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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 1 year ago

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When The World Is Crashing Down [Chapter 4: These Words Are All I Have So I'll Write Them]

Series summary: Your family is House Celtigar, one of Rhaenyra’s wealthiest allies. In the aftermath of Rook’s Rest, Aemond unknowingly conscripts you to save his brother’s life. Now you are in the liar of the enemy, but your loyalties are quickly shifting…

Chapter warnings: Language, warfare, violence, serious injury, alcoholism/addiction, prostitution, references to sexual content including noncon (18+), pregnancy, methods of ending pregnancy, speaking High Valyrian at a third-grade level, no Larys Strong this time yay!!!

Series title is a lyric from: “7 Minutes in Heaven” by Fall Out Boy.

Chapter title is a lyric from: “Dance, Dance” by Fall Out Boy.

Word count: 6.7k.

Link to chapter list: HERE.

Taglist (more in comments): @tinykryptonitewerewolf @lauraneedstochill @not-a-glad-gladiator @daenysx @babyblue711 @arcielee @at-a-rax-ia @bhanclegane @jvpit3rs @padfooteyes @marvelescvpe @travelingmypassion @darkenchantress @yeahright0h @poohxlove @trifoliumviridi @bloodyflowerrr @fan-goddess @devynsficrecs @flowerpotmage @thelittleswanao3 @seabasscevans @hiraethrhapsody @libroparaiso @echos-muses @st-eve-barnes @chattylurker @lm-txles @vagharnaur @moonlightfoxx @storiumemporium @insabecs @heliosscribbles @beautifulsweetschaos @namelesslosers @partnerincrime0 @burningcoffeetimetravel-fics @yawneneytiri @marbles-posts @imsolence @maidmerrymint @backyardfolklore @nimaharchive @anxiousdaemon @under-the-aspen-tree @amiraisgoingthruit @dd122004dd @randomdragonfires @jetblack4real @joliettes

Let me know if you’d like to be tagged! 🥰💜

She gives you a new dress to replace the one that is sopping wet and algae-stained from your tumble into the fishpond: a deep gory maroon, low-cut across the chest, a slit up to your thigh. It is the most revealing thing you have ever worn. You keep crossing your arms and tugging at the fabric, trying to make it cover more of you, incurably out-of-place in this room, this world. The madam is seated at her desk and jotting down notes in a thick, ancient book. When you steal glimpses of her words, they are messy and often misspelled, the script of a child. If you had parchment, you could write a letter. Your hands itch for it; your fingers flex to grasp nothing.

A woman glides into the madam’s bedroom—a tiny kingdom where no men exist—and hands you a cup of tea. She appraises you with a swift, intrigued glance; her hair is long and coppery red, her belly rounded out. She is perhaps five months pregnant. The madam casts her a stern look and the woman dutifully vanishes. “What is this?” you ask as you take a sip. It’s hot, lemony, bitter. “Moon tea?”

The madame chuckles. “No. We have moon tea for if that doesn’t work.”

Because I’m going to be doing things that could result in a child. Because I’m going to be violated here, again and again, I who was so terrified of being possessed by even one man.

The madam says: “Can you play any instruments?”

“No.” You draw into yourself—eyes and ears and the pores of your skin—every detail, every tapestry on the walls and creaky board of the floor and shift in tones of voice, anything that could help you escape. You are a traveler in a strange land. You have no map, no compass. You can bandage burns and set bones, but you know nothing about brothels in the suffocating, squalid entrails of a city.

“Sing or dance?”

“Not well at all.”

A furrowed brow. “Can you sew?”

“Barely.”

“Cook?”

“No.”

Disappointment, palpable and shaming. “Can you read or write?” the madam asks, scratching disorderly lines of black ink into her book.

“Both.”

Now she has perked up a bit. “How well?”

“Fluently.”

A raised eyebrow. This is unusual. “Any other languages besides the Common Tongue?”

“No.” Then you add desperately: “But I know about medicine! I’ve studied herbology and wound tending, and I can act as a healer for the women here, I can—”

“You could, perhaps,” the madam says, smiling with sad, aged patience. “But that is not what the prince regent intended.”

You stare at her, aghast, petrified. There is no swaying her. You consider revealing yourself and attempting to bribe her with the renowned Celtigar fortune, but this is inadvisable. It is one thing to be raped; it is another to be raped and then murdered and then probably raped again. The Greens are the true heirs of the throne in this establishment, which means Rhaenyra and all those who aid her are traitors. Already you have overheard the women gossiping about King Aegon. They do not appear to fear or dislike him; on the contrary, they fret over him like anxious mothers or wives. They hope his recovery is quick. They are grateful he survived. They wonder if he will return to visit them again soon. They do not seem to be under the impression that he is vile, amoral, cruel, a threat, a curse. When they look at him, white hair and ocean-deep eyes, they do not see a monster.

“You aren’t bleeding currently,” the madam continues.

“How do you know that?”

“You didn’t ask for a rag when I gave you that dress.” New words springing to life on those yellowed pages, pricelessly valuable and yet forbidden to you. “Ever borne children?”

“No.”

“Are you a maiden?”

You can’t decide how to answer; you aren’t sure if either reply will help you. You settle on the truth. “Yes,” you admit tentatively.

“Good. We can charge more for you.”

“Wait, no, I’m not. I’ve been with lots of men.”

The madam laughs, shaking her head as she makes her notes. Her necklace and earrings jangle merrily, too large, glinting and gaudy. “Have no fear. I will make it easier for you. I will find a slight, young lad to be your first. He won’t be too big, he won’t last too long. And if you’re fortunate, he’ll even be handsome!” Her prominent, pale eyes go distant; she is orchestrating myths, the trade she deals in like some women sell silk or wool. “A soldier home on leave, perhaps. Looking for a taste of dwindling innocence before he marches off again to be butchered by a Costayne or a Darklyn.” She snaps back into the room. “It will be over before you know it. You’ll be more underwhelmed than anything else, trust me.”

You picture it, red, rust, rage, resignation: the impossibly large stain of blood on your cousin Theodora’s bedsheets. “What if I’m frightened? What if I cry?”

The madam shrugs. “Some men like that. It will convince them of your inexperience.”

You gape at her. “That’s appalling.”

“That’s the world we live in.” She sets down her quill, closes the book, and stretches out her back as she stands. “Follow me. I’ll show you around.”

There are rooms where the women sleep, rooms where they get ready, servants to arrange their hair and moonlight-silver mirrors and a cluttered array of cosmetics and closets bursting with sheer, sensuous gowns. As the madam momentarily diverts her attention from you to scold a servant for knocking over a tin of rouge made from ground cinnabar, you swipe a small stick of kohl eyeliner off a table and tuck it into the pocket of your dress. You might be able to write with it.

What is that pocket supposed to be for? A vial of perfume to mask the sweat of men, mint leaves to clear away their taste? A cloth to mop their mess off your thighs? You shudder, then trail after the madam as she floats out into the hallway.

There are bedchambers, six or seven of them, but the doors are shut. You can smell incense burning; you can hear moans and wet slaps of flesh beneath plucks of harps played by servants. Outside there is a courtyard where women sit on the stone rims of fountains simpering and stroking men’s beards, necks, chests, thighs. It is surrounded by a wall nine feet high. Armed guards pace through the maze of rose bushes and elm trees and proliferate quilts of ivy, keeping uninvited men out, keeping women in. They are protected from their own ambitions of some other kind of life. They are prisoners. The sky above them is a mosaic of spilled wine and gold; the sun is setting.

Downstairs in the kitchen, the madam leaves you in the care of the same woman you saw earlier, long coppery ringlets and a bastard in her belly. The dress she wears is a cleaner red than yours, not blood that has dried and flaked but a heart that’s still beating. She is chopping vegetables and tossing them into a pot boiling over the fire. The long wooden table is strewn with carrots, onions, potatoes, leeks, mushrooms, fresh dark green herbs.

She flashes you a wily smile. “Our cook dropped dead last week. We’ve yet to procure a new one, so I’m making myself useful. All the house laments.”

You laugh and join her, though you don’t know the first thing about working in a kitchen; you pick up a knife and begin slicing through a carrot. It takes more muscle than you anticipated.

“On a cutting board, you idiot,” the woman says kindly, passing you one.

“Sorry. I’ve never cooked before.”

“What? Never?” Her auburn eyebrows spring up. “Where did you come from?”

The cliffs, the sea, salt and waves and mist. “The Crownlands.”

She is studying you with interest as her blade hovers over a half-chopped leek. “Were you a handmaiden to a lady there, or…?”

“It doesn’t matter. Whoever I was, I’m not the same person anymore.”

“No,” the woman agrees softly. “None of us are, I suppose.”

You glance down to her belly. You don’t wish to offend her, but you are curious.

“Go on,” she prompts. “You may inquire. I am well aware of my predicament whether you speak of it aloud or not, I assure you.”

“Did the moon tea not…expel the child?”

“No,” she sighs as she resumes hacking away at the leek. She speaks with vague, weary fondness. “The lemonweed tea did not prevent it, the moon tea did not kill it. I nearly died of fever and vomiting myself, but the child held on. It’s alive in there, I can feel it kicking sometimes. A fierce little thing.”

You nod, still gazing at her belly, undeniable evidence of the act that built it. The copper-haired woman is almost certainly younger than you, and yet she knows exactly what it means to be opened by a man, pillaged, conquered, used, left. This time tomorrow, you will know it too. “The madam let you stay?”

“Not very enthusiastically, but yes. I cook, I clean, I do the shopping in the market. She does not fear letting me venture out into the city. She knows I have nowhere else to go. I only have to entertain clients if they ask for a pregnant woman. Some men have a particular liking for that, you know.”

You did not know. “Right.”

“Besides, there might be some advantage in it for the madam,” the woman tells you. She grins. “When the child is born, there’s a chance it will have the silver hair of a Targaryen. Then the madam could approach Otto Hightower for a reward of some sort, money, protection. Royal bastards have never been more valuable. Little princes are dying left and right.”

“King Aegon’s?” you say numbly. “The child could be his?”

“Yes, obviously. Who else?”

So Aemond does not frequent this place as a customer. You wonder how he met the madam.

Aegon was here before the war began, you think, blood hot in your face, your guts twisting and nauseous. How many women know what he feels like, tastes like, sounds like when he is moaning in pleasure instead of agony?

The copper-haired woman is staring at you quizzically. You have to say something. You hear your voice like the distant cry of a crow through fog: “What was he like? The king, I mean.”

She considers this. “Drunk. Sad. But perfectly pleasant. I wouldn’t mind serving him again. He’s well thought of on the Street of Silk. I do hope he recovers. I think Rhaenyra would hang us all from a gallows. She knows Daemon has a wandering eye, and she’s not the type of wife to look the other way.”

You are trying to clear it out of your skull, like a room full of smoke: Aegon was here, Aegon was here, Aegon was here. “When you met with him, it was in this brothel?”

She hesitates. “Mostly.”

Mostly…? “Have you been inside the Red Keep?”

“Once. Ages ago. There is a network of secret passageways beneath the castle and behind the walls. The king has been known to use them for…well. You know.”

It should not hurt you. You’ve spent all your life listening to the tales of his failings. Yet it does, more than you thought was possible. You’ve never wanted a man before. But you want Aegon now. You do, you must, otherwise you wouldn’t be so pained by the thought of others touching him. You wonder if he feels the same way about you, if he ever lies awake at night with his stomach in knots over your nameless betrothed.

You try to focus on this moment, this kitchen, this copper-haired woman.You need to find a way out of here. “So the madam will decide what happens to your child once it’s born.”

“Of course,” she replies simply.

“You don’t want to keep it yourself? You are not attached to it?”

The woman is suddenly serious, quiet, melancholy. “I have no choice in the matter.”

She’s my chance. She’s my redeemer. “Can I ask your name?” you say.

“What my family named me is of no account. As you said, we’re not the same people anymore.” She smiles, warm like embers once again. “People here call me Autumn.”

“Autumn,” you echo. A woman with hair the color of crisp, dying leaves, the color of a dying world hurtling towards winter. “I think I can help you. You and your child, no matter its parentage.”

She does not want to believe you—hope is a dangerous, taunting creature, one that builds a home in your ribcage and then taps taps taps its claws along the ladder of bones—but she does. You can see it flickering in her small, upturned hazel eyes. “You…what?”

“When you go to the market, do you take a list with you? Of items that you require?”

“Yes,” Autumn replies, puzzled. “The madam always gives me one.”

“Do you have any parchment here in the kitchen?”

Autumn shakes her head. “The madam keeps it in her room. Shall I ask her—?”

“No,” you say. “Definitely don’t ask for any. Is there an old list lying around, perhaps?”

“Um, let me see…” Autumn rummages around the table; onions go rolling, leeks are flung aside. She snatches a tattered, folded sheet of parchment from under a pile of potatoes and surrenders it to you. “Here. This is the one from yesterday.”

