#future installments will have more tickling

[push-the-heartbrake]

𝘼𝙣𝙠𝙡𝙚𝙨 // 𝙎.𝙍

𝘗𝘶𝘭𝘭 𝘮𝘦 𝘣𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘬𝘭𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘥𝘨𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘥, 𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘮𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘥𝘰 𝘪𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘥𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘮𝘴. 𝘐’𝘮 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘨𝘰𝘯𝘯𝘢 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘱 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦, 𝘣𝘢𝘣𝘺.

Third instalment | Series masterlist

Summary: “Look at the poor boy, he’s got the unscratchable itch.” — or the one where you're overwhelmed and Spencer discovers he's an absolute munch.

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Fem! Reader (she/her)

Word count: 13.3k

Warnings: 18+ Minors DNI ♡ Virgin!Spencer is back and hornier than ever. Cums in his pants, again. Oral and fingering (fem! receiving). Slight discussion about reader having mommy issues and her past (read the prior parts and it'll make sense).

A/N: It took me forever but here's the third part to the 'Home For You' Universe! English is not my first language and this is not yet fully proof read! Please tell me what you think and if you have ideas or thoughts about the future of these two lovebirds. ♡

It had been raining when you woke up.

The soft, whispery kind. The kind that worked as a lullaby. The kind that made the whole city feel like it had collectively decided to sleep in.

The only reason you’d even stirred was because Spencer had moved—just enough to pull the blanket up over your bare shoulders sometime around 8 a.m. He hadn’t been fully awake either, just instinctively attuned to your comfort. You’d watched him through slitted eyes as he settled again, his profile soft in the dull morning light. 

Neither of you had said a word.

Instead, you’d nestled closer, one leg tangled between his, your face tucked into the crook of his neck. He’d made a little noise—one he always seemed to make when you burrowed in—a little half-asleep sigh out of pure contentment. 

And that’s how most of the day had gone.

The rain hadn’t let up, and neither had you. No alarms. No responsibilities. Just a tangle of sheets, long-winded conversations about nothing, and the kind of kisses that made no sound from how gentle they were. 

By the time afternoon rolled around, you’d only gotten out of bed three times—once to use the bathroom and get dressed, once for a late breakfast, and once more for another bathroom trip. Spencer had gotten up four times, the extra one to grab the Sunday newspaper from his mailbox.

You were draped across him like a sleepy cat, the sheets twisted around your legs, your chin resting on his chest. His fingers traced mindless patterns on your back, barely there, a touch just shy of tickling.

“Molecules move randomly, right?” you murmured suddenly, voice low from not having spoken in a while. 

The glow of a lamp flickered against the spines of his current bedside reads, casting their titles in blurry shadows. One book was yours, obnoxiously pink, wedged between dense academic texts like it belonged there. Like you belonged there. Spencer thought so, anyway. You watched his eyes linger on it for a second before he looked back at you, the barest hint of a smile on his lips. You infiltrated more of his life and home each day that passed. Even if it was as simple as an extra toothbrush on the sink or your Converse placed next to his in the entryway. 

“Yes, they do,” he answered softly. “Is there something on your mind?” 

You shrugged, shifting so that your cheek lay flat against him now, ear to his heartbeat. “Just something stupid a school class discussed when they visited the library.”

He didn’t press you. Just waited for you to say something. Like he always did.

You absentmindedly rubbed your leg against his, your toes brushing against his calf as you talked. “There was a kid—one of those annoying twelve-year-old dweebs with a Justin Bieber haircut and permanent marinara sauce in the corners of his mouth—you know the type?” 

Spencer laughed, nodding in agreement. 

“And he tried to scare one of the girls by saying that since they move randomly, oxygen molecules could spontaneously assimilate in a singular spot in a room, suffocating anyone outside of it.” 

His brow lifted, bemused. “Were you the girl he tried to scare?” 

“No, no,” you defended, grinning,“I just thought you could maybe rationalize it for me.” 

Spencer wanted to reach out and grab you. Bite you, even.

Because he’d never seen anything as beautiful as you, lying there on his chest, curiosity burning in your eyes, waiting for him to ramble on about something that you knew got the gears in his brain turning. 

He’d thought you were pretty since the first time he saw you at the checkout counter at the library. But it had been fleeting, simply registering another beautiful human in passing. 

It was different now. So very different. Because he knew you, and he could read your behavior, your quirks and traits. The way your mind worked. The strange little questions and facts you collected—like air molecules grouping together to suffocate you. 

He knew that you had different laughs for different situations. He cherished them all and cataloged them like rare editions. 

1. The little snorts that would come out of your nose when he said something silly, usually a pun that bordered on criminally bad. 

2. The high-pitched giggles that wriggled out when his fingers skimmed over your sides, late at night when you were half-straddling him in bed and desperately trying not to wake the neighbors, making the giggles even more squeaky-sounding. 

3. The loud, from-the-stomach kind of laughter—the kind you couldn’t hold back even if you tried—just because something was so genuinely funny. Like when he accidentally turned all his white shirts a soft pink thanks to a rogue red sock, or when he tried to surprise you with breakfast in bed but ended up spilling orange juice all over the bedroom floor.

You let out one of the first snorts now as he explained, nose scrunching up adorably. Spencer was fairly certain you didn’t even notice you did it.

“It is possible, though,” he said, tone casual, trying not to sound too eager. “In theory at least. In a system of random motion, any arrangement of particles is technically possible, including extremely unlikely ones.” 

You squinted up at him, suspicious. “So… I could suffocate?”

“You can calculate the number of oxygen molecules and then find out the statistical probability, but I’m assuming you don’t really want to learn that?” Spencer suggested, his hand moving to his hair, shoving curls off his forehead. 

You found his hand as it landed back down on the bed, lifting it to lay next to you on his chest, your fingers intertwining with his own. 

You shook your head, and he felt your hair rustle, telling him that his assumption was right. “No… I just want to sleep at night without having nightmares about suffocating.”  

He gently squeezed your hand, looking down at you reassuringly. “We’re talking about hundreds of septillions of molecules that would have to randomly gather together.” 

Spencer knew you had a tough time sleeping already. Falling asleep wasn’t the issue; instead it was staying asleep. You would fall asleep at a reasonable hour (for someone who mostly worked late or even night shifts), but then after a while, you’d wake up and just lay there. You didn’t need the added stress of silly nightmares, but he sometimes got the feeling they already haunted you. 

“So the chance is, like, microscopically small?” 

“A septillion is a quadrillion billions.” 

You stared at him for a beat, eyes slightly wide as you tried to comprehend the number. You weren’t even sure what a quadrillion was. Occasionally you got the zeros confused even at a billion. The number was huge, at least. And that was comforting. 

Spencer watched as you thought about it, wanting to take a picture of your puzzled expression. “You’re more likely to shuffle a deck of cards and get them in a perfect order millions of times in a row than for all oxygen to group in one spot.”

You huffed out a little laugh before you mumbled, “I can’t even shuffle a deck of cards.” 

“That I can teach you. Much easier than Avogadro’s number.” 

“Avocado who?” 

“Amedeo Avogadro,” he corrected, laughing out loud. “Italian physicist. He’s the namesake for the constant used to calculate the number of particles in one mole.” 

With a slight head shake and a scrunch of your nose, you declared that math and physics weren’t something for you. “I’d rather learn how to shuffle cards and play strip poker with you.” 

You pressed a kiss to his neck before he even had a chance to react, feeling his pulse jump beneath your lips.

Spencer was blushing—because of course he was. You always knew when you got to him. When your dirty words made his IQ split in half. You’d said it was one of your favorite things—the stupid and surprised look on his face whenever it happened. Spencer was on board with agreeing, even if the blush made his cheeks hurt. 

Your lips brushed the edge of his jaw, and he let out a small, stunned huff. His hand instinctively rubbed your shoulder, your knitted cardigan slipping down from the motion, exposing the strap of your tank top—and the soft, maddening curve of your cleavage beneath it.

One (equally horrifying and fascinating) thing that Spencer had discovered about himself since being with you was that he was a boob guy. He hated to admit it—that something so primitively sexual appealed to him. But he was just a man at the end of the day. 

Since seeing and touching them for the first time, he’d become obsessed.

Maybe it was the fact that you’d sometimes let him sleep on your chest, and he could unabashedly feel them as he nuzzled closer. Maybe it was the fact that your skin was impossibly soft and that your breast were somehow the softest part, squeezable and malleable, cupped in the palms of his hands. Maybe it was the way they bounced when you were sat in his lap, your hips grinding down onto his clothed cock. 

Maybe that was it.

He was a boob guy. And not afraid to let his eyes linger as your cardigan fell down and your top got exposed as you pressed into the side of him. 

Your tank tops were his undoing. It was simply sadistic—the way that whatever clothing brand had designed most of the tops you wore. Thin and soft to the material, a lace trim along the square neckline, and, worst of all, a little silk bow placed right in the middle. It was an evil trick, Spencer was sure of it, to make him stare down the valley of your tits. 

Which he did. A lot.

He wasn’t sure if you’d noticed his little fixation, but you sure didn’t do anything to stop him from looking, almost on purpose making the tank top slide down a little as you lay on top of him, the cups of your bra now peeking out. 

The ample skin moved as you pushed yourself against him, your breasts bubbling out of their confinement. Perfectly biteable bubbles. Spencer imagined putting his fingertip to the swell, just to watch the skin jiggle.

Oh Lord. This was the kind of greed they warned about in the Bible. 

Despite all of this—despite Spencer staring you down like he wanted to eat you alive—you hadn’t had sex. Not yet. Spencer told himself it was a “yet.” Clung to that word like a little life raft. But he wasn’t sure how true it was.

Because you had a tendency to push him away. 

It wasn’t necessarily on purpose, which Spencer had noticed. You made out a lot, kissed him whenever you got the chance, usually for hours on end. Like horny teenagers, he assumed. It was routine at this point—to watch a movie, or read together, maybe have a lazy conversation in bed after a long day—and then by the end of it, you’d end up in his lap, hands in his hair and tongue down his throat. 

Spencer had gotten braver with how he dared to touch you, not always keeping his hand stiffly glued to his side. He loved to feel your skin between his fingers, whether it was your plush thighs or your soft waist. Boobs too, of course. 

If he was capable of keeping it together, he’d wait for some time alone to sort himself out in the bathroom afterwards. But on more occasions than one (five times and counting), you’d made him bust in his pants. And no matter how many times you said it was the hottest thing ever, Spencer still couldn’t help but feel embarrassed to the point of no return. 

And you… He’d only made you finish once. That first time on your couch on Valentine’s Day—when he’d rubbed your soaking clit with his fingers until you collapsed in his embrace. Only touched, not tasted, not penetrated. 

Spencer couldn’t help but want more. And it wasn’t because of his lack of experience or lack of willingness that it hadn’t happened again. 

You simply just didn’t let him close enough to even try. You didn’t show any signs of wanting him to help you out, and he was too scared to ask. 

Can I go down on you? or Do you want me to finger you? were not questions that Spencer had in his vocabulary. Although he thought about saying them more than what was probably healthy. He didn’t know if it was fear from your side, or guilt, or something darker, and he wasn’t going to push.

You would only smile like you’d accomplished what you wanted when he was a panting and blushing mess with a spreading stain on his trousers, and then you’d continue on with your evening like nothing was different. 

And you smiled in the same way now when you followed his eyesight straight to your cleavage. 

“Any plans for next week?” you asked, almost nonchalantly. 

“We’re consulting in California.” Spencer swallowed, forcing himself to stare at the ceiling. “Cold case that’s been reopened, something from when Rossi started out.” 

You hummed and nuzzled just a little closer, your nose brushing the edge of his shirt. If he hadn’t been wearing one, your lips would’ve been right over his heart. The little sound made his stomach flip, which was ridiculous because you did things like this all the time. Making sounds, that is. The very human thing that was noisemaking. 

“How long?” 

“Flying out tomorrow morning, then we’ll see. Maybe a week?”

A week. Seven days. Possibly more. He really should be used to this by now, but the idea of not seeing you for that long made something inside him wilt.

You exhaled through your nose—soft, but unmistakably disappointed—and your fingers loosened from his hand. They disappeared beneath the blanket instead, toying with the hem of his worn-out t-shirt. It had the Caltech logo on it and was slightly too tight on him. You’d jokingly called it a crop top once, and Spencer thought about tossing it out until you said it was sexy. A personal milestone since it was the first time he’d ever been called that. 

“What about you?” he asked, voice low. “Do you have anything planned while I’m gone?”

Now, your fingers brushed against the bare skin of his stomach. Just a featherlight touch. He tensed—he always tensed—but not out of discomfort. No, it was the opposite. It was the unbearable pleasure of being seen and wanted by you, and the helplessness of not knowing what to do with that feeling.

“Work. Sleep. Work some more,” you said, stretching your legs with a lazy yawn. “Help Edith set up her new TV. Maybe catch up with friends. Oh—and uh… lunch with my mother on Thursday.”

Spencer blinked, tilting his head. “She’s in town?”

“She technically lives here,” you said, pushing yourself up onto one elbow. “Unless she sold the place and moved full-time to Baltimore with her new man without telling me.”

He chuckled softly, but there was a strange ache creeping in at the edges of his laugh. You hadn’t let him meet her yet. You hadn’t let him meet anyone yet.

And he couldn’t figure out why.

He sometimes worried he had yet to meet the real you even. 

You fit in perfectly when he introduced you to the team. Socially adaptable was what Emily had called you, like she could somewhat see through that you were nervous and uncomfortable, but still doing your best to be likable. And they did like you, a lot, it seemed. Soon you’d be off on girls’ nights with them, leaving Spencer behind. He knew it. 

You sat up suddenly, rubbing your eyes with the heels of your hands. Spencer looked at you like you’d gone mad. Until you pointed at the alarm clock on his bedside table and he read the time. 

“3 o’clock,” you simply said. “I have to get to my place and get ready for work.” 

“Why?”

The question left Spencer like an exhale. He could already feel a coldness spread in his body from where your contact was now missing. You’d made him hate the laws of time. Every time he was alone with you, he dreaded the moment you’d be apart. And every time you were apart, he counted the hours until he would next see you. 

You laughed, turning to look at him with a raised brow. “You’re asking why I have to work?”

“No, I mean—” he floundered, “Why this late?” 

“Because the library is open at night?” you teased. “Where else would geeks like you spend their time?” 

“But there have to be other people available for the late shifts as well.” 

“I got hired because I like working nights,” you said, standing and stretching, tugging your cardigan back over your shoulders. “The qualified librarians signed up for nine-to-fives. They’ve got spouses and kids waiting for them.”

“You’ve got me,” he said, almost too quickly.

You paused mid-movement, glancing back over your shoulder at him. “Sometimes,” you said quietly. “Other times, you’re on the opposite side of the country.”

He winced. He didn’t mean to guilt you. That wasn’t fair. But you weren’t wrong.

Spencer stayed in his spot as you started to move around his bedroom, padding across the floor to his dresser where your bag and clothes were. He only shifted slightly, propping himself up on one elbow to be able to keep his eyes on you.

The pajama pants you were wearing slipped off in one easy movement, exchanged for a pair of dark-wash jeans. You didn’t seem to care that he was watching, which somehow made it worse. That he could spot the see-through material of your underwear as you tugged the denim over your hips—doing that awkward (yet attractive) little jumping motion to get them on—made him wonder all over again about why you didn’t let him close. 

Since this didn’t seem to bother you, that is. 

Were you waiting for him to make a move?

He hated that his mind did that. He hated that he still didn’t know and that he was too scared to ask. 

“And I have picked up earlier shifts when I know you’re going to be in town. I’ve done it so much that Elizabeth complained,” you continued, arguing your case even though you had already won. 

You grabbed your bag, slinging it over your shoulder, as you headed back to the bed to sit down to put on socks. Little white socks with lace trims. No one would see them, but he knew the mere fact of wearing them made you happy—how the lace peeked out from the top of your shoes. 

“Is Elizabeth the scary one with the owl necklace?” Spencer questioned, turning to you now that you were next to him. 

“Mhm,” you hummed. 

You smiled faintly and turned to pick something up from your bag. A tangle of headphones. An essential for you together with your iPod. You couldn’t go on a walk without them, needing the distraction of music blasting. 

Spencer watched as you struggled to untangle them, wordlessly reaching out to do it for you. Not because he thought you were incapable of doing it yourself, but because you’d asked him for help multiple times before and seemed to like the gesture of him helping you. 

He was more efficient with his fingers, anyway. 

“Hey,” you said, glancing down at him, “why don’t you enjoy being alone for the evening? Watch some foreign movie without having to translate it to me.”

“I was going to suggest Bergman’s Autumn Sonata,” he murmured, handing you the untangled headphones. 

Spencer watched your mouth press into a thin line, eyes flickering just slightly away from him. He didn’t understand why he mentioned the damn movie—like it would miraculously stop you from having work to do? No, it was just stupid.

He knew you loved Bergman. You talked about his work with the same kind of reverence he had for Russian literature. But you hadn’t seen Autumn Sonata. He hadn’t asked why. Not yet. But he made a mental note of it, filing it away in the ever-growing, completely normal, and definitely not obsessive folder of things about you that fascinated him.

Your fingers tightened around the headphone cord, twirling it between them as you quietly said, “I haven’t seen that one. And it’s got subtitles.” 

“I know, that’s why I wanted us to see it together.” 

You shook your head a little. “No, you can watch it and tell me what you think.” 

“You say that like you don’t already know that you’ll love it.” 

“…There’s a reason I haven’t seen that one, Spence.” 

His lips parted, a question already forming—but you kissed him before he could speak. It was soft but lingering, and he felt your fingers curl slightly against the back of his neck. His brain short-circuited because kissing was still something he was getting used to. He was very aware of every single movement, every shift of pressure, every tilt of your head. Was he doing it right? Was he too stiff? Should he be—oh, your tongue—

And then you pulled away, smiling at his dazed expression.

“Will you call me before the flight tomorrow?” you asked, your voice quieter now, stripped of any teasing edge. 

You simply wanted to hear from him. Like that wasn’t a totally insane thing to say. He couldn’t believe you expected him to behave normally in front of you. Or maybe you didn’t expect it, but it would get old quite quickly if he verbally, as well as mentally, freaked out every time you showed him affection—a certain need for him that you actually had and he still couldn’t grasp. 

But still—

“Of course,” he said, embarrassingly quick. 

You smiled, lingering just long enough to memorize the way he felt beneath you, before you straightened up again.

“Be safe. Have fun,” Spencer said, sitting up after you, closing the space you’d created. 

“Fun? At work?” You raised an eyebrow. 

“I have fun at the library all the time,” he teased, so close that you felt his lips against yours.

“Shut up.” You laughed into the kiss he pulled you back into, fingers curling into his hair, warmth spreading through his chest.

Seconds later you were gone. The door clicked softly shut behind you. The sound echoed in the quiet apartment like a pin dropped. 

Spencer stared at the space where you’d been, his hands still half-curled, like he was holding onto the shape of you in the air. His shirt smelled like your skin—soft and floral, and a little like the soap he had in his shower. The sheets were still warm where you’d laid, rumpled and twisted, half falling off the bed.

He let himself collapse back against the mattress with a sigh, one arm thrown over his eyes. Your absence was growing inside of him, starting from his chest and spidering out like a nervous system drawn in light. A slow, luminous burn.

And he was terrified—utterly terrified—that this feeling consumed him far more than it ever would you.

⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚ ⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚ ⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚ ⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚

The case in California was… a weird one, and not the usual type of weird. Because that was a measurable thing for the team. A normal amount of weird, an abnormal amount of weird, and then thirdly—the weird kind they’d never encountered before. 

This was the third kind. Not because of blood, death, and gore. It was stranger than that. Stranger because it was stale.

A forgotten cold case dumped on their laps like an aging puzzle missing half the pieces. Files yellowed with time, reports handwritten in blue ink fading under the fluorescent lights. Evidence stuffed in mismatched cardboard boxes stacked haphazardly in a converted conference room at the local PD—each one covered in decades worth of dust. 

If this was one of those TV series about agents solving crimes and catching killers in the act, this would be the episode where everyone unanimously decided to stop watching because the show wasn’t worth it anymore. 

No progress was being made. At all. 

It was partly because the old detective was territorial and proud—only really letting in the help from Rossi—and partly because the leads went nowhere anyway. 

They were most likely dealing with a copycat. It was one singular murder that had a slight connection to a series of murders committed in the eighties. The connection was: same small town in California that didn’t see many murders and the same M.O. used. Asphyxiation with a barbed wire. 

They hadn’t had any reasonable suspects in the eighties, and the pool of people to look into now was even smaller. Or way too big, depending on how you looked at it. People handling barbed wire in a small farming town was a large amount. 

When Thursday rolled around, they’d spent four days with this going-nowhere thing. Stuck in the conference room with their boxes, pestering old witnesses and relatives by bringing up bad memories, and at the M.E., looking at the new corpse for too long. 

Maybe they would have to give up. 

It was far more usual than what Spencer wanted to admit, but they couldn’t spend forever on one case when they had other ones waiting. 

Rossi had gone with the detective to look at the crime scene once more. Hotch was outside of the conference room, possibly speaking with Strauss by the strained look on his face. Derek and JJ had gone on a coffee run, and Spencer and Emily were left in the conference room. 

He wasn’t sure if Emily was even awake—sat quiet and still in a corner with her file covering her face for over half an hour. 

Spencer had gone from standing to sitting to standing again. 

He flipped open yet another file, scanning the interview transcript, but his eyes weren’t really absorbing it. Not fully. Not when his phone was sitting face-up on the table beside him, untouched since breakfast. The screen annoyingly black and the sound eerily silent. 

You were supposed to have called by now.

Lunch with your mother couldn’t be a simple thing—he knew that much. He’d heard the tone in your voice whenever you mentioned her. A tightness that suggested years of subtle warfare and passive aggressiveness layered under polite smiles. Still, even the most drawn-out emotional lunches didn’t usually last past two o’clock. Unless things had gone wrong, and you were currently trapped in some kind of emotional gladiator battle over a Caesar salad.

Spencer checked his watch. 2:14 p.m.

You were never late without saying something. Not unless something had gone wrong. Which meant something had to have gone wrong. 

The door creaked open, and he looked up automatically. Derek stepped in, carrying coffee and a half-eaten bagel. JJ trailed behind him, flipping through a folder.

Derek clocked Spencer’s expression immediately. “Look at the poor boy,” he muttered to JJ. “He’s got the unscratchable itch.”

Spencer froze mid-step. He’d been pacing, subconsciously. He whirled around. “I’m not in love with her.”

Derek smirked, taking a seat in his chair, leaning back. The exact kind of smirk that let Spencer know he had walked into a trap. “I wasn’t talking about love, pretty boy. But it’s very telling that you think I was.”

Spencer opened his mouth, then promptly closed it. His face burned. Heat crawled up his neck and pooled somewhere just under his collarbone.

JJ gave him a soft, knowing look. “Then what’s wrong, Spencer?”

He inhaled sharply. “She’s not answering her phone.”

There. Said out loud, it sounded ridiculous. But now he was committed. He pressed on, pacing again.

“She said she would call me after she had lunch with her mother, and it’s now 2:16 p.m. That’s a reasonable time for lunch to be over, right? I mean, unless they got a twelve-course tasting menu at a Michelin-starred restaurant, in which case I would understand the delay, but they didn’t! Because they go to the same café every time, and it’s not a place that serves twelve-course meals, unless you count uncomfortable conversations as a course, which, in that case, I’d argue that—” 

JJ cut in gently, “Maybe they just lost track of time? Had a lot to talk about?”

“But she doesn’t like her mother. Or maybe she does. It’s complicated—”

Emily, who’d been eavesdropping at the far end of the room, didn’t even glance up from her file as she interrupted, “No girl likes their mother.” 

Spencer stopped mid-ramble. “That’s not true. I mean, statistically—”

Emily held up a finger, ticking off points as she spoke. “They might love their mothers. Unconditionally, even. But like? Like requires compatibility. And most mothers either carry a sadness that their daughters became something they never did, or they carry disappointment that their daughters became less than they expected.”

Spencer was momentarily thrown. He had a degree in psychology. He had read hundreds of case studies on maternal relationships. And yet, somehow, Emily Prentiss casually dropping this into the conversation like it was an immutable law of the universe had his brain short-circuiting.

The conference room went silent. A metaphorical tumbleweed rolled by.

Spencer stared.

JJ blinked. “Jesus, Emily.”

Emily took a sip of her coffee, utterly unbothered. “What? It’s not rocket science. It’s like if the Electra complex was actually useful and not just about male-centered attention. There’s a rivalry between mothers and daughters over everything.”

Spencer opened his mouth. Then closed it again.

“But,” he managed after a moment, “that still doesn’t explain why she won’t answer her phone.”

JJ muttered under her breath, “Who would’ve guessed boy genius’s kryptonite would be love?”

“I already said I’m not—”

“Reid, take a breather,” Hotch’s voice cut in from the doorway, sharp as ever. “The rest of you, back to work. We need someone to go to the crime scene again. ”

Spencer huffed, reluctantly collapsing into his seat. He stared down at his phone, holding it between both hands like it might sprout legs and run off. His knee bounced under the table. He tried to focus—on witness statements, on timeline inconsistencies, anything—but his mind kept looping back to one thing:

You hadn’t called.

Logically, he knew there were perfectly rational explanations for why you hadn’t called. But his gut—which had been trained by years of profiling and reinforced by knowing you—was telling him something wasn’t right.

He hadn’t ever thought of it like that, the simplicity in the words. How like could be stronger than love—because you choose what you like, and you are somewhat predestined to love. At least when it came to family. 

Gathering their things, Spencer and Derek got ready to leave the conference room and join Rossi at the crime scene. 

He heard Derek mutter something under his breath about how they possibly couldn’t gather any more information from looking at the same bloody barn again. Spencer wasn’t unusually cynical, but with this case, it was growing on him like moss. 

At 2:21 p.m. his phone rang. A quick beeping tone, signaling a text message. It wasn’t often he received those. Everyone stopped in their tracks when they heard it. 

Spencer’s eyes hesitantly scanned the screen. 

He was right; it was a text. A short one too. 

That was it? No Sorry, I forgot; no Lunch was a nightmare, please send a SWAT team, just a quick, impersonal abbreviation. Spencer squinted at the letters, blurring together. He still wasn’t entirely confident about texting as a method of communication. He had once typed out ’See you later’in a message, and somehow autocorrect had changed it to ’Seal utters’. He did not trust this medium, nor his ability to decipher abbreviations. 

Across the table, Derek raised an eyebrow. His voice was lower now, as if he suspected Hotch to still be in the hallway listening. “So… did she answer?”

“No, but she sent a text,” Spencer muttered, “Got called in to work, ttyl.”

“Talk to you later,” JJ translated. “See? It wasn’t something worth getting upset over.”

Spencer slumped, staring at the message like it personally offended him. You weren’t supposed to work until 9 tonight. You had a night shift. You couldn’t possibly work from 2 p.m. all through the night. You were… lying. 

