#rosie doctor odyssey

[skarkkk]

I don't know how to start with Doctor Odyssey.

First,

He killed himself. He killed himself because he didn't want to live with himself anymore, with his addiction, with his marriage. He killed himself because he couldn't stand the idea of this fake perfect relationship anymore and how his fiancée and her mother knew he was struggling and didn't say anything and how this will destroy them and how this relationship that his fiancée wanted to be perfect was literally their downfall. His best friend sleeping with her, him crying over the news, Erik killing himself because that's what suicidal people do when they can't think of another option or ask for help. I really cried when Max comforted Erik and how the actor acted that way and it was relatable, feeling lost. Even though I thought at first that it was because of repressed homosexuality when he married a woman, even him taking off his shoes, standing on the railing of the cruiser and jumping because it was his way of freeing himself from the pain.

Second,

The threesome. I've been talking about their threesome vibes all along here and it happened. Stupid as a wish list and everyone wanting a threesome and my thoughts were "you all want it, do it!" and then Avery offered and they actually did it. When Tristan went in to kiss her and she grabbed his hair, can we agree that this man is submissive? Can we see how the desire was written all over Max's face watching them make out? And then he joined in, and Avery in the middle and oh my god I needed more. Of Max with Tristan, because if this is going to be more than sex I need it to be a threesome where they both love and touch each other, regardless. According to the preview for the next episode, it's going to happen again, during "gay week" and if they don't take the chance to do a scene with Max and Tristan, or one focusing on Tristan as I said before in the style of a man hitting on him and Avery and Max being jealous and that triggering another night. I need it to start with messy and sentimental sex and for them to end up together without problems, she as a doctor, Max as he wishes and Tristan as he wishes. I don't know if ABC will miss the opportunity to really do polyamorous representation or not, but I beg them to at least try.

Third,

A gay week? For fuck's sake, I'm gonna love that. At least one pan person, please, but focusing on that, someone really explores the depths of sexuality in this episode and something like acceptance, and mentions homophobia and how it all leads to Tristan and Max getting together too because there's no other line of thinking. I want it to not just be another comedy episode or one with gay people, but one that's really about us, about queers and has depth and is the perfect episode for an AIDs case and angst. I want them to really take advantage of what this episode can bring to the plot.

Fourth,

We get past Avery and Max so where is Tristan? And what happened to Vivian?

Fifth,

There's not much else to say, in my opinion, so there's an appreciation for the cruise ship staff. Rosie, the co-captain whose name I still don't know, the Captain. They're like family. And speaking of the cruise ship staff and remembering gay week, I heard right when the blond guy from Flash said he was bi, right? That could very well be used as well.

[startedwellthatsentence]

I would like to reiterate in an original post that from Tristan’s point of view, Max rejected him professionally, reprimanded him in front of their boss, and then rejected him romantically, within about 1 hour. Then, instead of comforting him, Avery explained to him that she would only be with Tristan if Max was also there and then sexually manipulated him into attempting to get Max’s approval. So now he knows that if he doesn’t manage to succeed in getting Max, who just rejected them both and implied he was straight, back into bed with them, then he also loses Avery, and it will be his fault that they don’t work out.

[eddiespornstache]

butchest lesbian ryan murphy can handle before he starts getting scared who is also a global warming denier who also has the most painfully obvious name you could give a female engineer character is the exact kind of archetype i am watching this show for put her in every episode

[bucksboobs]

He’s literally an otter…

New clip from Doctor Odyssey episode 7 "Oh, Daddy". Tristan describes himself as a "twunk"

[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. 

[bucksboobs]

Current named crew members of The Odyssey:

Captain Robert Massey

First Officer Spencer Monroe

Chief Engineer Rosie (from Dowagiac, Michigan) Michigan

Dr. Maxwell Bankman, ship’s doctor

Avery Morgan, NP

Tristan Silva, RN

Vivian Montgomery, head chef

Corey, Head of Housekeeping

Billy: bartender

Viva: housekeeper

Brandon: position not named, he was folding towels on the pool deck in episode 4

Not named but credited:

Helmsman, played by Christopher Marino

[aroeddiediaz]

In the season finale of Doctor Odyssey when Max Avery and Tristan disclose to the rest of the crew that they’re dating, the captain will be all stern and serious while he reminds them of their duty and that they can’t let their relationship get in the way of their job. Then Rosie will pipe up “so who won the bet?” And the whole crew will start arguing over whether partial credit counts for winning prize money until the captain himself declares that he put money down on a throuple after Gay Week so hand him the money now. Housekeeper Guy will whisper to Tristan and Avery that he had money on them for nearly 3 years and wink while handing over his money.

[titanlord231]

I love the characters on Doctor Odyssey so much, because what do you mean Avery hates plastic surgery but loves wellness culture? The climate change denier is a Rosy the Riveter adjacent lesbian from the Midwest! I'm pretty sure that one hospitality guy is the same actor who played the Cruise Director on 9-1-1. Tristan is a trained medical professional but he also accidentally poisoned himself with gas lamps as a treat for Halloween. Doctor Odyssey the show that you are!

[tallahasseemp3]

there are shows where bisexuality exists and shows where it does not. like hannah said doctor odyssey is one where everyone but rosie the butch dyke who doesn't believe in climate change is bisexual. and then some shows you can tell it's a universe where it's either kinsey one or six no in between.

[gipepers]

Update on Project 100 Robots

All 100 robots have been outlined and placed!

11-45-G - Love Death & Robots

Astroboy - Astroboy (2003)

Atlas - Portal

Atomic Robo - Atomic Robo

B.E.N - Treasure Planet

Bastion - Overwatch

Baymax - Big Hero 6

BB8 - Star Wars

BD-1 - Star Wars

Bender - Futurama

Bigweld - Robots (Movie)

BMO - Adventure Time

Boyd - Duck Tales (2017)

Brainiac - DC Comics

Bubo - Wrath of the Titats (1981)

Bumblebee - Transformers

Butter Robot - Rick and Morty

C3PO - Star Wars

Carl - Carl (Webtoons)

Carl - Meet the Robinsons

Chappie - Chappie

Clank - Ratchet and Clank

Claptrap - Borderlands

Codsworth - Fallout

Cylon - Battlestar Galactica

D-O - Star Wars

Darrell - OK K.O

Digit - Cyberchase

Dog - Half Life

Dor-15 - Meet the Robinsons

Echo - Overwatch

EDI - Mass Effect

Eve - Wall-E

Fender - Robots (Movie)

Frobo - Amphibia

Gir - Invader Zim

GladoOS - Portal

Goddard - JImmy Neutron

Guilty Spark - Halo

Gumball Guardian - Adventure Time

Hal 9000 - 2001: A Space Odyssey

Helper - Venture Bros

IG-11 - Star Wars

Iron Giant - Iron Giant

Jethro - OK K.O

Johnny 5 - Short Circuit (1988)

K-9 - Doctor Who

K-VRC - Love Death & Robots

Karen - Spongebob Squarepants

Larry 3000 - Time Squad

Legion - Mass Effect

Lil Bulb - Duck Tales (2017)

Lopez - Red vs Blue

Marvin the paranoid Android - Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (Movie)

Mechagodzilla - Godzilla Franchise

Megaman - Megaman

Metal Sonic - Sonic the Hedgehog

Mo - Wall-E

Moby - Brainpop Webseries

Neptr - Adventure Time

NF Robot - Lost in Space (2018)

Norm - Phineus and Ferb

Omnidroid 10 - The Incredibles

Optimus Prime - Transformers

Orisa - Overwatch

Peabody - Portal

R.O.B - Nintendo

R2-D2 - Star Wars

Rattleballs - Adventure Time

Raymond - OK K.O

Red Tornado - DC Comics

Roberto - Futurama

Robot Babysitter - Benjamin McFadden and the Robot Babysitter

Robot Boy - Robot Boy (TV Show)

Robot Devil - Futurama

Robot Jones - Whatever Happened to Robot Jones

Robot Model B-9 - Lost in Space (1965)

Rodney - Robots (Movie)

Rosie - The Jetsons

Rover - Planet 51

Rush - Megaman

Santa - Futurama

Shannon - OK K.O

Snowball - Overwatch

Sonny - I, Robot

Terminator T-800 - Terminator

Trashcan - Astro Boy (2009)

Turret - Portal

Ultron - Marvel Comics

Uran - Astro Boy (2003)

Vision - Marvel Comics

Wall-E - Wall-E

Weebo - Flubber

Wheatley - Portal

Xbot 4000 - Love Death & Robots

XJ-9 - My Life as a Teenage Robot

XR - Buzz Lightyear of Star Command

Zenyatta - Overwatch

Zima - Love Death & Robots

Zog - Astro Boy (2009)

[indianamoonshine]

chapter iii | knightly behavior

summary: every summer you work on your father’s strawberry farm with your three sisters. it’s a way to take a break from the big city but summers in the midwest are hot and they linger. this year, your father’s old and mysterious friend shows up to stay on your land for a reason yet to be determined. din djarin seems dangerous, but kind enough, and the two of you quickly become…well, let’s fact it…smitten.

rating: (18+) for future and explicit sexual content.

author’s note: reader is well over eighteen for obvious reasons. i won’t ever go into physical detail about the reader’s appearance because we include everyone. this fic is pretty much a mix between pride & prejudice and call me by your name except without the und*rage crap we do not condone.

