#like i said it doesn’t really make sense from what we think we know about corona

[moomine]

Dad swansea and reader x daisuke established relationship

black friday | daisuke

author's note: this is based on the q&a where the devs said swansea was a sneakerhead lol. i love love love the concept of dad-swansea sm!! it actually maybe sorta kinda has me brainstorming another series.. thank you for the request! (cover image credit)

summary: (daisuke x f!reader) (modern au?) The semester is over and winter break has just begun. You and Daisuke met on campus and have been dating for a while now. When it's time for him to finally meet your dad, Swansea, he insists on getting him something for the season.

word count: 2,661

warnings: no trigger warnings (all fluff here)! all characters are 18+

now playing: Drugdealer, Kate Bollinger - "Pictures of You"

⋆⁺₊⋆ ☀︎ ⋆⁺₊⋆

The mall was a bustling hellscape. Packed like sardines, people pushed and shoved as they tried to meander from place to place. The line for the shoe store wrapped around the corner, down a long, wide hall, and into the food court. You stood side by side with Daisuke, your coat rustling as you hugged yourself. A cold draft blew past as other customers came and went through the grand entrance, each time causing a shiver to rake through you harshly. Daisuke, who was previously twisting his silver rings out of an anxious habit, stopped and began running his hands up and down the length of your arms. The friction of his hands sent waves of much-appreciated warmth throughout your body. You looked up at him, a grateful smile tugged at the corners of your lips.

“Thank you,” you said, breathing a sigh of relief.

“Of course. It won’t be so bad once we get ‘round the corner.” Daisuke peeked over your head and past the line, peering ahead to see how much longer it would take. It was moving at a snail’s pace, and all he could think about was empty shelves. In the nightmare of worst-case scenarios running rampant in his mind, the sneakers he had been keeping a watchful eye on for months were already sold out. Daisuke’s brows furrowed as he caught his bottom lip between his teeth, chewing at the soft skin absentmindedly.

“Maybe we should have gotten here earlier,” you observed, glancing around at the line of people as it only grew larger. You turned back to your boyfriend with a sympathetic expression, features softening as you reached out and placed a hand on his shoulder. “You don’t have to do this. Y’know that, right? My dad will be happy just to meet you at all.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. I absolutely do.” He laughed nervously, wrapping an arm around your shoulders and using his now free hand to run his fingers through his hair. “You’re, like, the most important person in my life. Your dad has to like me, he just has to. If he doesn’t I might straight up disappear. POOF! Daisuke’s gone, vanished into thin air.”

“You gotta relax. He’s gonna love you, I know he will,” you replied, leaning into him for a little extra warmth.

Daisuke held you tighter and shook his head apprehensively. “I just gotta make sure. I really, really want to make a good impression.”

“And you will! You wanna know how I know?” you asked, shifting under his arm so you were facing him. The line moved up and so did the two of you.

He nodded, eyes filling with admiration as his gaze fell from the line before you two to your face. God, he loved your face. No matter how hard he tried, he could never understand how a guy like him got so lucky. Daisuke knew he was a pretty good-looking guy, but you were gorgeous. Must have been his charming personality and impeccable sense of style.

“I know because you’re kind. ‘Cause you have a good heart and you care so much. My dad’s a good judge of character, he’ll see that.” Daisuke opened his mouth to protest, but you raised a finger and pressed it to his lips before he could. “Hey, I’m not finished. So what you don’t know what you want to be yet? You’re ambitious and talented, and you’ve got time. Don’t stress about that, ‘kay? He won’t care, I promise.”

“Can I talk now?” Daisuke asked, your finger still pressed against his lips. 

“You may,” you replied with a playful grin, your hand dropping to your side once again.

“I know I technically don’t have to, but I’m gonna get these shoes and impress the pants off your dad,” he stated, all proud until he had the chance to process what it was he had said. “That didn’t come out right…”

You laughed, taking another step forward as the line continued to move up.

-

A couple of weeks had passed since Daisuke bought those sneakers. Finals season came and went, ushered out by the frantic wrap-up of the fall semester and the introduction to winter break. It was early December when the two of you finally drove back home, meaning it had finally come time for your boyfriend to meet your parents. 

The entire way there Daisuke was a nervous mess. That anxiety only intensified the moment you were leading him to the front door of your family’s home. On top of the gifts he was already carrying, Daisuke had insisted on still carrying the bulk of your luggage inside as well. With one hand he held his presents to your folks, and in the other, he used to pull your suitcase behind him; your backpack was slung over his shoulders. He said it was about chivalry or something like that. As you stepped onto the front porch an onslaught of barking erupted from just beyond the door. 

“Lucy! C’mon, old girl, that's enough!” your dad, Swansea, shouted from inside the house.

You turned to smile at Daisuke only to notice his attention was busy elsewhere. He looked down at the gifts in his arms, biting at his lips. After a moment he noticed you had stopped and his gaze drifted back to you, offering you a timid smile of his own. You reached out and placed a hand on his shoulder, keeping it there as you began to rub small, comforting circles against the wooly fabric of his coat.

“It’s gonna be okay,” you whispered in a soft tone.

Daisuke looked down at the gifts in his hands, then back to you with a quick nod.

Now with his approval, you unlatched your keys from your belt loop and unlocked the door. As it swung open with a familiar groan, Lucy, your elderly border collie, came stumbling up to the doorway as she barked an excited ‘hello’. The dark patches of her fur were speckled with long, white hairs and her eyes held a little gray in them. She breathed heavily from her mouth, panting with her tongue hanging out. She looked from you to Daisuke, just as excited to see his new face as your well-known one.

“Hi, mama.” You knelt to her level, petting her head with one hand and scratching her chin with the other. “I’m home!” you shouted into the house.

The smells of garlic and onion wafted from the direction of the kitchen. Daisuke closed the door behind him, looking around the entryway with a curious eye. It dawned on him at that moment that he was standing in your childhood home. Over the course of your life, you had walked in and out of that very entryway countless times —going to school, coming home from your first job at that local coffee shop, leaving for prom or practice. 

“Took you long enough,” Swansea called back as he made his way from the kitchen to the two of you. “I was startin’ to worry you wouldn’t make it in time for dinner.”

Swansea stood in the doorway of the kitchen, a red apron that read ‘Kiss the cook’ tied loosely around his torso —one of the many stupid Father’s Day presents your mom had gotten him over the years. You stood up quickly, racing to him with open arms. He eagerly took you into a tight hug, his clothes and skin smelling faintly of 3-in-1 soap and motor oil.

“Haha. How about a ‘welcome home’ or ‘I missed you so much’?” you said sarcastically as you pulled away from him.

“Welcome home, kid. I missed you.” Swansea’s normal gruff tone of voice was much softer as he spoke to you.

Daisuke stood awkwardly by the front door, still carrying your belongings as well as his own. You glanced over your shoulder with a wide smile and motioned toward him. “Oh! Dad, this is Daisuke. Daisuke, this is my dad.” You took a step back, allowing the two of them to get a better view of one another.

His eyes shot from Lucy, who was now lying at his feet, and toward your dad. Almost too quickly, Daisuke let go of the suitcase and took a long step toward Swansea. He extended his hand, ready to shake, and adorned a toothy smile. The gifts along his other arm wobbled as he reached your father, which he clumsily saved from falling at the last minute.

“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, sir. I’ve heard a lot about you,” Daisuke said.

“That so? Looks like you got a lot on your plate, son.” Swansea took his hand, holding it firmly as he shook it. Daisuke did his best to match his grip, almost squeezing too hard. Swansea motioned with a nod to your luggage still on Daisuke’s person, along with the gifts in his arms.

“What this? Nothing I can’t handle,” your boyfriend replied, almost smugly. “These are actually for you. Well, and your wife.”

“I think we’re gonna go take my stuff upstairs,” you butt in, looking between the two with a slightly worried expression.

“All right then. Your mom’ll be home soon, dinner’s on in fifteen. I’m makin’ paella.” Swansea turned around with a skeptical look. “Sound good?”

“Sounds perfect. Thank you, dad!”

-

Once the two of you were upstairs, it became incredibly clear that Daisuke’s anxiety had intensified greatly. As the two of you walked through the threshold into your room, he let out a quiet sigh —both out of relief and distress. Over the semester, your room had become closer to a memory and now, as you returned to it exactly as you had left it, it had become an almost nostalgic sight. It was exactly as Daisuke had imagined. The pale blue walls were littered with band posters and pictures of you with friends from high school. You had everything you’d expect in a student’s room. In one corner, snugged away and smothered in soft blankets and pillows, was a full-sized bed. In another were a mismatched desk and dresser. Daisuke could easily see you sitting at that desk, engaging with one of your many hobbies or finishing up some assignments. The visual managed to make a small smile creep onto his lips, but it faltered quickly when he heard Swansea on the phone with your mother just downstairs.

“He hates me, I can already tell,” Daisuke said. He carefully set down your luggage as well as the gifts, tucking them away nicely on your desk.

“You don’t know that. My dad’s just like that with everyone at first, but he always warms up eventually. I promise.” You sat on your bed, pulling your shoes from your feet and tossing them in different directions.

To keep himself from pacing, Daisuke took a seat beside you before flopping back into the comforter. The plush blanket quickly engulfed him as he rested an arm over his eyes. With a little laugh, you laid down on your side next to him, caressing his face with your hand. It felt soft against his skin as you cupped his cheek. His arm fell back to his side as he leaned into your touch, letting out a content sigh at the comfort that alone brought him. His eyes trailed over your face with that same lovesick adoration he normally harbored while looking at you —a stare that said more than he ever could with words. He knew he would never get tired of looking at you. 

“It’s going to be okay,” you finally said, pressing your forehead against his. “I love you.”

His eyes fluttered shut as he tried to melt into you. Like it was second nature, Daisuke tilted his head ever so slightly to the side and closed the gap between the two of you. Sparks of electricity tingled against your lips as he kissed you softly. Abandoning their posts, his hands found their proper positions —one on your hip and the other along the back of your neck— and pulled you closer. You couldn’t help but smile against his lips as he kissed you, your chest becoming light at his touch.

Reluctantly, he pulled away, keeping his forehead against yours. “I love you too,” he breathed, sounding far more relaxed than before. “So much.”

His gaze met yours once more, and it looked like he was going in for another kiss. Just as you felt his breath against your cupid’s bow, there was a knock at the door, followed by the sound of Swansea clearing his throat.

“C’mon, get your asses up. I’m makin’ you set the table before your mother gets home. I want it to look nice for her, understood?” Your dad looked between the two of you with that questionable face Daisuke was starting to become accustomed to. He then turned around, shaking his head from side to side.

-

Dinner was a surprisingly quick affair. To nobody’s surprise, Swansea’s paella was a hit —other than a couple of gripes from your mother who had grown sick of the dish. She fell in love with Daisuke from the first second she saw him, and she only loved him more when he got comfortable enough to talk. After everyone was finished eating, Daisuke insisted on helping clean up and he did so happily. While your mom stepped outside to smoke a cigarette, Swansea, Daisuke, and you sat in the living room as your dad began to open his gift.

Swansea tore into the wrapping paper, eyes going wide when he saw the brightly colored shoebox beneath. He looked up from the present in his hands, and his gaze fell to Daisuke with an expression of pure disbelief.

“Son, I-” he started before promptly getting cut off by you.

“Just open it, dad.”

Daisuke shifted beside you as Swansea discarded the rest of the wrapping paper. He leaned forward, elbows resting on either of his knees as he bit at his lower lip. Swansea ran his hand along the top of the box and slowly opened it. After lifting the tissue paper and getting a proper look at the sneakers underneath, Swansea turned to your boyfriend again.

“These aren’t easy to come by. How on earth did you get them?”

“I, uh- well, we camped out for them. [Name] told me you had been checking out a pair online for a while, and I thought I’d save you the effort,” Daisuke responded, running a hand along the back of his neck. “It was totally worth it. I got a super good deal on ‘em and everything.”

“Thank you.” Your dad just nodded with the faintest smile on his face. Although his words were simple, cut, and dry, it was obvious to you and Daisuke alike that he was truly grateful.

“Of course. I’m really happy you like them,” Daisuke said. He was practically glowing, beaming with pride as he looked from Swansea to you. He mouthed an oblivious ‘hell yeah’ in celebration.

Later that night while you were getting ready for bed, Daisuke ventured down the upstairs hallway toward the bathroom. Along the way, he passed your parents' room. Through the crack in the door, a narrow stream of light illuminated the otherwise darkened hall. Daisuke froze in place as he overheard your mom and Swansea talking from inside.

“So, what did you think of him? He’s just a delight. Isn’t he, hun?” Your mom questioned.

“Who? Daisuke?” Swansea replied. The springs within the mattress groaned as he eased himself into bed. “The boy seems like a good man. I like him for her. She needs someone who’ll help her loosen up. Poor girl is too damn high-strung.”

Realizing he probably shouldn’t eavesdrop, Daisuke rushed to the bathroom with a look of pride on his face. Your dad liked him. Better yet, Swansea thought he was good for you. That was a better gift than anything he could have hoped for.

[maybanksmusings]

THE WALLS ; JJ MAYBANK

SYNOPSIS ; when an unknown face appears in the outer banks searching for a father she's never met, she's unaware of how her life is about to be completely turned upside down.

WARNINGS ; jjmaybank x routledge!oc, strong language, depictions of violence, afab!reader, sexual content, mentions of abuse, drug and alcohol consumption, strangers to lovers, fast burn to slow burn, canon adjacent, not proofread.

AUTHORS NOTE ; changes are being made! see this post to learn more. to me, this part seems a little like a filler, but i want to explore veronica as a character and develop each relationship with each character as something more than a side character, not just honing in on her relationship with jj, which of course is a huge part of the story also.

part one. part two. part three.

when veronica begins to stir, the sun had long set. there was no way of knowing how long the pair had been asleep, all she knew was the lights of the chateau were off and there was a bright pink post it note stuck to jj’s head.

‘gone fishin’. jb pissed.’

pope signed off on the note, a small smiley face drawn inside the o of his name. veronica knew the pouges hadn’t actually gone fishing, that is was some sort of code jj would decipher when he came to.

in this moment, veronica was content. wrapped in the arms of the most beautiful person she’d ever seen.

what could only be described as a war was ongoing in her head. she wasn’t exactly one to believe in love at first sight, she thought this entire ‘spark’ thing was something made up by male authors to keep women reading their shitty romance books to keep them hooked, waiting for it to happen to them.

but then she met jj, and he was like a magnet. every time veronica was in his presence she was mesmerised, whenever he was gone she felt like all the colour was drained from the world.

there was only two problems.

there was a maximum of forty eight hours that they knew each other, add to that he was her brothers best friend, then add to that said brother made it crystal clear that inter-group dating was not allowed.

oh, and then the whole ‘nobody knows i’m his sister but us’ thing.

