#but they had a whole series to themselves

[darkmatilda]

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐎𝐧𝐞 𝐈𝐧 𝐕𝐞𝐠𝐚𝐬 | 𝐬.𝐫𝐞𝐢𝐝

��𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲: upon waking up next to a certain unexpected person, spencer barricaded himself in the bathroom, trying to piece together the events of the previous night and come to terms with the fact that he had just gotten married in Vegas.

𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬/𝐭𝐰: spencer reid x diva!chemist reader, non-explicit nudity, alcohol consumption, they just went with the vibe and even slept together #imbeciles, everything is spencer’s drunk and dumb idea and even he has no idea what he was trying to achieve with all of it, lots of spencer's inner monologue, and quite a lot of just awing over our gorgeous reader (can you blame him?)

𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐬: 5.9k

𝐚/𝐧: shoutout to vegas anon for the idea. i’ll never stop thanking for it, it’s so dumb and it only works because it’s THEM. requests for the aftermath (and honestly the whole series) are open now <33 masterlist

There was a certain blissful feeling accompanying Spencer from the moment he cracked his eyelids open.

A blissful feeling that overshadowed something else lingering in the background—a weight pressing against his head, like the prelude to a brutal hangover that hadn’t yet caught him in its snare. A weight softened by the conditions in which he had awoken. The mattress of the bed in this upscale hotel seemed to mold perfectly to his body—naked, as it turned out. Comfortably warm, to the point where the blanket only covered a sliver of his hip, and yet he didn’t feel the slightest chill. No morning stiffness in his muscles—only relaxation…still drowsy, he rolled onto his back and realized that wasn’t entirely true. He was, in fact, sore in a few specific places, though he wouldn’t call it a bad feeling. If anything, it felt…welcome. Almost wanted.

Soon, he forgot even about that.

More precisely, when his gaze started to orient itself in space and cooperate with his sluggish mind, it almost immediately stopped on the divine sight right in front of him.

She must have woken up shortly before him. Also with skin fully exposed to the sunlight seeping through the balcony window, she lifted herself into a sitting position, shifting so she could end up face to face with him, hair flowing smoothly to one side of her head as she gently tilted it.

Looking at him, with a truly unreadable expression.

For a brief moment, Spencer’s body seemed unable to move, frozen in place.

He responded to her gaze with hesitation, but—as he had already managed to gather—they had slept together, so he should probably let go of the shyness. Let go of the shyness—he had to repeat that phrase in his mind to realize that, without taking his eyes off her, he had stopped breathing. Slowly, he let the air out, barely noticing that his lips had shaped themselves into a small, gentle smile.

“Good morning,” he finally said, his voice barely louder than a mumble, but soft.

What followed was a wave of confidence—or rather, an irresistible need to confirm that this wasn’t just a drunken dream (although he doubted that an alcohol-clouded mind would be capable of painting such a masterpiece as she was—something he had always sort of known, but only now became fully aware of)—and his hand wandered toward her, not yet knowing where it would land.

He didn’t care about any specific place—he simply wanted to feel again the miraculous smoothness of her skin and what it felt like under his fingers.

But she firmly brushed his hand away, and it felt like a slap straight to the face. Or rather, like a needle popped the blissful bubble that had surrounded him since waking. Even all the symptoms of a hangover began to come crashing down on his head like an avalanche, now that the barrier holding them back was gone.

“Oh, I’ll give you good in a minute,” she said quietly right on the dangerous edge of a hiss. Spencer blinked blankly, completely lost. The woman suddenly drew in a breath, her fingers digging into the skin at the side of her head.“I’m afraid…I have a suspicion we did something absolutely fucking stupid.”

Spencer felt his body tense up in an unpleasant way, and with it, his jaw clenched too. Not out of anger—of course not out of anger—just… ust suddenly it became so clear to him that she must really regret spending the night with him, which, to put it mildly, was a fucking awful feeling. It hit him and trapped him in its grip, a grip that only loosened when he looked into her eyes and, surprisingly, didn’t find regret there.

The first memories from the night before (a night, but not a night) started coming back to him.

And then the hand he hadn’t even realized was still hanging in the air dropped loudly onto the sheets.

“Oh fuck.”

She drilled her gaze into him.

“Oh fuck? Seriously, oh fuck is all you’ve got to say?”

“What else could you possibly say in this situation?!” he asked, his voice an octave higher, almost squeaky, as panic began to fill him, his mind bouncing off the walls of his head in chaos.

Trying to regain some composure, he lowered his head with a sigh and realized he was completely naked.

The earlier blissful, carefree, and contemplative mood was now nothing but a memory.

“I need to...I need to—”

Reid realized he wasn’t lying in bed anymore, but standing beside it, looking around for his clothes on the floor. He gathered them, pulling up the same pants at least three times, feeling so deeply awkward and pathetic that he disappeared into the bathroom, avoiding looking at her face.

It wasn’t until the door was closed, clothes slipping from his suddenly too weak hands, that he realized how hard his heart was pounding. Okay, bolting like that was honestly a pretty pathetic move on his part, but in order to even start thinking about the inevitable consequences of what they’d done the night before, he first had to force himself to open those events—lay them out—and figure out how the hell they’d even gotten there in the first place.

And he couldn’t do that while exposed to the sight of her, especially with absolutely nothing on.

And yes, they could literally have had sex just a few hours earlier, but as the alcohol was leaving his system, virtue came rushing in to take its place.

Spencer pressed his back to the door, already picturing the woman he'd just hidden from rolling her eyes in quiet disbelief and pity over how he'd acted. She was definitely going to make fun of him the second he came back out—that was a given. For now, though, he decided to focus on something else. First, he wiped a hand down his face.

You’re probably wondering how they even ended up in this situation.

Well, it all started with none other than Derek Morgan. Derek Morgan and his grand vision of proposing to his girlfriend—where else but in a massive, high-end hotel in Vegas. So what were he and she doing there? You could call it moral support for this big step in his life. Also, their presence helped throw Savannah off the scent and made the upcoming proposal a little less obvious. Besides, they just wanted to chill out in a nice hotel.

“Okay...so I was planning to do it like this.”

With those words, Morgan dropped to one knee in front of them and reached into the pocket of his black blazer to pull out the ring. It was proposal night, and the three of them were hiding out in Spencer’s room, away from Savannah, so their friend could rehearse everything one last time.

Reid looked at Morgan—down on one knee and clearly stressed out—and honestly, he didn’t have much to say. It was a knee drop. Whatever.

But there was someone who had something to say.

“No, no, no, totally not,” she said, waving both hands in dismissal and shaking her head with the face of a seasoned critic.

Spencer raised an eyebrow at her, but she ignored him completely, continuing as she motioned for Derek to get back up.

“You need to have your hand already inside your jacket as you go down on one knee. Grab the ring box then. That way it’s smoother and there’s no awkward moment of fumbling around trying to find it.”

Their friend sighed but got up and did it again—and then four more times.

They couldn’t stay there rehearsing forever, though. Eventually, the man rose for the final time, lacing his fingers behind his neck in a last wave of worry.

“What if she says no?” he asked aloud.

Reid exchanged a glance with the woman; they both knew that question was coming and that it would fall on them to say whatever it took to boost his confidence.

He even opened his mouth to start, but she beat him to it.

“You’re proposing in a restaurant,” she pointed out. “In front of dozens of people. Poor Savannah. Even if she wanted to say no, she wouldn’t, because of the pressure.”

Spencer stared at her, jaw dropping in disbelief.

“You didn’t have to say that!”

She just shrugged. Morgan stared at her for a beat before letting out a short laugh. Spencer, however, felt compelled to add:

“She’ll say yes. I mean, she loves you, you’ve been together long enough, and even statistically speaking…”

“Thank you, guys,” Derek said, glancing at his watch and sighing—the time was getting close for his date with his (hopefully) soon-to-be fiancée.

They both hugged him, wishing him luck. And there was nothing Spencer hoped for more than for everything to go exactly as planned. Because his best friend, Derek Morgan, absolutely deserved it. 

But before Derek left, he looked at them one last time, raising an eyebrow in that signature way of his.

“And you two? What are you gonna do?”

Reid had no idea what to say—he’d been so focused on Derek’s evening that he hadn’t thought about his own.

She looked at him, tilting her head slightly.

“Casino? I mean, we’re in Vegas. It’d practically be a sin not to go. Besides, I heard this guy’s pretty good with cards,” she added, raising her eyebrows at him meaningfully.

A strange wave of excitement passed through Spencer as it dawned on him—she had basically just told him she wanted to spend the evening with him.

But then he quickly grounded that feeling, telling himself it was just because she was a familiar face in a place he didn’t quite know yet. Then suddenly, another realization hit him, and this one made him uneasy. And no, it wasn’t her flattering words.

“Thing is…” he began, sighing. “I’m kind of…banned from every casino in Vegas.”

As he expected, she stared at him for a few seconds, motionless, then turned her gaze to Morgan, silently asking for confirmation. And when she found it, her eyes widened as she shook her head with a disbelieving scoff.

“Like, literally every casino in Vegas?”

 He shifted uncomfortably and gave a small nod.

“And Laughlin. And Pahrump.”

She made that scoffing sound again, and there was something accusatory in her gaze.

“And I’m only finding out about this now?”

She stood there for a moment, lost in thought as she came to terms with this new piece of information. Then she looked back at him, locking eyes—and maybe it was just his imagination, but he could’ve sworn he saw the hint of a genuine smile flash across her face.

