#just started multivitamins

[winwinwinterb]

Tale as old as time, really.

[bluebellhairpin]

google why is my piss highlighter yellow.

[lindensea]

🌜

[ruralcat]

in the past twenty four hours i have been awake for five of them

[granitxhka]

you guys

[rennisaturate]

i slept rlly good last night and yet im still tired 😭 gonna get some lunch in a sec and then hop on and chug some stuff out most likely 💗✨

[mothusband]

it's so fucked up how getting a therapist and getting on medication and taking vitamins and going outside for a little bit each day actually works. infuriating honestly. i want that stuff everyone says helps to be wrong but they've been right all this time. fuck off.

[dragonanon]

Finally cracked and ordered one of those little portable blenders with the intent of making smoothies for myself because I never eat any fruits or veggies, so my dumbass also doesn’t get much fiber if at all because I eat like a picky 5 year old. 🙃

[esperanzacboronial]

If you’re non-lacto vegetarian (like me) and also an idiot (like me) who forgets to eat for 2/3rds of the day (like me) top tip, don’t stop taking vitamins just ‘cause then spend 6 months wondering why you feel so fatigued all the time

[fizzysound]

okay while i do feel very silly for thinking i was sick when i was actually vitamin-of-some-sort deficient, in my defense my job has gotten me so used to feeling miserable and tired on a regular basis that i didn't notice anything else until it got really bad. I thought 'yeah, that's just retail stealing my soul' it's an easy mistake to make.

[goinggoats]

i need to eat chert

[no-one-hears-me]

they didn't let me donate blood >:(

[alhaith4ms]

it's been raining all day here and the sudden drop in the temperature has me feeling sick all of a sudden ૮ ◞ ﻌ ◟ ა

[antimonyandthyme]

1.2k, carcar, late night condom run

“This is—”

He means to say humiliating. Exceedingly mortifying. They’re both wearing obnoxious baseball caps, as if that’ll serve as sufficient disguises. Carlos is sporting a shit-eating grin, and the night air has turned his cheeks pink, obvious even under the brim of his cap. 

This is. Actually the most fun he’s had in awhile. 

It’s unlike him to be helpless in the face of Carlos’s obvious glee. But it’s late, and both their shields are a little flimsy.

He trails slightly behind, watching the way even Carlos’s feet seem giddy. The stupidest thought crosses his mind: I don’t see you this happy on Sundays, isn’t that something, and it takes all of his willpower to force the words back down his throat. 

“This is, what? Come on, Oscar.” He doesn’t like it when Carlos’s voice dips like that, turns teasing. Turns him all warm. “Don’t tell me you’ve never gone on a midnight condom run.”

“Not in Monaco,” Oscar says. 

He only realizes Carlos has stopped when he bumps his nose into something. Presumably Carlos’s back. Reluctantly, Oscar looks up from Carlos’s feet. Carlos is wearing a soft, amused expression. 

Oh. He might have just insinuated he hasn’t gone out for condoms in Monaco. Which in turns insinuates he hasn’t been having sex since he got here. Which in turn insinuates that he’s only been seeing–

Oscar tugs his cap down, opens his mouth to stutter out some excuse.

“All stocked up, eh?”

“Shut up,” Oscar mutters, cheeks flaming. 

Carlos laughs. Actually throws his head back and full-body laughs at Oscar’s expense. Unbelievable. This guy. A menace. Oscar kinda hates him.

“Don’t worry, I’ll show you the ropes, rookie.”

“Stop flattering yourself.”

Carlos jabs a finger into Oscar’s bicep. “It’s not flattery if it’s true,” he says. His feet are back to dancing. His eyes are crinkled into half-moon shapes. Oscar tries and fails to level the squeeze in his chest. 

Thing is, Carlos isn’t wrong. Sex with Carlos has been. Well. 

They’re both sporting the most inconvenient of erections, barely hidden behind the thickest pairs of sweatpants Oscar could find. Carlos had wrinkled his nose at Oscar’s choice of clothes. Oscar had raised an eyebrow, like You wanna wear jeans with that boner? And Carlos had caved, albeit with patented-Carlos-grumbling. 

Making out like they were competing to steal each others’ air, hands grabbing, tugging, touching. Separating only when Oscar had realized his apartment was out of the essentials. Throwing on clothes while painfully hard, stealing their way to a drugstore with a cashier who hopefully wouldn’t recognize them and put two and two together. 

Kinda crazy, doing that last bit. Kinda crazy, doing it with Carlos. 

Carlos strolls into the store like he doesn’t know the meaning of shame. Stalks right down to the aisle of condoms.

