#but i'm really not interested in a 'who suffered more' thing

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Trump can’t do ANYTHING for his base

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in PITTSBURGH on THURSDAY (May 15) at WHITE WHALE BOOKS, and in PDX on Jun 20 at BARNES AND NOBLE with BUNNIE HUANG. More tour dates (London, Manchester) here.

Trump's coalition includes a huge number of people who will suffer terribly from his policies, but who voted for him anyway. Trumpism requires that he find ways to keep those Christmas-voting turkeys happy, or at least distracted.

Trump's go-to move for keeping his base happy is inflicting pain on people they hate, like immigrants, racialized people, queers and women. That goes a long way, obviously: there's a kind of person who can be distracted from their own deteriorating material condition by the spectacle of cruel treatment for their enemies.

But Trumpism can't just run on sadism. There's a lot of people who enjoy the sadism, but not so much that it cancels out their own rage at their deteriorating personal conditions. Trump's main tactic is to blame the suffering of his base on the rest of us: "radical leftists," "wokeism" and other hobgoblins of the small-minded. That, too, has its limits – especially when Trump controls Congress, the courts, the senate and the White House. Obviously, Trump isn't above blaming his own people for being traitors (e.g., by sending a literal noose-bearing lynch mob after his own vice president), but there are limits to this, even for Trump. If all the power-brokers in Trump's coalitions are branded as disloyal, cowardly, or traitorous, Trump will have no one left to do the actual work of advancing his agenda.

Ultimately, keeping Trump's base happy requires providing some form of material benefit to that base. Every authoritarian has a version of this – like the cash handouts that Poland's former far-right government gave out:

https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/poland-model-promoting-family-values-cash-handouts

For Trump, this presents a problem: because he represents the interests of exploitation, extraction and looting, everything nice that he gives to everyday people in his base potentially gores the ox of someone who really matters to him. It's no surprise, for example, that he reversed Biden's price-cuts for Big Pharma's most expensive drugs – the cheaper drugs are for sick people, the less profitable they'll be for pharma companies:

https://www.levernews.com/trump-already-disarmed-the-war-on-drug-prices/

Luckily (for Trump), Biden's consumer protection and antitrust agencies teed up a long list of extremely good policies that would directly shift money from rich parasites to everyday people. For example, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau passed a rule that would make it very easy to find out which bank would charge you the least and pay you the most, and let you switch banks with one click:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/01/bankshot/#personal-financial-data-rights

It was a move that would have shifted $667m/year from banks to everyday people, every year, forever. But Trump's most important barons, like Elon Musk, hated the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau and insisted that it be shuttered, so that $667m/year will go to the banks after all – indeed, virtually all of the good things Biden's CFPB decreed the American public would enjoy henceforth have been destroyed. Sure, Trump would have liked to have taken credit for these, but the conflict between stolen valor and displeasing Shadow President Musk will always cash out in Musk's favor.

It's not just the CFPB. The FTC also set up a whole roster of ambitious projects to improve life for Americans. Some of these made the news in a big way, like the antitrust case against Meta:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/18/chatty-zucky/#is-you-taking-notes-on-a-criminal-fucking-conspiracy

Trump has lots of upsides from pursuing the Meta case. Everyone hates Meta products, including (especially) the people who are trapped using them because that's where their friends, family, communities, customers or audiences are. Breaking up Meta would be hugely popular with the American people. But also, once a court has convicted Meta of violating antitrust law, Trump can solicit favors – cash and favorable algorithmic treatment – from Meta in exchange for ordering his FTC to go easy on Meta in the "remedy phase," letting them off with a fine, rather than forcing them to spin out Whatsapp and Instagram:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/12/the-enemy-of-your-enemy/#is-your-enemy

But even if Trump lets Meta walk, there's plenty of great stuff Biden's FTC did that he could take credit for – policies that would help everyday people.

The most prominent of these is the FTC's "Click to Cancel" rule. It's a pretty simple rule: companies have to make it as easy to cancel a subscription as it was to sign up for it.

In other words, they can't do that thing – beloved of everything from the New York Times to every manosphere influencer's supplement business – where you can sign up for a subscription with one click, but you can't cancel unless you phone them, wait on hold, and beg them to let you off the hook.

Companies do this on purpose, because it's super profitable. Amazon executives carried on internal email threads where they straight up said that they'd deliberately made it confusingly easy to sign up for Prime and basically impossible to stop paying for it:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/03/big-tech-cant-stop-telling-on-itself/

This is a no-brainer. Companies make signing up for subscriptions into a greased slide, and they make canceling subscriptions into a greased pole.

No wonder, then, that when the FTC solicited public comments on a proposed "click to cancel" rule, they had no trouble building up the evidentiary record needed to pass the rule.

Now, Trump's FTC has announced that they are delaying enforcement of the rule until mid-July:

https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/10/ftc-delays-enforcement-of-click-to-cancel-rule/

This is the second time they've delayed enforcement (originally, the rule was supposed to go into effect in January). Trump FTC chairman Andrew Ferguson had no trouble getting the votes for the suspension, because he illegally fired the two Democratic Commissioners, Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Slaughter:

https://www.theverge.com/decoder-podcast-with-nilay-patel/657115/ftc-bedoya-slaughter-trump-fired-supreme-court-interview

Ferguson is proof that the FTC can't do anything material for Trump's base. Sure, he can set up a snitch-line so tht FTC employees can rat each other out for being "woke":

https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/bedoya-statement-emergency-motion.pdf

This should be a slam dunk. It epitomizes the "unfair and deceptive" business practices Section 5 of the FTC Act empowers the agency to snuff out. The Trump admin is unwilling to gore the ox of out-and-out scammers, people who trick you into unkillable subscriptions. It seems that there's no material benefit that Trump's oligarch backers are willing to cede to working people. All they can offer is cruelty.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/12/greased-slide/#greased-pole

Image: Vis M (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Slide_at_Thenmala_deer_rehabilitation_center.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[judgeanon]

Don't Look Back in Anger - BATGIRL #7 Review

For the first issue after the opening arc of their new BATGIRL series, Tate Brombal has recruited Isaac Goodhart for a mission. The objective: to tell the definitive Lady Shiva origin story.

Here's a recap and my own lengthy-ass thoughts on this first half of it, transplanted from the other hellsite that shall not be named:

The issue begins with Cass taking a train to the West with a mysterious envelope in her hands. Inside the train, she gets a little flashback to the events of a few issues ago, and it's extremely nice to see that Goodhart is following Miyazawa's lead and drawing Shiva with visible age lines and such. I really love that look for her, even if Spicer mixed up the coloring of her coat.

Cass' surprise gift turns out to be a book with two cranes on its cover and a walkman, of all things, which contains a tape recorded by Lady Shiva, who explains that the book is her "life story." Awful nice of her to include an audio book version for Cass, although Shiva's self-pitying "dead, perhaps even for the better" and her talk of legacy already rub me the wrong way.

Although Puckett heavily implied that Shiva had grown tired of her violent life back during his Batgirl run, and Gabrych explicitly had her say that she had Cass at least partly so that someone would be strong enough to kill her if she ever became a monster, I'm just not a fan of that kind of Shiva. I find the whole remorseful assassin looking for a way out thing more than a little cliche, and more importantly, I don't think it fits her Taoist inspirations, her spirit of living purely in the moment, without attachments to the past.

But whatever, I'm sure this will be the only thing I disagree with in this issue. Right?

The meat of the story begins with a flashback to Shiva's childhood with her sister and their parents, nomads travelling the Himalayas. Shiva's narration mentions "blue moons" and "hidden worlds" in the stories her mother told her, maybe suggesting a connection to the Unburied.

Just as importantly, it introduces her sister, who Shiva describes as being her other half.

Violence arrives in the form of an army of red ninjas straight outta GI Joe who butcher the girls' parents and stain young Shiva's face in their blood, planting the first seeds of revenge. And alone but together, the sisters reach the door of a monastery, where one quick timeskip later, we see how that has gone for them.

Shiva, who we now learn was called Ming-Yue, is training with the monastery monks while listening to a very interesting lecture by the abbot. Particularly notable are the two middle panels of the page, which seem to foreshadow Shiva's eventual role as a challenge, an "agent of suffering" meant to help others find and overcome their obstacles. And some always welcome multi-armed imagery to boot.

It's a pair of panels that'll make any longtime Shiva fan smirk knowingly, and it's very cool to see some actual Hinduism slipped into her new backstory, but I think it only tells half the story. Shiva is not just a destroyer, but can and has given life back to those she chooses to help. I know Brombal is aware of that, so I hope he includes it later.

The next scene shows a bit of the sisters' life in the village surrounding the temple, and this is where I started to notice what Brombal and Goodhart are doing. Compare the first panel of that page:

... with the opening panel of BATGIRL #73, which was the last time someone tried to do a comprehensive origin of Shiva:

One of the greatest strengths of this issue, to me, is how Brombal & Goodhart have taken a handful of panels from a few pages of an issue that's almost 20 years old by now and extrapolated an entire personality for Mei out of that. Whereas Carolyn barely had hints of a personality, those hints are here full blown elements of her character. The cute smiles Pop Mhan gave her are now a bubbly, cheerful demeanor that carries on through almost the entire issue.

And that is something that this issue does a lot: it takes what Brombal has certainly identified as the key elements of Sandra and Carolyn's story, the parts that he considers important and worth keeping around, and removed all the specific details to build a new origin around them. More on that later.

For now, we have the introduction of some familiar bad guys: a mob of bandits called the Blood, which are obviously meant to be connected to that neatly-dressed Wu Lin fellow from the previous arc. And we get to see what a GREAT time Goodhart is having drawing kung fu badassery.

After the fight, there's a nice page that pours some water on that seed of revenge from earlier, while also planting a new one: Shiva's drive to be perfect. It's a perfectionism that we know she will pass on to Cass, but here, is tied to her sister, born from a deep love for her.

The next centerpiece scene is another of those connections that Brombal makes with BATGIRL #73, this time not with its art but with its writing. Gabrych in that issue described Sandra & Carolyn's fights as a "dance":

... and here Brombal & Goodhart make that fairytale metaphor real:

And although the setting of the scene is a callback to BATGIRL #73, the double page spread of the sisters dancing is also a callback to the last six issues of Brombal/Miyazawa's newest run, using the same double page spread structure they've used so far for fight scenes. But where Shiva & Cass' spreads were tableaus of violence and chaos, this one is a soft, flowy performance, all swooping motions full of strong character expression.

All the while, Shiva's narration gushes about her sister in a very sweet way that's also a bit poignant when you consider this is the world's greatest fighter talking about the person she herself once looked up to, not just because of how she fought but because of how she moved. It's a moment of understated vulnerability for Shiva, describing her sister like this, begging Cass to understand just how good she was. The use of movement as a descriptor in particular lands particularly well, considering that's how Cass would really get to understand a person.

But once again, an army of red ninjas shows up to crash the party, and the parallels with Shiva and Cass are made even more evident:

Where Shiva struggled to make her daughter even listen to her, she was perfectly able to communicate with Mei without even a word. And what hits about this particular callback is how it shows not only what Shiva has lost, but also maybe what she's trying to recover: a connection, someone she can communicate with as clearly as she used to be able to talk to her sister. And as we already read in previous issues, Shiva does see a lot of Mei in Cass.

The next pages quickly introduce a bit more of the Blood's backstory and powerset, but more importantly, their leader: a brawny shirtless fellow who turns out to be the sisters' uncle, who speaks of a forbidden love union and promises to grant them their birthright. If I had to bet, I'd bet a few bucks that Shiva's father was of the Blood, while her mother was a member of the Unburied, and they had a bit of a Shaw Bros Romeo & Juliet going on.

But here we get another of those little remixed moments, as our big baddie notes that Mei is holding Yue back, both physically and metaphorically. This is maybe the most overt reference to BATGIRL #73, and big bald ninja fellow is clearly echoing David Cain's intentions from back then.

Hell, it's probably not even intentional, but #73's narration made references to sparks and fanning flames, and this issue does have a village set on fire so...

Fortunately, the sisters are saved by their master and escape the burning village, putting an end to this first chapter of Shiva's new origin. So... what's good about it?

Goodhart's art is VERY good, for starters. I knew the man could draw from CHRISTOPHER CHAOS, but his work here is rock solid and full of beauty. The panels are gorgeous, the shadows are evocative, the action's delightfully dynamic and Spicer's coloring brings everything to life. Although speaking of colors, here's a small detour:

Throughout this issue, Mei's color is yellow, perhaps as a nod to her colors back in her first appearance in KUNG FU FIGHTER #2. But also, we've seen Shiva wear a yellow crane on her back. And the book that Cass is reading has two yellow cranes on the cover.

So it's not a stretch to assume that yellow is a color that Shiva still associates with her sister. And wearing different animals with that color on her clothes is her way to metaphorically carry Mei on her back at all times. It's a small touch that highlights how much of Mei still lives in Shiva's memory.

Writing-wise, I appreciate Brombal's approach. You can see which parts of BATGIRL #73 he thought were important, the parts that spoke to him and that he chose to build from, and it's neat to see him remix them, adding new settings & events but mostly going for a "Yes, and" strat. However, this new origin already runs straight into one of my big pet peeves about any Shiva backstory.

Whether it's being raised in a village of assassins or just being a child prodigy at karate, I've always found the idea of Yue/Sandra being raised to be a master fighter a little limp. On some level, it feels like a lack of confidence -- like nobody will believe a completely normal girl would be able to turn herself into an invincible fighter with just a few months of training. No, she has to have been raised to be Shiva, she has to have been special from birth, she has to have (apparently) ancient warrior clan blood that may or may not turn into swords.

She HAS to be DESTINED to become, at the very least, something like Lady Shiva. But I find the idea of Sandra being someone who had never raised a hand in anger before Carolyn died to be a thousand times more powerful than that.

It's not something that was ever explored in previous comics (and I'd argue it doesn't have to be), but Sandra turning her back on every single part of her being except her desire for revenge, then getting that revenge and finding herself unable to just become Sandra again, is the journey that gives her backstory weight in my opinion. It's the story of a woman deciding to turn herself into something else to achieve a goal and finding herself unable to return to who she was.

If Yue/Sandra was already special, if she was already halfway to becoming Lady Shiva when her sister dies, then she's not really turning her back on nearly as much than if they had been normal girls. There's less emptying of the self involved, less destruction of Sandra and less creation of Lady Shiva. And in a way, there's also less agency involved.

