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slowdrawl · 21 days ago

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Third Sunday of June | Husband!Joel x Wife!reader | one-shot | 18+ minors DNI

Summary:Father’s Day comes quietly this year. Your daughter is asleep on Joel’s chest. The world is still. There’s no fanfare, no gifts—just softness and the weight of what you’ve built. He’s not sure he deserves it. You spend the day reminding him he does.

A/N: Spent my morning thinking about Jackson!Joel with a newborn on Fathers Day. So I made this. It’s grief, healing, memory, devotion. And Joel Miller saying “mama” in a way that will stick to your ribs. if you like to get horny and cry at the same time this one is for you. ps. i wrote and edited this real quick, sorry if its a mess

Warnings: 18+ MDNI , grief (Sarah mentioned), BREEDING KINK,SMUT, ITS ALL SMUT,baby in established relationship, domestic softness, emotional intimacy, smut (fingering, oral f receiving, piv, creampie, praise kink, use of “mama,” slight dom!Joel, tooth rotting.

You wake up slowly. Sunlight filtering through the little gaps in the curtains, painting the room with streaks of gold and pink. You reach over beside the bed, arm searching. You find nothing When you roll over, you feel him, solid and warm against you. Joel is lying there, pillow propped up behind his head, awake. His eyes are puffy, you can’t tell if he’s even slept at all. Your daughter is sleeping on his chest, he’s got one arm wrapped below her, cradling her. He makes her look so impossibly small. “Good morning, lover,” you whisper, voice barely awake. He rolls his head toward you, looks down, and smiles softly. “‘Mornin', darlin’,” he mumbles, his voice too rough with sleep, maybe something more. His throat sounds a little tight, eyes are wet. “Did you sleep alright?” you ask. He just nods once, slow, looks down at her in his arms. “She woke up for a while an hour or so ago, got her back down quick,” he whispers. “You always do, think your voice makes her feel safe,” you say, “probably all that talkin' n’ singing to her you did before she was born.” He smiles again, just barely. Doesn’t say anything. He just curls his hand a little tighter around her back. You watch his thumb start to move, rubbing tiny absent-minded circles—like he’s grounding himself. His face is set in soft worry, as if he’s scared that if he stops touching her, one of them will drift away. You shift closer to him, tucking into his side, resting a hand over his. “She’s perfect,” you murmur. His jaw shifts some, and he closes his eyes. You feel it in the way his breath catches in his throat. The way his hand stills. “She looks just like her sister,” he says. You nod. “Yeah, I see it too.” The words, the room, the light. It all hangs there. Fragile. You don’t try to patch it, just listen, just let him speak if he wants. “I keep thinkin’—“ he starts, then shakes his head. “Hell. I don’t know what I’m thinkin’”

You press your lips to his shoulder.

“It’s okay if it’s everything all at once.”

You hear him swallow hard.

“Feels like I’m cheating. Lovin’ her like this. Havin’ her at all.”

You sit up slowly, shift so you can take the baby gently from his chest, and lay her down in the bassinet beside you. She stirs once, just for a moment, then settles.

Joel watches you the whole time, eyes fixed and glassy, throat working around something he can’t quite say.

Once she’s settled, you turn back to him, knees tucked at his sides, your hands bracing on his chest.

“Joel,” you say, voice gentle, but firm. “You never stopped loving Sarah.”

He stays silent.

“You just… didn’t let the world stop forever. Didn’t stop living. And that’s okay.” You bring your hand up to his face, caressing his jaw. “You’re allowed to keep moving forward, she’d want you to, baby.”

“I don’t know how to do this.” He exhales something shaky from his chest, “It’s been so long, I feel like I forgot how.”

You’re scratching the nape of his neck now, both hands on him, reminding him you’re here, you’re real.

“You don’t have to know everything. That’s why we have each other.”

You prop yourself up on an elbow, kiss the corner of his mouth. “Why don’t I make somethin’ for you to eat?” you offer, “pancakes?”

He looks at you, caught off guard. Like he wasn’t expecting kindness today.

“You don’t need to do that.” He says.

“Let me take care of you.” You whisper, kissing him again, on his lips now.

He doesn’t keep protesting, just looks at you with his big brown eyes as you slip out of bed and walk out of the room.

The light in the kitchen is still gentle, golden.

You move through it quietly, just to let him have the stillness.

You cook, shape the pancakes into little hearts.

It's simple, but it's the simple things that take you back to before this. Before everything got dark.

You go into your pack and pull out the gift you've been holding onto for a few weeks.

You put the card on the table. The one you scrawled in crayon. The one you spent an hour trying to get just right while he was on patrol.

Paint everywhere, from her head all the way into every nook of her toes. She'd fussed the whole time.

Her little footprint was perfectly stamped in the middle of the paper in blue.

You set the table, and plate the food. Put the card on his seat.

You know he'll come out as soon as he smells it.

You boil the water and take it out. Coffee.

You traded one of the gentlemen who came through town a few weeks ago. Joel didn't know. He thought you were at Tommy and Maria's, but you were really with that man's family, painting them a portrait. He gave you a tin of coffee beans, you thanked him, and thanked him, and thanked him. He didn't know.

You grind them up, and as soon as it hits the hot water, you hear his feet hit the ground.

After a few minutes, he rounds the corner with your baby in his arms, both of their hair messy from sleep.

He doesn't speak, just walks up to you and leans his forehead against yours, holding her between you like she's the most precious thing in the world. Like she's everything. Because she is.

You eat in silence. Nothing but the sound of birds outside, the sound of cutlery scraping, and her cooing every so often.

When he opens the card, his eyes go glassy all over again. He picks it up and turns it over in his hands like it might crumble. Or maybe he will.

"You're too good to me," he murmurs as he sips the coffee.

"Not possible," you say, sitting right next to him, resting your hand over his on the table.

"You are my heart, Joel. You always have been, always will."

You squeeze his hand, he lifts it and kisses the back of it, looking right into your eyes. His gloss over with something too soft to name, no edges today.

The rest of the day passed like a dream.

But not in the way where it felt unreal—no. In a way where everything blurred at the edges. Where the light felt like it stayed warm a little too long, the breeze was too gentle to be anything but divine.

You sat on a blanket in the grass while Joel strummed the guitar, back leaning against the old porch post, your daughter nestled in his lap.

She kicked her feet, babbled. He stared at her, listening like she was preaching scripture. She swatted at the strings, and he just smiled, letting her. Didn't even try to stop her when she slapped the frets and giggled like she'd invented the very concept of music herself. He just kept strumming, singing something soft and low, the melody familiar and broken in, like an old t-shirt.

You watched them like that for hours, something deep in your chest, something you couldn't speak either. Something much too big for just love.

When the sun sank low behind the horizon, and the bugs came out, you cooked again. Something simple, warm. Pasta. You stood in the kitchen together, and he kissed your shoulder as you cut herbs. The baby giggled at every sizzle of the pan.

Later, you both bathed her. Joel held her like she was made of porcelain, crooning quietly under his breath while you rubbed soap through her soft little curls.

Eventually, when you put her down, he read to her. The same dog-eared books he always chose. Sesame Street, Robert Munsch… His voice was steady and soothing. Her little hands clung to his finger even as she nodded off.

You played cards, sitting cross-legged at the coffee table. You let him beat you at rummy. Twice. Then you teased him, accused him of cheating. He looked smug as hell, happy. After, you told him that if he was gonna hustle you, he'd better be the one doing dishes. He said, "Yes, ma'am," in what was still left of that lazy southern drawl you loved so damn much. It made your stomach flutter.

Now you’re in the bathroom, running the shower. You make him get in, reluctant as he is, you convince him. He trusts you. He loves you. You pour shampoo into your palms and lather it, scrubbing his hair with all the tender care in the world. He sighs into your chest as you scratch at his nape. Tipping his head down so you have easier access. He does the same for you. When the soap is rinsed and the water begins to cool, you press your body to his, arms wrapped and wet around his shoulders. You kiss him. Not hard, not desperate, or fueled. You just let your bodies melt together while the water runs over you like rain. When you break the kiss, you look up at him, water cascading through his curls, over his face. His lips are red and a bit swollen, his eyes aren’t glassy anymore, they’re dark. Hungry. The water seems to have been able to wash away some of the weight of today. He leads you out of the shower, wraps your hair up in one towel, and takes a second to dry off your body, paying perfect detail to every inch. You do the same for him. There is something so special about days like these. Where everything feels slow, comfortable, connected. They don’t come often anymore, not since the baby. You both get dressed in pajamas, he puts on pants, you just a shirt. Trying your very best to be quiet as you open drawers so the baby stays sound. He stands behind you as you stand at the end of the bed and watch her for a while. He wraps his arms around your middle, palms flat on your belly. He leans his head onto your shoulder, mouth beside your ear, whispers, “Thank you for giving me her.” You turn your head, look him in his eyes for a minute, and respond. “No, Joel.” You kiss him again, “Thank you. Thank you for making me a mama.” “I love you.” is all he responds, mumbling it into the curve of your neck, kissing the soft skin there, sending static waves all the way through you. He wraps his big hands tighter around your belly, kissing up from your shoulder to your jaw as he slowly walks you backward toward the bedroom door. As soon as you let the door softly click closed, the air in the house changes. It charges. He doesn't say anything when you guide him toward the couch—no. He just follows, like you're tethered to each other. His hands are still locked on you as you make your way to the couch in the dark.

He pushes you down onto it, then drops down to his knees. You reach forward and run your fingers over his bare shoulders, digging them into the tension that's there, today, every day. You massage him, cradle his face, and touch everything you can reach. He kisses you like he means to undo you. Slow at first, like he's still not quite convinced this is what he deserves. Like every inch of you is prayer, and he's scared to speak it too loud. His hands trail up beneath the shirt you're wearing. His shirt. Callused fingers palming gently at your sides, up and down like he's relearning the shape of you. He leans in and kisses you, harder this time. Still not demanding, it's like he's just claiming you as his. It's the kind of kiss that breathes in you like he's starving for oxygen and tastes like memory. Like every version of him that's ever loved you is all showing up at once.

You moan into his mouth when he slides his hand down from your jaw, over you collarbone, down lower. He stops to cup your breast, circling his fingers so gently over your nipple. His mouth moves down your body and replaces his hand. He sucks and flicks at your skin through your shirt, rolling his tongue over and over.

You can feel his restraint start to slowly slip. Feel it leaving him through short, little panting breaths.

The way he touches you is slow, full of that all-familiar ache. His hands find your thighs, your waist, and finally up under your shirt. When he pulls it over your head he pauses like he's seeing you for the first damn time.

Your hands reach for his face, thumbs brushing the sides of his jaw, rough with stubble.

You watch his eyes darken as they make their way over your body, traveling, lingering at the softest parts. Your belly, your chest. All of the places that bore witness to what you built together

He lays his palms flat against your stomach and stops.

"She was right here," he says, voice quiet. "You carried her right there."

You cover his hand with yours, pressing it tighter into your skin. "She was," you whisper. "And you loved me through every second of it."

His other hand slips down, cupping between your thighs—you feel him shudder when he finds you already wet, needy.

"Still love you like that. More, even."

You breathe out something shaky. "Then take me there again, Joel."

You watch his throat as he struggles to swallow, his brows twitch into the smallest furrow for a moment. He leans into you, rests his head against your bare thigh.

"I've been feeling like the word was gonna end again," he murmurs. "Like this peace...this quiet...this thing we built is just borrowed." he keeps his head down, "I don't wanna waste it. I wanna remember everything."

You slide your fingers into his hair and tug. Not hard, just enough to make his eyes flick up to you, glinting in the low light.

"The world isn't ending again, Joel, we're gonna keep building ours, together. Everyone's safe," you say.

He kisses the inside of your thigh, then higher, then higher, then higher.

He hooks a finger underneath the waistband of your panties and then looks up at you, like he's asking for permission.

You nod, and when he peels them down, he doesn't just look—he stares.

"Fuck, so wet already" he says, voice dripping in awe "You miss me too mama?"

That word—oh god, that word. Mama. It hits you like a chord strummed right through your ribs, makes you pussy clench, has your whole body aching. It wrecks you every time. The way he says it is like praise. Like a god damn title.

"Think I'm not always like this for you?"

He grins, its soft, not cocky, but maybe proud.

Pleased.

"You ruin me so easily," he says, voice low and worn. "Every fuckin' time."

"Joel," you whine, grinding your hips down toward his face.

He chuckles against you, then flattens his tongue, licking a long stripe right down your center, groaning when he tastes you. His lips wrap tight around your clit and he sucks, gentle at first—then firmer. He works you until your back arches and your hands are fisting the cusions.

He eats you like it's the first time, maybe like it might be the last. Like this is the only way he knows how to say thank you for staying.

You whimper, tilting your hips, thighs tightening around his neck.

"Baby, fuck--"

"Yeah, that's it," he murmurs against you. "Give it to me. Let me take care of you."

Your whole body arches when he slips two fingers inside, curling them just right. It's too much, it's not enough. It's perfect.

"God damn, I love the way you sound when I got my mouth on you," he says. "Wanna feel you, c'mon, wanna feel you fall apart for me."

You come, mouth parted in a soundless cry, legs trembling, until his name pours out of your mouth like a broken hymn.

His pace doesn't falter; he doesn't stop. Just licks you through it, lets you ride it out on his tongue. Holding you still, taking everything you give.

When he finally rises from your thighs, his beard is glistening, his eyes are dark.

He kisses your belly, then higher. Then your lips, like he's giving it back to you. Your taste, your need, your surrender.

"Gonna let me love you right?" he asks, voice rasped. "Let me give you everything?"

"Yes, please, Joel--need it. Need you."

"Been thinkin' about this all night. You. The way you looked this morning with her in your arms." He crawls over top of you. "You were made to be a mama."

Your breath stutters, heart kicking.

"You know, you're real mean when you talk like that," you whisper.

He looks down at you, grinning as he tugs down his sweats. You watch as his cock springs free, thick, flushed and leaking.

"You sayin' it's a turn on?"

You nod, biting your lip.

He groans low in his throat, wrecked, and lines himself up. The head of his cock drags through your slick.

He pushes in slowly, inch by inch, watching your face the whole time. Eyes wide, mouth open in awe.

A moan is torn from you, loud, head falling back. He sinks in all the way, hips flush to yours now.

He stays still once he’s buried deep. His hands frame your face.

“I’ve never loved anything like I love this,” he says. “You. Her. Us.”

Your eyes sting. Your chest cracks open.

“I know,” you whisper. “Me too.”

He starts to move—slow, deep thrusts that drag along every inch of you, rolling his hips into yours.

He grabs your hand and puts it over your belly with his. Pressing down right where you’re full of him.

“Wanna give you another one” he breathes. “Wanna keep fillin' our life with good things”

“Joel—”

He grabs your hips tighter, ruts harder, deeper. It doesn't feel like fucking. It feels like this is carving. This is memory. This is making something.

“You want that?” he asks, voice breaking. “You wanna give me another?”

“Yes,” you gasp. “Fuck, yes.”

He slows down some, shallower, grinding against you, the head of his cock catching on your opening over and over driving you insane.

“Turn around,” Joel murmurs, he growls. “On your hands and knees, baby.”

You don’t argue. You don’t ask. You feel it in his voice—that threadbare edge, the way he’s holding back like it’s costing him something. And you want to take the leash off.

So you nod. Slow. Wordless.

And roll.

Every limb feels loose, useless, boneless from how hard he just made you come with his mouth, but you shift, dragging your trembling body onto your stomach, then pushing up to your knees.

Your arms buckle a little under you. Joel’s hands are there instantly, one bracing your hip, the other gliding up your spine.

“Easy, sweetheart. I got you.”

You arch for him, shuddering, and you hear the crack in his breath. The way he exhales, like it hurts. Like the sight of you like this just knocked the wind out of him.

“Goddamn. Look at you,” he whispers. “Still fuckin’ cryin’ for me.”

You whimper when his hand spreads you open, thumb brushing through your folds. You’re slick everywhere. Down your thighs. Pooling between them. The contact makes you gasp.

“Fuck, you’re dripping,” he says, almost like it’s a prayer. “All over my fuckin’ couch. That from me, mama?”

Your voice is ragged. “It’s all from you.”

That earns you a moan.

You hear the soft slap of him stroking himself, the wet sound of his cock in his palm. You arch a little deeper, offer him everything.

And then he’s there.

The head of his cock presses back to your entrance and you both gasp as he slides inside.

The stretch hits different from this angle. Sharper, meaner, fucking heavenly. He presses in all the way, to the hilt, hands locked tight on your waist.

“Jesus Christ,” he hisses. “You feel like you’re fuckin’ made for me.”

You drop your head between your arms, mouth falling open. “I am, Joel.”

That makes him grunt. Low and rough.

He pulls back and thrusts in again, and it makes your knees slide an inch forward on the couch. Makes your voice break on a gasp.

The rhythm he sets is brutal—faster, deeper now. Dragging, grinding thrusts that punch the air from your lungs. “Still got more in you?” he pants, hand sliding up your back. You nod, forehead to the cushion. “As much as you want.”

His hand slides down again. Palms your ass. Spreads you wider.

“You said you wanted to feel it,” he murmurs. “Want me to make it count this time?”

“Yes,” you breathe. “Yes, Joel.”

He leans in over your back, one hand dragging up your belly now, wet with sweat, with slick, with heat.

“Then take it, mama,” he growls in your ear. “Take all of it.”

The sound you make is wrecked. Raw, wordless.

The filth from his mouth has your head swimming.

“You feel that? That’s me. All of me. Still fuckin’ hard for you. You’re wringin’ me out, baby. You want another one so bad? I’ll give it to you. I’ll fuckin’ give it to you.”

You don’t even recognize your own voice when you sob, “Please—please don’t stop—I need you—”

He grabs your hips, both hands now, and drives into you so deep it’s like he’s trying to break you.

You cry out. Eyes wet. Skin burning.

He moans, broken.

“Gonna come—fuck, baby.”

“Do it,” you whisper. “I want it, Joel, I want all of it.”

That’s it. He breaks.

He slams in once, twice. Then groans loud, slurred and filthy as he buries himself deep and pours into you.

You feel it. Warm and thick. A slow bloom of heat that makes your whole body tremble.

He stays there, cock still pulsing, his breath ragged, his hands bruising your hips like he’s scared you’ll disappear.

You both collapse on the couch, spent, wrecked. Happy Neither of you moves for a long, long moment.

He lays a kiss between your shoulder blades. “I hope it sticks,” he breathes. You turn your head to look at him, eyes glassy but glowing. “It will,” you murmur. You guide his hand to your belly, covering it with yours. Anchor to anchor.

“Happy Father’s Day, baby.” Then,�� from down the hall, soft and sudden. A cry.

Tiny, insistent, familiar.

Joel’s breath catches in his throat. He presses his forehead to your back. You feel his shoulders shake.

You whisper, “She knows.”

And he laughs, choked up and tear-wet. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, she does.”

#joel miller smut #joel miller x reader #tlou fanfiction #joel miller #tlou smut #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller x you #the last of us

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millermouth · 2 months ago

Note

teeny tiny request from me bc ily and your brain:

lazy morning sex with obsessed jackson!joel 🧎‍♀️

(think about him sleepily praising you…. yum)

joel miller x you drabble

|| smut MDNI 18+, plot what plot???, praaaaiiiseeeee kinkkkkkkk, edging, pinv, fingering?? kinda?? dirty talk so much dirty talk, daddy kink, pussy pronouns, picture either joel ||

a/n: I had a moment where I needed to step away from this and ask myself wtf am I doing. thank you for the request!!

Once upon a time, you'd shown old man Joel the art of edging.

You know, bringing you to the brink of an orgasm just to be denied and denied over and over again. The concept had confused him at first, not because he didn’t understand it, but because on a spiritual level, it offended him. Joel was a man who believed in finishing what he started. His favorite thing in the world was eating you out. He believed in slow, drawn out sessions where he'd bury his face between your legs and nearly forget to breathe. He’d make you come on his tongue and over and over. Leaving you on the edge of release, teasing you only to pull back? That shit felt cruel to him. Damn near a sin.

But then he'd done it once. With you beneath him, soaked and trembling, eyes half-lidded and unfocused, lips parted like you’d forgotten how to breathe, he saw your mind go far away, drifting slow through the heat pooling in your gut. It broke something in him wide open.

Or maybe it built something.

Because now he was obsessed.

So this morning, curled up in bed on a quiet Sunday, you refused to wake, even as the sun bled through your closed eyelids and painted the darkness behind them red. You'd barely stirred, body drowsy from sleep and overstimulation from the night before, your skin damp with sweat that had long since slicked fresh again. Joel had you spooned up tight, bare skin pressed against bare skin. His arms were wrapped around your ribs, thick and strong, locking you into place against his chest. One palm was splayed across your breast, fingers occasionally squeezing to feel the twitch of your spine. His other hand was beneath your hips, holding them at just the right angle so he could stay buried deep inside you.

He was moving in slow, controlled thrusts, fucking up into you from behind, steady and deep. Each time he pulled out, he dragged against your walls with painstaking precision, then drove his cock back into your slick, overstimulated cunt like he was slotting himself into a lock built just for him.

“So pretty,” he breathed into your ear, voice thick. His breath was hot, lips brushing the shell of your ear as he pushed in again. His cock hit a tender, spongey spot high inside you and you moaned, walls clamping down on him like a vice, still trembling from the second orgasm he’d denied you.

“Joeeel,” you whined, voice barely audible, one hand stretched up over your head, fingers laced in his damp, messy hair.

“I know, baby,” he murmured, lips dragging across your neck to your pulse as he pressed a kiss. Your skin was fever-warm and slick. His hand at your breast squeezed tighter, grounding you, while his grip on your hip never wavered, keeping you perfectly aligned for each slow, deliberate push of his hips.

“I could fuck you all damn day like this,” he said against your skin, lips brushing your shoulder, your neck, the soft edge of your jaw. His stubble scraped you raw in places already rubbed red from him kissing you over and over again. He pulled his cock out halfway, and you could feel the exact moment it dragged over the ridged front of your walls—the thick, curved head brushing the same spot again and again, making your toes curl and your breath hitch in your throat. Your mouth fell open, a mewling cry breaking out as your eyes rolled back.

“Shh, shh,” Joel cooed, voice like warm gravel, “You hear that?”

Your eyes blinked open, a little sleepy and dazed. He was peering over your shoulder, chin perched on your collarbone. His eyes were dark, wild, hungry. But soft, too.

“Can hear just how much she likes it, can’t you?” he murmured, hips giving a small roll that pressed him deeper, the obscene, squelching sounds of you soaking around him filling the room in time with your breath. The evidence of your arousal was everywhere. It shone along your inner thighs, it dripped against his balls, and soaked the bedspread beneath you. You were a mess.

“This is all she needed, just needed some love from daddy,” Joel added.

“Jesus Christ,” you whispered, your voice breaking on the words. Your head fell back against his shoulder, neck arched, whole body pressing into him, “Please, please, Joel—”

You rolled your hips in a desperate circle, seeking pressure, angle, anything that would fill that maddening void inside you. But he held steady.

“Gotta wait for it,” he said, casual, calm, but his voice was tight with restraint. “Be patient like daddy. You don’t want this to end already, do ya?”

You whimpered. The ache in your hips and spine was starting to burn, muscles trembling with the effort to hold it in while he fucked you slow and deep, like time didn’t exist. His cock throbbed inside you, dragging over your g-spot with each movement. It wasn’t fast. It wasn’t hard. It was worse. It was agonizingly slow. And yet so, so addictive.

He was torturing you.

Because Joel didn’t just edge you anymore. He’d started edging himself. He wanted to drag it out, hold back, hover on the brink of release until his whole body was shaking, the same as yours. He finally understood how it made the orgasm stronger. That it made you tighter around him, clenching like a fist. Said your cunt would milk him dry every damn time.

And fuck, he was right.

He let go of your breast, hand trailing down your sweat-slick stomach, fingers slow and lazy as they traced toward where your bodies were joined.

You let out a strangled noise when his finger grazed your soaked folds, feeling the obscene stretch where his cock disappeared into you. He pushed deeper at the same time, a slow, relentless press that had your thighs twitching.

"She's openin' up real nice for me, ain't she, baby? She loves daddy's cock, huh?"