“Well, now I have to play against you.”

Spencer finally tore himself away from the bathroom door, although he had to admit it had taken him an embarrassingly long time. What he had just opened in his mind had happened the night before, but it felt as if he were summoning a decayed memory from years ago. Still running on its fumes, he pulled on his pants, missing the leg hole on the first try and nearly toppling over on the second. Then he threw a white shirt over his back and, approaching the sink, began fastening the buttons.

When suddenly he froze—along with the breath in his chest.

He stood face to face with the mirror, and no, his hangover wasn’t so destructive that he didn’t recognize himself. On the contrary, he knew perfectly well he was looking at himself, and it made it even harder to connect the face that stared back at him every day from the subway window with the rest of his body. Or rather, with what was covering it.

A corner of his shirt slipped from between his fingers.

The first…let’s call it a signpost, since it marked the beginning of a long but consistent road, was located just below his jawline, partly overlapping it. Red, in the unmistakable shape of lips, nearly a perfect imprint. One might even think the surface had been a sheet of paper, a thin, unmoving plane — not his living, breathing skin. Funny how, instead of taking in his whole reflection at once, he gently traced his finger from one to the next, as if discovering an unexpected message written in Braille. The letters ran down his neck, chest, and stomach, fading downward into a more and more careless shape and a paler color — as if the hand that had written them had been struck by sudden inspiration and couldn’t quite keep up with all the mind wanted it to say.

Translating, of course, into nerd speak.

In reality, each next touch of her lips had simply been more impatient, wilder, and the lipstick had smudged more and more with every one of them.

The last of them were barely more than traces, faint smudges that could easily be mistaken for nothing more than flushed skin. He didn’t find out exactly where their journey had ended—when he spotted the lipstick just below his belly button, a sudden heat rushed up the back of his neck, almost instantly spilling beneath his skin and tinting it the same color as the lipstick that had marked him.

Spencer turned on the tap and nearly plunged his face under the stream of cold water.

"I've never played blackjack with just two people," the woman said.

Spencer focused on shuffling the cards carefully, yet as nonchalantly as possible. Right, he was showing off. Any problem with that?

"I've never played blackjack for drinks," he replied.

"Well, then this will be a first for both of us. You know the rules, right?"

He glanced at her briefly out of the corner of his eye, raising an eyebrow.

"Please."

"Sorry, I didn't mean to insult your skills, card king," she scoffed.

He nodded silently, holding back a smirk. He didn’t know what exactly was affecting him, not a drop of alcohol had touched his lips yet, but he felt unusually confident. And above all, in the perfect mood to take on this sarcastic dance.

"Well," he muttered, with feigned seriousness. "At least you feel remorse. Rightfully so."

Her loud chuckle echoed through every corner of the bar in their hotel. They couldn’t visit the casino, so they decided to head there together instead, to play something quietly in a secluded corner, which by no means meant it would be any less fierce. They sat across from each other, and whenever he glanced at her, and her eyes, focused on his hands dealing the cards, met his, he saw a sharp glint in them, a sign of the competition to come. 

A competition he fully intended to take on.

After nearly submerging his whole head under the faucet, droplets of water slid down the back of his neck, soaking the fabric of his white shirt. He finally managed to button it all the way up; it was visibly wrinkled — both from the eagerness with which it had been taken off and from spending the entire night lying on his bedroom floor. Spencer felt a fleeting moment of relief, during which he allowed himself exactly one calm breath.

Right after that, more pieces of the previous night pushed their way into his mind, and he had the urge to grab his past self by the shoulders for that competitive streak. His present self too, for ever having been his past self in the first place.

Drinking games have this particular trait — the drunker you get, the more often you lose. And the more often you lose, the more you’re forced to drink, which makes you lose even more — and so the cycle spins.

Spencer never had a particularly strong tolerance, mostly because he usually avoided alcohol altogether. So it didn’t take long before he began to feel the first signs of intoxication. His tongue loosened significantly, and everything he said became more chaotic — sometimes even intimate. Not in a way that he started spilling secrets or handing out his credit card number, but he was far more willing to back up a point with personal experience rather than plain statistics or scientific proof.

He was also far more willing to laugh.

Though…maybe, in that particular case, alcohol wasn’t entirely to blame.

Luckily, his card skills and a bit of luck early in the game meant that he and his companion were at roughly the same level of awareness. That is to say — drunk enough to occasionally lose track of the conversation and forget they were playing anything at all.The initial rivalry had quietly faded into the background when she suddenly glanced at the time on Spencer’s watch—still holding her cards—and fell into thought.

She looked so pretty.

It meant, well, she always looked. But that was just a statement of fact, an observation of reality.And as we've already established, drunk Reid had a much greater tendency to speak from the heart—from his worldview and feelings—not just from dry data and objectiviy.

So, yeah. She looked so pretty.

And he could stare at her!

Because when a person gets drunk, their expressions and reactions become so lethargic that what, on the inside, feels like drinking someone in with your eyes, on the outside just looks like a casual glance.

So, yeah. She looked so pretty, and he got to notice it not once, not twice, not three times, but an infinite number of times — each one sending that same otherworldly wave of awe rushing through his bones.

Bless the alcohol!

He realized she had said something to him, and like an idiot, he hadn’t even registered the movement of her lips. Which—fair enough—he had been consciously avoiding looking at. Reasons. Private.

He shook his head, snapping himself out of it, and asked her to repeat.

“Do you think it’s over already?” she repeated — surprisingly without the kind of venomous tone that would usually ask if he could maybe, just this once, listen to what she was saying.

But if she had asked that, the answer would have been yes. He could. Just not that time.Not when she had one leg crossed over the other, her foot bobbing to a rhythm only she seemed to know (which he, of course, tried to match to hundreds of songs filed in his head—eventually settling on Chopin’s Ballade in G minor, Op. 23—though it was entirely possible he was reading too much into it), not when her skin shimmered in the warm bar light, not when her head tilted gently to the side, a direction her hair seemed to follow, that evening choosing a wilder path he adored.

Seeing he was still lost, she rolled her eyes.

“The engagement,” she clarified. “Do you think it’s happened already? Did Morgan chicken out, or did he actually go through with it?”

Oh, a concrete topic of conversation. A reference to reality and their friend's character. The brain kicked in. The brain stopped being pathetic, the brain started braining. Focus returned. Spencer cleared his throat.

"Hm, it’s Morgan," he noted. Don’t judge the eloquence of this statement too quickly—it really was developing into something sensible! "Y’know, he doesn’t chicken out. I’m sure he did it. He could have totally and utterly embarrassed himself, but in the end, he did it."

"Totally and utterly embarrassed himself?" she repeated his words, looking as though she was holding back a snort of laughter, her eyebrows raised in skeptical amusement. "Don’t be so cruel to your friend. You’d probably trip over your own feet. Face first. Right in front of your fiancée."

Reid froze for a moment, for some absurd reason feeling genuinely offended by the remark. He felt a sudden duty to defend his honor in this alternate universe where he had a fiancée.

"I would not," he denied, folding his hands on the table between them and leaning forward slightly. He had already set his cards down on the table earlier, completely forgetting the game. "I could totally pull it off with real class. Even without all that planning. Just buy a ring on a whim and propose at the first opportunity, and it would still end up being the perfect proposal. Though personally, I’d prefer to have something prepared. But, you know, we’re discussing a specific scenario here."

She didn’t look even the slightest bit convinced, no matter how much drunken conviction and seriousness he was pouring into his words. She just nodded, with a mockingly sympathetic kind of agreement.

“Mhm. Sure you would,” she muttered.

Spencer’s fingers tapped nervously against the surface of the table between them, trying to shake off the wildly silly idea creeping into his thoughts. It wasn’t just silly—it was completely unnecessary and, if anything, didn’t prove a damn thing. Even his own arguments weren’t convincing him.

His hand suddenly stopped mid-tap, coming to rest flat on the wood. “I can prove it to you,” he declared.

“Prove what? That you can bend one knee? Spencer, baby, you’re not quite old enough for that to impress me.”

“That I can do it properly,” he clarified, not even bothering to roll his eyes at her jab. “Do it right the first time—what Morgan spent an hour rehearsing with us in the hotel room. Reach for the ring at the perfect moment…”

“...sounds like someone was taking notes.”

“...and not fall on my face in the process. Do it all smoothly. So,” he shrugged, feeling unexpectedly nonchalant about the whole thing—which only made her watch him more closely, with a flicker of curiosity in her gaze, eyes focused solely on him, like nothing else around them mattered. For a second, it was easy to forget there were other people in the bar at all.

“Show me one of them,” he said, tilting his head toward her hands. She followed his gaze to the rings scattered across her fingers.

A moment of silence passed before she looked back up at him. Her expression suggested she was fully aware of how ridiculous the situation was, and yet…something in her wouldn’t let her end it. Slowly, she bit her lower lip in thought before slipping one ring off her left ring finger and pushing it into his hand—no hesitation, with a challenge. 

“Lights, camera, action,” she said.

The ring suddenly seemed to weigh a ton in his grip, burdened now by the full weight of Spencer's own idiocy. He had no idea what he was doing—indulging some stupid, alcohol-fueled whim that was meant to be a joke, and yet it settled over him with a strange kind of pressure. For the three seconds he remained in place, unmoving, a weird sensation twisted in his stomach, and he suddenly understood why Morgan had been so scared earlier. He practically had to yell at himself mentally. None of this was real.

