#millburn imagines

[floraisunwell]

Promise | s.r

who? post-prison!reid x ex gf reader (she's a nurse)

category: angst (bold move ig)

summary: Spencer left you 5 months ago without a word for undisclosed reasons but he comes teary eyed to your door after seeing a girl that looks a little too much like you.

based on (very loosely lol): promise by laufey. the fic does not follow the events of the song at all but i love the "if it weren't for the sight of a boy who looked just like you standing out on Melrose avenue" part right at the end so it's all on that line.

word count: 1.6k

a/n: my first fic ahhhhhhh, i'm so nervous and happy rn, this is my baby and ik there's a lot of space for improvement but i'm proud of my writing, this comunnity is full of amazing people and if it wasn't such a lovely space i would have never posted this. shoutout to @lilacsandlavenderhaze for being the first to hear my idea and telling me i should go ahead and write it; @spencersbabymama for telling me to cut the bullshit and self deprecation and post this; and to @esote-rika for being my first readerrrr. love y'all <3

dividers by @aquazero

English is not my first language pls tell me about any spelling and grammatical mistakes. enjoyy!

The air was cold and crisp, a light drizzle could be felt dampening the streets – a scene typical for this time of the year in Washington. Spencer had gone out with the team to get some drinks after a hard but successful case, he was happy, of course, the fact that they had caught the killer pleased him but everything inside the building felt overwhelming: the voices, and the drunk conversations, all the limbs touching a little too much, the overly loud music. He was out of it and to be honest he had been out of it for quite some time now, actually some months, everyone noticed how the breakup made him feel.

Funny, because he was the one to leave.

After you came back from a long shift at the hospital excited to cuddle with the love of your life (or so you thought) but the only remnant of him you found was a sticky note placed on the cover of a book you were reading at the time:

"I'm sorry, I can't do this anymore"

That was all he said before destroying everything you two had built over 3 years, 3 years of love, pain, and learning, 3 years of giving everything for each other, destroyed in less than 24 hours like nothing.

He hadn't been the same for a long time, though—not since prison. You didn't blame him; you tried to understand him, give him space, time, and everything one could need to heal. He was not the same, of course. You weren't expecting the same Spencer to come back, sure, but you also were not expecting whoever he had become: some cold and distant version of the person you used to know.

Your relationship with Spencer is divided into two eras: Before Millburn and After Millburn.

Before Millburn, you guys were somewhat happy. Both of you were overworked and stressed but happy. You would tell him about your work, and he would tell you about his. In the rare times, he got a day off work, he would hug you whenever he could, like he was making sure you wouldn't slip away.

After Millburn, you didn't talk much, not unless it was necessary, he didn't hug you a lot anymore, in fact, the last time he hugged you was when you went to pick him up at the correctional facility, all the emotions running high, you remember thinking he looked and smelled different, you didn't know he would be so different when you wrapped him in your arms, placed a kiss on his shoulder and whispered that everything would be fine. But everything was not fine. It was all so not fine and everyone around you two could tell. Yet you could have never imagined that Spencer, the man who made the hopeless romantic in you thrive would leave in such a disheartening way.

Back at O’Keeffe’s, the team was still at it. The count of how many rounds of drinks Rossi had paid long lost, Emily and JJ leaning suspiciously close to each other, Rossi nursing some unnecessarily extravagant drink, Garcia and Morgan somewhere on the dance floor and Hotch nowhere to be seen. Spencer had gone outside, hoping the sensory overload would ease with the fresh air, it did slightly but the agglomerate of people was no better than the one inside, so many people, reeking of alcohol, walking like zombies, and saying nonsensical things. As he was standing near the entrance, hands stuffed into his pockets, the soft rain dampening his hair, Spencer let his mind wander and it ended up where it always does: him contemplating if leaving was the right decision.

He was so deep in this thought that didn't even notice the man approaching until it happened- a hard shoulder bump that took him away from his thoughts.

"Sorry dude" the man muttered not even caring to glance back as he moved past. Spencer blinked, shocked as he watched the man move swiftly toward a small group of people nearby. A group that included you.

His heart jumped to his mouth. No - not you. But she looked like you, uncannily so. She even acted like you, the way she threw her back when she laughed or how she scrunched her nose in an attempt to put her sliding glasses in place - he could've sworn it was you.

For a fraction of a minute, he actually thought it was you. His breath caught in his throat and he took a step forward before reality sank in and he retreated. It wasn't you; it was never you.

But as he watched her wrapping her arms around the man's neck, as his hands almost automatically moved to her waist, and they both smiled like idiots in love. He couldn't help but feel like he had been stabbed and the knife was being twisted inside him. Was this some type of fucked up joke by the universe? "This could be you, bad thing you lost her" The thing is, he didn't lose you- he gave up on you which was worse because maybe if he had stayed, and tried a little harder, you would still be together.

He staggered back a few steps, and if he hadn't reached the wall, he would've fallen considering he already felt his knees buckle as all the bottled-up emotions from the past five months came crashing onto him; he was overwhelmed by his own feelings, eyes blurry with tears as a lump formed in his throat and the weight on his chest got heavier.

Blindly, almost unconsciously, he reached for his phone in the inside pocket of his jacket. His thumb hovered above your name in the contacts list. The message he typed was brief:

"Are you home?"

He didn't get a reply, he wasn't waiting for one. The moment he hit send his legs were already moving, practically running towards the street to hail a cab. He gave the driver your address, and it came out of his mouth easily, as if he had never stopped saying it.

You were in the shower when his message came through, you didn't pay the loud notification much attention, not even caring to glance at the device when you heard the familiar ding. You prioritized the small occasions you got to take care of yourself when your job is to take care of others.

Now freshly showered and in the kitchen making tea- the next step on your little routine- you hear a knock on the door, a distinct knock, a knock you could never forget, not even a billion years from now. Your heart stopped for a moment, heartbeat pounding in your ears, you didn't quite register you were moving towards the door until it was open and he was standing there, his brown eyes open wide once he registered your presence, reacting as though you opening the door was the last thing he expected. You just stood there for a few seconds, staring at each other until Spencer wrapped you in his arms like he used to, his nostrils flooding with the smell of your shampoo and body wash, smells he recognized all too well, smells that felt like home.

You pushed him away, shattering the brief feeling of happiness he had started to feel.

"What are you doing here?" You asked almost a little too loud in an attempt to hide the hurt in your voice

"I miss you" he replied eyes searching for yours.

You stood there, arms folded, trying to hide how weak those words made you feel. He had no right to miss you, not after leaving the way he did.

Why should I care? You thought to yourself. He made it clear that he didn’t care about you, but you cared, you cared so deeply that it made your heart ache.

You were not going to let him in.

"You can't just stop talking to me and then come here like nothing happened, Spence." You couldn't help using the nickname, your voice falsely steady, trying to hide the pain.

"I know, I just-can I come in?" No reply "Please"

You hesitated, gripping the door handle tighter as a tornado of emotions swirled on your chest. Anger. Hurt. Loneliness. You wanted to slam the door in his face, make him feel a small fraction of what you felt over the past 5 months. But buried beneath all these harsh feelings, there was something softer, something you felt ashamed to acknowledge: the echo of all the nights you stayed up worrying about him and what could happen in his work, all the mornings you woke up without the smell of coffee lingering through the apartment.

You let him in.

You tried to convince yourself that letting him in was about answers- you deserved an explanation, some sort of closure at least. But as you stepped aside and watched him walk past you knew that wasn’t the whole truth.

Because no matter how much he’d hurt you, part of you still longed for the man he used to be.

“This doesn’t change anything.” You muttered, as much to yourself as to him. He gave a slight nod in reply, eyes watering. Damn him and his big brown eyes.

 As you were turning around after closing the door behind you, he captured you in a hug again and you couldn't help but wrap your arms around him too.

★

Somehow, he ended up asleep in your bed and as you gaze at his peaceful resting face, your mind tells you to wake him up, tell him to go home and never come back, tell him that he doesn't get to leave and reappear whenever it suits him, tell him that he can fuck off for breaking your heart like that. Yet, you don't do any of that, because your heart tells you not to.

tysm for reading, likes and reblogs are always deeply appreciated

@angellic4l it's finally here bestieee!

[uscss-prometheus]

Ｐ Ｒ Ｏ Ｍ Ｅ Ｔ Ｈ Ｅ Ｕ Ｓ

Embark towards the Heavens in THE CELESTIAL EDITION!

A fan-edit 10 years in the making.

I think you may believe me when I say my love for Prometheus knows no bounds. This bold, new vision for the Alien franchise, which I have grown up with all my life, blew my mind. It dared to answer some of the most unfathomable questions we are capable of asking ourselves, all while combining Alien, anthropology, the ancient alien theory, creationism and religion together, into a complex and definite answer. It reveals most of its secrets in such intricate, hidden ways and truly is the most courageous and important film of modern science fiction.

So, my friends, you can probably imagine what a great pleasure it is for me to deliver this project to you, at long last. The first draft of this extended cut dates from May 2014. The goal in delivering this definitive edition today remains the same as then : deliver the best possible way to watch Prometheus.

I think we were all surprised to see Romulus acknowledge Prometheus in such a way, so much so that a wave of appreciation for the film began to resonate all over the internet. So whether you feel like revisiting the film, experiencing it in another way, or giving the story and its characters another chance, this is the perfect opportunity.

Including not only a vast selection of deleted scenes, but also a major part of the blu-ray extras results in richer characters and a wider view into their world. The extras, which have become an essential part of my rewatches, are introduced into the first act, all before the crew even awakes, giving even the biggest rewatchers a refreshing kick-start. I have also reintroduced a few unused tracks and an alternate creature design.

I will not explain in complete detail what is different about this fan-edit. I think it's worth seeing for yourself. Not all deleted scenes and extras are included. There’s a special homage to Elisabeth during the transmission sequence. I really loved her, and her quest...

Something I believe is worth noting is the exclusion of the "Engineer Speaks" deleted scene. It does not add much. Weyland repeats himself, and verbalises the evident themes at play, while we still do not get to truly know what the Engineer says. Instead, I find the idea that our very own makers would answer our hopes and questions with nothing but silence and anger far more horrifying. It perfectly aligned with the film thematically, and so I left the scene intact.

If you watch it, you may also notice that I have spared us a few seconds of Millburn and Fifield's dumbest moments. I do not dislike them, they were absolutely iconic, but this makes them more likeable and credible in my book.

Disclaimer : I could not get my hands on the extras in great quality. I own the film twice, but have no way to port them. I may eventually re-upload with a visual fix some day, who knows... Please forgive the slight drop in quality for these sequences. 

Here is the trailer for my extended cut. You can watch the full fan-edit here!

Feedback and shares are immensely appreciated. Please share using the trailer or post only, thank you!

Download for HD - DO NOT USE CELLULAR DATA (18GB)

Follow @uscss-prometheus on Tumblr.

[muscari-midala]

Imagine you're helping David bleach his hair.

His roots had grown out again, forming a stark contrast to his bleach-blonde strands. You stood behind him, brushing your fingers through his hair.

“May I help you with your hair?”

He usually wasn’t fond of anyone touching or ruffling it, his developed pride and vanity closely tied to it. But there was something so affectionate in your touch that he couldn’t bring himself to mind. He found it endearing.

“You really don’t have to, but I’d appreciate it nonetheless.”

David caught your grin in the mirror’s reflection, slightly amused by the visible joy you took in helping him with something so unnecessary.

“I’m no professional stylist,” you said, “but I used to color my hair back on Earth! Where are your utensils?”

He stood up, turning to you with a playful expression as he lifted a finger to his lips.

“Wait here. I have to steal them from Miss Vickers’ room.”

A shocked gasp escaped you, followed by laughter.

“Somehow, Vickers being a bottle blonde makes so much sense!”

A few minutes later, you found yourself in the bathroom, mixing hair developer and bleaching powder in a bowl with a broad brush.

“Hah, this smells like an 11 p.m. decision made by 18-year-old me. Would you like to remove your shirt so I don’t accidentally stain it?” you asked, too giddy to feel ashamed or shy about the request as you pulled on your gloves.

And hell, David wouldn’t say no to that.

You two chatted about movies and books you enjoyed while you carefully parted his hair into sections, ensuring every strand was thoroughly coated with dye.

David treasured moments like this, where he felt treated like a peer, and you cherished the sense of normalcy he brought with his open mind.

Sure, Fifield and Millburn could be fun to hang around with, but no one else on the Prometheus could offer such quality time like sitting with your favourite Android on your couch, having some snacks and watching an old movie while his roots are getting lightened. 

Maybe one day, you’d both find the courage to share what you truly felt.

[snarkylinda]

And when dawn came

I decided to take a shot at @imagining-in-the-margins's New Beginnings writing challenge loosely based around the "characters are getting the hang of being a new parent prompt"; and I say loseely because it's more about the before with a little bit of after sparkled on it lmao anyways I hope y'all like this cause I am new at writing challenges. ❤️

Summary: Spencer calls Emily the night that Cat has the baby he decided to adopt.

Content Warning: discussions of PTSD and anxiety caused by it, general mental instability, mention of sexual assault (the possibility, but it didn't happen), mention of the foster system. Please tell me if I miss anything ❤️

Word Count: 4.4k

AO3 ver.

It was a stormy night when Emily received the call she had been expecting for a while- just for the reasons she would have never imagined.

“Emily” Spencer’s voice was muffled- shaky and slightly out of breath. But oddly firm. He sounded like a man on a mission in the middle of a tropical storm- which he might as well be considering the weather and the fact that he was calling from a payphone. Outside.

