#jan really be one with the flowers here

[darkcreamz95]

What's that? You don't have a calendar for 2025??? 😱😱😱

Say no more, for the Joker Out 2025 Calendar hosted by aroxarts on IG is finally out! ✨️

Had the pleasure of contributing to one of the months for the calendar~ Come check it out and find out which month I drew for! 🌸

[nereidprinc3ss]

hourglass

in which spencer disappears from fem!reader's life entirely for three months, right as it seems they were finally about to make things official. when he comes back they reunite, all the while knowing things can't be the same as they were.

18+ (smut, angst) warnings/tags: oh god so many. NOT canon compliant in the slightest, i make shit up, softdom!spence, nipple stuff prob, fingering, oral f receiving, piv sex, unprotected sex, pet names, tara mentioned, depression, mentions of trauma cause its the prison arc duh, passing mentions of alcohol, mentions of spencer losing weight, reader mistakenly thinks spencer tried to kill himself BUT ONLY FOR A SECOND, where is diana reid, nobody knows or cares, probably filming glee, optimistic ending a/n: haven't posted smut in forever but this wip required it and the angst was so angsty i just had to finish it. it was started in jan or feb and subsequently added to and changed months apart and then edited so the writing quality varies from section to section which i apologize for. originally based on good guy by julia jacklin... also the odyssey by homer? can't really explain that one you'll just have to see for yourself anyway byeeee ilysm!!! PLS tell me if you liked it! or if you hated it! but preferably if you liked it! MWAH! wc <12k

It’s been about three months since you last saw Spencer Reid.

About three months since you had an early Valentine’s Day celebration (even though you weren’t a couple) complete with champagne (even though he doesn’t usually drink) and slow dancing (even though you swore you’d be terrible and he spent the first ten minutes laughing at you as you stepped on his toes.)

About three months since you finally settled your head on his shoulder and let the warbling vinyl carry you somewhere distant as the two of you danced slow circles on the parquet floor for what felt like hours.

You’d have liked him to stay later that night. You’d have liked him to stay all night if you were being honest with yourself, but at 11:45 he gently pulled away and told you he had to go.

“Curfew?” you joked, the corner of your mouth lifting a little and you hoped you were hiding your disappointment well.

“Actually, I’m going down to Texas for a few days to speak with one of the leading doctors in experimental Alzheimer's and dementia treatment. I’m going to see if he can get my mom into a clinical trial. I leave early tomorrow morning.”

“Oh my god, that’s amazing, Spencer! What are you doing still here? You should be at home getting ready to go!”

A rosy blush stains his cheeks and he looks down at the ground, laughing that little self-deprecating laugh of his. It makes your heart dance to see him so happy, makes you want to wrap your arms around him and never let him go so that he knows how much you absolutely adore him—but you settle for an affectionate squeeze where your hands have come to rest on his biceps.

“I wanted to see you tonight because I won’t be here for Valentine’s Day... but I still really wanted to spend it with you,” he admits meekly.

If before your heart was dancing, it is now melting.

The dreaded ‘what are we’ talk has been lurking in the dark corners of every conversation you have with each other lately—at least, in your mind it has. What you have with Spencer is not easily defined, and near impossible to explain to your friends—you act like a couple, you go out on dates, he introduces you to his team like you’re his girlfriend without ever putting it into so many words—but this validation that your pseudo-relationship might be evolving is better than any flowers he could have gotten you (although the peonies he brought will look very nice on your bedside table.)

“Four whole days... what will I do without you?” you whisper, brushing a hand along his face, and your chest aches with the heavy truth of it—despite the fact that he often is gone for stretches about that length. They don’t ever start to feel shorter.

“Well, you can start by reading that copy of The Odyssey I annotated for you.”

“Depressing,” you admit. “And a little ominous, considering you’re about to embark on a hero’s journey.”

“I think you’ll like this one,” he smiles.

You chew on your bottom lip, looking up at him as you think.

“Give me something to look forward to,” you say, earnestly.

“I—well, honestly, I just really want to kiss you and I’ve wanted to for a long time now and, you know, if that’s something you’re maybe also interested in then we could, uh, figure out a time to—”

“You want to kiss me?”

“Wh—you couldn’t tell?” Spencer says, like he can’t believe it.

As if on reflex, you lunge up and capture his lips with your own. It obviously catches him by surprise, but when you lower from your tiptoes he follows you, pulling you in closer and holding your face in his hands.

It’s too natural, too right, to be exhilarating. There’s no rush of adrenaline—it's more like stepping into a hot bath or warming your freezing hands at a fire. Like pieces clicking into place. It’s a relief.

You breathe into it, letting more and more of yourself melt against him. He keeps coming back to you deeper and deeper like a rising tide, and you want more than anything to keep getting closer to him—but then he stops. He stays close enough for you to breathe his air, but dodges your kiss gently before supplanting it with a gentle one to the corner of your mouth.

“I really have to go,” he breathes, before moving away from your mouth to kiss your forehead and speak softly against your skin. “If I don’t leave now I’ll be here all night.”

Which is exactly what you want, and the implication does little to make you want him less. But you care about him too much to be so selfish.

At some point, his hands found their way into your hair, and you gently grab his wrists.

“Incentive for you to come home.”

Nearly three months since that night.

At first when he stopped answering texts, you’d assumed he just had too much going on down in Texas. Which you could understand—you knew how stressful this situation with his mother was.

Even when four days came and went without even an alert from him that he was back in town, you thought, okay, maybe he’s been called away on a case. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s disappeared because of his work. But even then, he’d at least text you enough information so that you would know he was alive. Now, radio silence.

So you tried not to be clingy. You tried to act like an adult, to focus on school and your life outside of Spencer, but when Tara Lewis cancelled your weekly meeting due to an “unforeseen work-related emergency”you called her immediately. Tara was something of a mentor, and it was she who had connected you and Spencer to begin with. You had met the other members of his team by that point, yes, but none who you knew as well as Tara.

When she had informed you that Spencer had been arrested in Mexico and was now facing prison time for murder, you laughed.

Laughed until you realized her end of the line was silent.

Realized it was not at all a joke.

In a catatonic state of tranquility, you asked her for more details. Beyond assuring you of his innocence, she couldn’t (or more likely, wouldn’t) provide them. Asked where he was now. Asked all the right things that made sense to ask.

Then you hung up and had a panic attack because Tara said something about 25 years and you saw Spencer evaporate from your future like an apparition.

Slowly, you felt him evaporating from your past, too. Those memories from the night he left, became visions of you swaying with a ghost. Holding nothing but light between your hands as you kissed the peony air of your apartment.

He doesn’t want to see you, she had said into the phone one night, her tinny voice cutting in and out. You’re not on his list of approved visitors.

“You asked him about me?” you had whispered, curled up on top of your made bed in the dark.

I tried. I’m sorry. I’ll call you when I know more.

All your days melded together like a muddied smear of paint. Suddenly you felt you had nothing to look forward to. No anchor, no goal. Yes, a PhD... and then what?

The only thing that punctuated one 24 hour period from the next was the time you spent crying because Spencer was in prison and he didn’t want to see you and by the looks of things you may never see him again. When you weren’t crying, you were thinking about how your life was a big cosmic joke. An unfortunate statistical anomaly that didn’t mean anything to anyone else, and that you couldn’t do anything about.

That copy of The Odyssey, which wasn’t even bound and instead was a thick stack of printer paper organized by a single black clip, became something of a manifesto for you—a tome that your poured over, reading and re-reading each note in the margins, each word beautiful and imbued with meaning because you knew Spencer had selected every single one specifically for you. You traced the letters reverently, because in a way this was the last thing he had said to you—about Lattimore’s faith to the original text, Merrill’s strict use of dactylic hexameter, the stylings of Wilson and Lombardo, and how he thought you would enjoy Hammond’s prose just as much as he did.

Day by day it was becoming more prophetic than fictional, and you allowed yourself to sink into madness. You would rather be a deluded zealot than be nothing at all.

He didn’t want to see you.

He might as well have been dead, for all that you were grieving him. And you started to hate him, because he wasn’t dead, but wouldn’t do you the kindness of proving it. Like a festering wound, scratched open day after day so as not to ever heal, you had to live knowing he was less than an hour away. So no, you weren’t exactly over it. You lived day by day, waiting for the occasional call from Tara to keep you updated on Spencer, but either she didn’t want to share much about how he was doing, or he had specifically barred her from doing so, because she was always sparse on the personal side of things. That thought actually lifted your spirits, because it meant he was at least acknowledging your existence in some tiny way.

But your routine was becoming more regular, and so you staid on top of your classes and your non-Reid related meetings with Tara once a week, and you learned to dip your toes into existential dread and the oily black pool of depression every night without ever fully submerging yourself. You learned hope, because it was pretty much all you had, and the BAU had confidence that they would get Spencer out one way or another so you did too.

So you didn’t really think about it when you missed a couple of calls from Tara some evening in May. You were preparing for finals and had way too much on your plate academically to think about anything else which was a welcome relief so you fully embraced it. I’ll call her back tomorrow, you think, as you clean up from dinner before going back to the living room where your textbooks and papers are completely covering every available surface. Maybe I have no idea what I’m going to do with my life after school, but I’ll be damned if I don’t even make it that far.

Hours later, well into the night, you’d all but forgotten about the calls. A knock at the door takes you a bit by surprise, and you frown as you stand again, tugging your Georgetown sweatshirt down over your shorts as you shuffle to the entrance of your apartment. You’re not expecting anyone, so you crack the door, peering around the edge of it.

And you couldn’t even consider trying to hide that shaky inhalation of dead air when you see Spencer standing on the other side.

Surely you’re hallucinating.

Surely this man in front of you who looks like he just got back from a day of work didn’t spend three months in prison pretending you didn’t exist.

He looks the same. Hair a bit longer, maybe—and gaunter even more than is normal for him. 

But it's him.

You can’t think about the apprehensive look on his face—you can’t think about the impossibility of him being here. You can’t think at all. Without your explicit permission, your body surges forward into his, and he’s real, and alive, and warm, and he is an anachronism in the hallway as he accepts everything you pour into the embrace, doesn’t flinch when you move your arms from around his waist to loop around his neck and back to his waist again with crushing force because you just can’t get him close enough.

“I’m sorry,” Spencer mutters into your hair, I’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorry, he keeps saying, rubbing your back as you try to find a solid grip on the sleek material of his suit—try to gather all the pieces of him, already afraid he might fall apart and float away again.

“You—dis—disappeared,” you hiccup after an eternity, pulling away enough to look up at his pretty face. Tears blur your vision and darken the front of his jacket, bending the florescent lights so they form a kind of halo above his head.

Through the surreal haze you can see his throat bob.

“I know.”

He knows?

He knows?

You scoff.

“You have no fucking idea, Spencer. What the fuck is wrong with you? I—I'm—”

The hot anger is such a relief for a second, boiling the oceans of your despair into a wrathful, scorching fog, but as soon as you try to tell him how you feel, the barbed wire cuts into your throat again. You shove him away, skin burning where his hands had been.

“I’m sorry,” he croaks, hands hanging uselessly at his side. There’s that kicked puppy look about him—and it’s familiar, but now there’s more damage. You don’t know anything about his time in prison, you haven’t heard a damn thing, but beneath the glassy desperation in his eyes there is an unfathomable void that seems to be preventing him from being fully present—and you realize for the first time that he is different.

It chills you.

Before, you and Spencer shared everything. There wasn’t one part of his internal machinations that you didn’t understand, nothing you kept from each other. But as you study him now from a few feet away, you realize there might as well be a yawning chasm between the two of you.

He is so different.

Those eyes look deeper. No gears turning just behind the slashes of gold and brown anymore—only an endless dark corridor that goes places you will never go.

Gone is the perpetual boyish up-turn at the corner of his lips that always made him look slightly vacant in a way that you found incredibly amusing. Something you had been so fond of, even if you teased him.

He seems to have aged ten years—if not physically, then in demeanor. And now you feel like a little kid throwing a tantrum.

You cross your arms, suddenly unable to meet his eyes.

You’re embarrassed. And pissed. And relieved. Everything is worse and better. You want to fall back into his arms, but you have been jarred by the revelation that this might not be the same Spencer. It might not be the same relationship. You have no idea where you stand.

He says your name gently, with so much familiarity you’re briefly jerked into the past. It makes you wish you could look up to find him as he was three months ago. Wish this was just a bad dream. But that’s not fair to him.

“Sorry,” you mutter, studying the grey carpet fibers instead of looking at him.

“Don’t apologize,” Spencer says immediately, “you’re right. I don’t—” he clears his throat— “I’m being incredibly selfish. I shouldn’t have just shown up, I’ll just—I'll leave. I’m sorry.”

A silent moment passes.

You don’t look up as he turns and swiftly begins to move down the hall toward the stairway, leaving as quickly and silently as he had come, like a few bars of a song sighed in and away on a fleeting breeze.

Your bare feet are concretely planted, imagining him jogging down the steps and speed-walking away from your building—

And suddenly you’re sprinting after him, feeling like you might puke because Spencer was just here and you let him go again—and even though you’re still so mad and confused and hurt, the realization that he is leaving again makes the entire building spin and lurch.

“Wait!” You yell, almost wiping out as you run down the stairs and whip around corners in your slippery fucking socks. “Please, wait!”

The lobby is already empty as you spill out into it, and cold dread tightens around your neck like a fist as you shoulder your way through the double doors and right into Spencer.

“Please don’t leave again, you just—I'm sorry, I really need you to not go—” you blabber, lachrymose once more, gripping onto his forearms for dear life.

“I’m not going,” he breathes shakily. “I tried to leave because I think you were right and maybe I should and maybe it would be better for you but I can’t.”

“You can’t,” you agree, more sob than spoken word. He cups your jaw, then your cheeks, wiping tears and brushing away hair like he can’t figure out how to hold enough of you between his hands. The wild kaleidoscope of his eyes, bright and alive and real as he scans you desperately captures your attention enough to slow the tears to a trickle. He notices this and stares back, entranced.

A silent agreement is made, or maybe an inevitable fate is accepted—either way, something was set in motion three months ago and it matters to see it through. Spencer kisses you and you’re ready for it. You don’t need slow or tender. You need to feel how he feels. You need to know what he knows.

You sling your arms around his neck and he pulls you closer until you almost tip backward, chasing the bruising kiss even as you regain your footing. You want to drink him in and you do your best, breathing deeply as he kisses you deeper, backing you inside and toward the elevator.

“Is this okay?” he manages, only after blindly reaching for and mashing the up button on the wall panel.

Ideally it wouldn’t happen like this, but the world you live in obviously isn’t ideal and your personal situations as they coincide are far from ideal, so this is how it has to happen. But it’s hard to explain, and you’d rather not admit that this is so far from what you wanted for both of you and follow up with the fact that despite that you need him like you need water. So you don’t say a word as the metal doors slide open promptly. Instead you pull him in and let him press you to the chrome wall as he hits your floor button, and that very hand comes back to grab your ass like you didn’t think Spencer Reid capable of. It almost aches as his fingers dig into the flesh, but it’s a good ache because it means he’s real and he’s there.

You gasp as he hitches your leg up, arching into him. The shorts that you’re wearing leave very little to the imagination to begin with, but they become downright indecent like this.

Quickly the elevator stops and the doors hiss open. You don’t hesitate to pull Spencer by the hand down the hall. When you notice you left your door wide open, you don’t even care. Neither does he, apparently—once you’re inside he slams it shut, flipping the deadbolt while his eyes are glued to you like you’re already naked. Now Spencer is shameless in the way he drags his eyes over every curve, every place your clothes and hair are disheveled from his touch and eye-fucks you so obviously it makes your face warm. Three months ago Spencer would have at least been bashful about it when he met your eyes again, but this Spencer is far from apologetic as he pins you with his burning gaze once more. His hand stays stuck to the door like he’s holding himself back.