So he got to work playing out their little scene, dropping to one knee after first slipping his hand under his blazer to mimic pulling the ring out from beneath it.

A heavy, awkward silence fell—for him, at least—as he suddenly realized he had no idea what to say.

She had been sitting with one leg crossed over the other, but now adjusted so that her knees touched. Her gaze pinned him down even further into the floor he was already kneeling on, though not in a humiliating way—more of a grounding one. With one corner of her mouth curled up, she leaned in slightly, speaking in a quieter tone.

“And how do you want me to react in our scenario?” she asked, tilting her head slightly. “Are we playing our friends now? Do you want me to do it the way I think Savannah would?”

"No," he said quickly. He wasn’t playing anyone else in that moment. As if this were real. He shook his head sharply, side to side. "No. I want you to react like you."

Her brows rose slowly and steadily, the rest of her face remaining almost completely unchanged.

“Like me if you were proposing to me right now?” she asked. Without waiting for confirmation, she let out a laugh. “I’d laugh in your face.”

Spencer didn’t even feel offended. He knew that’s exactly how she would react—she didn’t even need to say it. His sigh carried nothing but impatience, mostly because he hadn’t anticipated having to kneel for this long.

“C’mon. Just use your acting skills. I can pretend I want to spend the rest of my life with you, so you can pretend you’re in love with me.”

Another long stretch of stillness and silence from her. But it lacked any trace of awkwardness or discomfort. He started to wonder if she was doing it on purpose—keeping him in that position just to mess with him. If anyone was watching them—and someone probably was—they’d likely assume she was going through the greatest dilemma of her life, weighing all the pros and cons in her head. Wondering if she loved him. Their thoughts, not his.

“How much in love?” she asked.

Reid closed his eyes in frustration. Yep, she was definitely doing it on purpose. He shook his head, not even knowing what he could possibly say to that.

“You decide,” he said shortly—because really, that was the least important part.

Seriously, whatever.

Apparently not for her. She was still staring at him thoughtfully, not moving, not blinking—until finally, she did.

Spencer was sure this was it—that she would extend her hand, finger outstretched, so he could slip the ring onto it. The same ring he’d been holding out between them all this time. He even lifted his other hand, ready to do it smoothly, just like he promised.

But that wasn’t why she moved.

One second she was in her chair, the next she threw herself into his arms with an exaggerated, emotional sigh.

The suddenness and speed of it nearly knocked him off balance. He wobbled and had to drop to both knees to steady himself. Her arms locked tightly around his neck, her hair brushing his face, her scent flooding his senses.Over her shoulder, he saw his own hands frozen in the air. Hesitating, unsure whether to let them fall against her back. One of them still held the ring.

It simply froze him in shock. And he was the one who in such a cocky way told her to use her acting skills. A wave of self-pity washed over him, questioning what he had even wanted to achieve with all of this. Then she pulled away. Wrists crossed on the back of his neck, a brief meeting of their eyes, calling him an idiot and a reminder, a reminder with a small sigh, that it was him who had proposed this game. And then she kissed him.

Well, the way she did it was too monumental for him to keep his hands in the air. He closed the ring in a secure fist, as if it really were an engagement ring, both hands settling on her lower back to keep them from tipping backward.

“I thought you’d never do it,” she pulled away in the span of a second, speaking before he had time to open his eyes. When he did, he blinked and exhaled. Okay—more like gasped for air. “Ten years, fourteen weeks and three days. That’s how long I’ve waited for that ring. I was beginning to suspect you were just playing with me.”

Her loud voice, the fake outrage, and the completely made-up role. She was—she was brilliant.

And he was Spencer Reid, considered a genius, but in his own way, very, very stupid. Her lips looked at him again, and as he slid the ring onto her finger, he wondered whether anything he did now could still be counted as acting. She stretched out her hand, pretending to admire a massive diamond the ring didn’t even have.

You could feel the script slowly making its way to the end, and soon they'd be forced to get up and argue about whether he’d managed to make a point or not (he hadn’t), so he leaned in to cover her smile with his mouth. But before he could, someone appeared above them.

They both turned their faces toward her, wearing identical expressions—as if someone had stomped into their living room in muddy boots while they were sipping tea from delicate floral cups.

“Congratulations,” said some woman with a somewhat uncertain smile. She scratched the back of her neck. “You really do make a great couple. I mean, good-looking. You fit together. Did you know this hotel has its own chapel?”

In their very strong defense, they only went there after a few more drinks—when neither of them could’ve spelled the word M-A-R-R-I-A-G-E let alone remembered what it meant.

Time kept passing, and Spencer’s fingers were still struggling with the same button on his shirt. Eventually, he let out a heavy sigh and just gave up, no longer caring that half of his chest was exposed. He was acting like they hadn’t just seen each other naked a few hours earlier. Like they hadn’t woken up in that exact state, in the same bed, right next to each other. Still, he found it oddly difficult to leave his hiding spot—meaning the bathroom—not yet ready to face a certain possibility he still hoped wasn’t real.

They couldn’t have actually gotten married.

It had to be a dream. Just one of those hyper-realistic dreams that bleed into reality a little too well. And if it was a dream, then—sure, still questionable, but nowhere near as bad as actually getting married! In Vegas, no less, driven by nothing but alcohol, and not to the love of his life, but to… to…her. His hand was resting on the doorknob, but he couldn’t bring himself to press it down, too overwhelmed to make even the slightest move.

He shook his head, trying—unsuccessfully—to shake it all off, and with his jaw clenched, he stepped out of the bathroom.

Spencer wasn’t even going to pretend his eyes didn’t immediately land on her. He’d expected—was absolutely certain—that by now she would’ve done exactly what he just had. Got dressed, remembered everything, went through the initial shock and, riding its fumes, started wondering what came next. But that didn’t seem to be the case.

She was sitting on the bed in the exact same state he’d found her in when she woke up, only covered by the curtain of loose hair, rubbing at her calf—which was exactly where Reid’s gaze ended up lingering. There was a sizable bruise blooming there.

“No idea where that came from,” she muttered, more to herself than to him. She didn’t even look his way, and his steps were quiet.

A dumb little Oh slipped out of Spencer’s mouth, and only then did he manage to draw her attention.

“I know where that came from,” he said, swallowing hard. “It, um. You hit your leg when you were going over the chapel threshold. I mean, when I was carrying you over the chapel threshold.”

Their eyes met—long, steady, and real—for the first time that morning.

“Fuck.”

“Fuck.”

Spencer wiped a hand down his face, only now truly confronted with all of it. They had to… they had to… what did you even do in a situation like this? He paced the room in a tight, restless circle.

“This is stupid, we’re so incredibly stupid, who even let us do this, how could we—” he burst out, voice high with panic. He threw his arms stiffly to the sides, overwhelmed as another terrible thought struck him. “And we’re leaving today, I don’t know if we’ll even be able to get it annulled…”

He lost his train of thought watching her stretch out her legs on the bed, as if she were about to get up—but she didn’t. Her entire face was drawn in sharp, quiet fury, the kind of look that could burn straight through the fabric of his shirt, just to punch him in the gut with an invisible fist and set him straight. Not to undress him.

“I’ll tell you what we’re going to do,” she said slowly, with a firm little nod—like she had already crafted the one and only logical solution. “Sit down.”

Spencer looked at her without even a shred of belief that she might be right. Everything was too illogical for her to come up with a logical solution that quickly. First, they needed to focus.

“Maybe you could put something on?”

“I said sit. Your pacing around like a pissed-off fly isn’t helping me think.”

Frustrated, he raised both hands, ready to snap something back at the fly comparison, even opened his mouth, but suddenly everything felt so senseless he just let them fall loosely at his sides. And yes, he sat.

“Happy now?” he asked bitterly, taking a seat right at the edge of the mattress, so that there was a practically professional distance between them. As if they were representatives of two opposing factions who had just realized they weren’t up against each other, but something fucked up on a completely different, worse level than anyone could’ve assumed. Which didn’t mean they suddenly liked each other. “So I’m listening. Tell me what we’re going to do, because I—mark this moment, I don’t say this often—I don’t know—”

“Shut up. I’ll tell you what we’re doing,” she repeated once more, eyes locked on him and barely blinking. The irritation was radiating off her and only slightly faded when, after a long moment of silence, her chest rose and fell in a deep breath. “First of all, not a word to Morgan. We’re about to see him, we’ll let him go on and on about his engagement, congratulate him, smile, and don’t you dare say a word about this, you hear me?”

Spencer responded to her hard stare with one of his own, though the sharpness in his gaze faltered, and he caught himself giving a small nod.

“Makes sense. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t survive his comments. And the jokes. And those looks, especially those looks…” He almost shuddered just at the thought.

Her reaction was identical.

“Second of all…” she continued, suddenly snorting, “second and actually, last. We’re going home. First thing we do after leaving the airport is…”

“...divorce.”

“...picking up the cat from Penelope. Then divorce. I really hope you don’t have any objections to that.”

His mouth fell open, the scoff catching in his throat.

“What possible objections could I have to that?” he asked, his voice practically dripping with sarcasm.

She gave a casual shrug.

“Good then,” she replied. Her back slowly sank into the mattress with exhaustion, and as her head hit the pillow, she let out a low, groggy sigh. “Since it’s all settled, I’m going back to sleep. It’s too early.”