“Spence, what the hell-“ Her eyes found her bedside clock- 1 a.m “Why are you calling this? Screw that- why are you outside at this hour?!” She poured all of the annoyance she could muster at her tone but the thinly veiled concern was creeping in without her permission. Emily hated to admit it, but the absolute trust she had in Spencer being able to take care of himself had evaporated the moment Mexico happened. Even before that, there was this lingering, collective fear that the resident genius would succumb to either his drug of choice or a psychotic episode…maybe both, and all the indications they would have of it would be a phone call- either by himself done in a moment of desperate clarity or by an EMT.

The older he got thought, the more those not totally unfounded fears were allowed to blur in as one of the many possible horrible things that could happen to either of them in or out of the job….

And then Mexico happened. And he was high again. And then Millburn happened. And Emily started to question every day if his pysche would truly survive unscathed….

Survive it did- unscathed? Well…. It had been a little over 6 months since his release, about 4 since he was reinstated at the team, and there has yet to be a single day where Emily didn’t see him zooming out on his paperwork or constantly watching over his shoulder- and everyone on the team, even the most recent additions, were very aware of why he took so many “bathroom breaks” lately.

To fall apart in private.

So now, as Emily heard the rapid breathing on the other side of the phone, along with the occasional sniff, she started to seriously consider calling 9-1-1. Suddenly, sleep was no longer of importance “Hey, what is wrong? Take a deep breath, and tell me what happened.”

“I need your help with something.” Came from the other side, firmer than she would have expected too, but she could already see him in her mind eye, trying to control an upcoming anxiety attack with practiced self-soothing techniques that are subtle enough for the untrained eye to not really notice and for the rest of the team to pretend they don’t see it.

“Ok.” Emily’s response was sharp and poignant. She needed to know why the hell her clearly mentally unstable friend’s deal was, immediately, but knew better than to make Spencer feel cornered, so she waited for him to put his racing thoughts in order.

At long last, he did- but it wasn’t what she was expecting to hear- not tonight, not in a millon years.

“Cat entered labor an hour ago, I want to be there. Would you come with me?”

Silence.

And then….

“What?” It wasn’t the most articulate response ever but in her defense, it was 1 am and her best friend was losing his mind.

Or already lost it.

“She made Lionel Wilkins impregnate her 8 months ago- and uh- pretended it was mine, to manipulate me. Remember?” How could Emily forget? Sure, what happened immediately after was an even bigger shock to her personally, and even to the whole team, but even then there was this little, quilty voice at the back of their heads that resonated with how absolutely messed up everything was before that. How messed up everything was.

´To manipulate me´

Was it working?

“Emily?”

“How do you know she is going into labor, Spencer?” Her voice was tight, clipped. She was doing everything in her power to keep the accusatory tone off, but it was hard. She knew Spencer, she knew he had this weird obsession with knowing everything and anything was beyond simple scientific curiosity-

It was a survival instinct.

So him keeping taps on Cat Adams wasn’t a surprise- if not a bit…. hypervigilantly…

“I….asked Garcia to keep tabs on her in case she tried anything or….if she went into labor.”

If, not when. Everyone had assumed she would get rid of the fetus shortly after her plan backfired.

“Spence-“

“It’s not- it’s not obsession Emily, I just needed to know- I need to know what happened to me, and why, you know this.” There it was, that spike of defensiveness she had grown to know so well. If albeit, a bit less fiery and more….drained. Exhausted. And it wasn’t because of the obvious sleepless nights either.

“A sadistic bitch got obsessed with you and she got the perfect chance to pull a whole scheme, but we defeated her. That is everything there is to it.”

“You know is not.”

“This not about her Em, it’s about….” A pause “We never thought she would actually have the baby”

“Sounds to me like you had thought about it.” Emily sighed, rubbing her forehead. J.J. told her she had the suspicion that, even though the unborn baby was -thankfully- not related to Spencer, he wouldn’t be apathetic towards it when -if- it was born, regardless of the fact he would rather do anything else than see Catherine again.

“…Yes.”  He admitted, knowing that doing laps around the subject would help nobody. Emily had already figured him out, anyways “And my mind is made- don’t try to change it, please. I made this decision months ago….I had some time to think.”  It’s amazing how much free time the average person could have when they skip the whole sleeping thing as much as humanly possible.

“What bureaucratic bullshit do you want me to brush over?” she quipped, her phone now resting between her ear and shoulder as she put her coat on. A scoff at the other side made her lips curl up a bit- it wasn’t quite a smile, not yet, but her features and shoulders relaxed sightly; anything was better than hearing her best friend fighting tears- she had more than enough of that forged at her memory already.

“Don’t worry, this is completely legal-…ish. Cat didn’t have any known family that would accept and the social worker I spoke to would rather not bring a baby with that background to the foster system- wouldn’t be the easiest to get adopted. So I just had to pass a psychological test-“ That he cheated on “-an home inspection-“ once the security tape was removed and the blood was cleaned from his floor “-and the fact that I am currently jobless didn’t faze her as much after I showed her a mail of Yale and Harvard fighting for my love.”

Emily did laugh at that, her hand hovering over the doorknob as she allowed herself to truly take in the implications of…everything, especially the last bit.

As right now, Spencer was no longer her subordinate; her colleague.

Her mind flashed to a conversation she had with him a lifetime ago, over the phone just like now, when the distance between them was way wider than just a couple of streets. When she had tried -and failed- to convince him to get out of his self-imposed insolation, to let their friends in a way she couldn’t be, since her spot in London.

”I loved her Em, I know- I know it wasn’t conventional-“

 “That doesn’t matter, ok Spence? What matters is how she made you feel- God, I am so sorry…”

“You asked me…..if I wanted to have children. When J.J was expecting Henry”

“Yeah, I remember that-“

“I did. I would have traded this job in a second if I had the chance. Maybe settled down, teaching- I am not- I am not the best public speaker but….I would have liked to be there for them”

“You still can.”

“No, I can’t. That fantasy died with her”

Emily remembered the cheer panic -not unlike tonight’s- she felt the moment the other line went dead after that statement, sending their friends a collective text to keep her tabbed, and being so relieved when Penelope texted that Spencer was not longer locking them out of his trashed apartment and avoiding any and all communication after two long weeks of it.

She didn’t tell anyone of their conversation- she knew he was in a bad state of mind to open up like that to her, and respected his wish for privacy, although heavily encouraged to talk to the others about the grief and quilt that still kept his shattered heart onto a tight grip. Ironically enough, the only thing that kept the pieces together.

5 years later, a different kind of grief clenched it and it wasn’t doing a very good job as some bits had escaped their clutch and stabbed his insides at the regular But at long last, she could see something else putting little band-aids over the cuts-

Hope.

“So you don’t need me pressuring whatever social worker steps in the way? Where is the fun at that.” Emily finally spoke, wiping eyes that were becoming mistier by the second “Might I ask why I need to be the one to get out of bed in the middle of the night? J.J is the one that awoke your maternal instincts.” She was already inside of her car.

“For one, I knew you didn’t have company-“ Ok, rude. And the worst part is that he was right… “-and I thought you would like to meet your goddaughter first.”

Oh, she was on full crying now, cool. “What?”

“Surprised?” His smile was so wide and bright it could be heard through the phone.

“Yeah! I mean- you are the boys’s godfather so I thought that J.J- or maybe Penelope since you guys ´co-godparent´- and you met them first and had known them for the longest so I thought-“ She trailed off, overcome with emotion and grateful that the streets were empty. Emily was sure that having this many overwhelmed feelings at once while driving was some kind of street safety hazard.

“Well- I thought about that as well, I truly didn’t want to let anyone out- so I asked Morgan for advice and-“

“Hold on, Derek already knows you are taking Cat’s baby? I already know he had thoughts about it.” After weeks of prodding, Spencer had confessed that even though he felt immensely relieved that Lindsay didn’t actually assault him…he still felt extremely violated. Could feel Cat’s unwanted hands on his torso as she took away his gun out of his waistband in their first meeting, her whole weight as she sat on his lap in that interrogation room, knowing that pushing her off could get his mother killed-

And the knowledge that, if Cat had yet to full-take his body, it wasn’t because she didn’t want to, but because physically she was unable to.

He had ended up confessing everything to the man who he knew would understand this better than anyone else over the phone after throwing every meal he had ever gotten out, not even caring over the fact he was openly sobbing over the bullpen’s toilet, nor the fact that  Derek was hearing everything and more over the phone, nor the fact that Emily was witnessing it from her spot by his side as she awkwardly rubbed his back- he had been so absolutely out of it she remembers the first time he said after -literally and figuratively- spilling his guts out was asking what she was doing on the men’s bathroom. Truly someone who should be trusted with two guns.

Needless to say, Cat wasn’t someone Derek held in high esteem.

“Of course he did- but he respected and supported my wishes” A pause “After I told him he would be the godfather- anyways, he told me that when thinking of who should have become Hank's godparents he thought of who, and I quote "saved his ass in more than one occasion and would bail him out of jail if the time came" so yeah, I thought it was a good enough method so- yeah, you quite literally bailed me out of jail so- J.J and Penelope will understand.”

Oh, he took the last part literally.  “Oh my God, I will co-godparent with Morgan- if anything happens to you I will move to Chicago and raise baby Reid with them. I can already see the shenanigans inssuing”  Emily’s sarcastic tone didn’t match her bright, wet eyes nor the wide smile on her face; somehow, she knew Spencer looked about the same on the other side of the call.

"Why are you writing me off so fast?" Spencer shook his head, his wet locks all over his eyes and while that would normally bother him, his mind was too occupied with the possibilities- for the first time in months, he had his sight in the future instead of dreading it or downright writing it off. The panic his shell-shocked soul went through when he heard the name of his worst most recent nightmare over the phone was slowly turning into a different kind of panic. He knew he wasn't ready to face her again, not yet. The adrenaline that had given him the strength to do so six months ago had faded entirely and left an even rawer open wound.  

He knew he would see her again- now a part of her was part of him, it was unavoidable- but he would rather wait a little for the flesh wound to, at very least, grow a scalp.

"You feeling ok?" Emily had to ask once the amicable, unstable banter and watery laughter had died down to a weary silence. 

"Overwhelmed I guess.... I just can't believe I am doing this.... it is bad I can't wait to snatch a newborn out of her mother's arms? Hell, she won't ever get to hold her- I spoke to the nurse of her....past, and now that she knows I will be the one to take her baby, well...."

"She can hurt her to get to you. You made the right call, Spencer" Emily murmured, turning the wheel as her eyes caught onto the lone figure of her best friend, bending over a payphone way too small for him. She was thankful she brought a towel with her- the alleged genius was soaking. And shivering. Though she had her doubts that the reason behind his visible quivering was just the cold. As she opened the door and gave him the biggest smile she could muster, she couldn't help the excitement that slowly blossomed in her gut. "Come on, genius. Let's meet my goddaughter."

_____

The towel was functioning like a shock blanket at this point. A soft layer of protection and comfort that covered a very anxious Spencer's shoulders as he had his eyes glued to his shaking, fidgeting hands. Emily reentered the waiting room carrying their second batch of coffees, and sighted as she noticed the way he frantically looked over his shoulder before restarting his staring competition with the floor. She had been worried Cat wasn't the only trigger pulling at his unstable pysche.

They were in the heart of a federal prison, mere meters away from the actual cells.

She was sure Spencer was wearing a tie before she left.

"I brought you decaf- you are already anxious enough." She placed his cup by his side, earning a scoff.

"You know caffeine has no effect on me anymore"

"Why did you drink our entire budget on longer cases, then?"

"Placebo effect." Spencer shrugged, but took a sip of his very boring drink anyways. His eyes were fixated on his cup as he spoke again "Did they tell you anything?"

Emily bit her lower lip, her hands tightening around her own cooling beverage. She had used the excuse of searching for coffee to have an actual glimpse of what was happening in the room next to them- the birth itself was fairly standard considering the circumstances. The only thing that stood up to her was what she couldn't tell Spencer-

Catherine, despite the pain and exertion of labor, was smirking the moment she noticed Emily's presence.

"Tell him I said hi", she had mouthed between contractions.

"It....might take a bit more. She is not fully dilated yet" Was what Emily said. 

"Oh, ok...." was Spencer's reply. Emily had worded her response as a carefully planted trigger for a long-winded rant about anything and everything about the process of giving birth- and yet, here he was, a ball of nerves and what she could deduce was the start of acute depression. It was easier to see when they weren't in the middle of a crisis.

It was truly starting to settle in that on Monday, his desk would be empty.

"I am sorry for...not telling you earlier. I know you'll have a lot to do, finding my replacement-"

At that, Emily had to snort "As if I could ever find anyone that could replace you regardless. But I agree it would have been nice to be prepared. We could have thrown a goodbye party- we still will by the way."

"That sounds nice" The corners of his mouth twitched- it wasn't quite a smile, but close enough. "I'll still stay here, by the way. Mom is adapting well to the new center she is and, well, um-" His voice cracked a bit at the last bit "I don't want to be away from you guys- even if we won't see each other nearly as much."

"Yeah... yeah... you know what, Spence?" At that, he turned toward her, eyebrows raised in a silent question. "I am proud of you."

"Even when I dragged you out of bed at 1:20 a.m because I wanted to take in my worst nightmare's daughter but couldn't go the full route without a nervous breakdown?" His quip came out more snappy than he wanted it to but he couldn't help it- the last time Emily said that was the last day he had as a free, mentally sound-ish man. Spencer didn't believe in bad luck- but he sure did believe in triggers, and even after tossing his tie off he still felt suffocated so it wasn't very appreciated.

Emily, however, was not even fazed by the outburst. She was expecting it. "I am serious, Spencer. You are doing something that takes a tremendous amount of strength. And the fact you called me because you knew you needed help, well, you are the one with the Eidetic Memory, fill in the blanks- and don't focus on the after, just the fact"

"It takes a tremendous amount of strength to care for family, and even more to ask for help."

Family.

"Oh my God...." Finally, after hours of trying to not break -too much- Spencer couldn't suppress the tears that built in his eyes already reddened eyes as the realization of why he was here, why he dragged his friend out of bed, why everything felt like too damn much-

He was going to become a father.