“Is this what you want?”

There’s an undercurrent of sorrow below the gravely arousal, like this isn’t what he wanted for the two of you either. But you’re both at the mercy of fate. This is all you have, and it might be all you can do for each other anymore. So you don’t need to say that, because he understands.

“Yeah. Yes, this is what I want.”

For just a second more he watches you from his place by the door, and there’s an unexpected softness to it. He looks at you the way he would have looked at you before. Like as long as he stays there he can entertain the idea of being that person again.

Need wins out quickly, though, and he surges forward. Immediately you’re caught in the riptide of him, helpless as he kisses you all the way to your bedroom.

He’s never been in here before. You find yourself glad it’s relatively clean—one of the pastimes you’d picked up in his absence was keeping everything tidy. It was something you could control.

A lamp glows at your bedside. You lean against the footboard of your bed, hands timidly behind your back and suddenly shy to have in him in your intimate space. Both of you set aside the heaving desperation long enough to catch your breaths, and for him to scan the room like he too is being forced to reconcile with the innate and unexpected intimacy of the moment. He cuts a harsh, dark gash in your sweetly decorated bedroom, radiating something wild and powerful and unsure of himself like a chained bull as he takes in the soft, pale bedding, the paintings and photos taped to the walls, the woven rug and the sheer drapery. His breathing slows as he studies it all—eyes eventually catching on something behind you. Looking is unnecessary. You’re sure he’s spotted the dried peonies in their ceramic vase. Or maybe the now worn stack of papers that is his Odyssey, marked up and soft around the edges from constant flipping-through.

Then Spencer looks at you, and that softness seeps in again. Along with something like... fear? Grief?

In some other universe your first time with Spencer is sweet and giggly and kind and he smiles at the decor in your room and looks around with wonder because it’s another way he gets to know you. It’s a different way to learn you from the inside.

You sense that he’s caught in between universes right now as well, painfully aware of what he would have given you that he can’t anymore.

He breathes your name like an apology, and foolishly you let a second go by in which you think he might offer you one. But he doesn’t. Not with his words, anyway. His eyes tell a different story.

“It’s fine,” you say unprompted on a whispered exhale, then a little louder as you push off the footboard, crossing the space until your hands are on his chest. You focus on his tie, not making eye contact as you rush to undo it. “It’s fine.”

He lets you do this for a few seconds before finally covering your trembling hands with his own. You still can’t meet his eyes.

“We don’t have to do—”

“No! No, please. I want to. I need—I need us to be okay.”

“Hey,” he murmurs, catching your chin and forcing you to look at him. “We are okay. Me and you are fine.”

It’s a pretty thought, but it’s not true. In fact, it’s a hideous and abject affront to the truth. Sure, maybe you’re fine in comparison to last week. Maybe anything feels fine compared to an eight by six cell. But it would be impossible for you and Spencer, for your relationship, whatever that relationship may be, to be fine. It’s especially impossible for him to make that claim, after all he did or rather didn’t do while he was gone. What you need is for him to stay anyway. What you need is to find a way to be with him, to exist with him, even when you are so clearly not fine.

“I just need you to stay,” you whisper, and he’s already nodding, wide-eyed like he’d do anything for you. You ignore all the bitter venom rising in your throat. You pretend this isn’t all happening after he cut you out of his life with a dirty switchblade. Instead you focus on his hands on yours, the familiar smell of him, which invites you to let go of each and every thought and worry. He must’ve showered before coming here, you realize. How long has he been out? What happened? 

“Okay. Okay, I can stay. What else can I do? How do I make it better?”

You sniffle and look back down.

“You can untie that for me.”

He hesitates, then nods some more, fingers working under yours to undo the tie around his neck.

“Okay.”

A moment goes by and after that final whispered word, the tension begins to build again. Spencer senses it in the way your fingertips linger on his chest and you step even closer, dragging them down to his belt. The metallic sound of it unbuckling, despite being your own doing, still manages to flip your stomach. How many times have you pictured this? When was the first time you realized you wanted it? You’re sure you haven’t stopped wanting it even once since then.

Spencer tosses the tie away and is shrugging off his jacket now, then before you see it coming he’s kissing you again, ducking down to do it. He feels taller this close up, and especially in your bedroom, where he just seems rather out of place. But you want him here. God, you want him here.

You break the kiss, forced to look down as you fumble with his belt.

“Sorry,” you gasp, embarrassed by your lack of dexterity. The light is barely sufficient to see what you’re doing, especially when he’s wearing black on black and your eyes are still bleary.

“You’re okay,” he assures you, and it’s so Spencer a fresh round of nerves electrifies the tips of your fingers. That thing is happening—the thing you’d hoped to avoid if you hadn’t lost momentum partway through, where you’re allowing your actual feelings for him to get in the way rather than getting swept up in the pathos of the moment and letting everything be easy and mindless. “Here, can I help you?”

But he doesn’t actually wait for an answer before he’s finishing off the belt for you, tugging it loose from his hips till it’s a leather coil in his hands. Your fingers brush the material and he lets you take it as if it were your prize. It’s heavier than you thought it’d be, and you just feel the weight of it in your hands for a moment, your dropped head brushing his chest.

You have a terrible feeling that if you do this now, it doesn’t mean everything will be alright. Because it can’t just go back to normal. Spencer has told you nothing of what must be an enormous trauma, and you haven’t spoken about it at all, but you sincerely doubt that after this he’s going to be ready to just jump into that committed relationship the two of you had been toying with for months before his absence. You’re almost... scared of him, now. Scared of where he’s been and what he’s endured—things you’re sure you couldn’t have taken. What that does to a person, you can’t imagine. He seems so solid and real in front of you now—but you know that’s not always enough. Maybe you’re just scared that somehow whatever he’s been through will have made him care for you less. That you were too far removed from the whole ordeal, and now you’ll never understand. If you could understand, maybe you could fix it for him. Maybe he’d stick around.

Still—even if you do end up pushing him further away in the long run—won't it have been worth it to have had him so completely, even just once?

You toss the belt to the ground, compressing all of these very complicated thoughts and feelings into a few seconds so short he can’t ask you any questions about them. Instead you find his top button, and just as you manage to undo it with relative ease he’s gently grabbing your wrists. You look up at him, immediately surrendering.

“If we’re going to do this I need you to relax a little bit.”

Gears grind in your chest. You feel need and anxiety comingling in every square inch of your body. It’s a sick buzz—a high on an empty stomach.

“I can’t,” you admit.

“Yeah, you can,” Spencer gently disagrees, slowly lowering your hands. When he’s sure you’re not going to try ripping his clothes off again, he releases, and his eyes lower to the zipper of your hoodie. His fingers follow, warm against the soft triangle of revealed skin at your chest as he grips the small piece of metal between barely shaking fingers. “You can.”

You match his eyeline, breathing shallowly and watching as he slowly drags the zipper down. You wonder if that sound has haunted his fantasies the way the sound of his belt has haunted yours. If he’s seen this hoodie on you and wondered what’s underneath, staring at you and daydreaming during movie night with you none the wiser.

Both of you have your eyes glued to the span of skin as the zipper parts. Spencer stalls with the zipper at your sternum, just below the band of your bra.

Right. No shirt.

You look up and find his eyes already on you, tinged with a curious kind of humor.

“I wasn’t expecting guests.”

The words come out shy. Spencer’s chuckle has its own nervous airy quality as he resumes tugging on your zipper, leaning down until your noses bump.

“You don’t have to explain yourself to me.”

Then he kisses you again, a little sweeter now. Sweet enough to give you butterflies and for them to flutter right out of your stomach and spill from your lips in a little whimper against his.

It comes as a surprise when he pushes the fabric from your shoulders without looking or asking. Not that you’d have said no—you're just underprepared for how assertive he is in this foreign context.

Left just in your flimsy shorts and your thin bra, you feel quite exposed—but Spencer’s hands are as demanding and hungry as his mouth. They skim up your sensitive sides and sweep lower, suggesting less proper placement over your ass and pulling at your bottoms until you gently put a stop to their wandering.

“Wait. We’re... we’re uneven.”

It’s a struggle to get any words out at all when he keeps chasing your lips, nipping at you like he physically can’t stand not kissing you, but they catch his attention and he laughs airily, pulling back to let his gaze pour over your less clothed form. It lingers and catches and lights you up everywhere it touches, drops of heat soaking into your skin and making you feel all fuzzy and needy.

“We are,” he acknowledges, tone low and colored with the faintest smile. “You’re a lot prettier without your clothes on than I am.”

“I don’t believe you.”

The challenge comes immediately and thoughtlessly. Spencer’s golden eyes flash up to yours. He’s breathing a little harder than usual.

“You want me to show you what I mean?”

If that means getting him naked, then yes, absolutely.

You nod, but rather than immediately stripping, he takes your hand and holds his own open next to it. A thick pink scar bisects some pretty significant palmistry lines, but you don’t mention that. Instead you swallow—your thoughts, your words, your nausea.

“That’s new.”

You wonder how you hadn’t noticed it earlier.

He nods.

“A lot is new.”

It sounds almost like he’s challenging you—there's a kind of tremulous force in his voice, despite the perpetual softness there, like he’s inviting you to say it’s ugly. And you realize he’s referring to more than just the glowing scar cutting an asteroid trail against the flesh of him palm. The scars he obtained in prison must form a constellation over his body.

“I don’t care. I wanna see you.”

Spencer swallows, cupping your face with the scarred hand once more. You can’t feel it against your cheek but you know it hasn’t gone away.

“I’m sure you think you do,” he permits, and that’s where the conversation ends for the moment—with his hand on your face and his lips back on yours. “For now why don’t you let me worry about you?”

Obediently, you breathe, “okay.”

This is, for whatever reason, amusing to him. The brief levity dies as quick as it comes like a snuffed-out brush fire as soon as he lets his hands fall back down to your hips.

“I want... I want to give you slow. But...”

But slow is for people who didn’t lose three months of their life. Slow is for people who don’t know what it’s like to be starving. Slow is not for the desperate.

You understand the feeling.

“I don’t need slow.”

You’ll let him use you up like quick-burning fuel if that’s what he needs. You’ll go as fast and as bright and as hot as he tells you.

“But you want slow,” he murmurs, a secret acknowledged into your own waiting mouth. You’d keep it there forever. You could be the object he hides his soul in. “I know you do. You deserve to get what you want.”

“I can go fast. I want whatever you can give me.”

Spencer’s shuddering exhale is like a drug, dizzying as you inhale it and your eyes flutter at the high, pressed head-to-head with him. For so long you’ve needed him so badly. It’s overwhelming to have him now, all over you. If only your walls could breathe him in the way you are, if this room could remember what it feels like to hold him the way you will, if any inanimate object could bear witness to how you’ll give yourself, any part of yourself, over to him, so willingly.

“I’m going to try.” Spencer’s voice is hoarse as he walks backward to the bed, taking you by the hips as he goes. “I want to do it right. I want to do this the way I... the way I imagined it, before...”

Now he’s sitting, and you’re standing between his legs as he finds the clasp of your bra and undoes it, his fingers a comforting pressure where they ghost down the slope of your back. Your heart is pounding at the confession, at the way his tongue darts over his bottom lip and his fingertips journey back up to your straps, looking up at you with haloed irises as if he’d find anything other than the most dangerous kind of smoldering devotion in your eyes—the kind cult-leaders seek and spend years nurturing, and he’d earned with a mere brush over your bare skin.

The fabric slides down your arms, and as it falls to the floor, you watch something like despair flash-flood his eyes. It is a deep, distinctly human grief. The ineffable kind where something is almost too beautiful; so perfect it offends the mortal senses because it should be permanent, but nothing is, and the clash of divine beauty with unstoppable time which oxidizes copper and covers marble with vine is almost as grotesque as metal rending delicate flesh. It is the grief that drove the first poet to write and the first parents to press their baby’s painted hands to the walls of a cave. It is the desire to do the impossible—to capture ephemeral perfection and make it eternal, and the knowledge that it is hopeless. You recognize it because you’ve felt it for him.

“I thought about you all the time,” he whispers, doesn’t bother calling you beautiful but you don’t mind because he’s telling you with his hands and his eyes and the waver of his voice. “When I was gone, I thought about you—”

You’re just as quiet, just as soft.

“Don’t, Spencer.”

He doesn’t get to tell you about when he was gone. Not now. Not after he acted like you didn’t exist.

“Okay.” He swallows the things he’d wanted to tell you like you choked on the things you needed to tell him for three months. “I’m sorry.”

But his hands—his hands are perfect over your waist and his lips are perfect where they kiss your ribs like they’re his homeland. You could forgive a thousand wrongs for each kiss he puts to your skin. Light from the full moon stretches over the room like a blessing from the cosmos, and you have every intention of making the most of that gift, how the silver gilds the planes of his face and highlights curls like they were carved, and invites you to search for something in each shadow.

Some of his kisses land over the sensitive skin of your breasts though you doubt he has much intention or that there is any sort of end-goal with the trail he blazes—in fact, you have to root your hand in his hair and pull gently back when he doesn’t seem to realize that he’s making you wait again. His eyes are glassy and cheeks slightly pinkened—you weren’t expecting this wave of fondness to knock you on your ass but here you are, falling all over again.

“You don’t have to go that slow.”

A slow smile splits the heart of his mouth at your bashful tone and he’s emboldened to bring his hands higher for a moment, thumbs brushing particularly delicate though not downright indecent spots. Nonetheless, your breath catches.

“Impatient girl,” he scolds, and though it’s lighthearted it still inspires heat to dance across your face. Oh, I think I’ve been plenty patient, you itch to say, but you bite it back because it’s only sad and true and unkind.

Still, he gives you the beginning of what you want, really only the tip of the enormous iceberg that is your desire for him, by slipping his thumbs into the waistband of your shorts and tugging them down. His hands slide up the fronts of your thighs, tracing the trim of your underwear, and you’d swear he’s not even breathing. The moment one of his hand loops behind your knee and pulls forward until it’s pressed to the mattress and you’re half-kneeling, half standing, desire begins to truly cloud your mind. Manhandling never seemed like Spencer’s style, but when paired with how softly he reveals your hip, pulling gently down on the fabric of your underwear just to admire you up close, you don’t mind it.

More kisses are littered over your stomach, and he takes you by surprise a second time with a quick maneuver landing you on your back and him on top of you.

“I wasn’t doing you justice with my imagination,” he murmurs against your mouth. “I couldn’t have known.”

“Couldn’t have known what?” you pant as he shamelessly digs his fingers into the plush of your ass. You almost hope it bruises.

“How pretty you would be,” he coos like he means it, and you dissolve, slipping through his fingers like sand in an hourglass. “You were holding out on me.”

It’s a tease, not at all serious, but you manage to hit him with a, “Was not, asshole,” and he chuckles, placating your little hurt with another sticky kiss, and you get another disorienting glimpse of some other timeline where you’re both a little less damaged. Where it’s a little easier.

But in this timeline, his touch becomes starving and ragged and urgent, and you accept the drag of his thumb up your thigh and between your legs, gasping when he runs his knuckles up the center of you. This touch is metal on screeching metal. It does not pretend to be anything more than what it is—brute, powerful, executed to elicit sensation. You get the sense that Spencer’s never touched anyone this honestly, and while you do envy the girls who got to have him gentler, you’ll take this as the compliment that it is. A kind of vulnerability that is nearing primal.