She turned her back to him, lying on her side. Spencer stared at her spine, genuinely unable to believe that after everything, she could just lie down and fall asleep like it was nothing. It struck him as almost dismissive, and for a moment, a wave of anger surged within him—only to fade just as quickly.

Because really, what else were they supposed to do?

He, personally, didn’t have it in him to follow her lead—his mind was far too loud for that. But after a long moment of stillness, the mattress dipped under his weight as well.

Right on the edge, his hands folded on his stomach, eyes fixed on the ceiling.

[guess-my-next-obsession]

blue. | chapter one

pairing: bfd!joel miller x curvy!fem!reader

chapter warnings: series is 18+ only, MINORS DNI, age gap (reader's age is set at 25, joel is 40), best friend's dad trope, reader works at a bikini bar (race is a blank slate but reader is described as being curvy/plus size and is very much comfortable in her skin), divorced!joel, alcohol consumption, i think that's all for now :)

word count: 4k

next chapter

Blue.

It’s the color of your bikini top, the shade of your painted nails, the flavor of the popsicle you reach for when the Texas heat gets to be too much. It’s your chosen name here at The Boot—the bikini bar you’ve been working at for the last year since graduating college. 

Every girl who works up front is given a code name, something catchy for regulars to remember. It helps build a sense of familiarity without compromising privacy or safety, and given the nature of the job, you can never be too safe. 

One month into the job, you’d seen first-hand just how obsessed some customers can get. A girl who’d been working at The Boot a year or two longer than you slipped up one night when talking to one of the newer bartenders. Instead of calling her by her chosen name, Peaches, she used her real name, Deanna. What should have been a silly mistake turned into something dark and dangerous when a customer that had been a bit too interested in Deanna finally had a name to go off of. A quick internet search led him right to her front door. Thankfully, her husband was the one to open the door that night—with a loaded shotgun in hand—but it was a close enough call to scare Deanna away from The Boot for good. 

Ever since then, everyone keeps their real names to themselves. The minute you step through that door, you’re no longer the person you’ve always been. Here at The Boot, you’re Blue, the unattainable, curvy, slightly sarcastic but always flirty bartender that keeps customers coming back for more even though they’ll never get it. 

And most of the time, you enjoy playing the part. 

It’s almost like being a part of a cast, coming here to work with a bunch of women who you’ll never really know. You might see them outside of work here and there, but it’s always a character you’re running into. The customers are no different. They come here playing a part, and you play one right back. 

There’s no truth in any of it, and that’s usually for the best. 

But there are moments, like this one tonight, that make you wish for a little bit of honesty. 

Because if you’re being honest, the man sitting at the end of the bar—the man with dark brown eyes, soft, messy waves in his hair, and shoulders broad enough to bring a girl to her knees—looks a whole lot like someone you’d like the other version of you to meet. The girl who has more to offer than a fake name and an exaggerated persona. The girl who could bring a man like him home for the night without the nagging thought that he’s only doing it to say he managed to bed one of the illusive girls at The Boot. 

But as it stands, the only girl he’ll get to meet is Blue. And Blue isn’t the kind of girl to bring home a customer, no matter how much she might want to. 

“What can I get you, handsome?” The compliment is genuine, but it’s also something you’d say to any man who sat down at your zone of the bar. 

Judging by the way Mr. Tall, Dark, and Rugged looks at you, his brown eyes sparkling red and blue from the neon signs behind you, tells you that he knows that too. 

“Whiskey neat.” His voice is deep and rough, with just the slightest hint of a Texas twang. It’s as sexy as he is, and that’s just plain cruel. 

You give him a quick smile before turning to the wall of liquor behind you and grabbing a bottle of Jack off the shelf, only for him to stop you.

“The good whiskey,” he says, bringing your eyes back to his for a beat. 

You smile and nod as you turn back to the wall and grab one of the nicer bottles off the top shelf before turning back to the bar to pour his glass. “What’s the occasion?”

He sighs as he turns towards the entrance, seemingly waiting for someone to walk through the door. “No occasion. Just a…date, I guess.”

You slide the crystal tumbler towards top before resting your elbows on the wooden bar top, a tactic you usually use to get bigger tips after giving customers an eyeful of cleavage, but there’s no hidden agenda behind it tonight. “No judgement and all, but is this really the best place to bring a woman on a date?”

He breathes out a humorless chuckle as he lifts the glass up to his lips for a sip. “Believe it or not, this was her idea. I’ve never been here so I just thought this was a normal bar, not...”

“Not one notch from a strip club,” you say with a smirk. “Yeah, I can’t say I’d ever bring a date here. When I go out with someone, I want to be the only thing they’re looking at all night.” Leaning in conspiratorially, you lower your voice to a whisper and give him a wink. “The next morning, too.” 

He eyes you for a moment, a soft, barely there smile tugging at his lips as his eyes bounce across your features before he finally lets out a breathy chuckle. You get the sense that this is the closest thing to a full laugh he gives most people. 

“Yeah, well…can’t imagine that’s all that hard to do,” he says, glancing down at his cup just as the door opens and a long-legged redhead steps inside the building. 

Dressed in skin-tight jeans, a low-cut black tank, and a pair of heels, she looks like a femme fatale straight out of every man’s wet dream. She’s older than you, but not quite as old as the man in front of you—if he’s somewhere in his forties, she’s around her late thirties. Her walk exudes the femininity and sensuality of a woman who’s lived plenty life, the sway of her hips and upward tilt of her chin carrying an air of confidence you haven’t yet mastered. 

And, of course, she’s headed straight towards Mr. Tall, Dark, and Rugged. 

“Joel,” she purrs from behind him, her voice just as graceful as her gait. The man in front of you—Joel, it seems—turns his head towards her, a cold look washing over his face as he takes her in. 

Maybe he’s just as intimidated by her as you are. 

“Shannon,” he says, extending his hand out for her to take. Her perfectly manicured hand fits in his softly as she takes him in, her green eyes bouncing across his handsome features before trailing down to the T-shirt and jeans he’s wearing. She frowns in disapproval. 

“Did you come straight from work?” There’s a disappointed lilt to her voice. As if this obviously blue-collar man showing up to a run down bikini bar on a Friday night in a pair of faded blue jeans and a simple black T-shirt actually irks her. 

Clearly much too invested in their interaction, you force yourself to move down the bar to check in on Jerome—a regular that’s been coming here since long before you were hired. He’s not awful as far as regulars go. Jerome just likes to sit down on his favorite stool every night and drink until he’s blind. Sometimes, he’ll make conversation, but more often than not, he just sits there and quietly sips his drink. 

“Doin’ good over here, Jer?” you ask, propping your hip against the counter as you follow his gaze towards Joel’s date. 

Maybe it’s telling that you managed to remember his name and not hers. 

“S’that your cup of tea?” you ask with a smirk. He’s not usually the ogling kind, despite his favorite bar being so catered to the male gaze. 

“Looks just like my wife,” he says, his slurred words thick with something heavy. “Ex-wife, I s’pose.”

“She must’ve been a real looker back in the day, then.” 

He scoffs, lifting his glass to his lips. “Looked good enough to fuck the whole neighborhood and leave me with nothin’ but a broken heart and a lifetime of alimony payments.”

Unsure of what exactly to say to that, you decide to cut through the tension with a joke. “You should go warn him then. Save him the trouble.”

Jerome eyes you for a moment before turning back to the couple. With a huff, he sets his drink down and stands up, stumbling down the empty bar to where Joel is seated and his date is still standing. 

You hiss at him to sit back down, but he’s got a drunken, one-track mind right now. 

“Pardon me, son,” he slurs, tapping Joel on the shoulder as you look on with abject horror written all over your face. “You ever had your heart broken before?”

Joel’s eyes narrow with confusion as he looks at Jerome before letting his gaze travel to you down the bar. Averting your eyes, you quickly grab a cloth and pretend to wipe the perfectly clean counter rather than continue to watch the scene you accidentally crafted unfold. 

“Yeah, somethin’ like that,” Joel says, his voice colder than it had been with you. His date scoffs from beside him, and his eyes roll in response. 

“Well, women like your friend right here are nothin’ but heart breakers wrapped in a pretty package,” he says, though his words are hardly intelligible. “Best t’stay away from ‘em if y’can.”

“Jerome,” you hiss, and thankfully, he listens this time. “Come sit down. I’ll pour you one on the house.”

Jerome nods before turning back to Joel and patting him on the shoulder. “Y’hear me?” 

Joel’s lips purse but he gives him a quick nod before turning back to the woman beside him. They fall into quiet, but strained conversation as you fix your attention back onto Jerome. 

“I didn’t mean for you to actually go up to him, Jer,” you scold, refilling his jack and coke. “Can’t have you cock-blocking during people’s dates.”

He chuckles and tilts his head towards the pair. “Hardly looks like there’s gonna be any cock to block between them two.”

You let yourself steal a few glances their way as subtly as you can manage, and sure enough, the two of them look like they’re ready to claw each other’s throats out. 

Maybe this isn’t a budding relationship, after all. 

Maybe there’s some sort of history here that’s got Joel on edge and Jolene—you still can’t remember her name for the life of you—on defense mode. 

“What do you think the story is, then?” you ask, unable to stop yourself. 

“Mm, maybe she ran off with his dog to play house with his best friend,” he muses, rubbing two fingers against his gray, wiry beard as the two of you eavesdrop together. 