You open it and lay it flat on the table. Sure enough, there is a list written in black ink; but not in the Common Tongue. The items are sketched. There’s a carrot with a cloudlike plume of fronds atop it, a bee (meaning honey, you imagine), a pig and a chicken, a round bottle with a heart drawn above it. Perfume? you guess. “These are pictures.”

“Well, of course. I wouldn’t be able to read it otherwise.”

You take the stick of black kohl out of your dress pocket and flip over the list. The back is blank. You write as Autumn watches, baffled, fascinated.

Your Grace, you begin, and then scratch it out. You start again.

Aegon,

Aemond has imprisoned me in a brothel. He knows the madam (middle-aged, brown hair, clever).

“What is this place called?” you ask Autumn.

“The Pink Pearl,” she says.

Autumn works here, if you recall her. She says the establishment is known as the Pink Pearl. Please send someone to rescue me at once. I am to be put to work soon, and I am afraid.

You pause. What will he have been told? What will he think of you now?

I beg your forgiveness for my deceit. I did not mislead you out of malice. I knew you needed help, and that I would not be able to provide it if my true identity was known. I have not done anything to undermine your cause. I have not written a word to my family. I assume they now believe me to be dead. I do not want this, but it is a sacrifice I have made so that I can continue to serve you.

Please help me. Please allow me to return to the Red Keep.

My name was a lie, but none of the rest was.

Angel

“You’re highborn, aren’t you?” Autumn says, hushed, awed. “You must be, to write like that.”

“Yes. And I am a friend of King Aegon. If he knows I’m here, he will pay for me.” You don’t know that for sure, but you have hope, that risky rattling beast.

“He will pay to fuck you, you mean?”

“I believe he will buy my freedom.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

Then I will slit my own throat with one of these knives. “It’s better for everyone if he does.” You fold the parchment closed and then give it to Autumn. She takes it, perplexed but willing. “I cannot leave this place. But you can. I need you to get that letter to the king. You know the way to the Red Keep; you have been inside these secret passageways. Hand the letter to him directly if possible. If you are intercepted, ask to see the Dowager Queen Alicent or…” You debate this. Sir Criston is closer to Aemond than Aegon, but you believe the opposite to be true for the youngest Targaryen brother. “Or Prince Daeron. Tell them that the letter must be read by the king immediately, and by him only. If he is resting, he must be roused. If he is speaking with someone, he must be interrupted. Explain this and then leave. And do not allow the prince regent to see you.” Aemond’s words blow through you like a cold wind: If she tries to escape, kill her.

“This is a difficult task,” Autumn says uncertainly, the folded square of parchment disappearing into the bodice of her gown. “I cannot promise you anything. But I can try.”

“If I am rescued, I will see that you and your child are provided for. You will have your own home, one far, far away from here. You will never have to answer to the madam again. You will never have to lie with a man who is not of your choosing. Your life will be your own.”

She stares at you, dazed and wonderous. She cannot even fathom this, but she knows she wants it. You’ve begun to feel that way about certain things as well. When Autumn speaks, it is in little more than a whisper. “I would like that very much.”

“You will have my most fervent gratitude.”

“I will depart tonight after supper. I will tell the madam that I am craving apple cake from a street vendor.”

“Thank you, Autumn,” you say, lips trembling as they curl into a smile, tears blurry in your eyes.

She points to the stick of black kohl you’ve used as a makeshift quill, smirking. It’s still clutched in your dominant hand. “You’d better hide that before people start showing up looking for soup.”

Hours later, you are trying to fall asleep in a room you share with half a dozen other women who are not presently working, beds so close together they almost touch, soft snores, mattresses shifting when people roll over, a thin wool blanket pulled all the way up to your chin.

Aegon will read the letter. Aegon will send someone to rescue me.

In the darkness, your hands wander down to your belly, your hips, lower. Skating over your white silk nightgown, your fingertips press cautiously at a place where you sometimes feel an indistinct, uneasy sort of pleasure. You rarely touch yourself; you cannot do so without remembering that your body is not your own and never has been. But now, for the very first time and without any premeditation, you picture Aegon—his murky oceanic eyes, his crooked grin, his hands, his bravery, his gentleness, his shock of white-blond hair adorned with that single tiny braid—and instantly your once-ambiguous desire sharpens, strengthens, is accompanied by a wetness that you can feel blooming warm and needful beneath your nightgown.

But it’s not going to be him. It’s going to be some stranger who doesn’t know me and doesn’t want to.