You looked upon him in a way that no one had ever looked upon him before.

And it was strange, he thought, because the two of you had been introduced not even twenty-four hours prior. But in your eyes was a subtle enchantment that made Din forget the misfortunes that brought him to the farm in the first place.

You smile politely at him, albeit a bit drunkenly, as he mends your wound. Your foot is propped against his thigh as you sit prettily upon the bathroom counter. Your eyes shine, cheeks rosy with alcohol and adrenaline. The thorn had been removed, but the cut still bled enough to upset Din. When you flinch at the peroxide, he himself grimaces as though he can empathize with your pain.

“I’m surprised I felt it at all,” you say to him as though you’re sheepish from the fall. “With all the vodka and whatnot.”

Din meets your gaze and catches himself staring at your petal-like lips. He forces himself to look away, as much as it burned, but he was far too concerned with your feelings at the gesture.

there was no way you could look at a man such as him the way he looked at you.

Din places a Band-Aid on your foot, sealing it gently, and inspects it once more. “This is a tender part of the body,” he says. He finds himself squeezing you gently in a show of affection he had not expected. He swallows before adding, “-I would be concerned if you didn’t.”

A flash of mischief crosses your face before you tease. “Are you a doctor, Mister Djarin?”

He finds himself chuckling lowly at the question. His answer was quite the opposite, but you needn’t know the true nature of his lot in life. If possible, he’d avoid being transparent in that regard for as long as fate allowed.

“No,” Din finds himself saying. “And you can call me Din.”

A bold choice, but when you embrace with a gentle smile. “My father always told me to refer to my elders with their respective titles.”

You were funny. Witty. Charming to the last. Din found himself growing more fond of you with each passing moment; even in your disheveled state did he think you beautiful.

He mustn’t become attached. You could very easily become ammunition if he weren’t careful. In his pursuit of sound welfare, you had almost become something of a villain; you were making it increasingly difficult to focus on protecting his own interests. In just a few hours, Din felt an unwarranted dedication to you.

He wasn’t comfortable with it.

But he didn’t know how to stop it.

Those of Mandalorian creed did not devote themselves to anyone outside of the order. They hunt and they seek – they survive. And to be senselessly bewitched by someone of such (what he would’ve once considered) little importance was preposterous.

Nonsensical.

Din hadn’t ever been irrational before. Everything was calculated.

Not anymore.

Din tries not to grin, but he can’t bear it. His body is traitorous. “Funny,” he quips. He releases your foot.

You remain silent for a moment, formulating thoughts of whatever it was celestial beings like you did in quietude.

“How did you and my father meet?” you ask after what felt like eons of stillness. “He hasn’t told us very much.”

Din starts to clean up the medical supplies – bits of paper from the Band-Aid and the hydrogen peroxide he had so carefully dabbed upon your skin.

He falters for a moment. While what he was about to say was the truth, it felt dirty. There was more to your father’s past than what you’d have believed and Din knew it wasn’t his place to expose any of it; he would have tread carefully.

“We met when we were teenagers,” he replies.

You let out a messy giggle – like it caught even yourself off guard. You place a hand against your mouth as though to cover the goofy smile. “So when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, then.”

The age-gap hadn’t been lost on Din.

He opens the cabinet very carefully to avoid bumping your head with it. The bathroom was in older shape compared to the rest of the house, so it came as no surprise when the mirror rattled loudly as it opened.

“I was the one who carried you to safety, remember?” Din meets your eyes, hoping you’d find the humor in them.

You do.

“Yes,” you boff. The twitter that escapes your mouth causes his heart to jump to his throat. “And now you’re mending me after a vicious rose bush attack.”

He cracks a grin, though slyly to avoid sharing any bemusement due to your jesting lip. He couldn’t help it; your devilment was far too pleasant to make him scornful.

“Thank you,” you add meekly, but you’re smiling and it’s more than enough gratitude he required.

He wishes to see you smile all the time.

Din’s placed both hands against the counter, consciously ignorant of the space between the two of you. He meant no harm by it – was simply leaning against the sturdiness of the tile. But as you watch him, there was a sense of longing Din hadn’t beheld in quite some time. He tries to avoid it – whatever it may be – by tearing his gaze away from yours and pushing himself off with a casual grunt.

You blink when he separates himself from you, eyes fluttering a bit carelessly, and expression computing back to its neutralness. He does the same, brows raising in panic at the sensation.

“We met while I was camping in Michigan – the UP.” He scratches the back of his head and leans against the wall with arms crossed.

Anything to look complacent.

He finds himself engrossed by the way your ankles cross over one another and how your legs swing. Your dress had threatened to expose the more fragile parts of you, but you were of sound enough mind to eschew that from happening. Had that occurred, Din would’ve punished himself for looking. He wasn’t a religious man by any means, but what was that verse in the Christian bible again? “And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire.”

Faith didn’t belong in his repertoire, but that particular verse was commonsensical enough to recite.

Over and over again, apparently.

“So you’re from around here then?” you inquire.

“You know that people can visit the Midwest, right?” he remarks.

He was certain you’d simper mockingly – and sure enough, you do. “You’re very bratty for an old man.”

Din takes pride in guessing your responses; it must mean something.

Before he returns, he allows himself to laugh. It’s not full-bodied, but it’s some of the most genuine laughter he’s been able to conjure in quite some time.

“I’m from Chile,” he answers, perfectly amused by your bantering. “I moved here when I was a child.”

He watches as your fingers tap against the tile of the counter. They were well manicured, but cut short, and he guessed that was because you worked with your hands. He respected that – admired it. You clearly come from humble background and trialing youth.

Din could relate to that.

And yet you’re still soft, kind – gracious in your endeavors. And he was not. He was clinical, meticulous in the frayed edges of an odyssey he wasn’t sure he wanted to continue anymore. The two of you were snow and flame, and the old wife’s tale certainly wasn’t true. Opposites don’t attract. Opposites – the grunting, savage neanderthal of the two – are attracted. Someone ripened with softness such as yourself would surely never take rapture in a Neolithic man.

He could dream, of course. And he will.

“That’s very impressive,” you hum, chin raised in speculation.

Din furrows his brows, arms linking themselves around his frame tighter than before. It brought himself a semblance of comfort. For almost all his life, Din was the hunter and never the prey. He was large, foreboding enough to exude the kind of energy the average man could only theorize about, and yet here he stood…before you…

Feeling like the bounty he sought.

“Interesting to have been born in Chile?” he taunts.

Your brows crinkle, nose wiggling a bit to avoid showing your doubtful speculation. It wasn’t a look of disgust – Din was convinced you could never find fault in anyone. Maybe not even him. He hoped for this, anyway.

“No,” you reply. “To be able to keep that information from everyone.”

He shrugs, right brow arching in a show of faux derision. “Who said I was keeping it?” he all but drawled.

Something in his tone must’ve engaged your interest. Maybe you could see right through him; Din couldn’t find himself dumbfounded by the idea. You were smart enough to content with in a war of wit.

He notices how you head tilts in measured consideration. “You’re a very interesting man, Mister Djarin,” you whisper.

A heat flushes him from head to boot. He tears his fixation from the way your eyes swallow him whole – like a boa constrictor might do to a mouse. But he feels no fear for his safety – just his survival.

Because you were going to make this very difficult for him.

|||

TAG LIST: @dancingwiththeplanets, @ficthots, @t3a-bag, @dodgerandevans & there was one more person BUT I ACCIDENTALLY ERASED THEIR MESSAGE I’M SO SORRY TO WHOEVER YOU WERE PLEASE FORGIVE ME.

[skarkkk]

I finally (after so many dubious websites and probably some virus) saw the new Doctor Odyssey EP.

First. Okay, final opinion, I like Avery, she's really good at what she does.

Second. Strip Poker? A real queer ( " Boys and girls and bi " or somenting like that)? I love this crew (I love the co-captain whose name I don't remember, but the one who got high in this episode, and Rosie).

Third. These polyamory vibes are getting too much to ignore, I hope this goes somewhere and doesn't stay in that love triangle.

Fourth. That hug between Max and Tristan? I thought that scene was so cute and Max acknowledging his skills.

Fifth. Can we talk about the chemistry Tristan has with Vivian (the new cook)? Because my god, they exude chemistry and everyone thinks so, right?

Sixth. I loved this hurricane plot even though I expected a little more trauma (still stuck on the accident from season seven of 911 AND OMG I want a crossover fanfic).

Seventh. Considering that Tristan's last name is Silva I kind of need something related to Brazil, maybe because I'm Brazilian or because that's a common last name here, but anyway, it would be so cool. Plus, of course, more mommy issues, please.

Eighth. And now that I think about it I kind of need an episode or one focusing on Tristan's past (give me traumas please) in a near-death situation and that triggering a threesome or something like that.

