#but i don’t know how to quantify that

[macbethz]

There is this weird literary phenomenon where authors want to tackle Dark or Adult topics but the way they write about it still feels very juvenile and shallow in tone in what is allegedly supposed to be Stories for Grown Ups. Something adjacent and overlapping w fan space people who are like heh…I love exploring Problematic Taboo topics but throw a tantrum if you critique their favorite media and get scared if they see someone smoking a cigarette

[cairdine]

In the past fifty years, fantasy’s greatest sin might be its creation of a bland, invariant, faux-Medieval European backdrop. The problem isn’t that every fantasy novel is set in the same place: pick a given book, and it probably deviates somehow. The problem is that the texture of this place gets everywhere.

What’s texture, specifically? Exactly what Elliot says: material culture. Social space. The textiles people use, the jobs they perform, the crops they harvest, the seasons they expect, even the way they construct their names. Fantasy writing doesn’t usually care much about these details, because it doesn’t usually care much about the little people – laborers, full-time mothers, sharecroppers, so on. (The last two books of Earthsea represent LeGuin’s remarkable attack on this tendency in her own writing.) So the fantasy writer defaults – fills in the tough details with the easiest available solution, and moves back to the world-saving, vengeance-seeking, intrigue-knotting narrative. Availability heuristics kick in, and we get another world of feudal serfs hunting deer and eating grains, of Western name constructions and Western social assumptions. (Husband and wife is not the universal historical norm for family structure, for instance.)

Defaulting is the root of a great many evils. Defaulting happens when we don’t think too much about something we write – a character description, a gender dynamic, a textile on display, the weave of the rug. Absent much thought, automaticity, the brain’s subsconscious autopilot, invokes the easiest available prototype – in the case of a gender dynamic, dad will read the paper, and mom will cut the protagonist’s hair. Or, in the case of worldbuilding, we default to the bland fantasy backdrop we know, and thereby reinforce it. It’s not done out of malice, but it’s still done.

The only way to fight this is by thinking about the little stuff. So: I was quite wrong. You do need to worldbuild pretty hard. Worldbuild against the grain, and worldbuild to challenge. Think about the little stuff. You don’t need to position every rain shadow and align every tectonic plate before you start your short story. But you do need to build a base of historical information that disrupts and overturns your implicit assumptions about how societies ‘ordinarily’ work, what they ‘ordinarily’ eat, who they ‘ordinarily’ sleep with. Remember that your slice of life experience is deeply atypical and selective, filtered through a particular culture with particular norms. If you stick to your easy automatic tendencies, you’ll produce sexist, racist writing – because our culture still has sexist, racist tendencies, tendencies we internalize, tendencies we can now even measure and quantify in a laboratory. And you’ll produce narrow writing, writing that generalizes a particular historical moment, its flavors and tongues, to a fantasy world that should be much broader and more varied. Don’t assume that the world you see around you, its structures and systems, is inevitable.

We... need worldbuilding by Seth Dickinson

[heavenlybodies333]

Psychoanalysis and Other Forms of Foreplay -S.R

Spencer Reid x Hotch’s daughter!reader

Spencer slumped in his chair, shoulders curled forward, fingers twitching against the edge of his desk. His screen had gone black. He didn’t notice. His fingers toyed with a paperclip, twisting it into unfamiliar shapes. By the time he realized he had bent it into a crude spiral, Penelope Garcia was already leaning on the edge of his desk, silently watching.

Across the bullpen, Garcia appeared in a flurry of lemon-yellow and rage.

“Okay,” she said, not even bothering with a hello. “What the hell is going on with you?”

He furrowed his brows. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t you play innocent with me, Dr. Disaster. You’ve been cranky, broody, barely forming full sentences for like… months.” She planted her hands on her hips. “I thought it was just you being you. But I saw you turn down Olivia from accounting today.”

Spencer looked at her like she’d spoken Martian. “She has a boyfriend.”

“She also has working eyes and a pulse and was very into your whole tortured genius thing,” Garcia snapped. “But you looked like she handed you a hand grenade instead of a phone number.”

He sighed. “It’s not that I’m not interested in dating.”

She raised a perfectly arched brow. “So what is it?” He hesitated.

“Spencer.”

He stared at his hands. “I can’t… finish.”

Garcia blinked. “Like… your sentences? Or—”

“No.” He scrubbed a hand down his face. “Sexually. I can’t come.”

Her jaw dropped.

“Not since—” He cut himself off.

“Oh my god. Since her?” He winced. “Oh my god. Spencer, no.”

He exhales. “It’s just her.” Garcia stared, unsure if she wanted to laugh or cry. “So your… tool of quantifiable pleasure is emotionally monogamous?”

“I’m not doing this for fun, Penelope!”

“You’re not doing this at all, apparently!”

He glared at her. She softened. “Okay, okay. I’m sorry. But, Spence—listen to yourself. You’re literally telling me the only person who can get you off is Hotch’s daughter. The girl whose heart you broke. The girl you left because her father said to. You realize how messed up that sounds, right?”

He ran a hand through his hair. “I didn’t leave because he said to. I left because she asked me not to fight him. She didn’t want to make it worse. And I couldn’t… I couldn’t stand to hurt her more by pushing.”

“Yeah,” Garcia said, folding her arms. “And now you want to go crawling back to her. For what, closure? Round two? Post-nut clarity?”

Spencer runs a hand through his already chaotic hair. “That is not how I’d describe it. But yes.”

Penelope stares. “So you’ve tried?”

He nods, miserable. “Hookups. Dates. Paid for dinner. Tried not paying for dinner. Switched hands. Switched porn. Nothing.”

She squints. “And you think this is a… medical issue?”

“No. It’s psychological. I know exactly what it is. It’s her. My mind won’t let go of her, and my body’s catching on.”

She gave him a long, hard look. “Do not use her like some kind of sexual Drano, I mean it,” she continues. “You don’t get to show up at her door hard and hollow and expect her to patch the leak. That girl loved you. And last I checked, heartbreak wasn’t an aphrodisiac.”

Your Apartment, 11:02 PM

You opened the door without checking the peephole. Rookie move. But you’d been expecting a food delivery.

Instead, it was Spencer.

And he looked like hell. You crack the door, arms crossed, hip leaning into the frame. “You lost?”

He looks like hell. Not in the tragic, gaunt, ex-addict way—no, this is emotional hell. Shirt wrinkled. Hair a little too curly. Mouth parted like he’s not sure how to start.

“I… needed to talk.”

You sigh and open the door fully. “You’ve got two minutes.”

He walked in like he’d forgotten what your apartment looked like. Eyes flicking to the couch you used to fuck on, the blanket he’d wrapped you in when you cried watching Dead Poets Society, the half-read book on the coffee table with his annotated handwriting in the margins.

“Did you come to sightsee or spit out whatever dumbass reason brought you here?”

“You look good,” he offers, like it might soften the blow of whatever he’s about to say.

You blinked arching an eyebrow. “You look like shit. And I know that’s not why you’re here.”

“I tried,” he added quickly, like it was a confession. “And it just… doesn’t work. I can’t.”

“You can’t what?”

“Finish.”

Your mouth went dry. “Spencer.” You stare. “I’m sorry?”

“I haven’t been able to orgasm. Since… you.”

Your mouth opens and then closes again. Because what the fuck is this?

“You’re seriously here to tell me that no one else can make you come? And what, you thought I would fix that for you?” You laugh, sharp and disbelieving. “For fuck’s sake, Spencer.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he says quickly, stepping forward. “I just—I’ve been trying to move on. And I can’t. It’s like my body knows what my brain keeps denying.”

“Is this the part where I’m supposed to feel bad for you?” Your tone was acid. “Because it sounds like you came here to make your problem my problem.”

Spencer looked wrecked. “I don’t want to use you.”

“Then don’t.”

“I just—” He raked a hand through his hair. “It’s you. It’s always been you. And it’s like my body knows it before I do.”

Your breath caught. Because that’s the thing—he always knew what to say when it was already too late.

You turned away from the door, arms tight across your chest. He didn’t follow you right away. Maybe he was waiting for the invite that wasn’t coming. Or maybe he knew better than to push.

“So what now?” you asked, voice carefully flat. “You tell me that your dick misses me, and I’m supposed to be flattered?”

Spencer flinched. “That’s not—”

“Don’t you dare say ‘what this is about.’”

He shut his mouth.

You crossed the room and leaned against the kitchen counter, curling your fingers around the edge like it might hold you in place. “Do you know how sick it is that you showed up here because no one else can get you off? That’s a you problem, Spencer. Not mine.”

“I know that,” he said quietly.

“Do you?”

He looked down. “I don’t expect you to fix it.”

“Then why are you here?”

His eyes met yours. “Because I can’t pretend it doesn’t mean something.”

You stared at him. “You left me.”

“I didn’t want to.”

“But you did. You let him make the call for both of us.”

He stepped closer, slowly. “You asked me not to fight him.”

“I thought giving you space was respecting your boundaries,” he said finally. “I thought leaving was the least selfish thing I could do.”

You swallowed. “You were wrong.”

A beat. Then another. “Do you want me to leave?”

You looked away. The worst part was—you didn’t. Not yet. “…No.”

He exhaled, like he’d been holding it since he got in the car. “Then can I just… sit down?”

You nodded once, sharply. He crossed to the couch and eased into it like the memory of you was still warm in the cushions. You watched him from the kitchen, heart hammering.

“I’m not sleeping with you,” you said, even though he hadn’t asked.

He nodded. “I wouldn’t ask you to.”

You scoffed. “You already did.”

“I didn’t—” He stopped, caught himself. “You’re right. I did. I didn’t mean to, but I did.”

You were quiet a long time.

“I’ve tried to stop missing you,” he said, barely louder than a whisper. “It’s exhausting.”

“I didn’t ask you to.”

“I know.” He laced his fingers together in his lap. “But I thought you should know.”

You moved closer, slowly. Stood across from him, arms crossed. “So what is this, then? You show up, tell me your body won’t cooperate with anyone else, and what—expect me to just… hold that for you? Be honored?”

He looked up. “No. I’m asking if you still miss me too.”

You blinked.

“I’m asking,” he said carefully, “if I’m the only one who feels like there’s a version of us we never got to finish.”

You didn’t mean to cry.

It just… happened.

Hot tears slipped down your cheeks before you could stop them, before you could tell your body no. You turned away fast, back to the kitchen sink, chest rising too fast.

Spencer stood—but didn’t cross the room. “I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

“I mean it.”

You nodded, barely. “I know.” You blinked slowly. “So what now?”

“I don’t know.”

Another pause. And then you said it. The question that had been burning your tongue since he walked in.

“Is this about sex? Or is this about me?”

His jaw tensed. “It’s both. But I swear to you, if I could want anyone else—if I could feel this way with anyone else—I would.”

“Jesus,” you whispered.

“Not because I don’t love you,” he said quickly. “Because it would be easier if I didn’t.”

You stared at him. “You’re pathetic.”

“I know.”

“I should tell you to leave.”

“You should.”

“But I’m not.”

He moved first—close enough to feel your breath catch. His voice was barely audible. “If I kiss you, will you hit me?”

“Probably.”

He didn’t move. But you did. You grabbed the front of his shirt and yanked him down into you like it was instinct, like some part of your body still remembered.

You backed into the couch without breaking the kiss, tugging him with you until your legs hit the edge and you dropped into the cushions. He followed instantly, his knees bracketing your thighs, weight caging you in. That kiss didn’t stop—not even when your fingers started undoing the buttons on his shirt with more aggression than skill.

“I hate you,” you muttered between kisses, your breath catching as he dragged his mouth down your neck.

“I deserve that,” he mumbled back, nipping at your collarbone. “Say it again.”

“I hate you.”

“You still want me?”

“Fuck you.”

“Please.”

You shoved his shirt off his shoulders with trembling hands. He made a sound in the back of his throat when you scraped your nails down his chest. It was rougher than you used to be.

“Tell me this means something,” he whispered, voice cracked.

You dragged his belt free and tossed it to the floor. “It means I need you to shut the fuck up.”

He dropped to his knees. Palmed your thighs. Rested his forehead against your hip like he was praying.

“God, I missed you,” he murmured.

You pushed him back. “Lie down.”

Spencer obeyed like it was instinct—like your voice bypassed logic. He sank back into the cushions, legs spread, eyes dark and waiting. Watching you like he didn’t know if this was real or punishment.

You climbed into his lap slowly, deliberately—straddling him, knees pressed to either side of his hips, your thighs bracketing the tension he was barely holding back.

Your hands framed his jaw. You kissed him again—slower this time. He moaned into your mouth when you rocked your hips forward, grinding against the hard line of him. There was nothing polite about it—just friction and desperation, your thin panties soaked through already and his cock straining beneath his boxers like it couldn’t wait to be touched.

You reached between your bodies and tugged them down just enough, freeing him. He was thick, flushed, already leaking—and he cursed under his breath when you wrapped your fingers around him.

“Still can’t come for anyone else?” you asked, stroking him slow and steady.

His head fell back against the cushion, eyes fluttering shut. “No one but you.”

“Good.”

You lifted just enough to tug your panties aside and lined him up with your entrance. His hands gripped your hips like he was trying not to beg. You sank down, your slick slipping against his throbbing cock.

Spencer shuddered. A deep, guttural sound tore from his chest like it was the first breath he’d taken in months. His eyes flew open, wide and disbelieving.

“Fuck,” he gasped. “You—you feel—”

“Better than anyone else?” you finished, lips curling into something mean.

He nodded like he was drowning. “So much better.”

You set the rhythm—slow, grinding circles that forced him to feel every inch of you.

He was falling apart underneath you. Hands trembling where they clutched your thighs. Breathing erratic.

“Look at me,” you whispered.

His eyes met yours, desperate and glazed.

“You came here thinking this would fix something.” Your nails dug into his shoulders. “But it won’t. It’ll make it worse.”

“I know,” he whispered, voice raw. “I want it anyway.”

You rocked harder now, angling your hips just right, the drag of him inside you hitting every spot that made your legs shake. You clenched around him and he whimpered.

“Jesus—baby—please—”

“You close?” you asked sweetly, tightening your grip on his jaw.

He nodded frantically. “I—I can’t—”

“You can,” you said, breath hot against his cheek. “You came all this way, Spencer. Don’t you dare fucking stop now.”

He let out a strangled groan—head tipping back, mouth parted, eyes glazed like he was already coming apart from just the threat of it.

“I’m gonna—I can’t—fuck—”

His hips jerked beneath you, chasing every desperate ounce of friction, hands flying to your ass like he needed to ground himself. You were soaked, clenching hard around him, rhythm never breaking.

Spencer spilled into you with a shudder so intense it almost knocked you both backward. His hips jerked helplessly, mouth slack, eyes glassy as he came harder than he had in over a year, burying his face in your shoulder like he couldn’t handle the sound of it, let alone the feeling.

