#the more I think about it the more it works
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seat-safety-switch · 1 day ago
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You can tell a lot about the health of a civilization by their warning signs. Places with a lot of dumb folks will have very broad, very dumb warnings in public. "No feeding the birds." "Stop swimming in this drainage pond." That kind of thing.
Advanced civilizations have very precise signs. They've covered the bases of their regular, run-of-the-mill idiots, and now they're working hard to cover that other end of the bell curve: the talented idiot. When I was in Germany last time, there was a big warning sign that consisted of a 76-letter-long word that means "stop bothering this particular goose, Sven." I don't know who Sven was, but the goose looked pretty calm. It worked.
Now, I have a secret to tell you. You can just make your own signs. There's no law against it, except perhaps "littering," and the municipal sign factory doesn't have very good security. If you show up there past close and put in the door code that you shoulder-surfed off one of the employees returning from lunch a week prior, you have all night to fuck around with their sign-printing machine, making the most official-looking placards you can think of.
Is this wrong? I don't think so. It's a public space, and being able to put up an aluminum sign that says wacky crank shit is your right. For instance, just last week, I banned pickup trucks from parking by the playground. The cops figured out something was going on, because they didn't get any calls for toddlers getting backed over for a couple of days and sent a patrol truck to investigate. Took my sign right down.
What I discovered after that is that nobody keeps records of what signs are supposed to be there. Why would anyone put up a sign for no reason? They cost money, after all. The city is now suing the shit out of that officer for stealing the "no trucks" sign, thanks to an anonymous tipster who called in the theft. Guy wearing a reflective vest came by and put like four more of them up after the lawsuit made the news, just out of spite. I'm not entirely sure if he's actually a city worker; we ran into each other at 3am at the sign factory and just grunted. He was working on some really crazy signs about not feeding a particular swan. Probably German.
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succubusvalentine · 2 days ago
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Simon Riley with a wife that loves to cook him lunches. I like to think this is in the same universe as this blurb. CW : None. Pure fluff
Simon loves waking up, having a shower, and then coming downstairs to see a plate of breakfast on the kitchen island, and you, in the kitchen, wearing one of his shirts as your pyjamas.
Simon loves wrapping his arms around your waist as you cook whatever you're making for him.
And it's not as though he demands it, or expects it. Ever since the two of you got married and you got to work from home instead of in the office, you would make Simon lunch.
It wasn't always in the morning, either. Sometimes you would just show up to the 141 base, greeting everyone with a sweet smile. Before handing Simon a still warm container of food.
Simon loved your cooking, but something he loved even more was the ego boost he received from his mates. Johnny especially.
Johnny always commented on what Simon had for lunch. Expressing how good it was and how he wishes he had a 'bonnie lass' at home that would make lunch for him.
Then, Simon made the mistake of telling you about Johnny's words.
Simon had said it in passing while the two of you were cuddling in bed. Chuckling to himself, not even noticing the pout on your lips.
He shouldn't have been surprised when in the morning, he saw two containers, instead of one. One labeled "Simon ‪‪❤︎‬", the other labeled "Johnny ‪‪❤︎‬".
Simon slid the container across the table as he sat across from Johnny. The scotsman looking confused before his eyes lit up.
"She cook this for me, did she?" Johnny smiled brightly.
"Aye. But don't get a big head about it" Simon glared.
"How can I no' get a big head aboot it? sweet lass she is. Migh' have tae steal her from ye"
"don't even think about it"
"She e'en put a heart nex' tae ma name, Simon. She must fancy me"
"I'm telling her you hated the food"
"No! dinnae dae that ye big brute! she'll think A'm a bastard!"
"You are one"
Simon brought home two empty containers that night. Telling you about how Johnny groaned with every mouthful and nearly licked the container clean.
You also started receiving sloppy kisses on the cheek from Johnny whenever you brought lunch in during the day for your husband and his best friend.
⛧°. ⋆𓌹♰𓌺⋆. °⛧
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vaspider · 14 hours ago
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Listen to me. Listen very carefully:
They are trying to wear you out.
They are trying to wear you out, and they own most major social media now, along with many major media outlets. The disinformation machine is cranking along. You are going to have to slow the fuck down and read things before you help them wear out other people, too.
So you just saw a post about a real scary bill, hunh? Republicans want to make it a capital offense to pet dogs and repeal The Sky Is Blue Act of 1793, declaring the new official color of the sky to be squant? Damn, that sounds scary.
Let's go look up this fictitious "Make The Sky Squant Again Act" on GovTracker* & on the official legislative tracker on congress.gov!
Well, let's see... GovTracker estimates it has a 1% chance of even getting out of committee and a 0% chance of being enacted, while congress.gov says this bill has 2 cosponsors who have been in the House and combined total of less than a month. The bill doesn't have any actual text, and it was referred to 5 different committees.
That fictitious bill and a hundred others like it are quite literally not worth your time, and more than that, continuing to wring your hands about it and tell other people about the scary scary squant sky bill only does their work for them. It scares people, it makes them spend time and energy on it, and it wears them out. It is a legislative Gish Gallop, meant to throw so many things at people that we can't keep up.
Even calling or messaging your Rep in this case means their staffer has to waste time responding to you and letting you know that Representative Buttzonheads definitely won't support making petting dogs a capital offense, a thing that will never, ever happen regardless.
Staying engaged in this environment is going to require protecting your heart and protecting your energy, yes, but also protecting the energy of others. This is why WWII propaganda posters also included ones taking people to task for spreading panicky rumors and undermining morale.
Do you know why most observant Jews don't eat chicken and dairy together, even though the ban is on red meat and dairy together bc you're not supposed to cook the calf in the milk of its mother?** It's not because we think that chicken might secretly lactate or Just Because. It's because the rabbis decided that if I'm sitting out in public and eating turkey and cheese together, someone might glance at the turkey and mistake it for red meat and think, "oh, well, I know that Spider is a good Jew, there must have been a change, or maybe I can just justify it to myself that if Spider does it, it must be permissible to bend the rules just that much." And I would then be accidentally leading my fellow Jew astray. We are responsible for being even more careful for the sake of others than we are for ourselves.
It's the same principle here. We need to really be careful about the information we are spreading and check things past reading a news site. Is it true? Is it relevant? Is it meaningful? Is the news site one I recognize? Can I find meaningful independent corroboration on another site, which is to say, if I find an article about it on a second site, is it just quoting or rephrasing this site?
Yeah, that is a lot. But that's how we keep them from using us to lead our fellows astray.
*GovTracker is an independent site. They explain their methodology in their About section.
**I cannot say enough how I am not at this time interested in going on a Jewish Side Quest About Dietary Laws on this post. Usually, I love it, but hold off this time, please, y'all. Let's stay on target this once.
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ceilidho · 2 days ago
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fig. 1. hand in dog mouth | Johnny 'Soap' MacTavish x Reader
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MASTERLIST · AO3
The first time he smells her from inside the woman's locker room, it brings him to a halt. The human voice in his head grows dimmer and dimmer until it ceases to make a sound.
or: the forced mating omegaverse au
tags: Size Difference, Size Kink, Omegaverse, Explicit Sexual Content, AFAB Reader, Stalking, Kidnapping, Heavy Noncon/Dubcon Elements
“Fuckin’ gym isnae giei’ me a free month even though ah have tae drive tae practically the other side o’ the country tae get a decent pump in.”
“Mate, I can’t understand you when you get all worked up,” Gaz sighs on the other end of the phone, probably pinching the bridge of his nose. A lot of their conversations end up that way, one of them quickly losing patience with the other until the call abruptly ends.
Johnny drops his gym bag in the back and slams the car door shut, rounding to the other side to get in on the driver’s side. 
“Ah said, they aren’y refunding me fer the month even though the other location is on the other side o’ town. That’s a half hour back ‘n forth,” he gripes. The call switches to bluetooth a couple seconds after starting the car, Gaz’s exasperated voice coming from the speaker instead of his cell. 
“Don’t you already get a discount?”
“That’s jus’ fer bein’ a vet. This is completely different. It’s gonna be closed fer a month fer renovations. Ah cannae do this fer a whole month.”
“Hey, I know where you live. Aren’t there other gyms around that you could go to instead?”
“Are ye out o’ yer fuckin’ mind, Gaz? Ah’m no’ payin’ ten quid fer a fuckin’ day pass when ah already pay out the nose fer a membership.” 
“No need to get mad at me, mate, I’m just giving you suggestions.” 
“Well, keep them tae yerself if they’re all that bad.”
“Okay, this has been a great chat. I hope you blow a tire on the way there and try calling me for help so I can ignore it.”
The call ends with a loud beep and Johnny barks out a laugh as he reverses out of his spot, looping out of the lot and onto the main road.
He takes the highway because most of the slush and snow has long been cleaned off, though his wipers pump back and forth furiously to keep the snow flurries from sticking to the windshield. That already sets the tone for his evening. He nearly gets in an accident twice on the way there, everyone losing their ability to drive the second the weather is even slightly bad. 
He should just be lucky his gym even has another branch. They could’ve left him high and dry for the month, forced him to go to one the other gyms in his neighborhood that don’t offer the same range of weights and veteran’s discount. 
Worse, he could’ve been left with no choice but to use Gaz’s guest pass to his exorbitantly overpriced luxury gym downtown. Even the thought makes Johnny shudder. It could always be worse.
It’s so much more than just the drive that he hates about the other location. Like the first time he came here months ago when an appointment on the other side of town made him think it would be more convenient to pop in rather than heading back home for his workout, the parking lot is packed when he arrives, and he has to circle the lot twice before a spot frees up. 
The gym is similarly packed when Johnny walks in, and his mood darkens as he scans the weight section for a free bench. None in sight. Just meathead after meathead lining the far wall, huffing and puffing with each rep, dumbbells scattered around. 
Headphones slipped on and music loud enough to make his ears ring, he heads to the treadmills instead. Better to just start his workout like usual and hope for the best. 
The air stinks of sweat and hormones, alpha pheromones wafting through the gym and leaving not a corner untouched. It’s one of the reasons he prefers the location closer to his place—convenience aside, his location is mainly frequented by betas and omegas, the odd alpha not having much of an impact on the overall vibe. 
It’s not that he doesn’t have plenty of alpha friends (Gaz being just one of them), it’s just that sometimes he likes being the biggest, meanest thing in the room. Keeps him in line. Keeps him from being the stupid shit he is ninety-nine percent of the time, as Gaz would say. He likes to be the only one posturing. 
So he doesn’t relish being forced to work out with a million carbon copies of himself. It’s nothing Johnny isn’t used to at least—a decade in the military and a lifetime of contact sport before that had been enough of an education in coexisting with other alphas—but it leaves him on edge, muscles bunching up until his shoulders are nearly up to his ears. 
Running loosens him up. Distracts him from the urge to sink his teeth into something tender and shake until it bleeds. 
A brisk walk to a light jog to a full on sprint. Tongue suctioned to the roof of his mouth, sharpened canines throbbing. The most natural state in the world—legs pumping under him faster and faster, the faint memory of bare feet on a cold forest floor turning over loose soil with every stride. The steady pound of his feet against the ground rumbling through him.
It’s a pale imitation of the real deal, but the taste of salt and rust on the back of his tongue keep him grounded. The beast in his chest rumbles its approval. 
When a bench finally frees up, Johnny has to dash across the gym when he sees another alpha nearby eyeing his spot. He reaches the bench a few seconds before the other man though, slinging his sweat-drenched towel across the seat to claim it as his. The alpha hovers for a tense second, face screwed up in anger and nostrils flared like he might put up a fight for it. 
Do it, Johnny almost growls, teeth itching. Try it and see what happens.
Lucky for both of them that the other alpha knows when to cut his losses. He shoulder checks another alpha as he stomps back to the leg press machine and nearly starts a whole other fight, but that’s none of Johnny’s business. 
He cringes when he finally looks down at the bench only to find someone’s back outlined in sweat. Entitled shitheads at this gym can’t even be bothered to clean up after themselves. 
The noxious miasma of alpha stench would make his eyes water if he weren’t so used to it. Pungent and sharp, like gargling brine. 
A month can’t go by quick enough.
He leaves feeling worse than when he came in. Shoulders tight with tension and irritation crackling through him. Doesn’t even bother throwing a halfhearted see you later to the front desk workers on his way out. The height of rudeness. Not even rude so much as just not him; Johnny likes to talk, he likes to be friendly with the staff. It speaks to the anger riding high in his blood that he can’t even pretend. 
To make it worse, his car is covered in snow when he makes it back, forcing him to spend an extra five minutes cleaning the shit off before he can finally leave. 
It’s untenable. He can mind his ego for a paycheck, but on his own time his patience curls up into a ball in his chest and goes to sleep. It’s not a question of if he’ll lose his temper but when. Inevitable. His pugnacity has always been his downfall; his Achilles’ heel. Always cutting himself down on a sharp tooth.
The rosary beads dangling from the rearview window sway with the car when he takes a tight turn. 
“Ah ken,” Johnny mumbles to himself, silver cross glinting under the stoplight. “Ah can do a month. Ah can keep it together.”
The next couple of times are just as bad. It’s always crowded during his preferred usual time and it always stinks, like the staff know they’re fighting a losing battle trying to keep the place clean so they don’t even try. 
The sorry fuckin’ state of this place, Johnny thinks in revulsion, sneering down at yet another machine damp with sweat from the guy before him. It takes him a minute to wrestle down the impulse to chase after the other alpha and drag him back by his hair before shoving him face down into the puddle of sweat on the seat he left for someone else to clean up. 
Only the threat of being permanently banned keeps his temper in check. That can only last for so long though.
It’s gotten to the point where he seriously considers taking Gaz up on his offer to come with him to the gym downtown. He’s a danger to himself and others here; a walking time bomb rapidly ticking down. Each day, something new tests the limits of his patience, like when he comes in one crowded afternoon only to find all of the lockers taken, the locker room stuffed to the brim with alphas and a few straggler betas. 
He sits in his car with the heat on for an hour until the gym clears out, steaming enough to fog up the windows. Nearly turns right back around when he enters the locker room to find it absolutely demolished—damp towels strewn about, shower water all over the floor, and stinking to high heavens of sweat, body odour, and piss. 
There’s still a dent in one of the lockers from the brief loss of his temper. He doesn’t cop to it, but he makes a point to only use the lockers on the other side of the room from then on.
He’s desperate enough to join Gaz at his fancy downtown gym all of one time, but the facilities there are so serene and sterile that his skin crawls the moment he walks in. Soothing spa music echoes through the three-story gym (no, wellness centre, the staff correct him at the check-in desk, and Gaz has to kick his bad knee to keep Johnny from howling) and verdant green plants grow from pots placed around the facility. 
Like working out in the jungle, he thinks sardonically. 
“How can ye even concentrate here?” he asks, aghast, staring at the group of limber, flexible bodies stretching and straining in a group yoga class behind a nearby glass wall. He licks his lips. 
Gaz rolls his eyes. “It’s not that bad.”
“Ah’m no’ gonna get kicked out for breathing too loud, am ah?” 
“If anything, you’re gonna get kicked out for public indecency,” Gaz sneers, looking down pointedly at Johnny’s open hand inching towards his crotch. “Can you chill out, mate?”
“It’s no’ my fault! They’re arching their backs ‘n pushing their tits out. Ah shouldnae have to look at that when ah’m tryin’ tae work out.” 
“Would it kill you to not run your mouth off for five fucking minutes?”
Johnny mimes zipping his lips and then follows Gaz downstairs to the locker room, where the wall-length granite sink and infrared sauna make his eyes nearly bug out of his head. 
To no one’s surprise, he doesn’t go back. Gaz doesn’t ask him again either.
An appointment one day pushes his schedule back a couple hours and he shows up later than usual, his teeth clenched tight the whole drive over because he expects the worst. Double the occupants, double the meatheads. 