You roll over onto your side and thrust your hands under the pillow, squeeze your eyes shut until they ache, try not to hear the moans that creep through the walls like dark veins of blood poisoning.

~~~~~~~~~~

All day you wait for someone to cross through the doorway of the brothel to claim you, a guard, a messenger, Daeron, Criston, anybody. But no one does. The women here keep strange hours: late to bed, late to rise, breakfast at noon, lunch at four or five, supper long after nightfall. You pick listlessly at a breakfast of biscuits with butter, honey, and blackberry jam, bacon, weak wine, pomegranate juice, lemonweed tea to prevent an unintended child like Autumn’s.

“I was stopped by a guard just outside the Red Keep,” she mutters to you in a stolen moment, huddled together at the end of a hallway by a window that opens out onto the courtyard. “They agreed to let me see Prince Daeron. He took the letter and said he would deliver it. That’s all I could do. I hope it’s enough.”

I hope so too, you think to yourself as you thank her, marveling with brick-heavy horror at how all the Valyrian ancestry and riches in the world cannot save you from the fate of being born a card for others to play, trade, bet on, use until it is worn and faceless. I hope so with everything I’m made of.

The other women take you with them to the bathhouse down the street, and in the labyrinth of sweltering pools and swirling steam you scrub yourself all over until your skin is tender to the touch. You use perfumed soaps and luxurious floral oils, not for healing but for vanity, so strange men will imagine you to be an intoxicating fantasy, so any human imperfections can be ignored. You pluck some stray hairs and trim others. You inspect each other for bruises or scratches or bitemarks that will need to be covered. No one mentions how they got them. Everybody knows.

Back in the brothel, the women show you how to wear your hair and do your makeup: black kohl on the eyes, beeswax dyed with berry juice on the lips, powder on the face to even out your complexion. Servants flit around fussing over hairstyles and switching ripped seams on dresses. Your silk gown—the one you will be raped in—is a soft, helpless, feminine lavender. You are shown to a bedchamber: flickering candles, a mountain of pillows and jewel-toned throw blankets, harp music and fresh air breathing in through the windows. You sit on the edge of the bed wringing your hands. You are waiting to be rescued. You are waiting to be harmed.

The door opens, and he enters. The madam was truthful: she has found you a slight, benign-looking young man. He smiles shyly, clanging in his light armor. He is indeed a soldier on leave from the front. He wears the crest of his family as the clasp for his cape, a white shield with a black cross. He is a Norcross, the same as the dying boy you were tending when Aemond pulled you off the battlefield at Rook’s Rest. How easy it would have been for you to not be here right now; a difference of a few minutes, a few meters, and Aemond never would have found you.

“Hello,” the man says pleasantly. He is yanking off his boots.

“Hello.” You are still sitting on the edge of the massive bed, big enough for four or five occupants. This is not a coincidence, you’re certain. But that will come later, once you have been sufficiently broken in. Your stomach lurches; you try not to show it.

Now he is taking off his cape. “You’re nervous,” he observes. There is a pitcher of wine on the table in the middle of the room. He pours two cups and hands one to you. You take it—intending to be dignified, ladylike—and then gulp it down. The Norcross laughs. “You needn’t fear me, maiden,” he says. “I am here for pleasure, not pain. I have paid a considerable price for you. You are a piece of treasure, a rare gem, and I will handle you accordingly.”

Then he reaches out to stroke your cheek, and something in you shatters, splits open, screams. I don’t know this man. I don’t trust this man. You shrink away from him and retreat to the center of the vast bed. The Norcross blinks at you, a little amused, a bit bewildered. “Sir, you have stumbled upon a great opportunity,” you tell him. “I am no ordinary woman.”

“No?” he says. But he is smirking beneath gleaming eyes, like this is a joke; and he is removing his armor as well.

“I am here as the result of a dreadful misunderstanding. You see, I have actually already been claimed. There is another man who has the right to take my innocence if he so chooses.”

“Oh?” the Norcross says. He is unbuttoning his white cotton shirt. “Who?”

“King Aegon.”

He throws his head back and guffaws, dark hair long enough to cover his ears and brush against the nape of his neck. “This is a very charming jape. Me? Getting to deflower the king’s chosen whore? Yes, yes, very good. Delightful. Delicious.” He crawls onto the bed; the mattress shifts beneath your palms. A cold sweat slicks across your skin. Goosebumps rise on your arms. He doesn’t hear me. He doesn’t want to.

“I’m not joking,” you implore the Norcross. “I am well-acquainted with King Aegon, he cares for me. I was brought here by mistake and against his knowledge. If you assist me in returning to him, I’m sure you will be generously compensated for your trouble—”

The man’s hand juts out, snags in your hair, yanks and tears at it. You yelp and struggle as he wrestles you down onto the mattress and settles his weight on top of you. “You’re mine, all mine,” he growls, smiling, playing along with what he has chosen to believe is a fantasy. “Not the king’s whore. The king has plenty of those already, he probably has thousands. But you’re all mine.”

“Get off me,” you order him, as if you are still the daughter of one of the wealthiest houses in Westeros and not some powerless, penniless woman imprisoned in ornate walls and perfumed silk; and isn’t this where you always would have ended up anyway? Flinching on some stranger’s bed as he tried to claim you, subdue you, force pieces of himself inside you?

“I will show you, maiden. The king is a cripple now. He could not satisfy you anyway. I will give you what he could not. And I’ll give it to you more than once, if you ask nicely.” He presses his lips to yours, a sickening mockery of a kiss, all flesh and no heat. He is wearing only his trousers; they could be gone in an instant. He is tugging your sleeves off your shoulders to get to your breasts.

“Please don’t do this, please stop, I’ll give you anything—”

“Everything I want is right here.”

Just let him do it, you think. I can’t leave this place, I can’t fight him off. There’s no way out. Just let him do it, and live to see if freedom will arrive tomorrow.

Aemond’s words fill your skull like flashes of lighting: If she tries to escape, kill her.

The Norcross man is pulling off his trousers. It strikes you like a closed fist: the terror, the injustice, the rage. You swing at his face, your knuckles rapping against his cheekbones. “Get off of me—!”

There is a tremendous fracturing noise, and at first you think the man must have snapped one of your bones, your radius or your tibia or your clavicle. But no: it was the bedchamber door being thrown open so violently it hit the wall behind it and cracked down the middle. And now there are footsteps, and now there are guards pouring into the room, and now the point of a blade bursts through the Norcross man’s windpipe splattering blood across the bed, the walls, the wood boards of the floor. You are shrieking; scarlet rain peppers your face, chest, hands.

“You’d take an unwilling woman?!” Aegon demands of the dying man, who gapes at him with rapidly fading eyes and a mouth hemorrhaging dark, lethal red. The king is wearing all black, tunic, trousers, boots. Half of his hair is pulled back from his face and secured with a black ribbon. You have never seen him like this before. You have never seen him brutal, formidable, furious. “You fucking animal. Enjoy drowning in your own blood.”

Aegon wrenches his sword free from the dying man’s throat and he falls face-down onto the mattress as you scramble away. And then Aegon falls too: his legs give out and he collapses to his knees, kneeling in a pool of the Norcross man’s blood, the hilt of his sword tumbling out of his grasp. You bolt off the bed and drop down onto the floor beside him.

“Aegon?!”

“Are you okay?” He takes your face in his hands—they’re shaking, they’re weak again, but just strong enough to cradle the slope of your jaw—and looks at you, turning your face one way and then the other, his eyes searching for bruises, lacerations, more fuel for the vengeful fire that blazes in him. The burn on his own right cheek is inflamed, blistering. He does not seem to notice.

“I’m okay, I promise.”

“Did they hurt you?”

“No, no, you got here just in time.”

And Aegon—this so-called monster, this alleged beast, this man who the Blacks swear is a villain and a degenerate and soulless—slips the sleeves of your silk lavender gown back up over your shoulders so your chest is covered. “If it’s any consolation, you’re fucking beautiful.”

“Of course you would prefer me dressed like a prostitute.”

He laughs, embraces you, holds you to him, the first time he ever has. Your arms link around the back of his neck, your fingers knot in his hair. You are so close, yet not nearly close enough; you want him completely, always. You can’t claw your way back up the cliff you’ve fallen down.

There is a commotion as the guards that accompanied Aegon to the brothel part to allow two new arrivals into the bedchamber. Aemond and Criston now stand just inside the doorway, breathing heavily from their sprint across the city. Your gaze meets Aemond’s and you clutch Aegon tighter. The king kisses your temple—so quickly and unceremoniously it feels like a habit, something instinctual, something innately right—and reluctantly unravels himself from you. He grabs the nearest bedpost and hauls himself to his feet, wincing, groaning, bracing himself against it with both hands.

“What the hell are you doing?!” Aemond shouts at his brother.

“You will not harm her! You will not take her from me!”

“Aegon, she’s not a Thorne, she’s a Celtigar! Her father sits on Rhaenyra’s council, he funds her war effort, when our men are killed it’s with arrows and steel that he paid for—!”

“We’re all different people now!” Aegon roars. “All of us! You were some pathetic runt, I was useless, Daeron was a child, Helaena was happy, Criston was devoted to Rhaenyra, Mother was her closest friend, all of us have been changed by this world and its endless goddamn misery! So she was born a Celtigar, is she to be eternally condemned for that? Is she truly irredeemable? Can no acts of service to the Greens’ king convince you of her loyalty? She saved my life!”

“Are you insane?! We can’t trust her!”

“I am the king!” Aegon bellows. “I am still the one who gets to make these decisions, no matter how unworthy you think I am!”

“She lied to you, to me, to everyone, that cannot go unpunished!”

And then Aegon responds, but not in the Common Tongue. He says something—laboriously, haltingly—in a language you recognize only from hearing Daemon and Rhaenyra converse in it. You were not aware that Aegon knew High Valyrian well enough to carry a conversation. Perhaps Aemond and Criston weren’t either; they exchange a brief, astonished glance. The guards’ eyes dart between the king and the prince regent.

Aemond replies, his tone cutting but his words swift, seamless, graceful, fluent. Aegon stumbles his way through a sentence or two, pausing several times to conjure the correct word. Aemond says something else, an effortless litany of syllables your forebears shared. Aegon forces out one last plea. It sounds painful; it sounds like a confession. Aemond stares at his brother, perhaps scandalized, perhaps merely stunned.

“Alright?” Aegon pants, in anguish now. His hands are like talons on the bedpost, the force of his fingernails leaving white scratches in the wood. “You get it? You understand?”

“Fine,” Aemond says, low and bitter.

“You will not harm her. She stays in the Red Keep. Promise me, Aemond. I cannot rest until you do.”

Aemond nods, glaring down at the floor.

“Criston?” Aegon presses. “Promise me. If he breaks his word, you will stop him. I command this. I am your king.”

“I promise, Aegon,” Criston agrees, willingly enough.

“Good,” Aegon says. “Good.” And then he blacks out and crumples to the floor. The guards rush for him, but Criston tells them to stand back. He stoops low, lifts the king, throws him over one shoulder and carries him. Aemond fetches his brother’s fallen sword. You follow them out of the brothel, staying as far away from Aemond as you can. You pause just long enough to peek into the kitchen.

“Autumn?” you call, and she looks up from the chicken she’s been coating with herbs and butter. “I’m leaving now. You’re coming with me. Get your things.”

“What things?” she says, grinning. She cleans her hands and trots after you, one palm resting on the swell of her belly, her copper sea of hair streaming out behind her.

Inside the Red Keep, you inform the servants that Autumn will be staying as a guest of the royal family and that she is to have a room near yours. Then you hurry to Aegon’s chamber. He is sprawled across the bed, writhing and moaning. Grand Maester Orwyle is administering milk of the poppy. Criston is stripping him, heaving off Aegon’s boots and trousers before gingerly removing his tunic to reveal bandages red with blood around his shoulders. He has torn the half-mended flesh there. He suffers, he heals, he suffers again.

“Angel?” Aegon chokes out, reaching for you with tears flooding from his eyes.

“I’m here.” You take his hand. “What hurts, Aegon?”

“Everywhere,” he gasps.

You tell Orwyle: “Give him another dose.” And a second goblet of milk of the poppy is emptied down the king’s throat. Within a minute, he is mercifully unconscious again.

Criston looks at you. “What’s wrong with his face?”

“Sunlight. The rest of his burns were covered, but not the one on his cheek. Fresh burns must be kept out of the sun. He knows that.” You unwrap Aegon’s bandages; his wounds need to be cleaned and re-dressed.

“Oh, seven hells,” Criston whispers, covering his mouth with one hand. There are four or five ruptures around each shoulder, thin bleeding crevices that branch out like the legs of a red spider. Grand Maester Orwyle ambles off to order servants to fetch water, vinegar, honey, linen, more milk of the poppy.

“I should have done better,” you say, and your voice breaks. “I should have used more rose oil on his shoulders. I should have made him stretch three or four times a day.”

“You’ve tended to him tirelessly,” Criston says gently.

“I shouldn’t have lied about who I was.”

“I don’t see how you could have saved his life otherwise.”

“Go find Alicent,” you say. “Explain what’s happened, but don’t bring her to visit him yet. It will only upset her.”

“Yes,” Criston agrees, and leaves.

Outside, the sun is setting, and all the world is the color of dragonfire. Grand Maester Orwyle returns with servants and supplies. As you are dabbing at Aegon’s wounds with cloths dripping with water and vinegar, Daeron appears in the bedchamber doorway. His eyes—large and expressive like Aegon’s, but more crystalline, less dark—are shimmering and wider than you’ve ever seen them.

“Is he dying?” Daeron asks, sounding fearful and very young.

“No more than usual,” Aegon rasps; and that’s how you know he is awake again.

When Aegon is cleaned, bandaged, and soothed once again with milk of the poppy, the two of you are left alone. You perch on the edge of the mattress and can’t stop touching him, his left hand where his dragon ring glints in the flickering candlelight, his disheveled silver hair that still has that little braid you made for him. You don’t know what to say. You worry that if you begin talking, everything will spill out like a monsoon or a rogue wave, things you can’t take back, things you don’t fully understand yourself.

“House Celtigar, huh?” Aegon murmurs drowsily, smiling. “I’ve never been so happy to see a crab in my bed.”

