#probs will be gone the whole day with friends

[simcardiac-arrested]

I am super curious what would you have for de au canon once/if you come up with what you want for it. No pressure tho, it is your fun au.

Idk. I thought Wade and NWB could be a thing in which case it was probably something that NS was initially okay about but then it really drove him up the wall. He probably wanted to tell NWB but also couldn't bring himself to think about Wade or consider even a possibility of meeting him again. Or alternatively he didn't know, he just knew Wade was dating someone. And was completely blown up when he found out during current timeline.

The question is Wade's parents and how did they react to NWB. Harry ends up in police since it was upward mobility for him and Dora and them encouraged him towards this. I am not sure it would be a same situation here since, idk, I think they would hate NWB since let go.

like i said before wade and nwb arent a thing in the disco elysium au because that’s just not what their dynamic is supposed to be. yes i’m well aware that harry/dora is a romantic relationship but i’m not going to make this au 100% accurate to the game, like i’ve already changed the kim & harry dynamic for ns & nwb (because in the game kim & harry are cool with eachother, meanwhile ns & nwb aren’t) so i’m also changing the whole thing about dora into something less romantic but just as mentally ill if not more👍

[nereidprinc3ss]

hourglass

in which spencer disappears from fem!reader's life entirely for three months, right as it seems they were finally about to make things official. when he comes back they reunite, all the while knowing things can't be the same as they were.

18+ (smut, angst) warnings/tags: oh god so many. NOT canon compliant in the slightest, i make shit up, softdom!spence, nipple stuff prob, fingering, oral f receiving, piv sex, unprotected sex, pet names, tara mentioned, depression, mentions of trauma cause its the prison arc duh, passing mentions of alcohol, mentions of spencer losing weight, reader mistakenly thinks spencer tried to kill himself BUT ONLY FOR A SECOND, where is diana reid, nobody knows or cares, probably filming glee, optimistic ending a/n: haven't posted smut in forever but this wip required it and the angst was so angsty i just had to finish it. it was started in jan or feb and subsequently added to and changed months apart and then edited so the writing quality varies from section to section which i apologize for. originally based on good guy by julia jacklin... also the odyssey by homer? can't really explain that one you'll just have to see for yourself anyway byeeee ilysm!!! PLS tell me if you liked it! or if you hated it! but preferably if you liked it! MWAH! wc <12k

It’s been about three months since you last saw Spencer Reid.

About three months since you had an early Valentine’s Day celebration (even though you weren’t a couple) complete with champagne (even though he doesn’t usually drink) and slow dancing (even though you swore you’d be terrible and he spent the first ten minutes laughing at you as you stepped on his toes.)

About three months since you finally settled your head on his shoulder and let the warbling vinyl carry you somewhere distant as the two of you danced slow circles on the parquet floor for what felt like hours.

You’d have liked him to stay later that night. You’d have liked him to stay all night if you were being honest with yourself, but at 11:45 he gently pulled away and told you he had to go.

“Curfew?” you joked, the corner of your mouth lifting a little and you hoped you were hiding your disappointment well.

“Actually, I’m going down to Texas for a few days to speak with one of the leading doctors in experimental Alzheimer's and dementia treatment. I’m going to see if he can get my mom into a clinical trial. I leave early tomorrow morning.”

“Oh my god, that’s amazing, Spencer! What are you doing still here? You should be at home getting ready to go!”

A rosy blush stains his cheeks and he looks down at the ground, laughing that little self-deprecating laugh of his. It makes your heart dance to see him so happy, makes you want to wrap your arms around him and never let him go so that he knows how much you absolutely adore him—but you settle for an affectionate squeeze where your hands have come to rest on his biceps.

“I wanted to see you tonight because I won’t be here for Valentine’s Day... but I still really wanted to spend it with you,” he admits meekly.

If before your heart was dancing, it is now melting.

The dreaded ‘what are we’ talk has been lurking in the dark corners of every conversation you have with each other lately—at least, in your mind it has. What you have with Spencer is not easily defined, and near impossible to explain to your friends—you act like a couple, you go out on dates, he introduces you to his team like you’re his girlfriend without ever putting it into so many words—but this validation that your pseudo-relationship might be evolving is better than any flowers he could have gotten you (although the peonies he brought will look very nice on your bedside table.)

“Four whole days... what will I do without you?” you whisper, brushing a hand along his face, and your chest aches with the heavy truth of it—despite the fact that he often is gone for stretches about that length. They don’t ever start to feel shorter.

“Well, you can start by reading that copy of The Odyssey I annotated for you.”

“Depressing,” you admit. “And a little ominous, considering you’re about to embark on a hero’s journey.”

“I think you’ll like this one,” he smiles.

You chew on your bottom lip, looking up at him as you think.

“Give me something to look forward to,” you say, earnestly.

“I—well, honestly, I just really want to kiss you and I’ve wanted to for a long time now and, you know, if that’s something you’re maybe also interested in then we could, uh, figure out a time to—”

“You want to kiss me?”

“Wh—you couldn’t tell?” Spencer says, like he can’t believe it.

As if on reflex, you lunge up and capture his lips with your own. It obviously catches him by surprise, but when you lower from your tiptoes he follows you, pulling you in closer and holding your face in his hands.

It’s too natural, too right, to be exhilarating. There’s no rush of adrenaline—it's more like stepping into a hot bath or warming your freezing hands at a fire. Like pieces clicking into place. It’s a relief.

You breathe into it, letting more and more of yourself melt against him. He keeps coming back to you deeper and deeper like a rising tide, and you want more than anything to keep getting closer to him—but then he stops. He stays close enough for you to breathe his air, but dodges your kiss gently before supplanting it with a gentle one to the corner of your mouth.

“I really have to go,” he breathes, before moving away from your mouth to kiss your forehead and speak softly against your skin. “If I don’t leave now I’ll be here all night.”

Which is exactly what you want, and the implication does little to make you want him less. But you care about him too much to be so selfish.

At some point, his hands found their way into your hair, and you gently grab his wrists.

“Incentive for you to come home.”

Nearly three months since that night.

At first when he stopped answering texts, you’d assumed he just had too much going on down in Texas. Which you could understand—you knew how stressful this situation with his mother was.

Even when four days came and went without even an alert from him that he was back in town, you thought, okay, maybe he’s been called away on a case. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s disappeared because of his work. But even then, he’d at least text you enough information so that you would know he was alive. Now, radio silence.

So you tried not to be clingy. You tried to act like an adult, to focus on school and your life outside of Spencer, but when Tara Lewis cancelled your weekly meeting due to an “unforeseen work-related emergency”you called her immediately. Tara was something of a mentor, and it was she who had connected you and Spencer to begin with. You had met the other members of his team by that point, yes, but none who you knew as well as Tara.

When she had informed you that Spencer had been arrested in Mexico and was now facing prison time for murder, you laughed.

Laughed until you realized her end of the line was silent.

Realized it was not at all a joke.

In a catatonic state of tranquility, you asked her for more details. Beyond assuring you of his innocence, she couldn’t (or more likely, wouldn’t) provide them. Asked where he was now. Asked all the right things that made sense to ask.

Then you hung up and had a panic attack because Tara said something about 25 years and you saw Spencer evaporate from your future like an apparition.

Slowly, you felt him evaporating from your past, too. Those memories from the night he left, became visions of you swaying with a ghost. Holding nothing but light between your hands as you kissed the peony air of your apartment.

He doesn’t want to see you, she had said into the phone one night, her tinny voice cutting in and out. You’re not on his list of approved visitors.

“You asked him about me?” you had whispered, curled up on top of your made bed in the dark.

I tried. I’m sorry. I’ll call you when I know more.

All your days melded together like a muddied smear of paint. Suddenly you felt you had nothing to look forward to. No anchor, no goal. Yes, a PhD... and then what?

The only thing that punctuated one 24 hour period from the next was the time you spent crying because Spencer was in prison and he didn’t want to see you and by the looks of things you may never see him again. When you weren’t crying, you were thinking about how your life was a big cosmic joke. An unfortunate statistical anomaly that didn’t mean anything to anyone else, and that you couldn’t do anything about.

That copy of The Odyssey, which wasn’t even bound and instead was a thick stack of printer paper organized by a single black clip, became something of a manifesto for you—a tome that your poured over, reading and re-reading each note in the margins, each word beautiful and imbued with meaning because you knew Spencer had selected every single one specifically for you. You traced the letters reverently, because in a way this was the last thing he had said to you—about Lattimore’s faith to the original text, Merrill’s strict use of dactylic hexameter, the stylings of Wilson and Lombardo, and how he thought you would enjoy Hammond’s prose just as much as he did.

Day by day it was becoming more prophetic than fictional, and you allowed yourself to sink into madness. You would rather be a deluded zealot than be nothing at all.

He didn’t want to see you.

He might as well have been dead, for all that you were grieving him. And you started to hate him, because he wasn’t dead, but wouldn’t do you the kindness of proving it. Like a festering wound, scratched open day after day so as not to ever heal, you had to live knowing he was less than an hour away. So no, you weren’t exactly over it. You lived day by day, waiting for the occasional call from Tara to keep you updated on Spencer, but either she didn’t want to share much about how he was doing, or he had specifically barred her from doing so, because she was always sparse on the personal side of things. That thought actually lifted your spirits, because it meant he was at least acknowledging your existence in some tiny way.

But your routine was becoming more regular, and so you staid on top of your classes and your non-Reid related meetings with Tara once a week, and you learned to dip your toes into existential dread and the oily black pool of depression every night without ever fully submerging yourself. You learned hope, because it was pretty much all you had, and the BAU had confidence that they would get Spencer out one way or another so you did too.

So you didn’t really think about it when you missed a couple of calls from Tara some evening in May. You were preparing for finals and had way too much on your plate academically to think about anything else which was a welcome relief so you fully embraced it. I’ll call her back tomorrow, you think, as you clean up from dinner before going back to the living room where your textbooks and papers are completely covering every available surface. Maybe I have no idea what I’m going to do with my life after school, but I’ll be damned if I don’t even make it that far.

Hours later, well into the night, you’d all but forgotten about the calls. A knock at the door takes you a bit by surprise, and you frown as you stand again, tugging your Georgetown sweatshirt down over your shorts as you shuffle to the entrance of your apartment. You’re not expecting anyone, so you crack the door, peering around the edge of it.

And you couldn’t even consider trying to hide that shaky inhalation of dead air when you see Spencer standing on the other side.

Surely you’re hallucinating.

Surely this man in front of you who looks like he just got back from a day of work didn’t spend three months in prison pretending you didn’t exist.

He looks the same. Hair a bit longer, maybe—and gaunter even more than is normal for him. 

But it's him.

You can’t think about the apprehensive look on his face—you can’t think about the impossibility of him being here. You can’t think at all. Without your explicit permission, your body surges forward into his, and he’s real, and alive, and warm, and he is an anachronism in the hallway as he accepts everything you pour into the embrace, doesn’t flinch when you move your arms from around his waist to loop around his neck and back to his waist again with crushing force because you just can’t get him close enough.

“I’m sorry,” Spencer mutters into your hair, I’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorry, he keeps saying, rubbing your back as you try to find a solid grip on the sleek material of his suit—try to gather all the pieces of him, already afraid he might fall apart and float away again.

“You—dis—disappeared,” you hiccup after an eternity, pulling away enough to look up at his pretty face. Tears blur your vision and darken the front of his jacket, bending the florescent lights so they form a kind of halo above his head.

Through the surreal haze you can see his throat bob.

“I know.”

He knows?

He knows?

You scoff.

“You have no fucking idea, Spencer. What the fuck is wrong with you? I—I'm—”

The hot anger is such a relief for a second, boiling the oceans of your despair into a wrathful, scorching fog, but as soon as you try to tell him how you feel, the barbed wire cuts into your throat again. You shove him away, skin burning where his hands had been.

“I’m sorry,” he croaks, hands hanging uselessly at his side. There’s that kicked puppy look about him—and it’s familiar, but now there’s more damage. You don’t know anything about his time in prison, you haven’t heard a damn thing, but beneath the glassy desperation in his eyes there is an unfathomable void that seems to be preventing him from being fully present—and you realize for the first time that he is different.

It chills you.

Before, you and Spencer shared everything. There wasn’t one part of his internal machinations that you didn’t understand, nothing you kept from each other. But as you study him now from a few feet away, you realize there might as well be a yawning chasm between the two of you.

He is so different.

Those eyes look deeper. No gears turning just behind the slashes of gold and brown anymore—only an endless dark corridor that goes places you will never go.

Gone is the perpetual boyish up-turn at the corner of his lips that always made him look slightly vacant in a way that you found incredibly amusing. Something you had been so fond of, even if you teased him.

He seems to have aged ten years—if not physically, then in demeanor. And now you feel like a little kid throwing a tantrum.

You cross your arms, suddenly unable to meet his eyes.

You’re embarrassed. And pissed. And relieved. Everything is worse and better. You want to fall back into his arms, but you have been jarred by the revelation that this might not be the same Spencer. It might not be the same relationship. You have no idea where you stand.

He says your name gently, with so much familiarity you’re briefly jerked into the past. It makes you wish you could look up to find him as he was three months ago. Wish this was just a bad dream. But that’s not fair to him.

“Sorry,” you mutter, studying the grey carpet fibers instead of looking at him.

“Don’t apologize,” Spencer says immediately, “you’re right. I don’t—” he clears his throat— “I’m being incredibly selfish. I shouldn’t have just shown up, I’ll just—I'll leave. I’m sorry.”

A silent moment passes.

You don’t look up as he turns and swiftly begins to move down the hall toward the stairway, leaving as quickly and silently as he had come, like a few bars of a song sighed in and away on a fleeting breeze.

Your bare feet are concretely planted, imagining him jogging down the steps and speed-walking away from your building—

And suddenly you’re sprinting after him, feeling like you might puke because Spencer was just here and you let him go again—and even though you’re still so mad and confused and hurt, the realization that he is leaving again makes the entire building spin and lurch.

“Wait!” You yell, almost wiping out as you run down the stairs and whip around corners in your slippery fucking socks. “Please, wait!”

The lobby is already empty as you spill out into it, and cold dread tightens around your neck like a fist as you shoulder your way through the double doors and right into Spencer.

“Please don’t leave again, you just—I'm sorry, I really need you to not go—” you blabber, lachrymose once more, gripping onto his forearms for dear life.

“I’m not going,” he breathes shakily. “I tried to leave because I think you were right and maybe I should and maybe it would be better for you but I can’t.”

“You can’t,” you agree, more sob than spoken word. He cups your jaw, then your cheeks, wiping tears and brushing away hair like he can’t figure out how to hold enough of you between his hands. The wild kaleidoscope of his eyes, bright and alive and real as he scans you desperately captures your attention enough to slow the tears to a trickle. He notices this and stares back, entranced.

A silent agreement is made, or maybe an inevitable fate is accepted—either way, something was set in motion three months ago and it matters to see it through. Spencer kisses you and you’re ready for it. You don’t need slow or tender. You need to feel how he feels. You need to know what he knows.

You sling your arms around his neck and he pulls you closer until you almost tip backward, chasing the bruising kiss even as you regain your footing. You want to drink him in and you do your best, breathing deeply as he kisses you deeper, backing you inside and toward the elevator.

“Is this okay?” he manages, only after blindly reaching for and mashing the up button on the wall panel.

Ideally it wouldn’t happen like this, but the world you live in obviously isn’t ideal and your personal situations as they coincide are far from ideal, so this is how it has to happen. But it’s hard to explain, and you’d rather not admit that this is so far from what you wanted for both of you and follow up with the fact that despite that you need him like you need water. So you don’t say a word as the metal doors slide open promptly. Instead you pull him in and let him press you to the chrome wall as he hits your floor button, and that very hand comes back to grab your ass like you didn’t think Spencer Reid capable of. It almost aches as his fingers dig into the flesh, but it’s a good ache because it means he’s real and he’s there.

You gasp as he hitches your leg up, arching into him. The shorts that you’re wearing leave very little to the imagination to begin with, but they become downright indecent like this.

Quickly the elevator stops and the doors hiss open. You don’t hesitate to pull Spencer by the hand down the hall. When you notice you left your door wide open, you don’t even care. Neither does he, apparently—once you’re inside he slams it shut, flipping the deadbolt while his eyes are glued to you like you’re already naked. Now Spencer is shameless in the way he drags his eyes over every curve, every place your clothes and hair are disheveled from his touch and eye-fucks you so obviously it makes your face warm. Three months ago Spencer would have at least been bashful about it when he met your eyes again, but this Spencer is far from apologetic as he pins you with his burning gaze once more. His hand stays stuck to the door like he’s holding himself back.