“I still feel like something’s wrong,” he said under his breath as he put his phone in his pocket. Biting his lip, forcing him to not think of why you were lying. He had to focus on other things now. Such as… a bloody barn. 

Emily, yet again, didn’t look up from her notes as she spoke, “Well, the faster that big brain of yours helps us solve this case, the faster you’ll find out if you’re right.”

Spencer sighed. She wasn’t wrong. But that didn’t mean he could stop worrying.

. . . . . . 

The bloody barn didn’t tell them anything new. As evening fell over the little town, it had been decided that they were going home. The old murders would remain cold and the new case would be handled by the local police. It could probably lead to something. It just wasn’t enough to grant them being there for longer. 

Spencer was torn inside if it was the right or wrong thing to do. But there would always be another case, always be another murder. They couldn’t get them all. 

The team boarded the jet in silence. None of them had anything left to say. 

On the plane ride home, Spencer did something he maybe shouldn’t have done. Or maybe this was exactly what you had wanted. He borrowed Emily’s laptop and downloaded Autumn Sonata, watching it all in one sweep, not taking his eyes off the screen for even a second. Emily had looked at him with worry—calling it ’Mommy issues, the movie’. 

And that was what it was. Autumn Sonata unfolded like a violin string pulled taut over the little laptop screen. A mother and daughter dissecting decades of buried wounds in soft lighting and whispered monologues. It was 93 minutes of waiting for a rubber band to snap—either breaking clean or lashing back hard enough to scar.

“The mother’s injuries are to be handed down to the daughter. The mother’s failures are to be paid for by the daughter. The mother’s unhappiness is to be the daughter’s unhappiness—it’s as if the umbilical cord had never been cut.” 

When it ended, Spencer sat very still, the cabin quiet except for the low hum of the engines. He understood why you hadn’t called. 

⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚ ⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚ ⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚ ⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚

It hadn’t stopped raining for almost a week.

From the Sunday morning Spencer left for California to this very moment—early Friday at six in the morning, with your shoes squelching every other step and the sky still weeping as if the clouds had lost the will to hold anything back.

You had lost that will too.

You usually liked rain. Found it calming. Romantic, even. But right now? Your socks were soaked through your Converse, the sleeves of your coat clung cold and damp against your arms, and your jeans had turned several shades darker than when you'd left the apartment last night. Rain was not romantic. Rain was not poetic. Rain was miserable.

You looked like something dragged from a pond. Not a lot of people were awake to see you in this state, which was a saving grace of working the graveyard shift. That, and the fact that most of your mascara had been rubbed off by staying awake at the checkout desk all night, so you didn’t have to worry about looking like a melting member of the band KISS. Everything else was still miserable, though. 

You climbed the stairs, keys jangling, counting each tired breath. All you wanted was to crawl into bed, cocoon yourself in something dry, and sleep until the world stopped being soggy.

It was all you had wanted to do since 2 p.m. yesterday—when you had gotten home from lunch with your mother, lied to Spencer about why you hadn’t called, and then fallen asleep until your night shift. 

You had wanted to call in sick. But you weren’t sick. Just tired. 

So you suffered through it. Helping a few stressed students, organizing the current popular books, and drinking so much tea your taste buds still felt burned. 

But now, you were seconds from falling asleep on your welcome mat, even just seeing it outside your front door. A little bristly thing saying ’come back with a warrant’ in Pinterest-esque cursive writing. You had told yourself it was funny when you bought it. 

However, the moment you unlocked the door and stepped inside, you stopped dead in your tracks, your cocoon of blankets having to wait just a little longer. 

Because there was a light on.

The vintage Tiffany lamp on your hallway table, seeping light through its stained glass. You definitely hadn’t left it on before leaving yesterday. 

With a quick turn of your head, you saw the shape of a man sitting on your couch. Alone there in the darkness. 

“Spencer?” 

He stood up quickly, startled.

“What are you—” 

Your words got stuck in your throat at the sight of him. The man in front of you looked like he hadn’t slept in days. Spencer’s shoulders slumped forward, the crisp lines of his usual attire replaced with something wrinkled and weary—his sweater and tie gone, shirt half-untucked. Disheveled curls clung to his forehead. And his eyes… His eyes flicked from the floor to your face like they couldn’t decide what was safer.

“Edith let me in,” he said hurriedly, like he’d rehearsed it. “I—she had the spare key you gave her, and I just… I needed to see you.”

You placed your soaked bag by the door, the water from your coat already beginning to drop onto the floor. “You weren’t supposed to be here until tonight.”

“I understand if you don’t want me here—” he said quietly, eyes lowered, “Actually, I do not understand, not fully, because you won’t tell me anything.”

You blinked at him, shivering now that you were standing still. “How long have you been here?”

“We landed around midnight. I took a cab straight here.” His voice cracked at the edges. “I thought maybe if I saw you in person, you'd actually talk to me instead of… abbreviating everything.”

A pause.

“T-T-Y-L,” he repeated bitterly, “Is that really how we communicate now?”

You winced. “Spencer…”

He didn’t flinch exactly, but his shoulders rose—defensive, folded in. “You can throw me out headfirst if that’s what you want, but you should know that’s the opposite of what I want.” 

For a moment, just a flicker, he laughed—something small and tired and helpless. But it disappeared fast. His face crumpled into something far too raw for someone trying to act composed. A dull, terrified shine behind his eyes. Like he was seconds from breaking again. Like he'd been bracing for you to become the next person to walk out on him.

You should’ve known he would catch you in your lie. He wasn’t easy to fool. It wasn’t that you had wanted to lie to him. You just hadn’t wanted to talk about…it. About anything, really. You couldn’t face yourself, let alone him. And you knew that Spencer could force it out of you by just looking at you in the right way, the walls of your façade coming crumbling down. 

That was a terrifying thing. 

“I’m just…” you exhaled, bringing the sleeve of your coat up to your cheek to wipe lingering raindrops away. “I’m so tired, Spencer.” 

A similar little helpless laugh escaped your lips. Spencer dared to step closer to you. 

“I can see that,” he said with a slight smile, just inches away. 

But when his hand came forward to touch your arm, you tensed up, unthinking. It wasn’t that you had wanted to shy away. It just…happened. 

Spencer stopped in his tracks, his hand suspended in the space between you, looking at you with a perplexed expression. “Why won’t you let me touch you?”

He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t even frustrated. He asked it like someone who was hurting—like someone who’d been waiting far too long to understand why they were being kept at arm’s length.

“Because I—” you faltered. The words had come so easily to the front of your mind, but saying them out loud was a different thing. 

“Because I’m terrified, Spencer,” you finally whispered. “I’m terrified of being too much for you and making you uncomfortable. Because if we start, I’m scared of taking it too far. I always do.” 

Spencer’s brows pulled together. 

You’d had this discussion before. You thought you were too much; he didn’t realize that he was enough. An evil spiral of sorts. Maybe he’d thought you’d gotten out of it, hence the confusion. But you hadn’t. Or it had at least returned, in full force, like a hurricane sweeping by and taking everything with it. 

“When are you going to realize that I will tell you if I am uncomfortable?” 

The look in Spencer’s eyes was now the closest thing you’d seen to anger. It frustrated him. The walls you put up around yourself, thinking you were protecting him, hindering him from being close to you—they frustrated him. Because now he knew the reason. 

And quite frankly, the reason was stupid. You both knew it. 

You couldn’t hide from affection in a relationship. Because you were terrified of it leading somewhere further? That defied the entire purpose of your relationship. It was a support system, a center of gravity. It couldn’t develop if you were scared of that exact thing. 

Spencer exhaled loudly, shaking his head. “You always just… assume that I’m uncomfortable. For once, let me make up my own mind. ” 

“You sort of… look uncomfortable.” You twisted, arms coming up to fold over your chest. 

“I think that’s just my face,” he deadpanned. 

You huffed a quiet laugh—half relief, half disbelief.

“But you never make the first move,” you said softly. “You’re never the one to kiss me first. Never the one to—” 

He moved.

Quick, certain, finally—he closed the last of the space between you, and before you could get another word out, you felt your back hit the door. Not hard, just enough to steal your breath. And then his mouth was on yours.

His hands braced beside your head, then slipped down, anchoring you at your waist. It wasn’t rushed or messy. Just certain. Very certain that this was what you both wanted. Needed. 

Your fingers curled into his shirt, tugging him impossibly closer and not caring if you got him wet. You could taste the coffee he must’ve had hours ago. The slight salt of your own skin where the rain had dried between your lips. His breath shook when he finally pulled away just enough to speak.

“Is that better?” Spencer whispered, forehead pressed to yours.

You nodded, not trusting your voice.

“I’ve been waiting for you to tell me what you want,” he explained. 

You should’ve caught on to what he was doing. For him to suddenly become all confident in matters of… love (?) was something you simply dreamt of. Maybe you needed to help him along the way, even though your stupid brain kept telling you that it would make him view you as a burden. As someone too much, too eager, too loud with feelings he hadn’t asked for.

Yet here he was… actually asking for it. 

“What I want…” Your hands slid up his chest, feeling his heartbeat under your palm, ticking impossibly fast. That gave you courage. “…is for you to want me.” 

“I do want you,” he said. “Painfully so.” 

“I need to hear you say it,” you whispered. Then, a small smile. “Or show it. Pushing me against the wall is… a good start.”

“I believe we’ve established precedent,” he said, returning the smile. 

You laughed, light but wrecked, and for a second everything felt okay again. And then you shivered. A cold, involuntary tremble you couldn’t hide. The wetness of your coat and jeans clinging to your skin returned to the forefront of your mind. 

Spencer noticed it too. You couldn’t help the way your teeth chattered. He smoothed a hand gently down your arm, concern flitting through his features. “Why don’t you go get out of these wet clothes and lie on the bed for me?” 

In seconds you saw the fear in his eyes, noticing what he’d actually said out loud. Intended innuendo or not. Spencer stumbled over his next words, hurried and ashamed. “If that’s okay, I mean—” 

You continued to smile. An awfully content smile, like you were just waiting for him to notice that he’d done exactly what you wished for.

With a loud thud, you had shaken your coat off your shoulders, sneaking past him further down the hallway, saying a little sing-song, “Already on my way, Spence.” 

You didn’t look back as you walked toward your bedroom. But you could hear him exhale—something long and full of relief. 

Your bedroom was a sanctuary, always had been. Peeling off your soaked socks with your toes, you moved through the dim space, switching on the bedside lamp and the soft glow of fairy lights tracing the ceiling’s edge.

You sat down on your bed as you got there, struggling with the button of your jeans. It got even worse as you dragged the denim down your legs, the wet material sticking to your skin as your hands tried their best to get a good grip.

It wasn’t the rain slicking your hands anymore. It was a nervous sweat. 

“You got here too quick,” you said as you heard his footsteps near the door. “I’m not done yet.” 

Spencer lingered in the doorway, simply observing you on the bed, jeans pooling around your ankles. 

“Jeans are difficult to get off when they’re wet.” You huffed out a little laughter as you pulled them off completely, tossing them to your hamper, landing on the floor. You should’ve hung them to dry immediately. But Spencer was more important. 

Pantless, you realized your state of undress, reminding yourself that it was what he’d asked for. He wouldn’t be standing in the doorway if he didn’t want to see it. 

You tried to decipher his expression. Soft smile, even softer eyes. 

“Is that my shirt?” he quietly asked, walking into the room. His feet stopped when he was standing plainly in front of you. 

You looked down at what you were wearing. Peeking out from your sweater were the edges of a pink dress shirt. One that he’d accidentally dyed pink in the wash. Spencer had wanted to throw them all out until you said that you liked the color pink. In general, but especially on him. 

You could only nod at his question. There was no denying it. Looking back up, you caught a glimpse of an uncontrollable smile, where he had to fight the corners of his mouth from perking upwards too much, too noticeable. 

“You wore my shirt all day? To work? To lunch with your mom?” Spencer asked. 

You shrugged, lifting your rain-soaked sweater over your head, messing up your wet hair even further in the process. Spencer took it in his hands, throwing it over to where the jeans had landed. 

“It smells like you,” you said, lifting the pink poplin to your nose. “Or it used to. I’m afraid it smells like me now.” 

It was a comfort thing, you realized as you did it. Why you had worn it. Wanting a part of him near you, even subconsciously. 

Spencer’s gaze moved slowly across your body, not greedy. Your thighs flattened out against the mattress, the skin in contrast to the rose-colored shirt. You felt his eyes on you as he took you in. He was good at watching, bad at talking—you concluded. 

“Stand up?” he asked softly.

A little surprised, you obeyed, rising slowly from the edge of the bed, the mattress creaking beneath you. Spencer stepped a little closer and let his hands rest gently on your waist, fingers brushing the fabric of the shirt—his shirt. His warm palms wandered down to your hips, brushing the hem of the fabric and the tops of your thighs in an easy movement. 

He didn’t rush. Not even a little. 

Not even as his fingers started to unbutton the shirt. He could’ve ripped it open in seconds, but he began gently with the lowest button. 

You could feel his breath on your skin as he leaned in, eyes still focused on the buttons up the center of your stomach. His fingers moved with quiet precision, undoing one, then another, then another—his knuckles grazing your skin, warm and steady.

When he reached the last few buttons, right over your breasts, he looked up at you. Waiting for something. Your nod. Something saying yes, yes, yes. 

With the last button undone, you let the shirt fall to the floor.

Stood there on bare feet in nothing but your underwear—your worn-out, simple white bra and a pair of cotton panties where the elastic had started to fray—you couldn’t help but feel the nerves settling in again. Steady and heavy, like a weight on your chest. 

The air was still cold on your damp skin, but his hands were warm when they skimmed your sides. Spencer snuck his arms behind you, fingers ghosting over the clasp of your bra, waiting again, always waiting for the yes without asking it aloud.

And then, with two quick movements…

“Do I ask how you did that so well?” you asked, blinking as the straps slipped off your shoulders.

“I’m efficient with my fingers,” he said absentmindedly, still focused, eyes gentle but studious. 

You blinked once, bit your lip. He didn’t even realize the double meaning—of course he didn’t. In his mind, “efficient with his fingers” meant things like… moving chess pieces or untangling cords.

But the way Spencer’s knuckles dragged along your arms as he slid your bra down made you sure that he wasn’t completely innocent or unaware of his actions. He caught the garment in his hands before tossing it on the floor too, his hands quickly back holding your hips.

You reached up and touched the side of his face. “Come closer.”

Spencer looked at you briefly. You knew the spots where his eyes wanted to linger. Then, he pulled his own shirt over his head, putting it aside. You weren’t entirely used to him shirtless yet, his pale, lean yet strong build hypnotizing to you. His arms wrapped around you, skin to skin, almost pulling your feet off the floor as he embraced you. His chest was warm against yours, and you buried your face into the crook of his neck, breathing him in.

“You still smell like you, at least,” you whispered.

Spencer smiled against your hair. “That’s good.”

He was gentle as he led you towards the bed, the back of your knees bucking as you hit the mattress. In a brief moment of disconnect, you shuffled to lie on the bed, sighing as your head hit your mountain of pillows. 

With one leg propped onto the bed, Spencer waited a moment before he joined you. He loved seeing your skin. As simple as it was. He could get lost as his eyes trailed the texture of it. Scars, bumps, bruises, and birthmarks. Almost completely naked too. He wasn’t just a boob guy—he was a you guy. That was easier to get on board with than the simple stereotype that boobs were just great. 

Spencer got in beside you, a slight touch of his fingers all the way from your ankle up to your shoulder as he settled on top of the covers. On his side, his body cradling yours. 

His palm rested flatly on your stomach, moving with your heavy breathing up and down. You didn’t say anything but turned your head to meet his, lazily adjusting forward to kiss him. Kissing him was all you needed to feel safe. To feel that it was true. 

With a soft, open-mouthed trail, Spencer left kisses all over your face, down your neck, and chest. His hands started to roam as well, carefully gripping at your skin. 

“Let me take care of you, angel,” he whispered as his mouth landed in the valley between your breasts. He looked up at you with golden warm eyes. 

“Angel? That’s new,” you whispered back. Once his fingers dared to wander so low that he could run them over the fabric of your panties, feeling your arousal that had soaked through, you audibly hitched your breath. “I— I like it.” 

Spencer moved his body to hover over you, lowering down between your legs as you purposefully spread them apart. He was a scrawny mess of limbs most of the time, but somehow felt natural crouching together at the edge of your bed to face your most desperate parts. 

“Tell me what you want,” Spencer said, his hands touching over the soft swell of your stomach, down to your hips, but hesitant when they came back up, nudging the underside of your breasts. His nerves were finally showing. “And I’ll do my best.”  

You intertwined your fingers with him, making sure to have eye contact as you teased, “All bark, no bite, huh?” 

Spencer was flustered. You’d seen through his confident act since it began, but you enjoyed watching him try. He opened his mouth to say something, shutting it just as fast as he overthought. It was like you could see his decision-making happening, the signals connecting in his brain. 

“Do you want me to explore instead? Trial and error?” he finally asked, tilting his head slightly with a boyish grin. He took small breaths that you could feel against your stomach, waiting for an answer. “Because I have a few ideas I’d like to try.” 

You couldn’t wait to pick his brain, wondering exactly where he had gotten his ideas from. He was an anomaly as is. It wouldn’t be from an adult film or magazine. Knowing Spencer, it was something scientifically proven or from literature written centuries ago. 

“You—you can try,” you breathed out, running a hand over your face, feeling the warmth from your own cheeks. He could fluster you too. “Y’know that you don’t have to, like—you can stop immediately if you don’t like it—” 

He cut you off. “Let me try before you decide for me.”

Assertive. That was new. 

With the same warm eyes from before, he sought you out as his fingers found the hem of your underwear. You nodded eagerly, lower lip lodged between your teeth. 

You wanted to help him—rip the fabric off in seconds. But he took his time. Agonizingly slow as he bunched the sides up between his hands and started to pull them down your legs, shifting your hips slightly upwards to ease the process. 

You kicked them onto the floor with the help of your foot as soon as you were able. There was something desperate growing inside of you as Spencer found his place between your legs again. 

He was big with his movements first, heating your skin up—your stomach and thighs—using the warmth from his palms. Softly cupping your boobs, he pushed them together as his thumbs toyed with the nipples. Then he was gentle, with smaller movements. As Spencer’s fingers slid all the way to your pussy, slowly spreading your lips apart with pressure on each side. 

His thumb was first to touch your clit. Barely any pressure, just to watch your reaction to it. He pulled away, to see your wetness cling to his skin, before he gently swiped over it again. 

Spencer looked at you in a way you weren’t sure you’d experienced before—with a certain awe or fascination. Really took in the view of you naked, like he had all the time in the world. It felt intimate in a weird way. But not necessarily uncomfortable. You cursed yourself for being used to guys who fucked you with the lights turned off or under blankets, not someone who would drink in the sight of you aroused. 

On Valentine’s Day, when the first piece of your sexual puzzle together had been laid, you almost hadn’t had the time to feel nervous. You’d been too focused on Spencer and on his pleasure. When he had wanted to get you off with his fingers after your little dry humping session, you’d let him do it in a (desperate) heartbeat. That you hadn’t shaved or that no one had seen you naked in close to three years wasn’t at the forefront of your mind then. 

It was painfully obvious to you now, though. An outgrown little thatch of hair, your leaking entrance clenching around nothing, and your skin… flawed. 

Resting his cheek on your thigh, Spencer tilted his head to look up at you, his finger inches away from tapping your clit again. 

“I don’t tell you enough how pretty you are.” 

He said it simply. Easy. No qualms. 

Your brain shut off for a moment when you saw him lick his lips as he touched your pussy again, your eyes squeezing shut at the tingling pleasure. 

You truly did look pretty through Spencer’s eyes. Angelic even, the accidental pet name he had used suited you perfectly. With your damp hair clinging to you, your skin still slightly cold to the touch, your nipples pebbled like peaks.

“Can I—” 

Spencer couldn’t finish the question, the words stuck in his throat. Slightly mesmerized by the view in front of him, he teased the pad of his index finger around your clit, down towards the entrance, gathering your wetness along his digit. 

“You can finger me—yes, Spencer.” 

With a low groan, you hummed in agreement as he began to push the finger inside of you.

It slipped in easily, even though it was noticeably bigger than what you were used to. Your own fingers would do nothing after this. He was tentative at first, like he took in the feeling of your cunt, warm and tight, around his finger.

“Is this—Am I doing it right?” 

He sounded slightly worried but just as he asked it, he curled his finger upward, touching a spot deep inside of you. 

“Oh, uhmf—” you gasped. “Right-fucking-there. You’re good at this.” 

“I’m a virgin, not a monk.” 

“Could’ve fooled me—”

With the building wetness, Spencer slipped his ring finger inside of you too, catching you off guard. He never took his eyes off of you, though, in case you would change your mind. But you didn’t. You couldn’t when it felt this good. A surprised curse left your already open mouth together with a ringing laughter, “Oh f-fuck you.”  

Just the thought of you made his painfully hard cock leak in his boxers. Your taste, however, would send Spencer over the moon. You reached down to push the curls off his forehead as he finally delved in, leaving a series of kisses and nibbles on your inner thighs before you felt his tongue between your folds, his hands helping your legs up to spread apart even further. 

“You’re sweet,” he mumbled. Just as quickly as he had said it, his mouth was back on you. 

Tentative, again. But observing. Tuned into your body. Your reactions, your sounds. To every little touch he made. He tried out different methods, switching from gentle kissing and sucking of your clit to using all of his tongue to lap you up. 

Your thighs closed around his head when he did it, your cunt tightening around his fingers as he continued to work them in and out of you, sucking even harder and longer on your clit. Spencer could easily piece together that it was your favorite part—the long, repetitive suckling. Together with his fingers touching that special spot deep inside of you. That was what brought the most mind-blowing little moans from your mouth, staggered and breathy. His observing nature made him a natural… and a mess, face glistening from your slick. 

Spencer’s hair felt silky in your grip, tugging slightly as you settled into the pleasure he was giving you. You couldn’t help it as you started to rock your hips against his mouth, his nose pressing at your most sensitive part. Spencer choked out a groan as he realized what you were doing, the vibrations from it going straight into you. 

Disguised behind your own cries, you heard him time and time again. Spencer’s sounds vibrated against your skin, sending jolts of added stimulation. He was moaning into you, clearly lost in the moment, just as much as you were. When you looked down, his hips were rutting hard into the mattress, desperate to rub his aching cock against anything, desperate for relief as he ate you like he was losing control.

“I’m close, Spence,” you gasped, shuddering, the grip his hands had on your hips only getting tighter. “That’s—right there, please, I’m gonna cum.” 

He wrapped his hands around your thighs, pulling you closer than you thought was possible, continuing to whisper sweet nothings into your cunt, telling you to let it all go. 

With one last curl inside of you and a couple of lazy kisses to your clit, stars began to form behind your eyelids as Spencer held you down by your hips. Your hands flew from his hair to your face, covering your cheeks as you came. 

Spencer had noticed, even in non-sexual situations, that you were innocently shy about your own pleasure. Shy of taking, shy of enjoying. You probably always had been. But as he slid his fingers slowly out of you as you climaxed all up in his face, you were everything but shy. Your stomach tensing, your breathing stopping—and the sound, god what a sound. Deep from your throat, louder than he’d ever heard you. 

With a curious gaze, he watched your pussy clench around nothing, twitching as you rode the very last second of your orgasm out. Slowly licking, he cleaned the slick from between your folds, around your cunt, before returning his focus to your face. 

“Y’know, the  female orgasm can last for up to 60 seconds, sometimes even longer.” 

With your hands still glued to your cheeks, feeling nothing but burning heat, you malfunctioned a little as he spoke. “Why are you—oh my god, Spence. ” 

He came up to lie beside you as you were still nothing but a panting mess. Of course that would be the first thing he’d say to you. 

“Explains the aftershocks.” 

You guessed it did. You’d be reeling from this feeling for days. 

Spencer’s non-sticky hand gently took one of yours, removing it so you couldn’t hide your face. Intertwined, they rested on your stomach, still heaving irrationally from your breathing. You looked down at yourself, and at Spencer. Lovingly, almost. There were crescent-shaped indents on your thighs from his fingernails, your soft skin having spilled out between his fingers as he had pressed close to you. 

He breathed heavily beside you too, still catching his breath. You had almost expected it to happen, but you still smiled like a fool when you realized it. The dark stain on his soft gray trousers. His bulge not so prominent, but still a sign of what had happened. 

“Don’t mention it,” Spencer said, like through closed lips. 

Catching his sight, you shook your head with a little laughter, “I’ll take it as compliment.” 

And it was. Truly. To not always be the giver, but the receiver. And to have someone enjoy you receiving pleasure so much that it ends up bringing them their own pleasure. Again, you were ruined by men (boys, really) who were so focused on their own cocks reaching the final destination that you were only really there as a vessel for their own orgasms. You didn’t know the last time someone offered to go down on you, and for it not to be the result of you asking, making you feel like a burden for wanting it.  

Turning to your side, you laid your head on Spencer’s chest, letting out a breath that felt like it’d been lodged in your ribs for hours. Your legs tangled with his instinctively, and you sank into the heat of him, body finally relaxing in the aftermath. It took about five seconds for the awareness to hit: you, naked, skin to his still clothed legs, with nothing but the slight stick of sweat and something more lingering between you. 

One of Spencer’s arms curled around you automatically. The other hovered awkwardly in the air, like he wasn’t sure what to do with it—just a few inches above the sheets.

“Sticky fingers?” you asked, amused. 

“Y’know, it’s not as sticky as I first thought it would be. It’s more… wet—” 

As Spencer explained, you grabbed his hand without thinking, looking up into his eyes for any sort of intel but being met with a mostly blank stare as you guided the two fingers he’d used into your mouth, swirling your tongue around them slowly. Lazily, curious if it would short-circuit his brain as easily as you suspected.

You were not disappointed.

“Jesus C-Christ—” Spencer’s whole body tensed beneath you, mouth parting in a sharp gasp.

A slight giggle was your only response. Lifting your head, your cheek had left a faint pink imprint across his chest. Truth be told, the entirety of Spencer was flushed. Face, neck, stomach. He was a study in pale skin turned soft rose. 

“It’s like I can hear you overthinking,” you murmured, your voice rough around the edges, the way it always was when you were soft and…coming down.“And you really don’t have to.”

He hesitated, then shyly whispered, “Was I… Was that any good?” 

The corners of your mouth lifted, lazy and genuine. “It was really good, Spence. Did you enjoy it?” 

You felt him tense beneath your fingertips. He didn’t answer right away, too busy internally dissecting the phrasing—really good? As opposed to just good? Or better than expected? But before his thoughts could spiral, you kept talking. Doing what you always did: catching him before he fell too far into his own head, usually with something crude. 

“You’re better than most men by principle,” you said, casual and completely sincere. “You know where the clit is.”