“you’re staring, baby” jj mumbled, his voice low and tired as he stirred beneath her “can’t say i blame you”

with a sarcastic scoff, veronica sits upright in the hammock, her legs laid out across the blonds lap “just admiring the drool on your face”

“aren’t you funny.”

comfortable silence follows, jj crosses his arms behind his head and blinks the sleep out of his eyes. even though she was staring off into the water, veronica could feel jj’s eyes on her.

“can i help you?” veronica quipped, a teasing lilt to her words as she face the boy in question “use your words, you’ll get there.”

unexpectedly, jj sighs and lets his head fall back “what am i doing?”

veronica knows he didn’t intent for her to hear him, but she did. she would be lying if she said she wasn’t disappointed, but she was even more disappointed in herself at the pang of sadness that hit her.

before she can say, or do, anything, jj is sat up a little straighter and speaking again.

“listen, you’re a really cool girl,” he pauses, shaking his head and starting again “you’re hot as shit, damn it!”

barely, veronica manages to mask her giggle with a cough.

“don’t ask me how or why, but i gotta tell you i’m super into you.” he blurts out “yeah, makes no fuckin’ sense, we barely know each other, no pouge on pouge macking, you ain’t feeling me like that-“

her body is moving before her brain can even comprehend what she’s doing, chipped nail polish framing blond hair as she held his face in her hands and pressed their lips together.

then, her brain kicks in, and veronica jumps back like she’d just been burnt.

“fuck, jay i’m so sorry. i wasn’t thinking,”

seconds pass agonisingly slow and veronica can’t help but think about just how badly she had just fucked up.

but she doesn’t get to overthink for long.

a calloused hand tangled in long, brown hair. the other gripping her waist like it was a lifeline, helping her into his lap as his tongue makes its way into her mouth.

the kiss is messy, it’s desperate. like two people drowning, taking in the other like they were air. hands cling to whatever they can, afraid if they let go it would all be over.

any reservations veronica may have had about ‘the spark’ were discarded, undermined even, this wasn’t a spark, it was fireworks.

but fireworks don’t last forever, and when the sound of john b’s rickety van can be heard drawing closer. the newfound excitement being dulled by the shadow known as a protective older brother, a protective best friend.

by the time the missing pouges pour out of the twinkie, veronica and jj are in much less compromising positions, now sitting beside each other trading menial conversation about the earlier events of the day.

“welcome back to the land of the living,” kiara teases, a yellow vape coming up to her mouth as she took a hit “you two were out cold.”

instinctively, veronica’s hand shot out, wordlessly pleading for a hit of her vape. with a groan, kie handed it over.

veronica lets her head fall back against the hard oak of the tree behind her, relishing the feeling of her first hit of nicotine in two days. she had a vape when she left home, but it died before she even made it to the outer banks and being broke meant she couldn’t even go buy a replacement.

“you could’ve woke us up, y’know” jj defended, trying his hardest to act as if nothing happened, reminding himself to stop staring.

pope scoffs, not missing the longing stares sent the brunettes direction but purposefully ignoring them “we tried, it nearly cost us our lives.”

unamused, john b walks past the rest of the group in silence. when he gets to the door of the chateau he looks over his shoulder and nods for veronica to follow.

the girl is suddenly more attentive, climbing over the human embodiment of a golden retriever and padding her way into the house behind the older of the two.

“does the name redfield mean anything to you?” john b questions, passing a beer from the fridge and getting one for himself “like, the surname.”

veronica is quiet, her finger tracing the rim of the can as she goes through every crevice of her brain in search of any name even remotely close, there’s only one.

“chris redfield.” she answers with a nod, popping the tab of the can and taking a swig “but i don’t get how he’s involved.”

“why not? who is he!?”

“a video game character.”

with a huff of annoyance john b drags a chair across the kitchen to sit beside veronica, unscrewing his compass and placing it down on the table. the name ‘redfield’ is carved into the metal.

“we went back to the boat, found a motel key, whatever.” john b shrugs off the rest of their findings, more invested in whoever this redfield person was. “then i remembered when you showed me that note, the one in the compass. then i found this, figured you would know more than i do.”

veronica gently traced the carved metal, it was definitely their fathers scrawl, she’d memorised it from the note she read over and over and over.

it couldn’t be a coincidence, her fathers note asking her to meet, the matching compasses. now this?

“if i’m going to help you, i need to know..” she trailed off, biting at the edges of her nails as she wondered how to phrase her next question “does this have anything to do with dad dying?”

“he’s not dead.” john b’s voice is louder, stern. then his face softens and he tears his gaze away from the compass and to the floor “sorry, just, i know he’s out there. and this? this is proof.”

“john b, i get it.” the younger routledge speaks slowly, trying not to tread on any toes “you’re not the only one who wants him to be alive, that needs to see him. but i don’t see how this—”

“dad found the royal merchant. four hundred million dollars in gold, and he found it. he’s trying to tell us where to find it.”

veronica sighs, fingers rubbing at her tired eyes as she once again tried to think of any connection to any redfield. when it came to family, she only knew the bare minimum, her fathers name and her mothers maiden name.

what she did know, however, was the royal merchant. as a child her father sent her maps and books on birthdays and christmases without fail, until one day they stopped.

“you’ve got books and stuff, right?” she finally asked, not wanting to get either her or john b’s hopes up. a nagging feeling was telling her their dad was alive, but she knew he wouldn’t just up and abandon his son.

the walls of her fathers study feel like they’re closing in on her, john b let her inside and left her to it. veronicas hand ghosts over the framed maps and dusty books. blueprints of ships with her fathers messy scrawl written randomly around the paper.

there’s pictures of john b littered all over the office, all different life stages, a few feature jj and veronica can’t help but smile at the photo of two little boys holding a fish between them.

on the desk there’s a picture frame, immediately veronica recognises her mother, years younger and a gentle hand placed on her tummy. in the same frame, there’s an ultrasound that veronica almost bypassed as john b, but when she looked at the date it was a long time after he was born.

it was her ultrasound.

it was her in her moms tummy, framed and proudly placed right on her fathers desk.

everything comes back at once. finding the note, and in turn the years worth of letters her mother had hidden from her. the dateline special with john b pleading for information about his father, their father. the fight with her mother, packing a bag in the middle of the night and making her way to the address stored safely inside her compass.

the tears don’t register until they hit the glass of the frame, the last few weeks of pent up anger, sadness and hurt bubbling over from the flame that single photo sparked.

her dad loved her.

for years she’d heard about her absent father, then the absent father that passed when she was a baby. the father who didn’t want the responsibility of a child and ran away once he found out.

but the letters, the compass, this picture? john routledge loved the daughter he was forbidden from seeing, from the second he knew about her he loved her.

and now he was dead.

a sudden wave of anger rushes from her head to her toes, glass shattering when she throws the dusty old frame against the wall with a scream. papers fly and maps fall from the walls as she turns her fathers office into her own personal rage room.

the racket coming from the small room shakes the chateau, so it’s no surprise when the pouges come crashing through the door.

the pouges eyes briefly flash with fear when their eyes land on the destruction caused by the newest arrival, but it’s quickly replaced by a familiar sadness when veronica crumples to the ground, screaming as loud as her lungs would allow for them to get out.

they don’t know what’s wrong, but it doesn’t matter. veronica was now considered a friend, and they gathered that’s what she needed right about now.

jj is the first to enter, drawing closer slowly as if he were being cautious “it’s okay, ronnie.” he mutters softly, dodging shattered glass as he knelt beside her “we’re here, we got you.”

kiara, john b and pope are close behind, wrapping veronica in what could only be described as a group hug until her tears subsided.

taglist!

@ren-ni @marleymarleymarleymarley @miidollaasignnn @rainingcecilias @tanyaherondale @xspideyhollandx @sluterainterlude @loverofmarsss @xoxo-ada @gigistalked @genderlessmenance

[glamourscat]

୨୧ Shidou's hcs ୨୧

CW: nothing?? maybe a little angst

a meme sender. Idk he just gives off those vibes, he would probably fill any messaging chat w random memes. Or even worse, reacts to some of your messages with those really cringe meme reaction pictures ... like this one

takes pictures on your phone when you leave it around. Good luck w your storage, cause it will always be full of random pictures. From forehead pics, funny faces, pictures of you sleeping

We know that one of his fav/best subjects at school aside from PE was art. I like to think he likes art as a hobby, especially after a stressfull day on the field. Mostly painting or sketching, but I can see photography and music especially.

It’s no secret that he doesn’t fit in. From his bold and extravagant style, I mean the guy's colour palette is literally hot pink, but that aside is — he is literally the total opposite of what the Japanese culture claims to be. Unapologetically loud, extroverted, doesnt accept societal norms. No wonder he is seen as an outsider in blue lock lmao. Especially because, like Bachira but slightly different, Shidou doesn’t play because he wants to win. Not like Isagi, not like Rin, who if they lose a match will go absolutely nuts. He plays because he just wants to play. His philosophy on football is to leave a mark, big enough that people know he was there and to just enjoy football as it is.

But, with that said, taking in consideration his philosophy and the way he lives, I think he would be into someone who’s pretty much the opposite of what society expects. He doesn’t want “the society standard”, he doesn’t want you to change yourself because of him (eg: shaving, cutting hair like you think he would like, less or more makeup etc..) he wants you to be yourself. From your clothes to the way you present yourself. He wants someone that can be loud as him, unafraid to be free— to search for that freedom with him, but at the same time someone who’s brave enough to be calm during the storm (aka at night when you two are alone with your thoughts and feelings) 

His partner will be the same coin, just different side of it. Someone that can literally match his freak lol, but who’s different enough to anchor him down. Someone who sees the world in colours, someone who’s unconventional in the eyes of all. 

Aesthetically wise, I don’t think it really matters to him. Again, it’s a matter of vibes mostly. Still, I can see him taking a liking into people who have unconventional features or fashion style. Anyone who "doesn't fit in". Both people with muscle and plus size people. He gives me the vibes of someone who would enjoy squeezing the living out of you, I can’t explain why. If you’re into makeup, even better. I think colour wise, his partner would have a clothing palette maybe similar to his. Some colourful stuff, mixed with base colours. I don’t see him with someone that just dresses with one tone/colour. Someone who maybe doesn’t even have a particular fixed style, but every day dresses differently base on their mood. 

Just by taking a look at what his favourite manga, movie and song is (i go in more detail about my analysis on them here) I feel he is an extreme political being. His style was already a dead giveaway, but, the fact he likes those three pieces of media that hold such heavy political discourse, the lack of freedom, the sense of feeling trapped… I would say he is someone who’s definitely involved in politics. See it as you wish. 

Lastly, i think he struggles to make friends. It’s no secret, he comes across as strong, personality wise— extremely imposing. His aura has probably scared a few people off before. He probably craves those deep, intense, friendships with someone.

let me know your thoughts on them!

© glamourscat

[rose24207]

Reader is driving Illegal Night Racer!Lando’s car for the girlfriend drive. Reader has never driven Lando’s car before. (She doesn’t crash the car. Up to you if she wins.) I think it would be fun if Lando and Reader don’t actually know each other, and it’s like a meet cute. But if you’d rather they be dating then go for it!

That‘s my girl

Summary: The girlfriends of illegal street racers compete in a high-stakes race, with you driving Lando’s car to victory and surprising everyone, including Lando, with your skills.

Genre: Streetracer!Lando, fluff

TW: illegal race

A/N: I hope it is just how you imagined it! English is not my first language. I hope you enjoy it though! Requests are open and welcome!

Masterlist

The atmosphere in the underground racing club was electric that night, buzzing with energy as the men and women gathered for an event that had turned into something far more exciting than anyone had anticipated.

It all started with a throwaway comment from Lando Norris, as cocky and playful as ever, about how it would be fun to see the girlfriends race against each other.

“You all think you can keep up with us, huh?” he’d said, leaning back in his chair with that signature smirk. “How about we see who’s got the real skills behind the wheel?”

The men—Lando and his crew—laughed, clearly enjoying the thought of putting their girlfriends to the test.

What started as a joke had quickly turned into a full-on underground event.

The stakes?

A lot of money and, of course, pride.

“You serious?” You’d asked, narrowing your eyes as you looked at Lando. “You want me to race against all the other girls?”

Lando’s grin only grew wider, his eyes twinkling with mischief. “Why not? It’ll be fun. You’re a great driver. Plus, there’s cash on the line. Think you can handle it?”

You had hesitated, unsure at first.

Sure, you’d driven before—really driven. But racing? On an illegal circuit, no less? The thrill was undeniable, but so was the fear.

But there was no backing down now.

The others were game, and you didn’t want to be the one to wimp out.

“I’ll race,” you’d said, your voice confident, though you could feel a rush of nerves in your chest.

Lando had clapped his hands together, clearly pleased. “That’s my girl.”

Tonight, the underground lot was full of the usual illegal-race suspects—high-stakes gamblers, car enthusiasts, and anyone else who got a thrill from watching cars break the law and make money while doing it.

The men had gathered around their own cars, making bets and placing their chips. But this race was something different.

The women were getting ready, strapping into the cars their boyfriends—Lando included—had handed them. There was no official race gear, no helmets or racing suits. Just the cars, the roads, and the adrenaline that surged through your veins as you prepared for what was to come.

Lando’s car, a black, sleek beast that was almost as much a part of him as his own hands, sat ready at the starting line. He stood next to it, talking to a few of the other guys, but his eyes were always on you, watching with that half-smile that made your stomach flip.

The other girls were getting ready, too, some a little more nervous than others, but all equally determined to show they could handle the power beneath their hoods. There was a buzz in the air, a sense of competition that was palpable. Everyone was here to win, but for you, it wasn’t just about the cash—it was about showing you belonged.

You adjusted yourself in the seat, the leather feeling tight and unfamiliar. No helmet, no comms, just the cold, hard reality of racing.

You weren’t sure whether to be excited or terrified, but you knew one thing for sure—you were going to give it everything you had.