“Yes,” you gasped, brain blank, body buzzing like live wire. His fingers slid over your clit, the poor thing swollen, raw, so sensitive it felt like you were burning from the inside out.

“Yes, daddy, yes yes yes—”

He didn’t rub or stroke it, though. He merely brushed the lightest tease over your clit, so faint it barely registered as touch, but your body screamed at the sensation. He pushed his cock back in again, slow as syrup, grinding forward until you swore he was reaching your lungs.

“On one, you’re gonna come with me, alright, babygirl?”

You nodded frantically, tears stinging the corners of your eyes, breath shuddering through your lips.

“Five.”

He brought his fingers to your mouth, coaxing your lips open. You sucked them in obediently, wrapping your tongue around the two thick digits, tasting yourself faintly on his skin. Joel growled in your ear, low and primal, hips twitching at the sight of you like this, so desperate, and aching for release. He knew how much you loved it too.

��Four.”

His fingers left your mouth with a wet schlick, sliding down to toy with one of your nipples, just rubbing lightly around it, enough to make your back arch like a bowstring. You writhed against him, grinding back into his cock, brows pinched and breath shaking. His mouth was on your shoulder again, then your neck, his chin hooked over your clavicle.

"Three," he moved his fingers down, and thank every god in heaven above, began to stroke your clit in little circles. Your body jolted like you’d been shocked. You let out a mewl, high and desperate.

"You gonna be my good girl?"

“Yes, Jesus fucking Christ, Joel, I swear to god—”

“Two,” he cut you off, a slow grin curling against your skin as he lifted his fingers away, “That ain’t no way to be thankin’ me, baby. You were doin’ so good a minute ago. Maybe we should start over.”

“No, no, no, I’m sorry,” you cried, trembling hard now. “I’ll be good. I’ll be good. Please, please—”

“I know, I know,” he said gently, fingers sliding back to your clit with that same maddening precision. “My best girl. Prettiest girl I know. Prettiest pussy too, sweet baby. You wanna come for me?”

“Yes!” you shrieked, every nerve in your body sparking, heart slamming against your ribcage as you hung onto him for dear life, holding back the pressure that was building in your belly and your hips.

“Okay, baby. You can come for me,” he breathed heavily, groaning, "Come with me, pretty girl, there you go, there you go, yes—"

Your whole body seized as your head was thrown back, mouth open in a scream that sounded like a cat in heat. It tore through you, wave after wave of hot, unbearable pleasure. Your vision blacked out in bursts. Your eyes were blinded white, then red, then nothing but color and sound and Joel’s voice in your ear.

He held you tight, growling low in his chest as you clenched around him like a vice. His hips bucked, fucking himself through his orgasm as his release spilled into you.

The room spun, your limbs like jelly. You barely registered the soft kisses he pressed to your shoulder, your hair, the corner of your jaw.

Eventually, your eyes fluttered open again. You turned your head, still half-limp, lips curved into a lazy, euphoric grin.

“I’ve created a monster,” you whispered against his lips.

Joel just chuckled, deep and warm, and kissed you again before saying, "Good mornin' to you too,"

#joel miller smut #this shit is filthy #joel miller x you #joel miller x reader #joel miller #joel tlou #the last of us #the last of us smut #the last of us fanfiction #tlou fanfic #joel fanfic #jackson!joel #ask daryltwdixon

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froggibus · 2 months ago

Text

— Like Real People Do - Sentry

Pairing: Robert "Bob" Reynolds x gn! reader

Genre: hurt/comfort & fluff

Word Count: 1.2k

Summary: Bob seeks you out following a bad dream

CW: nightmares, insomnia, self doubt, reader is part of Thunderbolts* and was there for the final fight, knives, mostly cozy comfort vibes

some short n sweet comfort for a sunday ^.^ thunderbolts has singlehandedly brought back a love for marvel that i have not felt for years :,) gonna be writing some bucky next i think B)

This post contains spoilers for Thunderbolts*. Read at your own discretion :)

You’re awake before you even hear the knock on the door.

Stirring in your sheets, you wipe the sleep from your eyes and risk a glance at your phone. 3am. The soft knocking has you shoving your blankets aside and reaching for the knife magnetted to the back of your nightstand.

You rise to your feet, the cold floors of what used to be Stark tower sending a chill up your spine. You squint into the darkness and listen for a sound—any sound—from the other side of the door. You tighten your grip on the knife.

Though you trust everyone that lives in the tower, you aren’t a stranger to their quirks. You know better than anyone that night terrors (Bucky) or drunken fights (Walker) can devolve quickly.

Better to be safe than sorry.

You brace your hand on the doorknob, shifting your clammy palms on the handle of the knife. Just as there’s another quiet knock, you tug the door open and brace yourself.

Bob stands on the other side, dark hair tousled with restless sleep. His stormy eyes glance towards the knife in your hand and stay on you while you tuck it into the waistband of your pyjamas.

You keep your voice quiet. “Hey, everything alright?”

He swallows hard, running a hand through his messy hair. You don’t miss the way his hand shakes or the red strewn throughout his eyes.

“I—“ his voice cracks, eyelids closing in frustration. “I couldn’t sleep.”

You shuffle to the side, swinging the door open to allow him more room. “Do you want to talk about it?”

For a second, you think he’s going to say no. But then he nods, just once, and crosses the threshold into your room.

You settle in your bed first, Bob padding after you in the darkness of the room. He flinches and your hand flies to your knife.

You scan the room for threats—but all you see are the shadows cast across the walls from the moonlight filtering through your window. Shadows. You glance at Bob and then you’re reaching for the lamp, flicking the light on.

He lets out a sigh, his shoulders falling from his ears. He settles in at the edge of your bed, gripping your sheets.

“So, what did you—“

He furrows his brows at the lamp on your nightstand. “You don’t—you don’t use the smart lights.”

You shrug awkwardly, pyjama top slipping down your shoulder. “Force of habit, I guess.”

He glances at your bare shoulder and the room falls silent once again. His mouth moves but no sound comes out and his stormy eyes stay transfixed on the glow of your bare skin.

You soften your gaze, making a big show of discarding your knife back on the magnet. You open your mouth to speak but Bob beats you to it.

“I don’t remember,” he murmurs and suddenly his eyes are on his lap, a gnawed fingernail tracing the pattern of his pyjamas. “The Void, I mean. I don’t remember.”

You blink and glimpses of the rooms, of your worst moments, come back to you. You manage to force your face into a mask of calm and extend a hand to rest on Bob’s knee.

“I only know things from what you guys told me, or from what we…what we saw on the news reports. But sometimes,” he swallows hard, “sometimes it all comes back when I’m sleeping.”

Your blood runs cold. Suddenly the bags beneath his eyes and his disheveled appearance make sense. You squeeze his knee gently in what you hope can be seen as reassurance.

He shivers, drawing his arms up around his shoulders. “I see him. And me. And—and you guys. I see what you guys went through and I just—”

His eyes flutter closed and he swallows as though he’s going to be sick. Before you can think, you’re pulling the throw blanket off the corner of your bed and wrapping it around him.

A soft breath leaves him at the touch of the fabric, his hand catching yours when you go to pull away. A shock of electricity runs up your spine, the flutter of something familiar in your stomach.

You keep an arm wrapped around him, sitting next to him on the edge of the bed so that your legs are touching. He reaches for your free hand and squeezes it in his clammy palm.

“I hurt people, I hurt you guys and I hate it. I hate seeing it, I hate seeing him—me, fuck, I hate it so much.”

You rub circles along the back of his hand. “The Void hurt people,” you correct softly. “We know that wasn’t you, we know that wasn’t what you were trying to do.”

“But I—”

“No buts. I was in there with you, Bob. We all were. I—we know that wasn’t your intention.”

You tilt your head to look at him, really look at him. Thin strands of his dark hair glow gold in the lamplight, his thick lashes catching the light and reflecting on his irises—in this lighting, he’s ethereal. Beautiful.

Your voice is almost a whisper when you speak next. “I know your heart, and I know the kindness in it. You’re not him. Bob.”

He looks at you and you swear you can see the storm clouds fading away. There’s a sudden softness in his gaze, the slight shaking of his wrists finally stilling.

He whispers your name, a hand reaching up to cup your jaw. Your eyes flick up to his only to find a comforting kind of darkness within them.

“Bob.”

He leans in, tentatively brushing his lips against yours. He stills against you, hovering less than a millimeter away. A puff of air ghosts across your lips.

He mumbles your name and his lips catch yours once more.

You can feel the desperation radiating off of him, feel the need coursing through him. He’s so close to you—close in a way you’ve never been before.

Your fingers trail their way up his back, tangling in the messy hair at the base of his neck. The two of you rest there, touching but not touching enough. It feels like a century that you sit there, tangled together.

His mouth falls open when he pulls away, and he’s all red tipped ears and breathless mumbles. “I—”

It’s your turn to cup his face. Your hand brushes the skin of his cheek, feeling the stubble that’s starting to come in. You lean backwards, falling into the sheets and guiding him along with you.

Bob falls into your mattress, the blanket you wrapped around his shoulders spreading out, making it look like he has wings.

You smile at him. “Why don’t you stay a while, hm? Maybe we can chase those nightmares away.”

He nods slowly and relaxes into your touch.

Bob falls asleep quickly but you stay awake the whole night, holding him, ready for if he needs you again. You watch him until the sun starts to peek over the horizon.

The rising sun casts the whole room in gold, Bob glowing in the sunlight. Watching him now, sleeping in your bed and snoring softly, he’s not Sentry. He’s not the Void. He’s Bob, just Bob—and Bob is all you need.

thanks for reading <3 have a fantastic day!

masterlist | marvel masterlist

#sentry x reader #the sentry x reader #thunderbolts x reader #thunderbolts x you #sentry x you #robert reynolds x reader #bob reynolds x reader #bob reynolds x you #robert reynolds x you

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lieslab · 1 month ago

Text

Maybe dreams are meant for sleeping

꘎♡━━━━━♡꘎ ꘎♡━━━━━♡꘎

Pairing: Minho X gn reader

Summary: Your boyfriend's sudden coldness towards you causes you to assume the worst.

Genre: Angst with a happy ending

Word Count: 3.5k

A/N: I've been giggling over this for a while now. Shout out to the requestee because this made me giggle and kick my feet. I love a good misunderstanding that leads to something exciting. Anyway, since my schedule was train wrecked, I'll post my next fic on Sunday, schedule on Monday, another fic on Tuesday <3

_ _ _

Rain-swollen clouds burst open at approximately four-something in the morning. The heavens opened and the rain poured. It hit the roof so hard, Minho was certain his movement would be muted, but your body had other plans.

Twenty minutes later, your arms wrapped around the robe you put on. The shuffling of your house slippers fell victim to the pounding rain drops above. Minho’s body sat in the dim fridge light. He moved about in the dark kitchen, stirring through items, and looking for last night’s leftovers.

He didn’t realize you were there until you reached up and flicked on the kitchen light. “Minho?” You called, reaching up to rub your sleepy eyes. “Minho? What are you doing? It’s so early, you should be sleeping.”

He froze with his eyes locked on the glass container of rice. He made a large batch last night. Large enough, it’d last the two of you a few days. He planned to put it with his lunch. Of course, he could have eaten in the building’s canteen, but he wasn’t sure he’d have the time.

Lately, the guys had been so busy. Time muddled between their busy schedules. Management wanted everything done all at once. Twenty-four hours wasn’t enough time for a single day. You understood that, right?

“I have to go to work early.” He avoided your sleepy eyes. Instead, he spun back to the marbled countertop. He worked quickly, placing the leftovers into his lunchbox. “I didn’t know until late last night. You were asleep when I got the text from my manager. There’s a photoshoot we have to attend.”

“I wish I would have known. I wanted to make breakfast for us to enjoy together. I’ll have to wait for another day.”

He nodded and sucked in a deep breath. “Yeah. I’ll let you know when I’m not so busy. I’ll try to talk to management. I’ll see you later.”

You waited for the words, but they never came. You shut your eyes, expecting the warmth of his body, but that didn’t show up either. He left you standing alone in the kitchen. Without kisses. Without an “I love you.” He left your heart as cold as the downpouring rain outside.

Your eyes reopened. You assumed he’d rush back and make amends, but he didn’t. The front door opened and then it shut. A faint jingle of keys, the lock turned, and then nothing. You were left alone to your own thoughts.

A deep breath in and letting it out slowly. It hurt, the startling realization that you weren’t imagining things. Distance grew between you and Minho. You couldn’t place what you did wrong.

It's always been a fear, deep down, he’d find someone better than you. Maybe, he finally realized he didn’t have the time for love in his life. Being an idol is hard. He spoke so openly about it, maybe his own words struck a chord in his heart. A realization drove the point home and now he’d abandon you, unsure of how to state the truth.

You tried not to let it bother you, but it stung. Invisible wasps flew above your head and stung your brain; a thousand different thoughts, each one pierced the skin with a more potent venom.

It all circled back and clouded your self-worth. What if you weren’t good enough? What if he really did find someone better? What if? What if? What if?

It’s always been good, the relationship between the two of you. You cherished it with everything you had. It meant whispered words of affection while you played with his hair. A silent fondness in your eyes while you watched him consume the food you made.

He always joked he could make the dish better. Suggesting things to add, gesturing to different items housed in their locations. Nonetheless, he still ate everything you put in front of him. Every grain of rice, every smear of sauce, he scooped it up with his spoon and swallowed it. He never thanked you out loud, it was more of a silent thing.

He’d wash the dishes afterwards, insisting he had to do them because you spent so much time cooking. Other times, he’d walk behind you and wrap his arms around your body; a human-formed shroud of love. He didn’t need to thank you for the dish. You would have made him a thousand dishes without the need for compliments.

Compliments were nice, but the warmth washed over you when he scooped up a second bowl. Ladling in broth, using chopsticks to grab more meat, scooping up vegetables while he mindlessly said something needed seasoned more. Yet, when you offered him the option, he refused, insisting he’d manage.

The one time he insisted something needed more salt, he added a few more sprinkles. Popping the warm dumpling in his mouth, he paused and his eyes widened. An eye twitched and you forced a hand over your mouth to keep your laughter at bay. He never proclaimed something needed more salt again.

In the silence, ground sausage sat in the fridge. Eggs hid in the darkness of a cardboard carton. You purchased fresh bagels from a bakery last night. You figured you’d have so many hours before they lost that fresh-baked taste.

You expected to share a homemade breakfast with Minho, but his disappearance left your soul aching. You stared where his body once was. A coldness crept down your spine and your heart wavered. The burn of tears brimmed against your eyes, but you didn’t stop it.

Like the downpouring rain, your sadness leaked out. It soaked your cheeks, but you didn’t wipe it away. Instead, you sniffled and flipped off the light. The early morning darkness made you feel worse. You spun around, heading back to the safety of your bedding. You’d cocoon yourself in and try to feel normal again.

More importantly, you’d tried to pretend Minho was at work and not at someone else’s house, making their heart his newfound home.

~ ~ ~

A few days later, the sound of forks scraping against porcelain plates caused your eardrums to shrivel. You winced when your own fork caught the plate. In front of you, Minho twirled pasta around his fork without a care in the world.

You came home from work to the scent of tomatoes, oregano, and italian seasoning. Garlic wafted through the air and greeted you when you stepped into the kitchen. With his back to you, Minho used tongs to place pasta on plates. “You’re home just in time.”

You hummed, unsure of what to say. Things between the two of you felt different since the other morning. You wanted to bring it up, but fear stopped you. What if you were right? What if he really moved on, or decided he didn't want to do this anymore? Whatever it was, you hated it.

Fear kept you cautious and on the tip of your toes. Your heart wavered around him. Paranoia grew and you hated to admit it, but it followed you around like a shadow. When would he slip up?

Maybe you’d overhear a phone conversation where he’d admit his real feelings. Perhaps, his new significant other would show up and you’d catch it all in the act. You couldn’t stand the waiting, it felt like torture. The scent of a body spray that wasn’t yours. A hoodie that Minho had never owned.

So vigilant, you were on the constant lookout. You wanted to point and accuse him, drive the nail home, and have a final aha moment. You waited and waited, but it never came. The longer it went on, the more irritable and restless you became.

If Minho could have his secrets and stop loving you, you could do it, too. In your own way, you’d play his game. You’d treat him just like he treated you.

So you sat in silence at the kitchen table. Your fork scraped against the porcelain plate. You didn’t thank him for the meal. In fact, you didn’t say much of anything. You picked at your spaghetti, not feeling like you could consume much of it. The garlic bread, you managed to get in a few bites.

“Are you feeling ill?” Minho asked after a while.

You looked up blankly, not sure you heard him correctly. “Huh?”

“I asked if you’re feeling okay. You’re not eating much. You’re not talking a lot either, it’s not like you.”

You shrugged, brushing him off. The clock on the side of the egg-shell white wall ticked. Your fork scraped the plate again. You twirled the fork and waited.

Minho stared at you and his eyebrows furrowed. He didn’t say anything else, he waited for a confession. You refused to break. Maybe you were being petty, or maybe you were giving him a taste of his own goddamn medicine.

Hurt turned into annoyance and that annoyance grew into anger. You wanted him to hurt. You wanted to break his heart. You wanted to do everything you could to make him feel like how you felt.

Hurt.

Isolated.

Angry.

Afraid.

You wanted him to be afraid. You wanted fear to grip his heart and squeeze, causing longing to take over. Maybe he’d realize you were irreplaceable that way. Without you, life would be miserable, wouldn’t it?

The ticking of the clock marched on. Soft breaths came from your chests. You didn’t meet his eyes. Another sharp squeal of your fork. His eyebrows creased with worry and then his chair grated along the tiled floor.

A hand reached out, gently cupping the top of your empty hand. “Hey, talk to me. What’s going on with you?” You looked up for a brief moment, enough for your eyes to meet for a few seconds, and then you pulled away.

Your hand left his. Anger rose up the back of your throat. The acidic tomato and basil seasoning of the pasta sauce swirled in the darkened depths of your stomach.“Nothing,” you mumbled, refusing to meet his gaze. “Nothing is wrong. I’m fine.”

“Don’t do that. You’re clearly not fine. Talk to me. I can’t understand what’s happening to you.”

“How ironic,” you grumbled.

“What?”

“I said I’m fine!” You snapped, jerking yourself away from the table. Your wooden chair jerked back with a loud sound and you stood up. “If you can’t understand the problem, Minho, maybe there isn’t one at all.”

His face fell and his head tipped to the side. He watched your disappearing body in confusion. “What’s that supposed to mean?” He called after you.

“Figure it out!”

He sat in silence, unsure of the issue. Tears blurred your eyes, but you didn’t sob. You didn’t spin around and demand answers from him.

Instead, you stormed into your shared bedroom and slammed the door shut, a loud and cold action; the painful reminder that you wanted to be alone for now.

~ ~ ~

Over the course of the next week, the relationship between the two of you grew more and more rocky. You avoided Minho more and more, pulling away from who you thought was the love of your life. In your eyes, he let you.

You waited and waited for the day to come. You knew it was only a matter of time before the truth rolled out. At least, you were expecting it this time. He wouldn’t get the satisfaction of breaking your heart. You broke your own heart mere days ago.

He didn’t have time to explain himself. He couldn’t, not fully. Not when you worked and his work was dragging him further and further away from you. New things popped up. Fan signs, photoshoots, interviews, and the finishing touches on an album planned for early next year.

He wanted to find the right time to confront you, but it never worked. You didn’t give him a chance. You’d been going to bed early. By the time he came home, you were sound asleep in bed. He didn’t want to wake you up, so he let you sleep. When you woke up, he’d already be back at the studio.

You missed him like an abandoned dog craved the warm hand of their previous owner on a dark winter night. He filled your dreams. When you’d wake in the middle of the night, between his gentle snores, you’d roll over and curl into his body, holding him tight. You needed him far more than you’d admit out loud.

Too afraid to lose you, Minho made plans for today. On a Friday, you’d be home earlier than usual. Today, so would he. He’d confront you and things would go back to how they should be.

Dozing off on the suede couch, you didn’t hear the sound of Minho’s keys jingling and hitting the lock. The front door creaked open and he cautiously stepped inside. Holding his breath, he paused and waited.

The murmurings of some romance show fell from the television. You picked romance because you were swaddled in your own self-pity. What better way to bring yourself down again? Watch random couples fall in love. Watch it pull them together and break apart in painstaking ways. Love has always been such a contradicting thing.

When Minho called your name, you glanced up with half-droopy eyes. Sure you were dreaming, you mumbled his name. “Go away. I’m so mad at you, I don’t want to talk to you.”

“Why are you mad at me?”

“Because you’ve been distant and ignoring me.” Your bottom lip trembled. “It really hurts my feelings to watch you become so closed off. It’s like you don’t love me anymore.”

“Is that what you think?”

“So I’ve been trying to ignore you,” you continued, “because I can do that, too. I can ignore you and maybe you’ll see how much it hurts me. I can’t even recognize you anymore. What are we?”

You jerked upright, letting the tears fall down your cheeks. “I love you, you know? I love you and you’re making me feel like I don’t exist.” A sweater sleeve wiped across your nose. “So who is it? Who is the lucky new person that stole your heart?”

“You are such an idiot.”

“An idiot?” You wailed. “You broke my heart! It’s like you hate me now! I don’t even know what I-” Your words caught in your throat and a pathetic whimper came out.

He walked over to you and gently grabbed your hand. “Hey, I didn’t mean it. You know I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry, okay? I’ve been nervous and I guess I’ve done this the wrong way.”

“Nervous to break up with me?”

His head shook and he smiled. “I can’t break up with the love of my life.” He reached up, gently brushing your hair back. “You look like a splotchy clown when you cry.”

Your bottom lip trembled. He grabbed your other hand and squeezed, trying to hold onto you. “I’m not breaking up with you.”

“Then why do you keep acting like it? Stop dancing around the question and tell me. Trust me, I can handle it.”

“I…” He trailed off and sighed. “Just stay here for a moment, will you? I’ll show you instead of telling you. Just stay here and I’ll be right back.”

“Promise?”

He nodded and stood up. “Give me a minute and I’ll be back.” He spun around and disappeared.

You wiped at your eyes and blinked rapidly. Murmuring voices came from the television until you reached over and turned it off. When footsteps reappeared, you looked up. Minho approached you with a small box in his hand.

“What is that?”

He sank back down between your legs, letting his elbows rest on your thighs. “I’m sorry I haven’t been a good boyfriend lately. I’ve been struggling to keep this a secret. Every time I look at you, you make me want to blurt it out loud.”

You raised an eyebrow, unsure of what he meant. He lifted up the small black box. About the size of his palm, he reached down and tugged the box open. To your surprise, a ring sat pressed between two velvet flaps. Your eyes widened and you gasped, it jerked you right awake.

“Wait, what?”

“I was trying to figure out how to do it. I wanted to propose to you properly. I’ve been thinking about it for a while and I know you mentioned you wanted to get married. You’ve never exactly told me how you wanted to be proposed to. I didn’t want to ruin the surprise, but…”

“This entire time, I thought you hated me. I should deck you for making me feel worthless. Is this my birth stone?”

“Yeah. It’s pretty, isn’t it? Almost as pretty as you. Do you want to try it on?”

You nodded and let him grab your hand. He popped the ring onto your left ring finger. As you observed the glimmering oval stone, he grabbed your other hand. “How does it feel?”

“Perfect.” You didn’t take your eyes off of it. Instead, you lifted your hand, letting it catch the sunlight slipping through the window. “Why didn’t you bring this up from the start?”

“You like surprises and I only get to propose to you once. I love you so much, but I was so nervous about this. I’ve been restless. Every time I look at you, I want to gush right then and there. You make me feel like a little kid with a huge crush.”

Your bottom lip wobbled again and his face fell. “Hey, hey, please don’t cry. I’m sorry, okay? I won’t do it again. I’ll take the ring back and plan something grand. Tomorrow, I can-”

“No.”

“What?”

“Yes.”

“Excuse me?”

“Can you hear? I said yes, you loser. This implies we’re getting married. Look at it!” You shifted your hand again, letting the reflection sparkle. “It’s gorgeous.”

“But-”

“Do you want to marry me, or not?”

“What? Of course, I do!” His hands dug into your thighs desperately. “Yes, absolutely. I want to see you walk down the aisle and everything. The whole nine-yards.”

