#obviously we see it at night normally or just curtains drawn in general for privacy

[blossoms-phan]

this picture never fails to make me incredibly emotional like… first of all silly philly as an uncle is the cutest thing ever he’s probably so fun and playful but also. their home looks so beautiful when it’s full of light with the huge windows that phil always dreamt of 🥺

[ollieofthebeholder]

for the fic meme: tell me of the whumptober wip

So, for starters, it’s a Criminal Minds fic.

The premise of it was based on a headcanon/plotiphant I’ve been carrying around for umpty-scoop years, and a big part of the reason I didn’t post it (or, y’know, really finish it) was that I stopped watching Criminal Minds regularly ages ago, so I knew that short of saying “This is when I stopped watching and I’m skimming the wiki/IMDB and taking the plot points I like to use and saying to hell with the rest”, I was going to end up writing something WILDLY implausible. I liked it, though. May finish it at some point.

First part under the cut if you’re interested.

Spencer hesitated for a brief second, barely long enough to register, then turned the corner and stepped back twenty years in time.

The street hadn't changed. All the houses were the same color, even the same degree of faded. The few cars in the driveways at this time of day were the ones that had always been there. Sunflowers still marched along the edges of those houses that didn't have shrubbery under the window. The curtains were positioned in exactly the way he was used to.

Rossi squinted at the nearest porch. “None of these houses have their numbers displayed. Or am I just missing them?”

“Nobody uses house numbers,” Spencer murmured absently, barely aware he had spoken. Hell, the swing dangling from the maple tree in front of the Babashanians' house was still crooked, its left side about an inch higher than the right. It twisted idly in the breeze above the scuffed and dusty divot in the grass, almost as though someone had just run off inside. Any second, little Chrissie would come skipping out the front door and throw herself on it, stomach-first, arms stretched out like she was Supergirl and shouting for—

He caught himself firmly. “Little Chrissie” was in her early twenties now, and her brother was even older. Time moved on, even if it didn't look like it here.

Swallowing, he forced himself to at least try and speak normally. “It's a small town. Everybody knows where everybody else lives. Addresses are just for census purposes.”

“Well, then, how the hell are we supposed to know which house is 204?”

Spencer froze. For just a minute, it was hard to breathe.

204. Well, there were a few answers to that question. It's the one with a privacy fence on the right side and a row of rosebushes on the left. It's the one with an apple tree growing by the front corner. It's the one with the plants in the window.

It's the one that used to be home.

“Reid?” Rossi didn't sound annoyed, which was what Spencer half-expected from anybody any time he showed any kind of emotion beyond one hundred percent dedication to the case at hand. Instead, he sounded...concerned. Worried, even. He took a step closer and reached out like he was going to touch Spencer's arm, but stopped at the last second. “Spencer, is everything okay?”

Spencer honestly couldn't remember the last time someone had asked him that. Even JJ didn't usually bother, or if she did, she asked in a way that made it pretty clear she didn't really care about the answer, she was just asking because it was expected, and she also fully expected him to say yes even if it wasn't. But this was Rossi asking, Rossi who didn't cross the lines between personal and professional unless you did it first. Rossi, who was literally the only member of the team in the entire sixteen years Spencer had been a part of it to recognize, remember, and respect his boundaries and quirks from the beginning, consistently and without question or judgment.

“I used to live here,” he said softly. “Sort of. Part-time. It's...complicated.”

Spencer didn't have to turn his head to see Rossi's expression. He could feel him raising his eyebrows in surprise. “Just in town? Or specifically on this street?”

This time Spencer did turn his head, swallowing hard. “In 204.”

Rossi's face was hard to read, although Spencer wasn't sure if that was because he was schooling his emotions or because his own eyes were starting to blur with tears. He wasn't sure if he wanted Rossi to press him or wanted him to drop it, and he knew he wouldn't know for sure until Rossi reacted one way or the other and he was able to see his own response to that.

“So you know which one it is,” he finally murmured.

Nope, he'd been wrong. He still didn't know how he felt about Rossi not pushing for answers. “Yeah. It's that one.”

He pointed to the house catercorner from the Babashanians', aware that his finger was shaking, then lowered it quickly and started in that direction, Rossi at his side.