You came with a gasp, your entire body clenching around him, nails dragging down his back, hips still rolling through the aftershocks.

You were both breathless and trembling, locked together like neither of you could quite bear to be apart.

Spencer held you. Tight. His breath was warm against your neck.

You felt the words forming before he even said them.

“I love you,” he whispered, ruined. “I never stopped.”

You didn’t answer. Not yet. But you didn’t let go, either. And he knew. He’d just made the biggest mistake of his life all over again. But this time—you weren’t going to let him walk away without a fight.

a/n: limerence is going to kill me

⋆•★⋆ MASTERLIST ⋆★•⋆

[orcinus-veterinarius]

Information to know about your pet… before you visit the vet:

- What kind of food does your pet eat? Include the brand name and flavor, as well as the amount fed and how often they eat. Remember that “one scoop” doesn’t mean much, so be sure to quantify it in cups, etc. before your next visit. Don’t forget to mention treats, or any recent diet changes!

- What medications, if any, does your pet take? Please know the drug name, dosage, and frequency, as well as how long they’ve been on it. Preventatives count as meds too! Different brands protect against different parasites, so be sure to know which your pet takes.

- Is your pet ever exposed to other animals? This includes animals in the home, at the dog park, groomers, daycare, boarding, and play dates with neighbors or friends. When was their most recent exposure?

- Is your pet up to date on vaccines? Which ones? Just the core vaccines (rabies and DHPP for dogs/FVRCP for cats), or non-core such as lepto, influenza, Bordetella, and/or feline leukemia as well? If not up to date, did they ever receive any vaccines in the past, and when?

- Does your pet have any relevant medical history? Please disclose any previous illnesses or surgeries you are aware of to your vet team.

- What is your pet’s spay/neuter status? Different reproductive diseases affect intact and altered animals. If you’re unsure, just let us know!

- Has your pet traveled recently? This includes everything from trips out of the country to a day drive across town for a swim at the lake. Certain toxins and diseases are more prevalent in different environments.

- Is your pet nervous or aggressive? There’s no shame in this! Please let us know for our safety and your pet’s.

Remember that not all vet visits are planned, so be sure to learn this information ahead of time. I hope this helps better equip you to advocate for your pet!

Fellow vet professionals, feel free to add on!

[incognitopolls]

We ask your questions anonymously so you don’t have to! Submissions are open on the 1st and 15th of the month.

[plaidos]

i don’t really wanna have sex with many TME people who aren’t my girlfriend tbh so this is an aside but if you don’t have sex with trans women truly solely because “you don’t like penises” then you must be really bad at sex because did you know there’s actually hundreds of other ways to have sex without putting a penis inside you. actually, fun fact…. probably the majority of trans women with penises don’t use them penetratively! i think many of the people saying “i just don’t like penises” are secretly holding back from saying “buttholes make me squeamish… and balls…. and being fingered…. and trans women’s mouths are different to cis women’s mouths somehow….” like i’m guessing these folk’s entire idea of sex is just tribbing and being fucked with a strapon specifically (which is somehow magically a completely different thing to a penis btw. but don’t ask them how to quantify that they just intrinsically are; trans women’s built in strap is a result of their maleness so it doesn’t count)

[muirneach]

finished two books today. another 200 pages down. genuinely have not lived a book reading life like this since childhood idk whats gotten into me. a last desperate push to salvage my goodreads year in review perhaps

i read. 240 pages today. oh my god

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

i know we always joke about how ace shares one brain cell with deuce or how dumb he is but just how smart is ace canonically? cuz theres like many moments in the story of him proving to us that hes quick thinking and people praising him for it too

Well… “Smartness” of a fictional character is pretty hard to quantify 😅 It’s not like they’ve got IQ test scores we can use. Even if we did, the IQ tests most people think of do not account for those who have different strengths or learning preferences, such as Kalim, who is not book-smart but is emotionally intelligent and studies better in one-on-one settings as opposed to traditional classrooms).

That aside. Ace is definitely the smartest one of Yuu’s immediate friend group (comparing them to Deuce and Grim, I mean). I think the “single brain cell” duo/trio joke is based on moreso how this group tends to get into trouble together OR a misunderstanding of Ace’s skills. Unlike Deuce, who genuinely does not understand the content (even having to take remedial lessons) and has a hard time focusing + memorizing, Ace is a natural at it. He has a good memory and can imitate a lot of things (dancing, a runway walk, other languages, etc.) after observing it just once, as we see in book 5, Fairy Gala If, his Dorm Uniform vignettes, etc. Ace is also quick on his feet and able to come up with plans and lies on the fly (Riddle’s dream in book 7, book 3 at the museum, Endless Halloween Night, etc.). Adeuce are intentionally opposites of each other.

He is considered decent in the classroom too! Ace doesn’t need to take remedial lessons (again, unlike Deuce) and is often teasing Deuce about how long he takes to do homework and other assignments (while Ace wraps his up quickly). However, the thing with Ace is that he often seeks shortcuts in school, which might be why people assume he is “dumb”. Him seeking shortcuts actually isn’t because he struggles with the material, but because he has limited interest in learning. (Ace cuts class, ducks chores/responsibility, and still makes a deal with Azul to assure he passes his final exam with little effort on his end.) This is a pretty direct contrast to Deuce, who sucks at schoolwork but actively tries at it anyway. It’s even reflected in Ace’s favorite subject, Magic Analysis/Enigmics, which he states he enjoys because you just plug numbers into a formula. Again, it’s easy and minimal effort.

Personally, I don’t enjoy playing into the “single brain cell duo/trio” joke for the reason that I don’t find it super fitting for Ace. No shade to the fans who do use this term, it’s just not my own preference. I prefer to just say “Adeuce” or “Adeuce and Grim” when possible.

[fingertipsmp3]

My 2025 resolutions:

Don’t die unless it’s unavoidable

No fucking impulse buying! No! Fucking! Impulse buying!!!

Travel more (which means travel at all)

Read more and be on my phone less

[luv4arinn]

I Just Wanna Feel

Author’s Note: So—sorry for not posting in weeks, but I had a massive writer’s block, and well… I’m back! I was heavily inspired by THAT Robbie Williams song. Yes, I watched his biopic. Yes, I cried. Yes, I recommend it. And… surprise?! There will be a whole chronology with the others, all themed around Robbie’s songs! Yayy <3!! Consider it a gift? from me for taking so long 🥺. Love you all.

Pairing: Bayverse!Donnie x female reader

Tags: Intense fluff, nerd having an emotional crisis, extreme overthinking, unexpected kisses, Donatello’s mental breakdown, romantic panic, “oh no I messed up” but in HD, happy ending.

The sound of the keyboard echoed through the room—a rhythmic, steady tapping that blended with the low hum of the monitors. The bluish glow from the screens cast irregular shadows across his face, reflecting off the lenses of his glasses with every line of code appearing and disappearing on the monitor.

Donatello was there, as always.

The work was easy. Thinking was easy.

It was like a well-structured algorithm: receive information, process it, execute a plan of action. The world had rules, patterns, probabilities—formulas that predicted outcomes with near-absolute precision. No matter how chaotic a situation seemed, there was always a logical solution waiting to be uncovered.

Computers don’t lie.

Data has no biases, no whims. It doesn’t suffer irrational fluctuations. It doesn’t beat faster without reason. It doesn’t have to remind itself to breathe.

But then…

There’s you.

And everything falls apart.

Not immediately. Not like a fatal error shutting down the system in the blink of an eye. It’s more subtle. Like an unexpected variable in an equation that had, until now, been perfect. Something that doesn’t fit into the rigid structure of his world—but something he can’t ignore either.

He thinks about it often. About how his brain operates like a well-calibrated machine, each thought clicking into the next like the teeth of a moving gear. Logic is his native language. Reason, his compass.

And yet, when it comes to you, all that logic becomes blurred.

The gears grind.

The code becomes erratic.

The equation fills with unknowns.

Because when you step into his space, when your voice disrupts the steady rhythm of his keyboard, when you lean over his desk without a second thought for the scattered circuits and switch off his monitor without warning…

His first instinct is to think. Analyze. Quantify.

What does this mean?

Why does his heart react this way?

Why does his skin register the shift in temperature more intensely when you’re near?

But thinking doesn’t give him answers.

Feeling does.

And that is terrifying.

Because feeling isn’t predictable. Feeling has no neatly arranged lines of code, no graphs to chart behavioral patterns, no equations with exact solutions.

Emotions, in themselves, are a chaotic system.

And you…

You are the anomaly he still doesn’t know how to decode.

Nights shouldn’t feel this short when spent alone in front of a screen. And yet, when his mind drifts to the memory of a laugh, the fleeting image of a glance, the echo of an accidental touch… time dissolves in a way not even quantum physics could explain.

When he feels the weight of his name on your tongue. Like an access key to a system he never thought anyone would try to hack.

And he watches you from the corner of his eye as you lean closer, and in that instant, every variable in his mind shifts. Every equation rewrites itself.

A shiver runs down his shell.

Feeling.

He knows because his chest tightens with an undefined pressure, a sensation he can’t attribute to any specific physiological variable. His heart rate isn’t elevated from exertion. He’s not under attack. He’s not in danger.

So why does his body react as if he is?

There’s no equation to explain this.

Because if there were, he would have solved it long ago. He would have identified the problem, broken it down into its components, eliminated any errors. But every time he thinks he’s close to an answer, another unknown appears, shifting all previous solutions out of place.

Music filters through his headphones, slow and melancholic.

“I just wanna feel, real love…”

A shiver runs down his spine.

His body reacts to the sound before his mind does. It’s absurd. It’s ridiculous. There is no logical reason why a progression of chords and a set of words arranged in a certain way should have this effect on him.

And yet, here he is.

Fingers hovering over the keyboard, motionless—caught between the instinct to keep working and the strange, undeniable realization that… he can’t.

Not because he’s tired.

Not because he lacks information.

Not because there’s a problem that requires more processing.

But because, for the first time in a long time, the data isn’t the most important thing.

The screen flickers with information he should be absorbing, but he isn’t. His glasses reflect numbers and graphs that would normally hold his full attention, but his gaze is empty, unfocused.

The room remains unchanged—draped in shadows, illuminated only by the bluish glow of his monitors and the faint blinking of LED lights from his equipment.

The mission had been difficult. The margin of error had been higher than he liked to admit.

It wasn’t often that his calculations failed.

But sometimes, calculations weren’t enough.

Sometimes, reality simply… refused to adhere to logic.

“Feel the home that I live in…”

His jaw tightens.

He doesn’t know how that song ended up on his playlist.

But he has a reasonable theory.

One that involves Mikey, his blatant disregard for personal privacy, and his insistent need to “help him connect with his emotions.”

(Sure. Right.)

And yet…

The lyrics hit him harder than he’d like to admit.

It’s not the melody itself. It’s not the chords or the rhythm. It’s the way the words seem to slip through the cracks in his mind, seeping into the spaces that logic has never quite managed to seal shut.

“I just wanna feel, real love…”

Donnie exhales slowly, his fingers still hovering over the keyboard, motionless.

He thinks about the battle.

The mistakes.

The risks they took.

Numbers flash through his mind like a simulation running in reverse—impact probability, the margin of error in his calculations, the reaction speed needed to avoid damage. Fractions of a second where the difference between victory and absolute disaster depended on decisions made under pressure.

But more than anything—he thinks about you.

He thinks about the way, at the end of the fight, you rushed to check if he was okay.

About how, without even thinking, your hands—warm, alive—ran along his arm, searching for injuries he had already identified and dismissed milliseconds before with his visor.

He could have told you it wasn’t necessary.

That he was unharmed.

That he had concrete data to prove it.

But he didn’t.

Because logic dictates that worry should be extinguished by facts.

But feeling…

Feeling dictates that your touch lingers, even after you’ve gone.

That the sensation of your skin against his stays beyond his capacity for reasoning.

That the light pressure of your fingers on his forearm still burns in his memory, like an unsolved equation looping endlessly in his mind.

“Come and hold my hand…”

Donnie closes his eyes.

He could turn the song off.

He could erase the anomaly from his system.

He could rewrite the equation, adjust the variables, find a way to rationalize what he feels.

But… he doesn’t want to.

Because for the first time in his life, the result of a problem doesn’t matter as much as the unknown.

He doesn’t just want to think.

He wants to feel.

He wants to understand why being with you feels like the only constant that truly matters.

And then—you arrive.

Without warning, without fanfare, without the slightest idea that the world inside Donatello’s mind is teetering on the edge of a collapse even he can’t explain.

The lab door slides open smoothly—barely a whisper against the silence, thick with static electricity and the faint murmur of music in his headphones.

He notices everything.

The shift in air pressure.

The sound of your footsteps, softened against the floor.

The faint scent of shampoo and fabric laced with the chill of the night.

The way the temperature in the room rises by just a fraction of a degree when you step inside.

But he doesn’t turn around immediately.

Because he doesn’t know what to do with the anomaly that you are in his equation.

He doesn’t know where to place you within the rigid parameters of his logical, structured world.

His operating system slows, his brain—so used to processing information with the precision of a surgeon—stalls in an endless loop, searching for a resolution that refuses to exist.

And then—your voice.

“Donnie?”

Soft. Not because you’re hesitant, but because you know him. Because somehow—through a method he can’t quantify—you can read the tension in his shoulders. You can see the way his fingers have stopped typing, even though the screen is still waiting for input.

He closes his eyes for just a moment, as if that alone might be enough to reboot him, to restore the control that feels like it’s slipping through his fingers.

He knows he should say something.

He knows he should act normal.

But his normal means efficiency, speed, precise answers delivered at the exact right moment.

And right now, every command in his mind is failing.

You watch him with quiet curiosity, tilting just slightly toward him—just enough for the air between you to feel heavier, more tangible.

“Everything okay?” you ask, voice soft in that way that completely disarms him. Then your gaze sharpens slightly, scanning him with quiet scrutiny. “Are you hurt?”

He doesn’t answer immediately.

Instead, he looks at you.

His mind runs an automatic analysis of your expression—eyes slightly narrowed, lips barely pressed together, the faintest crease in your right brow, as if you’re already calculating the probability that he’s lying.

Logic dictates that he should reassure you with data. That he should tell you his visor has already run a full diagnostic scan and that his physical condition is optimal. That there is no rational reason for concern.

But then his gaze drops.

And he sees his own hand, still resting on the desk—still tense.

And for the first time in a long time, he chooses to do something without overthinking it.

He looks at you again.

His throat feels dry. Without realizing it, he wets his lips—a quick flick of his tongue over skin cracked from hours without proper hydration.

Then, in a voice so quiet it barely sounds like his own, he asks:

“Can I… hold your hand?”

It’s not the kind of question anyone would expect from him.

And he knows it.

Because it doesn’t fit his usual patterns. It’s not something that makes sense in any logical context.

But right now, logic is utterly useless to him.

Your lashes flutter in subtle surprise, as if the words take a few extra seconds to fully register.