Lando came up to the car, leaning down to give you a quick kiss on the cheek before pulling back with a grin. “You’ve got this, babe,” he said, his voice low and confident. “Just keep your focus, and don’t let anything distract you.”

“Don’t worry,” you replied with a smile. “I’m not here to lose.”

He chuckled, ruffling your hair. “That’s the spirit.”

The start line was set.

The other women were already in their cars, engines revving in anticipation. You looked around—you could see the guys in the crowd, all leaning against cars or standing with drinks in hand, watching with eager eyes. They were rooting for their girlfriends, of course, but you could tell there was a competitive edge in the air.

This wasn’t just for fun; it was a way for everyone to show who was really in control.

The countdown began.

“Five… four… three… two… one!”

The signal flashed, and with a roar of engines, the cars tore down the road. The air was thick with the smell of burning rubber and exhaust as you hit the accelerator, the car shooting forward like a bullet. You could hear the other cars close behind you, but you didn’t dare look back.

Focus.

That’s all that mattered right now.

The first corner came up fast, and you gripped the wheel tighter, the power of Lando’s car responding instantly to your movements.

The road was winding, narrow in places, but you knew this—had studied this path countless times when Lando had taken you out for drives just like this, pushing you to your limits and beyond.

The first few turns felt smooth, effortless. You were in the zone now, each move instinctive, the adrenaline pumping through your veins like a drug. The other girls were close behind, but you were pulling away, gaining speed as you hit the straights. The wind whipped through the open windows, but you didn’t feel it—didn’t need to.

All that mattered was the race.

You could hear the engines of the other cars behind you, the sound growing louder as they pushed forward, trying to close the gap. The second lap was more intense, the turns sharper, the road more treacherous.

The girls weren’t holding back, and you couldn’t either.

There was no room for error.

A sharp left turn came up, and you turned the wheel just a fraction too late. The car slid slightly, but you corrected it quickly, your heart pounding in your chest.

That was close.

As you rounded the next corner, you glanced at the rearview mirror. One of the other girls was on your tail, practically riding your bumper, but you weren’t going to let that scare you. This was it—everything you’d trained for in your own way. It was time to show them all you had what it took.

You pushed harder, the car responding like it was an extension of yourself. The final lap loomed ahead, and the finish line was closer than ever. Your heart was racing, but your focus was locked in—no distractions, no second-guessing.

You were almost there.

And then, with one final burst of speed, you crossed the finish line. The roar of the engine quieted, and the world seemed to slow down as you took your foot off the gas and let the car coast to a stop.

You had won.

As you stepped out of the car, the crowd went wild. The guys, who had been cheering for their girlfriends, now erupted into applause, whistling and shouting. Lando was already making his way toward you, his face lit up with pride.

“You did it! You actually did it!” Lando shouted, pulling you into his arms and spinning you around in excitement.

You laughed, still catching your breath from the high of the race. “I can’t believe it,” you said, your heart still pounding in your chest. “That was insane.”

“Insane?” Lando repeated, grinning from ear to ear. “You were amazing. You smoked everyone.”

You grinned, the rush of victory still surging through you. “Well, I’m just glad I didn’t crash your car,” you teased.

Lando laughed, shaking his head. “I knew you could do it. You were born to drive.”

As the other girls came over to congratulate you, you could see the pride in their eyes. They knew they had just raced against one of the best, and although the stakes had been high, there was no denying that you had earned the win fair and square.

Lando pulled out an envelope stuffed with cash from his pocket, handing it to you with a wink. “You earned every penny of this,” he said, his voice full of admiration.

You opened the envelope, your eyes widening at the thick wad of cash inside. You’d won more than just the race; you’d earned respect, bragging rights, and a hefty payout.

“Guess we’re celebrating tonight,” you said with a grin, feeling the exhilaration of the win still coursing through your veins.

Lando’s smirk was unmistakable. “Oh, we are. You deserve it.”

You looked at him, a mischievous glint in your eye. “I’ll take you up on that.”

As the night continued and the cheers died down, you felt a rush of pride. You’d shown everyone—not just Lando, but yourself—that you could handle anything the road threw at you.

And that wasn’t just a win—it was proof that you had what it took to belong here.

Thank you for reading!

[do-u-know-this-autisticcharacter]

Do You Know This (non-canon) Autistic Character?

Propaganda

This post which says:

He only eats fish (mackerel) ("You like mackerel too much" is a running gag)

He loves water because of the way it feels (sensory seeking)

He's the only one who sees a difference in his swimtrunks (he likes some better because the way they feel/they fit differently) (hyper sensitive sense)

His special interests are swimming and mackerel

When trying to convince others to swim, he mimics the way he thinks you should do it (with no regard to social cues) (masking)

Limited facial expressions (unless it's about swimming)

He doesn't care about swimming time, records and winning

He has a set routine

"I only swim free."

Is often seen providing support by sitting quietly beside people // or engaging in a conversation with his back turned to the group.

Tendency to give entities human feelings ("Maybe the water hates him" // "I thought I should ask water about matter that involves the water.")

Appears blunt but cares deeply (asks outright if people are okay /// "we're not going to discuss it (about something another character finds uncomfortable)" // gives things freely to children)

Straightforward

Takes his promises very seriously

"He's actually looking at the camera for once."

"Knowing Haru he probably doesn’t want to talk to anyone right now."

Trying to understand his feelings through thinking // struggling to name feelings

He never uses his phone // doesn’t bring it with him // "Haru usually doesn’t carry his phone around with him."

He remembers small things about his friends and then gifts really meaningful gifts

When he knows how he feels he shares his feelings openly and without shame (and with an abundance of eye contact used to drive home his sincerity)

He notices people when they're sad // really perceptive // notices differences in behaviour (pattern recognision)

"You're supposed to smile for pictures." // "Haru is always smiling on the inside."

My man does not care about social norms (is always ready for a dip, no matter where he has to strip).

"I don't care about winning," (i love this boy)

"You're too easily impressed, Haru-chan." (Once again, I love him)

As kids Haru sometimes wouldn’t talk, and instead Mokoto would "translate" how he felt (i almost cried 😭)

"You're so cold," (i hate this)

He litterally just went to Australia because Rin asked him to without knowing the language + without doing any planning just trusting Rin– and then felt panicked when he thought Rin left him (... I once went to Italy with a girl because she said she wanted to and I didn’t get that it was meant to be a joke... until we were already in Italy and she told me she it was a joke but she was glad I took it seriously. She planned everything and I just followed along because I trusted her. Rin also said he didn’t expect Haru to agree, so yeah. I don't know)

"It was my first fight (with him)" (relatable dude)

"Hey, c'mon. You could look a little happier... But I guess that reaction is typical Haru." (Seeing someone for the first time in a long time)

"That’s really impressive," Haru says. "Hey," someone else says. "You're supposed to laugh at that!" (Once again, relatable dude. I don't get the joke either)

"What did you talk about?" *Haru answers truthfully* *the other person makes noises of disbelief*

[slippinmickeys]

The Unseelie Court (8/16)

“So here’s what I’m thinking,” Mulder said, double parked in front of Scully’s building with the flashers thrown on. “We try to get in with Skinner, maybe. See what he does and doesn’t remember. But first I’m going to have Danny pull up phone records. Prove that the Sheriff called me yesterday morning, and that I called Skinner. Then we plead our case and explain that this is absolutely an X-File. If we’re lucky, we’re back in Adrian County by this time tomorrow.”

Scully roved her eyes over Mulder’s earnest expression, lingering on his eyes, almond-shaped and dusky in the dashboard light. The cap of his hair was only inches from the felt of the car’s ceiling. Sometimes she forgot how tall he was. 

“I agree that it’s an X-File, Mulder,” she said. “But what would we even do if we got back to Adrian County? How do you intend to explain all of this to Skinner? To the Sheriff? We don’t have a suspect. We barely have a crime. What are we going to do, get down there and ask them to put out an APB on redcaps and a powrie?” 

“For one thing, I don’t think the fae we’re dealing with here are nymphs and sprites. I think they’re people-shaped.”

Scully sighed. “I’m not sure that’ll sound any better to Skinner. Even assuming we can prove to him all the things that have happened, that will—if you’ll pardon the expression—sound completely insane.”

A car on the corner turned and headlights panned across Mulder’s face, tracing a shadow of his jaw. He was beautiful. And tragic. And she loved him in a way that shook her to her marrow. 

“At this point, I don’t really think he expects anything less,” he said with no small amount of diffidence. 

“I just don’t want you getting hurt,” she said. She wasn’t even sure what kind of hurt she meant; humiliation, rejection, or god forbid, something worse. She would do, she had to admit to herself, a ridiculous number of things to help him avoid that. “Mulder, I know I can be…the way I am.” She struggled to put words to the raw emotion he conjured in her, both good and bad. “But I would do almost anything to protect you,” she admitted in a rush. 

Her pulse picked up a little while the hazard lights ticked a steady rhythm. 

“Feels like a root beer moment,” Mulder said, giving her a half-hopeful, half-sad smile. 

An understatement, she thought, picturing a younger them sitting in the dark in front of Tooms’ apartment. God, would they ever figure out how to get out of their own way?

“I meant what I said then,” she said seriously. “And I mean it now.”

For him she wielded a scalpel and sliced herself deep. For him she bled. Would bleed. He made her desperate, and in her desperation she had stood up to bosses, to brothers, to Congress. He made her weak, but her weakness made her strong. Love by any other name was his. 

“Scully—” he started, but she whipped off her seatbelt and was half across the console, his cheek in her hand, her lips pressing desperately into his. He melted into her touch, his own hands tangling in her hair, straining against the seatbelt he was wearing to get closer to her. She kissed him soundly. She kissed him hard. She kissed him until the roar of blood in her ears was louder than the voices of fear and apprehension in her head.

When she pulled back, he looked dazed, spellbound, his lower lip glistening with the ichorous slip of her kiss. 

“I’ll see you in the office,” she said, and she was out of the car and into the cool damp of the night before he could muster a response.

***

Mulder thrashed to awakening, his sheets wrapped around his lower legs, pulling him, pinning him down. He drew in a gasping breath, trying to make sense of being in his own room, in his own bed. His dream had been terrible and dark, the only thing he could remember about it was that Scully had been taken away from him, and he’d been held down by a searing hot pain pressing into his chest. He brought his hand to the skin there, and it was hot to the touch. 

He leaned over and switched on his bedside lamp, blinking against the sudden light for a peek at his alarm clock. 3:33am. 

Far too early to head into the office, even for him. He knew he wasn’t going to be able to get back to sleep, though he was tired. He flopped back down onto the bed and reached for the pillow on the other side, hugging it to himself and huffing the scent of Scully’s hair that still lingered on the pillowcase. 

If he was going to be awake, he may as well put the time to use. Mentally, he put each piece of evidence, occurrence and person onto an inner-mind index card and shuffled the deck. When he laid out the cards, it put forth a confusing picture. Daly Carmichael had disappeared 26 years ago and returned, not altogether too far from where he’d gone missing, in almost the same state in which he’d left. Until Scully had pulled the leaf with the seven-pointed star etched into it out of his mouth, which Mulder had to consider might be coincidental. 

The star represented the Seelie Court of the Fae, if Mulder’s instincts were correct. The most perplexing parts of the case so far were the fact that Daly Carmichael hadn’t aged (and then had, rapidly), and the fact that no one seemed to remember it other than Mulder, Scully and the diener in the Adrian County morgue. The strange coins spoke to him, as did the now-missing ingot of iron. The fairy hollows or groves he and Scully had found, the missing time. If the leaf had been imbued with magic of some kind, that could explain either the lack of aging or the later aging itself, and perhaps why the only people to have come into contact with the leaf were the ones that seemed to remember it. Maybe it explained the other things that had happened as well—the missing evidence, appearance and disappearance of the groves.

And then Mulder remembered that the diener, Aeon, hadn’t actually seen the leaf. Scully had pulled it out of Carmichael’s mouth, and Mulder had bagged it and was still in possession of it. Other than pointing them in the direction of the lab, the grumpy little man hadn’t had anything to do with it. Unless he’d encountered it when prepping the body.

Mulder would have to ask tomorrow. In the meantime, he continued to shuffle and reshuffle the mental cards in his head over and over, each time coming up with an incomplete picture and no real concrete investigative path forward.

He sighed, hugging the pillow closer to his chest and taking another look at the clock. 

3:41am. 

***

Mulder was at his desk by 7:00, and Scully was sitting in front of her laptop in the annex by 8:00. She had bags under her eyes and had mentioned not sleeping terribly well. 

“Do you know,” Mulder said, after she’d taken the last sip of her coffee, “if by chance your diener came into contact with the leaf that was in Daly Carmichael’s mouth?” 

Scully looked pensive for a moment. “I suppose there’s a chance,” she said. “He just emailed me a digital copy of the dental records. I could ask him.”

“Would you?” Mulder said.

Only a few minutes passed before Scully looked up once again from her computer. “He says no.”

Mulder leaned back in his office chair, the base of it giving a complaintive creak. 

“What’s his last name?” 

“Whose?”

“Your diener.”

“Greene,” Scully answered after a quick glance at her screen. “Aeon Greene.”

“What do you know about him?”

Scully looked at Mulder blankly for a moment. “That his name is Aeon Greene and he’s an autopsy technician in the Adrian County morgue. Why?”

Mulder absorbed the tiny amount of incredulity he detected in her tone. “Because other than you and me, he’s the only person that doesn’t seem to be affected by the memory magic or whatever the hell it is that seems to be impacting literally every other single person involved with this investigation.”

“Memory magic?” 

“Mass amnesia. I don’t know. Whatever you want to call it.”

Scully rubbed her hands over her eyes. “You want to have Danny look into him?”

“Danny’s busy tracking down phone logs. I’ll do it.”

“Good,” Scully said, standing up wearily. “Do that. I told Violent Crimes I’d look at something for them. I’ve got to go up to the third floor. You want to meet in the lobby later and go out to lunch?”

Mulder’s mood, momentarily lowered by Scully’s announcement that she wouldn’t be around the rest of the morning, instantly lifted. He smiled. 

“It’s a date.”

She returned his smile and turned back to him when she was in the doorway. 

“Mulder?”

He looked up. 

“You still carrying that leaf around?” she asked. 

Mulder reached into his pocket and held it up in two fingers. “Not really sure what else to do with it. Chain of custody and all that.”

“Well, leave it here when we go out to lunch. Lock it in your desk drawer or something.” 