He had been thinking about this for months- he ever had a little room ready for the newborn, but he had been told to keep his expectations low. That this still was a fetus growing in a high-security prison, he of all people was acutely aware of everything that could go wrong in there, his ribs still ached from the times he was used as a punching bag.

And yet, here they were. 

"Yes, oh my God indeed" Emily chuckled, her own eyes far from wet for the second, but without a doubt, not the last time of the night as she grabbed Spencer hands shaking and held them in hers, letting him lay his head on her shoulders as a shockwave of awe, expectation, anxiety and joy filled his quivering form.

That was how the nurse greeted them a couple of hours later, a bright smile on her face. 

Phoebe Diana Reid was born on November 4th, 2018. 7:32 a.m. She weighed 6 pounds. 

She was absolutely perfect.

So perfect, in fact, that her adopted father had surprised his best friend by letting her mother see her before they left the prison. 

For a split second, he saw something in Cat's eyes- something akin to longing.

For a split second, he felt something akin to pity.

"Don't worry... I'll do my best so she doesn't end up like you."

"I am sure you will, Spencie, I am sure you will."

That was the last time they saw each other. 

_____

Emily decided to visit her ex-subordinate for the first time since they came back with little Phoebe. It has been a few busy months for the BAU- Spencer Reid's absence was more felt than ever, its permanency slowly sinking in. It was depressing to see his empty desk every morning, but they all knew it was for the better.

Spencer messaged them every day anyway. His aversion to technology pushed to the back when it came to showing them the very important moment of Phoeby raising her head, along with three paraphrases explaining why it mattered.

 Neither of them complained, she truly was adorable and his disjointed ramblings could be summarized as "look at my baby right now, she is awesome."

Emily shook her head at the latest pic he sent- it was of Phoebe laying on a fluffy, blue blanket -a present from J.J- next to her father as he was re-organizing the newest bookshelf in his room, filled with all sorts of fairytales and other children books for the infant that didn't even know of her own existence- lucky her.

 "Spence? It's me, Emily. Stop planning for Phoebe's future in Cambridge and open the door." 

Soon enough she heard the clicking behind all the chains that had to be undone to enter the Reid household and sighted. That was...another thing.

Before prison, Spencer only felt that he needed his gun in the field, when he wanted to make himself useful... after it, it had become a compulsive need to keep himself safe, to have some semblance of control in his life. That was how one service weapon became two. And now that he was no longer in law enforcement the two became zero. With nothing to protect his newborn but his wit and the closest blunt object he could get a hold of, and lingering PSDT, his door was now filled with all sorts of lockers and blockers that not even a forceful tackle could bug. A special present from Derek.

Whenever it was to appease Spencer's paranoia or his own it was a mystery, but everyone seemed happy regardless. 

Finally, the fire hazard opened as Spencer's big, exhausted eyes met hers. Having a baby and sleeping enough was never compatible with a normal person, let alone someone who had looked like an anemic raccoon since his 20s. "Emily? What are you doing here?"

"It's my free day so- I guess I decided to pass by and see how things are going." She stated as he stepped back and allowed her into his apartment. Turn out that it didn't have to be as "baby-proof" as she originally thought. Spencer had always thought about his place of rest as something that should be safe for vulnerable people- of course, when he designed it like he was thinking of his mother, rather than his child, but one of the very few perks of parentification is that you are pretty much a caretaker before puberty, so he was sort of ready for it. "Where is Phoebe?"

"On my room- and for your info, Cambridge is not in the life plan- I don't have contacts in Europe" Spencer pouted, already on a purposeful quest for the light of his eyes.

"Oh, but I do." Emily shrugged, sitting on the surprisingly unused couch. She knew Spencer had a thing for falling asleep there, since it kept his sleep enough to limit the access to any dream whatsoever- but Phoebe didn't like he had to relent and lay on his bed like a normal human being. She might not be helping his sleeping schedule but she sure was doing his spine a service. 

"Look who is here? It's Auntie Emily!...even though you are barely conscious enough to recognize faces, let alone names. Oh but you are doing such a good job at that, yes you are." Spencer cooed, holding Phoebe close as she giggled and babbled, a stuffed cow in her little hands. "They start to recognize other's names by about 7 to 9 months but recognize theirs as early as 4 to 6. So technically, she already knows she has the cutest name ever." He explained, an excited, infectious grin on his face that Emily couldn't help but imitate.

"That is great Spence, hi little Phoebe. Oh you are so adorable with those-" Her grin vanished as her eyes registered what her one and only godchild was wearing "Spencer, why is my girl wearing a fuc- freaking Chewbacca pajama?"

The baby girl was, in fact, cladded in a furry, brow onesie. Spencer frowned, offended. "It's actually an Ewok, they are considerably smaller than Chewbacca and-"

"Just don't dress her up like that for school and we are good." Emily deadpanned, accepting a very eager Phoebe back in her arms "Hi sweetie, so you recognize your name now, huh?"  A sudden thought struck her as she made sure to keep her hair out of said baby's grabby hands "Hey Spence, I always wondered...why Phoebe? Like what is the story behind the name- because I know there is one."

At that, Spencer's eyes shone as he took his daughter's tiny hand in his, his thumb rubbing the back of it with much care and gentleness, before he spoke again "Phoebe means Bright or Radiant in Greek. Everytime I think of the months I spent locked in a dark hole, I see her and- while it doesn't make the feeling go away- it gives me a reason to actually try, you know? A radiant light in the darkest night...so to speak..,"

And that was enough for Emily.

[alex-turners-world]

That's true. Not even Katie hangs out with her out of the tour. Kelly is still rather Katie's friend they hang out. Including Chloe Tom Rowley's wife like they were seen together at a gig in Sheffield recently I think that was even Millburn the singer is Kirstin's ex. They know what's going on. This group does have their preferences, they only fake it when they have to be on tour together like you somehow have to get along being together so many days and hours together like when you are at a school class trip. The most desperate are Kirstin and Louise because they don't feel accepted in their place like they want to. See how Katie doesn't hang out with Louise either anymore when she's in England, only Amanda does when she's in LA. Kirstin tries to be closer to Louise even defending Alex for being with her (on her NY post) but Louise doesn't seem to want to be close to Kirstin that's probably because Louise sees herself in Kirstin.

// Yeah, Kirstin looks like one of those girls at school who wants to be with the "cool" girls but they don't really want her into the circle

In all truth we don't know how much Katie hangs out with Kirstin. They both have private accounts. But I would imagine them hanging out together outside the tour too.

Oh yeah, both Kirstin and Louise are desperate. And it's so icky. Kirstin reminds of Louise in like 2018-2020 when no one gave a fuck about Louise but she still commented under everyone's post. Now Kirstin has been doing the same thing. It's funny that Louise doesn't even like her comments. Don't know why Kirstin is sucking up to Louise though, she'll be gone from the circle anyways, like all Alex's gfs.

[jimmyc748]

Daddy Submission Form

Name: James

Age: 56 

Location:  Millburn, NJ;   New York City 

Role: Daddy/Dom (Male) of Little (Female)

About Me:  Deeply literate, imaginative, caring and kind, very fit, attractive (I’m told) for an old guy.  Relatively new to the life, but deeply experienced with role play.  

Regular Life:  Career software designer, actual Dad, now stretching out as a musician and writer.  

Daddy Life:  I seek regular meet ups, texting and closeness in between;  but also: clear boundaries and respect for privacy.  If it’s our special, secret thing, that’s fine with me.   

Regular Interests:  Studying and playing jazz;  Reading (and writing) fiction and poetry; Meeting in cafes, parks, art galleries & museums;  Exploring NYC walking & talking; staying inside and cuddling.    

Daddy Interests: A Little who craves being cared for, and attended to, given presents and pats when she’s good;  scolded and when she behaves like a brat, punished when she’s bad, but shown patience, guidance and love throughout.   

Activities?  Going for ice cream, to the candy story, the M&M store in Manhattan, Build-a-Bear, shopping for clothes my Little likes. 

Favorite Shows / Movies?   Too many.  I’m a movie and quality TV buff.  Hitchcock, Polanski, Jacques Demy, Cohen Bros.  White Lotus! 

Preferred Partner Age: 24-48

Preferred Partner Role: 
 Little, Sub (Female)

What I am looking for in a Partner: 
I like when my Little wants to please Daddy in return for all the things she most needs. And when she’s been bratty or bad, comes to Daddy for forgiveness.  

Dislikes/ Deal Breakers:  Fakes, time-wasters, people who are on the fence and don’t know what they want or like.  

Relationship Type: Sexual and Non-Sexual - both are important to me

Best way to contact me:  Here, for now.  #Jimmyc748

[babbling-idiot2]

Millburn x  M/ reader

Requested: Nope

Warning: Fluff

(It is not opinion, but it is fact that Millburn from Prometheus, deserved better! He deserved a happy ending! Also this is a male reader! I hope you enjoy!)

****

When you had woken up from your deep sleep. You were met by a wave of nausea. Instantly you felt hot saliva and your face was in between your legs letting go of anything in your system. "Oh god, what the hell?" You say out loud but more to yourself. David walks over after checking on the others. "You seem to not remember that before you went into deep sleep, you were quite ill. Your illness has passed but the nausea will last for a few hours." He says as he sets a paper towel in your hand and walks away without a care in the world. You shake your head and look back to the mess between your feet "Fucking androids." Wiping at your mouth you hear someone laughing in the pod next to yours. Casting a glance behind you you see a man. He had dirty blonde hair and glasses. He had a cheesy looking smile on his face and he held his hand out to you after he seemed to calm down a bit. "Millburn, nice to meet you..?" You stood up and looked at him with a stern glare "I'm none of your god damn business!" You say as you walk out of the room. Later on in the day you actually started to feel better and you also though about what you said. Truth be told it was harsh, but also you threw up every bit of contents in your stomach. You weren't in the mood to be all happy and jolly. But you did want to apologize. So, for a second you looked around after getting your tray. You spot him across the room, sitting alone. You walk over slowly trying not to spill the boiling contents of soup. When you made it over you sat the tray down and sighed out. Looking up you see that Millburn was already looking at you. Another cheesy smile was plastered on his face and he seemed glad you were in front of him. "Anyone sitting here?" He shakes his head and gestures to the seat "Nope, all yours." You nod and sit down. "Listen, uh Milburn right?" "Yep!" "Alright, well Millburn I would like to apologize for my rude outburst earlier. I wasn't feeling great and just lashed out at the nearest person. Also between me and you-" you say as you lean closer, he does as well and for a small moment you thought, how beautiful his eyes looked, you felt your heart go a tad bit faster and you snapped out of your small moment. "-I- I um, I don't uh...Like Uh, androids all that much." He smiles even wider and nods his head while still looking at you. You look down and lean back in your chair. You tried to think of anything else but him. You wanted to change the subject. "S-so, the uh soup. Is it good or bad?" "Its good." He says as he continues to smile. Deep down you knew he could read you like a book. But you just hoped you didn't look like a fool. After everyone ate you all were asked to join in the main room for a meeting of sorts. At first it was to meet the guy running the show. And after doing so everyone started to mention their roles on the ship and why they were here. That was until everyone had to know why you were here. "I'm here to makes sure you don't die." "So your a doctor?" You open your mouth to answer but David cuts you off. "Yes. He is our medical advisor and is quite good at his job. If you need medical assistance you will go to him." Your hands go straight to your face and you groan out. You then stand and start walking to the exit. "The meeting is not over yet." "It is for me, robo." You say walking straight to the med bay. When you enter you go over to one of the many computer and sit at the chair. Laying your head on the desk you breath out shakily in anger. For a while you sat like that. Soaking in your own anger. That was the one thing you hated most, people interrupting and androids. They always gave you a bad feeling, especially David. You still sat in your own anger. That was until you heard the doors open and you immediately straightened up. You turned around with a smile until you saw David. Your roll your eyes and turn back around. "What do you want David?" "I will warn you now Mr. L/n. Skipping a meeting can result in consequences." You turn around slowly and stare at him "Is that a threat I hear? Or are you always this bitchy?" You say as you stand up. Walking over to him you look at him in the eyes. So lifeless. So emotionless. So dead. "Not at all, but I can only imagine what it is like to be a ignorant...? Oh what is that word I hear Fifield use? Ahh yes a, prick." Your fists ball in anger and you grab him by his lapels. Pushing him against the wall you bring your other hand back and punch him. Once, twice then a third time. By the fourth punch your hand is bleeding and he seems untouched. "Get the hell out you stupid fuck!" You let go and he walks out. You lay your hands flat on the wall in front of you. Your injured hand burns and aches with ever move. You squeeze your eyes shut at the pain. Breathing heavily you don't even hear the sound of foot steps coming into the room. "You need help with your hand?" You recognize the voice, Millburn. You look to the side and see him giving a small smile. "Sure." You say walking over to one of the many medical counters. You hop on top of it as he walks over to you. You point over at a cabinet, "In there, there is alcohol, Neosporin and in the top cabinet is some gauze and tape." He nods at this and brings everything back over to you. "So. You punched David huh? That quite uh, impressive." You raise an eyebrow. "I punched an android and fucked my hand up. How is that impressive? To be honest, ill probably pick up a few chicks with this or some shit." You laugh slightly at the small joke you made. "Or men." You look at him oddly for a moment as he continues to clean your hand. You honestly thought you were the only person on board who was interested in the same sex. Guess you were wrong. "Oh, and what is that suppose to mean, Millburn?" He smiles goofily. He shakes his head and continues to aid your hand. You use your other hand and card is through his curly hair. He stops what he's doing when he feels this. His eyes roll back and so does his head, he swallows thickly. You smile at the sight and decide to take a chance. You lean in slowly and kiss at the column on his throat. You pepper kisses up and down his neck and finally lean back after to observed a few small purple marks littered on his neck. He smiles again and wraps his arms around your waist. "I like you." "I like you too." You say rubbing his back with your uninjured hand. "Can I tell you something?" You nod "Well, before I went into my pod the first time. I saw you in the pod next to mine and I just thought you were so handsome. I got a crush on you when I saw you. And when I later found out we both would be on Prometheus, I just got so giddy with excitement! I couldn't wait to meet you. That's why I was smiling at you when we woke up!" You smile and lean in to peck his lips. He smiles into it and pulls away. He sighs out in content and goes back to doctoring up your hand. After this you'd definitely have take him on a date of some sort.