And it hits you all at once: I would take every last drop of pain for this man. I would slit him open and drain him of it, swallow it down, assume the debt. I would carry every burden, every red flare of agony and ache in his bones. I would learn the art of self-loathing if he could forget it. I would trade fates with him, threads cut and crossed and burned to ash.

“What?” Aegon asks. He’s watching you with those storm-blue eyes, glassy with pain and poison.

Why wouldn’t you send someone else in your place? Why would you go yourself? Why would you injure yourself so grievously, so senselessly? “Why would you do this for me?”

“You are the only person I’ve never disappointed. I’d like to keep that going if I can.” He takes your hand and laces his fingers through yours. “You’re so far away.”

You lie down on the bed and curl up beside him, careful not to put pressure on his fresh wounds. You place one palm on the center of his bandaged chest, the other against his unburned cheek. Aegon pulls you in closer until your noses are nearly touching and you swing one leg up to rest on top of his; even then, he keeps a hand on your thigh, as if to make sure you don’t leave. The other twists into your hair and stays there. Aegon dives into a deep, starless sleep and you doze next to him. When you catch wisps of dreams like fireflies in a child’s grasp, you hear crashing waves and see dragons pitching into the sea: Vermax at the Gullet, Arrax into Shipbreaker Bay.

Why did Aemond have to murder Luke? Why did he have to start this war?

Something wakes you, a sound, an indescribable shift in the room. You open your eyes and turn to see Aemond, arms crossed and back propped against the opposite wall. You rise as carefully as you can so you don’t disturb Aegon, untangling yourself from him like he’s something catastrophically fragile, a spider’s web, a splintering pane of glass.

You stand and take several steps towards Aemond, only so you can speak without waking Aegon. “What do you want?”

“I fear I did not conduct myself particularly well yesterday,” he says. “I may have acted…impulsively. Unwisely.”

“Your capacity for self-reflection is truly inspiring.”

Aemond frowns. “I’m being serious.”

“I’m not interested.”

“If we are to be on the same side of this war, we should learn to understand each other.”

“I don’t want to understand you. Your mind must be a horrible place to live.”

He stares at you with his sole remaining eye, cold and hurt and wrathful and hopeless.

You ask softly, knowing that only Aemond can tell you: “What did he say? Back at the brothel?”

Aemond does not answer for so long that you convince yourself he’s not going to. At last, he decides to extend a peace offering. “He said that he cannot live without you. Or that he wouldn’t want to. I’m not certain which he meant. His High Valyrian has always been terrible.”

Then Aemond walks out of the room without another word.

#aegon ii targaryen #aegon ii #aegon targaryen ii #aegon targaryen #aegon targaryen x reader #aegon ii x you #aegon ii x y/n #aegon ii x reader #aegon x reader #aegon targaryen ii x you #aegon targaryen x you

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fuckyeahgoodomens · 1 year ago

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Hey, amazing work you are doing <3

This is not a question, but thought I wanted to share this with everyone ^^

As someone who loves to read different kind of books and is always ready for recommendations, I was excited for the books being organized alphabetically in s2ep2. And since there was an X-ray of saying "... Would love for everyone to read these books..."

And I had way too much time so here is the list of those books:

No Woman, No Cry - Rita Marley

The Crow Road - Iain Banks

The curious incident of the dog in the night-time - Mark Haddon

Catch -22 - Joseph Heller

Love in the Time of Cholera - Garriet Garcia Marquez

Nineteen eighty four - Orwell George

The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler

The Bible

The Great Gatsby -F. Scott Fitzgerald

The catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger

A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket

Herzog - Saul Bellow

I know I missed one or two, but those are at least there.

Hiya! :) Thank you, made a thing: :) (Added A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith and The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath :)<3)

#good omens #gos2 #season 2 #aziraphale's bookshop #aziraphale's books #fun fact #bts #x-ray

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mizzskelter · 6 months ago

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My new loathing of flowers and carpal tunnel aside, finished Robin's cover art (who is also in desperate need of clothing redesign...)

Here's the playlist link:

List of songs under the cut:

If anyone's curious and wants do a symbolism deep dive or something on the flowers: (right to left) daisies, crocuses, Stars of Bethlehem, lilacs (madame lemonie or angel white variety).

#degrees of lewdity #dol #dol music #robin the orphan #dol robin #skelter's art #Spotify #I am never drawing this many flowers again #The next daisy I see I will eat it without hesitation

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paperstorm · 5 months ago

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Thanks for the tags @cold-blooded-jelly-doughnut @heartstringsduet @im-overstimulated-and-im-sad @strandnreyes @thisbuildinghasfeelings @birdclowns @orchidscript @whatsintheboxmh @nancys-braids

I have withheld Tarlos from y'all for long enough so have an extra long snippet

“Hey.” TK smiles back. He turns to shut the door and by the time he turns around Carlos is right in front of him, arms opening for TK to tuck himself into. He does, letting Carlos wrap him up and hugging around Carlos’s waist.

“I was wiping down the shower earlier, I probably smell like Mr. Clean,” Carlos says, kissing the side of TK’s head.

TK rests his head on Carlos’s shoulder, extending the hug for just a moment longer because Carlos is warm and his arms have always felt like home. “Lemony fresh.”

“Super sexy, right?” Carlos jokes.

“Mhm.”

“How was work?”

“Fine,” TK answers, in a tone he hopes is a neutral. He isn’t lying, but Carlos has been watching him like a hawk the last week. Sometimes TK feels eyes on him like bright sunlight burning his skin, as if Carlos is waiting with bated breath for TK to break down sobbing in the middle of brushing his teeth.

Nudging his head up, Carlos makes TK look at him. Part of TK wants to look away, but he makes himself hold his boyfriend’s glossy-eyed gaze. This is what he’s always wanted, he reminds himself; someone who sees him, who knows him and loves him as if his numerous flaws aren’t just a floor-length list of deal-breakers.

Carlos brushes his thumb gently underneath TK’s eye. TK supposes they’re still a little puffy, in a way that most people wouldn’t notice but Carlos does. Softly, he asks, “Are you okay?”

TK nods and tries to smile reassuringly. He is okay, he isn’t lying about that either, he just feels like it’s harder to make Carlos believe him recently. He steps away from his boyfriend and moves toward the kitchen. A long moment of silence soundtracks him as he goes into the refrigerator. Carlos must have been shopping today, TK notices three bottles of sparkling flavored Perrier that weren’t there this morning. It makes him smile to himself and he selects the grapefruit one, finding a glass and turning back to Carlos to ask if he wants some.

He finds Carlos still near the door, looking at him with puppy-dog eyes and the little fold between his eyebrows. It’s so endearing it makes TK laugh. He shakes his head fondly. “Baby. I’m fine.”

“You lost your mom really recently, TK,” Carlos counters in a tentative voice. “You don’t have to be fine. I mean, of course I don’t want you to be sad all the time but if you are sad … that’s okay.”

TK nods. “Thank you. Do you want some water?”

“Sure.”

Carlos steps closer as TK pours, taking a seat on one of the barstools and smiling when TK gives him a glass. Their fingers brush and Carlos grabs for his other hand, bring it to his lips to kiss TK’s knuckles over the countertop before letting him go.

“So, coffee with Tommy?” Carlos questions, repeating TK’s earlier text back to him.

“Yep.”

“You’ve been working with her for over a year and you’ve never gone out for coffee with her.”

“We did actually go for coffee,” TK begins after taking a breath, not wanting Carlos to think he was lying. He takes a small sip, the bubbles fizzy against his tongue, and leans his backside against the closed door of the dishwasher. “We just went to a meeting, first.”

Carlos tilts his head to one side in confusion. “What kind of meeting?”

“Like a support group. For people who’ve lost someone, run by a grief counsellor.”

“Oh.” His eyes soften, lips parting slightly. “Oh, I … that sounds like a good thing.”

“It was,” TK agrees. “She’s been going since Charles died and she asked yesterday if I wanted to go with her.”

He doesn’t mention that before she asked, he’d spent a few heart-pounding seconds thinking she was about to fire him for almost stealing from the narcotics safe. The guilt of it eats away at his edges like acid, even though he thinks she was being honest about trusting that he won’t do it again. Whether he’d managed to fool her into believing leaving it unlocked had simply been an accident, he doesn’t know. Whether his father let her in on what TK’d actually been doing that day, he doesn’t know. It all simmers underneath his skin like mosquito bites, and the largest, itchiest one of all is the fact that Carlos doesn’t know anything about any of it.

Part of TK longs to tell him. He wants to give everything to this man, and he wants Carlos to do the same. For the time being, a larger part of him wants to desperately cling to the idea that his addiction and his mess and his jagged edges are all too far in his past to touch them. TK knows Carlos looks at him and sees softness and kindness and a rose-colored glow and he loves that; he loves imagining he could live up to the person Carlos thinks he can be. The idea of shattering that illusion makes his knees want to buckle underneath him.

“Do you mind if I don’t get into it?” TK asks. Nothing he said was a secret, but he already told a room full of people all about how much he misses his mom, and then reiterated it to Tommy 30 minutes later in the back corner of a busy Starbucks. He doesn’t think he has the strength to talk about it a third time tonight.

Carlos frowns for a moment but then he nods and there’s only a trace of tightness in his smile. “Sure, of course.”

Tags under the cut

Tagging @theghostofashton @reyesstrand @carlos-in-glasses @actual-sleeping-beauty @herefortarlos

@goodways @alrightbuckaroo @lightningboltreader @freneticfloetry @mooshkat

@liminalmemories21 @lemonlyman-dotcom @inkweedandlizards @bonheur-cafe @reasonandfaithinharmony

@thebumblecee @never-blooms @sanjuwrites @jesuisici33 @kiwichaeng @fallout-mars

@honeybee-taskforce @vineofroses @fitzherbertssmolder @safeashousespdf @captain-gillian

@firstprince-history-huh @just-inside-her @welcomehometk

#911ls fanfic #paperstorm writes #wip wednesday #missing moments

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romanarose · 1 year ago

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Hannukah Prompt List

Hi! I wanted to create a little prompt list for Hanukkah fics to offer a religious alternative to Christmas or non-religious prompts for this season.

This can be for any fandom, but I'm mostly Oscar Isaac/Pedro Pascal and Oscar has played several Jewish characters, so I wanted to promote this aspect.

This is open for everyone, regardless of Jewishness. If you'd like to contribute to the visibility of Jewishness in characters like Moon Knight or write a Jewish reader to make your Jewish readers feel seen, I encourage it!

If you have questions about anything, feel free to come into my DM's or my asks.

Some are religious, some are nonreligious but secularly Jewish.

***************

Ugly Hanukkah Sweaters

Lighting Hanukkah Candles

Making Latkes

Trying to find Hanukkah decorations amongst a slew of Christmas decorations. (This is hard lol)

Adam Sandler's Chanukkah song

Holiday Armidillo from Friends (RIP Matthew Perry)

Lemony Snickett's "The Latke Who Couldn't Stop Screaming"

Trying to find seasonal things that aren't Christmas items, like snowflake decorations.

Telling the story of Hanukkah to a child

Getting jelly donuts

Seeing snow for the first time

Asking questions about Hanukkah or Jewish traditions.

Refusing to do a non-Jewish religious activity that makes someone uncomfortable.

Being snowed in and unable to attend services/family event

Please do not write Jewish characters doing Christian things if you aren't Jewish. Many Jews do things like attend Christmas services with family, sing Christmas songs, have a Christmas tree ETC, but those are very personal and individual choices. I'm not going to tell anyone what's wrong and what's right for any one person or family, but they are choices for Jew's to make, not non-Jews.

Also, please if you write Jewish blorbo and non jewish reader, please say so. If I'm reading a Hanukkah themed fic and Steven Grant is answering readers questions about Hanukah, it's going to take me out of the scene unless I know ahead of time the reader is non-jewish. Don't just assume your reader isn't jewish. Likewise, if your reader is Jewish, please label it Jewish!reader.

Will be adding more as I think of it, so feel free to comment or reblog with ideas!

If you use an idea, you totally don’t have to tag me but if you I’ll reblog it, wether it’s a fandom I read for not!

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beatricebidelaire · 4 months ago

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With a grand gesture, Officer Luciana stepped off the platform, clunked to the back of the room, and dragged a frightened-looking man out of a folding chair. He was dressed in a rumpled suit with a large rip across the shoulder, and a pair of shiny silver handcuffs.

“But I’m not Count Olaf!” the man cried. “My name is Jacques, and—”

“But lots of people have only one eyebrow,” Jacques cried, “and I have this tattoo as part of my job.”

“I’m not a villain!” Jacques said frantically. “I work for the volunteer—”

Jacques gave the children a grateful smile, but Officer Luciana turned around and clunked over to where the Baudelaires were standing.

“But I’m innocent!” the man on the platform cried. “Please listen to me, I beg of you! I’m not Count Olaf! My name is Jacques!” He turned to the three siblings, who could see he had tears in his eyes. “Oh, Baudelaires,” he said, “I am so relieved to see that you are alive. Your parents—” “That’s enough out of you,” Officer Luciana said, clasping her white-gloved hand over Jacques’s mouth.

J's description in tvv always kills me. "frightened-looking" "frantically" "cried" "tears in his eyes". he was frightened. desperate. in tears. it's just ...... so much. this is the first time the readers see J and it's in one of his worst moments.

in fact, it's not only one of his worse moments. it's also arguably his only on-screen moments. (when i say on-screen, i don't actually mean on screen, i guess, since i'm talking about the books, but you get what i mean). like sure, we get other details later, through occasional mentions/memories/flashbacks from others. we read his letters in tua, and there's the vfd meeting script. but he doesn't directly appear in the sense he appeared in tvv. those really were the only moments. even in atwq he didn't show up.

aside from tvv where he does show up, where he does appear, everywhere else he's more just, talked about / in flashbacks. quigley mentioned him. his siblings mentioned him. widdershins mentioned him. we saw his letters - but not himself directly - in tua. to quigley his this sort of mysterious image, someone who quigley learned some stuff from but also didn't really tell him much directly bc he was busy. in atwq he does not appear, and also wasn't mentioned by ghede when she listed what other apprentices of lemony's era were doing at that time - making him seem even more mysterious.