Sure, Sandra was very much tricked into trying to kill Richard Dragon back in her first origin, but turning herself into a jump-kicking death machine was very much her choice, as was to continue being Shiva once her revenge had been completed. Once you establish that she was always special from birth, then her decision to become Shiva carries less weight. Because it's no longer someone erasing their nature to create and embrace a new one, but someone whose nature was always there deciding to shake hands with it.

Which is not a bad story per se, but it feels less unique. Any attempt to make Shiva pre-Carolyn's death special, to me, always has the unintended effect of making her less special. That's my main beef with this issue, and maybe with the entire idea of writing a new Shiva origin. What I personally consider the key blocks of Shiva's origin are all post-Carolyn's death, while Gabrych and Brombal place them before that death. To me, the key is never so much Shiva's lust for revenge, but what she does with her life once she gets that revenge.

My secondary beef with this issue is the general atmosphere of Shiva still being haunted by Mei's memory. For the same reason I don't like a remorseful, self-loathing Shiva, I don't like a Shiva who's still tortured by the spectre of her sister. I think Shiva is far more interesting as someone who by all means should be haunted, should be burdened by this tragedy, but who has detached herself from so much of the material world that it's become a thing that happened, a thing that created her, but that no longer affects her. Shiva, to me, works best when she's living exclusively in the moment, closer to the Zen ideal of a life lived without regrets.

All that said, I do enjoy how much character Brombal gives to Mei. I'm aware of how I sound when I say that the most important part of Carolyn's character is dying, so I like that Brombal has taken these little hints of personality from the BATGIRL #73 flashback and crafted practically a whole new character out of them. And I'm especially excited to see her in the next issue, hanging out with Ben Turner and Richard Dragon.

Back in that original run, Carolyn was turned into a damsel in distress and a woman in a fridge with ghastly speed, so getting to see her actually being a character is bound to be cool, even knowing where it's gonna end.

To wrap things up, like the best parts of this run so far, I can see Brombal's vision, and I appreciate it, even when I disagree with the direction he's headed. I don't like this self-loathing, blood-destined, haunted by the past version of Shiva, and I probably never will, but I really value the craftsmanship and thought that's been put into this story.

I imagine #8 will be more of the same, with a few guest stars, but I'm interested in two things: First, just seeing what Brombal's going to do about the big white-haired elephant in the room he himself teased in the final page. And second, I'm interested in seeing if maybe, just maybe, having this definitive origin of Shiva around will help writers become less interested in her past and more in her present, and hopefully her future.

I'm really tired of Shiva only ever appearing in relation to Cass, and while this week has shown us how much of a colossal Monkey's Paw that can be, I'm hoping this will somehow provide a foundation that more people can feel comfortable building on. That's all, y'know, wishful thinking based on nothing.

It's entirely possible that this will just usher a whole new era of stories about Shiva's past or something equally pointless, but a fan can dream. Maybe someday, maybe soon, the "Book of Shiva" will be more than just the name of a mini-arc in her daughter's book.

[return-of-the-queen-au]

YYESSSS🙏 I HAVE to answer and elaborate on what I said now because I love getting in these kind of discussions.

I agree on what you said here, the florist herself is a pretty bland character with no other purpose than for another character to do a certain action, it's kinda expected for people not to really see her as an interesting character.

But when others put their ideas on the table? Now we're talking!

I've seen her being many things, they got repetitive after a while but it's always a joy to see it.

She's been the prince's friend, Vanessa's friend, the prince's sister or lover, even.

I've seen her just being a florist suffering Vanessa's outburst, I've seen her FIGHT to live against Vanessa's blizzard, she's been tons of things, and they were all cool ideas.

but..I still don't really care for her. I love to see it but I, myself, will not be caught be doing anything too complex with her.

because it's like I said, she has a story in my AU, she does have her own things going on but they're irrelevant in the end. She doesn't need to be there for things to go the way they are supposed to go.

I've still taken her into my arms and gave her the spotlights a few times just not the same spotlight Vanessa or the prince have, but I can't take all the credit for it!

Because the way I've written her is really just inspired on what I've seen! I thank all the crazy folks who decided to do something with such empty side character. (I base myself on specific fics or aus I've seen, really. But also I'm writing everything to this day so I could be casually just taking things from recent stuff I've seen and go on with my day HAISHAU)

even though I enjoy more staying into the realistic side of things rather than the fairytale, I've broken a few rules (like the prince marrying Vanessa despite he not being a royal,,) so I don't see why I shouldn't use those broken rules to take those beloved characters form the fandom (such an moonjumper or the florist, or even Vanessa's mother.) and give them a chance to be talked about.

their story is pretty simple though, I do admit in my case I have things planned but very very superficial, so don't expect some big things.

but the most important thing to note, in which I share with this wonderful person above me, she is nothing but a stranger.

She has zero ties to the royal family aside a specific person, which is neither the prince or Vanessa.

So yeah! I love the florist but she'll just be a silly character I like to explore individually to the story 😞 it was a mere coincidence that the prince came to her for flowers.

Hey, what ever happened to the florist in this au? Did she escape or did she transform into a subcon creature?

Lemme take a look at my AU script...

Uh... hm... so... okay... ah.

I sadly signed an NDA with Snatcher when I wrote this story and cannot reveal its secrets u_u But fear not! I can still give you a silly answer to what would happen if Astrid would get to interact with Snatcher and Vanessa and Moonjumper 👍

For easiness I made her a shadow ghost too

/j

[blackhholes]

Teen Wolf

4x03 Muted ⎮ 5x09 Lies of Omission

[writinginthesecrettrees]

As an unrepentant and complete Sam girl who wrote a once-in-a-blue-moon Dean-centric meta, let me explain the people that Dean has lost:

It starts with his mother, when he's four. Yes, Sam lost her too, but Sam was never old enough to remember having her so the loss is different.

The next was Sam. He lost Sam when Sam went to college. Whether or not that is true from an objective point of view, to Dean's very subjective view it was a loss.

Follow that with Cassie - a woman he cared enough about to tell the truth of their lives. And bam! just like that, confirmation that "no one will stay, I'm not enough." Again, not making any judgements on the accuracy of his perception. I'm looking at this from inside his perspective.

Then Dad disappears, and Dean is just. He's lost! He doesn't have anyone left. So he takes a chance on Sam - and gets Sam back! Yeah, Sam says it's just for the weekend, but that's not nothing! (and it's never addressed in the show, but I honestly believe that Dean blames himself for Jessica's death because if he hadn't dragged Sam off to look for Dad then Sam would have been there, might have been able to save her)

Follow that with finding Dad and having him die, and not just die but die to save Dean? While laying the "hey, you might have to kill your brother" burden on him... Well, let's just say I can completely understand why Dean made his own demon deal at the end of that season.

Ellen and Jo are the next big ones on the list. And follow that up with Sam jumping into the Cage - that was the loss that he sold his soul to avoid, but he couldn't stop it from happening. And sure, Sam came back, but that doesn't erase the pain of losing him for so long.

Then Castiel dies. My own opinions aside, that was a blow to Dean. Enough said.

And Bobby. Losing Bobby was like losing his father all over again. And he was still on the rebound from that loss when he got sucked into Purgatory...

and came back to find that Sam had settled into a happy life with a girl and a dog. Now, again, I'm not here to argue about whether Sam was right or wrong or just neutral in his actions - this post is about Dean and Dean's feelings. And in Dean's eyes, Sam jumped at the first chance to find a new life.

And that hurts him! And he has to wonder if Sam's really in it with him, or is Sam going to leave him behind (again) and go off to find his own life? And there's this perversity about that fear that makes him try to prove it true: he's gonna push and push and shove at Sam until either Sam leaves or Dean can be sure Sam will never leave - and the tragedy of it is that he doesn't realize how badly he's hurting Sam until he sees Sam ready to die to win his love back.

The love that Sam never lost, could never lose, because not loving Sam means not existing.

Dean can bear every single loss in his life except for Sam.

The way Dean spent a whole season telling Sam "screw you, you forgot about me, Benny's a better brother, I like Benny best" and then at the end was all "how could you think anything, past or present, could mean more to me than you?" was honestly peak Dean to me.

Because he was pissed! He was hurt! He wanted to make Sam know how he felt, and Sam never seemed to get it. So of course he kept at it... up until Sam was about to die. Thus proving that: yes, Sam got it. Sam felt his pain. Sam felt guilt and remorse and would do anything to make it up to him.

And his utter disbelief that Sam had believed him? That Sam thought he meant it when he said Benny was better? That Sam didn't understand that nothing and no one would ever be as important to him as Sam?

Look, sometimes Dean forgets that they are two people, that they don't actually share a brain the same way they share a soul, and he thinks that Sam will just get it. Get how much he loves him. Fuck that, love isn't even the right word, it's too small and limiting for what they are.

It's peak Dean because Dean needs to make sure Sam knows how hurt he is, but can't believe Sam doesn't know how he feels about Sam. Because it's this fragile veneer of tough-guy bravado over an aching fear that Sam doesn't care about him as much as he cares about Sam. Because Dean is just a boy who keeps losing the people most important to him, and he doesn't know it but he's terrified of Sam leaving him and the Purgatory fiasco and Amelia was an affirmation of that fear so he spent a whole season testing Sam to see how much would be too much? How far could he push before Sam leaves?

[sskk-manifesto]

Ep 5!!!

[icharchivist]

i mean i get why it sucks but i've been having an existential crisis that keeps me up at night for most of my life too and i'm not producing people expressly to abuse them and use them as tools about it. Astrals are just on something else i guess

i'd say it's a question of scale in general, as in an existential crisis coming so deeply from a whole different life in your head would fuck someone up much more. but anyway i keep saying Lucilius' way to treat other is bad, in those same posts in fact, just that his issues with depersonalization/derealization are also extremely compelling and actually make me feel bad for him. Those two feelings can coexist, and i don't mean that you have to be nicer to him or anything. i'm just saying he's still an interesting character.

[duncebento]

we shouldn't have to feel grateful for so much of this, man. as valuable a virtue as gratitude is, i don't want the world we've made to be one in which my prayer of thanks for anesthesia at the dentist is anything more than a novel acknowledgement, rather than resultant of seeing so many people lack that "privilege." i'm a senior at a polytechnic rn; i don't want to be grateful for the continued existence of the school, the fact of its concrete walls still standing. i don't want to be aware of the fact that the toddlers in my family are in one piece; i don't want a contrary example of limbless infants to live in my mind. the softly-suffered deaths i've mourned have provided more than enough suffering on their own!

but such is the world we've built. while some well-fed mouths in the imperial core shut their eyes and cover their ears and make crude jokes and question whether such suffering really is realistic at all, the virtuous of us, those interested in good, refuse to look away until we've changed it. part of exercising that continued gaze is providence. if your life has ever been happier on account of a living sibling or a standing university or a cat sleeping on your stomach or a warm home, see whether you can't provide for miriam baalou, who, like me, has a tumblr account-- @freepaleatine95 -- and who, younger than i am, has had all of these things taken away as collateral for the continued comfort of the imperial core.

in this empire, whose current is an evil one, even to remain in one place requires discipline, labor, capital. to do good requires even more. but let us work heartily against the worst selfishnesses of our worst ancestors.

the baalous’ campaign has been vetted by 90-ghost, who's work in making palestinian campaigns more legible to outsiders i am grateful beyond words for.

[kenyummy]

✰ 04. the ballad of a bygone blight.

✰ ꒰ ⍣'ˎ˗ platonic yandere batfam / spider! reader ꒱

✰ 04. fantastic four.

SYNOPSIS : being spidey isn't easy. being transported into an alternate universe where you're nothing but a shadow in your house, makes sneaking around a little easier... until you find yourself the apple of their eye... kind of.

note: had to wrack my brain to remember what math i was learning in seventh grade LMAO . sometimes i forget damian is just a little guy in like seventh to eighth grade. crazy. and please let me know if there's any mistakes with pronouns/gender!!! i want to keep this open to everybody so im always trying my best ❤️

also ive realised how chopped harry is in the comics after taking my rose coloured lenses off. basically he and mj have their look in the ultimate spiderman TV show (in my eyes anyway, i kind of just described their appearance based off tgat lmaooo)

prev. ✰ masterlist ✰ next.

School has never felt so bland for you. Sure, it was never your favourite thing in the world—except for maybe biology—but you'd think that discovering a whole new world in your last year would make it a little more interesting.

It didn't.

It's been three weeks since you crash landed here in Gotham. The most you'd gotten from your family was an awkward "how are you" occasionally, and a lot of staring.

You'd only shown yourself as Spidey a few times to the public, but never stayed for those pesky news reporters shoving their microphones into your face. You'd never liked interviews, anyway.

The only highlight of your long days were MJ and Harry. You'd gotten over the initial shock of Harry being in love with you—convincing yourself that it really wasn't you he liked; it was this world's original you. (Though—that fact still lingers in the back of your mind whenever you talk).

Apart from that, school truly was uneventful. Your kooky art teacher was the only one of whom you actually liked, and it seemed the education here was rather lax. Uncaring. Not good for your future, surely—but you wouldn't have a future here, and you're sure this [name] Wayne will be just fine.

Speaking of schooling—the people here really seemed to hate the Gotham Prep kids. More than what a petty rivalry should be—it was pure malice.

Harry was especially adamant about this.

"They're all dumb, entitled rich kids who use daddy's money to get whatever they want, you know." He stabs his fork into a dry cut of chicken violently. Then points, accusatory, at MJ—who already presents a sneer to him. "And don't you start lumping me in with them—you know I'm not like that."

Her face twists, but soon she grins cheekily. "Okay, fine. Yeah, you're totally not, otherwise nobody here would like you one bit. And who doesn't love Harry, huh?"

"Oh, be quiet," But still, he smiles—damn his head is big. He glances over at you. You're picking around at your soggy broccoli with a frown. "Hey, [name]. Don't two of your brothers go to Gotham Prep?"

You look up at your ginger friend, head tilted to the side before it clicked. Oh, right. Tim and that young boy—Damian, if you remember correctly. Tim barely ever went to school if your diary was still accurate, and Damian had little choice but to.

(Doesn't seem like he'd be the social butterfly type, though.)

"Yeah, they do." You nod, still fiddling around with that vegetable.

"Not that I'm not glad that you're here—but why don't you go to school with them?" MJ leans forward in her seat. "I mean, isn't it easier for siblings to go to the same school?"

Your eyes widen for a second.

There's a few ways you can go about this.

One—you tell them everything you know about your other self. About how you never felt included enough to ask. How you never spent time with them. How it always felt like everything and everyone else was more important than you. How you suffered silently—begging for their attention for years like a house pet becoming a stray.

Two—you could tell them you have absolutely no idea because you have none of your memories of anything from the past years of this life—how you don't even remember all your siblings names half the time.