“Is this what you want?”

There’s an undercurrent of sorrow below the gravely arousal, like this isn’t what he wanted for the two of you either. But you’re both at the mercy of fate. This is all you have, and it might be all you can do for each other anymore. So you don’t need to say that, because he understands.

“Yeah. Yes, this is what I want.”

For just a second more he watches you from his place by the door, and there’s an unexpected softness to it. He looks at you the way he would have looked at you before. Like as long as he stays there he can entertain the idea of being that person again.

Need wins out quickly, though, and he surges forward. Immediately you’re caught in the riptide of him, helpless as he kisses you all the way to your bedroom.

He’s never been in here before. You find yourself glad it’s relatively clean—one of the pastimes you’d picked up in his absence was keeping everything tidy. It was something you could control.

A lamp glows at your bedside. You lean against the footboard of your bed, hands timidly behind your back and suddenly shy to have in him in your intimate space. Both of you set aside the heaving desperation long enough to catch your breaths, and for him to scan the room like he too is being forced to reconcile with the innate and unexpected intimacy of the moment. He cuts a harsh, dark gash in your sweetly decorated bedroom, radiating something wild and powerful and unsure of himself like a chained bull as he takes in the soft, pale bedding, the paintings and photos taped to the walls, the woven rug and the sheer drapery. His breathing slows as he studies it all—eyes eventually catching on something behind you. Looking is unnecessary. You’re sure he’s spotted the dried peonies in their ceramic vase. Or maybe the now worn stack of papers that is his Odyssey, marked up and soft around the edges from constant flipping-through.

Then Spencer looks at you, and that softness seeps in again. Along with something like... fear? Grief?

In some other universe your first time with Spencer is sweet and giggly and kind and he smiles at the decor in your room and looks around with wonder because it’s another way he gets to know you. It’s a different way to learn you from the inside.

You sense that he’s caught in between universes right now as well, painfully aware of what he would have given you that he can’t anymore.

He breathes your name like an apology, and foolishly you let a second go by in which you think he might offer you one. But he doesn’t. Not with his words, anyway. His eyes tell a different story.

“It’s fine,” you say unprompted on a whispered exhale, then a little louder as you push off the footboard, crossing the space until your hands are on his chest. You focus on his tie, not making eye contact as you rush to undo it. “It’s fine.”

He lets you do this for a few seconds before finally covering your trembling hands with his own. You still can’t meet his eyes.

“We don’t have to do—”

“No! No, please. I want to. I need—I need us to be okay.”

“Hey,” he murmurs, catching your chin and forcing you to look at him. “We are okay. Me and you are fine.”

It’s a pretty thought, but it’s not true. In fact, it’s a hideous and abject affront to the truth. Sure, maybe you’re fine in comparison to last week. Maybe anything feels fine compared to an eight by six cell. But it would be impossible for you and Spencer, for your relationship, whatever that relationship may be, to be fine. It’s especially impossible for him to make that claim, after all he did or rather didn’t do while he was gone. What you need is for him to stay anyway. What you need is to find a way to be with him, to exist with him, even when you are so clearly not fine.

“I just need you to stay,” you whisper, and he’s already nodding, wide-eyed like he’d do anything for you. You ignore all the bitter venom rising in your throat. You pretend this isn’t all happening after he cut you out of his life with a dirty switchblade. Instead you focus on his hands on yours, the familiar smell of him, which invites you to let go of each and every thought and worry. He must’ve showered before coming here, you realize. How long has he been out? What happened? 

“Okay. Okay, I can stay. What else can I do? How do I make it better?”

You sniffle and look back down.

“You can untie that for me.”

He hesitates, then nods some more, fingers working under yours to undo the tie around his neck.

“Okay.”

A moment goes by and after that final whispered word, the tension begins to build again. Spencer senses it in the way your fingertips linger on his chest and you step even closer, dragging them down to his belt. The metallic sound of it unbuckling, despite being your own doing, still manages to flip your stomach. How many times have you pictured this? When was the first time you realized you wanted it? You’re sure you haven’t stopped wanting it even once since then.

Spencer tosses the tie away and is shrugging off his jacket now, then before you see it coming he’s kissing you again, ducking down to do it. He feels taller this close up, and especially in your bedroom, where he just seems rather out of place. But you want him here. God, you want him here.

You break the kiss, forced to look down as you fumble with his belt.

“Sorry,” you gasp, embarrassed by your lack of dexterity. The light is barely sufficient to see what you’re doing, especially when he’s wearing black on black and your eyes are still bleary.

“You’re okay,” he assures you, and it’s so Spencer a fresh round of nerves electrifies the tips of your fingers. That thing is happening—the thing you’d hoped to avoid if you hadn’t lost momentum partway through, where you’re allowing your actual feelings for him to get in the way rather than getting swept up in the pathos of the moment and letting everything be easy and mindless. “Here, can I help you?”

But he doesn’t actually wait for an answer before he’s finishing off the belt for you, tugging it loose from his hips till it’s a leather coil in his hands. Your fingers brush the material and he lets you take it as if it were your prize. It’s heavier than you thought it’d be, and you just feel the weight of it in your hands for a moment, your dropped head brushing his chest.

You have a terrible feeling that if you do this now, it doesn’t mean everything will be alright. Because it can’t just go back to normal. Spencer has told you nothing of what must be an enormous trauma, and you haven’t spoken about it at all, but you sincerely doubt that after this he’s going to be ready to just jump into that committed relationship the two of you had been toying with for months before his absence. You’re almost... scared of him, now. Scared of where he’s been and what he’s endured—things you’re sure you couldn’t have taken. What that does to a person, you can’t imagine. He seems so solid and real in front of you now—but you know that’s not always enough. Maybe you’re just scared that somehow whatever he’s been through will have made him care for you less. That you were too far removed from the whole ordeal, and now you’ll never understand. If you could understand, maybe you could fix it for him. Maybe he’d stick around.

Still—even if you do end up pushing him further away in the long run—won't it have been worth it to have had him so completely, even just once?

You toss the belt to the ground, compressing all of these very complicated thoughts and feelings into a few seconds so short he can’t ask you any questions about them. Instead you find his top button, and just as you manage to undo it with relative ease he’s gently grabbing your wrists. You look up at him, immediately surrendering.

“If we’re going to do this I need you to relax a little bit.”

Gears grind in your chest. You feel need and anxiety comingling in every square inch of your body. It’s a sick buzz—a high on an empty stomach.

“I can’t,” you admit.

“Yeah, you can,” Spencer gently disagrees, slowly lowering your hands. When he’s sure you’re not going to try ripping his clothes off again, he releases, and his eyes lower to the zipper of your hoodie. His fingers follow, warm against the soft triangle of revealed skin at your chest as he grips the small piece of metal between barely shaking fingers. “You can.”

You match his eyeline, breathing shallowly and watching as he slowly drags the zipper down. You wonder if that sound has haunted his fantasies the way the sound of his belt has haunted yours. If he’s seen this hoodie on you and wondered what’s underneath, staring at you and daydreaming during movie night with you none the wiser.

Both of you have your eyes glued to the span of skin as the zipper parts. Spencer stalls with the zipper at your sternum, just below the band of your bra.

Right. No shirt.

You look up and find his eyes already on you, tinged with a curious kind of humor.

“I wasn’t expecting guests.”

The words come out shy. Spencer’s chuckle has its own nervous airy quality as he resumes tugging on your zipper, leaning down until your noses bump.

“You don’t have to explain yourself to me.”

Then he kisses you again, a little sweeter now. Sweet enough to give you butterflies and for them to flutter right out of your stomach and spill from your lips in a little whimper against his.

It comes as a surprise when he pushes the fabric from your shoulders without looking or asking. Not that you’d have said no—you're just underprepared for how assertive he is in this foreign context.

Left just in your flimsy shorts and your thin bra, you feel quite exposed—but Spencer’s hands are as demanding and hungry as his mouth. They skim up your sensitive sides and sweep lower, suggesting less proper placement over your ass and pulling at your bottoms until you gently put a stop to their wandering.

“Wait. We’re... we’re uneven.”

It’s a struggle to get any words out at all when he keeps chasing your lips, nipping at you like he physically can’t stand not kissing you, but they catch his attention and he laughs airily, pulling back to let his gaze pour over your less clothed form. It lingers and catches and lights you up everywhere it touches, drops of heat soaking into your skin and making you feel all fuzzy and needy.

“We are,” he acknowledges, tone low and colored with the faintest smile. “You’re a lot prettier without your clothes on than I am.”

“I don’t believe you.”

The challenge comes immediately and thoughtlessly. Spencer’s golden eyes flash up to yours. He’s breathing a little harder than usual.

“You want me to show you what I mean?”

If that means getting him naked, then yes, absolutely.

You nod, but rather than immediately stripping, he takes your hand and holds his own open next to it. A thick pink scar bisects some pretty significant palmistry lines, but you don’t mention that. Instead you swallow—your thoughts, your words, your nausea.

“That’s new.”

You wonder how you hadn’t noticed it earlier.

He nods.

“A lot is new.”

It sounds almost like he’s challenging you—there's a kind of tremulous force in his voice, despite the perpetual softness there, like he’s inviting you to say it’s ugly. And you realize he’s referring to more than just the glowing scar cutting an asteroid trail against the flesh of him palm. The scars he obtained in prison must form a constellation over his body.

“I don’t care. I wanna see you.”

Spencer swallows, cupping your face with the scarred hand once more. You can’t feel it against your cheek but you know it hasn’t gone away.

“I’m sure you think you do,” he permits, and that’s where the conversation ends for the moment—with his hand on your face and his lips back on yours. “For now why don’t you let me worry about you?”

Obediently, you breathe, “okay.”

This is, for whatever reason, amusing to him. The brief levity dies as quick as it comes like a snuffed-out brush fire as soon as he lets his hands fall back down to your hips.

“I want... I want to give you slow. But...”

But slow is for people who didn’t lose three months of their life. Slow is for people who don’t know what it’s like to be starving. Slow is not for the desperate.

You understand the feeling.

“I don’t need slow.”

You’ll let him use you up like quick-burning fuel if that’s what he needs. You’ll go as fast and as bright and as hot as he tells you.

“But you want slow,” he murmurs, a secret acknowledged into your own waiting mouth. You’d keep it there forever. You could be the object he hides his soul in. “I know you do. You deserve to get what you want.”

“I can go fast. I want whatever you can give me.”

Spencer’s shuddering exhale is like a drug, dizzying as you inhale it and your eyes flutter at the high, pressed head-to-head with him. For so long you’ve needed him so badly. It’s overwhelming to have him now, all over you. If only your walls could breathe him in the way you are, if this room could remember what it feels like to hold him the way you will, if any inanimate object could bear witness to how you’ll give yourself, any part of yourself, over to him, so willingly.

“I’m going to try.” Spencer’s voice is hoarse as he walks backward to the bed, taking you by the hips as he goes. “I want to do it right. I want to do this the way I... the way I imagined it, before...”

Now he’s sitting, and you’re standing between his legs as he finds the clasp of your bra and undoes it, his fingers a comforting pressure where they ghost down the slope of your back. Your heart is pounding at the confession, at the way his tongue darts over his bottom lip and his fingertips journey back up to your straps, looking up at you with haloed irises as if he’d find anything other than the most dangerous kind of smoldering devotion in your eyes—the kind cult-leaders seek and spend years nurturing, and he’d earned with a mere brush over your bare skin.

The fabric slides down your arms, and as it falls to the floor, you watch something like despair flash-flood his eyes. It is a deep, distinctly human grief. The ineffable kind where something is almost too beautiful; so perfect it offends the mortal senses because it should be permanent, but nothing is, and the clash of divine beauty with unstoppable time which oxidizes copper and covers marble with vine is almost as grotesque as metal rending delicate flesh. It is the grief that drove the first poet to write and the first parents to press their baby’s painted hands to the walls of a cave. It is the desire to do the impossible—to capture ephemeral perfection and make it eternal, and the knowledge that it is hopeless. You recognize it because you’ve felt it for him.

“I thought about you all the time,” he whispers, doesn’t bother calling you beautiful but you don’t mind because he’s telling you with his hands and his eyes and the waver of his voice. “When I was gone, I thought about you—”

You’re just as quiet, just as soft.

“Don’t, Spencer.”

He doesn’t get to tell you about when he was gone. Not now. Not after he acted like you didn’t exist.

“Okay.” He swallows the things he’d wanted to tell you like you choked on the things you needed to tell him for three months. “I’m sorry.”

But his hands—his hands are perfect over your waist and his lips are perfect where they kiss your ribs like they’re his homeland. You could forgive a thousand wrongs for each kiss he puts to your skin. Light from the full moon stretches over the room like a blessing from the cosmos, and you have every intention of making the most of that gift, how the silver gilds the planes of his face and highlights curls like they were carved, and invites you to search for something in each shadow.

Some of his kisses land over the sensitive skin of your breasts though you doubt he has much intention or that there is any sort of end-goal with the trail he blazes—in fact, you have to root your hand in his hair and pull gently back when he doesn’t seem to realize that he’s making you wait again. His eyes are glassy and cheeks slightly pinkened—you weren’t expecting this wave of fondness to knock you on your ass but here you are, falling all over again.

“You don’t have to go that slow.”

A slow smile splits the heart of his mouth at your bashful tone and he’s emboldened to bring his hands higher for a moment, thumbs brushing particularly delicate though not downright indecent spots. Nonetheless, your breath catches.

“Impatient girl,” he scolds, and though it’s lighthearted it still inspires heat to dance across your face. Oh, I think I’ve been plenty patient, you itch to say, but you bite it back because it’s only sad and true and unkind.

Still, he gives you the beginning of what you want, really only the tip of the enormous iceberg that is your desire for him, by slipping his thumbs into the waistband of your shorts and tugging them down. His hands slide up the fronts of your thighs, tracing the trim of your underwear, and you’d swear he’s not even breathing. The moment one of his hand loops behind your knee and pulls forward until it’s pressed to the mattress and you’re half-kneeling, half standing, desire begins to truly cloud your mind. Manhandling never seemed like Spencer’s style, but when paired with how softly he reveals your hip, pulling gently down on the fabric of your underwear just to admire you up close, you don’t mind it.

More kisses are littered over your stomach, and he takes you by surprise a second time with a quick maneuver landing you on your back and him on top of you.

“I wasn’t doing you justice with my imagination,” he murmurs against your mouth. “I couldn’t have known.”

“Couldn’t have known what?” you pant as he shamelessly digs his fingers into the plush of your ass. You almost hope it bruises.

“How pretty you would be,” he coos like he means it, and you dissolve, slipping through his fingers like sand in an hourglass. “You were holding out on me.”

It’s a tease, not at all serious, but you manage to hit him with a, “Was not, asshole,” and he chuckles, placating your little hurt with another sticky kiss, and you get another disorienting glimpse of some other timeline where you’re both a little less damaged. Where it’s a little easier.

But in this timeline, his touch becomes starving and ragged and urgent, and you accept the drag of his thumb up your thigh and between your legs, gasping when he runs his knuckles up the center of you. This touch is metal on screeching metal. It does not pretend to be anything more than what it is—brute, powerful, executed to elicit sensation. You get the sense that Spencer’s never touched anyone this honestly, and while you do envy the girls who got to have him gentler, you’ll take this as the compliment that it is. A kind of vulnerability that is nearing primal.

His lips, though—always his lips—are kind when they brush and land on your skin guided by some invisible map. A dip down your neck and chest and then a plunge, his tongue dragging over your hips, chasing the fabric of your underwear as he almost pulls it off and then reroutes, making room for himself between your legs and pushing lace aside to mark the hinge of your inner and upper-most thigh. Your chest heaves and you don’t dare move for fear he’ll stop leaving signs of himself on your body and you won’t be able to reassure yourself that it was real and he was here and it was not another dream.

Because something in you knows, if only consciously recognizing it for the first time now, that he will disappear again. That this may be your only chance.

The desire to make the ephemeral eternal. An impossibility.

He’s clearly losing himself to something, eyes shutting blissfully. You wonder when the last time he let his guard down even a  little was. You’re okay with being the thing he gets lost in, even if you’re not exactly okay with him—something you are becoming more acutely aware of as each touch makes a part of you want to cry. Maybe you still have some things in common. A strange pain that doesn’t quite feel like it belongs to you, for one thing.

You slam back into your body as his nose nudges against you through fabric, and his lips catch on cotton as he drags himself up, eventually settling a kiss against the little bow at the waist of your underwear. There he stays, eyes closed, mouth pressed to you.