in his letters we found he and lemony have similar writing styles in some way, he also signs thing "with all due respect". he writes stuff like "i hope that this package reaches you safely, and that you are safe when it reaches you, and that i will be safe in making sure this package will reach you in safety, in a safe manner, and in a safe." or "but we have not been under normal circumstances for quite some time. for instance, currently i am under sixty feet of water, rather than under normal circumstances."

he says "please pass the brandy" in response to lemony's words during the vfd meeting.

he has this .... sort of dry humor of his own. sharp-witted. plays with word usage the way lemony did. he seems mysterious and stays in the shadow a lot, from the way we learned so few things about him in atwq. the atwq profile card of lemony covering his face but jacques in silhouette always gets me.

but then, J - mysterious, ambiguous, lurking in the shadows, quiet, dry-humor - his only, actually appearing physically moment was in tvv: and he was frightened. and frantic. one of his worst moments. and this absolutely kills me. and lemony described all that, too.

#jacques snicket #vera.txt #i love book!jacques so much

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hotelsrexford · 3 months ago

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ROLEPLAY PARTNERS WANTED ! ! ! !

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ┊ hi ! i'm KAYLA (25f). i've been roleplaying since i was wayyyyy too young. i've recently gotten into discord roleplay, and am looking for people to write with. i'm write a few paragraphs, but i'm not super picky on length. i try to match the energy i'm given. mainly mxf pairings, but that is by no means a hard set preference. i will only write with 18+ so, minors DNI ! ! ! below are a list of my fandoms. i do canon x canon, and canon x oc. if the character is bolded than i would prefer to write them in the ship, otherwise there is no preference. just ask and we can plot things out ! i also am not in just these fandoms below, i have a wiiiiide variety of interest. so PLEASE, ask ! [ my discord is zelonq. ]

FANDOMS:

HARRY POTTER (open to many ideas)

lucius x narcissa , regulus x marlene, fred weasley x beauxbaton's oc, sirius black x arabella figg, rowena ravenclaw x godric gryffindor, tom riddle x oc.

HELLUVA BOSS / HAZBIN HOTEL (open to the ideas below and many more.)

verosika mayday x vox , lucifer x oc , vox x oc, adam x oc, stolas x blitz

TWILIGHT (open to ideas)

alec volturi x renesmee, angela webber x paul lahote

A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS

gustav sebald x duchess of winnipeg, kit snicket x olaf, beatrice x lemony

FALLOUT (tv and games- open to sooo many)

arthur maxson x oc, nick valentine x oc, 76!oc x johnny weston,

RANDOM ! ! !

frances mosses x doorman!oc (that's not my neighbor!), elle woods x emmett forrest (legally blonde), coraline x wybie,

i also will write some dc, just depends on the ship !

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makethosenarratorsfight · 1 year ago

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UNRELIABLE NARRATOR BRACKETS

CLOWNS AND GHOULS WE ARE STILL CURRENTLY ON A SLIGHTLY SMALLER HATIUS! WE WILL BE BACK WITH A REVIVAL BRACKET SOON :]

Semi Finals

Kim Dokja (ORV) vs. Eugenides (The Queen's Thief)

Lemony Snicket (Series of unfortunate events) vs. Marvin (In Trousers)

Finals

Eugendies (The Queen's Thief) vs. Lemony Snicket (Series of Unfortunate Events)

CONGRATS TO LEMONY SNICKET FOR WINNING THE WINNERS BRACKET!! However, there is one more battle for him to face. The winner of the revival bracket!

RULES

For tie sweeps, im giving each match up a 0.2% margin. Additionally, you have to convince me that these two character have something in common besides being unreliable goofiers

Propaganda is very much encouraged :]

Please be nice to each other :( At the end of the day, this is a silly internet bracket with way too many obscure characters to count. remember to touch grass everyone

Polls from round 1-3 will be one day! From there, all polls will be a week, including the finals

The winner of the loser's bracket will go against the winner of the winner's bracket and that winner will be declared the most unreliable

Main tag (with polls) will be #unreliable narrator battle

NOTE; I do NOT write the propaganda on each poll. It's the propaganda I collect in submissions.

List of all characters below (+their match ups and brackets!)

(im not sure how to make them face each other?? if that makes sense. so uh. have these 4, right facing brackets :') )

SIDE A

SIDE B

SIDE C

SIDE D

I tried to evenly match everyone, however, i also metaphorically live under a rock so my view on everything might be EXTREMELY skewed. sorry.

SIDE A

Round 1

Lemony Snicket (A series of unfortunate events) vs. Dr. James Sheppard (The Murder of Roger Ackroyd)

Neil Josten (All For the Game) vs. Cersei Lannister (A Song of Ice and Fire)

Simon Snow (Carry On) vs. Alcatraz Smedry (Alcatraz Vs The Evil Librarians)

The Biologist (Annihilation) vs. Yukio Okumura (Ao no Exorcist)

Briony Tallis (Atonement) vs. Tobias (Animorphs)

Montresor (Cask of Amontillado) vs. Margot Garcia (An Unauthorized Fan Treatise)

Kuruto Ryuki (AI: The Somnium Files Nirvana Initiative) vs. Kaede Akamatsu (Danganronpa V3)

Jason Todd (DC Comics/Batman) vs. Greg Heffley (Diary of a Wimpy Kid)

Varric Tethras (Dragon Age) vs. Marco (Animorphs)

Mysterious Man (Into the Woods) vs. Narrator of Jane the Virgin (Jane the Virgin)

Johnny Traunt (House of Leaves) vs. Charlie Gordon (Flowers for Algernon)

The Narrator of Greater Boston (Greater Boston) vs. Italo Calvino (If on a Winter’s Night, a Travler)

Rebecca Bunch (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend) vs. Rue Bennet (Euphoria)

Tsurugi Kamishiro (Kamen Rider Kabuto) vs. Nishijou Takumi (Chaos; Head)

Humbert Humbert (Loltia) vs. Ted(I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream)

Brooke Page (Ever After High) vs. Coriolanus Snow (Hunger Games)

Round 2

Lemony Snicket (A series of unfortunate events) vs. Cersei Lannister (A Song of Ice and Fire)

Simon Snow (Carry On) vs. The Biologist (Annihilation)

Briony Tallis (Atonement) vs. Margot Garcia (An Unauthorized Fan Treatise)

Kuruto Ryuki (AI: The Somnium Files Nirvana Initiative) vs. Greg Heffley (Diary of a Wimpy Kid)

Varric Tethras (Dragon Age) vs. Mysterious Man (Into the Woods)

Johnny Traunt (House of Leaves) vs. The Narrator of Greater Boston (Greater Boston)

Rebecca Bunch (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend) vs. Tsurugi Kamishiro (Kamen Rider Kabuto)

Ted(I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream) vs. Brooke Page (Ever After High)

Round 3

Lemony Snicket (A series of unfortunate events) vs. The Biologist (Annihilation)

Margot Garcia (An Unauthorized Fan Treatise) vs. Kuruto Ryuki (AI: The Somnium Files Nirvana Initiative)

Varric Tethras (Dragon Age) vs. Johnny Traunt (House of Leaves)

Rebecca Bunch (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend) vs. Ted (I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream)

Round 4

Lemony Snicket (A series of unfortunate events) vs. Kuruto Ryuki (AI: The Somnium Files Nirvana Initiative)

Johnny Traunt (House of Leaves) vs. Ted (I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream)

Round 5

Lemony Snicket (A series of unfortunate events) vs. Johnny Traunt (House of Leaves)

SIDE B

The Narrators (Ever After High) vs. Louis De Pointe Du Lac (Interview with the Vampire)

Ulysses (Fallout New Vegas) vs. Phone Guy (FNAF)

Bilbo Baggins (The Hobbit) vs. Hamlet (Hamlet)

Patrick Bateman (American Psycho) vs. The Narrator of Fight Club (Fight Club)

Joker (Joker) vs. Ted (How I Met Your Mother)

Alex Eggleston (YIIK: A Postmodern RPG) vs. Benjamin Brynn (Before Your Eyes)

Odokawa (Odd Taxi) vs. Nadeko Sengoku (Monogatari Series)

Mima Kirigoe (Perfect Blue) vs. Drosselmeyer (Princess Tutu)

The Narrator of Slay the Princess (Slay the Princess) vs. Dr. Money (Presentable Liberty)

The Batter (OFF) vs. Sunny (Omori)

Submitter (Real Life) vs. Every Fic Writer (Real Life)

Shen Qingqiu (SVSSS) vs. Cale Henituse (Trash of the Counts Family)

Wei Wuxian (Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation) vs. Beatrice (Umineko)

Haruaki Fusaishi (Raging Loop) vs. Lee Hakhyun (ORV Side Stories)

Kim Dokja (ORV) vs. Yoon Jongwoo (Strangers From Hell)

Prince Huai (The Imperial Uncle) vs. Fukuide Kei (Ultraman Geed)

Round 2

Louis De Pointe Du Lac (Interview with the Vampire) vs. Phone Guy (FNAF)

Hamlet (Hamlet) vs. The Narrator of Fight Club (Fight Club)

Ted (How I Met Your Mother) vs. Benjamin Brynn (Before Your Eyes)

Nadeko Sengoku (Monogatari Series) vs. Mima Kirigoe (Perfect Blue)

The Narrator of Slay the Princess (Slay the Princess) vs. The Batter (OFF)

Every Fic Writer (Real Life) vs. Shen Qingqiu (SVSSS)

Beatrice (Umineko) vs. Lee Hakhyun (ORV Side Stories)

Kim Dokja (ORV) vs. Prince Huai (The Imperial Uncle)

Round 3

Phone Guy (FNAF) vs. Hamlet (Hamlet)

Benjamin Brynn (Before Your Eyes) vs. Mima Kirigoe (Perfect Blue)

The Batter (OFF) vs. Shen Qingqiu (SVSSS)

Lee Hakhyun (ORV Side Stories) vs. Kim Dokja (ORV)

Round 4

Hamlet (Hamlet) vs. Mima Kirigoe (Perfect Blue)

Shen Qingqiu (SVSSS) vs. Kim Dokja (ORV)

Round 5

Hamlet (Hamlet) vs. Kim Dokja (ORV)

SIDE C

Harrowhark (The Locked Tomb) vs. Percy Jackson (PJO)

Jonathan Sims (Mangus Archives) vs. John Gaius (The Locked Tomb)

Kuzco (Emperor’s New Groove) vs. Goob (Meet the Robinsons)

Jeramie Brasirie (Ohsama Sentai King Ohger) vs. Noé Archiviste (Vanitas no Carte)

Kvothe (The Kingkiller Chronicle) vs. Darkstalker (Wings of Fire)

Nelly Lockwood (Wuthering Highs) vs. Dr. John Watson (Sherlock Holmes)

Gideon Nav (The Locked Tomb) vs. Apollo/Lester (Trials of Apollo)

Dean Winchester (Supernatural) vs. The Narrator (The Stanley Parable)

Guy Montag (Fahrenheit 451) vs. Holden Caulfield (The Catcher in the Rye)

Theo Decker (The Goldfinch) vs. Nick Carraway (The Great Gatsby)

Pi (The Life of Pi) vs. Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III (How to Train Your Dragon)

Rosie Amo (The Administration Podcast) vs. Rune Saint John (The Tarot Sequence)

Charles Kinbote (Pale Fire) vs. Nana Daiba (Revue Starlight)

Lloyd Allen (Shaperaverse) vs. Josh Newman (SINF)

Kaz Brekker (Six of Crows) vs. The Maid (The House in Fata Morgana)

Eugenides (The Queen’s Thief) vs. Grisia Sun (The Legend of Sun Knight)

Round 2

Harrowhark (The Locked Tomb) vs. John Gaius (The Locked Tomb)

Kuzco (Emperor’s New Groove) vs. Jeramie Brasirie (Ohsama Sentai King Ohger)

Kvothe (The Kingkiller Chronicle) vs. Dr. John Watson (Sherlock Holmes)

Gideon Nav (The Locked Tomb) vs. The Narrator (The Stanley Parable)

Holden Caulfield (The Catcher in the Rye) vs. Nick Carraway (The Great Gatsby)

Pi (The Life of Pi) vs. Rune Saint John (The Tarot Sequence)

Charles Kinbote (Pale Fire) vs. Lloyd Allen (Shaperaverse)

Kaz Brekker (Six of Crows) vs. Eugenides (The Queen’s Thief)

Round 3

Harrowhark (The Locked Tomb) vs. Kuzco (Emperor’s New Groove)

Dr. John Watson (Sherlock Holmes) vs. Gideon Nav (The Locked Tomb)

Nick Carraway (The Great Gatsby) vs. Pi (The Life of Pi)

Lloyd Allen (Shaperaverse) vs. Eugenides (The Queen’s Thief)

Round 4

Harrowhark (The Locked Tomb) vs. Gideon Nav (The Locked Tomb)

Nick Carraway (The Great Gatsby) vs. Eugenides (The Queen’s Thief)

Round 5

Harrowhark (The Locked Tomb) vs. Eugenides (The Queen’s Thief)

SIDE D

Narrator of Death in the Forest (Death in the Forest) vs. Singer of the Main Character (The Main Character)

Guy Pearce (Memento) vs. Chief Bromden (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest)

Joe Goldberg (YOU) vs. Dr. Malcolm Crowe (Sixth Sense)

Daniil Dankovsky (Pathologic) vs. Amanda (Amanda The Adventurer)

Keyser Soze (The Usual Suspects) vs. Jane (The Yellow Wallpaper)

Narrator of Tell Tale Heart (Tell Tale Heart) vs. Victor Frankenstein (Frankenstein)

Gareth (Philadelphia) vs. Grace Marks (Alias Grace)

Squealer (Animal Farm) vs. Scout (To Kill A Mockingbird)

Katrina Kim (Liar Dreamer Thief) vs. Aislyn (The City We Became)

Claudia (Monday’s Not Coming) vs. Marvin (In Trousers)

Mars (The Honeys) vs. Jane North-Robinson (Horrid)

Rachel (The Girl on the Train) vs. Amy Dunne (Gone Girl)

The Mother (Pumpkin Eater)vs. Lacey (Lacey’s Diner)

Leshy (Inscryption) vs. Taylor Herbert (Worm)

All the Narrators of Rashomon (Rashomon) vs. Wayne Booth (The Rhetoric of Fiction)

Christopher (The Curious Incident o the Dog in the Night-Time) vs. Alex (A Clockwork Orange)

Round 2

Singer of the Main Character (The Main Character) vs. Guy Pearce (Memento)

Joe Goldberg (YOU) vs. Amanda (Amanda The Adventurer)

Jane (The Yellow Wallpaper) vs. Narrator of Tell Tale Heart (Tell Tale Heart)

Gareth (Philadelphia) vs. Scout (To Kill A Mockingbird)

Aislyn (The City We Became) vs. Marvin (In Trousers)

Mars (The Honeys) vs. Amy Dunne (Gone Girl)

The Mother (Pumpkin Eater) vs. Leshy (Inscryption)

All the Narrators of Rashomon (Rashomon) vs. Alex (A Clockwork Orange)

Round 3

Singer of the Main Character (The Main Character) vs. Amanda (Amanda The Adventurer)

Narrator of Tell Tale Heart (Tell Tale Heart) vs. Scout (To Kill A Mockingbird)

Marvin (In Trousers) vs. Amy Dunne (Gone Girl)

Leshy (Inscryption) vs. All the Narrators of Rashomon (Rashomon)

Round 4

Singer of the Main Character (The Main Character) vs. Narrator of Tell Tale Heart (Tell Tale Heart)

Marvin (In Trousers) vs. Leshy (Inscryption)

Round 5

Narrator of Tell Tale Heart (Tell Tale Heart) vs. Marvin (In Trousers)

#Brackets #important #unreliable narrator battle #unreliable narrators #alright! i hope i didn't create any hydrogen bomb vs coughing baby match ups #polls should be going up soon #also i think a person just mass submitted some characters and didn't put any propaganda for them?#cause theres 3 characters with just a dot in their propaganda box #edit; rip to kim dokja my fallen warrior

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verfound · 1 month ago

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FIC: "The Rain had Other Ideas" (MLB; Lukanette; LBSC Lukanette Month 2024; Lemony Fresh)

@lovebugs-and-snakecharmers is doing a Lukanette Month for September 2024, and we all just kinda tossed some prompts in the disco to compile a list? We ended up with 71 prompts, so I decided I’d roll some dice to pick a prompt, do a twenty minute (ish, bc we all know sometimes they run away from me) sprint, and try to get some short fics out this month?

Mind the rating - this one's a bit explicit 🖤

Read on Ao3

Prompt 13: City Walks

Neither of them had been ready to call it a night yet. Dinner was long past done, the bill had been paid, and the staff was starting to give them not-so-subtle little Looks that suggested they needed to vacate their table. It was Friday night in Paris, after all, and they were far from the only customers waiting for service that night. He had suggested taking a walk, because more than anything he had just wanted a little more time with her. It was a nice night out: a little cloudy, a little cool, but not so bad that they wouldn’t enjoy some time strolling around the city catching up.

It had been too long, after all. Since they’d seen each other for longer than a handful of minutes. Since they’d both been in the same city for more than a handful of days. Since she’d been able to remember what calm felt like, with his hand in hers and his presence grounding her. Since he’d been able to get lost in the melody that always seemed to pour out of her, his favorite song for as long as he could remember.

He hadn’t wanted the night to end. Not yet.

He hadn’t wanted them to be over. Not so soon.

Not again.

Neither had she.

…the weather had had other ideas.