Or three, and your personal favourite—you can just lie.

It doesn't take a serial genius to figure out which one you chose.

"I guess I just didn't like the rich private school vibe they had going on." A smile falls over your lips. "Plus—you guys were coming here, so it gave me even more of a reason to attend, you know?"

You're not entirely sure that's true. But—if these two were anything like the Harry and MJ you know—then this would probably be right.

Judging from their smiles, your detective skills haven't failed you yet.

"Man!" MJ lolls her head back, groaning. "Can't believe I'm friends with two rich kids who get to choose which school they want—the beat down public or sleek rich private."

"Don't go dissing this school just because you're jealous of their uniforms," Harry snickers, pressing his index finger into MJ's cheek. She huffs and slaps him away.

"Silence, nepo baby. Your dad is basically Lex Luthor if he wasn't bald."

Harry looks more confused than offended at her comment, "Okay, but my dad isn't an evil mastermind plotting against a red and blue suited superhero."

You press your lips together thinly and look to the side, eyes focused on anything but him. Oh, Harry—if only you knew.

Damian Wayne had never truly seen the point of highschool.

Raised by assassains all his life—he had little room, time, and desire to learn about all this nonsense. While he enjoyed arts and fine literature—he couldn't find it within himself to care about the American Revolution, or whatever other ridiculous thing happened in history.

His maths teacher was absolutely, indubitably pathetic. Always on his phone as he assigns mountains of homework (because he never bothers to explain the complex materials they're given) on the latest subject—whether it be those blasted simultaneous equations, or to factorise useless monic trinomials. Even calculating tax and interest on the stupidest of cases.

Damian found himself sitting in the corner of his class in silence, staring down, bored, at the book in front of him. He truly hated math. There's so much real work to be done—crime to fight, plotting organisations to take down.

But his father, as always, is unmoving in his conviction that school is important. For Damian especially, anyway; Drake can skip as often as he likes because he's a senior already. Truly, ridiculous.

For Damian, and—oh.

You.

Bruce always seemed especially insistent on you two going to school. Even when everyone but him knew you skipped every few days and simply come home to wait.

Wait for what? For them?

His brows furrow. Suddenly, the black and white equations on the sheet blur and he zones out. Thinking.

You always did. From the day he'd walked into the manor, you were always there. Unconsciously, he'd notice it. A trait of a good assassin is that they can spot everyone in the room.

A trait of a great assassin is that they can spot everyone inside and watching.

Always, you were watching. Those pitiful stares. Desperate like a unloved pet. If he cared a little more (if any at all), he would've felt sorrow for your state.

Always wanting, but never asking. Never taking. Simply waiting for it all to come to you. He would never understand it. He would never understand you.

He would never understand how somebody could allow themselves to be so weak.

Like everybody else—when he first entered the manor, he proposed to fight you. Assuming—being the child of his father, like he was—you were worthy. That you were strong.

He doesn't know how he could've been so wrong. You immediantly reacted, gasping and clutching your face. He'd nicked it with the edge of his blade after he unsheathed it. You looked at the blood dotting your fingertips, then back at him, eyes wide.

Immediantly, Bruce rushed to his side and pushed him behind his larger, imposing figure—telling you to not interact with him because he's different to regular people. Different to you.

He watched you storm off from behind his father's legs; anger practically blaring off your figure.

Later—he happened to overhear you and Grayson talking quietly. Telling you to not be too hard on Damian, because he's troubled. That he's had a difficult life. At first—he was a tad offended—but that offence could not compare to the absolute fury burning in your eyes.

Though, it all melted away when Grayson's hand ruffled your hair. Like a little kid, you stared up at him, soft and starry-eyed as you unconsciously murmured you'd forgive your new little brother.

Damian dry-heaved. You were so goddamn weak.

So weak, and so normal. Everything you did was completely regular. You were on the same wavelength as the civilians he saved from burning rubble. The same as people who walked down the street, talking about their favourite Justice League member. Who cowered in fear in front of villains—to be saved by those heroes. By him.

You were nothing, and yet everything he could never have been.

(What child does not long for normalcy?)

Damian always thought you were rather helpless, regardless of how regular you were—and seeing you with that bullet lodged in your shoulder—he was right. Not being able to dodge something like a bullet—there was no wonder you never become a vigilante. There was no wonder you needed to be protected.

... Though—he began to think back.

Who did? Protect you; that is.

Whoever it was, they did a pretty awful job at it.

Damian strums his fingers against the hardwood table rhythmically. Face blank but mind running rapidly.

It couldn't have been Todd. No—he seemed to be in a frazzled state of mania when carrying your bleeding body in your arms. Perhaps he too, believed you were safe with the rest of his family.

(Oh how wrong Todd was—he looked livid.)

... Grayson?

No. When he's not in Blüdhaven, he is almost always with the other vigilantes within the family. Not here nor there, and certainly not close enough to protect you.

Not Drake. He never cared enough, despite everything. Not Cain, either. Though the silent protector type—she had too much on her plate to worry about you as well.

Gordon and Brown had their own families to worry about.

And his—your father? The Batman? There was no time for a regular child like you in the Batman's life of vigilantism. Whom he sworn to protect in his crusade now lay bleeding out in his great failure's arms.

...

Did you truly have nobody?

...

Damian couldn't really imagine it. He'd always assumed you had many friends to fill the void that yoir family left with their civilian clothes. ... Perhaps you did. He wouldn't know.

You are his only half sibling. In this world, only he is truly your brother, and you are his only older sibling. Does that not give him the slightest of responsibility?

He'd always been taught to keep everybody at arms length—even his own family. The whole world is out to get the Demon's grandson, then he must fight it. But his father taught him differently.

To protect those who cannot protect themselves—to keep those he cares about safe at any cost.

What of you? He does not care for you in the way an ordinary sibling should. Seeing you so weak, defenceless against him—must mean you trust him in some way.

(It's hard for him to fathom being able to feel so unprotected in a world he was taught was trying to extinguish him at every turn).

Regardless of how you don't belong—or how frosty you act toward your youngest brother—he has a duty.

No matter how hard you try—you can never sever the blood you two share. The others do not have this duty—but he does, because in the end, you are his. None of the others bothered, so Damian must.

You are everything he could never be, he has realised. But in the end, you are blood. It runs thicker in the veins than any water, and that is one of the most important things to Damian.

Seeing that same blood—his blood—spill out of you carelessly—that is a sight he will never bear witness to again.

Damian was the first one out the door as soon as the bell chimed in his ear. His bag slung tightly around his shoulders and textbook under his arm; he rushed into the familiar sight of a sleek, large car.

He shuts the door as he climbs into the backseat (Bruce said he was still too short to sit in the front, much to his son's displeasure). "Hello, Pennyworth."

Alfred glances back at him through the rear view mirror. "Good afternoon, Master Damian. How was school?"

"Same as usual. A waste of time." He clicks his seatbelt shut as the car begins to move. Alfred only hums, keeping his eyes trained on the road.

"I'm unsurprised to hear you say so. I do hope you understand why exactly, you are enrolled in school, however. And why Master Bruce is so adamant about your attendance."

Damian knows. He's always known, because it has been drilled into his head like a mantra. Talia and Ra's Al Ghul weren't math teachers—and most of his time really was spent training and sparring to be the best he could be.

He was not illiterate, nor stupid. Rather smart, actually. However, he didn't exactly learn algebra and chemistry with the League of Assassins.

He grumbles. "I know, Pennyworth. Father cannot seem to stop reminding me that all these things are far more important than stopping the endless wave of crime in Gotham."

If he weren't on the road—Alfred surely would've given him a nasty look. "Master Damian, please—your sincerity is positively slaughtering me."

Damian rolls his eyes, opting to stop this fruitless conversation and look outside the windows instead. At the outside world—the sky already paling to deep auburn shades as they drive through the endless roads.

He watched all the cars moving past; hurrying to get to their destination. Each with their own story and reason for being there. Every single one with their own thoughts and worries. Some with children, others with pets, and some with piles of groceries.

All with their own, individual lives. Including him.

A bus, too. It stops for a moment at a sheltered space, then drives away, leaving a few people standing under the shade.

An elderly lady with a man, presumably her son, walking away with her. A woman with frizzy red hair and freckles dotted over her nose. A few schoolkids—some his age, some older. Clearly from the public school on the other side of Gotham, if only to judge from the scantily clad clothes some of the older students wore—

Wait, is that you?

He sits up—the car slowly coming to a stop at a red light. His eyes don't leave your figure as he presses his nose against the window; observing.

You look around at the people that pass by you—gripping your bag close to your side and rushing into the nearest alleyway.

He waits for a few moments. This red light feels rather long—but what feels longer is watching and waiting for you to come out of that alleyway.

You never do.

Even as the car begins to move once more, driving past the intersection, he crawls as far back as possible to even get a glimpse—but you never show.

Just today, he had decided to be the one to take up the mantle and protect you. Just today, during a boring math class, he has decided that since you are his blood, he must keep a helpless civilian like you safe.

And now you're gone. Are you dead, or something?

(Deep down, his stomach twists at the thought.)

"Pennyworth, pull over." Hid voice is more taut than he had imagined. "Now."

Alfred looks back, glancing at the streets around. He doesn't question the young boy, simply doing as he is asked and pulling over to a deserted parking area.

When he has parked the car, he turns around and sees Damian slipping his Robin mask on—somehow already fully suited up.

His eyes widen, "Master Damian, what—"

"I have something to do. Let Father know I will be back home late."

Opening the door, Damian rushes out and pulls out his grappling hook, swinging onto the nearest building's roof and looking around.

He spots the alleyway you'd run into. It is still. Absolutely no movement nor any looks from passer-bys. He rushes across the roves towards where the dark side seeped into the crack of the buildings.

Maybe you'd taken another way out?

But looking at the alleyway now, it's more like a dip between the buildings to stand in more than anything. It was blocked off on the other side.

So where...???

He drops down, landing on his soles and squinting as he stares around into the dark. There's nothing.

No people, nor bodies, and certainly not anything to indicate anybody was ever here.

Except...

He glances at the wall. Theres a white cocoon-esque oval webbed to the wall. Those same webs he'd seen all that time ago—from that spider. That would show up then leave immediantly. Never staying for longer than they had to.

Dodging all of his and Batman's attempts at asking who you were, and what you were doing in Gotham. Always swinging away into the distance before they could be subdued.

Now, he stares at their ball of webbing and wonders if it truly is an arachnid he's dealing with.

He pokes it, looking it up and down. Then, he sees it. Through the small holes in the webs and the translucent, silk-like material—he finally sees it.

Your bag.

He tears off the webbing faster than he can think, getting the sticky substance stuck to his gloves and clothes; he barely even notices it. He grabs your bag and stares it, swallowing hard.

His mind buzzes with an unfamiliar staticky feeling and he suddenly feels sick to his stomach. Despite all the noise in his ear—his brain is able to comprehend one singular question.

... What did that arachnid do to you?

Clothed fingers digging deep into the leather fabric of the bag—clearly worn down and fading. Old. He would get Father to purchase you another. ... When he sees you next. Because he will.

His jaw clenches hard.

Damian throws the bag over his shoulder and grapples up—swinging onto a building roof and running across.

Running for what, he isn't sure. But what he is sure of, is that once he gets his hands on that arachnid, it will not be kind.

To find out what happened to you—that is his duty as your blood sibling.

He decides that in this life, he will be your protector. In the next, if he is ever given a chance to be normal like you—he will become a doctor. Or perhaps a painter. Or a poet. Maybe he will ask you to help him decide when he finds you and that arachnid.

... Yes, that sounds good.

You cut through the cool wind as you swing through the city. Grinning widely underneath your mask—you don't think you've ever been so happy since you landed here.

You're sure nobody will take your stuff. Even if they do, you could always just get whatever else you needed again. You were far too excited to dwell on the small stuff right about now.

Landing on a rooftop, crouched—you walk down the wall of the apartment complex, and look around for civilians. As he told you—the streets around the back of the building were practically deserted.

You count the amount of rooms from the side, up and down.

"Row 5, Apartment block... 2..." You hum, and nod to yourself.

You tap your necklace and the nanobots all crawl off your body, leaving you in your regular clothes. You land safely on the balcony of the room you were given.

You smooth out your flared jeans and take in a deep breath. Then, you bring up your knuckles, and knock.

The glass screen door opens before you can say fantastic.

A small pair of arms wrap around your torso and knock you backwards—you fall on your ass and let out a loud laugh.

"Spidey!!! [name]!!!"

"Is that who I think it is?!" You tease, eyes squinted upwards and the young kid buries into your stomach. His giggles are muffled by the fabric and he squeezes you so tight you'd be inclined to choke—if it wasn't you. "Frankie!! How's my favourite Richard?"

"I can't believe you'd say that, [name]. That hurts." A familiarly sweet voice speaks.

"Sue!" You grin, taking in the sight of the blonde and her husband by her side. You get up—Franklin stumbles behind you—and crash into her arms.

She chuckles, patting your back and smiling down at you, "I missed you too, [name]. You always manage to find yourself in the strangest situations, don't you?"

Reed cradles his chin, "Well, we were technically the cause of this distortion in reality, Susan—"

But seeing the expression on both your and his wife's face; he stops himself. Only smiling sheepishly. "My apologies. It's great to see you again, [name]. I didn't think we'd find another familiar face in a different universe."

"You're getting better at this, Reed." You lift yourself from Sue's comforting cradle and grin brightly up at him. "I didn't think I'd see all of you guys again, either. When you all disappeared for so long—I was wondering if something bad happened."

"Hah! Ta us? You kiddin'? Ya more bug-brained 'den that spider that bit ya!"

"Ben!!!" You go flying toward the rock-encased man and wrap your arms around his comfortingly tough neck. He spins you around and lets you down with a loud laugh.

"'Ey kid, how're ya? Heard ya tackled ol' matchstick 'ere outta the sky!" He slaps his rocky chest laughing—in the corner of your eye, Johnny stands behind him, unimpressed.

He walks up beside you, swinging an arm around your neck and snarks, "Yeah—well, Spidey's always been known for catching people off guard, huh? Creepin' up when you least expect it."

"You're making [name] sound like a villain, Unc!" Frankin, who had found himself attached to the side of your shirt, sticks out his tongue.

Johnny recoils, face falling in pure horror as he dramatically points at the young boy, "UNC??!! I... I'm an Unc now...??? I'm not even 19! I can't be an Unc!!!"

You burst out into laughter at the genuineness of Johnny's expression, watching as he freaks out about being "old". Sue and Reed roll their eyes—while Ben is there with you, laughing his ass off like he'd just gotten a home run on Yancy Street.