Spencer groaned, dragging his arm over his face. “You really have no filter, do you?”

You laughed—low, warm, the kind that curled around his mind and stayed there. “Is that a bad thing?”

His voice came muffled through the crook of his elbow. “No. I love you for it.”

You stilled—just for a second. You didn’t say anything, but he felt the shift. The way your breath caught. The way your eyes lifted to look at him again, just to make sure you’d heard him right.

“You love me… for it?” 

It wasn’t the first time you’d thought about what this was, what it meant. Part of you had worried once that maybe Spencer only loved you because he could. Because you were the first person to touch him like this, see him like this. That he was falling in love with the intimacy itself—not with you.

But that fear didn’t live here. Not in the quiet way he touched you. Not in the way he listened. Not in the way he waited—for you, for your pace, for your yes.

You knew, somewhere deeper than your mind, that this wasn’t a performance. Not a conquest. Not the story of the virgin who loved the first person who said “stay.” The stupid virgin who fell in love with the person they had given up everything to. (It wasn’t everything. Far from it, actually).

As you had grown to know him, you realized how foolish you’d been to ever think that. He’d never wanted this to be one-sided. He was doing it all for you. The two of you. The us. Because if it wasn’t mutual, it wouldn’t be worth it to him at all.

“Mhm,” Spencer answered seconds later, muffled but still easily understood. Then, after a breath, “Should we take a shower?” 

Smoothly swerving the subject. 

Your head tilted slightly. “Like…together?” 

He nodded like it was obvious. “Yes, is that so weird?” 

You grinned. “I’ve never seen you naked.”

Spencer blinked. “I—yes, that’s true. Technically. That feels… unbalanced.”

“Let’s even the playing field then.”

You pulled the sheet with you as you sat up, tossing him a wink over your shoulder. Spencer groaned under his breath—somewhere between overwhelmed and entirely thrilled, watching as your naked body slipped out of the room. 

And in the quiet trail of your footsteps heading toward the bathroom, he found himself smiling so hard it almost hurt.

⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚ ⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚ ⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚ ⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚

The water had already begun to fog the mirror by the time you stepped in, first wiping off the last of your makeup and letting Spencer quietly undress. 

He stood beneath the showerhead, letting the stream beat down on his back and shoulders. His hair, flattened against his forehead, dripped steadily along his jaw. He’d slicked it back once, instinctively, and now little rivulets trailed down the line of his spine. The tips had already begun to curl again, wet and weightless, plastered to the nape of his neck. 

Spencer wasn’t cold—he didn’t think he could be, not with the heat of the water and the anticipation of you coming in behind him. 

Not nervous. Not exactly.

Just… aware. Aware of what this meant. Of how rare it felt to be so bare in front of someone and not feel the instinct to cover up.

He didn’t turn around when he heard the glass door open. Not right away. He just felt it—the slight change in the air, the extra warmth, the soft whisper of your breath as you stepped in behind him, saying a little hi.

Then your forehead pressed gently against his back.

That broke him a little.

Because it wasn’t a sexy thing, or even a performative one. It was grounding. A small gesture of trust. Your skin was slick against his, arms resting loosely at your sides, the crown of your head nestled between his shoulder blades like you belonged there.

Maybe you did. 

He turned around slowly, and you looked at him like you’d been looking all along.

Maybe you had. 

Your body was graceful in the low light, water gleaming as it slipped across your collarbones and traced down the dip of your stomach. Steam clung to your lashes, droplets staying on your cheeks. Spencer couldn’t decide what part of you to look at first. Your eyes always won.

He reached for the soap absently, trying not to fumble it. Jasmine.

The scent brought something up in him—unexpected and nostalgic. A low green bush outside his childhood home in Nevada. White, almost yellowing little flowers. His mother’s garden, where she’d hum Debussy and dig her hands into the dirt, fingers stained and nails wrecked but proud all the same. He remembered helping her water the jasmine in the summer, his small hands never quite strong enough to carry the big watering cans. 

Now, years later, that same scent lingered in your hair. On your skin. Tied to you. Beneath his hands as he lathered the soap over your shoulders and along your upper back. He worked slowly, deliberately. Partly because he didn’t know what to do, partly because he wanted to feel all of you against his hands. 

“That feels good,” you said, voice quiet with his hands running over your shoulder blades. 

“Efficient fingers,” he said without a hint of irony.

You laughed, resting your forehead against his chest, water cascading down between you. “You still don’t realize how that sounds.”

He tilted his head, genuinely puzzled. “How what sounds?”

You didn’t explain. You just kissed the spot over his heart.

The water pelted the top of your head gently as silence filled the gaps between words. It wasn’t awkward. Not at all. Domestic, even. He thought maybe this was what safety felt like. This quiet comfort. 

Spencer washed your back with care like you were something delicate and revered, and when he stepped behind you and wrapped his arms around your middle, you leaned into him like it was the easiest thing in the world.

Eventually, though, the quiet gave way.

His voice was soft against your temple. “Do you want to talk about why you shut me out yesterday?” 

A pause. Seconds long. 

“No,” you admitted. “Not really.” 

“That’s okay.” He tucked a damp strand of hair behind your ear, brushing a droplet from your cheek. “I just… I’m sorry if I made you feel bad. For not answering me. Or for being short.”

You met his gaze. “How you made me feel isn’t the issue.”

“Okay,” he said, carefully. “Then what is?”

Your eyes flicked toward the fogged glass of the shower door. You watched a droplet race another down the pane. “The younger version of myself still stuck inside. Constantly screaming that I don’t deserve this.”

Spencer’s face softened, his breath catching in his chest. “Deserve what?” 

“Being with you,” you shrugged. You tried to make it feel simple. “Being loved by you. Being in love with you.” 

He wasn’t worried that you hadn’t said it back in the bedroom, because he deep down knew—past his own insecurities—that you loved him back. But he hadn’t thought about your insecurities in the same way, how they formed like thick brick walls in front of you and hindered your capability of showing affection. 

Spencer’s throat tightened. “Did your mother bring out these thoughts? That you’re not deserving of love?” 

You didn’t answer, not with words. But your silence thudded between you.

“She’s a…” you started, then bit the words off in frustration.

“You’re allowed to say it.” 

“A bitch, Spencer,” you whispered, uncharacteristic of you to care about cursing. “She’s like comically bad.” 

He didn’t laugh, even though he knew you meant to ease the weight. Instead, he leaned forward and rested his forehead against yours. The water streamed around you, washing the ache away in some way. 

“You are deserving of love,” he murmured. “It would be terrible if you weren’t. Because I love loving you. And I honestly don’t know what I’d do with all of this love if you didn’t let me in to show it to you.”

Your fingertips curled at his chest, right where his heart lived. Then, you reached up to kiss him. Softly, sweetly. Your inhale was shaky as you pulled away, but your voice was clear. 

“I love being in love with you too.” 

After a few more minutes under the spray, you turned the water off, steam wrapping around your shoulders like a blanket. The silence that followed was almost startling—thick and filled with your shared breathing, the kind of quiet that felt sacred.

Spencer moved first, reaching for one of the larger towels hanging on the hook. You didn’t even bother drying off fully before wrapping it around your chest like a makeshift dress.

He grabbed another towel and rubbed it through his hair—quick, automatic motions. But his eyes kept drifting back to you.

You wiped at the foggy mirror with the flat of your hand, revealing just enough to see the two of you reflected back— naked, wet, soft around the edges with fluffy towels in the low light of your bathroom.

Spencer stood there for a moment, drying himself with his towel, just looking at you. Damp hair, glowing cheeks, a surprisingly big smile. 

“I know we’re having a sweet and sappy moment right now,” you began, trying to keep your tone even, “but I have to say—” 

He squinted, seeing mischief in your eyes. “Oh no.”

“You were lying when you said it was five inches soft, Spencer.” 

“Oh my—” He made an absolutely strangled sound—halfway between a laugh and a groan—burying his face in the towel while simultaneously trying to shield what was more than five inches, apparently. Maybe he’d been humble. “Don’t ever change.” 

You grinned into the mirror, entirely smug and still somehow the softest thing in the world.

In a moment of courage, and maybe as a slight comeback, he reached for your hand, laced his fingers with yours, and tugged you gently toward the bedroom.

The bedroom was dim, the morning sun barely sneaking in through the slats of the blinds, casting golden lines across the unmade bed. The covers were still tangled where you'd left them, half-slipped onto the floor.

You paused near the edge of the bed, still towel-wrapped, while Spencer rummaged through his travel bag. He emerged with a button-down and a pair of boxers in hand, the shirt rumpled from being folded too long. It was another pink one. You could tell without smelling it that it hadn’t been washed since he wore it last. California, probably.

“Here,” he said, holding it up. “Arms out.”

You blinked. “You’re dressing me now?”

He gave a small shrug, lips twitching. “If you want me to.”

You rolled your eyes, but they softened as you raised your arms. The towel dropped silently to the floor, pooling at your feet like a sigh. Spencer didn’t react—didn’t flinch or look away.

Spencer stepped in close, his own towel hanging dangerously low on his hips. The shirt slid down over your arms slowly, the fabric catching slightly on damp skin. The hem fell mid-thigh. He only buttoned two buttons, in the middle of your stomach, leaving the rest undone and revealing most of what was underneath anyway. 

But it smelled like him, and that was the sole purpose. You pressed your nose to the collar without even thinking.

You sat down on the edge of the bed, towel abandoned, bare thighs brushing the soft sheets. Spencer stood in front of you, pulling his boxers on beneath his towel before he too abandoned his in the pile of laundry gathered on the floor. 

He didn’t say anything as he moved to your closet, opening a drawer you always kept a little messily organized. Underwear. You wondered if he panicked over the selection—if you would’ve judged him for grabbing a hot pink lace thong or the floral granny panties. 

He settled on a safe pair in black cotton, just cheeky enough. Spencer handed them to you, and you giggled as you slipped them on. It seemed you still had to dress some parts of yourself. 

Spencer then knelt slightly, just enough to be level with you, and placed one warm hand on your bare knee. “Now,” he said softly, “do we eat breakfast, or do we go back to bed?”

You looked toward the window, then back at him with a raised brow. “Spence, it’s 8 a.m.”

He just shrugged. “There are no rules. If you’re hungry, we eat. If you’re tired, we sleep.”

You considered it for half a breath, then leaned forward, wrapping your arms around his neck. 

“Both,” you said into his shoulder. “I wanna do both.”

“Then we’ll do both, angel.” He leaned in to kiss your forehead. 

Thank you for reading! Please let me know what you think ♡ Title and lyrics are from Ankles by Lucy Dacus.

౨ৎ [ masterlist ]

[ma1dita]

a wish your heart makes

a 'partners in crime' installment - luke castellan x dionysus!reader prev -> play pretend | next -> star crossing words: 1.4k summary: (established relationship) The one where you share dreams, burn cookies, and it still reminds him of home. You try to do something nice for your boyfriend and everything goes wrong, or so you think. Luke Castellan x fem!Dionysus!reader a/n: I thought about May Castellan, alone in her kitchen, baking cookies and making sandwiches for a son who would never come ho—OH FUCK OFF, UNCLE RICK. sidenote this haunted me. (posted 1/26/24 unbetad)

—

Luke’s dreams were always different from yours. 

Both when he’s awake and holding your hand up until sleep finally rips him away from your earthly embrace, he’s always been certain of who he was and what he wants to achieve. To be a hero providing salvation for the needy, to be a half-blood son worth the love of a god, and to be a fierce soldier, leading his troop into battle for glory. These are the thoughts he routinely pounds into his brain, so much so that anyone who knows him knows of his aspirations.

You don’t think you’ve ever met anyone so insistent on wanting to be remembered. Luke wants to leave a legacy worth dying for, worth talking about for millenia to come. And your boy persists, despite the trials of life, the ignorance of his father, and the strings of the Fates.

Your dreams, however, were always much simpler. 

Cuddled under your covers and brushing your lips against Luke’s forehead to quell the growing unease that occupies his brain, you whisper what you deeply wish for.

“We’re getting old,” you mumble, and the breath of his laugh tickles your ear. He lazily runs his nose against the slope of your collarbone, sighing when he finally hears the steady beat of your chest, “We’ve definitely surpassed the average life expectancy of a typical demigod. Look at us…” he jests.

Your breath jumps in amusement as you feel his lips against your sternum, and then your boyfriend is smiling against your heart, using you for comfort as you both pass the time waiting for Hypnos to come calling.

“In a year, we’ll be nineteen…And I know you never wanted to stay here forever, so… What’s next?”

You hold in a bated breath, always unsure of where to place yourself in rank of his priorities. Who were you if not his biggest supporter?

Luke contemplates for a moment in the silence of your bedroom. It’s much easier to think and have more adult… conversations… without the many meddling children of cabin 11 always asking for one more lullaby, one more glass of water, and one more tuck-in goodnight. Here in the privacy of your room, he gets to be a boy void of his responsibilities besides hiding under his girlfriend’s duvet, giving her another shirt of his to wear, and kissing her until Apollo’s rays of light gently help you wake.

“You tell me, Trouble. What does the future have in store for us?”

Us.

He’s sweet to indulge in your fantasies like this, and you stroke your fingers through his curls as you speak, ‘I think it’d be nice to go to college. Made it this far, so maybe being normal won’t be so hard…”

A soft noise leaves his throat, urging you to continue as you bite your lip and smile.

“Maybe someday, we could get a house. One on top of a hill. I don’t need much, something like the Big House, but one we can call home.”

You can feel the teeth of his sleepy grin against your skin as he whispers the next words into your heart.

“We could do that. House with big bay windows, and the smell of my mom’s chocolate chip cookies in the air. Sounds nice, baby.”

And it does.

Luke’s eyes flutter shut shortly after, but your mind is awake with how to make the dream you now share a reality. Perhaps you couldn’t give him glory, or pray hard enough to Hermes so that he’d talk to his son, but you reckon that chocolate chip cookies would be easy enough. 

—

At least, it was supposed to be—until you set off the smoke alarm again.

“Oh for fuck’s sake!” 

Clouds of grey are billowing from the communal kitchen oven after your multiple attempts of trying to get this right. The dryads had both partially given up on the havoc you wrecked upon their workspace as well as your increasing frustration towards them. It wasn’t their fault, you knew that—but as a perfectionist who followed the recipe to a t, how was it possible that everything was still going wrong? The first batch, you got too excited and mixed all the ingredients together, making them lumpy and inconsistent. The second batch was over-creamed, and you had to scrape them off the tray, and with this one… well you had the oven setting on a bit too high.

You sigh deeply, pressing the palms of your hands into your eyes as you try to will away the mania creeping up your neck. Being the daughter of the god of insanity was hard, having to consistently control your emotions for the sake of others. Taking a shaky breath, you stare blankly at the darkened cookies, close to being burned to a crisp. The jingle of the windchime against the door rings across the room and you barely hear it until you feel Luke’s hands skate past your waist to go open a window.

“What’d you get into now, Trouble? Been looking for you,” he says, coughing lightly from the smoke.

You groan, trying to cover the mess behind you on the counter and accidentally catching your arm on the hot tray, making you flinch.

“Ow! Ugh, babe, you’re not supposed to be here yet! I thought you were still sparring…”

Your boyfriend approaches you, squeezing your arm to examine if you’ve gotten hurt and tugging you towards him.

“That was an hour ago—how long have you been here, baby?” Luke pulls you into his arms, placing a kiss on your warm wrist, instantly soothing your anxiety until you see his eyes meet your latest failure.

“You bake now?”

“Clearly not, Luke, I’m sorry…I tried but I kept getting it wrong and then I got mad at myself for fucking up something so…” your voice weakens, tears welling in your eyes again thinking you’ve disappointed him.

Luke steps away from you and towards the kitchen counter, warm cookies browned to a crisp. He reaches out to pick one up before you can stop him, crunching down on it, the bittersweet taste filling his mouth as he sniffs.

Just like his mother would make them, through her madness and all.

He’s transported back to a memory of a house with big bay windows, kind of like the one you two dreamt up last night, but he’s nine and sitting at the kitchen table drinking Kool-Aid while his mom makes peanut butter sandwiches. May Castellan forgets the cookies in the oven again, and for a moment, Luke forgets that the last time he saw his mother was a lifetime ago. 

He doesn’t realize he’s crying until he feels your fingertips brushing away the saltwater from his cheeks.

“Didn’t mean to make you cry, angelface, I’m sorry…” you mumble, but stop speaking when you see him take another bite.

“They’re great.”

“What?”

He chomps on another singed cookie, his lips quirking into a soft smile. Luke’s not going to let you throw the rest of this batch out. Chuckling weakly, he lifts you onto the kitchen counter as he slots himself between your legs, rough hands patting your thighs.

“Well, they’re not great. But they’re perfect. Just the way I remember them,” he smiles, kissing the furrow in your brow. You don’t bother trying to comprehend his statement, happy that you didn’t mess up a memory he holds dear. 

Luke wonders if maybe he’s been blessed by his father after all, to have such extreme luck to exist at the same time as you. He doesn’t answer to the gods, to fate, but he does answer when you call his name, and settles into your arms. Love is an action after all, uncontained by just words, and he knows you tried your best, which makes it more than enough.

“She would’ve loved you, I’m sure of it,” he says rubbing his nose against yours before you can interject again, “I love you, so I know she would’ve too.”

Luke presses a tender kiss against the palm that caresses his jaw, before meeting you in the middle and finding your lips. It’s a dance you two have memorized, sweet and breathless as you meld both of your grins together. To him, you taste like chocolate chips and feel like home.

“I love you too, angelface. Almost burned the kitchen down for you,” your chuckle is cut off when he goes to press against your pout again hungrily, tracing patterns against the soft skin of your thighs as he just eats you up. The sound of your moans escapes between kisses as you wind your legs around his waist and it dampens the sound of the kitchen timer when it goes off. 

(You forcibly have to detach from Luke’s embrace, much to his displeasure so that you don’t burn the next batch too.)

—

"Your name is humming inside my chest. I think this is what it means to love. I think this is what it means to be living." -Emma Bleker

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[august-anon]

jason damian and tim arent gonna let dick get away with that im sure... 3v1 revenge STAT

Brother Wrangling series: 1 - 2 (you are here)

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based on when this came in and what I had published at the time, i just assumed that it was meant as a revenge sequel prompt to Brotherly Duties, so I hope I got that right sdkjfhs I actually had some ideas in my head jangling around for a sequel to that fic already, but I think this prompted fic works well as a bridge between the first fic and my own idea! so in the future there Will be a third installment to this series lol

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Brotherly Revenge

Fandom: Batfamily (no specific source material/continuity)

Ship(s): Gen!!! Platonic!! Familial!! No batcest here

Characters (lee/ler): Lers!Jason, Damian, and Tim & Lee!Dick

Word Count: 4684 words

Summary: Dick's brothers decide that he's gone unchecked for too long. They decide to team up and take down their tickle monster.

[ao3 link]

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Dick practically skipped up the front steps of the Manor, humming some earworm pop song that had been playing on the radio before he’d slipped out of his car. Alfred would probably chastise him for parking out front instead of the garage, but the main entrance was so much closer to the family den than the side entrance, and Dick didn’t have the patience for that extra minute, short as it was. Because it was movie night.

Movie nights were far harder to coordinate than family dinners, but Dick lived for them. He got to force as much of his family as he could onto the couches — or maybe even cajole them into building a blanket fort — wrap himself with blankets and cuddles to chase off the chill, and spend time with his far-too-busy family for a well-needed night off patrol.

Of course, one of the downfalls of a far-too-busy family that worked nights was that movie night rarely had a full house, just like tonight. Bruce was off in another country with the JL, the girls had a big case they couldn’t afford to take the night off for, and Duke was on a weekend-long school trip to Metropolis. Dick just hoped the remaining Birds of Prey were able to handle Gotham that evening – if another movie night got interrupted by an Arkham breakout, Dick was going to scream.

As he ventured deeper into the Manor, the buttery smell of popcorn filled his nose. He could hear his brothers talking, but miraculously, there were no arguments. They must have already argued out the movie pick before he got there. He nearly ran smack into Alfred as he rushed down the hall, knocking half his armful of bedding to the floor. He grinned sheepishly as Alfred raised an eyebrow, leaning down to pick up the mess.

“Welcome home, Master Dick.”

“Hey, Alfred. They starting without me?”

“I believe they were growing impatient, sir. Something about you ‘always being late?’”

Dick gave an exaggerated gasp, whirling around to head towards the den. Alfred followed behind at a more sedate pace. He tossed his armful of blankets aside when he got there.

“I am not always late!” Dick grabbed for the nearest brother – Tim, as it happened, and trapped him in the tightest tickle-hug he could. “You try driving in all the way from Blud – I’m perfectly on time!”

Tim shrieked with laughter, trying to fight his way out of Dick’s arms. “I wasn’t even the one who said it!”

“Who said it then, huh? Tell me!”

“Jason! Jason said it!”

“Wow,” Jason said, sprawled in an armchair across the room. “What a wuss.”

Dick chuckled and stopped tickling, turning his hold into a real hug that Tim easily slumped into. “Watch out, Little Wing – you’re next.”

Damian tossed a throw pillow in Dick and Tim’s direction. “We are already behind schedule. Save your childish games for later.”

Dick released Tim, giving him a hair ruffle for good measure. “Maybe Dami wants to be next instead, hm?” He formed his hands into claws, allowing a mischievous grin to spread across his face. “Maybe all the Gotham grumps need a visit from the tickle monster before we have movie night.”

“I would suggest being cautious trifling with your siblings today, Master Dick,” Alfred said as he entered the room, adding his stack of bedding to a neat pile being formed on one of the sofas. Looked like it was a blanket fort night.

Dick snorted. “And why’s that?”

“Jay’s been on a rampage,” Tim stage-whispered.

“Indeed.” Damian glared at Jason. “We’ve already had to endure such foolish activities once tonight.”

Dick raised an eyebrow in Jason’s direction.

Jason raised one back. “Someone had to win the movie pick argument. I got sick of listening to them sniping at each other.”

“And I’m sure you did no sniping of your own.”

Jason bared his teeth in an aggressively fake smile. “Watch it. You’re more than deserving of comeuppance, Dickhead.”

Dick tilted his head to the side, bringing out his innocent, puppy-dog eyes. “What do you mean, Little Wing? I’ve been stuck in Bludhaven for weeks!”

Complete bullshit. Dick knew he probably deserved a healthy dose of revenge, seeing as he often went full tickle-monster whenever he dropped into Gotham. He’d avoided getting a taste of his own medicine so far, but he knew it would only last so long before one of his siblings — or even Bruce — took him down.

Tim and Damian both perked up.

“Richard is ticklish?” Damian asked.

“I figured he had to be,” Tim said, frowning. “I just can’t catch him.”

Jason checked his wrist, despite the fact that he wasn’t actually wearing a watch. “You know, I think we’ve got time for one more round.”

“Whoa, hold on—“

“What for?” Jason casually stood from his chair, stretching his arms above his head. “It’s not like you wait to attack, say, during Mario Kart.”

“You’re a cheater! What am I supposed to do?”

“What about when you drag me away from work?” Tim asked, his eyes narrowed.

“Someone has to make sure you don’t run yourself into the ground. At least I do it in a fun way!”

Damian stepped forward, his arms crossed. “And your interruptions of my training?”

“You’re a kid! You should not be training that much.”

Jason stepped forward, his steel-toed boots thumping heavily against the carpet. “Maybe you need a taste of your own medicine, Big Bird.”

Dick started backing out of the room. “You know what, I’m pretty sure I heard Alfred call for help–”

“No he didn’t,” Tim said. “He just left, he’s not that far away. We’d hear him.”

Jason rolled his neck. “Sic ‘em, kiddies.”

Tim and Damian charged him. Dick couldn’t help the fond laugh that escaped him as they barrelled into his middle, trying to wrestle him to the ground. Unfortunately for them, Dick was well-versed in playful roughhousing. He scrubbed at their hair to knock them off balance, then darted backwards to make them lose their footing. While they were disoriented, Dick managed to twist them both around so their backs were to his chest. He hugged them tight, laughing at their sudden panicked struggling.

“Should’ve known better.”

He started clawing at whatever tickle spots he could reach. Tim was easy — his ribs were far too accessible in this hold, and he lost himself to desperate cackling almost instantly. Dami took a bit longer, squirming and thrashing in stubborn silence as Dick clawed over his sides and tummy until — there, that little patch of skin next to his belly button that always got him giggling like the little kid he was.

Dick couldn’t help but laugh along with them. “Did you guys really think that would work? Come on, it’s me we’re talking about.”

Jason stepped forward again, eyeing Dick thoughtfully. “Looks like your hands are full there, Big Bird.”

Dick narrowed his eyes.

“I wouldn’t count yourself the winner just yet.”

“Jason, help!” Tim screeched, frantically trying to tug Dick’s hand away from his ribs.

Dick was gratified to see Jason’s mouth twitch up at the corners as he looked at the boys laughing away in Dick’s grasp. “Yeah yeah, Timmers — hold your horses, I’m getting to it.”

For a moment, Dick actually thought that the Older Brother Instinct might win out, that Jason instead might join him in tickling the snot out of their baby brothers and forget about revenge. That hope was dashed as Jason met his eyes again, smirking deviously. He should have known. Jason had always been good at holding a grudge.

With Jason still advancing, he didn’t have much time to think. In a moment of panic, Dick launched Damian in his direction, forcing Jason to catch him. Dick wrapped both arms around Tim then, brandishing him like a shrieking shield.

“Dick, no! You jerk!”

Jason set Damian aside like a disgruntled cat. “Arms are still full, asshole.”

Dick cocked his head. “Are they?”

Once Jason got close enough, Dick thrust Tim in his direction too. Jason, the secret softie, paused to steady Tim to make sure he didn’t fall flat on his face. Dick should’ve taken the opportunity to run. Instead, he darted around his brothers and hugged Jason from behind, digging his fingers into Jason’s stomach.

Jason doubled over with a strangled chuckle. Tim and Damian, after being subjected to more than Jason’s fair share of tickle attacks, eyed him as prey just as much as Dick for a moment. At least until Jason got an elbow solidly into his solar plexus, knocking the wind out of him.

“I’m not letting this go,” Jason said, twisting around in Dick’s now-loosened grip. “You’re going down, Dickface.”

Dick saw eight different escape routes from where he stood. Six different ways he could easily take Jason to the ground. He knew he could defend against Tim and Damian’s attacks if he took Jason down – he knew all their moves, had taught them a lot of them himself. Dick knew how to win a fight that was stacked against him, especially against such familiar enemies. He was Batman’s first and oldest student, after all.

Dick let Jason tackle him to the floor.

He put up a bit of a struggle against having his hands pinned, but in a straight-out grapple – especially when Dick was already downed – Jason naturally had the upper hand. His wrists wound up pinned to either side of his head, grip tight enough that even with all his dexterity, he would have a difficult time twisting out of it. He was well and truly trapped. The anticipatory butterflies started swarming around in his stomach.