Ninth. Avery's near-death is already here, I want to know more about Max's past and now I need Tristan.

I really love doing character/episode studies that no one else cares about, it's fun

[collectorscorner]

CC Blogger - New Arrivals @ Collectors Corner : Wednesday 3/31/21

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[petri808]

Fandom: Fairy Tail. Rating: Mature.  Nalu AU ANGST trigger warning.  Based on this post.  Just under 10k words

Lucy Heartfilia is diagnosed with a heart defect. Stuck in the hospital waiting on the transplant list, there is only one thing bringing any light to her dreary world; a volunteer named Natsu Dragneel who truly becomes her bittersweet savior.

@uzumaki2810 Here you go, I hope you like it :)  Also thank you to the angst queen @doginshoe IM SORRY I FORGOT TO ADD THIS MESSAGE ;-; she beta’d and bore the tears with me to make sure it was a good story :)

~~ ~~ ~~ ~~

It all started back in her last year of middle school when puberty really kicked into overdrive and she developed a well-endowed chest.  She assumed the little pricks of pain related to the added weight cause they sure gave her a backache if she pushed herself too hard.  Exercise was overly exhausting, so there went any chances of making the cheer squad in high school.  Not that Lucy was really interested in sports, but by the start of high school she realized any physical activity needed to be avoided.  But she didn’t want to worry her father since it was a random pain that would only surface if she exerted herself; ergo it was her boob’s fault, and she kept the pain to herself.

As time passed, and her high school years carried on, Lucy did her best to ignore the symptoms, even when something new manifested itself.  Fatigue…  she was studying too hard.  Rapid heartbeat… well, there was that cute boy that just walked by.  Shortness of breath when she laid down…  it’s just from the weight of her chest.  Each and every time, Lucy found a rational explanation.  She buried her nose in her studies as an outlet, which she really didn’t mind so much.  Her favorite thing to do in the world was to write quick fantasy stories she’d make up, and she’d often spend her breaks holed up in the library researching some new topic of dragons or fairies or whatever had caught her attention.

“Ugghhhh,” Lucy flinches as the blinding white light breaks through the surface of her vision.  She shields her eyes and slowly opens them but can only manage a tiny squint.  Her mind was groggy, and she swore her limbs felt like dead weights.  “W-Where am I?”        

She hears the muffled sound of her father’s voice calling for a doctor.  Why was there a slight ringing in her ear?  Something about she’s awake now, hurry?  The rest had been too muffled to understand.  Had she been asleep?  Lucy was completely confused. But the light… the light was so bright!

“Ms. Heartfilia?  Ms. Heartfilia, can you hear me?”

It was a strange male voice talking to her.  Where did her father go?

“Yes,” she croaks out, flinching as her body is coming out of its slumber and suddenly a sharp pain hits her again.  Lucy winces, this was worse than before.

“Ms. Heartfilia, do you know where you are?”

She shakes her head.  

“You’re in the hospital, dear.”

Wait!  It was her father’s voice again.  What did he mean she was in a hospital!  Lucy forces herself to open her eyes fully, though, keeping her hand between her face and the overhead lights.  “Why am I in a hospital?!”

Lucy hears the doctor's voice again, seemingly at a distance because her viewpoint was limited, speaking to someone.  Fainted.  Temporary amnesia.  Congenital heat disease.  Wait what?!  “Hey what’s going on?!” she calls out then is hit by another spike of pain.  Damn it!  “Dad?   Hello?!”  But it’s like she was being ignored.  Birth defect.  Advanced case.  Surgery.  “Someone please talk to me!”  Tears prick at the corners of her eyes.  “Talk to me!!!”  A third, and now the largest stab of pain hits her.  Lucy cries out at the pain and curls in on herself.  More shouting and the voice returns, hands probing something near her chest, and machines starting to blare out warning beeps.

“Please calm down Ms. Heartfilia, calm down, don’t push yourself too much or the pain will get worse.”

How could this get any worse…

That was 3 years ago, and the sands of time were running low.

Her father had done all he could, dragging her to specialist after specialist, exhausting a chunk of his fortune on doctors from one coast to the other, only to be told Lucy would need a heart transplant or she may not see her twenty-first birthday.  The most they could do for her while she waited on the transplant list was implant a ventricular assist device into her body.  It gave her a small measure of freedom instead of being tied to a normal transcutaneous machine, but it was still uncomfortable.  Her movements were restricted, she had to be careful of catching a cold, and what ended up being the hardest part, was the breast reduction surgery they had her undergo at the same time of the VAD surgery to reduce the weight and strain it added to her heart.

For so long she’d blamed her large breasts for causing all her pains, but now that she knew they weren’t, it was sad to see them go.  They were a part of her after all, no matter how much of a headache they could be.  For weeks after the surgery, Lucy could barely look at herself in the mirror.  She didn’t recognize herself anymore.  This youthful woman with tubes sticking out of her stomach which attached to a device around her waist that helped her weakened heart muscles do their job to keep her alive.  That had been the diagnosis, a congenital birth defect that weakened her heart muscles, and as she aged, the muscles would continue to deteriorate.  Oh, her father was so furious when they were told she didn’t qualify for an artificial heart because death wasn’t imminent.  

It hadn’t taken long after completing high school that the depression had surfaced.  All of her friends were moving on to college, most to distant campuses so she had no one to talk to.  Lucy would hide away in her bedroom for days at a time as the internal struggle mounted.  Why continue to go through this pain and struggle… why not just end it quickly and painlessly.  It was tempting.  From the research she’d done on heart defects, the end wasn’t very pretty.  Her only hope was a donor, but people die every day on the transplant list waiting for a heart that never came, just growing weaker and weaker….

At least the VAD had given her two decent years, but her days of being an outpatient at the hospital had come to an end.  Even with the device assisting her heart, Lucy’s body was struggling to deal with the strain.  The smallest exertions required fuel from her heart to power her body, so even something as minimal as the fatigue of reading a book for too long could trigger an arrythmia or worse, and the pain that may accompany it.  She needed to stay in the hospital so that her heart could be constantly monitored and if there was any sudden change, they could address it quickly.

The doctors were doing their best to keep her alive in the hopes a donor would surface.  But you never knew when one would become available, and her time was running short.  The original prediction of not making it to twenty-one was fast approaching.  Frankly, Lucy felt like it was by the luck of the draw and the odds were better at a Las Vegas casino.  It was a lonely experience being cooped up in the hospital and thankfully there was one glimmer of happiness amongst the sterile white halls.

“Lucy!”      

“Hi Natsu.”

He smirks, “I brought you something.”  The young man was bouncing on the balls of his feet with his hands clasped behind his back.  

All the volunteers that visited the hospital were kind people, but there was one that made Lucy smile the most.  A young man named Natsu Dragneel.  She’d told herself at the beginning of her medical odyssey that she wouldn’t let anyone get too close to her, not only for her protection but there’s.  The pain of losing someone you care about was an emotion Lucy had borne at the tender age of five when her mother lost her own battle to cancer, and it was a feeling she didn’t wish upon her worst enemy.  But this man sure made that promise a tough one to keep.    

Natsu’s adoptive mother was a long-time surgery nurse at this hospital, who had had taught him the value of life.  It was because of seeing her kindness towards people that spurred his decision to be a volunteer.  Even at eighteen years of age he knew that volunteering would be difficult, and five years later, he would admit it never got any easier.  Many volunteers eventually burn out, especially when dealing with the terminal patients, but Natsu pushed through, reminding himself it was those very patients that needed their support the most.

“Oh,” she quirks an eyebrow, “what is it?”

“Tada!” he whips out a single yellow rose with pinkish-red tipped petals and hands it to her.  “My younger sister showed me how to dye the tips, isn’t it cool!”

Lucy takes the flower, “wow that is really beautiful!  The pink even matches your hair.” She lifts it to her nose and picks up on the light rosy fragrance it exuded.  “Smells nice too.”  She tries to hand it back to Natsu.

“Tch, my hair’s not pink, it’s salmon, and I made it for you,” he smiles, “something to brighten your day.”  Natsu then walks over to the small bathroom and fills a cup with water, brings it back and places it on the small windowsill next to her bed.  “For the flower.”

“Thank you,” Lucy blushes a little and hands him back the bloom since she couldn’t reach the cup herself. “It was really kind of you to bring me that Natsu.”

“Nah,” he places the flower in the cup for her, “I’d do anything to make you smile.”

It wasn’t every day, but Natsu would come to see her as often as he could.  His regular job as a construction worker wasn’t a regular 9 to 5 kind of thing.  Some weeks he might work five days straight, while on slower periods like the winter and early spring months it may only be a couple of days a week depending on weather.  He’d told her that working with his hands was something he enjoyed immensely, and the company was training him to be a carpenter.  

Natsu sure wasn’t what she’d expected of a construction guy.  Oh, his hands showed the roughened appearance of someone who worked hard for a living, but she thought they would be these rough and tumble kind of men.  Not Natsu, with his goofy and sweet personality.  She could only imagine how well such a line of work helped to keep the man in shape.  He always wore t-shirts and jeans, but his trim features hidden behind the fabric were easily discernable.        