Franklin looks at your laughing expression and starts giggling along—jumping up and down beside you with sparkling eyes.

"Stop laughing, [name]! We're the same age!" Johnny points, accusatory. "If I'm an Unc, you're a...!"

"Doesn't matter. I'm cooler than Uncle Johnny anyways, right Frankie?" You grin, picking up Franklin as he cuddles into your neck.

"Mhm!" He nods eagerly.

Johnny sends you a blazing glare, lips pouted out. "You and me. We're—" He gestures to the two of you. "—gonna have some issues, here. Okay. Everyone knows I'm the cool Uncle."

"No, that's Benny!" Franklin points to Ben.

The look on Johnny's face shifts into utter disbelief—Ben falls out of his chair laughing wildly.

"Gosh, I missed you so much, kid." You pull at one of Franklin's cheeks and chuckle. He stares at you in awe for a few seconds, before hugging the side of your head and giggling.

"I missed you too!"

That same warmth fills each crevice and pore of your body, as you huddle close to your dear friends and let yourself feel at home for this small moment.

Meanwhile, in the dark of night, a pair of azure eyes watches, sharp and unnerving in the back of your skull.

You notice it. Of course you do. Your mind is tingling with that buzz—but you want to enjoy this night of nothing but home, even if only once.

taglist: @hello-bina @cosmosluckycharms @1abi @yhin-gg @insideoutjulie @bluepanda08 @omnivirgo @vanessa-boo @dind1n @welpthisisboring @lunaetiicsaystuff @marsmabe @atanukileaf @findingjaxx @4mrplumi @bunniotomia @lostsomewhereinthegarden @bat1212 @gaychaosgremlin @bongwaterflavoredgatorade @randomlyappearingartist @cxcilla @spidermanluvr444 @cruzerforce4256 @mybones537 @xjesterxjacksx @nirvanaxx1942 @djpuppy-kittens @br33zy-blizzardz @moon0goddess @0sunnyside01 @mei-simp @redsakura101 @the-dumber-scaramouche @wizzerreblogs @lovemiss-vale @deathbynarcisstick @allycat4458 @wonmyheart @luckyangelballoon @one-piecelover @hartwyrm @horror-lover-69 @maria-trisha @4rachn3 @galaxypurplerose @duskeras @coffeeaddictxd @lithiumval @kaz-playz

tsglist is closed, sorry! but do try and keep up with updates thank you!!!

[all-my-ocs-are-evil]

Jason's been pestering Danny about why he looks like a borderline walking corpse for ages and Danny has decided to put his lying skills to the test. (he has none)

rambling below cut

I've been playing w the idea that the more Danny transforms, the more his ghost form gets "lively" while his human form gets weaker and more sickly. He knows that if he keeps transforming like this then, one day, he's not going to have a livable body to go back to, but he really doesn't want to think about all that. He's more interested in the weird "totally dead but not dead" Wayne son who may or may not have a thing for his sister.

everytime i do one these im like "this time I'll keep it simple so I don't have to suffer through colouring bc I have zero foresight—it'll be greyscale at most" and then all of the sudden its 4am and i'm trying to finish a stupid comic but i decided to add "some" colour to spice it up and hide my shitty ink job and then SOME COLOUR ALWAYS BECOMES FULL COLOUR WHY CAN I NOT ESCAPE THIS STUPID CYCLE!!

(did this all stem from me not being able to decide between a super pale character design and one w a vibrant tan bc I love white hair + tan but I also love extremely pale albino so I forced myself to find a way to make both work? never! that's absurd!)

[krems-chair]

I'm always interested in analyses that portray a romanced Solas as a predatory hee hee trickster god manipulating a young and impressionable Lavellan into falling for him and if that's your world state go ahead and live your truth b/c it's frankly none of my business, but I sincerely think there are those who forget that for a lot of people, a romanced Lavellan is (with all due respect to my own Solasmancing Inquisitor Rielle Lavelllan) batshit crazy. Having her boyfriend turn out to be a wolf god is honestly the least of her problems but oh boy is she unafraid to become one to fix this mess.

This is a woman who woke up in a dungeon with a glowing hand, figured out she could fix the world, and thought "fuck it, it's not like I'll have anything else better to do if Corypheus sticks around. Also. Everyone here kind of looks like they want to kill me, so maybe I'll stick with the protective powers that be for a minute." And then all of five seconds later she gets her hand snatched by a sketchy elven apostate who knows exactly what to do with her shiny new powers and cannot stop himself from having a Mr. Darcy level hand-flex after he lets it go (in my heart and soul this happens just out of the camera's gaze) and goes "hmm maybe there's something to be said for this world saving thing."

This is a woman who brought an entire fucking avalanche down on herself and three of her closest friends (and I do mean closest as in physical proximity, she doesn't know these people who are looking at her like she's Thedas' Next Top Idol) because even if it killed her it was the proper middle finger to send to the wannabe god bringing his army tap-dancing down the mountain pass towards her on the one night she had scheduled off to celebrate finally taking a W.

This is a woman going Take 2 Electric Boogaloo on waking up with no idea where she is and learning she was successful in spite-dragging herself up a different fucking mountain in a blizzard. Except now everyone is fighting wait nope now they're Kumbaya-ing a song Andraste's Herald should really probably be familiar with whoops, oh thank God, time for a side convo with the same apostate who's been trying to turn her entire life into a history class only for her to dive in headfirst (much to his initial abject horror) and get that good good discourse she needs since she can't go around arguing with everyone else like she wants to. "The orb is ours." You know what? Of course it is. But if they need the world saved from an elven oopsie, who better to right things than an elf? Fuck it, we ball.

This is a woman who misses being close to nature and goes positively feral at Skyhold, yeeting herself over balconies and banisters and turning the ancient fortress into her personal parkour playground because she's got energy to work off and shit to do, and if the path of least resistance to hunt down everyone she needs to talk to is coincidentally the same path that will absolutely wreck her knees by the time she's sixty, that's just how it has to be.

This is a woman who finds herself back at Haven with a man she's found it possible to be unfetteringly unabashedly herself with and thinks, "hey, maybe there could be more than the flirations we've exchanged over heated discussions and philosophical deep-dives, maybe I can have just one smooch as a treat." And when she feels her slowly unfurling passion reciprocated only to be shut down? She resolves herself to fight for this fledgling love and all the fade tongue that comes with it. This is a woman who gets the tiniest glimpse of what a retirement plan might look like after this whole saving the mortal world thing and buys all the way in.

This is a woman who has Grey Wardens to save from themselves, an empire trying to self-cannibalize, and still finds the time to go rescue a spirit because she, as a fellow comrade caught up in this mess, knows damn well that no innocent deserves to suffer if she can help it while she's got this insane amount of power she never asked for. And if that happens to lead to the man she feels safe enough to nap on the library couches with confessing at last the feelings she knows he's been smothering beneath his all-too-collected surface? Yeah, she'll take that W.

This is a woman who gets absolutely blasted head-over-ass into the fade and goes "honestly things were going a little TOO well." This is a woman who sneaks a peak at the closest fears of the companions she's come to know and love and goes "not on my fucking watch." This is a woman who sees that the man she forces herself to learn the old language for, her vhenan, fears being alone more than anything in the entire knowing world and resolves herself to ensuring it never comes to pass.

This is a woman who gets the opportunity to shape the government of a straight up country and runs around collecting wooden fucking halla in a palace full of elven servants with no time to dwell on that particularly cruel irony because out here it's scheme or be schemed. This a woman who collapses against a balcony railing after putting out some of the sickest literal and metaphorical dance moves The Game has ever seen, resigned to bear her ever-increasing burdens alone, only to find her heart and his horrible horrible hat extending a hand, promising her that if he is not alone, then neither is she.

Like, do you feel me here?

And then he dares to think something as sudden and damning as the truth is enough to keep her away? The queen of tough conversations and tougher choices? No, no, dear readers who have made it this far into my descent into madness.

Inquisitor Lavellan is a master-class in encouraging the odds against her to fuck around and find out. She is a rift-mending false-god-bashing politcally savvy terror upon all of Thedas. Solas (and all of the living breathing world) is lucky she took time out of her busy schedule to notice the way his smile softens when talking about spirits or appreciate the fluidity of his form when they're obliterating venatori out in the field. This man cradled her cheeks in his shaking hands, looked into weary and wide eyes and called her beautiful, and had the audacity to steal her heart before trying to peace out and take it with him.

If she's got to track down a real god this time and frog march him into the fade to reclaim both her heart and the future she fought for because all he wants to do is launch himself like a meteor towards achieving his greatest fear, if she has to spend hours lecturing him on the sheer audacity of his ass while spirits float by and realize they're grateful they never had the chance to take on a body and subject themselves to a verbal lashing this brutal, if she has to do cartwheels around him while dropping all sorts of sweet nothings in the language she is now quite proficient in until he gets it through his luminous gleaming skull that when she said "var lath vir suledin" my girl meant it? Then that's what she's going to do.

"I wish it could, vhenan."

Oh it's going to, buddy. Buckle up to get wrecked, to get absolutely loved and cherished you fool, because Inquisitor Lavellan is not the Dread Wolf's prey, she's his hunter.

[pomefioredove]

Can we have more of snuggles for hire please?! > <

YES always. I need more cuddle content

part one (leona, tweels, vil)

*ੈ✩‧₊˚ snuggles for hire (encore)

summary: first years try helping you out with your touch-starved problem type of post: blurbs characters: rook, idia, silver additional info: romantic or platonic, reader is gender neutral, reader is yuu, rook is rook as usual

"Really? That's it?" Ace scoffs.

"So, they haven't been hugged in a while. Okay? Neither has Deuce,"

Deuce glares. It's almost menacing. "That's not true, and you know it! I get lots of hugs every time I visit home!"

"I do, too. But that's just the thing, though, ain't it?" Epel says. "They don't have no home to get hugs from."

The huddle of first years goes quiet. Some days, you become such a part of their world, they forget you're really not from it.

"...Okay, point taken," Ace sighs. "But they have Grim! And he only stinks like, half the time!"

"If memory serves, Grim usually sleeps on the floor..." Epel says. "Poor prefect, all lonely. Now even their sleep is suffering 'cause of it!"

Jack rubs the back of his neck. "It must be tough, not having anything to look forward to,"

Another melancholy silence. Finally, Ace stands, hands on his hips.

"Well, let's do something about it, then. There are tons of boys at this school- one of them should be willing to help,"

You were slouched over your desk, dozing off over an essay you hadn't even started yet, when your door flies open.

"Prefect!" Epel shouts, his eyes wide with panic. Immediately, dread sets in. Had someone else overblotted? Was Grim in trouble?

"I'm sorry! I was looking for Vil, but he found me first!"

Huh? "What do you mean b-"

"Oh, Trickster~!"

That question answers itself. In a blink, Epel is gone, bolting before he could get dragged into this. Rook lets himself in, smiling as if he'd just won a million thaumarks.

"Ah, there you are~! I have been waiting for your call!"

You blink. "...Hi, Rook. What?"

He slides his hands under your arms, and lifts you like a cat. You remind yourself that he's much stronger than he looks.

"How my heart ached, watching you suffer! But I had to be patient- I had to wait for your call, Trickster! And when I heard Monsieur Pommette was looking for someone to come to your aid... I knew it had to be me!"

Rook sits you in his lap, squeezing you as if you were a small, cute animal. Which, to him, you sort of were. "Now, rest. I will comfort you!"

"Rook," you say, smothered in his arms, "This really isn't necessary."

"For your health, it is," he boops your nose. "Bonne nuit, mon ange."

With the way he's cooing and cuddling you so closely to him, you know there's no getting out of this.

...Not that you're complaining. He's right, after all. And you're really just grateful that he decided to break in while you were awake.

You're still going to have to kick Epel's butt for it, anyway.

"I already told you, I don't have a problem,"

Ortho Shroud beeps at you. "Incorrect. Your hormonal levels and kinesics indicate you've been sleeping poorly," he says. "...And the other first years were talking about it."

Of course, you sigh. Ace and Deuce. "It's not that bad,"

"Then perhaps you would be interested in solving another problem?"

He brings you down a long, cold hallway, and stops at a door. You hadn't been inside Ignihyde before, but with all the tech stuff, you figure there's some kind of freaky sleep machine in there.

You raise an eyebrow. "I dunno. The technology here is pretty weird,"

"Not that kind of problem!" Ortho opens the door with a giggle. "Idia, look who's here!"

To your surprise (horror? delight?) there's no sleep machine. Just one wide-eyed, blushing, terrified Idia Shroud.

By the look on his face, you can tell he knows just as much about this as you do. He and Ortho exchange glances, having an entire silent conversation while you awkwardly stand in the doorway.

Finally, Ortho looks at you: "Idy has been having similar troubles with sleeping,"

"Ortho-"

"I thought you might be able to help each other!"

Idia looks about ready to crawl under his bed and hide. You look between the two.

"Is he okay?"

"Oh, don't worry! He always gets nervous around pretty people!"

He makes a noise like a deflating balloon. Ortho giggles. "I'll see you later!"

He leaves, and a whir and a thump follow him. You stare. "He took the door knob,"

Despite all the awkward staring and blushing and groaning, you end up in the same bed, anyway, lost in a tangle of limbs that is somehow both awkward and comfortable. Idia is a lot warmer than he looks. And a very, very clingy sleeper.

You'll both lament about how terrible it was to Ortho in the morning, and you'll both leave out the fact that if it really were so terrible, one of you could've just slept on the floor.

But... you didn't. And you won't tomorrow night, either.

When you told your friends you'd been summoned to Diasomnia, they looked at you as if you'd just said your exact time and place of death.

Ace and Deuce whisper-shouted something about "not telling him", but you didn't ask. You weren't worried about Malleus, after all.

...Except that the person waiting for you in the lounge isn't Malleus.

"Oh... hey, Silver. Did you...?"

You hold up the summons, and he nods. The way he's avoiding your eyes is almost... shy. Bashful.

"Sebek came back from class yesterday yelling about you... he made it sound like you were dying," Silver says, his arms crossed tightly over his chest.

"...But if it's just insomnia, I can help."

You blink. "Oh... I appreciate it, but..."

...You can't bring yourself to finish that sentence. He just looks... tense. This isn't exactly an offer he makes to most, after all.

You're just special.

And you need that.

You sit beside him in comfortable silence. The lights in the Diasomnia lounge are already dim, and it's as quiet and solemn as ever. Silver guides you into a soft position against him, your head on his shoulder, his head on yours, his arm around you, and he falls asleep.

Maybe it's just the exhaustion finally catching up to you, but it's surprisingly easy to follow his lead and fall asleep against him.