But when he pulls into a near empty lot, the knot of tension in his chest loosens. Only a handful of cars, and most of them are parked near the take-out place at the other end of the complex. 
It’s practically a wasteland when Johnny walks in. A few people here and there, but otherwise deserted. Only a single person posted near the free weights. 
Even the locker room is more palatable. Freshly cleaned and stocked with new towels. All of the showers have been scrubbed down and dried, the curtains tucked behind the holdbacks and waiting for someone to use them. It’s like walking into a brand new gym. 
“Yeah, this is kind of the sweet spot,” a staff member tells him when he rocks up to the desk to ask about it. “We get a lot of alphas that come here right after five, so when it empties out around nine, we have the cleaning staff come in to sanitize everything.”
“Well shit,” he laughs, pushing back from the desk and lacing his hands behind his head. “Guess yer gonna see me more often.”
True to his word, he starts showing up later and later, the streetlights plump and gold when he swerves into the parking lot and parks in the middle of two spots purely because he can. There’s a new bounce to his gait, a pep in his step. 
It fucks up Johnny’s schedule for a bit, but it’s well worth getting home well after midnight if it means that he gets the gym to himself. No one to complain when he groans and pants through each rep, sweat dripping from his face and body onto the floor, weights slammed against the mat with a loud thud every time he finishes a set. 
(In truth, he’s no better than the alphas that plague the gym during the evening hours, but he’s long made peace with being a hypocrite.)
For a moment, it seems like life will at least be bearable until the month is over and he can go back to training at his regular gym. All he has to do is wait it out. 
When it first catches his nose, he splinters down the middle.
It happens when Johnny’s on his way out for the night, muscles warm and only slightly sore, the kind of soreness that’ll dissipate by the time he flops into bed. It’s later than usual—closer to one than twelve, and he’ll feel it in the morning when he’s forced to get up at his usual hour—but there’s hardly anyone else in the gym and for that, it’s worth it. 
The strap of his gym bag digs into his shoulder as he tosses a hand up on his way, saying goodbye to the beta manning the front desk on his own. A shame that he’s stuck on his own all night. It would drive Johnny crazy to be stuck at work with no one to talk to—it’s one of the reasons that he followed Gaz into private security when they both got out of the service. 
He turns around, about to step out of the gym, when a peculiar smell tries to sneak past him. A slippery thing, silverfish quick and just as conspicuous. 
He catches it though. Hunting dog with a purebred snout, he sniffs it the second it wafts under his nose and goes ramrod straight, egress forgotten. 
The door to the women's locker room is closed, but he can smell the faint traces of the omega’s scent clinging to it. She must have touched it on her way out. Must have placed her palm against the door and shoved. The alpha beneath his skin that wears his face stills as well, everything vanishing into the singular nature of the scent emanating from the locker room door. 
In twenty-nine years, he’s never felt so—
(unmoored, untethered
sinking into it like a stone, not coming apart but unraveling altogether—)
He breathes in again and it’s fainter now, but he can still smell it. Candy pink frosting, so sweet that his teeth hurt and his dick throbs. Juicy like a ripe peach waiting for his teeth. It wafts from the women’s locker room, so subtle that it’s clear that whoever it belonged to is long gone. He must have just missed her, an hour separating them at most. 
It’s like nothing he’s ever smelt before. No omega in heat has ever made his head spin like this, every inch of him attuned to a single scent. Even slick on his tongue has never made him feel like this, rut thundering through his bones and snapping him into a new shape.
The hunger shifts from his throat to his stomach, settling in deep. And the beast under his skin that wears his face opens its maw, ropey strands of spittle stringing between its teeth. 
“Hey man, you good?” 
Johnny blinks, looking over his shoulder to find the guy at the front desk frowning at him. It snaps him out of whatever spell he’d been under. His alpha recedes beneath his skin again, hungering but quieter. 
“Uh…” he clears his throat, pulling the strap of his bag back up onto his shoulder from where it slipped down. Gives the guy a thumbs up. “Yeah. Sorry—lost my train o’ thought.”
The employee stares at him for a beat before mumbling, “Okay…” under his breath and looking back down at the computer.
Johnny stares at the door for another few seconds before finally leaving.
He sweats all the way home. Worries, wonder, and woes. Blinks and suddenly his exit is next, another car behind him honking when he changes lanes abruptly without signalling. Haud yer wheesht, he thinks and flips the other driver off for good measure. 
At home, he paces the length of his house thinking about that omega’s scent until it’s time for bed. Then he tosses and turns until his sleep grows profound and swallows him whole like Jonah. Into the belly of the beast. Nothing to do but let it spit him back out like a peachstone. 
Then morning comes and his jaw clicks when he yawns and his bad knee hurts. 
But worse than the snow pelting his windshield on the drive to work and worse than the cold stinging his face when he parks and stops for his morning coffee is the memory of that smell. 
It’s not as if he doesn’t have any experience with omegas. Despite growing up under the thumb of four alpha sisters, Johnny’s been popular with omegas his whole life. His history with them is an assortment of sordid trysts and quick flings, good enough to scratch an itch but not enough to make him want to bite and keep. 
Sticky, messy, syrupy ruts spent buried between an omega’s soft thighs, gorging himself on slick and pussy; nudging his cock against pillowy lips and then thrusting down their throat, hand palming the base of their skull to hold them in place. 
It’s always been like that though. One and done; a couple days at most to work through the worst of his rut and then out the door, a messy kiss for the road before whistling his way home. Johnny’s good for that. A romp in the hay, a roll in the sack. Generous with his fingers and mouth and cock. 
He’s never craved an omega like this though, never fevered like he fevers now. Itched like his skin was turned inside out in his sleep.
Waking up in the middle of the night panting, the covers under him drenched with sweat and his knot throbbing in his hand, already swollen and aching. Fisting his cock until he has no choice but to roll over and bury his teeth into his pillow, humping the mattress frantically until he comes, eyes watering with the force of his orgasm. 
No tonic for this ailment. It simmers in his blood, infatuation decocting into full blown obsession.
Brontide as leitmotif and it rumbles in his ears. 
Wandering through the city punch-drunk, always waiting for it to catch his nose somewhere else. In line at a salad bar, always a head taller than everyone else (which he’s still getting used to, which is still a strange new fact of civilian life); at a local venue with Gaz for a concert, scenting the air for any sign of them; seated at the back of the coffee shop across the street from the gym, eyes trained on the door.
Waiting. Always waiting. 
And, hungering like a starved dog. 
Saliva pooling in his mouth when he thinks of what it’ll be like when he finally has them under him, desperate and cloying and wet. 
Other omegas smell sickly to him now, off somehow. A facsimile of what he knows is out there waiting for him. He’s not down for a quick fuck anymore. A hand on his chest and doe eyes blinking up at him makes him shudder now, grimacing down at the omega trying to compete for his attention when out there there’s—
His omega.  
Just for him. Made to take his knot and clench around it and squeal when he pumps them full— 
Hishishishishishis. 
So he shrugs her hand off and sends her on her way. 
Johnny spends weeks trying to line up their schedules—his and that elusive omega’s whose scent still permeates the gym even though he never actually sees them in the flesh—to no avail. Even though he’s there waiting at the gym nearly every day, they must stagger their visits. Worse, they seem to come at irregular hours; some days, Johnny shows up and though he can smell the omega’s scent, it’s flat, stale. Like they’ve been gone for hours, ages. Only the oil from their hands still embedded in the dumbbells on the rack. 
He doesn’t even care if anyone’s watching when he brings one up to his nose and breathes in. 
Then abruptly, the scent disappears, and with it, his soundness of mind.
A week gasping for air, flopping belly up. Breathing in nothing, not even the old, stale scent of his omega because they’re gone suddenly without warning. The first couple of days are manageable only because he doesn’t notice it at first, used to his omega taking a couple days off at a time to rest and recover, but then two days stretch into three. And then into four. 
Johnny’s long thought of himself as wild and self-reliant, not accountable to anyone or anything apart from himself. It takes four days to obliterate that notion. 
On the fourth day, he wakes up and his agony crawls out of his mouth on spindly legs. 
It follows him to work and back, an ache between his shoulder blades and a gnawing, wretched hunger for something he can’t have because it’s beyond his grasp. Smoke now, lost in the ether. He drives across town before and after work, hoping that they’ll suddenly reappear and set his mind at ease, but the gym only smells of alpha funk and his own souring mood. 
Too long without it. He’s nothing but a shell of himself in its absence, without the scent of his omega to calm him down, and it makes Johnny realize that he wasn’t doing well on his own before but just barely surviving. Barely keeping his head above water. 
Ghost hauls him out of a bar by the scruff of his neck on Saturday night when he almost starts a fight, and only sinking his canines into the other alpha’s forearm calms him down. He slumps forward in the bigger man’s hold and whines when Ghost strokes a hand down his back and murmurs something vaguely soothing in his ear, his words muffled by the mask. He even lets Ghost drag him back home and curls up on his couch until a balled sock hits his head and he slinks into Ghost’s bedroom, dragging his feet the whole way.
His longing is excruciating. Pathetic. Like a dog with its own empty bowl in its mouth begging for scraps.  
Gaz still calls every day because they’ve been joined at the hip since they first met almost a decade ago and it’s not long before he picks up on the shaky note in Johnny’s voice, stilted conversations becoming wholly incomprehensible. Even Price calls him towards the end of the week to ask if he’s doing alright. No, sir. Yes, sir. Ah’m fine, sir. 
“Was it Gaz who snitched?” Johnny gripes, cutting a side-eyed glare at the alpha on the bench next to him curling sixty pound weights and groaning like he’s getting sucked off at the same time. Still no sign of his omega. 
“Well, it wasn’t Simon.”
That makes him snort. Last time he tells that traitor a goddamn thing about his life. 
Absence does not make the heart grow fonder. It makes the world seem fetid and bland, and he looks out at it through dull eyes, anger kindling inside. Makes his stomach cramp like there’s nothing in it. It takes the sheen out of an oil spill, leaving only the mess and rot behind. 
And then suddenly it’s back like nothing happened, stopping him in his tracks as he walks into the gym. They must have gone out of town for the week, on vacation or visiting family, something so trivial that he’d laugh if his innards weren’t char and ash. If his alpha weren’t half-feral, blotting out his thoughts for hours at a time, all instinct and anger and teeth taking over until he regains clarity and the sky is dark.
It nearly brings him to his knees when he walks into the gym and the smell of his omega blooms bright and nacreous. The gym staff eye him with growing uncertainty, but he’s hardly the most concerning customer at a big box gym (last week someone locked themselves in one of the bathroom stalls with a knife), so they leave him to his own devices when he’s finally able to move again.
His omega isn’t there, of course. Johnny can tell from a quick glance around the gym and a sniff of the air. But they were, and that’s all that matters. 
Their reappearance sharpens his resolve. Runs it against a whetstone, his time of waiting coming to an end. He rolls his shoulders back and puffs his chest out in anticipation. It can’t come soon enough. 
Nothing stays silent for long when a wolf is watching from the shadows. Eventually it has to make a sound. 
It’s quiet in the gym at two a.m. (a far cry from his usual time, but the hunt demands sacrifice), only the sound of a single treadmill whirring and shoes hitting the belt disturbing the near silence. 
Johnny smells you the second he walks in. It punches him right in the chest when he inhales and the ripe, sticky scent of his omega flows into his lungs. Mouth watering on instinct. Rutilant eyed, he tilts his head wolf-like and stares down towards the other side of the gym where a pretty thing fiddles with the settings on the treadmill, settling into a light jog. 
He’s buried under an avalanche of want so powerful and so swift that it collapses him down to base instinct. Thoughts disconnected and hazy, blooming like a bruise in his head. 
Shouldnae be here, he wants to croon in your ear while he holds you down, almost swaying on his feet at the thought. Should be back in my bed at home takin’ my dick so deep in yer gorgeous cunt that ye can taste my cum on the back of yer tongue—
The employee manning the front desk doesn’t even look up when Johnny scans his pass and pushes through the turnstile, flipping to the next page of the magazine open in front of him.
It’s better that way. Johnny doesn’t know what he’d do if someone tried to stop him or get in his way. 
The gym is deserted at this time of night, only the single treadmill in use and someone that passes him on their way out, a gust of wind at Johnny’s back signalling their departure. Everything always works out in his favour. He suffers for it, but God rewards him for his patience. 
He takes a seat on the closest available training machine and doesn’t even pretend to use it. Johnny’s never been much of a performer anyway. Instead, he drops his gym bag down on the floor beside the chest press machine and leans forward, elbows resting against his knees. 
He’s lucky that you’re too concentrated on your workout to feel the heat of his stare. Your phone rests on its side in front of you, an episode of a show playing to distract you while you run. Earphones in to block out the noise. He knows Ghost would tell him to correct that. Can’t have his omega distracted while alphas lurk nearby waiting to dig their teeth into the supple lump of flesh sitting tantalizing just below the collar of your shirt—
A bead of sweat runs down his temple and his dick twitches in his sweats. 
There are cuffs in his gym bag. Tools of the trade. It’s not as innocent as he lets himself think, but they’re there in case things go sideways. Sideways like if you take one look at him and run the other way when you notice the way his half-lidded eyes barely blink as he stares at you. 
And he can’t have that. Not now that he’s found you. 
His patience is unwavering when the circumstances call for it. It’s a skill he picked up in the service, learning to channel all of the frenetic energy coursing through him into a tight point at the back of his mind, compressing it all down to a singularity that later he’ll allow to expand and burn itself out like a dying star. 
Not now though. Now he sits and he watches and he waits.
He stares at your ass while you run, crossfaded on his alpha’s slabbering hunger and his own need to wrench those leggings down your hips. When he has the luxury of time, he’ll tie you to his bed by your wrists and ankles, belly down to make it easier on him, and sink his teeth into the flesh of your ass until it’s tender to the touch, until even ghosting his hand over your ass makes you squirm and weep. 
Even the thought has a growl rumbling at the back of his throat. 
You’re not a very fast runner, but you’re quick enough. Like a rabbit, Johnny thinks and nearly laughs at his own joke. A distracted one at that, too concerned with what’s in front of you to notice what’s lurking right behind. 
No matter. He sits and he waits. 
Eventually, the treadmill starts to slow down, and with it, you. Panting to catch your breath. Fingers trembling when you pause the video on your phone and scrub a towel down your face to wipe off the sweat. 
And for once the entire gym smells of nothing but a honeyed sweetness. Spun sugar and strawberry Angel Delight. Intoxicating and heady. It permeates the building, dragging him deeper into a drugged haze, dulling his senses, plugging his ears with cotton until the only thing he can hear is the sound of your rabbit-quick heartbeat going bump-bump-bump in your chest.
You must have been finishing your workout with a light jog because when the treadmill comes to a complete stop, you take another second to catch your breath and then step off to the side, draping your towel around the back of your neck and heading for the locker room. 
Johnny feels himself rise to his feet but there’s no consciousness behind it. No intent beyond primordial reflex, prey drive kicking in when you try getting away. He forgets about everything else—the employee at the front desk, his gym bag next to him. His knees don’t even crack for once, the movement fluid, and when he follows you towards the locker room, his feet hardly make a sound. 
It’s to his advantage that you haven’t noticed him yet, but he’ll deal with that soon enough. The locked room door swings shut behind you and there’s a second where he hesitates, better thoughts creeping past his alpha to whisper in his ear that he doesn’t have to do it this way. He’s never had trouble with an omega before—why use force now?
And then he hears a locker slam shut on the other side and instinct takes over. 
You’re half-undressed in the middle of the locker room when he walks in, clad only in your panties and bra, and his world narrows down to that moment. Everything in his life has led him to this. Like a red sea parting; the universe suddenly giving him a sign, beckoning him forth. 
The door swings shut behind him and your ears twitch at the noise. 
He’s done this before in another life. Three strides and he slips right up behind you, arms winding around your front to pull you into his chest and covering your mouth with his hand. You freeze for a split second before going haywire, flailing in his hold, his hand muffling your screams.