“Why?”

“Because if that thing is the mechanism of this amnesia ‘magic,’” she used finger quotes, “I’m kind of hoping that by the time we get back, we’ll have forgotten everything, too.”

***

With no hit on the NCIC, Mulder logged into the Virginia state database and ran a quick search on Aeon Greene. And came up with nothing. No driver’s license, no address, no voter registration or tax information. He tried various spellings of both first and last name and put them through the systems for Maryland and the District of Columbia, then threw in West Virginia as well. Nothing. 

By the time noon rolled around, he was frustrated, hungry, and had a splitting headache. 

Scully met him in the lobby looking equally worse for wear.

“You okay?” Mulder asked, holding open the door on the other side of Security, and momentarily forgetting all about his wasted morning. 

“The ViCAP case,” Scully said, ducking out under his arm. “It was a case with kids. They could have warned me.”

“They didn’t?” he asked, incredulous. 

“No. And the next time they want me for something, they can go through Skinner first.”

Mulder made it his mission to improve her mood and actually had her laughing by the time they walked back into their basement office. Scully hung up her coat with a smile and settled into the chair she’d vacated earlier. 

“How’d your morning go?” she asked. 

Mulder could feel his headache returning. 

“A total bust,” he said. 

“Danny didn’t have anything?” 

“I haven’t heard back yet,” Mulder explained. “What I meant was, there’s no record of Aeon Greene. Not in NCIC, not in the state systems of Virginia, Maryland or West Virginia, nor for DC.”

Scully looked at her computer screen. Right there in her inbox sat this morning’s two messages from the Adrian County morgue assistant. 

“How?” she said. “He’s a county employee.” 

“Well, he’s not in the system.” 

“Did you spell it right? ‘Aeon’ is a weird name.” 

“I spelled it right. I spelled it wrong. I spelled it every which way but loose.” 

Scully brought up her own screen, curious. Her own NCIC search came up negative, but that would only list if Aeon had ever been arrested for or part of some kind of crime. Then she pulled up the database for the State of Virginia. 

Aeon came up right away. 

“Here he is,” she said. 

Mulder looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“I ran a search,” she said. “He’s right here.” 

Mulder popped up out of his chair like he’d sat on something sharp and marched over to where she sat, peering intently over her shoulder. 

She pointed to the entry for Aeon Greene on the screen. 

“That wasn’t there,” he said, staring at it intently. 

“Are you sure you didn’t—” 

“Scully.” The way he said her name was low, almost dangerous, and made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. She felt suddenly discomposed. 

“Well,” she said, swallowing. “It’s here, now.” She clicked on it and scrolled through what data had been collected on the man. “Nothing jumps out.” 

Mulder sighed, the warm fug of his breath playing over the activated skin on her neck. She could feel a blush of something creep up her cheeks. 

Mulder straightened and made his way back over to this desk. “Good to know I wasted my morning.” 

Scully turned to him with an eye to making him feel better. The light on his desk phone was blinking. She pointed to it. 

“Looks like you have a message,” she said. “Danny, maybe?” 

“Let’s see,” he said, and dialed in, letting it play on speaker. 

“You have two new messages,” said the tinny recorded voice. Then, “Hey Mulder, it’s Danny. Listen, I got the phone records you were looking for from two days ago. No incoming or outgoing calls from your cell phone that morning. Nothing to or from the Assistant Director’s phone. Nothing from Adrian County to your line, Agent Scully’s line, or through the switchboard. About all I could find was five calls from Agent Scully’s cell phone to your cell phone yesterday afternoon. I know that’s not the information you were looking to get. Sorry, pal. Let me know if you need anything else.” 

Mulder connected eyes with his partner over the desk. The second message started autoplaying: a voice he didn’t recognize. 

“Hello? This is Candy Winnecott calling from the Jordan Lake Motor Lodge? I got this number from our registration, and I wanted to let you know that y’all left some kind of wire or cable here sitting on top of the bed you didn’t use in unit 6. If it’s government property I don’t want to get in trouble. You can call us right here at the front desk and we’ll arrange to get it to you. 540-555-0218.”

Mulder was just remembering Scully throwing her phone’s charging cord onto her bed when there was a light knock on their office door. 

They looked up to find Arlene standing there with a sheepish look on her face, holding a short stack of file folders. 

“Agents?” she said, her cheeks pinkening. “Sorry to interrupt. The Assistant Director needs your signatures on these reports. I would have interofficed them, but it needs to be done today.” 

Mulder watched as a look of barely controlled panic crossed his partner’s face. Had Arlene heard the part about “the bed you didn’t use?” 

Making a conscious effort not to share any kind of look with Scully that Arlene might pick up on, he turned breezily towards the assistant. 

“Sure,” he said, waving her in and pressing the button to hang up the phone’s speaker function. “We can do that right now.”

[tophats-tea]

NEW 🔥 DGNG 🔥 LOG 🔥

been a while i think. Anyway like I said, there’s a Lot to say here. Her design is genuinely beautiful to look at, the colour scheme is immaculate, I think fourwings mentioned the asymmetry which looks really nice, and I absolutely love the hair (partly since it’s really fun to draw :P.

I’ll talk about the burn scar later, but there’s a lot to say just based on the rest of her design too. She has a butterfly collar (ult lepidopterologist, obv), and her right arm is almost entirely covered (interesting given the whole thing about which hand she usually uses). Zooming in, from what we can see, her right hand doesn’t seem to be damaged in any way (unlike the right side of her face), so it doesn’t seem like that it being hurt is the reason behind why she tries not to use her right hand. If it weren't for it being her right hand and not her left that she avoids using, I’d have maybe hazarded a guess that she was just raised to use her right hand despite being left-handed (though that in and of itself has its issues since she’s already 18, meaning she’d have already either grown used to being forced to use her right hand, which happens, or just outright decided herself to use her left).

Since that’s not the case, the reason could be for all we know because of any number of things. Some kind of internal damage in her body (and she was warned not to use her right by her doctor), superstition or some kind of self-imposed rule (likely not this one, since if anything, the left hand was always associated with evil/bad luck not the opposite), or even just something small like training to become ambidextrous or something (though heavily unlikely too). The muttering in pain line right after suggests the first option, but it could still be because of a bunch of different but similar reasons (it does point to the root cause being something to do with her burns though).

Going back to her design, what’s interesting about her monocle is that seeing through it, she has the same styled eyes as Chika. As of right now since we only have the default expression, it’s hard to judge if that’s a genuine connection since it doesn’t seem as expressive as Chika���s, but the lens does have the same colour, so it’s not entirely out of the question. It doesn’t seem like just a way to style all glasses though, given the same thing doesn’t happen with julien (though his glasses are a lot more transparent). The only thing going against it right now is the fact Chika’s eyes still have her eyebrows above them. Despite Kellen’s expression being neutral, she should still theoretically at least have an eyebrow slightly above her eye. That in and of itself could still be a style choice, simplifying the eye, but who knows.

Anyway, moving onto the quotes and other details, from what I can see, there’s nothing too out of the ordinary. Her quote is pretty standard, kinda similar to other logs of the same nature (especially Kya’s, which makes sense since they’re both scientists who research nature of some sort). Her likes and dislikes are fairly standard given her log blurb, but the bugs and fire is something that’s mentioned in Chika’s log too, which points to another connection between them. You could argue that given her talent is related to bugs, Chika’s log might foreshadow more ultimates whose talents are related to fire and people respectively, but that’s entirey just baseless speculation for now (you could say that that might suggest Naruko had met Chika after having met Kellen, since that would make the topic of bugs a possible discussion to come up). Kellen’s birthday’s also on Pi day, but I don’t think that’s really meant to mean anything. She’s also the fourth adult, which isn’t anything special for now.

Moving onto her blurb, the first line’s a bit suspicious, which might or might not place her as a candidate for antag? (regardless it’s definitely something that’ll come up later at the very least). Not like there’s been too many participants that give off that vibe so far. Anyway, She seems to be hiding something, which might be related to her left/right hand deal, or something else entirely. Goal-oriented is used to describe her, but is also an adjective explicitly used to describe Asaro, but given it’s one time, it’s probably not too important (probably along the level of importance of the diamond in Asaro/Mikazuki’s clothing, at least until a third participant comed up with the same pattern).

Her philosophy brings into question a new trio, where her, Poppi, and Chika all have conflicting worldviews. That’s something that’ll be interesting to look forward to developing as the killing game progresses, so that might lower all 3 of their chances of becoming the first victim/blackened, though not guaranteed.

Oh, also, something I forgot to mention about her use of her left hand is that it reminds me a lot of what happened with Nikei in SDRA2. From what I’ve heard (I haven’t actually watched the full fangan), Nikei was shown across the game talking about how much he liked his right hand, and how it’s what allows him to engage in his talent. When (spoilers for sdra2 obv) his right hand gets blown off in the fourth trial, his tendency to use his right hand still remained. When trying to escape his execution, he tries to jump and reach for the ladder of a helicopter, only for his instinct of reaching towards it with his (blown off) right hand to cause him to miss, causing his downfall (literally, since he fell to death ;-;). Anyway, just as a small theory, something similar might happen with Kellen as it did with Nikei with either her forcing herself to follow through with using her left hand (thereby dooming her), or the opposite, accidentally using her right hand despite everything she’s done to stop and suffering the consequences. That plot point could develop in any number of ways, so we’ll see as it actually starts.

That aside, that’s pretty much it for her main log. Moving on to the butterflies though, I can’t really tell if they’re a real species or entirely functional since that’s not really my field of interest, but given the fact that they’re canonically there in the killing game presents a lot of different opportunities in the future.

Being a topic to help her build connections, butterfly accomplice murders?, tragic butterfly deaths (average lifetime is 2-4 weeks), butterfly births??? (there is more than 1 tbf. Also opportunity for slightly corny jokes about Kenta and Julien Kenta), and a possibility for them to die before her whether through the killing game, the first chapter, or even in an execution. As an early plot point, their deaths could also be used as symbolism or an allegory for any number of possibilities too (speaking of which, an execution for the ultimate lepidopterist would genuinely be really interesting to see).

Moving on again, something pretty simple to note is that their names start with the same letter as Kellen and each have 2 syllables (and they’re each of pretty much the most popular 4 colour combo). Doesn’t really mean anything, but I thought it was nice to mention.

The quote, “I swear they [the butterflies] have it out for me” is a lighthearted joke, obviously, but it does hint towards some kind of interaction between Naruko and Kellen in the prologue that wasn’t mentioned in the log blurb. Probably something simple like them bothering her (as an introduction to Kellen showing up?) or then blocking her from speaking to Kellen. Well, either that or Naruko dies first as a fakeout protag killed by Kyra (Kellen butterfly #3).

The butterfly log’s labeled #10.5 and doesn’t have much written, which makes sense considering they’re…butterflies. That’s about it.

Oh, also also, something I never had the opportunity to mention was that some of the chest measurements are measured in inches while the others are in cm, while the heights are all in feet. Thought this might be a bit of a hint towards about the characters nationality-wise, but given Julien’s existence (claims to be british; uses inches), probably not. It’s probably an innocuous detail. Anyway, banger log. Kaia new favourite character frfr

Log #10: Kellen Asuka, Ultimate Lepidopterist

[armandssawtrap]

The craziest thing is that I know exactly what’s wrong with Armand and could write a thesis on it but I have NO idea what’s wrong with Louis he’s a psychological mystery to me

[couthbbg]

gonna be so serious….. I’ll be an am34 fan for life let’s get that out of the way but if the leafs tr*de mitchy…….. I’ll be a fan of whatever team he ends up on and like leafs who?? never heard of em

[justsomeguycore]

i can’t stop thinking about how we didn’t actually see ianthe kill naberius. and how she says “i didn’t kill him i ate him.” and how the look on his dead face was one of surprise. if we take everything we know about corona at face value it doesn’t make any sense. but wouldn’t it be wild if she was the one who killed him

[redgoldblue]

.

[mabaris]

ok i’m listening to yesterday’s vows and vengeance episode and i had to pause immediately because harding swearing by the stone was so unexpected??? the idea that surfacer dwarves still believe in the stone as an actual religion is so interesting because unlike the other religions in thedas that believe they were abandoned by their respective deistic force(s), it is the individual who abandons the stone. the maker left the physical world and the creators were locked away against their will, but the stone is always there until you leave it, by choice or by force.

to have someone born and raised on the surface who still pays some importance to the stone introduces the idea of redemption to the philosophy of the stone. to me, being on the surface and still putting some kind of importance on it implies you left unwillingly right? because if you choose to walk away from it, you don’t care about preserving those ties. i wonder if she’s going to be something of a foil to varric—a child of exiles, born and raised on the surface, but she actually does have a desire to connect to that culture. and maybe that desire to reconnect is related to her weird new powers

[lilislegacy]

You know what I always think about? Percy is the classic funny boyfriend. He’s sarcastic and witty. Some of his jokes are sharp and clever, many are corny dad jokes. But nevertheless he’s hilarious. And yet, Rick rarely writes Annabeth laughing at his jokes. I feel like he thinks it’s empowering for Annabeth to just roll her eyes or scold him every time. But he’s funny asf!! Let his girlfriend think he’s funny!

There’s a scene in HoH where Percy makes Annabeth laugh when they’re climbing down a cliff, and she has to tell him to stop so she doesn’t fall to her death. Then in CotG, Percy says something and Annabeth smiles against her will, and it makes Percy so happy. Those scenes are rare, but so. damn. cute. That said, I wish Annabeth wasn’t always trying so hard not to laugh at his jokes. I want to see him be able to make her smile and laugh so easily that it’s not even fair to her. I mean, the guy can drop banger after banger—there’s so much opportunity.

If these new books are supposed to be lower stakes, give me percabeth laughter. Give me Percy cracking bad jokes and Annabeth bursting out laughing with no shame. Give me her cackling at his witty comment so hard that her abs hurt and tears fall from her eyes. Even though we know Percy is conventionally attractive, give me Grover making a joke that the reason Annabeth likes Percy so much is because she spends so much time with her eyes closed since she’s always laughing. I want people to think they’re kinda annoying. I want to see their friends giving them side eyes from across the table because Percy’s making Annabeth laugh so hard that it’s disrupting the whole room.