You dream of him that night.

[unequivocallyreid]

Why Didn’t You Tell Me?

it has been SO long... i was suffering from serious writers block but it think i'm finally out of it :)

pairing: spencer reid x fem!reader

summary: Spencer Reid used to be your best friend, but things changed. How long can you pretend that you don't love him before it ruins you?

warnings: angst! (with a happy ending), smut (unprotected piv), character loss, mention of Maeve, very sad Spencer, mental health struggles, drinking/bar scene, light choking, fighting, slight praise kink

wc: 8.8k 🤗

i’m very proud of this one! i hope you love it!

Every morning when you wake up, you feel a familiar and creeping sort of dread in the pit of your stomach.

Don’t get the wrong idea; you love your job. You love helping people and stopping horrible people from ruining any more lives, but the creeping feeling and desire to get out is always in the corner of your mind. Anyone working in this field would tell you that. There’s no absolute separation between you and the victims and their families. You take all of them home with you, and you just have to learn how to deal with that and not let it eat at you.

It doesn’t help that it’s an isolating job as well. The last time you were in a serious relationship was in college. Now, every date you have ends in disappointment. Not only do you lack interest in most of the men and women, but it couldn’t go anywhere even if you did. 75% of your time is spent in the office, on a jet, or hundreds of miles away from your home.

All of this contributes to the feeling, but the worst part of your job is Dr. Spencer Reid.

He’s secretive and dismissive and just about the most attractive person you’d ever seen. You honestly don’t know what is worse: his constant physical presence in your life or the fact that you can’t stop thinking about him no matter what you do. You’ve tried to get over it; you’ve buried yourself in work, lamented to your friends, and gone out on dates (all with guys that looked vaguely similar), but nothing has worked. All his worst traits grate your nerves and light you up at the same time.

The worst part of it all is that it wasn’t always like this. When you first joined the BAU nearly two years ago, you and Spencer got along well. You were friends, he talked to you about his life, he understood you, and you really severely fell for him. He became your best friend.

Everything changed around six months ago. Spencer started to develop migraines, and as those developed, he started distancing himself from you. He became snippy and closed off, he started hiding things from you, and he stopped talking to you about life outside of Quantico. It was like overnight, you became nothing to him, and you really didn’t understand. Everyone else on the team got the same old Spencer, but you went from his right-hand man to someone he only spoke to when it was necessary.

Maybe he didn’t deserve to be vilified. You know, realistically, he can and should be able to decide who he wants to be close to, but working with a man who unknowingly broke your heart was close to the hardest thing you’d ever done. So, you decided hating him was easier. The real emotions you feel toward him sit somewhere inside you, but they have been covered by manufactured distaste. Addressing the actual feeling would hurt too bad, so you pretend to hate the things you used to love.

Nothing, however, could have prepared you for the last case you worked on: helping Spencer save a girl he met about six months ago, a girl he loved. You tried to stay collected, you said nothing when Spencer assisted when he shouldn’t have, and goddamn, did you do everything in your power to find that girl. Maeve. She was perfect for Spencer, and you saw that immediately. Everyone did. The sight of him sobbing in front of her body is one that will never leave your mind.

Now, two weeks later, no one has heard from Reid. The only indication that he hasn’t abandoned his life altogether is the absence of the gift baskets on his doorstep that Pen leaves daily.

Nearly everyone has been to his apartment, but they are met with a closed door and have yet to receive a response. Everyone but you.

Penelope is the first to bring up your lack of appearance at the end of a long day of paperwork.

“Y/n, please, you just have to try. No one is getting anything from him.”

“I really don’t think my presence would do any good,” you pause for a moment, trying to collect the thoughts running through your head like a freight train. “Me and him haven’t been close in a long time, Pen.”

Before you can continue, she cuts in, “Everyone has tried, Y/n. Hell, I’ve even considered tracking down Gideon, and I really, really do not want to do that.”

She pauses for a moment before looking up at you with a pout on her face, “Please, Y/n, for me. I can’t bear the thought of him in there all alone, just wasting away in grief.”

For someone who claims not to be a profiler, Penelope knew exactly what to say to get you to agree. She’s the only person in your life who you told about how you felt, though you’re sure everyone else (aside from Spencer) knew: you’re shit at keeping secrets.

“Okay, okay, I’ll try.”

She nearly bursts with excitement, “Thank God-“

You cut her off before she can finish, “But I’m telling you, I’m not the person he wants to hear from right now. Don’t get your hopes up.”

“Yes, yes. I just want him to know we all want him to be okay.”

Before you can hurry out of the office to follow Pen’s instructions, she stops you and hands you a basket full of assorted snacks and fruits.

“Make sure he eats!”

The walk up to Spencer’s apartment is a hard one to take. The smell of his building hits you as soon as you step into the lobby. From there, everything rushes back at once. Memories of nights you spent watching reruns of Doctor Who or listening to him prattle off about whatever he last read assault you with every step. As you slowly make your way up, you start to question why you agreed to do this in the first place.

You feel a lot toward Reid. More than you should and less than you could. But all that care and feelings that are so close to love aren’t enough to make you forget why you’ve been trying to hate him for so long. He deserted you without an explanation and cut you off without a warning. You spent weeks (three months) crying over him like a love-struck teen. So, as much as you want to hold him and comfort him, you know it’ll hurt you to do so. Penelope sent you, with the whole team’s approval, you’re sure, to try to patch up a broken heart he got loving someone else. There’s a sickness in your gut, but it’s not enough to stop you from rapping your knuckles against his door.

“Spencer? It’s Y/n.”

There’s no response.

“I know you probably don’t want to hear from me right now, but I want to make sure you’re alright. Can you tell me you’re alright?”

Again, nothing.

You know he’s there. Despite your lack of communication, you know Spencer well enough to know that he would never leave his life behind entirely. That being said, your next few attempts at garnering a response are unsuccessful.

You decide to try one final time before just leaving the basket alone on his doorstep and texting Pen it was a bust.

“There’s a lot I don’t know about you now, and I won’t pretend to know what you’re feeling.”

You don’t exactly know where this is headed, but you continue on regardless.

“I know you’re in there, and I know you can hear me, and I know you’re hurting. You shouldn’t- I don’t want you to be alone right now, Spence. You can either unlock your door, or I can pick it, but I’m coming in one way or the other. You know I will.”

You wouldn’t, actually. It’s a last-ditch effort, and it’s met with the same silence you’ve heard on the other side for the past ten minutes. You’re about to turn to head back down the stairs when you hear the very faint sound of a deadbolt turning.

There’s no other sound or movement, and for a moment, you think you might’ve imagined the sound, but you try the handle anyway. It turns, and the door slides open. You take a step in.

“Spencer,” you call out to him.

You don’t see him at first in the mess of his apartment, but when you do, you feel a crack form in your heart.

Beyond the clutter of his entryway, you see his back on the couch. His frame looks smaller than you’ve ever seen it, and you can see his legs curled into his chest. You set down the gift basket by a collection of others on the entry table and walk over to him. Slowly, like you’re trying not to spook a lost dog, you creep in front of him.

His head is down, and his gaze stays trained on his knees.

You reach out your hand and lay it over his. He flinches but doesn’t pull away.

“Spence, I’m so glad you opened the door.”

You didn’t plan out what you would say, but ‘sorry’ feels redundant and useless.

You go on, “I’m here. I- I don’t know what to do or say, and I’m sorry that I don’t. I can get someone else for you. Just tell me what you need, and I’ll do it.”

You wait for him to say he wants Penelope or JJ, but it doesn’t come. Nothing comes. You start to move to get up, figuring you could clean up a bit and try to make him something to eat, then go, but he grasps your arm before you can.

He looks up at you, and his eyes hit you right in the gut. They’re bloodshot and sunken but still beautiful.

“Stay. Please. I just- I need to know I’m not dreaming. I keep thinking I’m dreaming.”

His voice is croaky from disuse and breaks at the end, but it’s so heartbreakingly earnest that you feel your breath catch. You move from your crouch and sit beside him on the couch; your hand is still in his.

You stay like that for a long time. His breathing is shakey and uneven, and every so often, his body shakes with what you can only assume are sobs. You stay pressed to his side the whole time, thumb rubbing back and forth over his hand.

Eventually, you speak again, “I’m gonna get you some food, Spence. You should eat.”

He says nothing back, but he does loosen his grip. You push yourself up from the coach with a promise you’ll be as fast as possible.

His kitchen is nearly empty, and you hope he’s been eating from the baskets. Still, you find enough to make noodles and butter, and you figure the carbs should help his energy some.

You return with the bowl. Spencer hasn’t moved, but his head follows you as you walk back over to him.

“It’s not fine dining.”

He studied you for a second, and you catch a glimpse of the old him in his eye.

“You did the same thing when I was sick on a case a year ago.”

You smile at his recollection.

“It helped you then.”

The rest of the night is spent mostly in silence. Occasionally, you tell him something to try to remind him that you’re there and that you won’t leave as long as he wants you there. Eventually, you get up from the couch again.

“Spencer, it’s too late to still be awake.”

He nods and still says nothing, but he is far more receptive than before. You reach your hand out to him to help him up from the couch, and he takes it.

He leads you to his room at a slow pace. His head stays down as you both take a seat on his bed, hands still interlocked. Being in his bedroom is odd for you. You’ve been to his apartment quite a few times before he disappeared from your life, but you never breached this space. It’s all very him. Almost surprisingly cozy, with books scattered around nearly everywhere there’s space.

You take in the moment for a beat before saying, “I’m gonna head home, Spencer, but please call me if you need anything at all. I’ll come back tomorrow.”

This makes his head snap up, and his eyes lock with yours.

“Please stay.”

That’s all he says, but every part of him is pleading with you. It’s not a good idea, and you know it. You’re the only person he’s seen in days, you aren’t close anymore, and you don’t particularly want to sleep on a couch tonight.

“Spencer, I don’t want to sleep in your living room tonight. I’ll come back.”

He pauses for a moment, “You can stay here with me. I don’t want to be alone.”

Your heart cracks again. There was a time when this was all you wanted. It’s still, deep down, all you want, just not like this. You know he doesn’t really want you there and he’s not himself. But you aren’t strong enough to say no, so you don’t.

He gets you clothes to wear, and you change in his bathroom. You come out and find him in his bed, laying with his back to you. You have no fucking idea what you’re doing, but you get into bed next to him anyways. There are a thousand thoughts racing through your head, but the prevailing one is how badly you want to touch him, to hold him, to make him forget, just for the night. You stay still, though, confined to the edge of the bed and start to count to drown out the noise.

Though, you can’t drown out his voice, saying, “Can- Could you hold me? I think that everything feels better when you touch me.”

Another crack. By the end of this, you know Spencer Reid is going to break your heart all over again.

~

When you wake up the next morning, Spencer is still asleep. You sneak out of his room and call Hotch. When he answers, you tell him Spencer has let you in, and you ask for time off to try to help. You can tell from his voice that he doesn’t think it’s a good idea, but he grants you it anyway.

Much of your day is spent like the night before. You stay next to Spencer, and you cook for him after leaving to pick up clothes and groceries. Then, you get him to shower and wash his hair. He sleeps with his head in your lap, and you feel like a fucking idiot at first, but as long as it’s helping him in some way, you let it happen.

That’s the thing: you don’t really know how to help him. You know he isn’t the type to talk about something until he is entirely ready, so all you can do is add something domestic and bright to his life while he grieves. It’s all you can think about in the moments of silence. Hell, you even read to him to try and get your mind off of it, but it barely helps.

The night is the same. You change in different rooms and slip into his bed at different times. You feel dirty for imagining what it would be like if the circumstances were different: if he wanted you like you have wanted him for the past two years. You hold him against you, and you pray for sign that you should be there.

The sign comes the following morning when Derek calls you.

“Y/n…”

You can hear his teasing tone over the phone.

“Hi, Derek.”

“What are you doing, mamas?”

You sigh, “What do you mean?”

You’re playing coy. You know he’s wondering why you’re at Spencer’s house, picking up the pieces, but you won’t be the one to bring it up.

“Why’d you ask Hotch for the week off, Y/n?”

Another sigh, “You know why, Derek. I just, I want to help him.”

“I know you do, Y/n, I know.”

He pauses for a moment, and you let the moment fill with silence.

“I know you care about him. We all care about him. But who is taking care of you?”

“I am. I can take care of him, and I can take care of me.”

“I know you can, but I don’t want you to get hurt, Y/n. Don’t let this be something that hurts you.”

“It won’t. I- You have to- Fuck, I’ll be fine. He’s not fine. I don’t care about me or any feelings that may get hurt right now. I’ll be fine.”

There’s another bear of silence, “Okay, Y/n. Just know you’re allowed to tap out.”

You try to think of anything else to say, but nothing comes, so you say your goodbyes.

You won’t need to tap out. You can take care of him and be good to him and ignore the other feelings you have. You can be good.

The call does make you think it’s time to push, to try harder, to help him get better. So, you approach him that day before bed, before he tucks himself into your arms and falls into a fretful sleep.

“Spencer?”

He takes a moment and then responds, “Yes?”

“You have to talk about it. I think that you need to talk about it. It doesn’t have to be to me but to someone.”

He’s quiet for a long time, and your breath is caught in your throat, waiting for him to say anything.

“I- I don’t want to,” his voice cracks while he says it.

“Spence, you can’t come back if you don’t. You can’t move forward if you don’t.”

“Maybe I don’t want to.”

A ringing echos in your ears.

“You don’t mean that. She- she would want you to keep going.”

Wrong thing to say.

“You don’t know anything about what she would want.”

He’s seething now, below the surface, but smoke has started to plume from his ears. Still, you don’t stop.

“Spencer, everyone knows that. No one would want you to put your life on hold.”

He speaks his next line through his teeth, “You don’t know anything, Y/n.”

You’ve never heard him sound so angry.

“Spencer-“

“No, just stop. You don’t know her. You don’t know me half as well as you think you do. You don’t know anything. I don’t even know why you’re here. I don’t want you here. You can't be what I need.”

The ringing in your ears is louder.

“Spencer, please. Just-“

“No!” His voice is raised now, bordering on a yell, “I don’t want you here. I want you out, Y/n.”

This has to be what shell shock feels like. The ringing, the tingle in your limbs, and the heat in your face. You don’t know how you are moving, but you are.

His voice is echoing in your head, or maybe he’s still talking, but you can’t tell either way. The only thing you can focus on is how Spencer sounded like he hates you and that Morgan was right about the hurt.