“Then yes. Let’s get married. What are we waiting for?” You tried to stand up. “Let’s go to the courthouse now.”

“WHAT?”

“You heard me. Come on,” you shifted again. “No take-backs. You wanna marry me soooo bad. You’re down so bad, you’re a simp.”

His face went blank and he blinked. “I suppose I deserve that for being distant.”

“You deserve to shine my shoes until next year.”

“Hey!”

But I’ll be nice and say you can make it up to me by doing the dishes for the next month. You know how I feel about the dishes.”

“Only if you cook for the next month.”

“Ha!” You reached out, playfully slapping his chest. “I knew it! You love my cooking!”

“You can’t poison me if we’re engaged.”

“But it still means I can kick your ass any time of day.”

“Kiss it, you brat.”

You stuck your tongue out. He reached up and pinched it between his fingers, causing you to freeze. Your cheeks went bright red and your eyes met his.

“Fine. You can keep the ring, but we’re planning an actual wedding. We’re not rushing the wedding. We’re going to communicate and talk to one another. Do you understand me?”

You timidly nodded and he let go of your tongue. You pulled back, wiping your face with your sleeve. “Wow, that was um…”

“Hot?” He guessed.

“Gross, actually. Now you’ve got my tongue germs. How does that feel?”

He reached up and wiped his fingers against your bare thigh, causing you to squeal. “You really love pressing my buttons, don’t you? Keep pressing them and see how far that attitude gets you.”

A grin lit up your face and he pulled away. “Don’t even start.” You grabbed his hand before he could get far. He groaned and tipped his head back. “What more do you want from me? I said I was sorry.”

“I want a proper kiss.”

“Oh, that I can do.” He jerked forward, grabbing the front of your shirt. He pulled you back to his face. “Just remember who’s in charge here.”

You reached up, flicking his nose playfully. “Who has a ring on their finger and who doesn’t?”

“You brat.”

“Jackass.”

“Dipshit.”

“Bastard.”

He opened his mouth, but you cut him off with your lips against his. Heated and flushed, you chased the kind of kiss you’d been missing out on. Desperate and hungry, you clutched the front of his shirt and pressed him closer to your body.

You wanted it to last forever, but he pulled away after a few seconds. You whined his name in misery. “Easy there, brat. You’re kissing me so much, you’re forgetting to breathe. Take a deep breath before you end up dying from lack of oxygen.”

“What a beautiful way to die.”

“Who’s the simp now?”

“Minho, shut the fuck up and kiss me again.”

Before he did, his hand curled around yours and the cool ring brushed against his fingers. As your lips met again, he took pleasure in knowing you were his. His and his alone.

Even if you were a brat, he loved you just the same as he always had; the same as he forever would.

| ♡.﹀﹀﹀﹀.♡ | ♡.﹀﹀﹀﹀.♡ | ♡.﹀﹀﹀﹀.♡ |

Taglist: @lia-linny @seungnishi @stellasays45 @emilyywhyy @rockstarkkami @flightlessackerman @inlovewithstraykids @velvetmoonlght @chrizrizz @ari-hwanggg @m-325 @justcallmewhatyoulike

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#stray kids #stray kids fanfic #stray kids drabbles #skz fanfic #skz imagines #skz scenarios #lee know #lee minho #lee know fanfic #lee know x reader #lee know x you #lee know x y/n #lee know angst #lee minho angst

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pilgrimjim · 2 years ago

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"Stir up your power!"

When we pray "Stir up your power" on the 3rd Sunday of Advent, what are we asking? And what are we risking?

Mattia Preti, Saint Nicholas of Bari (1653) Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us; and, because we are sorely hindered by our sins, let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us … The Collect-Prayer for the 3rd Sunday of Advent is one of the most exciting petitions in the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer. I mean that literally, because the Latin term…

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#Advent #Annie Dillard #Book of Common Prayer #Christ #Collects for Advent #Malachi 3:2 #Neil Young #Prepare the way of the Lord #Stir up Sunday #Stir up your power #Third Sunday of Advent #Who can abide the day of God&039;s coming?#Woke

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murderousink23 · 2 years ago

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11/26/2023 is Sunday of the Dead ⚰🇩🇪, National Milk Day 🥛🇮🇳, Constitution Day 🇮🇳, Mother's Day 🇷🇺, National Cake Day 🎂🇺🇲, Stir-up Sunday 🇬🇧

#sunday of the dead #national milk day #constitution day #mother's day #national cake day #stir-up sunday

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push-the-heartbrake · 3 months ago

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𝘼𝙣𝙠𝙡𝙚𝙨 // 𝙎.𝙍

𝘗𝘶𝘭𝘭 𝘮𝘦 𝘣𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘬𝘭𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘥𝘨𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘥, 𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘮𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘥𝘰 𝘪𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘥𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘮𝘴. 𝘐’𝘮 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘨𝘰𝘯𝘯𝘢 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘱 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦, 𝘣𝘢𝘣𝘺.

Third instalment | Series masterlist

Summary: “Look at the poor boy, he’s got the unscratchable itch.” — or the one where you're overwhelmed and Spencer discovers he's an absolute munch.

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Fem! Reader (she/her)

Word count: 13.3k

Warnings: 18+ Minors DNI♡ Virgin!Spencer is back and hornier than ever. Cums in his pants, again. Oral and fingering (fem! receiving). Slight discussion about reader having mommy issues and her past (read the prior parts and it'll make sense).

A/N: It took me forever but here's the third part to the 'Home For You' Universe! English is not my first language and this is not yet fully proof read! Please tell me what you think and if you have ideas or thoughts about the future of these two lovebirds. ♡

It had been raining when you woke up.

The soft, whispery kind. The kind that worked as a lullaby. The kind that made the whole city feel like it had collectively decided to sleep in.

The only reason you’d even stirred was because Spencer had moved—just enough to pull the blanket up over your bare shoulders sometime around 8 a.m. He hadn’t been fully awake either, just instinctively attuned to your comfort. You’d watched him through slitted eyes as he settled again, his profile soft in the dull morning light.

Neither of you had said a word.

Instead, you’d nestled closer, one leg tangled between his, your face tucked into the crook of his neck. He’d made a little noise—one he always seemed to make when you burrowed in—a little half-asleep sigh out of pure contentment.

And that’s how most of the day had gone.

The rain hadn’t let up, and neither had you. No alarms. No responsibilities. Just a tangle of sheets, long-winded conversations about nothing, and the kind of kisses that made no sound from how gentle they were.

By the time afternoon rolled around, you’d only gotten out of bed three times—once to use the bathroom and get dressed, once for a late breakfast, and once more for another bathroom trip. Spencer had gotten up four times, the extra one to grab the Sunday newspaper from his mailbox.

You were draped across him like a sleepy cat, the sheets twisted around your legs, your chin resting on his chest. His fingers traced mindless patterns on your back, barely there, a touch just shy of tickling.

“Molecules move randomly, right?” you murmured suddenly, voice low from not having spoken in a while.

The glow of a lamp flickered against the spines of his current bedside reads, casting their titles in blurry shadows. One book was yours, obnoxiously pink, wedged between dense academic texts like it belonged there. Like you belonged there. Spencer thought so, anyway. You watched his eyes linger on it for a second before he looked back at you, the barest hint of a smile on his lips. You infiltrated more of his life and home each day that passed. Even if it was as simple as an extra toothbrush on the sink or your Converse placed next to his in the entryway.

“Yes, they do,” he answered softly. “Is there something on your mind?”

You shrugged, shifting so that your cheek lay flat against him now, ear to his heartbeat. “Just something stupid a school class discussed when they visited the library.”

He didn’t press you. Just waited for you to say something. Like he always did.

You absentmindedly rubbed your leg against his, your toes brushing against his calf as you talked. “There was a kid—one of those annoying twelve-year-old dweebs with a Justin Bieber haircut and permanent marinara sauce in the corners of his mouth—you know the type?”

Spencer laughed, nodding in agreement.

“And he tried to scare one of the girls by saying that since they move randomly, oxygen molecules could spontaneously assimilate in a singular spot in a room, suffocating anyone outside of it.”

His brow lifted, bemused. “Were you the girl he tried to scare?”

“No, no,” you defended, grinning,“I just thought you could maybe rationalize it for me.”

Spencer wanted to reach out and grab you. Bite you, even.

Because he’d never seen anything as beautiful as you, lying there on his chest, curiosity burning in your eyes, waiting for him to ramble on about something that you knew got the gears in his brain turning.

He’d thought you were pretty since the first time he saw you at the checkout counter at the library. But it had been fleeting, simply registering another beautiful human in passing.

It was different now. So very different. Because he knew you, and he could read your behavior, your quirks and traits. The way your mind worked. The strange little questions and facts you collected—like air molecules grouping together to suffocate you.

He knew that you had different laughs for different situations. He cherished them all and cataloged them like rare editions.

1. The little snorts that would come out of your nose when he said something silly, usually a pun that bordered on criminally bad.

2. The high-pitched giggles that wriggled out when his fingers skimmed over your sides, late at night when you were half-straddling him in bed and desperately trying not to wake the neighbors, making the giggles even more squeaky-sounding.

3. The loud, from-the-stomach kind of laughter—the kind you couldn’t hold back even if you tried—just because something was so genuinely funny. Like when he accidentally turned all his white shirts a soft pink thanks to a rogue red sock, or when he tried to surprise you with breakfast in bed but ended up spilling orange juice all over the bedroom floor.

You let out one of the first snorts now as he explained, nose scrunching up adorably. Spencer was fairly certain you didn’t even notice you did it.

“It is possible, though,” he said, tone casual, trying not to sound too eager. “In theory at least. In a system of random motion, any arrangement of particles is technically possible, including extremely unlikely ones.”

You squinted up at him, suspicious. “So… I could suffocate?”

“You can calculate the number of oxygen molecules and then find out the statistical probability, but I’m assuming you don’t really want to learn that?” Spencer suggested, his hand moving to his hair, shoving curls off his forehead.

You found his hand as it landed back down on the bed, lifting it to lay next to you on his chest, your fingers intertwining with his own.

You shook your head, and he felt your hair rustle, telling him that his assumption was right. “No… I just want to sleep at night without having nightmares about suffocating.”

He gently squeezed your hand, looking down at you reassuringly. “We’re talking about hundreds of septillions of molecules that would have to randomly gather together.”

Spencer knew you had a tough time sleeping already. Falling asleep wasn’t the issue; instead it was staying asleep. You would fall asleep at a reasonable hour (for someone who mostly worked late or even night shifts), but then after a while, you’d wake up and just lay there. You didn’t need the added stress of silly nightmares, but he sometimes got the feeling they already haunted you.

“So the chance is, like, microscopically small?”

“A septillion is a quadrillion billions.”

You stared at him for a beat, eyes slightly wide as you tried to comprehend the number. You weren’t even sure what a quadrillion was. Occasionally you got the zeros confused even at a billion. The number was huge, at least. And that was comforting.

Spencer watched as you thought about it, wanting to take a picture of your puzzled expression. “You’re more likely to shuffle a deck of cards and get them in a perfect order millions of times in a row than for all oxygen to group in one spot.”

You huffed out a little laugh before you mumbled, “I can’t even shuffle a deck of cards.”

“That I can teach you. Much easier than Avogadro’s number.”

“Avocado who?”

“Amedeo Avogadro,” he corrected, laughing out loud. “Italian physicist. He’s the namesake for the constant used to calculate the number of particles in one mole.”

With a slight head shake and a scrunch of your nose, you declared that math and physics weren’t something for you. “I’d rather learn how to shuffle cards and play strip poker with you.”

You pressed a kiss to his neck before he even had a chance to react, feeling his pulse jump beneath your lips.

Spencer was blushing—because of course he was. You always knew when you got to him. When your dirty words made his IQ split in half. You’d said it was one of your favorite things—the stupid and surprised look on his face whenever it happened. Spencer was on board with agreeing, even if the blush made his cheeks hurt.

Your lips brushed the edge of his jaw, and he let out a small, stunned huff. His hand instinctively rubbed your shoulder, your knitted cardigan slipping down from the motion, exposing the strap of your tank top—and the soft, maddening curve of your cleavage beneath it.

One (equally horrifying and fascinating) thing that Spencer had discovered about himself since being with you was that he was a boob guy. He hated to admit it—that something so primitively sexual appealed to him. But he was just a man at the end of the day.

Since seeing and touching them for the first time, he’d become obsessed.

Maybe it was the fact that you’d sometimes let him sleep on your chest, and he could unabashedly feel them as he nuzzled closer. Maybe it was the fact that your skin was impossibly soft and that your breast were somehow the softest part, squeezable and malleable, cupped in the palms of his hands. Maybe it was the way they bounced when you were sat in his lap, your hips grinding down onto his clothed cock.

Maybe that was it.

He was a boob guy. And not afraid to let his eyes linger as your cardigan fell down and your top got exposed as you pressed into the side of him.

Your tank tops were his undoing. It was simply sadistic—the way that whatever clothing brand had designed most of the tops you wore. Thin and soft to the material, a lace trim along the square neckline, and, worst of all, a little silk bow placed right in the middle. It was an evil trick, Spencer was sure of it, to make him stare down the valley of your tits.

Which he did. A lot.

He wasn’t sure if you’d noticed his little fixation, but you sure didn’t do anything to stop him from looking, almost on purpose making the tank top slide down a little as you lay on top of him, the cups of your bra now peeking out.

The ample skin moved as you pushed yourself against him, your breasts bubbling out of their confinement. Perfectly biteable bubbles. Spencer imagined putting his fingertip to the swell, just to watch the skin jiggle.

Oh Lord. This was the kind of greed they warned about in the Bible.

Despite all of this—despite Spencer staring you down like he wanted to eat you alive—you hadn’t had sex. Not yet. Spencer told himself it was a “yet.” Clung to that word like a little life raft. But he wasn’t sure how true it was.

Because you had a tendency to push him away.

It wasn’t necessarily on purpose, which Spencer had noticed. You made out a lot, kissed him whenever you got the chance, usually for hours on end. Like horny teenagers, he assumed. It was routine at this point—to watch a movie, or read together, maybe have a lazy conversation in bed after a long day—and then by the end of it, you’d end up in his lap, hands in his hair and tongue down his throat.

Spencer had gotten braver with how he dared to touch you, not always keeping his hand stiffly glued to his side. He loved to feel your skin between his fingers, whether it was your plush thighs or your soft waist. Boobs too, of course.

If he was capable of keeping it together, he’d wait for some time alone to sort himself out in the bathroom afterwards. But on more occasions than one (five times and counting), you’d made him bust in his pants. And no matter how many times you said it was the hottest thing ever, Spencer still couldn’t help but feel embarrassed to the point of no return.

And you… He’d only made you finish once. That first time on your couch on Valentine’s Day—when he’d rubbed your soaking clit with his fingers until you collapsed in his embrace. Only touched, not tasted, not penetrated.

Spencer couldn’t help but want more. And it wasn’t because of his lack of experience or lack of willingness that it hadn’t happened again.

You simply just didn’t let him close enough to even try. You didn’t show any signs of wanting him to help you out, and he was too scared to ask.

Can I go down on you? or Do you want me to finger you? were not questions that Spencer had in his vocabulary. Although he thought about saying them more than what was probably healthy. He didn’t know if it was fear from your side, or guilt, or something darker, and he wasn’t going to push.

You would only smile like you’d accomplished what you wanted when he was a panting and blushing mess with a spreading stain on his trousers, and then you’d continue on with your evening like nothing was different.

And you smiled in the same way now when you followed his eyesight straight to your cleavage.

“Any plans for next week?” you asked, almost nonchalantly.

“We’re consulting in California.” Spencer swallowed, forcing himself to stare at the ceiling. “Cold case that’s been reopened, something from when Rossi started out.”

You hummed and nuzzled just a little closer, your nose brushing the edge of his shirt. If he hadn’t been wearing one, your lips would’ve been right over his heart. The little sound made his stomach flip, which was ridiculous because you did things like this all the time. Making sounds, that is. The very human thing that was noisemaking.

“How long?”

“Flying out tomorrow morning, then we’ll see. Maybe a week?”

A week. Seven days. Possibly more. He really should be used to this by now, but the idea of not seeing you for that long made something inside him wilt.

You exhaled through your nose—soft, but unmistakably disappointed—and your fingers loosened from his hand. They disappeared beneath the blanket instead, toying with the hem of his worn-out t-shirt. It had the Caltech logo on it and was slightly too tight on him. You’d jokingly called it a crop top once, and Spencer thought about tossing it out until you said it was sexy. A personal milestone since it was the first time he’d ever been called that.

“What about you?” he asked, voice low. “Do you have anything planned while I’m gone?”

Now, your fingers brushed against the bare skin of his stomach. Just a featherlight touch. He tensed—he always tensed—but not out of discomfort. No, it was the opposite. It was the unbearable pleasure of being seen and wanted by you, and the helplessness of not knowing what to do with that feeling.

“Work. Sleep. Work some more,” you said, stretching your legs with a lazy yawn. “Help Edith set up her new TV. Maybe catch up with friends. Oh—and uh… lunch with my mother on Thursday.”

Spencer blinked, tilting his head. “She’s in town?”

“She technically lives here,” you said, pushing yourself up onto one elbow. “Unless she sold the place and moved full-time to Baltimore with her new man without telling me.”

He chuckled softly, but there was a strange ache creeping in at the edges of his laugh. You hadn’t let him meet her yet. You hadn’t let him meet anyone yet.

And he couldn’t figure out why.

He sometimes worried he had yet to meet the real you even.

You fit in perfectly when he introduced you to the team. Socially adaptable was what Emily had called you, like she could somewhat see through that you were nervous and uncomfortable, but still doing your best to be likable. And they did like you, a lot, it seemed. Soon you’d be off on girls’ nights with them, leaving Spencer behind. He knew it.

You sat up suddenly, rubbing your eyes with the heels of your hands. Spencer looked at you like you’d gone mad. Until you pointed at the alarm clock on his bedside table and he read the time.

“3 o’clock,” you simply said. “I have to get to my place and get ready for work.”

“Why?”

The question left Spencer like an exhale. He could already feel a coldness spread in his body from where your contact was now missing. You’d made him hate the laws of time. Every time he was alone with you, he dreaded the moment you’d be apart. And every time you were apart, he counted the hours until he would next see you.

You laughed, turning to look at him with a raised brow. “You’re asking why I have to work?”

“No, I mean—” he floundered, “Why this late?”

“Because the library is open at night?” you teased. “Where else would geeks like you spend their time?”

“But there have to be other people available for the late shifts as well.”

“I got hired because I like working nights,” you said, standing and stretching, tugging your cardigan back over your shoulders. “The qualified librarians signed up for nine-to-fives. They’ve got spouses and kids waiting for them.”

“You’ve got me,” he said, almost too quickly.

You paused mid-movement, glancing back over your shoulder at him. “Sometimes,” you said quietly. “Other times, you’re on the opposite side of the country.”

He winced. He didn’t mean to guilt you. That wasn’t fair. But you weren’t wrong.

Spencer stayed in his spot as you started to move around his bedroom, padding across the floor to his dresser where your bag and clothes were. He only shifted slightly, propping himself up on one elbow to be able to keep his eyes on you.

The pajama pants you were wearing slipped off in one easy movement, exchanged for a pair of dark-wash jeans. You didn’t seem to care that he was watching, which somehow made it worse. That he could spot the see-through material of your underwear as you tugged the denim over your hips—doing that awkward (yet attractive) little jumping motion to get them on—made him wonder all over again about why you didn’t let him close.

Since this didn’t seem to bother you, that is.

Were you waiting for him to make a move?

He hated that his mind did that. He hated that he still didn’t know and that he was too scared to ask.

“And I have picked up earlier shifts when I know you’re going to be in town. I’ve done it so much that Elizabeth complained,” you continued, arguing your case even though you had already won.

You grabbed your bag, slinging it over your shoulder, as you headed back to the bed to sit down to put on socks. Little white socks with lace trims. No one would see them, but he knew the mere fact of wearing them made you happy—how the lace peeked out from the top of your shoes.

“Is Elizabeth the scary one with the owl necklace?” Spencer questioned, turning to you now that you were next to him.

“Mhm,” you hummed.

You smiled faintly and turned to pick something up from your bag. A tangle of headphones. An essential for you together with your iPod. You couldn’t go on a walk without them, needing the distraction of music blasting.

Spencer watched as you struggled to untangle them, wordlessly reaching out to do it for you. Not because he thought you were incapable of doing it yourself, but because you’d asked him for help multiple times before and seemed to like the gesture of him helping you.

He was more efficient with his fingers, anyway.

“Hey,” you said, glancing down at him, “why don’t you enjoy being alone for the evening? Watch some foreign movie without having to translate it to me.”

“I was going to suggest Bergman’s Autumn Sonata,” he murmured, handing you the untangled headphones.

Spencer watched your mouth press into a thin line, eyes flickering just slightly away from him. He didn’t understand why he mentioned the damn movie—like it would miraculously stop you from having work to do? No, it was just stupid.

He knew you loved Bergman. You talked about his work with the same kind of reverence he had for Russian literature. But you hadn’t seen Autumn Sonata. He hadn’t asked why. Not yet. But he made a mental note of it, filing it away in the ever-growing, completely normal, and definitely not obsessive folder of things about you that fascinated him.

Your fingers tightened around the headphone cord, twirling it between them as you quietly said, “I haven’t seen that one. And it’s got subtitles.”

“I know, that’s why I wanted us to see it together.”

You shook your head a little. “No, you can watch it and tell me what you think.”

“You say that like you don’t already know that you’ll love it.”

“…There’s a reason I haven’t seen that one, Spence.”

His lips parted, a question already forming—but you kissed him before he could speak. It was soft but lingering, and he felt your fingers curl slightly against the back of his neck. His brain short-circuited because kissing was still something he was getting used to. He was very aware of every single movement, every shift of pressure, every tilt of your head. Was he doing it right? Was he too stiff? Should he be—oh, your tongue—

And then you pulled away, smiling at his dazed expression.

“Will you call me before the flight tomorrow?” you asked, your voice quieter now, stripped of any teasing edge.

You simply wanted to hear from him. Like that wasn’t a totally insane thing to say. He couldn’t believe you expected him to behave normally in front of you. Or maybe you didn’t expect it, but it would get old quite quickly if he verbally, as well as mentally, freaked out every time you showed him affection—a certain need for him that you actually had and he still couldn’t grasp.

But still—

“Of course,” he said, embarrassingly quick.

You smiled, lingering just long enough to memorize the way he felt beneath you, before you straightened up again.

“Be safe. Have fun,” Spencer said, sitting up after you, closing the space you’d created.

“Fun? At work?” You raised an eyebrow.

“I have fun at the library all the time,” he teased, so close that you felt his lips against yours.

“Shut up.” You laughed into the kiss he pulled you back into, fingers curling into his hair, warmth spreading through his chest.

Seconds later you were gone. The door clicked softly shut behind you. The sound echoed in the quiet apartment like a pin dropped.

Spencer stared at the space where you’d been, his hands still half-curled, like he was holding onto the shape of you in the air. His shirt smelled like your skin—soft and floral, and a little like the soap he had in his shower. The sheets were still warm where you’d laid, rumpled and twisted, half falling off the bed.

He let himself collapse back against the mattress with a sigh, one arm thrown over his eyes. Your absence was growing inside of him, starting from his chest and spidering out like a nervous system drawn in light. A slow, luminous burn.

And he was terrified—utterly terrified—that this feeling consumed him far more than it ever would you.

⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚ ⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚ ⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚ ⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚

The case in California was… a weird one, and not the usual type of weird. Because that was a measurable thing for the team. A normal amount of weird, an abnormal amount of weird, and then thirdly—the weird kind they’d never encountered before.

This was the third kind. Not because of blood, death, and gore. It was stranger than that. Stranger because it was stale.

A forgotten cold case dumped on their laps like an aging puzzle missing half the pieces. Files yellowed with time, reports handwritten in blue ink fading under the fluorescent lights. Evidence stuffed in mismatched cardboard boxes stacked haphazardly in a converted conference room at the local PD—each one covered in decades worth of dust.

If this was one of those TV series about agents solving crimes and catching killers in the act, this would be the episode where everyone unanimously decided to stop watching because the show wasn’t worth it anymore.

No progress was being made. At all.

It was partly because the old detective was territorial and proud—only really letting in the help from Rossi—and partly because the leads went nowhere anyway.