The light of the sun brought the yellow rose to life along with a slight tremor in her heart, not of pain but of adoration.  Lucy smiles sweetly at his remark, her eyes crinkling, glinting with a tinge of moisture she had no control over.  She didn’t want to admit her growing affection for this man who always said the sweetest things or made the most charming gestures.  Natsu was always so compassionate and supportive, while never making it seem like it was just his job as a volunteer to comfort the patients.  It was easy to wish that maybe… he was doing it just for her?  

Lucy ducks her head, hiding the hint of jealousy coating her cheeks and tone, “I’m sure you make such kind gestures for the other patients too.”

“Oh, no,” Natsu sits beside her and takes her hand, “just you.”  He gently lifts her chin, forcing her to face him.  She averts her eyes, but he stares forward, softening his glare, almost wanting to chuckle that he’s had such an effect on her.  “You’re special to me.”

Of all the patients in this small hospital, Lucy Heartfilia was the one his heart grieved for the most.  It wasn’t fair, at only twenty years old, for this beautiful and intelligent woman to be tied to a hospital bed, watching her life flash by in the form of ridges and valley peaks.  The first time they had met was two years ago, but back then she would only come in for overnight monitoring’s or check-ups, and after her major surgery, she stayed for a few months during the recovery process.  By now, they were friends, but it had taken work on his part to get her to open up to him.      

“No, I’m not…” Lucy sucks the corner of her bottom lip in to stifle the tremor.  

His tone deepens in a comeback, “Yes, you are.”

Her eyes finally snap to his, and when she sees the determination behind them, reality kicks in.  He was telling the truth!  Oh, heaven help her.  It was cute to dream, but not for it to be real.  She feels a sting in her chest and pushes his hands away.  “Please don’t,” her voice is barely a whisper, trembling from the stinging pain in her heart and her soul.  “I-I shouldn’t be….”  ‘This is so wrong…  Because I’m dying and he deserves someone better.  I shouldn’t have said anything.’  Stupid little daggers of jealousy!  She clutches her chest, willing her heart to still, and pain to subside, ‘please go away!’

“Hey, hey!” Natsu immediately switches his concern from being flirty to concerned.  “Lucy please calm down, I’m sorry I didn’t mean to upset you!”

“I-It’s okay, I-I’ll be okay.” She fights the tears back with all the strength she can muster.  Lucy didn’t want to cry in front of Natsu.  “Please, Natsu, I don’t want to get our hopes up l-like that…. If this… If things were different….”

“Shhh,” he cradles her face, “shhh, it’s okay Luce, I feel the same way.”

After a few moments, Lucy lets out a long exhale.  “I appreciate it, I really do.”  She looks up and cracks a pained smile.  “You’re the only thing keeping me going, but I-I just don’t even want to think about not being there for you…”

It was Natsu’s turn to crack.  “Please don’t finish that.”  He looks down, holding back the urge to cry or show how upset it makes him.  “I don’t want to think about that.”

“But it…”

“You don’t know that, no one knows that, and I,” his voice falters, seething with all the will of his soul placed behind it, “I will cling to hope till my dying breath.”

The sudden change in his demeanor, switches Lucy from feeling so self-absorbed in her own thoughts to realize, Natsu has had an effect on her, but she truly had an effect on him too.  It hurt even more now that his behaviors weren’t just a rouse to make her happy, and it killed her to think of what he will suffer when she goes.    

“I’m sorry, Natsu.  I didn’t realize.”  She grabs his hand, squeezing it hard.  “Natsu I’m sorry.  Let’s stop thinking about this then, hmm,” doing her best to keep her tone soft and comforting.  “Look at me, Natsu, please, I don’t want to keep fighting with you.”

He sighs, “you’re right.  That’s the last thing I wanna do with you.”  It was a surprise even to himself that he’d lost his cool, and for the first time the awareness of his growing infatuation became real.

“Good,” she squeezes his hand again.  “Hey, um, you know its lunch time, we could eat outside since it’s a nice day…” her voice grows tentative, “if you’ll join me.”

“Lucy Heartfilia, are you asking me out on a date?” He chuckles, ready to put all the sadness behind them.  “Because if that’s the case,” the sparkle in his eyes return, “I would be honored.”

For the next couple of months, Natsu and Lucy’s friendship flourishes, as her physical body slowly deteriorates.  It was hard, he couldn’t lie, to watch this happen, and if it wasn’t for the strength of his convictions or his plain stubborn attitude about it that kept him upbeat.  He knew that she needed him to be her strength, and that fueled his desire to make sure she smiles every day.  

Lucy didn’t know, but his mother would keep him updated on her condition.  Not that he needed to know all the technical jargon, for he could see it with his own eyes.  Lucy herself would tell him just enough information when she needed to, but he never pushed or pried for it, letting it always be on her terms.  The cardiomyopathy was getting worse, her heart muscles barely functioning on its own at this point.  She had her good days and bad days but walking around wasn’t really an option anymore aside from brief steps for a purpose.  It also meant that the muscles in her legs were weakening too.  Physical therapy once a week worked with Lucy on light stretches to keep them from completely atrophying, but it was all they could do for her at this point.  But no matter how much weight she lost, or that her hair didn’t hold its familiar luster, to Natsu she would always be the same radiant woman he adored.  

She’d resigned herself to this fate a lot better than Natsu would have thought a person could do.  When he tried to picture himself in her shoes, he was sure he wouldn’t have the strength to keep going, but that was what amazed him even more about her.  On her agreeable days, Natsu enjoyed getting her out of her room, even if for brief periods of time.  Lunch or dinner in the cafeteria, the grounds of the hospital on a sunny day, or even stargazing when the evening air was warm.  He’d bring a wheelchair, and off they’d go, talking about anything or nothing, avoiding the subject of her condition, just giving her a smidge of a normal existence for once.              

Lucy opens her eyes at the knock on her door to see a familiar face pop through.  “Hey Natsu,” she cracks a pained smile.  

“Hey Luce, how ya doin’ today?”

She starts to sit up in the hospital bed, but when it’s clear to Natsu the woman was struggling, he quickly rushes over and assists.  “Thanks,” another light smile.  “I’m sorry, I’ve been a little sore today.”

“Never apologize to me,” he smiles back warmly.  No matter what, he always did his best to appear upbeat for the patients despite his heart literally breaking for them.  He places his hand on hers, “so, tell me gorgeous, are ya hungry?  We could dinner date in the cafeteria if you’re up to it.  My treat,” he winks.

“Stop calling me gorgeous,” Lucy chides the sunny young man, despite the small rosy glow of her cheeks.  “I know I’m not, and that’s okay.”  With the help of a psychiatrist and over a year of therapy, Lucy had finally accepted her fate and kept moving forward as best she could.  If she will die someday, she will die with dignity.  Stress wasn’t very good on her heart, so once she made peace with her circumstances, even her physical ailments had benefitted.  

“Pfft,” Natsu pretends to be offended, “are you calling me a liar because I know I’m not blind.”  His grin growing along with the deepening of red along her cheeks.  “Besides, you know I won’t stop no matter how much you complain about it.”  

Lucy laughs and her eyes twinkle, “I know, so we’ll keep agreeing to disagree.”

It was in these moments, and why he did what he did, just to see this woman’s eyes light up, that sent his own heart into palpitations.  Deep down Natsu knew that the chances of Lucy making it out of this hospital were slim to none, but you’d never know it when he spoke to her.  He stifles the urge to sigh. Oh, how he wished the circumstances were different.  In a perfect world, Natsu would love nothing more than to walk this woman down the aisle.

He circles the topic back around, “so… dinner, on me?” he teases lightly with a wink.  “We can take a trip through pediatrics where there are a few recent arrivals.”

Her gaze lowers as she hides the seventh heaven emotions the young man stirs in her.  “I’d like that.”

Natsu squeezes her hand, “I’ll be right back, lemme grab your carriage milady.”

As Lucy waited the few minutes for Natsu to grab a wheelchair, she closes her eyes and does a breathing technique to calm her heart.  She hadn’t wanted to show the slight tinges of pain she was getting as they spoke, because she knew it would have worried him.  They’d been steadily increasing in frequency lately, and she fought to keep him from discovering that.  But she couldn’t help it.  Despite her condition, Lucy was still a young woman with an intact mind, she still had desires like any other, and when a handsome young man close to her age flirted with her, of course she would react to it!  She did her best not to let these thoughts sink in too deeply and told herself he was merely doing it to make her feel better.  It was a lie, but it was the best way to shield herself.

“Ready?”  Natsu extends his hand to help Lucy to her feet.

She nods and takes hold, gripping on while he maneuvers her around and onto the chair.  It weakened Lucy to where her muscles were slowly losing their strength because her heart was struggling to keep her body oxygenated and functioning properly.  With support she could stand for brief periods, but only with support.  At least with Natsu, she could put her faith in his hold that he’d never let her fall.  