Annabeth’s reluctance to laugh made sense before they were dating and were bickering 24/7, when they didn’t want to show their true feelings. But that’s not the case anymore. And don’t get me wrong, it really frustrates me how Rick seems to be rapidly reducing Percy to simply being “the funny guy.” He’s stripping him of so many qualities and compensating with double the cheesy humor. But the worst part is that even when being funny is all Rick will allow him to be, Percy still doesn’t get to be the funny boyfriend. It’s as if he wants Annabeth to be too mature for her boyfriend’s bad humor. But if Percy is going to continue be diminished to the stupid, annoying guy who can’t take things seriously, the LEAST Rick can do is give him the ability to easily make his girlfriend laugh.

[incognit0slut]

Pretty bunny

PART 1 OF KINKTOBER | MAIN MASTERLIST

Sub!Spencer x Playboy Bunny!Reader Spencer doesn’t know what to do when he recognizes you from his favorite adult magazine.

Content: (18+) 3k, boobjob, male oral, public space, and Spencer being insecure of his size but we love him just the way he is, right? a/n: "WE LOVE PRINCE CHARMING REID!" We say in unison while we hold hands and continue to chant over and over again

Issue number: 662. Date: June 2009. Centerfold, pages 36 through 42, draped in nothing but the iconic bunny ears.

Spencer shook his head. No. There was no way it could be you. There was no way the same Playboy bunny he had masturbated to was casually picking up a book in this quiet library. But there was something unmistakable about you. The familiar curve of your back, the subtle sway of your hips, the way your ass rounded perfectly as you reached further down the bottom shelf.

His pants tightened uncomfortably.

It really was you.

Dear god, what were the chances? Spencer had only come to this library on a whim. It was supposed to be a simple day—run a few errands on his free day, pick up groceries, maybe find a new book to keep himself occupied. But what he didn’t expect was to come face-to-face with the very woman he had spent far too many nights thinking about. The same woman whose body he knew too well, even if you didn’t know him at all.

He shifted nervously, trying to focus on anything else—the books, the shelves, the smell of old pages—but his eyes drifted back to you. His gaze lingered on the neckline of your blouse dipping low as you bent further, revealing the soft curve of your breasts.

His tongue swiped over his bottom lip.

“Can I help you?”

Spencer’s heart nearly stopped when he noticed you staring at him.

“No,” he rushed out, the word falling through his lips like autopilot. "I was, uh, looking for a book."

Your brow raised slightly. “I didn’t know I was part of the collection.”

He could feel the heat creeping up his neck, and he looked away, trying to think of a response that didn’t make him sound like an idiot.

“No, no, that’s not—of course you’re not… I—” He stopped, realizing he was only digging himself into a deeper hole. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

You straightened up, and he took in a sharp breath when your hips shifted slightly, brushing against the shelf as you moved.

“I wouldn’t say uncomfortable. Curious, maybe.” You crossed your arms. “You don’t seem like the kind of guy who goes around staring at women in libraries.”

“I don’t,” he blurted out, his voice coming out a little higher than he intended. The way your crossed arms subtly pushed up your breasts only made it harder for him not to gawk at your chest. His gaze briefly flickered downward before snapping back to your face.

“I don’t,” he repeated in a voice he hoped sounded more confident than he felt. “You look… familiar.”

“Familiar? Have we met before?”

Of course not. Well, to you at least. He, on the other hand, had seen you more times than he could count. In photos, in dreams, in moments he’d rather not admit. “I… might have seen you in passing.” It was the truth. Sort of. “I didn’t expect to see you in a library.”

You let out a soft laugh. “I guess I don’t seem like the reading type to you, do I?”

He quickly shook his head. “No, it’s not that. I just didn’t expect to run into someone like you here.”

“Someone like me?”

"You know, someone who’s, uh, famous.”

He instantly winced when the words tumbled out, regretting how awkward and clumsy it sounded.​

“Ah,” you said with a knowing smile. “So you do recognize me.”

He paused for a moment, his eyes darting to the floor, the ceiling, anywhere but directly at you. “I… yes, I do. And I’m sorry,” he added, his second apology in less than five minutes. “I didn’t mean to make this weird.”

Your smile deepened, clearly enjoying his discomfort, but not in a cruel way—more in the sense that you found his awkwardness oddly charming. “It’s fine, I’m actually used to it,” you told him, uncrossing your arms. “And I don’t mind being recognized by someone as cute as you.”

Spencer’s eyes widened slightly. “…cute?”

“Adorable,” you emphasized. “What’s your name?”

You called him cute. Cute.

What was his name again?

Oh. Right.

“Spencer.” He cleared his throat nervously. "I’m... Spencer."

“Spencer,” you repeated, and he could hear the way your voice softened, almost breathless, like you were savoring the sound of his name as it slipped from your lips. “It suits you.”

His tongue swiped along his bottom lip. “It does?”

“Mm-hmm. It has a nice ring to it.” Your eyes flickered down to his mouth for a split second before meeting his gaze again. "Strong, but gentle. You seem like the type of guy with those traits."

Spencer felt a wave of heat run through him. “I—I wouldn’t say that...”

“Well you are,” you continued, leaning in just slightly. “You seem gentle, but there’s more to you, isn’t there?”

“I… I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”

"Oh, come on," you said with a teasing grin, your eyes flickering over his features as if trying to read the depths of his thoughts. "You've got that sweet, quiet thing going on. Like you're trying to be all polite and proper... but there's something else, isn't there?"

His eyes darted at the edge of the bookshelf. “No. I’m just… me.”

"Just you? Somehow, I don't believe that. I think there's a side to you that doesn't come out very often. Maybe you're not so innocent as you let on. Or maybe..." Your voice dropped lower, almost a whisper, just loud enough for him to hear. "Maybe you're not as gentle as you seem."

There was a flicker of panic in his eyes as he tried to laugh off your words, the sound coming out strained and awkward.

“I’m really not that…”

But you didn’t let him finish. You leaned in closer, just enough that he could feel the heat of your body, your breasts brushing lightly against his chest.

“Not that what?” you pressed. “Not that innocent, or not that gentle?”

His pulse pounded visibly at his throat. “I... don’t know what you mean,” he said, but you could see the way his pupils dilated, the way his fingers twitched at his sides.

“I think you do,” you replied softly, your fingers brushing just barely against his. You watched as he stiffened, his shoulders momentarily tensing as if the slightest touch sent a shock through his whole body. You smiled, leaning in just a fraction closer. “I like you.”

You felt his breath hit your face as he let out a strangled sound, almost a gasp, and the warmth of it urged you on. Your hand gently found its way to his arm, fingers tracing a path down to his wrist.

“And I think,” you continued, looking up at him with wide eyes. “You might like me too.”

Spencer couldn’t find the words to respond, he couldn’t even breathe properly. How could he when your sweet scent filled his senses? How could he when he had imagined what it might be like to touch you, to have you this close, and now it was real?

He took a deep, calming breath to steady himself, but his heart was pounding violently against his ribcage, and his mouth had gone completely dry. Your fingers trailed down his arm, lingering for a moment before slipping under his hand to guide it firmly to your waist.

He was sure he could combust right on the spot.

“Tell me something, Spencer,” you murmured. “Did you like my pictures? The ones in the magazine?”

He tenses under your touch. His pupils dilated even further, his grip tightening on your waist involuntarily.

“I—uh,” he breathed out, his voice almost breaking, eyes darting away as if he couldn’t quite bring himself to meet your gaze. But you didn’t let him retreat. You shifted slightly, pressing your soft breasts more firmly against his chest. His gaze flickered back to your cleavage.

“Come on, I bet you did. I bet you… enjoyed them.” You let the implication linger. “Didn’t you?

His eyes fluttered close. Enjoyed felt too innocent for what he'd felt, what he'd done. He didn't just enjoy those photos—he devoured them. He touched himself, imagining you sprawled in front of him in that same pose. He fantasized about you, dreamt of your pretty face, the sultry look in your eyes, the way those cute bunny ears framed your hair but left everything else bare.

He grew even more painfully hard at the thought, and you could feel his his arousal pressed against your hip. A soft laugh escaped your lips.

"Spencer,” you cooed, his name rolling off your tongue effortlessly. "What ever are you thinking?"

He tried to shift away.

“I-I’m not—” he started, but every word he tried to speak died on his lips the moment your hand brushed against his stomach. He felt like all the air had been knocked out of his lungs.

“You’re not?” You let your fingers trail down his abdomen, feeling the way his muscles clenched under your touch, before drifting even lower. “Because it seems like you've got something on your mind. Or..."

Your fingers passed over his belt buckle, grazing the edge of his waistband.

“Somewhere..."

You hovered over his bulge.

“…else."

Without hesitation, you palmed his erection, feeling the full hardness straining against the fabric. He sucked in a sharp breath. “W-What are you—”

You brought your lips to the shell of his ear, letting your breath tickle his skin. “I think you know what I'm doing."

Spencer's eyes glanced to the side, as if anyone might appear around the corner at any second, but he couldn’t bring himself to pull away. Not when your hand was moving slowly along his length.

“We… we can’t,” he managed to choke out. “Someone could—could see us."

“Hmm? Should I stop then?” You pulled back just enough to look into his eyes. “Do you want me to stop, Spencer?”

The hesitation in his eyes was unmistakable, but so was the desperation. Brown orbs stared helplessly back at you. He couldn’t bring himself to say yes when every part of him screamed no. So he opted for silence, hoping that his lack of protest would tell you everything he couldn’t put into words.

You understood him clearly, so you pressed your hand more firmly on his bulge, fingers teasing the sensitive outline through his pants. The shape of him grew even more defined as you moved slowly, teasingly, with just enough pressure to make him gasp.

“Feels good, doesn’t it?”

His grip on your waist tightened.

“Y-yes,” he managed to breathe out, eyes half-closed as he gave himself over to the sensation.

"I bet I can make you feel even better.”

Without breaking eye contact, you began to sink slowly to your knees, hands sliding down his body. You let your fingers trace down his hips as you came face to face with the unmistakable outline of his arousal, your gaze still locked on his as a smirk danced on your lips.

An IQ of 187 was hardly enough to process what was happening now. Every neuron in his brain fired wildly, trying to make sense of the rush of sensations, the heat of your touch, the intensity in your eyes.

How was this even real?

You let your lips hover for a moment, teasing him with the anticipation before you pressed a soft, lingering kiss against his cock. He let out a muffled cry.

“Shh,” you whispered soothingly, your fingers working at the straps of his belt. The metallic clink of the buckle was faint as you loosened it, pulling it free with a soft hiss of leather. “We don’t want anyone to hear us, do we?”

Your fingers brushed against his waistband, eyes looking up at him all doe-eyed, wide and innocent, though everything about your touch was far from it.

He was going crazy. You looked so sexy, so pretty, yet so impossibly cute in that moment, like the very picture of temptation wrapped in innocence. His mind couldn’t help but flicker back to those pictures—the pictures—where you wore nothing but those bunny ears, your gaze so similar to the one you were giving him now.

He watched as you slowly peeled down the fabric, and found himself holding his breath. The cool air met his hot skin as his cock sprang free, and for a second, he couldn’t breathe.

Because Spencer knew he was different. He wasn’t like the other men you’d surely encountered, who knew their way around a woman like you, who were confident, who didn’t hesitate. And then there was the matter of size. He couldn’t help the thoughts rushing through his mind, wondering if you’d find him lacking, if he measured up to whatever experiences had shaped you into the woman that knelt before him now.

But a smile tugged at the corners of your lips as you wrapped your hand around his cock.

“You’re so…” You let out a small, appreciative laugh, your thumb brushing over his tip. “God, everything about you is cute, isn’t it?”

Spencer struggled to steady his breath, his chest rising and falling in uneven bursts as your touch made it impossible to think clearly. You leaned closer, eyes still locked on his, and your tongue darted out to give a teasing kitten-lick along the base of his cock.

“Not too big,” you teased, dragging your tongue up the underside, tracing every ridge.

“Not too small…”

You let your tongue travel upward until you reached the tip, where you sucked gently, swirling your tongue around him in circles that had his legs shaking.

“You’ll fit perfectly.”

A pained groan fell through his lips. “Fit… where?”

You let go with a wet pop, his cock twitching as the cool air replaced the warmth of your mouth. Holding his gaze, you let your fingers move to your blouse, slowly undoing the buttons one by one. “Don’t think I didn’t catch you staring.”

Then in one sudden, fluid motion, you tugged your bra down, letting your breasts spill free. The movement made them bounce slightly, the soft curve of your flesh catching the light, and Spencer’s eyes went wide.

His lips parted as if to say something, but no words came out, just a strangled groan as his cock twitched visibly. The sight of you was too much for him to bear. He couldn’t decide where to look, his gaze flickering between your breasts and your face, like he was afraid to miss a single second of this moment. He followed your movement with wide, hungry eyes as you wrapped your hand around the base of his cock, guiding him to your chest.

“See?” you teased, pressing his length firmly between the soft, warm flesh of your breasts. “Perfect fit.”

His pupils dilated with full-blown lust as you started to move, slowly at first, letting him feel every inch of your warm, soft flesh sliding around his cock. You squeezed your breasts tighter together, the pressure creating a delicious friction that had him biting back a groan, his eyes glued to the way he disappeared and reappeared between your curves.

Up. Down. Up. Down. The head of his cock glistened as it emerged at the top again, only to slide back down into your cleavage, leaving a hot, wet trail along your skin.

“God… oh god,” Spencer choked out, his voice strained as his hips bucked slightly with each thrust. His eyes squeezed shut briefly, only to flutter back open as if afraid to miss a second of what was happening. His mind was a mess of disjointed thoughts, desperately trying to make sense of the scene unfolding before him. But all rationality was drowned out by the way you moved, the soft squeeze of your breasts around him, and the warm, slick glide of your sweat-kissed skin against his length.

He felt himself spiraling, the pleasure climbing higher, and all he could think was how good you looked, how perfect it felt, and how badly he wanted to paint his cum all over your face.

“Look at you all worked up.” You leaned forward slightly, letting the tip of his cock brush against your lips as it emerged, just the barest whisper of a touch. “You’re already so close, aren’t you?”

His fingers dug even deeper into the shelf, nails scraping against the wood. His voice was raw, almost desperate, as he let out a strained, “Please.”

With a satisfied smile, you lowered your head just enough to let your tongue flick out, circling around the head of his cock as it emerged from between your breasts, tasting the salty-sweet bead of arousal that had formed there. His hips slammed forward.

“Mm,” you hummed softly. “You wanna use me now, Spencer? Is that what you want?”