“Shh, it’s just me, doe,” Johnny shushes you, arms constricting around you. Relishing the feeling of your body against his, warmer and softer than he imagined. 
You shriek behind his hand, twisting in his hold and trying with all your might to break free. Simple thoughts for simple creatures. Even when you try to bite his hand, Johnny only coos, cock swelling at the feeling of your tongue on his skin. The little kittenish licks just rile him up. He likes it less when you try to headbutt him, narrowly missing his nose when you throw your head back. 
When he dips his nose into the crook of your neck, he can’t help the growl that slips out of him.
“Enough o’ tha’,” Johnny growls, words reverberating with his annoyance. 
The sound makes you still, prey instincts as sharp as his. Smart girl. You know when not to push your luck. He’s bigger and stronger, and his teeth are precariously close to your mating gland, which sits nestled in the crook of your neck. 
He breathes in. Your scent is strongest there, at the base of your neck. A delicate layer of skin and then underneath it, your blood sings. Whispers praises high and sweet to him. A shuddering breath out. 
You mumble something behind his hand. Tremble violently, your nails digging into his forearm with a biting sting. 
He shushes you again. “No’ here, baby—gotta take ye somewhere more private.” 
He pays no mind to the way you resume your screaming behind his hand as drags you deeper into the locker room and away from the door. Hardly needs to use any of his real strength, only a fraction of it. The fight you put up would almost be endearing, would almost make him go thatta girl and nip at the tip of your nose, if not for the way it triggers his instincts, an innate urge to dominate you into submission. 
It isn’t hard to wrestle you to the floor in the showers. Like play fighting, all bark and whine and keen, teeth snapping an inch from his nose until he pins you under him, snarling right in your face until you submit. That gets you to stop making a fuss. The last thing he wants is to deal with a front desk employee trying to play the hero by pulling him off you. Not that anyone could. He’d rather this not end in bloodshed. 
“Tha’s better,” Johnny growls. “Jus’ be nice, a’right?”
You shiver at his words, eyes wide and petrified, darting all over his face. Even tinged with your fear, how could he not preen under your gaze now that you’re getting a proper look at him? He knows what he looks like—rugged and strong, mohawk recently cleaned up and beard freshly trimmed. Not a behemoth like Ghost, but big for an alpha, broad shouldered and beefy. 
Big for an alpha in a couple different ways, he leers.
“Don’t hurt me,” you whimper, and that breaks his heart. How could he ever? How could he ever look at something as perfect as you and want to ruin it? His chest aches at the thought. 
“No, baby,” he whines, nuzzling his nose into the side of your face. “Ah would never, baby, never. Dinnae be scared. Ah’m no’ gonna hurt you, doe.” 
He drags his nose down the length of your head, running his tongue over the rounded corner of your jaw. Your sweat tastes of wet roses and tart jam. Still intoxicating, but wrong, sour and sodden with fear. It makes his skin itch and his shoulders tense. You shouldn’t be scared of him; his omega should never be scared of him. 
“Ye cannae smell it, doe?” he asks, pressing a soft kiss into your neck, lingering there so he can feel your pulse flutter against his lips. “Ah can… Cannae smell a damn thing else when yer around. S’all ah can think about.”
“What are you talking about?” you whisper, so frightened that you can barely squeeze the words out, fear choking you. He can’t stand it. The thought that you might find him dangerous makes his throat burn, agony ripping his chest open and yanking his insides out. 
He braces himself up on his forearms and forces his hand under your head, lifting your head up off the tile floor.
“How do ah smell, doe?” Johnny rasps, shoving your face into his neck and holding you there until you have no choice but to inhale. He feels the way you shudder when you do, hands spasming against his chest. “Smells good, doesn’t it? Just breathe it in, doe.”
You do, shakily. Then a deeper inhale, filling your lungs with his scent. 
“I—oh god—” you groan, your hands suddenly fisting in Johnny’s shirt and dragging him closer. 
“Jesus,” he curses through clenched teeth, dizzy with lust. He goes with it, laying more of his body weight on top of you, hind brain taking over.
A long, deep inhale. Your nose digs into his neck. “What is that?” you whine. 
“S’the best thing in the fuckin’ world.” An understatement. Johnny’s eyelids fall shut when your tongue pokes out to lightly graze his neck. 
So much pent up emotion and anguish and want only for it suddenly—
stop.
Motion succumbing to instinct, to fate. Everything else is collateral damage when fate gets in the way. 
Your hands fisted in his shirt, scent ripening, fear replaced with something else—still sharp, but charged. Hesitant because you shouldn’t want this—it shouldn’t even be a thought in your head to indulge the strange man who wrestled you to the floor and forced you to scent him, but then you get a good whiff of him and that thought shakes like television static, like a mirage, like a glass surface wobbling right before it breaks—
When he pulls back, the world is different. 
You’re glassy eyed, so pliant now that he could do anything to you, anything at all. And then his eyes dip lower. 
He cups your neck with a clammy hand and strokes a finger over the lovely gland at the crook of your neck. It’s warm to the touch. 
“Look a’ this,” he breathes, awed. Your hand flies to his wrist, fingers barely able to wrap around it. 
“D-don’t touch it,” you choke out, swallowing harshly. It has to be sensitive. Still, Johnny can’t keep from stroking his finger over it again, soaking up the way his touch makes you shiver. Poor thing, gone so long without your alpha’s touch. 
“Ah cannae help it, doe,” Johnny whispers. He switches to his thumb, rubbing the pad of it over your gland until you whine and squirm, eyebrows drawn tight together. “Does it hurt, baby? Do ye need me tae make it better?”
You whine, trying to weakly bat his hand away. “N-no, that’s for my alpha—” 
“Aye, tha’s right.” His eyes gleam fulgurite under the fluorescent lights. “Fer yer alpha.”
He digs his thumb in harder until your mouth opens on a silent cry. 
His alpha drools a messy puddle beneath his skin, jowls sagging. It stares without blinking. 
It’s different than lust or bloodthirst. Darker; deep-seated. He’s never felt this way before, and, if his gut feeling proves true, he never will again. It’s like looking down a vast, dark hall, and seeing only one way out. 
A damp shower room floor in a locker room is no place for him to take his omega for the first time, but he couldn’t lift himself off you if he tried. His muscles feel far too heavy, like lead weights dragging him down, the gravity stronger here somehow.
“Let’s get this off,” he murmurs, sitting back on his haunches.
“Wait—wait, not here, alpha, please—”
Your protests fall on deaf ears. He wrenches your bra over your head, mindful not to let the back of your head smack against the tile floor. “Gentle, gentle—there we go. Tha’s a good girl.”
Your panties come next, stripped off and tossed elsewhere. His lips follow the path of his hands, sucking kisses into your hips and thighs until your fingers thread into his hair and yank. He yelps, scalp tingling with pain.
“Do tha’ again, doe,” Johnny purrs, shuddering when you do. Eyes rolling back in his head.
His world tilts on its axis when he forces your legs apart and stares at the perfect slice of heaven between your thighs. 
“Doe.” Voice broken, shredded. Running his thumb up the seam of your lips and moaning when your hole clenches at his touch and a drop of slick leaks out. “Oh, doe…she’s so…” 
Too awestruck for words. Language is beyond his grasp, too inadequate for the feelings coursing through him. Lacklustre, diaphanous thing. There’s no way to describe the feeling of leaning forward and touching his lips to yours, angling his head to give her a proper kiss, one with tongue and feeling. She kisses him back just as passionately. 
The taste of you is incomparable. He can’t believe he ever thought there was a world where he could subsist on just the smell of you. Impossible now that he’s had you on his tongue. He runs it up the seam of your pussy, the flat of his tongue spread wide to catch every honeyed dewdrop clinging to your skin, sucking each fold into his mouth to be extra thorough. The pearl sitting nice and pretty at the top gets a wet kiss for waiting so long for his touch. 
He pulls back for a second to catch his breath. “So pretty, baby,” Johnny whines, pulling the hood of your clit up with his thumb and sucking her into his mouth.
“Oh my god—” 
He buries his face into your cunt, the bridge of his nose wedged against your clit and making you howl. He doesn’t budge even when you practically wrench his hair out by the roots, too committed to making your pussy squirt all over his face. Not an easy task with the way you keep trying to push him away from your cunt, but Johnny’s always risen to any challenge. 
You howl when he wedges his tongue in as deep as it’ll go, thighs clamping around his head. Not a bad way to go, Johnny thinks in a daze, chin wet with your juices and nose nuzzling your sensitive little clit, making your whole body jolt. He can tell you’re close by the way your thighs spasm and your scent goes marzipan sweet, so lush and rich that his swollen cock leaks in his sweatpants.
It’s easy to get lost in your pleasure; Johnny feels it like it’s his own, his low back aching with the force of your impending orgasm. He misses your clit too much to let her get lonely though, so he lets go of your hip to push a couple fingers into your hole instead of his tongue. 
“C’mon, doe, lemme see ye come,” he whines into your pussy, thrusting all three fingers into your hole, half-lidded eyes with blown out pupils watching the way your pussy gobbles them up. “Just like tha’—oh, there we go, baby, oh my god, come on, yes—lemme have it, doe—”
Your release is wet on his hand and all over his face. Little pussy still milking his fingers, the prettiest thing he’s ever seen. 
A hush falls over the room, the moment almost devotional. He thinks you might be crying, but it’s hard to tell because the blood in his ears is too loud and his hand is wet with your come and he wants nothing more than to do it all over again until you can’t even talk. 
He rises to his feet in a daze, a deep red flush high on his cheekbones. His shirt comes off first, pulled over the back of his head and tossed behind him; his sweats are similarly discarded, tugged down and kicked away until you’re staring up at him in all his hairy, naked glory, cock flush with blood and heavy, drooping away from his stomach.  
He laughs when he notices where your gaze has dropped. “Like what ye see?”
“I don’t know about this—” you start, but he pays your words no mind. 
“C’mere,” he growls, suppressing the urge to wince when he drops to his knees again.
Johnny hooks an arm under your low back, hoisting your hips up until your ass rests against his thighs, making your back arch. It thrusts your tits up towards his face and he nearly goes cross-eyed staring down at your cute little nipples. They look lonely too. 
He gets distracted again, forgetting about sinking his cock in your cunt in favour of hunching over to get his mouth on your tits. Sucks one until it's hard and pebbled against his tongue and circles his tongue over the soft areola skin, completely forgetting about your other breast. It’s hard to pull himself off. 
You yelp when he bites down, not hard enough to hurt, but deliberate enough to tick you off. 
“That’s too rough!” you hiss, grabbing him by the hair again. 
“Sorry,” Johnny gasps. He nuzzles between your breasts, practically purring. “Ah’m so sorry, doe, ah couldnae help myself…”
Puppyish, he leans up to bunt his head under your chin, shuddering when your fingers loosen and hesitantly scratch his head. 
“…Okay…” you murmur, overwhelmed. He ignores you, too content with nuzzling into your neck while you run your nails over his scalp.
Being this close to you after weeks of nothing is almost enough. The air reeks with your scent. If it weren’t for the ugly, festering ache in his belly, he’d be tempted to skip straight to this. Roll onto his back and pull you onto his chest, press his nose to the crown of your head and breathe in until it lulls him right to sleep. Maybe get a good belly scratch at the same time.
Then he inhales and the scent of your come on his chin makes his spine go stiff. Drool leaks from the corner of his mouth.
It can’t wait anymore. The thing under his skin shakes with hunger, its greed a ravenous, frothing appetite that goes mindless when it waits for its food. Do it. Do it now.
He braces a hand against the tile floor to lift himself up and pets your cheek with his free hand. “Ah’m gonna put it in now, okay, doe?” 
And he means it too, stomach cramping with eager anticipation, knot already filling up at the base of his dick—still small enough to pop it into your hole, but not for much longer—because it’s everything he’s dreamt of since he first caught your scent in the air. 
That must not be the case for you. 
When you twist onto your belly and try to scramble away, he stares dumbly for a second before seeing red. Johnny crawls after you, dragging you back by your ankle when you get a bit too far away and flipping you over again. You hiss when the back of your head smashes against the floor, hands reaching up to cradle it instinctively. 
You get it snarled right in your face, his anger erupting out of him like a geyser, like a dense fog rolling down from the mountains and spreading to everything below. “Ye dinnae fuckin’ move.”
“I-I’m sorry,” you breathe. 
Even consumed by rage, he can smell your terror. Putrid, not the soft sweetness of your usual scent. There’s pain there too, and it makes his muscles tense like he’s ready to spring. It’s what brings his alpha to the surface, the scorch of anger cooling slowly as you lie there trembling. 
It doesn’t feel good, but he can’t—he can’t let you go. 
His hands flutter over your face, squeezing your cheeks and leaning down to plant kiss after soft kiss on your lips. “Doe, please, ye cannae do tha’…ah wanna be gentle, but ah cannae control myself if ye—” Johnny can’t bring himself to say it, the image too painful to contemplate. There’s no reason on Earth that his omega should be trying to run away from him.
“O-okay, alpha…I…I’ll be good.” 
His self-control is hairstring thin. “Yer just nervous, right? Tha’ why ye tried tae run?”
“I-I’m just nervous, alpha.” It’s a neat trick, repeating his words back to him in order to calm him down. It works. 
His chest deflates as he kneels there over you. Johnny stares into your eyes a few seconds longer, a subtle reminder not to fucking move, before he sits up again, rolling his shoulders back and tugging your lower half in again. 
This time when he notches the head of his cock against your entrance, you whisper oh god oh god oh god to yourself but you don’t try to run. It must seem inevitable—no way to fight him off or talk him out of it because there’s a film over his eyes that reflects nothing back. 
And then he slowly sinks his cock into you, your hole stretching around the mushroomed head. His jaw rolls on a shaky exhale.
Something in him cracks wide open and—
something ugly slithers out.
“Oh fuck,” he moans, voice cracking. His cock sinks in another inch, warm, wet heat sucking him in. “Jesus, doe, ah cannae fuckin’ breathe—”
You flex your hips at his words, ankles digging into the divots above his arse and pulling him in until he suddenly bottoms out, cock stuffed to the root in the warmest, snuggest cunt he’s ever felt. It nearly makes him go mad; he gets so close to it that his face goes numb, the blood pounding in his ears. He curls over you, a string of curses slipping out of his mouth. 
You’re there when Johnny opens his eyes again, damp hair haloing you. 
“I’m sorry,” you whisper, a tear slipping past your waterline and dribbling down your face. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me—”
“It’s okay, doe.” His hands run up and down your sides, soothing you. “S’just instinct. Ye cannae help it any more than ah can.”
Your walls squeeze around his shaft, nerves making you tense up, and Johnny groans, his hand curling into a fist by your head. It takes every iota of his being not to come right then, buried to the hilt in your pussy with your ankles digging into his low back. He nearly does when you whine at him to move. 
“Okay, baby,” he breathes. 
Johnny tries to be gentle at first. Makes a conscious effort to rock into you with slow, smooth strokes, distracting you with a deep, wet kiss. Lips gliding together, sucking your bottom lip into his mouth only to graze it with his teeth, heat rushing through him when you tremble. Coaxing your tongue into his mouth and then sucking on it.
His control starts to slip when he tries to pull out and your ankles dig into his back, pulling him back in. The force of his next thrust makes your body shift, sliding up the wet floor. Too much. Be gentle. But he can’t—the pressure in his core gets worse the longer he fucks you, an eagerness to reach his end building and building. All he can do is chase it. Bite at its heels. 
“Yer so pretty,” he rasps, petting your face with shaky hands and bucking his hips into yours until you can’t hold back your pretty little moans. “Pretty, pretty doe. Ah’ve got ye, love.”
A few more like that, pounding into you until you squeak like a toy and he laughs, breathless and full of mirth. Buoyant. Revelling in the sound of you coming apart under him, all fractured pleas and kiss-swollen lips. 