“Is this okay?”

You swallow, buzzing. Is this really what he wants? After everything?

“You don’t have to...”

“But is it okay with you?”

Nothing more than an airy whisper, you reply, “Yes, if that’s what you want.”

Being emotional at this point seems wrong, but it’s difficult to ignore the fact that you have thought about this before and it’s finally happening but it’s not exactly as you’d imagined it. There is an indelible sadness to it, to the way he’s so hungry for you because he’s been deprived, to the desperation with which he touches you because he’s had everything taken from him.

For a moment, before he tugs your underwear down, he pauses, and you wonder if he’s freezing one moment in time, this moment, and grieving all the other ways it could’ve been, and accepting that this is the way it is going to be. You are.

These higher realms of thought abandon you as he finally pulls the last barrier down your legs and encourages you to spread them further. You don’t have time or energy to be embarrassed, not even by his staring, or the way his eyes dart up to yours and back down again, wide and shining, as if to say, have you seen yourself? Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?

All you feel is the lack of him on you, the pull to have him closer so strong it’s almost sickening because he could be gone at any second. Maybe he understands that because he doesn’t waste anymore time before he’s kissing the most sensitive part of you. The drag of his tongue has you loosing a shuddering cry.

His mouth wanders, making connections you wouldn’t have realized the value of until you feel them on your skin. Your hips buck as he traces you and you’re unable to stop yourself from tangling your hands in his hair. Speech fails you—hell, you can hardly breathe as you watch his with a furrowed brow and parted lips, only expelling air from your lungs in the form of little cries and gasps and failing to hold your hips down to the bed.

The tip of his tongue teases around your entrance and he catches your leg as your foot rises off the bed, slinging it over his shoulder and consuming you more fervently until you have no choice but to moan though you’ve never been one for theatrics. Nobody has done this for you like he’s doing it for you. Locks of hair fall in front of his face and you hold them back for him, shuddering as he shifts his weight and presses the tip of his finger to your cunt.

“Ah—please,” you manage, your first words since he started. Spencer groans against you and the sound is so wonderfully unexpected, so much better than in your dreams. You cant your hips up in further invitation, chirping as he takes it, pushing two fingers into you at once. Your eyes screw shut and you bite back a whine at the slight stretch, unconsciously writhing your hips either to get further away or take him deeper, you’re not sure.

Spencer pulls back, kissing your hips and thighs and pumping his fingers very slowly as you adjust.

“’M sorry,” you pant, “it’s been awhile, I...”

“Don’t apologize,” Spencer says like it’s simple, his own breath coming quicker. “How’re you feeling? Need me to stop?”

“No! No, it feels really good, I feel good.”

He holds your burning gaze, matching it with his own, and his hair is tousled and his cheeks are flushed as he continues to move his hand.

“Yeah?”

“...Yeah.”

This little show of obedience, of call and response, has him smiling before he occupies his mouth with something else once more. It’s a different smile than you’re used to from him, but you decide you don’t at all mind it.

Like that, with his tongue and fingers working tirelessly, your orgasm comes on quickly. The feeling is rare but not entirely foreign, and in that brief moment of utter disconnect between your brain and reality, of sheer white-hot pleasure, you don’t feel you’re missing out on anything at all. How could you be, when you are here and Spencer is here and for a moment all your neurons are lighting up and flashing neon? How could there be anything more to life than the searing feeling of him slowly withdrawing his fingers from you, than your hips between his hands like he’s cradling the world, and his lips, indiscriminate with where they kiss because every part of you is worthy of attention?

You’re reeling, and your legs are gelatinous as he so affectionately sucks the darkest mark yet onto your inner thigh like a parting gift, like he’s signing his trembling work. If you could clamp your legs shut around the almost painful aftershocks you would, but he’s climbing back up your body, so all you can do is wriggle against him and release delayed, stunted little moans. He stops to kiss your neck before he makes it to your mouth and drinks down all your sounds until you’re gentle and pliant for him like you haven’t been yet.

His voice is soft and sympathetic when he speaks. “Better?”

Wordlessly you nod, both comforted and unsettled by how well he knows you. What, exactly, has been made better, you’re not sure. Not trust. You don’t trust him anymore. Something cheaper, but temporarily effective. A sense of permanence, maybe, however fleeting it may be. You’ve completed something with him now, and he’s still here, still sweet.

He looks into your eyes, then, for a moment—and there is just enough light in the room for you to tell yourself that the shadows dancing there as he looks at you are love.

They morph as you watch into haunting, wild hunger. Pained even now.

He sits up abruptly and so do you, scooting back against your headboard and pulling your knees to your chest to protect your pounding heart as Spencer takes you in with darting eyes and quick breaths. His fingers find the collar of his shirt and he begins to unbutton.

“I need you to remember it’s all going to heal.”

He swallows, and you hardly have the wherewithal to study the way he unbuttons his shirt, a way he exists in the world that you had previously not been privy to. The words are too distracting.

“What?”

Sometimes he reminds you of a deer, with those big brown eyes that can’t help betraying anxiety. Moreso in those old pictures he’d shown you from his early days at the BAU—but it shines through occasionally even now. It’s reassuring to know that something inside of his has remained soft.

“Just...” his fingers don’t stop at their task, and you come to the disturbing realization that his knuckles are bruised. “Please don’t freak out, alright?”

Your mouth goes dry, eyes glued to the lengthening span of revealed skin.

And before he even has his shirt fully undone, something isn’t right.

He’s like a Pollack of bruises—starbursts and watercolor blots of discoloration blooming over his side and stomach.

You’re glad the light is off for two reasons: one, being that you don’t think you could handle the bruising in all its glory, and two, you hope the look of horror painted on your face is at least partially obscured from Spencer.

But you can’t. You simply don’t have the gas in the tank to freak out, as he’d said—at least not externally. Those bruises shouldn’t be there, but 96 days is a long time to be gone.

You drag your eyes back to his—nervous, deeply insecure and mistrustful. A deer. Just like those pictures of a 24 year old Spencer in an FBI jacket that was too big for him.

It’s enough to have you scooting on your knees across the mattress to him. Those big eyes stay glued to you as you draw near, falling as you carefully push open his shirt, cautious not to bump any tender spots as it falls to the bed. A flash of white gauze wrapped around his forearm that makes your stomach flip. How? You want to ask. Why?

He doesn’t seem to know what you’re going to do, and neither do you, until you’re grabbing his hands, bruised knuckles and all, and just... holding them for a minute.

“I lost weight,” he says quietly, as if that’s the most shocking thing about his current appearance, though it is noticeable.

“You’re still pretty.”

He smiles at this—a true Spencer Reid smile. Flattened lips, eyes tinged silver with sadness, voice quiet and anxious and wavering.

“I didn’t have a lot to spare.”

A moment goes by.

“I’m not going to ask you about them,” you promise, though you care so much and you want to know but you already understand that he won’t want to tell you.

Another moment. It doesn't surprise you to watch the shiny vulnerability in his eyes to freeze over completely. But he squeezes your hands once in thanks, and you know it’s still the same Spencer.

“Lie down.”

Oh. Right.

This.

You do as he says, taking a deep breath to try and exhale the concern twisting your stomach like a poison. Somehow your room feels so unfamiliar, so new with him in it. Even the whorls on your ceiling look different as you study them, trying to time the pattern of your breathing with the pattern of the paint and plaster and not let the sound of Spencer further undressing quicken your heartrate too much.

Soon he’s coaxing your legs apart again, reverently, and kneeling between them, studying every part of you—lingering not on the parts you’d expect. He traces the scar on your knee with his thumb, follows a line down your thigh to the freckle on your hip. The scrutiny is unnerving and warms you everywhere. Perhaps he senses the microscopic clench of your thighs as you imagine pushing them together, if he weren’t in the way.

“You alright?” He asks, still stroking your hip. Tender again. It’s so hard to keep up.

“I...”

Suddenly your heart beat is a deafening echo in your own ears. The tide of your breathing is too powerful, too in and out and whooshing, leaving you always too empty or too full but never comfortable.

Maybe he’s changed, and he’s harder to know now, but he is the same Spencer. He is the Spencer you’d fallen in love with. The hard part is knowing that now you may never get a chance to tell him that. You don’t know if he’d be able to hear it.

There are things you can’t have with him anymore. Not now, at least. Maybe not ever. But you can have this. It will be different, but you’d rather him be different and here than the same and only in your memory.

You swallow.

“I’m good.”

Tangling your hand in his hair once more, you pull him down into a kiss. It’s hesitant, at first—maybe he can taste your thoughts, where they’d been balancing just on the tip of your tongue. But the uncertainty fades and he kisses you deeper, harder, in a way that is hard to keep up with. You like the messy overwhelm of his lips, teeth, tongue. That’s the only way he knows how to want you.

When you go to wrap your leg around his waist he catches it, running his hands over the soft plush of your thigh. The hard line of him presses against you like memory foam and you gasp and he breathes it in deeply as your brain short-circuits, as you realize this is really going to happen, that you’re going to have him like you’ve never had him before and in ways you’ve only imagined and immediately felt ashamed for.

“Spencer,” you whisper. He ducks to leave open-mouthed kisses along your neck and your eyes flutter shut, craning your neck but not losing sight of your objective as you reach down blindly. When you find what you’re looking for he freezes, groans against your neck at the same time as you breathe the tiniest whimper. Just in your hand he feels impossible, hot and imposing and hard. Your heart palpitates.

Without thinking, you angle your hips up and encourage him closer, until the tip of him is smearing through your folds, and you both go utterly silent like the breath had been stolen right from your lungs. The moment crystallizes, time around you hardening like preserved amber to keep you frozen there forever.

And then he rolls his hips, catching the underside of his cock on the crux of you, and then he does it again, and you choke out a moan and so does he, and it’s beyond perfect—it's nirvana, more than you could ever have conceived of, with his weight pressing you into the mattress, arms caging you in, his heavy breaths hot against your neck and vice versa as you twine together like serpents on a rod, your foot floating in the air as you widen your legs to make more room for him.

And you’re not even fucking yet.

“Oh my god,” you whine, just for him, barely audible under the heavy cloak of night, the thickened air in your bedroom and the sound of panting and fabric shifting. It’s like your heart is trying to reach through your chest to his own where they’re pressed together—that is how hard it’s beating.

Spencer only breathes a long, low curse and shifts so he can grasp himself. Your fingers drift down the shaft of him as he slots himself at your entrance, notching half an inch in and you hold your breath, and you brace yourself—and then he’s kissing you again, but gentler this time. Reassuring. You soften, you can’t not, releasing all your air in a soft gust through your nose, and then he’s pushing in.

Your lips part at the stretch as it fuzzes your mind, but he stays right there, nose pressed to your nose, lips ghosting over your own. He’s not going anywhere, you think, and you’re glad for it, when it burns ever so slightly, and the tiniest whine escapes your open mouth.

“Shh,” he soothes immediately, low and soft, only fractionally louder than you had been. “You’re okay.”

Spencer. Your Spencer.

For a moment, you’re living in that alternate universe. The kinder one. The flash of pain you feel then has nothing to do with the way he’s opening you up.

This is the closest you have ever been, and in some strange way, the furthest apart.

Together, fingers brushing, you guide him until he settles at not quite your deepest point. You can feel that he’s not giving you everything yet, but you’re okay with that, as you adjust to the full feeling. Spencer again senses your desire to close your legs against the deep intrusion, and gives you the best he can by encouraging you to wrap your legs around him.

“Good girl,” he whispers tenderly, nudging at your jaw with his nose and dragging kisses along the ridge of it. Your stomach flips at the moniker and your brain turns to warm sludge as your eyes flutter shut. It makes you feel all light-headed and you flutter around him. Spencer chuckles into the junction of your neck and shoulder and the vibrations send a chill down your arching spine. “I thought you might like that one.”

“Mhm.”

“Mhm. How are you? You okay?”

“’M ready.”

“You’re ready?” His tone is dripping sarcasm and faux-disbelief as he pulls back the slightest bit only to push right back in deeper, this time. Your toes curl, one thigh sliding higher up his waist as you cling to him.

“Fuck,” you manage, a pitiful, high pitched curse tossed to the wind. He echoes the sentiment.

“Oh, my god,” he groans, continuing with that slow pace, “you feel so good, angel.”

You grapple at his back, searching for purchase as your brow knits. “Faster.”

This inspires another breathy chuckle, but he obliges, and you cry out softly. It’s almost unreal, your head buried against his neck, drunk on his scent and the drag of him like a shock felt in the far reaches of your body, again and again.

There’s nothing you can say that will accurately demonstrate what you’re feeling, so you elect not to speak, to remain silent and try to get a grip on this cacophony of sensation and emotion. But it’s too much to be alone with. You feel you have to get it out, to seek understanding. You can’t do it alone.

“Spencer.”

“Hm?”

“I don’t know...” the sentence trails off into a gentle keen. He moves to kiss you, speaking against your lips.

“You don’t know?”

Shyly you shake your head. Spencer sighs wistfully.

“Do you know how much I missed you?”

It’s like he can sense your need for comfort. For something grounding.

And while this topic was off-limits earlier—you're softer now. The stone walls that form your boundaries have been chipped away and lowered.

Spencer continues unprompted.

“I thought about you every day. Every night while I was falling asleep. You were always on my mind, angel girl.”

You whine. Whether it’s pleasure or distress is anyone’s guess—including your own.

“You were gone so long,” you whisper, eyes shut.

At this, Spencer slows again, and the tension that was building settles back to a simmer.

“I know. I wish I could—I wish I could change that. But I’m here, okay? I’m right here with you.”

Then he makes sure you feel every last inch, and it takes your breath away. If your thoughts were any more coherent, they’d be something along the lines of: but for how long? How long until you leave again?

“You’re here.”

You say it like a mantra, once out loud, and then again and again in your head, timed with every clash of your hips. With each repetition he becomes more real. Every little ache, every tingling, head-emptying brush against that most sensitive spot inside proves to you that he could not be any closer. This can’t be faked. It can’t be another dream to wake up in tears from.

“You’re here,” you gasp as it hits you, as it truly sinks in.

“I’m here,” he breathes.

There’s so much you want to say—three months of words you need him to hear, of things you need to talk to him about, things you need to yell at him for and things you can only say crying in his arms and things you can only say laughing or whispering or drunk or half-asleep—and in this moment you can’t manage any of it. Every word condenses into one drop of salt water, drifting away from your eye and down your cheek. Spencer doesn’t tell you to stop crying. He only kisses the tear away, and murmurs I’m here I’m here I’m here over and over again against your skin until he’s not even speaking it out loud anymore. But you feel it. With every brush of his lips, every breath, every movement, you feel it.

Soon he’s adjusting his angle, gradually picking up the pace but retaining that unforgiving depth, and your nails bite into the skin of his back as your jaw drops. Spencer hisses, pressing impossibly closer.

“I’m sorry!” you squeak.

“Do it again.”

“Wh—what?”

“Please,” he begs, low and hot against your jaw, just beneath your ear. “Do it again, honey.”

Honey.

You’d do anything for him if it meant he calls you that again.

When he shifts his weight to one arm and reaches down between your bodies to play with your aching clit in exactly the right way, you don’t really have a choice. You arch and moan wantonly enough to feel embarrassed as your nails scratch down his back. At the same time he’s making noises of his own, and you almost feel guilty for marking him up like this only you think he likes it. The most perfect and troubling tension is building in your core, so taut you almost fear the inevitable rebound when it snaps. But you’re driven to be exactly what Spencer needs right now, and to let him try and be what you need. Even if it scares you. Even if you’re not sure how.

Spencer groans, head tucked to the bend of your shoulder. “I’m not gonna last.”

Any response you might’ve been about to muster is annihilated by a sudden, deep bolt of pleasure.

“’M gonna cum,” you mewl like it’s a secret.

“Are you?” he asks, coming up breathless. If your eyes were open, you’re sure you’d see him above you.

“Mhm.”

“Look at me. Look at me.”

It is unmistakably a command—one you fight to follow.

You cry out as you meet the intensity of his gaze, those shadowy corridors suddenly ablaze and alive. They are not unending, like you’d thought. They are a door thrown open to let the light in, or maybe to let the fire out. They’re open in this moment for you.

No more words are spoken after that—you cum hard, gasping as you fall and spin. Spencer follows very shortly after, like he was holding it together just for you, and your eyes are still locked though everything is a bit bleary.