His lips, though—always his lips—are kind when they brush and land on your skin guided by some invisible map. A dip down your neck and chest and then a plunge, his tongue dragging over your hips, chasing the fabric of your underwear as he almost pulls it off and then reroutes, making room for himself between your legs and pushing lace aside to mark the hinge of your inner and upper-most thigh. Your chest heaves and you don’t dare move for fear he’ll stop leaving signs of himself on your body and you won’t be able to reassure yourself that it was real and he was here and it was not another dream.

Because something in you knows, if only consciously recognizing it for the first time now, that he will disappear again. That this may be your only chance.

The desire to make the ephemeral eternal. An impossibility.

He’s clearly losing himself to something, eyes shutting blissfully. You wonder when the last time he let his guard down even a  little was. You’re okay with being the thing he gets lost in, even if you’re not exactly okay with him—something you are becoming more acutely aware of as each touch makes a part of you want to cry. Maybe you still have some things in common. A strange pain that doesn’t quite feel like it belongs to you, for one thing.

You slam back into your body as his nose nudges against you through fabric, and his lips catch on cotton as he drags himself up, eventually settling a kiss against the little bow at the waist of your underwear. There he stays, eyes closed, mouth pressed to you.

“Is this okay?”

You swallow, buzzing. Is this really what he wants? After everything?

“You don’t have to...”

“But is it okay with you?”

Nothing more than an airy whisper, you reply, “Yes, if that’s what you want.”

Being emotional at this point seems wrong, but it’s difficult to ignore the fact that you have thought about this before and it’s finally happening but it’s not exactly as you’d imagined it. There is an indelible sadness to it, to the way he’s so hungry for you because he’s been deprived, to the desperation with which he touches you because he’s had everything taken from him.

For a moment, before he tugs your underwear down, he pauses, and you wonder if he’s freezing one moment in time, this moment, and grieving all the other ways it could’ve been, and accepting that this is the way it is going to be. You are.

These higher realms of thought abandon you as he finally pulls the last barrier down your legs and encourages you to spread them further. You don’t have time or energy to be embarrassed, not even by his staring, or the way his eyes dart up to yours and back down again, wide and shining, as if to say, have you seen yourself? Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?

All you feel is the lack of him on you, the pull to have him closer so strong it’s almost sickening because he could be gone at any second. Maybe he understands that because he doesn’t waste anymore time before he’s kissing the most sensitive part of you. The drag of his tongue has you loosing a shuddering cry.

His mouth wanders, making connections you wouldn’t have realized the value of until you feel them on your skin. Your hips buck as he traces you and you’re unable to stop yourself from tangling your hands in his hair. Speech fails you—hell, you can hardly breathe as you watch his with a furrowed brow and parted lips, only expelling air from your lungs in the form of little cries and gasps and failing to hold your hips down to the bed.

The tip of his tongue teases around your entrance and he catches your leg as your foot rises off the bed, slinging it over his shoulder and consuming you more fervently until you have no choice but to moan though you’ve never been one for theatrics. Nobody has done this for you like he’s doing it for you. Locks of hair fall in front of his face and you hold them back for him, shuddering as he shifts his weight and presses the tip of his finger to your cunt.

“Ah—please,” you manage, your first words since he started. Spencer groans against you and the sound is so wonderfully unexpected, so much better than in your dreams. You cant your hips up in further invitation, chirping as he takes it, pushing two fingers into you at once. Your eyes screw shut and you bite back a whine at the slight stretch, unconsciously writhing your hips either to get further away or take him deeper, you’re not sure.

Spencer pulls back, kissing your hips and thighs and pumping his fingers very slowly as you adjust.

“’M sorry,” you pant, “it’s been awhile, I...”

“Don’t apologize,” Spencer says like it’s simple, his own breath coming quicker. “How’re you feeling? Need me to stop?”

“No! No, it feels really good, I feel good.”

He holds your burning gaze, matching it with his own, and his hair is tousled and his cheeks are flushed as he continues to move his hand.

“Yeah?”

“...Yeah.”

This little show of obedience, of call and response, has him smiling before he occupies his mouth with something else once more. It’s a different smile than you’re used to from him, but you decide you don’t at all mind it.

Like that, with his tongue and fingers working tirelessly, your orgasm comes on quickly. The feeling is rare but not entirely foreign, and in that brief moment of utter disconnect between your brain and reality, of sheer white-hot pleasure, you don’t feel you’re missing out on anything at all. How could you be, when you are here and Spencer is here and for a moment all your neurons are lighting up and flashing neon? How could there be anything more to life than the searing feeling of him slowly withdrawing his fingers from you, than your hips between his hands like he’s cradling the world, and his lips, indiscriminate with where they kiss because every part of you is worthy of attention?

You’re reeling, and your legs are gelatinous as he so affectionately sucks the darkest mark yet onto your inner thigh like a parting gift, like he’s signing his trembling work. If you could clamp your legs shut around the almost painful aftershocks you would, but he’s climbing back up your body, so all you can do is wriggle against him and release delayed, stunted little moans. He stops to kiss your neck before he makes it to your mouth and drinks down all your sounds until you’re gentle and pliant for him like you haven’t been yet.

His voice is soft and sympathetic when he speaks. “Better?”

Wordlessly you nod, both comforted and unsettled by how well he knows you. What, exactly, has been made better, you’re not sure. Not trust. You don’t trust him anymore. Something cheaper, but temporarily effective. A sense of permanence, maybe, however fleeting it may be. You’ve completed something with him now, and he’s still here, still sweet.

He looks into your eyes, then, for a moment—and there is just enough light in the room for you to tell yourself that the shadows dancing there as he looks at you are love.

They morph as you watch into haunting, wild hunger. Pained even now.

He sits up abruptly and so do you, scooting back against your headboard and pulling your knees to your chest to protect your pounding heart as Spencer takes you in with darting eyes and quick breaths. His fingers find the collar of his shirt and he begins to unbutton.

“I need you to remember it’s all going to heal.”

He swallows, and you hardly have the wherewithal to study the way he unbuttons his shirt, a way he exists in the world that you had previously not been privy to. The words are too distracting.

“What?”

Sometimes he reminds you of a deer, with those big brown eyes that can’t help betraying anxiety. Moreso in those old pictures he’d shown you from his early days at the BAU—but it shines through occasionally even now. It’s reassuring to know that something inside of his has remained soft.

“Just...” his fingers don’t stop at their task, and you come to the disturbing realization that his knuckles are bruised. “Please don’t freak out, alright?”

Your mouth goes dry, eyes glued to the lengthening span of revealed skin.

And before he even has his shirt fully undone, something isn’t right.

He’s like a Pollack of bruises—starbursts and watercolor blots of discoloration blooming over his side and stomach.

You’re glad the light is off for two reasons: one, being that you don’t think you could handle the bruising in all its glory, and two, you hope the look of horror painted on your face is at least partially obscured from Spencer.

But you can’t. You simply don’t have the gas in the tank to freak out, as he’d said—at least not externally. Those bruises shouldn’t be there, but 96 days is a long time to be gone.

You drag your eyes back to his—nervous, deeply insecure and mistrustful. A deer. Just like those pictures of a 24 year old Spencer in an FBI jacket that was too big for him.

It’s enough to have you scooting on your knees across the mattress to him. Those big eyes stay glued to you as you draw near, falling as you carefully push open his shirt, cautious not to bump any tender spots as it falls to the bed. A flash of white gauze wrapped around his forearm that makes your stomach flip. How? You want to ask. Why?

He doesn’t seem to know what you’re going to do, and neither do you, until you’re grabbing his hands, bruised knuckles and all, and just... holding them for a minute.

“I lost weight,” he says quietly, as if that’s the most shocking thing about his current appearance, though it is noticeable.

“You’re still pretty.”

He smiles at this—a true Spencer Reid smile. Flattened lips, eyes tinged silver with sadness, voice quiet and anxious and wavering.

“I didn’t have a lot to spare.”

A moment goes by.

“I’m not going to ask you about them,” you promise, though you care so much and you want to know but you already understand that he won’t want to tell you.

Another moment. It doesn't surprise you to watch the shiny vulnerability in his eyes to freeze over completely. But he squeezes your hands once in thanks, and you know it’s still the same Spencer.

“Lie down.”

Oh. Right.

This.

You do as he says, taking a deep breath to try and exhale the concern twisting your stomach like a poison. Somehow your room feels so unfamiliar, so new with him in it. Even the whorls on your ceiling look different as you study them, trying to time the pattern of your breathing with the pattern of the paint and plaster and not let the sound of Spencer further undressing quicken your heartrate too much.

Soon he’s coaxing your legs apart again, reverently, and kneeling between them, studying every part of you—lingering not on the parts you’d expect. He traces the scar on your knee with his thumb, follows a line down your thigh to the freckle on your hip. The scrutiny is unnerving and warms you everywhere. Perhaps he senses the microscopic clench of your thighs as you imagine pushing them together, if he weren’t in the way.

“You alright?” He asks, still stroking your hip. Tender again. It’s so hard to keep up.

“I...”

Suddenly your heart beat is a deafening echo in your own ears. The tide of your breathing is too powerful, too in and out and whooshing, leaving you always too empty or too full but never comfortable.

Maybe he’s changed, and he’s harder to know now, but he is the same Spencer. He is the Spencer you’d fallen in love with. The hard part is knowing that now you may never get a chance to tell him that. You don’t know if he’d be able to hear it.

There are things you can’t have with him anymore. Not now, at least. Maybe not ever. But you can have this. It will be different, but you’d rather him be different and here than the same and only in your memory.

You swallow.

“I’m good.”

Tangling your hand in his hair once more, you pull him down into a kiss. It’s hesitant, at first—maybe he can taste your thoughts, where they’d been balancing just on the tip of your tongue. But the uncertainty fades and he kisses you deeper, harder, in a way that is hard to keep up with. You like the messy overwhelm of his lips, teeth, tongue. That’s the only way he knows how to want you.

When you go to wrap your leg around his waist he catches it, running his hands over the soft plush of your thigh. The hard line of him presses against you like memory foam and you gasp and he breathes it in deeply as your brain short-circuits, as you realize this is really going to happen, that you’re going to have him like you’ve never had him before and in ways you’ve only imagined and immediately felt ashamed for.

“Spencer,” you whisper. He ducks to leave open-mouthed kisses along your neck and your eyes flutter shut, craning your neck but not losing sight of your objective as you reach down blindly. When you find what you’re looking for he freezes, groans against your neck at the same time as you breathe the tiniest whimper. Just in your hand he feels impossible, hot and imposing and hard. Your heart palpitates.

Without thinking, you angle your hips up and encourage him closer, until the tip of him is smearing through your folds, and you both go utterly silent like the breath had been stolen right from your lungs. The moment crystallizes, time around you hardening like preserved amber to keep you frozen there forever.

And then he rolls his hips, catching the underside of his cock on the crux of you, and then he does it again, and you choke out a moan and so does he, and it’s beyond perfect—it's nirvana, more than you could ever have conceived of, with his weight pressing you into the mattress, arms caging you in, his heavy breaths hot against your neck and vice versa as you twine together like serpents on a rod, your foot floating in the air as you widen your legs to make more room for him.

And you’re not even fucking yet.

“Oh my god,” you whine, just for him, barely audible under the heavy cloak of night, the thickened air in your bedroom and the sound of panting and fabric shifting. It’s like your heart is trying to reach through your chest to his own where they’re pressed together—that is how hard it’s beating.

Spencer only breathes a long, low curse and shifts so he can grasp himself. Your fingers drift down the shaft of him as he slots himself at your entrance, notching half an inch in and you hold your breath, and you brace yourself—and then he’s kissing you again, but gentler this time. Reassuring. You soften, you can’t not, releasing all your air in a soft gust through your nose, and then he’s pushing in.

Your lips part at the stretch as it fuzzes your mind, but he stays right there, nose pressed to your nose, lips ghosting over your own. He’s not going anywhere, you think, and you’re glad for it, when it burns ever so slightly, and the tiniest whine escapes your open mouth.

“Shh,” he soothes immediately, low and soft, only fractionally louder than you had been. “You’re okay.”

Spencer. Your Spencer.

For a moment, you’re living in that alternate universe. The kinder one. The flash of pain you feel then has nothing to do with the way he’s opening you up.

This is the closest you have ever been, and in some strange way, the furthest apart.

Together, fingers brushing, you guide him until he settles at not quite your deepest point. You can feel that he’s not giving you everything yet, but you’re okay with that, as you adjust to the full feeling. Spencer again senses your desire to close your legs against the deep intrusion, and gives you the best he can by encouraging you to wrap your legs around him.

“Good girl,” he whispers tenderly, nudging at your jaw with his nose and dragging kisses along the ridge of it. Your stomach flips at the moniker and your brain turns to warm sludge as your eyes flutter shut. It makes you feel all light-headed and you flutter around him. Spencer chuckles into the junction of your neck and shoulder and the vibrations send a chill down your arching spine. “I thought you might like that one.”

“Mhm.”

“Mhm. How are you? You okay?”

“’M ready.”

“You’re ready?” His tone is dripping sarcasm and faux-disbelief as he pulls back the slightest bit only to push right back in deeper, this time. Your toes curl, one thigh sliding higher up his waist as you cling to him.

“Fuck,” you manage, a pitiful, high pitched curse tossed to the wind. He echoes the sentiment.

“Oh, my god,” he groans, continuing with that slow pace, “you feel so good, angel.”

You grapple at his back, searching for purchase as your brow knits. “Faster.”

This inspires another breathy chuckle, but he obliges, and you cry out softly. It’s almost unreal, your head buried against his neck, drunk on his scent and the drag of him like a shock felt in the far reaches of your body, again and again.

There’s nothing you can say that will accurately demonstrate what you’re feeling, so you elect not to speak, to remain silent and try to get a grip on this cacophony of sensation and emotion. But it’s too much to be alone with. You feel you have to get it out, to seek understanding. You can’t do it alone.

“Spencer.”

“Hm?”

“I don’t know...” the sentence trails off into a gentle keen. He moves to kiss you, speaking against your lips.

“You don’t know?”

Shyly you shake your head. Spencer sighs wistfully.

“Do you know how much I missed you?”

It’s like he can sense your need for comfort. For something grounding.

And while this topic was off-limits earlier—you're softer now. The stone walls that form your boundaries have been chipped away and lowered.

Spencer continues unprompted.

“I thought about you every day. Every night while I was falling asleep. You were always on my mind, angel girl.”

You whine. Whether it’s pleasure or distress is anyone’s guess—including your own.

“You were gone so long,” you whisper, eyes shut.

At this, Spencer slows again, and the tension that was building settles back to a simmer.

“I know. I wish I could—I wish I could change that. But I’m here, okay? I’m right here with you.”

Then he makes sure you feel every last inch, and it takes your breath away. If your thoughts were any more coherent, they’d be something along the lines of: but for how long? How long until you leave again?

“You’re here.”

You say it like a mantra, once out loud, and then again and again in your head, timed with every clash of your hips. With each repetition he becomes more real. Every little ache, every tingling, head-emptying brush against that most sensitive spot inside proves to you that he could not be any closer. This can’t be faked. It can’t be another dream to wake up in tears from.

“You’re here,” you gasp as it hits you, as it truly sinks in.

“I’m here,” he breathes.