Perfect angel, all sweetness and moans and cream coating his cock, gleaming under the fluorescent lights every time he pulls out. 
There’s a white ring at the base of his dick from the mess of your combined fluids. Johnny nearly passes out when he notices. 
His bad knee aches from digging into the tile floor. He’ll feel it in the morning when he wakes up with bruises on his elbows and shins, muscles stiff and twinging when he moves, but it’s a price he’ll happily pay to keep his pretty doe on her back with her legs spread. 
Any lingering guilt about fucking you on the gross shower room floor evaporates the more you pant and the wetter you get because, he rationalizes, on some level you must want him just as bad. Not with the same fervour, not a bone bright ache that sucks you dry and spits you out like a peach pit, but close enough that you aren’t pushing him away anymore. 
He ignores the weak pressure on his shoulders. Pries your hands off so he can pin your wrists together over your head. 
“Been lookin’ fer ye fer so long,” Johnny croons. He ruts into you clumsily, losing any semblance of finesse. “Smelt ye weeks ago ‘n knew…knew ah had tae have ye.”
Your eyes fly open, stunned. “Weeks?” you gasp.
“Thought ah’d lose my fuckin’ mind lookin’ fer ye.” His breath comes out ragged. “Couldnae sleep or eat or do anythin’ except jerk my cock raw. Should’ve saved it all up fer ye, but…” his laughter is a deep, brassy thing. “…ye’ll still get a fair share.”
“You’re disgusting,” you moan, and that makes him laugh even more, rutting into you like a beast.
“Christ, doe, keep runnin’ that mouth.”
“You’re a—”
dumb, nasty dog
sick in the head, fucking me with that big, fat dick—
He grunts and his lip pulls back in a mean, crooked grin. 
It’s never been like this before. Like someone drilled a hole in the side of his head and filled it up with you. You’re in every crevice of his mind and body, mycorrhizal tendril spreading through him.
“Ah’m gonna ruin yer pretty cunt, doe,” Johnny rasps, neck soaked with sweat and eyes burning hot, pupils blown so wide only a glimmer of blue remains. “Get her nice ‘n soaked with my come.”
“Alpha—” you keen, for lack of anything else to call him and it makes his vision go blank. 
That’s the only truth that matters to him. Like a divine calling—his omega begging for him, asking for more more more. It’s as close to love as he’s ever gotten; as close to heaven as he ever will. 
Diving headfirst into oblivion. He clamps his hands around your waist to hold you in place and fucks into you with renewed vigour, losing himself in the pleasure. Any coherent thought evaporates, reduced to mindless instinct. His beast and him are indistinguishable; two sides of the same coin; he looms over you Janus-faced, a god of beginnings and endings. 
He breathes out heavily through his nose, teeth gritting together and lips pulled into a flat line. So close to it, knot catching more with every thrust, almost too big to pull out. 
The smack of his hips against yours fill his ears, drowning out your pleading and keening. Seismic motions churning beneath the tile floor keep a steady pulse. The lewd squelch of your pussy nearly drives him mad—slick running down your thighs, pooling onto the floor beneath you, this place irrevocably changed because of your mating— 
If only you’d squirt on his dick too, he could die happy. Scream out alpha, alpha, alpha until you shudder and come.
And you do eventually—milk his dick filthy sweet and cling onto him for dear life, nails scoring red lines into the flesh of his back. His muscles bunching under your touch. 
“Fuck, doe,” Johnny chokes, near tears himself. His perfect girl coming all over his cock, eyes rolling back in your head like it’s never been like this for you before. “Tha’s right, tha’s right—such a good fuckin’ girl—oh, baby—”
You need him. No other alpha can take care of you he would. It’s not enough that he fuck you, not enough that he make you come, not enough that he see you through your next heat, he has to—
Take it all for himself, every last fuckin’ inch of you his.
He bears down on you, scooping his arms under your back until there’s no space between you, chests pressed together. 
His eyes zero in on it. The nodule of flesh at the crook of your neck. And his teeth itch like they’ve never itched before, too large for his mouth. 
“Alpha—” you sob, squirming in his hold. “Alpha—too tight—”
He can’t respond. Mouth full of drool and teeth, fucking you harder than you should be fucked, cockhead trying to kiss your cervix with every thrust. He’d crawl inside of you if he could. His thrusts only slow when his knot finally catches, the pressure making you sob when he tries to pull out and he can’t, stuck inside you. Lazy grinds of his hips now, getting as deep as possible. 
It’s a shock to his system so profound that he can’t stop shaking. His first knot—better than a ring, more binding than a marriage contract. The most basic, ancient covenant. Irrevocable. 
And—it feels—
Indescribable. His thoughts leak from his ears like tar. Eager, fevered. Eyes fixed on your mating gland, dropping his head to get a better view. Better up close, so close that his teeth graze it every time he pants, so sharp that one wrong move and they’ll slice right through, one twitch and it’s game over—
You mewl and arch your chest, inadvertently thrusting your neck up too, so his canine drags across your gland—
mine mine mine mine mine mine
The beast under his skin has a name and it’s—
mine mine mine mine mine mine
(and his teeth just slipped, he’ll say when you ask)
Ah dinnae mean tae, doe, honest—
But ah’ll take care of ye—
You’ll never understand it, but there’s a beast that lives under his skin and it—
—yearns, craves, hungers, howls like its belly is still empty even after all this time, constantly aching no matter how much it’s fed—
Sometimes Johnny wonders if it’s like this for other alphas. Whether they crave their mates with the same intensity, the same burning need smoldering in their veins. He asks Price once and gets an answer that neither confirms nor denies. 
All Johnny knows is that your legs shake when you follow him out of the gym, the employee behind the front desk not meeting his eyes. Better that he not. There’s still blood and come on his chin, his grey sweats stained at the crotch. You’re no better, shirtless under your puffy jacket, hat jammed on a bit too low on your head because he had to be the one to put you back together after taking you apart. 
And though he’s sheepish on the drive home—because what’s his is yours now, and what’s yours is his—your car still back in the parking lot until he can get someone to pick it up in the morning, he wears guilt like sheep’s clothing. It doesn’t fit quite right. 
“We’ll get ye a nice wedding gift tomorrow,” he placates when you huff, thumbing your swollen bottom lip at the next stoplight. It’s tempting to lean in and suck it into his mouth, even now. 
“I’m gonna max out your fucking credit cards,” you mumble, scowling at him. Still, you wrap your lips around his thumb when he slips it into your mouth. 
You cup your hand over your punctured mating gland in lieu of a bandage. 
Johnny cackles. Man plans and God laughs.
In the distance, thunder rumbles and your head turns towards the sound that only you and he can hear.
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dailymothanon · 2 days ago
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(Shattered Glass) I read about how Soundwave’s joints would lock up sometimes because of him being a mix of cybertronian and earth metals and I couldn’t stop thinking about it 😌 I also thought about how Starscream tried to get him to stop working for once in the comics; he really doesn’t take care of himself does he 🙄
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(This one I made much longer ago—) I also think this might’ve happened atleast once
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Alas these are also from @knight-says-rollout! I really liked their analysis about Sg Soundwave 😛 disability in Transformers is really interesting! It also prompted me to think about how (atleast in IDW) Soundwave’s telepathy struggles— at the least to me, and my familiarity with mental disabilities, was reminiscent/like an allegory of a mental disability; ofc he grew to manage and even work with it but at base level he did often talk about how his ability stunted him (especially when he was younger) ; I have a lot more to say about this but that’s for another time, if anyone’s interested
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cherrygirlfriend · 2 days ago
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*ੈ✩‧₊˚ my nerdy boy
pairing: nerd!rafe x pervert!reader synopsis: all about nerd!rafe and his popular, secretly pervy girlfriend ૮꒰ ྀི >⸝⸝⸝< ྀི꒱ა warnings: smut, masturbation (f), implied virgin!rafe, MDNI! wc: 500 a/n; this is the first rafe fic on this account that isn't a repost! anyway lmk if you want to read more about them, this was sort of a 'morning thoughts' kinda post i wrote within an hour of waking up ໒꒰ྀིっ˕ -。꒱ྀི১
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when you first met rafe, he was tutoring you for math and the moment you saw him, you thought he looked downright edible in his little specs and his slicked-back hair. he wore baggy hoodies and sweatshirts adorned with your college's name, but one time, you grabbed his bicep to 'steady yourself' (to feel him up) and you felt the hard planes of muscles hidden under his clothes that immediately gave you filthy thoughts.
from then on, you'd do anything to see that pretty blush that'd sometimes grace his defined cheeks, and it wasn't even a difficult thing to achieve. really, most of the time calling him cute was enough to get him turning as bright as a tomato.
you always wore something low-cut and tight to your tutoring sessions, biting down on your lip and shamelessly pushing your cleavage together as you pretended to listen to him explain statistics, your panties getting wetter and wetter the more and more he stumbled with his words.
when he finally gathered enough courage to ask you out on a date, you took him to see a movie, keeping your arm around his shoulders the entirety of the movie, until the final thirty minutes when you pretended to stretch and yawn, moving your hand to rest on his thigh.
rafe stiffened in his seat, a bulge starting to form in his jeans that you pretended not to notice, all the while drawing hearts on the inside of his thigh with your long, pretty nails.
when you two finally started going out officially, you could tell that he didn't have much experience with relationships, his kisses were clumsy and he kept apologizing if he was 'doing it wrong' and you thought it was the most adorable thing ever.
the first time he let you into his dorm room, it was like his personality had been transformed into a bedroom. when he slipped off into the bathroom, you rolled around in his sheets, smelling his shampoo on his pillow, your hand going to rub yourself over your leggings.
you giggled when you saw all the different boxer shorts neatly arranged in his drawer, grabbing a blue plaid pair and slipping them into your bag.
later that night, you called him, wearing his boxer shorts, your arousal soaking them the moment you put them on. he answered in a groggy voice that caused another pang of arousal to go through your body. he'd been up late doing homework, explaining the subject of his essay while you simply 'mmhm'ed and 'oh?'ed at everything the boy said, too busy rubbing yourself to pay any real attention.
you were looking at a picture that you'd secretly taken of him as you worked yourself closer and closer, picturing his hand was the one getting you off, thinking about what it'd be like to jerk him off with your favorite strawberry-scented lotion.
when you finally felt your orgasm rock through you, you bit down on your pillow to muffle the moans and the 'nngh!'s that escaped you.
and for the next ten-or-so minutes, you just listened to him rant about his classes, your hand still in his boxer shorts, a satisfied smile on your lips, thinking of all the ways in which you wanted to defile his innocence.
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aomiiine · 2 days ago
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COME HOME? CUM HOME!
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LIKE A ROMANCE TURNED EROTIC … husband farspace colonel!caleb & wife!reader. warning(s) -> nsfw, MDNI (18+), pure filth ahead !! established relationship, fluff for like the first 3-4 paragraphs, unprotected sex (pls wrap it up b4 action irl), impatient caleb lol, creampie, breeding, teasing, uhh daddy kink, degradation (he calls u a slut), petnames: pip-squeak(once!!!), baby, honey, princess, brat, not proofread wordcount. 1.9k (small smth for caleb’s release!! a bit rushed) taglist. @jellysix
𝑯𝑼����𝑩𝑨𝑵𝑫 𝑹𝑬𝑻𝑼𝑹𝑵𝑺 from service after nearly a year, caleb is more than eager to reacquaint himself with his wife’s body.
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22nd January. Today. It was the day your beloved husband finally returned from service as the Farspace Colonel. You stayed up all day, all night since the day before, restless and worried of your husband’s well being. Sure, news hasn’t said much about the farspace dealings but being a Space Hunter, you heard a thing or two from work.
“Honey? I’m back— uumph!”
you raised from the couch the moment you heard keys jingling from outside your front door, reaching Caleb as soon as he opened the door to take a step inside. Your arms circled his torso beneath his arms, nearly tackling him with your jump which he caught with ease, tossing his bag to the side on the floor carelessly.
“Hello to you too, my little brat,” Caleb giggled, lifting you up from the ground in his arms with a little twirl. He buried his face into the top of your head, hair tickling his nose as he inhaled your scent deeply, taking the unique scent of yours—the scent of home.
“I missed you so much, you have no idea,” he gushed, lips against your hair with his gloved hand cradling the back of your head, tucking you deep under his chin. “Then you’re can’t imagine how much I missed you,” you mumbled against the firm plane of his chest, his uniform warm against the warm curves of your body pressed against his perfectly like puzzle pieces complementing each other. “Dramatic as always,” he chuckled warmly.
wholesome reunion, right? Caleb indulged himself in you, catching up to all the days he missed out in your life. He stayed patient, listening like a good husband all the while he kept the cruel side of him that clawed at his skin to pounce and ravage you. Caleb knew he couldn’t. Not now, at least. So bit his tongue, curled his fingers to a fist so tight, you could hear the faint strain of leather.
“Sweetheart.. so much has happened since I left. I missed out on so much, baby, don’t you think it’s time to make up for lost time?” He finally spoke his mind after the hums and replies of acknowledgement at your joyful gushing, the sight of you so happy to see him igniting a certain desire both innocent and not inside him.
you quirked a brow at him, small smile on your face along at his words. You were glad he wanted to make up for lost time, but now?
“Right now? Sure, I suppose. If you have an idea how,” you shrugged with acceptance, nodding as you shifted yourself on the couch to face him better. And in the split second your eyes met his face, you could’ve sworn you saw the edge of his lips curled to a smirk.
“Oh, I do have ideas.. So many of them.” Caleb’s hand on your waist squeezed the flesh there lightly before pulling you closer to him, other hand moving to tilt your head up with a finger beneath your chin. In that moment, your eyes blinked wildly, throat dry and lips parted invitingly for his lips to capture yours. And they did, securely so. His tongue plundered deep into the warm cavern of your mouth, slanting and sweeping his tongue over yours.
“Shouldn’t take it lightly when I say I miss you, pip-squeak,” caleb murmured once he broke the kiss, hand previously beneath your chin now holding your face, long slender fingers sliding up your jaw until they raked through your hair.
His other hand wandering your body made you gasp, cold leather fingers sneaking beneath the hem of your shirt to skim through the surface of your belly. He wasn’t shy with his exploration, making his way to cup the soft mound of your breast until it filled his palm.
“Fuck, these curves, these pretty tits that are just begging for their daddy’s touch, yeah?” Your husband seemed in awe as he reacquainted himself with your body, kneading the flesh of your breast through the confines of your bra, all until he tugged it down to spill you bare to his hand. Every tug and pinch of pebbled nipple sent jolts of desire straight to your core, your back arching into him involuntarily, much to his pleasure.
“C-Caleb, maybe we should head into the bedroom— ack!” Your efforts to reason with him was interrupted with a firm yet gentle shove on your shoulder, his larger frame hovering over yours that was laid on the couch. “Bedroom, living room, what difference does it make? We’re alone regardless,” he replied with a sly smirk, pushing your shirt up to your chin, exposing your bare midriff and tampered bra.
“Besides, your legs are welcoming me so wholeheartedly.. Is it force of habit?” Caleb taunted, free hand taking off his hat to toss to on the coffee table beside them. His other hand wrapped around the curve of your thigh, nestling himself between them as your legs locked around his waist securely.
“Must’ve fucked you so good before I left. Trained you just for this moment, didn’t I?” He drawled, free hand resting flat on your pelvis, the cold metal band on his ring fingers tracing idle circles on your skin sending goosebumps to your body. You whimpered his name, unsure exactly to ask from him all the while you squirmed beneath his touch.
“Baby, please,” you pleaded breathlessly, eyes flickering down to his hand flat on your lower belly, fingers dangerously low to your core. His hand went back up to hook a finger under the waistband of your pants, tugging down to your knees, pulling up and off your legs. All that was left was your panties, the a wet spot slowly blooming on the fabric.