From somewhere nearby, Freddie Mercury began pleading with someone to find him somebody to love. Something in Spencer's chest twisted unpleasantly, caught by the memory, but before he could start hyperventilating, the music changed abruptly, mid-note. A short, too-familiar introduction, and then England Dan started telling someone that he'd really love to see them tonight.

Frankly, that was almost worse. Spencer flinched and glanced upwards briefly to mouth, Really? He was an agnostic, but if there was an all-powerful, all-seeing God, then She was kind of being a dick right about then. He pulled himself together, mostly, and headed for the porch.

The front walk needed sweeping, which wasn't all that unusual really, but the lawn bore signs of having been mowed recently, probably by a neighborhood kid who needed a few extra bucks for something or was looking for an easy community service project to get that next merit badge. The apples on the tree would probably be ready to pick in a week or two, and the potted plant in the window seemed cheerful and thriving. The curtains had evidently just stayed with the house, because they were the ones Spencer had made twenty years before, deep blue and streaked with silver like the night sky. He found himself wondering what had happened to the (admittedly few) things he'd left behind—things he hadn't been able to bring himself to go back up and clean out, because that would mean admitting—

The door knocker was the same.

Spencer brought himself up short, staring at the knocker. It had been something of an inside joke—a snake clutched in the talons of a bird, its head and tail jaunty and elated. Someone had cleaned it recently, or maybe it just saw a lot of use and stayed shiny, but it caught the sunlight. It was a good quality knocker, but it was still odd, and he'd been fully prepared for it to be gone. Except it wasn't.

Slowly, he reached for the knocker. His hand was shaking worse than it had when he'd been detoxing. He'd gotten good over the years at forcing the memories down, but he'd never been this close to them before. He wasn't prepared for what was on the other side, and for a split second, he didn't know if he could bring himself to knock—to knock on the door that he'd always just opened before, the one he was pretty sure he still had the key to.

But he had to. This wasn't his house anymore. And this was his job.

Taking a deep breath, he closed his hand around the snake's body, lifted it, and rapped on the door. Tap. Tap. Tap-tap-tap.

It was automatic—he hadn't even thought about it. He quickly let go of the knocker and stepped back, clenching his fists tightly and trying to school his reactions, trying to prepare himself. They had a name, but no picture—Ezra Fell was a notoriously reclusive and secretive author; that wasn't even his real name, not that anyone knew what his real name was—and all Spencer had to go on were the few clues he'd gleaned from the books he'd been drawn to from the start, since he saw the name and recognized the reference immediately and picked up the novel even though it hurt to think about.

Irish. The mystic language that Coelynth used for his magic was obviously based on Irish, maybe with a little bit of Scots Gaelic mixed in occasionally, so Fell had to be Irish or of Irish ancestry. Probably an older gentleman, white hair, bushy but neatly trimmed beard, horn-rimmed glasses, tall and broad-shouldered and fond of alcohol, or at least pretending to be. Or would, if he socialized. He would likely be annoyed at having been interrupted and hostile about answering their questions.

There was a faint clunking sound, like the bolts were being shot back. Spencer couldn't explain the feeling that washed over him all of a sudden, as though his soul had clicked into place like a magnet jumping from the fingers to a metal board. It was like a piece that had been missing for ages had been replaced. It was like coming home. Which was ridiculous, and he needed to stop being stupid about it. This wasn't home, hadn't been for a long time. Would never be home again.

Then the door opened, and Spencer's breath caught in his throat. It wasn't just that the man standing at the door was exactly the opposite of what he'd envisioned—around Spencer's age, dark brown hair, a roughly two-day growth of stubble, eyes clear and unadorned, same height and general build as Spencer was, a polite but faintly bemused expression on his face. It was that he wasn't supposed to be there at all.

“Zira?” he blurted.

The man's head snapped around. His eyes—warm and brown—widened, his lips parting in shock. Spencer knew he had the same expression on his own face.

It seemed an eternity between one heartbeat and the next, but it couldn't have been any longer than that split second before the man breathed out a single word, in a familiar voice he'd never expected to hear again. “Spencer.”