There’s so much you want to say—three months of words you need him to hear, of things you need to talk to him about, things you need to yell at him for and things you can only say crying in his arms and things you can only say laughing or whispering or drunk or half-asleep—and in this moment you can’t manage any of it. Every word condenses into one drop of salt water, drifting away from your eye and down your cheek. Spencer doesn’t tell you to stop crying. He only kisses the tear away, and murmurs I’m here I’m here I’m here over and over again against your skin until he’s not even speaking it out loud anymore. But you feel it. With every brush of his lips, every breath, every movement, you feel it.

Soon he’s adjusting his angle, gradually picking up the pace but retaining that unforgiving depth, and your nails bite into the skin of his back as your jaw drops. Spencer hisses, pressing impossibly closer.

“I’m sorry!” you squeak.

“Do it again.”

“Wh—what?”

“Please,” he begs, low and hot against your jaw, just beneath your ear. “Do it again, honey.”

Honey.

You’d do anything for him if it meant he calls you that again.

When he shifts his weight to one arm and reaches down between your bodies to play with your aching clit in exactly the right way, you don’t really have a choice. You arch and moan wantonly enough to feel embarrassed as your nails scratch down his back. At the same time he’s making noises of his own, and you almost feel guilty for marking him up like this only you think he likes it. The most perfect and troubling tension is building in your core, so taut you almost fear the inevitable rebound when it snaps. But you’re driven to be exactly what Spencer needs right now, and to let him try and be what you need. Even if it scares you. Even if you’re not sure how.

Spencer groans, head tucked to the bend of your shoulder. “I’m not gonna last.”

Any response you might’ve been about to muster is annihilated by a sudden, deep bolt of pleasure.

“’M gonna cum,” you mewl like it’s a secret.

“Are you?” he asks, coming up breathless. If your eyes were open, you’re sure you’d see him above you.

“Mhm.”

“Look at me. Look at me.”

It is unmistakably a command—one you fight to follow.

You cry out as you meet the intensity of his gaze, those shadowy corridors suddenly ablaze and alive. They are not unending, like you’d thought. They are a door thrown open to let the light in, or maybe to let the fire out. They’re open in this moment for you.

No more words are spoken after that—you cum hard, gasping as you fall and spin. Spencer follows very shortly after, like he was holding it together just for you, and your eyes are still locked though everything is a bit bleary.

“Fuck,” you whine as he continues to fuck you for as long as he can, despite your writhing hips, but you’re entranced by him, unable to look away now that you’re hooked. Until he slows to a halt, glances down at your mouth, and you just have time to pray that he’ll kiss you before he does. You whimper against his lips—a plea for understanding. A plea for him to stay, even though this is over. He kisses back so soft and sweet it’s like he can read your mind. Echoes of I’m here I’m here I’m here still buzz across your skin. His eyelashes tickle your cheek. Your heart stops beating quite so quickly, melting and warm like the rest of your body.

Soon the kissing ceases and you’re just breathing together, trapped and faced with the knowledge that it must end just the same as you had waited for it to start.

Eventually the air between you becomes mostly carbon dioxide and you let your head fall to the side, dizzy and giggling breathlessly as you nearly avoid asphyxiation. Spencer laughs too, letting his head fall to your shoulder once more, and you finally let your eyes flutter closed. To do something as simple as laugh with him again is its own small euphoria. It’s unexpected, and a soft landing once all that tension breaks underneath your combined weight.

It can’t last forever, you know that well. But the slow fade of it makes the next parts a little easier.

Spencer presses a kiss to your neck. “Is your bathroom through that door?”

You hum a confirmation and are only slightly disheartened when he pulls out and rolls off of you. You’re further disturbed when you see there’s gauze around his thigh, matching what’s around his arm, and you wonder how you missed that. Spencer scoops up his clothing and disappears into the adjoining restroom, assuring you he’ll be right back and leaving you alone with your thoughts and the whorls on the ceiling which have seemingly shifted into entirely new constellations.

He leaves the door cracked which is oddly reassuring—the sliver of warm light and the sound of the sink running. Only a few moments pass before he’s returning clad in boxers once more to sit on the edge of the bed, pushing away the sheet you’d just pulled over your chest and pulling one of your legs over his lap. Your face warms as he brings a washcloth between your thighs. As soon as he glances up at you and catches your eye you’re looking back to the ceiling.

“I should’ve asked first,” he says quietly as he cleans up the mess he’d made of you.

You speak just as softly, like you’re both afraid of disturbing some peace, of waking some sleeping giant. “It’s okay. I would’ve told you if I didn’t want it.”

His reticence, his unreadable face, make you nervous.

When he’s done, he rises to toss the dirtied cloth in the laundry bin, and with his back to you (as scratched up as it might be) you feel braver.

“Are you gonna, like... hate me now?”

It was a mistake. That’s clear by the way he turns around, brow knit deeply and grimacing slightly like even the suggestion offends him.

“Am I going to hate you?”

Again you pull the sheet up, and again you look away, studying the pattern of moonlight stretching out over the floor and scooting to make room for him when he steps in it.

“Not hate, I just...” the bed dips beside you and you are indescribably glad he’s not immediately running out the door. “I’m not dumb. I know what this was.”

He pulls you into him and you settle against his chest. It feels good. “I never thought you were dumb.”

This is your first real conversation since he’s gotten back, you realize. And how quickly you’re falling into familiar patterns, familiar syntactical beats. You know when to speak. You know when to bite your tongue and keep him talking.

The silence goes on longer than you’re used to. Maybe he got good at not speaking while he was away.

Eventually your eyes wander, falling to the white strip over his thigh where it is parallel to yours on the bed, only over the sheets.

“What happened?”

You said you wouldn’t ask, but that was then, and you’re upset again. You almost want to hurt him. To piss him off. You don’t know.

But it doesn’t work.

“Do you really want to know?” There’s a note of something heavy in his voice, and you look up at him. It’s a privilege to have him this close—his beauty is a constant surprise that you’d become unaccustomed to over the months. You say nothing, and he takes that as the yes that it is. “I... I did it to myself.”

He may as well have reached down your throat and grabbed for fucking heart for all its clenching. Tears well almost immediately, though they’ve been waiting in the wings all night.

“What? Did you—were you trying to—”

His eyes widen.

“No! No, honey, no.” You wilt as he gathers you closer, a deeply confused frown still contorting your features, too heartbroken even to cling to him, or to appreciate the ease with which honey slips past his lips again. “No. I was—it's complicated. I didn’t—I wasn’t trying to hurt myself, but I had to—I had to do it before someone else did something worse.”

The bruises covering his abdomen.

You sniffle and pull back enough to look up at him tearfully. “Why would they want to hurt you?”

Mist fills his eyes even as he’s looking down at you, a layer of separation, as if he’s two places at once. Even as he goes to brush your hair behind your ear, to stroke your cheek.

“I’m... not... the same, as I was.” It’s not an answer to your question—but it’s the beginning of the answer to a question you’d been too afraid to put into words.

“Don’t say that,” you beg, because you know where this is going. He keeps smoothing your hair like it’ll make this easier.

“But it’s true,” Spencer says gently, the slightest waver betraying his own emotion.

“You’re just going to leave again.”

And you’re losing to the tears.

“I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”

“But you will,” you insist, like a child crying to a parent come to comfort them after a bad dream.

“Not right now. Right now I’m here.”

I’ll stay until you fall asleep again.

For now, maybe that has to be enough. 

You cry on his shoulder. He kisses your head and doesn’t tell you to stop. 

Eventually, you sniff and wipe your eyes. 

“We were so close. Before you… we were almost there.”

You’re sure of it. You’re sure that if he hadn’t gone when he did you would’ve been a real couple. You would’ve told him you loved him. 

“We’ll get there again,” he promises, rubbing your arm. “I just… I need a little bit of time. I think you do too. But we’re going to get there again.”

Maybe it will never be like it was. 

But as so often is the case—Spencer is right. Difference doesn’t mean it won’t ever be good again. 

You have to believe that, just as you had to believe you’d see him again. 

You look to The Odyssey on your bedside table. 

The sun has been obliterated from the sky, and an unlucky darkness invades the world. 

But the sun has a habit of rising, time and time again, after the longest nights, after the darkest storms. 

You feel the beginnings of its rise, see the golden tips of it lighting the room as he holds you. Even now. 

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

So for new year cards...

Jack SSR is actually so cool; I like it. Malleus SSR is beautiful and all, but he really reminds me of a bride in forced marriage tropes. 😭

[Referencing the Twst JP Jan 2025 schedule!]

Finally, some good fucking food for Jack stans 😭 Port Fest feels like so long ago… fbjssbdjjs I feel like I can’t appreciate his design as much as others can. I’m not into the skintight undershirt on a character as buff as Jack is, and I'm confused as to why his gloves are... like that??? But!! I do like his fluffly little boa thing and how enthusiastic his pose is. You can tell he’s really putting his all into the New Year Sale~!

Malleus got another new hairstyle (any hairstyle that's different than his default one is a win in my book www)!! I think it's a well-liked look among his fans; I already saw so many people commenting that he looks like a love interest in a reborn as a villainess isekai or something to that effect.

I also saw some chatter around the thin fabric that Malleus seems to have over himself. A common joke is that it's a "wedding veil", but given the traditional Japanese clothes everyone is wearing for the new year, it's more likely also a Japanese article of clothing. A friend theorized that it's a 被衣 (kazuki/katsugi), a garment worn over the head that fully covers the body. These are mostly donned by noblewomen to cover their faces when they go out--and that sort of makes sense, given that Malleus himself is a noble. How demure and mindful... I thought the veil could also be a frost blanket (you know, to protect the budding flowers from the cold)?? But I'm not entirely sure right now; maybe the vignettes will give us more context!

A friend and I were speculating as to what flowers might be featured in the initial card art and the conclusion we came to was ume (plum) blossoms. The color and shape are similar, and they're a classic flower in winter anime. Something else I noticed was that the same flowers seem to appear in Sebek's New Year Attire from two years ago! If you compare Malleus and Sebek, you'll notice that the lighting is much warmer in Sebek's too. In fact, all previous SSR cards are pretty much like that, save for maybe Trey but at least Trey is shown to be in front of the shop. It really makes Malleus's card "stick out", since he's the only one that appears to be in a lonely and isolated location, just him and the plum blossoms.

On the subject of clothing worn by Japanese women! The same friend and I talked about Jamil's New Year Attire too. (Figured I'd throw this in here since I'm already talking about the other three 2025 New Year boys. Don't wanna leave him out, y'know??)

You can see that he has his hood up in the initial card artwork; my friend joked that Jamil's a newlywed. Why? Brides that choose to dress traditionally for their wedding days wear a wide white headdress/hood called a 角隠し (tsunokakushi), which covers an elaborate hairstyle like Jamils'/j. The "tsuno" (horns, as I'm sure you're all familiar with) in the name refers to the "horns of jealousy"; the tsunokakushi is meant to blanket the jealousy so she can enter her new married life at peace.

Of course, the shape, color, and context of the tsunokakushi is very different than what Jamil's got going on and the Twst team most likely did not intend for this comparison to be drawn, but I thought that this was interesting to share ^^ (*feeds Jamuil yumes this delulu cultural trivia*)

Aaaand let's close out with Floyd! The answer to his question is simple, actually. To put one's arm inside the kimono is just a very casual or relaxed way to pose. It suits Floyd and his attitude, doesn't it?

[pastafossa]

🌊TUNA-TOBER🌊 PROMPT CHALLENGE 2024 🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟

Hello friends! So last month I realized that one of the reasons I'm struggling to get my writing back up to my old speed is I am seriously out of practice since Dec/Jan when shit went down and I stopped writing for a while. After some thought, I decided I was gonna set up a little prompt challenge for myself, just a general, 'here's a prompt a day' thing for about a month. And I tossed this idea out onto my fave Daredevil discord server to see if anyone would want to join. And I'm happy to say there were takers, including some of my favorite writers in the fandom! So I've set up a delicious prompt challenge for all of us, and for anyone else who wants to take part.

For each day in October, there are three prompts: an 🌧️angst/whump prompt🌧️, a 🌻fluff prompt🌻, and a 🔥kink prompt🔥. Participants are free to choose which one of the prompts they want to write or make art of, or they can try to incorporate two, or even all three prompts into a single fic or art piece. They can write a short fic/make art every day, or just on whichever days they feel like (personally I'm going to shoot for one fic a day, but we'll see), or even incorporate those prompts into the chapters of longer fics. There are also four 'backup' prompt options for each category in case anyone hits a day or prompt where they aren't really feeling what's available on the chosen day. If any of these prompts inspire you, you can feel free to take on the Tuna-Tober challenge even if you're not in the server! This challenge is also not fandom-specific (although I have a feeling I'm mostly gonna write Charlie Cox characters, a surprise to precisely zero people, but again, we'll see).

Sometime this week, I'll be setting up a sideblog specifically for Tuna-Tober. That sideblog blog will reblog any Tuna-Tober fics/art or link to those fics that are posted on Ao3 so they'll all be easy to find. That blog will also have instructions for how to tag your Tuna-Tober fics and/or art pieces. If you'd like to be notified when that sideblog is up so you can follow it, let me know in the comments.

Without further ado: our Tuna-Tober prompts!

🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟

Day 1: Falling Asleep In A Hospital Room ⚜ Reading To Each Other ⚜ Somnophilia

Day 2: “Why? Why do you love me?” ⚜ Flower Crowns ⚜ Mutual Masturbation

Day 3: Broken ⚜ “I feel real when i’m with you.” ⚜ Role Reversal

Day 4: “This isn’t you.” ⚜ “Are you blushing?” ⚜ Sixty-Nine

Day 5: Self-Loathing ⚜ Watergun Fight ⚜ Begging

Day 6: "Shh, I've got you now. I'm here." ⚜ Love Bites ⚜ “Spread your legs for me.”

Day 7: Nightmare ⚜ Honest Apology ⚜ Nothing Underneath

Day 8: Shaking ⚜ “You can sleep here tonight.” ⚜ Overstimulation

Day 9: Anxiety ⚜ “You don’t need to do that.” “I want to.” ⚜ “Open your mouth.”

Day 10: "I'm not good enough." ⚜ A Hug That Lasts A Little Too Long ⚜ Strap-on/Pegging

Day 11: Tears ⚜ “I’d be lost without you.” ⚜ Breast Worship

Day 12: "I did it for you.” ⚜ “You remembered?” ⚜ Deep-Throating

Day 13: Loneliness ⚜ Playful Kiss ⚜ “Beg me for it.”

Day 14: "Please look at me." ⚜ Sleep Talking ⚜ Accidental Stimulation

Day 15: Hiding An Injury ⚜ “Are you jealous?” ⚜ Threesome

Day 16: Exhaustion ⚜ Accidental Kiss ⚜ Against A Window

Day 17: "I'm not leaving you." ⚜ Tickling ⚜ “Touch yourself for me.”

Day 18: Scars ⚜ Pillow Fort ⚜ “I’m so proud of you, you’re taking me so well.”

Day 19: Touch starved ⚜ “I’ll always be there for you.” ⚜ Gags

Day 20: "Who did this to you?" ⚜ There Was Only One Bed ⚜ “You were made for me, weren’t you?”

Day 21: Fainting/Collapsing ⚜ Flustered ⚜ “Was that an order?”

Day 22: "You haven't done anything wrong." ⚜ Breathless Kiss ⚜ Aphrodisiacs

Day 23: Father ⚜ “If you won’t take care of yourself, I will.” ⚜ Toys

Day 24: Drugged ⚜ Drunken Confession ⚜ “Shh, do you want them to hear us?”

Day 25: "What's Wrong?" ⚜ Playing With Their Hair ⚜ “Did I say you could do that?”