“Maybe he was the one that hurt her,” you say, although your gut is telling you that’s not the case. Jolene looks too smug, too amused by Joel’s rigid posture to be the wronged. “Or maybe it’s some kind of role play they get up to. Who fucking knows”

“Why don’t you go on and ask?�� Jerome says with a drunken smile. “You seem so goddamn interested, after all.”

You feign a gasp, clutching your nonexistent pearls. “You’re the one who stumbled over there with words of advice.”

“Well, you told me to,” he counters. 

Rolling your eyes, you decide to venture over there and check in on the pair, telling yourself it’s just because Joel’s drink is empty and his date has yet to order. 

“Can I get y’all started on another round?” 

Joel sighs and swings his head towards you, an almost pleading look in his dark brown eyes. “Just the tab.”

Jolene scoffs and levels a glare at you. “I’d like a drink. Or are you only serving men tonight?”

Arching an eyebrow at her, you nearly tell her to fuck right off with her attitude, but Joel cuts in before you get the chance. 

“This clearly isn’t workin’, Shannan,” he says, hanging his head for a beat before lifting his defeated gaze to meet hers. “Let’s just sign the papers and be done with it.”

Sensing that this moment is about to get a whole lot more personal than you’d like, you step away—back towards Jerome—and watch as Shannan, not Jolene, pulls a folder out of her giant purse and shoves it towards Joel. 

“Seventeen years down the drain just like that,” she says, tutting her tongue as she watches him slip the papers out and pull a pen from his back pocket. “All because I made a little mistake?”

Joel says nothing in response as he signs his name on each flagged line while you, Jerry, and Shannan all look on with varying levels of interest. 

Leaning over the bar, close enough for you to smell the liquor and cigarettes on his breath, Jerry whispers. “I don’t think it’s role play, darlin’.”

It’s a quarter past midnight by the time you close out and hang up your metaphorical apron. The bar’s nearly empty, save for a few stragglers that like to stick around until Miguel—the closing manager—kicks them out. 

With your purse slung over your shoulder and your tips securely tucked away inside a zip-lock for you to count out in the morning, you make your way out of the bar and into the warm summer night. You traded your bikini top for a tank, but with it being this sweltering out, you almost wish you hadn’t. Sweat trickles down the nape of your neck to the valley between your breasts, drawing a map to a very neglected part of your body, because despite what most customers must think of you considering your line of work, you just haven’t had the time or energy to get much action lately. 

That and the dating pool is more like a cesspit these days. 

Breathing out a sigh, you listen to your feet as they crunch against the gravel parking lot with each step towards your old beater of a truck. It’s a hand-me-down from your father, one of the only good things he’s ever given you, and that’s not saying much considering how often the old Ford ends up at the mechanic’s. 

Just as you open up the cab and set your purse inside, your phone rings and illuminates the darkness around you. You pick up the call with a smile on your face, already anticipating what stories your best friend will have to tell from her Friday night in Dallas. 

Sarah’s four years younger than you, but the friendship came easy anyways. You were late to go to college, having to stick around and save up for school after graduating high school, and Sarah was an early graduate at just seventeen. Getting paired up to share a dorm freshman year was pure coincidence, but everything afterwards felt like destiny. She’d been the little sister you never had, the confidant you always longed for, and in return you helped steer her away from frat boys. 

“Hey,” you say, cradling the phone between your shoulder and ear as you heave yourself into the truck. “How was the date with Chad? Or was it Kyle? I can’t remember which finance-bro you’re talking to right now.”

“Ha-ha, very funny,” Sarah says. “His name is Marcus, and he’s actually an attorney. Very fancy. Very sexy. Kind of boring.”

“Just your type,” you tease as the engine roars to life. “Does he get a second date?”

“Eh,” she hums, and you can practically see her tilting her head to either side. “We’ll see. He didn’t try to take me home on the first date, so that’s a win. But anyways, I didn’t call to give you a rundown on my shitty love life. Are you doing tomorrow?”

You chuckle dryly. “Besides working? No. You know I’m a hermit unless I’m getting paid to be a social butterfly.” 

“Okay, well I miss you enough to pay you to come see me,” she says. “All the beer and carne asada you can eat if you come with me to my dad’s barbecue tomorrow afternoon.”

You bite your lip, contemplating the offer. It’s not as if you don’t miss your best friend. After living together all throughout college, it’s a special kind of torture having to be this far apart from each other—her busy with her new career in Dallas and you stuck here in Austin. You just haven’t felt like yourself in a while. 

Call it the breakup blues, but ever since your last relationship, you’ve found a certain comfort in staying home and wallowing by yourself. But you’ve been a lonely hermit for far too long, and the thought of seeing Sarah after so many months of distance is just appealing enough to have you considering coming out of your shell. 

“I’ll have to find someone to cover for me, but it’s a yes, if I can get off work,” you say. “Your dad’s here in Austin, right?”

You’d heard plenty about her dad over the years. According to Sarah, he was the best dad in the world. It was her stepmom, the one who came in a few years after her biological mom had passed, that sucked. 

“Yeah, he just moved into a new place a few streets down from your apartment, actually,” she says. “So you definitely can't flake and blame it on the commute.”

Rolling your eyes, you hold up your middle finger to the phone even though she can’t see the gesture. “Fine, I’ll try my best to show up and meet daddy dearest. But it’s time for me to go home and get into bed. Long shift. Weird divorce paper exchange from a pair of customers tonight. The guy was sexy and completely not age appropriate and the wife was a cunt.” 

“Oh, the joys of working at The Boot,” she sighs. “Text me when you’re home.”

“Will do. Love ya.”

“Love ya back.” 

You weren’t able to get your shift covered last minute, but thankfully, one of the morning girls offered to switch shifts with you. Truthfully, she got the better end of the deal considering how slow and cheap the morning patrons are. But you’ve saved up enough to not need the tips for one night, and seeing Sarah is more than worth the sacrifice. 

It’s nearly the end of your shift when a familiar face steps into the bar, his dark eyes scanning the room until they land on you. Feeling nervous for no apparent reason, you shoot Joel a smile and a wave. 

He’s in a hunter green T-shirt today that pulls against his broad chest and shoulders, accentuating the light brown of his skin, and unlike last night, he put on a pair of stainless dark wash jeans that hug his long legs just right. If the whole blue-collar, working man thing did it for you last night, this cleaned up version of him is enough to make you sweat. 

“Blue,” he says, glancing at your name tag that’s pinned to the flimsy fabric of your bralette. “I see they’ve got y’all in even less clothes than last night.”

You laugh without faking it. “Saturday is lingerie night—or day, I guess. If you’re looking to find me a little more covered up, I’d suggest coming on Sunday. We wear tank tops on the Lord’s day.” 

Giving you a devastating smile, he nods and raps his knuckles against the bar top, eyeing the liquor behind you rather than meeting your stare. “I wasn’t complainin’.”

You breathe out a sigh in an attempt to clear your stomach of the butterflies fluttering there. “Can I get you something to drink? My shift’s almost over, but I’ll leave you in the hands of one of the other girls. They’re even easier on the eyes than me.”

His eyes flit back to yours before dropping to your cleavage and back up. “I don’t know about that.” 

Yeah. 

Fuck him and these fucking butterflies. 

“But, no. I didn’t come for a drink. Or—well, I guess I did,” he says, suddenly going shy on you as he shuffles his feet and looks away. “I was wonderin’ if y’all sell drinks to go. I got a little get together I’m throwin’ tonight.”

“Looks like everyone’s throwing a party tonight,” you say, smiling. “Yeah, we sell cocktails by the gallon. But I’m going to warn you, the way I make them is fruity and highly dangerous. I’d sip with caution, unless you plan on giving your guests a striptease tonight.”

Another slight tug of his lips. “Unlike you, I don't think many people would enjoy the sight of me stripping down.” 

“You'd be surprised,” you flirt, and for once, it’s not an act. “Anyways, let me go ahead and get those drinks started for you. It’ll just take a second.”

“No rush,” he says, settling into one of the stools. 

His presence is a warm thing, even with your back turned as you go through the motions of funneling vodka, rum, and tequila into the different cocktail gallons. You can feel his gaze on your body, trailing across the expanse of your exposed curves and dips, right down to the round globes of your ass hardly concealed by a pair of lacy blue boyshorts. They’re just see-through enough to give him a glimpse at the skin beneath, but you feel naked in a way you don’t normally. Being a curvy woman in this industry usually means one of two things—either you’re fetishized or you’re ignored.

But it’s different with Joel. You don’t feel like he’s eyeing you like this because you fit some sort of kink he’s into. It just feels he’s a man who likes what he sees.

Clearing your throat, you start talking just to keep yourself from thinking. “So what’s the party for?”

“Well, as I’m sure you saw last night, I’m gettin’ a divorce,” he says, his deep voice bringing an ache to your core despite the nature of the conversation. There’s nothing sexy about divorce, nor should there be about a man at least fifteen years your senior. But here you are, turned on anyways. “The party was my brother’s idea. Get myself back out there and all that. Socialize.”

“You don’t sound too happy about that.”

He scoffs. “I’m not all that enthusiastic about startin’ over again at my age, that’s all.” 

“How old are you?”

God, please don’t let him be older than your father. 

“Forty,” he says. 

That’s not too bad. Just fifteen years. He was practically still a kid when you were born. Totally acceptable. 

Right?

“You’re still plenty young,” you say, rather than what you want to say. “Don’t hang your hat up just yet.”