~

You spend the next day trying desperately to shut down the noise in your head. It doesn’t work. The day after is the same. And the days following that. You ignore calls when they come, you ignore the texts, but you can’t stop looking at your phone for a message from the man who fills your thoughts.

Spencer doesn’t call, obviously, and you have to sit with a pit in your stomach while you beg yourself to just get the fuck over it. Two years of reckoning with the severity of your love, months of watching him live happily without you, and it’s the three days you spent trying to help him feel incrementally better that floor you.

You feel like a dumb teenage girl with so much love and nothing to do with it. On top of everything, you feel selfish. Spencer lost the love of his life forever, and you’re nursing the worst heartbreak of your life because a boy will never want you and never has. Still, you send out prayers for him over and over. You hope you’ll see him in the BAU again, even if his eyes glaze over you. Hell, even if they look at you with hate the way they did two days ago. You just want him to function. You want him to be good and eventually be happy. You try to go to bed with soothing thoughts, but you end up with a mantra of his name.

You wake to your alarm and dress for work before you realize you aren’t actually supposed to go back yet. You never set a date to return. You wanted to be open as long as Spencer needed you. You’re supposed to be with him. You’re supposed to be helping and not tapping out. But you aren’t.

You have no reason not to return to the bullpen, so you do. You walk in and feel eyes on you. You wait for Morgan to call out to you, but he doesn’t, so you follow the feeling.

Your breath catches in your throat; it’s Spencer. He’s sitting at his desk, paperwork spread out, and he doesn’t look away from your gaze; he just holds it. His face is unreadable, and yours is definitely not, so you look away first. You don’t look up again until you reach Hotch’s office. You knock and hear him call out to come in.

“I’m back if that’s okay.”

He looks up at you, and you want to cry. You know he can read you. He has always been the best at it.

“Are you okay with that, Y/l/n?”

You lock eyes with him, “Yes, sir.”

It’s no use; he knows your tells and you aren’t being honest.

“Alright, conference room in five.”

Whatever he sees in your face, he ignores and takes you at your word, but there’s a warning in his tone. He knows when to let things go and when to push. More than that, though, he knows you’d never let something like this affect your work.

~

The first case back is in Maryland, and the one after is in Austin, and the next is in Philadelphia with The Replicator. The job takes you all over the country, and the cases blend together. You don’t speak to Spencer through all of it. You’re never partnered, never work together, you sit on opposite ends of the jet. You don’t even speak at Strauss’ funeral. It’s radio silent, and everyone notices it, but no one brings it up.

In that time, you allow yourself to slip away slightly. You don’t go out with the team, you see Pen at nearly half frequency, and basically, the only time you speak is on cases. It’s stupid and melodramatic, but you call it healing. Derek tries to reason with you, JJ sticks to you a bit more than usual, and Penelope calls you virtually whenever she can, but their efforts are mostly in vain. This is your way of protecting yourself. You feel like you have to isolate in order to improve, and you know, given time, you will come back to yourself.

Penelope’s insistence that you go to her Day of the Dead celebration breaks your distance.

“Y/n, please come. I know you aren’t going out, but you have to. I know you have people to honor, and I need you there.”

You sigh, “Whose going, Pen?”

“The team, which you are a part of, so you must be there.”

“I don’t think I can do that. I promise you I will celebrate with you. I’ll help you set up, just please don’t make me go.”

Penelope pauses, but the glint in her eye keys you into the fact that she is not interested in giving up.

“We miss you, Y/n. Everyone loves you and misses you. You’ve been living this stupid, isolated life, and it’s time for you to come back. You are not this person. I refuse to believe it. You’re coming, and that’s final.”

Maybe you don’t have the energy to argue, or maybe you know she’s right, but you agree to go.

~

The thought of seeing him makes your heart race, and the clock you keep glancing at makes it worse. Just a few more hours before you're trapped in a confined space (Pen’s beautiful home) with a man you haven’t spoken to in weeks.

You busy yourself with preparing. Lights are hung, food is made, and you make a trip to the store while Pen sets up her remembrance table. When everything is said and done, you can’t help but feel this is the most beautiful thing you’ve been a part of in a long time.

The first knock comes at 7:30 exactly, and it’s Hotch and Rossi. They are followed closely by Blake, then Derek and JJ. By 7:00, the atmosphere is light and loving, and you feel a bit of your anxiety let up as the minutes go by without Reid. But, eventually, the knock comes, of course it does, and you move into a corner as Spencer walks in. You feel a shift in energy, though you doubt it’s palpable for anyone else. Rossi is the first to make his way over to you, and his presence comforts you nearly immediately.

“How you doing, kid?” His voice is soft like he’s speaking to a scared rabbit.

“I’m better,” you say, and it’s about as honest as you can get. As much as you’d like to think he knows nothing about what’s gone on, you’re smarter than that. He’s the best profiler on the team, and he’s always known when someone was off with you. Even so, you are better than you were, even if you aren’t quite good, and you know he believes you.

There’s some idle conversation between you before he asks, “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not tonight. I don’t know when, but I will. Eventually, I will.”

It’s good enough for him, and you move on easily, which surprises you.

Right before Pen gathers you all to present your photos, he says, “Sometimes we think we’ve seen the whole picture, but we miss a big part. People do things because they don’t want to be hurt, but those things hurt them more. Just, be open.”

You don’t quite understand what he means, but you hope you will.

Penelope presents the first picture, which shows her parents. JJ honors her sister, Derek, his dad, Hotch Haley, and Rossi, Hernandez; then it’s your turn. You place down a photo of your best friend. You hadn’t talked much about her, but you think of her daily. She passed a few years before you joined the BAU.

“I was lucky to have someone that hurt that much to lose.”

That’s all you say, but it’s enough for you, and it would be enough for her.

Spencer is last. He places down a picture of Tesla and a picture of Maeve. Your heart is heavy for everyone.

The night dwindles from there. Hotch and Rossi say their goodbyes, and Rossi gives you a knowing look as he leaves. You just smile. You stay for a few minutes after, but eventually, you move to leave as well.

You make it down Garcia’s porch before you feel a hand grab your arm. You turn, and it’s Spencer’s face you see.

“Would you- Do you think you could come over? Do you think we could talk?”

~

The feeling you have walking up to Spencer's apartment is similar to what you felt the last time. You’re incredibly anxious, but at least you know you’ll be let in this time.

The drive over was silent. Spencer had taken the metro to Penelope’s, so he rode with you. It wasn’t necessarily awkward. There was just an understanding that the car wasn’t the place to begin your conversation.

Now, as Spencer unlocked his door, it’s one of those rare moments you felt starved for words, and you know it’s because you’re scared you’ll say the wrong thing and face the same reaction that you did the last time you were in his home.

He leads you to his living room and motions for you to sit, and you do. The two of you are on opposite ends of his couch while you wait for him to say something.

His first words are airy and light, “Thank you for letting me talk to you.”

You look at him but remain silent, waiting for him to go on. All you can think about is why he wants to speak to you at all. The last time you spoke, he made it incredibly clear he did not want you in his life or around him at all.

Before you can think about it more and let your anger and sadness build, he speaks again, “I feel really stupid right now. I kind of feel stupid whenever I’m around you recently.”

He pauses momentarily before going on, “I’m so, so sorry, Y/n. About the last time we spoke. I’ve been thinking about it pretty constantly for the past few weeks.”

You open your mouth, unsure of what exactly to say, but you can’t get there before he’s off again.

“I’m not sure how to talk to you anymore. I don’t think I’ve known how to for a long time. I just, I need you to know how sorry I am for speaking to you like that.”

He takes a shakey breath but keeps going, “That wasn’t me, and that isn’t how I feel. I’m just unbelievably sorry, Y/n.”

He stops there, and you work to collect your thoughts.

“I know. A part of me knows, at least, that you didn’t mean it. I just wanted to be there for you, and hearing that made me- I just- I think it made me hate myself for wanting to be there.”

“I’m so sorry. I’m unbelievably sorry.”

“You didn’t talk to me for months, Spencer. I just don’t understand. I don’t understand why you let me in in the first place. I thought you hated me.”

He’s silent for a long minute.

“I never hated you, Y/n. I just stopped knowing how to act around you, and then I met Maeve. I fell so deep into it that I couldn’t talk to anyone about it. I- And I just started to feel like you didn’t want me to speak to you, so I didn’t. But, when you came here, after everything, I guess I just felt like you were the only person who would get it. You never, no one on the team ever treated me or talked to me how you did. I just wanted that.”

Tears had begun to well in your eyes now. A part of you gets what he means, at least about letting you in, but the other part is so confused as to why he stopped being comfortable around you.

“I don’t understand, Spencer. Why did you stop knowing how to be around me?”

There’s desperation in your voice that makes you sound like a stranger to yourself. Maybe you’re a stranger to everyone right now.

“I uh, I don’t really know.”

“That's not fair, Spence.”

You’re crying now. Just a little bit, but you can feel the wetness on your cheeks. You can see that you are by the look on his face. He looks broken, and you know it's a reflection of your own image.

You wipe your face, “Thank you for apologizing, Spencer. I just, there are parts of this all that I don’t understand, and if you can't explain them to me, I don’t think I ever will.”

“Y/n-,” he calls out your name like a prayer.

“It’s okay, Spence. You don’t have to say anything more. We talked, and things will go back to how they were eventually.”

“I’m so sorry, Y/n.”

You smile sadly as you get up to leave.

“I am, too, for what it's worth. For whatever I did to make things change in the first place.”

You leave it at that, and it takes everything in you not to look back as you leave his apartment.

~

Things do get easier after that. Not completely. You still love him, and it hurts, but it helps to know he doesn’t hate you. He talks to you some, cordial things, and you do the same. You're sure your teammates still sense something is off, but this works for you. Right now, it works. Getting over him, not loving him anymore, is going to take work, but eventually, you know that you won’t hurt anymore.

Shortly after you and him talked, you started going back out with your friends. Spencer joined periodically, but that was normal. Bars were never really his scene.

Tonight, everyone gathers at your local pub. Your last case was particularly grueling, and you all need a way to blow off some steam. It's fun, and you feel good, even with Spencer sitting across from you. You feel proud of yourself for getting to this point.

JJ and Penelope feed you drinks to try and get you to dance, and you let them. Tonight feels as good of a night as any to ‘get back out there’ as Pen says. So, you do. You dance with them, and you ward off the other cops and agents around you who try to pull you away from your group. You aren’t interested in that. Right now, you're just having an appropriate amount of fun for a woman 15 feet from her boss.

Time goes by quickly, and by the time you get back to the table, you, Derek, Penelope, and JJ remain. He tells you that Hotch, Rossi, Reid, and Alex left a few minutes before. The conversation between you flows for a while, up until the drinks loosen Penelope up enough to bring up what you were pretty sure the team designated a no-no topic.

“Y/n, you have to talk about it.”

You’re still laughing as something Derek said when you reply, “What?”

“You know what. You and Boy-Genius. What on Earth happened? You went from ice-cold to semi-friendly. None of us saw it coming.”

“Babygirl-,” Derek tries to stop her, but you cut him off.

“No, it’s okay. I have to talk about it at some point, and I think right now is the only time I’ll be tipsy enough to let you get it out of me.”

You're still laughing slightly, but the pit that's lived in your stomach for the past few months starts to rear its head.

“After your Day of the Dead party, he asked to talk to me. I went to his place, and he apologized. I don’t really understand what he said or what he meant, but I can’t be sad about him forever.”

Pen perks up a bit at that, “I knew that party would bring good things!”

You giggle a bit at her outburst, but then JJ asks, “What did he say?”

The faces around you all tune in at that. You know they don’t see this as gossip. They care about you both too much to trivialize it like that.

“He just said that he stopped knowing how to act around me, and he didn’t know why, but then he met Maeve, and I guess it didn’t matter so much after that. He was my best friend, and then he was nothing.”

JJ shares a glance with Derek and then speaks, “Oh, Y/n.”

“What?”

After a beat, Derek says, “He didn’t just not know how to act around you.”

Now you're confused, “What do you mean? I talked to him, that's what he said. He didn’t know why. I mean, he knows everything and didn’t know why he didn’t want to be around me anymore. How fucking stupid is that.”

You laugh again, but it does come off as genuine in the slightest.

“Y/n, he probably doesn’t really know why. At least not fully. For someone as smart as he is, the kid can be really stupid.”

“Stop being cryptic.”

Derek sighs but goes on, “Pretty girl, pretty boy was in love with you. Probably still is. He just didn’t think you’d ever feel the same.”

“No. That's not true.”

You look at the others around you, but their faces are serious.

“He loved Maeve. He loves Maeve. That, that doesn’t make any sense.”

It's JJ’s turn to talk now.

“He definitely did love Maeve, no one is denying that, but we all saw how he was around you. His whole relationship with her was safe. He couldn’t be hurt by her rejection every day because he had no way of seeing her. With you, he could.”

Your mind is moving a mile a minute, “Did he tell you guys this?”

Penelope puts her hand over yours and says, “He didn’t have to, love. We all say the way he looked at you and acted around you. The way he talked about you. That boy was head over heels.”

“Guys, I appreciate whatever you’re trying to do, but this isn’t real. Spencer doesn’t- this is not real.”

“Y/n, pause. Think about the way he acted around you, the things he said. Think about how Reid is.”

You hear what Derek said, but it all sounds faint like someone stuffed your ears with cotton while you weren't paying attention. All you can focus on are the different scenes running through your head, the scenes of your life with Spencer in it. How he memorized your coffee order and brought it for you every day, how he never shied away from your touch despite his aversion to contact, how he consistently went out of his way to protect you on the field. At his house after everything, the way he clung to you and wanted to be held. How he said in his own words, “You can't be what I need”; not “you aren’t,” but “you can’t.”

Your whole world is crashing down in this bar, and you can’t do anything to stop it.

“Y/n?”

JJ’s voice snaps you out of your spiral.

“Just go talk to him.”

You nod mutely, and you get up.

~

Everything in the last ten months of your life has led you to the exact spot you were when everything blew up in the first place: Spencer’s door.

This time, you aren't too worried about him not letting you in. If anything, it's the opposite. Him opening this door could open a hundred others, and you don’t quite know if you are ready for any of them. You sit there and sit there and sit there, trying to work up the courage to knock, though you aren’t sure it's there to begin with. Right as you're about to walk away and decide you’ll come back another day, his door swings open.

“Y/n?”

His face is lit up with shock, and you notice his hand that is not on the door is holding his pistol.

“What are you doing here?”

You don’t answer, “Why did you open the door?”

He sets his piece down on the entry table before responding, “I heard footsteps in the hall and saw they stopped here. I was anxious. 50.3% of home invasions happen between 8:00 pm and 7:00 am.” He cuts himself off there, “Y/n, why are you here?”