Day 26: "You're not fine." ⚜ “Shut up and kiss me.” ⚜ Under The Desk

Day 27: Near Death Experience ⚜ Overheard Confession ⚜ “Let me see what that pretty mouth can do.”

Day 28: Chronic Pain ⚜ Sharing An Umbrella ⚜ Hair Pulling

Day 29: "Talk to me, please." ⚜ Forehead Kiss ⚜ Restraints

Day 30: Healing ⚜ Road Trip ⚜ “Take it off. Slowly.”

Day 31: "Why wasn't I enough?" ⚜ Blanket Hog ⚜ Stockings/Thigh Highs

🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟

🌊Tuna-Tober🌊 Backup Prompts:

Bound/Chained ⚜ Moving In Together ⚜ Almost Getting Caught

"Take me instead." ⚜ “I’m in love with you, and that scares me.” ⚜ High Heels

Insomnia ⚜ Adopting A Pet ⚜ Scent Marking

"You're not alone." ⚜ Playing A Game Together ⚜ Ass Worship

🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟

[rainbowolfe]

Heart eye Leshy is adorable and all, but I'd love to understand why. Is it just cause it's cute? Did they fuck with Jan's Leshy design that hard? Or was that foreshadowing for what was coming? The timeline of events is short enough that it could go either way.

Cause the heart, on its own, is a symbol that seems to have its own significance in-universe. It would suggest a connection to Hathor and Ratoo and, by extension, Forneus.

But also, maybe it's just me, for Leshy to be "cleansed" of his sister's symbol feels like it means something? And that could be an oversight, but it's hard to ignore.

It would imply there's something inherently bad about Heket and/or her Crown. Or that Heket did something specifically to Leshy. Since the only other thing that changes about their designs is their bandages—a representation of the 'curse' Narinder inflicted on them. A reminder of their betrayal.

In fact, on that subject, isn't it weird that the only one whose injury ends up exposed is Heket's? Shamura's is covered by silk. Leshy and Kallamar's bandages become plant-like wrappings. Her scarred throat is just. Out there.

And it looks incredibly awkward, so they chose showing us that detail over going for a more aesthetically pleasing option.

And as for the state of their relics...

Shamura's skull blooms with flowers, something that the Blood Moon Ritual suggests is an objectively good thing. It's lowkey representative of how Narinder perceives death as a "change" and not an end. The carcass of perished beasts giving way to new life as a sign of their passing on/forgiveness. Flowers also bloom on the crypts if you do a funeral for anyone inside of it.

Leshy's eye grows his signature "fur", whatever it is. A collection of moss and leaves? The defining trait of his purgatory form is that he's plucked bald. So for the eye to go from bald to not-bald would suggest a sort of recovery/improvement. He's more himself. And. AND. In a way, the eye goes from animalistic (critter-like) to more human (beast-like). //Cause of the way animals don't generally have visible whites of their eyes, while humans do.

Kallamar's ear becomes clean and sewn up. A properly handsome ear. Also gets one of his rings back lol. But Heket's throat? It's placed in a jar. It's being preserved.

The only other relics getting similar treatment are Kudaai's Lost Tooth and (maybe) Ewer of the Widow. Both of which are from the corrupted parallel universe.

And comparisons aside, that feels fundamentally different from the other Bishops. When I think of putting something in a jar and preserving it, that doesn't really read as 'healing' or 'recovery'. It's the antithesis to change. There's no degradation, sure, but there's no improvement either.

Unless the idea here is that the throat is being... pickled? Which would track with her whole food and hunger thing. But still, the idea behind pickling is preservation, even if it does (over enough time) modify what's inside.

Many thoughts many thoughts......

[bbitess]

goth and metal prt 1-eurory x f!reader (use of y/n)

brothers best friend‼️ (euro is 19 in a high school type band, reader is a senior) idk how norwegian school works sorry

warnings‼️ smut, drinking and drugs, making out, ass slapping, fingering, oral f!receiving, p in v, gagging, creampie, the L-word, a meer couple sentences that have just a wee bit of degration and exibitionism

(this is based off sum random pic i saw on here and my love for my bauhaus vinyls and obsession w my set up 💪)

thank you all for being so sweet frrr, i’ve been an anonymous rory lover and all of these fics are from the archive of my notes app over the past few months :)

Y/N is jan axels sister who doesn’t listen to much metal music, she’s more into gothic music. her brother had two friends he started a band with, she only knew the guitarist, oystein, since he was jan’s friend for a while. she stayed upstairs most of the time but around 9 she got sick of all the noise and decided to go downstairs.

As she approached the basement the music grew louder. she opened the door and the music stopped, all of their eyes hit her, making her feel a little embarrassed in her sleep shorts and a sweater.

“jan, can you keep it down or like, idk go somewhere else becuase i am just trying to have some peace of mind…”

the other members looked at jan who said “yeah, yeah we are almost done.”

“thank you” Y/N said leaving and going back upstairs.

“you really let your little sister boss you around like that?” oystein asked, he was a long time family friend and he knew Y/N for a while. they were friends when they were younger but he just kind of changed. “she’s not bossing me around, i just respect her, i mean, she usually is tolerant when we practice at my place.”

oystein looked pretended to be offended “what do you mean tolerant? she should be moved by my amazing guitar skill.” the bassist snickered, “in your dreams” jan replied, making oystein blush a little and the chuckles to grow louder.

oystein sighed and set down his guitar, “im getting a drink,” he states plainly before running up the stairs. he goes to the fridge and retrieves a cold glass of beer. when he closes the fridge door he finally noticed Y/N is also in the kitchen. she is reaching up high to grab a mug from the top shelf but she couldn’t seem to reach it. the sweater she was wearing rode up on her torso, exposing her flat stomach and thin waist which contrasted her full behind, the shorts hugging them well, leaving little room for the imagination. oystein shuttered, he couldn’t tell if it was because he was seeing his childhood best friends little sister all grown up, or because he was overflowing with desire. he will admit it, he has longed for her for at least a decade but nothing ever came of it. she was out of his league and off limits because of her brother, they had hung out a lot as friends but,

(a/n: idk why but when i wrote this i made the back story from euros first person, idk just imagine culkin like narrating idek, good luck.)

“i knew jan protected her with his life. one day when jan and i were in our last year of secondary school, about to graduate, i actually told him how i was feeling. that was unusual to say the least, we didn’t put our emotions into words very often. i told him how i wanted to ask his sister to the prom and how she had caught my eye in the past. he seemed suspicious and hesitant but eventually got the idea and gave me his blessing. i went to the store to get flowers, but they were sold out, i didn’t want to spend gas going to a different store so I just went home. but after that i lost hope, i never went to get the flowers or ask Y/N to prom, i guess i got caught up in the senior work and eventually i graduated, and now i only see her when im at jan’s.”

(okay it’s over, back to third person <3)

he pulled his eyes away and searched for a bottle opener but couldn’t seem to find one anywhere. he held the bottle up to Y/N and she nodded, she swiftly grabbed a spoon. oystein had his hand by the cap and had the bottle set on the table so she swiftly held his hand in place with one hand and with the other, used the spoon to open the bottle. oystein flinched and shook his hand, Y/N laughed, “it didn’t hurt that bad! and look your bottle is open,” oystein just smiled a little, and Y/N almost melted, his smile was beautiful but he never wore it. “you should smile more.” she she stated facing him. oysteins smile dropped almost immediately but the blush stayed on his cheeks and he reddened as Y/N inched closer to his face.

“you look nice when you smile,” she says, beaming and brushing a stand of his hair behind his ear smoothly. she walked away, giving oystein a second to breathe and hide the massive boner inside his pants. Y/N had abandoned the mug and grabbed a beer bottle from the fridge and opened it. “aren’t you too young to drink, Y/N?” oystein asked, he was 19 but not that new to alcohol. “no” she replied, “well, yes and no…” she said taking a hearty sip. “how old are you these days?” oystein asked slyly, Y/N replied with her honest age, “i’m graduating in a couple months.” “wow, you are mature beyond your years…” oystein states, smiling. “maybe you are just behind,” Y/N laughs and then drinks more. they are both about halfway done but the weather was kind of nice out. it was a summer dusk so Y/N and oystein went outside to finish beers and while they were out there, oystein couldn’t help but retrieve a rolled blunt from his pocket.

Y/N was a little nervous because they think smoking weed with someone is very vulnerable but they agreed to oystein and they smoked the joint. “i’ve always wanted to do this with you…” oystein admits, “do what?” she laughs, “idk, smoking together, drinking, talking, anything… i’ve always wanted to know you better.” she looks down, “i wanted to know you to, but you always seemed to push me away when i got to close, you never opened up to me after middle school you know…” oystein feels devastated a little hurt hearing this, he keeps smoking. “i’m so sorry if i made you feel unappreciated, Y/N. i really liked you, like really really liked you,” he chuckles. “i promise,” she smiles, still looking down, “really?” she asks. he goes on, “really! you know i was going to ask you to my prom last year, gosh i remember like it was yesterday. i asked your brother for his permission, it was the scariest shit i’ve ever done. and i was going to ask you but the store was sold out of flowers and i guess i just psyched myself out…” he admits, kind of laughing at the story.

Y/N is surprised since he never talks about his feelings this deeply. “wow, i never knew. why did you get psyched out?”

“i don’t know, you were almost two years younger than me but i was a nobody at that school. you were pretty and had good friends and were nice to everyone. i figured another lucky guy had already asked you, i wouldn’t want it make it weird.”

“wow, oystein i wish you told me, i would have gone with you.” Y/N said, he was kind of in disbelief at that.

Y/N smokes the blunt and smiles, content with oysteins confession, “i forgive you, cheers…” she says and holds up the bottle, “cheers to what?” oystein questions. “cheers to confession…” she laughs and they clink the bottles. “i confess that i really liked you too, well before you slammed the door on your emotions… but i know the oystein i knew is still in there.” Y/N says, seriously, almost in a stern tone. oystein was frozen for a moments time but in that moment he felt like he had gained the wisdom of centuries.

oystein finished the blunt and tossed it, and that quickly he grabbed her jaw and pressed his lips to hers for their long awaited kiss. their lips locked together, so perfectly they thought they would get stuck and never pull away. oystein even ran his tounge over her lips, meeting her in the middle when she got brave enough to try a french kiss. she was a little hesitant kissing someone she had known for so long, it almost felt wrong, but also so so right. her hands tangled in his wild hair and he held the back of her neck, his other hand subconsciously creeping up Y/N’s soft thighs.

after another moment which seemed like centuries, they pulled away catching their breath. they began to arrange their clothes and hair back to normal. “oystein?” Y/N asks, “yes?” “does this mean… that you still you know, like me?” oystein blushes “what makes you think that??” he states quickly. “well, you just kissed me like your in love, and… it’s just- also, i could see your boner the whole time.” Y/N admits, oystein was flustered but they laughed it off, his icy eyes locked on hers and he promised-not said, promised, “the second I laid eyes on you I was yours, yes, Y/N, I do like you.” she smiled and put herself in his arms, “good, i like guys who like me…” and then they both started laughing in each others arms like they used to.

“i have to get back,” oystein says getting up and holding the door back into the house open for Y/N but they eventually speak, “have fun with your death metal,” Y/N says, “its black metal, norwegian black metal…” oystein says smiling, “either way, my bauhaus vinyl is easier on the ears.” she smiles. “well maybe i’ll come up to your chamber and we can listen to it together, how does that sound?” he asks, she responds quickly, “grood… i meant to say great and good, i’m sorry i-.” he had already walked away thinking about how was he going to get rid of this raging boner.

later in the night, the guys had packed up their things, oystein was the last to leave, “hey do you want to stick around and watch a movie or something?” jan asked oystein, “umm, no” he remembered he promised he would go to his sisters room, “sorry man i’m just tired, see you.” and oystein quickly left with his guitar case and pretended to be going out the door but in reality he went to the next floor and knocked on Y/N’s door.

she had been waiting patiently for oystein to come upstairs and when he knocked she started the bauhaus vinyl, hoping he would be impressed with her music taste.

when Y/N opened the door oysteins jaw dropped, she had changed from her pajamas and into a lacey black top and thong that was covered by a sheer robe, tied around her small waist. he couldn’t believe it, she looked so different, so beautiful and enticing, he didn’t know what to say.

“does jan know you are here?” Y/N questioned, oystein shook his head, still in disbelief, “um- can i come in?”

she let him in and he sat on the end of her bed which also was the best place to listen to the vinyl. “do you like it?” Y/N asks. “yes” oystein says smiling, he puts his hands on her waist and begins to inch upwards towards the lacey bra, his hands still over the robe. “i think it’s really sexy…” oystein says continuing, “no,” Y/N laughs taking his hands in her own and interlocking them. “i meant the vinyl, oystein.”

oystein blushed from embarrassment and arousal, “oh- yes that’s really good too.” he nods. she laughs.

she leans into him and their lips meet, his hands returning to her body as the kiss intensified. she reached under his shirt, he felt electrified when she touched his skin and peeled his shirt over his head, quickly reattaching their lips.

the gothic music blasted through the speakers, him still sitting on the bed, she backed away and he bathed in all her glory. she gave him a small tease, untieing the robe and slowly peeling it off her body, revealing her smooth pale skin that shined in the moonlight flowing through the window. the black lingerie contrasted her complexion and he had a sudden urge to strip it off her.

oystein stood from the bed quickly, pulling her in for another kiss, rubbing his large ringed fingers up and down her torso, he reached behind her back and unclipped the bra, letting out a sigh. he pulled it off her, staring for a second at her chest before grabbing her in his hands and fondling her breasts in his hands. “you are so beautiful, god you have no idea what this does to me.”

Y/N moaned at his words which only encouraged him, he latched to her neck and slurped at it like a vampire, letting his teeth graze her soft skin before sucking a hickey onto her throat. “sorry babe, your brother might get mad about that…”

she sighed, “forget about him.” she said, running her hands into his hair. he moved his lips down her body to her chest and began to suckle and kiss her breasts, Y/N continued moaning as she held his face to her, he bit down a little on her nipple causing her to flinch a little and pull oystein by the hair, but he just let out a low moan and the vibrations ran from his teeth to her bud, making her pussy wetter every second. she had to hold on to the desk so she wouldn’t collapse right there.

he got down to his knees, leaving a trail of kisses down her torso. his ringed fingers pulled down her thong effortlessly. he stared at her, but then slid his finger through the folds and penetrated her hole. Y/N let out a lewd noise but oystein didn’t stop, he kept fingering her, making her moan harder and her legs feel like jelly. oystein placed a hard smack on her asscheek and then brought his lips to the clit, kissing and then sucking on it. she felt close already. “oystein!! i’m gonna- please i’m going to cum”

oystein was suprised that she was going to cum this fast but her pussy leaked all over his hand and he lapped the juices up with his tounge. he stood up and pulled her into a kiss, her cum mingling between their lips, and right then, she came on his fingers- hard, his hand was still on her ass and it held her up since her knees had completely buckled under her.

oystein took down his pants and boxers swiftly, Y/N was suprised at his length, “oystein, that won’t fit!” “i’ll be careful baby” he replies. while he took his pants off Y/N flipped the vinyl which is very important. then he was ready. he took her by the waist and pressed her back to his chest, his hard member pressed between her legs, precum was oozing from the tip of his cock. oystein sat back in the bed, right between the speakers and set Y/N on top of him, spreading her legs. “are you ready?” oystein asks gruffly in her ear, nibbling at the lobe. she nodded and he groaned and his cock twitched between her legs so she wasted no time and grabbed it. she pumped it a few times, lubing it with pre cum and her pussy juices. then she pushed him into her, his cock filled her to the brim. “oh my god,” she muttered, he continued pushing in, inch by inch. she didn’t know if she could take the feeling at first. oystein wrapped his arm around Y/N and grabbed her tit roughly, he began moving her up and down his length. “you are doing so good.” oystein praised as he began to speed up, pounding into her messy cunt. she began to moan louder, over come by the feeling. “let me hear you,” oystein says, “they can’t hear you over the music, unless you want them to you little slut.” he laughs, “yeah, i bet you would like that, if your brother came up here and walked in on his best friend pounding his innocent little virgin sister.” Y/N couldn’t respond more than pornographic moans. “i’m-im” she utters, “oystein, cum-“ she speaks and has and orgasm on oysteins cock. he reaches his other hand around her and puts his fingers deep in her throat, pulling her down on him roughly. she was gagged and fucked into oblivion, his hand squeezing her chest. her moans echoing louding through the room with bauhaus music.

oystein finished inside her, he grunted and spurted cum though her. she was oozing and when he pulled out she sighed roughly and let cum drip and bubble from her hole. oystein left a harsh slap on her ass, almost squeezing it like he was milking her pussy. the whole time serenading her with compliments and love that he had for her. “you did so good, baby, god if i knew that pussy was so good i would have gotten it in grade school.” kissing her neck.

then he left, getting a washcloth from her bathroom to clean them. he got dressed and she pulled on the robe, “are you leaving?” Y/N asks, “i’m sorry- i thought that’s what you wanted, i mean, i would have to leave early tomorrow.” oystein responds. “that’s okay,” Y/N says, “do you want to spend the night?”

oystein couldn’t believe it, it’s not like he had never slept over in the house before, he had hundreds of times, but never in your bed. he nodded and got into the bed. they kissed a couple times before he pushed her hair back and stated, “i love you,” it seemed early but they really did love eachother, and they had for years. she blushed and tried to cover her smile with her hand. “i love you, too, oystein, i never stopped once.” she states, cuddling up into oysteins chest and falling asleep.