“C’mere kiddies,” Jason said with an absolutely vicious grin. “Let me show you just how to take Big Bird down.”

Dick growled, pretending to put up a fight to preserve his own pride. He squirmed under Jason’s weight, bucking slightly as if trying to throw him off. A twinkle sparked in Jason’s eyes and Dick had to fight down the flush that immediately wanted to crawl up his neck.

Jason knew he wasn’t really trying to get away. He knew Dick was letting this happen. Dick was never going to hear the end of this again. The mocking was already ringing in his ears now.

“I’m not a kid,” Tim grumbled, but kneeled at Dick’s side anyway.

Damian kneeled down on Dick’s other side. “How do you know where Richard is ticklish?”

“I saw Bruce tickle him down to the mats enough times when I was a kid. I know all his weak points.”

Dick gave him a mischievous smile. “Just like how I know all yours.” He kneed Jason in the back.

Jason grunted, narrowing his eyes, and he let go of one of Dick’s hands just to reach back and squeeze at the offending joint. Dick choked on his suppressed laugh, ripping his leg out of Jason’s grip. His free hand gripped Jason’s shirt, not able to reach his hand to pull it away.

“See? Goldie’s ticklish as all hell.” Jason’s grin turned predatory.

“Where do we begin?” Damian asked, shuffling even closer on his knees.

“Nowhere!” Dick said, playing up his squirming a bit more. “Get off!”

“Where’s his tickle spot?” Tim asked, scanning his torso.

“From what I remember, he’s a walking tickle spot – almost as bad as you, Baby Bird.”

Okay, he was actually going to kill Jason later.

Scowling, Dick kneed Jason in the back again, harder this time. He straightened out his leg quickly, trying to avoid Jason grabbing at it again. 

“Still not as bad as you,” Dick said, a saccharine smile on his face

Jason stared him down. “You’re gonna regret that.” He glanced up at their brothers. “Ready, kiddies?”

Tim glared at him. “Call me ‘kiddie’ again and we’ll team up against you instead.”

“Yeah, good luck with that.”

“No, you’re onto something, Timmy. You knock him over, and I’ll–”

“Damian, start tickling. Shut him up.”

“Wait, no–”

Damian, for once, did as he was told. Hesitant fingers started spidering against his stomach and the side closest to Damian, where his shirt had ridden up in his struggles. Dick bit his lip on a smile, jerking away from the touch. The reaction seemed to give Damian the confidence he needed, as he started to dig into Dick’s stomach in search of the laughter Dick was holding back. Being the youngest of all of them, whether it be the Wayne clan or the full Bat clan, Damian had the least amount of experience being on this end of the tickling. It seemed he was going to take advantage of this opportunity for all it was worth.

“There you go, kid,” Jason said. “You wanna get him real good, go up near–”

“No!” Dick shouted, actually putting some effort behind his squirming now. “Giving away spots is against the rules!”

Jason laughed. “Since when are there fucking rules to tickling?”

“Since now!” He whipped his head back and forth, giving his two youngest brothers a desperate look. “I’ve never told Jason any of your spots!” He looked back up at Jason. “And I never told them yours!”

Jason raised an eyebrow. “So?”

Dick gaped at him. “What happened to loyalty?”

“There is no loyalty in war,” Jason said. “Only casualties.”

Tim and Damian leaned forward again, as if on queue. 

“Let’s start him off easy. Domain – start up again on his stomach. Tim – armpits.”

Dick squawked as his brothers shifted into position. “That’s easy?”

“What’s wrong, Dick?” Tim asked. “Can’t take your own medicine?”

Dick wasn’t given a chance to reply. Immediately after the words left Tim’s mouth, Damian’s fingers were digging back into his stomach, clawing clumsily into his abs. Despite that, it still tickled pretty well. He was clearly unpracticed, but he was doing his best to mimic the torment all of them had inflicted upon him.

Then Tim started in on his underarms, and all hope of Dick keeping his composure was lost. Tim was always nothing if not precise, and apparently that carried over to tickling, too. His fingers travelled slowly around his designated space, paying attention to every tug of Dick’s arms or twitch of his torso.

Dick couldn’t help but burst into laughter, tossing his head back and finally squirming for real. He never could hold still while tickled, even if he tried. Everyone always seemed to find it hilarious; Bruce teased him about it to no end, and the Titans had a habit of teaming up to pin down every limb and tickle him breathless. He wrenched at his arms, but even when Dick wasn’t weakened from laughter, Jason was stronger than him. It would take some tricky Bat shenanigans to get out of his grip, and that was something that being tickled didn’t exactly leave him the brain power for.

“You’re all gonna regret this!” Dick called out.

Jason scoffed and muttered, “Yeah, right.” He raised his voice to direct their brothers. “He can still talk – time to kick things up. Timmy, ribs. Dami, sides.”

Confusion flashed through Dick as they switched spots, his laughter trailing down into giggles. Stomach and sides, they were pretty similar for the most part, but moving from armpits to ribs? How was that meant to be worse for Dick? Then as Tim’s fingers spidered down his ribs and Damian’s fingers crawled up his sides, Jason’s plan hit Dick like a truck.

“Don’t you dare–”

Jason grinned down at him, toothy and mischievous – a spitting image of the grin Jason wore whenever he donned the Robin costume as a teen. For a brief moment, Dick’s heart ached. 

“Boys, focus just on the side closest to you, keep up exactly what you’re doing.” 

The heartache was swiftly replaced by excited panic.

Tim and Damian exchanged a confused look but obeyed Jason nonetheless. It was the easiest he’d ever seen either of them take orders – maybe he should let them team up against him more often, if it would make them this agreeable. Team bonding and all that jazz.

And then Damian’s fingers hit that horrible spot just beneath his ribs and Dick lost all coherent thought. He shrieked with laughter, rolling his upper body away from Damian’s fingers as far as he could. Both Tim and Damian jumped at the sound, pulling away briefly. Then, Tim gave him an absolutely evil grin.

“Oh, this is gonna be fun.”

“Timmy–” Dick said, wriggling like a worm under Jason as Tim and Damian shuffled back into place. “Timmy, you don’t have to do this.”

“You’re right, I don’t.” Tim made eye contact. “But I’m going to, anyway.”

Dick yelped and jolted to the side as Tim’s fingers approached. He turned his pleading look on Damian. “Come on, kiddo – you had your fun. Let’s just watch the movie, yeah?”

Damian raised his eyebrows. “Do you think me a fool, Richard?”

Jason leaned down, looking Dick in the eyes. “You deserve this, asshole.”

Tim’s fingers latched onto that awful spot, and Damian’s fingers weren’t far behind. Dick shrieked again, arching his back to try and escape, but with Jason sitting across his thighs, he had nowhere to go. He collapsed back onto the carpet, cackling like a madman.

Tim continued to be methodical in his exploration, feeling out the exact boundaries of the tickle spot by gauging Dick’s reactions. Once he’d figured that out, he went to town with every tickle method in the books: spidering, massaging, wiggling, tracing, squeezing. He was probably trying to find the most effective way to pick Dick apart, but Dick didn’t think it really mattered. Every single one of them made Dick lose his mind.

Damian, though he would likely stab Dick for saying so, was a bit more clumsy – but that didn’t mean it tickled any less. He started with pokes and prods, feeling out the tickle spot similarly to Tim, before going in with quick, sporadic squeezes that were absolutely ruthless on his hypersensitive nerves. Every once in a while he switched to wiggling his fingers deep into the muscles there, something that made Dick jolt every time, but he seemed more partial to the squeezing than anything else.

And the whole time Jason just watched, a taunting grin on his face. Sometimes, if Dick made a particularly amusing sound, Jason (and the boys) would laugh along with him. In other moments, Jason teased him, and Dick knew if the laughter hadn’t already stained his cheeks red, Jason’s words would’ve done the trick.

“What’s wrong, Dickie? Can’t take your own medicine?”

“Whoops, that one really tickled, didn’t it? Dames, do that again, he jumped like, a fucking foot in the air.”

“Timmy’s fuckin’ ruthless, huh? Bet you regret tickling the shit outta him. How’s revenge feeling, Big Bird?”

“God, if only Bruce were here. You think he’d break out the Bat-camera, take a picture of his golden child getting the snot tickled out of him? Seems like something the old man would do, the damn sap. I bet he’d put it on his desk in the study, and then you’d have to see yourself getting tickled to death every time you went down to the Batcave.”

This was it. This was how Dick died. He could barely even protest or call out threats of his own, he was laughing so hard. His brain had turned into absolute mush, though the space between his ribs felt lighter than he had in a while. Goddammit, this was fun, and that was something he could never let his brothers know – at least, not more than Jason already knew. They’d never let him live it down and he’d never go another Gotham visit without one of them trying to stage an attack. Not that he’d exactly be complaining, but he was the oldest sibling, it was kind of his job to tickle the shit out of the rest of them.

“Let ‘im breath for a sec,” Jason said after an eternity. “Just a quick break.”

Dick gasped for air as Tim and Damian pulled their hands away, looking far too smug for his liking. Dick breathed out a threatening chuckle. “Oh, you’re all so going to regret this, later. I’m gonna tickle you until you cry.”

Jason hummed. “Big talk for someone still pinned to the carpet.”

“Can’t keep me pinned forever, Little Wing.”

Jason narrowed his eyes. “No, but we can provide plenty of discouragement.”

Dick matched his expression, twisting his hands in Jason’s grip. Whatever was coming, it was about to tickle like hell. The butterflies returned to his stomach in full-force, feeling almost ticklish in their own right. Totally not fair.

“Do your worst,” Dick said.

“You heard him, boys.” Jason gave his wrists a quick squeeze, whether reassurance or a threat to behave, Dick wasn’t sure. “Do your worst.”

Damian immediately took that as incentive to begin again, Tim following not far behind. They tickled everywhere they could reach – armpits, neck, ribs, stomach, hips. Expectedly, though unfortunately for Dick’s sanity, they both seemed rather keen on returning to that soft spot just beneath his ribs, over and over and over again.

As Dick cackled and snorted and wheezed, just generally laughing his lungs out, Jason gave his wrists another squeeze.

“Alright – keep an eye out for flying limbs.”

“Todd – what?”

“Jay, don’t let him go!”

Jason didn’t listen, freeing his wrists after just a moment more. His hands flew to Tim and Damian’s tickling fingers, but the laughter and ticklish sensations had made him so weak and feeble that he had no hope of actually pushing them away. All he could do was hold on for dear life, only letting go when they started to crawl up his ribs or try to sneak into his underarms, snapping his arms to his sides as his last line of defense.

Jason only gave him a few moments to process his newly freed limbs before making his own attack. The moment Jason’s fingers touched down on Dick’s thighs, he screamed. Tim and Damian’s fingers faltered, but they didn’t pull back this time, apparently getting used to Dick’s dramatic reactions. Jason squeezed at the muscles, massaging into pressure points just right to turn the touch unbearably ticklish. Whenever he found a weaker spot, somewhere that really made Dick squirm and his legs jolt, he honed in with dangerous precision until Dick’s laughter was almost silent. Tears of mirth were beading up at the corners of his eyes, his lungs burning with the force of his laughter. It was almost euphoric.

“Home stretch!” Dick heard Jason call over his near-deafening laughter.

Dick had no time to mentally prepare as the three of them honed in on every worst spot imaginable. Damian and Tim returned full-force to those spots under his ribs, using all the knowledge they’d gained from their experimentation to drive him mad. Jason, somehow having memorized all those hyper-senstive little spots on his legs from his own brief exploration, narrowed in on them with a marksman’s precision.

Bruce had never gotten Dick this bad in his life. The man only had two hands, after all – not six. While he was known to jump between the sweet spots on his sides and his ridiculously ticklish legs, he could really only get one side and one leg at once. Between Jason, Tim, and Damian, they could tackle every debilitating tickle spot with ease.

He didn’t even think the Titans had ever gotten him this bad. Sure, they would make a game of pinning him down and tickling him breathless, but even they had never been this ruthless. They didn’t shy away from his worst spots, but they’d never targeted them like this before. Probably because they didn’t want to kill him. His brothers had no such reservations.

The tears finally leaked out of the corners of Dick’s eyes. His laughter grew hoarse, starting to fall silent from the intensity. His lungs and abs burned from the workout. The sensations started to overwhelm him, almost more than he could handle.

“Okay!” Dick called with the air he had left, slapping one hand repeatedly against the carpet. “Okay, okay!”

Jason pulled back immediately, Tim and Damian quickly following suit. Jason’s weight left his body, but Dick barely noticed. He melted into the carpet and shut his eyes, his body completely boneless. Every limb felt like overcooked pasta, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to stand on his own right now if he tried. Dick wanted to be annoyed at them for going so far, he really did, but… as much as he hated to admit it, he’d had a lot of fun.

“I warned you not to trifle with them, young master,” Alfred’s voice rang from the doorway. 

Dick coughed a little between his leftover giggles, trying to clear his throat. “You know me, Alfie. Never was all that good at listening.”

Alfred sighed, though it sounded distinctly fond. “Quite so, Master Dick.” His footsteps grew closer, so Dick peeled his eyes open, seeing Alfred hold out a chilled bottle of water. “I suppose it’s too much to think that you might’ve finally learned your lesson.”

Dick gave him a tired grin, reaching out one jellied arm for the water bottle. It seemed to be answer enough, because Alfred just smiled and shook his head.

“I’m sure your father will enjoy seeing you boys getting along.”

Dick’s eyes went wide and he shot up into a sitting position, immediately getting a headrush. Damian and Tim rushed to steady him, while Jason snatched the water bottle out of his hands to crack it open.

“Did you send him pictures?”

“Perhaps next time, if you’d like to remain undetected, avoid screaming.”

Dick’s face, which had finally begun cooling down, flushed with warmth again. Alfred’s eyes twinkled with good humor as he turned to leave the room.

“Are you quite alright, Richard?”

Dick groaned, quickly returning to his floor time with a controlled collapse. A moment later, his now-open water bottle was pressed into his hand.

“I’m fine, Dami. Just tickled out.”

Jason snorted. “Serves you right.”

Dick rolled his eyes and chugged some of the cool water, careful not to choke since he was still lying down. Tim screwed the cap back on as he pulled it away from his mouth, having somehow stolen it off Jason already.

“Maybe you’ll think twice before you tickle me next,” he said.

Dick flicked him on the forehead. “Not a chance, Baby Bird.”

“We made him beg–”

Dick squawked, slapping at Jason’s knee. “I did not beg! I just said I had enough!”

“– he’s definitely gonna make sure we regret it.” Despite his words, Jason ws remarkably relaxed.

Tim and Damian on the other hand, eyed him warily. He let out a weary chuckle. “Don’t worry – you’re all safe at least until the end of the night. Now, somebody carry me to the couch. I’m not moving again until tomorrow afternoon.”

His brothers rolled their eyes, but twenty minutes later, Dick was half-dragged, half-carried into Tim’s very structurally sound pillow fort as Jason set up the movie. Damian helped Alfred carry in some snacks (and Alfred definitely looked constipated at the sight of all the junk food) before immediately cuddling up to Dick’s side without even a complaint. Five minutes later, he had a pile of brothers on top of him while some period piece played on the TV.

It was nice. Dick was warm, surrounded by his brothers, and eating his weight in pizza and popcorn while he still could. His chest still had that light, airy feeling, though it felt like something was melting between his ribs at the same time. The feeling only intensified as Damian snuggled into his ribs and Tim rubbed his head under Dick’s chin like a cat.

But even still, Dick thought as he watched Jason stack snack cakes on a half-asleep Tim’s spine, no matter how sweet his brothers were being now… he would make certain that his revenge against them was just as ruthless. They didn’t deserve anything less.

[ramp-it-up]

II Most Wanted Part 6: Came Out of Nowhere

Pairing: Syverson x OFC Reader "Buttercup"

Summary: Will it be church, or another kind of worship this Sunday morning? 😏

Warnings: 18+ Only, Minors DNI. RPF. S MUT, SINNING ON A SUNDAY MORNING, some Fluff, a tiny bit of Angst, talk of being physically uncomfortable after vigorous sex, voice/dirty talk kink. Thigh riding, nipple play, manual sex, squirting, oral sex (female recieving), fine dining, anal play, talk of anal sex, size kink, slight choking, graphic depiciton of sex. This was meant to be a drabble but it got away from me. This gets nastyyyy. And I'm proud of it. :) Happy Mother's Day for all of those who care for another human. 😘

Read at your own risk.  Not Beta’d. All errors my own.

A/N:  This is the sixth installment of II Most Wanted. I'm in love with these two; they are bringing my writer heart back to life. If you like it, please reblog and comment.

I don't have a taglist. Please follow @rampitupandread and turn on notifications to learn when I post! 😘

I Do NOT Consent to my work being reposted, translated or presented on any other blog or site other than by myself.

Previous part here

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Sy woke up the next morning, elated that you were warming the bed next to him. Your hair had come out of the towel and was an unruly halo around your head; he had to be sure to get some satin pillowcases, he thought.

He smiled as he gazed at you, excited about his dreams of you coming back to him after this weekend. Sy’s heart was hopeful.

Last night you’d said you wanted to spend the night with him, and the way you smiled at him as you drifted off to sleep, after telling him that he’d ruined you, was like a gift from heaven. Truth was, you’d ruined him, the way your screams echoed off the walls of his house. He was addicted to that sound.

And he wanted to hear it for the rest of his life. 

Sy must have stared at you sleeping for over an hour after the sun rose. As much as he wanted you to profess your undying love for him, he didn’t want to pressure you. He wanted you to be his of your own free will, not out of any obligation, but couldn’t keep his hands off you, and he couldn’t keep his mind from making plans for the future.

He knew he was chipping away at the wall around your heart, but he didn’t have much time left.  There had been a lot of water under the bridge, and you had to be sure that you wanted to cross it. 

He’d waited 20 years, he could wait a little longer. He had hope. 

He concentrated on enjoying the moment. You were tangled up in the sheets, no makeup, hair disheveled, and more beautiful than ever. 

“You’re a creep, you know that?”

Your sleepy voice did things to him.

“How’s that, darlin’?”

Sy gathered you in his arms as you turned around and stretched, poking your ass toward him and your breasts out as you yawned.

“Watching me sleep. Probably listening to my snores and watching me drool. Creep behavior. Hahahaha, stopppp!”

You giggled as Sy tickled you lightly on your bare stomach. You turned around and punched him on the shoulder. But you were smiling a mile wide.

“It was a beautiful sight. Almost as beautiful as you in the shower, or you bent over for me, or the way your pussy—”

“Speaking of God.” 

You cut Sy off and he laughed.

“We gotta get up. I have to go get my church clothes.”

Sy groaned, pulled you close and started kissing your neck.

“You’re playing around now, Buttercup. We could stay in bed all day, I can eat, then make you breakfast…”

You squirmed in his grip, enjoying his hands on you.

“You’re the one that’s playing, Sy.”

Sy’s eyes came back up and his eyebrow arched as he slowly slid down your body.

“You’ve broken my box, Jacob.”

Sy stopped what he was doing.

“Not the government name. Okay. You must be serious.” 

He came back up to look into your eyes.

“Are you okay?”

The last thing he wanted to do was to hurt you.

You looked him in the eye. His care and consideration was the sexiest thing. You wanted him. You needed him.

“I’m more than okay, Sy. This weekend has been… I’m good.”

Sy kissed your lips tenderly and suddenly you felt like a china doll that wanted to be broken. But now you just had a view of Sy’s muscular back and was as he went into his closet and came back out with gray sweatpants slung low on his hips.

You bit your lip but Sy just smirked at you and said, “Let’s get a move on.”

—---

Sy was a gentleman and made you eggs and coffee, refraining from doing anything more to you than kiss you on the cheek. It was driving you crazy, making you only want him more. But you couldn’t go back on what you said. The looks, though.

The looks you and Sy exchanged as you drove back to your air bnb were enough to set the world on fire. You had a new plan for the morning as you pulled up to your place.

Sy relaxed in one of the armchairs in the small bungalow as you busied yourself with getting ready, and after you’d finally tamed your hair and walked out of the bathroom to put on your jewelry and finish getting ready, Sy raised his eyebrow when he saw you. He watched you closely as you sauntered over to the closet in front of him and gave him the back of you as you leaned over to put on your black strappy heels from the other night.

You straightened up and turned, giving him your profile as you smoothed the dress down and looked in the mirror. Sy noticed that you were still glistening from the body oil you’d just applied, and your black jersey shirtdress wasn’t buttoned all the way up. He could clearly see some side boob. The way the dress was clinging to your ass made him question if you were wearing panties, since you clearly weren’t wearing a bra. 

Sy remained silent as he took you in. He was perfectly content to pray at the altar of you today, his goddess. If you really did intend on going to church, God might just strike him dead for the thoughts he’d be thinking.

When you glanced at him in the mirror and did a double take as you put on your earrings, he knew he had you. He stared at you and licked his lips, silently telegraphing his intent.

Your almost imperceptible sigh told him everything he needed to know.

Sy inclined his head and you walked over to him. You stood between his outstretched khaki covered legs as he lounged in the armchair in the combined living/sleeping area of the small rental. His long arms allowed him to grab the back of your knee and pull you to him as he slid his hand up your thigh.

His gruff voice shook your soul.

“The way you look in that dress is causing some unholy thoughts, Buttercup. Don’t know how we’re gonna make it to church.”

You smiled down at Sy, a strange feeling snaking around your heart. You smiled wider as you realized it. Yes. He was yours. And you wanted it to be so.

Your eyes flicked down to his crotch.

“What? Can’t keep it in your pants for a couple of hours Sy? It’s for a good cause.”

Sy palmed the ridge of his cloth covered cock and stared up at you adoringly.

“I just want to worship you, darlin.’”

He ran his hand up the backs of your thighs as you suppressed a smile. His eyebrow arched again as he reached your unclothed ass. He palmed your bottom in his hands as he pressed his nose into your crotch.

The way he looked up at you was everything, and you ran your hand through his curls, messing it up from its carefully arranged state.

Sy stood up, and you put your arms around his shoulders because you were weak in the knees.

“Changed my mind, Sy. Want you to ruin me some more…”

You breathed it into his mouth as he watched your lips form the words. And that was all that he needed before he pressed his body into yours and slid his fingers into your freshly coiffed hair.

“I can’t resist you, Buttercup. And I’d much rather spend time inside you than inside a stuffy building full of hypocrites. The sacrament is between me and you.”

Your lips met in a practiced dance and your tongues spoke things without words. Your hands were underneath his polo, teasing his nipples that you knew were sensitive and Sy pulled away to bring it over his head, grabbing the belt of your dress as you took it in your hands. He gathered you toward him by it and slipped his hand into your cleavage, weighing your breast and rolling the hard nipple in his fingers.

“Every part of you is so beautiful, Buttercup. I love you so much.”

He lowered himself back down to the chair, all the while keeping your gaze and puts his hands back on your thighs. Next thing you knew, you were on his lap, ruining his dress pants as you ground against him, your nipple in his mouth as he suckled you as if he was trying to draw out your life force.

Your head was thrown back, and you peered down at his rosy lips pursed around the stiff and aching bud in his mouth. It was almost too much to witness, and you felt your wetness spread against the fabric of his pants.

“Ohhhhh, ssssssssss. Yes, Sy, Baby… yes….”

Sy smiled around your nipple at the pet name, and reached his hand under the skirt of your dress, palming your clit and sliding a finger inside your embarrassingly wet and hot cunt. He released your nipple with a pop, and grinned up at you as you whined.

“Fuck, Buttercup, I’ve been so excited to finally be with you, I didn’t pay enough attention enough to how much you like me lovin’ on your tits. But I’ve caught up now. We only have one more day, and I’ve got a lot to learn…”

He whispered up into your face, flexing his huge thigh as you undulated, your dress riding up around your waist. You groaned and grabbed his face as he palmed the globes of your ass and kissed you. You were definitely ruining his pants now.

“Shit, Buttercup, I swear I can feel your clit throbbing through my pants. So fucking hot. Where d’ya want me, hunh?”

His hungry mouth traveled down your neck, collarbone and chest, finally arriving again at a nipple, tongue snaking out to taste, only to abandon it again to shrink in on itself against the cool air that he blew on it next.

You moaned again as his warm mouth closed against the tight bud, sucking with increasing intensity until you arched your back, pushing more of your flesh into his face. His hand reached your other breast and clutched it, rolling your other pointed peak against his palm, causing a slight delicious burn on your skin. 

“Sy… I- I love your mouth…”

Your eyes were cast down, so he grabbed your chin to make you look at him.

“You want me to eat you out?”

Sy quickly switched nipples, after asking his question, laving and blowing on the hot one to cool it down. 

“Ughhhhh, yes, please, Sy… ever since you mentioned it this morning.”

Sy talked you through it as he pushed and pulled you on his thigh and played with your nipples.

“Why didn’t you tell me then, Buttercup? I could still be eating you out in my big ol’ bed.”

He started sucking the other nipple as you looked down on him and pulled his curls when you answered, your head thrown back.

“I– oh shit, Sy! Hunh, hunh…. “

You licked your parched lips as he ministered to your breasts.

“I wanted to come get a change of clothes. Wanna spend… some time... Fuckkkkk, Sy!”

He watched you as he switched up, again and again, until you were a writing mess. He pulled off of your wet nipples and run two fingers around one pebbled areola, his gaze hot on your skin.

“Syyyyyyyy,” you sigh-gasped as you watched him lean over and take your nipple in his mouth again, this time through his fingers. When those blue eyes looked up at you, you almost came.

His hand moved, but his mouth didn’t as he found your needy clit, and began circling it with his wet fingers.

“Tell me what you wanna do Buttercup?”

He was as out of breath as you were as he watched you come undone.

“I-I– oh fuck. I want to spend the rest of the weekend at your place, Sy.”

Sy moaned, your words having the effect that his hands were having on you.

“You telling me that you’re mine, for the rest of this time, Buttercup?”

Your head was thrown back again, and his hand was sliding toward your neck as your hips moved faster on this thigh.

“Yes, Sy! Yes, I’m yours…and not just for the weekend…oh my god!”

The freedom of admitting it just came out of nowhere, and suddenly, your thighs started shaking and you soaked his trousers, biting your lip as he extended your orgasm with his fingers on your clit and nipple.

“That’s what I’ve wanted to hear for s’long, Baby.”

Sy was slurring his words, drunk on you. And he wasn’t even inside you. Yet. He held you close, as you wrapped around him like a vine, rubbing your back as you came down.

“Then let’s get you packed up and gone. You’re at my place until tomorrow.”

His voice was gruff as he guided your hips until you were standing up, your legs unstable as he rose in front of you. You shakily made your way over to the nearby vanity and lean on it as Sy made his way behind you and looked at you in the mirror.

“Who am I kidding Buttercup? I’m not leaving here until I see you cum at least one more time.”