“What?”

His instincts scream at him to backtrack, to rephrase, to find a way to explain what even he doesn’t fully understand.

But he doesn’t.

“I want to…” He inhales, trying to reorganize his thoughts. “I mean, just—”

He shuts his eyes for a second, frustration flickering across his face. He has never felt this clumsy with words before.

When he opens them again, you’re still there. You haven’t moved. You haven’t looked away.

And somehow, that alone gives him the courage he’s lacking.

“I just… want to feel it.”

The truth escapes him so easily, so quietly, that it almost embarrasses him.

Your expression shifts.

It’s not amusement.

It’s not rejection.

It’s something softer. More intimate.

And without questioning it—without hesitation or unnecessary words—you let your hand slide over his.

Not hurriedly.

Not hesitantly.

Just with the quiet certainty of someone who understands exactly what he’s asking for.

And when your fingers intertwine with his, Donnie feels every equation, every algorithm, every carefully structured rule in his mind… simply dissolve.

As if they had never really mattered in the first place.

“Well?” you ask, your voice carrying a faint attempt at lightness.

Donnie knows you’re trying to sound casual, that you’re masking your uncertainty behind a relaxed tone. But he notices.

He notices the delicate dusting of pink on your cheeks, the almost imperceptible tremor in your lower lip, the way your thumb brushes against the back of his hand—like you’re adjusting to the contact just as much as he is.

And something inside him… softens.

His lips curve, at first unconsciously—a smile, small and barely formed. Then, from deep in his chest, a quiet laugh escapes, unbidden and genuine, as weightless as the air after a storm.

It’s not mockery. It’s not disbelief.

It’s something purer. Something real.

—Nothing, —he murmurs, his thumb moving awkwardly against your skin— Just… this is nice.

The confession catches him off guard.

Because he hadn’t planned it.

Because he hadn’t filtered it through his logic before speaking.

Because it simply happened.

And then, you look at each other.

Maybe for too long.

Maybe just long enough for the world around you to blur into a distant murmur, as if nothing else exists except the space you occupy together.

He finds himself mesmerized by you.

Fascinated.

But not in the way he is fascinated by a new equation, by an unexpected pattern in the data, by the perfect symmetry of a well-designed structure.

This is different.

This is raw.

This is visceral.

This is feeling.

His other hand, trembling in a way he doesn’t understand, lifts with a slowness that borders on reverence.

And when his fingers brush against your cheek, the touch is so light it feels like an experiment in itself.

He feels.

He feels the warmth of your skin beneath his fingertips, the way it molds so effortlessly to his touch, the way your body leans ever so slightly toward him—responding to an equation he hasn’t yet written but, for the first time, doesn’t feel the need to solve.

He feels the erratic pounding of his own heart, too fast, too unsteady, as if it has forgotten its natural rhythm.

He feels the heat gathering in his chest, expanding outward like a shockwave, defying all logical explanation.

And then, he hears you sigh.

Small.

Soft.

Almost imperceptible.

But he feels it.

He feels the warmth of your breath against his skin, the subtle vibration of your exhale in the nonexistent space between you.

Feels,

feels,

feels.

As if every one of his senses��once so meticulously calibrated to process information—has now been repurposed for a single objective:

You.

Your warmth seeping into his skin.

Your quiet, rhythmic breathing.

The barely-there weight of your gaze resting on him.

The familiar scent of you, imprinting itself onto some hidden corner of his mind he never thought necessary.

Just you.

Only you.

Nothing else exists.

Nothing else matters.

And then—without thinking, without calculating, without rationalizing it into exhaustion like he always does—

he kisses you.

It’s brief. Just a brush of lips.

A moment suspended between doubt and need, between impulse and fear.

A single heartbeat contained in a single point of contact.

And then—

He hears you gasp.

His entire body locks up. Every muscle goes rigid with a tension so sharp it’s almost painful.

His brain—so efficient, so precise, so relentless in its ability to analyze every variable in a situation—enters a total shutdown.

He stares at you, eyes wide, pupils blown.

Oh, no.

No, no, no.

He misread everything.

What the hell was he thinking?

You don’t see him that way.

Why would you?

Why would you ever?

Shame crashes over him like an unstoppable wave. His stomach twists, his skin burns, his heart clenches into an invisible fist that threatens to crush it from the inside out.

He pulls back, his hands loosening, his voice catching in his throat.

—Oh, God, I didn’t mean to— —he stammers, his voice cracking under the weight of his own panic. His thoughts are a mess of unsolved equations, of probabilities collapsing into a singularity of pure dread— I just… I thought it was a good moment, I—

—Yes.

Your voice cuts through his spiral.

His brain short-circuits.

—It was.

…

What?

His breath halts.

The air thickens, pressing in from all sides, as if the entire universe has stopped—right here, right now, in these words, in this reality he never accounted for.

And then—

You close the distance.

You are the one to bring your lips back to his.

And his mind—his brilliant, overanalyzing mind—

for the first time in his life—goes completely silent.

And he simply—feels.

[kinardsevan]

if the world was ending (would you drive to me to cry with me)

8x15 coda scene

Tommy spends an indeterminate period of time standing in front of the monitors watching Evan. His throat hurts just as badly as the knots in his stomach that have kept him rooted to the spot, torn between going inside to find the younger man and continuing to watch him. 

It hurt him in a way that he couldn’t quantify into words, to see the younger man hurt the way he currently was. It fed into this continuous loop of trying to shove down his true feelings while also feeling them bubble up at what felt like the most inopportune times. 

If there was one thing he was clear on, though, it was that his feelings toward Evan weren’t gone in the slightest, let alone something sophomoric that he could just push away. 

He wanted someone to tell him the right answer. He wanted to go inside and fold Evan into his arms, be there for him. He wanted to stuff the boiling-over feelings in his chest so far down that he could go home and try to continue on without the younger firefighter in his life the same way he’s been trying—and mostly failing—since that night he walked out of the loft months ago. 

Except, nobody is coming, because Howie is in isolation, and so is Hen. Ravi and he are on decent terms, but he doesn’t exactly expect the kid to come and tell him how to deal with his own feelings when the kid is clearly dealing with far more in the face of losing Bobby.

And sure, Tommy was losing Bobby too, but not in the way everyone else was. Not in the way that Hen and Howie were, when they had stayed at the 118 during Bobby’s entire tenure. Not in the way that Ravi had only ever known Bobby as a captain, because he’d never faced a 118 A shift without him. Not like Evan…

Something snaps in him at that thought, and he swipes at the tears on his face, turns on his heel and walks out of the tent.

There are people still milling in and out of the facility when he makes it inside. If anyone of them has anything to say about the fact that he’s not suited up to be inside the building, they don’t say anything. He passes by swathes of people, ultimately joining a group in the elevator where only one button is pushed. He can feel the way eyes shoot in his direction but no one actually speaks and he’s glad for it. He’d be inclined to snap at the moment if anyone actually did. 

When the elevator docks on the floor, people exit, heading in different directions. He passes by all of them, moving deeper into the facility until he finally comes to one of the doors that leads to the locked area. A man in fatigues eyes him up quickly—Tommy vaguely recognizes him from before they all went inside—and then swipes a card at the reader before moving aside. 

Tommy brushes past him, walking faster and faster the closer he gets. When he finally reaches the last locked door, he meets the Colonel in charge, and the man swipes his card without saying anything before Tommy even reaches him. 

He hears Evan’s sobs as soon as the door opens, and it feels like drowning. His feet move under him in a way where it feels like they almost never touch the ground, because in one second he’s passing through the door and the next, he’s down on the floor, water soaking through he legs of his flight suit as he pulls the younger man in and holds him. 

Evan’s hands claw at the back of his suit with desperation, as if he can’t get close enough to the pilot. 

“Shh, I know,” he murmurs, holding on to the younger man just as tightly. “I know, baby.” 

The word slips out, and whatever version of him feels like he shouldn’t have said it is stomped to death by sob that Evan lets out as his fingers dig into Tommy’s trapezius muscles. The pilot closes his eyes and buries his own face in Evan’s collarbone, inhaling him and feeling so fucking selfish for the fact that he gets to, when feet away, Athena Grant still stands at the barrier between herself and the lab where Captain Bobby Nash is dying. 

He loses time again, doesn’t give any inclination to it passing, even with the watch on his wrist working perfectly fine. Evan cries, and so does he, and they just exist. 

Eventually, after an extremely long time, he feels Evan sag entirely against him, and when Tommy pulls back, he knows. 

It takes him a few seconds to configure their movements, but he gets his arms underneath Evan, shifts on a knee, and then pushes off the ground with the younger man in his arms. He heads back up the hall, passes through doors freely, and when they approach the outside, he sees people he recognizes as being from the medical examiner’s office. Somewhere inside of him, he feels the slightest bit of relief, knowing Evan isn’t awake to see them. He’s not sure the younger man could handle that realization at the moment. 

He’s surprised when he gets outside and finds Weston leaning against Tommy’s truck, keys in hand. When they’re close enough, Weston opens the passenger side of Tommy’s truck, and Tommy gets Evan settled, buckles him in, and then closes the door quietly before turning to his captain. 

“How?” He asks as Weston hands over Tommy’s keys. 

Weston shrugs. “Donato and a few of the others offered to do some shuffling around after shift. My car is across the lot.” The man looks past him toward the building. “Saw the coroner arrived.” 

Tommy nods, gulping past the knot in his throat. Weston reaches a hand out and squeezes his shoulder. 

“Take an extra day. Hell, Kinard, take two. We’ll figure it out. Just take care of yourself,” his captain states. He jerks his head toward the passenger door. “And him.” 

Tommy nods, turning his head away as a tear slips out and down his cheek. Weston squeezes his shoulder once more before stepping past him, patting it gently before walking away. Tommy takes enough time to take another breath before he rounds his truck and gets into the driver’s seat, starts the vehicle. 

He glances over at Evan, still passed out and still in his turnouts, reaches over and cups his cheek as he swallows down against the knot still in his throat. Evan lets out a breath, sniffling in his sleep. Tommy pulls his hand back after a few seconds and backs out of the parking spot. As he turns back around from checking out his back window for clearance, his hand falls against Evan’s palm on his thigh as naturally as it ever has, and the younger man curls his fingers in. Any part of Tommy that feels like he could pull away before sinks away.

He spends far too long trying to figure out whose house to take them to, before ultimately taking Evan back to his place. The younger man’s truck is bound to be at the 118, and he can’t be sure if he has his keys on him. It’s a longer drive, but it also gives Evan a longer time to rest. 

He pulls the truck all the way into his garage, grateful that his most recent project vehicle is finished, so he’s able to park the truck in the middle so he can get Evan out and into the house without having to wake him. 

He gets the younger man in the house, through the kitchen into the bedroom, settles him on the bench at the end of the king-sized bed before he starts removing his turnouts. The jacket goes easiest, and then he lets Evan sag back against the mattress after he gets the suspenders down before removing his boots and pants. They smell of smoke and ash—as they always do, given their job—and he walks out into the kitchen long enough to set them on a couple of chairs before he returns to the bedroom. Evan is still stretched half across the bottom of the bed, sagging down just slightly where his body presses the mattress down while his hips and legs are tilted higher by the bench. 

He questions himself for a time, wondering if it’s right or even okay for him to remove the rest of Evan’s clothes. He knows that the younger man loathes sleeping in pants, and more often than not, he doesn’t wear a shirt to bed either. Still, he isn’t sure that it’s his place anymore. 

Evan snuffles and rubs a hand across his face before resettling, trying to shift his hips and failing. 

“‘mmy,” he mutters, barely audible, and it’s enough to make the decision for the pilot.

He crosses the space between them and unbuttons and zips Evan’s jeans. 

“I’m right here, baby,” he answers softly, reaching up to squeeze his hand before pulling the jeans off Evan’s hips, down his legs. He folds them and sets them on the dresser before moving around to the side of the bed and lifting Evan. He moves the blankets around and then slips the younger man beneath them. All the movement is enough to rouse Evan at least a little bit. Tommy sits on the edge of the bed beside him, helping him out of the t-shirt and letting it fall on the floor. When it’s gone, Evan’s hand runs down Tommy’s arm until it wraps around his forearm, holding on. Tommy glances back at him as Evan’s eyes meet his, defeated and heartbroken. 

“Bobby’s gone,” he rasps. It isn’t a question. 

Tommy gulps, strokes his thumb along the inside of Evan’s elbow. 

“Yeah, baby.” 

Evan keeps staring up at him as tears well up. Tommy remembers, only too easily, how only a year ago they had sat in the kitchen of the loft and Evan had told him how he’d feared losing the captain then, and how Bobby was the father he’d never had. 

Except, now Bobby is gone, and he’s not coming back. And the same way Tommy will never talk to his mom again, Evan will never talk to Bobby again. This was not a matching scar he wanted them to share. 

Wordlessly, Tommy reaches up and wipes away Evan’s tears with his free hand, and they exist together in space again for a time. After a few minutes, Evan reaches for the snaps on Tommy’s uniform and starts pulling them apart. He works them open all the way down to Tommy’s stomach, never asking, but both of them knowing. 

When Tommy stands, their hands slide down, fingers intertwined as he pulls his free arm out of the uniform and then turns, letting Evan take that hand as he slides his other arm out and then slips out of his shoes and kicks away the uniform before using his toes to get his socks off. 

Down to his undershirt and boxers, he lets Evan pull on his hand, and rather than cycling around the bed, he slots a leg over Evan and then leans over him to get to the other side. Evan stops him for the briefest moment as Tommy passes over top of him, their gaze meeting, but once the pilot is settled into the space beside him, Evan lets his hand go and rests it on Tommy’s leg as the pilot removes his t-shirt, tosses it down by Evan’s before laying down with him. 

Evan rearranges himself, curls up against the pilot’s chest as Tommy’s arms loop around him. 

“He said he loved me,” Evan whispers, his voice wet with phlegm. “That I’d be okay without him, and everyone was going to need me.” 

Tommy’s fingers stroke up and down his back as he listens, the other curled up in Evan’s free hand, the younger man holding on to his index and middle fingers. 

“I don’t know where he gets that. I’m not…” He huffs and sniffles, shakes his head minutely. Tommy feels wetness on his chest. “Everyone leaves. Or dies.” 

His statement twists something inside of Tommy’s chest. A callback to their breakup, something that makes him want to argue about who said what and when, but in the face of the current moment, it doesn’t feel like it means anything. And really, does it? Does arguing that Evan said he doesn’t feel anything for him—when they both still clearly do—and Tommy thinking the younger man would choose someone else eventually really matter if, in the face of death, they just want each other? 

“I have to be okay for them,” he continues. “Athena. Hen, Chim. Someone has to hold it together for all of them.” 

Tommy nods his head against his pillow as he keeps his eyes on the younger man. Whether intentional or not, Evan tightens against his side, and Tommy’s hand moves to the back of his head, his thumb stroking down against it. 