After adjusting the foot plates and making sure Lucy was comfortable, Natsu takes off towards the cafeteria two floors down.  He’d already alerted dining when he’d gone out for the chair they were coming down, to prepare a meal within Lucy’s dietary needs.  It wasn’t a terribly restrictive diet, but there were some limits, such as no stimulants like caffeine, or anything with a high fat content.

Natsu loved these little dates as he called them.  On warm sunny days it may include a stroll outside for some fresh air, or if it was cold and rainy, merely sharing a cup of light hot chocolate in the visitor's lounge in front of the massive floor to ceiling windows.  But if Lucy wasn’t feeling well, he was content to sit by her side in her room, talking, telling stories, or doing anything just to cheer her up.  Sometimes he would fantasize during these events as if they were simply at home and relaxing like a normal couple.

“Oh yay, beef barley,” Lucy stirs and lifts a spoonful up before letting it flow back into the bowl.  “My fave.”  She knew why they gave it to her, but that didn’t make it anymore appetizing.  Barley was supposedly good for heart health, and the protein it contained was useful for her body.  She crunches up the soda crackers the meal came with and drops them into the soup, letting the pieces soak in.

“I don’t mind it,” Natsu shovels a spoonful into his mouth.  He always made it a point to eat the same thing they gave Lucy, so she felt more normal about it.  “But if you really don’t want it, I could ask them to make you a sandwich instead.”

“No, no,” she waves her hand, her voice oozing with a sense of longing mixed with frustration, “it’s okay, I’m fine with it.  I just would kill to eat a fatty, tasty, slathered in sauce cheeseburger with a side of waffle fries or something you know.”

Natsu snorts a laugh and almost chokes on his food as a mental picture of Lucy chomping down on a burger, with sauce dripping down her chin both amuses and arouses him.  “I-I can imagine,” he bangs his chest a couple times to dislodge some liquid that made it down the wrong pipe.  “Throw some sriracha sauce on that vision and you just named one of my favorite foods.”  Could this woman become any more of his dream girl?!

She giggles, “So, um…” Lucy hesitates for a second.  She didn’t want to sound desperate or anything, but loneliness was the quickest way to send her back into a depression and she cherished the time the man spent with her.  “How much time are you spending with me today?”    

“As long as you’d like,” he winks.  “I always do my rounds first and come to you last so I can stay as long as I want to.”

Ugh!  The flirty thing again!  Lucy wills her body to behave.  “Wow, that makes me pretty special, huh?”

“Extremely,” he leans in, letting his gaze grow half-lidded, and his tone mellowing into a soothing cadence. “I’m gonna steal your heart one day Luce, that’s a promise.”

“What?!  Pfft,” damn, she can feel the heat rising in her cheeks, “there’s no point in stealing a broken heart sir…”  Despite the desire to feel aroused over his comment, it also brought a sense of sadness to her she fought down the urge to let tears rise to the surface.  ‘He’s just teasing… he’s just being sweet, trying to make me feel normal… It’s not real Lucy, It’s not real!’  But oh, how she wished it was!  Natsu was the perfect man that any woman would kill for.  Sweet, strong, handsome, silly, she could go on and on with the list.  He was the one ray of sunshine in her dreary world now that she truly was all alone in it.  The stress of caring for her had driven her father into his own massive heart attack last year.  She had no one, except Natsu.

“I mean it Luce,” he reaches out and takes her hand, letting his thumb sweep over the skin.  “Broken or not, I want to steal it and have the person it’s attached to a—ll to myself.”

“Please don’t,” Lucy pulls her hand back.  She could feel the tears pooling and if she didn’t stop it now, they’d soon fall.  “You know I appreciate it, really I do Natsu.”  Lucy looks back up at him and cracks a pained smile.  “But you deserve someone who’s not broken.”

The absolute pain measured in Lucy’s eyes, and the sorrow in her voice was like a dagger straight through Natsu’s soul.  He could understand her desire of not wanting to believe in miracles or to shield herself from further pain, but that only killed him more.  She deserved so much more out of life. Ugh, if only he had a direct line to destiny so he could kick its ass and tell it to leave Lucy in peace!  He didn’t want to upset her anymore.  “Okay, I’ll stop pushing too hard.  But I promise you Luce, one day you will walk out of this hospital a healthy woman, and you can steal my heart instead.”

She sighs, “You can’t promise something like that.”

“I have faith,” Natsu gives her his wide, ear-to-ear grin and a wink.  “You’ll see.”

How could she stay upset after seeing that smile of his?  That damn ear-to-ear grin that lit up his eyes.  The eternal optimist, Natsu Dragneel trying so hard to keep her spirits up.  He and that smile may very well be the one thing keeping her going at this point.  “Okay, okay,” Lucy chuckles, “I give up, yes it's possible.”

“Woo Hoo!”  He pumps his fist in the air in an exaggerated victory, “that’s the spirit!  Now eat, so we can go check out the babies!”  

Lucy laughs again and nods with a smile, “okay.”

It was harder than she let on to him because she knew how much he enjoyed checking out all the new arrivals, but seeing those babies coming into this world while she would be leaving it shortly was painful.  All those hopeful, bright little lives….  They were a bittersweet reminder that a hospital holds two balances; the power to bring life into this world or take it away by not being able to heal a person.  She didn’t blame the doctors, for they were doing their best, because sometimes the sands of time runs its course and there is just nothing more they can do.  It was simply a part of life, to be born and die, never knowing when the grim reaper would come calling.  

“Look, look!  I was told three were born yesterday.” Natsu points excitedly as he parks her chair in front of the viewing window of the nursery.  He plasters his face against the clear glass.  “Two girls and one boy.  Awww, one already has some hair!”  Turning back to Lucy, “can you see okay, would you like me to help you stand up?”

“Thank you for the offer, but I can see just fine,” Lucy throws on a smile for effect.  “They are quite adorable, aren’t they?”

“Are you sure?  You know the doctors want you to stand sometimes so that your legs don’t atrophy as quickly.  I will gladly bear the weight.”

“Are you saying I’m heavy?!”  She was just teasing, but it was the perfect setup to do so.

“What?!” he waves his arms, “n-no way!  You’re not heavy, I meant I’m stronger so I can hold you up…”

“So, I’m weak?”

“Wait, what, no!”

Lucy giggles at how much the man was stepping all over his tongue.  “I’m just teasing you, Natsu.  I know I should, but I’m just a little tired today.”  That was partially true.

The man pouts, “so mean Luce,” he whines and throws on the saddest puppy dog expression he can muster, even a sniffle for effect.  “But it was an excuse to hold you in my arms.”

Oh, how quickly the tides can turn as his bold little statement sets her face ablaze.  He re—ally needed to stop with the flirting, or she was about to have an actual heart attack!  “All right,” Lucy groans, “just for a few minutes.”  It wasn’t the first time she’s allowed him to help her stand and maintain her balance, but before his little retort, she’d never thought twice about it.  

Natsu locks the chair and adjusts the foot plates out of the way so that Lucy can put her feet on the ground.  “Just take all the time you need,” his voice grows soft and soothing, “don’t rush.”

She tests her leg strength by pushing with the balls of her feet against the floor, rocking them and applying pressure to warm up the muscles.  Brief movements, like getting from the bed to the wheelchair were one thing, standing for a few minutes or walking a few feet were another.  It was frustrating and embarrassing, so she avoided it as much as possible, like when going to the bathroom.  Lucy didn’t mind when the nurses assisted her with that compromising predicament, but this was embarrassing in a different way.  

Once she feels her legs are ready, she holds out her hand which Natsu quickly takes hold of and braces her other on the arm of the chair to push herself up.  When she gets to a standing position, Natsu moves around her body, placing an arm around her waist as he gently guides her the two feet to the window.  He stays on constant alert, monitoring any change so if her legs decide to buckle, he can catch her.  As soon as she reaches the window, Lucy places her hands on the slight ledge of the sill.  Natsu then switches his position to stand directly behind her, wrapping both arms around her upper chest to hold her close, but above the tubes in her lower abdomen.  

Could he feel how much her body was heating up from the intimate contact?  Lucy fought her own emotions to keep from escalating and stressing her heart out, for she was keenly aware of how they would look to anyone passing by.  Dear heavens, it was hard to do with his chest pressed up against her back…. She wished they could stay like that forever.  ‘Breathe… just breathe, Lucy…. Look at the babies, just focus on the babies…’  That only made it worse.

The babies….  Just a day old. The little angels were like moldable clay.  They’ll grow… they’ll change…  Will they become teachers or astronauts some day?  Oh, look at the one, smiling in his sleep, how precious.  Someday, will they make their dreams come true?  What will they be like?  Good little kids or naughty, friendly, the life of the party or a shy introvert?  Like many young girls who dreamt of becoming a mother someday, Lucy had envisioned having a family of her own with the love of her life and the white picket fence.  A little girls fantasy.  She closes her eyes, praying that Natsu wasn’t paying attention to her.  The tears pool behind her eyelids and she stills the desire to sniffle.  That fantasy was now dashed like a shipwreck against the shoreline, never to sail the seven seas again.  Natsu would have made the perfect husband and father for such a fairytale, and he will one day, just not in her storybook ending.