(prt 2 here)

[vacantgodling]

as stated, much of these are placeholder names, ideas, and concepts—this is just doing something fun for fun

chapter 1: the march hare runs

As March tore through the woods—she really had to wonder, what was wrong with this picture here?

She was a princess of Nectaria, one of the most prosperous kingdoms in all the land! And here she was, tripping over her own two feet, covered in mud, debris and even some of her own blood, trying to escape the shouting guards that had somehow caught up to her only a few days removed from her flight.

“I thought—” She huffed aloud, nearly missing tripping over an overgrown Glowtree root. “—That I had given myself—” She tripped over a second Glowtree root that had sprung up, deglowed, so nearly invisible in the dark. Face planting in the dirt, she didn’t even bother to finish her sentence, letting out an enraged huff that blew her messy hair out of her eyes. She planted her hands firmly in the ground, mud and clay squelching between her fingers, almost making her want to gag—the sensation was awful, to push herself up into an all-fours position.

“I think she went this way!”

“Get her!”

“Shit!”

March didn’t linger for much longer. She pushed herself back up to her feet, taking off downhill into the deep woods before her, praying that her tracks would be covered by the darkness that was ever lingering here; only ever illuminated by luminescent plants like Glowtrees and lumen flowers. She wasn’t sure how close to the border she was—any border, really. And that would be a problem. All of her papers and identification she left back in the palace, not thinking about it in her haste to just leave. If she was smarter, she would’ve left sooner. But no one thought that Princess March Hare of Nectaria was smart. They thought she was pretty. They thought she was kind. They thought she was a bit ditzy, or airheaded—and apparently that she… smelled good? That’d been the first thing to absolutely weird her out regarding her recently (forcibly, she would add) betrothed future-husband; the Prince of Doffensdu. He had taken a lock of her hair between his fingers, smelled it, and then with the most sickeningly disgustingly lecherous smile that anyone in all the lands could muster, he uttered that she smelled good. Divine, really, that was the word he’d used, but it still made her skin crawl.

Her elder brothers, Jan (short for January) and Feb (short for February—yes, with all 12 of them her parents had been remarkably original) had laughed at her. But they didn’t have to worry about marriages, at least not yet. They had been pathed to their militia and scholastic academies, since the two of them (unless, heaven forbid, something happened to them) were slated to become candidates for the next ruler of Nectaria, and they needed experience before their father stepped down from the crown and retired. But for the daughters and youngest sons? Oh no, it was all about alliances now—and as the third child, and unfortunate, unlucky eldest daughter—since the time she was fourteen, March had been introduced to suitor after suitor. Candidate after candidate. And frankly, if you asked her? They all were awful! Either too old, or far too young. Too boring, too plain, or too stuffy. Or, like the one her father had finally, finally settled on, too… weird! Everyone had their kinks and preferences to be sure; March was no prude, and she had a few of her own—but that’s certainly not how she would lead a conversation with someone she just met, nor one she planned to marry!

Regardless—she knew that her father wanted the best for her. She never doubted her father’s love—and surely in his mind, securing his eldest daughter’s future with a prince of Doffensdu was, on paper, extremely advantageous. Their kingdom was rich in ore and traded goods from the sea; being coastal, while Nectaria was located extremely far inland so it had access and was a hub for all the land trades. Having the two kingdoms combined through marriage meant an opportunity for more strategic and safer roads—things that March learned in her economic scholasticship, since her tutors knew she would be the most likely daughter to secure an advantageous trade marriage. And March had been fine with literally all of those things on paper. She knew her place as a princess, and she knew that just as people paid taxes, she was a bargaining chip for resources for her subjects.

But she just didn’t want to marry someone so… off!

Of course, she thought as she ran through the dim forest, tripping every few feet due to the low visibility, It is selfish of me to kick up such a fuss about this. Because she knew that many others didn’t have, well, the freedom to be spoiled like she knew she was being. And of course, she wasn’t only running away from this betrothal to a, probably decent man, just because he smelled her hair weirdly one time. Sure, he did make her uncomfortable whenever they were in a room together beyond that—though her sister below her, and closest confidant, April, assured her that she was just building him up to be some terrible guy in her head because she had a complex about getting married. Well, maybe she did! What was wrong with that? She knew that once she was wed that she’d be expected to perform…. wifely duties, and as a young maiden of just 23, that didn’t sit right with her!

March wanted to explore the world beyond the palace walls; educate herself in the lands beyond Nectaria’s rolling fields and bustling markets. Each new trinket that she could find from some far off place in one of the tiny corner stalls at the bazaar outside the palace, was another piece of the puzzle of the grand world just outside of her doorstep. But a queen couldn’t travel freely; she would be a kept woman, bound by duty, and state, and children, and more besides… and well. That terrified her! She was not so stupid to admit it! And so, she’d stolen out, just three weeks from her proposed wedding day, and disappeared without a trace.

Or so she thought.

She didn’t know what part of her plan went wrong. Did the note she left on her door dislodge? Or were there sightings of her among those in town? She wasn’t planning on staying away forever… probably. She did have a plan… One that did fall mostly apart after she lost her map in a swamp, was robbed just outside the kingdom’s walled border, and now this—stumbling through the darkness in mud and woods as she tried to put distance between herself and her captors. She needed somewhere to stop, to think…

And then—a stroke of luck.

March’s racing thoughts about all that transpired to land her racing like a little hunted rabbit through the forest, came to a screeching halt when she cleared all the glowing foliage and skidded into a clearing. All around her the trees loomed over the surrounding landscapes; their thick canopies obscuring light of the moon overhead; but the lumen flowers underfoot still bringing a soft shine to the surrounding wilderness. Not a single thing moved in this clearing; there was no wind in the grass or through the trees, no animals overhead or underfoot. Nothing but a chilling, eerie silence.

And in the middle of it all, stood a tower.

March stared, her thoughts quieting for a moment. Then they slowly began to churn, faster and faster as she slowly approached it. It appeared to be made of all manner of materials: wood, stone, brick, clay, terracotta, glass… harder to discern the further she peered up at the structure. The tower was narrow at some points…. but then March wandered around the base of it and it seemed to go around for miles at the same time. It took her nearly 40 paces to get around the length of the tower on one side, but that seemed far too wide for a structure that seemed so thin as it appeared. She couldn’t make out it’s spire, but she almost imagined that it pierced the clouds—if somehow the night swallowed it like it had.

A yell in the distance made her jolt out of her curiosity. Fear makes haste. So she quickly approached the base of the tower again, feeling around until she could try and find some sort of door or opening to hide herself in; at least for a moment. But no such door—one you could push, nor one you could pull, could March feel. In an act of desperation she began to test some of the sides of the walls, seeing if there were any pushed out or loosened stones she could use to grapple onto the side of the building, racing around the structure as fast as the panic in her throat would let her. But to no avail.

Except—she found something better.

Right as she was certain that the guards looking for her would descend upon her (as the noises in the woods as she searched the tower grew closer, and closer), she felt something coiled and sturdy, almost rope-like. What she didn’t see was the trapdoor that the “rope” had fallen down from as she circled away from this side of the tower only a few moments before. March only took a split second to make a decision: she had always been a decent climber. And now it was time to put those skills to the test.

March hiked herself up, wrapping both hands around the rope to begin to scale the wall free tethered. She could absolutely die if she fell the higher she climbed, but in her frenzied mind, it seemed better than getting caught. Until, suddenly, a snap sounded in the silence of the night; louder than any other noise that she heard near or far since she entered the clearing, and even louder than the sounds of the far off soldiers that would surely now come this way.

But it didn’t matter. Because with the sound of the snap, the “rope” unraveled only just, where March’s hands gripped it, ensaring her in its grasp and yanking her up the tower like a sandbag cut loose from a boat, and through the trap door whence it came, slamming shut with a thunderclap behind her, drowning out her startled scream.

[20dollarlolita]

Steal this look:

Recently, I've been feeling the need to build a few more easy and cheap lolita tutorials. In the interest of getting back to the budget lolita roots, I thought it was time to give this old post a remake:

[image caption: Family came over and I didn't want to leave my room so I made a headband with hot glue. Posted 8 years ago on Jan 3, 2015]

So, today I made a headband with hot glue. I didn't take pictures, but here's a rough run through of what I used, so you can make one too:

a 2" wide headband, which seem to run about $8, which is a lot more than I expected. Inflation's a bitch. Going to have to change the blog to 50dollarlolita to keep up.

This project did not remotely take 54 yards of cluny lace, but honestly if you're going to make handmade lolita, you should buy 54 yards of cluny lace. (I have not bought from this listing, but it looks pretty legit). If we math it out per yard, it used about 40 cents worth of lace.

I have actually bought this ribbon in multiple colors. Once again, it's a really good thing to have on hand if you make lolita. If you only buy one color, I recommend buying the color that you can use for the back lacing of most of the dresses you own. Those ribbons always seem to get lost when I do laundry, and it's also an easy way to pick a color that you'll use for accessories. $6 for 100 yards comes out to about 12 cents worth of ribbon.

I can't begin to fully articulate how valuable having trims available is for making handmade lolita. Lolita fashion is all about putting as many details into a garment as you can tastefully add, and being able to "Oh, this would be nice to have a ribbon! Oh, this would be nice with a line of lace!" can really help you push your designs to the right level of detail.

Fake flower heads and leaf ribbon. I almost didn't include the leaf ribbon in this list, but I think it really added something. I don't find a ton of need for this in lolita fashion, but it seems the smallest amount you can buy is like 20 yards. (I actually got my flowers and leaf ribbon from a cheap flower crown, but it seems you have to buy the flower crowns in packs of 10, making it more expensive than getting the components).

The flowers that I have on my headband came with a little felt tab on the back, which made them easier to glue. It might be worth it to glue a felt strip onto the plastic stem, and then glue that onto the headband.

I'm not going to count the selvedge edge of the fabric that i had lying around. You probably also have fabric scraps lying around.

Assembly strategy is a little bit up to you, but here's my thoughts:

I wrapped the headband with a scrap of fabric, and then wrapped ribbon around that in the other direction. In addition to looking nice, I think that wrapping in opposite directions is going to make the fabric wrap stronger. The front ruffle is just a 1.5-2" wide lace (I didn't measure) that was sloppily pleated. Each pleat was tacked down with hot glue.

To cover the sloppy pleats, I stuck a piece of lace over the pleated edge. This smoothed things out, and I believe that will also help reduce damage to the ruffle. The lace here is beading lace, which is intended for you to weave a ribbon through. The only ribbon I had was too wide, so I just glued the beading on top and hoped no one would notice. Spoiler alert: no one did.

What I've noticed on these kinds of accessories is that they need two things to feel complete: they need some kind of element to frame the face and make the headband visible from the front, and they need a large accessory at each ear. This isn't universally true for all substyles, but I've found that in general, it's what I shoot for.

I had an old flower crown from a party, so i just cut some roses and leaves off that crown and stuck them on the sides. I added some little ribbon bows to help sell the "this is not me cheating at beading lace" illusion.

(If you're looking for inspiration for doing this without a ruffle or a side focus, and you don't know where to start looking, I'd start with Innocent World and Moi Meme Moitie).

If you're buying ALL the components listed here, so buying all 50+ yards of lace and 100 yards of ribbon, it's going to be $37. This is a lot, but it's cheaper than a taobao headdress once you factor in shipping. If we only count the cost of what will be used in the headband, it comes out to about $13. I really cannot express enough how much having lace and ribbon on hand will improve your handmade lolita life, so if you're looking for an excuse to buy a lot of lace, here's your excuse.

And that's it! Put it on your head and you're good to go out into the world!

I think this is a great improvement over the one I made 8 years ago, although the other one did a better job at avoiding my family.

Just a quick note about building with hot glue: less is more. It's easier to hid small dots than to hide big long lines. Get a silicone thimble and really push your glued material into the glue (note: i live on the edge and just lick my finger and smooth it down, and I get burned a lot). The more texture an item has, the more likely it'll glue well. How your piece is structured will impact its longevity, so think about the strongest possible way to construct something. And if you don't like hot glue, but still want to make this, my suggestion would be to use Aleen's Super Fabric Adhesive and letting it cure between steps. My other hot glue advice is that if your design is a mess, good construction won't save you, and if your glue is a mess, good design won't save you. So this is a case where hot glue is already saving you 96 hours of cure time, so respect it and be careful.

I made this to coordinate with this dress, because the dress has some pretty modern elements like the rose trim and the sleeves, that want to push it into being a very extravagant dress, but it also don't have enough room to be very poofy (not that I'm wearing a petticoat anyway, but y'all know what I mean). I don't know how to articulate the difference between silky polyester lolita dresses and old cotton twill lolita dresses, but this is definitely better with the silky poly than the cotton twill.

[saucyjothoughts]

🌼 i fear if i come on here speaking about feminization just the one more time, you might get tired of me. but really, feminized!jan anon, i owe you my fucking life. i cant help myself. something something, stuck lever, something something.

jan will call nace over eventually, im sure. and nace will come running - who wouldnt. but i think jan should call kris first to play with.

theyd be so pretty. kris in his pretty delicate lace, maybe he gets a new set just for this - baby blue, cute flowers, bows, crotchless, a see through, unpadded bra, with the straps just tight enough over his shoulders to lift his pecs into tits. and jan in all black silk - panties thinning into straps at his hips, bralette with just the tiniest lace trims, garter belt at his waist and connected with bands on his legs.

they kiss, and caress, just enjoying all the sensations the clothes give them. eventually, when theyre both desperate enough, they devolve into humping each other until they both cum, splashing their bellies and staining their sets. and when they catch their breath, the send a pretty picture of their spent on their bellies to nace.

At which point Nace comes over to play with them both, right? Right?!