“Maybe,” he murmurs softly. “But you don’t have to for me.” 

Evan inhales a deep breath audibly, and when he lets it out, Tommy feels another tear fall onto his chest. They lay together quietly, the only sounds being their breathing and the occasional sniffle from Evan. Tommy doesn’t fight his own tears, but breathes in and out of his mouth, not wanting Evan to feel like he can’t have a place to let his walls down. 

And then, some time later, a breath catches in Tommy’s chest at a memory. Evan tilts his head up, his own tears still coming slowly and quietly. Tommy’s head is tilted higher on his pillow, clearly trying to keep the focus on Evan, but the younger man reaches up with Tommy’s fingers still wrapped in his hand, and he uses his thumb to pull at the pilot’s chin until Tommy looks down at him. Gaze to gaze, there’s nothing but naked vulnerability between them. 

“You’re not allowed to die,” Evan tells him. 

Tommy lets out a mirthless laugh as another tear slips out, rests on his eye socket. “Neither are you.” 

Evan stares up at him, a mix of something happening in his expression. It causes that swell in Tommy’s chest again, more than boiling at this point as he watches Evan open his mouth at the same time as more tears fall. His gaze slips to Tommy’s lips and then back up at him. 

“I…” 

“I know,” Tommy answers him, squeezing his fist around where Evan still has his fingers in a haphazard handhold. “I do too.” 

Evan’s gaze softens at him, and for the briefest moment, things hurt just a little less. Evan reaches up and pulls Tommy’s head toward him, and the pilot lifts, meets him in the middle in a kiss that they’re both too tired to let turn into anything else. When they part, Evan rests his head on Tommy’s shoulder and his hand over the pilot’s heart, feeling the thump thump thump beneath his palm. Neither of them speaks, and neither closes their eyes, all too aware of what they’ll see if they do. 

Bobby Nash was a man who had saved both of them—for Evan, on more than one occasion, and for Tommy, when he needed it most. He’d kept them both alive so that they could find each other, and even though they might only have to figure out out one minute a time, Tommy wasn’t sure of how he was going to get Evan through losing the captain, let alone himself. 

But he knew that he would. He had to. He’d promised. 

“Hey!” 

Tommy glances up, a smile crossing his face as he looks up at Bobby. 

“Hey, Bobby. Good to see you again,” he comments, extending a hand to his former captain. The other man takes it, grips firmly as he shakes Tommy’s hand. 

“Glad to see you joining in on the team get-togethers,” he answers, clapping his hand on Tommy’s shoulder again. Tommy’s gaze shifts back across the yard at where Evan is swinging Jee-Yun around, and his eyes soften as his heart swells. The younger man was supposed to be getting them new refreshments, but he’d clearly gotten distracted, and Tommy wasn’t about to complain. 

“Happy to be invited,” he responds, a little softer. Evan stops as Maddie walks up to him and says something, and the younger man laughs at her, setting Jee-Yun on the ground. She tears off in a different direction towards the other kids. 

“It’s a good thing,” Bobby states, and Tommy glances up at him, raising an eyebrow. Bobby nods at him. “I know how you can get. But you’re good for each other. And if you let him, he’ll protect your heart just as much as his own.” 

Tommy inhales a deep breath and gulps, nods minutely. 

“Well, maybe just don’t go having anything happen like that fire anytime again soon,” Tommy states when he manages to feel like he hasn’t swallowed lava again. 

“I’ll do my best,” Bobby tells him. A moment later, he glances over at Tommy. “But something tells me that even if something did happen, he’d be taken care of.” 

Tommy looks back at him again, that lava feeling welling in his chest once more. Bobby nods at him, as though he’s decided on something neither of them had voiced. Tommy opens his mouth to say something, but then Athena is calling the man’s name, and he pats Tommy on the shoulder before walking away. Shortly thereafter, Evan walks up to him with two fresh beers, passing one to Tommy before slipping an arm around his waist. 

“Everything okay,” he asks, curling into Tommy’s side. The pilot glances back in Bobby’s direction, his mind still on their exchange as the captain looks back at him, a smile still on his face. 

“Yeah,” Tommy answers, fully aware of what causes that lava feeling as it swirls around in his chest again. He turns towards Evan and nuzzles an eskimo kiss. “Yeah, everything’s great.” 

[pillow-coded]

To Have and To Hold — Chapter 2

Summary: Spencer doesn’t plan on seeing her again—but fate disagrees. A second encounter at the library leads to lunch, crayons, and conversation that slips into unexpected feelings.

Couple: Spencer Reid/Fem!Reader

Category: Slow Burn Series (NSFW, 18+)

Content Warning: Just a lot of fluff, and Spencer being a natural girl dad.

word count: 8.5k (I might’ve gone a little overboard)

Series Masterlist

“Books were easier. Made more sense than people did.”

That’s what I told the woman in the library two weeks ago when I found her daughter crying.

Maybe that’s why I’m back here. Back in the same library. Same hour. Same section.

Because books are easier than people, and thus I spend all my free time in the Library. Or maybe it was a coincidence. It was just a coincidence that this Library is closest to Quantico and was the same one where I met her. I’m not here for her. I’m not—

Actually, statistically speaking, the odds of running into someone twice in the same place, at the same time, without planning to, are roughly one in—

I exhale. Pick up the dog-eared copy of A Short History of Nearly Everything, flip it open with the spine cradled in my palm like something sacred. Page 203. I already know what’s there. I’ve memorized this edition. The typo in the footnote. The misplaced semicolon.

I set it back.

My fingers twitch toward Cosmos. Sagan. Safe. Familiar. Predictable, in the way that humans never were. Books don’t lie. Don’t leave. Don’t disappear into the world after saying things like “Thank you for being so gentle with her.”

She had a kind voice. Soft but tired. Like it had been through too many nights alone.

I blink and shake the thought loose. Refocus on the shelves, on the choices. As if there’s a decision to be made, when I know I’ll probably leave empty-handed anyway.

I don’t even need more books.

I tell myself I came here to browse, but I could’ve done that anywhere. There’s a secondhand shop closer to my apartment. Bigger science section. Better lighting.

But I came here.

Same day. Same time.

I run my thumb along the edge of a cover, barely registering the title.

It’s not like I expected to see her again. That would be ridiculous. Irrational. Entirely out of character.

But that doesn’t stop my brain from replaying her voice.

"Thank you again. For everything."

I didn’t say much in return. I never do. But she looked at me like I had, anyway. Like I’d said something important without needing to speak it aloud.

She was tired. In that way people are when they don’t trust the world to be kind to them. I know that look. I’ve worn it.

I wonder if she always smells like pancakes and baby shampoo. If she always speaks gently when she’s angry. If she ever lets anyone in.

I wonder how long I’ll remember the curve of her smile. The way her daughter clung to her shirt like it was home.

This is stupid.

I’m being stupid.

I pick up Cosmos. Open it halfway, then shut it again. I’m not even pretending anymore.

I turn slightly, scanning the aisle like maybe I’ll catch a glimpse of—

Laughter.

High, bright, unfiltered. A child’s laughter.

My chest tightens before I even realize I’m holding my breath. It’s probably nothing. Just another kid. There are always kids in libraries, especially on weekends. It doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t—

Another laugh, this time followed by a tiny voice too far away to make out. But there’s something about the cadence. The way it rises and dips with storybook rhythm.

I close my eyes.

I know that voice. Not in the way I know facts. Not in a way I could quantify. But I know it.

My fingers curl tighter around the edge of the book.

No. It’s not possible. The odds are ridiculous. Coincidence is one thing—this would be something else entirely. This would be—

My heart stutters.

I don’t move, not yet. I just stand there, spine straight, staring blankly at the shelf in front of me like it might explain what I’m supposed to do next.

It could be her, It could be Maddie.

Which means…

She’s here too.

And that thought—that tiny, traitorous flicker of hope—is enough to terrify me. Because if it’s not?

If I turn that corner and it’s just some other little girl with Rapunzel hair and a too-loud laugh?

Then I’ll have to admit that I came here for someone I barely know.

And I’m not sure what’s worse—seeing them again, or not seeing them at all.

I didn’t have to do anything to figure it out. Because before I could even make up my mind about turning the corner, I felt a small tug at the bottom hem of my shirt.

And then—

“Spencer?”

Her voice. High-pitched. Certain.

I looked down.

There she was. Bright-eyed, slightly flushed, her hair a little messier than I remembered, like she’d been running through the shelves unsupervised again. The same Rapunzel doll she had gotten from our previous encounter, clutched in one hand.

And just like that, the rest of the library disappeared.

All the facts. All the logic. All the well-rehearsed mental gymnastics I’d been running through dissolved under the weight of one look from a five-year-old.

“Hi,” I said—because it was the only word I could find.

Her face lit up like it was the answer she’d been hoping for.

“I knew it was you!” she beamed. “Mommy said maybe someday, and I told her someday would come.”

Someday.

I swallowed hard.

It was suddenly, terrifyingly, today.

“Maddie…” I crouched down a little, just to meet her eyes. “Where’s your mommy? Did you get lost again?”

I looked around, scanning the edges of the room for any sign of her. But all I saw were rows and rows of shelves, shadowed corners, and quiet readers. No familiar face. No soft, tired voice. Just absence.

“No,” Maddie said, entirely unfazed. “Mommy’s at the kiddie section, talking to my friend’s mom. I was playing hide and seek with my friend… and then I saw you.”

She said it like I was the thing she’d been hoping to find all along. Like this had been part of the game.

I was about to suggest we head back to the kiddie section and find her mother, but it was clear she had no intention of being rerouted. Her mind was already somewhere else—bouncing ahead like she always seemed to.

“Mommy brought me to the library today, and she read me and my friends a book!” she exclaimed, practically vibrating.

“Oh really?” I asked, settling into her rhythm. “What book?”

“There’s No Place Like Space!” she announced proudly.

I raised an eyebrow. “Cat in the hat?”

She nodded eagerly. “Yeah! He wears a space helmet.”

I smiled. “Did you learn any new facts?”

She leaned in like she was about to share a state secret. “Did you know Saturn has rings made of ice and rocks and moon dust? That’s what the book said.”

“I did know that,” I whispered back. “But only because I read it too.”

Her face lit up like I’d just told her we shared a superpower. “Really?! what else do you know?”

I smiled, keeping my voice low like we were sharing very important secrets.

“Well… did you know that on Venus, it rains acid? But the air’s so hot, the rain disappears before it ever touches the ground.”

Her mouth opened slightly. “That sounds scary.”

“It is,” I said softly. “But it’s far, far away. Just a cool thing to learn about.”

She nodded, thinking. Then, out of nowhere—like a thought just dropped into her head—she said, “My mommy likes the stars too.”

That pulled at something in me. Quietly. All at once.

“She does?” I asked.

Maddie nodded. “Sometimes we look at them through the window before bedtime.”

I hesitated, then gently cleared my throat. “Hey… do you think maybe we should go find her now? I’m sure she’s wondering where you are.”

Maddie looked back toward the shelves behind her, then back at me.

“Okay,” she said, like it hadn’t occurred to her until now. “She’s by the little chairs.”

“Then let’s go find the little chairs.”

We started walking side by side when, suddenly, Maddie’s small hand found mine.

It was a common thing—kids reaching for the hand of an adult they trusted while walking. It wasn’t unusual.

But did I really count as that? A trusted adult?

I mean, it’s not like I would ever hurt her. Not in a million years. I’d protect this little girl with my life if it came to that.

Still… the idea that a child I barely knew could trust me enough to take my hand without hesitation It felt foreign. Unfamiliar. Like something meant for someone else.

And yet, I didn’t panic, I didn’t pull away. In fact, I felt strangely calm. Like her hand belonged there.

It was small—smaller than I remembered, even—and warm, and sticky in the way little kids always seem to be. But she held on with certainty. Like I was something solid. Like I was safe.

We walked slowly, her short legs trying to keep pace with mine, and I didn’t rush her. I didn’t want to.

I could feel the weight of that hand more than I could feel the floor beneath my feet. Like it anchored me to something I hadn’t even known I’d been floating away from.

I glanced down at her, at the way her gaze scanned the shelves, totally unbothered. Totally sure.

She didn’t look up at me. She didn’t need to. She already trusted I’d follow her lead.

And somehow, I did.

A fleeting thought crossed my mind before I could stop it:

This shouldn’t feel so good.

Because it did.

It felt easy in a way that nothing in my life ever has. Maddie’s hand in mine wasn’t just comfort—it was hope, concentrated into the smallest, warmest palm. And I didn’t know what to do with that. I wasn’t used to ease. I wasn’t built for things that slipped into place without needing explanation.

She tugged me gently to the left, toward the kid’s section, and I followed without question.

I didn’t even try to tell myself it was just good manners, or that I was walking her back because it was the responsible thing to do. I was following because I wanted to. Because in that moment, I wanted to be wherever she was—wanted to stay in this little pocket of borrowed peace for as long as I could.

The truth was, I’d never given much serious thought to having children. Sure, I’d wanted a family in the vague, hypothetical way people who grew up lonely tend to. I thought maybe, someday, I’d settle down. Maybe have someone waiting at home. A dog, probably. A partner, if I was lucky. A kid, maybe—but that part always felt hazy. Distant. Like a chapter in someone else’s story.

But right now, walking beside Maddie—imagining myself in this setting, not as a stranger or a bystander, but as a father—something shifted.

It wasn’t a sharp ache. Not like the usual stabs of grief or guilt or want.

It was quieter than that. Slower.

Like a soft click. Like something sliding into place.

And while it was a strange concept for me—unfamiliar, fragile, impossible in so many ways—I couldn’t say I felt opposed to it. In fact, for the first time in my life, I didn’t feel afraid of it at all.

We were only a few feet away from the kiddie section now. I could see the tiny beanbag chairs, the colorful rugs. Hear the gentle hum of a mother’s voice reading aloud. For a second, I let myself imagine it was ours—that this was routine. A Saturday morning. A library run. Me, her, and

I stopped myself before the thought finished.

This wasn’t mine. This wasn’t something I got to keep. For crying out loud, I’ve only met the girl and her mother last week. I’m way too over my head.

And when Maddie pulled on my hand again, her other arm wrapped around that worn Rapunzel doll like it was a promise, I tried not to fall any further into it.

“Told you I knew where she was,” she said softly.

I managed a quiet smile. “You did.”

And then—just over the shelves—I heard the voice that had been echoing in my head for two weeks.

Hers.

My eyes shot up toward her, and to my own surprise—

she was already watching us.

She stood just beyond the shelves, half-shadowed by a spinning rack of paperback picture books, her arms loosely crossed over her chest. And she was smiling.

Not big or performative. Just soft. Gentle.

Like she’d been watching for a while. Like this wasn’t a surprise to her. Like maybe… this made sense. I wasn’t sure what to do with that.

The way it made my chest tighten. The way her eyes found mine, and didn’t flinch or look away. The way she looked at the two of us—at me—like I belonged in the picture.