“Easy for you to say,” he chuckles. “You don’t have a bad back or achy knees yet.”

“Hey, I work on my feet all day,” you challenge, shooting him a smirk from over your shoulder and inadvertently confirming your suspicions on what his eyes were locked in on. Turning back around, you hide the way your lips part in response. “My back aches plenty.”

Silence falls between the two of you as you finish up his gallons just in time to clock out. You quickly ring him up and slide the jugs his way, but he must be feeling just as flustered over the interaction as you are given the way his eyes refuse to meet yours for long. 

“Remember what I said about those drinks,” you say, catching him as he hurries to leave. Joel shoots a bashful smile your way, tipping his chin at you before pushing through the door. 

And for the first time in your career—if that’s what you’d call this job—you hope to run into a customer outside of work.

[isfjmel-phleg]

tell me something you love and think is overlooked about the Oz books?

Hello! Thank you for the question, and for your patience. I wanted to answer at a time when I could give it the attention it deserves!

One of the things that I love about the Oz books that I don't think is given enough credit is how ahead of their time they were as forerunners of the modern fantasy genre. Most fantasy stories at this time were more like the traditional fairy tales. Baum wasn't the first to write a portal fantasy, of course, but the amount of worldbuilding that went into Oz--inconsistent as it became over nearly two decades of writing--is much closer to our contemporary fantasies than to, say, Wonderland. Oz had maps and crossovers with a whole fictional universe of locales and characters from Baum's other fantasies. It's a clearly fantastical world with fairies and wizards and talking animals and magic, but Baum includes elements that veer into science fiction. Tik-tok is one of the first robots in fiction. The Tin Woodman is basically a cyborg. When Oz goes invisible to the outside world (in part to prevent people from flying there in those newfangled aeroplanes), Baum reestablishes contact with them via the telegraph. Some of the magical devices described have more in common with modern technology than Baum could have ever suspected, like something that the Shaggy Man uses in Tik-tok of Oz that is basically a Bluetooth cell phone. And some features were (probably unintentionally) used in better-known works, but Baum did them first--he wrote about Orks before Tolkien's orcs (Baum's are a kind of four-legged stork- and parrot-like talking bird with peculiarly shaped wings), and his characters in Sky Island (adjacent to the Oz series) used a flying umbrella with a distinctively-shaped handle decades before Mary Poppins ever did.

I also love that the series is genuinely light-hearted and optimistic. Much has been made of the "dark" elements of Oz, especially in recent reimaginings. And sure, Oz isn't always sunshine and poppies roses, but the tone and the narrative themselves never take a dark, depressing perspective. Unpleasantness is either made silly or treated very matter-of-factly. There can be genuine danger, but there's always the confidence that our hero(es) can be clever enough to find a way out. A bizarre and nonsensical way, probably--don't overthink things with Oz, it's not the point--but such is the nature of this fictional world.

One more thing: Baum's female characters get a lot of well-deserved praise for their strength and bravery and proactiveness, but I'd also like to say a good word for the boys too. Ojo the Lucky, Prince Inga, even Button-Bright (who doesn't get enough credit for his character development between The Road to Oz and Sky Island and might? be neurodivergent? in some way?) are all interesting characters in their own rights.

Is the Oz series perfect? No. Is it Great Literature? No. But is it a lot of fun? Absolutely. I read the first few books when about five or six but didn't catch up to the rest of the series until I was thirteen. I think it was the first fantasy series that I ever got deeply invested in (we didn't read a lot of fantasy in my house), and having my head in this magical world made my own ordinary world so much more magical, and I am always grateful for that.

[farawaydoe]

"When asked about the equation between Spike and Faye, Watanabe has said the below. I had not really given this much thought the first time I read it a few years ago, assuming he meant Spike felt some physical attraction to Faye or some such.

DT: You said in your lecture that the characters you relate most to are Mugen and Spike. Care to explain?

W: First, I’m often shooting people and slashing them up with a sword … It’s a joke. [Laughs] Spike and Mugen aren’t very straightforward in expressing themselves. For example, even if there’s a girl they like standing right in front of them, they don’t pursue her directly – in fact, they do the opposite, they ignore her almost. I think that part is kind of like me. If I was to sum it up, it’s kind of like being a little contradictory or rebellious.

DT: Are you talking about Spike’s relationship with Faye?

W: Of course. Sometimes I’m asked the question, ‘What does Spike think of Faye?’ I think that actually he likes her quite a bit. But he’s not a very straightforward person so he makes sure he doesn’t show it.

This time around though, this struck me as odd. I realised it goes against Spike’s character to “like” another woman while he is so completely smitten with the love of his life from start to finish. It goes against his honour code and discipline. So when exactly does this happen? The deep-dive into Julia answered part of that question and what I’m writing now answers the rest.

The last scene where Spike leaves to go confront Vicious and Faye tries to stop him happened to be something I saw completely out of context the first time, as a standalone thing because it was on TV and while flipping through channels it happened to catch my eye. I didn’t watch the rest of the episode, tuning out the moment Faye begins firing. I hadn’t seen the full show yet, had no clue what it was about, and just saw that bit. I watched it again when I saw the whole series but in that out-of-context viewing, the sequence struck me as something very deeply charged with unspoken emotions on both ends. It was very clear that while we see him turning his back on her as she shoots her gun, there is something deeper going on within him. When I watched the scene in a flow with the series though, somewhere that effect got muted, again swept up in the larger drama. The moment felt poignant, important, but ultimately insignificant compared to everything larger which I thought at the time was actually going on. But that initial impact still stayed with me and I wondered at it often.

The two women in Spike’s life are both named after songs. Julia is named after the Beatles song of the same name, considered a reference to Yoko Ono. I won’t go further into that since the other pieces on Julia cover these aspects in detail already but basically it’s not a very positive association.

Faye Valentine’s character was conceived from the song ‘My Funny Valentine’ and this is referenced in the episode of the same name where we begin to get to know her truly. The song talks about a comical lover who is ridiculous in every way but is good for the soul. “My funny Valentine, sweet comic valentine, You make me smile with my heart…Your looks are laughable, unphotographable…Yet you’re my favorite work of art….” “…Is your figure less than Greek? Is your mouth a little weak? When you open it to speak are you smart?…But don’t change a hair for me, not if you care for me. Stay, little Valentine stay…each day is Valentine’s day…” If you are one of those watchers of this show who likes the character of Faye, something in this song is likely to recall her. She doesn’t say the smartest of things, she doesn’t have a lot of finesse ,but we do get to know she has a good heart. Valentine is also an association with love in general.

The song is about a cherished lover who is a bit ditzy, a bit awkward, and ridiculous but who also makes you “smile with your heart.” Basically a wholesome love, someone whom you adore despite their broken parts, someone who makes you truly happy.

In Mish Mash Blues, Faye muses that her personality is likely to drive all the “good” men away. But she doesn’t believe in pretending to be something she is not, in saying things like she actually wants to be a homemaker even though she dresses the way she does etc. She mentions that the right man, unfortunate enough to end up with her, will accept her as she is.

The first time Spike meets Faye, we see him instantly and surprisingly openly enamoured by her. He definitely does not seem to have any intentions to act on it since we see him take his poker chip as a “memento” and walk away but he seems very attracted to her. It does feel a bit strange because, although we have seen him interact with only one other woman till now in the series, if you are coming back to rewatch the show you realise he is actually not shown behaving this way with anyone else ever again. Spike is emotionally unavailable and hung onto his “lost” lover at this point, but the episode goes out of the way to establish how fixated he gets on Faye when he first sees her. Part of it may be amusement at her cheating but not all the shots correspond to just this. The fourth image in the ones below always gives me a sense he sees something deeper in her, something sad or painful behind her external shell, and he is pondering it, trying to figure her out.

I was unsure initially if we are supposed to take this as a “love at first sight” thing or that lonely Spike just walks around like a creep playing Blackjack with women because that’s the max he can do.

If we were shown multiple sequences of Spike becoming enamoured by random women he keeps meeting, we as the audience would get used to it and take it as a part of who he is. But we are not shown that ever again except for this sequence. Even in the movie when he meets Elektra and jokes about going on a date with her, it’s casual and playful, we get a sense he is doing it just to goad her. We do not see him sitting staring dreamily at her. So, once you are familiar with the series, this is a moment which does stick out as an anomaly. This is not characteristic of Spike at all. Something is happening here which does not happen as a norm in the series and perhaps we are to understand he himself is not aware of it. Of course, he doesn’t know Faye at all at this point, but the narrative does seem to want us to understand that something draws him to her during that first encounter. Faye is not particularly focused on him at this point, thinking simply that he is the target from the job she needs to run for Gordon. Based on the rest of the instances in their story I do feel retrospectively that, despite everything that happens from this point on, something in Spike never lets go of this initial feeling.

Of course, all hell breaks loose soon enough in characteristic Bebop fashion and, along with Jet, he ends up trying to cart Faye off to the police. As the episode progresses and she breaks out of the ship, his response to her is one of amusement and even a hint of admiration as she blows up Gordon’s ship and manages to escape. At the end of the episode, we see him smiling back in amusement at the memory of the strange cheating dealer he met. Of course, all of this part is kind of in alignment with the ‘Bounty of the Day’ format they follow but it goes a bit beyond.