****

(I will write for him cause he is Cute! And he deserves love. I will gladly take requests for him all day long. :))

[the-fiction-witch]

11th Christmas Fairy

TV SHOW SEX EDUCATION COUPLE: OTIS X READER RATING: CUTE

I smiled as I got to the school for the Christmas party lights, tinsel and paper snowflakes everywhere walking up the usual stairs "Hey y/n" I heard behind me I turned seeing Otis and instantly jumping into his arms

"Otis! I missed you"

"I missed you too sweetie" He smiled giving me a tight cuddle

"you saw each other four hours ago" Eric laughed as he walked alongside

"what are you as?" I asked

"the kid from nightmare before Christmas that gets the head in a box" he says

"so PJs?"

"Yeah kinda" He nods

"what are you, boys?" I asked Eric and adam

"elves" adam says

"but like... fun flirty elves" eric corrected "I love your angel"

"angel?" I asked "I'm a Christmas fairy," I said

"Christmas fairy?" Otis asked

"That's what the costume bag said" I sighed but there was silence "god damn it! I'm an angel aren't I?" I sighed

"I think so hun" Otis nods

"The costume bag lied to me" I sighed "Come on I want a shot of something" I sighed holding otis' hand

he smiled and gave my head a kiss "I think you're a lovely little Christmas fairy or angel either I think you look nice"

"Thank you Otis" I smiled

"I'd put you on the top of my Christmas tree"

"You would?"

"of course I would" He smiled

"Thank you" I smiled giving him a kiss

"Come on my little fairy" He smiled "I'll get you something to drink"

"Yay!" I giggled

we drank, we danced, we had fun with all our friends and eventually, we stumbled into otis' bedroom

"Ummmm you look so pretty" He smiled cuddling me

"am I? don't I always look pretty?"

"always but the cute little tiny dress made out of glitter really.... highlights my little angel" He smirked

"Does it now" I smirked pushing him onto his bed "Well you have been ready for bed all night" I smirked

"I have, I've been ready and waiting all night" he smirked pulling me into his lap

"do you wanna put me on your Christmas tree?"

"I'll put you on something" He smirked

"You've had too much to drink Otis, let your little fairy but you to sleep"

"No I wanna go to bed with my little angel" he smirked dragging me down to lay on the bed

"Alright, come on then Otis" I smirked

[komotionlessqueenmm]

Imagine # 722

Gif NOT mine. (Found on Pinterest.)

If this gif is yours please let me know, so I can give you credit.

Gif credit goes to - Unknown.

Year posted - 2021

[ontheoddoccasioniwritestuff]

The Last Cigarette (Spencer Reid x Reader) Smut

Summary: Mr Scratch was an unsub with undoubtedly the greatest impact on the team. Even in death, he pushes Spencer beyond the preconception of his limits. 

AN: This was part of a fic swap on @imagining-in-the-margins​‘ server! This Unsub!Spencer!AU is for the outstanding @cardigayn​ <3 I hope you like it! 

Content warning: Character death, abuse of power, physical assault, murder, Unsub!Spencer, mentions of rape and attempted murder, mentions of knife wounds, unhealthy coping mechanisms

Smut content warning: AFAB!Reader, they/them pronouns, facesitting, hair pulling, overstimulation, light choking, riding, biting, praise kink, unprotected sex, dirty talk, a hint of breeding

Gif credit: @imagining-in-the-margins​ // Masterlist

Your name: submit What is this?

No one on the team spoke about what Luke did to Scratch – or rather, what he didn’t do. The BAU were far beyond tired of that man’s torments. His impact upon each member was the greatest of any unsub they had ever encountered and now it was finally time to close the book on his crimes. That included turning their gaze away from the abuse of power that Luke had taken by letting Scratch fall from that building. Not the first time the team had banded together to mask a member’s tracks.

Spencer glanced up from his paperwork. Everyone else in the bullpen was focused on their tasks, as if nothing had happened. Even Emily was at her desk and typing away at her desktop when she had been an inch away from death not two weeks ago.

Spencer’s pen tapped against the desk twice before it was placed down adjacent to his pencil pot. He remembered the details of their cover-up. That wasn’t what paused his paperwork.

His mind was straying to another timeline, in accordance to the multi-verse theory. Luke had made a choice in this universe to not pull Scratch up. In another universe, he decided to save the unsub. What happened next?

After experiencing prison first hand, Spencer could somewhat pinpoint how long Scratch would have lasted in a place like Millburn. The respect for serial killers on the inside, especially those who had tormented law enforcement, would keep him alive.

There was the chance that there was another universe where Scratch would have gotten off scot free. And another timeline where Scratch, without a gun, overpowered Luke or Matt, taking either or both of them down. Kristy had no husband. Jake, David, Chloe, and Lily had no father. Roxy had no owner.

Maybe it was better that Luke didn’t help Scratch off that ledge, that Matt had just stayed back.

Spencer could not decide what he would have done in that situation, and he didn’t have to. But that didn’t mean another version of him didn’t. To be jealous of a version of himself that did not exist in his world was a bad idea. It was out of his hands and in his head – the roof, the unsub, the choice.

 --->--->--->--->--->

“Anyone want a coffee?”

A series of murmurs rose from the team, all negative, and Luke tucked his chair back under his desk before he walked off to the SAPD break room. Spencer watched his reflection in the conference room’s window. There was an itch in his brain that spread through a nerve to his knee – bouncing it just beneath the table.

Suddenly that nerve propelled him to follow Luke. Spencer’s feet weaved him in between officers until he found his teammate switching on the station’s coffee pot.

“Change your mind?” Luke raised an unsuspicious eyebrow.

“Yes,” Spencer lied, and he collected a mug to wash up. Suds flooded in the sink, rolling out the mug and around the plughole. Spencer fixated on them, a menial hope that he could focus on something else rather than the temptation of asking Luke for details.

He had to be closer of being clean of this whole thing than he thought. Scratch was dead, the case was closed. A few more years, this would be a memory that haunted him every few weeks instead of every day.

Dilaudid was craved by a tiny section of his brain, but he knew that it would not help him at all. He needed something else to help ease the cravings. If only he had inherited his mother’s affinity for cigarettes.

“Can I ask you something?”

Luke shrugged in return, “Sure.” He had opened his palm by his side but did not reach out to Spencer’s clean mug. Spencer appreciated that. A glance at the bullpen, visible through the open door, told him that no one else had followed them. It wasn’t too late. He could come up with a question about the case, about Roxy, about anything.

“What did he look like before he fell?”

Luke’s expression sobered and soured. He too checked the proximity of the police officers outside their bubble. Clearing his throat twice, he poured the coffee into his mug and spun the handle once it was down to fit Spencer’s need.

His voice was low as he said, “He looked desperate.”

Spencer nodded while he poured into his own cup. Perhaps more caffeine would aid him, for he had scratched the itch and it had spread elsewhere. Stirring in some sugar, he took a burning sip before it had dissolved and cringed at the granules in his mouth.

It was when he’d finally swallowed them, instead of spitting out like he wanted to, that Spencer gave into the itch: “Did he say anything to you?”

“He asked me to help him.” Luke blew on his coffee before taking a sip. Even then, he still struggled to swallow it. “He begged.”

“That can’t have been easy. Thanks for telling me.”

But Luke didn’t seem like he concurred. In fact, he looked as though he wanted to make right the claim and say that letting Scratch die was the easiest decision in the world.

Spencer blinked. Luke was gone, already back in the conference room. Perhaps he’d imagined something like that. His attention shifted to Scratch’s face, morphing it until it was a stereotypical expression of fear. Spencer had heard too much of that man’s voice, but it was good for one thing: recreating the words Luke had told him.

“Help me. Please!”

Matt was back with Emily.

And suddenly so was Luke. Spencer had gone it alone after Scratch. It was just the two of them on the roof, and soon it would be one.

Scratch’s clothes were whipped up by the wind, his begging too. It was almost as though he reached up for Spencer. One last cry for help. Then he fell, silent and ragdoll-esque.

Just before the body hit the ground, Scratch was clinging to the building’s side again. When he fell this time, he screamed hysterically. It echoed across the roof until Spencer couldn’t discern it from the wind. A swell of relief spread through his body. He took a sip from his coffee.

“Reid?” Just as he had done a minute prior, Luke was lingering in the doorway. “We should get back to the conference room.”

“Right,” Spencer dropped the teaspoon onto the side. It clattered about the side, then went quiet, then hit the floor. Spencer didn’t turn to see where it landed.

 --->--->--->--->--->

What an absolute smarty pants who could just about learn to use Teams by himself. Spencer leant to the right in his office chair as his partner Y/N showed him the ropes of his new application. How lucky he was to still have them after all they had been through – together and apart.

“And… ta-dah!” Y/N made jazz hands at the monitor.

“Thank you. You’re so good to me,” Spencer straightened up, smiling at the screen, “Can I get you a reward?”

Y/N seemed to ponder on this offer, an act Spencer had seen many times and never grew tired of. Then Y/N tapped their cheek twice and bent forward. With butterflies in his stomach, Spencer tilted his chin up and pressed a lingering kiss there. There was a bashful smile across their face when they drew away. Even after all this time, Spencer was proud he could still affect them so.  

The door to his office shut behind them and Spencer looked over his desktop’s background. His students’ homework was hovering in the background, already being printed off. The printer stuttering out each page had long since been tuned out

He glanced away from it to his left and saw Y/N again. Their arms were wrapped around themselves, their body close and facing Spencer with a clear expression drawing bravery upon them. Spencer’s head then turned to see if Scratch was still dangling by the tips of his fingers. He was.

“What do I do?” Spencer asked, his voice almost torn away by the wind he couldn’t feel against his cheek.

Y/N hardly spared Scratch a glance. They had never seen him before, and they made this one time they did as short as possible. Their hand moved Spencer’s head so that Scratch was in his blind spot. They held his face and looked on him sweetly, even in the darkness around them.

They gave Spencer their answer: “Leave him.”

Scratch’s body trembled as his head rigidly shook, “Please!”

But Y/N took Spencer’s hand in their free one and they held it even as Scratch’s grip failed him. Only then did they look at the unsub and watch unflinchingly together as their tormenter fell to his death. A second later, the pair heard the body hit the ground. Spencer began to move towards the ledge, Y/N tugging him back towards the door of the roof.

“I have to see,” Spencer insisted, “I have to know he’s really gone.”

There was no pity, just empathy, as Y/N nodded their head, “Ok.” Their hands tensed together while they approached the roof’s end.

There he was, his body broken, his head smashed against the dirt. Lifeless. Gone.

Then Scratch was falling again, the last seconds of existence, and Y/N was hiding their face in Spencer’s shoulder. He was holding them tight, so that if they changed their mind about watching, they wouldn’t be able to. But he was watching everything in slow motion.

Every fraction of change in Scratch’s terror was drawn out until it was a pantomime of itself.

“Are you ok?” He asked quietly.

“Yeah.”

Closing his eyes, Spencer kissed Y/N’s head. He basked in his comfort before he opened his eyes again and drew a deep breath from the comfort of his desk chair. Then he collected the printed essays of his students, grabbing a pen to prepare for marking.

  --->--->--->--->--->

 This time Hotch was there, Jack’s face hidden in his father’s chest. Derek too, holding little Hank with all the tenderness a father could.

Spencer waved his hand towards the door, “Get them out of here. I don’t want them to see this.” He waited dutifully for them to leave, both of them sending a nod Spencer’s way.

Once the door bounced against its frame to close, he stood at the edge. He couldn’t feel the cold rushing past him, coaxing him to fall with Scratch, but he could picture hearing it. Almost deafening him to Scratch’s pleas, he turned those words up loud so that he could hear the moment the words stopped, the moment that Spencer pulled out his Smith & Wesson and shot Scratch in the head. His grip faltered instantly and his lifeless body tumbled down.

“No.”

Spencer screwed his eyes shut before looking back at the geographic profile.

“No what?”

He started. He didn’t realise that Tara was still in the room with him.

His words tumbled out quickly, “Just testing a theory, but it’s not right, it doesn’t fit.”

Nodding, Tara made her way beside him and observed the evidence collected so far, “We’ll get there. Just keep that brain going.”

Spencer planned to do just that. This daydream wasn’t as satisfying, like Nicorette mists or chewing gum. Just shooting him in the head? That was more than mercy for Scratch. No, he’d have to come up with something else to use. For the daydream of course.

He was glad that Tara was treating him normally. Not like JJ, who had checked in on him for Dilaudid before take-off. She was hovering around him like a gnat and it was starting to piss him off. Where was this energy when he was actually contemplating the drug’s pros and cons? He was determined to keep it together for the team to function and solve this case, but JJ in his peripherals was making it hard to focus. On work. Not the daydreaming. He loved her to bits, but he just wished she’d leave him to his own devices unless it concerned the case. That was the priority now.

The broken fingers of the victims sat like warped roots of a tree on the board, each knuckle shattered with a hammer. This unsub – a man in his 20s, not 30s – had such an odd post-mortem signature. Like when Ronald Weems did on the prostitutes. The ones Nathan Harris was obsessed with, wrote about, then killed himself before he could re-enact such a crime.