She didn’t rush forward. Didn’t call out.

She just stood there.

Calm. Certain.

And somehow, that scared me more than if she’d run.

Maybe this was all in my head. The screw had finally come loose enough to make me believe that this woman—this beautiful, exhausted, soft-voiced woman—was actually smiling at me.

Like I was someone worth smiling at.

Like the sight of me, a stranger, with her daughter didn’t set off alarms, or raise questions, or make her second-guess every protective instinct she’d ever built.

Maybe my brain, forever conditioned to prepare for rejection, had simply decided to give me a mercy hallucination before crashing back to reality.

Because what else could explain the warmth in her eyes?

What else could explain the way she was looking at me like…

like I hadn’t just found her daughter again—

But like I’d shown up.

Before I could spiral any further, she started walking toward us—steady, unhurried, like she wasn’t surprised to see me there at all.

Maddie turned just as she arrived, tugging gently on my hand and beaming.

“Look, Mommy! I found the wizard again! I told you I would!”

Her voice was loud enough to turn a few heads from the nearby shelves, but she didn’t seem to notice. Or care. Her joy was too big for her body.

I glanced at the woman—at her—half-expecting to see confusion or concern flicker across her face. Maybe even wariness. Instead, she just smiled. Not the polite kind. Not the forced kind. Just something real. Soft around the edges.

She looked between me and her daughter, then down at our joined hands. And I swear—for a second—her smile deepened, like the sight didn’t just make sense, but maybe... made her glad.

“I see that,” she said, voice warm with amusement. “You’re getting pretty good at finding him.”

Maddie nodded proudly. “I said I would. You said maybe someday, and I knew it was today.”

I wasn’t sure what to say. I probably should’ve let go of her hand, or at least looked less like I’d just been emotionally tackled in the middle of a library. But I couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak.

She looked at me then—really looked—and for the first time since she’d appeared, the smile didn’t falter.

“Hi,” she said, simple and easy, like this wasn’t strange. Like we weren’t two people somehow caught in the gravity of something neither of us planned for.

And all I could think to do… was nod.

“Hi.”

It came out too quiet, too late—but she smiled anyway, like she didn’t mind.

Then silence.

Not a heavy one, not uncomfortable exactly—just... full. Like neither of us knew what to say first, or maybe we were both waiting for the other to fill in the blanks.

I let go of Maddie’s hand, finally, and immediately missed the weight of it.

She shifted slightly, brushing some hair behind her ear. “I didn’t think we’d actually see you again.”

“Me neither,” I said, and then immediately regretted how abrupt it sounded. “I mean—I come here a lot. Not for—well, not because of…”

I trailed off. Good. Very smooth.

She tilted her head, lips twitching like she was trying not to laugh. “Not because of the children’s section, I hope.”

I cleared my throat. “Yeah— I mean no! no... I didn’t… plan to. I mean, not in a weird way. I come here a lot. I wasn’t... following you.”

Why did I say that?

But she laughed, and thank God, it wasn’t uncomfortable. Just warm.

“I didn’t think you were. Though if you were—this is a pretty safe place to be stalked.”

I shook my head quickly. “No, no. I was… in nonfiction. Science.”

“Of course you were.” The way she said it—soft, teasing, like she already knew that about me—made something flicker in my chest. “What were you reading?”

I blinked. “Oh, uh—Cosmos, again. I’ve read it more times than I care to admit.”

She tilted her head, genuinely curious now. “Why go back to something you already know?”

I opened my mouth to answer, and stopped.

Because it’s safe. Because I know what’s coming. Because people don’t make sense and books do.

Instead, I said, “Sometimes I need something that doesn’t change.”

That earned a slower nod from her. Thoughtful.

“That’s actually kind of beautiful,” she murmured.

I should’ve let the moment settle, but I didn’t want it to end. Not yet.

“So…” I said, voice low, uncertain. “Do you come here often?”

She raised a brow, and I realized immediately how that sounded. My ears burned.

“Sorry—that sounded like a really bad line. I just meant… is this your usual Saturday spot?”

Her expression softened again, and to my surprise, she nodded.

“Pretty much every week. It’s our ritual.”

“It’s a nice one.”

“Yeah,” she said. Her eyes flicked toward Maddie, who was now sitting cross-legged on the carpet, flipping through a board book upside down. “It keeps us grounded.”

Something about the way she said us made my chest ache.

And still—I didn’t want to leave.

I could’ve said goodbye. Should’ve. But instead, I opened my mouth again.

“I never caught your name.”

“I never caught your name.”

She turned back to me, almost surprised I’d asked, like she hadn’t noticed we’d gone this long without saying it.

A slow smile crept onto her face. “It’s Y/N.”

Y/N.

I repeated it silently, like a fact I didn’t want to forget. Like something I’d write in the margin of a book I didn’t own but wished I did.

“I’m—”

“Spencer… I know,” she said, that smile tugging just a little higher now. “Maddie wouldn’t stop rambling about you all week.”

My eyebrows lifted before I could catch the reaction, and I felt the heat rush to my face.

She already knew. But somehow, hearing her say my name still felt like the right thing—like speaking it aloud made this real. Not just a strange, passing moment in a quiet library, but something grounded. Something remembered.

“She has a lot to say for someone under four feet tall,” I said, hoping humor would mask the way my chest was suddenly too full.

“She does,” Y/N agreed softly. “But she only remembers the good things.”

Her eyes were steady on mine. Not teasing this time. Just... warm.

“It’s nice to officially meet you, Spencer.”

And somehow, it felt like the first honest thing I’d heard all day.

I nodded, unsure what to say—afraid that if I said anything at all, it might break whatever this was. The moment. The quiet understanding. The fact that I was still standing here, and she hadn’t walked away.

But eventually, she glanced down at Maddie, still content in her world of upside-down books and floor-level discoveries, and I could tell she was about to say goodbye. I felt it before she spoke. The air shifted.

“We should probably head out,” she said gently, and began to step back. “She gets grumpy if we skip lunch.”

I smiled, even though the thought of watching them walk away made something in me feel uneven.

Y/N leaned down to gather Maddie’s things, and as she did, Maddie stood and toddled back over to me.

And then—without hesitation—she reached up and wrapped her tiny fingers around mine again.

I froze. My hand curled instinctively around hers, soft and steady, like it had before. Like it still belonged there.

She looked up at me with wide, hopeful eyes.

“Will I see you again?” she asked.

I froze. Not visibly—but inside, everything just… stopped. My thoughts. My breath. My ability to pretend this wasn’t affecting me.

I hadn’t prepared for that. I’d expected a goodbye. Maybe a smile. Not this. Not a question that sounded so innocent and yet landed like a weight in the center of my chest.

Because the truth was—I didn’t know.

I wanted to say yes. God, I wanted to say yes. More than I should have. More than made sense for someone who had only just learned her mother’s name.

But wanting something has never made it safe. Not for me.

My gaze lifted—instinctively, automatically—and found hers.

Y/N was already looking at me.

And I could tell from the way her breath caught, the way her hand hovered mid-reach like she’d forgotten what she was doing, that she hadn’t expected it either. Not the question. Not the way I looked at her like I was asking her to answer for me. Like I needed her to be the one to say it was okay to want this.

I didn’t know what was written across my face, but she didn’t look away. She didn’t laugh or step in or rescue me from the moment.

She just… watched.

And in the silence, I felt it—all the things I wasn’t letting myself say. The wish that this wasn’t just a moment but the beginning of something. The hope that I hadn’t imagined the connection. The ache I’d been holding at bay since the first time Maddie reached for my hand and didn’t flinch.

It was all there. Pressed between us in the space of a few seconds.

And she didn’t look away.

Then, slowly, I crouched down to Maddie’s level. My knees creaked a little, and the hem of my coat bunched at my sides, but I didn’t care. I met her eyes, soft and serious, and smiled.

“I hope so,” I said, my voice quieter than I meant it to be. Rough around the edges. Still honest.

She beamed, her face lighting up like I’d just granted her a wish.

I reached out and gently tapped her nose. She giggled, and the sound felt like a small sun blooming in the center of my chest.

He tapped her nose, and Maddie giggled—light and free, like the world had never once scared her.

I watched them from just a step away, something quiet unfolding in my chest. The way he looked at her. The way she looked at him. I wasn’t sure when it had started to feel like they already knew each other. Like some invisible thread had pulled them together and neither of them had questioned it—not once.

Watching them bond shouldn’t have affected me this much. But it did. It was. It is affecting me in a way I didn’t expect, didn’t prepare for. And somewhere beneath all that stillness in my chest was something louder—I can’t let him walk away twice.

And before I could stop myself—before I could think too hard about what it might mean—I said, “Spencer, would you maybe like to join us for lunch?”

The words left my mouth before I had time to second-guess them.

He blinked, startled—like he hadn’t expected me to say his name, let alone follow it with an invitation.

His lips parted, but no sound came out.

I felt the nerves flood in, quick and sharp. I cleared my throat, rushing to soften the moment.

God. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that. What was I even thinking?

Too forward. Too hopeful. I mean—I just met the man. And now here I am, inviting him to lunch like we’re old friends? Like we’re… something?

And wait—was that even just an invitation?

Oh no. What if he thinks I’m asking him out?

Was I asking him out?

I’m not ready to date. I haven’t dated in years. I wouldn’t even know where to start—what to say, what to wear, how to be. Besides, lunch with your daughter and a man you met in the library is not a date. Right?

Right?

He probably thinks we’re a mess. Just a tired, overstretched mom and her talkative little girl, desperate enough to drag the first nice stranger we meet into some kind of father-figure fantasy.

God, he’s probably trying to come up with a polite excuse right now.

I glanced down at Maddie, who was still looking up at him like he hung the moon.

I nearly opened my mouth to take it back. To say I was joking. Or that it was totally fine if he was busy.

But then—

He looked at her.

And something in him softened.

And once again, I just couldn’t stop my mouth.

“There’s a little place just down the block,” I added quickly. “It’s nothing fancy—mostly sandwiches and crayons and spilled apple juice, but… Maddie likes it.”

I didn’t know what I expected him to say. Maybe I was already preparing myself for a polite decline. But then he glanced at her—at the way she was still beaming, still holding onto the weight of his words.

Then he looked at me.

“Okay,” he said quietly. “Just for a little while.”

Maddie gasped like someone had just told her she could live in a candy store.

“Yay!” Maddie shouted, throwing her hands in the air with absolutely no regard for indoor voice levels. “Spencer’s coming with us!”

Her joy was so pure, so loud, so entirely her, I couldn’t help but laugh. It bubbled out of me before I could stop it—part nerves, part disbelief, part just watching her glow like she’d won something precious. And Spencer—he smiled too. Tentative at first, like he wasn’t sure he was allowed to, but then a little fuller when she grabbed his hand without asking, without hesitation, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“Come on,” she said, tugging him toward the exit, already halfway to the door. “I’ll show you where it is!”

He glanced back at me, wide-eyed, like he wasn’t sure if he was being kidnapped or adopted.

I shrugged, trying to keep the amusement out of my voice. “Maddie, don’t drag him. He’s not a toy.”

She didn’t slow down. If anything, she gripped tighter.

I stepped in to help, reaching for her arm, but Spencer shook his head gently. “It’s okay,” he said, still watching her like she was some strange, marvelous creature he hadn’t quite figured out. “She’s stronger than she looks.”

I smiled, and for the first time since inviting him, I felt the knot in my stomach start to loosen. “I’m sorry,” I murmured, falling into step beside him. “She’s… very persistent.”

“I’m starting to notice,” he said, voice soft with something that sounded dangerously close to fondness.

The three of us walked together, side by side. Maddie led the way like a tiny parade marshal, humming something under her breath, swinging their hands with so much enthusiasm it lifted his arm with every step. Spencer let it happen.

And I watched him out of the corner of my eye—how careful he was not to step too far ahead or too far behind. How he looked down at her, then at me, then away again. Like he was still waiting for the moment to collapse on itself. Like he was quietly, hopelessly wondering if this—whatever this was—was real.

Maddie tugged him forward again, chattering about crayons and sandwiches and something called “the apple juice tower,” whatever that was. I let her lead, falling just a step ahead of him as we neared the glass doors.

But just before I reached for the handle, something made me glance back.

He was watching us—watching me—with that same quiet, uncertain awe like he still wasn’t convinced this wasn’t all in his head.

Our eyes met, and I smiled. Not big. Not nervous. Just enough to say I see you. You’re here. This is okay.

He smiled back. Small, but real. Like he meant it.

The café was exactly the kind of place that looked like it had been decorated by a five-year-old with a glue stick and too much creative freedom.

Paper menus. Crayon buckets on every table. Bright yellow walls smudged with fingerprints and faded murals of dancing sandwiches. The air smelled like grilled cheese and applesauce, with just the faintest undercurrent of desperation.

Maddie walked in like she owned the place.

She made a beeline for her favorite table near the window, climbed into the booster seat without help, and immediately grabbed a crayon to start coloring the laminated menu like it was a job she took very seriously.

I offered a quick, breathless apology to the hostess—who, by now, knew us by name from how often we ate here, and how often I apologized for Maddie. She just smiled, waved us along like always.

I followed behind, juggling Maddie’s water bottle, my slipping purse strap, and the bag hanging awkwardly off one arm. My hair stuck to the back of my neck, and I was already sweating before we even reached the table.

Spencer hovered behind us—shoulders tense, hands tucked carefully into his sleeves like he wasn’t sure what he was allowed to touch. He eyed the table before sitting, then reached for a napkin and used it to wipe off the corner of his chair.

I bit back a smile.

He sat down slowly, like the seat might collapse under him, and folded a napkin onto his lap with an almost surgical precision. Then, with the same cautious care, he picked up the menu between two fingers like it might bite him.

“Is this… washable?” he asked, squinting at a suspicious green smear in the corner.

I bit back a laugh.

The way he held himself—tense, deliberate, like the entire environment was foreign terrain—should’ve felt awkward. Should’ve made him seem stiff or out of place. And maybe he was. This place was loud and messy and sticky in all the ways kid-friendly cafés tend to be. It didn’t match his cardigan, or the way he spoke, or the precise way he folded that napkin like he needed it to anchor him.

But somehow, despite how out of place he looked in here… it was charming in a way I hadn’t expected.

Like he was trying. Like none of this made sense to him, but he’d still shown up and let a four-year-old lead him to a table covered in crayon marks and glitter glue residue—and never once complained.

It made something settle in my chest. Not in a dramatic, cinematic kind of way. Just… gently.

The way something shifts when you realize someone doesn’t quite fit into your world, but doesn’t seem afraid of it, either.

Maybe i’m getting ahead of myself again…

I smiled as I finally slid into the seat across from him.

“You’re holding your sandwich menu like it’s radioactive.”

He blinked at me, then laughed—nervous, quiet, but real.