Sy’s hands snaked around you, wrapping you up and pulling you close to him so you could feel his hardness in your back. He held your gaze in the mirror as you witnessed him leaning down to whisper in your ear.

“I love you. So much, Buttercup.”

Your eyes closed and you leaned your head back on his chest as his hands reached into and under your dress, bunching it up, but you were beyond care. He skirted two fingers into the wet split of you and plunged them inside you, only to bring them out much quicker than your liking. His dripping fingers ran your clit between them, and you moaned each time his passing knuckles pinched it tighter. 

“All this is for me, huh? How’d I get so lucky?”

Sy was rolling your nipple with the other hand, and your mouth was open, gaping at what he was doing to you. He leaned down and sucked your pulse point as he tuned you to his preferences.

Your hands splayed on the counter as you tried to ground yourself from the electric pleasure he was giving you, but Sy’s voice won’t let you do that.

“That’s my good little Buttercup. So so good, letting me…godamn you’re so wet… letting me have my way with you.”

He breathed heavily into your ear.

“I want what you want, Baby. Want to eat you out again. From behind. Need to shove my tongue up your ass and have some fine dining. Maybe we do need to go to church. Might need to pray for your man, Buttercup, because they wouldn’t let me in, what I’m thinking of doing to you, Buttercup. Wanna train your ass, wanna slip my cock in there and make you cum so hard. But that’s not holy. Is it?”

“H-h- holyyyyyy shittttttttt, Sy!!!!!”

You whined, your body dripping onto the floor. Sy felt it and got down on his knees to witness it.

He kissed your ass, then kneaded it, kissing, licking, and biting as he slowly opened you up to him. 

“Make me so fucking hard for you. So godam pretty. Everywhere. Make me wanna kiss you all over.”

Sy licked into you, tracing his tongue over your puckered hole.

“Fuck Sy.”

“Yeah? You want it? Want my cock in this hole?”

Then he circled it with his tongue, making you feel as if you would pass out. You whimpered and bit your lip, a tinge of fear making your heart race even higher.

Sy read your mind.

“You can take it Buttercup. Like a good girl. Promise you’ll be begging for it.”

And then Sy licked and suckled his way into the deepest parts of your soul. 

“Sy!” 

You could hardly say his hame as your body pounded with pleasure again.

“You’re right, Buttercup. Nee’ ‘ore ti.”

Need more time.

He tongue fucked you in the most indecent way as he tried to speak to you. It was the hottest thing ever. He pulled off as his finger took over, because he wanted to make sure that you heard him good.

“I’d need at least a day for you to wear a butt plug.”

He said it wistfully as he traced two fingers through your sopping wet folds.

“I’m thinking stainless steel, heavy, and with my initials engraved on the end.”

The way you clenched at that image and your silence made him smile and you heard his belt coming undone. You dripped down his hand, and you looked back to see Sy licking his fingers.

“Yeah, at least 6 hours (don’t know if I could take much more than that) and then you’d be good and gaping for me, Buttercup.”

Sy’s finger found its way into your tightness, and he leaned forward to suck your clit as you raised your thigh onto the counter. He stopped again and you almost screamed. Then you noticed his cock in his hand, angry red and leaking head disappearing and reappearing rapidly. You gave him the moan of his dreams as his blue eyes met yours.

“I’d make you cum, at least twice, and you’d be ready for me to slip this in. Wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, Sy! Give it to me now!”

They way Sy’s jaw clenched was the thing that put you on the edge of nirvana.

“Don’t…” 

The man growled. Then he looked up at you.

“Now’s not the right time. Cum on my face. Wanna drink you up.”

And he licked and slurped his way to victory, earning a close up view of you raining down on him. After you’d finished, He quickly stood up and started jacking his cock on your ass, squeezing it so that he could view the object of his focus.

“You said I broke your box earlier, Buttercup…”

His heart was literally beating out of his chest.

“....FUCCKK! Just let me… just let me cum on this tight little….ughhhhh!

Your clit pulsed again as you felt his hot cum on your asshole, and you reached down to bring yourself home again.

“Fuck yes, Butercup YESSS!”

You watched Sy’s lurid look of lust in the mirror as he watched your hole wink at him through his spend. 

“Good god woman!”

He looked up at you and grinned in the mirror. 

Then he smirked. 

Because now it was your turn to be on your knees.

——

Next part here.

Like it? Hit Reblog, please!

[cozy-cinnamon-roll]

Stitches (Part II)

(Read Part I Here! used to be We Interrupt This Broadcast... changed the name because I feel like this fits better 😅)

Fandom: Hazbin Hotel

Pairing: Ler!Rosie, Ler!OC, Lee!Alastor (strictly platonic)

Content/Trigger Warnings: tickling, very brief blood mention, medical themes (non-graphic & painless). And again, this is set right after Alastor gets his ass handed to him by Adam, so you can expect some angst (don't worry, he gets better).

If there are any trigger warnings you'd like me to add in the future (and/or to this fic), PLEASE let me know! I am always happy to oblige. 💕

This is a ticklefic! If that's not your cup of tea, kindly move along.

"Almost ready" I said. "Basically finished" I said. Sorry y'all, the Chronic Illness Fairy struck. 😅 I will say this was my favorite part to write, but also the one I'm most uncertain about... bit more angst in this installment and I'm not much of an angst writer lol... but with Rosie in the mix (especially as a ler), angst never lasts long. 🥰

Also I changed the title. Hopefully it's not confusing that way... cuz without Part 1 this fic makes zero sense 😅

One last thing... I'm so happy y'all like Trudy! Was thinking about posting a lil sketch of her at some point (I need a new insomnia project now that this fic is done 😅). I've been having a truly awful few weeks on the anxiety front, so all the positive feedback on Part I has been quite literally making my days 💕

Hope you enjoy!!

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"Ooh, you stubborn little bastard. You're still gonna refuse to laugh?" Rosie mutters.

Alastor doesn't dare try to speak. All he can manage is a defiant shake of his head.

"Look, my friend. If you 'don't mind a little tickling,' and getting all giggly is your specialty…" Rosie tweaks his bottom rib, eliciting a noise that comes just short of a squeak. "What, exactly, is the problem here?"

"I'm supposed to be in control!" he grinds out through his twitching grin.

"You are in control, sir." Trudy abruptly withdraws her hands, holding them up innocently. "You can tell me to stop at any time."

Alastor cringes. He was sorta hoping no one would point that out.

"Which is why I find it so fascinating that you haven't yet." A sly smirk creeps across Rosie's face.

Oh, for fuck's sake.

"I- I'm humoring you!"

"Humoring me?" Rosie tilts her head. "My dear, I hope you're not doing this just for my sake. If you don't want Trudy to check for further injury-"

"No, I do! O-on my terms!"

"This is on your terms."

"Yes, but-"

"In fact, you insisted."

He stumbles again, before mumbling another meager, "…to humor you!"

Trudy shoots her boss a disoriented look - but Rosie, as usual, is hearing her friend loud and clear.

"Alastor." Rosie rolls her eyes, gestures for Trudy to step aside, and scoots over to place a hand on his knee. "Adam is dead. Everyone in hell thinks you're either succumbing to your wounds in some remote gutter or hiding in whatever alternate dimension you just spent the last seven years. You're not even 'on air'." She leans in. "You can drop the act for a moment, if it's what you need."

That certainly hits the mark. For the first time, Alastor's smile falters - not completely dropping, but certainly losing much of the strained quality it's had since he arrived.

"I wish I could, my dear."

Encouraged, Rosie continues. "Well, what's stopping ya? As much as I love spending time with Alastor the Radio Demon… if you wanna take this opportunity to let out whoever's underneath that effervescent grin of yours, you know we wouldn't mind."

Alastor swallows - and for the first time in a decades, Rosie finds his expression difficult to read. "Rosie, I'm afraid I can't really..."

"I mean, you've been holding that same silly show-host-smile for years! Don't tell me you've never gotten tired of it!"

"It's sewn on, Rosie."

"…What?"

He hesitates. "Let's just say today wasn't the first time I've been, ah... stitched up." As he speaks, he gestures to his toothy grin. And for once, there's not a trace of distortion in his voice.

Rosie's dark eyes go wide when she realizes what he means. The cannibal overlord just stands there for a beat, in an uncharacteristic moment of shock.

But, being Rosie, she quickly recovers. "Well, so what?"

"I'm just saying, I'm afraid I can't really drop the act."

"Nonsense! Since when has your act had anything to do with your face?" Rosie flicks her hand, as if brushing the thought aside. "Who cares if you can't show genuine Alastor. I wanna hear him."

"But my microphone..."

"You're doing just fine without it."

Once again, this attempt at reassurance only makes Alastor look more disturbed. "Th-this can't be me!"

"...Well, no. This right here sure isn't the Alastor I know. But…"

Alastor is barely listening to her anymore. His broadcast persona has been his sole identity since he was alive. Now his radio tower has been reduced to rubble, his microphone snapped clean in half, even his carefully-styled clothing left in tatters…

If this is the Genuine Alastor he's now stuck with - panicked, stuttering, weak - he can't imagine how he'll ever be able to face the rest of hell…

But these racing thoughts are once again interrupted by nails tracing up his sides. A sharp yelp cuts the air as poor Alastor just about jumps out of his skin.

"…Perhaps I can offer a little help?" Rosie suggests gently, once she has his undivided (and adorably flustered) attention. "On your terms, of course?"

Alastor just gazes back at her for a long moment. "What do you have in mind?"

"I happen to know something about you that even you can't fake."

The radio demon hesitates… before heaving a sigh and, to Rosie's surprise, giving a small nod of consent.

She breaks into a brilliant (and frankly terrifying) smile.

Before Alastor can brace himself, Rosie's hands have both found his sides and begun working into his waist. Having just watched him squirm around under Trudy's thorough probing twice (and adored every second of it), she already has a pretty good idea of where his worst spots are.

Which is made abundantly clear by Alastor's reaction. Within seconds he's gone from still trying to hold it all in by habit, to giggling into his hands, to cackling hysterically.

And it's the kind of laughter she's spent the last seven years missing. This isn't the confident, taunting chuckle he brings out for battles or brushing off rivals; this is bright, helpless, occasionally hiccuping laughter, the kind that is nearly impossible for him to stop once he starts - and the kind she only has the privilege of hearing when something truly amuses him.

"You can't sew your laughter on," Rosie reminds him. "This is all yours."

Rosie's fingers creep up under his shirt to scribble on bare tummy, adding a couple new sweet spots to her mental catalogue. This technique brings out even more of her favorite little quirks: the way he bats playfully (and completely ineffectually) at her wrists; his repeated attempts to speak around his laughter that only result in frantic spurts of incomprehensible, giggle-laced gibberish.

As she traces her nails across his lower belly she also finds a tiiiny layer of unexpected pudge. Which probably shouldn't surprise her - he's been out of the battle scene for seven years, after all. All those deer carcasses have to go somewhere.

Regardless, she finds it terribly endearing for some reason... and the surge of affection translates into a corresponding surge in the intensity of Rosie's tickles.

"AHaha! Ro- Rosie!" he blurts, his voice jumping a full octave higher than normal. "Stop!!"

Rosie removes her hands immediately. "Stop?"

"Aha- ah- well- I mean, er…" He stumbles breathlessly, and gives a sheepish cough.

"You didn't really want me to stop, did you?"

Rosie resumes with a chuckle, reeling herself in just a little. "How 'bout we say... oh... 'enough,' if you really want me to quit?"

Of course, she has to go and say it out loud.

"M-more of a reflehex..." he admits reluctantly.

Alastor tosses a shaky thumbs-up at her, already too lost in his own giggles to manage a verbal reply.

And he's gotta admit… Rosie was absolutely right. He wouldn't stop her right now for all the souls in hell. There's a reason Alastor has the most recognizable evil cackle of any other overlord. He can't help but find dissolving into laughter as cathartic and exhilarating as always - even if this time, it's not at some poor soul's misfortune. It's a result of his best friend's affection for her darling deer demon.

"As fun as getting your soft little belly is," Rosie muses, pausing to let Alastor catch his breath for a moment, "I can't help but wonder if you're ticklish anywhere else…"

Alastor may be off the air, but Rosie can practically hear the screech of microphone feedback just by the look on his face. "….I plead the fifth."

"Have you considered his ears?" Trudy pipes up shyly. While she'd managed to restrain herself behind an impeccably professional bedside manner earlier, it had taken everything in her power not to stroke Alastor's ears when she'd been close enough to do so. They were just. so. fluffy.

"Ohhh, heavens…" Alastor, for his part, curls in on himself at the mere suggestion.

Rosie grins. "Hey, 'no' is always an option."

A long pause. Alastor can't believe he's considering this. But the sensation of being tickled, as unbearable as it is, does feel awfully pleasant… and it's been so long since anyone has dared to touch him…

And what else does he have to lose at this point, anyway?

"I suppose if you're… very gentle…"

"Are you aware that your ears are the softest thing in the nine circles?"

This stipulation ends up backfiring. When it comes to his ears, gentle is worse. So, so much worse.

Poor Alastor is too busy clutching his stomach and snickering madly into his sleeve to reply.

"I should know, I work in retail. These right here-" Rosie traces her fingers down the feathery-soft edges, sending the radio demon into a new round of hysterics. "-Would fetch a pretty penny."

"They're nohot for saHA-ale!!"

"Nooo, I should say not." Rosie's hapless victim lurches back into the cushions as her fingers find the fluffy region at the base of his ears. Even without the microphone, his cackles have no problem filling the room. "You're the only demon classy enough to wear them."

"And don' you - GAHaha! - f-forget it!" He's so drunk on laughter now that he's beginning to slur his words. His careful elocution has gone the same place as his steady tone, and lack of stutter.

Luckily, he's also far too drunk on laughter to care.

...Right about there, Rosie notices that the faint hum of radio static in the air is no longer just in her head.

He is laughing his heart out for the first time in weeks. Genuinely laughing for the first time in decades. And laughing completely for himself, for his own enjoyment, without need for intimidation or control or image or audience, for the first time since long before he died.

While Trudy typically can't say much for her self-preservation instinct, she's got enough of one to feel hesitant joining her boss in tickling the most powerful overlord in hell (outside the pretense of medical intervention, at least). So she just stands back, watching fondly as The Most Dangerous Overlord This Side of the Pentagram utterly destroys the deer demon.

...At least, until she notices a flicker of green light out of the corner of her eye. Lying forgotten on the end table, the splintered ends of Alastor's microphone are sparking and crackling like live wires.

The surgeon creeps over for a closer look, staring in fascination. And then - just as Rosie gets poor Alastor behind the ears and delivers a scribble to his tummy at the same time - she ever-so-gently nudges the fractured ends closer to one another.

To her surprise, a bright green spark arcs clear across the gap. For a fraction of a second, the whole staff radiates a flash of a familiar green glow.

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

"Keep him laughing, Rosie," Trudy murmurs over her shoulder. It appears the Radio Demon's downfall will be nothing more than an intermission.

Thanks for being so patient with me y'all! Hope it was worth the wait 💕

💜- Cozy

[thorin-is-a-cuddler]

A very devilish angel

A/N: A demon and an angel are in love and while that could be embarrassing for the demon, he would definitely not let it stop him from making plans for their future (in secret of course, though keeping it secret from tickling angels could be pretty hard.) Just floofy fluff floof and a pinch of feely schmeelies, pardon me.  

It hadn’t been long that they’d been together. Officially together.

And Crowley just couldn’t stop blushing.

Every time Aziraphale did something even remotely romantic, he froze, his eyes widening in disbelief and his voice leaving him hanging as he turned speechless.

The worst part was that Aziraphale seemed to find this incredibly endearing. His lips tended to quirk into that very specific, charming, almost sympathetic smile and his eyes glazed over with a warm playfulness, a soft infatuation with Crowley’s reaction.

Crowley could swear that, had Aziraphale installed any fire alarms in the bookshop, they’d be going off all the time from the hot, embarrassed steam the demon produced at any instance Aziraphale gave him that specific look, often accompanied by a gentle chuckle.

From what Crowley could tell, his behaviour did nothing but inspire Aziraphale to turn increasingly more affectionate. His blushing never seemed to come to a halt anymore as the angel came up with all sorts of gentle gestures and fond phrases to make his insides melt.

He’d feel his lips quiver when two perfectly manicured hands smoothed out the fabric of his shirt, making his chest feel warm in the touched places and his cheeks even warmer. “You look absolutely gorgeous today, my love.” The angel would say as he’d lean in to place a kiss on Crowley’s 100 degree face. Turning boneless, Crowley would make an awkward little step to the side, snarling and hissing – even though Aziraphale argued that he was in fact purring – before pushing himself past his lover to act like nothing was the matter.

Crowley had reacted the same way when Aziraphale had kissed the back of his hand for the first time, or whenever he took off his glasses to look fondly into his snake eyes before kissing him on the lips, or when Aziraphale had had the audacity to put an arm around his middle while he had been busy skimming through the pages of a book, complaining about the general concept of dusty imprinted, tree-skeletons. He’d almost jumped out of his own vessel then, dropping the book in question – that Aziraphale had then caught effortlessly – and zipping it almost instantly.

“You were saying?” Aziraphale had asked smugly, putting his chin on Crowley’s shoulder and beaming up at his deeply flushed face.

Yes, his angel had figured him out quite well. And Crowley was loving it deeply. To not be but a riddle to which Aziraphale knew all the answers was one of the most comforting experiences of Crowley’s existence. Nevertheless, the effortlessness of his angel’s reactions to him never seized to surprise him, to leave him breathless, weak in the knees, all wibbly-wobbly inside. And that could at times be a little frustrating for him.

Currently, Crowley was busy turning a map around in his hands, seated on one of Aziraphale’s larger sofas. With furrowed brows, he was trying to figure out where exactly he’d have to go to reach the coast, something the two of them had been talking about a lot in recent times. His angel had been busy preparing tea and was minutely returning, a silver tray with clinking cups in his hands, his reassuring angel-voice humming sweetly. Crowley’s neck was tingling comfortably at the noise.

“Oooh, a maaap!” Aziraphale exclaimed excitedly as he settled down next to the demon on his couch, placing the tray upon the table in front of them

“Don’t call it a maaap!” Crowley groaned, sending him a reprimanding glance over the brim of his dark glasses.

“I didn’t,” Aziraphale answered with a small lift of his eyebrow, making Crowley’s heart jump  a little.

“Yes, you did!” He insisted, before lifting the map in a way that made Aziraphale’s face disappear from view. Aziraphale’s presence made him so tense that he lifted his shoulders to his ears without even noticing it.

Aziraphale was chuckling softly, taking a sip of his tea, before sticking his nose over the top of the map, glancing down at what Crowley was looking at.

“What are you doing?”

Crowley narrowed his eyes at the angel and sniffed in an unbothered way, as if nothing of interest was currently happening. “Looking. At a map.”

“Yes, but whatever for?” Aziraphale’s eyes were smiling now and Crowley’s shoulders shot up a little higher.

“Nothing you must know about right now.”

Aziraphale, that terribly sweet angel, pushed his head past the crook in Crowley’s arm, his face ending up rather close to the demon’s and rather past the map in question. “Are you planning something?”

Crowley blinked at him, mouth agape, a tender blush creeping over the bridge of his nose. “Y-you will find out s-soon enough!” Quickly, he tried to look away from the angel, gulping. But Aziraphale had other plans. Chuckling gently, he pushed the map down and leaned in even closer to Crowley than before.

“I like it when you make secret plans. I wonder for how long you’ll be able to keep them from me, though.”

Crowley blushed a deep red when Aziraphale went to push him down into the cushions, his warm hand on his collarbone, his familiar, beloved vessel weighing him deeper down into the sofa. He felt his lips quiver as the angel’s nose touched his own, one of Aziraphale’s hands moving away from their propped up position next to his ears to remove his glasses. Bright blue eyes were gently looking into his own.

“Are you trying to bribe me, angel?” He asked, covering up his shyness by raising his eyebrows at the other playfully, an excited turmoil raging in his stomach. Aziraphale had him trapped on the sofa now, his left arm on the demon’s chest, his right one extended to place the glasses on the table next to him.

“You know, I have methods to get you to speak…” A mischievous glance sprang to the angel’s eyes as he started to wiggle the fingers of his now free right hand around.

“Now, wait a minute!” Crowley gasped, sobering up a little, seeing what he had done with his mindlessly uttered remark. “You cannot do this, I- I am the demon! Y-you are an angel, you’re supposed t-to spare people, for whoever’s sake!”

For Crowley’s taste, the angel was enjoying his insignificant attempts at wiggling out from underneath his stylishly dressed ‘boyfriend’ far too much. Blue eyes were sparkling with joy as demonic hands came up to protect a rather defenceless upper body.

“Do you hear me, angel?? People. Angels. Sparing!” Crowley repeated a little more hysterical when Aziraphale’s hand started to get closer to his body. It was embarrassing really how his voice went up the second Aziraphale’s threatening hand moved slightly faster towards him.

The angel was having a great time, evidently, laughing at Crowley’s demise. It didn’t really help with Crowley’s general embarrassment and fidgeting and melting and not-actually-trying-to-get-away. Apparently, he was too soft to spoil Aziraphale’s fun. (And maybe he also did enjoy it a little, when Aziraphale teased him like this.)

Sympathetically the angel tilted his head to the side, before saying: “Oh, Crowley, you’re not people.”

After that, Crowley was nothing at all anymore really – nothing but a bubbling, squeaking, laughing pile of demonic goo on a dusty bookshop sofa, as Aziraphale’s hand travelled straight to the ticklish spots on his left side, squeezing the sensitive area repeatedly and deepening Crowley’s blush immediately. “NO! Angel, wait!! WAIT!!”

“Wait for what, my dear?” Aziraphale asked as if nothing was the matter, his lips curled up in the most self-congratulating smile, while his fingertips were expertly seeking out the bits and pieces of Crowley that made him arch his back and toss his head around. Red curls were getting dishevelled on the red sofa cushions. Bright, pointy teeth glinted in the sombre bookshop lighting, yellow eyes filled with mirth, disappearing from sight whenever Crowley had to squeeze them shut against the ticklish sensations.

“PLEASE STOP!!” He squealed, his laughter bright enough to open the gates of Heaven, impossibly sweet for a snarling, moody demon. “PLEASE, ANGEL!!”

“But you haven’t told me anything, yet!”

Crowley doubled over with laughter, when Aziraphale’s fingers started scribbling at his stomach. He couldn’t kick himself out from underneath the angel and his flailing and pushing hands had the same effect on him as Beelzebub’s flies if they were to plop against him.

“Oh, the demon’s weak spot,” Aziraphale teased, chuckling when Crowley gasped for air dramatically, as if it were necessary. “Are you trying to make me pity you?”

Crowley started shaking his head violently when Aziraphale’s fingers began wiggling into his ribs, his lungs burning from all the laughter. “JUST STOP! STOP AND I’LL TELL YOU!!”

Aziraphale wasn’t cruel – not that cruel, at least – and granted Crowley his wish. Smug and pleased with himself, he put both his elbows up on Crowley’s chest and smirked down at his flushed face. A demonic chest that was currently moving up and down rather fast, indulging unnecessarily in the drama of the moment – a poor, unjustly tickled demon, trying to regain his breathing after a vicious, vicious attack from a very ruthless angel…

“You’re being really dramatic right now,” Aziraphale commented, chuckling when Crowley stopped the act and started pouting instead, yellow snake eyes glaring at his face. The dishevelled demonic mess seemed to have a rather softening effect on the angel, who moved one hand up to push a strand of hair out of his forehead. “It suits you very well.”

“Shut up!” Crowley exclaimed, a small smile clinging to his features as he tried to sound convincingly exasperated. One gentle caress to his hair sufficed and Crowley was purring- err snarling again. “You are a very devilish angel.”

“How dare you!” Aziraphale huffed with a grin, his hand wandering to Crowley’s side again to tweak it one last time in retaliation, relishing in the way the demon squawked.

Crowley couldn’t help but laugh afterwards, amused by his own noise, joined quickly by Aziraphale. “Stop it, seriously!”

“Of course,” Aziraphale put his hand back on Crowley’s chest and made an expectant face, “but you better start talking real fast.”

“Secret plans are in fact very secretive, you know.” Crowley answered, his hands gently moving up the angel’s back, who made a rather pleased little noise.

“Does this mean you do not plan to tell me about them?”

Crowley smiled and pulled Aziraphale closer towards him. “For now.”

The demon pulled the angel in for a tender kiss, reversing their positions progressively until he was the one on top, his hands cradling the angel’s chuckling face.

“What?” He slurred, drunk on angel.

“You tend to do this.” Aziraphale answered, his fingers caressing the skin under Crowley’s chin.

“What?” The demon asked again, snarling against Aziraphale’s ear now.

“Be … ‘more straightforward’. After I’ve tickled you.”

“Reaaally? Is that soooo?”

“… Yes?”

“Hmmmm, surprising, I wonder what opportunities my newly gained position might offer me…”

“… Ehm.”

“Whatever might inspire a demon like me to get ‘more straightforward’ after an angel like you goes so far as to tickle me??”

“Now, Crowley, let’s not do anything we might regret here…”

Now it was Crowley’s turn to chuckle. “Oh, we are far past that point by now, angel.”

And maybe the muffled giggling noises that could be heard from inside the bookshop were the sounds of an angel who hadn’t seen a hellish revenge coming his way. But who was happy to endure it nonetheless. Because secret plans were being made for him. Which meant that his love was going to last.

Maybe even an eternity.

[yourlocalmerchgirl]

Is it ok if I call you mine? Part Three

Soft!Joel Miller x Neurodivergent/ anxious F!reader

Part 1 Part 2

Summary: Joel is falling for you as deeply and quickly as you are for him, both taken by surprise that the other actually feels the same way.

Soft! Joel miller x neurodivergent reader AU (outbreak never happens)

Warnings: soft Joel, concerned Joel, protective Joel, neurodivergent, audio overstimulation, anxiety. Best friend Tommy, falling in love. Acceptance, low self esteem.

A/N: Writing this story and connecting with all of you that it’s touched has been exactly what my heart needed! This will be the last installment of this story (at least for now) but I’ll be focusing on bringing you all more neurodivergent reader stories! Please let me how what you all think of the story conclusion for these two and if there’s character stories you’d like to see in the future

There’s not a lot of descriptors about reader other than eye color but they can easily be changed.

Song pairings for this arch:

Dave Matthews Band: Here On Out

In complete shock that Joel would even remotely share the same feelings as you, all you can do is nod your head as tears well in your eyes.

Joel runs his calloused hand along the side of your face before resting to cup your cheek.

“What’s wrong sweetheart?” He asks as he searches your eyes, wiping away the tears with the pad of his thumb.

“Nothing…I promise these are happy tears… I just I never thought you’d share the same feelings I do, I was honestly ready for the rejection.”

“You make me feel happier than I’ve felt in a very long time, more like myself than I have in a long time” Joel says and leans in to place a gentle kiss on your lips, his lips surprisingly soft.