“Fuck,” you whine as he continues to fuck you for as long as he can, despite your writhing hips, but you’re entranced by him, unable to look away now that you’re hooked. Until he slows to a halt, glances down at your mouth, and you just have time to pray that he’ll kiss you before he does. You whimper against his lips—a plea for understanding. A plea for him to stay, even though this is over. He kisses back so soft and sweet it’s like he can read your mind. Echoes of I’m here I’m here I’m here still buzz across your skin. His eyelashes tickle your cheek. Your heart stops beating quite so quickly, melting and warm like the rest of your body.

Soon the kissing ceases and you’re just breathing together, trapped and faced with the knowledge that it must end just the same as you had waited for it to start.

Eventually the air between you becomes mostly carbon dioxide and you let your head fall to the side, dizzy and giggling breathlessly as you nearly avoid asphyxiation. Spencer laughs too, letting his head fall to your shoulder once more, and you finally let your eyes flutter closed. To do something as simple as laugh with him again is its own small euphoria. It’s unexpected, and a soft landing once all that tension breaks underneath your combined weight.

It can’t last forever, you know that well. But the slow fade of it makes the next parts a little easier.

Spencer presses a kiss to your neck. “Is your bathroom through that door?”

You hum a confirmation and are only slightly disheartened when he pulls out and rolls off of you. You’re further disturbed when you see there’s gauze around his thigh, matching what’s around his arm, and you wonder how you missed that. Spencer scoops up his clothing and disappears into the adjoining restroom, assuring you he’ll be right back and leaving you alone with your thoughts and the whorls on the ceiling which have seemingly shifted into entirely new constellations.

He leaves the door cracked which is oddly reassuring—the sliver of warm light and the sound of the sink running. Only a few moments pass before he’s returning clad in boxers once more to sit on the edge of the bed, pushing away the sheet you’d just pulled over your chest and pulling one of your legs over his lap. Your face warms as he brings a washcloth between your thighs. As soon as he glances up at you and catches your eye you’re looking back to the ceiling.

“I should’ve asked first,” he says quietly as he cleans up the mess he’d made of you.

You speak just as softly, like you’re both afraid of disturbing some peace, of waking some sleeping giant. “It’s okay. I would’ve told you if I didn’t want it.”

His reticence, his unreadable face, make you nervous.

When he’s done, he rises to toss the dirtied cloth in the laundry bin, and with his back to you (as scratched up as it might be) you feel braver.

“Are you gonna, like... hate me now?”

It was a mistake. That’s clear by the way he turns around, brow knit deeply and grimacing slightly like even the suggestion offends him.

“Am I going to hate you?”

Again you pull the sheet up, and again you look away, studying the pattern of moonlight stretching out over the floor and scooting to make room for him when he steps in it.

“Not hate, I just...” the bed dips beside you and you are indescribably glad he’s not immediately running out the door. “I’m not dumb. I know what this was.”

He pulls you into him and you settle against his chest. It feels good. “I never thought you were dumb.”

This is your first real conversation since he’s gotten back, you realize. And how quickly you’re falling into familiar patterns, familiar syntactical beats. You know when to speak. You know when to bite your tongue and keep him talking.

The silence goes on longer than you’re used to. Maybe he got good at not speaking while he was away.

Eventually your eyes wander, falling to the white strip over his thigh where it is parallel to yours on the bed, only over the sheets.

“What happened?”

You said you wouldn’t ask, but that was then, and you’re upset again. You almost want to hurt him. To piss him off. You don’t know.

But it doesn’t work.

“Do you really want to know?” There’s a note of something heavy in his voice, and you look up at him. It’s a privilege to have him this close—his beauty is a constant surprise that you’d become unaccustomed to over the months. You say nothing, and he takes that as the yes that it is. “I... I did it to myself.”

He may as well have reached down your throat and grabbed for fucking heart for all its clenching. Tears well almost immediately, though they’ve been waiting in the wings all night.

“What? Did you—were you trying to—”

His eyes widen.

“No! No, honey, no.” You wilt as he gathers you closer, a deeply confused frown still contorting your features, too heartbroken even to cling to him, or to appreciate the ease with which honey slips past his lips again. “No. I was—it's complicated. I didn’t—I wasn’t trying to hurt myself, but I had to—I had to do it before someone else did something worse.”

The bruises covering his abdomen.

You sniffle and pull back enough to look up at him tearfully. “Why would they want to hurt you?”

Mist fills his eyes even as he’s looking down at you, a layer of separation, as if he’s two places at once. Even as he goes to brush your hair behind your ear, to stroke your cheek.

“I’m... not... the same, as I was.” It’s not an answer to your question—but it’s the beginning of the answer to a question you’d been too afraid to put into words.

“Don’t say that,” you beg, because you know where this is going. He keeps smoothing your hair like it’ll make this easier.

“But it’s true,” Spencer says gently, the slightest waver betraying his own emotion.

“You’re just going to leave again.”

And you’re losing to the tears.

“I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”

“But you will,” you insist, like a child crying to a parent come to comfort them after a bad dream.

“Not right now. Right now I’m here.”

I’ll stay until you fall asleep again.

For now, maybe that has to be enough. 

You cry on his shoulder. He kisses your head and doesn’t tell you to stop. 

Eventually, you sniff and wipe your eyes. 

“We were so close. Before you… we were almost there.”

You’re sure of it. You’re sure that if he hadn’t gone when he did you would’ve been a real couple. You would’ve told him you loved him. 

“We’ll get there again,” he promises, rubbing your arm. “I just… I need a little bit of time. I think you do too. But we’re going to get there again.”

Maybe it will never be like it was. 

But as so often is the case—Spencer is right. Difference doesn’t mean it won’t ever be good again. 

You have to believe that, just as you had to believe you’d see him again. 

You look to The Odyssey on your bedside table. 

The sun has been obliterated from the sky, and an unlucky darkness invades the world. 

But the sun has a habit of rising, time and time again, after the longest nights, after the darkest storms. 

You feel the beginnings of its rise, see the golden tips of it lighting the room as he holds you. Even now. 

[1d1195]

Invitation

~3.5k words

From me: I mentioned I had a kinda rough weekend. This just sort of wrote itself. Def a stand alone. Second chance at love. I wrote it mostly in the drafts page and didn't do a whole lot of editing for continuity so it's probs not very realistic nor will it make a ton of sense. But anyway.

Warnings: MC parent death; funeral, angst, angst angst. But I'm hoping if you read it you'll see some cathartic, comforting fluff.

Summary: She and Harry broke up years ago and it was completely fine. But seeing her again, even under sad circumstances has his heart pulling him closer to her.

It had been eight years since he had last laid eyes on her. But when he read the piece on her mum off a mutual friend’s Facebook page he was transported back to one of those moments he spent so totally in love with her.

The idea that her best friend was gone made him terrified for her well being. It was the reason he was in a hotel room, straightening his tie in the mirror. Double checking he didn't miss any spots while shaving. He looked simultaneously presentable yet solemn. Her mum was special, beautiful. She made Harry feel at home the entire time they dated. Bought him thoughtful gifts for his birthday and Christmas. Made sure she bought his favorite snacks and always inquired about school, work, or his favorite show. She joked with her that Harry was too good for her and she didn’t treat him well enough (which was inherently false). She was the perfect girlfriend and had the perfect mum.

He couldn’t imagine how she was feeling.

Harry didn’t want to make his appearance about his arrival at the funeral home at all. He stepped in line silently, tried not to make eye contact with anyone and slowly made his way through toward the front, pretending he was invisible. He looked at the picture boards as he walked along his favorite girl and her mother in so many of them. Both were beautiful and Harry thought she was going to look just like her mother when she was older and so he was really lucky that he would know she was beautiful for the rest of his life. But he would have predicted that anyway.

Their relationship ended amicably enough. They were changing, time moving on, and quite frankly it felt like they couldn't spend enough time together so it didn't seem fair. "Shouldn't we want t'spend time with each other, beautiful? Shouldn't we feel feel bad we're not spending time together? It shouldn't be forced. You're m'favorite person in the world, kitten. S'not fair."

He was right of course. She agreed. So they went their separate ways. Since they were still in university at the time, they saw each other frequently. Their friend groups overlapped a bit so they weren't rid of each other all that much until after graduation. There was even a picture of the pair of them together on that day--her mum's suggestion. It was apparent more so then, that they were changing and moving on but Harry was grateful for that picture. When he saw the notice of her mum's passing, he looked at it fondly and felt something in the pit of his stomach. Wanting and wishing he had made more time for her. That she wasn't so busy and their time apart hadn't lasted as long.

But that was eight years ago. Harry was thirty now. He had a few girlfriends during that time and maybe it wasn't a surprise they didn't work out. When he inquired of his friends if he should go to support her, they said it was up to him. Louis and Eleanor were out of the country so they would send flowers. Mitch and Sarah were waiting for Sarah to give birth at any moment so they too, would send flowers.

"I'll be at the funeral," Niall assured him. "I can't make the visiting hours, sorry, Harry," Harry could hear his frown as they spoke on the phone.

"S'okay, s'nice y'can make it t'any of it. She'll appreciate it."

"I hope," a frown in his voice, a sigh in his tone.

"No, she will," Harry was confident. She would never make Niall feel bad--anyone feel bad. It was just the way she was.

Harry was in front of the urn containing the ashes of her mother and he knelt and said a short prayer for her and her sweet daughter. He tried not to think about his own mother at such a sad time and how he would feel if this was her. He shook his head, blessed himself automatically, and stood to greet the receiving line. It was filled with aunts and uncles who were surprised to see him. He didn't fully understand their surprise (of course he would be there for her--even if things were different now) but moved to each one, quietly apologizing for the loss of their sister and only answering how work, life, and everything was with as few words as possible. It was just her and her mom. Dad was out of the picture before she was even born. It wasn't a bad thing because she was her mum's whole life and she never made her want for anything. "Where is she?" Harry asked quietly. Usually the children were first in the line but she wasn't there.

"Another spat with the boyfriend," her aunt rolled her eyes. "You are by far our favorite," she smiled at him encouragingly. "Don't leave till she gets back, if you can. She deserves to see someone who will make her happy right now," she winked.

Harry felt his eyebrows crawl up his forehead in surprise. He nodded. Pride bloomed inside him for being the favorite. It wasn't the time but he couldn't help it. His heart felt heavy, worried she was with someone horrible. "Yeah, sure. Of course."

So Harry stayed in the little seating area, watching people walk through the receiving line, looking at the slideshow of pictures that somehow managed to boil down to one person's life. There was even a picture or two of him. It made sense, he was in her life for nearly four years and they were inseparable until they weren't.

Harry smiled fondly at the memories within the pictures and wondered where she could be right now. He had seen the full slideshow twice.

"Harry, you're still here?"

He cleared his throat, stood, and shook one of her uncle's hands again. "Yeah... um... haven't seen her yet."

"She went outside with the boyfriend ages ago. I'm assuming they're still arguing or she's trying to calm herself down enough to come in and fake that everything's fine."

Harry frowned. "Maybe I'll go check then," he suggested and headed for the door.

Why was she dating someone if it was clear no one in her family liked him?

The men at the door, let Harry through and he quietly walked to the side of the building wondering where she could be having a private conversation at a funeral home. The side was dark except for a flood light that perfectly illuminated the couple. Harry stepped out of sight but strained to listen.

"What do you mean, 'you have to go'? You're seriously joking right?"

Harry didn't know her voice could take on a tone that sounded so angry like that. They never fought that way. No more than who's pizza topping was better or if they had to pick which dinner place to go to on a busy Saturday night.

"Babe, you know with my work--"

"This is my mother," she croaked. It felt like a bullet through Harry's chest to hear her choked up like that. All that grief wrapping in her throat and pulling on her vocal cords.

"I know, but don't you think she would want me to continue living my life and doing what I need to do so--"

"She's my best friend," her voice cracked because she was crying so hard. Harry wanted to run over, unceremoniously knock him to the ground, and comfort her. "You're supposed to be here to support me!"

"Well you know death kind of freaks me out, babe. I'm trying to support our future. I've been here all day."

Her tone was so biting, he truly couldn't believe it. "You've been here for an hour."

Harry winced and shook his head. No one liked death. Everyone was freaked out by it to some degree. But he was supposed to love her; be there for her.

"If you leave, we're done," Harry felt intrusive for listening in but he couldn't move.

"You don't mean that."

"I do, mean that. I really, really, really, really mean that," she sniffed. Good girl. Harry thought. "I have put up with your bullshit like this for way too long and you're unsupportive and if you leave this is it," she assured him. "Work cannot be more important than me."

"It's important for us, babe. So when we get married--"

"And when will that be?" She shouted.

"For the love of God, we're going to do this now?"

"It's been three years. I'm thirty and wanted kids and you are just..." she trailed off. "Fine. Go. We're done anyway."

"Babe, you don't mean that--"

"I will pack my stuff up when I get home."

"And where are you going to go? You don't have a job right now--"

"BECAUSE I WAS TAKING CARE OF MY DYING MOTHER."

Why was she even with this guy? Harry couldn't fathom it. It was so unlike her to date someone so crass and careless. Or maybe Harry was just filled with rage and envy of a man that couldn't help her the way she deserved.

"Well..." he cleared his throat. "I'm sorry you feel that way. I have a plane to catch. Maybe after you've calmed down and aren't grieving we can have a more pleasant conversation."

A silent moment passed between them. Surely he heard it as he said it. It couldn't have been just her and Harry that heard what he implied. "Do... do you... do you think I'm supposed to be done grieving?" She hissed.

He sighed, mumbled something about calling her when he landed, and walked away. He didn't even notice Harry pressed to the building.

Harry watched him get in his car and pull away as if this wasn't the worst day of her life. Harry took several deep breaths to calm himself. This wasn't about him or how he wanted to strangle him. This was about her, her grief.

She was leaning against the wall. She was heaving, sobbing into one hand. For what, at that point, Harry didn't know. He could only see her from behind, the same figure he could have picked out in a lineup and if he was blind. But she seemed smaller. Withdrawn of course. Her free arm wrapped around her stomach like she was trying to hold herself together.

"Hey beautiful," he murmured softly. She sniveled, spun around. Harry was met with her face grief stricken, heartbroken, and tear soaked. But yeah, she was still as beautiful as he remembered. "Aw, kitten," he cooed gently. "C'mon s'cold outside. Let's get you--"

She threw herself against him as he approached. Her arms around his neck and she continued her sobbing against his shoulder. Sighing, he wrapped his arms wrapped around her waist and back, she fit effortlessly into his embrace even after eight or so years since he last saw her. It felt natural to hold her like this. "I know," he murmured comfortingly. "I know, kitten," he kissed the side of her head, soothingly rubbing his hand up and down her spine.

"Please don't let go of me," she cried. "I can't--"

"Shh," he hushed. "M'here. M'not letting go until you do," he promised softly. He hoped she wouldn't pull away because he wanted to take care of her the way that asshole couldn't. It didn't matter what the past was it only mattered that her sweet self could find some sort of contentment.

"Please don't leave me," she begged. "I can't do this alone."

It felt like a switch changed in him. Or maybe it was the anger he felt for her ex-boyfriend. Or perhaps a combination of missing her when he didn't really know he had been missing her and all the frustration he felt for the reasons she was so distraught. He would do anything for her. "No way, beautiful. M'not going anywhere," he assured her pressing his lips instinctively to the top of her hair. Patiently he listened to her cries, held her tightly, and lightly brought a hand to the side of her neck. He carefully pressed his fingertips against her skin, hoping that if she was aching (which he assumed every part of her was) it relieved the smallest bit of tension.

"How much did you hear?" She sniveled pulling away enough to glance into his eyes. Her face was blotchy and red, she was sure. Harry looked like he just left his modeling job for ties and cologne. She wanted to look more beautiful--so it would have at least made sense that Harry had ever decided to date her--even if it was years ago. But she was so overwhelmed with sadness, she couldn't feel anything but that and not even her horrendous look could deter her long enough to utter more than a quick apology for snotting all over him. "M'sorry. I look--"

"Shh," he hushed immediately. Harry pulled a handkerchief from his pocket--Mum was always insistent he have one when he wore a suit. Someone is always crying when you need to wear a suit and it's not to work. Carefully, he dabbed under her eyes, and swiped the fabric across her delicate cheeks. "You look beautiful," he assured her a kind, small smile made his lips curl up just enough to get the dimple in his cheek to appear. The one she had told him she was going to stick her tongue in back when they laid on a mattress that was too small for two people and resulted in a giggling tickle fight between two people who were much too old for tickle fights.

What he would have given to make her laugh now.

Harry kept one arm around her waist taking over her own job to hold herself together. "How much did you hear?" She repeated.

He shrugged, nonchalantly. "Too much, probably."