His grip on the shelf finally faltered, and you could hear the whimper in his throat, the way he bit down on his lip to keep from making a sound that would echo in the library. “Yes,” he gasped. “Please, I… I need to…”

“Go on,” you coaxed him, squeezing your breasts tighter around his length. “If you want it, take it. Use me.”

The moment those words left your lips, his hips jerked forward. The movement was sharp, desperate, and once he started, he couldn’t stop. He fucked himself into the tight, slick warmth of your breasts. He stammered incoherently, half-formed words falling from his lips, barely audible over the sounds of his ragged breaths and muffled whimpers.

“Please, I—I can’t… I can’t—oh god…”

He finally snapped, his body trembling violently as the sensation ripped through him, the pressure too intense, too overwhelming. His hips bucked wildly, thrusting desperately into the warmth of your body, lost in the heat, in the wetness, in the need to let go completely—

And then, everything vanished in an instant.

He jolted awake, eyes snapping open, his chest heaving as he took in his surroundings. No longer surrounded by warmth, no longer on the brink of release. Just the quiet stillness of his bedroom, sweat beading on his forehead, heart pounding in his chest, sheets tangled around his body… and the magazine lay open beside him, your image staring back at him mockingly.

Bunny ears perched on your head, delicate breasts spilling over, legs spread wide apart.

It took a few seconds for Spencer to catch his breath. He glanced down at himself, his eyes trailing to his painfully hard arousal, noticing the wetness seeping through his boxers and sticking to his skin. The rush of disappointment and adrenaline twisted sharply in his chest as reality hit him.

It was just a dream.

An embarrassing, all-consuming, impossible dream.

[amu-says-hav-says]

I can’t believe I went through all of Season 2 assuming Nina was the stand-in for Crowley when you actually pay attention it’s so CLEAR that she’s Aziraphale. I was tricked by her spiky, sarcastic, cynical outer shell and lulled into a false sense of security by Maggie’s bubbly optimism and wholesome goodness, because on the surface they reflect the ineffable husbands perfectly, in their personalities, their aesthetics, even many of their actions and morals. but not, and this is the real key, when it comes to their “relationship”. but those first impressions really had me damn fooled. 

I missed the blatantness of Nina’s “we’re just friends. actually we’re not friends. we barely know each other.” the same thing Aziraphale said in season 1.  the way he still struggles to quantify their friendship when Nina asks. Nina’s sarcasm when Crowley asks about rain and awnings because it worked for him (we all know it LMAO). hell, that whole convo the girls have in the rain is so AziraCrow (“I know. I’m not your type” “...You have no idea” hits so much harder the second time, help meeeee.) “Lindsay” maybe being symbolic of Heaven and Aziraphale’s toxic relationship with them and their abuse? (the handwritten text messages in red pen make me think of angry notes on paperwork, anyone else?) because Crowley has never actually cared about what Hell thinks of him, just not getting into trouble (or him or Aziraphale getting hurt). Maggie is always chasing Nina. NINA NEVER GOES IN THE RECORD STORE. Just like Crowley always goes to the bookstore, to Aziraphale, Zira NEVER WENT TO THE FLAT (apart from The Swap but that doesn’t count imo). Crowley has always chased Zira, not the other way around. Always there to rescue him, always going to him for company, always relying on their shared connection, always US. OUR SIDE. All through season one, he comes to Zira every time to work together, never trying to work alongside Hell in any way that isn’t to save their skins or Earth, while Zira hides things from Crowley because he STILL thinks Heaven is ultimately good and will do the right thing if he can just show them. fix it from the inside. 

Maggie working up the courage to finally say something, to put herself out there, while Nina is utterly oblivious and then when she does realise Maggie has feelings, becoming standoffish, putting up that barrier, fighting it, denying it, ITS SO CROWLEY AND AZIRAPHALE IN THAT ORDER. the way I was fooled into thinking Nina’s trust issues are Crowley because he does have trust issues ofc he does BUT Crowley has ALWAYS TRUSTED AZIRAPHALE. has always relied on him. has always been hurt when Aziraphale doesn’t immediately reciprocate the way he expects (the holy water request, the bandstand, the “off in the stars” etc). he’s always the one putting himself forward. Aziraphale has always been the one to second guess everything, to fight their connection, their similarities, their friendship. the girls really made me think it was going to be okay when they sat Crowley down, even as my inner sirens were going haywire about Metatron interfering, they were telling Crowley he just needs to open up and it’ll all work out BUT HE’S ALREADY AT THAT POINT. he may not say it, and by gosh is that part of their damn problem, but he’s always SHOWN IT. he’s not Nina who needs time to heal and recover from her broken trust, he’s always been Maggie believing it doesn’t matter, they’ll end up together in the end anyway AND I WALKED RIGHT INTO THE TRAP THAT THIS MEANT THEY WERE GOING TO BE OKAYYYYYYYYYYY

[nereidprinc3ss]

do you believe me now? | 4

in which spencer reid and inexperienced fem!reader are interrupted at the most inopportune of times. he calls you on the first night of his case. dirty talk turns into a hard conversation. we get a glimpse into spencer's past, and we finally learn why he's so hesitant to sleep with you.

series masterlist

18+ (smut) warnings/tags: dirty talk, phone sex/mutual masturbation, softdom!spence, obligatory he talks u through it, lots of graphic discussions of sex, established relationship, angst (sorrryyy!) a/n: so remember how i said you'd need the bonus chapter to fully appreciate/understand this part? i was wrong!! it will come in handy probably in the next part tho:) also idk how these parts keep getting so long im sorry! anyway, i love you all so bad. thank you for bearing w/ my craziness. PLEASE let me know your thoughts on this part!! i adore hearing from you!! kisses

(also special thank you to @fliesforeyes who convinced me phone sex w/ spence could be done!! i will link his phone sex blurb here :)) thank u binx!!

“Three million six hundred eighty four thousand three hundred thirty two times fourteen million seven hundred sixty one thousand nine hundred seventy one.”

You’ve lost count of how many stupid math questions you’ve asked your human calculator boyfriend, just to see if he can actually do them. Spencer is silent for a second, and you think you’ve finally stumped him. 

“That one is complicated.”

You sit bolt upright in his bed, looking down at him and pointing an accusatory finger. His brows raise at the manic look in your eye. 

“You don’t know.”

“I do know. I meant it would be hard to explain if you aren’t a math person.”

“Bullshit!” You scoff, “you don’t know!”

“It would display on a calculator as five-point-three-eight-eight-E-thirteen. It’s a really big number.”

“Oh, really big, huh?” you mumble, searching for your phone blindly in the sheets and scrambling to open the calculator app. “Um… what numbers did I say?”

Spencer repeats them back to you and you press the equals sign. 

You look at it. 

And then you set your phone down. 

“I was right, huh?” he smiles up at you, probably reveling in your pouty wrongness. 

Too proud to admit it, you collapse on top of him, burying your face in his shoulder. 

“I don’t like this game anymore. What the fuck even is an e? Why are we doing algebra?”

Spencer laughs, brushing your hair aside. 

“The e stands for exponent. It’s to the power of ten.”

“Ever heard of a rhetorical question?”

“Yes, I have.”

It’s hard not to snort even at his dumbest jokes. 

“You’re annoying. Let’s do something else.”

You roll over onto your back again, letting your head flop over to look at Spencer, whose hair is exactly the right amount of messy after a long day, falling in impossibly soft waves over the perfect lines and contours of his face. Despite lounging, he’s still in his suit from work—he’d left Quantico and immediately picked you up. There were no solid plans for the evening, so after both of you pretended that you wanted to go out for a while, you ended up back at his apartment. 

He looks good. Almost too good. 

“Something like what?” he smiles lazily, reaching over and tracing his fingers over your cheek. 

“Something… naked?”

His grin widens and he shakes his head. 

“Me naked or you naked?”

Pretending to think about it, you roll your bottom lip between your teeth. 

“Mm… why not both?”

“Hm. Why do I feel like I know where this is going?”

The mattress sinks underneath your elbow as you prop yourself up, dropping your head over Spencer’s to kiss him. 

“Because you’re so smart, and you think it’s a great idea.”

He entertains your kiss for a moment. Just a moment.

“You sound sure of yourself.”

“Because I am!” You finally give in to your impulses, tangling your fingers in his hair and looking at him meaningfully. “It doesn’t make any sense for us to have not had sex. I don’t care about any of your weird, cryptic moral reasoning.”

He grabs your wrist carefully. 

“It is not moral,” he scoffs. “We haven’t even talked about it yet.”

“Really? Because I feel like we’ve talked about it a lot.” 

He begins to reply, but you realize you don’t want to get into a debate over whether you’ve technically talked about it yet. “I don’t even care! If that’s all that’s standing in your way, then let’s talk about it. Right now.”

Spencer sighs, his eyes darting between yours as he reaches up to cradle your cheek. 

“Fine. But I have things to say you’re not going to like.”

“So business as usual?”

He rolls his eyes. You allow yourself a tiny self-satisfied smirk, forever relishing in his poorly-hidden soft spot for your constant teasing. Spencer ignores this. Which is probably for the best. 

“I know you probably won’t see it this way, but—sex is different than everything else we’ve done so far. It can be really fun, obviously it feels good, it facilitates deeper feelings of connection—that’s all true. Which is why, in my opinion, it’s incredibly important that you be selective with who you sleep with. Because it’s so easy to do something you regret, and sex is vulnerable. It should always be with someone you trust and—and… care about.”

A pink flush stains his cheeks like watercolor as he stumbles over the last few words. It makes your heart flutter against the confines of your chest.

Maybe best not to think about the absence versus presence of certain four-letter words and what they may or may not mean. You’ll move on to more pressing matters and pretend like it doesn’t ache just a little in your whole body. 

You cover his hand with your own. 

“Are you going to break up with me anytime soon?”

Spencer’s eyes widen, filling with genuine horror and confusion. 

“What? No!”

“Are you going to cheat on me?”

“Absolutely not, I—”

“Then I’m not going to regret it. Issue resolved. Moving on.”

“Honey, I just want you to be 100% sure that I’m what you want.”

“Oh my god,” you groan, flopping onto your back once more. “I have begged you to sleep with me on multiple occasions. We have been dating for months and I liked you even longer before that. I think about it literally every time I see you. I don’t know how to be any surer.”

It’s quiet for a moment as you study the imaginary pattern on the ceiling. The rebuttal you’d been anticipating doesn’t come—instead, the mattress shifts next to you. Spencer enters your field of vision, now leaning over you with a little smile on his face that gives you butterflies. 

“Every time?”

“…yes, every time,” you agree, voice considerably thinner than it had been a moment ago. Spencer glances at your lips as he speaks. 

“Interesting. And what is it that you think about exactly?”

You groan again, attempting to roll facedown, but he pins your shoulder to the bed. The way he’s sweetly kissing down your cheek and jaw is infuriating because you know it’s a false pretense. 

“Ugh, I don’t know! Don’t make me answer that!”

“You said if talking about it was all that was standing in my way, we would talk about it. Now I want to talk about it. Come on,” he says, voice low and cloying against your throat as he attempts to tease the answer out of you. “Tell me what you think about when you think about us having sex.”

You let out a shaky breath at the feeling of his lips skimming your neck, hating how easily he can reduce you to this. 

“I… I always wonder what it will feel like. Sometimes I wonder if it will hurt.”

Spencer sighs, interrogation by way of seduction momentarily forgotten. You silently curse yourself for saying something so��un-sexy. 

“It might, sweetheart. That’s one of the reasons we’ve held back. I… really don’t want to hurt you. I don’t even know if I can.”

You grab his face in both hands, forcing him to look at you with more confidence than you feel. 

“Sometimes I worry about it, too. But I like you a lot more than it scares me. I still want to.”

He kisses your palm. 

“You’ll be okay. It doesn’t hurt for everyone, and even if it does, you’re resilient.”

“Exactly. So you have to get over yourself.”

Spencer laughs like he wasn’t expecting to, eyes sparkling as he regards you.  

“Yeah. Yeah, maybe I do.”

He’s smiling again as he leans down and kisses you—a slow, lingering thing which tastes like spearmint as you part your lips for him. 

“Please?” you whisper against him after a long moment. He hums, keeps kissing you. 

“What is it that you think you want? You don’t even know what you’re asking for.”

“Tell me,” you beg, chasing his lips. “Tell me what you’re going to do with me. We can talk about it. This is talking about it.”

Spencer exhales deeply, wedging a thigh between yours. Immediately you clamp around it, trying not to grind against him too overtly. 

“You want to know what I’d do to you?”

“Yes—” you paw at his jacket. Surprisingly, he doesn’t stop you from pushing it off. Your heart pounds. 

“Well… we both know how anxious you get,” he muses, pressing his lips so delicately to your fluttering pulse-point in emphasis, and then back to your mouth. His thigh pushes harder against you to supplant the absence of his lips as he speaks, though he kisses you sporadically and between sentences. “You’re hard to get out of your head when you’re nervous, you know that? I watch it happen. One minute you’re with me, and then you start overthinking, and getting self-conscious. The only thing that seems to relax you is letting me touch you—so first I would touch you like I’ve touched you before. I’d make sure you know how pretty you are and how good you deserve to feel.” You whimper inadvertently at his words, arching into him and grinding against his leg as he pauses to kiss the sensitive soft spot below your jaw. “You’re going to need to be really ready to let me in. Do you know what I mean by that?”

As he asks, he pushes his thigh against you harder. Your body responds immediately, arching into him and seeking more friction. When you squeak, he takes it as a no. 

“I mean I need you relaxed and wet. You’ll excuse my crude language.”

You pull at his tie, breathing heavier now and so turned on it’s almost painful. 

“What are you gonna do after that?”

“What else is there to do but fuck you after that?” he breathes. “You want me to tell you how I’d fuck you?”

Something about it makes you whine salaciously. You’ve heard him curse—you’ve even heard him talk about fucking you. But it feels more real now; when it’s low in your ear and you’re covertly undressing him and he’s pushing your shirt over your stomach promisingly. 

“Yes, please.” 

He hums against your jaw, nipping and brushing his lips over the skin as he considers. Leaves you waiting. 

“I would have to take my time with you. You’ll be overwhelmed. I know you think you won’t, but you will. I’m going to have to be so, so careful with you, angel. It’s going to drive me insane. But it will feel good for you.”

“Why careful? I don’t want that.”

He chuckles. A chill runs down your spine. 