You waste no time returning the kiss as your hand finds purchase in his hair.

Joel pulls away wrapping his arms around you and rolling back over onto his back pulling you into his chest. You both just lay there holding each other and just taking joy in each others presence. That is until your stomach growls so loud it makes you both bust out laughing.

“What do you say we get you some breakfast baby girl?”

“And coffee?” You giggle out

“You think I’m gonna give you breakfast with no coffee? What’do I look like a crazy person?” He chuckles, watching you as you sit up swinging your legs over the side of the bed.

“No I’m just making sure. You don’t want to see me without my coffee” you tease as you turn back to look at him, it’s the smile you give him that does it. Even while he’s still laying down, your smile makes him weak in the knees.

Joel sneaks up behind you as you’re mid stretch wrapping his arms around your torso, pulling you flush against his chest. A giggle bubbles out of you when his scruffy beard tickles your neck as he peppers you with kisses. He hums at the sound of it, he can’t believe this is real, that you feel the same way as him. The warmth of his body around yours is soothing.

“You make me so happy Baby Girl” he says looking at the two of you in his mirror.

“You make me so happy too Joel” you tilt your head back to look at him, unable to help the smile you have when ever you’re around him.

“I like you calling me baby girl” you say, smiling wider when you see the look in his eyes and the smile on his face at your comment.

You pad down the stairs a little bit ahead of him and catch a glimpse of Tommy in the living room as you reach the bottom.

“Tommy!”

“Hey Darlin!”

Joel watches as you hurry over to Tommy as you hit the floor, his heart swells at the love and care you have for him. He understands the bond you two share over your similar disorders understanding each other in away only the two of you could. Joel’s so happy to see his brother have someone like you for a friend.

“You alright? Did you get some rest? I was really worried about you”

“I was worried about you too Tommy, you didn’t have to put yourself out into the storm, I know the thunder isn’t your friend either”

“I wasnt gonna have the two of you out there alone, you two are the most important people in my lives. I couldn’t not be there for both of you.”

Tommy pulls you into one of his big bear hugs, as he squeezing you tightly you let out a little grunt.

“Jesus Tommy be easy with my girlfriend would ya?” Joel teases. You can’t help but smile hearing it out loud, a smile that Joel doesn’t miss.

“Shit sorry sweetheart didn’t mean too…

Oh…wait did you say girlfriend…are you two….shit are you two official?” Tommy asks whipping his head back and forth between you and Joel.

Tommy’s gaze settles on you as you’re smiling ear to ear.

“We are” you say nodding with a smile as you reach your hand out to Joel. Joel gabs your hand pulling you into him and settles his arm around your waist.

“Bout damn time” Tommy says laughing.

“But seriously I’m so happy for you two” as he throws his arms around you both.

When you get up to grab some more coffee you over hear Tommy and Joel talking.

“I’m gonna still go over to the house and do some things and make sure everything’s all good from the storm and I’ll be back before the Cowboys have there kick off for tonight’s game”

“Shit…you sure? I know you need help with the dry wall and installing some of the new sinks, I can help after work this week.”

“Take me with you guys” you pipe up from the edge of your coffee cup.

Joel and Tommy both turn to you shocked by your comment.

“What?”

“I don’t want you guys changing your plans because I’m here. If you need to go work on Tommy’s house, take me with you. There must me something I can help with? Painting? Cleaning?”

“Are you sure, you don’t have to do that?”

“Of corse I’m sure, I’m going to need to borrow some old clothes to wear though.”

Joel can’t help but light up when you enter the bedroom wearing the sweatpants and shirt he gave you. The sight of you wearing his clothes made his heart skip a beat.

“Those look way better on you than they’ve ever looked on me”

“Oh please that can’t be true, but they are cozy”

“Are you sure about this? I’m not trying to put you to work or anything.”

“Joel…I would feel extremely guilty if you didn’t help Tommy just because I was here, I want to go, I want to be helpful. Plus I also just want to spend time with you.” You turn to face him to find he’s already looking at you.

“You would come to work with me for the afternoon just because you wanted to spend time with me?” Joel says pointing at himself almost as if he didn’t believe the words coming out of his own mouth.

“I would, if you wanted me there, I’d be there everyday with you.”

Joel doesn’t say anything, he just looks at you in amazement. That’s when the panic starts to set in. Am I being to much? Was that to much to quickly. I’m being clingy. FUCK. I’m being clingy.

“Sorry! I shouldn’t of said that…I’m not trying to be weird” you say nervously when he continues to say nothing.

“You just keep amazing me more and more. Give yourself some credit sweetheart. I’d happily take you to work with me every damn day. You think I wouldn’t jump at the chance to spend time with you?”

————————————————————-

Tommy sets you up, having you doing some painting in the living room while him and Joel are working on some other projects.

You don’t see him but every once in a while Joel poked his head into the living room to see how you doing.

“Tommy! You wanna come help me lift the counter top with the sink” you hear Joel yell down the hallway

“Tommy!” Joel yells again, mumbling under his breath when Tommy doesn’t respond.

You look back to see Joel trying to lift the counter top himself.

Jesus.

“I can help you with that” you say as you hurry to your feet and over to him.

“You sure sweetheart? Thank you”

“Well I can’t have you hurting yourself on my watch” you say making you both chuckle.

“Plus Tommy’s music is loud enough to wake the head, he’s never going to hear you yelling”

The two of you lift the counter top up into the position.

“Thanks baby girl” Joel coos as he gives you a kiss.

“C-can you…uh can I watch you install it? I can hold the flash light for you.” You smile nervously, immediately worried about being in his way.

“You want to learn how to instal the sink and counter top?” Joel inquisitively asks tilting his head as he looks at you.

“Oh only if I won’t be in your way…never mind it’s ok I’ll just go back to painting”

“I would love t’show you bout what I do”

Joel hands you the flash light as you sit down on the floor together. As you guys lay there under the sink Joel is explaining every step and why each step is necessary. Your silence as he’s explaining makes him think for sure that your just humoring him, that you asked to learn about his work because you thought it’s what he wanted to hear but he couldn’t be further from the truth. When he turns his head to the side to look at you he sees just how intently your listening to him. You eyes are filled with happiness and interest. He loved how content you were, how much you truly enjoyed being on the job with him learning and asking questions when you wanted to understand things better. It’s in this moment Joel realizes how happy you make him, how completely in his element he is when he’s with you. That you completely except him for who he is, there’s no need for him to try to hide parts of himself to placate you.

“Well shit, ain’t the two of you just cute under there.”

“Oh Tommy shut up, someone had to help him when you didn’t, plus he was teaching me and I was enjoying it” you tease sitting up from under the sink. And that’s when you hear it, Joel’s laugh. His boisterous full belly laugh at your response that makes you melt. From that moment on it’s your goal to make Joel laugh like that more. Your pretty sure the sound of pure happiness in his laugh could cure any anxious feeling, any self doubt about how he feels towards you.

Joel is your person. Nobody in your life has ever made you feel more comfortable in your own skin like he has. The comfort that he makes you feel in his unwavering desire to make you feel seen and heard instead of expecting you to change yourself or to act more “normal”. Joel likes you for you and you like him for him. You hope your able to make him feel even a faction as happy as he makes you.

“Can we stop at the store on the way home?” you pip up from the back seat. Joel’s heart is bursting with happiness hearing you call his house home.

“Course we can sweetheart” he says smiling at you in the rear view mirror.

“I’m just going to run in real quick”

Joel jumps out of the truck to take the bags from you when he sees you juggling 2 full bags of groceries.

“What’s all this for sweetheart?” Joel chuckles as he takes the bags.

“I’m going to make dinner for the three of us” you say as you hop in the back seat.

“Really?”

“I heard you guys saying you wanted to watch the football game and you guys busted your asses today so I thought I’d make a family dinner for us all, nothing crazy” you explain, you can feel your eyes soften the longer Joel holds your gaze.

Joel tenderly pulls you into a kiss, before Tommy embarrasses you buy whistling loudly.

—————————————————————

Joel admires the way you’re moving about the kitchen singing along to the music. He watches you for a few moments, silently gushing over how comfortable and beautiful you look. You’re in the zone while your washing dishes that you don’t see or hear Joel coming until he’s embracing you from behind, his large hand splayed over your stomach pulling you against him. A giggle bubbles out of you as your head falls back on his shoulder. A smile so wide it reaches your eyes as Joel nuzzles into your neck resting his head on your shoulder.

“Dinner was delicious baby girl thank you s’much”

“You’re welcome, I’m so glad you guys liked it, I loved having a family meal. I put the left overs in the fridge”

“Y’don’t have to hide in here, come watch the game with us”

“I’ll be in in like 10 minutes, I just wanted to finish cleaning up so we can go upstairs and relax after the game”

Your upstairs curled up in bed flipping through the channels when Joel gets out of the shower. He pauses in the doorway at the sight. He doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to the sight of you in his bed. It makes his heart beat a little after thinking about how badly he wants you to be what he sees every night before he goes to bed,how he just wants to hold you in his arms until you fall asleep.

You notice him out of the corner of you eye and turn to him.

“Did you have a nice shower babe?”

“I’did but it’s even nicer now that I’mma bout to crawl in bed with you.”

“I found a movie to watch, want to watch it til we fall sleep?”

“I’ll do anything as long as I get to be next to you”

“Come here” you say pulling back the blankets, your arms out stretched.

Joel climbs in bed and wastes no time curling into you, wrapping his arm around your torso, placing his head on your chest in the place right above your heart. The warmth and weight of him setting every last nerve in your body ablaze. It didn’t take long for you both to fall asleep like that, two people who spent most their lives feeling unwanted and unloveable being embraced now by the person they loved most in this world.

@kalllistos @justasadlittlebean @bcon24 @its-dee-lovely @fishingforpike @macaroni-artist @gengar-neutral @morgaussy @sailorsophiee @samarav @dionysusinparis @arlovesper @fandomsohmyohmy @lovelyladiess @lovebandrry @joelmillersblog @pinkbowsandcoffeestains s @pascal-is-punk @thatgirlpeaches @alyhull @fandomwhored @hiddenbabynyc @goldenhxurs @frecklefacelm @amyispxnk

@alongfortheridereader

[bl00dst41ned]

*.·:·.✦ catering day ✦.·:·.*

pairing: jude bellingham x female oc (Ryan)

summary: in which it’s time for Nugget to fully move in in the house and her owners go a bit over the top

author's note: part one here, read it for content. requested by @hummusxx, delivered by me. also some things might not make sense, so like J.Lennon said, imagine. enjoy besties !

warnings/content: a very obsessed Jude, fluff, fluff and more fluff (since I love cute relationships)

word count: 839

The sun was rising, waking Madrid up. On a normal day, Jude and Ryan would have woken up way later and lazed around the house, crushing their screen time. But today was different. Jude had woken up at the crack of dawn, getting ready for the excited day he and his girlfriend were about to have.

“Ray” He softly sang in her ear, his breath tickled her neck making her scrunch her face in her sleep. “Ryan”

“You sound like a serial killer” Ryan mushed his face away, rubbing her eyes open. She wrapped her arms around him hugging him tightly as he left multiple kisses on her neck.

They stayed in this position for a few minutes, Jude almost falling asleep from his girlfriend sweet touch. She ended up letting him go and getting up from the bed.

“Jude, it’s 6 in the morning, why would you wake me up?” She was already on her way back to bed before he quickly grabbed her arm.

“We have to take Nugget to the vet at 9”

Jude had taken it upon himself to book an appointment at the veterinarian, finally putting his few spanish lessons to use. Which surprised Ryan, since he would not try to speak for his life.

The two had gotten ready, now in the car on their way to the vet. While Ryan kept her eyes on the road, Jude kept his on Nugget, his index finger rubbing his growing fur. Ryan took few glances at them and appreciating him bonding with his new pet.

Nugget had been at their house for two days now. Jude stayed glued to it most of the time not even letting Ryan take care of him unless he had practice. They tried to feed it the best they could even buying a syringe so that it was easier but they wanted to give their pet the best care.

Once they arrived at the vet, they waited a few before entering the office. The doctor examined Nugget, trying to determine its age, give appointments for his vaccins and scan it for a microchip. They found out that Nugget was actually a female, was only one week old and probably stayed outside for two to three days. He gave them a brand for cat milk to improve her growth before letting them go. Ryan and Jude left the veterinarian, Nugget stuffed in her box.

………………………..

Jude drove the cart through the pet shop, Ryan’s arm wrapped around his bicep as the couple walked through the aisle. Jude basically wanted to put everything in the cart, Ryan trying to be responsible even though she too wanted to buy the whole place.

She scrolled through her Pinterest looking for ideas as Jude complimented everything.

“Can we create her a little room in our mhouse?” He asked with a wide smile after seeing a picture on her phone.

She gave in, finding it very cute too. They looked through the shop for her furniture. They picked up a green pastel sofa, covers, cushions, everything in mini size. Jude picked up way too many stuffed animals for Nugget showing it to the little animal even though her eyes are still closed.

“Jude, Nugs can not see” Ryan broke his happy bubble making him snap his head towards her, mugging her.

“This is between me and Nugget, mind yours”

He went back into a conversation with his now bestfriend as Ryan looked through essential stuff.

“Look at this collar” She pointed to a baby blue one with clouds.

It only took a second for them to decide to take it with them.

………………………..

They ended up checking out, leaving with a full cart. At home, they immediately choose a bright and calm space in their living room to install her mini room. And they took it very seriously. Ryan drew a sketch of the space, calculating the space with her actual and future size+ while Jude did all the furnishing. Once they were done, they put the final touch, Nugget’s shoe box. Since she seemed to enjoy it, Jude and Ryan agreed to give their shirt for it to become her cover.

“Seems right to me”

They admired their work before looking around at their house.

“We should think about decorating our place too” Jude spoke, pointing at their lack of furniture.

They recently moved in, but did not take the time to buy furniture. Boxes were all around the rooms since they didn’t even had any cabinet to put their stuff into.

“Yeah” Ryan dragged, not motivated at all “Maybe another day”

As they did since they’re together, one’s laziness caused the other’s. The two decided to spend the night watching their signature movie, Paddington, Nugget layed on Ryan’s lap, after an eventful game of rock, paper scissors.

They treated Nugget like their child, spoiling her with everything to give her the warmest home. Nugget’s life had not started easily, making them want to cater her. With her addition, they have now become a family.

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[cursedonyx]

Professor Fig Adopts the Emerald Trio (Part 2)

The second instalment of an AU in which Professor Fig has survived, and has adopted Sebastian, Ominis and Dracaena.

Part 1

Sixth year begins and with it comes the NEWT preparations. Fig discusses with the Trio what careers they might take, and tries to help Ominis begin to process his childhood trauma. Sebastian and Dracaena end up in possession of contraband.

Word Count – 5.7k

Warnings – Mentions of childhood abuse (Ominis) | Contraband (drugs)

The summer of 1891 was an enjoyable affair for the Emerald Trio. Dracaena, Sebastian and Ominis spent most of their days taking full advantage of the mostly empty castle, exploring every nook and cranny and delving into places they were more than certain they shouldn’t be, before retiring for the evening and having dinner with their new guardian, Professor Fig.

Dracaena took the opportunity early on in the summer to show them all, including Fig, the Room of Requirement, revelling in the praise heaped upon her by her mentor and her best friends for all she’d done with the space. It became a retreat of sorts for her and her best friends, a far warmer and more comfortable hidden spot than the Undercroft, which they visited only on rare occasions (and mostly when hiding from Peeves). Fig didn’t come into the Room all too often, telling the trio that it was their space, and he’d only enter if he needed them for something that couldn’t wait. That didn’t stop him enjoying his frequent invitations, particularly enjoying spending time with the beasts Dracaena had acquired during her adventures, and bonding with the Phoenix that she had named Miriam.

But time marched on, and summer eventually came to a close. The other students came back, and word quickly spread that the three were now cared for by none other than one of their own Professors. Some muttered irritably that they were now protected from consequences, and others tried to test the waters by teasing and attempted hexes, but they were dealt with as Sebastian, Ominis and Dracaena had always dealt with irritants. Swiftly and without mercy, which landed them all detention before the first week of term had ended.

The weekend arrived, and Dracaena lounged on one of the sofas in the Room of Requirement, her feet propped in Sebastian’s lap, occasionally tickled as he turned a page of the book he was reading. Ominis was tending to a large Flutterby bush he’d been cultivating all through the summer, and Professor Fig was seated at an elegant desk, marking homework. Deek swanned around, a smile on his face as he offered them all tea and biscuits, the light pattering of his feet accompanying the gentle music piped from a magical gramophone.

With a light sigh, Fig placed the last essay onto the pile and leaned back in his chair, running a hand over his face as Miriam the Phoenix ruffled her feathers from the perch behind him. He eyed the three Slytherins, one corner of his lips lifting and pulling out a touch. His charges. His kids. His smile broadened, and he decided to disrupt the soft peace by clearing his throat.

“I think we all need to have a little chat,” he said, fighting to make his expression stern as all three of them stilled, throwing guilty looks to each other, Ominis doing a remarkable job of it, all things considered. He let the silence hang a long moment as they turned to him, then he chuckled.

“About your future careers,” he clarified, smirking like a schoolboy as his adopted charges all uttered various sounds of relief and irritation at his little joke.

“Merlin’s arse, Elly!” Dracaena said, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes. “You made me think we were in for a bollocking!”

He chuckled, warmed by the freedom with which she now spoke to him, her comfort with his presence obvious. The lads weren’t quite so informal, but that would come with time. At least they all still called him ‘Professor’ when they were around the rest of the school. He waved a hand, and the three gathered in front of his desk, conjuring their preferred chairs and settling before him.

He clasped his hands and leaned forward with a smile. “So, any thoughts on what you want to do once you’re finished with Hogwarts? I know the careers advice of last year might not have sunk in with all you endured.”

Dracaena was the first to answer, ever eager and certain of herself.

“I thought being an Auror would be good,” she said.

“Yeah, I thought about that too,” Sebastian agreed. “Or maybe a cursebreaker, or research, or something like that.”

“Marvellous ideas,” Fig said, turning to Ominis. “What about you?”

He gave an elegant shrug. “I’ve no idea.”

“Surely you must have some thoughts?” Fig pressed.

Ominis twisted the corner of his mouth. “Nope,” he replied, his hands tightening in his lap.

Sebastian and Dracaena shared a significant look at this oddly colloquial word, and Sebastian cleared his throat.

“You know, I’ve got to go grab something from the library,” he said. “Care to give me a hand, Drac?”

“Yep,” she jumped to her feet, and caught Fig’s eye, tilting her head meaningfully at Ominis with a look that said he needs your help. Ominis began to rise, but Dracaena put her hand on his shoulder, leaned down, and whispered in his ear. A flash of fear crossed his face, but his friends were already halfway out the door.

“Well…” Eleazar cleared his throat gently as the young Slytherin before him shuffled his feet, looking for all the world as if he wished he was anywhere but here. “Is… everything alright, Ominis?”

His shoulders tensed immediately.

“What have they said?” he demanded. “There’s nothing wrong with me!” Almost instantly, another flash of fear lit on his elegant features. “I-I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude.”

Frowning lightly, Eleazar got to his feet, and the young Slytherin bolted out of his chair, taking several steps back. Alarmed, Eleazar followed, raising his hands.

“Ominis, it’s alright, you're not in trouble,” he said. Far from relaxing the lad, he seemed to become more agitated, his eyes darting around, as if he was seeking an escape he couldn’t see. “Come on now, come and sit with me, and we’ll have a nice cup of tea, and a chat about whatever’s bothering you, hm?”

Ominis looked terrified.

“You think he’ll be alright?” Dracaena said, following Sebastian through the castle. “I feel awful, like we were abandoning him.”

“Nah, He’ll be fine,” Sebastian said, the back of his hand occasionally bumping hers as they walked side-by-side. “Fig really helped me, more than I thought he would, and Merlin knows Ominis has some heavy shit to get off his chest.”

Dracaena sighed. “All the same, I do feel a bit guilty. He always seems so much happier when we’re with him.”

“Well, you,” Sebastian grumbled under his breath.

“Sorry, what was that?”

“Nothing.”

She chuckled, and took his arm, causing a blush to flow up the back of his neck. “So, what was that thing you needed to get?”

“Absolutely nothing,” Sebastian grinned. “I’ve been trying to get Ominis alone with Fig for ages now, and didn’t want to waste the opportunity.”

“Is that the only reason?” Dracaena teased, and the blush crept onto Sebastian’s cheeks. He glanced away.

“Fancy a walk?” he said, gesturing vaguely at the windows. “The weather’s good.”

They made their way down to the grounds and took an easy, rambling route, meandering up to the quidditch pitch to spy on the Gryffindor team’s practice for a few minutes before they were chased off by an irritable Madam Kogawa, losing ten points apiece for Slytherin. They decided it was worth it. Giggling together, they wandered off in the vague direction of Hogsmeade, before Sebastian glanced meaningfully at the Forbidden Forest.

“We've only landed the one detention so far,” he said casually. “I feel a bit strange without getting into trouble every now and then. How about it, Hoctina, you feeling brave enough to go in?”

Dracaena gave him a level look, trying not to grin at the cheeky smile on his face. “You do know I was in and out of that Forest more often than I was our common room last year, right?”

Sebastian chuckled. “Rubbish. Yeah I get that there’s a load of rumours about you, but you don’t need to make them up to impress me. We already did loads together that would scare the pants of most people.”

“So why are you doubting me?” Dracaena said, sufficiently rankled. She dropped his arm and marched over the tiny bridge, her nose in the air, Sebastian scampering along behind her. His free laughter told her he’d gotten exactly what he wanted, and she sighed, chuckling a little herself at how easily he’d played her. He’d always had such a talent for it.

“Hang on,” Sebastian said, after trekking down the path for a good ten minutes and occasionally blasting spiders out of the trees. “What’s this?”

Dracaena paused, peering at the tangle of thorns Sebastian was investigating. A battered pair of boots poked out, and she felt the familiar prickle of cold shiver up her spine, the same feeling she got whenever she saw a dead body.

“Careful,” Sebastian said, as she stepped closer. He held out a hand to stop her. “There’s a Devil’s Snare in there, probably what got the poor bugger. It’s hiding now because the sun’s up, but still, be on your guard.” He used his wand to levitate a few of the brambles out the way. “Looks like he was a courier, there’s a parcel there. Maybe we could deliver it on his behalf?”

“Good idea,” Dracaena said. “But why was he walking through the Forest if he was delivering something?”

Sebastian accioed the parcel into his hands and frowned as he turned it over, a light clinking coming from within.

“No address,” he said, and picked at the string tying the brown paper together. “I wonder what…”

The paper fell away, and Sebastian’s brows went up as several tiny bottles were revealed, all neatly packed together in a small crate. Each tiny bottle contained a swirling, white-blue substance that seemed to slide between a liquid and gaseous state.

“Bloody hell,” Sebastian said. “This isn’t good.”

“What is it?” Dracaena asked, huddling up to him as he picked out one of the tiny bottles. “Unicorn blood?”

“Nah, that’s way thicker, and the colour’s more silvery,” he said. “This is moonflower essence. It’s extremely rare, worth an absolute fortune, and very, very illegal.”

Professor Fig sat patiently on the sofa in the Room of Requirement, a leg crossed over the other, his foot tapping the air slightly as he sipped steadily at a lovely cup of tea. He was settled back against the arm, trying his hardest not to ask for the fourth time what the matter was with Ominis. The young Slytherin was sitting bolt upright on the opposite end of the sofa, clutching a cup of tea that he hadn’t touched. Half an hour had passed, and he’d not said a word aside from variations of “I’m quite alright, thank you,” despite the older man’s gentle probing.

Eleazar had his suspicions, of course. The way he’d reacted when he’d thought he’d spoken out of turn to a parental figure spoke volumes of the kind of trauma he suspected he’d endured, and he knew as well as anyone that Ominis had to talk about his past in order to be able to process what he’d gone through, to begin to heal. But he couldn’t force it, for that would only make matters worse.

So he sat, and he waited. Unfortunately, it seemed Ominis was far more accustomed to long periods of silence than Sebastian was, and he sensed that if he was going to get anywhere at all, he was going to have to prove that he could be trusted. But how? Ominis was mistrustful by nature, and it didn’t take much for him to dismiss those around him as a bunch of lying fools, even if he wouldn’t say such a thing about his elders out loud.

The best way to get Ominis to trust him enough to open up would either be through gradual increments over a very long period of time, or it would have to be through shared experiences. Eleazar had no desire to wait for possibly years for Ominis to open up to him that much, walking on eggshells and praying he didn’t inadvertently abuse the young man’s trust. But he had very little in common with the lad, in truth. From what he knew from the gossip amongst the professors, Ominis was the polar opposite of his family in every way, though this realisation had only really come to pass in recent months as his dear Dracaena practically dragged him out of his shell when they were together.

Ominis, it seemed, had not had a happy childhood. The fact he went to live with the Sallows the moment he could signified that. But Eleazar had had a thoroughly enjoyable boyhood with warm and loving parents. How could he connect with Ominis like he needed when they were so different?

Another fifteen minutes passed, and Ominis gave a long, almost silent sigh.

“Forgive me sir, but I really ought to finish tending my Flutterby Bush,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “Might I be excused?”

“You don’t have to ask,” Eleazar said. “You’re not being kept here against your will, you know.” He paused as Ominis set his untouched tea on the low table and got to his feet, berating himself silently for not being able to help the lad when he so desperately needed someone to care for him. “Do you want some help? I might not be the most green-fingered of men, but-”

“I’m perfectly capable, thank you,” Ominis said, his tone carefully neutral, and Eleazar avoided swearing aloud by a narrow margin. Of course the poor chap would think everyone wanted to help him because they assumed his blindness rendered him helpless, and not just because they wanted to out of the kindness of their hearts.

But then, Ominis hadn’t known much kindness in his life.

“Well, perhaps you could talk me through what you’re doing?” Fig got to his feet as well. “I’ve always held a bit of a fascination with magical plants, but never really had the time to study them.”

He was keenly aware that Ominis wanted to be alone, but he couldn’t give up, not now. He had no idea how long Dracaena and Sebastian would be before they finished fetching whatever it was they were going to get (or rather, knowing them as he did, getting into mischief), and if he missed this chance to get through to Ominis, it was unlikely he’d ever get such an opportunity again.

Ominis’ shoulders moved with another silent sigh. “Of course, sir.”

Eleazar followed him down a corridor and into a rather glorious, long room, where Dracaena had conjured a number of potting stations at one end, the walls covered with tools, diagrams and cuttings, and at the other end were her cauldrons, where she and Sebastian occasionally experimented, with significantly more success than their Gryffindor friend, Garreth.

Ominis headed straight for the Flutterby Bush, a pretty little shrub whose leaves waved and shivered independently, giving the whole plant a pleasant rippling affect. Eleazar took up a station beside Ominis, clearing his throat a little to let him know where he was, and he clasped his hands, waiting patiently.