She frowned; if she could muster an emotion other than sadness and grief, she probably would have been embarrassed. "I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry. I was waiting inside, but then your uncle said y'were out here and I wanted t'see you and--"

"Do you need to leave?" She asked quickly. "I'm sorry I'm holding--"

"Kitten," he said gently pinching her chin between his fingers so she had no choice but to look in his eyes and process what he was saying. "M'staying here until y'tell me t'leave."

She sighed. For the first time in what felt like months she felt relief. "Okay."

*

She dragged him alongside her to the front of the receiving line. Harry felt slightly embarrassed and out of place but the rest of her family paid no attention to it. Like he was supposed to be there. She hugged and cried a lot over the next two hours. Harry handed her tissues and water.

“What if I don’t tell you to leave?” She whispered. Harry was standing so close to her that no one else could hear. Like it was just the two of them. She was sipping from a water bottle and Harry was stroking her hair back with his fingers while wiping below her eyes with a tissue.

“Then I’ll never go," his voice was quiet, like hers. He kissed her forehead softly.

"You don't have to obviously, you have no obligation... but is there any chance you were planning to be here tomorrow?" She asked.

He nodded hurriedly. "Course, kitten," he smiled gently, almost sad that she thought he wouldn't. "Niall's going t'come too. He's really sorry he couldn't make it tonight," he explained. "I have a hotel room right nearby so I can stay s'long as y'need me. Do anything y'need, too. And Niall m'sure would be happy t'help if y'need anything requiring two people, as well."

"Really?" A fresh well of tears filled her eyes and Harry's grin grew even if it was sad she was so surprised.

"Of course, beautiful. We... we want t'be here for you," he assured her.

She pressed her face against his shoulder again and sniveled against him. "I owe you a new suit," she mumbled into the fabric.

"Shh..." he hushed. "M'here," he promised. "Don't worry 'bout anything else."

*

His hotel room was dark when they entered. Harry didn’t want anything to happen that could be misconstrued due to her grief but she seemed adamant and sure that she wanted to spend the night. Harry was planning to sleep on the floor but instead they chatted way too much. Much later than a girl who had her mum’s funeral the following morning should have chatted. She giggled the way Harry loved and smiled despite how sad she was. Harry told her all about the last eight years, his job, his mum, their old friends and everything in between.

When he looked at the clock, his phone said it was well past one in the morning and she needed to be up early. “Think y’need t’sleep, kitten,” he was lying beside her, fully clothed except he lost the tie. He was brushing her hair away from her face watching her eyes droop.

“Mom didn’t like him,” she whispered. “She didn’t like anyone that wasn’t you,” she told him.

Harry swallowed nervously. Not because he was worried about her sentiment but because her grief was fresh and the tire tracks of where her stupid ex peeled out of the parking lot were still warm. Her mind had to be jumbled and as much as he wanted to kiss her and make promises, it wasn’t the time. Harry was older and more mature now. The way he wasn’t but wished he had been when they broke up. “After that performance, beautiful,” he sighed with a shake of his head. “M’surprised she didn’t poison him.”

“He didn’t even like her oatmeal raisin and white chocolate chip cookies,” she grumbled bitterly.

“Kitten,” he tutted. “How could you let that continue?” He joked, nudging her playfully.

She turned on her side, their faces inches apart on the same pillow. “Thank you for being here for me,” she whispered.

“There’s no where else I want t’be, beautiful,” he promised.

“I didn’t realize how much I missed you. It’s sad this is what it took.”

He leaned forward, pressed his lips to her forehead and let the kiss linger there. “Do y’want me t’sleep on the floor?”

“No,” she shook her head. “This is the first night I’ve felt tired in months. You have to stay here if you want me to sleep through the night.”

“If you’re sure,” he reached for the bedside lamp and turned it off. He didn’t want to change into different clothes or anything. He just wanted to be there for her.

“This is also your hotel room that I invited myself into," she reminded him.

He grinned at her in the dark. “You’ve always had an open invitation, t’me, kitten,” he brought her closer toward him, kissing the top of her head.

There would be about a thousand and one things to discuss after the funeral. But right then it was late, and they needed to sleep because the day was going to bring more exhaustion and sadness that was inevitable. “Did you mean it?” She whispered quietly after Harry thought she had fallen asleep.

“Mean what, beautiful?” He murmured.

“You’ll never go?”

He nodded. “Mmm,” he hummed inhaling the scent of her shampoo. “I meant it,” his words were slurred with sleep and she knew it because she had heard it in his voice hundreds of times in their time together. He was on the brink of dreaming and her mind was reeling.

“Mom wanted us to get back together,” she whispered. “For ages. She had our graduation picture on the fridge,” she explained. “When I was taking care of her these last few months and he was useless, she kept mentioning you. Told me it wasn’t too late to start over. I guess... I guess this was one way she thought she could bring us back together.”

There was no response because Harry had fallen asleep, and she was close behind. She brought the hand that held his to her lips and kissed his fingers inhaling the comforting smell of him as she finally felt like sleep.

“Your mum was the best,” he mumbled. “She brought you into this world, just for me t’find you.”

The words were lost in her mind, her throat, and her aching heart. But she liked to believe that Harry knew already because he was there, and he wasn’t planning on leaving again.

“We can start over, beautiful. M’not going anywhere,” he whispered one more time as sleep overtook her tired mind.

--

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[judeyswife]

not what i’m looking for. — jude bellingham x reader. II

genre : angst

word count : 928

note : hii lovies, this is official part two of the series not what im looking for !!! (part one) please let me know of what yall think in the comments! there will be a part 3 guys so don't worry, but it'll probs be a wrap up for this mini series since i want to get started on some other fics too + made a few format changes and writing from author's pov this time -- but thats it! enjoyyy! requests box always open !!

‏‏‎ ‎ ———————————————————-‏‏‎ ‎ ‏‏‎ ‎ ‏‏‎ ‎ ‏‏‎ ‎ ‏‏‎ ‎

"i'm sorry"

it's horrendous how fast people switch up. or i'd say men, in this case. it's been roughly about six months since that conversation had happened. it was honestly one of the worst days in your whole life. i mean, yeah you'll get through it. but why? every once in a while you think about what did she have that you didn't.

but this is a topic that hasn't been brought up in about a month. and a certain individual isn't mentioned anymore in your life thank the lord.

you have gone to a beach house near where you live with a few of your best friends, layla, jess, and liv. yall needed this vacation after months of torture. or studying.

they've been with you since day one. truthfully you'd say who needs a relationship when you have your homegirls?

"Y/N, come here right fucking now." -- layla screamed from our room in the house.

you could literally think she had been getting murdered with the way she was screaming honestly.

"oh my god what!"

"whats his name posted a fucking video of missing someone LOOK."

who? jude.

you sit next to her curiously taking her phone from her hands in order for you to take a look at the tiktok she was trying to show you.

( for the sake of the story, jude has tiktok xoxo )

you were shocked. who genuinely who would've though that he'd actually miss us? it didn't even sound right thinking about it.

"maybe it's about her layla" you shrugged getting up to grab your water bottle from her desk.

"are you stupid girl, he's obviously thinking about you, i mean look at his caption." - 'didn't think a situationship could hurt more than an actual relationship' don't be a fool y/n"

liv and jess had entered the room a few minutes ago listening to the conversation making liv enter the conversation.

"ain't no way he has the nerve to do that bullshit on social media"

you stood there listening to them diss jude for about 5 minutes straight. but your lost in your thoughts. i mean, why would he ever miss something he supposedly never had? it's genuinely so draining and confusing.

"guys just drop it, its whatever. lets just go hang out at the hot tub, i really fucking need it"

your friends just looked at one another not saying a single word. they knew better. not to make you sound like a maniac or anything, but they knew how you were with bottling up your feelings. jude was a sensitive topic for you. they didn't want to be the cause of ruining your vacation over some dumb tiktok captions. they simply agreed with you and started getting changed to go out the the hot tub.

•

it had been a few hours since you last seen your phone and you're now inside getting ready to have dinner with the girls and settling down. so you took these few moments, unlocked your phone and checked out what you had missed.

you furrowed your eyebrows trying to figure out who this number could possibly belong to. since you and layla are sharing a room for the trip, she was getting ready at her vanity and noticed your confused expression.

"y/n what's up?" -- asking you meanwhile putting a face mask on.

"i don't know, this random number just texted me with my name i'm just hella confused"

"that's weird. ask who it is obviously"

you nodded listening to what she had advised you to do.

you had this conversation silently without saying a word to layla about who this "mystery person" was. mainly because you wanted to fight your own battles. i mean you basically already had jess and liv involved. not that your mad at them or anything, you know they want what's best for you. clearly they're on team jude. those girls.

"who was it?" layla said getting up from her chair to grab her phone from the charger near her bed. "no one important, they got the wrong number and person" you honestly don't know how she believed you. you hate to admit but you were feeling jittery after having that conversation with jude after so long. even if it was barely a conversation.

you hated that you needed to lie to layla, but you truly believed it was honestly for the best. when you and jude were talking, they knew every single detail about the relationship you had with jude. and by they i mean your friends and his friends. always involved. one of the main issues why miscommunication was lacking horribly in your relationship. so that's why you want a new beginning. not just to "lie" to your friends but to feel the sense of control in your life. even if tomorrow was the last conversation you had with jude, you wanted to keep the moment to yourself.

•

without saying a word to anyone, you and jude had been chatting it up all night. just a catch up with each other. you guys went from telling every detail of your day to each other, to not saying a single word for months to each other. it felt nice being able to slowly regain that comfort you once had when you guys would text or facetime all night long.

you were honestly praying for the best in tomorrow's conversation, you had no idea what it could lead up to.

but the overthinking was done on your pillow all night long, plus his texts of course.

[bellewintersroe]

I'm back in your inbox with new ideas! Lol. The guys being left to care for your baby alone for the first time. I feel like this would kinda be both sweet and hilarious. For Malarkey, Chuck, Babe, Shifty, Winters, Luz, Liebgott, and whoever else you wanna add. ❤️

Super cute idea omg, I love this, thank you for your requests!!!

Easy Company x Reader Headcannons. 

Don Malarkey:

- okay 1000% is super confident when you’re around, he LOVES fatherhood, he’s so emotionally intelligent and caring that he’s the perfect dad, I can’t stress that enough (for all the men).

- when you leave just for a couple hours the baby’s probs asleep and Malarkey’s calm and content, just chilling, reading the paper and what not.

- That’s until the baby starts crying, at first he just goes for it, but when he can’t seem to settle your son he’s deffo raking his brain for every single thing he can do.

- Speaks to himself ‘okay, okay. What do I do?’

- would accidentally put the baby’s vest on backwards, or accidentally put his foot through the head hole.

- He doesn’t exactly fret, but he’s a little flustered and clumsy, especially when the baby won’t stop crying for its bottle and Don spills it all over the floor.

- But he wants everything to be perfect for when you come back, so as soon as he hears that door go he’s resting as carefully as he can back on the sofa with your baby boy wriggling resting on his chest.

Chuck Grant:

- I think after his accident Chuck is a lot more nervous and anxious about fatherhood. He never really worried about it before, he didn’t think about it a whole lot.

- Truthfully he’s scared to be left alone with the baby. He’s confident in his abilities to do day-to-day life tasks now, but due to the slight paralysis in part of his left arm he’s nervous.

- Regardless if he had the accident or not, he’d still be scared.

- Asks you sooo many questions, asks his friends, families, mom, he’s such a caring and good dad really, you’d assure him he has nothing to worry about.

- Deffo stands over your daughter’s crib to make sure she’s breathing. Like he’s checking on her every five minutes.

- Kinda scared of how tiny she is, like he’s scared to pick her up, faces so many irrational fears, but when she starts crying he kinda has no choice.

- He’s sooo reassuring, speaking to her and stroking his hand over her blonde hair.

- Scoops her up SO GENTLY- sosifiwidikwksosksos too cute omfg I can’t.

- but he’s extra fucking careful like with everything, he cradles her head and rocks her carefully.

- figures its not as scary as he thought. So when you’re back from the shop and see this you’re overwhelmed with happiness.

- “hey, this isn’t as scary as I thought!!”

- he’s a mf angel fr (even if he does almost throw up trying to change her dirty diaper).

Babe Heffron:

- On the topic of dirty diapers. You’ve gone out for the evening with a few of your girlfriends, extremely hesitant, but Babe is confident and assures you that you need to take a night off and he can handle your 3 month old daughter.

- He truly means it, he wants you to have a break- but it feels like the second you step foot outta the door all hell breaks loose.

- Your baby girl’s diaper practically explodes and Babe is positive he can handle it but the second he has to deal with it he’s GAGGING NOOO-

- Probably wraps a shirt around his face and he’s retching the whole time. Panics and gets the diaper on backwards- Bill is the only person that picks up the phone.

- He’s rocking and burping, feeding and soothing your baby but she won’t stop crying as Babe frantically questions Bill.

- “ya should know, you’ve got a whole army of em.”

- Turns out she just wants rocking and a little cuddle and as soon as she settles down Babe feels super proud. Like he smiles to himself so much, kisses her head and keeps her sleeping on his chest.

- Probably doesn’t move for a good 2 hours. If the baby is asleep he doesn’t want to wake her and cause WW3 so he just stays in that position lolllll.

Shifty Powers:

- He has such a calming presence that your daughter just soothes in his arm immediately. She’s got her dad wrapped around her finger and Shifty will find himself running all around the house

- Deffo cool asf with being left alone with your baby for the first time. He’s a little worried because you two are such a good team.

- I can imagine him sitting on the porch with your baby, holding her close as he points out the different wildlife he see’s running past.

- Probably the type of dad that wants to play with the baby fresh outta the womb, and you kinda have to say; “Shifty, give her two months to develop first.” Lmao

- “Look who’s back? That’s ya mommy, hm? Let’s go see her.” Ugh he’s so sweet and takes care of her so well, like I said he’s so mf calm, cool and collected. Literally like a baby whisperer.

Dick Winters:

- Similar to Shifty, he’s so mf calm and collected when he’s left alone- except before you leave he’s asking you plenty of questions.

- you kinda have to reassure like ‘Dick, I promise you’ll be fine, he’s not gonna run off anyway and you’re not going to drop him.’

- You’re right, and similar to Chuck he’s checking up on your baby every few minutes, smiling every time your son moves or makes the slightest noise.

- Sooo gentle and so good at keeping to a routine, literally so methodical, checks if he’s hungry, tired, cold, warm, just needs a cuddle?

- He’s even a little smug when you got back. Luckily for you both your baby is already calm, but I can imagine Dick carrying him and just watching down to his peaceful little face feeling so accomplished at life.

George Luz:

- Same as Shifty but worse, he but wants to play with your kid but he’s literally like 4 weeks old lmao.

- “Don’t worry, babe, I got it all covered, we’re gonna have the best time. Aren’t we?” He reassures before you leave as he speaks to his son (who obviously doesn’t reply).

- Thinks he’s got it all under control but he’s deffo exhausted by the end of it. At first the baby is asleep n he’s speaking to him before he turns over; “you don’t talk much, do you?”

- makes the worse mistake EVER and wakes up a sleeping baby; “c’mon little guy, let’s listen to the baseball.”

- Crying, crying and more crying. George does everything, he literally apologises to your baby for getting him up.

- “Tough life, little guy.” He teases but it doesn’t exactly work.

- George probably gets a little upset when you walk back in and the baby is still wailing. He feels the need to apologise and explain.

- “George it’s fine, he’s a baby he’s gonna cry.”

- Fr tho he’s such a good dad, so present and active in his child’s life.

Joe Liebgott:

- “Hey, I’m actually really fuckin’ good at this.” Accidentally curses in front of your newborn and slaps his hand over his mouth.

- Thinks he’s the pro at changing diapers and fixing bottles, he wants to do it as much as he can seeing as he has to go work through the week in the day.

- “You want me to read this or some real stories, huh?” Would read a comic book to your son, and it actually works when he goes to sleep.

- Tries to sleep when the baby does, he’s eager to show you that the two of you should start trying for more little Liebgott’s asap!!

- You’re out for the whole night, staying over at a relatives and Joe practically SPRINGS out of bed every time the baby cries.

- Maybe he’s a light sleeper from the war, but it’s just an automatic reaction, hurries over in a slight panic to make sure everything is ok.

- admits later he feels like a zombie by the morning, it creates an even stronger gratitude for you as a mother and he’s honestly so happy your back.

- Never complains about being tired again. He loves spending time with his son as much as possible, even if it is hard work at first, he’s soo fucking good at it that he does convince you to have 400 more children.