She’d been so focused on fighting back her emotions, that Lucy hadn’t noticed Natsu’s head was now resting against her shoulder or how his face was curled against the nape.  

“It’s okay to cry sometimes Luce.”

His whispered voice, so close to her ear, breaks the dam.  Lucy squeezes her eyes tighter and fingertips curl, tensing against the windowsill.  Shit, he knew all along.  Her knees tremble as the tears flow freely, but she feels his hold tighten around her to keep her from falling.  It had been some time since she’d allowed herself to release the pain in this way.

Natsu hadn’t been certain of it until now, but in the last several times they’d come to the pediatric ward, he’d sensed a change in Lucy’s energy.  She always wore a smile with a hidden agenda and now he’s confirmed his suspicions.  Well, it was his mother really that pointed it out one day when he’d mentioned it to her.  The woman was great at understanding human emotions and after years of caring for patients, she’s learned to follow her intuition.  

“Lucy was a young woman who may not live to be a mother or have a family of her own, of course it might upset her to see the infants.”  His first inclination was to stop bringing the woman to this ward, but his mother gave him a second option.  “Help her grieve.”  Those three words coming out of his mother’s mouth stunned him briefly. What did she mean to help her grieve?!!  “If Lucy has no one to turn to, how can she process what is happening to her.  Show her it’s okay to be upset, help her let out the pain before it consumes her.”  

“I will hold you for as long as I need to Luce, just let the pain go.”

But it was killing him to do this!  Natsu had told his mother that he didn’t think he was strong enough. The woman simply smiled, patted his cheek and said, “I believe in you son.  If you truly care, then you’ll have the strength to move mountains for her.”  Damn his mother and her intuition, though Natsu realized only a fool couldn’t see how much he was falling for Lucy.  He’d sell his soul to a demon to get her a new heart.

Strangely, Lucy’s body wasn’t reacting like she thought it would.  Stress usually caused her blood pressure to rise and strain her heart muscles, but that wasn’t happening.  She couldn’t stop the tears from flowing like a broken spigot, and maybe that was the best thing, like a release of the pressure that had built up unbeknownst to her.  Her hands move from the windowsill to Natsu’s arms, clutching to and resting her head on them.  Lucy couldn’t look up, not yet, but she needed to let him know she heard his words, and they meant the world to her.  

She would have made an amazing mother, Natsu was sure of it, and it would be a lie to say he’s never thought of or imagined them staring through this viewing window at their own little boy or girl one day.  Would the child have Lucy’s beautiful golden waves or chocolate brown eyes?  Or maybe take Natsu’s salmon pink hair and onyx eyes.  No matter what, the child would be perfect and loved.  A child that as the day ticked down on the transplant list was losing hope of ever being born.  Crap!  Natsu squeezes his eyes closed tight.  He couldn’t let her see him struggling with this, but damn if those images didn’t just cut him deep.

Neither of them knew how long they were standing there or even if any of the other hospital staff had noticed.  They were in their own little world while time passed them by.  It was Lucy who finally let out a small exhale as a last release of all that had struck her today, and with that tension gone, the tears turned into exhaustion.  Ever cry so hard and for so long that your body became lethargic?  Lucy yawns wide and deep, her eyes growing heavy and clouded, a little lightheaded, ready to go to sleep.

Natsu kisses the crown of her head and without a word, maneuvers her so she can sit back down in her wheelchair.  He sets the foot panels in place and helps her feet onto them, then pushes her back to her room.  There is a companionable silence, as if all their wordless exchanges had communicated volumes that needed no explanation.  Once back in her own room, Natsu helps her onto the bed and set the wheelchair aside.

After helping to re-attach her heart monitors, Natsu checks, “is there anything else I can get you before I go?”  She shakes her head.  “In that case…”

Lucy motions for him to lean in closer and once he’s close enough, she hesitates briefly then places a kiss on his cheek.  “Thank you for everything Natsu.”

His eyes widen, shocked by what she’d just done.  “Luce?”

“I just felt like doing it,” she blushes.  “Tonight… I don’t know, I just feel so much better and it’s all because of you.”  Lucy closes her eyes as a yawn cuts through.  They were so tired…    

“You are very welcome,” Natsu smiles.  He moves to leave, but Lucy grabs his hand and squeezes.  When he turns back to look, her eyes are still closed, and there is a slight smile on her face which brings a swelling of his pride.  He leans down and kisses the back of her hand.  “Rest now, and I will see you again tomorrow.”

Mister Sandman beckoned to Lucy of mystical creatures bathed in glittering stars, calling upon father time to bring peace to a weary soul.  She didn’t know why, but though the pull was strong, she fought his dreamy reverie.  Today had been the most emotionally charged day in a long time.  All the tears Lucy had shed brought a new peace to her spirit, something in this entire experience not even a trained therapist could have given her.  The amount of love that Natsu provided, whether platonic or wishful yearnings, calmed her, and pushed away the emptiness she had felt for so long…. So long stuck in this pain.  She wanted to relive this day forever, safe in Natsu’s arms, drowning in the pool of his obsidian hues.  ‘… to steal his heart…’  Lucy knew she already had, just as he had stolen hers in a way.  A sense of warmth floods through her body, shielding her to the cool air-conditioned room.  Lucy’s smile widens as her mind slips into the abyss of dreams, of a pink-haired prince who’d finally set her soul free.

“Natsu wake up,” the voice repeats as the person attached to it shakes his sleeping form.  “Natsu wake up.”

“Huh?” His clouded mind hears the voice of his mother.  “What is it?”  He turns his head, his eyes temporarily pin-pointed from the harsh lamp light next to his bed.  “Mom, what are you doing in my room?”  Natsu pushes himself to a sitting position as his mother takes a seat next to him.  With his vision focusing better, he finally notices the moisture clouding his mother’s eyes.  “Mom, what is it?!”  

She takes his hand, squeezing it tightly with her head slightly lowered in pain.  “I-I’m sorry, son, but the hospital just called me…. Your friend, s-she had a massive heart attack.”

By the time his mother had finished the sentence, Natsu had stopped listening to anything she was saying. He knew, the moment she’d said I’m sorry… to wake him up in the middle of the night, it had to be….  All the blood drains from his face and his shoulders slump.  He felt dizzy, weak, like all of his strength were stripped away, leaving him an empty shell.  He turns his head slowly, the tears already flowing down his cheeks in an endless trickle to meet the woman’s sullen gaze.  This wasn’t happening!  Not yet!  Lucy was fine today!  Fine!!  He wanted to scream!  But his throat was closed up, choking back the sobs that wanted to break free.  

“Oh honey,” the woman wraps her arms around her son and pulls him tightly against her chest.  “I’m so sorry,” her own tears flowing freely and hitting his face.  “Don’t give up hope, they were able to save her, but she’s been placed in a medically induced coma.”

It couldn’t be true!  Why weren’t his cries coming out?!  Natsu’s voice refused to make a sound and all he could do was weep.  It hurt so much!  His fists clench at his stiffened sides.  This wasn’t fair!  

“Let it out son, don’t hold it in,” she coos, doing her best to soothe the pain.  “They believe she didn’t suffer because it happened while she was asleep, that should give you a bit of comfort.”

No, it doesn’t!  She was still in a coma!  He’d almost lost her!  And, “I-I never g-got to s-say good... good…” he couldn’t finish it.  What if she never woke up again?  Natsu’s heart ached at the thought he may never again hear her beautiful laughter or that silly snort she would sometimes make when he teased her.  This world was too cruel to do this to a woman who should be in college, starting the next stage of her life.  A fit of sobs racks his body, ‘I never got to tell her I love her…’

“Would you like me to drive you there, son?”

“Yes, please mom, i-if you don’t mind.”  

“Of course.”

Natsu paused in front of the closed door to Lucy’s new room, unsuccessfully preparing himself for what he knew he would find behind it.  On the way to the hospital, his mother had filled in a few more details that tore the man up and brought a wave of guilt flooding over him.  Had he caused the heart attack?

The heart monitor alarms had gone off only 30 minutes after he had left her for the evening, and the doctors wasted no time in implementing emergency resuscitative efforts.  They deemed it a miracle, but after 10 minutes of herculean efforts they were able to get her heart restarted.  Lucy was then moved to the ICU unit and placed on other machines such as a feeding tube and ventilator to keep her alive.