“Yeah, you do. You’re going to want me to be careful when I’m—” he pauses, pressing his thumb to your bare lower tummy and dragging up to a spot below your belly button. He presses down lightly again. “Right here. Approximately.”

The surface of the sun has nothing on the temperature of your skin in this moment, as you writhe underneath him in both arousal and embarrassment. Mostly, burning need. You feel almost sick with it. 

“Please don’t make me wait anymore. Just do it, please, Spencer. I need it to be you, I don’t want it to be anyone else. I promise I’m ready.”

It’s silent for a moment. Your heart quickens. You sense his walls wearing away, his instinct to keep you intact for god knows what reason crumbling. He’s finally going to give you what you’ve been begging for. 

Spencer opens his mouth, eyes glimmering—

And then his phone rings. 

You both freeze—he melts dejectedly before you do, more accustomed to an ill-timed phone call and realizing the finality it can present. 

He’s breathing heavily against your neck, as if maybe whoever it is will just hang up. But the phone keeps ringing. 

“I’m sorry.”

Your stomach sinks as he sits up, grabbing his phone from the side table and rubbing circles on your inner thigh as he answers.

“This is Reid,” he says, lackluster. 

If you wanted, you could hear what Penelope is saying—but you don’t bother listening. It’s going to be a case. Spencer is about to leave. The details are his problem. 

“Okay. I’ll be there in an hour.”

He hangs up, tossing the phone onto the mattress and not speaking for a moment, just continuing to rub your leg apologetically. Watching you almost mournfully—taking in your disheveled hair, your likely blown-out pupils, the shirt pushed almost over your chest. 

“I have to go right now,” he finally manages with a heavy sigh, gently pulling your shirt back into place. 

You sit up, shedding all the hopes that had been building for the evening, and try to sound chipper—though all you feel is bitter disappointment that goes deeper than you understand. 

“I know. Go ahead, I can get a cab home.”

He frowns, running his hand over the back of your hair. 

“I don’t love the idea of you standing on the sidewalk waiting for a car in this part of town so late. Do you just want to stay here for the night and go home tomorrow?”

You force a smile. Great. So you’ll be spending the night in his bed after all—just without him. 

“Sure. Thanks.”

“Yeah.”

Neither of you are feeling particularly grateful. 

Soon you’re walking him to his own door. Both of you come to a stop in front. 

“I’m sorry,” he sighs again. 

“Spencer, it’s fine. It’s your job. You don’t need to apologize. You were very clear about this part when we started dating.”

“I know, but… it’s easier in theory than in practice.”

You smile. If Spencer is a reflection of you, it doesn’t quite reach your eyes. His hair is still messy from your fingers running through it and he’s missing his tie. You hope all his coworkers see and feel bad about taking him away from you. 

But it’s not their fault. You just want someone to blame. 

Instead you mould yourself to his body, wrapping around him like you belong there. He returns your embrace, pressing his lips into the crook of your shoulder and rubbing your back in that way he always does with you. 

In that moment, your affection for him becomes so profound it’s like a chemical reaction—everywhere he touches burns and you love him so fucking much it aches in every inch of your body the way your muscles do when you have a bad fever. Love is the most terrible of afflictions, you realize. It is a fever dream. It’s every fiber of your being screaming to tell him how you feel, to beg him on your knees not to go because you love him like a child loves a parent or a bee loves honeysuckle or the ocean loves the horizon. Pared down to your most basic components, the barest version of yourself, you require him. Your soul needs his soul. 

“Spencer?”

“Hm?” 

It’s nothing more than an absentminded hum against your skin. 

“I…”

Should you be looking him in the eye when you say this? Should you say it right before he has to leave? Just because you say it doesn’t change the fact that he’s about to be gone for several long days. Maybe this is a terrible time to admit something that suddenly feels so true and so consequential. 

He senses your internal conflict, pulling back despite your resistance and holding your face between his hands. 

“You what?” He murmurs, soft eyes bouncing back and forth between your own. Fuck—you feel so observed, now. Like he can read your mind. 

“I forget.”

FUUUUUUCK. 

Spencer blinks. Processes. You watch the disbelief crystallizing over his eyes like ice freezing over a lake. 

He knows. 

He knows you didn’t forget, and he probably knows what you were going to say, and he’s going to tell himself he was wrong to spare your dignity. 

Everything hurts when he kisses you. You wonder what regret tastes like. 

“Well, let me know if you remember.”

It’s too gentle and at the same time he can’t hide the edge with all the tenderness in the world. You nod as if in a trance, already looking forward to dissociating as you lie in bed and stare at the dark ceiling.

Two small goodbyes are exchanged, slightly stifled now, as if shared between drunk strangers who have sobered up and are mutually embarrassed about how candidly they’d interacted before. 

You close the door behind him, doing up all the locks, and meticulously flick every light switch in the apartment off before climbing into his bed—though you don’t really feel like you deserve to be there anymore.

But perhaps this is all an overreaction. It’s not like you owe it to him to say I love you, or anything—it was bad timing, anyway. And why can’t he say it? In fact, why hasn’t he said it? 

Maybe you have it all wrong. 

Maybe he doesn’t feel that way about you. 

You fall asleep before you allow these questions to make you sick. 

24 hours go by. 

24 hours go by and you really had meant to leave his apartment—it was just that you woke up late, and your phone was dead so you couldn’t call a car, so you charged it while you made breakfast, and then you ate, and then you decided to take a shower and wash your clothes, and then it was two in the afternoon and you hadn’t left yet and you decided to walk to the store and replenish the groceries you’d used up. 

Maybe you got a bit distracted looking at flowers and other beautiful things at the market and by the time you got home it was 5:00, so you decided to wait until seven to skip rush hour. And then eight, just to be sure. 

Before you know it, it’s midnight, and you’re dozing off in his bed again (teeth cleaned with the brush you’d bought at the store—maybe this whole situation hadn’t been entirely unwitting on your part.)

Throughout the day, you tried to let all your anxiety about the previous night melt away. If it’s something that needs to be addressed, Spencer will address it. Everything will work out in the end. That thought is how you’re able to doze off. 

You’re almost asleep when your phone lights up and begins buzzing on the side table. You wince as your eyes open, not adjusting well to the harsh bright display and unable to discern who’s even calling you at this hour. Stupidly, probably because you’re half asleep, you answer without checking. 

“Hello?”

Your voice is groggy, quiet with sleep. 

“Shit, did I wake you?”

“Spence?” you whisper, stomach flipping at the sound of his voice on the other line. You feel caught, still sleeping in his bed. 

“… yeah,” he chuckles. “Did you not check who was calling before you picked up?”

“I was asleep,” you pout. “Kinda.”

“Okay. Go back to sleep, honey. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

You sit bolt upright, phone balanced between tense fingers and speaking directly into the microphone. 

“No! No, I’m awake. What’s up? Why did you call?”

A longer stretch of silence—you’re too sleepy to comprehend what it might mean, though never too sleepy to worry about it. With a pang of pain, you recall your strange goodbye, the words you hadn’t said. 

“I just needed to hear your voice,” he sighs. You frown, staring at nothing in particular in the pitch black room. 

“Oh. Is everything okay?”

“As much as it can be.”

“Right.”

More quiet. You chew on the inside of your cheek, stricken with a sudden feeling of awkwardness that you haven’t had with Spencer in a while. 

“I’m sorry… I don’t really know what to say.”

“That’s okay,” he says, and you can hear the smile in his voice which makes you feel a bit better, “why don’t you tell me about your day? Or you can absolutely go back to sleep, if you’re too tired.”

“Don’t ask me about my day,” you whisper, flopping down on the bed once more. Shame seeps into your voice. He laughs. 

“What? Why?”

“Because if I tell you you’re going to think I’m super weird and you’re going to break up with me.”

Laughter tapers off into gentler tones. 

“I already think you’re super weird. It’s actually one of your most attractive qualities.”

Blood rushes to your cheeks. 

“But it’s like… borderline crazy.”

Immediately, he replies, “for better or worse, I also frequently find myself attracted to crazy.”

“Thank you for calling me crazy and super weird,” you grumble. 

“I also called you attractive twice. Tell me.”

When his tone takes on that easy, assertive quality, and it’s sort of raspy and low because it’s late and he’s been talking all day, and you can hear the lazy smile on his face—you imagine him laying on his hotel bed, arm slung over his eyes in the dark as he grins into the microphone—you have a very difficult time saying no. 

“Fine. Guess where I am right now.”

“Um, I would hope you’re in bed?”

You smile to yourself, basking in the victory of successfully throwing him off his game even slightly. 

“Guess whose bed.”

Silence. 

“What an interesting question.” That cocky smile, the low drawling is back, and you chew on your lip, ignoring the shiver that runs down your spine. “If it’s not mine or yours, we’re going to have issues.”

“But if it is yours? You’re not going to call the police on me?”

“Why would I call the police? To tell them there’s a pretty girl in my bed and I don’t want her there?”

“To tell them your psychopathic girlfriend broke into your apartment and might be holding hostages there.”

Spencer laughs; a brittle, drawn out thing, flat and quiet as the desert.

“If you were a psychopath, calling the cops would be a waste of time. I would handle you myself.” The idea of being handled has your thighs clenching. “But—yeah, don’t invite anyone else in.” More humor finds its way into his voice, momentarily relieving some tension that had sneakily begun to build. “Having people in my space makes me anxious.”

“But not me?” Your whisper is half flirtatious, half insecure. Spencer’s reply is soft, as if he’s picking up on this from hundreds of miles away.

“No, not you. You are always the exception.”

“Good,” you say, cheeks aching as you half-bury your warm face into his pillow. “Because I made myself really comfortable. You have a nice shower, by the way.”

Spencer groans. 

“You’re killing me.”

“What? What did I do!”

“Don’t talk to me about my bed and my shower. I might start to think you’re intentionally being a brat.”

“You asked me about my day! I’m just telling you what I did!”

But you’re also intentional teasing him for sure.  After a pause, he sighs in defeat. 

“You’re right. I did do that. Tell me what else happened.”

“Well,” you begin, all too eager, “I had to put my clothes in the dryer after I got out, so I borrowed some of yours. But then they were way comfier than mine, so after I went to the store I put them back on, and—”

“Okay.”

“Okay what?” you frown. 

“Tell me what this is.”

“I—I don’t know what you mean.”

Lying to a profiler is usually pointless. 

“I’m not stupid, sweetheart. Tell me why you keep talking about my shower and my bed and my clothes.”

Caught red-handed. Your skin heats up. 

“I don’t know. I miss you.”

He hums in a way that blurs the line between sympathetic and patronizing. Even through the phone you can feel the bass of it in your bones.  It changes the frequency you’re vibrating at. It’s hypnotic. 

“But that’s not really why you’re being intentionally provocative, is it?”

“No,” you admit quietly. “I’m still upset you had to go last night.”

“So you’re frustrated and you’re taking it out on me?”

Your brow furrows. Well, when he puts it like that…

“I’m not taking anything out on you.”

“I think you are. And I don’t appreciate that, because I’m on your side, honey. Do you think I prefer being in a hotel bed by myself or being in my bed with you?”

Somehow, he makes you feel like a scolded child. But he makes it appealing in ways you don’t understand. 

“Your bed with me,” you murmur, skin prickling with the coldness of his absence even as you curl under the blanket. 

“Right. So why don’t you tell me what I can do for you right now, instead of punishing me for things that are beyond my control?”

“I wasn’t punishing you,” you mutter. 

“No? You weren’t intentionally talking about using my shower and sleeping in my bed and putting on my clothes so that I’d have to think about what I can’t have right now?”

“I—”

“Believe me when I tell you I have been thinking about what I can’t have, all day. Your efforts are entirely redundant and you can’t say anything about yourself that is even close to as dirty as the frankly disrespectful thoughts I’ve been having about you for seventeen hours.”

The lack of air is making you so dizzy your vision goes gray at the edges. 

“What… what thoughts?”

“None that you need to concern yourself with.”

“You can’t just say something like that and then not tell me!” you insist. He’s obviously giving you a taste of your own medicine and it’s fair but it doesn’t mean you have to like it. 

“I can do whatever I want,” Spencer corrects cooly in a way that pisses you off beyond belief because he’s right. It triggers some adolescent immaturity within you—a desire to get back at him, so to speak. He wants intentionally provocative? He can have it. 

“Fine. Then so can I. And there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it even if I could.”

“Spencer,” you warn. “If you don’t tell me what you were thinking I’m gonna—” you look around the room for ammo. “I’m gonna look through your nightstand!”

“Go ahead. I’ll warn you, it’s not very interesting.”

“Sounds like what someone who has something hide would say,” you mumble, crawling across the mattress through tangled sheets and using your phone flashlight to open the drawer. 

Spencer is patient and silent as you take in its contents—a small blue leather-bound notebook (full of what looks like Russian), a fountain pen, a glasses case, various kinds of vitamins, and—

“Spencer Reid,” you say, dragging out his name and pretending nothing is fluttering in your stomach, “what are these?”

“I don’t know. I can’t see what you’re referring to.”

“Take a wild guess.”

“Oh, I have one. But I’d like to hear you say it.”

You realize you may have gotten yourself in deeper than you meant to by going through his stuff. Well—they don’t say karma is a bitch for nothing. 

“What are you doing with a box of condoms?” 

He chuckles and you feel it in your whole body, warm as you stretch across his mattress and eye the box like it might jump out at you. 

“Those are years old. I’ve used three since I bought them.”

“Don’t tell me that,” you whine. “I don’t wanna think about all the other women you’ve seduced.”

“You wanted them to be for you, huh?” 

You flush. Honestly you hadn’t even thought about that. 

“I… I don’t know. I kind of just assumed…”

It’s silent for a second and you frown, realizing you hadn’t even considered protection when you’d imagined sleeping with him before. 

“You assumed what, honey?” he asks, voice soft. 

“It’s dumb. I can’t tell you.”

“You can tell me anything. I’m not going to think it’s dumb, I promise.”

You chew on your lip, letting your eyes unfocus on the box as you muster the courage to be honest. 

“Whenever I imagined it… we didn’t… use anything.”

The words make you cringe even as you’re saying them. So does the quiet that follows. 

“When you imagine us sleeping together, we don’t use a condom?”

“Ah!” The phone drops to the mattress as you cover your ears and roll onto your side, curling into yourself once more. “You didn’t have to say it! You make me sound so weird!”