“Please, what? Be more specific.. I only take clear orders, after all,” your husband chuckled lowly, leaning down closer to you, hips nestling closer to yours just enough to let you feel the bulge of his cock growing with every passing moment.
“Please what?” He repeated by your ear hotly, knowing exactly he was doing by teasing you like this.
you on the other hand, was torn between your pride and need for him. You didn’t like the thought he could see how much affected you with his absence, and return. This was surely be material for him to tease you for later on. But at the moment, you could care. You needed him to calm the raging desire in your heat, desperately.
”please.. fuck me,” you whispered, brows furrowed as you relented to his advances, eyes fixated on the sight of his hips grinding with shallow thrusts into you, the ridge of his cock straining in the confines of his pants painfully evident against the soft folds of your panty clad pussy.
The colonel smirked beside your ear, leaning away just enough to look at your face, drinking in the lust dazed expression you had on right now.
“Good girl,” he purred, grabbing each of your thighs up all of the sudden, lifting your legs up and pushing them up to your chest. He release one leg of yours to unbuckle his own belt with ease, unzipping his fly and tugging his pants down with his boxers to let his throbbing cock breath. He hissed at the cold air, stroking himself with a fist lazily before leaning down to align his tip over your clothed folds, pulling the fabric aside. A soft moan escaped your lips at the direct contact, his hips nudging forward to pierce through your slick entrance.
“So fucking tight, perfect pussy remembers me, baby..,” caleb rambled, slowly burying his girth deeper into your warm heat that welcomed the intrusion, fluttering around his shaft with each move he made. He proceeded to lift your legs up to hang over his shoulder, the narrow space between your calves allowing him a view of your sprawled on the couch, hair sprawled on the velvet cushion, features scrunched into a face of unadulterated pleasure. But nothing turned him on more than the sight of your tits bouncing back and forth in time with his thrusts, your voice raising in volume each time he got deeper in your depths—rearranging your guts with frantic jerks of his hips.
“Come on, cum for me.. Welcome me back with a biiig, wet mess, baby,” caleb coaxed, hugging your legs to his body with both arms, fucking in and out of your drenched cunt with ruthless abandon. His hips were unforgiving, drunk in the feeling of your pussy sucking and wringing him dry for he was worth. It took you all the focus and energy you could muster to keep yourself stable on the narrow surface of the couch, holding on tight to the headrest you clung onto.
“Caleb, ngh— too fast, too fast!” You slurred, your husband’s bulbous cockhead bullying the spongy spot that he knew by heart, beyond eager to make you explode on his cock. “What was— shit— that? Too slow?” Caleb teased between pants, grinning at the tight spasms of your velvety walls, a telltale sign of your impending orgasm. And he was determined to make you reach it first.
his name fell from your lips repeatedly like a mantra, nails burying into the cushion of the couch’s headrest with the fabric threatening to break—like how the coil in your belly threatened to snap. Caleb’s cock plunging into your core was reckless still, especially so now that you were on the brink of climaxing. So in a final effort, Caleb sheathed himself inside you to the hilt, settling on shallow thrusts and grinds on your clit. Much to his pleasure, the change of pace finally made you cum, your juices coming out in a spray on his cock and his pelvis, the pressure only urging him to start moving again—harder this time.
“That’s my wife, cumming all over me like a dirty slut, hm? Don’t worry, princess, I’ll be joining you aah— soo enough,” he groaned, arms binding your shivering legs tighter as he fucked into your pussy like a man deprived of any sorts of physical touch—and in a way, he way. He went on too long without you, he had to melt himself in your sopping cunt again.
“Yesyesyesyes, agh— fuck!” Caleb groaned loud, a deep guttural moan coming from his chest without his control when he felt his balls draw up tight, cock heavy and throbbing as jet after jet of semen was pumped into your womb. His hips didn’t dare to stop plummeting into your vice-like channel until he was sure that his seed would take root, that you would be swollen with his child after a month or two.
Well, he would need a good reason to stay by your side after that long, torturous, mission.
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lamefish · 3 days ago
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kento nanami is an anniversary man. nsfw
you think it's sweet, how he has the date of big events in his life on memory. when it's a loss, he'll take the day off to remember, with his head in your lap as he tells stories of whomever has passed. you listen intently, ask questions about them and watch as your husband recounts every good thing about a person.
he celebrates the good, too. almost excessively. the date you met is circled on the calendar, and kento will wake you up with breakfast in bed and a day of doting to show you just how important this anniversary is to him. you turned his world upside down in the best of ways, and what kind of man is he if not one to celebrate the light in his life?
of course, your wedding anniversary too. it's the one he goes all out for: more often than not you put a weekend aside to take a trip and spend some uninterrupted time together. you'll act as newlyweds again, because you still feel like newlyweds despite the passing years, and you'll be reminded over and over just how lucky you are to have found your soulmate in a man like kento nanami.
a man who is sentimental, and so very in love with you. and also celebrates the first time you had sex.
that first year, he had spent the day doting on you so profusely that you were convinced he was going to propose. he was pulling out all of the stops, taking you out fopr an expensive meal, dosing you with fine wines and so many kisses you could get drunk off the taste of him alone. he took you home, ran you a scented bath and took care of the house while you relaxed.
and of course the night ended in mind blowing sex—as your nights usually do. he had insisted on fucking you in missionary despite his recent penchant for taking you from behind and, once he has ripped two orgasms from you and was working on your third, he let it slip.
“we made love for the first time a year ago today,” he whispers against your lips, cock pulsing inside of you as he reaches deep inside of you. “just like this—looking into each others eyes, three orgasms from you, two from me. fell in love with you that night, do you know that honey?”
“you kept track of the day?” you cant finish your sentence without a moan breaking from your throat. “kento, you’re something else.”
“of course i did. it’s an important date, reaching such intimacies—feeling these beautiful velvet walls of yours for the first time… i’ll never forget it.”
you laugh, though it’s quickly swallowed by a kiss from your lover. he rocks his hips into you, feels every inch of his veiny cock disappear inside. he looks down to watch himself sink into you, though his gaze his brought back when you speak.
“three.”
kento blinks. “three what?”
“orgasms from you. you said you had two, but you came a third time right at the end—i milked you dry and you were so sex-drunk and exhausted but you insisted on making me food.” you reach down and grab his hand, the one that had been cupping at your chest, and hold it up for him to see the gentle scar that runs across his thumb. “you cut yourself slicing the bread because i fucked you mindless.”
it comes back to him in gentle flashes. you had, in fact, milked him of a third release. he had just been so out of his mind with nerves and pleasure that the memory had washed itself clean from his mind. he scolds himself mentally for ever daring to forget a detail about being intimate with you, but smiles.
“i remember,” he says. “you told me sex made you hungry so i wanted to incorporate it into your aftercare…”
“silly man,” you wrap your legs around his waist and lick your ankles behind him. with a gentle nudge, he’s forced that tiny bit deeper inside of you. “my silly man.”
kento moans—his eyes flutter shut and his lips catch between his teeth. he adores you—he really does. so much so that the sheer memory of his first time with you is quickly becoming too powerful of a memory to have.
and you, his beautiful other half, laid beneath him with lustful eyes and parted lips, smile up at him. “are we recreating our first time, ken? is that what this is?”
he nods, a little wordless as he tries to keep his mind straight.
“then i think you know what i’m going to do to you, my love.”
he smiles. “milk me for all i have. it’s all yours anyways.”
you lean up and kiss him. it’s slow, gentle, like your first kiss with him was. you taste him wholly on your lips and thank all the divine beings that may exist for putting such a man in your life’s trajectory. his cock twitches inside of you, he fills you out so perfectly.
still, you smile as you roll your hips up to meet his. “just let me handle the aftercare this time.”
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k1tty5 · 2 days ago
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ooo if you’d like to, bad boys? your art is so shaped /vpos :DD
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bad boys 4 u <3
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tumble-tv · 1 day ago
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ICE raids are happening.
Any immigrants, no matter how long you have been a citizen of the USA, is at risk of being deported either out of the country as a whole or into what are basically concentration camps. Raids starting in Chicago, Illinois. and spreading to other major cities with high POC and Hispanic populations. The US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) have started raiding homes and families in California.
There are no "protected locations" as of January 21, 2025. Hospitals, schools, and churches are all at risk of being raided, where before these places were deemed safe and off limits to raids.
When it comes to spotting an ICE agent, look for these:
Weirdly neat/well kept hair (shaved heads, side parts, military burs for men; low buns, high ponytails, close cropped bobs for women)
Oversized jacket (long and bulky outerwear makes it easier to hide tools/equipment without being suspicious)
Both hands in pockets
Many undercover agents/cops buy cheap plain clothes off the racks so they aren’t seen in their own clothes. This can make their outfit seem awkward
Sweatshirts with the hood up
Sports apparel (warm up jacket, sweats, etc) with non-sports clothes (jeans, cargo shorts)
Cargo pants/shorts (usually full of items like their badge, flashlight, taser, pepper spray, backup handcuffs, zip ties)
Military or hiking style boots, sometimes chunky sneakers (extra points if none of it matches anything in their outfit)
Outline of a gun in their pants/shirt (easy to see when bending, leaning, or raising arms) (NO NOT SAY ANYTHING)
Overly friendly
Overly inquisitive
“How old are you” and “what do you know about this happening” are both red flags, along with generally odd and personal questions
Don’t fit in
Mismatched pairs in public spaces (usually cops do these things in pairs. They don’t talk to each other or acknowledge each other much, if at all)
DO NOT SAY ANYTHING UNTIL YOU ARE 100% SURE
YOUR BEST BET IS NOT TO SAY ANYTHING UNTIL THE SUSPECT STARTS ACTING OFF AND GETTING PUSHY
COPS ARE NOT OBLIGATED TO TELL YOU THAT THEY ARE UNDERCOVER
COPS CAN AND WILL LIE TO YOU
SCREAM “LA MIGRA” AT THE TOP OF YOUR LUNGS
For protesting:
N95 masks
Respirator/gas mask if you have access to one
Water water water water water (I hate to say it, but disposable one use bottles are best here. If it comes to it, you need to be able to drop and run.) Use for flushing wounds, flushing eyes of tear gas, and of course drinking.
Snacks! You'll be doing a lot of walking and/or running and need to keep that energy up. Trail mix, dried fruit, nuts, granola bars, crackers, jerky/meat sticks, fruit snacks, candy, etc. Think of it like packing your lunchbox for a field trip.
Eyedrops (teargas is a bitch)
Goggles (I bring my old snowboarding goggles)
If you are wearing a t-shirt or have exposed skin, put on fake/temporary tattoos. If you are brought into something and they say you were there, showing a picture of you with the tattoos, show them where that tattoo would be and how there’s nothing there. How would you get rid of a giant flower on your forearm in 2 days anyways?
Hide your hair. I tuck my hair into my beanie since it’s short. If you have longer hair, try to do the same or tuck it into your shirt. Balaclavas are also a good choice, as they cover both your face and hair.
Power bank
Chargers
Helmet. Any is fine, my personal choice is a skating helmet since they’re rounder and can take more damage, but tactical is also good
Hand sanitizer
Gloves with hard knuckles (tactical gloves). These pack a good punch even if you don't have the correct form. Don't have those? Wrist guards for roller skating/skateboarding work kinda like that too. More of a slapping motion, but still hurt like a bitch. Extra points if they're all scuffed up from use and falls.
Bandanas. Somebody might need one for their face or hair, maybe you need to get dirt off somebody’s face, maybe somebody got injured. They’re great for anything and everything.
Cash (try to stick to cash, your card can be tracked)
Medications if you take them. If you get arrested or happen to somehow be away for longer than expected after the protest, it’s always good to have emergency meds
FIRST AID ALL THE FIRST AID (Tourniquet, Quikclot, chest seal, trauma shears, gauze, bandages, duct tape, and all the usual stuff you’d have in there)
Good shoes. Boots and sneakers are your best choices. Not heels, not platforms, not sandals. Good boots or shoes that won't come off your feet too easily when you run.
Spare socks. Trust me. You can use them to stop bleeding if it comes to it, but also you can put rocks in there and boom weapon. Also if the socks you're wearing get wet.
As much covering clothing as you can handle. Plain jeans, plain hoodie, plain t-shirt, keep yourself as anonymous as possible. Black is best.
Photocopy of your ID, not your real one.
Sunscreen!
Make sure your clothes have pockets, even if you have a bag. You want everything to be easily accessible.
Do not wear contact lenses. If tear gas is used, that will make everything so much worse. Wear your glasses or go blind. If you have overly unique or identifiable frames, goggles are your friend here. Get some goggles that will fit over your frames, preferably ones that are tinted.
If you use mobility aids, cover defining features. Logos, brand names, colors, stickers, all of it. Take some old plain t-shirt and tie it around your wheelchair’s backrest. Wrap your wheelchair frame in cling wrap, then duct tape, or plain black self adhering medical tape. Cover stickers on your cane or crutches the same way. Electric chair? You have a little more work, but you can do it. Wrap it up. Same idea. Walker? Same thing. Cover. It. All.
If you are bringing a bag, make sure that bag is as plain as possible. No pins. No patches. No keychains. Except maybe a pride flag so people know which team you're playing on.
Scarf or keffiyeh if you have one. They have many uses!
Write a reliable phone number (of someone who is not at the protest with you) on your body. On the off chance you get arrested, that is your emergency contact.
Pocket knife.
Pepper spray/mace
Anything you can throw. Soup for my family.
IF YOU CAN, LEAVE YOUR PHONE AT HOME
IF YOU HAVE TO TAKE IT WITH YOU, TURN OFF LOCATION SERVICES ON ALL APPS AND TURN OFF BIOMETRICS (FACE ID AND FINGERPRINT) SO YOU CAN ONLY UNLOCK YOUR PHONE WITH YOUR PASSWORD
COPS CAN FORCE YOU TO OPEN YOUR PHONE WITH YOUR FINGERPRINT OR FACE ID
MAKE SURE SOMEBODY KNOWS GENERALLY WHERE YOU ARE
If you see a potential or active raid, take pictures and note the time and location. Post online if you can, as well.
You have the right to remain silent. State that you wish to remain silent. Avoid giving information about anybody's immigration status. You have the right to refuse to sign anything before speaking to an attorney. You have the right to refuse searches of your car, your home, and yourself. Schools do not collect a child's immigration status.
I do not want to scare anybody, but this is what life is right now. That man does not care how long you have been a citizen of this country. If you are not a white, cisgender, heterosexual, Christian male, you are seen as less than by men in power. You are not less than. You are a threat to them, and they are scared. Keep it that way.
Here's the link to my post on what to bring in terms of first aid.
If you cannot attend protests, that’s fine. Do what’s best for you. Even just reposting information helps.
This is an updated version of this post,
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luveline · 2 days ago
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shy!reader and spencer who are in the early days of their relationship and are getting more comfortable with initiating physical affection with each other (especially reader lol) and spencer gets her to open up by playing with her hair / hands, tickling her, cuddling, the like <3
The first time Spencer let his head rest against yours, you were sure you’d die right there and then, half-asleep on the subway, then suddenly away as he’d started talking under his breath, his conversation for you and you alone. You'd flushed full body and forced yourself to stay still, until Spencer had confused your shyness for not wanting his weight against you and pulled away. 
This time you’re ready. This time, he’s working his arm over the top of your shoulders. Not a timid first move on the first date, he’d suffered through that already. Spencer lets his arm slip between your back and the couch as he tugs you toward him, resting his cheek against your temple, two points of skin turning hot as a burner. 
“Okay?” he asks quietly. 
You let yourself relax into it. “I’m fine.” 
“Did you want me to run that bath for you?” 
It’s imperative he doesn’t move. “No, I can do it. I’ll do it later, if that’s okay.” 
It’s Spencer’s bath, but he let you take one the last time you stayed the night, so you’ll work it out. You knew he wasn’t gonna peep on you, knew you were totally safe in his bathroom, but your heart hammered fast as a hummingbird’s whenever the floors creaked —just the idea of being near him when you were unclothed set you aflame. Your skin warms with the memory, a nervousness in your chest and hands that grows uncomfortably warm. 