[alliewritesthings]

papers - pt 6

Pairing: Dad!Chris Evans x Reader

Word Count: 2.2k

Warnings: angst, mentions of divorce, mentions of cheating. if ive missed anything please let me know!

A/N: two years later and im backkkkkk. she's back to finish what she started 🤓 this took me way too long, and also makes me sad that it's finally finished. just wanted to give a shoutout to my bestie while im here because we actually met because she stumbled across my shitty little blog a few years ago, shes consistently gone on at me for years about finishing this series and i probs wouldnt have finished it if it wasn't for her 🥲 also this gif felt relevevant as we lay papers to rest with a "night night" 🤍

series masterlist   |   main masterlist

Considering you’d found out you was pregnant three months into the pregnancy, the time flew quickly. Baby girl Evans was due 13th June, but decided she didn’t want to share a birthday with her daddy. 

At 5:15am on Saturday 9th June, Penelope Evans decided to make an appearance. Unfortunately for you, this was the weekend that Chris made a short trip back to Boston to have some well-earned birthday celebrations with his family. You’d decided that for multiple reasons, including being close to your own family, that you wanted to spend the rest of your pregnancy in London so returning to your family home in Boston wasn’t an option. 

Chris missed the entire birth of his second child, the event being unknown to him as his phone had died early on during his night out with old friends. Baby Penny was over twelve hours old when Chris finally received the news of his newborn child. A baby girl. News that brought the man to tears; he loved being a girl dad. 

But that was just over a month ago, baby Penny was quickly approaching seven weeks old. And Chris had spent every waking moment with both his young daughters. Summer was rolling in and Olivia had just finished her last week at school in London. It was two weeks until you packed up and once again moved your little family of four back to the USA. You’d made an agreement with Chris that your London apartment wasn’t to be sold and would instead be used by your family on your regularly planned visits. This luckily meant for you that there wasn’t much packing that needed to be done, only the essentials you’d need when you returned to your family home. You’d forever be grateful that you didn’t need to pack up the whole apartment with two little ones in tow. 

Penelope Evans was your perfect little secret for the first 5 weeks of her life, allowing yourself time to settle in being a parent of two. Being cooped up in your apartment from the day Penny was brought home from the hospital, both Chris and your parents taking it in turns to do the school run for Olivia. Of course, the rumour that Baby Evans was born spread when you weren’t spotted in public for weeks, but you were in your perfect newborn bubble. But you wanted to be present for Olivia’s last days in British school, so you made the effort to leave the house and walk the youngster to school every morning and watch her skip alongside her baby sister's buggy. 

It was 9pm, the evenings being the main time you got some silence in the little London apartment. Chris was perched on your shared bed, scrolling through his phone and replying to emails. You were sat on the carpeted floor, one leg outstretched and gently rocking the moses basket with your foot while you packed some of your newborn's clothes into one of the few suitcases dotted around the room. Both your daughters fast asleep in their respective beds. 

Your phone vibrated on the carpet next to you, ignoring it as you expected it to be Chris sending you something he’d seen on Instagram. You hummed quietly to yourself as you carefully folded clothes and placed them inside the case, your foot still gently rocking the moses basket. It wasn’t until your phone vibrated another two times that you curiously peeked down at the screen; your eyebrows furrowed as you noticed multiple Facebook messages from an old friend of yours that you’d not spoken to in years. 

I’m so sorry but I thought you should see this. One of the messages read, follow by a Sent a Photo and a link. You tilted your head in curiosity as you opened the messages, the link and screenshotted news article headline referencing the birth of your child and Chris’s whereabouts at the time. 

It wasn’t until you read further into the article that silence fell over the room, your humming coming to a sudden halt and your foot stopped pressing against the bassinet. Evans night out during birth of second child. Underneath the headline a picture of the alleged ‘Sarah’ from the previous cheating rumours that almost ruined your marriage a year ago. Chris had his arm wrapped around her shoulder as they sat in a booth in the corner of what seemed like a club, both leaning in closely and talking quietly amongst themselves. 

Recent discoveries show that Evans’ second child, a baby girl, was born on Sunday 9th June in the early hours of the morning. During this time Evans’ was in Boston on a night out with friends celebrating his approaching birthday, understood to also be his child’s due date. Evans has two children with his British wife. Rumours spread last summer of acts of infidelity within the marriage, however this did not seem to break the couple as they reunited and introduced their second child. 

Updates as they come. The article stated. 

You were speechless at the article, unsure how to process it as you placed your phone back on the carpet and focused back onto packing the suitcase in front of you. Was that even Chris in the photo? It was slightly blurry, and of course the club was dark. But you could pick Chris out of a crowd in an instant, and that certainly looked like the woman from previous photos. 

“You okay?” Chris questioned, peeking over his phone to look down at you. 

“Mhm.” You mumbled in response, a sigh leaving your lips as you picked up one of your favourite newborn onesies. Penny had grown out of it at this point, but you wouldn’t dispose of it; the onesie was Penelope’s first outfit, her coming home outfit. The same onesie that Olivia wore home when she returned from hospital. The neutral onesie with little Winnie The Pooh drawings printed across it. It almost made you cry at the thought of the perfect little family you once had, and could have continued to have. 

You closed your eyes and brought the onesie to your nose, taking a deep breath as you took in the scent of the laundry detergent you often used on your children's clothes, the milky honey scent filling your nostrils comforted you. 

Your phone vibrated next to you again, you’d turned on notifications for updates to the article. You were unsure if you wanted to return to read the update, a knot formed in your stomach and you began to fill sick. You laid the onesie on your lap as you reached again for your phone, following your gut feeling and reopening the article. 

UPDATE 

Recent investigations show the woman believed to be Sarah Jenkins, a 35-year-old from Atlanta. This is the second time she has publicly been spotted with actor Chris Evans. Sarah, who is public on most social media accounts, has a one-year-old child with an unknown father. Sources believe that Evans could be the father of the child. 

“Hey, what’s up?” Chris questioned, worry filling his face as he moved to sit next to you on the floor as he watched your face completely drain of all colour. 

“I’m going to be sick.” You mumbled, quickly pushing yourself to your feet and away from Chris. You almost tripped over the suitcase and other items scattered across the floor as you made a beeline for the bathroom, dropping to your knees as you leaned over the porcelain toilet and threw up the contents of your stomach. 

“Hey. It’s okay.” Chris followed you, kneeling down to hold your hair out your face and rub your back. 

“Get away from me!” You almost shouted, tears beginning to fill your eyes as you withdraw from any contact from the man. “How could you?!” You cried. 

“What?!” Chris questioned; his brows furrowed as he stared at you in shock. 

Oh boy was he a good actor. 

“Don’t you dare fucking lie to me again!” You bit back with gritted teeth. “How could you do that to me?! How could you do that to our poor innocent Olivia?!” The sadness fell over your eyes, the tears falling down your cheeks at the thought of your two precious girls who got hurt in the process. How as you going to explain this to them? How was you going to tell Olivia that her daddy was the reason the family fell apart? 

“How could you?!” You repeated again, a sob getting caught in your throat. “How could you cheat?! How could you have a child with another woman and simply act like its nothing?!” A loud wail tumbled from your lips as you pulled yourself back to the toilet and vomited some more. 

“I’m sorry.” Chris accepted defeat. That was all the conformation you needed. He should have known that after some time the news would come out. 

“You’re sorry?!” You looked at him in complete shock, bringing the back of your hand up to wipe at your mouth. “You think that's going to take all this away?” You truly were stunned that he was acting like this wasn’t as large a crime as it was. 

“His name is Theodore. Theo.” He mumbled, pushing himself to his feet as the tears started to fill in his eyes. The realisation was beginning to hit of what he’d done. How much he’d hurt his wife, and would shortly hurt his two precious daughters too. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.” 

“You didn’t mean for this to happen?!” Your voice raised in complete disbelief at his words. “You didn’t mean to spend time with another woman? Didn’t mean to fall into bed with her? Didn’t mean to have a child with her? Didn’t mean to continue seeing her, even when the child wasn’t present. You lied to me! You lied and then played me into thinking everything was okay, we had another child!” You screamed, it was all beginning to boil over and push you to the edge. 

Multiple instances flashed through your mind; like Christmas, Chris had no work on the lead up to Christmas, but yet he couldn’t be in London until the twenty third of December. He claimed he had commitments to his family. He missed the birth of your child for a night out on his birthday, yet the only photo you’ve seen from the night is the previously posted photo with ‘Sarah’. He missed out on time with yourself, and your growing family, major events like the birth of his second, well technically third, child. You weren’t as big a priority as it was made out to be. 

A loud screaming cry came from your bedroom, your almost two-month-old child awakening due to the loud noises flowing through the apartment. 

“Get out.” You bit through gritted teeth, pushing yourself to your feet as you prioritised getting to your small baby girl crying out in need. You cradled her in your arms, cuddling her close as you tried to compose yourself, holding the little baby so tight as you rocked her back and forth but her crying wouldn’t stop. 

“Get away from me.” You almost growled at Chris as he approached you in the bedroom, your hold becoming more protective of your sweet innocent child. 

“Please, let me explain.” Chris tried to speak over the sound of the screaming baby which you continued to rock. 

“Explain what, Chris?!” You turned to look at him, tears streaming down your face which matched the face of the distraught newborn. “There is nothing to explain.” You were starting to get overwhelmed with the situation, the screaming of the baby, the cheating man stood in front of you trying to talk his way out of his sins. 

“Mummy?” A little voice spoke from the door. “Daddy?” The small child stood at the door, her fists rubbing at her tired eyes and chubby cheeks. “Is Penny okay? Mummy, are you okay?” she questioned, unsure what all the noise was about. Her tired eyes adjusted as she looked between you and her father, the upset visible on both your faces as well as her newborn sister. 

“Penny’s okay, princess.” Chris spoke up, turning to speak properly to his eldest daughter. He couldn’t comment on how you felt, and he didn’t want to lie to his daughter again. “Mummys got her. Let's get you back to bed.” He hummed, leading the little girl out of the room as he tried to compose himself. In that moment, you had to admit you was grateful for Chris stepping up for his eldest child. 

A few moments passed until you heard Olivia’s bedroom door closing, you’d managed to compose yourself to a certain extent but also calm Penelope down enough that she’d fallen back to sleep and was once again nestled in her basket. 

“I want you gone. You can collect your things during the week, my parents will be here to deal with it. You won’t see the girls. We’re not coming back to Boston.” You rambled out the words that you’d been planning in your head. 

“Babe, please!” He tried to beg, stepping closer to where you were perched on the edge of the bed and looking down at the newborn in her basket. 

“Don’t call me babe. You won’t see the girls until a plan has been made. You’ll leave tonight.” You sighed, defeated.

“My solicitor will be in contact to get the papers signed.”

thank you again for reading, i hope you enjoyed!!!

it's finally finished!!! 🎉

[sadie-bug345]

gang as after school snacks🫵🫶

i main oreos and milk ANYDAY OF THE WEEK🧍‍♀️👹❤️

ponyboy:

prob apples or sum shit😭

like something kinda random but also reasonable

ngl apples and peanut butter HIT sometimes

so he’s real for that

6/10 also gives pudding cup guy

johnny:

either doesn’t have anything as an after school snack

#neglected

in all seriousness i feel so incredibly bad for johnny and his home life

OR he makes like a whole meal

no in between

like he’ll come home and just put together a whole sandwich, juice, apple, the whole thing

5/10 i’m sorry😭

sodapop:

just has a can of coke or smth

this is not a joke on his name but it does go very well with it

but i think he just THRIVES off caffeinated sodas

comes home and cracks open a dr pepper, pepsi, whatever

thats enough to fuel him thru the rest of the day

also when he’s had a bad day he’ll just sit in his and pony’s room in the dark and sip his soda ominously LMAOOO

8/10 my mom does this

darry:

yoghurt and granola typa guy

probably calls granola “cereal”

ily darry but this is unacceptable 🫶🥰

he def pressures pony and soda to have healthy snacks which pony listens to but soda…well we know what soda does💀

everyone makes fun of him for his taste but he gets so pressed so fast (trust me he’s mad at me already for writing this)

3/10🏃‍♀️💨

dally:

religiously has bowls of cereal

or just cigarettes yk

just sits in the dark and eats his lucky charms whilst contemplating everything annoying he !everyone else! did that day

thinks about how much homework he has and how hes not gonna do a lick of it

calls up friends asking them to share their answers to the spanish hw

and on the other side of the line they can just hear him munching away and just like “…what are you eating🧍‍♀️”

dal’s just like “the bones of your dead dreams now tell me what the fuck a conjugation is and how i do it”

9/10 y’all prob know im an intense cereal lover

two-bit:

gushers or fruit snacks typa thing

prob drinks kool-aid like it’s the water of life

he’s real for that to a degree

like sometimes too many ritz crackers is too much 😭

probably just eats packs after packs of fruit snacks

struggle meals all the way💀

8/10

steve:

just drinks a glass of milk or smth

straight from the carton

just a total scavenger of the pantry

so disrespectful💀

in general i think he steals all the gangs food as a joke

darry just bought some cookies from the grocery store and by the time he gets home from work they’re gone😭😭

4/10

ANYWAYS request hcs, imagines, anything! i do platonic and romantic y/ns too🫶

ILYSM‼️‼️

[blvckentropy]

WARNING LONG RANT!

Okay so I've been sitting on Drake so called "diss track" and I still declare it as the biggest CONTRADICTING ASS track ever. Like I get die hard Drake fans gone be like he won regardless but he hasn't because he made several deep holes in his argument. Granted you probably don't give a damn and that's fine. Overall, neither do I but some of you got so blinded and hyped by his one-liners and his flow that you ain't peep what he really said did you? Ngl, had me sitting here like a was crazy for a minute. Now correct me if I'm wrong cause I also had to fact check myself, but these are the lines that got me like now wait wait....

You said, "The ones that you're gettin' your stories from, they all clowns" just to say "We plotted for a week and then we fed you the information".... which one is it? Are you calling yourself a clown or the ppl you sent the info. to? I'm perplexed.

"What about the bones we dug up in that excavation? And why isn't Whitney denyin' all of the allegations? Why is she following Dave Free and not Mr. Morale? You haven't seen the kids in six months, the distance is wild Dave leaving heart emojis underneath pics of the child"

First and for most, what is your obsession with this woman? Also are we in high school? Why we worried about someone follow count and/or who following who? She a grown ass woman like she can't have male friends. Plus, if irl she with Kendrick every day, why does she need to? And if Kendrick aint worried about, why are you? You caught up in finding out if that's her real bd but where are your evidence? If Kendrick has to, you do too. Childish.

BUT THIS IS WHERE IT GOT DISRESPECTFUL!

"This Epstein angle was the shit I expected TikTok videos you collected and dissected Instead of being on some diss-direct shit You rather fucking grab your pen and misdirect shit My mom came over today and I was like, "Mother, I—, mother, I—, mother—" Ah, wait a second, that's that one record where you say you got molested"

"This about to get so depressin' This is trauma from your own confessions This when your father leave you home alone with no protection, so neglected That's why these pedophile raps and shit you so obsessed with, it's so excessive"

"Touch My Body" by Mariah Carey play, you probably start reflectin"

This whole verse was a misinterpretation of Kendrick's song "Mother I Sober" which I had to educate myself with. Long story short, the song is about his mom SA and how she thought he was by his cousin even when he told her "no" and it forms a bigger picture to his overall family trauma as a whole and so on. So not only did you Mr. " You gotta learn to fact check things and be less impatient" if that ain't the biggest pot calling the kettle black idk what is. You got it wrong (Kendrick pretty much explained it) then double down on borderline prob over the line atp disrespecting his mother and all and every victim of SA? We victim shaming now?

I never been with no one underage, but now I understand why this the angle that you really mess with Just for clarity, I feel disgusted, I'm too respected If I was fucking young girls, I promise I'd have been arrested I'm way too famous for this shit you just suggested

*Slow claps* Congratulations you played yourself. What in the fuckery? CURRENTLY....DIDDY DOODLE BOB HAS ALLEGATIONS RIGHT NOW AND HE'S MORE FAMOUS THAN U. And don't get me started on the list....umm...you literally just named one (If you still bumping R. Kelly, you could thank the Savior)

"Only fuckin' with Whitneys, not Millie Bobby Browns, I'd never look twice at no teenager" but you'll look once? Also, someone que up the video with him on stage w/ a 17-year-old. He and I quote "Why you look like that?" "You thick. look at all this" Then kiss her all over her face🤔 Sir a kiss on the cheek or forehead would suffice but I digress.