“Wait,” Oscar hisses, dragging Carlos back by the elbow. “Could we make it less obvious?”

“What?” Carlos says. Mouth half-open, head tilted like he can’t figure Oscar out. Oscar’s come to realize he’s on the receiving end of that look from Carlos too many times to be safe. “Make what less obvious?”

“Oh my god,” Oscar says. Not a single thought between the man’s brown, brown eyes.

He yanks Carlos into a random aisle, throws two random packages of band-aids into a basket. Then two bottles of kid’s gummy multivitamins sitting on the next shelf. Whatever. They’re pretty tasty, so they won’t be going to waste. Some safety razors. Some coconut oil.

“Oh,” Carlos says, “oh, less obvious with the condoms, I get it now.”

“Do you ever shut up?”

“You know they’ll still scan the items right?”

“Here,” Oscar says flatly. “I’m getting this for Pinon.”

It’s a pink donut chew toy, complete with raised sprinkles for effect. Dog toys for aggressive chewers! the tag says. Oscar has no idea whether Pinon likes chewing or not. He’s not about to start caring. 

Carlos, for once, isn’t arguing. He’s got another one of those weird looks he’s directing at Oscar, one of those that turns Oscar’s stomach inside out. 

“How do you know his name?”

It’s Oscar’s turn to be confused. “What,” he says. “Don’t you like, talk about him all the time?”

Carlos rolls his eyes. “You’re mixing me up with Charles.”

Impossible, Oscar manages not to say.

“I rarely talk about him,” Carlos says. There’s a hint of a smile, curving his lips up. “Very, very rarely.”

“Well,” Oscar says, floundering. Carlos and his stupid, stupid eyelashes. “You must have, on Instagram or something–”

Ah. Shit.

Carlos grins. Blinding, too bright for Oscar to face head on. In the middle of the entire store, he runs his knuckles under Oscar’s jaw. He’s got Oscar right where he wants him. A menace. Oscar doesn’t know how he goes about acting like that. Sucking up all the space in the room while being unaware of how he turns heads. Unashamedly buying condoms in the middle of the night in Monaco with Oscar as if it were something he would do any day. A menace, three times over. 

Carlos looks down at their basket, now half full. 

“The cashier is going to think we have very kinky sex.”

“Oh my god.”

“Coconut oil, really? An aggressive chew toy? You could have just told me if you wanted to be gagged–”

“Shut up,” Oscar squawks, even as the idea lodges itself somewhere underneath Oscar’s rib like a bullet, “shut up you idiot–”

A laugh sneaks out of Carlos’s dumb mouth, where it sees fit to expand itself until Oscar’s laughing too. Unacceptable. Oscar curls an arm around his belly, protectively. Carlos is slapping his knees. It’s not even that funny. It’s Carlos’s fault Oscar’s wheezing so hard he can barely breathe.

“Now,” Carlos gasps, “can we finally get what we came for?”

“Fine,” Oscar says. He reaches for the box, nestles it carefully in the middle of the basket. Looks almost natural. “Now no one will suspect a thing, see?”

“You’re very bothered, for someone so unbothered,” Carlos says.

Oscar’s knee jerk reaction is to deny it. How many layers will Carlos peel off him tonight? It feels too much like losing, only that Carlos isn’t gloating, already trotting off with their mishmash basket of goodies without a care in the world. Carlos leans over the counter, says something that makes the cashier laugh, tilts his body and jabs his thumb over his shoulder in Oscar’s direction in the universal gesture of I’m talking about this guy in a way that makes it clear I want everyone, him included, to know I’m talking about him.

“Don’t believe anything he says about the chew toy,” Oscar says faintly. 

Carlos laughs. The cashier laughs. Oscar manages something high-pitched that might pass off as a laugh.

They refuse to pay for a plastic bag and Carlos makes Oscar shove the box of condoms down one pocket, the rest of the shit in the other, while he skips off with the donut and bottle of coconut oil. 

Classic Carlos.

Their shoulders bump, on their way back. Every step scrapes the edge of the pocketed box against Oscar’s inner thigh, right near his now soft dick. It doesn’t matter. Just the thought of Carlos’s warm hands around him is enough to get him going again.

Carlos tips his head toward Oscar, boyish grin making him look all of twenty. He squishes the toy in Oscar's face. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

If he were a little braver: I’m bothered because I know what I’m signing up for. The space between races will hit me with a separation anxiety I’m probably not equipped to deal with, and I’ll learn the names of not just your dog, but your family’s, and I’ll start looking at my phone with a goofy smile and have everyone around me question it because they'll know, they'll just know, and I’ll have to learn how to lie better, and pretend better, all because I’m into you.