Her flat was closer than his, and added the luxury of no nosy sisters or sister-in-laws interrupting them with gentle ribbing or excited squeals. And they’d both been soaked by the time they slipped through her door, so what happened next…

Well.

Could anyone really blame them?

Especially when she fell back against the door as soon as it was closed, looking up at him from under her lashes as her teeth pressed down on her lip, biting back a breathless laugh. It was too easy to step closer, to rest his arms on either side of her, to crowd into her space just enough…

He waited. Because of course he did – of course he was leaving the choice up to her, just like he always did – but she didn’t want to wait. Not anymore. Neither was really sure who moved first – whether he leaned in to close that last bit of distance, or if she tugged him down from the hands already fisted in his wet shirt – but the next thing either knew their mouths were pressed together in a hot, hungry kiss.

It was their first kiss.

It…didn’t feel like a first kiss.

It felt like a long time coming.

Like coming home.

Like neither was ready to be satisfied with just a kiss, and maybe that’s why. Why his hoodie ended up on the floor by their feet, why her dress was already hanging open with the fingers steadily picking at the buttons moving lower and lower – and God damn it all, what masochist ever decided a dress needed that many buttons and how pissed would she be if he just…ripped the last few? Why his mouth was already trailing along her jaw and down her neck and to the expanse of Marinette now open to him. Why her head was already falling back against the door as she pushed herself closer, desperate for more and that and him.

He slid a little as his knees hit the wet floor – but that was only a reminder of how wet their clothes were, and wasn’t there some sage old wisdom about getting out of wet clothes before you caught cold? He was still fumbling with the last few buttons – he wasn’t sure if the dress was a gift or a torture device anymore – when he noticed her shivering, her skin icy cold beneath his lips. He did rip the last few when her fingers twisted in his hair and tugged, and she supposed she would have to forgive him for that – it wasn’t her favorite dress anyway, too many damn buttons – as he rose back up to press her against the door, covering her body with his own.

…even if his clothes were still wet, and they still needed gone, somehow it was still warmer. With him against her like that. It shouldn’t have been, she thought absently, but with his lips and hands on her like that…

But they had no idea what they were doing, beyond some carnal, primal instinct to get closer, so it was too easy for her to do a little hop-skip-jump, with the idea that she was going to be sexy and bold and lock her legs around his waist – just like all the romcoms said she was supposed to at this point – and…accidentally knee him in the groin. And he dropped her as he stumbled back, his arms suddenly bracing against the door for an entirely different reason, but he was laughing – breathless, strained laughing – as he shook his head. A thousand apologies tumbled from her lips, but the look in his eyes when he raised his head…his mouth was back on hers in a flash, and then she was squeaking when his hands cupped her ass and hauled her against him, lifting her just enough that she could scramble herself into position.

…neither really noticed, when her heels – because she wore heels now, and if that hadn’t royally fucked with his head when he’d met her at the restaurant earlier – dropped to the floor behind them, but he definitely noticed when her feet pushed just so against his ass.

And then he was moving, carrying her deeper into the flat – until his thighs banged into her coffee table. They were both laughing as he stumbled towards the couch, dropping onto it less than gracefully as she asked if he was all right. He kept her settled on top of him, and he was nuzzling her neck as he made some quip about how she was literally going to kill him.

He would still be hard-pressed to say what he’d meant, if what ultimately ended up killing him was her minefield of a flat or the sight (feel) of her half-dressed and sprawled out on his lap like…

…it was easier to carry on from here, though, so she just reached for his shirt and tugged it over his head. There was a whispered promise about how that was the plan before she started kissing along his neck, and for a long moment he just…sat there, soaking up the moment. Taking it all in: the feel of her against him, of her lips trailing fire along his skin, of fingers dancing down his chest. To let his own hands wander, slipping into her open dress and sliding along smooth, smooth skin, until he was moving her arms back and watching her sleeves drop lower and lower, until the dress was barely a memory on the floor behind them. To creep his hands higher, to find the hooks of her bra and, after a moment of curious fiddling, slip them open. It was harder to be a passive participate once the straps slid down her shoulders and the cups dropped, revealing her perfect, creamy breasts to him.

They were lost in each other, ignorant to the world beyond the little space that was them and here and now. Hawkmoth could come crashing through her balcony doors – not that he would, now that he’s been rotting in prison two, going on three years now – and it wouldn’t be enough to pull her away from him. From the way his breath caught when she started fiddling with his belt – or how his hips rose to meet her when she started sliding his jeans off him. How other things had already risen to meet her, and oh if that wasn’t something she wanted to spend the rest of the night – the rest of every night – exploring. She had put him – them – on hold for too long, and now that she had him – now that he had her – neither were willing to give the other up.

Why had they waited so long?

Why had they spent so many years on wasted not yets and next times and somedays?

She remembered having a passing thought that first dates – first times – weren’t supposed to be like this, that maybe they were moving too fast, that maybe she should stop before they went too far…but too far was accepting his dinner invitation in the first place, and by the time he was hovering over her, desperate blue eyes searching her own as a whispered you’re sure? left his lips…there was nowhere else she’d rather be. No one else she’d ever wanted to be with.

She’d made her choice, a long time ago. She was just sorry it had taken her so long to finally act on it.

(…there had never been a choice, for him. It had always been her. It always would be.)

If kissing him had felt like coming home, she didn’t know how to describe the moment he was finally inside her. He had no sooner pushed in than he’d stilled, and she was grateful for that – for the chance to adjust, to breathe, to just…be. And maybe he needed that moment, too, so overwhelmed by the feelings – both physical and emotional, so much more than he had ever anticipated – suddenly crashing over him like the tide. No, not…not suddenly, because there was never any suddenly with Marinette, but it was suddenly all too real, too much.

They were doing this.

They were finally doing this.

And she was clinging to him like she never wanted to let go – never wanted him to let go – and that was everything he had ever wanted. And yeah, he needed a minute, to just lay there against her and soak it all in, to breathe and gather himself – as much as he wanted to gather her. She moved first, her hand squeezing his shoulder as her face turned towards him, her nose brushing along his neck as she pushed out a steadying breath. He felt like he was shaking, overwhelmed with it all, but maybe that was her – maybe it was both of them. But then she was pushing up, lifting her hips just enough to press against his own, and a strangled little moan that sounded like move left her – and that was all the encouragement he needed.

And oh, once he started moving again…she surrendered herself to the moment, for once letting her brain shut off and letting herself just…be. Every aching dream, every longing fantasy, the reality was so much better. The feel of his lips on her skin, his cock buried inside her, the hand tangled in her hair and gently pulling with every thrust…it was so much better than she had ever dared to hope. And when he shifted and sunk even deeper, hitting her just there…

If he had thought just being inside her was good, it had nothing on when she came. She had already been gripping him so tight, but the way she clenched as her entire body tensed, trembling beneath him…he slowed, barely dragging out of her before sinking back in, over and over – anything to make the moment last longer. Her head fell back, a quiet cry slipping past her lips, and oh.

He wanted more of that.

He wanted to hear that again, and louder, and for the rest of his life, if she’d let him.

He found himself redoubling his efforts, moving harder and faster against her until she was clinging to him again, barely hanging on as he drove her back to that point – back over that point, until it wasn’t just a cry but an outright scream she was gifting him with, and the groan that left him when she clamped down on his cock…

Her kisses were feather-light, little touches peppered along his neck and across his chest as she melted back into the couch. Her lips lingered over his heart, searing his skin before her head fell back and hazy, satisfied eyes gleamed up at him. He moved in for another kiss, his hand finding hers and holding it tightly as he pushed in and stilled, and God he was close…her other arm tightened around his shoulders, and her toes tickled along the back of his thigh, and he grunted as he pulled back and sank back in.

He wanted this to last. He wanted to stay right where he was, safe inside her, forever. He wanted to exhaust her, to make her come again and again until she was exhausted from the pleasure. There was a part of him, a terrifyingly large part, that feared if he gave in, if he let this end…he didn’t want it to end. He didn’t want them to end. He…

“Let go,” she whispered in his ear, nipping by the stud before nuzzling her cheek against his. “Come for me, Luka.”

And that was all he needed. He snapped into her again, one, two, three more unsteady jerks of his hips, and then he was stilling against her as he emptied himself into her heat. Her walls spasmed, fluttering around him, and he wasn’t sure if she was coming again – coming with him – or just still that sensitive from the last time, but the mewling little noise she made in his ear was one of his new favorite songs.

She was his favorite song, now more than ever, and he didn’t know how he could ever let her go. Not again. He wanted to spend the rest of his life…the rest of their lives learning how to play each other, familiarizing himself with their harmony until it was the only song he knew. And maybe he was crazy, maybe it was moving way too fast, but when they had both finally started to come down and he was curled up behind her, nuzzling her neck as he fought the need to sleep he could feel drifting on the edges…maybe it was stupid, but it was too easy to voice that desire.

“…stay with me,” he whispered, begged, into her skin, and maybe it wasn’t so crazy, after all. She was twisting suddenly, nearly knocking them off the couch – and God, she was going to hate herself for that later, because it was so much harder to clean a couch than a bed and they’d have so much more room besides – as she reached for his face, pulling it back to hers and kissing him as feverishly as she had before.

“Luka Couffaine, you silly, stupid, impossible man…” she breathed against his lips, her eyes burning into his, “…where else would I go?”

Outside, over the city, it rained on. Inside, neither noticed as they drifted off, content to stay exactly where they were for the foreseeable future.

(…well. Almost exactly where they were – Luka was willing to concede that the bed was a better option when Marinette moved in her sleep, rolling off the side of the couch and accidentally tugging him after her. More room for lanky rock stars, she said.

Warmer, too.

And dryer.)

#miraculous ladybug #luka couffaine #marinette dupain-cheng #lukanette #endgame lukanette #lukanette endgame #ml fic #ver fic #lbsc lukanette month 2024 #prompt: city walks #lulu lemon #ver's lemonade stand #ten years later #zero to sixty couffaine #it's a long time coming #I have no idea how to tag this 😂#just bone already?

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beelmons · 2 years ago

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love comes in moments.

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Fem!BAU!Reader Rating: Mature, 13+. Tags: Angst, no happy ending, Reid!POV, slow burn if you squint Word count: 6,772 Summary: Dr. Spencer Reid writes a memoir about the 15 years he spent by your side, and everything you went through since the moment you joined the BAU. A/N: I wanted to feel utter pain, so I wrote it. Hopefully you will suffer with me. Also, this hasn't been proof read, so things might change a bit during the week as I re-read it. This fic ended up having an aftermath with an slightly happier ending, you can read it here Heavily inspired by these two songs: 1 , 2 Tag list: @hey-dw @cassiemartzz

“Entry 1: The humble beginnings.

I still remember the day you first came through the doors of the unit. Shoulders down, your stare facing the floor, walking slightly behind Gideon. You were nervous, at the least, but if your body spoke as loudly as I was guessing, terrified would have been a more accurate word.

I couldn’t shake your hand, the germophobia wasn’t always nice to me, but you didn’t care. You understood. You faked a high-five, and just like that we had our own little inside joke. I had made a new friend within thirty seconds of meeting her; that was a first, but silly me, twenty-something and naïve, I couldn’t notice right away that a woman like you was meant to be many “firsts”, and even greater “onlys.”

“She’ll be your partner, be nice.” those were Hotch’s words.

Not until much later would I have come to realize the weight of that warning. Trained eyes could reach everything I wasn’t able to. I wonder if you noticed the utter adoration that man had for you, as a subordinate, as a friend, as a companion. Aaron always had that eagle-like eye to spot people who needed him just as much as he needed them. Emily and Derek were a clear example, but that’s besides the point.

Now, believe me when I say I’m sorry I didn’t notice how beautiful you were the second I laid my eyes on you. Perhaps, that would have saved us a lot of pain, or rather given us a lot more happiness. I was, to my ill luck, blinded by my adoration for someone else. I wouldn’t label it a mistake, it’s fair to say it was just an unfortunate event at the time, that would later come in doubles, and then in triples, like a series of them.

Do you remember that book? ‘A series of unfortunate events’ by Lemony Snicket. It was the first thing you gave me as a birthday present, that and the ridiculous hat that haunts me to this day. Engraved in my mind I have the expression you made when I told you it was a children’s book.

“No way! I’m giving a children’s book to a genius?!” the anguish in your voice was palpable, you were truly ashamed.

“Well, this is not the illustrated version, so it’s technically not a children’s book. I love it, thank you.” I tried to reassure you, but I wasn’t very good at that.

Maybe, you just wanted your partner to like you, to show me you were trying, or to prove that you could know me as much as the others in such little time, but regardless of the reason you felt like you’d failed. I could see it, and I regret not letting you know just how precious that possession would turn out to be.