They were most likely dealing with a copycat. It was one singular murder that had a slight connection to a series of murders committed in the eighties. The connection was: same small town in California that didn’t see many murders and the same M.O. used. Asphyxiation with a barbed wire.

They hadn’t had any reasonable suspects in the eighties, and the pool of people to look into now was even smaller. Or way too big, depending on how you looked at it. People handling barbed wire in a small farming town was a large amount.

When Thursday rolled around, they’d spent four days with this going-nowhere thing. Stuck in the conference room with their boxes, pestering old witnesses and relatives by bringing up bad memories, and at the M.E., looking at the new corpse for too long.

Maybe they would have to give up.

It was far more usual than what Spencer wanted to admit, but they couldn’t spend forever on one case when they had other ones waiting.

Rossi had gone with the detective to look at the crime scene once more. Hotch was outside of the conference room, possibly speaking with Strauss by the strained look on his face. Derek and JJ had gone on a coffee run, and Spencer and Emily were left in the conference room.

He wasn’t sure if Emily was even awake—sat quiet and still in a corner with her file covering her face for over half an hour.

Spencer had gone from standing to sitting to standing again.

He flipped open yet another file, scanning the interview transcript, but his eyes weren’t really absorbing it. Not fully. Not when his phone was sitting face-up on the table beside him, untouched since breakfast. The screen annoyingly black and the sound eerily silent.

You were supposed to have called by now.

Lunch with your mother couldn’t be a simple thing—he knew that much. He’d heard the tone in your voice whenever you mentioned her. A tightness that suggested years of subtle warfare and passive aggressiveness layered under polite smiles. Still, even the most drawn-out emotional lunches didn’t usually last past two o’clock. Unless things had gone wrong, and you were currently trapped in some kind of emotional gladiator battle over a Caesar salad.

Spencer checked his watch. 2:14 p.m.

You were never late without saying something. Not unless something had gone wrong. Which meant something had to have gone wrong.

The door creaked open, and he looked up automatically. Derek stepped in, carrying coffee and a half-eaten bagel. JJ trailed behind him, flipping through a folder.

Derek clocked Spencer’s expression immediately. “Look at the poor boy,” he muttered to JJ. “He’s got the unscratchable itch.”

Spencer froze mid-step. He’d been pacing, subconsciously. He whirled around. “I’m not in love with her.”

Derek smirked, taking a seat in his chair, leaning back. The exact kind of smirk that let Spencer know he had walked into a trap. “I wasn’t talking about love, pretty boy. But it’s very telling that you think I was.”

Spencer opened his mouth, then promptly closed it. His face burned. Heat crawled up his neck and pooled somewhere just under his collarbone.

JJ gave him a soft, knowing look. “Then what’s wrong, Spencer?”

He inhaled sharply. “She’s not answering her phone.”

There. Said out loud, it sounded ridiculous. But now he was committed. He pressed on, pacing again.

“She said she would call me after she had lunch with her mother, and it’s now 2:16 p.m. That’s a reasonable time for lunch to be over, right? I mean, unless they got a twelve-course tasting menu at a Michelin-starred restaurant, in which case I would understand the delay, but they didn’t! Because they go to the same café every time, and it’s not a place that serves twelve-course meals, unless you count uncomfortable conversations as a course, which, in that case, I’d argue that—”

JJ cut in gently, “Maybe they just lost track of time? Had a lot to talk about?”

“But she doesn’t like her mother. Or maybe she does. It’s complicated—”

Emily, who’d been eavesdropping at the far end of the room, didn’t even glance up from her file as she interrupted, “No girl likes their mother.”

Spencer stopped mid-ramble. “That’s not true. I mean, statistically—”

Emily held up a finger, ticking off points as she spoke. “They might love their mothers. Unconditionally, even. But like? Like requires compatibility. And most mothers either carry a sadness that their daughters became something they never did, or they carry disappointment that their daughters became less than they expected.”

Spencer was momentarily thrown. He had a degree in psychology. He had read hundreds of case studies on maternal relationships. And yet, somehow, Emily Prentiss casually dropping this into the conversation like it was an immutable law of the universe had his brain short-circuiting.

The conference room went silent. A metaphorical tumbleweed rolled by.

Spencer stared.

JJ blinked. “Jesus, Emily.”

Emily took a sip of her coffee, utterly unbothered. “What? It’s not rocket science. It’s like if the Electra complex was actually useful and not just about male-centered attention. There’s a rivalry between mothers and daughters over everything.”

Spencer opened his mouth. Then closed it again.

“But,” he managed after a moment, “that still doesn’t explain why she won’t answer her phone.”

JJ muttered under her breath, “Who would’ve guessed boy genius’s kryptonite would be love?”

“I already said I’m not—”

“Reid, take a breather,” Hotch’s voice cut in from the doorway, sharp as ever. “The rest of you, back to work. We need someone to go to the crime scene again. ”

Spencer huffed, reluctantly collapsing into his seat. He stared down at his phone, holding it between both hands like it might sprout legs and run off. His knee bounced under the table. He tried to focus—on witness statements, on timeline inconsistencies, anything—but his mind kept looping back to one thing:

You hadn’t called.

Logically, he knew there were perfectly rational explanations for why you hadn’t called. But his gut—which had been trained by years of profiling and reinforced by knowing you—was telling him something wasn’t right.

He hadn’t ever thought of it like that, the simplicity in the words. How like could be stronger than love—because you choose what you like, and you are somewhat predestined to love. At least when it came to family.

Gathering their things, Spencer and Derek got ready to leave the conference room and join Rossi at the crime scene.

He heard Derek mutter something under his breath about how they possibly couldn’t gather any more information from looking at the same bloody barn again. Spencer wasn’t unusually cynical, but with this case, it was growing on him like moss.

At 2:21 p.m. his phone rang. A quick beeping tone, signaling a text message. It wasn’t often he received those. Everyone stopped in their tracks when they heard it.

Spencer’s eyes hesitantly scanned the screen.

He was right; it was a text. A short one too.

That was it? No Sorry, I forgot; no Lunch was a nightmare, please send a SWAT team, just a quick, impersonal abbreviation. Spencer squinted at the letters, blurring together. He still wasn’t entirely confident about texting as a method of communication. He had once typed out ’See you later’in a message, and somehow autocorrect had changed it to ’Seal utters’. He did not trust this medium, nor his ability to decipher abbreviations.

Across the table, Derek raised an eyebrow. His voice was lower now, as if he suspected Hotch to still be in the hallway listening. “So… did she answer?”

“No, but she sent a text,” Spencer muttered, “Got called in to work, ttyl.”

“Talk to you later,” JJ translated. “See? It wasn’t something worth getting upset over.”

Spencer slumped, staring at the message like it personally offended him. You weren’t supposed to work until 9 tonight. You had a night shift. You couldn’t possibly work from 2 p.m. all through the night. You were… lying.

“I still feel like something’s wrong,” he said under his breath as he put his phone in his pocket. Biting his lip, forcing him to not think of why you were lying. He had to focus on other things now. Such as… a bloody barn.

Emily, yet again, didn’t look up from her notes as she spoke, “Well, the faster that big brain of yours helps us solve this case, the faster you’ll find out if you’re right.”

Spencer sighed. She wasn’t wrong. But that didn’t mean he could stop worrying.

. . . . . .

The bloody barn didn’t tell them anything new. As evening fell over the little town, it had been decided that they were going home. The old murders would remain cold and the new case would be handled by the local police. It could probably lead to something. It just wasn’t enough to grant them being there for longer.

Spencer was torn inside if it was the right or wrong thing to do. But there would always be another case, always be another murder. They couldn’t get them all.

The team boarded the jet in silence. None of them had anything left to say.

On the plane ride home, Spencer did something he maybe shouldn’t have done. Or maybe this was exactly what you had wanted. He borrowed Emily’s laptop and downloaded Autumn Sonata, watching it all in one sweep, not taking his eyes off the screen for even a second. Emily had looked at him with worry—calling it ’Mommy issues, the movie’.

And that was what it was. Autumn Sonata unfolded like a violin string pulled taut over the little laptop screen. A mother and daughter dissecting decades of buried wounds in soft lighting and whispered monologues. It was 93 minutes of waiting for a rubber band to snap—either breaking clean or lashing back hard enough to scar.

“The mother’s injuries are to be handed down to the daughter. The mother’s failures are to be paid for by the daughter. The mother’s unhappiness is to be the daughter’s unhappiness—it’s as if the umbilical cord had never been cut.”

When it ended, Spencer sat very still, the cabin quiet except for the low hum of the engines. He understood why you hadn’t called.

⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚ ⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚ ⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚ ⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚

It hadn’t stopped raining for almost a week.

From the Sunday morning Spencer left for California to this very moment—early Friday at six in the morning, with your shoes squelching every other step and the sky still weeping as if the clouds had lost the will to hold anything back.

You had lost that will too.

You usually liked rain. Found it calming. Romantic, even. But right now? Your socks were soaked through your Converse, the sleeves of your coat clung cold and damp against your arms, and your jeans had turned several shades darker than when you'd left the apartment last night. Rain was not romantic. Rain was not poetic. Rain was miserable.

You looked like something dragged from a pond. Not a lot of people were awake to see you in this state, which was a saving grace of working the graveyard shift. That, and the fact that most of your mascara had been rubbed off by staying awake at the checkout desk all night, so you didn’t have to worry about looking like a melting member of the band KISS. Everything else was still miserable, though.

You climbed the stairs, keys jangling, counting each tired breath. All you wanted was to crawl into bed, cocoon yourself in something dry, and sleep until the world stopped being soggy.

It was all you had wanted to do since 2 p.m. yesterday—when you had gotten home from lunch with your mother, lied to Spencer about why you hadn’t called, and then fallen asleep until your night shift.

You had wanted to call in sick. But you weren’t sick. Just tired.

So you suffered through it. Helping a few stressed students, organizing the current popular books, and drinking so much tea your taste buds still felt burned.

But now, you were seconds from falling asleep on your welcome mat, even just seeing it outside your front door. A little bristly thing saying ’come back with a warrant’ in Pinterest-esque cursive writing. You had told yourself it was funny when you bought it.

However, the moment you unlocked the door and stepped inside, you stopped dead in your tracks, your cocoon of blankets having to wait just a little longer.

Because there was a light on.

The vintage Tiffany lamp on your hallway table, seeping light through its stained glass. You definitely hadn’t left it on before leaving yesterday.

With a quick turn of your head, you saw the shape of a man sitting on your couch. Alone there in the darkness.

“Spencer?”

He stood up quickly, startled.

“What are you—”

Your words got stuck in your throat at the sight of him. The man in front of you looked like he hadn’t slept in days. Spencer’s shoulders slumped forward, the crisp lines of his usual attire replaced with something wrinkled and weary—his sweater and tie gone, shirt half-untucked. Disheveled curls clung to his forehead. And his eyes… His eyes flicked from the floor to your face like they couldn’t decide what was safer.

“Edith let me in,” he said hurriedly, like he’d rehearsed it. “I—she had the spare key you gave her, and I just… I needed to see you.”

You placed your soaked bag by the door, the water from your coat already beginning to drop onto the floor. “You weren’t supposed to be here until tonight.”

“I understand if you don’t want me here—” he said quietly, eyes lowered, “Actually, I do not understand, not fully, because you won’t tell me anything.”

You blinked at him, shivering now that you were standing still. “How long have you been here?”

“We landed around midnight. I took a cab straight here.” His voice cracked at the edges. “I thought maybe if I saw you in person, you'd actually talk to me instead of… abbreviating everything.”

A pause.

“T-T-Y-L,” he repeated bitterly, “Is that really how we communicate now?”

You winced. “Spencer…”

He didn’t flinch exactly, but his shoulders rose—defensive, folded in. “You can throw me out headfirst if that’s what you want, but you should know that’s the opposite of what I want.”

For a moment, just a flicker, he laughed—something small and tired and helpless. But it disappeared fast. His face crumpled into something far too raw for someone trying to act composed. A dull, terrified shine behind his eyes. Like he was seconds from breaking again. Like he'd been bracing for you to become the next person to walk out on him.

You should’ve known he would catch you in your lie. He wasn’t easy to fool. It wasn’t that you had wanted to lie to him. You just hadn’t wanted to talk about…it. About anything, really. You couldn’t face yourself, let alone him. And you knew that Spencer could force it out of you by just looking at you in the right way, the walls of your façade coming crumbling down.

That was a terrifying thing.

“I’m just…” you exhaled, bringing the sleeve of your coat up to your cheek to wipe lingering raindrops away. “I’m so tired, Spencer.”

A similar little helpless laugh escaped your lips. Spencer dared to step closer to you.

“I can see that,” he said with a slight smile, just inches away.

But when his hand came forward to touch your arm, you tensed up, unthinking. It wasn’t that you had wanted to shy away. It just…happened.

Spencer stopped in his tracks, his hand suspended in the space between you, looking at you with a perplexed expression. “Why won’t you let me touch you?”

He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t even frustrated. He asked it like someone who was hurting—like someone who’d been waiting far too long to understand why they were being kept at arm’s length.

“Because I—” you faltered. The words had come so easily to the front of your mind, but saying them out loud was a different thing.

“Because I’m terrified, Spencer,” you finally whispered. “I’m terrified of being too much for you and making you uncomfortable. Because if we start, I’m scared of taking it too far. I always do.”

Spencer’s brows pulled together.

You’d had this discussion before. You thought you were too much; he didn’t realize that he was enough. An evil spiral of sorts. Maybe he’d thought you’d gotten out of it, hence the confusion. But you hadn’t. Or it had at least returned, in full force, like a hurricane sweeping by and taking everything with it.

“When are you going to realize that I will tell you if I am uncomfortable?”

The look in Spencer’s eyes was now the closest thing you’d seen to anger. It frustrated him. The walls you put up around yourself, thinking you were protecting him, hindering him from being close to you—they frustrated him. Because now he knew the reason.

And quite frankly, the reason was stupid. You both knew it.

You couldn’t hide from affection in a relationship. Because you were terrified of it leading somewhere further? That defied the entire purpose of your relationship. It was a support system, a center of gravity. It couldn’t develop if you were scared of that exact thing.

Spencer exhaled loudly, shaking his head. “You always just… assume that I’m uncomfortable. For once, let me make up my own mind. ”

“You sort of… look uncomfortable.” You twisted, arms coming up to fold over your chest.

“I think that’s just my face,” he deadpanned.

You huffed a quiet laugh—half relief, half disbelief.

“But you never make the first move,” you said softly. “You’re never the one to kiss me first. Never the one to—”

He moved.

Quick, certain, finally—he closed the last of the space between you, and before you could get another word out, you felt your back hit the door. Not hard, just enough to steal your breath. And then his mouth was on yours.

His hands braced beside your head, then slipped down, anchoring you at your waist. It wasn’t rushed or messy. Just certain. Very certain that this was what you both wanted. Needed.

Your fingers curled into his shirt, tugging him impossibly closer and not caring if you got him wet. You could taste the coffee he must’ve had hours ago. The slight salt of your own skin where the rain had dried between your lips. His breath shook when he finally pulled away just enough to speak.

“Is that better?” Spencer whispered, forehead pressed to yours.

You nodded, not trusting your voice.

“I’ve been waiting for you to tell me what you want,” he explained.

You should’ve caught on to what he was doing. For him to suddenly become all confident in matters of… love (?) was something you simply dreamt of. Maybe you needed to help him along the way, even though your stupid brain kept telling you that it would make him view you as a burden. As someone too much, too eager, too loud with feelings he hadn’t asked for.

Yet here he was… actually asking for it.

“What I want…” Your hands slid up his chest, feeling his heartbeat under your palm, ticking impossibly fast. That gave you courage. “…is for you to want me.”

“I do want you,” he said. “Painfully so.”

“I need to hear you say it,” you whispered. Then, a small smile. “Or show it. Pushing me against the wall is… a good start.”

“I believe we’ve established precedent,” he said, returning the smile.

You laughed, light but wrecked, and for a second everything felt okay again. And then you shivered. A cold, involuntary tremble you couldn’t hide. The wetness of your coat and jeans clinging to your skin returned to the forefront of your mind.

Spencer noticed it too. You couldn’t help the way your teeth chattered. He smoothed a hand gently down your arm, concern flitting through his features. “Why don’t you go get out of these wet clothes and lie on the bed for me?”

In seconds you saw the fear in his eyes, noticing what he’d actually said out loud. Intended innuendo or not. Spencer stumbled over his next words, hurried and ashamed. “If that’s okay, I mean—”

You continued to smile. An awfully content smile, like you were just waiting for him to notice that he’d done exactly what you wished for.

With a loud thud, you had shaken your coat off your shoulders, sneaking past him further down the hallway, saying a little sing-song, “Already on my way, Spence.”

You didn’t look back as you walked toward your bedroom. But you could hear him exhale—something long and full of relief.

Your bedroom was a sanctuary, always had been. Peeling off your soaked socks with your toes, you moved through the dim space, switching on the bedside lamp and the soft glow of fairy lights tracing the ceiling’s edge.

You sat down on your bed as you got there, struggling with the button of your jeans. It got even worse as you dragged the denim down your legs, the wet material sticking to your skin as your hands tried their best to get a good grip.

It wasn’t the rain slicking your hands anymore. It was a nervous sweat.

“You got here too quick,” you said as you heard his footsteps near the door. “I’m not done yet.”

Spencer lingered in the doorway, simply observing you on the bed, jeans pooling around your ankles.

“Jeans are difficult to get off when they’re wet.” You huffed out a little laughter as you pulled them off completely, tossing them to your hamper, landing on the floor. You should’ve hung them to dry immediately. But Spencer was more important.

Pantless, you realized your state of undress, reminding yourself that it was what he’d asked for. He wouldn’t be standing in the doorway if he didn’t want to see it.

You tried to decipher his expression. Soft smile, even softer eyes.

“Is that my shirt?” he quietly asked, walking into the room. His feet stopped when he was standing plainly in front of you.

You looked down at what you were wearing. Peeking out from your sweater were the edges of a pink dress shirt. One that he’d accidentally dyed pink in the wash. Spencer had wanted to throw them all out until you said that you liked the color pink. In general, but especially on him.

You could only nod at his question. There was no denying it. Looking back up, you caught a glimpse of an uncontrollable smile, where he had to fight the corners of his mouth from perking upwards too much, too noticeable.

“You wore my shirt all day? To work? To lunch with your mom?” Spencer asked.

You shrugged, lifting your rain-soaked sweater over your head, messing up your wet hair even further in the process. Spencer took it in his hands, throwing it over to where the jeans had landed.

“It smells like you,” you said, lifting the pink poplin to your nose. “Or it used to. I’m afraid it smells like me now.”

It was a comfort thing, you realized as you did it. Why you had worn it. Wanting a part of him near you, even subconsciously.

Spencer’s gaze moved slowly across your body, not greedy. Your thighs flattened out against the mattress, the skin in contrast to the rose-colored shirt. You felt his eyes on you as he took you in. He was good at watching, bad at talking—you concluded.

“Stand up?” he asked softly.

A little surprised, you obeyed, rising slowly from the edge of the bed, the mattress creaking beneath you. Spencer stepped a little closer and let his hands rest gently on your waist, fingers brushing the fabric of the shirt—his shirt. His warm palms wandered down to your hips, brushing the hem of the fabric and the tops of your thighs in an easy movement.

He didn’t rush. Not even a little.

Not even as his fingers started to unbutton the shirt. He could’ve ripped it open in seconds, but he began gently with the lowest button.

You could feel his breath on your skin as he leaned in, eyes still focused on the buttons up the center of your stomach. His fingers moved with quiet precision, undoing one, then another, then another—his knuckles grazing your skin, warm and steady.

When he reached the last few buttons, right over your breasts, he looked up at you. Waiting for something. Your nod. Something saying yes, yes, yes.

With the last button undone, you let the shirt fall to the floor.

Stood there on bare feet in nothing but your underwear—your worn-out, simple white bra and a pair of cotton panties where the elastic had started to fray—you couldn’t help but feel the nerves settling in again. Steady and heavy, like a weight on your chest.

The air was still cold on your damp skin, but his hands were warm when they skimmed your sides. Spencer snuck his arms behind you, fingers ghosting over the clasp of your bra, waiting again, always waiting for the yes without asking it aloud.

And then, with two quick movements…

“Do I ask how you did that so well?” you asked, blinking as the straps slipped off your shoulders.

“I’m efficient with my fingers,” he said absentmindedly, still focused, eyes gentle but studious.

You blinked once, bit your lip. He didn’t even realize the double meaning—of course he didn’t. In his mind, “efficient with his fingers” meant things like… moving chess pieces or untangling cords.

But the way Spencer’s knuckles dragged along your arms as he slid your bra down made you sure that he wasn’t completely innocent or unaware of his actions. He caught the garment in his hands before tossing it on the floor too, his hands quickly back holding your hips.

You reached up and touched the side of his face. “Come closer.”

Spencer looked at you briefly. You knew the spots where his eyes wanted to linger. Then, he pulled his own shirt over his head, putting it aside. You weren’t entirely used to him shirtless yet, his pale, lean yet strong build hypnotizing to you. His arms wrapped around you, skin to skin, almost pulling your feet off the floor as he embraced you. His chest was warm against yours, and you buried your face into the crook of his neck, breathing him in.

“You still smell like you, at least,” you whispered.

Spencer smiled against your hair. “That’s good.”

He was gentle as he led you towards the bed, the back of your knees bucking as you hit the mattress. In a brief moment of disconnect, you shuffled to lie on the bed, sighing as your head hit your mountain of pillows.

With one leg propped onto the bed, Spencer waited a moment before he joined you. He loved seeing your skin. As simple as it was. He could get lost as his eyes trailed the texture of it. Scars, bumps, bruises, and birthmarks. Almost completely naked too. He wasn’t just a boob guy—he was a you guy. That was easier to get on board with than the simple stereotype that boobs were just great.

Spencer got in beside you, a slight touch of his fingers all the way from your ankle up to your shoulder as he settled on top of the covers. On his side, his body cradling yours.

His palm rested flatly on your stomach, moving with your heavy breathing up and down. You didn’t say anything but turned your head to meet his, lazily adjusting forward to kiss him. Kissing him was all you needed to feel safe. To feel that it was true.

With a soft, open-mouthed trail, Spencer left kisses all over your face, down your neck, and chest. His hands started to roam as well, carefully gripping at your skin.

“Let me take care of you, angel,” he whispered as his mouth landed in the valley between your breasts. He looked up at you with golden warm eyes.

“Angel? That’s new,” you whispered back. Once his fingers dared to wander so low that he could run them over the fabric of your panties, feeling your arousal that had soaked through, you audibly hitched your breath. “I— I like it.”

Spencer moved his body to hover over you, lowering down between your legs as you purposefully spread them apart. He was a scrawny mess of limbs most of the time, but somehow felt natural crouching together at the edge of your bed to face your most desperate parts.

“Tell me what you want,” Spencer said, his hands touching over the soft swell of your stomach, down to your hips, but hesitant when they came back up, nudging the underside of your breasts. His nerves were finally showing. “And I’ll do my best.”

You intertwined your fingers with him, making sure to have eye contact as you teased, “All bark, no bite, huh?”

Spencer was flustered. You’d seen through his confident act since it began, but you enjoyed watching him try. He opened his mouth to say something, shutting it just as fast as he overthought. It was like you could see his decision-making happening, the signals connecting in his brain.

“Do you want me to explore instead? Trial and error?” he finally asked, tilting his head slightly with a boyish grin. He took small breaths that you could feel against your stomach, waiting for an answer. “Because I have a few ideas I’d like to try.”

You couldn’t wait to pick his brain, wondering exactly where he had gotten his ideas from. He was an anomaly as is. It wouldn’t be from an adult film or magazine. Knowing Spencer, it was something scientifically proven or from literature written centuries ago.

“You—you can try,” you breathed out, running a hand over your face, feeling the warmth from your own cheeks. He could fluster you too. “Y’know that you don’t have to, like—you can stop immediately if you don’t like it—”

He cut you off. “Let me try before you decide for me.”

Assertive. That was new.

With the same warm eyes from before, he sought you out as his fingers found the hem of your underwear. You nodded eagerly, lower lip lodged between your teeth.

You wanted to help him—rip the fabric off in seconds. But he took his time. Agonizingly slow as he bunched the sides up between his hands and started to pull them down your legs, shifting your hips slightly upwards to ease the process.

You kicked them onto the floor with the help of your foot as soon as you were able. There was something desperate growing inside of you as Spencer found his place between your legs again.

He was big with his movements first, heating your skin up—your stomach and thighs—using the warmth from his palms. Softly cupping your boobs, he pushed them together as his thumbs toyed with the nipples. Then he was gentle, with smaller movements. As Spencer’s fingers slid all the way to your pussy, slowly spreading your lips apart with pressure on each side.

His thumb was first to touch your clit. Barely any pressure, just to watch your reaction to it. He pulled away, to see your wetness cling to his skin, before he gently swiped over it again.

Spencer looked at you in a way you weren’t sure you’d experienced before—with a certain awe or fascination. Really took in the view of you naked, like he had all the time in the world. It felt intimate in a weird way. But not necessarily uncomfortable. You cursed yourself for being used to guys who fucked you with the lights turned off or under blankets, not someone who would drink in the sight of you aroused.

On Valentine’s Day, when the first piece of your sexual puzzle together had been laid, you almost hadn’t had the time to feel nervous. You’d been too focused on Spencer and on his pleasure. When he had wanted to get you off with his fingers after your little dry humping session, you’d let him do it in a (desperate) heartbeat. That you hadn’t shaved or that no one had seen you naked in close to three years wasn’t at the forefront of your mind then.

It was painfully obvious to you now, though. An outgrown little thatch of hair, your leaking entrance clenching around nothing, and your skin… flawed.

Resting his cheek on your thigh, Spencer tilted his head to look up at you, his finger inches away from tapping your clit again.

“I don’t tell you enough how pretty you are.”

He said it simply. Easy. No qualms.

Your brain shut off for a moment when you saw him lick his lips as he touched your pussy again, your eyes squeezing shut at the tingling pleasure.

You truly did look pretty through Spencer’s eyes. Angelic even, the accidental pet name he had used suited you perfectly. With your damp hair clinging to you, your skin still slightly cold to the touch, your nipples pebbled like peaks.

“Can I—”

Spencer couldn’t finish the question, the words stuck in his throat. Slightly mesmerized by the view in front of him, he teased the pad of his index finger around your clit, down towards the entrance, gathering your wetness along his digit.

“You can finger me—yes, Spencer.”

With a low groan, you hummed in agreement as he began to push the finger inside of you.

It slipped in easily, even though it was noticeably bigger than what you were used to. Your own fingers would do nothing after this. He was tentative at first, like he took in the feeling of your cunt, warm and tight, around his finger.

“Is this—Am I doing it right?”

He sounded slightly worried but just as he asked it, he curled his finger upward, touching a spot deep inside of you.

“Oh, uhmf—” you gasped. “Right-fucking-there. You’re good at this.”

“I’m a virgin, not a monk.”

“Could’ve fooled me—”

With the building wetness, Spencer slipped his ring finger inside of you too, catching you off guard. He never took his eyes off of you, though, in case you would change your mind. But you didn’t. You couldn’t when it felt this good. A surprised curse left your already open mouth together with a ringing laughter, “Oh f-fuck you.”

Just the thought of you made his painfully hard cock leak in his boxers. Your taste, however, would send Spencer over the moon. You reached down to push the curls off his forehead as he finally delved in, leaving a series of kisses and nibbles on your inner thighs before you felt his tongue between your folds, his hands helping your legs up to spread apart even further.

“You’re sweet,” he mumbled. Just as quickly as he had said it, his mouth was back on you.

Tentative, again. But observing. Tuned into your body. Your reactions, your sounds. To every little touch he made. He tried out different methods, switching from gentle kissing and sucking of your clit to using all of his tongue to lap you up.

Your thighs closed around his head when he did it, your cunt tightening around his fingers as he continued to work them in and out of you, sucking even harder and longer on your clit. Spencer could easily piece together that it was your favorite part—the long, repetitive suckling. Together with his fingers touching that special spot deep inside of you. That was what brought the most mind-blowing little moans from your mouth, staggered and breathy. His observing nature made him a natural… and a mess, face glistening from your slick.

Spencer’s hair felt silky in your grip, tugging slightly as you settled into the pleasure he was giving you. You couldn’t help it as you started to rock your hips against his mouth, his nose pressing at your most sensitive part. Spencer choked out a groan as he realized what you were doing, the vibrations from it going straight into you.

Disguised behind your own cries, you heard him time and time again. Spencer’s sounds vibrated against your skin, sending jolts of added stimulation. He was moaning into you, clearly lost in the moment, just as much as you were. When you looked down, his hips were rutting hard into the mattress, desperate to rub his aching cock against anything, desperate for relief as he ate you like he was losing control.

“I’m close, Spence,” you gasped, shuddering, the grip his hands had on your hips only getting tighter. “That’s—right there, please, I’m gonna cum.”

He wrapped his hands around your thighs, pulling you closer than you thought was possible, continuing to whisper sweet nothings into your cunt, telling you to let it all go.

With one last curl inside of you and a couple of lazy kisses to your clit, stars began to form behind your eyelids as Spencer held you down by your hips. Your hands flew from his hair to your face, covering your cheeks as you came.

Spencer had noticed, even in non-sexual situations, that you were innocently shy about your own pleasure. Shy of taking, shy of enjoying. You probably always had been. But as he slid his fingers slowly out of you as you climaxed all up in his face, you were everything but shy. Your stomach tensing, your breathing stopping—and the sound, god what a sound. Deep from your throat, louder than he’d ever heard you.

With a curious gaze, he watched your pussy clench around nothing, twitching as you rode the very last second of your orgasm out. Slowly licking, he cleaned the slick from between your folds, around your cunt, before returning his focus to your face.

“Y’know, the female orgasm can last for up to 60 seconds, sometimes even longer.”

With your hands still glued to your cheeks, feeling nothing but burning heat, you malfunctioned a little as he spoke. “Why are you—oh my god, Spence. ”

He came up to lie beside you as you were still nothing but a panting mess. Of course that would be the first thing he’d say to you.

“Explains the aftershocks.”

You guessed it did. You’d be reeling from this feeling for days.

Spencer’s non-sticky hand gently took one of yours, removing it so you couldn’t hide your face. Intertwined, they rested on your stomach, still heaving irrationally from your breathing. You looked down at yourself, and at Spencer. Lovingly, almost. There were crescent-shaped indents on your thighs from his fingernails, your soft skin having spilled out between his fingers as he had pressed close to you.

He breathed heavily beside you too, still catching his breath. You had almost expected it to happen, but you still smiled like a fool when you realized it. The dark stain on his soft gray trousers. His bulge not so prominent, but still a sign of what had happened.

“Don’t mention it,” Spencer said, like through closed lips.

Catching his sight, you shook your head with a little laughter, “I’ll take it as compliment.”

And it was. Truly. To not always be the giver, but the receiver. And to have someone enjoy you receiving pleasure so much that it ends up bringing them their own pleasure. Again, you were ruined by men (boys, really) who were so focused on their own cocks reaching the final destination that you were only really there as a vessel for their own orgasms. You didn’t know the last time someone offered to go down on you, and for it not to be the result of you asking, making you feel like a burden for wanting it.

Turning to your side, you laid your head on Spencer’s chest, letting out a breath that felt like it’d been lodged in your ribs for hours. Your legs tangled with his instinctively, and you sank into the heat of him, body finally relaxing in the aftermath. It took about five seconds for the awareness to hit: you, naked, skin to his still clothed legs, with nothing but the slight stick of sweat and something more lingering between you.

One of Spencer’s arms curled around you automatically. The other hovered awkwardly in the air, like he wasn’t sure what to do with it—just a few inches above the sheets.

“Sticky fingers?” you asked, amused.

“Y’know, it’s not as sticky as I first thought it would be. It’s more… wet—”

As Spencer explained, you grabbed his hand without thinking, looking up into his eyes for any sort of intel but being met with a mostly blank stare as you guided the two fingers he’d used into your mouth, swirling your tongue around them slowly. Lazily, curious if it would short-circuit his brain as easily as you suspected.

You were not disappointed.

“Jesus C-Christ—” Spencer’s whole body tensed beneath you, mouth parting in a sharp gasp.

A slight giggle was your only response. Lifting your head, your cheek had left a faint pink imprint across his chest. Truth be told, the entirety of Spencer was flushed. Face, neck, stomach. He was a study in pale skin turned soft rose.

“It’s like I can hear you overthinking,” you murmured, your voice rough around the edges, the way it always was when you were soft and…coming down.“And you really don’t have to.”

He hesitated, then shyly whispered, “Was I… Was that any good?”

The corners of your mouth lifted, lazy and genuine. “It was really good, Spence. Did you enjoy it?”

You felt him tense beneath your fingertips. He didn’t answer right away, too busy internally dissecting the phrasing—really good? As opposed to just good? Or better than expected? But before his thoughts could spiral, you kept talking. Doing what you always did: catching him before he fell too far into his own head, usually with something crude.

“You’re better than most men by principle,” you said, casual and completely sincere. “You know where the clit is.”

Spencer groaned, dragging his arm over his face. “You really have no filter, do you?”

You laughed—low, warm, the kind that curled around his mind and stayed there. “Is that a bad thing?”

His voice came muffled through the crook of his elbow. “No. I love you for it.”

You stilled—just for a second. You didn’t say anything, but he felt the shift. The way your breath caught. The way your eyes lifted to look at him again, just to make sure you’d heard him right.

“You love me… for it?”

It wasn’t the first time you’d thought about what this was, what it meant. Part of you had worried once that maybe Spencer only loved you because he could. Because you were the first person to touch him like this, see him like this. That he was falling in love with the intimacy itself—not with you.

But that fear didn’t live here. Not in the quiet way he touched you. Not in the way he listened. Not in the way he waited—for you, for your pace, for your yes.

You knew, somewhere deeper than your mind, that this wasn’t a performance. Not a conquest. Not the story of the virgin who loved the first person who said “stay.” The stupid virgin who fell in love with the person they had given up everything to. (It wasn’t everything. Far from it, actually).

As you had grown to know him, you realized how foolish you’d been to ever think that. He’d never wanted this to be one-sided. He was doing it all for you. The two of you. The us. Because if it wasn’t mutual, it wouldn’t be worth it to him at all.

“Mhm,” Spencer answered seconds later, muffled but still easily understood. Then, after a breath, “Should we take a shower?”

Smoothly swerving the subject.

Your head tilted slightly. “Like…together?”

He nodded like it was obvious. “Yes, is that so weird?”

You grinned. “I’ve never seen you naked.”

Spencer blinked. “I—yes, that’s true. Technically. That feels… unbalanced.”

“Let’s even the playing field then.”

You pulled the sheet with you as you sat up, tossing him a wink over your shoulder. Spencer groaned under his breath—somewhere between overwhelmed and entirely thrilled, watching as your naked body slipped out of the room.

And in the quiet trail of your footsteps heading toward the bathroom, he found himself smiling so hard it almost hurt.

⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚ ⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚ ⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚ ⋆.˚𖦹⋆✮⋆.˚

The water had already begun to fog the mirror by the time you stepped in, first wiping off the last of your makeup and letting Spencer quietly undress.

He stood beneath the showerhead, letting the stream beat down on his back and shoulders. His hair, flattened against his forehead, dripped steadily along his jaw. He’d slicked it back once, instinctively, and now little rivulets trailed down the line of his spine. The tips had already begun to curl again, wet and weightless, plastered to the nape of his neck.

Spencer wasn’t cold—he didn’t think he could be, not with the heat of the water and the anticipation of you coming in behind him.

Not nervous. Not exactly.

Just… aware. Aware of what this meant. Of how rare it felt to be so bare in front of someone and not feel the instinct to cover up.

He didn’t turn around when he heard the glass door open. Not right away. He just felt it—the slight change in the air, the extra warmth, the soft whisper of your breath as you stepped in behind him, saying a little hi.

Then your forehead pressed gently against his back.

That broke him a little.

Because it wasn’t a sexy thing, or even a performative one. It was grounding. A small gesture of trust. Your skin was slick against his, arms resting loosely at your sides, the crown of your head nestled between his shoulder blades like you belonged there.

Maybe you did.

He turned around slowly, and you looked at him like you’d been looking all along.

Maybe you had.

Your body was graceful in the low light, water gleaming as it slipped across your collarbones and traced down the dip of your stomach. Steam clung to your lashes, droplets staying on your cheeks. Spencer couldn’t decide what part of you to look at first. Your eyes always won.

He reached for the soap absently, trying not to fumble it. Jasmine.

The scent brought something up in him—unexpected and nostalgic. A low green bush outside his childhood home in Nevada. White, almost yellowing little flowers. His mother’s garden, where she’d hum Debussy and dig her hands into the dirt, fingers stained and nails wrecked but proud all the same. He remembered helping her water the jasmine in the summer, his small hands never quite strong enough to carry the big watering cans.

Now, years later, that same scent lingered in your hair. On your skin. Tied to you. Beneath his hands as he lathered the soap over your shoulders and along your upper back. He worked slowly, deliberately. Partly because he didn’t know what to do, partly because he wanted to feel all of you against his hands.

“That feels good,” you said, voice quiet with his hands running over your shoulder blades.

“Efficient fingers,” he said without a hint of irony.

You laughed, resting your forehead against his chest, water cascading down between you. “You still don’t realize how that sounds.”

He tilted his head, genuinely puzzled. “How what sounds?”

You didn’t explain. You just kissed the spot over his heart.

The water pelted the top of your head gently as silence filled the gaps between words. It wasn’t awkward. Not at all. Domestic, even. He thought maybe this was what safety felt like. This quiet comfort.

Spencer washed your back with care like you were something delicate and revered, and when he stepped behind you and wrapped his arms around your middle, you leaned into him like it was the easiest thing in the world.

Eventually, though, the quiet gave way.

His voice was soft against your temple. “Do you want to talk about why you shut me out yesterday?”

A pause. Seconds long.

“No,” you admitted. “Not really.”

“That’s okay.” He tucked a damp strand of hair behind your ear, brushing a droplet from your cheek. “I just… I’m sorry if I made you feel bad. For not answering me. Or for being short.”

You met his gaze. “How you made me feel isn’t the issue.”

“Okay,” he said, carefully. “Then what is?”

Your eyes flicked toward the fogged glass of the shower door. You watched a droplet race another down the pane. “The younger version of myself still stuck inside. Constantly screaming that I don’t deserve this.”

Spencer’s face softened, his breath catching in his chest. “Deserve what?”

“Being with you,” you shrugged. You tried to make it feel simple. “Being loved by you. Being in love with you.”

He wasn’t worried that you hadn’t said it back in the bedroom, because he deep down knew—past his own insecurities—that you loved him back. But he hadn’t thought about your insecurities in the same way, how they formed like thick brick walls in front of you and hindered your capability of showing affection.

Spencer’s throat tightened. “Did your mother bring out these thoughts? That you’re not deserving of love?”

You didn’t answer, not with words. But your silence thudded between you.

“She’s a…” you started, then bit the words off in frustration.

“You’re allowed to say it.”

“A bitch, Spencer,” you whispered, uncharacteristic of you to care about cursing. “She’s like comically bad.”

He didn’t laugh, even though he knew you meant to ease the weight. Instead, he leaned forward and rested his forehead against yours. The water streamed around you, washing the ache away in some way.

“You are deserving of love,” he murmured. “It would be terrible if you weren’t. Because I love loving you. And I honestly don’t know what I’d do with all of this love if you didn’t let me in to show it to you.”

Your fingertips curled at his chest, right where his heart lived. Then, you reached up to kiss him. Softly, sweetly. Your inhale was shaky as you pulled away, but your voice was clear.

“I love being in love with you too.”

After a few more minutes under the spray, you turned the water off, steam wrapping around your shoulders like a blanket. The silence that followed was almost startling—thick and filled with your shared breathing, the kind of quiet that felt sacred.

Spencer moved first, reaching for one of the larger towels hanging on the hook. You didn’t even bother drying off fully before wrapping it around your chest like a makeshift dress.

He grabbed another towel and rubbed it through his hair—quick, automatic motions. But his eyes kept drifting back to you.

You wiped at the foggy mirror with the flat of your hand, revealing just enough to see the two of you reflected back— naked, wet, soft around the edges with fluffy towels in the low light of your bathroom.

Spencer stood there for a moment, drying himself with his towel, just looking at you. Damp hair, glowing cheeks, a surprisingly big smile.

“I know we’re having a sweet and sappy moment right now,” you began, trying to keep your tone even, “but I have to say—”

He squinted, seeing mischief in your eyes. “Oh no.”

“You were lying when you said it was five inches soft, Spencer.”

“Oh my—” He made an absolutely strangled sound—halfway between a laugh and a groan—burying his face in the towel while simultaneously trying to shield what was more than five inches, apparently. Maybe he’d been humble. “Don’t ever change.”

You grinned into the mirror, entirely smug and still somehow the softest thing in the world.

In a moment of courage, and maybe as a slight comeback, he reached for your hand, laced his fingers with yours, and tugged you gently toward the bedroom.

The bedroom was dim, the morning sun barely sneaking in through the slats of the blinds, casting golden lines across the unmade bed. The covers were still tangled where you'd left them, half-slipped onto the floor.

You paused near the edge of the bed, still towel-wrapped, while Spencer rummaged through his travel bag. He emerged with a button-down and a pair of boxers in hand, the shirt rumpled from being folded too long. It was another pink one. You could tell without smelling it that it hadn’t been washed since he wore it last. California, probably.

“Here,” he said, holding it up. “Arms out.”

You blinked. “You’re dressing me now?”

He gave a small shrug, lips twitching. “If you want me to.”

You rolled your eyes, but they softened as you raised your arms. The towel dropped silently to the floor, pooling at your feet like a sigh. Spencer didn’t react—didn’t flinch or look away.

Spencer stepped in close, his own towel hanging dangerously low on his hips. The shirt slid down over your arms slowly, the fabric catching slightly on damp skin. The hem fell mid-thigh. He only buttoned two buttons, in the middle of your stomach, leaving the rest undone and revealing most of what was underneath anyway.

But it smelled like him, and that was the sole purpose. You pressed your nose to the collar without even thinking.

You sat down on the edge of the bed, towel abandoned, bare thighs brushing the soft sheets. Spencer stood in front of you, pulling his boxers on beneath his towel before he too abandoned his in the pile of laundry gathered on the floor.

He didn’t say anything as he moved to your closet, opening a drawer you always kept a little messily organized. Underwear. You wondered if he panicked over the selection—if you would’ve judged him for grabbing a hot pink lace thong or the floral granny panties.

He settled on a safe pair in black cotton, just cheeky enough. Spencer handed them to you, and you giggled as you slipped them on. It seemed you still had to dress some parts of yourself.

Spencer then knelt slightly, just enough to be level with you, and placed one warm hand on your bare knee. “Now,” he said softly, “do we eat breakfast, or do we go back to bed?”

You looked toward the window, then back at him with a raised brow. “Spence, it’s 8 a.m.”

He just shrugged. “There are no rules. If you’re hungry, we eat. If you’re tired, we sleep.”

You considered it for half a breath, then leaned forward, wrapping your arms around his neck.

“Both,” you said into his shoulder. “I wanna do both.”

“Then we’ll do both, angel.” He leaned in to kiss your forehead.

Thank you for reading! Please let me know what you think ♡ Title and lyrics are from Ankles by Lucy Dacus.

౨ৎ [ masterlist ]

#spencer reid x reader #spencer reid smut #criminal minds #criminal minds fanfiction #criminal minds fic #criminal minds x reader #spencer reid #doctor spencer reid #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid x you #spencer reid fluff #spencer reid imagine #dr reid #dr spencer reid #spencer reid criminal minds #criminal minds imagine #spencer reid fic

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shezasag · 2 years ago

Text

thinking abt how i only see [very intentionally redacted] reblogging muscular/twunky black bodies while publicly engaging with bodies of other sizes from other ethnicities. inch resting pattern

#do not ask who i'm not in the mood to stir up shit on this sunday

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theonottsbxtch · 1 month ago

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THE STATION DOWN THE ROAD | MV1

an: everyone seemed to love the flat next door so consider this a second instalment in the flat next door universe

wc: 15.6k

summary: she was too young to be taken seriously. he’d spent his whole life holding the world at arm’s length. they found home in each other, slowly, quietly, completely. not a love story with fireworks. just one that stayed.

MAX DIDN'T TALK MUCH ABOUT WHERE HE CAME FROM. Not because it was secret, exactly, but because some things sounded worse when said out loud. Like once you named them, they could crawl back in through the cracks and settle in your chest again.

He grew up in a council flat in Croydon, the sort where neighbours knew each other by the sound of arguments through the wall more than by name. His dad was loud. His mum was quieter, but not in a good way. Max learned early which floorboards creaked and how to move through silence without stirring it.

By sixteen, he was already trying not to be like him. He joined cadets. Signed up for any scheme that kept him out late. Police work hadn’t been a dream, not really. It was just something that looked like order. Something solid. Something with rules.

Now he lived a little further out. The town had just enough grey to feel real, but enough green round the edges to breathe properly. His flat was above a barber’s, with creaky stairs and a window that stuck when it got cold. But it was his. No shouting, no smashed plates. Just silence. Peaceful most of the time, though it could feel a bit hollow on Sundays.

He’d just finished a late shift, Friday, bit of a messy one, a pub scuffle that ended in a bloke crying on the kerb about his ex, and the streets were that in-between kind of quiet. Late enough that the buses were mostly empty, but not early enough for the milk floats. Streetlamps buzzed softly. His boots scuffed against the wet pavement.

Max didn’t mind nights like this. He liked the hush, the permission to think without interruption.

He unlocked his front door, kicked off his boots, and collapsed onto the sofa, still in uniform. The radio buzzed from his jacket pocket. He clicked it off. Enough for today.

It had been just past ten on a Thursday when the call came through.

Max was halfway through a lukewarm cup of tea in the station kitchen, watching condensation bead down the windows. One of the younger PCs had left a jam doughnut half-eaten on a napkin, sugar stuck to the table. Rain pattered soft against the roof. He'd been hoping for a quiet shift.

Dispatch crackled through on his radio, voice clipped and tinny. “Units for immediate. Child located in the high street, possibly lost. Caller states child appears unharmed, mother not present. Caller’s staying on scene.”

Max pushed back his chair with a sigh and clicked his radio. “PC Verstappen, responding. I’m five minutes out.”

He grabbed his jacket from the hook by the door and headed out into the drizzle, the kind that didn’t soak you straight away, just lingered like damp breath on the back of your neck.

The high street wasn’t busy. A few shops still had lights on. Off-licence, the late-night bakery that always smelled too good for its own good, and the nail bar with the flickering sign. Max spotted the pair straight away, just outside the pharmacy.

The kid couldn’t have been more than five, maybe six. She was sat on the low brick wall, swinging her legs, damp hair sticking to her cheeks. Beside her stood a woman, not much more than twenty, holding a phone in one hand and trying to coax the child into zipping up her coat with the other.

She wasn’t wearing a coat herself. Just a big hoodie with the sleeves half-pulled over her hands, trainers slightly scuffed, eyes flicking up as he approached.

“You the one who called?” he asked, keeping his voice steady.

She nodded. “Yeah. Sorry, she was standing by the crossing, no adult in sight. Looked like she was about to leg it across the road.”

Max crouched down a little, level with the girl. “Hey there. You alright, poppet?”

She gave a tiny nod but didn’t say anything. Her thumb hovered near her mouth before she pulled it away, glancing uncertainly between Max and the woman.

“She wouldn’t say much,” the woman added, quiet now. “Just told me her name’s Elsie. Didn’t know her mum’s number.”

“Right,” Max said, nodding slowly. “You did the right thing. Staying with her, I mean.”

The woman gave a little shrug, like it was nothing. But it wasn’t. Most people walked past.

Max clicked his radio again. “Verstappen here. Found the child, safe. Waiting on possible parent. Could we run a check for any missing child calls in the area? Name’s Elsie, about six.”

He glanced at the woman again. She was standing close enough to keep the kid calm, far enough not to hover. No umbrella. Her hair was damp, clinging to her forehead. Still no coat.

“You cold?” he asked, before he could stop himself.

She looked down at herself like she’d forgotten. “Bit. Doesn’t matter.”

He almost offered her his jacket. Didn’t. Instead, he nodded toward the wall.

“Why don’t you sit a sec? You’ve done enough standing about for one evening.”

She gave him a faint smile, like she wasn’t used to people saying that sort of thing.

They waited like that for a bit, Max crouched beside the kid, the woman perched nearby, rain threading through her sleeves.

Eventually, the update came through.

“Mum’s just rung in. Panicked. Apparently thought the girl was with her sister. She’s on her way now, seven minutes out.”

Max relayed that gently. Elsie’s face didn’t change much, but she shifted a little closer to the woman beside her. Her shoulder pressed against her arm, just briefly.

“She likes you,” Max murmured once Elsie was distracted by a cat in the window across the street.

The woman raised an eyebrow. “Kid doesn’t know me.”

“Still. You kept her safe. That counts.”

She glanced down, then back at him. “You’re not from round here, are you?”

Max tilted his head. “What gives it away?”

She smiled, small. “You’ve got that careful voice. Like you learnt it on purpose.”

Max smiled faintly. “Maybe I did.”

A beat passed.

Then the sound of a car pulling up, too fast, a woman jumping out, clutching a handbag, tears already running.

Elsie ran to her mum without hesitation, and the moment hit hard, the kind of relief that made your lungs ache.

Max let them have a minute. Once the mum had calmed, offered her breathless thanks, and filled out the basics on the clipboard he handed her, they left in a rush of apologies and relief.

Then it was just the two of them again. Him and the girl in the hoodie, now stood with her hands stuffed in the pockets like it was suddenly awkward.

“You alright getting home?” he asked.

“Yeah. I’m only up past the church. Ten-minute walk.”

“You sure?”

She nodded. “Done it loads.”

He paused. Then held out a hand. “Max.”

She looked at it for a second before shaking it. Her hand was colder than it should’ve been.

“I know,” she said, not quite smiling. “You’ve got your badge on, officer.”

He huffed a quiet laugh. “Fair point.”

She stepped back slightly, hands shoved into her hoodie pocket, trainers scuffing the wet pavement.

“Thanks again,” he said. “For sticking with her.”

She shrugged, but there was a softness behind it. “Someone had to.”

He nodded. “Still. You didn’t have to be the someone.”

That got a small smile. Barely there, but it settled somewhere beneath his ribs.

“Get home safe, yeah?” he added.

She looked at him then, properly. Rain clinging to the ends of her fringe, cheeks a little pink from the cold. “You too, Max.”

And with that, she turned and walked off into the drizzle, footsteps light on the pavement, her hood still down despite the weather.

He watched her go, just for a second longer than he needed to.

Didn’t even know her name.

But he figured he might like to.

She didn’t look back, but she felt his eyes on her as she crossed the road.

Max. That had been his name. Short. Solid. The kind of name that felt steady, even when spoken quietly.

She walked the long way home, just for the space. The drizzle had turned into proper rain by the time she reached the alley behind the bookshop. She ducked through the side gate, keys already in hand, and climbed the narrow staircase that led to her flat above the shop. The steps were worn down the middle, edges scuffed from years of deliveries and clumsy tenants.

Inside, the flat was small but warm. The radiators ticked softly. Her boots squeaked faintly against the entryway mat. There was a distinct smell of paper and damp glue that always drifted up from the shop below. She’d grown to like it. It was hers.

She peeled off her hoodie and hung it on the hook, already thinking about the morning, early shift again. The café opened at seven, but she always arrived by half six. Just enough time to sort the pastry delivery and set up the machine before customers started begging for oat milk lattes and toasted bagels with no butter.

The flat was quiet. No telly on, no music. Just the faint hum of the fridge and the occasional car tyre splashing outside. She boiled the kettle without thinking and stood by the window while it hissed behind her, watching the glow of the town bleed faintly through the rain. Somewhere down the street, a siren wailed, but distant. Not urgent.

She didn't miss living at home. Not really. Her mum still texted most days, usually some variation of “eating properly?” or “when are you visiting?” but it was easier like this. Cleaner. She’d gone to uni a year early, skipped the last year of school because someone at her old place had said she was “a bit too clever to be hanging round with the rest of them.” It had seemed like a compliment at the time.

Now she was twenty, degree in hand, trying to convince café customers she could do more than steam milk and remember four regular orders without writing them down. Most didn’t believe she was old enough to rent a flat, let alone have studied economics. One bloke last week had called her “kiddo” and asked to speak to the manager. She was the manager. Sort of. They just hadn’t updated the name tag yet.

The next day, the rain had cleared, but the air still had that freshly wrung out feeling. Cold and clean. Her shift started like most, juggling coffee orders, wiping down tables too early in the morning, answering "what time do you open?” while clearly standing inside an already open shop.

It was just after eight when she saw him again.

Max.

He didn’t walk in with a swagger. More like he hadn’t planned to be there at all. Just ducked through the door with a slightly wind-blown look and the faint kind of hesitation that said he was deciding whether to stay.

She spotted him from behind the counter. He hadn’t clocked her yet.

He looked different out of uniform. Less official. Hoodie under a coat, hair slightly tousled like he'd towel-dried it in a rush. He scanned the board briefly, then looked up, and saw her.

Recognition flickered. Nothing dramatic. Just the faintest pull at the corner of his mouth, like a smile that hadn’t made up its mind yet.

She nodded. “Morning.”

He stepped up to the counter, hands in his pockets. “Fancy seeing you here.”

“Yeah, super fancy,” she said, pouring a filter coffee for another customer. “You after anything complicated?”

“God, no. Just a tea. Strong. Normal milk.”

She smirked faintly. “Classic.”

“I try.”

She got to work, kettle already boiling, and busied herself with a spoon and teabag while he stood awkwardly on the other side, like he wasn’t quite sure what to say.

“You alright?” she asked eventually, not looking up.

“Yeah. Just…” He scratched the back of his neck. “Don’t normally come in here. Didn’t realise you worked this close to the station.”

She poured the tea, slid the mug toward him. “Most people don’t notice the small places.”

He gave a small shrug. “I notice more than I used to.”

She tilted her head slightly. “That a police thing?”

“Maybe. Or maybe just a getting older thing.”

She gave him the kind of look that could’ve meant anything. “Must be ancient, then.”

He huffed a laugh, accepting the tea. “Cheeky.”

She wiped her hands on a tea towel, then leaned on the counter, her shift apron tied loosely round her waist. “So. What brings you here, Max?”

He paused, tea in hand. “Dunno. Just fancied a quiet one. This place looked not terrible.”

She gave him a proper smile then, dry and amused. “High praise.”

He took a sip. Winced. “Bloody hell. That’s hot.”

She smirked. “You said strong. Not lukewarm.”

He grinned, and for a second, they just stood there, that comfortable pause settling again. The quiet kind. Familiar. No rush to fill it.

Eventually he gestured toward the corner table. “That alright?”

She nodded. “Go on. Table service is extra, though.”

He walked off, still smiling to himself, and she turned back to the espresso machine, the warmth from the encounter still tucked somewhere beneath her ribs.

Max stayed longer than he meant to.

He nursed his tea like it might reveal the meaning of life if he just sipped slow enough. The café was quiet now, post-breakfast lull, just a couple of old regulars in the corner and one student with headphones in, typing furiously and ordering nothing.

She wiped down the counter and glanced his way. He caught her eye. She raised an eyebrow.

“You alright over there? Or waiting for a second round?”

He smiled, tilted his mug. “Still working through the first. Dunno what you put in it, but it’s strong enough to resuscitate a corpse.”

“That’ll be the house blend,” she said dryly, making her way over with a cloth in one hand. “Bit intense, but does the job.”

She leaned against the table next to his, arms folded. He watched her for a second, the way she tucked her hair behind her ear without thinking, the way she still had a bit of flour dust near her knuckles.

“So,” he said eventually, “how long have you worked here?”

She gave him a look, not cold, but evasive. Like she'd been asked that question one too many times by people trying to figure out what she was doing with her life.

“Mm,” she said casually, “how long have you been a police officer?”

Max chuckled. “Alright. Fair. Seven years. Became a cadet as soon as it was legal then took a break. Worked in security, bit of door staff stuff in that in between then decided I wanted to be on the side that got called, not the one that got kicked out.”

She nodded like she understood more than she said.

He glanced up. “And you?”

She didn’t answer straight away. Just moved the cloth absently across a spotless bit of wood. Then, quietly, “Six months. Been working here since I graduated.”

He blinked. “Graduated?”

“Mm. Uni. Last summer.”

He tilted his head. “What’d you study?”

“Economics.”

That gave him pause. “You’re kidding.”

“Nope.” She smiled, wry and small. “Skipped a year at school, went straight through. Finished my dissertation with a kettle that didn’t work and a housemate who thought pasta went in before the water.”

He let out a soft laugh. “And now you’re here?”

“Now I’m here,” she repeated. “No one wants to take a twenty year old seriously in finance, turns out. Doesn’t matter how good your marks were if you look like you should still be doing your GCSEs.”

He sat back, thoughtful. “Ever considered working for the police?”

She raised an eyebrow. “As what, a teenage detective?”

He grinned. “Not everyone wears a stab vest. We’ve got departments for everything. Finance. Logistics. Budgets. Payroll. People who make sure Danny from transport doesn’t blow the whole annual allowance on cola bottles and petrol receipts.”

She laughed, properly this time. A low, warm sound that made his shoulders relax without realising.

“Serious, though,” he said, reaching into his coat pocket. He pulled out his wallet, slid a card across the table. “That’s me. My PC number’s on there. If you ever want to come by the station, chat to someone about the admin side, see what’s what, you should.”

She looked down at the card. His name was printed in neat block letters. It didn’t have a fancy title, no big flourish, just PC Max Verstappen and a contact number.

She turned it over in her fingers, then glanced back at him.

“Bit of a jump from latte art and sourdough, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” he said. “But so was door work to front-line response. You never know.”

She tucked the card into the front pocket of her apron. Didn’t say yes. Didn’t say no either.

“You offering this to every café girl you meet?” she asked, a smile playing at the corners of her mouth.

“No,” he said honestly, finishing the last sip of his tea. “Just the one who called in a lost kid and didn’t flinch once.”

She looked away, just slightly. But her smile stayed.

It had been a week since she’d seen Max.

Not that she was counting. But the card he’d given her was still tucked in the side of her mirror, propped up behind a stray hair bobble and a nearly empty bottle of dry shampoo.

She looked at it most mornings. Didn’t touch it. Just looked.

The flat had started to feel smaller since then. It wasn’t awful, not really, a bit damp in the corners, taps that squealed, windows that didn’t shut properly in the bathroom. But it was hers. Sort of. If you ignored the landlord, anyway.

That morning, she’d found a note shoved under the door. Crumpled, biro-scrawled, barely legible.

Rent due on the 1st. No delays. Don’t forget the increase. Cheers.

No “hello.” No signature. Just another reminder that everything cost more than it used to, and she wasn’t earning more than she used to. At the café, hours had been cut slightly, “just while trade’s slow”, and she’d started skipping lunch without noticing. Tea and toast at home would do.

Then the night after, something happened next door.

She heard it first, a shout, then a crash, maybe glass. Someone swearing, a door slammed. She’d frozen for a second, standing barefoot in the kitchen with the kettle halfway to boiling. It wasn’t her flat. Wasn’t her business. But she crept to the peephole anyway, breath held like that could stop whatever was happening outside.

Police had shown up a few minutes later. She watched the flashing lights bounce across the opposite wall, hands curled around a cold mug of tea. A robbery, apparently. Second one in a month down that street. No one seriously hurt, but still.

She barely slept. Every creak sounded wrong.

By morning, her mind was already half made up.

The station was quieter than she expected. Not loud or chaotic like telly made it look, just tired and slightly beige. The reception desk had a cracked laminate top, and someone had left a half-eaten pack of biscuits beside the computer monitor.

She stood just inside the doorway, rain still clinging to her coat, her trainers damp around the toes. The woman at the desk gave her a polite smile.

“Can I help you, love?”

She cleared her throat. “Erm. Yeah. I was wondering if I could speak to someone about jobs. Admin side, I mean. Not… not the front line.” while fiddling with the card Max had given her.

The woman nodded. “Alright. Let me see who’s about. Name?”

She gave it and the woman typed it in like it might mean something. Then she picked up the phone.

Two minutes later, footsteps sounded from the hallway. And there he was.

Max.

He looked surprised, but not in a bad way. Just a small lift of the eyebrows and a soft, “Hey. You alright?”

She nodded. “Can we talk? Somewhere quiet?”

He glanced back over his shoulder. “Course. Come on.”

He led her into a side room, plain, with a kettle and a stack of mugs that had clearly been borrowed from someone’s nan. He gestured for her to sit, then closed the door behind them.

She stayed standing.

“I thought about what you said,” she began, fingers curled around the strap of her bag. “About the jobs. The finance side. Is that a real thing? Or were you just being polite?”

He smiled faintly. “Bit of both. But mostly real.”

She nodded once. “Right. Because I’m looking. I mean, I’ve been looking, but I need something more stable. Somewhere that doesn’t cut my hours the minute it starts raining. And somewhere I can actually use my degree. I’m good with numbers. Just not very good at being patient with people who think I’m twelve.”

Max leaned back slightly, arms folded across his chest. He looked at her like she’d already passed some kind of test.

“We’ve got a couple of posts open,” he said. “Civilian roles. Budgeting team, HR, resource planning. You wouldn’t be out on the beat, don’t worry.”

She smiled at that, a little dry. “Don’t think I’m quite stab vest material.”

He chuckled. “We’ve got an application portal online, but I can put your name forward, make sure someone actually reads it. If you want.”

“I do,” she said, firmer than she meant to. “I really do.”

He nodded once. Then reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded slip of paper, looked like he’d written something on it already.

“Go online, use that reference,” he said, handing it to her. “Should take you straight to the vacancies. If you want to list me as a referral, feel free. Might help. Don’t think they’ll hold the tea against you.”

She looked down at the note in her hands. His handwriting was neater than expected.

“Thanks,” she said, softly. “Seriously.”

Max tilted his head. “You alright, though? Really?”

She hesitated. “Just had a rough week. Landlord’s a tosser. Place got broken into next door. I keep telling myself I’ve got it under control, but it’d be nice to have something that is actually under control, you know?”

He didn’t say much, just nodded like he understood that far more than he was letting on.

“Then let’s get you something solid,” he said. “Yeah?”

She folded the slip and tucked it into her pocket, next to his card.

“Yeah,” she said. “Let’s.”

The weeks that followed unfolded in slow, steady steps, like crossing a stream on uneven stones.

The interview process was less terrifying than she'd expected, and more exhausting. Two rounds, plus a phone call with someone in payroll who seemed very invested in her knowledge of procurement software. She answered every question as clearly as she could, kept her voice level, tried not to overexplain or sound like she was trying to prove something.

Max didn’t make a big deal of it. He never hovered. An email here and there, a simple “Good luck today” or “Let me know how it goes”, always signed just with M from his work email. She appreciated that. The quietness of it. No pressure. No assumption. Just presence.

And then it happened. The job came through. A real one, with proper hours and paperwork and more than enough acronyms to get lost in. She stared at the offer email for five full minutes before she let herself believe it was real.

She handed in her notice that same day. Her manager barely looked up. Just muttered something about how it’d be hard to cover weekends and told her to print out her P45.

She didn’t tell Max right away. Not because she didn’t want to. But because the moment felt too raw, too personal. Like a small flame she wanted to protect from the wind.

He showed up at the café that Saturday. Not in uniform, jeans, a coat that had seen better days, and trainers that looked like they’d done a few too many miles. She saw him before he saw her, and by the time he reached the counter, her hands had stopped shaking.

“Alright?” he asked.

She nodded, wiping down the steam wand. “Still doing strong tea, or have you developed a taste for vanilla oat lattes?”

He made a face. “I’d rather chew glass.”

She poured his usual without asking.

“You busy?” he asked, glancing round. A couple of students hunched over laptops, a man reading the Metro with the patience of a monk.

“Quiet enough.”

She handed him the mug, their fingers not quite brushing.

“I got it,” she said.

He frowned. “Got what?”

“The job. I start on the twelfth.”

Max blinked, then his face softened in that way it did, like the smile hadn’t quite reached his mouth but had settled somewhere just behind his eyes.

“That’s brilliant,” he said. “You deserve it.”

She gave a small shrug, looking down. “Was starting to think maybe I wasn’t good enough for anything that didn’t come with a chipped mug and a dodgy boiler.”

He shook his head. “You were always good enough. Some people just take longer to be seen.”

That stopped her for a second. The way he said it, like he wasn’t talking about just her.

She nodded once. “Thanks. For you know. Putting my name forward. And not treating me like I was a child.”

“I figured,” he said quietly, “if anyone knew what it felt like to be underestimated it’d be me.”

A small silence opened between them. Comfortable, if a bit heavy.

She looked at him then, properly, saw the wear in the corners of his eyes, the carefulness in how he held himself. Like someone who’d spent years learning to take up as little space as possible.

“I owe you a coffee once I’m on the other side,” she said.

Max gave the faintest nod. “I’ll take you up on that.”

Then, like always, he paid without a fuss, nodded his thanks, and left without lingering.

But when she wiped down the counter a few minutes later, she found he’d left behind a folded napkin with a short note scribbled in careful block capitals.

You’re not inexperienced. You’re just getting started. M

She kept it in her pocket for the rest of the day.

The building looked different when you walked in with a pass.

She’d picked it up from reception half an hour before her shift, a plastic rectangle with her photo laminated on it and her name in blocky type underneath.

It felt strange, official. Like someone had finally let her into a room she’d been standing outside for years.

Her desk was on the second floor, tucked behind a stack of filing cabinets and two dying spider plants. The office buzzed in that low, fluorescent way, humming computers, quiet phone calls, the occasional cough. Everyone had a mug, she noticed. Bright colours. Slogans. Some in-jokes she didn’t get yet. Someone had taped googly eyes to the printer.

Her new manager, Hannah, was friendly in a brisk, no-nonsense way. She showed her how to log in, gave her a binder full of things she’d definitely forget by lunch, and introduced her to the people she’d mostly be emailing, not speaking to.

Then she was left to it. A screen, a login, an inbox that was already judging her.

She took a slow breath, rolled her shoulders, and got stuck in.

By eleven, she’d answered three emails, deleted seven spam messages about an expired toner contract, and double-checked a spreadsheet of overtime claims twice, just in case she’d missed something. Her tea had gone cold.

There was a knock on the doorframe.

She looked up.

It was Max.

In uniform this time, sleeves rolled, radio clipped to his vest, eyes scanning the room automatically before landing on her.

“Alright?” he asked.

Before she could answer, someone behind her desk piped up. “You’re not Danny. What are you doing here?”

The voice belonged to Gianpiero, she’d met him briefly that morning. Looked like he’d been working here since dial-up.

Max gave a faint smirk. “I’m here to check on a friend.”

That pulled a couple of glances. One or two eyebrows.

She stared at him. “A friend?”

He shrugged, unbothered. “Yeah. Thought I’d see how your first day was going.”

Before she could think of what to say, something witty, probably, or at least something that didn’t make her sound like she’d forgotten how speech worked, he reached into a paper bag and pulled out a mug.

He set it down on her desk.

It was mint green, slightly oversized, and in big white letters across the front it read, World’s Okayest Civilian

She blinked. Then laughed.

“Classy,” she said, picking it up. “Did you pick this yourself?”

“Course,” he said. “Had to fight someone for the last one.”

“Bet they were twelve.”

“Thirteen, actually.”

The moment hovered. She held the mug in her hands like it was something fragile and warm all at once.

“Thanks,” she said, quieter.

Max just nodded, a little smile threatening the corner of his mouth.

Then his radio crackled, and he glanced down at it, frowning.

“Sorry,” he said, already stepping back. “Gotta go, duty calls.”

She nodded. “Go be heroic.”

He gave her a look over his shoulder, something amused and gentle and gone too fast to pin down, and disappeared through the door.

GP leaned round the filing cabinet once he was gone.

“He your boyfriend?”

She stared at him. “What? No. He’s just helped me out. That’s all.”

GP shrugged, already turning back to his screen. “Alright, alright. Didn’t say anything.”

She looked down at the mug again. Bright green against the grey desk. Not subtle. But not loud, either.

She poured herself a fresh tea.

It tasted better than the first.

The rest of the day passed in fits and starts.

She read through a ten-page PDF on procurement protocols, half of which seemed written in another language, and tried not to look completely lost when Hannah came over to ask how she was finding things.

“Good,” she lied, with enough conviction that it almost sounded true.

Her new mug sat proudly on the desk, even though she caught one of the interns sniggering at it. She didn’t mind. It felt like a small anchor. Something that said, I belong here. Sort of.

By half five, she’d answered enough emails to feel useful and learned how to book meeting rooms without breaking the calendar system. A victory, by all accounts. She walked out of the building with her coat buttoned to the neck, the cold biting just slightly, her ID badge tucked into her bag like a ticket she didn’t want to lose.

It wasn’t glamorous. It wasn’t changing the world.

But it was hers.

The following weeks found their own rhythm.

Mornings started with the steady hum of the office, printer noises, people comparing meal deals, the occasional dodgy ringtone no one wanted to admit to. She kept her head down mostly, but people started to learn her name. GP brought her a KitKat on a Tuesday “just because” and muttered something about “decent work on that leave audit.”

Hannah let her lead on a supplier review. Nothing massive. But still.

Max didn’t appear often. Maybe once a week. Always at odd times, catching her by the printer, or standing by her desk with a coffee in one hand, looking like he’d just wandered in but had probably known exactly where she’d be.

Their conversations were still brief. Uncomplicated. But the tone had shifted. Warmer. Less formal. Like they were slowly building something that didn’t need naming yet.

One Wednesday, she came back from the loo to find a Post-it on her monitor that said Tea? 3:15. Downstairs. -M

She found him by the vending machine, leaning against it like he was waiting for the universe to deliver a snack. When he saw her, he stood up straighter and handed her a flapjack.

“Thought you might need a break,” he said.

She raised an eyebrow. “You psychic now?”

“More like observant. You’ve got your ‘I hate spreadsheets’ face on.”

She tried not to smile. “Do I?”

He nodded. “Same one I pull when someone says ‘let’s do a briefing.’”

They sat on the low wall outside, flapjack split between them, coats zipped up against the wind. No deep talk. Just quiet companionship. It was enough.

Another time, he popped by during her lunch and helped her fix a jammed stapler with surprising patience.

“You don’t seem like the stapler-fixing type,” she’d said.

“I contain multitudes,” he’d replied.

And once, when the fire alarm went off during a drill, they ended up standing together at the far end of the car park, watching clouds roll in.

“Didn’t realise you were still around,” she’d said.

“I’ve been here the whole time,” he’d replied, then winced. “That sounded creepier than I meant.”

She laughed. Properly.

After a month, it wasn’t strange to see him. Wasn’t strange to hear his voice across the office, or find a text on her phone that just said, You still alive in that finance dungeon?

It was a slow friendship blooming between the two of them, nice.

She liked that he didn’t push. That he let silences be silences, instead of trying to fill them.

And sometimes, when she caught herself smiling at her phone, or watching the doorway in case he happened to walk past, she wondered if maybe he was doing the same.

That night the cold had settled in with a kind of quiet that always made her uneasy.

The shop below had gone dark an hour ago, shutters clattering down with a rattle that shook through the floorboards. Upstairs, her flat was dimly lit, the glow from the small lamp by the sofa doing its best against the flickering overhead bulb she'd never quite got round to replacing. The air smelt faintly of toast and damp. Someone’s car alarm had gone off earlier, again, but the street was silent now, save the occasional rumble of late buses and the hum of faraway traffic.

She was curled on the sofa, knees drawn up, one hand resting lightly around a chipped mug of tea gone cold. The telly was on, volume low, some forgettable panel show she wasn’t really watching. Just noise, really. A buffer against the emptiness.

It had been a long week. Work had been full-on. The finance team were in the middle of quarterly reconciliations and someone had managed to delete half a spreadsheet with four days to deadline. She’d sorted it, eventually, but her eyes were still aching from staring at formulas that barely made sense. All she’d wanted tonight was to switch off.

Instead, she heard the window.

A sharp noise, not quite a smash, but something wrong. The back room. The one with the bathroom and the tiny kitchen window that never shut properly.

She sat up, heartbeat stuttering.

Then, footsteps.

Not above. Not beside.

Inside.

She didn’t think. She just moved. Grabbed her phone off the coffee table, keys from the hook, and slipped her feet into her trainers without even bothering to tie them. She didn’t even stop for her coat.

The flat door stuck slightly, as it always did in the winter, she wrenched it open with more force than was needed, and bolted down the narrow staircase two at a time. Her breath came short. Hands cold. She didn’t look back.

Out on the pavement, she kept walking until she was a few doors down, then turned and pulled out her phone.

The patrol car showed up just under ten minutes later.

Blue lights spilled across the shopfronts, dancing over wet tarmac and bins left out from the morning collection. She was standing beneath the streetlamp, arms crossed over her chest, trying to look smaller than she felt.

When the driver’s side door opened and Max stepped out, something in her tensed, not fear. Something closer to relief, though she didn’t want to admit it out loud.

He spotted her instantly and came over, calm and focused in his uniform, radio clipped to his shoulder, expression unreadable but softer than she’d seen him at work.

“You alright?” he asked, tone low.

She nodded, though her voice stuck. “Think someone broke in. I was in the living room. Heard the back window, then footsteps. I didn’t see anything, I ran.”

“Good,” he said, gently. “You did the right thing.”

He glanced toward the stairwell, then gestured to one of the officers behind him. “Take a look inside. Back entrance too. Let me know what you find.”

She stayed rooted to the spot while Max remained beside her, not too close, but enough that she felt anchored. He didn’t push her to talk, didn’t drown the silence in empty words. Just waited.

Eventually, the officer returned. “Window’s been forced. Back one, like she said. Looks like they scarpered out the rear alley. Nothing major taken, far as we can tell, but flat’s been rifled through.”

She nodded slowly. “Right.”

Max turned to her. “You can’t stay there tonight.”

“I’ll be fine—”

“No, you won’t,” he said, firm but not unkind. “You’ve just been through a break-in. You shouldn’t be on your own.”

She hesitated. “I don’t really have anyone. Mum’s up in Cumbria and I’ve not got any friends who’ve got spare sofas knocking about. I’ll sort something, I just, I need to think.”

He looked at her for a moment, then said, simply, “Come back to mine.”

Her eyebrows lifted.

“I’ve got a spare room. It’s quiet. Heating works. I’ll be on shift most of the night, but you can sleep, lock the door, not worry. I’ll give you a lift in the morning. Deal?”

She wanted to argue. To prove she was fine. Independent. Capable.

But she wasn’t, not really. Not tonight.

So she swallowed her pride and nodded once. “Yeah. Alright.”

He offered the faintest of smiles. “Come on, then. I’ll stick the kettle on before I head out.”

And just like that, she wasn’t standing under a flickering streetlamp anymore. She was in the backseat of the police car, hoodie pulled tight around her, and for the first time all night, she didn’t feel like she was bracing for the worst.

The inside of the police car was warmer than she expected. Not fancy, but oddly neat. The kind of neatness that came from routine, not effort. She settled into the seat slowly, still holding herself like a coiled spring, and glanced around, not at Max, but at the car itself.

“Bit weird being in one of these and not in trouble,” she said, mostly to fill the silence.

Max huffed a quiet laugh. “That’s the goal, really.”

She ran her fingers lightly along the edge of the door, taking in the scratch marks and rips on the seatbelts. “Thought it’d be more gadgety. Like in the shows.”

He flicked a look at her. “Sorry to disappoint. We’ve got a dodgy radio and a cup holder that doesn’t actually hold cups. Welcome to glamour.”

She smiled, faint but real, and leaned back in the seat as he pulled away from the kerb. The city passed them by in smeary amber streaks. Shopfronts closed. Streetlights flickering overhead. Her fingers finally unclenched from around her phone.

“You sure this isn’t against a rule or something?” she asked after a minute. “Letting civilians crash at yours?”

“Oh, almost definitely,” he said. “Walking HR violation.”

She turned to look at him. “So why’re you doing it?”

He didn’t take his eyes off the road. Just said, quietly, “Because I’d rather get bollocked for that than find out you stayed and something happened.”

That shut her up, but not in a bad way. Just left her sitting there, heart beating a bit too loud in her chest, unsure what to do with the warmth creeping up the back of her neck.

His flat was on the top floor of a squat red-brick building, she recognised the type where builders once tried to make it look nice, then gave up halfway through. There was a crack up the side of the stairwell wall and the communal carpet smelt faintly of bleach and damp socks. Still, it felt private.

Inside, it was simple. Two rooms, one half-decent-sized living area, a cramped kitchen with slightly newer cupboards than hers. It was lived-in, but not messy, odd bits of kit from the job, a battered bookshelf, a pair of trainers by the door. A mug sat by the sink with I’m not yelling this is just my voice printed across it in fading capitals.

“Not much, but it works,” he said, locking the door behind them and flicking the hallway light on.

“It’s bigger than mine,” she said honestly, toeing off her trainers and glancing around. “Less mould, too.”

He gestured to the smaller room. “Spare bed’s in there. Sheets are clean, promise. Bathroom’s next door, if you want to shower or whatever. There’s toothpaste in the drawer, unless the cat nicked it.”

She blinked. “Wait, you have a cat?”

Before he could answer, a low, gravelly mrrrp echoed from down the hall.

A large, grey bengal appeared in the doorway with the kind of swagger usually reserved for ex-cons. One bent ear, slow-blinking dark eyes, and an expression that said he’d seen things and had no time for fools.

“That’s Jimmy,” Max said, tugging off his boots. “He hates everyone.”

Jimmy ignored him entirely and padded over to her. With all the ceremony of a royal inspection, he sniffed her bag, then her hand, then hopped up onto the bed, circled once, and plonked himself down beside her like she belonged there.

She blinked. “Right. Apparently not me.”

Max stared, dumbfounded. “He bit my last girlfriend. Through a sock.”

She grinned, scratching behind Jimmy’s ear as he purred like a small, lumpy engine. “Guess I’ve got better vibes.”

Jimmy butted his head against her elbow, still rumbling.

Max gave the cat a deeply betrayed look. “Traitor.”

She smirked, kicking her bag gently under the bed. “You’re lucky I don’t take that personally.”

He leaned on the doorframe, arms folded, watching her with a look that didn’t quite reach his usual quiet sarcasm. “You alright in here?”

“Yeah,” she said, suddenly, earnestly. “Yeah, I think I am.”

“Good.” He hesitated. “I’ve got to head off in a bit, can’t be slacking on shift when the lady doing the pay is watching me. You’ll be alright locking up after?”

“Course,” she said. “Jimmy’ll protect me.”

Jimmy sneezed.

Max shook his head with a quiet laugh. “I’ll wake you in the morning. Lift to work’s on offer. Try not to nick the telly.”

She smiled, not just amused, but something a little deeper than that. Warm, settled. For the first time in a while, she felt like the world had stopped spinning just enough to catch her breath.

The following morning the kettle clicked off just as she stirred.

The spare room was still dim, lit only by the grey spill of early morning light through the blinds. The sheets smelled faintly of fabric softener and something warm she couldn’t name, like clean jumpers and leftover sleep. She blinked at the ceiling for a moment, disoriented, before memory caught up with her.

Max’s flat. The break-in. Jimmy curled up at her feet like a lumpy guardian angel.

She sat up slowly, careful not to jostle the cat, and rubbed her eyes. Her hoodie was twisted from sleep, hair sticking out in too many directions. She hadn’t meant to sleep so well, but she had, solid and deep, like her body had finally stopped keeping score for a night.

The knock came soft on the doorframe.

“You awake?”

His voice was low, hoarse from overnight silence.

“Yeah,” she called back, just above a whisper.

Max stepped into view, still in his uniform trousers but with a plain grey T-shirt now, hair slightly rumpled, a mug in one hand.

He passed it to her without ceremony. “Tea. Still figuring out how you like it. Had a guess.”

She took it with both hands, fingers brushing his. “Thanks. It smells right, at least.”

He lingered just a second longer before leaning against the doorframe. The hallway light cast him in soft silhouette, shadows under his eyes but not sharp, just tired in that familiar, lived-in way.

“How’d you sleep?” he asked.

“Better than I should’ve,” she said honestly. “Didn’t realise how tired I was.”

He nodded. “That’s how it gets you. You power through, then one quiet room and a cat with poor boundaries and you’re done for.”

She smiled into her tea. “Speaking of, he didn’t move all night. Like a warm rock.”

“Rude. He usually abandons guests halfway through.”

“Guess I’m winning him over.”

“More than I ever have.”

They stayed there a beat, just sipping quietly. Jimmy meowed from somewhere down the hallway, clearly annoyed breakfast hadn’t been served yet.

Max scratched the back of his neck. “Look, I’ve just come off and I’ve got no intention of seeing the station until tomorrow, but I’ll give you a lift in.”

“You don’t have to—”

“I know,” he cut in, soft but firm. “But I’m doing it anyway. I’ll sleep better knowing you got there alright.”

She looked down at her tea, then back up at him. “You’re allowed to be looked after too, you know.”

His mouth tugged into a small, lopsided smile. “Yeah. Maybe. Just not today.”

She didn’t press. Just nodded, because she understood what he wasn’t saying. Some days you needed to be the strong one, not because you had to be, but because it was easier than letting someone else try.

“I’ll be quick,” she said. “Don’t want you crashing the car from lack of sleep.”

He huffed a tired laugh. “I’ll be fine. Coffee and spite’ll carry me through.”

She set the mug down and stood, stretching out stiff shoulders. “You’ve got cereal, yeah?”

“Top cupboard. Might be some toast if Jimmy hasn’t nicked it.”

She padded past him toward the kitchen, brushing his arm as she passed. Nothing big. Just a moment. The kind that warmed the edges.

He watched her go, the weight behind his eyes not quite heavy enough to dull the faint lift in his chest.

Outside, the world was starting up again. But inside, it still felt like early. Like maybe they had a little time before the noise came back in.

She didn’t know where anything was at first, rummaging through unfamiliar cupboards with Jimmy underfoot, offering helpful grumbles every time she opened the wrong one. Eventually, she found what she needed: bread, butter, a slightly dented jar of raspberry jam, and a mug she recognised from last night still on the side. I’m not yelling, this is just my voice.

She ate at the kitchen table, one leg tucked beneath her, Jimmy sprawled across the other chair like he paid rent. The place was quiet, warm in that lived-in kind of way. A small radio played quietly from the corner, some breakfast show with people laughing too early for comfort, and she watched the kettle steam in the light, toast crumbs on her plate, feeling oddly still.

Somewhere down the hall, the shower started running.

She finished her tea, wiped her hands on a napkin, and stood to rinse her plate. Jimmy followed her to the sink, tail flicking, clearly judging her speed. She bent to scratch behind his ears.

“You’re very needy for a cat who hates people,” she murmured.

He blinked, slow and smug.

She padded out into the hallway a few minutes later, intent on grabbing her bag from the spare room, and stopped dead.

Max.

Midway between the bathroom and his room, towel slung low around his hips, hair dripping, steam still clinging to his shoulders. He was walking away, back turned, completely unaware of her presence.

She froze. Eyes wide. Brain short-circuiting slightly.

It wasn’t that she’d never seen someone in a towel before. Just not him. Not like that. Not with his back all bare and shoulders solid and everything else her eyes weren’t supposed to linger on.

She spun on her heel, face burning, practically tiptoed back into the kitchen like she’d just walked in on national television.

Jimmy watched her, unimpressed.

“Oh, shut up,” she muttered, pressing her palms to her cheeks.

By the time Max reappeared, fully dressed in a grey tracksuit, towel now wrapped round his neck instead of his waist, she was sat at the table again, pretending very hard to scroll through her phone.

He looked good. Ridiculously so. Comfortable in his own skin, hair still damp, sleeves pushed up slightly. The kind of good that made her teeth ache.

“Toast alright?” he asked, slinging his keys into a bowl on the counter.

She nodded without looking up. “Yeah. Think Jimmy wanted half of it.”

Max eyed the cat, now snoozing on the windowsill. “He’s always starving. Don’t fall for it.”

She finally looked up then, just briefly, and caught him mid-sip of water, one hip resting against the counter, his tracksuit clinging a little too well to his frame.

Unfair.

He noticed her looking but didn’t say anything. Just raised an eyebrow like he’d clocked something and let it pass.

“You ready?” he asked.

“Just need to grab clothes and my laptop from mine. Shouldn’t take long.”

“Right,” he said, straightening. “Let’s go, then.”

The drive over was quiet in the best kind of way.

Soft radio on in the background, something low and acoustic. Houses rolling by in a blur of greys and browns. Her bag tucked at her feet, seatbelt clicking gently as Max took corners like he’d done them a thousand times before.

He didn’t fill the silence. Just let it be. Every now and then, she glanced over, at the line of his jaw, the way his hand rested loose on the gearstick, the quiet concentration on his face, and wondered when things had started feeling like this.

They pulled up outside her building, the shop shutters still halfway down, her window just visible above.

“I’ll wait,” he said, shifting into neutral.

“You sure?”

“Yeah. You’ll be five minutes tops, right? What could possibly go wrong?”

She gave him a look. “Don’t tempt fate.”

He smirked. “Go on, then.”

She dashed up the stairs, keys already out, and grabbed what she needed. Work bag, fresh clothes, a spare charger. She changed quickly, jeans, jumper, warm coat, stuffed the rest into a tote, and took one last glance round the flat before locking up again.

Still didn’t feel quite like home.

Max didn’t ask questions when she slid back into the passenger seat, slightly breathless, Jimmy’s fur somehow still clinging to her sleeve.

“All good?” he asked.

“Yeah. Think so.”

“Alright,” he said, pulling away smoothly. “Let’s get you to work.”

The station came into view just as the sun started to peek out, weak and watery, but trying. The morning moved on. But something between them had shifted like a needle on a record finding the next groove.

Quiet. But playing the same song.

The week frayed around the edges.

Work was steady, spreadsheets, supply reports, someone in IT shouting gently at their screen, but she was off-kilter. Snapping pencils without meaning to. Forgetting her mug on the printer. Laughing too loud at things that weren’t funny, just to stop the silence swallowing her whole.

Because on Tuesday, folded inside an envelope with no return address and stuffed through her letterbox, was an eviction notice.

The wording was polite enough. “Due to recent concerns regarding property safety and tenant suitability”, whatever that meant. She read it three times before the meaning settled in her stomach like a brick.

She was being kicked out. For being burgled.

Apparently, the break-in had made the landlord "nervous" about her "ability to keep the premises secure.” Which was rich, considering he hadn’t fixed the lock on the back window in over a year.

She didn’t cry. Not then. Just sat on the edge of the bed, heart thudding in her throat, and stared at the wall like it might blink first.

By Thursday, Max noticed.

She hadn’t said anything. Didn’t want to make it a thing. But she must’ve looked different — hunched in slightly, her eyes that bit too sharp and tired, because he caught her by the vending machine after lunch and didn’t let her wriggle out of a conversation.

“You alright?”

She blinked, halfway to tapping the hot chocolate button. “Yeah. Fine.”

He tilted his head. “Liar.”

She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes.

He waited.

Eventually, she sighed. “Got an eviction notice.”

Max stared. “What?”

“Apparently I’m a ‘risk’. Landlord reckons the break-in proves I’m not a reliable tenant.” She did air quotes so hard her fingers nearly cracked. “It’s nonsense, but it’s legal nonsense, and I’ve got to be out by the end of the month.”

“That’s—" he stopped himself. Took a breath. “That’s bollocks.”

“Yeah, well. Can’t afford anywhere else round here. Not unless I fancy living in a cupboard with six other people and a damp problem.”

They stood there in silence. The vending machine buzzed faintly behind them.

Then, quietly, he said, “Move in with me.”

She blinked. “What?”

He shrugged, like it wasn’t a big deal. “Spare room’s yours. You’ve stayed before. You know where everything is. Heating works, cat’s already in love with you. Makes sense.”

She folded her arms, defensive without meaning to. “I’m not just going to freeload off you.”

“You wouldn’t be.”

“I’ll pay rent.”

He looked at her, steady. “Can you cook?”

She frowned. “Yeah. Why?”

“I’ve been living off pasta and beans for the last ten years. If you feed me something with actual flavour, you can stay for free.”

She stared at him. “That’s your pitch?”

“Take it or leave it.”

A beat passed. Her mouth twitched.

“I make a decent lasagne,” she said.

“I’m sold.”

“Bit manipulative, don’t you think?”

He shrugged again. “You can always poison me if I get annoying.”

She laughed then, the stress cracking at the edges just long enough to let the sound out. He smiled, quiet and soft, watching her.

“Seriously,” he said, more gently now. “Spare room’s there. You’ve got enough to deal with. You don’t need to fight on this one too.”

She looked at him. Not just his face, but all of it, the steadiness, the way he didn’t flinch when things got uncomfortable, the way he never tried to rescue her, just stood there until she felt steady again.

“Alright,” she said at last. “But I’m making you eat vegetables.”

He grimaced. “Bit harsh, but fine.”

“And I’m not doing the washing up.”

“Jimmy does it,” he said deadpan.

She grinned. “I’ve made worse deals."

She moved in on a Sunday.

No fanfare. No removal van. Just three overstuffed bags, one suspiciously heavy box, and a carrier with Jimmy’s new scratching post that she’d insisted on buying because, “If I’m moving in, the cat needs enrichment.”

Max picked her up in his car just after lunch. He offered to help carry things before she’d even asked. She tried to protest, said she was fine, really, but he just raised an eyebrow, took the heaviest box without blinking, and carried it like it weighed nothing. She didn't argue after that.

“Alright,” he said, setting it down inside the flat with a quiet grunt. “You packed bricks?”

“Books,” she said, shutting the door behind her with her foot. “And maybe one casserole dish.”

“Just the one?”

“It’s versatile.”

He smirked. “You’re not allowed to judge my three frying pans, then.”

They unpacked slowly, without pressure. She tucked clothes into the drawers in the spare room, stacked her tea bags next to his in the cupboard without asking, and set her alarm clock by the bed like it had always been there.

It was easy. Too easy.

Every so often, Max appeared behind her with another bag or a box. At one point she turned to find him hanging her coat on the hook by the door, like it was already her hook. She stared for a second too long, and he glanced over, half a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she said. “Just weird how not weird this feels.”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

They stood like that for a moment, the kind of quiet that wrapped around them instead of falling between them.

Jimmy wandered in, tail flicking, and leapt straight onto her new bed like it had always been his.

“Right,” Max said, clapping his hands together. “We’re in. Now what?”

She looked round, hands on her hips. “I’m starving.”

“You’re the cook.”

“You have pasta, don’t you?”

He snorted. “Obviously. Question is which kind of sad student meal do you fancy?”

She grinned. “Leave it to me.”

That evening, the flat smelled like garlic and tomatoes and something warm and real. She moved round the kitchen like she’d always known where everything was. Max sat on the edge of the sofa with a beer in hand, watching as she stirred, tasted, adjusted.

“You’re very calm in a kitchen,” he noted.

“Years of being the only one in my uni house who could read a recipe,” she said. “That and my mum used to make us all cook one dinner a week from the age of twelve. Builds character.”

“You trying to impress me?”

“Obviously. You’ve got top-notch cutlery and a slow cooker. I’m trying to earn my keep.”

He smiled into his bottle. “You already have.”

She didn’t answer. Didn’t need to.

Dinner was nothing fancy, pasta with a sauce that took more effort than she let on, garlic bread from the shop round the corner, side salad that Max prodded at suspiciously.

But they ate together on the sofa, plates balanced on knees, Jimmy snoring gently on the rug, telly on but muted. And when she looked round the room, laundry folded on the radiator, a half-done crossword on the table, her mug already in the sink, it didn’t feel like she was staying over.

It felt like she’d come home.

Over the next month and a half, things blurred in the loveliest way.

She was still technically looking for a new place. She had a spreadsheet and everything, bookmarked listings, a budget column, a list of must-haves like “no mould” and “close to bus stop” and “not run by a complete knob.”

But she wasn’t rushing. Not really. Not anymore.

Max never brought it up. Not once. Just carried on like this was normal, her using the last of the milk, her socks in the laundry, Jimmy choosing her lap more often than his.

They fell into a rhythm without meaning to.

He worked late, came in quiet, sometimes left a note on the fridge if he missed her, cat’s a menace, save me leftovers if you love me. She worked days, brought home biscuits from the office when someone had a birthday and they’d bought too many. They watched telly together more often than not, her on one end of the sofa, feet tucked under her, Max half-stretched out on the other side, always warm and within reach.

Sometimes she fell asleep there, curled up with a blanket she hadn’t unfolded properly, the end credits of some quiz show still playing. And when that happened, she’d wake up hours later, back in bed, hoodie tucked round her shoulders, everything dark and still.

Max never mentioned it. But she knew it was him.

He’d carried her. More than once.

The first time she caught on, she nearly asked. Stopped herself at the last second. Didn't want to make it weird. Didn’t want him to stop.

She started seeing him shirtless more often, too. Not on purpose, just mornings, usually. He’d stumble into the kitchen half-awake, hair all over the place, joggers slung low and no top, rubbing at his eyes and mumbling about the kettle being too slow.

The first time, she’d dropped a spoon.

He didn’t notice. Just yawned and opened the fridge like he hadn’t just ambled in looking like an advert for domestically competent, emotionally repressed men with decent arms.

She told herself it was fine. Just a normal thing. Totally standard flatmate experience.

Except it wasn’t. Not really.

Because now, whenever he sat next to her on the sofa, all warmth and sleepy weight, or reached over her for something in the cupboard, or knocked her foot with his under the table and didn’t move it straight away something in her chest shifted.

Something small. And slow. And real.

There were moments, too. Quiet ones that almost said too much.

Like when she made him soup from scratch on the day he came home drenched, muttering about road closures and paperwork soaked through with rain. He didn’t speak much, just sat at the table while she stirred, and when she put the bowl in front of him, he said, “No one’s ever made me soup before.”

Like that meant something.

Or the night she came in late, soaking and fed up, and found her dressing gown warm on the radiator and a note beside it that just said, Shower’s free. Thought you might need it. — M

Or how he always waited up, even if it was just half an hour. Even if he didn’t admit that was what he was doing.

One morning, she came into the kitchen and found him standing barefoot by the sink, tea in one hand, phone in the other, bare-chested and blinking against the light. The sight hit her like it always did, a little spark of heat in the chest, the kind that stayed, even after she looked away.

He turned to her, sleep-mussed and soft-eyed.

“Morning,” he said.

“Morning,” she replied, opening the cupboard for a mug. Her fingers were steady. Just.

He didn’t move. Just watched her for a second longer than usual. Then turned back to his phone like nothing had happened.

Jimmy meowed loudly, possibly offended by the lack of food. She reached for the cat biscuits, heart thudding far more than the situation required.

Something was happening. Quietly. Gradually.

And neither of them had said a word.

Then something happened and it was GP’s fault.

She should’ve known better. Should’ve run the other way the moment he said, “He’s from the fire station, lovely bloke, good pension,” like he was reading from a checklist.

But she’d laughed it off and said, “Why not?” before she could think too hard.

The date was fine. Technically. Polite. Predictable. His name was Jack, he was good-looking in a catalogue sort of way, talked a lot about protein shakes and the gym. Ordered a steak, rare, and made a comment about vegans being “a bit militant.” She wasn't even vegan. Just tired.

By the end of the meal, her smile felt stapled on.

He tried to kiss her by the bus stop. She leaned left instead of right and it ended in a half-hug that was more tragic than polite.

She let out a breath the moment she got home.

The flat was quiet, warm. The hall light was off, but the living room lamp glowed. Jimmy blinked at her from the windowsill like he was judging her outfit.

“Don’t start,” she muttered, kicking off her shoes.

She half-hoped Max would be asleep. That she could sneak past with her dignity intact and pour herself a glass of wine in peace. But he wasn’t.

He was on the sofa, legs stretched out, hoodie on, hood down, telly muted. Just a low hum of street noise drifting in through the cracked window.

She froze for a second in the doorway.

He looked up. Took her in, hair curled from the wind, lipstick smudged, expression tired in that bone-deep way.

“Hey,” he said softly. “You alright?”

She nodded, then shook her head. “Not really.”

He sat up without a word, patted the space next to him.

She hesitated. Then crossed the room, dropped onto the sofa beside him, and let her head fall back against the cushion with a sigh.

“Let me guess,” he said. “Fireman.”

She groaned. “Is it that obvious?”

“GP was grinning like he’d set up a marriage and he has a habit of trying to liaise police and fire.”

“He said he had a 'feeling'. That’s never a good sign.”

Max chuckled. “Was it awful?”

“Not awful. Just off. You know when someone ticks boxes, but none of the ones that matter?”

He didn’t reply straight away. Just nodded, slow and quiet.

“I kept thinking, ‘I’d rather be on the sofa with a cat and a blanket and a packet of bourbons,’” she admitted.

“Reckon Jimmy’s offended he wasn’t invited.”

“He’s got standards.”

They sat in silence for a moment, the kind that hummed with more than it said. She turned her head and found him already watching her.

Their eyes met.

Something shifted.

It was the smallest thing, a pause, a breath, a fraction too long of looking, but it crackled in the space between them like static. Like standing too close to a fire.

Neither of them moved. Neither of them smiled.

The room felt still. Suspended.

He looked at her mouth.

And she felt it. That low, aching pull in the chest. That heat blooming at the base of her throat. That sense of this means something.

If someone had walked in just then, they’d have apologised. Backed out slowly. Closed the door with a whispered sorry, like interrupting a prayer.

Max blinked first. Not away, just slower. Softer.

“You deserve better than someone who makes you feel ‘off’,” he said, quiet like a promise.

She swallowed. “I think I already have better.”

His fingers twitched, like he wasn’t sure whether to reach for her. But he didn’t. Not yet.

Instead, he nodded once. Barely. Like something had been agreed on without needing to be spoken.

The moment passed. Kind of.

But it stayed there, too. Settled in the air between them. Waiting.

And when she stood a few minutes later, brushed her hand against his arm just a second longer than necessary, he didn’t move.

Didn’t need to.

Another month slipped by. Quietly. Intimately.

She told GP, quite firmly, that she was no longer accepting any romantic recommendations from someone who thought George from dispatch was “a bit of a catch.” He sulked for half a day, then brought her a custard cream and muttered an apology. Peace was restored.

Life continued in the in-between.

Work. Shared dinners. Him pouring the tea, her washing up. Jimmy playing favourites depending on who fed him most recently. Everything felt ordinary on the surface, still platonic, still friendly, but the edges had started to fray.

The kind of tension that builds slowly, like heat from a radiator you didn’t notice had been turned on.

Max was quieter than usual. Not cold, just a bit more deliberate. Lingering less. Looking longer. He still carried her to bed when she fell asleep on the sofa. Still left mugs out for her in the morning. But something about him had shifted.

And she knew exactly when it started.

It was a Tuesday. She’d been half-asleep, padding to the kitchen for a glass of water after a late shift, barefoot and bleary-eyed in an oversized T-shirt that fell to mid-thigh. No bra. Shorts underneath, technically, though they barely showed. The shirt hung off one shoulder, neck wide, worn soft with age.

She didn’t think twice.

Until she walked into the kitchen and found Max already there, lit only by the open fridge. He’d frozen mid-sip of orange juice straight from the bottle. Looked up. Stared.

Then blinked like he’d forgotten how light worked.

She’d mumbled something, probably sorry or just water, and edged round him to the sink, painfully aware of how much leg was on show.

Max hadn’t said a word. Just stood there, completely still, like someone trying not to spook a deer.

When she left the room, he didn’t follow.

And since then something had been off. Not wrong. Just aware.

It didn’t blow up. It wasn’t like that.

But one Friday evening, with the flat quiet and warm and the telly playing some old detective drama they weren’t really watching, it finally cracked.

She was curled in her corner of the sofa, knees tucked up, hoodie zipped halfway. He was beside her, arms folded, head leaned back against the cushion, eyes closed but not asleep.

It was raining, softly, rhythmically, against the windows, and Jimmy was snoring on a tea towel someone had left on the radiator.

She turned her head to say something. Maybe a joke. Maybe do you think they’ll actually solve it this time.

But he was already watching her.

She paused. “What?”

He didn’t answer straight away. Just looked at her, really looked, like he was trying to decide something.

And then, quietly, almost like it surprised him as much as her, he said, “This is getting harder.”

She blinked. “What is?”

“Pretending this isn’t something,” he said. Soft. Honest. No edge to it, just quiet resignation.

She sat very still. Her heartbeat felt louder than the rain.

“I thought maybe I was imagining it,” she admitted, voice barely above a whisper.

“You weren’t.”

Another beat passed.

“I don’t want to mess this up,” she said. “What we’ve got. Living here. You.”

“You’re not,” he said simply. “You couldn’t.”

And that was it.

Not some grand declaration. No fireworks. Just that shift, the tension giving way like breath finally released.

He leaned in, slow, like he wanted to give her a chance to move away.

She didn’t.

Their lips met, soft, unsure, careful at first. Like testing something fragile. And then, not so careful. Warmer. Familiar.

When they pulled apart, his hand still resting lightly against her knee, she exhaled shakily.

“Well,” she said.

Max gave a faint smile. “Bit overdue, that.”

She huffed a laugh. “Little bit, yeah.”

Their mouths met again, slower this time.

Like neither of them could quite believe it had happened the first time, like they needed to check it was real.

She shifted closer, knees brushing his thigh, hand resting lightly on his chest. He didn’t pull away. Didn’t flinch. Just let her move, eyes half-lidded, breath shallow as her fingers found the edge of his hoodie and slipped underneath, brushing bare skin.

He exhaled, sharp and low. Like he’d been holding it in for months.

She climbed onto his lap, straddling him easily, her legs folding around his hips like she’d always belonged there. The hoodie rode up, and his hands found her waist instinctively, warm, steady, tentative only in the way they lingered.

Her forehead pressed to his. They breathed the same air.

“Max,” she murmured, lips brushing the corner of his mouth. “Tell me to stop if you need to.”

But he didn’t.

He pulled her back in, kissing her like he meant it this time, like he’d finally let go of all the reasons why he shouldn’t.

It was slow, and deep, and so full of longing it hurt.

And then.

He broke away, suddenly, jaw clenched.

“Ahh, fuck,” he muttered, hands dropping from her waist. “This shouldn’t be happening.”

She blinked, still breathless. “What?”

He looked up at her, properly looked, the guilt already forming.

“You turn twenty-one in two weeks,” he said, voice low and pained. “This is bad. I feel like I’m taking advantage of you.”

She stared at him, stunned. “You know when my birthday is?”

He groaned, tipping his head back against the cushion, hands covering his face for a second. “Please be serious.”

“I am serious!” she said, a little breathless still. “You know my birthday. That’s kind of sweet.”

“Yeah, well,” he said, dragging his hands down his face, “I also know I’m twenty-eight and I’ve seen you barefoot in the kitchen and I just spent the last six weeks pretending I didn’t want to touch you every time you fell asleep on the bloody sofa.”

Her breath caught.

He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t cold.

He just looked wrecked. Not because he didn’t want this, but because he did.

“I’m not a kid,” she said, gently.

“I know,” he replied, just as quiet. “You’re brilliant. You’ve lived more than most people my age. You pay council tax, you make your own soup, you talk back to Jimmy when he gives you attitude.”

She snorted despite herself.

“But,” he continued, softer now, “part of me still feels like I should be the grown-up here. The boring, sensible one.”

She tilted her head. “Are you saying you don’t want this?”

He looked at her, and it was all there, in his eyes, his hands, the way he still hadn’t let go of her entirely.

“No,” he said. “I’m saying I want it too much.”

She was silent for a beat.

Then, “Right. Well. If it helps, I’m the one on top, so technically I’m in charge.”

Max gave her a flat look.

She grinned.

“Alright,” she added, softer now. “We can slow down. If you need to.”

He exhaled, long and shaky. “Yeah. Just for now.”

She climbed off his lap gently, settling beside him instead, pulling her hoodie down with exaggerated modesty.

They sat there for a moment, hearts still thudding, the air still warm and charged, but calmer now. Closer.

“I wasn’t joking, though,” she murmured after a moment. “About you knowing my birthday.”

He rolled his eyes. “It’s in your HR file. I’m not a stalker.”

“Still sweet.”

“Shut up.”

She leaned her head on his shoulder, still smiling.

And even though they’d stopped, even though everything was still complicated and just slightly tangled, neither of them moved away.

Because whatever this was it wasn’t going anywhere.

In the week leading up to her birthday, something shifted.

Not suddenly. Just gradually. Like snow melting.

They were still careful, still hadn’t talked about what they were, exactly, but hands lingered longer. Shoulders brushed more deliberately. Her fingers found the crook of his elbow when they passed each other in the kitchen. His hand slid into the small of her back when he reached for the kettle behind her.

Once, in the middle of an episode neither of them were really watching, she’d tucked her feet under his leg. He didn’t blink. Just adjusted, like that was normal now.

And then, one Thursday night, they both fell asleep on the sofa.

She was curled into her usual corner. He’d stretched out beside her, hoodie half-zipped, one arm slung lazily across the back of the cushions. Jimmy, with the authority of someone who owned every surface in the flat, had nestled himself directly between them, a warm, furry barrier, tail twitching against her knee.

They hadn’t meant to sleep.

But the telly was quiet, and her head had tilted onto Max’s shoulder at some point, and when she blinked awake at three in the morning, the world was dark, and Max was still there, breathing slow and even beside her.

Neither of them moved.

Not until the next morning, when she woke to find Jimmy sitting on her hip like some triumphant gremlin king and Max already in the kitchen, clattering about with suspicious urgency.

Her birthday arrived grey and drizzly, the kind of typical early spring morning where the light couldn’t decide what it was doing.

She padded into the kitchen in her pyjamas, hair rumpled, blinking blearily at the smell of toast and something distinctly sugary in the air.

Max was by the counter, back turned.

“Morning,” she mumbled, rubbing one eye.

He glanced over his shoulder, slightly sheepish.

“Happy birthday.”

She froze. “Wait. Did you—?”

He stepped aside.

There, on the kitchen table, sat a birthday cake.

Well. Two, technically.

One clearly shop-bought, neat icing, little sugar flowers, a ribbon round the base.

The other was less successful.

Lopsided, slightly sunken, icing already starting to slip down one side. A single candle jammed into the middle, tilting at an alarming angle.

Her hand flew to her mouth. “You didn’t.”

Max folded his arms. “Don’t look in the bin.”

She laughed, really laughed, that open, surprised kind that bubbled out of her chest.

“Was it that bad?”

“Looked like a victorian crime scene by the end,” he said, deadpan. “Flour everywhere. Jimmy fled.”

She reached for the shop cake instinctively, then paused.

“I kind of want to try yours.”

He looked horrified. “Don’t. You’ve got so much to live for.”

She grinned, grabbing a fork. “It’s my birthday. I’ll risk death.”

After a heroic effort of politeness and three mouthfuls of dry sponge, she gave in and set the fork down, laughing as she reached for the proper cake.

Max, still pretending not to be slightly proud of his culinary chaos, handed her a box.

“Before you accuse me of being sentimental,” he said, “this was Jimmy’s idea.”

She opened it.

Inside was a mug. Big. White. With you’re brew-tiful printed in bold, terrible lettering above a smiling teabag.

“Oh my God,” she breathed. “This is horrendous.”

He looked smug. “Thank you.”

She clutched it to her chest. “I love it.”

“Thought you might.”

But then he reached into his pocket, suddenly quieter, and pulled out something small, neatly wrapped in brown paper with a red ribbon tied round it.

“This one’s less awful.”

She blinked. “There’s more?”

He shrugged. “S’pose twenty-one’s a proper one. Thought you deserved something that didn’t come from the bargain mug aisle.”

She unwrapped it slowly.

Inside was a delicate silver chain, fine and simple, with a tiny engraved pendant, a moon on one side, her initial on the back.

She didn’t speak.

Not straight away.

When she looked up, her eyes were shining. Not crying. Not really. But close enough.

“No one’s ever done this for me,” she said, voice quiet.

He stepped forward, hand brushing her cheek. “You deserve more than this.”

She looked at him and something in her chest cracked wide open.

Then she kissed him.

Soft. Properly. No hesitation. No build-up.

Just something full and warm and real.

He kissed her back instantly, hands finding her waist, drawing her in. No overthinking this time. No rules. Just them.

When they finally pulled apart, he rested his forehead against hers.

“Happy birthday,” he murmured.

She smiled, fingertips brushing his jaw. “Best one I’ve ever had.”

After her birthday, something shifted, but not in a loud, dramatic way.

It was gentler than that. Quieter. Like slipping into clean sheets after a long day. Familiar, and lovely, and soft at the edges.

They didn’t have a conversation about it. No sit-down, no labels, no awkward what are we now moment.

They just were.

Some mornings she woke to find him already dressed, coffee in one hand, his other trailing lightly down her back as she stirred. Other mornings, it was her brushing the hair off his forehead while he snored into the pillow, one leg hanging off the bed like he’d lost a fight in his sleep.

They went food shopping together on Sundays, her with a list, Max pretending they didn’t need one.

“We’ve got pasta,” he’d say.

“You’ve always got pasta.”

“That’s preparation. It’s not my fault I’m efficient.”

She’d roll her eyes and chuck a bag of spinach into the trolley, only for him to sneak in a multipack of crisps when she wasn’t looking. Jimmy once tried to climb into the shopping bag when they got home and got stuck in a packet of brioche rolls in hopes there were treats there.

At work, they were still careful. Sort of. But people noticed.

She made him packed lunches, proper ones. Left notes on napkins, little drawings of cats and reminders to eat the fruit. He acted like it was embarrassing. Always finished everything, though. She caught GP smirking once, and just raised an eyebrow.

“Don’t start,” she warned, a phrase she kept for Jimmy and GP only.

“Didn’t say a word,” he replied, smug.

Sometimes, Max would come up behind her in the kitchen, no fanfare, just a warm hand on her hip, a kiss pressed to the curve of her shoulder like it was second nature. And it was.

She started leaving things in his room. He started stealing her shampoo. They bickered over the thermostat. Shared tea in bed on Sundays. Found themselves existing together in the kind of easy silence that spoke more than words.

Their official hard lunch was at the end-of-year service gala and it was a bit of a production.

Not black tie, but close enough to make Max grumble when he realised he’d need to iron a shirt. She caught him halfway through, sleeves rolled, top button undone, looking unfairly good and pretending not to notice.

She spent longer than she wanted picking a dress. Nothing too much, just something that felt nice. Her hair refused to behave, Jimmy tried to eat her mascara wand, and Max, to his credit, didn’t rush her once.

When she finally emerged, he actually froze.

His mouth opened like he was going to say something clever, then closed again.

“You alright there?” she asked, smirking.

“Yeah,” he managed. “You, uh. You look incredible.”

She smiled. “So do you.”

He offered her his arm like a gentleman. “Come on then. Let’s go drink prosecco out of plastic and make polite conversation with people I avoid during the week.”

The venue was buzzing by the time they arrived, a function room done up in serviceable navy and gold, clusters of uniforms dotted around high tables, the occasional gleam of medals. The kind of affair with a cheap bar, a decent buffet, and an overenthusiastic DJ on standby.

She stuck close to Max as they wove through the crowd. He greeted a few people with polite nods, muttered “don’t ask” to someone from traffic enforcement, and made a direct line for the drinks table.

He handed her a glass of fizz with a lopsided smile. “Alright so far?”

She nodded. “Still standing. You?”

“Just about.”

Then someone called out from across the room.

“Oi! Verstappen! Thought you weren’t showing!”

Max turned, already smiling, the proper kind. Soft and real.

Two men approached, one in a dark suit with the top button undone, the other in a tailored jacket and expression that said I’ve got my eye on you, even while smiling.

“Gentlemen,” Max greeted them, nodding. “Didn’t think I’d find you vertical past eight.”

“Rude,” said the man in the suit, grinning. “This your better half, then?”

Max turned slightly, hand resting lightly on her back.

“This is, yeah” He paused, just a beat. “She’s with me.”

The man stuck out a hand. “Lando. Fire service. He hates us.”

“Not all of you,” Max muttered.

The other one leaned in, charming as anything. “Oscar. Also fire. Don’t hold it against us.”

She shook both hands, surprised by how easy it felt.

“So,” Lando said, glancing at Max with raised brows, “you’ve managed to not scare this one off?”

“Not yet,” she said, dry.

Lando smirked. “You might be alright.”

They chatted a while, light stuff, easy, Oscar talking about some botched catering order at their station, Lando teasing Max about the time he once fell asleep in the back of a van during academy.

And through it all, Max stayed close.

Not possessive. Just present.

When someone called the fire lads over to the buffet queue, Lando saluted with mock solemnity.

“Pleasure meeting you. If he gets weird and quiet later, it’s because someone mentioned budget reviews. He’ll recover.”

Once they were gone, she turned to Max. “They’re nice.”

He gave her a look. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. I can see why you like them.”

He shrugged, a bit bashful. “They’re alright.”

She bumped his arm lightly. “You proud of yourself?”

He gave her a soft smile. “Yeah. Bit.”

The night droned on and thankfully the speeches were mercifully short.

A few awards handed out, a couple of polite laughs, someone from HR choking up halfway through a thank-you. Then the music shifted, something slower, older, the kind of song you’d recognise if you’d ever grown up hearing it from a kitchen radio.

She looked up from her glass and found Max already watching her.

“What?” she asked, smiling.

He didn’t answer. Just extended a hand.

“Dance with me?”

She blinked. “You don’t dance.”

“I make exceptions.”

She let him lead her to the edge of the makeshift floor, where a handful of couples were already swaying gently, some more tipsy than romantic. The lights had softened; the music curled around the room like a warm duvet.

Max rested one hand low on her back, the other catching her hand, fingers slotting between hers like they belonged there. No fancy footwork. Just the two of them, slow and quiet, bodies close enough to hush the world.

He leaned in slightly. “You alright?”

She nodded, pressing her cheek lightly to his shoulder. “More than.”

His hand moved, sliding up to rest against her neck, thumb brushing just beneath her jaw.

And then, right there, in the middle of everyone, he kissed her.

Not rushed. Not cautious. Just real. Solid. Like something he’d meant to do for a long time and finally had the nerve to finish.

A few people glanced over. Lando nudged Oscar. Someone let out a very unsubtle “finally” from the bar.

She smiled against his mouth. “Bit bold, Verstappen.”

He smirked. “Bit late for subtle.”

Back at the flat, it was quiet again, the kind of late-night hush that wrapped round your shoulders like a cardigan.

She kicked off her heels by the door with a groan. “I’m never wearing those again.”

“Want a brew?” he asked, slipping off his jacket.

She shook her head. “Come help with the zip.”

He followed her into the bedroom, fingertips light as he tugged the fastening down, slow, careful, like the fabric might bruise. She let the straps fall from her shoulders, the dress pooling at her feet as she stepped out and reached for her pyjamas.

But then his hand found her waist.

Still soft. Still careful.

He kissed her shoulder, warm, open-mouthed, right where her skin met the curve of her neck, and her breath caught.

She turned, and he was already there, mouth meeting hers with more heat than either of them meant, hands sliding over her back like he was trying to learn it by feel.

She kissed him back, fingers tangling in the front of his shirt.

It didn’t go further than that.

But his hands stayed on her waist when they stopped, his forehead rested gently against hers, and when she whispered, “Stay?” he didn’t even nod.

He just reached for the duvet, pulled it round them both, and held her like it was the most natural thing in the world.

And maybe it was.

The years folded in quietly, without fanfare but full of little milestones.

Max met her mother one damp autumn afternoon, the kind where the sky refuses to clear and the scent of wet leaves clings to your coat. It was awkward at first, polite smiles and cautious conversation, but by the end of the visit, her mum had accepted him with a nod that said, I like him. That was all Max needed.

They moved out of the cramped flat not long after. The place had served its purpose, but it felt right to leave it behind, to find somewhere that felt like theirs.

The house was modest, just around the corner from the station, nestled on a quiet street where the noise of the city softened to a gentle hum. It had two floors, a small garden they barely kept tidy, and, best of all, a study where she could work from home a few days a week. Max sometimes teased her about turning the place into a number cave, but he’d settle into the living room with a book or just his thoughts, content.

They got Sassy a bengal kitten not long after she’d started working from home, a wild splash of grey and black spots that darted around the garden chasing shadows. Jimmy, ever the grumpy old king, had at first regarded Sassy with thinly veiled disdain, but even he softened as the weeks went by, especially when she’d settle in Max’s lap, purring loud enough to drown out the news on TV.

They didn’t rush anything. No grand declarations, no shiny rings flashing in the light, just slow mornings with shared mugs of tea, soft banter across the kitchen table, and the quiet certainty of someone always being there.

They’d cook together, usually something simple and quick, a stew or pasta, but the way Max would peel the vegetables while she chopped herbs made the ordinary feel special.

Some nights they’d fall asleep tangled up, her head on his chest, the steady thump of his heartbeat lulling her. Other nights she’d wake first and watch him, marvel at how someone who’d seemed so guarded could become her home.

Work days were often rushed, rushing to get ready, grabbing breakfast on the run, getting to the car first or walking to the station together. She liked how it felt, the rhythm of their mornings syncing without effort.

Birthdays came and went, each one marked not by big gestures, but by shared mornings and lazy evenings, takeaway boxes on the sofa, candles only lit because one of them remembered.

When she turned twenty-three, the air was just beginning to change, that first hint of spring stretching into the afternoons. They were in the park near the house, one they always walked through when Max was off-shift and she wanted to stretch her legs after a long day at her desk.

He stopped beneath a tree that was just beginning to bloom, fingers brushing nervously against the inside of his coat pocket. She was mid-story, something about a spreadsheet disaster and too many biscuits, when he dropped down on one knee.

She’d blinked at him. “Max. What are you—?”

And then she saw the ring.

Simple. Silver. Unfussy. Just like him.

“Bloody hell,” she whispered.

He gave her a soft look, that lopsided, uncertain smile she’d fallen for ages ago. “Don’t panic. I’m not expecting fireworks. But if you’ll have me I’d like to make this a bit more official.”

She stared for a beat, heart hammering.

“You didn’t need to get on your knee, old man,” she teased, even as her voice caught. “You’ll do your back in.”

He laughed, breathless and relieved. “Bit late for that.”

She didn’t cry. Not properly. But she said yes, and kissed him like it meant something big, because it did. And when they walked home, hands laced, the whole world felt settled somehow.

Two years later, curled up on the sofa on an ordinary Tuesday night, she’d said it, offhand, like it had only just crossed her mind.

“I think I’d like a kid. Not mine, though. Just someone. You know.”

Max had looked up from his book. Quiet, thoughtful.

Then, “Yeah. I think about that too. Not a baby. But maybe someone who’s had it rough. Someone who needs a place.”

They didn’t say much else about it that night, but something had shifted between them, a thread laid down gently.

A few months later, it happened. A boy, quiet, with wary eyes and shoes that didn’t quite fit. From the same estate Max had grown up on. Same school, even.

Max saw himself in the boy before anyone else did.

They didn’t talk about fate. That wasn’t their style. But when they brought him home and showed him the freshly painted room where the study used to be, she noticed Max pause in the doorway, saw the way his jaw tensed, the way his eyes softened.

The boy didn’t say much, but he let their older Bengal sit on his lap that first night. That felt like enough.

Life settled into new shapes. School runs and packed lunches. Late-night whispers under duvet covers. Burnt toast and forgotten PE kits. Laughter, low and real. They were a family now, not by blood but by choice, and that, in every way, felt more honest.

They still had the mugs from their old flat, mismatched and chipped. Jimmy and Sassy still ruled the house, often found curled together in the warm patch beneath the living room window. Max still left his boots by the door and she still grumbled about it every single time. Nothing perfect. Everything real.

And in the quiet moments, when the house was still, when the rain tapped soft against the windows and the cats dozed in warm corners, she’d look across at Max, the man who’d once offered her a chance and ended up offering her a whole life, and she’d feel it down to her bones: the peace of being truly seen, truly chosen. Not for what she could prove or pretend to be, but just as she was. And as he reached for her hand without looking, like he always did, she knew, this was the kind of love people didn’t always get. Not loud or perfect or shiny. But steady. Built in quiet kitchens and long drives and shared jokes. Built in the softest, bravest ways. The kind that stayed.

the end.

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