You don’t move, though. You’re sending him all the wrong messages when you reject him out of timidity, you’re more than aware of it, but the longer he sits there gently holding you, the more the temptation to squirm builds. 
Spencer makes a soft, soft sound as his hand trails up your back, curling around your arm, and meandering a path to your elbow. 
“I got…” —Spencer begins, without any inclination to rush— “…more of that bath soak you liked, the camomile… and honey…”
You love the smell. Sometimes you swear you can smell it in his hair when he presses near you. 
“And a loufa, ‘cos you didn’t have one last time,” he adds. 
“Thank you.” 
“…You’re welcome.” He kisses the side of your head. Then, in a betrayal of his character, he laughs breathlessly, saying, “Sorry, I forgot what I was saying. The loufa– It’s purple. I put it on the towel rack, and I got you a new face towel, too, mine’s too rough for you.” 
“Did you get yourself a new one too?” 
“Yeah.” He taps your cheek, the hand you’d forgotten about drawing a short line to your jaw. “You’re pretty.” 
You drop your chin. 
“You are,” he says. 
“Thank you.” 
“You’re welcome.” Spencer’s hand slides down your neck, a caress that turns to a kind hold. “Can I…” He snorts softly. “You’re solid,” he says, squeezing your neck with enough pressure to wind you, which isn’t much. “You don’t have to get all tense.” 
“I’m trying really hard not to get tense,” you admit. 
“I know. I’m trying to help, but I’m just making it worse.” 
Spencer isn’t making it worse. Or, he wasn’t. “I thought you were gonna kiss me, is the thing.” 
“I was. Then you tensed up and I didn’t think I should.” His easy smile goes funny. “Could I have?” 
“Of course you could’ve,” you mumble, pressing your face into his shoulder before he can decimate the last of your self respect. He laughs —giggles, really, in a burst of sound— and tugs you in. “Not funny.”
He can hear the lie. “No, it’s not funny,” he agrees anyways, laying back and then moving forward, swaying you enough to turn the giggle into a full blown laugh. 
He murmurs something. You mumble back. His fingertips slip over the dip in your back and he’s saying something nice, if a little shy. It’s been nice getting closer to him, seeing the real Spencer, someone who’s hesitant but gentle beyond words. There’s no reason for him to be touching you like this, to talk sweet nothings behind your ear as he lugs you onto his chest, and maybe there’s no reason for you to melt. Butter in the sun, drifting bonelessly into his lap. 
“You smell like tea,” you say quietly. “I love it.” 
“You love it?” he asks, something oddly awed about him as he shifts your head back to look you in the eyes. 
“Mm. It’s nice. And your eyes are so brown… they’re my favourite thing about you.” 
Spencer teases the stripe of skin exposed by your rising t-shirt until you’re shivering again. “Thank you,” he says, letting one close in a wink as he taps your nose with his. “Am I allowed to say what I like about you, or–” You shake your head so violently he immediately stops. “Fine. But only because I want to sit like this for the rest of the night with you.” 
“I still need a shower.” 
“Later,” he says, his lips resting on your chin. “Way, way later, please.” 
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starkeysbunny · 3 days ago
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something about you.
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pairing - rafe cameron x kook!reader
summary - rafe and reader have been in a friends with benefits relationship for months now. it’s been slowly killing both of them, but they’re both too afraid to say anything. it gets to a point and rafe can’t take it anymore. he can’t stop thinking about you.
warnings - fluffy as hell literally throwing up it’s too sweet
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my eyes were closed, my lips slightly parted as i let out a huff against my pillow. it was friday. rafe would usually text me on fridays. he’d ask me to come over, stressed out from work, a long week—whatever it was. i didn’t care.
he needed me.
it was friday, at eleven pm, radio silence. not a word from him. i felt a gnawing at my insides. this man had a grip on every fold of my brain. and we weren’t even together. it was pathetic. but i couldn’t stop.
if i couldn’t have more of him, i’d take this. being his for a couple hours a week. all his attention on me, like it was real. for a couple hours, i get to pretend it’s real.
i turn and stare at my ceiling, hoping i’ll hear my phone ping. i was getting tired. but if he texted, i’d go.
it’s pretty sad. i know. my friends have told me to get up, so many times. shake his hold. but i can’t. i’ll take any parts of him he’ll give me.
ping.
i practically fall over as i reach for my phone, frantically checking the notification.
rafe
hey.
hey? i huff, my head plopping against my pillow. another ping.
can you come over?
i stare at the message, taking a deep breath. it was nearly midnight. i should get up. i should say no. say i’m sick of the casual bullshit.
but soon, i find myself slipping my hoodie over my head, sliding into my uggs.
yeah.
is all i say. i didn’t need to say more. there was nothing more i could say. another ping.
i’ll pick you up. it’s late. don’t want you driving.
my eyebrows furrow. he’s gonna pick me up? he’s never done that.. it’s always the same routine. he texts me, i go over. and sometimes he makes me spend the night, whether i want to or not, because he doesn’t want me driving so late.
but he’s never picked me up.
i don’t say anything, heading to my living room and sitting on the couch in my empty apartment. i recently moved out of my parents, and i’d like to say it’s just a coincidence i moved into the complex only seven minutes from tannyhill.
it wasn’t.
my nails nervously pick at the hem of my hoodie as i wait. it was the longest seven minutes of my life. my mind kept racing. something about tonight felt different. he’s picking me up. and it’s so late. it’s usually never this late.
ping.
i’m here.
i swallow roughly and rub my eyes, standing up. i slide my phone into the pocket of my sleep shorts. the only sound in my quiet apartment is the shuffling of my slippers against the hardwood as i walk toward the door. i grab my keys and slide them into my other pocket, heading for the door. i lock it behind me and walk down the stairs, spotting the blaring headlights from rafe’s truck.
i walk towards it, shivering slightly from the cold air hitting my skin. i look up and see him get out, rounding the truck to the passenger side. he opens my door as i approach.
“hey.” i say softly.
he was in a hoodie and sweats, more relaxed from his usual appearance. which contained a white button up, usually unbuttoned by the time i see him, paired with some kind of dress pants.
“hey.” he whispers. his eyes drift down my appearance. “why’re you wearing shorts? it’s freezing, are you crazy?” he sighs, running a hand over his buzzed hair. his hand comes to the small of my back, not even allowing me to respond before he ushers me in his truck. he shuts the passenger door and rounds the vehicle again to his side.
he gets in, the engine humming as he starts it. he glances over at me and sighs, reaching his arm back to the backseat. he grabs a blanket, gently laying it out over my lap.
“nearly thirty fuckin’ degrees, and you’re sleepin’ in shorts.” he sighs, muttered under his breath.
i swallow roughly, looking down as his hands gently linger over the tops of my thighs as he lays down the blanket. “thanks.” i whisper.
“mhm.” he hums, his hands moving to grip the steering wheel as he peels out of the driveway.
the drive to his house was short, and quiet. the heater gently enveloped me, quickly changing my shivering form from earlier to warmth. my eyes stay looking out the window as i feel the occasional glances from rafe to my side. his eyes were like blades, puncturing into my skin at every glance with a sting.
i feel the truck come to a stop as we pull into the driveway. rafe had taken over tannyhill after his dad died, and sarah moved in with the pogues. so, it was always quiet here. sometimes i wonder if he brings anyone else over ever. or just me.
i watch as he gets out of the drivers seat, rounding the truck to my side. he sticks his hand out for me to grab as i step out of the truck. my hand fits in his warm palm, his hand cradling the small of my back as i step out.
i stand by his side as we walk up to the house. i look up at him, my eyes soft. “r-rafe..?”
“hm?” he hums as we approach the door, he fishes through his pockets for the keys.
“um.. are we…” i trail off.
he pauses as he finds the keys, his eyes flicking to me. his gaze runs over my face as he lets out a breath. “no.” he whispers.
so this was something else. i swallow roughly as i feel my stomach drop. was he ending things? i don’t say anything more and he opens the door, allowing me to walk in first
whenever i was in tannyhill, i felt out of place. it was a huge, beautiful mansion. but it carried a darkness to it. i could hardly imagine how rafe lived here alone. it would eat me up. just as i stand in the foyer, i feel small and inferior in the big space.
“hey.” he whispers. his voice snaps me out of my thoughts, his hand coming to the small of my back. i follow him as he guides me toward the living room. my eyes sift over the space and he guides us to a window seat, outfacing the backyard.
he sits and gestures his hand out for me to sit. i nervously pull my legs into my chest as i slip off my slippers.
“rafe.. why-why’d you text me?” i ask softly.
he leans back against the window with a soft sigh, his hand coming up to run over the stubble against his jaw. he chuckles softly, throwing his hands up. “been asking myself the same shit.” he sighs, looking over at me. he presses his lips together, his eyes wandering over me as he thinks. “i’ve been-“ he sighs. “i’ve been thinking.”
i furrow my eyebrows. “okay.. about..?” i ask softly.
he runs a hand over his face. “everything.” he whispers. “i-i’ve been really stressed.” he huffs. “cameron development, all that bullshit. i just have so much pressure on me, y’know?”
i nod gently. “yeah.” i whisper. “i-i get that. but rafe, you’re so much more than that.” sigh.
he chuckles, his tongue sticking to the inside of his cheek as he raises his eyebrows. he turns his gaze to look at me. “i appreciate that. you’re faith in me, i mean..” he trails off. “it’s nice. nobody else has it.”
my eyes narrow at him slightly. “well, i mean it, rafe.” i whisper softly, my hand gently coming to rest on his knee.
he looks down at my hand, letting out a sigh and leaning his head back against the window. he looks back at me, his gaze holding mine. but there’s something different about it this time. an intensity in his eyes i’d never seen before.
his hand comes to rest over my wrist, his thumb gently tracing in my skin. “y/n.. i-“ he murmurs, his voice barely above a whisper.
my eyes blink up at him, my eyebrows knitted together softly. “yeah..?” i whisper.
he’s hesitant. like whatever he wants to say is stuck in a knot in his throat. he takes a deep breath, searching for the words. he swallows roughly. “look, i-i know i’m no good for you.” he whispers. “but there’s.. there’s somethin’ about you, just can’t fuckin’ get you outta my head.” he sighs and pauses before speaking his next words.
“i-i want us to be.. more. than just this. i-i can’t stop thinking about you, y/n.”
my stomach drops. my eyes widen slightly and my lips part. “i- what..?” i whisper, stunned.
he presses his lips together and i see the nerves bubble in his eyes. “i-i know we agreed to be friends with benefits and nothin’ more but-“ he runs his hand over his buzzed head, a satire chuckle escaping his lips. “i can’t fuckin’ do this shit, okay? i-i can’t keep texting you just to fuck and pretending you don’t mean fuckin’ everything to me. i can’t stand the thought of you being with other people i-“ he huffs, leaning back.
“‘m fucking obsessed with you, alright?” he whispers.
my eyes blink slowly, my lips parting. i couldn’t believe it. he felt the same way i did? every time he’d hold me after we’d hook up, a part of me hurt inside. knowing it was temporary. knowing, that i’d never really have him.
and that whole time—he was thinking the same thing.
“rafe, i-i want that too.” i whisper.
his eyes snap over to me, they scan over my features. almost trying to see if i was telling the truth. “really?” he whispers.
“yeah.” i say breathlessly. “i-i’ve wanted so much more. i was just scared that you didn’t. and that if i said anything, i’d lose you completely. so i was just.. settling for what i could get.”
he swallows roughly, his lips parting. his hand comes up to my cheek, his thumb gently stroking the skin. “i wanna give you everything.” he whispers. “i-i don’t deserve you. i’m fucked up, and i get angry and i’m selfish. wanting you is probably the most selfish thing i’ve ever done. but i-i can’t get you out of my head.” he sighs softly, his hand gently cradling my face.
“i may be all of those things.” he whispers. “but i’m gonna work so damn hard to deserve you. i’m gonna be better, i wanna be better every time i’m near you, baby.”
i shake my head gently. “you don’t need to be better.”
he smiles softly. “this is what i’m talkin’ about. too sweet for your own good, baby.”
“so.. you wanna be.. real?” i ask softly, my voice cautious. “like.. official and exclusive?”
he grins, nodding softly. “mhm.” he hums. “want you to be my girl. just mine.”
i smile softly, my stomach swarming at his words. “yeah?”
he chuckles lowly. “yeah, sweetheart.”
i can’t help the grin that creeps up on my lips. i scoot closer, burying my face in his neck. “okay.” i whisper, my arms wrapping around his broad shoulders.
his beefy arms immediately encapsulate me, holding my close. “yeah? you my girl, sweetheart?”
i grin, my cheeks heating up this words. “yeah, ‘m your girl.”
he grins, chuckling lowly as he presses a gentle kiss to my jaw. “‘m sorry i didn’t say anything sooner. made you think i was stringing you along.”
“no..” i shake my head softly. “‘m just glad i have you now.” i whisper. “in every way.”
he smiles, tugging me impossibly closer. “in every way.” he promises.
-
sickeningly sweet 🙂‍↕️ i’m a sucker for fluff srryyyy
791 notes · View notes
dilf-docs · 2 days ago
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So Is it Your Place Or Mine?
bfd!joel miller x younger!reader
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summary: summer is over, but your affair with joel isn't (or, you grind on joel's belt buckle while sarah is at soccer practice)
warnings: 18+ (minors dni), age gap, smut, p. in v., exhibition kink (sarah is again a victim of this), brat taming (this two are soo into it), degradation kink, praise kink, lwk breeding kink, daddy kink (wow! it's a whole library of alexandria of kinks in here), fingering, dad bod!joel (best joel you mean), angst (oh guys look oh no it's alr starting), dirty talk!!!!! (they're so dirty ew i want it too wait who said that)
word count: 3,701 words
side note: and it became officially a series. hope u all are into this as much as i am because it's my first series ever !!!!! ALSO angst finally makes it way in this mess LET'S GO (i'mcrying i really looked up big texas belt to come up with a mental image in the middle of class, i'm so sorry to whoever sat behind me but idc abt me writing smut while at uni; we die like real men)
part: prev | masterlist | next
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"What do you mean you're not coming?"
It's been an unspoken rule that, even if you hate sports and the ball stays ten meters away from you, you always come to Sarah's soccer practice, cheering for her from your usual spot at the benches.
Except today, you aren't there. And now Sarah is calling you when she shouldn't, but that she doesn't know.
"I can't. I have stuff to work on stuff"
Bullshit.
Your laptop and the half-written essay sit untouched at the coffee table. The thing being touched in question, is something entirely different.
"Need help?"
His hands grip any free spot of your glistening skin, sucking on the rosy pink until it turns maroon red.
"I'm at my dorm, sorry"
Double bullshit.
Sarah doesn't even know your car is parked next to her dad's truck. She has about four hours to find out.
"I can drop by later then" she suggests.
His hot breath tingles against your neck as his nose caresses the spot. Bad girl, he mouths, like he wasn't the one who told you to pick up, despite his daughter's name on the caller's ID. You try to reach for a kiss, but his digits press on your hair, pulling you back with violence to forbid your lips from touching his. Bad girl, and your arousal drips with more intensity at the remark. Bad girl.
"No!" the answer comes quick, your voice strained, and Sarah jokes that you should take it easy with your classes, instead of suspecting anything else.
"Fine! I won't go if you don't want me to, but if you show up dead by stress, I'll be free of guilt"
He kisses the outline of your jaw with sloppy movements, like he just wants to busy himself while Sarah blabbers about the practice, and you keep trying to make her stop, but she tells you not to worry, that she's on a break right now, and the task to avoid whimpering at his rough kisses across your neck becomes increasingly difficult. A gasp escapes your lips when his teeth sink into your flesh. Mine, not to be said but to be felt. Seen by the rest. A pretty red that tastes like the blood he craves, the hunger akin to violence. Bad girl, and he's biting your lip to stop any other filthy noises from escaping. What if she hears?