“I’m just… recalibrating. I don’t usually eat anywhere that serves chocolate milk with every meal.”

“Well,” I said, gesturing to the glittery chalkboard behind him, “you’re in luck. Today’s special is dino nuggets with a side of animal crackers and a sticker.”

He raised a brow. “Do I have to finish my vegetables to earn it?”

“Only if Maddie lets you.”

From her booster seat, Maddie gave him a solemn nod. “You have to eat two bites. That’s the rule.”

He nodded seriously, matching her tone. “Fair enough.”

Maddie picked up her crayon again, dramatically scribbling across the corner of the kids’ menu like she was signing a contract. “I’m gonna get the dinosaur lunch,” she announced. “And I’m gonna eat the animal crackers first.”

“Bold choice,” I said. “Dessert before lunch?”

She nodded with absolute conviction. “They taste better when they’re still cold.”

Spencer looked genuinely intrigued. “Cold animal crackers?”

I smiled. “The servers here love Maddie. She likes her animal crackers cold, so they put them in the fridge for her. We come here a lot.”

He glanced between us, amused, and I added, “She also keeps a stash in the fridge at home—right next to the ketchup and a collection of stickers she refuses to actually use.”

“They’re for emergencies,” Maddie mumbled, still coloring.

He smiled, clearly charmed. “I think that’s smart.”

Maddie sat back, tapping her crayon to her chin. “What’s your favorite food, Spencer?”

He blinked, clearly not expecting to be called on. “Oh. Uh…” He paused, clearly thinking harder than anyone needed to over the question. “As a kid, I really liked buttered saltines.”

Maddie wrinkled her nose. “What’s that?”

“It’s… sad toast,” I said, biting back a grin.

He laughed—actually laughed—and shook his head. “Yeah, okay, that’s fair.”

“Well I like jelly sandwiches,” Maddie declared, puffing up proudly. “But only if they don’t touch the crust.”

I turned to Spencer, already smiling. “Last week she had a full meltdown because her sandwich was touching the pickles on the plate.”

He raised a brow. “Touching the pickles?”

“Contamination, apparently,” I said. “There were actual tears. Like, betrayal-level tears.”

Maddie shrugged. “I hate pickles.”

Spencer held up both hands. “No judgment. I cried once because I dropped an ice cream cone on a squirrel.”

There was a pause. Then Maddie said, dead serious, “Did it eat it?”

Spencer leaned in just slightly, like he was letting her in on a secret. “It did.”

Maddie let out a satisfied little “huh” and went back to coloring like that settled everything.

I looked across the table at him, and before I could stop myself, I smiled.

God help me… I was enjoying this.

Before anything else could be said, the server arrived to take our order. Maddie ordered for herself, proudly pointing at the “Dino Lunch” with a red crayon-smudged finger, and I gave my usual half-apology as I asked for something simple and spill-proof.

Which, of course, did nothing to stop the inevitable.

Because just as the drinks were set down—and Spencer opened his mouth to comment on the chalkboard specials—Maddie reached for her crayon and accidentally knocked her cup with her elbow.

Apple juice went tumbling sideways, spilling fast across the table and soaking everything in its path: the menu, a handful of napkins, and most dangerously, the edge of Spencer’s side of the table.

“Shoot—Maddie, careful!” I said, snapping forward before I could think. One hand grabbed the cup, the other reached for the nearest napkins, my voice already apologizing. “I’m so sorry—God, I always forget to move it. Are you—did it get on you?”

But Spencer didn’t flinch.

He didn’t startle or recoil. He didn’t look to me for direction or freeze up like he wasn’t sure how to exist inside the chaos.

He just moved.

Quiet. Certain. Crouched beside the table with a napkin in hand, dabbing gently at the spill like it was something ordinary. Like he’d done it a hundred times before.

There was no performance in it. No show of exaggerated patience. No offhand comment meant to smooth over the discomfort.

Just presence. Just calm.

And it shouldn’t have surprised me—but it did.

Because I’ve grown so used to being watched during moments like this. To feeling people’s eyes crawl across the back of my neck when juice spills or crayons fall or Maddie’s voice gets just a little too loud. I’ve learned the tone people use when they try to be helpful but can’t quite hide the edge in their voice.

But Spencer?

He just helped.

And it wasn’t just that he helped—it was the way he moved. Careful, like the world had taught him to tread lightly. Like he knew some things break if you come at them too fast.

He handed Maddie a napkin without a word, and she took it without hesitation. Like she already understood his kind of quiet.

And I just stood there, blinking at this man who looked so completely out of place in a room full of noise and color—and yet somehow felt like the most steady thing in it.

The moment passed the way these things always do—juice soaked up, napkins tossed aside, and Maddie already moving on like it had never happened at all.

She was now focused on arranging her animal crackers by species, narrating under her breath which ones were friends and which ones were “going to space.” Spencer watched her with quiet interest, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

Maddie was mid-chew, swinging her legs beneath the booster seat, when she glanced up at Spencer and asked, in the completely unfiltered way only kids can,

“Do you have a kid?”

Spencer blinked.

There was a pause. Not long enough to seem strange, but long enough for me to feel it.

And God, I felt it.

The second the question left her mouth, I wanted to shrink. Apologize. Backpedal so hard I’d fall through the floor. I could’ve sworn the air changed. My stomach twisted. I opened my mouth, ready to say something—anything to fill the silence, soften the edges—but then he answered.

He smiled—small, controlled. “No,” he said. “Just books.”

His tone was light. Almost rehearsed. But something in the way he said it made my chest tighten.

Just books.

It sounded like a joke. The kind you throw out to change the subject. But his eyes didn’t quite match the smile. They didn’t crinkle at the corners. They didn’t hold amusement. They held something else.

Not sadness, exactly. Not regret. Just… distance.

Like the question had touched something he hadn’t expected. Like maybe there was a story there—one he didn’t tell often. Or at all.

I didn’t push. I wanted to. More than I should have.

But I just reached for Maddie’s juice and asked if she wanted a straw. She nodded and went back to organizing her crackers.

And Spencer?

He went back to watching her with that quiet kind of attention—the kind that didn’t ask for anything in return.

The moment settled, the way heavy things do—gently, but not without leaving something behind.

Maddie had already moved on, now focused on biting the heads off her dinosaur nuggets in species order, completely unaware of the silence she’d left behind.

Spencer picked up his water, took a small sip, and then moved his attention towards me. Not at Maddie. Not at the menu. At me.

And of course, that was the exact moment I realized I’d been staring at him.

I panicked, internally.

My brain scrambled for something—anything—to do with my face. Should I smile? Look away? Pretend I was zoning out and just happened to be staring into the space he occupied? My fork suddenly became the most fascinating object in the universe.

But he didn’t seem thrown by it.

If anything, there was something different in the way he was looking at me now. A shift. Not in focus exactly—he’d been paying attention this whole time. But something had turned. Like I wasn’t just Maddie’s mom across the table anymore. Like now, I was someone he wanted to understand.

“You’re good with her,” he said, voice softer now. Not like a compliment, exactly—more like an observation. One he’d been quietly holding onto for a while.

I smiled, a little caught off guard. “Oh. Uh… thanks?”

It came out more awkward than I meant it to. I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, buying half a second to breathe.

“I try,” I added. “She makes it easy most of the time.”

Then, like I couldn’t help myself, I added, “She’s also really clumsy. Like, expert-level.”

He let out a soft laugh—just enough to warm the space between us.

“Clumsy’s fine,” he said. “It means she’s moving fast enough to chase things.”

“Chase things?” I repeated, raising an eyebrow.

He glanced down for a second, like maybe he hadn’t meant to say it out loud.

“Yeah,” he said, a little sheepish. “I just mean… she’s curious. Curious kids knock things over sometimes. It’s kind of the price of wonder.”

I stared at him for a second, not because I didn’t understand, but because—

who says things like that?

Somehow, he made Maddie’s juice spill sound like a trait of great explorers.

“That’s…” I shook my head, smiling despite myself. “Weirdly profound.”

He gave a half-shrug, eyes still on his water glass. “I think about stuff like that a lot.”

“So you’re one of those… deep and mysterious guys?” I asked, only half-joking.

He looked up at me then, something flickering behind his expression—amusement, maybe, or hesitation. Or both.

“I don’t think I’m mysterious,” he said. “Just… overthinky.”

“Is that the technical term?”

He cracked a small smile. “It is in certain circles.”

There was a pause—one that didn’t feel awkward, just full. I watched him trace the rim of his glass with one finger, thoughtful, like he was weighing what to say next.

“But I guess I’d rather be quiet than careless,” he added after a moment. “Some things deserve a softer touch.”

And just like that, there it was again—that pull in my chest. That stupid, quiet ache for someone who wasn’t just listening, but noticing.

I wasn’t used to that. Not even a little.

People usually speak just to fill silence, to be heard. But he didn’t do that. He left space—real space—for something to exist between us, and didn’t rush to fill it. And in that space, I felt something shift in me.

Maybe it was the way he said it—careless, softer touch, like he knew what it meant to ruin something just by trying too hard.

Or maybe it was the way he looked at me without flinching. Without expectation.

Whatever it was, it made me want to offer something back. Just enough to even the playing field.

“It’s just me and Maddie,” I said, almost before I realized I’d decided to. “Always has been.”

“Just you two?” he asked, and his voice wasn’t surprised or pitying—just curious. Open.

I nodded, brushing my fingers over a wrinkle in the paper napkin beside my plate. “Yeah. I’m a single mother.”

There wasn’t any bitterness in the words. Not anymore. Just fact. Just a quiet kind of truth I’d grown used to carrying.

“I didn’t plan it that way, obviously,” I added, eyes flicking up to meet his. “But life doesn’t really wait around for your timeline to catch up.”

He didn’t rush to fill the silence. Didn’t try to soothe it or fix it or offer up some canned line about how “strong” I must be.

He just listened.

I didn’t know what I would’ve said next—maybe make a joke, or let the silence stretch just a little longer between us—but then Maddie broke through it all with the most casual kind of urgency.

“Mommy, I’m done…”

She pouted, arms folded across her dino nugget-stained shirt, her plate pushed an inch away like that somehow made it official. Her tone was flat, but I could hear it—she was winding down. Bored. And I didn’t have to check the time to know why.

Her favorite show would be starting in about fifteen minutes.

I blinked, like surfacing from deep water, and turned toward her. “Okay, baby. One second.”

She huffed dramatically, which in Maddie-language meant you have exactly forty seconds before I start getting antsy.

Spencer chuckled under his breath, and when I looked back at him, the moment we’d just been sitting in had softened—but it hadn’t vanished.

It was still there. Waiting.

“I’m sorry,” I said, glancing at Maddie as she slumped dramatically in her seat. “She gets like this when she’s bored… plus, her favorite show starts in fifteen minutes, and she’s got an internal clock like you wouldn’t believe.”

He smiled, his eyes still following her as she fiddled with her empty cup. “She’s kind of amazing.”

I let out a soft breath. “She really is.”

I looked at her—my messy, impatient, wonderful girl—and then back at him. And for a brief second, I wondered what this must look like from the outside. The three of us sitting there. Laughing. Talking. Almost like—

No. I stopped myself. It was way too early for almosts. But still… the warmth lingered.

I cleared my throat, reaching for Maddie’s water bottle. “Anyway, we’re gonna head out, but the meal is on me.”

Spencer blinked, like the words took a second to register. “Oh—you don’t have to—”

“I know,” I said, managing a half-smile. “But I invited you. It’s only fair.”

He looked like he wanted to argue, but didn’t. Just gave me that small, quiet nod that felt like more than it was.

“Thank you,” he said. And he meant it.

The afternoon sun was warmer than expected when we stepped outside, the kind that made you squint even if the sky wasn’t all that bright. Maddie shuffled beside me, her dino-nugget energy finally spent. She yawned dramatically and leaned into my side, thumb sneaking into her mouth like it used to when she was smaller.

I wrapped an arm around her shoulders and adjusted the bag on mine, heart still a little too full.

Spencer stood just a step behind us, like he wasn’t sure if this was where we said goodbye or if he should keep walking with us. His hands were in his pockets, eyes flicking between me and Maddie.

“Thank you,” I said, turning slightly toward him. “For coming. And for lunch. You really didn’t have to—”

“I wanted to.”

He said it before I could finish, and something about the way he said it—quiet, certain—made me feel like the ground had shifted just a little beneath me.

I nodded, unsure what else to say. There was a question hovering at the edge of my mouth, but I didn’t ask it.

Maddie blinked up at him sleepily and gave a tiny wave. “Bye, Spencer.”

He smiled and lifted his hand, the wave a little awkward, almost formal. “Bye, Maddie.”

He turned like he was going to leave—and for a second, I thought that was it.

But then he hesitated. Turned back.

“Wait—”

I stopped, startled. He looked almost nervous now, which was oddly comforting, considering I felt the exact same way.

“Would it… be weird if I asked for your number?”

It wasn’t smooth. It wasn’t practiced. It was Spencer—uncertain, a little flushed, and completely genuine.

I smiled. “No. It wouldn’t be weird.”

He reached into his coat pocket for his phone, and for the first time that day, I saw him fumble.

And it made me smile even more.

He reached into his coat pocket for his phone, and for the first time that day, I saw him fumble.

It made me smile even more.

He handed it to me without a word, the lock screen already open to the contact form. I took it carefully, thumbs suddenly too aware of themselves as I typed in my name and number.

I hesitated just before hitting save, then added a small emoji at the end—just to keep it from looking too clinical. Too… formal.

“There,” I said, handing it back.

He glanced at the screen, then up at me. “Y/N with a little star.”

I shrugged, suddenly shy. “Seemed appropriate.”

He nodded, like he was tucking that away somewhere quiet.

“I’ll text you,” he said, slipping the phone back into his coat.

“Okay.”

It felt like the kind of word that meant more than it sounded like. Not a goodbye. Not yet.

He lingered for a breath longer, then gave me that same soft nod—the one that meant he’d said everything he was going to say.

And then, he turned and walked down the sidewalk, hands in his pockets, hair catching a little in the wind.

I watched him go. This time, on purpose.

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[halsteadlover]

𝐒𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐭 𝐃𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐬

*Pics not mine credits to the owner*

• Pairing: Charles Leclerc x Female!Reader.

• Requested: no.

• Summary: just you doing a TikTok trend and Charles being completely in love with you.

• Warnings: none.

• Word count: 820.

• A/N: this is ugly af I don’t like one bit how it turned out but I just wanted to post something quick 😭 I promise I didn’t forget about any of the request, I’m just having a hard time finding inspiration to write so I just write something quick here and there, I’ll get to them I promise and pls don’t hate me 😭❤️

You quickly lay on the couch after Charles texted you he was coming home, covering yourself with the blanket waiting for him to finally come back.

You wanted to do the trend on TikTok where you pretended to sleep to film your partner’s reaction, so you positioned your phone as it recorded so it wasn’t visible but could film Charles.