Maybe he shouldn’t have pushed her to see the infants after all.  Maybe the crying had stressed her out and neither of them had known it.  She seemed perfectly fine when he’d left!  Happy, in fact, happier than he’d seen in a long time.  Natsu’s fingers absentmindedly trail over the area she had kissed.  Lucy was at peace when he’d left.  His mom told him her sudden fatigue may have been a sign.  Or maybe he clenches his jaw, that kiss was her way of saying goodbye, like she knew something might happen once she’d closed her eyes.  The way she’d grabbed his hand when he tried to leave….  “Fuck!” he grits outs as the tears pool in his bloodshot eyes again.  “I shouldn’t have left her…”  

He pushes the door open and his knees buckle instantly at the sight.  Tubes… all the tubes, and monitors, the beeping and lights, bright flashing lights of the stat graphs, subcutaneous fluids hooked to her arms, the drips… slow drips of liquid and medicine flowing into Lucy’s body.  He wasn’t ready for it.  Her beautiful face partially hidden by the feeding tube running into her mouth and the breathing tubes entering her nostrils.  If it wasn’t for his mother standing at his side, Natsu would have collapsed to the floor when his legs lose all their strength and crumple.  The woman guides him to a chair placed beside the bed.  

“Oh god, Lucy!”  The tears pour out and sobs take control of his body.  He throws his upper body over hers, clutching desperately to the blanket covering her, and burying his face into its folds.  Natsu felt a part of his soul die right then and there.  “You don’t deserve this,” his muffled words stolen by the fabric.  Why couldn’t they find her a heart?!

“Son,” Natsu feels his mother’s hand resting on his shoulder, but he doesn’t respond.  “Son, there’s no telling how long Lucy will stay in this state, so it’s best you say your goodbyes now.  They say that people can hear you even if they are in a coma.”

But all he can do is shake his head fervently, denying it to the world and himself that Lucy wouldn’t come out of this.  He had hope, damn it!  Natsu refused to say goodbye because that meant he’d given up hope Lucy would recover somehow.  

The woman seemed to understand her son’s frustration and didn’t push.  “Then, just talk to her son, let her know you’re here.”  

“Mom, could you… I wanna be alone, please?”                

“I’ll come back in an hour to take you home.”  

Natsu just nods in response.  He hears the door open and close, the click of the lock like the final latch being set on a coffin, sealing them to their fate.  He’d known the dangers of giving his heart to Lucy and yet despite what was happening, still had no regrets.  She deserved the peace of knowing someone loved her, and if this really was the last moments, Natsu could have that tiny measure of satisfaction knowing he was the one who had provided it to her.

“But you’re not gonna die yet, Luce.  You can’t, do you hear me, you can’t!  It’s not your time yet, so you need to fight for me please…”  Oh, how his heart was shattering into a million pieces as if he was the one with the problem.  It fucking hurt!  Emotional daggers stabbing him in the chest repeatedly.  “You’re stronger than this, Lucy!  I know it, you’re gonna wake up from this!”

By the time his mother returns an hour later, the sheer exhaustion had consumed Natsu.  She finds him passed out, and it takes a bit of begrudging effort to get him to leave Lucy’s bedside.  He was so afraid to leave again in case she passed away, because he didn’t want her to die alone.  It was his mother that coaxed him into believing that she wasn’t alone as long as he kept her in his heart.    

Day after day, week after week, became a never-ending cycle of zombiesque activity.  Natsu’s body was there, trudging through routine, but his mind was broken, battling between keeping hope alive and giving up.  He went to work, did his job, then headed to the hospital.  It got to where the staff had placed a spare bed in the room, and he practically lived in the ICU with Lucy.  He was lucky that his mother was a long-time nurse and he a volunteer with an impeccable standing that the hospital allowed him to bend the visitor hour rules.  They knew the woman was alone in this world, so maybe they also felt a sense of duty to become that family for her, because nobody deserved to die alone.

He grew obsessed with anything to do with her condition and used the lonely hours to scour the internet for information.  Sure, much of the stories about coma patients being able to hear weren’t really solid or verifiable, but any glimmer of possibilities was worth the effort.  It couldn’t hurt to try.  Whether it was telling her about his day or what was happening in their town, Natsu would keep talking.  He bought a kindle and read stories he thought she would like, fantasies of princes saving princesses filled with mythical creatures.  He remembered her saying she used to write such stories and wished he had been able to read them.

When he was too tired to read, or his throat was too sore to continue, Natsu wrote her letters.  The staff and his family were getting worried about Natsu.  So, the hospital’s mental health service counselor had come in one day and spoke to him on the off chance that they could get through to him.  While he refused to listen to most of the advice, he found the writing to be helpful.  Maybe when Lucy awakens, she could read them. But for now, it was one way he could pour out some of his thoughts in silence.      

He was always tired and exhausted, pushing himself through this day-to-day routine, sometimes forgetting to eat.  Concerned staff would often pop their heads in to check on him to make sure he had or scolded him when the hours grew late and they knew he needed to work the next day.  His bloodshot eyes held dark bags under them, and his mother swore he was losing weight.  But he would always push them off saying he was fine.

“No, you are not son.  As a mother I am supremely proud to know I raised a son who cares this much, but I don’t want to lose you too.”

“And you’re not, I’m perfectly healthy.”

“You know as well as I stress is harmful to the body.”

Natsu sighs and runs a hand over his face, “mom, I’m fine, I even cut back on work hours to make you happy.”

“And I appreciate the gesture, but you’re still working, just here!”

“Mom, I’m fine!  Please, just leave me be, I-I don’t want to fight.  I just want… I’m not leaving her.  End of discussion.”

His mother sighs, knowing that her stubborn boy would not listen.  “Just please, Natsu, eat more, get more sleep, do it for me.”

“Okay, okay, I will.”        

“I love you, son.”

“I love you too, mom.”

She kisses his forehead and turns to leave, taking one last look at her boy, and to Lucy.  Grandeeney Dragneel pauses with a bittersweet smile as Natsu resumed reading quietly from his Kindle.  Somehow, she knew that young girl loved her son back, and it broke her heart to know they were like those star-crossed lovers from a long-lost folktale, never destined to truly be together.  She liked Lucy.  The girl was smart and sweet, very articulate whenever she visited during her rounds, and her strength through this all was remarkable.  Even after being dealt such a cruel hand by fate, she never grew bitter or resentful.  Her son couldn’t have fallen for a better girl.  Grandeeney slips away quietly before the moisture building in her eyes could be seen by Natsu, bracing against the closed door, and praying for a miracle.

Is this that tunnel people talk about?  Lucy wonders as all she could see through her eyelids is the brightest light that seemed just too brilliant to be normal.  Her eyes hurt a little from it, but if this was heaven, why is there still pain?  She forces her lids open and tries to shield them with her hand that… doesn’t seem to move, huh?  But it wasn’t just her arm, her entire body felt heavy.  The images filtering in through her vision were blurry, slowly gaining focus as her pupils adjust to the light to see, wait, ceiling tiles?  Why does heaven look so much like a hospital?

“Oh good, you’re awake.”

Lucy looks over and sees a doctor standing beside her.  “Where am I?”  Or more like why am I here?  

“Do you remember the heart attack?”  She shakes her head.  “You’ve been in a coma for two months after you suffered a massive heart attack.  But luckily, a local donor came through...”  He goes on to explain about the surgery telling her that the transplant surgery went well, her body was accepting the new heart, and while she’ll still be going through three to six months or rehabilitation and monitoring, she was on track to make a full recovery.  

“Oh-okay, thank you so much, doctor.”  It was a miracle to be alive again with a new heart.  But something felt wrong, missing?    

“I’ll be back in a couple hours to check on you again Ms. Heartfilia, but if anything feels off in the meantime, be sure to ring the nurses.”  He moves to leave, but she stops him.

“Doctor, the donor, can you tell me about them, please?”

The man hesitates for a moment.  “Well Ms. Heartfilia, privacy laws don’t allow me to….”

“You don’t have to tell me their name or anything.  Please, just a little information.  I’d like to know who saved my life.”

The man sighs and takes the seat next to the bed, clearly torn with what he was about to say.  “He was a young volunteer at the hospital who tragically fell asleep at the wheel and passed away from a car accident…”

The doctor's voice droned on for another minute as he tried to reassure her that the man didn’t suffer. It was quick and painless from a one-car crash.  As if that was supposed to make her feel any better.  Lucy didn’t need to be told the name as tears poured down her cheeks, because she knew.  She just knew.  That was what was missing, for she knew that if she’d had received the new heart, Natsu would have been the one by her side when she’d woken up… unless he could be there.  With all the wires attached to her arm, she could barely move them without the sting of the I.V. lines, but she didn’t care.  Lucy’s hands cover her lowered face as the tears continue to stream.

“I’m very sorry, Ms. Heartfilia.  Would you like me to have someone from mental health support to come see you?”

Lucy shakes her head. She couldn’t speak, she couldn’t even think.  

“Mrs. Dragneel would also like to speak to you when you’re up to it.”  

More tears and sobs choke out. Oh god that was Natsu’s mom, how could she face Natsu’s mother!  

Seeing the woman’s distress, the man nods and squeezes her shoulder, “Again, I’m truly sorry Ms. Heartfilia.  We all miss him very much.  Please try to get some rest,” and leaves the woman to grieve in her own way.  