"Are you okay?" concern laced on Sarah's tone. Guilt creeps through the cracks of the worn-out paint of his bedroom, one your friend had practically begged him to restore; the joke of it all was that was about his job yet he couldn't fix his own goddamn house. "Y/n, did you hurt yourself?"
I'm treating you well, ain't I, doll? and then he'd grin against the crook of your neck before looking at you, his dark blown-wide pupils gazing at you with a hunger you didn't think it was possible. They'd burn, and the fire didn't scare you: it was the warm your cold body needed. Tell Sarah her daddy ain't hurting her slut of a friend.
"I-I'm fine" you manage to choke out. Good girl.
Joel's lids feel heavy as a crown. But you like 'em rough, don't 'cha, baby?
"Should I worry?"
Joel pulls harder, your scalp burning at the harsh tug. Answer when I ask. You breathe in heavily, and Sarah keeps on asking you if you're okay, threatening to burst through a dorm door she'll find empty.
"N-no" you meekly answer, and he laughs at your demeanor. Under his weight, pinned down on the mattress, there's nowhere to run to.
"Is it okay if I-"
"Sarah I need to hang, okay? My head hurts. Bye" it all comes down in a rush, the words a vomit of excuses. You make sure the call has ended, and so does Joel, that in an act of mercy, has stopped. You both look the screen until the lockscreen is back up again, a picture of you and Sarah. Despite used to having his weight on top of you, your throat feels constricted.
"Do you want to traumatize your daughter, Mr. Miller?"
He's back at his task of kissing, making you moan and writhe at the sensitivity of your kissed and bit skin during the last hour. You hate how he takes his time―edging you; unbearable.
"What I want is you"
The lie comes out effortlessly from his teeth. He wants you, needs you, but does he really want you? His daughter's best friend, the college girl he was going to lecture just last summer―to live life and forget about him, yet couldn't. He lies to himself, saying he didn't because you felt asleep, but feeling a warm body next to him, being your beautiful frame of all people, made it hard.
The way he makes a moaning mess out of you, how he knows every spot of your body no one had been able to please before, how your cunt stretches perfectly around his cock, how you call his name like no one else had done. It belongs to you now, and this is a vice.
It's like he's got a wound, and you're the only balm that can soothe the pain. But the effect is temporary, and after you leave, he always finds himself wanting more.
The doubt on his eyes has your heart beating out of fear.
"Then have me, Mr. Miller" you dare.
When Joel smiles, barely noticeable, something flutters in your stomach.
"Al'ight, impatient one. We have sum hours until Sarah's back. Spread" his hand nudges your thighs apart, and you oblige, making Joel chuckle at your obedience. "Good girl, baby. S'good f'r me"
You let out a gentle moan at the praise, and he smirks at your reaction.
"Feelin' desperate, are we?" he taunts, seeing your pretty lips parted and face flushed, a whine escaping them.
"Shut the fuck up and just kiss me already" you beg, pussy throbbing painfully.
"Damn brat" he hisses, "ain't you such'a needy greedy slut?" his finger hooks on your panties, tugging you closer into him, your body rising to clash against his softer frame that has nothing to do with his rough demeanor. You can feel the bulge that has formed through his pants, making you moan in delight.
"Sorry, daddy. I'll be a good girl" you squirm under his weight, pouting lips and batting eyelashes. "Please, kiss me. Pretty please, daddy"
"Jus' cus you asked well" but he knows it's an excuse to capture your sweet lips until he's tasted all of you. You once heard old men kiss like they want to devour every inch of your mouth, to make space for their tongue like it's going to live in there, and they were right.
He pulls away from the kiss to pull out his shirt, revealing his soft body. Your hands itch, immediatly reaching for it with wandering fingers. He chuckles at the eagerness, but then he catches the subtle adoration in your eyes, and his breath hitches, heart stopping.
"What's wrong?" you look up, and it's gone. Maybe he imagined it.
Joel doesn't know why he feels dissapointed by it.
He tries to push the thoughts back, head diving down between your breasts, leaving sloppy kisses and messy trails of saliva with his tongue on each one. He gives a special lick to your hardened nipples, making you squirm.
"Gonna bend y'r fuckin' sexy little body on this sheets. Gonna make you cum all'over, until y'r scent is'mpregnated on 'em"
You groan at his words, fingers pulling down the pajama shorts you brought over, revealing your pretty black laced lingerine.
"Fuck, baby. You wore 'em for me?" he's asking, and you'd be crazy if you think the tone reveals devotion. Is Joel even capable of warmth?
He leaves a new trail of kisses, this time, running from your neck to your stomach.
"Gonna make you scream my name 'til that's the only thin' you know how to say" his hot breath tingles over your abdomen. He buries his face in there, the mustache and scruffy graying hair tickling the skin. "Gon' give you such'a load, this flat stomach of yours will be bustin' with my seed"
You whine at his filthy words, mouth agape slightly. He looks at your soaked panties, arousal on clear display now. Joel's cock twitches in the confines of his jeans.
He lets out a low growl. "Look at you, such'a slut for me. Drippin' wet like a fuckin' whore and desperate, when I ain't even touch you"
To prove so, Joel teasingly runs his fingers along your inner thigh, dangerously close to your soaking core.
He pulls your underwear down, taking them off.
"M'gonna fuck you real good, baby" his fingers dig on your thighs for support, the burning sensation of his calloused digits on your soft skin delicious. "Gon' take care of what's mine"
Mine.
The words ring loud and clear. The only other noise to be heard is his lips leaving wet sounds against your thighs. Does Joel even realize what he said? Or was it in the heat of the moment?
No, wait. Stop. Why do you care?
He begins to rub circles in your clit, coating his fingers in your dripping arousal, prodding the tense needy hole, making you moan in desperation.
"Please, daddy" your lips cry as you beg for him to do anything to remove the pain in between your legs.
"Please, what?" Joel teases, voice raspy. He keeps prodding your center, his digits in and out in a gentle manner, contrasting his hard hold on your thigh. You squirm and whine at the sensation, but maybe it's the dark on his eyes that's really responsable for making you shrink under his gaze. "Think 'm doin' this for ya'? To please ya'? No, baby" he tuts, "you were a bad girl. Almost got caught"
"If you didn't make me answer" you seethe, a moan almost escaping your lips when his fingers hit that sweet spot of yours. "Maybe if you didn't, she wouldn't-"
Joel removed his fingers from you, and you reduce to a moaning mess, begging for the release you were chasing and now it's lost.
"But you wanted'er to know, didn't ya'?" he unbuckles his belt and fumbles with his worn-out jeans, revealing a barely concealed neediness on his side. "Wanted'er to know where 'er slut of a friend was: at daddy's house, beggin' for his dick like a cockhungry slut"
"I-I want it. Want you dick" you barely choke out, lips parted at the sight of his pulsating dick's silhouette under his brief.
"Then take it, hungry one"
His tip buries deeply into your cunt before you even speak again, sliding inside in one swift motion. You gasp, as he fills you up completely, because despite the way your cunt stretches for him, or the way you have had his dick and need it, his girth never fails to amaze you.
"D-daddy" you moan, walls stretching to accommodate his size. Your sweet arousal drips down your thighs, coating Joel's balls. Fuck, doesn't he love to see you squirming under him. He's never had a woman like you before, wrapped around his finger. You may be a girl, but God, you feel so much better around his dick than anyone else: your cunt tenses around his cock deliciously, his dick twitching when he takes a look at your legs shaking and fucked out state.
"That's it, pretty girl. Beg for'it"
His words go straight to your core as you moan. "Please. Let me take all of you, Joel, please"
You said his name. Fuck. He shouldn't be this aroused, but the way you say it like that's the only thing you know, like it means something more, it makes his dick throb and heart sting. That he, Joel Miller, old bitter man, single dad, could mean more to a young pretty girl like you.
"Fuck" he grunts, grabbing a handful of your hair as he begins to pull out slowly, plunging inside of you with harsh movements. The sound of skin clapping is obscene as he begins to fuck you mercilessly. "Ain't you a noisy lil' thing, huh? You like that, baby? You like it rough?"
Your voice comes out shaky. "Y-yes, daddy. F-fuck, just like that. I like it a l-lot"
"Good girl" he grins satisfied with your respone, his thrusts getting rougher and messier. "Lookin' s'pretty with my dick's inside of you"
Joel changes angles without telling you, brushing your g-spot. A noise so loud and vulgar comes out of your parted lips, and you feel ashamed.
But then he's brushing a strand of hair from your face, with a delicacy you've seen reserved for his daughter only. It feels weird, and you try that it doesn't distract you from your looming orgasm.
"Joel..." you breath out his name.
"Yes?" with everything coming out of his mouth: possesiveness, neediness, pleasure. Like he'd give you the world if you just ask, despite telling himself he wouldn't.
"K-keep going"
Your gaze bores into his eyes with an intensity that almost makes him stop. Because the words are simple, but Joel's been alive enough on this Earth to know it doesn't mean just that.
Keep going. Don't stop. Don't end this. Don't let me go.
"Whatever m'princess asks if she asks 'em nice"
You scream in pleasure as his thrusts become deeper, his balls slapping against your cunt, as your slick begins to run down your thighs. Joel thinks he's going crazy at the way your folds take him, how tight you feel, and the loud noises you make, begging him to fuck you harder, to use you. Every thrust pushes you closer to the edge, writhing under his touch as you begin to see stars.
"You close, aren't ya'?" he laughs, but it's devoid of mockery. A subtle softness hides behind them. Ask nicely, and I shall give. "Gon' cream 'round my dick like a good girl, right?"
His digits dig in the flesh of your hips, guiding himself to fuck you harder, for you to take him better, caging your body under the sheets, pushing you even closer to your orgasm. You mewl loudly, tears in the corner of your eyes at the delicious burn.
If you told yourself a year ago you'd be crying over Joel Miller's dick, of all people, you'd probably laugh. But no college boys had been able to please you, less bring you to tears as you reach your orgasm. This is heaven, and you aren't ready to say goodbye to the paradise you found in summer just yet.
Your core tenses around him, body so close to finishing, hair a mess, eyes brimming with tears, and lips spilling the filthiest sounds ever heard to humankind. It's heaven, and Joel isn't ready to give it up just yet. Your pussy throbs, and as your juices mix as one, you roll your eyes and head back, your high approaching, knot in your stomach tightening faster. Before you can register, your mind goes blank and you're seeing stars.
You come around his cock, coating it in your arousal as Joel admires how you cream his member, tight walls almost pushing him out of you. He groans at your simmering cries, some tears coming out of your eyes.
"What'e fuckin' slut, baby. You sure are somethin' else" he chuckles, his thrusts messier by his own high approaching. "Wait for me, yeah, baby?"
You humm, as he buries deep into you, filling you up completely, as his hips stop their harsh movements when he feels the tension in his abdomen release.
"Fuckin' sweet" he uses a finger to clean some of the slick that's run down your leg. "Good girl"
He licks them off in an obscene display, making sure to never break contact.
"If you keep doing that, I'm gonna become a real bad girl" you taunt.
Then he pulls out of you carefully, doing his best not to spill too much of his load from your cunt. He grabs one of the corners of his sheets, cleaning some of his seed from your thighs. Joel should be careful, but all his foggy mind can muster is you being his in every way he can. Making you his. Mine. Mine. Mine. You plead him not to do that, but he argues laundry day is soon and he likes it better when it smells like you anyway. You confess with a cute light blush in your cheeks that you do the same when he comes over to fuck you in your dorm, sleeping better when the covers smell like him. He shouldn't feel like this: like it could be. But he allows himself to, even for an instant.
"Oh, yeah?" he pants, "what you gon' do?"
Your eyes travel to his jeans and untied buckle he hadn't wasted time taking off, rather just pulling them down.
"I have something in mind..." you wander off, remembering filthy thoughts of your first night together, how you briefly thought about it. "I-" you cut off, blushing furiously.
"Yes?" he holds your chin tightly, forcing you to look at him as his rough fingers press on the skin. "Remember what I told ya', baby? To ask nicely? 'Cause you said you'd be a good girl, so be one and tell daddy what'd ya' want"
You gulp, trying to hold his gaze. You never back down. You never back down. But the intensity of the shinning copper makes that insufferable character of yours to be tamed, boiling against the surface but just scratching, all screams lost. Is like he knows this power over you, acting on it with a benevolence so sick, it has you thinking loving Joel Miller isn't impossible.
You never back down, but being with Joel feels like walking over stones, always thinking about the next step and the ones that were, ghosts of the lingering doubts and afterthoughts behind every step you take. It's like there's a river below them, washing away regret.
But you're still here: water up your knees then and now over your head.
You're barely floating. You'd be willing to drown anyway.
"I want to ride your belt buckle"
There's silence in the other side, until its met with a light chuckle.
"Yeah?" Joel keeps on laughing, his eyebrows raised in disbelief. "S'that what that filthy head of yours be thinkin' on?"
"Stop it" you groan, covering your hot face with your palms. You wish you could erase that ugly smirk off his face. "I'm never telling you anything again, ever"
"Now c'mon, baby. I was jus' messin' 'round" his tone adquires a soft edge to it, tender warm hands removing yours from your face. "Don't cover your face, baby. You're too goddam pretty" you blush, and Joel better resist the urge to kiss you just for the sake of kissing you. "I didn't mean to make fun of ya'. You know y'can tell me anythin' that's goin' inside that head of yours"
"Then you'll let me?" your pretty eyes look up to him, shinning like the stars of the summer night sky months ago.
He can't deny you anything, and a small crack of fear wounds his impenetrable heart.
"Get'ere you filthy slut"
You eagerly climb onto his lap as he sits against the beds headboard, your thighs pushing against his belly.
"Now" he tries to put in a more comfortable position, his tired joints creaking. He avoids your gaze, coughing over his blush. "You do all the job, baby. I ain't gonna help you, this greedy pussy took all of my energy"
You giggle, moving until your bare pussy clashes against the cold. A shiver runs down your spine, the dried juices moistening again over the metal piece. His hands move to your hips, hands now soft as they hold you, and he seems unsure of it, both of your breaths coming out ragged.
"You said you weren't gonna help" you chuckle, wrapping your arms around his neck. His face feels closer, and you can see lines time has marked across his features. "But thanks, daddy"
His heart takes a dangerous leap.
"'Course, baby" he smiles. "You know I spoil ya' too damn much"
You begin to roll your hips, sliding your pussy over the cold material, your arousal making a wet slick sound that bounces off the walls, a shiver down your back as you feel your slick already coating the front of it and the top of his jeans.
"Mmm, can't say no to me, can you, baby?" you mock, rocking your hips back and forth. A shaky breath escapes your parted lips, and Joel feels his renovated dick spring hard. You moan, your ass barely touching his now tense member.
"Quit runnin' that mouth of y'rs, baby" his digits dig on your skin, "or I'll bend ya' over again"
"Sorry, daddy" you feel the metal star on the middle digging inside your pussy, the borders of the imprint brushing your leaking cunt in a pleasant way. "I promise to be good"
"Do" he grunts, "you're runnin' out of time, doll"
You close your eyes, movements more quick and erratic, little moans leaving your body as you groan.
"Tell me how this lil' experiment of yours feelin', baby"
"F-feels good, daddy. Fuck" you groan, lifting your hips a bit as you grind yourself down across the material. "So so good, daddy. Thank you, daddy"
"Mmm, that's right. Now be a good girl and come for me. Let me see that pretty face of yours when ya' come over ma' belt"
You let out a shaky breath, juices spilling over his jeans even as you see stars. He chuckles, enamoured at the sight.
"You gonna need help with that?" you point out his boner.
Oh, aren't you a doll? So kind-hearted.
"That's okay" he breathes out, tiredly. He thinks of the next trip to the bathroom, the image of what he'll fuck himself to clear now.