But it was fine. This was different. Spencer wasn’t writing these down. He didn’t need to. That, and he wasn’t about to recreate his daydreams.

“Excuse me.”

“Off for a smoke?” Luke joked half-heartedly.

Shortly after shaking off that effort at a joke, Spencer’s hand froze against the metal pole of the wheelchair access to the police station. His lungs took a deep breath of the cool Christmas air, a worthless hit. He hoped that Derek and Hotch were being the fathers they always wanted to be - that Gideon could have been.

--->--->--->--->--->

Adrenaline was what enabled him to haul Scratch up. Still, Spencer strained with his weight. He was gasping with the unsub when they were both allowed back onto the roof, Scratch’s knees digging into the floor for security and his hands still clasping the edge of the building - from the other side now.

Spencer watched, blood roaring in his ears with each panting breath. He took one deeper and let out a yell as he kicked his foot up into Scratch’s nose. Scratch rolled onto his back with a ragged rasp, blood spouting from his nose to stain everything it made contact with, and his head lolled off the edge of the building. Spencer’s chest burned with unsatisfaction so he kicked again. This time, his foot came down on Scratch’s groin. Ineffective in stopping him from standing, this was personal deliverance of pain.

He was out of breath but completely fine. He had the energy to drag Scratch back with one hand at his ankle, so now his head was beneath a solid enough surface to stomp on three times. Each one sent Scratch’s eyes rolling back further into his head.

Spencer began to use his hands. Getting close into Scratch’s space, he lay punch after punch, no pain on his hands, no. He put it all into Mr Scratch for every second he stole from him and his team until finally he stood up.

Scratch barely had enough energy to cough behind the blood pooling in his mouth. But Spencer could make out the one word he was wheezing in his agony.

“Spencer.”

Then, and only then, did Spencer draw his gun once more and shoot Mr Scratch in the neck.

The jet jolted as its wheels touched the runway. Spencer leant back in his chair, dragged as the jet slowed to a stop. He grunted, his head still catching up to that sudden jolt.

“I want you all to just go home, alright?” Prentiss was already stood at the end of the plane’s gangway, “Get some rest.”

The rest of the trip home was a blur for Spencer; it was committed to his memory but not with any intrigue. Only when he dropped his keys in the front door’s bowl did he start paying attention to his surroundings again. Y/N was powerwalking over to him, instinctively reaching out long before they made it to him.

“Hey baby!” They greeted, and Spencer enfolded them into a tight embrace, “You must be knackered.”

They swayed a little on the spot as Spencer answered, “I was.”

“Was?”

“Not after seeing you.”

His chin brushed over Y/N’s shoulder before he kissed that spot, smiling against the cloth of their shirt. His support rocked as Y/N giggled. Their grip on him tightened for a moment before they ran a hand over his tummy, the little “pouch” as they had affectionately named it. A thought ran past his eyes: that it wouldn’t hurt to start working out if he was going to do more than just shoot Scratch.

“Cheeky,” Y/N touched one of his curls as they pulled away, “Come on, let’s go to bed. Not like that.” They tapped his nose at the raise of his eyebrows.”

“I missed you,” Spencer said, not immediately after that, but when they were both in bed together, “I always do.”

“Me too.”

Y/N was unable to look Spencer in the eye. Spencer loved that they were so overwhelmed with love that they had to seek refuge elsewhere. They were just like him in that sense.

--->--->--->--->---> 

  Gun drawn, Spencer took deliberate steps stalking through the darkened apartment complex. The entire area was due for demolishing the following morning, so there were plenty hiding spaces for this unsub to jump out of. Every deep breath stilled his hands as he moved swiftly around each corner. Matt mumbled something in his earpiece about going down to the poolside.

He made his way to the third floor and followed the glowing green signs towards the fire escape.

Martin Harvey had just turned around to see Spencer. He instantly dropped the pipe he was wielding and thrust his hands into the air.

“Ok, ok, ok, you got me. Don’t shoot.”

His legs crumbled and he fell to his knees. A coward, just like the profile had said. This was too easy. No, it wasn’t actually. Interviewing those parents and friends of the victims, gritting teeth while working through red tape set up by the small town talk and the prejudices constructed long before this case occurred, none of that and none of what came prior was easy.

“Get up there.”

Harvey frowned, his eyes unsteady between Spencer’s face and Spencer’s gun, “What?”

Spencer tilted the barrel of his gun to the fire escape stairs for a second, immediately returning it onto Harvey, “You heard me.”

Shaking, Harvey took the steps as they came. His hands were still on his head. His boots made hollow clanks against the rusting metal, echoing Spencer’s lighter taps, until they came into contact with the concrete of the roof. The wind felt more brutal today. It was colder than Spencer imagined. The February chills shouldn’t dissuade him much though.

The second Harvey made a move to spin around, Spencer smacked his head with the butt of his gun. Harvey tripped forwards but remained upright. So Spencer holstered his weapon, grabbed Harvey’s shoulder, and punched across his nose. Both men let out a cry. Spencer flexed his fingers to subside the pain, but it continued to shoot up and down his bones. Another attempt, he grappled with the scruff of Harvey’s shirt then shoved him off his balance to the ground. The unsub wobbled and cried out as he fell backwards. Spencer kicked again, not as strong as the last time, but he felt the surge of power in him. Adrenaline, real and flooding his every movement. This was beyond what his fantasies had ever brought him, and he was living for it. He didn’t have to hold back anymore.

“Why are you doing this?” Harvey sobbed, trying to hide in his hands. Pathetic. The man who had raped and attempted murder on five different women couldn’t take it when a man stood up to him.

He hit Harvey once more but drew back from the opportunity for a third. Instead, he rolled the body over the edge with just enough tact to allow Harvey to make a grab for the edge.

Once more, Harvey begged for Spencer to stop.

Spencer looked down on this low life, this scum that dared to interfere with innocent lives for fun. The heel of his shoe came down hard on Harvey’s hand. He howled in pain. Spencer stomped down again; this time there was a series of collective crunches. Harvey let go with that hand, but the other was still clinging dearly to the roof.

As he stared into those panicked eyes, Spencer squatted down beside Harvey’s hands. Broken fingers flailed nearby, Harvey not strong enough to pull himself up and reach for Spencer. His thumb slid off the edge, and the pinkie finger too.

The begging faded into the background. The fear in his face, it had to be at least somewhat the same as Scratch’s. The proximity to danger was beyond comfort.

People he lost:

Derek.

Hotch.

Emily, nearly.

People he loved:

Tara.

Matt.

Penelope.

Luke.

JJ.

Him.

Mom.

Y/N.

Spencer brought down the butt off his gun onto the last three fingers holding on. His eyelids forced him to watch as Harvey fell fast to the ground, a crunch of bones reaching his ears when the ground met with him

A delicious shiver ran up Spencer’s spine. He shook his shoulders and breathed it out. There was not the extreme of happy. Felt in his heart was content in the gentle breeze, in the dull pain.

“Prentiss. He’s dead. I’m on the roof.”

“We’re on our way, Reid.”

--->--->--->--->---> 

  Paramedics had pressed the sterilised cotton against his cuts while his eyes were on the bag that was wheeled away towards the other ambulance. Spencer’s thousand-yard stare ended shortly after that; Emily walked into his view and touched his shoulder. Her embrace was welcomed greatly, as was the nap he took on the flight back.

His bag was not as heavy as he remembered it being as he drew up to his apartment. Once his keys were out the door, he dropped everything and was on his way to the bedroom for an early night when he bumped into Y/N – who was all bundled in their pyjamas.

“You’re back! In time for Valentine’s Day!” Y/N’s smile was quick to disappear, “What happened?”

“I found the unsub. He fought back, resisted. I didn’t have a choice.”

“Oh Spencer.” They hovered an inch over his face before they settled their hands on him.

A quick kiss on his lips, then they took him into the kitchen and set about making a tea for him. But Spencer didn’t really need, or want, one. He slipped up behind them, mumbling into their ear, “I’m meant to be the one taking care of you today.”

“We take care of each other, Spencer, you know that.” Y/N patted his arms that were now around their waist. Spencer kissed the spot below their ear, smirking into\ them as he felt the stutter in their movements. His lips found the side of their neck and kissed again.

“We do,” He agreed.

“You know, I won’t be able to take care of you if you keep doing that.”

“Oh, you will,” Spencer nuzzled his cheek against them, “Just not by making me tea.” To make extra sure his point was getting across, Spencer moved them around and kissed them with two fingers lightly pinching their chin.

“Your hand-”

“Doesn’t hurt. And I have two.”

Already Spencer was unbuttoning Y/N’s shirt, his thin fingers parting it open to place his cool touch against their bare skin. It shuddered beneath him, sending waves to help him map the rest of their body again in his mind. A tingle sat in between his shoulder blades as Y/N tugged at the curls in the nape of his neck.

How they got into bed doesn’t really matter. It was when Spencer’s hands pressed into the mattress that he winced away from Y/N’s lips.

“You are hurting,” They pushed to sit up.

“I’m fine.”

“You need to rest.”

“What I need is for you to sit on my face and not stand up until I say so.”

Spencer heard Y/N’s teeth knock together as they closed their once-agape mouth. “Can you help me with that?”

Y/N nodded, dumbstruck at Spencer’s words and the thumb he was dragging across their bottom lip in an attempt to distract from his injuries.

“Y/N, I’m ok. Really. It’s just a little sting. Let me love you.”

“I’m not stopping you. I’m just worried.”

Throb of each cut on his hand as his fingers fanned across their skin Grasping tight on their thighs

He only had to let go for a moment while Y/N stripped clean of their clothes Seeking refuge, he felt completely content with those thick thighs wrapped around his head. Not a single time did his mind stray to Scratch or any other unsub now that Y/N was safe from them. Calm seeped over him, fuelling his biting and lavishing his tongue upon their inner thighs

His pace enjoyed such a leisurely stroll around their cunt, the tip of his tongue gliding through each of their folds. Eyes still closed, he had the image of it soaking wet with his spit and their juices. He licked his lips once before he pursed them around the clit. His hands, now stiff and sore from stroking their hips, reached up to touch their chest. He fondled at their sensitive nipples with delight at Y/N fisting at his hair. All this, and he licked at Y/N’s clit like it was an ice lolly on a summer’s day.

When Y/N came first, they let out short bursts of breath coupled with their moans. The second time, they had to hold onto the bedframe as their body slumped forward and their clit rubbed up against Spencer’s nose. On the third, they fell off his chin, rolled to their side of the bed. Giggles fell from their satisfied smile as they curled up. Smearing the back of his hand across his mouth, Spencer pushed onto his side so he could reach them for another kiss. Y/N could barely respond and they were still laughing as Spencer pulled them into his lap. His fingers looked so pretty around their neck; he kept them there until silence filled the room again. When they reached that moment, he squeezed lightly and let out a gentle “hmm” at Y/N’s moan.

“You good, darling?” He whispered.

“Just what the doctor ordered.”

Though their lips were together, they parted in pants and smiles.

“You got one more for me?”

“Of course,” Y/N clumsily patted a hand down his cheek, “You haven’t even had one yet.”

“I don’t need one.”

“You must be the only guy to say that and mean it.”

Swallowing the statistic on how many men had said they wanted to orgasm during sex, Spencer watched Y/N struggle to sit on his cock. Their legs were shaking uncontrollably; they didn’t settle, not even in his firm hold.

His hands dragged them down onto him and over their moans he whispered, “Doesn’t mean I don’t want one.”

“I wanna give you what you want.”

As Y/N  rocked into him, Spencer shared the last of their tangy taste that lingered on his tongue. Then he found peace in resting his chin on their shoulder, rising and falling as they did.

“You wanna cum for me?”

Their words hit his ears, “Please, help me.”

A spike of pleasure ripped through his body. In an instant, Spencer flipped them over and drove his hips hard into them. His teeth sunk into the skin of their shoulder before releasing his load into them. His entire being trembled into Y/N, their ankles locked in his lower back lazily as he milked every last drop of exhilaration he could from them.

His cock stayed inside them, keeping his cum safe inside. Y/N barely lifted their head but luckily for them, Spencer’s shoulder was within their reach. They bit him in the same spot he had bitten them, not releasing him until their marks matched.

“I’m so glad you’re safe,” They mumbled against him.

Spencer tipped himself back an inch or two, “I’m happy you’re safe too.” He didn’t mind the ache on his skin any more than the others. It was a nice collection he had gathered today.

“Happy Valentine’s Day, Spencer.”

--->--->--->--->--->  

 This was it, the last cigarette. He didn’t have to worry about Scratch anymore after this.

A low whistle lead Spencer to pull at his collar sheepishly, and Tara leant against his desk. At first, he ignored her, signing off the last of his paperwork. His mandatory session with the team’s therapist set fresh on his lungs without a single symptom of guilt.

“Well, well, well,” Tara teased, indicating to her neck with two fingers tapping, “Something about a life or death situation that gets you in the mood?”

“Actually, research into the terror management theory has shown that people respond to mortality reminders by bolstering their own cultural view, derogating opposing views, and shoring up their self-esteem. By this account, the effect of death on libido will depend on the meaning that sex has for a person.”

“And what does it mean for you?”

“I’m not telling you that.”

“You don’t have to,” Tara grinned, “I would hazard a guess that Y/N’s looking the same.”

Spencer shook his head playfully, “We said we wouldn’t profile each other.”

The ribbing came to a close as Penelope brushed past and announced to the bullpen, “We have a new case, in the conference room.”

Spencer dropped his finished case file into Emily’s empty office on the way to the conference room, his hand only complaining an itch at the motions of holding a pen and a form. It didn’t end as he flicked over the file’s papers while Penelope went over the details of their latest case – gruesome photos of open knife wounds the television screens.

The shrinking juxtaposition between body discoveries indicated a devolving unsub with a disintegrating cooling off period. Basically, it was an unsub not worthy of his daydreams or of his injuries.