To his utter delight, this tactic worked.

Though Ominis’ speech was monotone and halting to begin with, he soon settled into his usual pattern of casual conversation, a small smile even appearing on his lips as he spoke about the shrub before him, how to care for it, nurture it, and what results Professor Garlick expected by the end of term.

After half an hour of this, Fig risked a question.

“What is it about Herbology that you enjoy so much?” he asked, crossing his fingers.

Ominis gave an elegant shrug.

“It’s predictable,” he said. “Magical plants generally won’t hurt you, and those capable of causing harm do so only as it’s their nature, and that’s easily avoided if you know what you’re dealing with. You don’t have to deal with dangerous plants if you don’t want to.”

“It’s safe, then?” Fig said, and Ominis hesitated, his fingers brushing the tips of the shivering leaves.

“Yes,” he said, slowly. “I suppose one could call it that.”

Fig clamped his lips shut, waiting for Ominis to continue speaking. He had to wait a while, but his patience was rewarded as he sighed, lowering his hands to the worktop.

“Plants don’t lie to you,” he said, his voice so soft Fig could barely hear it. “They don’t seek you out to hurt you. They don’t force you to hurt other people. They don’t ignore you and manipulate you and disregard your feelings out of spite.”

Eleazar leaned to the side, peering at him. Ominis’ face was set in a fierce scowl, quite at odds with his gently delivered words. He looked about ready to hit something, and his hands were white-knuckled on the worktop.

“I don’t know about you, but I could use another cup of tea,” Eleazar said gently, and to his delight, Ominis nodded, turned, and led the way back to the sofa.

“What should we do with it?” Dracaena asked, staring at the little crate of tiny bottles in Sebastian’s hands. They’d rushed out of the Forbidden Forest as fast as their legs could carry them and holed up in the nearby stately ruin lying along the road to Hogsmeade. Now, they were huddled up behind a stack of crates, and Sebastian had conjured a blanket to lie on top, shielding them from all sides. The space was quite small, and they were pressed up together. Dracaena tried very hard to ignore how warm he was.

“We could do loads,” Sebastian said. “By my guess, there’s got to be at least fifty-thousand galleons worth of essence here.”

Her jaw dropped. It was an almost obscene amount of money, enough for her, Sebastian and Ominis to buy a big house and live happily on the profits well into their middle ages, probably longer if they were sensible. Of course, Fig would live with them, and…

“We probably shouldn’t,” she said. “Bassy, if this really is worth that much and is as illegal as you say, how the hell would we even sell it? How would we explain where we got the money if we managed it?”

“Well… we’d need to launder it so the Ministry doesn’t get suspicious,” Sebastian said, rubbing his chin. “But that’d mean we need a business, and none of us are likely to do that until we’re out of school.”

“So we just sit on it? What if we’re caught with it?”

“Azkaban, probably,” Sebastian said, pulling one of the bottles out again and tilting it to and fro, his eyes on the swirling, liquid mist within. “A few drops of this makes for a powerful hallucinogen, giving you visions of blissful things. Easy to get addicted to, but the more you use it, the more you need, and the more you take, the worse the visions get, until you’re in a waking nightmare, but you can’t stop. People who get addicted to this end up wasting away because they forget to eat, cowering in a corner and surrounded by horrors.”

Dracaena bit her lip. “We probably shouldn’t sell it, then,” she said. “I don’t want something like this out on the streets where vulnerable people can be hurt by it.”

Sebastian shrugged. “Hey, if people want to take it, it’s not for me to tell them no,” he said. “Their body, their choice, right? And if it makes us rich in the process…”

Dracaena thumped his arm, and he chuckled, rubbing it.

“Take it easy, Sparks,” he said, teasing her with the nickname she hated, and she stuck her tongue out at him. His eyes flicked to it immediately, and his smile slipped for a fraction of a second. He wrenched his gaze away and back to the bottle in his hands, barely larger than his little finger.

“It’s not just used as a drug, it’s a really valuable potion ingredient too,” he said.

Dracaena laughed. “That's better. So we sell it to Pippin?”

Sebastian shook his head. “He’ll want to know where we got so much… even a single bottle of this would raise eyebrows.” He pursed his lips, and Dracaena found her eyes drawn to the shape they made. “The only way to sell this would be outside of Ministry regulations. If we own up and say we found it to anyone on the right side of the law, the Ministry would confiscate it, and maybe we’d get a ‘well done’ in the Daily Prophet or something. Now, I don’t know about you, but if someone asked me whether I wanted to take a risk and the result was fifty grand, or do the ‘proper’ thing and get a thank you if I’m lucky, well, I know which one I’d pick.”

Dracaena nodded slowly. “You make a good point,” she said. “But it’ll be dangerous. We should probably take it back to the castle and hide it somewhere until we know what to do with it.”

“Don’t tell Om-” Sebastian began, but Dracaena poked him hard in the ribs and he yelped with a pained laugh.

“Have you learned nothing? If we don’t tell him, he’ll find out anyway, then be upset we excluded him,” Dracaena scolded. “I’m telling him the moment we get back and Fig’s out of earshot.”

Ominis slumped on the sofa, his head hanging. His voice had returned to its monotone state, but for the first time, Fig was glad of it. He thought he’d heard the worst kinds of neglect when Sebastian had told his story (though he suspected Sebastian hadn’t quite told him everything), but the horrific abuse the young Gaunt had suffered at the hands of his family chilled him to the bone. It was a wonder he was even alive, and the story had only reached up to when Ominis was four years old.

“Marvolo used to put me on a broom for fun,” he said, speaking to his knees. “One might think that’s a brotherly thing to do, but once my feet left the ground, I had absolutely no idea where I was. I didn’t have my wand or even the barest hint of magic at such a young age, so I had no way of telling whether I was two foot from the ground or twenty. He used to love sitting in the sun with a book, listening to me screaming for help. It was music to him. He always did it when Aunt Noctua was away, because when she caught him at it, even my father couldn’t stand in the way of the beatings she’d give.”

A tiny flicker of a smile passed his lips. “I suppose it’s funny in a way, looking back on it. She used to frighten the daylights out of Marvolo, but I wished she wouldn’t sometimes. He always hurt me worse after she twisted his ear of whipped his behind bloody. I do miss her.”

“When did she pass?” Eleazar asked, gently.

“Oh, many years ago now. I think I was six when she stopped coming back.” A flash of pain crossed his face, swept away almost instantly by the carefully neutral expression he so often wore. “Ten years… I can hardly believe it.”

Eleazar raised a hand as if to place it on the young man’s shoulder, but he thought better of it. Ominis was a bit funny about being touched, he shied away from contact from almost everyone. Indeed, he’d only ever known Ominis to accept a brief hug or pat on the back from Sebastian, though he did seem perfectly content to lean on Dracaena when they studied. Not that this surprised him, she was a warm and likeable young witch, able to get on with just about anybody.

He tilted his head as Ominis sighed slightly.

“I apologise for going on so, sir, I don’t want to talk your ear off,” he said, his voice still low and dull. “It must be a frightful bore to listen to me complain so.”

“Nonsense,” Eleazar said. “It’s good for the soul to get things off your chest once in a while.”

Ominis shook his head slightly, turning away, and Eleazar bit down on a swearword. He’d been doing so well, and now he was pulling away again! He drew a steadying breath. Patience, Eleazar, let him go at his own pace.

“I could make us another hot drink, if you like?” he offered instead. “Perhaps something other than tea? A coffee, perhaps, or a hot chocolate? I might even have a little firewhisky on hand if you’re in need of a pick-me-up?”

Ominis huffed a soft laugh. “No thank you, sir,” he said, lacing his fingers together and leaning back until he was resting properly against the back of the sofa, his hands in his lap, his head pillowed, his crystal eyes gazing unseeing at the ceiling.

“Did you know that my parents tried everything they possibly could to fix this?” he said, waving a hand at his eyes, before it fell back into his lap. “Everything, I’m told. Gold no object. There was no Healer too expensive, no shaman too far away, no treatment too experimental.”

Eleazar, who had been about to take a sip of coffee, froze, the rim of the cup touching his lip. The darkness in Ominis’ voice chilled him to the bone, and he dreaded hearing what was to come next.

“None of it worked,” Ominis said, his head lolling a little to the side, his eyes closing. “All of it hurt. They’d make me sit there for hours, trying all these different spells, making me drink potions, rubbing poultices into my eyes…” he shuddered. “I think if I wasn’t blind already, I’d have lost my sight for all that they did. Apparently one of their experiments fused my irises together, not that it made any difference to me, but it made them treat me more like an outcast. ‘At least people will know right away that you’re broken, boy, and won’t trouble themselves with you.’ That’s what my father said when it happened.”

“Ominis,” Eleazar began, but the young Slytherin seemed oblivious to his presence.

“They used to give me a piece of chocolate once they got bored of trying to fix me.” He said. “I was never in the mood for it, I was usually in too much pain to think about eating anything. But they forced me, told me I was being ungrateful. I never could stand the taste of it after that.”

Eleazar shifted guiltily, thinking of all the times he’d made the trio a hot chocolate before sending them off to bed, the warm treat a favourite of his as well. Ominis had always accepted with polite thanks, and usually left more than half his cup undrunk once the other two had scoffed theirs. The few times it had been empty, the cup had been spotless, and Eleazar suspected he’d vanished the contents so as not to offend.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “Ominis, what you’ve endured is terrible. I don’t know how someone who was hurt so badly by those that were meant to love you has turned out to be one of the most well-mannered, kind people I know.”

If Ominis registered the gentle compliment, he didn’t react to it. Instead, he sighed.

“It gets worse,” he said gloomily. “Once I got my wand, and had practiced enough with it, they decided to let me join in on the family sport, something I’d always been curious about, until I found out what it was. Marvolo had always called it ‘hunting,’ and I suppose it was, in a way. The thing is, what they were hunting was muggles.”

“Ah, shit, they’re still in there,” Sebastian said, his ear pressed to the door opposite the tapestry of Barnabus the Barmy. “Can’t hear what they’re saying, but it’s mostly Ominis talking.” He flashed Dracaena a grin. “Told you it’d work.”

“I hope you’re right,” she said. She’d been anxious about Ominis’ declining mood for a good while now, and she got the feeling he desperately wanted to talk about it, but didn’t know how to start. She was wise enough to know she was ill-equipped for helping him considering the little she knew of his past, no matter how much she wanted to be the one he bared his soul to. “But enough about that for now, where the hell are we going to hide the moonflower essence?”

“Shh!” Sebastian flapped his hand at her, glancing nervously along the corridor. “Anyone could be creeping up on us!”

“Revelio,” Dracaena said, her wand revealing nothing but them. “No, there’s no one.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t trust the portraits,” Sebastian muttered. “Gossips, the lot of them.”

“I guess we could hide it in your dorm?” Dracaena suggested, eyeing the bundle of robes Sebastian was carrying, the crate of essence hidden within.

“Why mine? If anything, we should hide it in yours, everyone loves you and would believe you if you said you didn’t know what it was or where it came from,” Sebastian argued.

“Because I can get into your dorm, you can’t get into mine,” Dracaena said. “If one of us is indisposed, the other should be able to move it pronto, don’t you think?”

“I could get into your dorm if I wanted to,” Sebastian muttered, then his cheeks flushed. “We can’t just keep carrying this around. Maybe if we just hid it in a suit of armour or behind a tapestry or something?”

“Too exposed,” Dracaena said. “We can’t risk someone stumbling on this. Knowing our luck, I bet Peeves would find it.”

As if he was summoned, the colourful poltergeist zoomed around the corner, cackling madly, his arms full of star charts he’d clearly just stolen. He pulled up short in midair with a screeching noise as he saw them standing there, and his little black eyes narrowed in malicious glee.

“Oooh, it’s feeble Fig’s new adoptees!” he cackled. “Up to no good, it seems to me, thinking a professor dad will save your skins!”

“Don’t,” Dracaena said, grabbing Sebastian’s wrist as he went for his wand.

Seemingly disappointed by their lack of reaction, Peeves glowered, his beady eyes lighting on the bundle of robes in Sebastian’s arms. His grin almost split his face in half when both students tensed.

“Oooooh, what’ve you got there? Is it foody or drinky, or something much more naughty?”

He swooped towards them, dropping the star charts, his hands outstretched. Sebastian swore and dived to the floor, holding the robes to his chest. Dracaena stood over him, firing hexes at Peeves as he soared about her, trying to get to Sebastian. She swore herself as he began throwing things at her, vases, potted plants, portraits that yelled at their unexpected flight, and more. She drew the line when he pulled a fat tarantula out of his pocket and flung it at her face.

Dracaena yelped and whacked it away, and unfortunately, it decided to take refuge down the neck of Sebastian’s shirt. He flung himself into the air as though he’d been electrocuted, the bundle of robes flying away as he scrabbled for his collar, howling like a wounded wolf. Dracaena avoided his flailing limbs and hurled herself after the robes as Peeves shot forward, cackling. He caught one end of the robes and Dracaena caught the other, and the wrapped package came flying out.

“Accio!” Dracaena yelled, and it shot into her hands. “Depulso!”

Peeves was blasted backwards, vanishing through the wall with a yelp.

“Get it off get it off get it off get it off!” Sebastian yelled, kicking and slapping at his torso. Dracaena spied the poor tarantula making an eight-legged run for it into the shadows, but delayed saying anything, because at that moment, Sebastian saw fit to tear his shirt right off.

She raised a brow, admiring the freckles on his shoulders, the light dusting of hair on his chest and navel, the tiniest hint of weight around his belly. He blinked up at her, caught her staring, and they both went as red as Gryffindor.

“No spider,” Dracaena said, clearing her throat and nudging his shirt towards him with her foot, averting her gaze. “Look, we better get out of here befo-”

The door to the Room of Requirement opened, and Professor Fig poked his head out. His brows flew up as he caught sight of Sebastian sitting half dressed on the floor, both he and Dracaena blushing furiously. To her surprise, she saw that his eyes were rather red.

“I hope I didn’t interrupt anything,” Fig said, trying to smile. “Did you get everything you needed?”

“Uh…” Dracaena glanced at the package in her hands, then at Sebastian. “Actually, Elly, there’s something pretty serious we need to talk to you about.”

Sebastian swore under his breath.

The package sat on Fig’s desk in his office as he stared at it the following day. Dracaena had told him everything about what they’d found, and he’d advised them both, firmly, that as tempting as it was to sell it and get a lot of gold for it, it would only end up in trouble for the lot of them. He would have to take it to the Ministry. Sebastian set up a fierce protest of course, arguing a passionate case as to why they should do things his way as Dracaena sidled over to Ominis and gave him a huge hug that he eagerly returned, burying his face in her shoulder.

Fig had already had a word with Aesop and written to Minister Spavin, and most of the little bottles would make their way to the Ministry for a small reward, about a hundred galleons or so.

He chuckled softly. It wasn’t fifty grand, but it was something. The other would be tucked away in Sharp’s private stores for his more difficult potions.

His smile slid away as he remembered all Ominis had told him before Dracaena and Sebastian had their fight with Peeves. He hadn’t been able to stop himself weeping, hastily casting a Silencing Charm on himself as he listened to all the poor lad had endured. Endless abuse, mindless torment, even torture.

But listening to him had helped him. Ominis had strode to breakfast that morning with a smile on his face, arm in arm with Dracaena, Sebastian on her other side, the three of them laughing and joking freely. Dracaena had caught his eye and mouthed a thank you to him. Fig had raised his goblet, hoping against hope that his youngest charge would feel more comfortable coming to him with any problems he had in the future. The first step, after all, is always the hardest.

Masterlist

[hiraethblack22]

Fire and Ice

(Bucky x ofc) series.

MASTERLIST OF THE SERIES: here.

SUMMARY: Thirteen is a HYDRA pawn, a soldier, a spy and an assassin. A wraith. Chosen because of her powers and transformed into the perfect weapon. (enchanted!reader) What happens when her mission becomes locating and eliminating The Winter Soldier?

IMPORTANT: I won't use Y\n but the lead character will be given a name and will be a fully formed character. Set in a time where everyone is still alive and Bucky is free of the hydra. Warnings: violence, blood, torture, and manipulation. Vulgar language. The story will contain adult content. Probably a whole lot of Smut.

CHAPTER TWO: US AND THEM.

Peace is an abstract concept made by powerful people to install faith in the institutions of the world that claim to keep crime and danger at bay. In all the years I’d been living, I quickly realised that it was indeed a false concept, a lie, considering that the same people who claimed to protect the world were installing the danger in it. The idea of peace is nothing but a facade that is used to manipulate the masses.

Hydra was claiming to cleanse the world from evil, but how could they pretend to act for world peace when they were responsible of the death of millions? Couldn’t they see the blood tinting their white vest of morality? How could they profess goodness when they were keeping dozens of slaves under their polished boots?

The Avengers were painted as heroes. Flying around to beat up the evil—that, yes, when they weren’t busy fighting among themselves.

There had been a time when I had hoped for them to come and rescue us, me, from Hydra. But, it soon faded; hope was dangerous, it only led to disappointment and despair. Instead, I focused on survival. I had waited, spending days laying facedown on the filthy floor of the cells and weeks silently witnessing the deaths of my cellmates one after the other. The years I had passed, fed with injections of syringes, and pumped up with synthetic drugs to accomplish assignments that were impossible for anybody else, had helped me to give up all hope, not just in the Avengers but also in the rest of the world.

I ingenuously thought they weren't saving us because they were fighting each moment to defend their values, as we fought every day for a cup of water or a bit of sleep, but no; here they were, drinking champagne in fancy dresses, dancing, as the world outside cried their names.

The fair of peace for the future was another clown show created by the government to show the citizens that the future was safe. The secretary of state had delivered a very long sermon on heroes and peace, licking the avengers' arses every two sentences, and delivering sexist remarks about the heroines of the team—that made my fingers tickle the trigger of my rifle more eagerly than I should have—but in between inaugurations and philosophical peace speeches, the secretary of state made sure he got an exclusive on the prostitution trade every single month, and on the remaining days he accepted bribes from Hydra. So, he would end up murdered, one way or another, but killing him wasn't allowed in my future.

I guessed I couldn’t even proclaim myself as a white knight of peace, not when I was currently waiting to bomb the shit out of it.

“I have eyes on the target.” I murmured into the radio, lowering the binoculars to eye the building where the fair was taking place.

My body moved without me telling it what to do. It checked the ammo, fastened a couple of guns to my legs, secured the daggers around the belt, and lowered the rifle behind my back.

"I hope you mean this horrible building," Marya's voice said in reply. The radio cracked with her voice.

The building was indeed quite horrible—a white oval with an awful lot of windows. It was not a safe place, not even with the dozens of security guards standing outside the building. The others had by now removed the guards and placed the explosives.

The orders had been made clear that it had to be set to trap everyone inside, and us inside with them. The roof was the way out. A soldier had infiltrated the rooftop guards to take control of the chopper when the time was right.

I lowered my hand, and as I willed it, a light flared beneath the skin, producing a flame on the palm of my hand. It swirled on itself, hissing like a wild animal. I allowed it to dance around my fingers with a smile. “It will burn down with the lot of them.”

Marya had been with us for what I imagined was a couple of weeks; sharing a wall of bars had quite made us close. It wasn’t friendship; I didn’t even remember what friendship was supposed to feel like, but we were accompanying each other on long missions and on the dark, cold nights at the headquarters—holding my hand in hers like a loving mother and whispering funny stories of her childhood, telling me how her family had always been loving and caring for her and the rest of her siblings. She often cried, remembering them, thinking about what they thought when they remembered her—I cried with her most of the time, thinking about my brother and the life we had lost.

I knotted the rope to my body, crawling down the side of the building in the silent shadows of the night.

As the other soldiers would trap them all inside, and I would be focused on The Winter Soldier.

The programme they implanted in his head was nearly perfect, certainly better than the one in my head; ours was injected with syringes and would fade away after some weeks, leaving us begging for more. I didn't know why these people wanted the soldier, but I was in charge of bringing his body back with me to the base. I wasn't in a position to care about the reason; the only thing I needed was for my brother to be safe.

I nodded to the other soldiers when I crossed the doors. As soon as I was inside, they all disappeared.

The people were all gathered in the big hall on the second floor, watching the performance. And I was going to give them the most beautiful spectacle—the one they were going to pay with their lives to watch. I distantly heard the noise of the bombs going off behind me.

I smirked.

The game was finally on.

The door of the big hall flew open. The people inside began rushing out, scarfs and clothes over their mouths, to block the smoke from entering their lungs.

I rolled my eyes—people really didn’t know how to save themselves. Running straight into the arms of danger.

I grabbed my rifle and fired shots against the walls. They all dropped in an instant, moving out of the way, and clearing the way for us.

He was in the back of the room. Beautifully swinging punches and kicks at the soldiers surrounding him, ducking out of the flashes of knives. I walked to him, taking my sweet time to extract my favourite dagger from the belt.

The soldiers didn’t waste any time, shooting and punching their way to the Avengers. I recognised a couple of them—I saw the widow jump straight for one of us, leaving him at her feet an instant later. The Captain was, as usual, throwing his shield at the enemies and shouting orders. An arrow flashed past me, grazing my cheek, but I paid no mind; somebody else would take care of that. I saw out of the corner of my eye the soldiers shooting in the direction of the Hawke without breaking the protective circle they had me in—if I didn’t grab a hold of the Winter Soldier, none of us would go unpunished. And then, finally, I saw him

One of the soldiers, S-32 was his number, was attacking too roughly, advancing too closely. He swung a powerful punch at the Winter Soldier, making his head shoot sideways. I saw his blood spraying the floor. Another soldier came, locking his arms behind him. S-32 raised a knife, arching down straight for the Winter Soldier’s throat. The knife flashed closer and closer and brushed the skin of his neck before it stopped.

S-32 stared at me in shock, his eyes wide. His mouth opened, but only a pained groan escaped his trembling lips. He shot his eyes where my hand was closed around his wrist, my skin glowing and his flesh fuming away through my fingers.

“He is mine.”

I kicked him in the chest, watching his body tumble to the ground amid the fight.

I nodded to the other to release him, and his hands couldn’t have dropped faster.

I stared at the Winter Soldier, bending my head to the side to study him better. He was panting in pain, but I couldn't feel any remorse. The power coursing through my veins was too intoxicating to resist. The first thing I noticed were his blue and intense eyes. They reminded me of the ocean, but with a dangerous edge that made me shiver.

I threw another knife from my holster, imbedding it on the floor between the Winter Soldier's feet. He stared at it, then at me.

I winked. "I'd hate for this to be boring."

The Winter Soldier's eyes narrowed, sizing me up and trying to figure out if it was a scam or not. I took a step forward, keeping my eyes locked on his.

"You know," I said, "I've heard a lot about you. The things you've done... they're pretty impressive." He didn't react, remaining frozen in the little bubble that had formed around us. I saw a flicker of something in his eyes. Recognition? Regret? It was hard to tell.

"I don't do that anymore."

"It's cute you think you can escape this," I mocked him.

I quickly turned around to face him, my heart racing as I braced myself for his next move. He lunged at me with the knife. I bent sideways, avoiding that flash of silver.

I didn't wait any longer and lashed out in attack. As I lunged forward, I felt a rush of adrenaline. My foot collided with his stomach, making him stumble backward. He doubled over, escaping from my attack like intangible smoke. He rolled out of the way, rising on his feet behind me, knife in hand and ready.

"Let's dance, doll."

In a flash, the Winter Soldier was on his feet, behind my back, immobilising my arms against my torso with his metal arm. He pressed me against his hard chest. The knife angled beneath my chin, and his breath caressed my ear as he bent down and whispered, "It's cute you think you can beat me."

I took a step back, my eyes locked on his, searching for any sign of weakness. He was quick and agile. Hydra had definitely wasted their time training this man, but they had done it with me too. With a sudden burst of energy, he charged at me again, his knife glinting in the light. I sidestepped his attack and landed a swift kick to his side. He stumbled backward.

The Winter soldier grabbed his side, slightly hunched on his side. I dove forward, sending my knife to slice the air towards his forehead. But the bastard grabbed my wrist, like I had done with S-32 minutes prior. His metal hand crushed it so hard that I felt my bones' wishes to snap. He twisted my wrist until my fingers spasmed open, and the blade clattered awkwardly to the floor. If any of my trainers had been watching, they would have whipped me into unconsciousness.

There was something in his voice that made my blood roar violently in my veins. I involuntarily licked my lips.

"If you're done flirting with me, soldat,” I hardly recognised my own voice, and that mocking smile that could be heard in it. “I'd like to kill you now."

I concentrated on my back, making the skin flare up with fire. He hissed. At first, he tried to hold on to me, but he stumbled back, surrendering to the pain. The knife fell, and I kicked it to let it disappear in the crowd.

As soon as there was space between us, I elbowed him in the groin. I laughed as he groaned in pain, finally rolling away, free from his hold.

With a quick movement, he lunged at me again, his metal arm glinting in the dim light. I dodged his attack and countered with a swift kick to his side. He grunted in pain but didn't back down.

We continued to exchange blows, each one more powerful than the last. As the fight dragged on, I could feel my energy waning, but I refused to give up.

The winter soldier's punch came straight for my mouth. The hit almost knocked me to the ground, but I managed to stay on my feet. I could feel the blood trickling down from my lip. The winter soldier smirked at me, his intense eyes now filled with a hint of amusement.

I knew that this fight was far from over.

I wiped the blood off with the back of my hand. My lips curled in a small smirk of their own.

"I hoped I didn't have to use this," I told him, showing him my hand, the fire rolling on my fingers, "Hydra won't be happy if I burn you to fucking ashes, but hey!" I shot a wave of fire, making it more solid than hot, sending him backward. I shrugged. "Accidents do happen."

I knocked him down twice, sending him further and further into the back of the room, right where I saw Marya keeping the door open for me. She was leaning against the door, using a small knife to clean the underside of her nails, unbothered by the chaos and destruction that was going on around us.

The Winter Soldier stumbled on his feet again, and finally, sending a last blast of power against his chest, he stumbled out of the room.

I nodded to Marya, and she moved to grab her two guns, diving into the room and locking the door behind her.

I took my rifle from my back, and pointed it straight for his heart. “It’s just you and me now, soldat.”

“You don’t have to do this,” he spoke, holding up his hands to show submission.

“Don’t I?” I asked, my voice rougher than I intended. “Are you going to appeal to my sense of pity? Because I have none.”

None I could feel; not at the moment. Not when whatever they shot in my veins was making my heart hammer so loud in my ears that my head felt like it was about to explode; not when I knew what would happen to me and the others if I failed.

“I can help you.”

His eyes were kind, almost sweet, but it was pointless. I didn't know how long I could resist the urge to give in to the voice screaming at me to complete my mission.

“Help me?” I laughed bitterly. “It is a bit late for that.”