When Faye finally does move in with them we see Spike all manners of comically unhappy but he seems simply way too bothered about her moving in for us to buy the act completely. He is a “contradictory” character and if something does not get to him he will simply not respond to it. Throughout the series, the moment you see him going out of the way to do something which seems out of place at the moment, be rest assured it has something to do with Faye. In fact, the whole reputation his character has earned over time of being ‘reckless and endangering himself just for fun’ is in a large part because of things he does to protect Faye. I’ll draw out this pattern as we go.

However, whatever feelings are there in Spike at this point, he seems to not acknowledge them or be unaware of them. He already has an unresolved commitment from his past and his fealty is to the woman he feels is still holding a torch for him. The feelings also don’t run as deep right now as they eventually will. It will be a while still before he reaches the point of acknowledging them.

The next few episodes work to show two sides of Faye-the first as a contributing member of the ship, or “soldier Faye” as I like to call her, a sincere and capable individual, seeking out bounties along with Spike, and the second as an opportunistic, bitchy woman. But, we do see her earning her credibility with the boys and with the audience as well.

The first time when the ongoing connection between Spike and Faye is set up is during ‘Ballad of Fallen Angels.’ Through the course of the story, Faye ends up being the only one in the Bebop crew who gets directly embroiled in Spike’s past. She knows both sides of him, unlike anyone else on either ends. Through her own recklessness, she is kidnapped by Vicious in this episode and gets to see first-hand who Spike turns into when he meets his rival.

There is also a certain similarity established in this episode between how Faye and Spike approach the possibility of death. When Jet and Spike receive the call where she is a hostage and she needs to inform them she will be killed if they don’t rescue her, we don’t see her particularly fazed. She informs them this as if reading the dinner menu at a restaurant.

In the sequence during the church as well we don’t see her exhibiting any fear except for concern about what is happening to Spike, which is a natural reaction. She goes along with what is going on around her, runs out pretty practically without trying to get in the way of the fight, and calls Jet. It does help create a sense of uniqueness to her character. We already know she’s no stranger to being in tough spots but her coolness in handling all this chaos does make you start getting a sense there is more to her than strictly meets the eye. She complements Spike’s single-minded, dramatic passion and fury in the sequence with her comic indignation at being shot at in the literal middle of a raging gun fight and her rational response to the situation.

Toward the end of the episode, Spike wakes up from the dream of Julia humming while he lies injured, to find Faye doing exactly the same thing. He seems irritated at that and goes out of his way to insult her, contrasting to what we have just seen with Julia, where he had asked her to sing for him in the exact same situation.

Faye was not singing off-key in the sequence, not really. Spike just says it because his mind makes some sort of connection and he does not want to give her that place in his life. We are given the sense that seeing her there strikes something in him so he goes out of his way to insult her. If a person is indifferent to another, they would not be bothered by such a situation and would likely just ignore it, but the narrative specifically built this sequence, to show a deflective action from him. Which means Faye holds some significance for him by this point even though all we have seen of her is an insufferable woman. So perhaps the creepy staring at the Blackjack table is not something he does with every pretty dealer. Perhaps we are to understand it is one of those things where you are drawn to someone but really can’t explain why.

In the same episode, both Spike and Faye are seen picking up the same playing card through chance. Jet drops it in Faye’s case and she picks it up while in Spike’s case it lands on his head after she smacks him with a pillow. This card is the Ace of Spades, also known as the ‘Death Card’. I have read this being interpreted as death in Spike’s future, just as Faye has had a brush with death in the episode either at Vicious’ hands or because she witnessed dead Mao. I take it to be a bit more significant than that.

For starters, showing this is reminiscent of the fact that both have been “dealt a similar card” by fate since they each receive these cards by accident and not through any actions of their own. Both of them started a brand new life three years ago in circumstances completely unfamiliar to them and their journeys have converged now. Both have unresolved issues with their pasts and are also very similar as individuals.

It seems to also indicate that through “being dealt a similar hand” their lives will now be intertwined along a similar path, which we also see happening as both end up getting more involved in each other’s lives than anyone else, getting direct insight into aspects of the other individual unknown to anyone but them. I believe it also holds another meaning. In card readings, while the Ace of Spades is known as the Death Card, it does not interpret to the demise of whoever receives the reading. Rather, it points at the ending of something and a new beginning. So these two characters receiving the same card in the episode also indicates that both are to put an end to their previous broken lives and baggage and find something new together and that’s the path the story takes too.

So far in the narrative, the only one of the two whom we have seen giving any kind of special attention to the other, even if heavily disguised as something else, is Spike. However, we do see a change in that from the next episode. Perhaps fascinated by what she saw in the church or by just general laws of attraction, when Spike goes off to kill Wenn, we see the first traces of Faye developing a concern toward him. They insult each other as he is leaving but we see her in the next frame, watching him fly off through the Bebop’s window. True to character, she makes a comment about men being idiots but we know it’s her way of masking the fact that she is feeling concern for him, just deflection.

By episode seven things seem to have fallen into a rhythm as we see both work together to save VT, and their own collective lives. The equation between Spike and Faye is developing in the manner of two extremely thick-headed children who are at each other’s throats the entire time. This is a personality aspect of Spike which is very unique to his equation with Faye. The show builds a marked contrast with who he is on the Bebop versus who he becomes when he goes to deal with his past. He is a more ridiculous version of himself here, more carefree. He is burdened, hunted, and pained when he deals with the past.

His equation with Faye is an extension of this comfort level. Neither is shown to pretend to be something they are not around the other, showing their most pathetic and juvenile sides, giving back as good as they get. We see Spike rely on Faye for backup, trusting her, even as she does the same, but they also insult each other and bicker like an old married couple. That easy camaraderie and the space to be yourself is the crux of their equation. She can hold her own against him and while backing him up.

Episode eight again sees Spike and Faye team up to successfully catch bounties for a change, entwined with Rocco’s story later. Both episodes have Faye commenting on how she is “not the delicate type” and in episode 8 we get to see how well she can handle herself even as a single player as she goes in search for her bounty, but eventually ends up being backup to Spike in a fight, along with Jet.

In episode 9, we see Spike smoothly take over Faye’s bounty mission when it gets too complicated (here’s that example of going out of the way to do something which seems out of place or contradictory to what he wanted to do initially). He wants to sit out that one but, when someone needs to fly to the satellite manually, we see him decide to step in, though she does end up having to back him up eventually when things don’t go as per plan. Jet has given up on the bounty hearing Ed’s complicated instructions and Spike is aware that Faye’s desperation will mean she won’t give up and will end up doing it herself. Both he and we have seen her put herself in dangerous circumstances before for bounties. It is another deflection, covering up his real motivation behind the action by claiming it is for the adventure.

There are sequences throughout the series which I like to refer to as “deflections” practiced by both Spike and Faye. They are shown again and again hiding the real intention behind an act by trying to club it under something else like anger, ridicule, a thirst for adventure, or something equally random.

While prima-facie it is very easy to assume that seeking out dangerous situations is a pastime for Spike’s character, actually he goes out of the way to put himself in danger throughout the series only whenever it is truly needed. He is indifferent to death and does not fear it for most of the series but does not go out seeking danger actively just for the heck of it either, contrary to what is a popular belief about this character.

He goes after Vicious in the fifth session but mentions to Jet he does not want to but has to. Vicious is now aware Spike is alive and if he does not go meet him, he will kill Faye and likely come after Jet too. With Wen, Spike knows he has to go kill him since he needs to be stopped. He goes back to meet Pierrot because he catches on that Pierrot is a psychopath who will not stop seeking him. He goes to confront Vicious at the end because there was no way he could run or hide from him after he had taken over the Syndicate and had that much power behind him. In the context of Faye, he actually does this multiple times throughout the series. Him stepping in here to take over a dangerous stunt for something he was not even interested in is nothing other than trying to protect Faye. I don’t think he admits it to himself at this point of the show either.

We are to understand Spike is aware of Faye as an individual more than he lets on. He sees the ridiculous aspects of her but also knows she has more to offer. In Toys in the Attic he shows awareness of her adeptness at cheating and preferred methods, something where Jet has chosen to ignore his advice. All her idiosyncracies are largely harmless and seem to amuse Spike, giving him fodder to poke fun at her. At this point, she is the funny, potential, but not-quite, valentine.

In Ganymede Elegy, he tells her she is wrong if she thinks all women are like her and there is a scene later in the episode with very subtle sexual tension as we see Faye sunbathing out on the deck, directly in line of sight of the swordfish which he has brought out. There is a pause for a bit and then the Swordfish flies right over her with a lot of force, ruffling her hair. Now, this would happen either way since she is lying directly in its flight path but the scene is set up to hold subtle hints of a building tension and dynamic, the flying off being feigned disinterest on Spike’s part at this point.

I don’t think there is a point where Spike is not attracted to Faye but he chooses to push that down because that’s how he is shown and since, during the first part of the show, he is still hung up on his lost love. At this point, the dynamic here is of confused attraction with one person being emotionally unavailable, leaving the other a bit baffled. For Spike, he does not know if his lost girlfriend is ever coming back to him and having a woman around whom he is attracted to might create a confusing situation. For Faye, unaware of his situation, and feeling something for this individual which seems unrequited, would be extremely confusing as well. She has had a difficult time of things since she woke up in her new life and something like this would not be easy to deal with for someone already in a lot of emotional pain.