You didn’t pay attention to anything he said. All you could think about was the way his lips were moving and the way his eyes locked onto yours as he talked.

“Do you love me?”

That is not what you wanted to say.

His lips fall open as he takes in a sharp breath, “What?”

“Or I guess did you love me? Before everything? Because Derek and JJ and Pen, they all said that you loved me, and now I can’t think about anything else, Spencer.”

He doesn’t speak, but you don't really give him a chance to.

“I just, I know I sound crazy right now, but I feel fucking crazy. I keep going over everything in my head, and I have been, for the past year I have been, but now it’s all different. It's all different because they said that you loved me, but you didn’t think I’d feel the same way.”

Here, you do pause, but he still doesn’t say anything, so you go on before you can stop yourself.

“Because if that's true, Spencer, it's just- I did. I do. And if it's not, then please just tell me so I can stop feeling this way.”

He sounds resigned when he says, “Y/n,” and you feel like you know what that means.

“Fuck, I’m sorry. I don’t know why I'm doing this. You don’t have to say anything. Actually, please don’t say anything. I don't think I can hear it. Just pretend I never-”

He cuts off your ramble, “Y/n, stop.”

You draw your eyes from the floor, look up at him, and find something in his gaze you have never seen before. He doesn’t say anything, just stares at you, and it takes everything you have not to look away. His hand raises to cup your jaw, and your skin lights on fire. Before you can process what he’s doing, you feel his lips press against yours, and something clicks. At first, his touch is light, like he’s giving you the chance to pull away. But, when he grasps that you won’t, he presses himself to you harder, and all you can think about is how nothing has ever felt so right.

His lips move against yours, and you don’t know how you're managing to reciprocate because it feels like everything in your body has gone fuzzy. The kiss is by no means long, but it feels like it lasts forever, and by the time he pulls away, you’re breathless.

His forehead stays connected to yours, and he whispers, “I do, Y/n, love you. I have.”

You don’t feel the tears on your cheeks until he’s wiping them away.

“Oh, Y/n.”

“Did you know? That you did? Is that why…”

You trail off, hoping he’ll pick up on what you're asking, and he does.

“I didn’t at first, or I didn’t realize I was falling in love with you until it happened. I got scared, so I ran. I just never thought that you could feel the same or that I was hurting you. I didn’t realize that. I just thought I was doing what was best for us. I felt guilty for being in love with my best friend.”

“And Maeve?”

“I loved Maeve. I’ll always have love for her. I was trying to move on, and I thought I could eventually be with her and be around you without it hurting. I wish I would have told you this before.”

“You’re telling me now. That's enough.”

This time, it's you who pushes your lips to meet his. Your arms snake around his neck, and his fall to your waist. You follow when he pulls you into his apartment and closes the door. There is still pain on both sides, but you can feel it dissipating as you cling to each other. You’re just two broken people who have finally found a way to each other.

This kiss is different, hungrier. Neither of you pulls away for longer than a few seconds as you navigate your way from his entryway to his couch. Every touch is desperate like you're searching for something you never knew existed until now. His hands pull you closer and closer until he's pulling you on top of him, and each of your legs rests on opposite sides of his hips.

Your lips break from his for a moment, “What do you want, Spence?”

His reply is instant, “You.”

From there, things move faster. Your hands unbutton his shirt and push it from his shoulders while he undoes your pants. There are moments of awkwardness that come with exploring another for the first time, but it feels good. His hands trace over your hips and push further until you're left on top of him in only your underwear and bra. He takes you in like you are something to be marveled at, and you know your eyes reflect the same adoration.

You raise yourself off of him and work to get him in the same state of undress as you, and when you position yourself on top of him, you feel his length press against your center. The two thin layers of fabric do little to hinder the intensity as you rock into him. He lets out quiet moans at the action as his lips trace down your neck and over your collarbone.

His breath ghosts over you and makes you shiver when he asks, “Can I touch you?”

“Please.”

His hand moves between the two of you, and his fingers find your clit easily, rubbing circles over the fabric of your panties. You pant his name against his lips at the action. You feel like your whole body is lit up, and under any other circumstance, you'd feel embarrassed at how worked up you are, but you can’t seem to care.

After a few moments, he lifts you up and carries you to his bedroom. From there, he positions you below him on the bed, removing your remaining clothes in the same motion. The new setup lets you grip him, and he feels big in your hand. His fingers resume their previous assault before dipping down into you. You cry out at the feeling of him inside you, slowly pushing in and out, finding a spot that makes your legs start to shake. He’s relentless in his pursuit and all you can muster up the energy to say is his name.

“You’re so beautiful, Y/n.”

It's somewhere between a whimper and a whisper, but the sound of his voice causes you to clench around his fingers.

He picks up on this, of course he does, and quickens his pace as he coos at you.

“So pretty like this. I’m so lucky.”

You’re embarrassingly close already, so when he moves his thumb over your clit to rub circles as he fucks into you with his fingers, you come undone almost instantly with a warning and cry of his name. He works you through your orgasm, all while whispering praise in your ear. Once you come down from your high, you start to push his boxers down his legs, but he stops you before you can fully.

“We don’t have to do anything more, Y/n. I liked just making you feel good.”

“I want more. I want to feel you if you want that too.”

“Of course I do. I just don’t want you to regret anything.”

“I couldn’t regret this, Spencer. I love you. I want all of you.”

It's the first time you’ve actually said those three words to him, and it feels so fucking good to say.

“I love you, too. God, so much.”

With that, he positions himself back on top of you, running his fingers over your slit gently before gripping himself.

“Do you have a condom?”

“I might somewhere, but I have an IUD, and I’m clean. I can try to find one if you’re more comfortable with that?”

“IUDs have a failure rate of around .05% and are largely considered the most effective form of birth control, so uh, as long as you're okay with it, I am.”

You smile to yourself at his statistic but nod, “I want to feel you, Spencer.”

He returns your smile before rubbing his length over your entrance a few times and slowly pushing himself into you just slightly. He teases you, or maybe himself, for a moment before fully entering you. You push your hips up to meet his, and feeling him in his entirety makes your jaw fall open. He’s big, and you feel unbelievably full.

He waits a moment for you to adjust before he starts to develop a rhythm. His hands are everywhere, but his eyes are focused solely on your face like he doesn’t want to miss a moment of your reaction to him inside of you. To be fair, you are probably putting on a good show. Every movement he makes hits you in exactly the right spot, and you don’t think you could be louder if you tried. You can feel the leg he’s not holding up against his shoulder shake against the bed. Your first orgasm has made way for your second to be incredibly close.

“Spencer, please.”

You’re crying out, desperate for a little more to push you over the edge.

“What do you need, baby?” His voice is tight like he’s not far himself, and it sounds better than anything you’ve ever heard.

“Harder. Please, harder.”

He takes your direction immediately, rubbing circles on your clit with one hand while he thrusts into you with a bruising force. He’s fucking you like he wants you to remember the feeling long after he stops, and you know that you will. Everything about it is overwhelming: his smell, his pace, his eyes. You are covered in him, and he is covered in you.

After a moment, the hand he had on your stomach trails up to grasp lightly at your throat, and you fall into feeling. You can’t warn him that you're about to come before you do. The feeling is white hot. Bigger than your first, and the fact that you're coming on him sends you into overdrive. You can feel his hips falter for a moment, but you're lost in a daze, crying out his name.

He pumps into you a few more times before he follows suit. He pulls out, and you feel stripes of his come paint your cunt and lower stomach as he finishes with a moan of your name.

He falls next to you on the bed, and it takes you both a few moments to collect yourselves and catch your breath.

Once you do, the only thing you can think to say is, “I love you.”

It feels like those are the only words circling around in your head at the moment. Some mixture of his name and that declaration. While you know you each said it before, that your profession was the exigence of the sex you just had, it feels uniquely vulnerable to say now. It’s like the moment you just had together could have changed things or made him realize that he doesn’t actually love you after all.

That shoe doesn’t drop, though. Instead, you hear the three words echoed back to you by a man who, 6 hours ago, you thought would never, ever say them.

You turn to face him, and the love on his face feels like it could knock you out. He’s looking at you and smiling in a way you haven't seen in a long time.

“Will you let me clean you up?”

You know that part of the reason he’s asking has something to do with the likelihood of bacteria growth or something like that, but you think it's mainly that he wants to take care of you. Him wetting a rag and running it over you feels intimate in a different way, in an excruciatingly gentle way. Personal in a way that makes you feel like nothing between you could ever be wrong again, and maybe that's naive to think, but you feel hopeful regardless.

Once he finishes, he takes his space back next to you in the bed. This time, he pulls you into his arms, and it's different than it was all those months ago. This time, you know that he won’t push you away and that you won't hurt yourself by being next to him. This time, you just tuck yourself into him, and you let him whisper sweet nothings into your ear as you begin to drift off. This time, it feels like peace.

~

The following day, you wake up to Spencer still next to you, looking incredibly soft in the early morning light. You search for a moment to find your phone in the piles of clothes and are greeted with a text from Pen.

How did it go????

You smile before turning your phone off and climbing back into bed next to the man you love. It couldn’t have gone better.

-

all done! yay!!!

i hope you guys love it!! i’m not 100% happy with the ending but i’ve been writing this for so long and just needed to be done.

this is my first time writing angst on here and my longest fic, so PLEASE tell me what you think! all (nice) feedback is welcome and i love to hear from you guys!! :)

[genderqueerdykes]

so something that was more common in the past in queer spaces was ally pride. people were often very proud allies! they were often family members, best friends, partners, neighbors, co-workers, anyone really. maybe they just support queer people regardless. there's a lot of reasons why people support us, there's no reason to judge.

i feel like there's been this exhausting outlook on things where we have to immediately take things in bad faith because there's no way someone else had our best interest in mind. people have become very resistant to the idea of interacting with people who aren't exactly like them and it's disturbing. that is not how to approach community. that fosters arguments and drama.

also i don't like that some people don't like the idea of allies being at pride or calling themselves "proud allies" or whatever like that's not embarrassing, they should be proud, because they're refusing to hold us down. how's that embarrassing? we have to be kinder to one another. it's really over. this hostility is not where it's at. this is not the spirit of things at all. in the past it was not like this at all

there was a lot of diversity in queer spaces because they didn't really have the largest physical locations possible and often had to deal with minimal resources, so specialized groups were not always possible. generally you were mingling with everyone. you would have to just sort of talk to people and socialize. the first people i met at my college's pride group was an agender transfem person, 2 cis gay drag queens, 3 cis gay men two of which were asexual, a cis butch lesbian, a cis femme lesbian, & 2 cis bisexual women.

you just kinda talked to whoever, and that was a good thing. i saw parents, friends, kids, relatives all the time. it was super normal. like nobody was pestering you for your identity. legitimately i never came out the whole way about my gender when i was there i just tried to be gender vague and people understood. i didn't get heckled for my terms or pronouns i mostly told people i was genderqueer and they'd be like oh yeah totally. and then we'd go get sandwiches at a restaurant after the meeting was over.

there's a severe lack of connection we're having as a community right now. there's a breakdown in communication and it makes us suffer for it. i think it's time to shelve the needless hostility and just have conversations. i'm guilty of it it too. i dont want to say im excluded from this. but we need to just talk and then maybe we can get to the part where we go back to living as queer people and eating food together instead of interrogating people for everything down to what their genitals were at birth or are right now. it's time to shelve it.

we seriously do need to make room for pride and joy. the anger and rage isn't helping if it's being directed at each other- it need to be directed at people who are oppressing us, not the people we target right now. men who are allies, trans men, transmascs, male lesbians, transfems, trans women, intersex men, gay men, bisexual men, men of color, and disabled men, aren't the people who are holding us down, your target is elsewhere.

let us express joy and pride for once. it's okay to do so. it's constructive and healthy.

[heechwe]

ANYTHING FOR YOU | 전원우

⋆✴︎˚｡⋆ ꒰ MY FIC FOR JUPITER'S SECRET CUPID COLLAB

⟢ PAIRING: jeon wonwoo x fem!reader ⟢ WORD COUNT: 3K ⟢ GENRE: slight comedy, fluff, smut ⟢ TAGS: best friends to lovers au, drunk confession, dirty talk, breeding kink, unprotected sex, creampie, cum eating ⟢ SYNOPSIS: Wonwoo has been your best friend forever. And maybe something more could be in the cards with a mature, sophisticated confession. Or a lot of alcohol. ⟢ AUTHOR'S NOTE: Inspired by LANY's song "anything 4 u"! Big thanks to my betas for this fic Tiya (@gyubakeries), Honey (@heesuncore), and Mitchie (@seokgyuu)! I love you all so much. And this fic is for my Secret Cupid Ally (@lovetaroandtaemin)!! I love you loads and you're an incredible friend. I'm so glad I got you so I could share a small token of appreciation for our friendship. I hope you love this story as much as I did writing it! ♥︎

Valentine’s Day weekend. The one weekend you have to suffer through everything being doused in red, pink, and white decorations. It’s everywhere: across your work office, all around the city you live in, and even plastered around the hole-in-the-wall bar that all of your friends are drinking in now. 

It’s not one of your least favorite holidays, per se. But the intensity of it can be incredibly draining. The constant declarations of affection, the emotionally gooey visual representations of one’s desire for another person, it’s too much even for some of your own friends who are coupled up. 

The reality of your loneliness pushes your mood down just enough that staring down your third bottle of beer makes you yearn for another, despite your alcohol tolerance being less than stellar. And to make matters worse, it sucks to be surrounded by others’ happiness when you’re so alone in love and in love with someone too enmeshed in your life as a friend, rather than a person of romantic interest.

Wonwoo sits with Vernon and Soonyoung at the high-top bar, nursing tequila shots and Coronas without bothering to look back at the rest of your table of friends. Yes, you were all celebrating Soonyoung’s new promotion and Vernon finally nabbing a girlfriend in time for Valentine’s this year, and they only stalked off a few minutes ago to share a few drinks on their own, but you wish Wonwoo was sitting next to you again. 

You always mocked him for telling you to slow down. To drink water to avoid dehydration or to eat something to offset your alcohol intake. With all of his parroted wisdom that drives some of his closest friends crazy, you love him for it. You love him for a lot of reasons, really.

“Maybe you should just tell him, you know?” Seokmin says across from you, looking over at you from the rim of his Whiskey Sunrise. It’s a sickly shade of red, grenadine mixed in with the other ingredients to commemorate the holiday season. You wonder if it tastes like cough syrup, because it sure looks like it.

“You think I haven’t thought of that?” You ask with a slur, licking the remaining beer on your lips. “It’s not that easy to destroy seven years of friendship.”