“It’s not weird,” he laughs, because he can probably imagine exactly what you just did, “I just wanted to make sure I was understanding you. That said… we would definitely use protection.”

“Do we have to?”

The quiet words take even you by surprise—and they seem to stun Spencer as well. Several false starts are punctuated by a sigh as he gathers his thoughts. 

“We really should, baby. That’s the kind of thing we need to take seriously.”

“But you’re… you’re good, right?”

Thankfully he picks up on your meaning. 

“I am. I wouldn’t touch you if I weren’t.”

“And I’m good. So...”

“Hm. And has anyone ever explained to you where babies come from?”

You groan in frustration. 

“Spencer, I’m being serious! There are ways to negate that.”

“Honey,” he murmurs, “I understand that. But it would be irresponsible of me to say yes. We can talk about it in the future, but—”

“I’m telling you it’s already dealt with. The chances of an accidental pregnancy are slim to none.”

The new information hangs in the air for a moment until Spencer speaks—to your surprise, his voice is low and humorous. 

“That is… good to know. But even so—I’m setting a dangerous precedent if I always let you get exactly what you want.”

“Is it such a bad thing that I just wanna—I wanna know what it feels like? You don’t want that?”

“That’s not what I said. I want to know exactly what you feel like. I’m just hesitant to give in so quickly because it makes me look weak.”

You laugh breathlessly, caught between being turned on by the first part of his sentence and amused by the sarcastic second half. Your thighs clench and your hand absentmindedly wanders between them. 

“You know what I was thinking about?” you ask. Spencer hums curiously. “I was thinking about when you let me, um… when you let me touch you how you touch me.” He hums again, but you can hear the amused curve of a smile in it now.

“When you had your mouth all full of me and you looked so pretty?”

“When I—yeah,” you agree, too caught up to deny his compliment as your fingers brush your most sensitive spot through clothing. “And  how you got me all messy after. And I was wondering what it would feel like… inside me.”

He sucks in a breath. Your legs brush against each other and you twist slightly as you pretend like you’re not touching yourself just a little bit. 

“You want me to come inside you?”

“Yeah,” you whisper, brain short-circuiting at the way those words sound in his voice. 

—

On the other side of the line, Spencer isn’t doing a fantastic job of thinking clearly either. His dick is half-hard already and it’s only getting worse with each little noise you make that you don’t seem to realize you’re making. 

“Really? That would be very messy, baby. I’m surprised that’s what you want.”

“But I really want it,” you breathe. He’s not even looking as he slips his hand under the waistband of his pajamas and palms himself, his other hand rubbing tiredly over his face as his phone rests on his chest. This was not how he intended for this call to go, believe it or not—but he’s here now. 

“Yeah? Is that why you’re touching yourself right now?”

You go silent—which is more or less exactly the reaction Spencer had been expecting. Patiently he waits for you to deny it, in three, two—

“’M not.”

Now, he could explain how he knows that’s a lie. How your breathing pattern changed, and your voice got softer and airier, and how you started speaking with smaller words in fragmented sentences. But he doesn’t feel like explaining any of that. 

“I know that’s not true,” he murmurs. “You know what? It wasn’t fair to get you all worked up last night and then leave. I don’t want you frustrated, honey. I want you to do whatever you need to do.”

You make a little gasping noise, and Spencer can imagine the way your back would arch when you did it. His own hips buck slightly as his dick twitches under his fingers. 

“Where are you touching?”

“Um—over my clothes.”

Cute. 

“Go under them for me. Tell me how it feels when you’re touching yourself like that.”

It takes a moment, in which all he hears is the rustling of fabric, until you’re whispering, “feels… it feels good. I wish you were here.”

He inhales, freeing his cock and squeezing the base. 

“I know. Just listen to my voice, pretty. I’m right here.”

Spencer allows himself a few slow tugs as he imagines what’s happening in his bed. You make a squeaking noise, like a held-back moan, and his eyes screw shut. 

“I need them inside,” you whine, and he knows you’re referring to his fingers—the ones currently stroking his own leaking cock. 

“You can use your own, just give yourself a minute first. Remember what I said about needing to be ready?”

“I am ready—” judging by the surprised chirp you interrupt yourself with, you’ve proven yourself right. What surprises Spencer is the weak sound of disappointment you make next. “Spence, it doesn’t feel the same.”

“We’re different sizes, honey. Your hands aren’t as big as mine. But you can still make it feel good.” 

He almost says, 90% of the nerves in the vaginal canal are located in the lower third—in other words, within approximately 2.36 inches from the opening, which you can most certainly reach—but he refrains. He’s not sure if that’s good dirty talk. 

“You have a really sensitive spot about three inches up, right in front. It’s going to feel a little different than the rest of you when you touch it. I want you to try and find it for me, okay?”

“Okay,” you breathe, ever-eager to please even from a great distance. There’s a quiet moment. “I can’t—I don’t think I can r—oh,”

The moan is so pretty Spencer can’t help speeding up the motion of his hand, hissing slightly as his fingers brush against the angry tip with every pump. 

“Did you find it?”

“Yeah,” you whine, a weak, high-pitched thing. “Oh my god.”

“Be gentle,” he warns with some effort as his own hips jump slightly. “You’re really sensitive there. If you’re not careful you’ll make yourself sore.”

“I don’t care—holy shit—” the way your voice rises and tightens to a squeak at the end has Spencer moaning as he fucks his fist. A black hole forms and warps time, turning every minute into a second and every second into an infinity until he has no idea how much time is going by. He drags his thumb over the tip, smearing precum over his cock and whining as his jaw drops at the feeling. “Oh my god, Spencer,” in that same strained, high voice. “’M gonna—ah!”

He gets the general sentiment. 

“What, baby? You’re gonna make yourself come all over your fingers? Is that what you wanted to tell me?”

“Mhm!”

“Yeah, I bet you are. It feels good, huh?”

“Yes,” you cry. 

“See? You don’t need my fingers to feel good. Mine barely fit, you know that? I have to hold your fucking hips down whenever I put my fingers in you because you can’t stop squirming. I don’t know how you think you’re going to take my cock.”

“Spencer!” 

He knows. 

“Come, baby. Let me hear you.”

The delicate sounds you make as you bring yourself to orgasm tip him over the edge of his own—grunting as he comes all over his fist. 

“Jesus,” he strains under his breath, the word dragging out into two long syllables as his hips buck involuntarily and cum drips down his knuckles. He’s lightheaded and he’s created a mess and it all happened so quickly. “Fuck,” he breathes, a rasping chuckle as he reaches for the towel he’d dropped on the bed after his shower earlier. “You conscious over there?”

“I’m conscious,” you slur, breathing heavily. “I’ve never had an orgasm by myself before.”

“Are you proud of yourself?” Spencer smiles, wiping his hand off and making sure he’s otherwise clean. “You should be. I am.”

He’s barely kidding. 

“I’ll be proud when I can do it without your help,” you tease. 

“But I’ll always want to help you with that.” His already warm face flushes further as he goes over what he’d said. “Sorry I was so vulgar.”

You laugh. He blushes even more. 

“Are you? I think you secretly love being vulgar.”

“I don’t know why! I have no idea where it comes from. I would never speak that way in any other context. I should probably work on that. Sometimes I look back on the things I say and I’m genuinely appalled.”

“Well, don’t stop on my account. Personally I enjoy it.”

“Yeah, I think I’m corrupting you. You probably shouldn’t enjoy it.”

The truth of it weighs heavy on his mind, but he’s pretty sure his voice alone doesn’t betray that and you can’t sense it through the phone. 

“Oh, my god. Do not do that falling on your sword shit. I like being corrupted by you. If you stop I’ll be very upset.”

“Well god forbid you get upset,” he teases gently. Idly he wonders if the reason he’s suddenly feeling so depressed is because his cortisol levels were already high from the case, and then he jarred his system with an orgasm, spiking his dopamine and ultimately causing it to plummet without the oxytocin release that post-coital physical contact would usually provide. 

Or if it was something else. It could also be something else. 

For the millionth time, he wishes he was with you. Part of him also wants to go to sleep. But mostly he wishes he was with you. 

—

A comfortable silence settles over the conversation. In the ditch between words, you’re mapping constellations in the texture of Spencer’s ceiling. If you squeeze your eyes almost shut, you can imagine it really is the night sky. You can imagine he’s really here. 

You think about what he said—his apparently mindless vulgarity. Did it mean anything? Or was he just rambling to get you off?

“Spencer?” you murmur. 

“Yeah?”

“Can I ask you a question?”

He sounds earnest, perhaps a little tired, as he replies, “always,” through the little metal rectangle on your chest. He likes me and my questions are important to him, you repeat to yourself silently as you work up the strength. 

“If Penelope hadn’t called, last night… were you going to have sex with me?” 

Your lip tastes like his toothpaste as you chew it. Spencer sucks in a breath of air like he’s about to speak—and lets it fizzle out like foam on a carbonated drink. 

“I don’t know,” he finally admits, lamely. “That wasn’t my plan, but you can be extremely convincing when you want to be.”

“But why can’t it be your plan?” It’s an almost whine, pouty and childish—but the next words are quiet and pained. “Is it something I’m doing wrong?”

“No, no! It’s not you. You’re perfect. It’s—it’s complicated. It’s a me thing.”

Such trite words—such a ubiquitous, simple excuse sounds almost comical from his mouth when you know he’s capable of all the eloquence in the world. It’s not you, it’s me. It’s ridiculous. 

“Okay. Let me simplify this for you,” you begin with an uncharacteristic assertiveness that surprises even you. “I want to have sex with you. Either we are going to have sex or we’re not. So your future branches in two diverging paths. In one, we have sex, and then we keep having sex. In the other we never have sex ever. If you want to ever have the privilege of fucking me, then we just have to do it. Otherwise it simply will never happen. And I’m not eternally patient, Reid.”

Go me, you think, slightly breathless from your monologue. 

“Watch your mouth,” he says dryly. Something about the chastisement makes your stomach flip and your whole body tingle. “When you talk to me you call me Spencer. I will also accept Doctor Reid.” You wrestle down a smile, refusing to let him change the subject. A delayed sigh from him sobers up the conversation. “You know what I want. I’ve been very clear with you about that. But…”

“But…?”

Another sigh. A deeper, shuddering sigh, like his breath is searching for balance. Like Spencer is in a precarious position for which he was unprepared. 

“But—but to be completely honest… I worry that you’ll regret choosing me. And I know virginity is a social construct and I’m not implying that your worth will somehow be diminished if we have sex but regardless of my views on virginity as a construct, having sex for the first time can be weird and scary and it’s incredibly intimate and I don’t want you to regret your first time like I regret mine because you chose the wrong person.”

The words come at you so rapid-fire it takes you a moment to process them. And aside from all the ways you want to reassure him that you will not regret choosing him—that you could never, ever regret anything about him—one thing stands out. 

“You regret your first time?” 

Something between a scoff and a sigh travels through the line. You can tell he’s not annoyed at you for asking so much as he’s flustered himself with all his own words as he occasionally does. 

“Yeah. Yes. Sometimes I do. The person—she didn’t… like me as much as I liked her. And I was really, really in love with her, and she knew that and she knew she wasn’t in love with me—or maybe she was, I don’t know—but my point is, when one person likes the other more than the other person like them, things get complicated. And however you feel about me—that’s fine. It’s fine. I don’t want you to feel bad if we don’t feel exactly the same way about each other. I understand that this is newer for you, it’s different, I—I just don’t want us to do something we can’t undo because I don’t want to relive that. And I’m not saying it will never happen but I just don’t want you to make this choice when… when right now, I think we’re in different places emotionally. Regardless of that, I want you to choose the right person. I don’t want you to choose me and then find out that we feel differently after we sleep together and leave you feeling like you signed up for something you didn’t understand. I’m sorry. Maybe telling you this is selfish. But I’ve been thinking about it and trying to ignore it and I think I just have to be completely honest.”

Your ears ring like Spencer just fired a blank right into the microphone. Like you just got backhanded across the face and now you have the world’s worst case of whiplash. 

Every finger is numb and your blood is so cold it feels blue as it slithers thick through your veins. 

What you want to do is scream. What you want to do is go back to last night and stop yourself from almost telling him I love you, slap yourself and keep your cards a little closer to your chest. Because now he knows, and he doesn’t feel the same. 

You want to scream bloody murder. 

But when you try, when you unhinge your jaw and part your chapped lips and expect a bellow to come hurdling up the corridor of your throat with so much force it rattles your bones, all that falls out is a small, “oh.”

Maybe that’s worse. 

Spencer doesn’t reply. You hate yourself for feeling obliged to fill the silence. 

“I didn’t realize you…”

I didn’t realize that you don’t love me back. 

I didn’t realize I like you more than you like me. 

I didn’t realize you’d tell me to masturbate in your fucking bed and then drop this not even five minutes later. 

If Spencer Reid was able to talk to you over the phone with the same amount of affection and familiarity as always, like everything was still okay, knowing you love him and he doesn’t love you the whole time, he is not who you thought he was. 

“I’m sorry,” he lamely says again, like it could ever help. 

More silence. Now you can’t bring yourself to speak, so Spencer does. 

“I realize how awkward this is. I really didn’t mean to put you in this position. Especially not over the phone when I—god, I’m stupid. I’m sorry. But can we—can we talk about this in person when I get back? Please?”

Is that what grownups do? Is the proper etiquette for him to take you out to dinner and explain why he’s not in love with you? Is he going to break up with you?

What does one even wear to a breakup date?

“Okay,” you whisper. Your eyes sting, your everything stings, like you’ve been wrapped in a shroud of briar. Sheets that were soft a moment ago feel like sandpaper on open wounds. You feel like an open wound. 

Spencer sighs. It’s a sound of relief that confuses and hurts you even more. 

“Okay. I—okay. Thank you. Um—I’ll let you go back to sleep, now.”

“Okay,” you repeat—as if any of this were okay. But you can’t keep being that stupid girl who feels it all so much harder, who loves easily and begs to be loved in return, too naive to assume that someone who treats her so kindly might not reciprocate her feelings. It has to be okay, because if it’s not, you’re silly and dramatic and you’re just proving him right. 

“Goodnight,” Spencer whispers, and you can’t help but feeling that it’s the last time you’ll ever hear those words from his mouth while you’re in his bed. And he’s not even fucking here.

So you pull the blanket a little higher. You let your tears stain his pillow because they’ll be invisible by the morning. It will be like they were never here. Like you were never here. 

“Goodnight.”

-

part five