A few minutes passed and you suddenly heard the sound of keys in the lock, sign he was finally here. You immediately closed your eyes, bringing the blanket up to your shoulders while trying to ignore the rapid heartbeat and butterflies in your stomach.

“Bébé I’m home!” Charles exclaimed, closing the door behind him and immediately taking off his shoes. He was dead tired after the race and couldn’t be happier to finally be able to go home and be with you.

He walked towards the living room and his eyes soon landed on the couch, where he soon spotted you. When he noticed your eyes closed, he realized you were asleep and tried to make as little noise as possible.

He didn’t realize the smile that appeared on his face as he looked at you and knelt next to the couch, next to you. He raised his hand and gently ran his fingers through your hair, moving the strands that had fallen in front of your eyes. He wanted to take a better look at you, especially because it’s been so long since the last time he did it.

“How can you be so beautiful?” he whispered, so low that you almost didn’t hear him. His fingers continued to caress your hair, going down your cheek, always with such intense delicacy you almost wanted to burst into tears.

Charles leaned over you and left a short but delicate kiss on your forehead, being as careful as possible not to make any sudden movements that could wake you up. He looked at you for a few moments before giving you another kiss this time on the cheek.

“I’m so sorry I can’t be here as much as I want to be baby,” he kept whispering, his eyes never leaving your face. He looked  at you with so much love even a blind man would’ve seen it. “I miss you so much when I’m away, I just want to…” His voice trailed off and he let out a small sigh. “I just wish I could keep you with me all the time, I just want to get off the car after a race and see you in the garage, cheering for me, I want you to be the first person I hug,” he paused a bit, trying not to cry. “I live in fear you might get tired of all this, the distance, and leave me, god I think I would die…”

Before you could think about it, you opened your eyes and threw your arms around his neck, holding him so tightly you almost fear you’d suffocate him. He immediately returned your hug. “You little shit, you were awake weren’t you?”

You giggled and nodded. “I wanted to make a trend I saw on TikTok, but it doesn’t matter anymore. I missed you so much Charlie, I’m so happy you’re finally home.” You kissed his cheek over and over again before pulling away from him just long enough to grab your phone and stop the video. You threw it on the couch and turned your attention back to Charles, who was looking at you with an amused and embarrassed expression at the same time, his cheeks pink from the fact you had heard him.

“I love you to death, you know that right?” You grabbed his face and kissed his lips over and over again, making him smile. “I can’t even begin to quantify how much you mean to me baby, so there’s no way on earth I could ever leave you,” you stroked his hair softly, running your fingers through it. “There’s no distance that will separate me from you, I would follow you to the ends of the earth.”

He was the one to kiss you this time, wrapping his arms around your body with so much intensity and strength as if he didn’t want you to go anywhere. “Je t’aime, je t’aime, je t’aime, mon Dieu comme je t’aime,” he kept whispering on your lips between kisses, making you giggle like a little girl and driving you crazy with that accent.

“C’mon stand up,” you ordered when you broke away and he did as you said but with a confused expression on his face. You stood up too and intertwined your fingers in his before dragging him towards the bedroom.

“What are you doing, baby?”

You turned to him and threw your arms around his neck, kissing him as he let his hands roam on your before ending on your ass. “Show you how much I missed you.”

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[revelboo]

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE TELL ME WHERE YOU GOT THAT ITA BAG 😭 I NEED TO MAKE A STARSCREAM ONE IF THEY HAVE HIM

It’s from this seller on Etsy. They have Misfire, Sunstorm, and Slipstream left looks like. I keep going back to look at Misfire and talking myself out of it, but he’s so pretty

Point of Extinction Pt 5

TFP Shockwave x Reader

• “Come, Thirteen.” Servos flexing, he waits as you look up at him then hesitantly approach. Still less trusting now since you’d seen Fourteen even though he’d gone to great lengths to move his experiments into a soundproofed area far from your cage since. It shouldn’t matter, but this new fear of him snarls uneasily in his processor and spark. Makes those ghosts of memories surface more often. Because he broke your trust in him or because your fear is something familiar? It’s all illogical, counter to what he knows, but when you come to him and allow him to curls his servos around your little frame, the chaos eases. Calms.

• Having no idea what he wants with you, it’s hard to make yourself approach him when you can still picture what he’d done to that deer. The sounds it had made. Nothing makes noises like that unless it’s in excruciating pain. But there’s no point resisting him, making him have to reach to grab you might make him angry and that might land you on an exam table. Right now he seems content to scan you periodically and to ask questions. Lifting you clear from your cage, Shockwave settles himself at his desk and sets you down on top of it before reaching for one of the apparently hundreds of identical packets of MREs you really don’t want to think about how he came to possess. Sliding it toward you, but keeping the servo on it. “Do you fear me, Thirteen?” Reluctantly you nod, glancing up at that glowing optic then away. “What does that feel like?”

• Your eyes dart to him and away, arms wrapping around yourself while he waits. Needing to know, to untangle the illogical with facts. Things he can weigh and quantify. Little shoulders lifting, you wrap your arms around yourself. “Nervous?” When he doesn’t move, you blow out a breath. “Like something skittering inside me, breaking me apart from the inside. Like I can’t breathe or move. I don’t know how to explain it. Don’t you get scared?” No. He doesn’t feel anything, except this vague unease he can’t understand. But sometimes those memories that don’t fit ring through him. That stranger had been terrified at the end. Relinquishing the food, he watches you reach for it and sit down to tear at the packaging. “Do you feel anything?”

• His helm tips, that single optic flaring brighter as he stares at you. Had he felt anything when he’d hurt that animal for science? Any guilt at all? “No,” he says as your shoulders sag. Then his servo is under your chin, tipping it back up as he stares at you. “It bothers me.”

• Why had he admitted that? It’s makes no sense as his servo lingers against your throat, feeling your pulse. And you reach up to lay a little palm on him. “If you want to talk about it,” you murmur, offering him an uncertain smile. A tiny bit of trust despite still fearing him. No, he doesn’t want to talk about it. Can’t explain that sometimes his memories aren’t his. That in his dreams, his plating is white and blue, not purple. That he comes out of recharge shaking uncontrollably, feeling like his spark is being torn between now and a past that isn’t his. And maybe never was. That he always feels like he’s dreaming and numb to everything but the constant tide of frustration seething inside him.

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[slowd1ving]

KILLER ・゜゜MOZE NSFW

"All you are to me is a bleak obsession I am the mark intent on burning the street How many times can I ask you? How many days can I go without you?" Hǎoshì chéng shuāng. 好事成双. Good things come in pairs, even if the pair in question is a homicidal crow and a brokenhearted cryptologist. art by @ ma_mori74 on x!!! moze can we honestly e date? you’re so beautiful. You always make me laugh, you always make me smile. You literally make me want to become a better person I really enjoy every moment we spend together. My time has no value unless its spent with you. I tell everyone of my irls how awesome you are. Thank you for being you. (joke) (not really) this was kinda rushed so :3 errr consider this like part 3 of tales of a disgruntled corvid pairing: moze + male reader warnings: nsfw, male reader, mentions of blood/death/violence, alcohol consumption, jealousy wc: 4.5k  

HONKAI STAR RAIL MASTERLIST

MASTERLIST ・゜・NAVIGATION

Hǎoshì chéng shuāng. 好事成双. Good things come in pairs. 

Fortune. It is a humorous concept for Moze: tasting of a fleeting childhood dream and the dregs of hope. Fortune, as some know it, comes in all forms. From gilt wealth and corruption, to finding a strale dropped on the street and getting to bed on time—everyone, it seems, tastes good fortune somewhere along their paltry lives. 

Moze’s good luck surmounts to meagre things: not getting blood beneath his nails after a mission; evading the prying eyes of the Yaoqing as he slinks into the shadows; working by himself; and most of all, not running into you. Good luck equals a tidy house and leftovers in his fridge. Good luck equals not needing to stock up on the tools of his trade and knives that don’t need sharpening. Good luck equals a fresh steamed bun and a slow day perched on the roof of a building. 

The point must be made. Moze does not experience auspicious encounters often. 

Conversely, those afflicted by confirmation bias might say misfortune comes in threes. Misfortune, for Moze, is significantly easier to quantify—but to stratify it into threes grossly underestimates the cesspit of chance he’s been allotted. 

One: being outside currently at Jiaoqiu’s food stall while rain drizzles down on him. It could be argued it’s only by his own volition that he’s slurping on steaming chilli-infused noodles as petrichor stains the air, yet that stupid fox decided this was the way to go in terms of conveying intelligence from Feixiao. This was the hell crafted by Jiaoqiu’s hands seeped green with pungent herbs. 

Two: getting his apartment lease renewal rejected a week ago over a development project at his block. Though he had been planning on starting afresh—never one to stay in the same area for too long, just like the rest of the Shadow Guards—he quite liked the nondescript studio. It’s a tidy place: plain and unassuming. What a pity. He’s read the message from his landlord over and over: growing a tad bit more incensed each time. 

Three: the sudden absence of suitable apartments in the districts that he sticks to. None of the flats he browsed were innocuous enough, and the ones that were perfect for his schedule and profession were in dismal condition. 

Four: you purchasing a flat a month ago which perfectly fulfilled his conditions. Two-bedroom, in the lower districts of the Yaoqing, with reclusive neighbours and a walking distance of the Seat of Divine Foresight. Had he gotten the notice for his lease rejection earlier, it might’ve been him there. 

Five: upon asking about his dilemma, Feixiao’s eyes gleaming bright. This was the indicator for certain disaster—an omen as ill as he ever saw. And unfortunately, her gaze next fell on the scripts you were working on, before flickering back up to you. Shit. That was the only thought running through his mind, before she pitched her idea to have him simply move in with you. Say no, he pleaded mentally, but alas—

“Sure,” you mutter, red ink spilling from your pen onto the parchment. Bold characters sign the form off and the letter is folded neatly onto a cycrane absent-mindedly; before you finally look up at the assassin who flinches as your eyes land on his. “S’long as he pays rent.”

Six: you agreeing to this stupid deal. Why? Why? It can’t possibly be the deep veneration for the Arbiter General. Surely your adoration of her cannot be deep enough to let this guy room in your house—an assassin, at that. You aren’t a follower of Qlipoth, but where the hell is your sense of preservation?

Seven: him not actually finding any fault in the building. Not in the surroundings, nor the modest room across from yours, nor the lazy grin on your face as you showed him around the apartment—still expecting him to vehemently shake his head. 

He signed the damned contract, and that was that.

“What’s got you sighing?” Jiaoqiu eyes him from where he’s pulling noodles: sleeves rolled back to avoid dusting the salmon hues with flour. Fragrant red wafts from the pot on the stove, and he’s suddenly reminded of the crimson shirt you wore just this morning—rippling around the taut lines of sinew and muscle as you worked diligently on decrypting ancient alchemical texts. “I thought you found yourself a place to stay, so why the long face?”

Moze keeps his silence. Well, tries to—but it’s not like a singular word will make him any less laconic. Tapping his chopsticks against the rim of the blue-toned porcelain, he evades the question and focuses right on the middle of Jiaoqiu’s sentence. “Somehow.” 

“Right! Your dearest partner—” Jiaoqiu drags the word out, characters stretched tight until they wind right against Moze’s eardrums. He glares: visibly annoyed, yet this only makes the man in his peripherals close his own eyes in satisfaction. “—took pity on you, didn’t he?”

“Maybe.” The assassin slams down the rest of the piquant broth: lips dripping with sanguine. His response is a question in itself—because why the hell did you agree to Feixiao’s request?

“Curious?” Of course he’s curious. 

“It’s not much of a surprise, really,” the foxian sighs, twisting the strands into a neat circle and letting it drop into the boiling water. “Poor thing’s probably still in shock from his breakup. I think he would’ve agreed to pretty much anything coming out of Feixiao’s mouth at that point.”

The man can only stare incredulously. Every part of that sentence is laden with a bombshell. 

“Wow, I thought you would’ve known. Guess what’s said at Qiu’er’s stays there too.” Jiaoqiu’s golden eyes gleam slightly at the mention of the downtown bar. No, Moze didn’t know. No, Moze isn’t currently outright staring at the man no longer in his peripherals. No, Moze cannot hear his chopsticks creaking beneath his grasp. “Woah, don’t break those.”

The fox eyes the crow warily. “Seriously. Cool it.”

Eight: you’re still not over your boyfriend cheating on you. In the drizzle beneath the canopy, this is how your new roommate diligently listens to how his work partner and resident cryptologist really can’t catch a break from bad men. 

“That includes you, you know,” Jiaoqiu squints at an unusually contemplative Moze. Flickering amber lights and the buzz of cicadas makes the assassin seem even more shady than usual. “You don’t have a chance, so don’t even try.”

“The hell are you talking about?” For someone like Moze, his piece of good fortune is that his voice remains steady in almost any sort of situation. This means that anyone hearing this man speak right now would naturally presume he’s affronted at Jiaoqiu’s response out of its complete implausibility. But on the flip side, those who’ve known Moze longer have learnt to watch for other irritated tells of his rather than a wavering voice. The subconscious flex of long fingers. Minute shifts in the elbows propped up on the bar. Biting the inside of his lip, just enough that it’s unnoticeable. But these aren’t things the assassin really takes stock of. 

For a brief moment, Jiaoqiu’s friendly smile drops and he peers at the man askance. Is he brain dead? “...Okay.”

And that is how the tall man—hunched over in the downpour to not let his noodles get too cold—first learns of matters of a more personal note of yours. In the rare grey skies that cast over the Yaoqing, it’s a chance to digest this information he’s learnt. 

But he doesn’t care. 

He doesn’t. 

・゜゜

A painful month passes for Moze. 

There’s nothing else to describe it—psychological torment is the only fitting description of your behaviour. Outwardly, nothing changes. He still hates you, and you still hate him—two arguing peas in a pod with a mutual dislike being the only thing in common between the two of you. Outwardly, behaviour-wise, nothing changes. Outwardly, appearance-wise, something does. 

He first notices it about three weeks after that waterlogged conversation with Jiaoqiu. There’s a faint aroma of sweet-smelling smoke on you—a long cigarette holder between your fingers as you read a thick book on the couch. He’s never seen the thing before in all your months together. Sure, the Yaoqing tobacco scent fades quickly away to not linger  in the case of a borisin’s especially sharp senses—but he’s never seen that sort of heavy-lidded expression on you before. When you glance at him, it’s usually irritatedly—not like this, where your glance is hazy and your lips are parted to blow plumes from your mouth. 

Shit. He doesn’t quite know why his heart speeds up. 

The second thing he notices is that every week or so, there’s a clinging perfume to your body: never your usual clean scent, one that clearly belongs to a different person. This is the same time he starts noticing you slipping on shirts with longer necks on missions—a darker imprint just about peeking above the material. 

He’s not an idiot. He can put two and two together. 