I pressed my finger on the trigger. I didn’t know why I was entertaining his idiotic desire to speak with me. I didn’t know why I yet had to shoot a bullet in his heart—heart, not head—because, for whatever reason, my orders prevented me from performing my regular schedule.

“I know they control your mind. I can help you get out of their control. Let me help you. I have connections," he said, "people who can protect you and your loved ones.”

I shook my head.

I opened my mouth to speak again, to scream at him to shut up, to stop messing with my time.

“Nobody can save us,” I said. I heard the sound of the chopper igniting and taking off and the noise of screaming in the distance. The sinister whispers of the serum in my ears and the roaring of the fire.

“The building is on fire. You will die one way," I raised my rifle to aim at his heart, "or the other. Goodbye, soldat. Hydra sends its regards.”

Then everything exploded.

I felt my body flying, smashing against the wall. Then everything turned black.

“Thirt-” a voice broke the surface of the fog clouding my mind. “Thirteen…are you—”

My throat felt like sandpaper, it was aching, and it burned. I brought a hand to my head, as if to find out if I could feel something other than the loud ringing in my ears.

The hand came away stained with blood. I coughed, groaning in pain.

I couldn't understand where I was, couldn't understand why I was in pain. I squeezed my eyes tightly shut, making the tears that had been stuck in my eyes fall, and tried to bring my surroundings into focus.

Everything was tinted in red, smoke was filling the room. The flames were slowly consuming the area around me, but my powers had squeezed me into the familiar protective shield, allowing me to breathe. The fire would not burn me, would not kill me—the scientists had tested it in any way they could think; they burned every part of my body, shoved burning iron on my body, in my eyes, in my throat, but nothing; the smoke would kill me, with time, and those damn powers didn't even give me the joy of an unexpected death.

My throat felt like sandpaper; it was aching, and it burned.

I lifted myself onto my knees, bracing myself with my hands when the world wobbled violently.

The screams in the distance were now drowned out by the crackling of the fire. I knew I had to get out of there, but my mind was still reeling from what had just happened. The sinister whispers of the serum echoed in my head, getting quieter and quieter. And for the first time since I had woken up, my head wasn’t heavy and my mind wasn’t blank.

"What the fuck is going on?"

For the first time in years, I was out of the base, and I didn't feel the black mask of the drug pushing me down. There was no constant pain that clutched my heart and mind, no voice in my head making me do things I hated. The world around me seemed brighter and more vibrant than ever, as if I were seeing it for the first time.

Tears rolled out of my eyes. I stared at the door, and I gathered myself to run out of it. Maybe I'd reach those mountains I had seen on the mission to Norway a few years back. I could finally escape and hide. I would be free. Free.

But then I saw him—the sergeant, the soldat, the Winter Soldier slumped on the ground, eyes closed and still as a corpse.

And I remembered the mission. The headquarters. The other soldiers. The fucking microchip they had implanted in my body, prevented me, even in my clearest moments, from escaping.

The rifle was lying somewhere in the room, but retrieving it was the least of my thoughts. I remembered all those words the scientists had shouted in my face, as they beat, whipped, and carved my body according to their pleasure. Michael. Michael would die if I disappeared like that.

I sobbed, mourning for the life I didn't get to live, for the things I wasn't allowed to feel. I took a deep breath and wiped away my tears. I couldn't let my emotions consume me, not now. Michael would be safe, and I would need to sacrifice my life for him. It was a small price to pay for the life of my only family. I had to get up and go back, no matter how hard it was.

But I had a choice to change things. To make them better.

I crawled to the soldier as blood began to trickle from my nose. I groaned with pain as I rolled him onto his back, placing my fingers on his neck. He was alive.

His words echoed in my head.

I can help you. I can help you.

I eyed the exit; it was engulfed in fire, and an escape through the windows was unlikely. "Soldat." I shook him from his shoulders roughly, but nothing. "Soldat. Wake up! Come on."

His eyes stayed closed. Shit.

I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself down. I had to think fast.

"Thirteen! Thirteen! Report now." I nearly ripped my belt off in my haste to grab the radio. Marya's voice came through, screaming at me to inform her whether the mission had been successful. "Is the target dead?" I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself down.

And I could make no other decision.

My heart was pounding as I took a deep breath and replied, "Affirmative, target eliminated."

"Meet us at the rendezvous point in ten minutes.”

I knew what her words actually meant, if I was not there in time, a squad would track down my microchip—whatever that thing was—and execute me for desertion. Mission accomplished or not. I had to move fast.

"Copy that."

I took another moment to stare at the man before me, looking so peaceful despite everything. He was strong enough to have survived that long in the smoke, in that moment, I had to be strong and pull us both out of this hell. "I hope you're worth it."

I wrapped my arms around the soldier and began to pull, nearly screaming from the pain in my muscles, but I had no time to find an alternative. I couldn't do anything else.

"Damn it, you're heavy." I yanked him with me, stretching the shield around both of us. “If we both die because you want to pull a Sleeping Beauty on me, my ghost will torture yours for eternity.”

The crossing was excruciating.

I dragged him through the big chamber, and then, kicking open the doors, I hauled him up the fire escape to the roof.

I collapsed on the floor beside him, desperately gasping for air. The soldier was still unconscious and unmoving, but he was breathing, and his pulse was steady. And that was enough. Enough to hope.

I lifted the sleeve of his jacket, exposing his arm. And being the only thing at my disposal, I began to write on his arm with my blood.

"You said you could help us." I gave him one last look. "Please do it."

I jumped down the stairs again, submerging into the fire and disappearing.

For the first time in years, the familiar bite of hope came back to haunt me, I only hoped not to be absolutely devastated by the consequences of my actions.

Please, Let me know what you think and if you would like to be tagged in later parts!

Disclaimer: all of my chapters will have a title with the name of a song. This chapter has the title 'Us and them', a song by Pink Floyd. It has no correlation with the story, but I thought it was nice to let you all know.

@mori1b2bpad @lady-bellyn  @thefandomplace @bonkyandsteebluver @billihill - let me know if you still wish to be tagged to the next parts or deleted from the tag list.

[absolute-immunities]

triggered by the Amars calling succession to the Presidency by Cabinet officers, rather than the House Speaker, “apostolic succession”

the succession to Rome is by election of the College of Cardinals??? it doesn’t just go to the favorite of the last Pontifex???

sure, Christ picked the Apostles, and the Apostles picked the bishops for particular seats, cf. Tertull. Praescr. Haer. 32; Iren. Adv. Haer. 3.3.1, but ever since the proper succession to any particular seat has been by election

see, e.g., Jerome, Dialogue Against the Luciferians, ch. 11 (translated by Peter Norton, Episcopal Elections, 250–600: Hierarchy and Popular Will in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2007), 5):

The truth is, the men who are elected to the episcopate come from the bosom of Plato and Aristophanes. How many can you find among them who are not fully versed in these writers? Indeed everyone, whoever he may be, is ordained at the present day from among the literate class and makes it his study not how to seek out the marrow of Scripture, but how to tickle the ears of the people with the flowers of rhetoric.

Cyprian, Ep. 55.8.4 (Norton 13):

Cornelius was made bishop by the judgment of God and his Christ; by the testimony of almost all the clergy; by the vote of all the people who were present [de plebis quae tunc adfuit suffragio], and by the committee of senior bishops and good men.

cf. Cyprian, Ep. 67.3 (Norton 15):

the people definitely has the power either to choose worthy bishops or to reject unworthy ones [quando ipsa <plebs> maxime habeat potestatem vel eligendi dignos sacerdotes vel indignos recusandi]

Ambrose, Ep. 63.2 (Norton 13):

rightly it is believed that he whom all have asked for [as bishop] is chosen by the judgment of God [merito creditum quod divino esset electus iudicio, quem omnes postulavissent]

Apostolic Constitutions 8.4.2 (Norton 24):

and so, I, Peter say that a bishop to be ordained is to be, as we have all already commanded, without blame in all respects; a chosen person, picked by the whole people; and when he is named and approved, let the people assemble, with the presbyters and bishops that are present, on the Lord’s day; and let them give their consent. And let the principal of the bishops ask the presbytery and people whether this is the person whom they desire as their ruler.

And if they agree, let the bishop ask further whether he has a good testimony from all men as to his worthiness for such a great and glorious authority; whether all things relating to his piety towards God be right; whether justice towards men has been observed by him; whether the affairs of his family have been well-managed by him; whether he has been irreproachable in the course of his life.

And if all the assembly together act according to truth, and not according to prejudice, and witness that he is such a one, let them the third time, as before God the Judge, and Christ, the Holy Ghost being also present, as well as all the holy and ministering spirits, ask again whether he be truly worthy of this ministry, so that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.

And if they agree the third time that he is worthy, let all be asked for their vote; and when they all give it willingly, let them be heard.

And then, after order has been called, being made, let one of the principal bishops, together with two others, stand near together, the rest of the bishops and presbyters praying silently, and the deacons holding the divine Gospels open upon the head of him that is to be ordained.

Leo, Ep. 10.6 (Norton 38):

Let he who is to be in charge of everybody be chosen by everybody. [Qui praefuturus omnibus est, ab omnibus eligatur.]

Leo, Ep. 14.5 (Norton 43):

When it comes to the choice of a bishop, let him be installed whom with harmonious agreement the clergy and people have requested; and where the votes of the parties are split among diVerent candidates, the future bishop will be he who, in the metropolitan’s judgment, is more deserving and has greater support, so that no bishop is ordained to those who do not want him or who have not requested him; and so no city which is not allowed to have the bishop it wanted will either despise or hate an unwanted bishop, and become less pious than is proper.

[Cum ergo de summi sacerdotis electione tractabitur, ille omnibus praeponatur quem cleri plebisque consensus concorditer postularit; ita ut si in aliam forte personam partium se vota diviserit, metropolitani iudicio praefuturus qui majoribus et studiis iuvatur et meritis: tantum ut nullus invitis et non petentibus ordinetur, ne civitas episcopum non optatum aut contemnerit aut oderit; et fiat minus religiosa quam convenit, cui non licuerit habere quem voluit.]

Cod. Iust. 1.3.41 (Norton 34):

with this law we ordain that whenever in any city there should be a vacancy for the bishop’s throne, the inhabitants should make a resolution concerning three candidates, men of sound faith and pious habits . . . so that from these the most suitable might be promoted to the bishopric.

apparently Gratian helped kill the tradition by mangling a letter from Pope Celestine, dated 428. see Kenneth Pennington, The Golden Age of Episcopal Elections, 1100–1300, 35 Bull. Medieval Canon L. 243 (2017)

Celestine’s letter originally read:

No bishop should be given to an unwilling flock. The consent and desires of the clergy, laymen, and senate are required.

[Nullus invitis detur episcopus; cleri, plebis et ordinis consensus et desiderium requiratur.]

but Gratian edited that down to its final sentence, and extracted from it the black-letter rule that “the people don’t elect their bishop”:

The people do not elect [their bishop], but consent to the election.

[Plebi non est eligere, set electioni consentire.]

The consent and desires of the clergy and people are required.

[Cleri plebis consensus et desiderium requiratur.]

that isn't what it says, Gratian!

contra, e.g., Lumen Gentium 3.20–22, which reads the Fathers for all they’re worth and, not finding its own doctrine in them, cites to them with a “cf”, and even has the guff to cite the Apostolic Tradition (ca. 215), which reads, in Botte’s edition:

and in Dix’s edition:

Romish guy, wise: “electus ab omni populo”? “consentientibus omnibus”? what could that possibly mean? ....... probably means the Pope picks them ......

it's an election, dumbass!

[xqueenybees-collection]

I Read Assistant to the Villain

Title: Assistant to the Villain Author: Hannah Nicole Maehrer Tags: fantasy, romance, grumpy-sunshine dynamic, office romance, mystery, humor Spice: None Cliffhanger: Yes CW: multiple forms of abuse, especially familial abuse and neglect, attempted rape backstory, attempted murder, prison isolation (let me know if I should add any) Read Below for Review (Spoiler-Lite)

Reading Assistant to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer tickled the part of my brain that watched Ella Enchanted as a kid and loved the visual world building of movie-Kyrria. It has a very fun fantasy-medieval world with modern conveniences like coffee and clocks. That said, the true stand out elements of the story, are the characters.

The titular Assistant, Evie Sage, is an overly optimistic and clumsy girl that ran into her most ideal job. She's an interminable busybody who keeps the office in tip-top shape to the point that it literally can't run properly without her after only a few months. She could very easily be really annoying, but honestly I think she resonates as very relatable, especially as you get further into the book and learn more about her parents and the situation they put her in. It's also really interesting to watch as her inner dark side becomes more and more apparent.

Her boss, the Villain of Rennedawn, is in my humble opinion, a lot more quirky and grumpy than he is actually scary. It's established quite quickly that the Villain is only truly heinous to those that deserve it, which is pretty common for this character archetype. A Villain with a heart-of-gold if you will. I really like him because he has a lot of little character details that make him feel more squishy, especially his love for sweet and milky coffee, get the boy a latte machine. His relationships with his family members, while brief, are quite enlightening and I'm curious to see how they will develop in the future. He has some things that he has done that I believe will come to bite him (or maybe not) in the next volume.

Evie and the Villain balance really well and have extremely fun banter and chemistry. I look forward to witnessing how their relationship will expand in future volumes.

Personally, I think this is quite a good book for a first time author with a unique idea. I think she had a really good grasp of the characters, which to anyone who has seen her TikTok videos shouldn't be surprising. However, I think the world-building could be fleshed out more as I would have liked to see and understand more of the anachronisms of this world and I hope she adds more in the next book. I am also looking forward to more time spent with the side-characters and how the relationship webs out even further (especially Blade and Becky). A lot of questions were raised and answered in this book, but just as many were left for the next installment.

I would recommend this book to anyone who has seen her skits and was interested in what stories these characters could get up to if properly developed. Also to anyone that was a nice and light fantasy book with light romance and a mystery.

[burnwater13]

Sketch of Grogu, gremlin mode, from 2023, by me. Pencil on off white paper. Image based on The Mandalorian TV series showing on Disney Plus.

Grogu knew that he needed to get to IG-11-M as quickly as he could, once they reached Nevarro. That meant that he had to get to the protocol droid before High Magistrate Karga sent the poor droid off to do a thousand thankless tasks. Sure, Grogu loved finding the dish on the High Magistrates desk filled to the brim with fresh, tasty snacks. Who wouldn’t? But that was one of the things the protocol droid did. He would have to forgo that little bit of delight in order to implement his plan.

Now, knowing himself, if he didn’t make sure that he was too full to find eating enjoyable, he’d crumble and ask the droid to fetch the snacks himself. He couldn’t do that. It would spoil everything. That meant he had to eat now, while they were still on the N-1. His dad wasn’t going to be very happy about that, but Grogu had to take the risk. 

The N-1 wasn’t very big. Din Djarin wasn’t small. That meant that the Mandalorian fit snuggly into the seat and found it hard to twist around to access the food storage bins that they had installed after Grogu became his apprentice. Grogu blamed the Mandalorian’s armor but it really didn’t matter. If you have shoulders that broad, you’re just going to have trouble moving around in a confined space like a starfighter cockpit. 

That meant that Grogu would have to access the bins, which was even harder to do because once they made R5-D4 a permanent member of the crew, Grogu lost a lot of space. He usually sat with his dad while Din Djarin droned on about astro-navigation, fuel consumption, hyperspace anomalies, and the like. But, if he was careful, he could work his way around the cockpit as long as he didn’t step anyplace on fortunate, like on the control panels, like the time he almost caused them to drop out of hyperspace too early when his foot slipped and he stepped on the wrong controller. That had been pretty dramatic. At least his dad’s reaction to it had been dramatic. 

So, instead of crawling around the Mandalorian and potentially waking him up, Grogu decided that stealth demanded that he use the Force. That was tricky too because if he didn’t keep his concentration perfectly perfect he might accidentally tickle his dad. It had happened before when they were in such close quarters. That had been part of the whole stepping on the wrong thing fiasco. It was, no doubt, why the Jedi Masters had them practice things over and over. To get it right the first time. Or at least by the nth time. 

Grogu thought back to those days of standing with a group of younglings and practicing the same thing over and over again. Take the pebble off the stack of pebbles. Put the pebble back without knocking all the pebbles askew. Over and over and over. Like one day they would find that the placement of a pebble was the key to their future. 

Huh? Wait a minute. Wasn’t that the thing he was doing in that dream? Not moving the pebbles, but wanting to move just one of them. His pebble. That’s why he wanted to find out more about these Brethren and what they did and how they did it. Now, it was clear to him that the Jedi had known of the Brethren, even if they hadn’t bothered to teach Grogu and his pod mates anything about them. 

Instead the lesson had been about focus, precision, accuracy, and doing just enough without doing too much. Grogu had to explain it all to his friend Ian, because Ian had spent the afternoon in the health clinic. He said he had a headache that just wouldn’t go away. He’d missed the whole lesson. Grogu had guessed that the very thought of having to concentrate that hard for that long had brought on the headache. A lot of their pod mates had complained about having a headache when the lesson was over. Since Grogu wasn’t one of the complainers, Master Beq had asked him to show Ian the basics of what they covered once Ian felt better.

Grogu had tried to do that.

“Listen, Kid. That amount of concentration for a thing that makes no difference is always going to give me a headache. When is a Jedi ever going need to need that skill? Either we use a lightsaber or we jump out of the way of the other guy’s blaster bolt.”

Grogu didn’t have a good counter argument to present to his friend, but he insisted on showing Ian how the technique worked. Which was a mistake. Because as soon as Ian watched him pick up the pebble, move it across the room and drop it into one of their pod mate’s boots by mistake, Ian suddenly was filled with tests to run on it’s usefulness. Could you put a pebble in a drinking glass? Yup. Could you put a pebble in someone’s pocket? Yup. Could you put a pebble on top of a door, so when it was opened the pebble would fall on whoever over the door? Yup, but don’t do that to a door Master Windu was likely to pass through. 

Ian seemed to really like the testing of the method, even if he didn’t like practicing it. When they wore out the places you could put a pebble, Grogu had hoped that the not really the lesson he was looking forward to teaching was over and done with. It was not. It changed. 

He and Ian had been going through the line at the cafeteria to get their afternoon meal when it occurred to Ian that he’d like to try hot sauce, but the container was up on a high shelf. He turned to Grogu and made his request.

“Hey, Kid, if size matters not, can you collect that bottle of hot sauce for me? I want to give it a taste test drive.”

Grogu didn’t see the harm in that and he agreed with Master Yoda that a pebble and bottle of hot sauce weren’t really that different from each other. So he reached out with the Force and took ���hold’ of the bottle and brought it down to Ian without anyone else noticing. Mostly because he was standing on the cafeteria floor and was obscured by Ian, the serving line equipment and the person behind them. 

Ian made the bottle of hot sauce disappear as soon as it was within reach, displaying his abilities with Force in a manner that always fascinated Grogu. Later, after they finished their food, Ian gave Grogu the hot sauce bottle and asked him to return it. It had been a fun experiment, but he didn’t really like the flavor all that much. He commented that it reminded him of the smell of Wookiee chow. Grogu had no idea where Ian had come in contact with Wookiee chow, but vowed to ask one of the Wookiee Jedi Knights about it the next time he saw one of them. 

It occurred to Grogu, as he returned to the cafeteria serving line to ostensibly get another cup of broth, that the skill that Ian had mocked, had actually come in handy and Grogu fully intended to make sure that his friend learned how to perform it without complaint or a headache. 

That plan was put on a back burner when one of the kitchen staff noticed the floating bottle of hot sauce and started to yell about a ghost being in the room. Grogu let go of the bottle because discretion was still the best part of valor and trotted out of the room without anyone noticing him. Being small had been a big advantage that day. 

Which reminded him that he was actually hungry and that the N-1 presented a more complex challenge that that kitchen shelf had and if he wanted to complete even step one of his plan he needed to focus and get on with it. 

‘Freeze dried froglets, come to Papa!’, was all he had to think about to gain the necessary focus to open the correct storage bin and select a package of ‘Grogu chow’ as his dad called it. After he was happily munching on the froglets Grogu wondered if Ian and his dad had ever met. They seemed to have a lot in common. Hmmm.

To be continued…

[postgamecontent]

'Touhou Genso Wanderer -FORESIGHT-' Switch Review

Regular readers will know that Shaun likes him a good Mystery Dungeon game. The Shiren games in particular tickle my fancy greatly, but I've enjoyed many a spin on the basic concept. The Touhou Genso Wanderer games have been some of my favorite Touhou games because of this, and we've now got a third game in the series on Switch. I wish I could call it the best one yet, but Foresight has a lot of problems specific to this installment that keep it from being all it could have been.

As is generally the case with Touhou Project games, the story here is a nigh-unintelligible mess to anyone who isn't already a fan of the characters and setting. So yes, if you're new to all of this, you might as well check out on the narrative immediately. Reimu is a powerful shrine maiden who gets called in to deal with all kinds of supernatural problems. She has a lot of friends from both sides of the proverbial line, and you'll be seeing most of the popular ones pop up here.

The story kicks off here with a future battle where Reimu is defeated, and then we head back in time to a more peaceful point. Reimu gets tricked by some fairies into doing a tutorial dungeon, and then she's soon called in to investigate some incidents. That's about all I can offer you. It's not amazing, and it mainly relies on you being excited to see your favorite characters showing up. But again, this is pretty typical for Touhou Project games. They're quite literally fan games, and the stories reflect that.

In terms of gameplay structure, this is a fully orthodox take on the Mystery Dungeon concept, right down to keeping most of the same control conventions. The one big twist is that you collect Danmaku Points that you can use to fire off a variety of ranged attacks, and as big twists go that isn't much. Consequences for failure are minimal, much like the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games. That doesn't mean this is easy, though. Indeed, one of the bigger problems with this game comes from the difficulty spikes at certain bosses. It's nothing you can resolve with good strategy. You just need to grind until you're strong enough to pass the test.

The tedious grinding really hurts this game over the long haul. The procedurally-generated dungeons aren't spicy enough to keep you entertained for all of this, and the enemies don't offer enough variety. There are only a handful of different types, and you'll quickly suss out what you need to do with each of them. The bosses often start showing up as regular enemies, but due to their level-check nature they rarely present much of a real threat by the time that happens. You don't get many of the interesting interactions that make the Shiren games so tense and exciting.

You won't find much of note in the character building, either. There's a skill tree system in play here, but it's a very dull one. Mostly damage modifiers that are specific to an enemy type, and you'll pretty much have to waste resources doing a respec for each new area and boss to take advantage of their weakness. It's functional, and I guess it's better than nothing, but it's hard to get much of a fever going over damage modifiers.

Touhou Genso Wanderer -FORESIGHT- has some ideas, but the way it implements them makes for a far more tedious affair than its predecessors. You can find far better choices in this genre at the same price point, so unless you've fully exhausted those or are a huge Touhou fan, I can't really give this game much of a recommendation. It's not dreadful by any means, but it falls into just about every trap that can make a game like this feel tiresome rather than invigorating.

Score: 3/5

[ilopisara]

27.01. 21:48 | Ilo Pisara vs Die Bobers 8 - 7

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, let's break down the circus of a hockey game that just unfolded before our very eyes. Ilo Pisara versus Die Bobers ended in an 8-7 barnburner—a scoreline more befitting a junior peewee scrimmage than professional hockey. First off, Teppo Winnipeg—you puck-moving maestro—your defense was as absent as my patience for slow Wi-Fi but redeeming yourself with two goals and three assists? You're like that one friend who shows up late to the party but brings the best snacks. Keep tickling those twines! Sami Noddy! Six assists? Two goals including the game-winner? If you were any more clutch, we'd have to install you in a manual transmission. But zero hits?! This is hockey, not ballet; next time throw your weight around or so help me... Jani Saari... four goals on five shots—that's efficiency hotter than a ghost pepper sauna! However, thirteen giveaways—is this Christmas or are you trying to set some sort of charitable donation record? And Olaf Kölzig between the pipes... A save percentage barely over .500? What were you doing back there—playing Sudoku while pucks whizzed by? As for historical context: We've been crushing it lately (remember Trojans & Outlaw Rangers?), yet tonight felt shakier than a newborn fawn on ice skates. Future implications: Let’s tighten up defensively unless we want future games to resemble arcade shootouts rather than strategic chess matches. In conclusion: Offensively dazzling yet defensively puzzling—we skate away with another W but leave much room for improvement lest our pride gets checked harder than Sami avoids body contact. Onward Ilo Pisara!

[tatiekfuji]

“Revealing the journey of the 39th selected work of Denny Ja:” The Teacher’s Voice “

   In the world of Indonesian literature, Denny Ja’s thoughts and work have become a source of inspiration for many people. In his long creative journey, Denny JA has created the work that tickles the mind and arouses emotions. One of his latest works raised in this 39th exhibition is the “Teacher’s voice”.    In this exhibition, Denny JA revealed his chosen journey carefully. He wants to show the world through his work how a teacher thinks can have a big influence on the development of the younger generation. Through his work on display, Denny JA gave a vote for teachers who were dedicated in shaping the nation’s future.    In the “voice of the teacher”, Denny Ja uses various mediums and techniques to describe the strength and influence of a teacher in the life of his students. In a poem of his essay entitled “Dream of the Nation’s Children”, Denny Ja described a teacher who inspired his students to achieve their dreams. With a bright color and expressive style, this essay poem presents joy and enthusiasm in learning.    In addition to essay poetry, Denny Ja also uses photography techniques to convey his in -depth message. In one of the photos on display entitled “Traces of Education”, Denny Ja captured a precious moment between teachers and students in various corners of the country. This photo describes the hard work and dedication of a teacher in guiding his students, even in different circumstances and challenges.    In the work of Denny Ja, he also explored the medium of writing as a form of creative expression. He wrote poetry that aroused feelings and presented contemplation about the role of a teacher. The poem titled “Inspiring Light” is one example of the poetic work of Denny Ja. In this poem, he described the presence of a teacher as a light that guides and inspires his students.    The “Voice of the Teacher” exhibition also includes unique and interactive art installations. In one of the installations entitled “Tracks of Concern”, Denny Ja uses paper with a positive message that can be cut and posted by visitors. This invites visitors to participate in expressing their gratitude and appreciation to teachers who have given a positive influence on their lives.    Through this exhibition, Denny Ja wants to inspire and give awards to teachers in Indonesia. He hopes that his work can be a reminder of the importance of a teacher in realizing a bright future for the younger generation.    In the journey of the 39th elected work, Denny Ja has succeeded in revealing the strength and influence of a teacher through various art mediums. Through essay poetry, photography, writing, and art installation, Denny Ja revived the voice of the teacher in each of his works.    The “Voice of the Teacher” exhibition is an opportunity for visitors to explore and feel the strength of the message that is transmitted through the work of Denny Ja. In attending this exhibition, we can all appreciate the important role of a teacher in shaping the younger generation and inspire them to achieve their dreams.

Check more: Uncover the journey of the 39th selected work of Denny Ja: “The Teacher’s Voice”