Months later, we would also come to know that you couldn’t stand for that long without moving, otherwise your legs would feel swollen for days. Six hours you spent with me at the shooting range, even after Hotch had given up. They had to kick us out, and out of hunger we found that indian restaurant that’s open 24/7. I refuse to believe I still failed that certification, you were one of the best teachers I’ve ever had, but I’ll always be thankful for every missed shot, since that night I found the wonder that butter chicken was. My first time having indian food.

Interestingly enough, we didn’t go back to that place on our own, jobs, people, life always getting in the way. Now I understand, then, it was no wonder the chicken never tasted the same.

Entry 2: Trial, one of many.

I still wonder how you always managed to show up, regardless of the way I constantly seemed to juggle with my own life. The first time I died, courtesy of Tobias Hankle’s dad, I wondered if my mom was going to be okay. Funny, huh? Even in death I found it hard to put my life first. I know that always pissed you off, and I never knew better, and I’m sorry to tell you I’ve kept the bad habit, I’m afraid.

Peaceful doesn’t quite describe the way it felt, my last breath I mean. Relieved, I guess, would fit better. I had told you before, hadn’t I? The hospital she was in, the books she liked best, the letters I wrote everyday. It was a hopeful relief, I craved that you would have come to care for me enough to look after my mother if I were to be gone.

Luckily, you didn’t get the chance to prove it, but many years later I would understand that, back then and there, you would have moved heaven and earth for me; and I should have known by the way your arms found me amidst the dark of that cemetery. I should have known by the way you stayed in my messy apartment throughout the night, by the way you held my arm when I woke up shaking in terror, and by the way you repeated that same routine every evening for almost a week.

Should have known after you dropped everything to meet me at Gideon’s cabin as I cried over his gun and badge, as I mourned someone that I hadn’t lost, as I yet again felt insufficient to remain, to make him stay. I’m still not sure why I called you. Perhaps you would share the burden of losing a mentor, or maybe you would notice that I was breaking down, that I was too weak to fix myself, and even weaker to ask for help. No one reached out for me because I never screamed, no one knew how bad I needed it. And yet, with a simple whisper miles away, you came. You showed up.

I should have known right when you were sitting by the toilet bowl, your hair tie loosely holding my hair together so it wouldn’t get dirty. Did I think I looked good with that? Why did I ever leave it that long? Stop, I can’t also be rambling while I write, not that you ever minded the infinite data of nothingness, did you? Circling back, I still feel the coldness of your fingers, pale with concern, as they curled around my trembling wrist while I threw up my guts and soul in that white container.

“You should go.” I would whisper in between gargles and spits.

“And leave you like this?” you weren’t even looking at me. I guess the image of my body bent over a basin, sickly and frail, was enough to be engraved in your mind with one glance.

“I’m just one of the 21 million americans that struggle with at least one addiction. I’m nothing special.” I grumbled with disdain “And you don’t have a magic wand you can wave and make it go away. You’re nothing special.”

You sighed at my words, by then you knew how stubborn I could be, am I correct? It didn’t take a profiler to figure out something like that. “Only 10% seek help, though. Those odds make you special enough, don’t you think?” If you said anything else, I cannot remember. I could only focus on the fast speed of my beating heart, that I mistook for undesired side-effects of the drugs.

Withdrawal can be hell, but I had already had a taste of that, so I figured I could handle a bit more of it. You, on the other hand, were not ready for the burden that was I. I could see the facade you put on whenever I said something so hurtful anyone else would have gone out running, the subtle swallowing of the knots in your throat, the deep, shaky breaths, the way your eyelids clung to the tears that threatened to come out. Yes, I should have known right then and there, after you met the worst of me, and yet stayed.

Entry 3: Did I care to share?

To be fair, you were a bit to blame for my obliviousness. A pure heart is a mystery for men who don’t know kindness, and life hadn’t been particularly tender to me. I had begun to question if, maybe, the lifeline that had become your gentle hand meant something else. But more often than not, I had learned that love follows after life, and if it had been gentle enough to give you to me, who was I, a mere mortal, to want more, to show greed.

You were there for Elle and her revolting, for Morgan and his search for his truth, for Garcia and her desire to cling to life after her very own kindness had almost taken it from her, and for Hotch and his falling into the darkest of despairs. You would tell me how you had to cancel plans to make him company, how you woke up extra early to make sure he’d have breakfast, how you’d pretend to be walking by his new bachelor apartment as an excuse to check up on him, and spend extra hours just so you could get him to talk in his office.I watched you worry and give your best to put a smile on a saddened face. Just like you had done for me, and the many people that we both loved. It hurt, it selfishly hurt. Your love was so vast it could fill a dam and still pour, yet my thirst could barely be quenched.

My skin still burns with the memory of your tears falling on my hand when I told you my cravings had started again. I saw the glint of failure in your eyes, like I had years ago with the children's book. It made me question if eidetic memory could translate to the sense of touch, to this day it is vivid, like they cover me again whenever I feel the urge, whenever I need to escape.

Once again, you showed up. You showed up at my apartment to pick me up, like a toddler waiting to be taken to the doctors, only that the person that would fix me was not a medic, it was a sponsor. I don’t think I’d have been brave enough to show up by myself, to get help on my own, if I hadn’t been so scared to hurt you again, probably bad enough to finally push you away.

It was okay, even if you were to be shared, if your heart had space for everyone else, I was happy to know I could belong as well, to be included. I was okay sharing you, as long as I got a piece.

Entry 4: The dreaded distance.

I never understood politics, or the system. Ironic, though, since human behavior is nothing but a mixture of different structures interacting together, creating a being that then I would dedicate my entire life to studying. But it was always so confusing, why would they rip you away from me? Didn’t they see how good you were? Perhaps that was the issue.

I still remember the way you clung to my chest when we were saying goodbye. Did the DEA really need you? Did it really have to be you? It wouldn’t be the only time the bureau would plot against me, against the hope I grasped on to continue doing my job, but it certainly was the hardest one, and mind you, the first one. The pain of having a friend ripped from my arms, a handful of things could only compare.

Hotch would later come to confess that my hatred for the superiors was unfunded. You were not taken, you were a tribute. When Strauss came in arms, you had to surrender to protect me. They made Aaron choose between me and you, one had to leave, it wasn’t up for discussion, and you volunteered. Because you knew, I could barely make it anywhere else.

“It’s been a while since I was hugged like this.” you said when we were strong enough to finally pull apart, when the clock was streaking 6, and there was no professional excuse to keep you in the building for longer.

“Like what?” I had to ask. You deserved to be engulfed in arms every waking second. You deserved to be carried by the holiest of angels. Why wouldn’t I hug you like we were in a Shakespearean tragedy?

“Like somebody was afraid of losing me.” you answered.

Oh, my love, was I terrified.

Maybe I am dramatic. You weren’t dead, you weren’t gone, just in a different building, in the same city. I knew where you lived, where you bought your coffee, and your favorite place to dine in. Yet, you felt so far away, so out of reach I could barely handle it. I missed you, so dearly, so madly.

Weekly escapades to the geekiest of places, a lousy street diner I was too scared to eat at, and that I would just because of you, the faking of high-fives whenever I got an idea, my favorite inside joke, the laughter in the bullpen at my unintentioned comments, the looking over my shoulder to see if you were still there, the joy in my chest whenever you entered the room, the love I didn’t know was love. All gone, away from me.

Your midnight calls were balm to an open wound. Calming at the stake of some pain. And I knew, one of the very few things I knew, that you weren’t doing good in that place, that your pain was greater than you would express, but your body wouldn’t lie to me, it could never lie to me, the sighs between sentences, the strain in your voice, the tiredness in your breath. But I wasn’t like you, I couldn’t just show up, I didn’t know how. I didn’t know I helped. I didn’t know I was to you what you were to me. A beacon of light, of hope.

I wondered what was hurting you. Was I not nice enough for you to tell me what, or who, was causing that to you? “Be nice” Hotch had said. Was he nicer? You always went to him for things like these, the matters of the heart. I had to hear from Garcia, months later, about that mysterious fellow agent that was making you cry, and I realized in that moment that I had never known rage. The pure, raw need to tear someone limb by limb. How dare he toy with a soul as giving as yours? Like using the crown jewel as a skipping stone.

Fortunately, I was not the only one that wanted to protect you. Not the only one that cared enough. A visit from Morgan, a call from Hotch, and the rat was gone, for good, and you were back in the unit, for better.

Entry 5: When I knew without knowing.

You’d changed, I could see, and I’d heard heartbreak does that to a person. Yet your smile always seemed to shine bright. It shone for our boss, swallowed in deep grief, it shone for JJ as she was, to no one’s surprise, cruelly taken from us, it shone for Prentiss and her struggles, the ones that were there even when she wouldn’t confess to them.

Do you remember the flame of my tears on your shoulder when I heard she was dead? I could barely stay home. The walls seemed to crush me if I was alone. I hopped from your house, to JJ’s, to the office, to yours yet again. Your arms were my solace, my God given solace. Whenever I turned, you were there.

I don’t know what was harder to deal with: her death or her return to life. How did you manage to not take a side? You felt the same pain I did. You cried the same tears I shed. I wondered if you were always stronger than me. Stupid question, the answer was yes.

“I’m just saying, Spencer.” you twirled around in my kitchen as you spoke, impatient since I was taking a long time to get ready, and there was an appointment to get to.

“Well, okay, then stop saying!” I was shoving a couple of books and other belongings, I can’t even remember what, as I subtly yelled at you.

Time and again, the stupid book would slip out whenever I tried to close my bag. It was frustrating, infuriating. Kind as you were, you kneeled with me, your hand brushed mine, and a mere graze was enough to slow me down. I looked at you. Did you see pain? I know you did. You always did. My body couldn’t lie to you.

“I feel it too.” you began to talk “The guilt. The wishing that she was still gone so you wouldn’t have to go through the excruciating pain of betrayal.” bullseye, as per usual. I started to cry; you always made me comfortable enough to break down without care. “If you truly don’t wish to make up with them, the girls, I’ll be on your side. You have the right to feel hurt. If you tell me, right now, hand to heart, that you want to skip Rossi’s dinner and go catch that ridiculous black and white movie, I’ll get up and walk beside you, like I’ve done countless times, and I will also be there, when you are filled with regret, and the words can’t leave your mouth to ask for their forgiveness for your attitude.”

Dragged by your hand, we showed up, and I felt it, the memory of a feeling long not emoted, the warmth of family. You were right, you were always right. I walked you to your place that night, stumbling a little from the wine, laughing about something Garcia and Morgan had said. We stood by your doorway, and you stopped. You looked at me, so deeply, so filled with pride. How could I be so stupid? I should have kissed you at that moment. I should have hugged you in a way you hadn’t before, in a way that told you that in this and many other lives, I needed you with me. I needed you to be mine.

Entry 6: The start of my demise.

I still wonder how you did it. How did you stand beside me with a straight face while you broke on the inside? Watching me slowly fall for someone else to a point of no return, a point of devotion you had long earned.

You knew about Maeve before anyone else. I didn’t have to tell you, my smile gave me away, since you knew it better than anyone, you were the one that put it back there more than once. You supported my every move, my every whim, my every idea to please her, to make her love me. And she loved me, and I loved her, there’s no point in hiding it.

How did you do it? Seriously, how did you advise me to court her and hear me rant about her like she was the latest scientific breakthrough? How did you wear a straight face as mine lit up at the thought of her name? How did you pour your heart out to help me find her? All while wearing that damned smile, the cursed reason for my existence. How did you not fall in shambles as you watched me love her? I would have, without question.

So, I beg of you to tell me. How could you possibly love me while I loved someone else?

It’s like a riddle whose answer is before me, but I can’t see it, I can’t find it. To this day it amazes me, the way that you remained outside my door throughout the night. Did you think I didn’t know you were there? The way you took care of my food and services. Did you know I couldn’t bring myself to even check my bank account? The way you saw through me when I came back to work. You knew I wasn’t okay, regardless of my attempts to prove so.

You remained for months by my side, showing up at my door when the night got too cold, holding my head on your lap as I sobbed, as I, once again, mourned. You stood there with me trying to fix something someone else had broken, something you didn’t even know if you could glue back together.

“If I believed in religion, at least I could cling to the hope of meeting her again.” I muttered, and you laughed a bit.

“Perhaps in another universe, if you’re lucky enough.” smart of you to talk to me in terms I could understand.

“It doesn’t feel like it will ever end, you know? The grief.” I confessed to you as your fingers threaded on my locks, body too tired to hold up straight from crying, so my head laid on your thigh.

“It will.” you reassured “Maybe not soon, but it will.”

“Maybe.” I could only agree “but I can’t count on you to soothe my pain forever.” I only looked up because your fingers stopped moving, but I’m glad I did, I’m glad I caught your eyes, filled with endless determination, as you spoke.

“Says who?” did you mean it? Forever?

Entry 7: All that’s well…

After JJ’s abduction, something drastically changed. Not just the two of us, but the entire team. Our secrets were no longer innocent and blameless, they were dangerous, harmful. They could tear us apart if not properly shared. They could push us away if we didn’t say them outright.

My love for you was my deepest rooted secret, pushed so far into the drawer I had forgotten about it myself, too scared to pull it out, afraid I’d just have to push it back in without giving it a chance to show off.