Except that’s not what it was at all. This was an unsub to be arrested and face punishment, before more people could be hurt. Spencer didn’t need a cooling off period because he wasn’t going to do that again. He could recall his played-out fantasy in complete and utter detail, never forgetting a thing he saw.

And anyway, this unsub was definitely an impotent and disorganised man lashing out. Couldn’t hold a candle to Scratch. So why waste his time on that? Why would he have another cigarette when he didn’t need one right now?

--->--->--->--->

AN: I do not condone the actions displayed in this fic. I find unsub!AUs of the show interesting developments and the intended recipient of this fic is aware of that. I will not write a part two for this, because I do not have the motivation or idea besides Spencer getting caught and subsequently arrested.

Thank you for reading!

[unfoldingmoments]

The Minimalists

Imagine a life with less, a life of passion unencumbered by the trappings of the chaotic world around you. Well, what you’re imagining is an intentional life. It’s not a perfect life, and it’s not even an easy life but a simple one.  “When it’s cool to have nothing.” —New York Times

Perhaps you’ve all known about this movement about being minimalist by Joshua Fields Millburn & Ryan Nicodemus who have help over 20 million people live meaningful lives with less.

The reason I share this movement, it is not because I am a minimalistic person, but I am a total opposite. Though I am still struggling to live less, I think being minimalist is a good thing. We are more aware on what we consumed everyday and hopefully we are more responsible to live a sustainable lifestyle for a better earth and future.

Here are some snippets to ponder upon:

How do we learn to live confidently without the material things we’ve convinced ourselves we need? How do we live a more intentional and rewarding life? How do we learn to reset our priorities? How do we transform the way we look at ourselves? How do we get what we want out of life?

The Minimalists explore these questions by examining the 7 essential relationships that make us who we are: stuff, truth, self, values, money, creativity, and people. These relationships criss-cross our lives in unexpected ways, providing destructive patterns that frequently repeat themselves, too often left unexamined because we have buried them beneath materialistic clutter.

Minimalism has helped us…

Eliminate our discontent

Reclaim our time

Live in the moment

Pursue our passions

Discover our missions

Experience real freedom

Create more, consume less

Focus on our health

Grow as individuals

Contribute beyond ourselves

Rid ourselves of excess stuff

Discover purpose in our lives

“I wish everyone could become rich & famous so they could realize it's not the answer.” — Jim Carrey

The year was 1979, when Jimmy Carter, 39th president of the U.S., identified in his Crisis of Confidence speech the key issue that the addictive consumerism lifestyle has lead us to – 'human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns'. Good evening. It’s clear that the true problems of our nation are much deeper, deeper than gasoline lines or energy shortages, deeper even than inflation or recession. In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we’ve discovered that only things and consuming things doesn’t satisfy our longing for meaning. We’ve learned that piling up material goods can’t fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose. This is not a message of happiness or reassurance, but it is the truth and it is a warning.

Love people and use things, because the opposite never works.

For more information visit their website:  https://www.theminimalists.com/

[theshipsfirstmate]

Sex Education Fic: My Heart Is Like Paper, Yours Is Like a Flame

Post-s2 finale. Maeve makes her way to the shop. So does Otis. (aka, the immediate elimination of the Isaac obstacle.)

A/N: Fun fact: the working title of this fic was just, “I Lost Your Jumper.” I just have a LOT of feelings about these two and think Maeve Wiley deserves the world.

I also can’t believe we haven’t had a canon Maeve/Jean scene yet — all of those two together in s3, please and thank you. Anyway, hi new fandom! (p.s. please let me know if I messed up any of the British-isms or references, so I can fix.)

Title from “Such a Simple Thing,” by Ray LaMontagne.

My Heart Is Like Paper, Yours Is Like a Flame (AO3 - wc: 4248)

She picks up her pace as she makes her way to the shop, and tries to make the burning in her legs drown out the ringing in her ears. She looks up to the same stars she’s seen every night since she can remember, and tries to exhale away the chaos of the day. She blinks a few times whenever her vision starts to swim, and tries not to picture Elsie waving from the back seat.

She’s not sure how long she wanders around the brightly-lit aisles, browsing without really looking, in no rush to get back to Isaac or her empty caravan. After however many minutes, she barely even hears the door swing open or the squeal of a trainer on the tile floor. But she’d know that voice anywhere.

“Maeve!” It’s one syllable, but somehow he still ends on a stammer. “Hi, I was just-- You’re here!”

Her head snaps up, out of her daze, and she realizes she’s almost walked right into him. He’s close, too close, and she takes a quick step back, nearly knocking a dozen packets of crisps right off the shelf.

“Hi, Otis.”

He smiles, wide and bright, and it makes her jaw ache. “Congratulations on the Quiz Heads!”

Right. 

The finals seem like ages ago, and she can’t imagine what it might feel like to be celebrating right now. “Thanks.”

“I saw you on TV.” He’s still smiling, and she’s still biting back the corners of her mouth until she tastes copper. In avoiding his eyes, she notices that the tips of his ears are turning bright red. “You guys were incredible.”

“Thanks,” she says again. Her insides feel like a spin cycle, and now, mixing in with the anger and sadness and regret, is the way he makes her feel. She doesn't know what to call it, really. Or, she does, but she won't.

“I was wondering, if-”

“I’m sorry, Otis,” she interrupts. “I just— I really can’t do this tonight.”

His face falls, perhaps more steeply than she’s ever seen in the year or so she’s known him well. He tries to hide it, but he does a shit job.

“Okay, yeah,” he answers slowly, before pointing at the refrigerated shelves behind her. “I told Mum I’d grab milk on my way home.”

They awkwardly shuffle around each other, doing their best not to touch, and just before she turns away for good, he blurts out,  “Look, I’m sorry if my message upset you. I just- I saw you on TV and I had to-”

She frowns. “Your message?” 

“Did you not...” He frowns and tilts his head, looking not unlike a sky-eyed puppy dog. “Is that not why you’re brushing me off?”

She doesn’t even have the energy to hate the hope that tickles in her chest. She just has to get out of here. “No, Otis, I’m brushing you off because I've had a shit night.” He opens his mouth as if to ask, but she won’t let him. “And I don't want to talk about it -- I just need to get some things and get back home.” 

She doesn’t mention Isaac. She wonders for a moment if it would make his eyes flash that frosty blue they do sometimes -- and then shakes her head to clear the thought, selfish and stupid, from her mind. 

Instead, he just looks at her, for what feels like a very long time. “Yeah, sorry, of course.” But it’s never that simple, not with Otis. “And I’m sorry again, about the voicemail, if that’s-- I only wanted to say, uh, congratulations. You were brilliant today.”

She dips her head so he won’t see her eyes shimmer, and pats at her pockets, realizing they’re empty but for a few pounds. She can’t really remember looking at her phone after making the call this afternoon, though she knows she must have.

“Hear that in the least patronizing way you can, please,” he tacks on to the end of his run-on thought, with another sheepish grin, but she’s hardly even listening anymore. It’s too much for tonight. 

“Thank you,” she says once more, almost mechanical at this point, grabbing a handful of random items from nearby shelves and tossing some bills at the cashier, who barely has the chance to hand her a bag before she’s out the door. “Goodnight, Otis.”

She wants the night sky to swallow her back up the second she steps outside, squeezing her eyes shut as tears track icy down her cheeks. But still, she hears him echo softly behind her. “‘Night, Maeve.”

_______________

She spends the entire walk home preoccupied by what he could have said in a voicemail to leave him so flustered and apologetic -- and then about 20 minutes tearing her caravan apart looking for her phone before she remembers Isaac again.

He smiles at her when she opens his door, and her stomach drops at how smug it looks. She sought him out in the first place, looking for a refuge in shared trauma, but after her encounter with Otis, she finds she's not really in the mood for his morose sarcasm.

“You’d think a personal chef would be a bit more punctual,” he teases, and her middle fingers go up on instinct after she drops the shopping bag on the counter. His grin widens; he’s the type to take that as the highest form of flirtation.

“Did I leave my phone here?” She tries to ask casually, forming the words around the adrenaline that's still burning in the back of her throat.

“No.” Isaac frowns, and he’s pretty good, but she’s known too many liars to not recognize the twist at the corner of his mouth. “No, I don’t think I saw it.”

It takes her five seconds to spot it on the side table. Her whole shit kingdom for just one man who doesn’t try and manipulate her.

“Christ,” she scoffs as she clicks first to voicemail and then over to missed calls. “You think you’d know to be better at this.”

And with that she storms out, leaving the groceries scattered on the countertop and Isaac’s protests blowing in the wind. (“It won’t work!” he calls after her, like she hasn’t heard it a million times in her own head.) She doesn’t shed a tear until she’s back in her own caravan, curled up in a bed that still smells like her sister’s strawberry-scented cuddly toy.

_______________

It's just a few hours later when she wakes with a start. Her eyelids feel like sandpaper from all the crying, and the emptiness around her is almost deafening -- she was only just beginning to get used to the idea of a fuller house.

When she’s struck with a pang of loneliness so sharp it makes her breath stutter, she realizes there’s only one person she wants to talk to.

She reaches the steps in front of Otis’ house without remembering the walk, and without a plan --  internally debating the merits of chucking pebbles at the top windows until she finds his, trying her luck at the door, or, alternately, turning around and taking her crazy arse back home. 

The question is answered for her when she shuffles her feet as she nears the front door and startles at the sound of a nearby female voice.

“Who’s that? Eric?”

She rounds to the side porch to see Otis’ mum sat at a table with a mug of tea, wrapped in a yellow robe that doesn't look nearly warm enough for the late hour.

“Hello, Dr. Millburn.”

The woman’s brown furrows, but not menacingly. She looks distracted, Maeve thinks, too distracted to properly worry about the intrusion. “Who are you?”

“I’m Maeve. Maeve Wiley,” she answers, feeling an only slightly lesser version of the panic that crept up on the disastrous night she went over to meet Jackson’s mums. “I’m a friend of Otis’ from school.”

“So you’re the mysterious Maeve.” Dr. Milburn narrows her eyes again, and this time it feels a little more like being looked through.

“Mysterious?”

“Well your name seems to come up quite a lot, but I'm not sure I actually know anything about you.” Maeve scuffs her foot against the deck, absently hoping her makeup isn’t too smudged. “Though I did re-read Wollstonecraft on Otis’ insistence of your recommendation. Liked it much better than I remembered.”

That sets a proud grin on her face, and a swarm of butterflies in her stomach, but it’s easy to tamp both down when Dr. Milburn’s demeanor darkens.

“I thought maybe it was just a crush,” the woman continues, “but now I wonder if maybe you’re a fellow... clinician?”

Maeve’s first instinct is to lie, but there’s something oddly comforting about the idea that Otis’ mum’s concerns about her seem to be due to their work together -- and not the fact that she’s a red-eyed caravan park girl who turns up at people’s houses in the middle of the night.

She sighs. In for a penny, and all that. “I’m not a therapist,” she answers. “I’m in charge of cash flow and scheduling.” 

She steels her shoulders as the other woman does the same with her gaze.

“It’s very serious, what the two of you did. And please note the past tense,” she says coolly. Maeve knows his mother is only referring to the clinic, but still, her stomach bottoms out. “It’s incredibly unethical.”

“It was my idea to charge,” she admits quickly, and this time it isn’t just taking the fall. “Otis, he has a gift for helping people... when he can focus it the right way.” 

She remembers hearing him diagnose Adam that first time, with a calming reminder to accept every part of himself. She remembers how happy he’d made Aimee with the simple suggestion that her own pleasure might be worth consideration. She remembers watching him talk Liam down off the moon at the dance, before she was even certain that speech was for her. It’s so genuine, what he does, and she’s never felt anything like being around him.

“He’s incredibly talented, and kind,” she tells his mum, letting emotion flood her better judgement, “and he just-- he really cares.”

The sound Dr. Milburn makes is barely a chuckle, but when their eyes meet again, there does seem to be a touch of something like maternal warmth. Maeve’s honestly not sure she’d recognize it if she saw it.

“Yes,” the woman says, knowingly. “Perhaps he's not the only one.”

That’s the problem with her feelings for Otis, she realizes sharply. They’re rose-colored glasses, and she can’t ever afford to lose the big picture. 

His mother sighs, and tips her head back, either towards the stars or the upstairs windows. “I suppose I’m not in much position to judge anyone tonight.”

It’s a statement that begs more than a few questions, Maeve thinks, but she’s 100-percent sure she’s not the one who should be asking them. After a beat, Dr. Milburn seems to realize the same.

“Upstairs,” she offers. “The one at the end -- you’ll think it’s the bathroom.”

“Thank you.”  

_______________

Maeve rushes inside, and up the stairs, down the hall, with barely even a breath. Otis’ light is still on, but he’s lying in bed -- and he nearly jumps out of his skin when she bursts through the door without bothering to knock.

“What did you say in that message?”

“Maeve!”  He shoots upright immediately, folding his legs in towards himself and scrabbling at the covers. She can’t help a little smirk at his frantic discomfort.

“The voicemail, dickhead, what did you say?” Every one of her emotions feels like it’s breaking the needle, but most pressing at the moment is curiosity.

“What?” His hair is all stuck up in different directions, and he’s looking at her like she’s speaking a different language. In other circumstances, she might find it endearing.

“Isaac deleted it,” she explains fast, like it’ll make it less humiliating, “and I just want to know what you--”

“He what?” 

“He’s an arsehole, I’m over it.” Otis won’t be, she can see it in the pinch of his lips, but she doesn’t let it pull focus. “What. Did. You. Say?”

“I, uh-” He stammers and then heaves a deep breath, nervously reaching down again to smooth the covers at the end of the bed. It’s like he can’t meet her eyes, now that he understands why she’s here. “Do you want to sit?”

“No.” She folds her arms across her chest. “Out with it.”