Her head was spinning.  It wasn’t supposed to happen like this!  Why was destiny such a malicious bastard to take away the one person she had and leave her in this world all alone?  Lucy clasps a hand over her chest, recalling the last conversation, that last night with Natsu.  She squeezes her eyes to the pain of the memories…  He’d made her so happy… so very happy, and yes, she remembered thinking for the first time since her diagnosis; she didn’t feel alone anymore.  Fuck if she didn’t want to just keel over again, but that would mar the beautiful gift that she’s received.  Natsu believed with every fiber of his being that she would walk out of here one day and she will live on for him, that’s a promise.  “Our heart,” Lucy breathes out…  But how ironic that he was right all along.  She really did steal his heart in the cruelest of ways… 

[namirotraeu]

Online Relationships

I know it took me a long time to finish this fic, but I hope you’ll still give it a try. I originally planned it to be longer. I had to delete several scenes since it does not match, maybe I’ll use it in my future fics. 

Please enjoy the final chapter and let me know your thoughts. 

“Personalities and relationships tend to differ offline. “

(Part 1) I (Part 2) I (Part 3)

Title: Online Relationships- Part 4

Pairing:Trafalgar Law X Nami

Genre: Romance / AU

Rating: T

Word Count: 1734

Disclaimer: I do not own One Piece, they rightfully belong to Oda Eiichiro.

Helen of Troy launched a thousand ships because of her beauty. It was not her fault that she became the cause of a ten-year war. It was the Fates who were weaving her destiny. Nami liked the epics The Iliad and The Odyssey, which tells the story of Helen. She read the books all over again every time she finds time to do so. She loved how the story tells that we are rational beings and it is our actions that makes our fate. Helen chose to love and that love became the downfall of a lot of people. Nami, on the other hand chose, to leave a comment on Law's post. She never thought it would end up like this.

16 love reactions. 5 likes. 25 comment replies.

Luffy D. Monkey: Zoro, Sanji, Robin, Franky, Ussop, Chopper, Brook, Vivi and Shiraoishi. Look! Nami, we demand an explanation! Since when did you and Torao became too close?

'Ugh, why did Luffy have to be the first one to see this? He even tagged all our closest friends.' Nami thought in despair.

Sanji Vinsmoke: Is the shitty doctor your boyfriend, Nami-swan? T^T

Zoro Roronoa: Witch, I told you to behave. Law, better take care of her.

Nico Robin: My, my, I never knew that he stole your heart, Nami.

Chopper: So it was Law that Nami likes?

It was not only her friends that reacted and commented. Even Law's friends did.

Shachi: Captain! She commented. Hurray!

Penguin: Yay! Our captain is on his spring time.

Bepo: Sorry for not noticing it earlier. I'm rooting for the two of you. May your relationship be strong. Aye!

X-Drake: Hmm..

There are a lot of people who reacted which she did not know personally, but were mutual friends with Law in Facegram. At this point in time, she regretted what she did. It would be a big deal for his and her friends. She even read a comment conversation between Penguin and Luffy saying they should team up to match the two of them. What is done is done, so she decided just to meet up with her friends in Baratie's Food Joint. Luffy said that Robin and Franky will be joining them since they have no work for today.

Her friends have already placed their own orders when she came to their table. She ordered her favorite tangerine smoothie and the lunch special from the counter. Luckily for Nami, Law and his friends were seated far from their table. She is too ashamed to look at them, but her curiosity urged her to take a glimpse on his table. Even with the crowd their eyes always find each other. His lip draw into a smirk, then he waved at her. She smiled and waved back while her cheeks is slightly blushing. It felt like it was just the two of them in the food joint full of people. But they are not. Both their group of friends is observing the two of them.

Luffy, Chopper and Ussop was laughing out loud when they saw Nami coming back to their table.

"Why are you laughing?" Nami questioned. The trio continued to laugh till Ussop decided to answer her.

"Law sudden used his bag to hide his face after you smiled at him. He was so red."

"Eh? I don't believe you. We both know you're a liar." Nami taunts her friend.

“Shishi.Torao! Look over here. Nami wants to see your face" Luffy shouted. Nami hurriedly punched Luffy to silence him.

She subtly glanced and saw Law's friends looking at her while pointing at Law, who is burying his face on the bag. His friends was laughing and teasing him. He is obviously pretending to be sleeping, she knew he wasn't someone who can sleep in any place. She found this scene cute and she happily ate her lunch with her friends.

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Marine duties in the town vary depending on which branch you are assigned. Being a Rear Admiral, Drake doesn’t have much to do than waiting for a new mission for him. He often uses his time off visiting museums to see dinosaur artifacts or collaborate with universities for dinosaur researches as a hobby. Today was he was supposed to meet Corazon, Law’s foster father, to fetch a package for his father. However, the old man called that he will be sending over his son because he has urgent matters to deal with his brother.

He knew the whole time him and Law would be together would be spent with them pissing off one another. That nerd really makes him tick. Just thinking that they would be meeting up in a few minutes made him exhausted.

While strolling in the park, he saw a familiar red head who was leisurely walking.

“This would be interesting.” He thought. He heard that Law tend to be quiet when she’s around.

“Nami!” He called out.

“Oh! Hey Drake. It’s been a long time since I last saw you. What’s up?”

“Nothing new really. I’m supposed to meet up with Law in Buggy’s Steak House for lunch. Join us.” He invited.

“It is your treat? You know I like free things.” The younger girl beamed.

“Of course, and you’ll get a bonus of seeing Law.” He teased.

“I see him almost every day in the campus or at Baratie. He should be the one getting a bonus of seeing a cute girl like me on weekends.”

“You should say that to him.” He chuckled.

They arrived shortly at the Steak House. Law was already grumpily waiting for Drake.

“You said you’d be here thirty minutes ago.” Law scoffed.

“My bad. I brought company.” Drake pointed at Nami.

“Nami-ya?” Law was shocked at the unexpected appearance of the girl.

Drake wanted to laugh out loud at the shocked state of Law. The rumors were indeed true. Maybe this lunch would be interesting.

“Hey Law!” Nami greeted.

Nami sat next to Drake while they are sitting in front of Law. Law ordered for Nami because Drake won't stop teasing him to pay for her.

"I never knew you were this close." Law stated as he looked at the two red heads conversing like its just the two of them.

"We knew each other for quite a long time and you know the thing about Robin." Nami explained. Drake and Robin used to date, however, things didn't proceed romantically as both have their priorities.

"Hn." Law quietly finished his meal.

The two red heads continued on talking. While he stayed quiet observing the two.

It didn't take too long for Drake to excuse himself. “I better go. We have emergency at the base. Walk her home or I’ll tell Cora-san that he did not raised you to be a gentleman. Surely, he will be disappointed.”

As a matter of fact, there was no emergency. He was just annoyed by Law’s state. He thought he would enjoy him squirm at the girl’s beauty, but it became boring since its not like his usual shitty attitude. Might as well give the two a little push. Maybe Nami could forgive some of his debts.

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"You don't really have to walk me home, Law. I'm going to the university to check on the progress of our team's prototype." Nami said.

"Nah. I'll walk you there. Could it be you're afraid of me?"

Nami was shocked by the question. She was quite shy that he is walking her to the university but not afraid.

"Nope. Why would I be afraid of you? I doubt a nerd could outrun me." She taunt.

"I don't think so. I may be a studious type of person but I have been athletic since I was middle school. I beat up Shachi and Penguin when I first met them."

"Being violent is not the same as athletic. Why would you even beat up your friends."

"It was their fault since they were bullying Bepo. We were all young back then." He argued.

She noticed he is awkwardly keeping distance between the two of them as they walk.  

"You know, sometimes I don't get what you are thinking. Online we are so close, but offline we're so awkward." She said bluntly. If she wanted to move forward they would have to break their barriers.

"Its just that I don't know. When I'm with you I feel like a different person, Nami-ya. Every plan I make to get close to you, seems won't work. I guess plans do not apply to you and your friends."

"Do you really like me? Or are you just pressured from the people around us?" She was embarrassed to ask, but decided to ask anyway.

"Why would I be pressured? When I met you before it was just you, not my friends nor your friends. At first I thought I was just an infatuation, but it grew on me. Nami-ya, I like you."

She leaned to gift a light kiss on his cheeks. "Let's take it slow until you are used to being around me. We should hang-out like today more."

He stared a her rosy cheeks and glorious smile. What happened today will surely change them.

"Oh! I think we should give them our response, Mr. Heart stealer."

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Their friend's phone rang with a notification; it was a tagged comment from Law. He posted a photo of Nami drinking coffee from a cafe. From the photo, they could see Law's favorite hat on the table.

'I don't know about being a Heart stealer, but this girl clearly stole my heart.' This was the caption of the photo.

Before their friends could comment on the post, another notification rang. Again, they were tagged in the comment section, but this time it was by Nami. The photo she posted was from the same cafe. A booked covered the lower area of this face, while his golden eyes looked straight to the camera. Nami leaned her cheek on the top of his head, while giving a bright smile and peace sign.

'Oops! Exams are still ahead. Gotta keep this nerd Heart stealer focused on studying.'

Nami captioned it this way to show that even if they will be moving forward, their dreams would be their top priority.

It wasn't long until her and his phone began ringing. They friends wouldn’t stop until they heard the whole story.