[macrolit]

Do You Have ‘Bookshelf Wealth’?

A TikTok home-décor trend has irked some bibliophiles.

By Madison Malone Kircher

Published in the New York Times, Jan. 15, 2024

When it comes to aesthetic trends, social media loves a catchy name.

Cottagecore. Dark academia. Eclectic grandpa.

Now there’s a new entry to the canon: bookshelf wealth.

On TikTok and other digital platforms, there has lately been much ado about people who own a great number of books and — this is critical — have managed to stage them in a pleasing manner.

If you’ve ever seen a Nancy Meyers movie, the look might ring a bell. Warm and welcoming. Polished, but not stuffy. A bronze lamp here. A vintage vase there (with fresh-cut flowers, of course). Perhaps there is a cozy seating area near the floor-to-ceiling display, with an overstuffed couch topped with tasteful throw pillows.

Kailee Blalock, an interior designer in San Diego, posted a video to TikTok last month that sought to define bookshelf wealth and school viewers in achieving the aesthetic in their own homes.

“These aren’t display books,” Ms. Blalock, 26, cautions in the video, which has been viewed over 1.3 million times. “These are books that have actually been curated and read.”

This literary look, she went on to say, goes well with pictures hung willy-nilly on the walls, sometimes even partly blocking the shelves, as well as mismatched fabric patterns and a bit of clutter.

In an interview, Ms. Blalock expanded on her advice. “I think to really achieve the look and the lifestyle, someone has to be an avid reader and has to appreciate the act of collecting things, especially art and sculpture,” she said.

Though Ms. Blalock did not originate the term “bookshelf wealth,” her video has spurred plenty of online discussion. “The day I ‘cultivate’ books instead of buying what I like to read is the day I’ll know I’ve truly failed as a human,” one user commented. Others remarked how bookshelf wealth was less about reading and more about regular old wealth.

Breana Newton, a legal coordinator in Princeton, N.J., who posts regularly about books on TikTok, was one of the people who responded to Ms. Blalock’s video. “I am going to show you bookshelf wealth,” Ms. Newton, 33, says in a video of her own. “Ready?”

She then gives viewers a brief tour of her home, showing books everywhere — on shelves, in overflow piles here and there, and strewed across the bed. Absent is the sense that the rooms have been staged, or that the books were bought with the consideration of how they would look on Instagram.

In an interview, Ms. Newton said that she worried trends like bookshelf wealth encourage overconsumption. This year, she added, she is trying not to buy any new books.

Another critic of the trend, Keila Tirado-Leist, said in a reaction video: “Who does it benefit to constantly have to name and qualify and attach wealth to any kind of style or home-décor aesthetic?”

Ms. Tirado-Leist, a lifestyle content creator in Madison, Wis., likened bookshelf wealth to “quiet luxury” and “stealth wealth,” styles that have recently made social media waves.

Still, she was understanding that what drives a home-décor trend like this one is a desire to create a home that feels, well, homey. In another video, she described the idea of layering — that is, slowly acquiring pieces and building up to a finished look, rather than trying to buy a bunch of things all at once in an effort to chase a trend.

“Styling a home takes time,” Ms. Tirado-Leist said.

Another TikTok user put it more bluntly in a response to Ms. Blalock’s video: “Bookshelf wealth does not mean you have books. It means you have built-ins.”

Editors’ Picks

A Practical Guide to Quitting Your SmartphoneHow Sad Love Songs Tap Into the Chaos of DatingWhen WeightWatchers Ended In-Person Meetings, They Held Their Own

Madison Malone Kircher is a Times reporter covering internet culture. More about Madison Malone Kircher

[thebibliosphere]

Callout post for @a-kind-of-merry-war and the Mills & Boon marketing team for trying to make me choose between Raff and Penn in Emma/Merry's debut novel, One Night in Hartswood, a queer medieval romance, when my ADHD, bisexual ass has never committed to making a decision in my life, and I'm sure as shit not about to start now because I love them both, your honor.

I love them both so much.

More coherent words to follow when I've actually sat down and processed this because I'm currently in that stage when you've just finished a book, and you don't know what to do with your life anymore.

This was so much fun. Really gorgeous prose. Reads like comfort fanfic even while you're screaming at the pages. I am absolutely going to order myself a hardcover copy from the UK, as us plebians in the US don't seem to be getting one. (Yet.) UK release date Jan 19th, 20223. The US release seems to be in November (according to Amazon, at least). All the pre-order links are up above, along with some more info and tropes, but I'll link them again here.

I am going to lie down. Maybe scream into my pillow for a bit.

Additional image ID under the tags due to length and post accessibility.

Image ID: A series of three images collected into a collage. In the top image, we are shown the purple spine of a book that reads "One Night in Hartswood" by Emma Denny in a sunset gradient of colors.

The bottom images showcase the two sides of the book cover, which is rendered with a watercolor texture background in yellow, orange, and pink, bordered by lilac and dark purple trees with leaves falling to the ground.

This arc copy of the book depicts the main character, Penn, on the back of the book, cast in the same dark purple silhouette as the trees. He is sitting on the ground under a tree, head bowed with one arm resting on his knee. Above his head, the name “Penn” is written in a purple gilded font. Underneath is the hashtag #PennHasMyHeart.

The right side image depicts the front cover where the other main character, Raff, is rendered similarly but with his head uplifted and a dandelion flower blowing away in his fingers. Above him is his name in the same gilded font, and beneath him is the hashtag #RaffHasMyHeart.

[virgil-my-emo-son]

Accepted.

Dukeceit Week 2024 Day 1, Sunflowers!

Dukeceit Week 2024 is run by the amazing @imnotgrimimjustagrumpyreaper ! I am really hoping I can stay on track and do the rest of the days but I make no promises lol. Starting off strong with day one though!

This fic is just like pure angst! But it does have a happy or at least hopeful ending, so there's that.

I've never actually written Dukeceit so their dynamic is much more like their dynamic in Grim's The Mysterious Disappearance of Roman Grimm (One of if not my favorite Sanders Sides fics ever) than their canon dynamic but I hope you all enjoy anyway!

Ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/55012822/chapters/139463146

The drive was long and winding and dark, the trees only visible in glimpses Remus caught from the Subaru’s high beams. The only sign of life on the West Virginia highway was the occasional headlights of a car going the other way, but those were few and far between. Remus wasn’t surprised, it was 5:37 AM.

They’d left around 4, once Remus’s breakdown had been dealt with.

The drive was long and winding and dark, the trees only visible in glimpses Remus caught from the Subaru’s high beams. The only sign of life on the West Virginia highway was the occasional headlights of a car going the other way, but those were few and far between. Remus wasn’t surprised, it was 5:37 AM.

They’d left around 4, once Remus’s breakdown had been dealt with.

“Where are we going, Jan?” Remus tried.

Janus didn’t make any indication he’d heard him, eyes looking straight through the windshield, hands holding the steering wheel steady at ten and two. His hands were, as usual, gloved, but Remus had a feeling if he’d been able to see his knuckles, they would’ve been white.

“Janus, you can’t keep ignoring me forever.”  He sighed, letting his head fall against the headrest. “You’re the one who wanted to go on this crazy drive, anyway.”

“Remus… we’ll be there soon.” Janus’s voice was tight, almost strangled.

“Okay.”

“Give me twenty minutes.”

“Okay.” It came out as a whisper.

The dense forest soon gave way to thinner trees, then to flat farmland. Remus’s face went to his window to watch the soybeans and the slightly lightening sky.

Pretty soon, Remus heard the clicking of the turn signal, and Janus turned into one of the farms. Remus caught a glimpse of what looked like sunflowers before Janus slowly pulled into a worn wood barn and turned the key, cutting the engine. He tucked one leg beneath him and turned so he was facing Remus.

Janus smiled. “Tired?”

Remus knew his eyes were drooping. “Yeah.”

Just as quickly, the smile slipped from Janus’s face. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you where we were going.”

“Where did we go?” Remus looked around. “We’re just in a random barn. Looks very splintery.” He grinned, trying to lighten the tension. “Might get some sort of wood-borne illness.”

Janus wrinkled his nose. “I’m not even sure those exist.”

“You never know.”

Janus moved on. “We’re not here for the barn. I’m… this is my grandfather’s farm.”

“I thought your grandpa was dead.”

“He is.” Janus said flatly. “It’s my farm now.”

“Your farm?”

“Yes, he left it to me.”

“You’ve never mentioned a farm before.”

“I didn’t want anyone to know about it.”

Remus considered for a moment. “So, this is where you’ve been going on weekends?”

Janus nodded. “My uncle looks after the place most of the time. He gets all the proceeds from the produce.” He shrugged. “I’m really just the name on the deed.”

“Mm.” Remus hummed. “Why are we here?”

“I wanted you to see the flowers at sunrise.”

“The sunflowers I just saw?”

Janus nodded again, holding out a hand to Remus. He looked at it for a moment, reached out, and squeezed it, as was their custom.

“Lets’ go.” Janus reached for his door.

Remus did the same, hopping out of the car and circling around to the other side. They walked out of the barn, Remus trailing a few feet behind Janus as he glanced around, unable to see much in the dark.

He kept following him as they walked to the sunflower field.

“Huh. I thought you closed at night.” Remus remarked to one of the yellow blooms they walked past.

“I did too, until I started helping out at the farm.” Janus led them to a small opening between a few flowers, carefully pushing one aside and ducking between them.

“How long have you been coming here?”

Janus shrugged. “A long time.”

Remus could tell when he didn’t want to talk, so he stayed quiet as they walked the narrow path between the sunflowers.

Janus abruptly stopped, and Remus almost bumped into him. “Jeez, Jan, give a guy some warning.”

“My apologies.” Janus looked over his shoulder briefly.

“Accepted.” Remus mumbled.

“Look.” Janus nodded towards the East, where the sun was beginning to crest over the horizon, painting the yellow petals in shades of red and orange.

“Wow.” Remus said softly, but he turned his face back to Janus. He felt like a sunflower himself, turning towards the brightest thing he could see.

As if he could feel his eyes, Janus turned to look at Remus, his eyes softening. “I just wanted you to see this. I made this path, a long time ago. I like watching sunrises, I always have. I figured it might calm you down.” He swallowed. “Remus… we don’t have to talk about earlier, not if you don’t want to.”

Remus closed his eyes. Did he want to talk about it?

“I don’t need you!” He snarled.

Don’t you see I need you?” Janus threw his hands up.

I don’t deserve you! Even a little bit! I don’t deserve to have you… I don’t deserve you! I don’t need you!”

He opened his eyes. “I do want to talk about it.”

Janus’s eyes flicked down to the soil, then up again to Remus. “We deserve each other, Remus. We’ve both done things we’re not proud of. You know that.”

Remus nodded.

Janus continued. “I… love you, Remus. I don’t want to lose you.”

“I don’t want to lose you, either… I just don’t want to… hurt you.”

“You only hurt me when you tell me you want to break up with me because you don’t want to hurt me.”

Remus suddenly couldn’t look him in the eyes. “I’m sorry.”

Janus nodded. “Accepted.”

[ggidolsmuts]

What are your top K-pop songs released in 2024?

Oooohh hmm hmm hmm, gonna go in order of release and point out songs I liked. Some will be left out if I missed/didn't listen to them.

Jan: Yena's Good Morning and NMIXX Fe3O4 (Sonar, Dash, Run for Roses was a great triple) were great. Was nice to see Seola's Without U too. One of my standouts was H1-Key's Thinkin About You, ruined by their tiktok version of it where it's sped up :(

Feb: IU Love Wins All has to be mentioned here

Mar: Wendy's Wish You Hell was very nice. Purple Kiss BBB too. I guess ILLIT's Magnetic hit so big that I couldn't help but hear it here and there lol

April: Loossemble's Girls' Night was ok, IVE's Heya I like too

May: ARTMS DALL album my main one here. Flower Rhythm choreo whew. Birth, Butterfly effect, Virtual Angel all good too. Yves' Loop too, good debut for her. Aespa's Supernova I guess? The body bang part was very weird but sounded good lol

June: H1-Key's Let it Burn is probably my favorite from this month. AKMU release would be next, both Love Lee and Fry's Dream was great, I liked Fry's Dream a lot. Kep1er's Shooting Star was also very good. Nayeon also had ABCD with that choreo heh. Red Velvet's Cosmic was great for their sound, I hope they continue with that too. Lots of big releases this month.

July: STAYC Cheeky Icy Thing and 1Thing! Arguably 1Thing should've been the title song.

August: Fromis9 Supersonic is so good!! Too bad Pledis said WEFUCKINGGO apparently. NMIXX's See That was ok, I think I liked Beat Beat and Love is Lonely a lot more. Oh My Girl's Classified was very nice except for what they did to Yubin's hair argh. Do give Start Up a listen!

September: Loossemble's TTYL is very catchable, although very autotuned in my ear lol, but nice twerking XD Fifty Fifty had a solid album, liked SOS the most.

October: Kiss Of Life's album was the standout here. REM is my favorite from the album I think, and Igloo is peak cunty song, so good. The other songs like Chemistry and Too Many Alex are great too. Say My Name's debut was solid, but I liked Goldilocks Water more, Hitomi UWU either way! StayC released GPT right at the end of the month, quite cute and nice.

November: Yves really has her own sound with Viola, it's great! Kep1er's sync-love I like a lot. Haven't caught up on the other releases yet like Taeyeon/Irene.

If I had to pick a top...10?

Fromis9 Supersonic

IU Love Wins All

NMIXX Sonar

H1-Key Let it Burn

KIOF REM

Oh My Girl Classified

H1-Key Thinkin About You

NMIXX Run For Roses

Yena Good Morning

Yves Viola

Thanks for the ask! Really helps just looking back and be like, damn, lots of good songs this year!

[kanmom51]

Genuine question?

Has Jungkook promoted the others albums the same way he’s watched and listened to jimins. I haven’t watched all his lives as I don’t have the time and genuinely don’t know or don’t remember if he had or not. Like I’m like 50% sure he listened to wildflower or atleast played it on his live in like Jan-Feb but I don’t really know. Has be mentioned or played or watched any of SUGA’s recent album? My memory is really bad.

Like is it normal behaviour what he did for Jimin or a bit more compared to the others, has he played or interacted with the other members albums at all? I’m pretty sure if I remember correctly he may have played songs from Indigo + Jack in the Box but idk outside of that or if I’m right at all.

Like does anyone have the full rundown of what members projects he’s played + watched on Live since Jack in the box. I literally only remember him coming by Jimin’s practice & Hobi’s photoshoot/release party & playing Set me free MV and other jimin videos.

The answer is no.

He did watch Hobi's song way back in a live in 2022.

He also talked about Yoongi's concert and how he's seen it and wants to go see it live (which he did).

I'm not even sure he played songs from Indigo now that I'm thinking about it, maybe Flower-works. Yeah, I think he watched Flower works. I'd have to go back check, and forgive me, but I just can't be bothered, lol.

And I'm not just being a shit here. I don't feel like checking cause even if he did listen to a song that's exactly it - a song. Perhaps a couple of words about how cool that member is. And that would be a wrap.

What he most definitely did not do for the other members, and this is carved in stone:

Did not watch or listen multiple times to the same songs.

Did not watch interviews and shows with other members.

Did not watch compilations centered around the other members.

Did not repeat this continuously over several lives.

Did not plan ahead, set up scenarios (the guitar for instance) and give us spoilers for other member's songs or album or clips or choreos.

That, my friend, is JM exclusive.

And that is also why it was so damn loud.

And got many knickers in a knot in the fandom.

More so while folding JM's tiny red Calvin's.