She glances around his room while she waits. It’s not like she pictured, but it’s nice.

“Okay, I, well… My dad’s been around recently, and-”

“Otis.”

“I said I was sorry,” he admits at her prompting. “For what I said to you at the party, for Ruby, I--”

She doesn't want to, but she flinches at the memories. “You were drunk,” she shrugs.

“I was.... horrendous,” he continues. He seems to have found some of his composure, she notices his eyes look particularly icy. “I was angry, and shitty, and spinning out on the punishment of getting the thing I wanted most, right when I wasn’t allowed to have it. I found it unfair, and I took it out on you— I knew how to hurt you, and I did. And I’m so, so sorry.”

She doesn’t answer him, so certain that if she speaks, the tears burning at the backs of her eyelids will spill over. 

“But you’re not selfish, Maeve, you have to believe that.” He’s right when he says that he knows her -- that was the most painful part. “You’re not selfish, you’re strong.”

She snorts derisively, and looks down at his floor. “I’m not that strong,”

“You are.”

“Saying it again doesn’t make it true, Otis.” Now she’s the one who can’t meet his eyes.

“I’m telling you,” he insists. Stubborn as always. “I know you may not always be able to see it, but I-”

“I had to call social services on my mum today, okay?” The admission comes out in a rush, and so do her tears. 

“Oh, Maeve, I’m--”

“Don't say sorry,” she warns, swiping at her cheeks and willing her voice not to shake. “She’s using again, and it wasn’t safe for Elsie.”

She stares at his bedroom floor for a long moment, clenching her fists until her wrists start to twinge. When she does look up, he still seems horrified -- and she can’t really blame him. “She's never gonna forgive me.”

When Otis finally speaks, though, it's soft and almost pleading. “Maeve, will you please just come and sit?”

Exhausted, she gives in, crossing the room to take a seat on the side of his bed as he swings his legs around to sit next to her. She holds herself together for a split-second, but when he gingerly reaches out, as if to take her hand, it’s too much. She twists into his arms on a sob, and if any fragment of her heart was left to break today, it would at the way he’s right there to catch her.

“It’s not your fault.” He talks to her softly as she soaks through the shoulder of his sleep shirt, soothing a hand up and down her back. “I’m so sorry you had to do that.”

She doesn’t scold him for the apology this time, it would feel hypocritical with his arms around her. She doesn’t even protest when, after a few minutes, he maneuvers them back until they’re leaning against the wall at the head of his bed. 

Otis keeps an arm wrapped around her shoulders, and Maeve curls into his chest, absently noticing his Super Mario pajama pants and letting the image tug at the corners of her mouth. He smells warm and familiar, and after a while, her tears start to taper off and she relaxes against him.

“Could you just… keep talking for a bit?” she murmurs. “It doesn't matter what about.” He nods, but he’s so close that his lips accidentally brush against her forehead, and they both freeze for a second at the spark.

“My dad’s been back around because he cheated on his new wife and she kicked him out,” Otis offers. “The older I get, the more I’m realizing that he’s kind of an awful person.” 

The next part he says lower, and she can almost feel the sadness rumbling in his ribcage. “My mum told me I look just like him when I lie. Ola said I try so hard to be a good guy that I end up the opposite. I’m just worried that the parts of me that come from him are destined to be rotten.”

“If that’s how it worked, I’d already be fertilizer,” Maeve deadpans, eliciting a weak chuckle on each side.

“I don’t want to be like him,” he continues after a beat. “I don’t want to hurt people. I don’t want to hurt you.”

There’s so much in his voice that she has to look up, and when she meets his eyes, her breath hitches in her throat.

“I don’t want more apologies, Otis,” she protests, weakly. “Tell me something good.”

His arm tightens around her for just a second. “Back when I was invisible, I could be kind of a dickhead. It didn’t matter much, really, only Eric was there to hear it.” It’s strange to think about, how the time before they knew one another wasn’t all that long ago.

“But you’ve helped me become somebody, Maeve,” he continues. “Somebody better.”

“Otis--”

“And so tonight, I just called to tell you that. And to tell you how proud it made me feel to see you win that championship. And to tell you how sorry I was for treating you the way that I have.  And to tell you that I lo-”

“Don’t!” She sits up on a gasp, pressing away from his chest as her heart thuds against her sternum. She doesn’t get too far, his palm is still on her shoulder as her hand fists in his shirt and then snaps back to her side. “Why would you say that?”

“Because it’s true,” he says, clear and certain, like a heartbreaking deja vu. “We’re good together. Great, even.”

“And what do you expect me to say back?” 

She’s not sure why, exactly, she’s immediately antagonistic, but the second he began to say it, Maeve thought of a recurring dream she has sometimes. She’s stuck in a car, buckled into the passenger seat, and there’s a cinder block on the accelerator and no one around for miles.

“N-nothing,” Otis stammers, finally taking his hand off her arm. She knows it’s true, he’s not the type to bargain with words like that. “I mean, anything. Whatever you want to say.”

She’s learned how to wake herself up from the dream most nights, to focus on the details that tell her what’s happening isn’t real. But his expectant face, hopeful and nervous, tells her that they’re speeding towards the point of no return. It’s almost time to crash or bail.

“Maeve, you’re the most brilliant person I know.” He says it so easily, and there’s no dishonest twist to his mouth when he does. “You’re smart, and stunning, and I-”

“I lost your jumper.” It’s not at all what she means to say, but it’s what comes out when she cuts him off. “The one you let me borrow.”

Otis sputters a little in confusion, but he does his best. “That’s okay,” he answers, and she glances up to see his brow furrow.

“I mean, I kept it, for a long time. Too long,” she explains in a rush. “And then after you gave me that trophy last term, and I read your letter, I came to bring it to you.”

“Maeve, it’s fine. I have loads more.” He still doesn’t understand. 

“But when I got to your house, you were with Ola. Like, with her, with her. ” She looks up again to watch it click. “And so I ran away and I threw your jumper on a clothesline in the caravan park.”

“Oh,” he exhales, wincing a little. “I didn’t know.”

“I waited too long. I was a coward, and I waited until you were happy with someone else, and then I tried to steal you back,” she confesses. “So I’m not all brilliant.”

He frowns as she finishes. “You are, though,” he replies, adding a teasing grin that he does his best to drop when she glares back at him.

“Fuck off.”

“Look, it wasn’t right with Ola. And we both knew it, I think,” he explains in that soft, earnest way of his. “We were just… trying something because it seemed like it might work for a while.”

For a split-second, she thinks of Jackson, and how it always felt like they were playing with borrowed time. “I think I realized, afterwards,” Otis continues, “that what I liked the most about her was that she liked me back.”

“She’d have been crazy not to.” It’s almost an admission on her part, and when he raises his eyebrows at her, she scoffs lightly and moves back to sit next to him again. The bed isn’t large, so their arms brush against one another, and Maeve takes a deep breath, in and out, and takes his hand in hers, looking down to watch their fingers tangle together.

“Otis, I do, still,” she tells him, struggling for the right words over the thudding in her chest. “Like” feels insignificant. “Love” feels monumental. And then there’s the matter of the rest of it. 

“But I don’t know how we could expect this to work,” she admits after a moment. “We’re so different. You’re you, and I’m...me.” 

She can practically hear his consternation at that, but when she looks up, she doesn’t see any pity on his face. In fact, he looks a little angry. “Do I have Isaac to thank for that, too?”

It peeves her a little, that he’s not entirely wrong. She’d thought she was past fighting with her inferiority complex after Jackson, but Otis is different. He always has been.

When her silence serves as an answer, he sighs. “Maeve, when I say you’re the most brilliant person I know, I don’t just mean your freakish, National Quiz Championship-winning brain.” Instead of swallowing her smile, she turns to press it into his shoulder. It feels like progress, and his answering grin makes her heart skip a beat.

“I mean that you’re... formidable. You’re clever and profound and beautiful and so much more,” he says, his voice at a low, impassioned decibel. “And you are strong. You’re gonna be amazing at whatever it is you want to do.” 

A kitchen table with four chairs. But maybe not all of them are empty.

“I’d just like to be there cheering you on,” Otis finishes. “If you’ll have me.”

For a moment, she allows herself to imagine a world where it’s that simple. But part of her brain is still trying to pry the cinder block off the gas pedal. “What if it’s too much?” 

It’s the least painful version of the question she really wants to ask. The rest light up like neon signs in her brain as she watches him weigh his answer. What if I lose you? What if you betray me? What if you’re just like everyone else I’ve ever loved?

“It can be whatever you want it to be, Maeve,” Otis says finally, with a squeeze of her hand, and the concession is a little dizzying. “All I’m asking is for us to maybe try being in the same place at the same time for once.”

He makes it sound easy enough. At the very least, it loosens the knot in her chest from icy panic to something warmer. “I think I want to kiss you,” she says, grinning so hard it crinkles her nose as she watches his eyes go wide.

“Yeah?” It comes out on a breath, and she nods, pursing her lips.

“Yeah.”

It’s soft and sweet, and even more than she had hoped. The part of her that had allowed herself to picture this moment had worried a bit that Otis might kiss her too delicately, like a china doll. But he’s bolder than she expected, bringing a hand up to cup her jaw and diving in like he’s been waiting for the chance. It thrills her to think that he probably has. 

She loses whole minutes kissing him -- trying to remember every time she caught herself glancing absently at his lips while he was talking -- and when they pull back to catch a breath, he looks as dazed as she feels.

“Hi,” he whispers, with a foolish smile she can’t help but match.

“Hi,” she replies, threading her fingers through his hair before leaning in again. “I’ve missed you.”

They stay up, talking and kissing, for awhile longer, eventually sliding down the wall until they’re staring at each other from across his pillows. When her eyelids start to drift closed, he presses his lips to her forehead -- this time on purpose -- and she feels more content than she has in a very long time.

In the morning, maybe she’ll see if she can get his jumper back. Or, even better, she’ll just borrow another.

[soyboyjames]

Minimalism: a Documentary About the Important Things 2015

10 Favorite Lines:

…now as a minimalist, every possession serves a purpose or brings me joy. [—Joshua Fields Millburn]

There’s a template out there. You can call it “the American Dream” or “keeping up with the Joneses.” That’s just a template; it’s not the template. Once we realize that, I think we can create our own template that works just for us. [—Joshua Fields Millburn]

Imagine a life with less. Less stuff. Less clutter. Less stress and debt and discontent. A life with fewer distractions. Now imagine a life with more. More time. More meaningful relationships. More growth and contribution and contentment. [—Ryan Nicodemus]

Hey, keep your books. It sounds like you get a lot of value out of your books. And that’s what I’d say about any kind of collection. [—Ryan Nicodemus]

We’re not going to ever be able to achieve the environmental gains that we’re seeking while still expecting our lives to be the same. We’re going to have to give up a lot. The secret is that a lot of that we’re not actually going to miss. [—Jay Austin]

I absolutely believe in quality over quantity. I’d much rather have one nice sweatshirt than a closet full of ugly sweatshirts that I don’t enjoy wearing. I don’t own a lot of clothes now, but all the clothes I do own are my favorite clothes.  [—Joshua Fields Millburn]

There’s a certain amount of worry that makes sense and a certain amount of worry that doesn’t. …ask yourself a simple question: Is this useful? [—Dan Harris]

Too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption… But we’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We’ve learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose. [—President Jimmy Carter]

It really does come down to a value-based ideal. You want to do the most amount of good and get the most amount of value with exactly what you need. Having too little is not going to give you that, and having too much is not going to give you that… Having that balance, having enough — that’s what you’re looking for. [—Patrick Rhone]

The whole point of this message, the whole point of us sharing this story, is to help people curb that appetite for more things, because it’s such a destructive path to go down. [—Ryan Nicodemus]

[nathanieldorsky]

Brett Kashmere’s writing about Nathaniel Dorsky’s A Fall Trip Home

This article on A Fall Trip Home (1964, 11 min, sound) was most generously written for Canyon Cinema by Brett Kashmere and presented on their website.

Image: Nathaniel Dorsky, A Fall Trip Home

Autumn Erotic: Nathaniel Dorsky's A Fall Trip Home

By Brett Kashmere

In the Shreve High football stadium, I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville, And gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood, And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel, Dreaming of heroes.

All the proud fathers are ashamed to go home, Their women cluck like starved pullets, Dying for love.

Therefore, Their sons grow suicidally beautiful At the beginning of October, And gallop terribly against each other’s bodies.

James Wright, “Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio” (1963)

In America, fall is football season. An evidently irresistible cultural form despite our awakened comprehension of its traumatic aftereffects, the game’s popular appeal depends upon mediation. (This makes sense to me, elementally. Have you ever attended an outdoor football game in Ohio in October?) College football and NFL contests dominate the TV schedule from September to January, spilling further and further across the weekly grid: from Saturday and Sunday afternoons in the 1950s and 60s, to Monday nights (starting in 1970), then Sunday nights (as of 1987), and, since 2006, Thursday nights. Today, game footage is captured with high-speed cameras from every conceivable angle, repeated and dissected in slow motion replays, supplemented by torrents of statistics and a parallel fantasy football industry, in which players become interchangeable with, and reduced to, their data profiles. Mediated football’s affective, sensual pleasures are partly defused and redirected by its high-tech, scientific presentation.