Oscar takes a breath. Exhales for long enough that all the words escape him.

“Wasn’t so bad,” he says.

[euroclydonn]

Genuinely if you feel like everything is going terribly, start by fixing one thing at a time. Once you get the ball rolling it all gets easier. Start by taking a multivitamin or by getting better sleep. Pick one thing and focus on that one thing until it's better. And CELEBRATE EVERY SUCCESS NO MATTER HOW SMALL.

Do not fall into the trap of downplaying every little success!!! If that little success is "I made my bed today" FUCK YEAH BROTHER. if your success is "I got out of bed today" FUCK YES MY DUDE. I am so proud of you. If today is your first day clean I'm so proud of you. If you're not clean today but you're not as bad as you were yesterday I'm proud of you. If today is the day you decided to pick up a book for the first time in years I'm proud of you.

You can ignore your failures. I'm so serious. You failed? Move on. Learn from it, don't dwell on it. Spend all your time focused on your next success. Cause you WILL succeed. It may not look like the success you expected. But you're gonna make it.

And success is different for everyone. For some people success is just contentment. For some it's graduating. For some it's being sober, being healthy, being in less pain, being more comfortable with your body, adjusting to a new sense of self, divorcing a terrible spouse. Whatever it is, I believe in you and I love you.

[icarryitin]

Episode 24: Trade Deal

spencer reid/gn!reader

i started this bc i was ill and feeling sorry for myself and it turned into a very not to me not if it’s you kind of vibe, mostly bc i frankensteined a couple of my favourite translations of That Scene so they could have their own version🥰🥰

series masterlist

word count: 1.5k // warnings: reader has a cold and all the grossness that comes with it, spencer is so Cute™️ it causes me physical pain

summary: In which Spencer Reid, known germaphobe, pretends he doesn’t know exactly how many pathogens have made their home in your sinuses.

It starts with a scratchy throat on a Tuesday morning.

You don’t think much of it, blame it on seasonal allergies, knock back a multivitamin - you’re not about to be bested by a cough of all things. That is, until it gets to Friday afternoon. You’re trying, you really are. Your immune system has other plans.

“You stay right there, Patient Zero.”

Rossi’s comment would be funny if you didn’t think that laughing might trigger a coughing fit that could very well be the end of you, right there in the doorway of Hotch’s office. That’d be one hell of an epitaph - too stubborn to take a sick day, choked to death in boss’s office. Hotch, at least, already seems to know why you’re hovering.

“I’m-“

“Going home, I hope.” He interrupts you with all the fondness of a concerned father. You don’t have the energy to argue, or to hold up an unaffected front. The men standing by the window soften a little as they watch you visibly deflate. Dave promises to send you his Nonna’s minestrone recipe, there’s nothing it can’t cure; right now, though, you’re only thinking about your bed.

The well wishes follow you through the bullpen, old wives tales and family cures that have never failed. JJ tells you to sweeten your tea with honey, Derek swears that a hot water bottle on your back will work magic. Even Emily pipes up from behind her germ shield, the folder held across her face so you can only see her eyes, and tells you to take a hot shower first thing in the morning - the steam will clear you out for the day. There’s a chorus of agreement, or disagreement you’re not sure. It’s a struggle to hear much over the cotton wool in your ears.

“We’ll see, with any luck I’ll die in my sleep. Love you!” You sniffle as you back out of the office, feeling all kinds of sorry for yourself, and determined to make it as far as you can without touching anything. Lest you actually start the next plague.

Spencer watches you go, shuffling backwards out of the office and turning towards the elevators. He’d elected not to add his own suggestions to the plethora of options supplied by the rest of the team. Unable to focus on much beyond just how tired you look. You’ve been fighting this thing all week, he’d passed over his own supply of hand sanitiser only that morning when you ran out. Ultimately, you put up a good fight, but there’s no cure for a virus. It just has to run its course. Just like his own feelings.

Okay, maybe he shouldn’t be comparing a virus to whatever it is he feels for you. Has felt, will feel - if there’s an end to this tunnel, he can’t see it yet.

“What about you, Spence?”

JJ’s voice pulls him from his thoughts before he can start spiralling down that particular hole. It takes him a moment to recall what they’d been chattering about before your long overdue exit - drinks, right. Yeah, that’s not happening.

“I’m busy, actually.” He shrugs, content to miss out on one night in favour of the plan currently coming to fruition in his mind. They won’t miss him too much.

“Busy? You weren’t busy when we talked about it last week.” Emily makes no effort to conceal her surprise. To be fair to them, it’s not like him to blow them off. There’s just something that’s come up, something decidedly you shaped, that’s far more important.