And correct me if I'm wrong, I believe the only reason Kendrick hasn't even the touch the "beating allegations" is because he covers all that in both Mr. Morale and Mother I sober? If I'm correct, then you basically didn't tell us nothing that hasn't been said on him. Plus you also not fact checking. Where's of your proof? I would think someone with the upper hand would have laid down evidence that you mastermind...oh wait...was Kendrick right along? Now you look like the goofy on defense. Like do Kendrick even have to say anything?

Bruh, but the funniest part on it all. You acting like YOU DIDN'T ASK FOR THIS. YOU DROP A DISS first wanting him to response and now you trying to make it seem like you didn't? My guy, if your actions alone here isn't a manipulation master class. Chileeeeee

[sparklingcid3r]

hc that the biggest red herring fight paul and darry got into was when bob tried to fw pony on his way home from school. darry does not play abt his brothers, esp against a soc and pony defs being smaller anyways? paul took bobs side tho

I’d prob call this more foreshadowing in terms of the deterioration of their relationship but YEAHHH let’s talk abt it!! I’ll eat this shit up nom nom nom

It’s funny bc I just read a post abt Paul beating up on Pony w his new fuck buddy and Darry pulling up w Tim Shepard in his bag and OHHH MY DAYS it was like Thanksgiving feast 🙏 Idk if that’s relevant but I wanted to put it out there bc I’ll prob end up taking some hcs from the post so if you read it and see it here yk where it came from lol

Also if we’re doing this whole triangle btwn Bob, Paul, and Darry then ig I should try and establish ages. And bc I could go over how like “oh so bob could be a junior while paul is prob a senior in hs rn meanwhile darry is a year older and spent half a semester at college, so canonically paul and darry were in two different grade levels and bob pulls up to Paul’s side from the underclass” it’s a lot easier for me to point at paul and say “SUPER SENIOR🫵”

this is what i mean when i say im a certified yapper literally noneee of that shit mattered

Alr let’s go‼️

- When Pony came home from school battered to hell Mr. and Mrs. Curtis were just worrying about cleaning him back up and making sure he was alright. Mr. Curtis would prob be the one who wanted to give him the talk abt defending himself but the Missus was having none of it. Life’s hard enough without fighting

- They know who Paul is and have an alright opinion about him, they like that he extends his hand out to Darry the way parents do when their kids are making friends you don’t expect but don’t disapprove of. Darry is the reason Paul doesn’t jump Pony or Soda, he knows he’d be thrown aside in a heartbeat if that were to get back to him, and also Paul’s suchhhh a whore for having all his limbs intact and teeth inside his mouth

- Bob’s more of a masochist yk. But not on purpose bc all he saw was this scrawny little greased up mouse with his head tucked down walking all by himself, both hands on the straps of his backpack and wanted a piece of all the action that other Socs get from jumping the East side’s equivalent of a wet stick

- Pony is the one who rats Bob out to Darry, not because he’s aware that Darry already had his sights locked on Bob’s snake ass from the beginning, but because Darry is Superman to Ponyboy and is always ready to throw hands for his brothers (behind closed doors ofc, he’s not gonna toss away his spot on the football team for just anything r u crazy??)

- Darry might be a little crazy tho, we’ll get to that later trust

- He takes the civil route to start off and talks to Paul abt it bc he just knowwws that Bob’s been Paul’s little sidepiece while Darry and Paul have been drifting the closer they get to graduation, but they’re still close enough that Darry can go to Paul abt shit like this and get him to listen

- Except not really, bc Paul just says he had nothing to do with it and that Darry can’t rlly expect him to have his back when a greaser gets what all greasers have coming

- So anyway Darry pulls up to Bob talking abt “yo wsg robert why don’t u come outside rq i just wanna talk” man JUST SQUARE UP

- I’m playing he doesn’t do that

- What Darry actually does is sneaky bc at his core, doesn’t matter if he believes it or not, he’s a greaser and he can fight filthyyyy

- So catch Darry pulling up to a grad function (with that madras drip on iykyk🙏) and pulling Bob aside for just a little talk, it’ll only take five mins

- When he’s got Bob and his solo cup brimming w that nasty jungle juice alone, all he does it sucker punch him in the face. It’s glorious, no witnesses. The man drops like a cartoon peter griffin style

- And Darry doesn’t even stay. He shoulder checks Paul on the way out and he’s gone with the wind

disclaimer: anon i’m sorry i wrote this at like 3am and am posting it now lmfaoo i’m so sorry if u wanted smth serious 😭🙏 if any of u think that i think this is canon pls don’t🙏🙏 this is just me having fun w an ask that im very grateful for🫶🫶

[kelpeigh]

Okay as long as I'm out here defending and over-analyzing Too Sweet here's an old text I sent a friend at 4am shortly after Too Sweet came out:

“Too Sweet” is a huge shift in a narrator's perspective from anything we've seen from Hozier before. It's the closest a Hozier narrator's come to blaming "Babe" for the breakup. And as a result we finally learn something about her, not just how the nature of his love for her and what he'd do for her/what effect she has on him

Most of his songs that have anything to do with heartbreak either have the narrator shouldering the blame completely, or maybe possibly sharing a tiny bit of the blame with Babe: -All Things End is all “even a perfect match can’t stay together forever, technically” -Unknown has the slight dig of “and there are some people, love, who are better unknown” and is an overall vague acknowledgment of some betrayal (though I still don’t quite see it fitting in the theme of treachery tbh) -NFWMB (not a heartbreak song but worth a mention) is “if she kills me, don’t prosecute. She wouldn’t kill me if I didn’t have it coming and if she killed me then oh, what a way to go”. -Cherry Wine runs into problems with fan reception because the narrator self-victim blames, and romanticizes the hell out of the abuse. Even when Babe is clearly in the wrong, the narrator is saying “but I love it and I’ll always come back for more, so what blame is there to assign? What good would that do?” Having volunteered for a crisis line, our hands are kind of tied if someone calls with a clear problem (drugs, abuse) but doesn’t see it as a problem. If they call because they’re upset about a death in the family and casually mention using meth 10x a day, we focus on the death in the family. I think about that every time I listen to Cherry Wine -Jackie and Wilson: “well that’s what I get for putting someone I just met up on a pedestal, whatchagonnadoaboutit”

“Too Sweet” itself has the thesis statement of “good for you, live your own way, literally no FAULT in it (kinda sad you prob fell victim to a system that's selling you your own health at the cost of the full human experience :'c but That's Capitalism, babey), but it’s not compatible with how I want to live”.

So it's still not saying “you wronged me” or even “you annoy me” on any level. So still not necessarily assigning blame. HOWEVER. This is the most we’ve ever actually learned about the object of his affection in any song, and it happens to be the one where he’s most directly complaining. In other songs he’ll allude to qualities of Babe in ways that tell us a lot more about the narrator’s view of her, than anything actually about her. We learn she’s “like the love that discovered sin” etc, but…. Literally his whole discography to this point concerning a lover only tells us HE loves her so much she inspires HIM. He’ll be the shrike to her thorn, he’ll fuel the pyre of her enemies, he’ll crawl home to her. But what about her inspires this devotion? What about her prompted the creative metaphors he used to express that devotion? I think the closest we got until 2 days ago was “she’s the giggle at a funeral”. She’s funny enough to make you laugh even in the bleakest of settings. But the rest of TMTC is “here’s a list of the feelings she makes me feel and the things I’d do for her.”

It feels like he’s been so careful to not badmouth anyone ever that he inadvertently scrubbed any identity away. In his selflessness, he makes it about himself. Don’t get me wrong, when he hides behind poetry we get some of the most beautiful lyrics of all time. I’m not saying he needs to stop. In fact it’s something that’s always stuck out to me in a good way: his lyrics are elevated beyond any one experience. It makes them evergreen and still relatable to a bitch like me who’s only ever gone on one date, and only agreed to that date as a joke. I’m not accusing him of copping out the way a lot of pop stars do, leaving out details to lower the common denominator of about whom he can possibly be singing. His other love songs are not lacking by omitting characterization of Babe. He simply hasn’t needed to describe her in any way; if anything he is painting a beautiful picture AROUND her silhouette that tells us everything that matters.

Like. The fandom girlies (no hate, I'm one) get to insist that Hozier wrote xyz song about/for their ship because he wrote about the act of loving, not loving a specific person. So it can apply to anyone. I bet you anything Too Sweet will get hijacked 80% less because he hasn’t scrubbed the object away and left us only with the eye of the beholder.

But this new POV is engaging a whole new aspect of his point of view.

In Too Sweet we FINALLY learn she goes to bed by 10 and gets up at dawn, she’s careful about what she eats to the point of insanity, etc. Stuff she does. Stuff she likes. Stuff she refuses to do.

In summary: Too Sweet is, to me, a million times more intimate than Warm Climate, because after 10 years he’s finally telling us what kind of person takes him to church (in this case, health influencer church)

[souryam]

I've always been bothered by the analysis that Lily didn't care about Severus. Not only because I love their friendship and ship them together, and also because I think it cheapens the relationship as a whole and makes things fall a bit flat. I do understand where people are coming from tho. She does defend James to him, and is implied to be physically attracted to him even while being friends with Severus (I disagree with her already having a full blown crush, but I do think she found him handsome), also she's pretty emotionless when he's trying to apologize, which leads people to believe she was only looking for an excuse to ditch him. Which I strongly disagree.

First off, I don't think they would've lasted that long if she didn't love him a lot (as a friend or as a crush that's your pick). Their friendship lasted 6 years, and JKR confirmed that a huge motivation for James, personally, bullying Severus was jealousy she felt of Lily's attention and affection, he saw Snape as a threat. Potter watched Lily all the time, hit on her all the time. Lily is described to have a temper. It is almost impossible to me to believe that James wouldn't have noticed that Lily was bothered by Snape and outright wanted him gone from her life, therefore rendering his motive for the bullying flat. We see he is even more cruel when Lily stands up for Severus, mocking him further (as we see on the train scene in Prince's Tale and in SWM), exactly because he believed that they both liked each other (romantically or platonically)

Also, a scene that sticks out to me is the one in DH when Lily is insisting for Severus to stop hanging out with Avery and Mulciber. If she was just looking for an excuse, wouldn't she have given the ultimatum then and there? She clearly didn't like them, thought they were cruel, and they hurt Mary, which is implied to be an acquaintance if not a friend of hers. Why stay as long as she did, "making excuses" for him to her friends as she says, if she didn't want the friendship anymore? Her lack of emotion when he's apologizing can be easily explained away by how angry she is. That scene didn't happen after days or weeks from SWM, it happened in the same day and she clearly didn't want to speak to him in the moment, it being the only scene in which he demanded her attention in a sense. In Lily's POV, that was this friend she had for almost a decade, her oldest friend, who had just turned on her for no reason, when she was trying to help him. A lot of people ignore how bad Severus is at expressing his feelings and telling her hard things about his life (as seen in him using euphemisms for his father's behaviour when we know that he was being brutally whipped), so it's very possible that he wasn't transparent with her about his insecurities or how bad the marauders' bullying affected him, so she never thought much of it. Might be a little insensitive, but hey, she was a 15 yo. It always seemed to me that he presented himself way more as a shoulder for her to cry on than the opposite.

Also, the memories that were given to Harry were not meant to show the pretty moments of their friendship, at least not in my interpretation. Yes, it had some cute moments to make clear to Harry that they were friends, but to me it was way more about showing Harry the conflict of Snape's life from the start, the Dark Arts and the DEs, which he was very tempted and interested by, and the Lily, who's a symbolism for Light in his life. She was the one pulling him away from them, warning him, and he wouldn't listen. That's why basically all their scenes have some sort of conflict. To show Harry how his entire life, he was in between those two sides being pulled back and forth, and when Lily's pull was gone, he headed straight in to the Dark Arts, and ofc, that didn't end well at all.

This got super long for no reason and it's prob very badly written but it was mostly a word vomit lmao I just rlly like them and yes they had their problems but most friendships do :( they would've worked it out in another universe...

[callsigns-haze]

Another announcement yet again

Two this week huh?! Probs not the best thing ever but yet here we are.

Tbh I don't think I have left too many things lying out unfinished I might delete one of my series and you know I was only one part in and not much attention either so no big deal.

I did post like a little peak of one but it's fine. That can wait or just never happen.

I have exams coming up soon and won't have any time to post anything but in fairness I feel like I'll be around here till the end of this month then I'll probably pull what I did from April to June but this time I'll probably be gone most of the time for possible 6 months maybe?!

I'll still be posting some fics if I have time. I'm about to close my requests because I won't have time. My exams are in January and then again in June and these go on my cert so this matters a lot to me.

Tbh some of my things don't even get acknowledged around here anymore so let me be honest this will be a small change to your blogging life.

I go back to sports in two weeks so then I'll be busy 24/7 and studying matters to me this year, a lot.

I've also been feeling really sick recently so this is not making anything better. I'm out of my hand brace and finger splints but still don't feel all nice and fuzzy.

Here's the real shit.

I have really bad anxiety. Like absolutely shit.

Over the period of my whole life I have ended up in hospital due to severe panic attacks and other issues.

It sucks how these things come back huh?

I was talking today with one of my friends Maria that last year was the worst year for me with my attacks but this year they seemed to calm down. In the month of September I would say I only had like 3.

I spoke about this to my doctor and she said maybe it's because I can do sports so I'm calm or maybe I found a better routine. Then why do I feel so shit on my day off?

I just had a conversation with a mutual and currently I'm legit on the edge like all this trauma and shit just flooded back and is sitting on my chest and yet I can't do shit about it.

Last year on the third of October someone passed away that was somewhat involved with me but that's nothing relevant to me or what I feel.

People on this very app ruined my experience at the end of last year and I was close to another attempt.

But right now out of September I only had 3 panic attacks that month I had 4 today and it's the first of fucking October.

Am I sobbing currently yes. I can't control it anymore. I don't want to have to keep on writing more as right now it doesn't please me.

My writing isn't so great in the first place. My first language was polish and I only started to get English properly by 8 so I see where my fics do not have the best range.

I really wanted to reach 1k followers by the end of this year but there's nothing to go off on anymore.

I will be online for a bit and I will be DM people I like to text but mostly don't be surprised if I don't answer too much. I'm not in a good space at all.

I'll probably be doing a bunch of rants on my blog and if you don't want to see it just don't read or just ignore.

I need the trauma to fucking go away but I'm shit at talking.

[aleksa-sims]

Simself Story

CW: addiction, pregnancy, cheating, divorce

I told him... 😢🤦‍♀️

As the sun slowly rose after we talked all night about what Daniel has experienced the last 4 months, it was my turn, to tell him what I did, while he was gone...

What I can say? 😞... He was devastated. It wasn’t really my pregnancy or the fact that I get a baby by someone else, what has made him so upset, but rather the... circumstances that led to it and how it all came about. All our probs were caused by that damn attack/assault on us, 8 months ago. This thing has traumatized us. We both had difficulty processing it.

My parents told him I was dating Nico. The day he came back, he talked to them. He asked questions. And now, D. wanted to know from me, why I even met Nico? Did I call him? Or he me? How did we get there? Well, the stranger I met online... 🤦‍♀️

Daniel: He did it all on purpose! He pretended to be a stranger playing Sims with you. I mean how sick is that?... Did you know it was him? Did you lie to me? Be honest!

Me: No, I swear I didn't know!!! You know the whole story, I showed you everything he texted me. And he didn’t plan on breaking us up. He never meant to see me, he knew I loved you and we were married. He even helped me make up with you. It wasn’t until weeks after you left, that Nico started giving me more and more clues about his true identity. Listen D., he tried to distract me. I was always sad. I was looking for you everywhere with Alex. I was devastated! And I also relapsed, really bad, I fucked up sm. 🤦‍♀️😞

Daniel: You want to divorce me. Everything breaks dwon.... This is worse than the shit my crazy mother did to me. You and me... that wasn’t planned to end this way! It should never end!

Me: I'm so sorry. I don’t want it to end either. That’s why I married you, I love you, but-...... how’s this gonna work?

Daniel: You love him, not me! Otherwise, you’d just stay here. But you decided to divorce me and start a new life with him. So go! Go to him!..... What the fuck are you waiting for?

Me: No, I’m not leaving. I can’t leave you alone now. I’ll stay with you, as long as you need me.

Daniel: Damn, stay away from me!!.... Leave me alone, or I might say something I don’t want.

I couldn’t leave him alone. So I just stood aside somewhere in a corner, looking down, while Daniel left the living room. I touched my belly.  I apologized to my Baby for the hatred I felt for myself at that moment. I was disgusted with myself. I resented myself for constantly repeating the same, damn mistakes. I never wanted to hurt Daniel!! He deserved me to stay with him and live our fucking lives the way it used to be. I have to find a solution!