As the media scholar Margaret Morse notes, “Football on television is a world of representation which has abandoned Renaissance space and Newtonian physics – but not the claim to scientificity of sport.”[1]  This recourse to scientific-investigative observation and statistical fixation is a means by which the erotic spectacle of football, wherein men are permitted to touch each other in a variety of aggressive and affectionate ways, is disavowed by its majority straight male audience. The anthropologist William Arens remarks that, while in uniform, “players can engage in hand holding, hugging and bottom patting that would be disapproved of in any other {straight} context, but which is accepted on the gridiron without a second thought.”[2]  And as the folklorist Alan Dundes observes in his psychoanalytic interpretation, the sexually suggestive terms of American football – “penetration,” “tight end,” “hitting the hole,” and so on – combined with the game’s structural goal, of getting into the opponent’s end zone more often than the opponent gets into yours, imply “a thinly disguised symbolic form by, and directed towards, males and males only, {that} would seem to constitute ritual homosexuality.”[3]

Few have lensed this symbolic ritual and pageantry of masculinity as sensuously as the film artist Nathaniel Dorsky. Even more remarkable, Dorsky’s delicate handling of the game and its defining season was made at the tender age of 21. The second film of a career-opening trilogy, A Fall Trip Home (1964), like its sister films Ingreen (1964) and Summerwind (1965), is restrained in its visual concept and skillfully executed. Partially inspired by James Wright’s football poem “Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio,” Dorsky’s subjective camera interleaves Northeastern foliage with the tangled, swirling, and collapsing bodies of adolescent footballers as well as close-ups of rapt onlookers. The flow of images is modulated by montage editing, slow motion photography, and floating superimpositions. A Fall Trip Home’s fluid construction was achieved through intuition and simple means, using a synchronizer and A/B rolls: “At that time, I can’t tell you how much one was winging it,” Dorsky explains. “You’d imagine this over that, then this over that. You didn’t really see it, until you got it back from the lab.”[4]

The film begins with an extreme long shot of a train, echoing the title, with fog rising from the distant tree line. A progression of blue-green forested hills and flora follows, signaling early fall. Dorsky’s landscape impressions meld with snippets of kids playing pickup football in a grassy yard, a high school stadium, pieces of mundane game action, a marching band, pompoms, and a cheering audience in dissolving cascades. Throughout the film’s 11-minute running time, images surface, assemble momentarily, then vanish and reemerge. Outside of its initial framing, the film adheres to a nonlinear logic; documentation is suffused with qualities of remembrance and fantasy. A mixing of film stocks adds to this perception of disjunctive timeframes. Most of A Fall Trip Home is shot on Kodachrome II, “the greatest stock they ever made,”[5]  but a passage in the middle of film, of imagery we saw earlier in full color, appears in black-and-white. A grainier, high-speed color stock is used for the final nighttime sequence, accentuating the juxtaposition of exterior and interior scenes visually and temporally.

Dorsky describes the film as “less a psychodrama {though it is that} and more a sad sweet song of youth and death, of boyhood and manhood and our tender earth.”[6]  Dissolves between visuals of players and leaves emphasizes the themes of transformation and maturation. Tenderness is the film’s foremost emotional register[7]  until the conclusion, when A Fall Trip Home takes a sharp turn towards psychodrama. This shift in tone, from affection to anxiety, follows a move into the filmmaker’s family home. We see his mother at the kitchen window backlit by artificial light. It’s getting dark out, and Dorsky is seemingly being called inside. With this move, from public/social/day into private/familial/night, we are cut off from the reverie of male teenaged bodies inscribed in slow motion and layered assemblage. That spell has been broken by the domestic setting. Here we see black-and-white images of planes dropping bombs, connecting football to war, re-photographed off a television monitor. A sense of despair, claustrophobia, and unease attends this final passage. Returning home also entails a reminder of what one needed to leave in the first place.

Roughly speaking, A Fall Trip Home is what its title asserts: a return to the filmmaker’s hometown of Millburn, New Jersey, shot intermittently over the course of a season with his Bolex. At the time, Dorsky was living in Manhattan, a 35-minute train ride away, and attending film courses at New York University. What might be of visual interest to a young artist honing his craft, and, as Scott MacDonald writes, “coming to grips with the combined excitement and terror of gay desire,”[8]  upon returning to the autumnal suburban landscape of his childhood? Given the time, place, and circumstances of its production, it’s not surprising that A Fall Trip Home would focus upon the poetic and aesthetic aspects of football within the context of a seasonal rite, staged here as going home (crucially as a subject in flux). More accurately, it seems fitting that Dorsky would cast his eye on the male homosocial sphere of football, with its regiment of intimate male contact, as subject matter.

As Dorsky explains, “Like a lot of kids, I loved playing touch football after school. I was crazy about it. I mean, in the fall. You only played football in the fall, and you only played baseball in the spring. I loved playing touch football, but I was never on the level that I would want to play varsity high school football. In fact, I was in the marching band. {Laughs.} I was in the orchestra, and then the orchestra was the marching band during football season. So I did go to all of the football games, as a band member.”[9]

Dorsky’s recollections of football are framed within the pleasures of performance, looking, and accompaniment (as band member), at a remove from the competitive and violent physicality of organized tackle football. A Fall Trip Home mobilizes these personal threads into a fascinating counter-narrative of masculinity and erotic longing through primarily visual means – though unlike the majority of Dorsky’s films, A Fall Trip Home does have a soundtrack. Japanese flute music, discovered by the filmmaker in a record store in San Francisco’s Japantown, contributes to the film’s pensive mood and complements the slow-motion imagery. In eschewing the bombastic music most commonly associated with high school and college football – that of the percussive, upbeat marching band – for a solo performance of elegiac, non-Western music, Dorsky heightens his idiosyncratic presentation of this American game.

Image: Nathaniel Dorsky, A Fall Trip Home

A Fall Trip Home is also notable in the way that it anticipates formal advancements in sports media language. Dorsky’s film was shot at the same time that NFL Films was being conceived as a publicity instrument of the National Football League – the ultimate marriage of sports, advertising, and corporate media. Both Dorsky, working with film individually and non-commercially as an artist, and NFL Films, an institutional, large-scale documenting apparatus, used slow motion cinematography and color 16mm film to evoke distinctive visions of football: compassionate in Dorsky’s case, while mythic for NFL Films. The grainy texture of 16mm and the vibrant, high-contrast range of Kodachrome reversal convey a sense of romanticism and nostalgia. Unlike video, which imbues immediacy and “presentness,” film images carry an intrinsic archival effect, a sense of the past. And unlike the slow motion of the instant replay, an electronic process associated with analysis, Dorsky’s use of the technique affirms the theme of, in his words, “a melancholy struggle. I realized that if you slowed down the football players it would turn more into… not a bromance {laughs}, to use a modern word, but slightly eroticized.”[10]  John Fiske similarly observes that the use of slow motion in mediating sports functions “to eroticize power, to extend the moment of climax.”[11]

Dorsky’s film speaks to one of the foremost paradoxes of football. Forged in the culture of the late 19th century Ivy League, football has long been an emblem of white supremacy and heterosexual power, organized as a colonizing conquest of an opponent’s territory. At the same time, football is a homosocial enclave that authorizes the objectification of male bodies for a primarily male gaze: a fraternal exchange which belies the game’s homophobic culture and its racist practices. As scholar Thomas Oates describes, “From its earliest days, football has been a complex and conflicted cultural text, in which seemingly straightforward assertions of the power of white men consistently involve an undercurrent of uncertainty and anxiety.”[12]  In A Fall Trip Home this undercurrent is expressed by a desirous yet detached subjectivity. Male bodies are captured on film, slowed down, studied, but also obscured under layers of superimposition. The film’s specular gaze is complicated by aesthetic rather than scientific mediation. Here, a game in which masculinity is defined and affirmed unfolds in front of the camera, but its homoerotic traces are “masked by the (supposedly) hyper-masculine setting of football.”[13]  The erotic undertones of A Fall Trip Home are circumscribed within the seasonal frame. “I always found … like the composer Mahler, there’s something erotic about autumn, because it’s a season of death, of dying,” Dorsky notes. “That kind of thing sometimes intensifies a kind of erotic compensation, of life itself, as opposed to death.”[14]

A Fall Trip Home’s sensuality circumvents the accepted mythology of American football and in doing so complicates the dominant image of masculinity as embodied and expressed in popular media coverage of the sport. By shifting focus away from heroism, winning, and depictions of physical strength, A Fall Trip Home offers a gentle queering of football’s construction of manliness. At the same time, it highlights – and savors – the homosocial conditions that football creates.

Homosociality provides an important context for understanding what goes on when men watch other men perform in the sporting arena. In Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick explains that “‘Homosocial’ is a word occasionally used in history and the social sciences {to describe} social bonds between persons of the same sex; it is a neologism, obviously formed by analogy with ‘homosexual,’ and just as obviously meant to be distinguished from ‘homosexual.’ In fact, it is applied to such activities as ‘male bonding,’ which may, as in our society, be characterized by intense homophobia, fear and hatred of homosexuality.” Football’s sexually violent hazing rituals are an example of the fear (heterosexual panic) produced by homosociality. “To draw the ‘homosocial’ back into the orbit of ‘desire,’” Sedgwick continues, “of the potentially erotic, then, is to hypothesize the potential unbrokenness of a continuum between homosocial and homosexual – a continuum whose visibility, for men, in our society, is radically disrupted.”[15]

Football, through its enforcement of homosocial but often homophobic behavior, adherence to male authority, and suppression of individual speech, teaches patriarchal thinking and practice. The consequences are considerable. As bell hooks notes, “To indoctrinate boys into the rules of patriarchy, we force them to feel pain and to deny their feelings.”[16]  Football’s culture of violence stems in part from this condition of denial. The tenderness and poeticism that underpins Dorsky’s representation draw, as Sedgwick puts it, the homosocial into the orbit of desire and the potentially erotic. If even for a handful of moments, the viewers of A Fall Trip Home are accorded “the ambiguity of sexual orientation in the liminal state of love for and identification with the object of desire.”[17]

Brett Kashmere is a media artist, historian, curator, and doctoral student in Film & Digital Media at University of California, Santa Cruz. He is also the founding editor of INCITE: Journal of Experimental Media. His writing on experimental cinema, moving image art, sports media, and alternative film exhibition has appeared in Millennium Film Journal, MIRAJ, The Canadian Journal of Film Studies, PUBLIC, Senses of Cinema, Carolee Schneemann: Unforgivable, The Films of Jack Chambers, and Coming Down the Mountain: Rethinking the 1972 Summit Series.

1. Margaret Morse, “Sport on Television: Replay and Display,” in Regarding Television: Critical Approaches – An Anthology, edited by E. Ann Kaplan (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1983), 49. 

2. William Arens, “An Anthropologist Looks at the Rituals of Football,” The New York Times, November 16, 1975, 238. 

3. Alan Dundes, “Into the Endzone for a Touchdown: A Psychoanalytic Consideration of American Football," Western Folklore 37, no. 2 (April 1978): 87. 

4. Nathaniel Dorsky, telephone interview with the author, July 16, 2018. 

5. Dorsky, interview. 

6. “A Fall Trip Home,” Canyon Cinema website, http://canyoncinema.com/catalog/film/?i=802 

7. This quality of tenderness separates A Fall Trip Home from celebrated mainstream cinematic treatments of the sport, such as North Dallas Forty (1979) and Any Given Sunday (1999), which often explore the visceral brutality and degrading aspects of football’s professionalized variant. 

8. Scott MacDonald, “Nathaniel Dorsky,” in A Critical Cinema 5: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 78. 

9. Dorsky, interview.

10. Dorsky, interview. 

11. John Fiske, Television Culture (London: Routledge, 1989), 219. 

12. Thomas P. Oates, Manliness and Football: An Unauthorized Feminist Account of the NFL (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017), 8-9. 

13. James L. Cherney and Kurt Lindemann, “Queering Street: Homosociality, Masculinity, and Disability in Friday Night Lights,” Western Journal of Communication 78, no. 1 (January–February 2014): 2. 

14. Dorsky, interview. 

15. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 1-2. 

16. bell hooks, “Understanding Patriarchy,” in The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (New York: Atria Books, 2004), 18. 

17. Morse, “Sport on Television,” 57. 

link  Canyon Cinema  

[silvanavdesigns]

Minimalism: A Documentary about the Important Things

Under reference on the Consumerism lecture, the documentary “Minimalism” ended up by being an excellent add to my watch list.

In this documentary directed by Matt D’Avella, amongst a lot of testimonials from the growing minimalist community, we follow mainly the Minimalists Joshua Millburn & Ryan Nicodemus, creators of this movement, that also have a book, youtube channel, podcast, spreading the word on this lifestyle where people live with less in order to be able to focus on the important things. 

Such an important message, that makes us critically question the bombardment of images we are exposed to daily, and wether we want it or not to tell us what to do, like “Buy this!”; “Buy that!” 

The minimalist movement brings such good improvements to our society, or perhaps is just human kind returning to its roots, as this shows improvements on the communal sense people have, of cooperation and helping each others and sharing stuff.

The importance of owning and consuming less and breaking this consumption cycle urges so much, as doing so doesn’t actually fulfils us and our purpose as humans. Two of my favourite quotes: “ Imagine a life of less, a life of passion, unencumbered by the trapping of the chaotic world around you” 

“Love people & use things, as the opposite does not works”

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[PDF Download] Love People Use Things: Because the Opposite Never Works BY : Joshua Fields Millburn

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Love People Use Things: Because the Opposite Never Works

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 Author : Joshua Fields Millburn

Title : Love People Use Things: Because the Opposite Never Works

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 How might your life be better with less?Imagine a life with less: less stuff, less clutter, less stress and debt and discontent?a life with fewer distractions. Now, imagine a life with more: more time, more meaningful relationships, more growth and contribution and contentment?a life of passion, unencumbered by the trappings of the chaotic world around you. What you?re imagining is an intentional life. And to get there, you?ll have to let go of some clutter that?s in the way. In Love People Use Things, Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus move past simple decluttering to show how minimalism makes room to reevaluate and heal the seven essential relationships in our lives: stuff, truth, self, money, values, creativity, and people. They use their own experiences?and those of the people they have met along the minimalist journey?to provide a template for how to live a fuller, more meaningful life.Because once you have less, you can make room for the right kind of more.

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