“Yeah, I forgot. Sorry.”

Spencer doesn’t miss the look that JJ and Emily share, he doesn’t miss the eyebrow that Derek raises in his direction. He simply chooses to ignore them.

At least the walk to your apartment is short, there’s still heat leeching from the plastic bag around Spencer’s wrist as he fumbles with his keys. You’d given him a bright pink key cap, so he’d know which one was yours, as if he wouldn’t know anyway. Eidetic or not, that’s one he would have committed to memory. The excuse had been because he was helping you out whilst you were down an arm, takedown gone wrong, you’d dislocated your shoulder. And then you’d insisted he keep it, because someone should have your spare key, and he’s the least likely of the lot of you to lose it.

He thinks you might be asleep at first, open plan living area lit only by a salt lamp and a set of fairy lights draped over your kitchen window, it’s cosy. And then you appear in the bedroom doorway, wrapped in a jewel toned blanket. The low light is forgiving, but Spencer would be able to spot the bags under your eyes from a mile away. Without his glasses.

“I brought noodles.” He says as he turns back to set the steaming bag on your kitchen counter.

“I’m so gross right now.” As if to demonstrate your point, another cough racks your body. You just about manage to catch it under the swathes of blanket clutched in your fingers, but at least he can’t claim you’re not truly disgusting in this moment.

“I don’t mind.”

You’re so set on denying him entry that you don’t even really register what he said - Spencer Reid doesn’t mind that you’re ill. He doesn’t mind. A younger, healthier version of you would swoon. You might anyway, although that’s probably the vertigo talking.

“You’ll get sick.” Your rebuttal is weak, resolve crumbling. Warm noodles do sound pretty good right now.

“Will you let me help you, please?” It’s the firmest he’s ever been with you. No room for argument, doctor’s orders. So you have to relent. Not that you have much of a choice, he’s already pottering about in your kitchen in search of bowls. As if he doesn’t remember where they are.

“Did you get me a number three?” Your voice is brighter than he’s heard it all week.

“With extra toppings, of course.”

And those extra toppings go down a treat, of course they do.

Spencer watches you carefully as you eat - usually he’d be a little more subtle about it, but there’s not a lot that could pull your attention away from the bowl in your hands. You’re cross legged on the couch, blanket bunched around your middle, happy as a clam. Something his mother would say. He wonders what else she might say, what she might think about the abandonment of his germaphobia. Convenient, probably. Diana would say it with a raised eyebrow and a sly smile, the one that’s just for him. She has always liked you.

He promises he’ll be back tomorrow, once dishes are washed and leftovers are tucked neatly in your fridge, to make sure you get that hot shower Emily mentioned. The steam will definitely help, he’s read about it. Arguing with him would be pointless. You don’t have the energy, he’d only show up anyway, and it’s kind of nice to feel looked after. Spencer’s never failed to make you feel like that. You’re far too delirious to start thinking about that, not while he’s still standing in front of you at least. So you let him tuck you into bed, let him leave a glass of water on the table, let him dote. Pretending is a comfort when you feel as awful as you do. You’re already drifting off before he’s even ready to leave, content enough in your bed with the sound of him in the other room. Just, tinkering.

The sound of your front door opening rouses you the next morning, just about. Just enough to raise your head from your pillow and witness the sorry sight in your bedroom doorway.

Spencer’s trying - key word, trying - to suppress his sniffles, but the red rimmed eyes and tissue clutched in his fist give him away. It’s impossible to keep the sad little smile off of your face.

“Oh no.” You reach out a tired arm to pat the space beside you. There’s enough room for the two of you in amongst the blankets, and Spencer’s so far gone that he doesn’t even argue. His shoes and bag find a home at the foot of your bed as he lets himself collapse into the nest you’ve built. Tension leeches out of his body the moment he hits the mattress.

You have to lean across him to get your phone, right arm outstretched over his back - you can feel the heat rising off of him through his sweater and yours. Fever, that’s day two. Which means he spent yesterday evening taking care of you whilst he began to feel worse and worse. Softie.

“Egg or no egg?”

There’s an affirmative grunt from where his face is buried in your blankets. Egg it is, then. You dial the number mostly from memory, elbow still resting on his shoulder blade when you put the phone to your ear. You feel a little better than you did, but dragging yourself to the front door is still probably all you’ll be capable of today. At least you won’t be suffering alone. The line rings for a moment, then clicks, and a grainy hello sounds from the other side.

“Hi, can I place a breakfast order for delivery, please?”

i’m stuck on which chapter to work on next, do we want angst or yearning or fun flirty activities????🧡