“Come on. You act like nobody else has noticed when it’s plain as day, babe,” Seungkwan pipes up next to you, elbowing you softly in the ribs with an accompanying waggle of his eyebrows.

“And what is your best course of action, Dum and Dee?” You split your stare between both of your friends, your irritation peaking. “I just go over to that bar and confess everything to him. Then he’ll say he’s felt the same this entire time and we ride off into the sunset together?”

“One, you don’t need to be rude,” Seokmin responds. “Two, you don’t have to make it so dramatic. Get him alone tomorrow, maybe. Talk it out, see where it goes.”

“Exactly,” Seungkwan says. “It doesn’t need to be this big movie scene thing.”

“What movie?” Soonyoung asks, sitting back down next to Seungkwan and in front of his empty bowl of ramen. The other boys follow suit, Vernon alongside Seokmin and Wonwoo next to you once again.

It feels like torture and sanctuary in the same moment, so close but so far from what you wish the two of you could be.

“Nothing, just this documentary we all saw the other night,” you respond. You press your lips to your bottle again, pouting when the last droplets hit your tongue. “I’m gonna get another,” you say to nobody in particular. Wonwoo perks up once he notices you stumbling to get out of your chair.

“Not so fast,” Wonwoo says as you fall back into his arms. “I think I should get you home.”

“No, the night’s still young!” You whine into his jacket, your hair ruffling the skin on his neck. His chest rumbles with laughter, but nothing at the moment is funny to you. You don’t want to leave just yet, and he doesn’t need to treat you like a baby. “We still haven't even gone to karaoke.”

“Another night. Go sleep it off!” Vernon calls from behind you.

“You kids have fun!” Seokmin says with a conspiratory wink. You and Wonwoo walk towards the entrance of the bar, and you want to throw something at Seokmin to make your idiot best friend’s dumb smirk and even more ridiculous idea of confessing your feelings to your mutual friend blip out of existence.

Wonwoo has seen you at your lowest. He consoled you after you ran your car into a parked motorcycle when you were sixteen, your humiliation palpable the whole three hours you both waited for the police to show up. He’s held you in his arms after every failed romantic relationship, telling you it was always them and never you when it ended poorly. There’s nothing the two of you haven’t been there for each other for, no experience too vulnerable to share and overcome together.

But Wonwoo holding your hair in a makeshift ponytail as you throw up may just be the all-time low of your embarrassing moments. He whispers in your ear that you’re okay and rubs your back with a soft hand, and you feel all the worse for it. How could he ever love someone this prone to disaster, this cringeworthy?

“You should go home,” you cry into the toilet bowl. “I’m disgusting.”

Wonwoo says your name in a mocking tone, pretending to be serious but in no way critical of you or the situation. He takes off his plaid button up and throws it in some random corner of your bathroom, free to hold you as close as possible as you continue dry-heaving. “You’re not disgusting.”

“Of course you’d say that, you’re you.”

He laughs again, tucking what hair he can from your face so you can lift your head off of the toilet. “And what’s that?”

You look at him with puffy, half-open eyes. “Perfect.”

He helps you up from the tile floor and moves you to your bedroom on your weak legs. He sheds off your overshirt as you kick off your denim jeans. Your mind rumbles with a whirlpool of thoughts as his brain ruminates on the word you used when comparing himself to you.

“I’m in no way perfect, kid,” he whispers. The nickname he’s used on you forever feels like a backhand, a copious amount of salt in a wound you know will never heal. He’ll always see you at a distance from him, his feelings leagues away from yours.

“Don’t call me that,” you cry into your pillow, resting your cheek deep into the material to muffle the quiet sobs in your throat. He can’t be serious, talking to you so tenderly when you’re falling apart.

“Hey, can you look at me?” You shake your head and settle deeper into the pile of comforters and throw pillows. Wonwoo suddenly feels his gut turn into a dozen knots. He doesn’t know what’s wrong, how to fix it, or what to say to make things better, and it kills him. “Why are you acting like this?”

“Because you’re too perfect to love someone like me. But I love you so much, and it fucking sucks,” you hiccup, the darkness of your bed making you believe he’s not there, this isn’t real, and it’s okay to release all the words in your heart into the dark. “And every time I see those damn red and pink hearts all over the place, I think of you and I want to die.”

The force of your confession almost knocks Wonwoo on his ass. At the very least, he settles onto the desk chair near your bed and hears your whimpers give way to light snores.

He runs his hands through your hair again and tucks the covers up to your chin. He holds himself back from pressing a kiss to your forehead, the one thing he’s always done when you’ve passed out countless times before in his presence, but never recalled the next morning. This time, though, he prays you’ll remember your drunken admission.

“I hope you meant everything you said,” he whispers before retreating to your couch to fall asleep to the sounds of the cityscape below.

You wake up to low jazz playing from your living room TV and the smell of sizzling eggs. Each limb aches from the heavy sleep you fell under last night. You quietly pad out of your room to find Wonwoo cooking what looks to be the perfect mix of breakfast and hangover food. A makeshift Bloody Mary sits on the counter next to him, waiting for you.

Wonwoo turns when he senses you behind him, and he grins. “Hey, you’re awake. I was worried you’d be passed out until the afternoon. I wouldn’t blame you, though.”

You blush a shade deeper, still sporting your tank top and clad in a pair of boy shorts. You forgot you had taken your pants off before slipping into bed the night prior, but it isn’t the first time Wonwoo’s seen you half-clothed. You drink half of the concoction and set it down, your headache throbbing a little less. “How bad was I last night?”

He smirks. “Bad enough to throw up another three times.”

You groan into the back of your hand and hitch yourself up on the counter across from Wonwoo, his focus still on the over-medium eggs in the pan. “I’m sorry you had to take care of me again.”

“I wanted to,” he says without looking up at you. “I always want to be here when you need me.”

“I know, I know, it’s your job to say that,” you joke.

He drops the metal spatula next to him on the stove, and you jump up at the sound. He doesn’t look up, doesn’t say a word for a moment, and you’re unsure if he’s even breathing when you ask him if he’s okay. “So, you don’t remember then?” His question comes out almost like a statement, but the wavered edge of it proves he is concerned with whatever has slipped your mind.

“Woo, you’re freaking me out.”

He turns the stove to a low, simmering heat before facing you. His eyes look sad but expectant, waiting for the inevitable to come to you. “You really have no idea what I’m talking about?”

You tuck your hair behind your ear, and in that instant, you recall that last hour before you fell asleep. Wonwoo helping you into bed. Crying in your bed. And all the words that followed.

The memories bring tears to your eyes and your hands to your face. “Oh my god—”

Wonwoo takes your palms away and holds them to his mouth. “Stop running from me.”

“Don’t make me say it again, Woo, please.” Your bottom lip trembles. You fight every instinct to run from the kitchen and out of the apartment altogether, wanting to accept the continuous pain of hiding your feelings than the truth that this could be the end of the both of you as you know it, for better or worse.

“Fine, you don’t have to.” Wonwoo’s lips curl into that grin you’ve adored for almost a decade. “I’ll say what I need to first, then.”

He takes a deep breath and sets his jaw. “I’ve been in love with you since the minute you threw your ice-cream at that biker who almost clipped me in the foot on the way to school. Remember? I may have loved you long before that, but that’s the moment I realized.

“And I don’t want to lose you. I want to be more than just the guy you call your best friend. I want to be the only friend that matters, the friend that kisses you goodnight and tells you how beautiful you are because there’s no other way to describe you. I love you, too, kid, whether you realized it or not.”

A breathy yelp leaves your mouth before you kiss Wonwoo on the mouth. It’s a hard one, a clash of teeth and a bit of tongue, but you didn’t expect less from such an unexpected and perfect confession. Maybe this was the way you rode off into the sunset together. Sure, there was the smell of burning eggs instead of the sounds of a white stallion gallivanting off to the unforeseeable future, but it’s perfect. It’s yours.

Wonwoo shuts the burner off entirely before he takes you by the hand into your bedroom. When your bed is in full view, he kisses you long and slow. It’s nothing like the first kisses you shared a second ago, but it’s earth-shattering all the same.

You moan into his mouth when he presses a free hand to your breast, teasing the skin above your shirt until your nipple pebbles.

“Is this too fast?” He asks in a gruff voice. “We don’t have to do anything if you’re not comfortable, I just—”

You press a finger to his lips, effectively shutting him up. “If you do not take my clothes off right now and fuck me, I will never speak to you again.”

Wonwoo smirks and kisses you once more, only stopping to pull your tank top over your head and rip your underwear off of your legs. His fingers delve between your folds, and you shudder in his hold but refuse to let him take his hand away.

“You like this,” he whispers, the statement thick with his lust.

“Yes, it feels so good,” you whimper. You gasp when two of his fingers curl inside of you, his thumb still nestled on top of your clit to swirl around with the pad. The amount of pleasure he’s already given you is indescribable, and he hasn’t even truly done much yet.

You whine when he takes his hand away, but it’s to discard his own clothes and sit at the edge of your bed. He beckons for you to sit on top of him, and he doesn’t think twice about swirling himself between your essence and lining the head of his dick with your entrance. His tip is so swollen and covered in pre-cum, there’s no problem sinking it inside of your heat.

You share a mutual curse of pleasure when he bottoms out, his pelvic bone meeting your skin. You stay like that for a moment. You’re so full and unable to move from the size of him filling every empty space inside of you, you think this has to be a dream. Last night has not given way to day yet, and now is just a conjuring of your cruel mind. 

You get lost in your thoughts for so long Wonwoo brings his hand to your face and traces his fingers over your cheek, staring at you lovingly. “Where’d you go?”

You smile shyly and kiss his nose. “I just can’t believe this is happening.”

“I guess I’ll just have to remind you it’s real.”

He takes your ass between his hands and spreads you out before thrusting up inside of you, making you gasp hard. He moves long and slow underneath you, almost taking his cock out of your pussy completely before delving back into you.

“I want to give you everything,” he pants. “All that I have—will have—is for you. You know that, right?”

“Yes, fuck,” you whisper, meeting his hips with yours as you try to set your own pace, sinking down onto him with every thrust where your skin meets with loud smacks.

“I love you so much,” he says into your neck before biting down on your soft skin. You moan loudly and press yourself deeper and harder against him. His cock hits you at the perfect angle as you straddle him, and you feel the start of your climax deep in your stomach.

Seven years of missed opportunities. More than too many chances for days and nights like this spent together so intimately gone to the wind. It’s easy to be regretful for all the time that you’ve wasted without each other, but you realize it’s not wasted at all.

Every step, every thread of fate that tied you two together, brought you here. Whatever comes of today is just an extension of what has already existed in your hearts. So what more is there to ask for?

“Fuck, I’m so close,” he growls in your ear. His balls smack against your skin as he continues to slam into you. Tears spring in your eyes as he moves even harder, trying to take you both to your peaks together. “Where can I come, baby?”

“Inside of me. I want all of it, all of you. Please,” you beg. You bounce harder on top of him, circling your clit with your fingers to fall off the precipice with Wonwoo by your side.

“You want to feel all of me, yeah? So full of my cum it’s all you’ll think about?” He smirks and replaces the fingers on your clit with his own. “Maybe I’ll fuck a baby into you with how much cum I give you. Would you like that?”

You see stars behind your eyelids as you listen to the beautiful, dirty words on his lips. You nod vigorously, wanting nothing more than for him to claim you in this way. It’s all you’ve thought about for years, truthfully.

“God, I’m coming,” you say into his neck, thighs quivering as the rest of your body goes slack from the pleasure. Wonwoo grunts into the shell of your ear as he orgasms himself, his seed spilling into you so deep you think there’s no way any remnant of him will slip out.

When he takes himself out of you, he swirls the mixture of both of your releases on his fingers before you take those fingers into your mouth, sucking them dry.

Wonwoo chuckles and kisses you deeply, the taste of the two of you on both of your tongues. “That’s one way to end Valentine’s weekend, don’t you think?”

You giggle and kiss him on both cheeks, too eager to see the rest of your future together. “You could say that.”

@gyubakeries @loserlvrss @okiedokrie-main @brownbunnyb

𝐧𝐞𝐭𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐬 ౨ৎ˚₊

@kstrucknet @k-films @kvanity-main @lapydiaries @moadiarynet @/sweetvenomnet @onedoornet @deoboyznet @violetanet @whipped-kpop-creators

[whatevergreen]

Two migrant teens, Alan Magalles Bello and Yeremi Colino were confronted by 3 people in Lower Manhattan and stabbed. Colino has died.

As for CNN, they and other news outlets also had the full Luigi Mangione manifesto (more of a note) for days but wouldn't release it, and instead made intentionally false statements about the contents.

This is what he actually wrote and doesn't come across as "unhinged" (despite the cringe opening):

As for Luigi Mangione:

It's no good judging him on his background or his social media alone. His twitter wasn't updated for months, and such as Goodreads shows a somewhat different side, more relevant to recent events - though there are hints of it on twitter. And something has clearly changed radically recently. Conservatives or alt-right people (or whatever label some have been trying to fix on him) do not normally refer to corporate executives as "parasites" who "simply had it coming" and then go out and kill one of them.

It seems like he has been trying to find his way... and it's led him to target a key figure among the many responsible for the suffering, and too often deaths, of millions of people over many decades through insurance and other healthcare profiteering. He didn't take out his personal problems and his ideologicial issues on random strangers or random employees like many have in the past. He took out one of those most responsible. Indeed it's just been revealed that he considered using a bomb to kill Brian Thompson but decided against it because he did not want to harm anyone else.

As for his being born into a wealthy Republican family, so what?

Countless socialists, communists, anarchists and others more difficult to label - famous, infamous or little known - have come from a privileged background. For a start Karl Marx was the son of a wealthy lawyer and married a member of the aristocracy. He lived in poverty for most of his life however. Engels was the son of a wealthy industrialist. Mao's father was a wealthy farmer and landowner. I'm not comparing Luigi with them too deeply of course but this needs to be considered.

Don't throw him or anybody like him under the bus when they do a neccessary thing for the right reasons, and are possibly rising above some of their older ideas, just because of those said ideas or beliefs. We don't know what his current state of mind is on any issue beyond the healthcare one.

It has been suggested that there may be some connection with possibly using psilocybin (magic mushrooms). Some people have been making that point to discredit his actions when actually such may have made him more empathetic and hence more enraged by the suffering of others. And his interest in such drugs was because of his chronic pain problems.

As a side note, apparently 2/3rds of Penn students support his actions. It's not really that surprising considering that the so-called health care system can be a nightmare for anyone but the very richest.