The third instance of misfortune is your habit of wandering around after a shower with nothing but a towel wrapped around your waist conservatively. Sure, the area from your hips to your knees is covered—but what about the rest? He finds himself growing more irritable during work hours. Marks not caused by injuries still bruise your skin; as you turn your back in the kitchen to make yourself a mug of tea, his eyes rove the dips and valleys of your back. Categorising each wound. Systematically detailing each little infringement on your skin. 

He doesn’t particularly know why. Maybe his obsession with tidiness crosses over to people too. 

・゜゜

It happens like this. Occasionally, a man as ill-fortuned as Moze receives gets a break. 

There’s a tumbler of whiskey on the low coffee table in the living room. Polished chestnut—if you had to describe it—with the light shining through the amber liquid just so, until it reflects onto the varnished surface. A cube of ice sits dainty in the middle, clinking as you tip the glass this way and that. 

“Don’t spill it,” the assassin murmurs. From behind the couch, breath ghosting just past your ear. You don’t shriek (perhaps he hoped you would)—you don’t even glance his way. 

“I feel like that was a redundant warning,” you remark brusquely, taking a swill of the liquor. It’s sweeter than it would’ve been normally: courtesy of the saccharine pipe nestled betwixt your fingers and the smoke still lingering in your mouth. “Were you hoping I’d jump?”

“Yes.” Short. To the point. Laconic. That’s how those outside this home would describe the man currently leaning down, hands splayed on the backrest of the couch. “We’ve got a mission tomorrow, and you still haven’t done the dishes.”

“It’s your turn,” he adds, because he likes seeing how this man’s expression wrinkles in exasperation, likes that stupid cant of your head—for it means Moze has won this little encounter. It’s all because he strongly dislikes his roommate, no other reason. 

“You suck.” Syrupy plumes ghost his face as you exhale into his face above—he doesn’t move back, even as the traces of burnt caramel become far more prominent, even as it feels like you’re blowing him a kiss more than anything.

“And you need to clean and go to sleep before you’re late,” he grits out, more annoyed than he was a moment ago. He’d say it was due to your lack of responsibility, but this angle allows the loose robe to expose your bitten collarbone—like some stupid fucking trophy. “Like you always are.”

“I’m never late, A-ze,” you enunciate each word in such a way that makes it clear you’re not drunk—so clearly the nickname is just to piss him off. A last-ditch middle finger; a threat that hasn’t worked for some time, one that makes his stomach churn uncomfortably but not enough to admit defeat. “You’re just up stupid early.”

He goes silent, in the way he does when you’re right. Instead of saying anything, he instead plucks the glass from your hand: downing the smooth alcohol from where you drank it, enjoying how for once your mouth closes just like his. The pipe in your hand tilts this way and that as you take a drag thoughtfully—recovering far too quickly for his liking. 

“A-ze.” Like this, with wisps exiting your mouth and silk draped over you, you look good enough to eat. He freezes at the implication of his thoughts, freezes at the sound of the name blanketed in some gruesome replica of affection. He hates it; hates how his heart squeezes and a faint flush of red dusts his cheekbones. Aeons. 

It is common knowledge to not toss a starving dog a bone before it hungers for more. 

“What, you don’t hate it anymore? Here I was, hoping you’d turn tail and leave,” you sigh, theatrically despondent—much like you normally are. Too damn dramatic for your own good. 

So desperate, drinking your sorrows away as if that’ll possibly work. He scoffs, striding the short distance over so he can tower over from the front. 

“Maybe you just like calling me that,” he breathes. There’s a smile playing on his lips: the rare one he gets when he knows he’s got a point, knows when he’s right. It’s unconscious—he’s far too oblivious to notice it only occurs around you. 

“I do,” you murmur. “Bet it warms your heart though. No one likes you enough to call you that.”

“So you like me?” There’s an odd buzz in his veins tonight. As the orange lights from the street blink into existence, and the room is no longer illuminated by ‘day’, he’s glad for the darkness that conceals the heat in his face. Your clothing rustles as you stand—practically nose to nose with the man in front of you.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Xiaoze,” you mutter, and the heated breath from your lips fans over his sensitive skin—mingling with the tobacco wisps and alcohol vapour. He swallows. “It’s pity.”

“Pity?” he sneers. “Like how you sleep around to get over your boyfriend? That’s not pitiful?”

“Like I said—” your tone becomes frigid as you shift closer: until his chest brushes up against yours, until he can count every lash that glows amber in the incandescent street lamps, until he can practically taste the rolling fury off your tongue. Warm. Scalding heat ebbs from your body and flows right into his own. “—don’t get ahead of yourself, Xiaoze.”

His breath comes in ragged waves. So close. When he stands so near to a human, it typically means he’s feeling life flow from them. Not like this; but he cannot bring himself to get away. 

He’s never been more thankful for his unwavering voice. 

“Don’t give bones to starving dogs,” he murmurs, mellifluous rather than jarringly annoying. “They’ll bite.”

Smoke wafts into his face as you survey his expression: flushed, brows knitted taut, lips still slick with liquor. 

“So you’re a dog, now?” Your fingers graze his chin, canting his head this way and that as he makes no moves to evade your grasp: heart beating miserably in his chest. There’s a strange sort of hunger in your gaze. 

He’s never seen it before. 

“No, it was proverbial—” Like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “—you know?”

“Just as desperate as one,” you mutter. Trailing your finger down until they graze his collarbones, it’s no wonder he flinches—and you stare at him, unimpressed. “If I tell people about this, your reputation would immediately disintegrate. How many years have you cultivated that stupid mysterious image?”

“Hah—who would believe you?” It’s true, not many people would—but alas, the important ones have already witnessed this man looking at you. 

“Jiaoqiu, but I guess he already knows what a loser you are.” And you miss how when he lowers his head, he looks like a completely different person—flushed visage mired in shadow, like the assassin he truly is. He’s staring right at you, unblinking as he watches the cruel movement of your lips. 

“Don’t talk about him right now.”

And so, you don’t. 

・゜゜

This is the prelude leading up to this particularly humiliating scene. 

Humiliating, because propping himself up on his elbows on your bed isn’t a position he thought he’d ever find himself in. Humiliating, because he never gets drunk, so why the hell is his head spinning? Humiliating, because for once the mellow deep of his voice is pitched a note higher—larynx taut with suppressed groans. Unsteady, in a way his voice has never been. 

You taste like the pipe still tipping in your fingers: candy-sweet and saccharic. But there’s also the heavy aroma of liquor on your breath, mingling bittersweet with the plumes of smoke wafting from your fingers. Beneath that, blood from a scrape on your lip—acrid and metallic. That is what he knows, so your lips moving gently against his feels so utterly foreign: and not just in the way they taste. 

When you pull back for air, his eyes are blown wide in surprise; his mouth has only ever been used to bite, after all. You seem to instinctively know this as you take a long drag from the stick, blowing the curls of vapour into his mouth when you pull back in: to induce a slight tingle into him presumably (but Lan knows he doesn’t need aid to feel that buzz). 

Languorous. That’s how he’d describe it—for it seems you only ever work lazily. There’s no hurry as you lick past the seam of his lips. There’s no hurry as both your scalding mouth and your arid fingertips trail downwards, past the vales of his tense abdomen. There’s no hurry—but Aeons he wishes there was, for your hand slipping under his shirt and against his stiffened nipples are much too damn slow. 

“Do you—do you even know what you’re doing?” he mocks, like he isn’t currently jolting as you roll the pink flesh between searing fingers. You raise a brow: lucid against the otherwise irritated thoughts. 

“Do I?” you copy his broken whine, gripping the fat of his tits coarsely while the rise and fall of his chest becomes ever so slightly more shallow. If only he could see himself right now: jarred at every turn, pupils blown out, and the residual sheen on his lips. Every damn hue of purple littering his neck and collarbone. And if only you could see better in this darkness—spot that obsessive fervour in his gaze, one neither of you are quite aware of. 

“Do you have any experiences to compare it to?” you counter, twisting your hand while he glares at you heatedly. Nothing. Quiet as a corpse when you make an irrefutable point. 

No, that’s right, you grin sardonically as you slip the long cigarette back into its place on your nightstand. Syrup drips from your mouth as you twine your free hand in his hair, tugging until he groans into your lips with his own in that mellifluous cadence. 

You’re harsh as winter. 

No, cruel.

Cruel, as you trail your hand from his chest to his waistband—palming him roughly through his pants. Cruel, as you pinion his hips against your bed to prevent them from bucking into your hand—fingers digging desperately against your sheets as you grind against him. Cruel, as you swallow each whine with your warm mouth: so sweet, so gentle even as you wrench your hand into sinew, flesh and everything beyond. He can taste the arid heartbeat through your mouth, and he’s sure you can feel his own—pulsing hotly as he yields his worries to you, just for a moment. 

Or two. 

He’s inexperienced, but even he knows what the tension in his abdomen signifies. The distinct tremors in his legs, the pain as he digs his nails into your thigh, the tightness coiling his body into rigidity. Puppet-like beneath your machinations: manipulated this way and that way with strings unseen. 

Fucking his hand has never felt like this. 

As he writhes, he greedily swallows you whole. Taking everything, including your bloodied lips, including the faint caramel tracing your tongue, including the strangled gasp as he grasps your nape with burning urgency. Aeons. He’s breathless; judged human lust far too soon. Against your brutal palm, the fabric of his trousers is slick with his release—wet patch a testament to his sin. 

Yet still you rock against him as he rides out the mind-numbing pleasure: limbs infinitely heavier from the tension suddenly all releasing. 

But he forgets how cruel you are. 

One final sweet kiss later—nails raking past his scalp and the other hand warmly pressed against his cheek—and you pull away with a lazy smile. 

“Go to sleep.” The directive jolts him awake, like a bucket of ice-cold water breaking apart a dream. Dissolved like candy, like the damn fluid in Penacony connecting the conscious and unconscious. “We’ve got a mission tomorrow, remember?”

Like the cat that got the cream, you smile Cheshire-bright. A fucking riddle on your lips. “And I still have to do the dishes, remember?”

He’s left stupefied: numb lips, a reeling head, and an impercipient body. Once more, the shower he douses himself in is frigid—but nothing could be as cold as what just occurred. 

What the hell? 

He presses his palm to the lower half of his face in shock. 

What the hell?

Seriously, there’s something wrong with you. And as he glances down, he realises with utmost horror that his problem has not yet died down yet. 

What the hell?

Important things must be said thrice. Duplicitous in nature, Moze’s fate both turns for the worse and better simultaneously. 

The bone has been tossed. What will the starving dog do?

・゜゜

All actions have consequences. 

That is a proverb universally recognised by all walks of life: trodden on by kings, revered by alchemists, and vowed by the weak. You reap what you sow. What goes around comes around. Equivalent exchange. 

The natural outcome from that night is mutual silence. You don’t speak of that evening, and neither does he—face flush with implication, yet unwilling to actually divulge his thoughts on the matter. Sure, he finds himself with his hand attempting to recreate your rough friction (teeth clenched around his shirt as he paws at his lean chest)—but it never quite works, and all of his colleagues are privy to his especially curt mood. 

Joint missions with you are now a thing painful. Tense. 

The strings that bind him to you are taut with the feeling. Constricting, tightening, until he can sense their imminent breakage. 

This leads this unusual pair to this scenario. You, fresh out a shower and post the nth mission of this month. It’s only been three weeks since that night, and watching you meander about the kitchen with only a towel slung low on your hips is giving him heart palpitations. Steam curls from your body; each time you shift, he’s excruciatingly aware of how it appears just like that smoke from that night. 

“A-ze. What do you want?” 

That’s the golden question—what snaps him out of the trance—and makes him realise he’s practically pressed up against you from the back. No, scratch practically. His arms are on either side of the counter, pinning you in position as you continue stirring the fragrant drink. Feeling that damned sear of your skin is driving him into the throes of madness. 

He wraps his arms around you, burying his face in the crook of your neck and not heeding the rivulets that seep into his clothes. So warm, he wants to murmur—but talking is for those who want to speak, and he does not want to. Not in this moment, where he’s appreciating the soap you used, the lotion spread onto damp skin, the inherent smell of you. 

His teeth graze the vulnerable juncture. You turn, and he can see your eyes waver, feel the rapid thrum of your pulse as you become aware of just how desperate he is. “A-ze.” And your hands roam his waist, tracing the taut muscles betraying his anticipation. 

His lips are heated as he leans into you: a snarling mess. Trembling fingers trace the expanse of your soft body, like you’ll ghost away just like the wisps you smoke. 

“Need you.” It’s not a plea—the rough deep of his voice makes him sound demanding, as arrogant as ever. “Haven’t I behaved?”

He’s so damn desperate as he grasps your body: bruising and fatal. He’s desperate as he kisses you heatedly, desperate while your hands brush past the feverish skin of his stomach, desperate as you push him against the couch—too hasty for the bedroom. Now, he chokes out. Now, now, now. Please. 

Pliant beneath your hands, it’s not exactly the longest time until he’s gasping beneath you. So tight, you may have commented: drunk on the sensation of him fluttering around your probing fingers. Aeons. 

He’s so malleable: arching into you as soon as you line yourself up. It almost makes you feel bad for him: feeling him flinch whenever you brushed past him, watching his face bloom scarlet as he saw the marks on his neck in the hallway mirror. Almost.

It’s because he’s so cute like this: drooling amidst all the broken noises as you slam into him. You’ve never quite seen him this dishevelled, not even during that night. Hungrily, he’s sucking you right in—paying no heed to suppressing the almost-pained moans dribbling past his open lips. 

What a mess. 

Physically, it can only be described as such. White globs decorate his flushed skin messily: pearlescent in the dim lights of the living room. He can’t even begin to count how many times his weeping tip has stiffened, not when you’re so damn insistent that he forgets how to speak properly. It’s not like you’re any better; each time you look down there’s that frothy ring that strings you two together. 

Emotionally, it’s also quite the mayhem. You don’t particularly know where to look when his eyes have that gleam in them—a sort of fervour that one rarely ever sees. Even now—pupils hazed with lust and eyelids lowered heavily—he’s staring right up at you, content as can be whilst you drill mercilessly into him. 

Fuck. 

“Come on, you—ah—can do better than that,” he taunts. As though he doesn’t look completely fucked-out, as though there aren’t tears leaking from his foggy eyes. You’re not sure where he gets his audaciousness from. 

He’s beautiful. 

“This is why no one likes you,” you hiss, sharply tugging his hair back to hear his surprised whines. Supplicantly, he does exactly what you expect. Loser. Aeons, he sucks. 

“Yeah?” he grins. “What does that say about you?”

“That I’m a no one from the Intelligenstia Guild,” you answer against his neck, feeling his throat constrict as he swallows. Though it’s only minutely, his nails dig somewhat deeper into the flesh of your back—marking you up just as much as you’ve marked him. An acknowledgement of your words. 

Well. 

You suppose you’ve always been drawn to the pathetic ones. 

・゜゜