I believe what makes Faye begin to feel something for Spike is comfort and proximity. She has likely never had men in her life she could rely on, who were not trying to take advantage of her. But here she is. We are shown consistently that she ends up spending more time with Spike than Jet as they work together on the field. They are also very similar individuals in multiple ways and we are shown that again and again as well (I’ll come to that). There is definitely an element of physical attraction but more than that I feel her feelings develop from the comfort of being able to rely on someone for a change, bickering with him, being able to act herself rather than some seductive persona to manipulate him, stability which she has never had before. And that’s what causes her emotional overload in Jupiter Jazz.

Analysing the relationship of Spike and Faye within Cowboy Bebop

Part 1 of 4

[clarissaweasley-10]

JLB fr is like that one teacher who always shows favourism. And we all know who the fav student(s) are....

[crazy-fangirl2524]

Andrew’s “bottomless rage” and Jean’s “old and ugly rage” are the same in this essay I will -

[roseaesynstylae]

Alpha-17 being a mother hen to the other Alphas* is something we need to see more. Jangotat survives because Alpha stomps in, shrieking obscenities, and drags his ass away, pausing only to yell at Obi-Wan for daring to put his little brother in danger (nevermind that that's what they're currently supposed to do). Maze doesn't tell him about Ordo punching him because if he did, Alpha would make sure the body wouldn't be recognizable as a corpse. Muzzle and Fordo don't get that brotherly overprotectiveness because they're just as prone to mother-henning as Alpha is. On their days off, the three of them team up to make the lives of anyone who dares fuck with their siblings hell.

*Specifically the Alphas that serve the Republic. Do you really think Mr. "They grow up loyal to the Republic or they don't grow up at all" would be at all sympathetic to Sull and Spar's reasons? The best case scenario is that he tells them that he's pulled some strings (read: blackmailed and threatened) to get them back into the GAR scot-free and if they do not accept it he will break their fucking limbs and drag them back.

[al-luviec]

compiled whatever this is (and I run out of tag space)

meh HoT gifs (3/?)

[the-way-astray]

guys i really hate to break it to you, but elves would not consider the moon landing to be a particularly outstanding achievement

[fellamarsh]

another thing i've been trying to do recently is read more self-published stuff. "but fell," you say, "you're a self-published author. surely you've been reading self-published stuff all along" and then i laugh for so long in response we both become uncomfortable.

see, the fear (which has for a long time been killing my mind) that i'll read other self-published stuff and find out that it's so much better than mine that i might as well stop writing forever kept me from doing that basically ever. i have a hard time not unfavorably comparing my work to others and had convinced myself i was being smart by withholding an avenue of de-motivation (reader: i was not being smart). it also doesn't help that i'm pretty low income and have a hard time spending money on books i haven't already read, and that self-published stuff isn't always available at the library---but really a lot of it was just me being a coward. which i'm working on. i could talk about how this particular cowardice is Very Silly, but i think enough has been said about it on writeblr and in the Writing Space in general that i don't feel the need to (though i will if anyone wants me to).

instead, i wanna talk about the self-published things i have read in the past few months and ask about the self-published things you love!

so: what happened was i got real sick, and while i was real sick i (naturally) read over 200,000 words of ace attorney fan fiction in the span of a few days. eventually i got bored of it (and also maybe annoyed at how people were characterizing some of my guys), but i still wanted to read something gay and romantic and nice, something i knew was gonna end happily, which isn't my typical fare.

now you may be saying (having gotten over all the uncomfortable laughter from earlier) "fell, you write gay romance. what do you mean that's not your typical fare?" listen. until a couple months ago i hadn't read a cut and dry romance novel since before i finished college. for context: i graduated in 2015. i know it doesn't make sense. i'm a guy who doesn't make sense.

but in this case it worked to my advantage. not the not making sense thing, but the not having read Published Romance in 1000 years thing. I didn't know where to start. I was very skeptical of everything the library had Available Now in the Gay Fantasy Romance category. what if it was all bad and also not good?

and then i scrolled past the familiar cover of our very own @ashen-crest's A Rival Most Vial.

now this was comfortable territory! this was a novel by a very nice writeblr person whose posts i enjoy! i already loosely knew the plot, i was familiar with the characters, i knew the names of things like rosemond street and the griffin's claw and that ambrose had blue hair and that at the end of it all there would definitely be Boyfriends. i didn't have to worry that this would be bad! i only had to worry that it would be really good!

but i wasn't worried about that, because i was officially Not Writing at the time, and because why the hell hadn't i read this book yet Ash literally emailed me some very kind words last year when my cat died??

Y'all, I devoured ARMV. If you haven't read it yet---especially if cozy fantasy is more your thing than it is mine---you should check it out Immediately. It was fun! It was heartwarming! It was sweet and earnest and confident! I was delighted to find it was occasionally hot! Ambrose and Eli snuggled up into my sick exhausted heart and found a permanent little place there. (Especially Ambrose. I have such a thing for Stiff Guys who Kind of Suck for Tragic Backstory Reasons and are So So Lonely They Don't Even Realize It. gawd)

(And a very small part of my brain spent the whole time wondering why I had been so afraid to really engage with the work my community is doing. The community that I'm in. The one I'm a part of. Why?! Maybe more on that later.)

But from there the curse was broken! I immediately devoured @stjohnstarling's What Manner of Man in a similar sort of frenzy (and hooooly shit guys am I excited for the expanded, finalized version to come out at the end of next month!) and started digging into @lurinatftbn's The Flower that Bloomed Nowhere (which I can already tell is going to be an All Time Favorite).

And now I want to ask you what your favorite self-published books are so that I can read them, too, but I think I will in another post that doesn't dedicate so much space to talking about my various and sundry Issues and isn't Terminally Long

[empyreansentinel]

TELL US ABOUT THE FLESHRIPPERS WE LOVE THE FLESHRIPPERS

OKAYY YAYYY YIPPEEE!

nadia - 2nd gen fleshripper! though her parents are both long since dead. she isnt involved in a lot of active fighting that her clan does and doesn't leave the interior or the soaring dragon very often. she was one of the fleets navigators and got hell for it from flynt whenever they got caught in the flash freeze. ruiz - old boat engineer that lived in the bay who is forced to run maintenance on the fleshripper's ships. he goes along because the faster he can get them off of the glacier the faster that theyll leave them the hell alone. but he makes things Much worse when he tries to take more drastic measures to ward them off. flyntlock - originally was a part of baron’s crew but pushed to the fleshrippers when he died instead of joining the bloodshots. may or may not be a straight up robot (?) instead of a cyborg like most of the other rippers. hes kind of third wheeling captains marriage. its a little embarrassing. titania - meets hammerlock when she catches him out hunting and they are uhm. well they almost made it to being friends! almost. but she values the wants of her clan over him + the other residents of liars berg so when captain gives the order she starts knocking down doors. shes got a very direct way of thinking and though she acknowledges what the fleshrippers are doing is wrong, it doesnt stop her. mutya flynt - sparky's mama :(. outlives both her husband and her son and is in charge of whatever's left of the fleshrippers when BL3 comes around though theyre not really pirates anymore. she has her men stick to the water because its far out of the COVs interest. shes in hyperion custody during borderlands 2 and misses most of the fighting. she also wants 2 attack zane with hammers. jenny-mae hodunk (flynt) - politically engaged to sparky but they never make it to the wedding for. vault hunter reasons. was born and raised in the hodunk clan and took the absolute first chance she could to get out of there. shes moxxis niece! though shes young enough that she doesnt really remember her.

[themyscirah]

"worlds finest" ok but when are they gonna let diana and clark hang out though

[camellcat]

it's irritatingly funny that I can find books for almost any other series like it's nothing and yet somehow doctor who continues to evade me. I just. can't??? none of my usual sites have them, and looking online brings me nothing, and I ??? where are they ?????

[cherriesandcharms]

If you wanted to explain dragon age to someone who's never heard of it (me) what would you say?

this is all v biased bc i love this series

at it's core its a lore rich fantasy rpg. the mechanics change across the three (soon to be four) games, as do the characters, so people have varying Opinions on which game is best. personally i like all three for different reasons, tho i have played inquisition the most

i prefer story over combat, so thats where most of the focus for me is. i like that there are different classes and backgrounds to choose from for your main characters, and that decisions u make during the games impact the world state, and can carry over from game to game.

i wont detail the plots bc it is A LOT. but theres a lot of silly dumb stuff mixed in with the serious that keeps it entertaining

there is a lot going on in the wider universe with politics, religion, class and race struggles. it is a world with magic, so the rights of mages is one of the biggest debate topics. u do have to pick sides, but if u dont care u dont have to read codex entries or ask extra questions in dialogue options

its a series i would recommend to people. you dont have to start with Origins, i didnt, but it can be fun to start from the beginning (tho keep in mind it is a bioware game from 2009, it is crash happy, biggest rec is researching any patches that u might need)

[lesbiansanemi]

God nothing hits like early bleach, the substitute shinigami arc and rukia’s execution arc are just. Ugh. Something about the crunchy-ass early 2000s-ness of it that the rest of the series lost (not just animation wise but aesthetic wise), when there was still hope that all the potential would be capitalized on, idk, it was just fun and getting to fall in love with all the characters because pretty much every single one introduced was great and engaging. I just really really wish the series had kept that early vibe that it started losing once the visoreds were introduced, they got the last little tail end of it. As soon as we got to the heuco mundo arc this all vanished and it’s so upsetting, the series just lost a lot of its personality, if that makes sense, I wish it had kept it so badly

[bulbtooth]

IM FREE