And why so many in this fandom are yearning for a MV with JK 'proving' (this is where I link George Michael's careless whisper) he ain't into JM.

Cause, as you know already, JK ain't no gay, I have a whole expose series to prove it.

Just for funsies, here's my Jikook in Vlives (those were the days) masterlist.

Go and see just how much JM overload we got from JK starting on White day (previous Feb and Mar lives had him melt over JM comments, but the spoilers and JM promotion love fest started on White day with his "something very exciting is happening in half an hour" and fly away spoiler - oh, and maybe even an Angel pt. 1 spoiler too, let's not forget about that one).

Yeah-nah, no precedent to the way he promoted JM.

JM was and is his one and only.

Period.

[an-annyeoing-writer]

Chanyeol x Reader: status quo. [+18]

➢ Genre: smut, domestic fluff

➢ Rating: +18

➢ Warnings: content as tagged above, cigarette use

➢ Word count: 2 459

➢ Release date: 6th Jan. 2023

This relationship is peculiar.

If you were to ask anyone, they’d probably guess it’s some friends-with-benefits scheme, maybe no strings attached or maybe on a more personal level, but definitely not one that lovers share. You’re not lovers – he doesn’t bring you flowers on the Valentine’s, doesn’t spend Christmas with you, you don’t live together and you’re not even entirely sure where he works – you vaguely remember he mentioned it once, but then the next time you brought it up, he was already working somewhere else, and didn’t really bother sharing details – not because he kept it a secret, it just didn’t particularly matter.

He’s in the balcony now, arms resting over the railing and a cigarette in hand, creating clouds of smoke disproportionate to its size. He has his jeans on and an unbuttoned, white shirt, looking the most casual and unbothered.

You stare at him dreamingly. Your eyes barely opened but it’s a nice sight, even despite slight blurriness of your eyes slowly adjusting to the conscious state. The balcony door is open wide, letting in fresh air, white curtains pushed to the sides, with their edges waving lightly in the wind.

It’s Sunday, there’s no rush, nothing much to think about. The sun is stronger than you remember it being yesterday. It’s still rather chilly at this time, so you shiver and wrap yourself tighter in your gray sheets. His bed is warm, even if his presence is already gone, along with his own warmth. The duvet is thicker than yours, pillows are somehow softer too, there’s no noise outside other than soft hum of cars some floors below – it’s not the biggest street, not much ever happens, and the sound barely reaches his apartment, only perceivable because he opened the balcony, but not enough to disturb you. You like sleeping here; not only for other benefits coming from spending time in his bed – you just enjoy the time of slumber.

“Yeol” you call rather quietly, but he moves at the sound, first putting the cigarette out in the ashtray kept on the window sill, then turning around to face you.

He enters the apartment again, stretching lazily; not only his shirt is unbuttoned, you now realize, his jeans are too, and gray boxers poke through, and it takes you the greatest power of will not to stare.

“You got anything to do today?” he asks. You expected him to stop by the bed and maybe, even, join you, but instead, he passes by and walks towards the exit – you stop him by reaching with your hand and hooking your finger through the belt loop of his pants, and he stumbles slightly before turning to face you, one eyebrow lifted expectantly.

“You.”

He grins, but the smile is rather short-living.

“Make us a breakfast and we’ll see.”

“Sure thing.”

You don’t need more encouragement. You pull yourself up with the help of his pants, unwittingly slipping them down a little bit. You quickly look in the mirror on one of the walls and frown at the messy look – your hair is all over the place, and the satin robe you slept in is completely crumbled and misplaced. You quickly untie it and tie again, a bit more reasonably. When you finish and turn around, you’re alone again. The door is slightly opened, and you stumble to your feet, rushing to the kitchen.

The smell of coffee is all you sense, and although it’s pleasant, it lacks a more fulfilling aroma, one of actual breakfast.

“Toast? Pancakes?” you ask.

“We don’t have bread. Nor milk” he huffs. “Just heat up the pizza from yesterday, it’s in the fridge.”

Your enthusiasm dies a little bit, but you mask it up, raising from the cupboard and opening the fridge instead.

“Maybe scrambled eggs at least?” you suggest, turning to him.

“No, then we won’t ever eat that pizza, don’t waste food” he scolds you. You pout but realize he’s right. Not the healthiest nor freshest choice, but pizza it is.

Even after heating up it tastes nothing like yesterday, but it doesn’t hurt you as much as you thought it would. The cheese still tastes like cheese, the corn still tastes corn, what’s there more to worry about.

The light entering the room through the window starts to strengthen and lose its chilly aura. The temperature starts to rise, to your relief, because the satin clothing is anything but warm. He rarely turns the heating on in his apartment – as though he’s constantly warmed up. It doesn’t bother you so much when you’re lying in the bed, chests pressed against each other, your breath hitting his neck and his – tickling your scalp. His bed has only the best things to it, only the warmest, the most comfortable ones; only good memories. A safe place.

“What about you? Any plans?”

He looks up from the spot he was staring at with a mindless look on his face for the last four minutes at least.

“Nothing much. Grocery, I guess.”

“May I?”

“Hm?”

“Do grocery.”

“It’s just a few things.”

“Still.”

He watches you silently for the next few moments, as though thinking into this matter way more than it was necessary, although you doubt he was spending this time thinking at all.

“Go ahead if you want. But I don’t think any stores are open yet.”

It’s early, very early, although the sun is already getting to life, you feel like even if the stores are open, it’s not entirely appropriate to show up at them at this hour. You yawn.

“We can go back to sleep and wake up at a better time” you offer. In fact, this night wasn’t as long as you’d like. You fell asleep late, tired, worn out, panting and blacking out before being carried into the bed and lulled into slumber. These few hours were not enough, and although there were no tangible remains of yesterday’s business anywhere to be found, the exhaustion was still there, slightly pushed aside by the morning aura, but coming back as it sets in and you find yourself thoughtlessly moving back towards the bedroom.

“What, really? Are you that tired?” He sounds more surprised than you think he should be.

“Yep.”

You become a bit grumpy when sleepy.

“You shouldn’t be tired. Not yet.”

He catches up on you right as you enter the bedroom and pushes you forward so you fall onto the mattress not as softly as you’d like, and face first – discomfort. You groan, reaching forward to prop yourself up on your forearms.

“Let’s just go to sleep” you whimper tiredly.

“No.”

You press your lips together.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Earn it. Earn your rest. You’re not tired enough, yet.”

The words take your breath away and you whimper when he straddles your thighs from behind, hands automatically finding support on your waist.

“Serve yourself when I sleep” you mutter, reaching to the nearby pillow and pulling it towards yourself.

His fingers find the hem of your robe, slowly pushing it up your legs, tickling the skin right below your bottom. You squirm with annoyance; you don’t have the strength to fight him now. But he doesn’t carry on with the silly act, and instead brings his hands closer to the middle, sliding his middle finger down until it brushes your center.

“Don’t sleep, I need to make you pass out first” he murmurs, but your arms only wrap around the pillow tighter, hearing him fidget with his clothes behind you. The touch of his bare flesh against yours feels the most familiar, and you suck in breath when he slides into you without any restraint, your body accommodating so fast with how it still hasn’t gotten back into its usual shape after yesterday.

There’s no much soreness to it, no much leftover pain. Everything is smooth and perfectly adjusted, and so are his movements, still so drowsy, making it clear that you’re not the only one who wishes to go back to sleep. It makes you hum in content, as if it could lull you back to sleep.

“Am I boring you?” he jokes, noticing you doze off despite his command.

“Maybe a little” you reply mischievously.

He grunts in annoyance, deciding to reposition, pulling you up by your waist to make you rest on your knees instead, while he kneels between them and then draws you back down onto his shaft. You let out a strangled sound at the new angle, slight burning sensation finding its way to your core, but it disappears rather fast and you mind it no longer. You’re crumbled a bit uncomfortably, your thighs hitting your tummy with every time he pulls you back down, but arms still wrapped around the beloved pillow, although in this position it’s way harder to stay mindless, constant movements quickly awakening muscle cramps from yesterday’s activities.

“Better now?”

“I don’t want to move” you whimper, but take no action, tired out of your mind.

With strength you wish you possessed yourself, he suddenly grabs your shoulder, flipping your body over so that you face him, although the pillow remains pressed against your chest as you hold it tightly. You can’t help yourself and glance down.

“Not bad” you admit, as if you haven’t seen him countless of times before. Chanyeol rolls his eyes.

His fingers push your knees apart again as he repositions himself at your entrance, thrusting in yet again without a warning, and this time, with this angle, you can’t help but let out a moan that he catches with his lips, one hand grabbing your hip tightly while the other rests next to your head as he thrusts into you with newfound vigor.

“Better now?”

You bite your tongue to hold back another teasing comment that wants to slip past; instead, you decide to let go of your pillow with just one arm and use it to pull his face down, making your lips meet again.

There’s many things you want to say, but none of them seem necessary to be spoken, and so you just enjoy the moment, bodies pressed against each other, Chanyeol’s breaths becoming ragged and your own turning into whimpers as the two of you get closer and closer.

 His eyes slip closed and you finally let go of your pillow, throwing it aside and wrapping your arms around his neck, pressing his face into the crook of your neck with all the strength you have when you come undone with a strained moan released straight into his ear.

With a few more thrusts, he pulls out and you feel him spill on top of your pubic mound, his body heaving from exhaustion as he groans and lets his body fall atop of yours, no strengths left in either of you and you lie like this for what feels like forever, sticky from sweat and cum that probably got onto his bedsheets, which he doesn’t seem to care about as his entire focus is on coming down from his high. His eyes are closed tightly as he falls to the side and rests next to you, legs still tangled, his hand resting on your waist like it’s the most natural place for it to be. You watch him like he’s the prettiest picture; and, in a way, he is – angelic features, making him look almost innocent, if you didn’t know him for his personality.

You barely know each other; after all the time spent together, you realize, you know his intimate self without having much clue about his daily life. How true is that part of him, you think? Is it the real him, or is he putting up an act to boost his ego with how good he can make you feel, with how easily he can make you fall for him?

If either of you started a relationship, the other could not have any say in it. You didn’t make any deal out of it, in fact, you ponder whether the communication between you two is sufficient. And anything you think of it, you have no way of knowing if it isn’t one-sided as well.

But it fulfills you well. When he pulls you into his chest, letting you rest in the comfort of his embrace, you have a feeling that you don’t need anything more.

There are different types of love. Platonic love between friends, another kind that family members share, and yet another, controversial, love for inanimate objects. And then, there is love between lovers. But it’s not the type of love you share with him, and you somehow just know it’s neither what he feels towards you. But there must be something, some type of love that can describe the trust and reliance that you put in him, one for which a term such as “friends with benefits” would reduce the meaning of too much to be appropriate.

“What are you thinking about?”

You realize the tables have turned, and it’s him observing you now, head resting on his palm and a small smirk lifting the corner of his lips.

“Difficult things” you answer vaguely. You wonder what he would react like if you told him so suddenly that you’re thinking about love.

“Ah, so.”

The smirk doesn’t dissipate, and his gaze is piercing you, despite the reaction making it clear that he wants you to keep talking.

“I just wonder, what we will be doing in a few years from now, you know?” You feel like you’re touching a topic you shouldn’t, but the words just spill. “You know, will we still… meet like this?”

He watches you silently, the smile disappearing, giving way to a more thoughtful expression.

“What do you expect us to do?”

“What do you want us to?”

He tilts his head a little, although it’s already tilted in this position. The smile returns onto his face, calmer and even a bit lazy.

“I don’t mind the things staying the way they are, do you?”

You ponder on it a while longer, although drowsiness starts creeping into you again and the thoughts take longer and longer to form, and eventually, your eyes close and your breaths calm down. The last few moments of consciousness you spend focusing on his own chest moving, his warmth, his smell.

And you think that you don’t mind waking up like this for long years of your life, even if it would be just it – just lively evenings, quiet nights and warm mornings spent in his presence, just you and him, with your unromantic, yet not solely erotic, love you can’t name, but – you know now – is reciprocated by the one you chose to love this way.

[bisexualrobertlowe]

As a possible distraction for tomorrow: give me All the thoughts/headcanons you have for Mappe~

omg i got this ask last night, thank you so so so much!! 😭😭💞💞 i’ll make this a general headcanons post! for my/our version of mappe uwu~

~ 💜🌦️☂️🌦️💜 ~

mappe björkman; general headcanons

(there’s a mention of alcohol and occasional heavy drinking in here)

two causes for his resting grump face: 1) he’s camera shy, 2) there’s this intense melancholia and yearning about him that Must take on a physical form 🥹

conflict avoidant to all hell. mappe prefers to keep the peace, especially among those he loves and cares about - and could not afford to lose. so he’s taken to just,, repressing what’s on his mind if he feels like it would be divisive or he’d make someone upset.

this is why he didn’t communicate with leif how much it hurt to be walked away from, for the longest time.

touching on that, the real reason mappe declined leif’s offer in ‘97 to come back to candlemass? he didn’t want to risk getting his heart broken again. but mappe could never get over leif, he’d think about him and how much he wanted him back time and time again, and he jumped on leif’s next offer in ‘01. he couldn’t lose another chance.

in general, mappe can grow extremely attached to people, mostly to other men, and vents only to those he trusts. for example, while staying with jan and his family, mappe spent hours in the night crying over his leffe as jan held him close.

very physically affectionate, especially when cameras aren’t rolling :3 out of the core four, mappe’s usually the cuddliest! and he gets to cling even more with his lovers uwu~

the petname ‘älskling’… really petnames in general… it’s Something. only once in a blue moon has mappe called each of his ex-wives by a petname, or he’s forced it to keep up appearances. but with leif it comes out so naturally. i feel like leif and mappe have a bunch of nicknames, ranging between silly and romantic, for each other from over the years :3

in general, you can tell mappe really loves you when he calls you by nicknames or petnames like all the time, and it seems really natural!

and if you give mappe a petname, just for him? he Might Cry /vpos

such a good listener,, sobs,, if you need someone to go to, mappe’s always there. he’s happy to give his friends and lovers a shoulder to cry on at any time. though someone needs to tell him it’s more than okay to express himself and his needs too-

in general, mappe kind of puts it on himself to hold friend groups together, especially the closer-knit the group is.

mappe used to drink pretty heavily in lower moods, especially when heartbroken or feeling like he had no one to go to about his own problems. when he felt the need for a heavy drink, mappe would leave the house (he doesn’t want his daughters to see that) and go out to a bar or club.

though since mappe gets together with leif and their two mutual partners (;3), he hasn’t had one of these heavy drinks; they also help him withdraw if he needs to!

mappe isn’t religious, but he does wear cross necklaces for ✨ the aesthetic ✨. that is, when he’s got one of his better ‘fits on…

… because as we know, mappe is sometimes a walking fashion disaster 😭 especially offstage and when not wearing black. present-day mappe is an Older Gay if i have ever seen one.

whereas 80s and 90s mappe is Sad Gay, and 2000s mappe is Extra Doom Gay. if this makes any sense.

mappe loves flowers, and being surprised with them!! as well, he loves to just,, relax under wisteria and willow trees. weeping willow is his spirit tree SJENKD and he’d love to visit japan during the cherry blossom season!

he also loves a good hot chocolate. when he’s sick, or it’s just really cold out and he feels the chills coming, mappe craves homemade hot chocolate, which his husbands of course get right onto making for him~

mappe decorates the house for the holidays every year. weeks in advance, too, the garlands and lights appear even before december starts! it’s a perfect remedy for the seasonal depression - alongside all the gloom and doom of candlemass, of course!