Half an hour later, I went over to Daniel to look after him. And.....huh? Is Daniel cuddling his old teddy bear??? 🤨😄

Me: Daniel?..You ok?... You... need a huggie? 😳😬

Daniel: Nah, I just don't wanna see you. And why's that old dust catcher here? He also smells like you.

Me: I found him at your house the last time we were there. Your sister said it was yours once. And the other day when I was home, I found him in my closet. I gave him a little makeover. I cleand him and put some of my perfume on him. And yea, he's cute I wanted to keep him.

Daniel: I hate that teddy bear. He disappointed me when I was 7, just like you now. 😒

Me: Um... that's just a toy, Daniel. How can a teddy bear disappoint you? 🤨

Daniel: I got him when I was five. My crazy mother kept locking me in the closet as you know. He was my bud, who was allowed to accompany me. And whenever I was alone in our damn house, I was less afraid, bcs he was there too. But on my 7th birthday I found out who gave me that teddy bear. It was one of those damn witches my mother met at her fucking clut-parties. That woman also told me my teddy bear was not a boy as I thought, it was a girl! She showed me the label. And well, at 7 I could read. The label said, "Susi the bear." I was totally disappointed. He wasn’t my friend anymor, just a fucking traitor! A damn witch, Susi, like one of my mothers odd followers. 😠

Me: Sorry. I didn’t know, I’m gonna put him away. 😞

Daniel: Take it with you! Maybe your soccer player's gonna be happy about it. Kind of like a trophy for him. He’s an athlete, he should like that. 🤷‍♂️

Me: I’ll save your old teddy bear for my Baby. I thought one day, we could give it to our own baby, but if I had only guessed, I would be pregnant by someone else.... I-...agh, Daniel. I'm so sorry. I wish it was.................... otherwise. 😢I could stay with you, but what should I say to Nico? I can’t hurt him, and I don’t want to hurt you either. Really not! But I’ll find a solution. I won’t let you down.

Daniel: I don’t want....your solution. I want my girl to myself. I'm not gonna share you with him. I ain't like Philip, damn it! So just go!

I went out to our roof. I wanted to take Daniel’s laundry off the cloth-line. I wanted to help him and be there for him. But Daniel was annoyed.

Daniel: Hey! Don't you hear?... What are you still doing here?

Me: I wanna be there for you. I’m just helping you.

Daniel: I don’t need you as a cleaning lady or maid! I need my... wife!

Me: I’m not going! This is my home too!

Daniel: Fine! I’ll give you an hour. If you’re still there, I’ll lock the door. Then, you really have to stay here,.... overnight! I won’t unlock the door until tomorrow.🤨

Me: I have a key, you smart guy. 😒

Daniel: Not anymore, know-it-all. 🤨 Besides, I’m stronger than you.

Me: You’re gonna handcuff me?

Daniel: The clock's ticking. One hour! Decide!

Previous/Next

[barry-j-blupjeans]

Day Two - Bet

Barry was eleven years old when he first met Lup. He and his moma moved from the great empty plains of Georgia into the bustling city of San Diego in California. It was a pretty drastic change, but Mama’s sister lived out here for them to stay with, so Barry was trying not to make a huge fuss about it.

Still, it was weird here. Living in the city was far too loud. Barry didn’t know how anyone could sleep with all the noise. Even at night, there were car horns and bright lights and just- too much, sometimes. Way, way too much. He couldn’t hear the crickets over all the noise. He wasn’t sure California had crickets.

And the kids here were different. Back home, they’d get into scuffles a lot, but they’d always make up after each other. Barry had known the kids there his whole life. Their school was small enough that he knew every face, and everyone knew him. Here, there was more than one classroom per grade. He had already been dreading middle school, but he felt like he could Barry breathe in the hallways with so many people around.

But Mama— or, now just “Mom”, because someone overheard that he still called her Mama and started picking on him- knew what she was doing. She worked a lot more now. Barry supposed that came with the new territory. He was trying to get used to it.

But it was very, very hard.

She was never late picking him up from school on purpose. Sometimes she just ran a little behind. And his aunt and uncle were gone this week for a holiday, so they couldn’t come pick him up. He was trying to learn his way home, but every street corner looked the same here. Barry didn’t remember which towering building their apartment was in, let alone which of the endless streets it was on.

And it was raining.

The line for student pickup was slowly winding down. Barry kept his umbrella over his head, his eyes trained on the parking lot. She should be here soon. Unless she got hurt somehow? Or got fired and she was too sad to pick him up? Or something absolutely terrible had happened—

“Hey!” said a voice above him.

Barry jerked back, nearly falling off the bench. Standing there was someone he just vaguely recognized— from orchestra, maybe? From orchestra, definitely. She was carrying a violin case, which she set on the bench next to him. The bottom half of her pants was covered with mud.

“Uhm,” Barry said. “Hi.”

“Bet I can make a bigger splash in that mud puddle than you,” she said, pointing to a puddle further away from the school doors.

“Uhm,” Barry said again. “Prob— probably?”

“That is not the response I wanted,” mud girl said, somewhat critically. “But I’ll take it. C’mon, I’m gonna prove you right.”

Lup was… wow. Lup was. And from that moment forward, she Was with him included. She didn’t fix all his problems- he had too many of those. But over time, the harsh words from the other kids meant less and the sound of Lup’s laugh meant more. Life wasn’t better, but it was something. She was something.

Barry wouldn’t say that Lup was perfect by any means, but she made it a lot easier on him. Any time he’d get an “anxious face” (which he didn’t know what the fuck looked like, but Lup said it was very obvious), she’d nudge him and say-

“I bet I can talk to our waiter more than you can.”

“I bet I can get dressed faster than you.”

“I bet I can do the solo better than you.”

And Barry’s responses began to build from blubbering excuses into laughter into,

“Yeah? I bet you can’t.”

Barry— man, Barry will admit it, he was not a smart guy. Sure, his grades were good and he got into a good college but, it was sometimes hard to see what was right in front of him. It took several people to make him realize that his affection towards Lup might kinda be crush behavior. And it took over a decade to realize that, oh! Duh! She liked him back.

“Hey,” Barry said, nudging her. They were sitting in the back of their friend Magnus’s shitty pickup truck, deep into the country. There were crickets chirping around them. Barry always thought it was wild how you couldn’t see the stars in the city. Lup said she didn’t get the big deal of it all until the first time Barry brought her out here. The expression on her face when she first truly saw the sky was one he’d never forget.

“Hm?”

“Bet I can propose better than you can,” Barry said. Lup raised her eyebrows, her mouth quirking up into a smile.

“Oh?” she said. “Is that a challenge, babe?”

“Maybe,” Barry said. “If you want it to be.”

“You are going down,” Lup said, winding her arms around his shoulders. “I am gonna propose to you so hard.”

“I look forward to it,” Barry said, leaning in to kiss her. 

[leafith]

The Daylight Prairie; 1-2-3-4-5-6

(every paragraph is a chapter!)

So, we stopped at the end of Isle. The group, made of Sentinekka, Symphony and Ojtaro, have reached the little field that will take them to the Prairie. It's night, so the group should rest (time passes faster than in game). Symphony and Ojtaro really don't get along. After they have concluded a fight, Oj' tells Sentinekka that Symphony will remain in the Prairie after reaching the temple with them, and that the other two will keep going on their journey. Sentinekka gets sad, and updates her diary about all that is going on. In the meanwhile, we discover that Ojtaro is the "son" of the Passage Guide, and that he needs to help Sen' to get through the Forest in a short time, because he'll soon have to reach his family to help them with preparations about the future Passage lessons, that will take place in an year (we are during season of Abyss circa).

The day later, the kids are going to reach the Meeting Area of the Prairie (aka Prairie Lobby). Before following Sentinekka, who's already near the entrance, Symphony tells Ojtaro that he should always reciprocate the affection of Sentinekka. When he asks her why she gave him that advice, she replies that she doesn't find him a good person, but that Sentinekka has trust in him and that he needs to be a good friend to her. Then, the children finally reach the lobby. The girls are fascinates by the Prairie, they find it very beautiful. Ojtaro tells things about things, and explains to the girl the thing of the Spirits' Graves in every realm (when you help a Spirit, you can find it in its grave).

The kids reach the Butterfly Fields. Ojtaro tries to ask the girls their opinion about the place, but Sentinekka instantly runs away and lays on the grass. Symphony follows her, and Ojtaro decides to imitate them. After a while, Symphony goes to explore the Fields on her own, leaving Oj' and Sen' alone. The little girl begins to do something with some flowers, until the "guide" of the journey tells her that he might not be able to show her the whole Forest because of a family event. She accepts the fact, and puts on his head a crown of flowers she did before he spoke.

Symphony comes back, and she notices the crown of flowers that Ojtaro has got on his head. She'd like to say the truth, that he looks ridiculous, but she lies to not offend Sentinekka in some way. After the little compliments to the crown of flowers, she tells the other Children that she found a cave with butterflies and a new friend. Sentinekka is excited, and she wants to meet him. So, the group reaches the cave of the first Spirit that Moths usually unlock. The one with the yellow cape. I don't remember its name- but, anyways: the group meets Youssef, a 16-year-old that has relived the Spirit's memory for the two Moths. He lives in the Prairie and wants to host Symphony when Oj' and Sen' will reach the Forest. I'll introduce his design soon. He says that Ojtaro looks like a Spirit, but the other boy silences him with a cold stare and tells him to avoid using such nicknames.

The Moths receive the Spirit's blessing. In the meanwhile, Ojtaro and Youssef talk a bit. About the way Oj' reacted when Youssef called him a "Spirit", about how Youssef met Symphony, and about the Passage Lessons. In fact, Ojtaro can be called like a "Passage Student". He explains that the Passage Guide and its students arrive every twenty years for the lessons, and live in another realm in other cases. He tells Youssef that he can come to the lessons if he wants. When their discussion finishes, they notice that the other kids are gone. They find them outside the cave. Symphony is fixing Sentinekka's hair and gives her a less messy ponytail. Then, Symphony invites Youssef to sit with them. And Ojtaro sits too.

Later, the group continues the journey. The Fields are full of people, and this is strange for Youssef, who says he's not used to see many people there. Ojtaro says that it is probably happening because of some shows or tours or more things, but that he doesn't know much about it. Symphony mocks him, saying that he needs to admit he's not good at socializing, and he admits it. They reach the door that will take them to the Islands of the Prairie, and finally begin their flight towards them. During the flight, Symphony confronts Oj' about Youssef, telling him that their new friend is surely the opposite of him. He agrees. She says that Youssef probably didn't have an easy life (that's what she thinks at least), and Oj' almost reveals to her that his life isn't easy either. In any case, they finish their discussion with the end of the chapter.

[thefluxqueen]

HIIII :) here to ask about the abyss tell me about it please please please love this sort of thing :3

HAIIII welcome :) to preface this im normal i swear. anyway The Abyss is what i like ta call my Horrible Horrible Maze, i made it w/ the goal of making the worst possible experience in minecraft to torment my friends ^_^

I enjoy putting people in situations and studying them :D 

On that note! everyone who runs the abyss (24 people at current count) I time and write a couple notes on them! the abyss is honestly half maze half personality test LMAO. at current moment the quickest time goes to @ghostpajamas with a baffling 03:24 (wild that he got out so quick, i win tho cause i haunt his dreams), and longest goes to the beloved @rendogdomesticated with 1:35:54 <3 special shout out ta my dearest @theoctagon tho wolff ur insane i love u. guy goes inta the abyss for fun and has like 10 pages and counting of insane person phsyical notes tryna map it out (hes reported that hes gone through the first one 60 times and the 2nd one 5 jesus chriiiistttt). the abyss is fond of Pilot :) also if wolff is the favourite than @potionofinstantdamage is the Least favourite, rude ass set the place on fire when he got stuck in there :( oof ouchie

Highlights from my notes include @quack-city running backwards and upon me asking Why, simply replied “what if there’s slenderman :(‘ ... cant argue w/ that! he also hadda stop mid run so we decided its funnier if he’s just stuck in there forever. @newtbeetle was in there for like an hour and would NOT shut up about Paul Dano the whole time which was a time (love u beebs. ur isnane). my two test runners are @kishdoodles and @officialgleamstar and they had about the same time but like Opposite reactions it was very funny, kish treated it like they were a streamer n kept a like constant chatter, and travvy was like DEAD silent the whole time n Intensely focused akjewkjr tbh outta all 24 runners trav’s been prob the most like, methotical bout it? LIKE I SAID personality test. i Love studying people. 

In regards to its origins I came up w/ the idea back in like feb/march ish of this year and from start to finish it took me like 2 weeks ish i was on the Grind. u dont understnad how much black concrete this thing took. hell on earth,,, darkwoods has an economy/shopping district and i bought out like All the sand/gravel available akjwekjr the rest i hadda gather myself n God gravel sucks. also ive killed So Many Squids. the 2nd abyss was much easier ta gather supplies for cause i could ask for help w/ supplies n i kept the first one a Complete secret minus my test runners (i hadda bitch at SOMEONE while makin it or i wouldve died i think. speakin of the first abyss has a death count of 13 and the 2nd one has like, 5 or somefin? rlly shouldve writen that down akjwerjk those are Entirely me dying in the process of buildin them btw. its not a true Spain Build unless its mildly dangerous <3) The 2nd one also made me learn redstone, notably i specifically studied Tango’s decked out process vids from s7, tho i really only stole like two aspects of it n i couldnt even get one ta work properly LMAO

The second abyss took me like, wayy longer ta make, bout two months ish (i finished it like mid july). not necessarily in actual like, time spent building but cause in the process of makin it i had Two month long events i was in (Voiceteam in may and Art fight in july) so that distracted me a bit wkwnekeneie Im a bit more secretive bout the second abyss in general since not That many people have actually ran it compared ta the first n theres actually like, Things that can be spoiled in there <3 i like seein peep’s initial reactions its much more satisfying.

This didnt happen w/ everyone but i think a like, Core part of running the abyss is getting emotionally attached ta weird things. i wouldve said just torches until a few days ago when Tac (onea the rat server mods) ran it and claimed the stack of pumpkin pies i gave her as family. But Prior Ta That several people have had very intense emotions bout the redstone torches, whether love or hate or both, key example ft dog: 

Also not everyone ive mentioned on this post is in darkwoods! ive got a server i world editted the abyss inta so non-server members can run it for fun and profit (more data for me) :) on that note ive been slowly infecting the rat gang server cause my friend’s in there alot n another friend of mine’s a mod so peeps in there’ve been runnin it lately :) shout out ta TalonMC for lettin me subject him ta the Horrors literally our first conversation, onea my more fun first impressions i’d say

In regards to lore the abyss is a parasitic entity that infects anyone who gets stuck in there n slowly compells them ta go build their own lmao. note that ive only called the second abyss the Second one and not Abyss 2, because its technically just The Abyss as well cause theres many of them i just made it second wowjdkenejd (a real example of this is Wolff gettin obsessed w/ the abyss n then goin n buildin his own build called the Tower :) very excited bout that) The Abyss has a weird like fucked up warlock bond w/ my goddess oc The Overseer :D Her design’s vaugely based off my irl friend @hotcollectionoftubs cause her creation The Hole on a creative world her n some other friends of mine are on was onea the main insperations for certain aspects of the abyss’ lore :D mainly the teal in the colour palette and the whole ‘the [hole/abyss] provides’ thing. 

(my reference images for her and 3rd pic's art i commissioned from the Lovely @opuntie):

my darkwoods chara, Snake, is a whole nother bag entirely (basic gist is they’re a dimension traveler not by choice and darkwoods is the 3rd world theyve been in, their deal’s worth a whole post of its own lmao) i built the first abyss entirely unrelated ta my chara just as like, fun weird build ta torment my friends w/o yaknow? but then as i was buildin the 2nd one i was like hmmmmmm. alotta things could make sense if i made this one built by Snake. so their retirement arc on darkwoods turned inta even MORE trauma! wahoo! poor guy deserves a break,,, (he will not be getting one). 

(pre abyss + post abyss. i gotta properly draw pre-darkwoods Snake at some point but this dudes changed Alot ill say that lmao. both crops from bigger pieces on my art blog @fluxydrawings)

Anyway thats basically it! ive got more details and things locked in my brain ill probably remember in like 2 days after postin this so theres a chance ill reblog this w/ extra shit later lmao, sides that tho the abyss is my babygirl n thank yall for showin interest ^_^

Memes n shit to end us off: