#thank u so much for the strength!

[the-kingshound]

Uni registration is so needlessly stressful T-T

Wishing you strength.

Right?? I swear they want to age you prematurely, there is not even a reason why it should be so complicated and chaotic.

This is the third time i do this and it doesn't get any easier😢

[bacchuschucklefuck]

Can you expand on what you mean by Baron being "too cool" to really fit a horror monster? It's a very interesting concept and I'd love to hear your thoughts. Is it that they're too active/involved/tangible and it detracts from their scariness?

I feel like I should preface this with a wall of disclaimers lmao 1/I am a hardcore, down-to-the-marrow, avid, deeply sincere horror enthusiast, esp. horror creatures. this usually means my mileage is vastly different from the average populace's, and my scaredy bone has been disintegrated by longterm exposure. most things in a piece of horror media won't scare me! so I practically never use that on its own as the scale to talk abt horror experiences, but when something does scare me it's always a special occasion to be treasured. 2/canon d20 is never really meant to be horror horror, and for good reasons: it doesn't fit the company's output, it takes a kind of carelessness in production estimation that is always a huge risk, it's often vulnerable in a way that kinda goes against how TTRPGs usually facilitates vulnerability, and for most people it's just! stressful! d20, even with the "horror-themed" seasons, generally just plays with horror tropes and stays focused in its goal of being a comedy improv tabletop theater show. 3/fantasy high's chosen system is DnD, which as I've mentioned before is before all a combat-based game system, which means the magic circle of play is drawn based on stats that facilitate and prioritize combat. want or not this affects every interaction you have in the game, and given fantasy high's concept from the ground up (everyone's going to school of DnD stuff to get better at DnD) it's doubly relevant. 4/This Is Fine I have no quarrel with this. my meters are internal, I do not ask this show to be anything it doesn't advertise itself to be, and what it is is fucking great! I like it! when I expand on this ask's question it will be like a physicist going insane in a lab. that's the mindset we're going in with.

disclaimers done. my stance on horror as a genre is that it's a utility genre rather than a content genre or a demographic genre; it is the discard of narratives. it's the trash pile. horror, above being scary, is about being ugly and messy, it's the cracks on the ground any story inevitably steps over to stay a genre that isn't horror. the genre's been around long enough to develop a codex and a general language that medias and makers and enthusiasts of the genre can use to talk about and build onto, but if you go into individual pieces there's really no unifying Horror Story. one person's beautiful life can be another's horror story, it's just how it is.

this makes The Monster a deeply intriguing piece of the genre. thing is a monster is in a decent percentage of any story - it's just when the antagonist force steps into something past a certain line traced out in the story's world. monstrousness is in pretty much every western fantasy story, it's in any story with a hero and something to vanquish or win; more than anything it's a proxy of that thing up there. the line in a narrative's world. the monster is the guard of the unknown lands, where heroic, civilized people don't tread.

what does this mean in the context of horror? the genre is about that perceived lawlessness, that "unknown land" so to say. we're in the monster's home. that's the literary context that we often walk into a horror piece with; the monster knows more than you about where you are. it may not understand you, but it holds more information than you, and with that it moves swifter than you, has more covered than you, and is more assured in its existence in this context than you. it's a struggle to catch up to it, it's nigh impossible to get one over it, and you're never sure it'll 100% work, because you just don't have the information necessary to.

with that framing you can kinda see where I'm coming from here: horror's often about the breaking of rules. I always think a monster's most effective when it breaks well-established rules of both existence and visual storytelling. think Possum (2018) or Undertale's Omega Flowey or the Xenomorph Queen - unique change in medium, unique change in graphic, unique change in design language, etc. in that sense I actually really like how canon baron plays out: they don't really function like anything else in the fantasy high universe, the bad kids have not managed to kill them when they've felled literal gods, their domain in fhjy literally introduces new mechanics to encompass their existence! from an experience design standpoint they slap mad shit. BUT! I can't help finding their character, like as a character riz (and the other bad kids, eventually) interact with, to be very... coherent? in design. this is kinda hard for me to articulate in words, it's more often a sense you get once you've looked at enough of these scrumptious fuckers, their general design and the way they show up is just kinda too clean, so to say. always kinda newly made? fresh unboxed. it, once again, makes sense for their lore - they are looking for more about themself from riz - and their function - they're an antagonist in a game experience, they're meant to be interacted with in a way that produces results and meshes with the existing magic circle - but that shininess takes away from the implied history they should have dominion over and the person they're haunting doesn't.

from another angle there is kinda something there about how put-together canon baron is as a concept; the domain they call home is riz's deep-seeded fears, extremely vulnerable things he's drawn borders around to quarantine and refused to walk into. things that from his perspective would irreversibly shatter certain pleasant fictions his world is built on top of. canon baron, While Extremely Cool, I feel is kinda too neat to connect with and signify the apocalyticized mess that'd result from this paradigm shift. the part where they're in riz's briefcase and looking through every mirror is Very Cool And Fucked Up! but ultimately the show draws a line around them as well, by making game-physical, tangible spaces they're in (the mirrors and the haunted mordred manor) and put riz and the bad kids there only when they need to confront stuff. riz is meaningfully narratively away from baron's unknown land for most of fantasy high.

with that and all of my disclaimers in mind my conclusion here is if canon baron wants to be a Horror Monster they'd have to cross way more lines. be a Lot more invasive. hence (holds up my class swap baron like a long cat)

[theladyfae]

i think human nature/family of blood is a really good two parter in how it manages to show how full of shit ten is 🫶

[paging-possum]

hands this to you

(I didn’t know if kyra’s hair is in a ponytail at the moment in canon but!!!) KEO BE UPON YE!! The pose reference I used is from Love Lies Bleeding btw-haven’t watched that movie but gay people real :]

I AM GOING TO LOSE MY MIND????????? I AM GOINGTO LOSE MY MIND. collapses to my knees on the ground you have drawn them truly so tenderly you have drawn then with a peace they will only ever get to know in this drawing the way they are gently holding unlovable hands THE BONE BRACELET the way they are looking at each other I will actually start keeling over....TRULY thank you so much I cannot begin to describe how nice of a surprise this was in my inbox omg.....I need to tape them to my computer for strength

[lemonbubble]

boy i sure wish i could google literally anything and get accurate results in return

[ausrache]

Spending prolonged time with anyone these days felt unnerving but the will of the Equilibrium was absolute – if they were instructed to complete the task together, there was no denying it. “I’m… not exactly thrilled to be partnered up either but the least we can do is be cordial. I’m Yanfei.” She would break the silence between them with a nod in her direction, yet still struggling to make eye contact with the stranger.

𝐔𝐍𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐌𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐃 | 𝙰𝙻𝚆𝙰𝚈𝚂 𝙰𝙲𝙲𝙴𝙿𝚃𝙸𝙽𝙶 ➥ @wise-innocence

the universe was a dark & lonely place. cold, even if you raised your head & looked 'pon the stars as they twinkled so idly upon the sky. some of them were dying. in the distance, in the past — exploding in the most beautiful of ways. some of them lived, burning just as bright or yet, even brighter than our own sun. this was balance. equilibrium paved its way into every nook of our world & must be upheld. yet, it would not always bring forth the same amount of joy as she traversed upon it . . .

such as this moment. well, displeasure would also be the wrong sentiment here. it was foreign at best.

balance had been achieved in solitude for most of her time as an emanator. it was carved into her skin; the calcified veins that ran down her arms to the black tips of her fingers having becoming testaments to her lonesome existence. so, to have been assigned another emanator to enact HooH's ways? a partner, one might even say? it was . . . strange.

crimson gaze flickered to the woman at her side, inexpressiveness remaining as a small sigh fled from pursed lips. had she felt anything? emotions were harder to digest than to actually socialize with another. yet, what the other spoke of held its truth & as such, the emanator nodded whilst staring off into nothigness. "if it is what the equilibrium seeks . . . i — no, we shall comply." a pause, lips remain parted for a second as if the answer to her own introduction hung at the tip of her tongue. to be within the presence of another who was chosen by THEIR gaze . . . would it be okay to bask in familiartiy for even just a second? for most knew the woman by her number. after all, it is what she proclaims to be within the chaos that seeks balance.

it is what she seeks . . . right?

"mali." yet is her given name that echoes between them, filling the awkward silence & slicing through it like a warm knife. "my name is mali." the addition, perhaps not needed, felt oddly nice as it rolled off her tongue. could this be . . . nice? perhaps being in the presence of a likeminded individual would be enjoyable after all — even if her own aversion spoke of other tales. a hand remained at her hip, pads grazing against the cold metal that hung from there. "i've heard this will be a particularly hard case to solve . . . this planet has been hanging within imbalance for eons, it is said.''

"shall we get to it, then? yanfei?"

[kerorowhump]

keroro the type of person to get very upset if he's not invited to something

[seiwas]

elliot knights (gaz in cod) ig post yesterday actually fried my fawkin brain like r u kidding me i cant bELIEVE HE DID THAT I CANT BELIEVE HE TOOK A MIRROR SELFIE WITH HIS ASS HANGING OUT LIKE THAT

[canongf]

it’s really so cool to see you reaching for your dreams and getting more involved within acting! sometimes i fall victim to thinking that it’s “too late” to do something or that i’m falling behind a lot of others my age or younger because life and other shitty things have stolen a lot of years from me, but it’s really cool to see you being proof that anything is possible at any time <3 i hope ur doing well and im so proud of you liv!!

(also i hope this doesn’t come across as rude in any form LRJAJFJES youll always have a little stranger rooting for you somewhere across the world <3)

anon!!! 🖤 this isn't rude, this is the sweetest thing in the world!!!!!

i know exactly how you feel. i don't know how many times i've felt like i've missed my chance, and with so many things!!! careers!!! hobbies!!! relationships!!! life milestones!!! i was sure of it. sometimes it's easy to forget how fluid and flexible life really is!!!

thank you, thank you, thank you for rooting for me!!! i am rooting for you!!! your path might be different than other people's, and it might look different than how you expected it to be or how you hoped it'd be, but it is still yours and there is still lots to look forward to!!! and i know it's hard and i know it's scary, but i hope you remember that you are not alone in it!!! we're figuring it out together!!! 🖤

[synthbug]

just casted a very helpful spell on you 🪄 good luck with your tasks!!

OHH MY GOODNESS THANK YOU SO MUCH‼️‼️‼️💙🦋🦋 right after I got this I received your helpful spell BLAST and I held off from answering till I finished a task (the shortest yet most daunting one I had) and I think now that that's done I can power thru the rest of my stuff :33 thank u SOO MUCH my mutualbestie !!💙🦋 Truly the power of friendship can make the world go round ‼️‼️

[hyunebear]

something abt hyunsung and their friendship and how strong it is it could destroy and create universes at once

[lotuslate]

i am too afraid to reblog it (penis) but i HAD to comment on your tenderhorny wangxian manhua redraw... i've seen so many iterations of that panel (AS IT DESERVES), but yours is by far my favorite, even more than the original. every time i see it i just get so fucking emotional. it's so warm and romantic and erotic in one neat (well, a bit messy 😏) little package.

i love EVERYTHING about their expressions in your close-up. lwj is never going to get enough of kissing and touching wwx and i can not blame him, just look at how kissable those lips are. his eyes are closed like he's dreaming and if he opens them this will all disappear. and wwx's eyes are so bright, like he just realized the extent of lwj's love for him. they are speaking to me and they are saying "wow... i love him, and he loves me, more than anything in this world."

the way you drew wwx's grip on lwj's arm just fucking sends me. he grabs it and hugs it in closer and closer and closer. i'm gone. ascended. not to even mention the hand cradling his stomach... ugghhhh i want what they have. thank you for bringing this beautiful piece into the world and sharing it with us.

I HAVE LOST COUNT OF the amount of times i’ve read this message omg gkhsdjbdf i absolutely love how much you like all these details and it warms my heart that someone took the time to pay enough attention to them I’m genuinely so moved 😭🩷

and thank YOU!! for sharing your thoughts it really does make me feel motivated to keep sharing my art even if sometimes I don’t feel too good about it kjdasfbksd I really appreciate it you have no idea!!

[kuromi-hoemie]

Suletta baby the world doesn't deserve you

[coalburiedinwarmashes]

First week working in the best place ever completed🤩

[tteokdoroki]

jock bf yuuji who’s tongue lolls out of his mouth when he feels u cum on his dick and then he ends up cumming when you suck on his tongue as it hangs out of his mouth <3 he’s a big manhandler and so unbelievably strong, has def broken the weak frame of your dorm bed at least once <3 loves sleeping over and then waking up to you in the early morning light, eats you out then has you ride him and you’re both thinking about it for the rest of the day <3 yuuji sends you the riskiest texts too, texts you that he can’t stop thinking about how good you looked when you sucked him off the night before and now you’re distracted in the library <3

ִ ࣪𖤐๋࣭ — JOCK BF!YUUJI ENTRY #6. pleasure prioritised.

about. just some scenarios of an incredibly strong jock boyfriend pleasing his girlfriend in different ways. thank you nonnie for driving me up the wall with this!!! ( 1K )

warnings. minors, blank and ageless blogs do not interact. nsfw, smut, college!au, characters aged up to 20s, creampies, messy makeouts, breaking the bed, strength!kink, unprotected sex, oral sex (f + m!receiving), jock bf!yuuji, weird + fem!reader.

everybody knows that yuuji itadori is strong, he wouldn’t be the star athlete in the soccer team if that wasn’t the case. 

with muscles that ripple when he moves, thick thighs that spread wide and flex on instinct and dark eyes that shine like gold while pulling you in — it’s no wonder why half of the campus wants a piece of him. luckily enough, yuuji itadori only wants to give himself to you.

yuuji only uses the full extent of strength when he devotes his body to pleasing you. when it’s lights out at your dorm go out, and the common spaces are vacant while your roommates party the night away and all that remains is a man who loves his girlfriend with all of his entirety. and a girl who loves him all too much, right back. he pins you to the bed, pelvis to pelvis as yuuji uses all of his might to pound into you.

his thrusts are usually heavy, but thoughtful and with meaning — designed to make you see bright, shining stars behind your eyelids and pull an angels song from between your lips. itadori doesn’t just fuck you —  his sweet girlfriend, his everything, his purpose. he makes love to you, makes the bed rock while his sticky tip stays tacked to your g-spot and safe, comforting brown his eyes stay locked on yours, reminding you of how much you are loved as you tremble and quake beneath him. 

there’s often a dull thump to the wall from where the force of yuuji’s hips drive the headboard into it. only you ever have the power to make your man that feral, have him drooling like a dog with its tongue in the wind whenever he has the chance to sink into your tight heat. it’s the way your snug little pussy ripples around the giant jock’s fat girth, his tummy smooshed up against your puffy clit does nothing to help him either. the more ecstasy he gives you, the more you clench down on your boyfriend and the further his eyes disappear into his skull. 

itadori just loves being inside of you, tucking his thriving dick away inside your velveteen walls, hearing your pussy suction around you and your cheap dorm mattress squeak in harmony with your hiccuped moans. yuuji, yuuji, yuuji. his name on your kiss swollen and tear glossed lips is enough for the pink haired man to break the bed from how hard and deep he thrusts into you. even when it does collapse in on itself, yuuji doesn’t dare stop until you’re cumming in sweet streams around him — painting his toned stomach and washboard abs in your arousal before he fills you up with his own thick white.

he usually cums with his drooling tongue in your mouth and an arm wrapped around your head, keeping you tucked underneath while he grinds his hips through your shared highs. sometimes salacious laments and high-pitched whines manage to slip through the cracks — which mean noise complaints from the Dean of your dorm and a call to maintenance in the morning to fix your destroyed bed (and walls).

mornings are no different (once your bed is fixed), yuuji itadori always fails to keep his hands to himself and if he’s lucky enough to stay the night — he uses those very same greedy and large hands to pleasure you all throughout sunrise. you wake up to find fingers on the swollen little nub tucked between your puffy pussy lips and his eager tongue swiping over the eight of your slit to catch any of your juices before they’re wasted on cheaply made college-friendly sheets. 

it’s a sight to behold, the way you arch your back from the bed and your thighs quiver either side of a head full of bright pink hair that tickles their insides. you can’t help but tug on the soft tufts — dragging yuuji further into your creamy cunt while accidentally kicking plushies galore from their place amongst your pillows and blankets. itadori remains a messy eater, slurping on your succulent folds, running laps over every inch of the heat between your glorious thighs. 

except you don’t get to cum on his mouth or his tongue on mornings like this — instead yuuji likes to really show off his strength. he likes you in his lap and seated on the swell of his fat, oozing girth. he adores plugging you full, watching you writhe above him for something, anything. any type of thrust or friction. yuuji can’t help himself, he’s always dying  to grope the globes of your ass when you’re riding him, using the strength in his arms  to hold over his bright red ans milky tip before pumping himself all the way into you in one calculated thrust upwards. 

both of you cum before either of your alarms go off, messy as always but content. you’re happy with yuuji and he’s always so happy to please you — it’s the least he could do for his precious girl. 

itadori always leaves you with a limp throughout the rest of your day — a comfortable pain in the base of your spine that reminds you of how deep he’d gone. there’s a dampness to your underwear during your classes too, reminding you of how much hot, oozing seed the jock had filled you up with. ‘keep it there,’ the pink haired soccer player tends to ask with those guilt-tripping puppy dog eyes of his. ‘want you walking around with my cum dripping down your thigh, so that everyone knows who you belong to.’

you often wonder what the campus would think if they knew how debauched their star player really was.

they’d have a field day if they saw the texts yuuji sent you while wiping the floor with his teammates during practices. pictures of his erection in the changing room mirrors and maybe some of your pretty face while he had you cumming on just his tip. sometimes paragraphs detailing how he was going to ruin your pussy, make you see god or even reach cloud nine. some tell you how much itadori misses your plush lips wrapped around him as he cums down your throat. 

but no matter what way you look at it, your jock boyfriend yuuji itadori always has your pleasure prioritised at the forefront of his mind. he’d use whatever part of his body, whatever strength he has to keep you satisfied. all alongside his insatiable appetite for you and only you. 

꒰ end. — all rights reserved © tteokdoroki 2024. do not copy, repost, translate & recommend elsewhere.

[nereidprinc3ss]

you know the killer doesn't understand

in which spencer is so terrified he's going to hurt you after he gets out of prison that he can barely touch you. an argument ensues.

angst (+ comfort) warnings/tags: established relationship, fem!reader, mentions of violent intrusive thoughts (non-specific), arguing, yelling, use of the word rape, nightmares, happyish ending, mention of showering together, it's a bad time but it's also a good time for us woo i love angsty angst a/n: i miss posting for real so bad i dug up this draft which was mostly finished and polished it up. i think i really like this one and it was based on a request but i lost it:( i hope u guys enjoy this, pls lmk<3

Spencer is by no means happy with his sudden fear of touching you—it makes everything in his life significantly harder and less convenient and he hates that he’s constantly afraid he’s going to break you. He hates watching you hold back from attacking him with a hug when he enters a room like you used to, and he feels terrible every time you ball up on the opposite side of the couch as he reads, waiting for an invitation into his lap but too scared to ask for one (he’ll always hold out his arm for you, though—he’s not cruel.)

You’re adorable in the way you stand at the foot of the bed in your pajamas, arms behind your back like it’s not your bed too, but it makes him feel terrible. This isn’t at all what he wanted for you, and in all honestly he’s thought about ending the relationship because he knows he’s being an absolutely awful partner—but he just can’t bring himself to. Instead, he gestures for you to get into bed, and you curl up under the covers close to him but not against him, and he’ll play with your hair and read for a while because he can’t sleep very well. Eventually he’ll assume the position of sleep, but some sick part of him doesn’t know what to do with the sounds of the city and the fan instead of the sounds of a hundred men rolling and sniffing and shuffling around their echoey cells. He doesn’t understand warmth anymore, or softness, or nice pajamas or fluffy pillows. He’s starting to think he doesn’t understand you. And that’s the worst thought of all. 

So he essentially dozes for the first week, on and off, always exhausted in the mornings but what’s new. When he can’t sleep, he turns his head to watch you breathe—some beautiful, sweet creature dreaming in his bed, unwaveringly loyal to him even though he can hardly stand to touch you for fuck’s sake. You’re beautiful, and it makes him feel better to watch you, even if he can’t touch you. Not now that he knows what he is capable of doing to another person. What if he has some sort of PTSD—PTSS, thank you, Luke Alvez—induced dream and does something terrible to you in his sleep? It’s not like you’re tiny, but he’s stronger, he knows he is, and lately every time you get too close he remembers exactly what it feels like to exert the full force of that strength, and what it feels like when someone else unleashes their own onto him. 

They’re just intrusive thoughts, and in them he doesn’t hurt you intentionally, but he always feels a little bit sick now. He is so, so sick. A bull in a China shop. Spencer knows exactly how breakable humans are—it’s his job to know. If he left so much as one red mark on you by accident, he’s quite sure he’d drill down to a previously unknown rock bottom. And if he reaches that point, he doesn’t know if he’d ever deserve to come back. 

Every day it seems to become clearer that the only humane thing to do is break up with you. But for now he’ll watch you sleep—the delicate rising and falling of your chest, the way you curl in on yourself because you can’t curl into him. In sleep you look so peaceful and content. You never look that way awake, anymore. Not when he’s around, which is pretty much always. At least he can’t disappoint you while you’re asleep. 

Or so he’d like to think. 

Until one night, about a week and a half after he gets home; you whimper in your sleep. It’s so quiet he could’ve missed it, but he doesn’t, and then he watches your smooth brow furrow with worry and he knows you’re having a nightmare immediately. 

Spencer panics—before, he would have woken you up and held you and comforted you until you fell back asleep and it would have been so simple. Now he’s frozen, afraid to touch you but not sure if he can just lie there watching you so afraid and not do a thing about it. 

In the end, you choose for him—and it only takes a few moments. You’re close enough to him that it’s easy for you to close the few inches even in sleep, and maybe you’re slightly conscious but not enough to remember you’re not supposed to touch him. 

He stops breathing as you fold yourself against him, muttering worried nonsense—he catches his name, once—nestling against his chest, one searching arm gently draping over his waist. Every muscle in his body is rigid, and his thoughts—his mind goes… completely fucking blank. 

Suddenly, all he’s known, all he’s ever known, is the smell of your hair, the warmth of you seeping through layers of clothing, and the weight of your arm over him. Everything he ever was ceases to exist, and he’s just this, right now. The person you’d turned to unconsciously for comfort, so sure, so trusting that he would keep you safe. He can feel your breath for the first time in months. Slowly every tense muscle unspools. For the first time in a long time he doesn’t feel dangerous. He doesn’t feel like his entire body is spring loaded and ready to attack at the slightest provocation. Spencer allows himself to hold you, and part of it feels like betrayal because he knows how badly you need this from him while you’re awake but mostly he feels like he could cry. His thumb rubs circles into the middle of your back and your head tucks so perfectly under his chin while he studies the rumpled sheets where you’d been lying a moment ago. He almost feels like sticking his tongue out to gloat at your half of the mattress—haha, look who gets to hold her now—but instead he sighs, shakily, and squeezes his eyes shut. 

You don’t make another sound for hours. 

He’s reluctant to let you go when you begin to stir around six AM, but forcibly holding onto you is so far from what he wants to do that he manages. You roll back over to your own side of the bed, and he continues admiring you from afar until he falls asleep. It’s the best three hours of sleep he’s had in a very long time. 

Of course, you don’t remember it. When you wake up your sadness resumes, and so does the pretending like you’re not sad, but you’re a very good sport—and it helps that he’s feeling much better this morning than he has since he got back. 

“Good morning,” you whisper faintly, still blinking as you watch him longingly from your spot. 

Spencer pushes himself up onto an elbow, and you watch with big eyes as he leans over you, stroking your cheek with his free hand. 

“Good morning. You sleep okay?”

Your brow flickers, and he realizes it’s not a question he asks every morning, and you’re probably distracted by this overt display of affection, but you answer it obediently anyway. 

“I think so. I had weird dreams.”

He hums. 

“About what?”

It’s quiet for a moment as he takes in the exact spattering of microscopically fractured pigment over your irises. Your voice is small when you finally speak. 

“Do I have to tell you?”

That hurts. 

“No. But it might help.”

Coming from him? Ironic doesn’t even begin to cover it. 

You acknowledge him with a small hum of your own, studying him with soft, mistrustful eyes. 

He can’t help it anymore—Spencer leans down and gently kisses you, so tenderly, so chastely, it makes his own head spin. He hasn’t kissed you like that since you picked him up from Milburn. It’s long overdue. 

Which is why he’s not expecting you to start crying. He pulls back immediately, not far, just enough to assess your expression. 

“What’s this? What’s wrong, angel?” He frowns. Your lip quivers in a way that feels like a blow to the chest. 

“That’s not… you’re…”

“What? What is it?”

A fat tear finally traces a path down your cheek and when you speak your voice breaks in the most fragile, devastating way. 

“You’re not being fair.”

He has no neat question to summarize all the bafflement your accusation inspires in his lately cloudy head, but the wildly confused look on his face must be prompt enough.

“I’m trying really hard to respect your space and boundaries and not upset you but my feelings are hurt, Spencer, I don’t know how they couldn’t be. I feel like you don’t even like me anymore. I’m embarrassed around you because I feel like I care about you so much more than you care about me. And then you—and then you wake up one morning and you think it’s okay to act like you love me again but I can’t—I c—” you stop, obviously frustrated—now crying in earnest and lacking the words. “You can’t be mean to me. I know you’ve been through a lot and I’m sorry but you can’t treat me like that. I’m a person, too.”

His chest aches and he swallows down barbed wire.

“I’m not acting like I love you. I do love you. More than I’ve ever loved anyone or anything in my life. That’s not an act.”

It’s not an adequate response, but your words are still spinning in his head until he can’t keep up with them. He’s not used to this, anymore. The language you two had developed is so foreign now. 

Maybe he just doesn’t know how to talk to you. 

Resignation—a too-calm recognition softens the stormy look that has brewed on your face. As soon as it’s gone, and you’re looking at him placidly, he realizes he’s afraid. 

“Well, that’s not enough,” you whisper. 

Spencer feels like he’s been shot as you push the covers aside and slip out of bed. And he knows what that feels like. 

“Where are you going?” And then louder, when you don’t hear him because you’ve already left the room, “Where are you going?”

He follows you through the apartment as you march purposefully for the door, slipping shoes on and grabbing your keys and coat. 

You barely look over your shoulder as you leave, slamming the front door behind you. Things shake from the impact. A mini earthquake. 

Spencer is too stunned to follow you. 

It’s not until a few minutes later when he goes to call you that he realizes your phone is still sitting on your bedside table. He stares at it, tasting metal, because he has absolutely no way to reach you or guarantee your safety. There’s no way for you to call him, or anyone, if you get in trouble—and he fears that you’ll retaliate against him by doing something stupid and dangerous. 

He only just manages to stop himself from calling the police and asking them to start looking for you. Only just recognizes it to be an overreaction. 

Besides, he’s not feeling particularly fond of the criminal justice institution these days. If it came down to it, he’d trust himself and his team over the cops any day.

The team. They’re always a resource. If worst comes to worst, he thinks, robotically making coffee as he tries to talk himself down, and she doesn’t come home before dark, I’ll call all of her closest friends. If she doesn’t come home before the morning—the thought makes him feel sick—I’ll deploy every fucking resource at my disposal. 

Maybe that’s an overreaction, too, but he has to find a way to self-soothe somehow. Planning makes him feel better. Being prepared for the things you never see coming makes him feel better. It’s impossible, of course—but the illusion of control is stubborn and so seductive. 

Thankfully, it doesn’t come to that. 

At around 2 PM, he receives a couple of texts from Garcia that are a massive relief. 

Penelope: She’s at my apartment

Penelope: BE NICER TO YOUR GIRLFRIEND!!!!!!!

The series of emojis that follow (including an octopus?), he doesn’t even try to decipher. He simply drops his phone and sighs deeply into his hands, releasing an extreme amount of paranoid tension that had been tying him into knots. Lately, he’s had this sense that everything is fleeting—that the things he takes for granted are painfully, violently impermanent. It doesn’t take anyone with a degree to figure out why he’s been feeling that way, but it’s so all-consuming he’s not sure how to cope with it. Just a few days ago, he’d been wondering how to break up with you. Now he’s asking himself how the fuck he thought he’d be able to do that when he’s barely functioning after a few hours without you.

It’s a question he still hasn’t answered by the time the front door opens at 10 PM. It’s clear by the deer-in-headlights look on your face that you hadn’t been expecting him like this—leaning over the counter, half-empty mug by his hand, staring at nothing in particular and waiting for you to come home. Neither of you have changed clothing since this morning—not that you could—but you look apprehensive as you close it behind you, never facing away from him. The whole thing is like a teenager being caught sneaking back in by a weary parent. 

For a moment the silent confrontation stretches into the horizon, a non-specific point as neither of you seem inclined to be the first to talk. You just watch him watching you—leaning against the door rigidly as if you can’t get far enough away. But he’s too tired for this. Too worn out. 

“How’d you get home?”

You swallow. 

“Penelope.”

Spencer nods slowly, rolling his bottom lip between teeth and finally looking away. 

“You really should have brought your phone.”

You scoff, peeling yourself from the door. 

“Of course that’s what you’re worried about.”

It’s the same situation as this morning, but in reverse—him following after you down the hall as you storm toward the bedroom. 

“Wh—should I not have been? You scared me—” he says your name, barely catching the door before it can slam in his face. “I was worried about you.”

“Why?” you face him, laughing bewilderedly as if the situation were at all funny. A kind of manic energy crackles from the surface of your skin and in your eyes that renders him unable to think of a reply. “Because you thought I would get raped and murdered and then you’d be sad?”

“Yes!” Spencer yells, eyes widening as he fails to contain his frustration any longer. “That is fucking exactly why I was scared!”

You step forward, getting in his space. It jars him, momentarily—he wants to get away from you. Being angry and so close to you is terrifying. What if he lashes out? What if he hurts you? He’s seen crimes of passion. His blood is freezing in his veins. 

“Of course you didn’t give one single fuck that I left you. You didn’t think for one fucking second that I might be tired of this. That wasn’t what you were scared of at all.” For every inch you near, he backs away. Another scorned, bitter laugh from you that feels like poison coursing through his entire circulatory system. You notice everything, eyeing him up and down as he cowers from you. “What is this, Spencer? If you hate being near me that much, just fucking break up with me.”

You’re close enough that he can see the tears welling in your eyes, but he’d know they were there even if he couldn’t observe them. He would hear it in your voice. He would feel it. But he can’t do anything about it. Right now, he’s paralyzed. 

“If the only thing holding you back is wanting to spare my feelings, just fucking do it. This isn’t better. I don’t give a fuck if it’s hard for you. It’s hard for me, too, but I’m not just going to ignore it anymore.”

There’s no more room. The wall is at is back. 

“Honey, please back up,” Spencer breathes. Last time his back was to a wall, he’d been gagged and beaten. Don’t lash out. She never hurt you. It wasn’t her. 

“Don’t tell me what to do!” you shout, as tears begin to spill over your cheeks. “Either break up with me or stop telling me to go away!”

At that moment, as you break down and your words become muddled with sobs, you raise your fist. 

Spencer watches it approach his shoulder as if in slow-motion. 

On instinct, he catches your wrist.

There’s a lull as he waits for something to explode, for something to go terribly, deeply wrong—

But it doesn’t. 

He realizes his grip is gentle. He realizes you’d never actually hurt him like that. He realizes how little resistance he’d found when he stopped what was sure to be nothing more than a petulant, petty bump against his shoulder—a maneuver that wouldn’t have hurt in the slightest. It was nothing more than a desolate, childlike display of feelings bigger than you know what to do with. 

In the second that it takes him to realize all of this, to realize he is not endangering you in the slightest, nor you him, you’ve begun to truly sob. Standing just inches from him, head angled down as he holds your wrist carefully, you are the picture of a girl who has been running on empty for a very long time and has nothing left to give. Spencer twines his arms around you, tucking your head under his chin and slowly rubbing your back like he’d never forgotten how to hold you. It stuns you, and the tears pause for just a second—before you’re wrapping desperate, weakened arms around him and sobbing even harder, albeit silently, into his shirt. 

“I don’t want to break up,” he whispers, his own voice shaky with understated emotion. “I’m sorry. Please don’t say that. I don’t want that.”

“What’s wrong with you?” You cry, a desperate plead caught between sobs that wrack your body against his against the wall. And he knows it’s not an accusation. It’s not an insult. It’s a question borne of confusion and fear. It’s what a child might ask a sick dog while tears stream down feverish cheeks. And it’s completely appropriate, considering he never tells you anything anymore and he’s only just realizing how scary that must be. Spencer is back from prison but you may as well still be living alone for all that you know about him. He tangles a hand in your hair and holds you against his chest, breathing you like nitrous oxide. 

“I don’t know,” he whispers. The room beyond blurs as he stares at nothing, focused only on the tingly euphoria of feeling you under his hands clashing with the ever-present and crushing shame that he couldn't do it sooner. “I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want you—to be sorry.” Shuddering breaths and gasps still cleave your sentences in half, and Spencer listens so intently he thinks there might be harmonics hidden in the layers of your voice. He clings to every syllable like you’re wielding the word of god in a five-foot-something body. “I just miss you so m—much. I want you to—to love me.”

“I do,” he promises immediately, lips pressing to your ear. “I do love you. So much. So much.”

When you don’t respond, he’s not exactly surprised. He almost asks what he can do, what you need—but is quite sure that’s not the right move. Instead he doesn’t say a thing. Only holds you.

Later, you’ll pull back and he’ll swim in your teary gaze, and then kiss you. He’ll trace silent apologies into every inch of your skin under the torrent of the shower, and he’ll do whatever it takes to make you understand. But for now, for the first time in months, you’re holding each other, and that’s all either of you need.