No more secrets. That’s the pact we all agreed on. I kept thinking about that as you walked with me. You knew it had hit me hard to see JJ so weak and hurt, reduced to bruises and agony; you also knew I would find a way to blame myself if I were to be left alone in that room, so you decided to make me some company. We dined in silence, utter absence of sound that did not, at any moment, feel odd. You walked with me, not next to me, with me. And you waited by the door for my invitation to enter. I could just stare at you, so beautifully patient, so wonderfully loving. So easy to love.

“No more secrets.” I told you, my eyes unable to leave your face.

“Yes, Spence. No more secrets.” you answered with that blissful smile of yours. You caught up rather quick that I was hiding something. I could never fool you, not you. “Is there something else you need to tell me?” you questioned me, and I could see the look in your eyes trying to subtly profile me.

I couldn’t bring myself to answer. Over 7,000 languages are spoken in this world, and there were still not enough words to describe what I felt for you. I didn’t talk. My lips just found their way to yours, so naturally, so right.

“This is a mistake.” you muttered. You were still unsure, you would tell me later, that life could be so kind to you, to have me love you. How silly of you, darling, to even dare to think I could not.

Our bodies didn’t lie, they couldn’t lie to each other. Your tongue gave you away, it spoke of truce but tasted of war. Your hands explored all of my body, they felt my every vein, and tasted the pulse of a heart that beat for you. Your mouth spilled honey-like sounds as I greedily took every part of you for my pleasure. As I embedded your scent in my brain, to the record of things I loved about you. I had never made love. Sex, once or twice, but never love. I remember watching you sleep, your warm cheek on my bare chest; your hands, even unconsciously, clinging to my torso as if I were to slip away like a dream. But you felt so real, oh honey, you were so real. You were so mine. And I couldn’t remember the last time I was held so close I could touch love.

I can still hear Hotch’s sermon. No more secrets, that’s what we pacted, and you were big on promises, but to be fair, so was I. An hour, I recall, we were shoved inside that office. Hands together, faces down, like children caught in the act.

“Fraternization is dangerous,” it was his third time saying that “and if this were to come out, I would have to transfer one of you.” we didn’t care, and he could tell. He sighed, in defeat. “Just tell me one thing.” he changed directions “Are you happy?”

He was asking you, yet pretended the question was for both. You didn’t entertain him with an answer. He already knew. He knew in the way you reached for my hand, in the way I held back a smile. He nodded. Did he approve? I don’t think we’ll ever know, but he protected us, he always protected us.

That day, we drank and danced all together, as if our love was a reason for celebration. Apparently, it wasn’t a secret to anyone but us. Long ago they figured we’d end up together, even got some complaints for having been later rather than sooner.

Life was good and kind with you by my side, filled with laughter, adventure, and pleasure. The darkest nights still glimmered with your presence, like a blindfold being lifted to reveal the cold truth; all it took for life to be kind was me loving you, and you loving me.

Entry 8: Alone we stand

When did I stop making sense? Curiously enough, that’s the one moment I can’t pinpoint. I broke a promise, and the downfall caught up.

“Were you even going to tell me?!” you paced around my apartment in rage.

“Come on, you know I was” I had gotten defensive, regardless of my wrongdoing.

“When, exactly? After you had fixed it? ‘Cause you have to fix everything alone?” you snarked at me.

“I don’t want to sound rude, but it’s a private matter.” worst phrasing I could have chosen, to be honest.

“I’m your girlfriend, Spence. I think I have proven for quite a while now that I’m here for the bad and the worst. Instead, I have to find out your mother has Alzheimer’s through a hitman. You told a hitman before you told me!” I see now, that your anger was not unfounded.

“She had a gun to my crotch! What did you want me to do!?” I tried to argue.

“Oh, okay, so that’s what it takes to get you to open up?”

No, you didn’t hold a gun to my crotch. You did way worse, you forgave me, and we moved on. But it was never the same, oh no, I could feel it, we both could feel it. How conversations seemed to require more energy, how the touches were more scripted than impulsive, how after a few hours you realized that you hadn’t thought about me in a little while.

I tried to fix it. It’s what I always do. Perhaps if I could get us both in the same place, it would happen again, the spark that we had lost. I asked you to move in with me, and you agreed. We were happy again, not simply because of the fact, but because it was a great reminder for both of us, that the future was together, it had always been together.

But alas, life isn’t kind enough. We had agreed to find a new place, somewhere we could turn ‘ours’ without getting rid of the ‘mine’. It was taking time, of course, since we wanted it to be perfect. And little did we know that time was the only thing in this world we didn’t have.

The news of Hotch’s departure hurt us all in a way we never truly recovered from, but for you, for the never-ending-loving you, it left a wound I couldn’t close. I saw the always dreaded glint of loneliness in your eye, the same one I carried when Gideon left. I saw the breaking of a soul that had lost a mentor, a protector, you lost the ground you walked onto and never learned how to fly.

We didn’t make it. I don’t think it was your fault, or mine, for that matter, life just happened so fast, so merciless. I loved you, that never stopped, and you loved me, I know that much. All I could do was hold on to the hope that I had made the right decision, the decision to push you away, to save you from the torture that our life would be. I would do anything for my mother, even if that meant standing back on my own, without you.

I’m sorry, my love, that it took me so long to understand. That the strength you were lending me was not for me to judge, but to carry, to use as a tool to build what we dreamed of . I didn’t learn about it until JJ visited one day, when I was mourning the love that we had, that she told me what happened the day she showed up at your apartment, knees on the ground, to beg you to continue loving me.

“It wasn’t my decision, Jennifer.” you said, barely allowing yourself to glance at her.

“He’s just doing this because he thinks he’s protecting you, you know that.” she tried to argue on my behalf.

“JJ, you are his best friend, if you’re asking me to convince him to change his mind, you know it would be easier to get Garcia to play soccer.” you were right, by the way. JJ was about to give up.

“He needs you.” she kept trying.

“No, he doesn’t.” you answered “He needs someone to be there for him, at his constant back and call, to dedicate their very being to his happiness, to pour out the entirety of themselves onto him, and I can’t be that person. I can’t.”

“But why not!?” to her, it also didn’t make much sense. You always were, what was different this time?

“Because I’m not whole.” you finally admitted.

She had to hear you cry for hours at how lost you felt. I didn’t understand I’d become a part of you, and by taking me away, I was ripping a portion of who you were. With Hotch gone, there was no way you could fix yourself, not fast enough, at least. I’m sorry, sweetheart, I didn’t know.

You stayed for the man that more than once had your back. You stayed to catch Mr. Scratch. I was no longer the hope you held on to, I was no longer the one you chased after, Aaron was your last hope, your last piece to make sense of whatever you felt like was happening around you. The person who would return to you the will to love something that wasn’t me.

But he wasn’t there, and you were lost.

Entry 9: Together we fall apart.

I can’t blame you for leaving, you had no reason to stay, the job had long ago stopped making sense, it was the people that you loved what made you stick around, and now we were gone, in more than one sense. And believe when I say I missed you, with every pore of my heart, even if I couldn’t bring myself to reach out to at least know how you were doing.

I did wonder, though, if having you around would have made a difference. If you could have seen something all of us missed, if you had protected me better, if you could had helped me when I didn’t know how to help myself.

Cat Adams would ruin me in more than one way, sure, but regarding us, I’m sure now I’m the only one to blame. A series of unfortunate events by Spencer Reid.

“We told her you were in prison.” Emily said as she sat across the booth, with a crystal screen separating the both of us. There was no need to say your name. They all knew you were all I ever thought about. “She’s asking to be put on the list.”

“Emily!” I yelled out of reflex .

“I’m sorry, Spence, but she’s really worried, and maybe she could help.”

“My answer is no.” I watched her sigh as I said those words.

“Can I at least tell her you’re thinking about it?” she still tried to convince me, for your sake. “And, will you think about it?” I nodded.

I promise I thought it through, hard and well. It’s not that I didn’t want to see you, I didn’t want you to see me. I knew, I knew you would try to fix it, and I couldn’t do that to you, not again. Regardless, you still tried. You made sure my mother was safe and well, you made her company, it wasn’t your fault, I don’t hold it against you, they outsmarted us all. And I’m sorry, again, that after I was freed I still couldn’t bring myself to face you.

Many things happened in the following years. I wish I could have seen you one more time just to tell you all about it. A coffee by my apartment window, a nap on that comfy living room couch, a laugh by the bullpen. The things I’d have done to have one more moment with you.

The second time I died, it was way less scary. Guess I had some practice. If I told you who I saw, you wouldn’t have believed me, but it was the message that counted. I wasn’t ready to go, and I wasn’t ready to leave you. If I were to stay, I was going to fight to at least see you one more time, to hear your laugh once again.

My mom did tell me that I should be careful what I wish for, and when I woke up in that hospital room, after a horrible stroke nonetheless, I understood why.

“Please don’t be mad at me.” Penelope remained for a second by my bed after my mom had left to get some water.

My eyebrows furrowed the slightest, I couldn’t move that much. “What did you do?”

“I didn’t know if you were going to make it, and I didn’t think much before I hit the call.” she continued to explain.

Again, I could only tilt my head in confusion, something about having brain failure had made me the tiniest bit slower. The fog cleared very quickly, though, once I saw you walk through the door. You were as beautiful as the day I met you, only now I could see, and I would never cease to see. You walked to the bed and your hand reached out for mine, like it was supposed to be.

“Hey, you.” you said softly.

“Hey,” I muttered. If I had been able to breathe better, believe me I would have yelled out like an excited 5 year old “what are you doing here?”

“I recently realized I’ve grown into the habit of showing up after you almost died.” you joked, and it was like time hadn’t passed at all “which, if you ask me, it’s a weird habit to have.” it was my turn to laugh, you always caused that in me.

Penelope had stepped out, she knew we needed the space, as for our souls could only be bare if it was just the two of us. You came closer, and our eyes met, and time actually stopped, and everything was okay.

“I will always love you.” I’m sorry I said it like that, I know it’s not what you expected.

“Spencer…” you began to talk.

“No, just,” I cut you off “I know I can get it right this time.” the way that you looked at me I will never forget, a look you had never given me, that you respected me too much to give me, the look of pity.

“I’m not a second chances program” you started “I couldn’t just wait around until you were ready to notice that I was still there, that you allowed me back in.”

Your tears threatened to fall. I could see them, that’s not what I wanted, that’s never what I wanted. I reached for your face, and you leaned against my hand. Old habits die hard, don’t they? I should know, since I had fallen into the habit of wanting you, of loving you. This and every other life. I couldn’t hold them any longer, the sobs, the tears, the pain, the pain only you could heal, only you could let me show. I love you because of your strength, since it allowed me to be weak without remorse.

You did the same for me, your gentle fingers caressing my cheek, pushing away the salty droplets. “It’s okay, Spencer, it’s okay.” you whispered “we have to let us go.”

“And if we’re lucky enough?” I asked.

“If we’re lucky enough,” your face smiled, but the strain in your voice showed me the misery in your words, along with their genuinity “in another universe, you would have been with Maeve and I would have never loved you. And we could finally be happy.”

You couldn’t have been more wrong to think, even for a second, that my destiny was any other than you. I didn’t have the words to prove it, I could form a sentence to save my life, save the love of my life. I tried to kiss you. I wish you had done it, you would have understood.

“My boyfriend is waiting outside.” you muttered before my lips could meet home, and like that, you were gone.

Entry 10: I think I’ll be alright.

I never saw you again, but it’s okay. Years to come I would question every decision I had made, did they lead me to you, or just pushed you away? There was no way of telling. Regrets are a broken sword, dull enough to be harmless, and sharp enough to hurt. Would you have done something differently? I doubt so.

I’m thankful, nonetheless, to have been given the opportunity to concur. To have been loved by you. I did wish for a different ending, but who am I to be selfish? I had it all, even if I lost it. Until years later I would hear about your marriage; you eloped, as we always thought we would do, planning a wedding was too much of a hassle. Did you end up having kids? If you did, lucky them, if something they were to never lack, it would be love. I hope he is treating you well, that you are happy, like you always deserved.

Me? I finally had to learn. The grief finally went away, you see, someone once told me that love comes in moments, and later in life I found myself clinging to that thought. If love comes in moments, my darling, after everything we've been through, yours will last me a million years.

Even if I got just a fraction of it.”

The silence was covered by the rustling of book pages as the woman finished speaking. Yet her crowd of one didn’t seem to show much reaction, which was a source of concern.

"Spencer, would you like me to read it again?" Penelope asked as she swayed back and forth on the rocking chair the staff had given to her.

"Sorry?" he asked, seemingly lost in thought.

"Ma'am." a gentle nurse interrupted them "visitation time is over, Dr. Reid has to rest."

"Of course." the once blonde woman, whose hair now shone silver, said as she handed the diary back to his owner "Here, take this."

"Is this mine?" a still confused Spencer continued to question.

"Yes, it's your favorite book." she reiterated.

"Really?" his fingers fidgeted with the cover "What is it about?"

Penelope couldn't help the way her eyes filled with water, like they did every week whenever she had to leave the friend she'd visit in that mental facility without fail.

"The greatest love story ever told."

#spencer reid x reader #spencer reid/reader #spencer reid #fic: spencer #fics: spencer #fic: mine #fic: criminal minds

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