You smile at him, for the first time forgetting this started as a blowing-off-steam-time or transaction.
For a moment, it feels like it could be.
"Jus' seein' you cum all over me so prettily is'nough, baby"
563 notes · View notes
pencil-n-pen · 3 days ago
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ALL I DO IS TRY, TRY, TRY
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post prison! spencer x genius fem! reader
masterlist
summary: all your life, you’ve been second-best. Even now that you’ve been chosen to be an agent of the BAU, you’re just a replacement for Spencer Reid. What could change now that’s he’s out?
cw: there is a bit of an age gap, i imagined reader in her early to mid 20’s, nevermind how it isn’t accurate for working at FBI. this is a criminal minds fic, so there are graphic depictions of violence, as well as implied/referenced child neglect/abuse in readers childhood, reader is somewhat a genius
tropes/tags: slowburn on readers end, Spencer is flirting from the beginning, HURT/COMFORT, angst, bit of a sick fic in one scene, bit of soft dom! spencer as a treat
a/n : this came to me in a prophecy. full disclosure i haven’t actually seen the prison arc yet so if there’s any inaccuracies shhhhhh look at the fluff
also !! this is a LOOOOONG one. strap yourselves in. grab snacks and drinks
slipped in some very slight father figure Hotch bc that’s my crack
title taken from Mirrorball by Taylor Swift
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Spencer Reid is absolutely nothing like you’d thought he’d be.
From how the team talked about him, you’d been expecting a short, slight man. Someone quiet and meek and non-threatening.
And Dr. (Agent?) Reid was quiet. But not in the don’t-notice-me way, but in the I-know-what-I’m-doing-and-don’t-need-to-say-it way. He quietly commanded attention and respect. One look at the man told you he was not somebody to fuck with.
He was also really, really, really hot.
It was unfortunate and difficult, truly, because he’s your senior agent, someone who’s got more than a few years on you in both field experience and general age. He’s a genius- insanely good at what he does and there’s no refuting that.
But most of all, he’s kind and respectful and just genuinely a good person. And also good looking. Did you mention that yet?
He clicks seamlessly into place with the team in a way you’ve never managed to do in the time you’ve been with him. And after all, why would you? You’re just the rookie transfer with a bit higher than average IQ. Nothing to brag about. Nothing like Spencer.
You were a data analyst with the FBI before your boss told you: “The BAU is looking for a temporary genius. I put your name in the ring. Hotchner must’ve been impressed with something, cause he picked you. I know you’ve completed the training courses for their team, so pack your desk. You’ve got a new assignment.”
And just like that, every single one of your dreams came true. And then promptly burst into flames and burned to ashes when you realized what exactly your position on the team was: Temporary and replacing.
It makes sense, you guess. The team grew to rely on Reid’s quick wit and intellect. And beyond that, they’re an agent short. And you fit the bill well enough: swift and intelligent. Nothing more, nothing less. It became clear during the first few weeks that no one on the team had any intention of liking or particularly getting to know you beyond a professional capacity. And you get it, you really do. You don’t name the dog you’re gonna get rid of.
With the exception of Penelope. But you don’t think she has the ability to ignore someone without a clear reason.
So you did your job and you were good at it. Held the team at arm’s length even when they warmed up to you. Kept your head down, stuck to yourself. This way, it’s easier to stop yourself from leaning into JJ and Prentiss’s jokes, or to stamp down the glow in your chest from Hotch’s approval.
All of this hard work goes sailing straight out the window and spattering on the concrete below when Reid comes back. Because all it took was one case together- one. And then you’re hopelessly in love with the guy you replaced.
And it’s all kinds of terrible, because it’s Reid. He’s not only your coworker —soon to be ex, because now that he’s back you’ll be out of a job— but he’s also so incredibly out of your league it’s not even funny. But he keeps smiling at you and including you in conversations and saying hi to you and asking your opinion on things during cases as if you would have more to add than he does.
It’s very hard to keep him at arms length. And because Reid is Reid he drags everybody else over with him and then you’re bonding with a team you have a week left with, maybe two.
Spencer Reid has weaseled his way into your life one stupid smile at a time.
The case is going terribly.
What started as a run-of-the-mill serial killer case in some nowhere town turned into huge investigation because Spe— Reid figured out its relation to a cold case from a neighboring town decades prior. And then, to top everything off, just so happens to be near enough to your hometown that your mom saw you on the news when JJ was giving a statement.
And now she won’t stop calling.
Prior to this, you haven’t talked to your mom in about seven months. Now? She’s calling upwards of twelve times a day.
“Mom,” You say, tucked in one of the police stations back rooms, pinching the bridge of your nose, “I’m working, I can’t just come out to see you—“
“But you’ve never visited! And your finally in town, and—“
“I’m not in town, I’m a four hour drive away from town.”
A sigh crackles through the line, her voice tinny. “You know, your brother always made time to visit family, and your younger brothers—“
“Are younger than me and more successful, yes mom, I’ve heard it all before. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m trying to catch a serial killer.”
You snap the phone shut before she can protest, effectively ending the call. You sag against the wall, sighing deep and weary. Exhaustion clings to your bones. It’s not just your mom. This case, being physically close to your hometown, everything— it’s weighing you down. You spend more time in the hotel bed tossing and turning than sleeping.
Even Em— Prentiss had shot you look when you’d came in this morning- though jury’s still out about whether or not it was an are-you-okay look or a you-better-be-good-for-the-case look. You’re hoping it’s the former.
The room you’re in is empty- the precinct that called for the team went under renovation and remodeling last year, so some of the rooms have fallen into disuse, apparently. It’s dusty, and filled with boxes and papers and weirdly, one or two condom wrappers. You wish you were surprised.
Your phone has been put strongly on silent, and you’re not expecting anyone to find you for at least twenty minutes. Of course, you don’t need twenty minutes. You just need five.
You just need to collect yourself for a moment. A few minutes to breathe, to get your mom’s words and the unpleasant memories they bring out of your head; to will the shake out of your hands and the cold creeping in your lungs.
So when the door opens, you nearly jump out of your skin.
Spencer walks in, phone clasped in one hand and a worried expression on his face.
“We’re getting ready to give the profile.”
“Oh,” You peel yourself off the wall, discreetly wiping at your face. You hadn’t noticed the frustrated tears carving lines down your face, “Sorry, I’m coming.”
He frowns as you come closer, and panic begins to beat like a drum in your chest.
“Is Hotch upset? I just had to take a call, I thought it would—“
“Slow down,” He says, raising his hands. “Hotch isn’t upset. Is something wrong?”
“No,” You say quickly, too quickly, because his frown deepens.
“You’ve been taking a lot more calls recently and you’re always upset after they’re over. Is someone bothering you?”
You sigh, rubbing at your face. “My mom. We’re a four hour drive away from my hometown. She saw me on the news when JJ gave her statement.”
Something flashes in his eyes when you say your mother, but it’s gone before you can decipher it.
“You don’t want to see her.”
He says it flat-toned and blank. Like it’s a fact.
It is a fact.
“No,” You confess, “I’ve never been close with my parents. I haven’t spoken to her beyond a text in years, and I haven’t texted her in months. Then she sees me on the news and I’m back on her radar again.”
You chuckle, but there’s no humor in it. “Oh, the folly of the disappointing daughter.”
He tilts his head, questioning. “You’ve made something of yourself. You’re a special agent. That’s not nothing.”
“Yeah, well. It’s not Doctor or Lawyer or C.E.O or anything else my brothers or cousins have made of themselves, so,” You shrug. “Disappointing.”
“Well that’s stupid,” Spencer says, a small curl to his lips, “You keep all of those stupid people safe by catching serial killers.”
“You’re a doctor. Did you just call yourself stupid?”
He shrugs, mimicking your earlier action. “I’m not that kind of doctor.”
You look down to hide the smile on your face but he ducks down, catching it anyway.
“Hey,” He says, eyes catching yours, “If you want to talk, you know where to find me.”
You (hesitantly) look up to meet his gaze. “Thanks, Reid.”
His face does something weird. Contorts at the words, just for a second. Like he just bit into something sour.
And then it’s gone.
“Of course.”
For the rest of the case, everytime your phone rings, Spencer looks at you. You’re getting close to just throwing the damn thing off a roof, if it’ll convince him to stop looking at you like that. You don’t know what to do with it. The look he gives you tastes like worry, and you don’t know what to do about Spencer Reid worrying about you.
You never meet his gaze. You know he’s looking, but you never look back.
Finally, the case comes to an end. Actually, it goes out in a literal blaze of glory— the unsub lights his kill shed on fire.
All of it would have burned to ash if you hadn’t run into the structure and and snatched the murder weapon and the most damning pieces of evidence: the printed photographs the unsub took with the victims.
It’s a win because you saved the evidence.
It’s a loss because Hotch looks pissed while the paramedics check you over.
Well. You assume he looks pissed. You’re staring resolutely at your shoes.
Finally, the paramedic gives you the all clear —just some minor burns here and there, you got lucky— and you no longer have a human buffer and excuse to avoid talking.
The silence stretches out between you two. Eventually, you cave.
“Hotch, I’m sorry—“
He holds a hand up and you clamp your jaw shut.
“Did you not hear me give the order to stay back?”
“I just thought—“
“We are a team, agent. I need to be able to trust not only that you’re going to follow my orders but be able to work together with the team. Now, you’re not doing either of those things.”
You frown. “I do follow your orders.”
He sighs. “You didn’t today. And more importantly, you’re not acting like a member of this team. You don’t call for backup. You don’t ask for help. You do good profiling work, agent. But if you can’t work with this team then we might need to reconsider your position here.”
That… doesn’t make any sense.
Hotch catches the confusion on your face. “Something wrong, agent?”
“I just— I was under the impression that I would only be working with the team for a few more weeks…?”
Now it’s his turn to look confused. “You may have been hired at an inopportune time, and until the first year is over it is a probationary basis, but pending review, you are and always have been a permanent member of this unit.”
You blink. “Oh.”
He’s quiet for a moment. “You didn’t think you’d be staying for long.”
You shake your head, your world turned on its head.
He hums. “You should buy earplugs. Rossi snores.”
You drop your head into your hands.
“And agent?”
You look up.
“You did good work today. You have a team. Learn to use them.”
He walks away, leaving you to process this crisis-inducing information.
So. You’re not leaving the team. You’re a profiler. Forever. This is your job now.
So does that mean you weren’t replacing Spencer? So why were you hired? Anything you can do multiple people on the team can do better. Why would Hotch pick you?
You stare at the pavement, which gives you a perfect view to watch Spencer’s shoes walk into view and hear him settle next to you.
“You’re a little young to be having a mid-life crisis.”
It takes you an embarrassingly long time to respond, partly because you’re not sure what to say, but also, the length of his thigh is pressed against yours and it’s hard to think when he’s emanating warmth and you can’t stop yourself from thinking about how it would feel to touch, skin to skin.
“Well,” You croak, “I did just get some pretty big news.”
He leans back on his hands, raising an eyebrow. “Oh?”
Looking up at him was a mistake. Bathed in the glow of the ambulance and the light from the moon, you can see just how long his eyelashes are, and how his lips move when he says your name.
Oh shit.
“Sorry, what?”
His face twitches in a smile. “I asked if you were okay. You were staring.”
You flush from your neck to the tips of your ears. “Sorry. It’s been a long day. I’m fine. I was just thinking.”
“About?”
See, he always does this. Most people would end the conversation there and move on. And that’s fine. It’s normal. But Spencer asks. Like he’s interested.
You shrug. “I thought… I thought I was leaving the team in a few weeks. Turns out i’m staying.”
He starts swinging his legs on the edge of the ambulance, though where his almost brush the ground, yours swing several inches above it. “Why did you think you were leaving?”
You laugh softly. “My boss told me the position was temporary. And in my excitement of getting it I may or may not have… not read the paperwork?”
He clicks his tongue. “Oh, honey.”
The tips of your ears burn. “I was excited!”
“To get a job staring at gruesome crime photos?”
“To help people.”
“What? Data analysis not helping people enough?”
“Do I even have to answer that?”
He snorts, his body shaking against yours. “You’re a consulting analyst. That’s the big leagues.”
Now it’s your turn to huff. “Is there a big leagues for data analysis?”
He leans his head down to look at you. “Well, maybe miss smarty-pants over here made a league of her own.”
The shade of red you turn must be visible, dark and bad lighting aside. “You have an IQ of 187. Can you really call me a smarty-pants?”
He tilts his head, giving you an assessing look. You recognize it. He gives case files the same look.
A faint shudder runs down the length of your spine at that precise, clinical gaze.
It should concern you, unnerve you.
It doesn’t.
“No, I’m positive. You’re a smarty-pants.”
You look away, unable to hold the intensity of his gaze.
“Hey, no. Come on, you gotta own up to being a smarty-pants. Otherwise you ruin the effect.”
“Am I supposed to start wearing sweaters and Converse, then?”
“Well, that wouldn’t be owning the smarty-pants look.”
“Do we have to keep the smarty-pants thing going?”
“Took your mind off the burns, didn’t it?”
You blink, realizing that you haven’t noticed the dull sting of the minor burns littering your body for a few minutes now.
But that has less to do with Spencer speaking and more to do with the fact that he’s here. Touching you. If you focus really hard, you can feel the chords of muscle lining his arm.
“Uh,” You stutter, momentarily flabbergasted by the way he’s looking at you. Like it’s important to him— you not being in pain. “Yeah, yeah, I guess. Well. I feel them now.”
“Oh, shame. I guess we’ll just have to keep talking.”
You furrow your brows. “Don’t you have somewhere else to be? Shouldn’t you be helping finish wrapping up the case?”
He shrugs. “I’m right where I want to be.”
That’s a decidedly very loaded statement that are not going to unpack.
You’re not going to unpack to jolt of pure electricity you feel from it, either.
You may or may not have lied about just how sick you were, exactly.
“You know,” Rossi says after you hack a cough into your elbow for what has to be the fiftieth time in as many minutes, “That’s starting to sound less like the plague and more like desperation.”
You sniff harshly, taking a swig of cough syrup and praying this isn’t the king with codeine in it. You didn’t read the label very well. “What do you mean?”
Prentiss raises an eyebrow. “He’s saying that most people on their veritable death/bed opt to sleep comfortably in their own beds in their own homes rather than on a plane to hunt down a violent killer.”
You think if your apartment— it’s cozy, at least, but still a glaring reminder of the reason you told Hotch you were fine to come in- loneliness.
You have heated blankets and warm lighting and books and tea —boxes and boxes of tea— and all manner of things that make you happy. But no amount of things can replace, tangible human connection.
You knew the ache of spending the day in your apartment would sting worse than the cold. Fever, Whatever you have.
“I’m thinking of a word,” JJ says, mock tapping her chin thoughtfully, “Starts with work, ends with holic.”
“I am not a workaholic,” you wheeze. “I am fine.”
“Yes,” Prentiss says, raising her other eyebrow. Oh no. Not the double eyebrow raise. “Because this is exactly what the picture of health looks like.”
To avoid answering, you take another swig of cough medicine.
“Just do you know,” Spencer says, “You’re about one tiny sip of that away from overdosing. I’d cool it on the cough syrup.”
“But I’m still coughing.”
“Have you given it any time to work?”
“It’s been thirty-ish minutes since I took the first dose.”
He levels you with a look at your usage of dose. “Why don’t you wait a little longer before committing suicide via shallow breathing and seizures.”
You wave a hand. “It’s fine. I know how to take care of myself when I’m sick.”
“Is your version of taking care of yourself just continuously taking medicine until the symptoms become bearable?”
“You’re un-bearable.” You snort at your play on words, but grow quiet because when you look up, the entire team is looking at you. “What?”
“You never joke.” JJ says.
“And I think I’ve heard you laugh exactly two times, and I’m pretty sure one of them was a sneeze.” Rossi says, a look of vague disbelief on his face.
You squirm in place. “It’s not that big of a deal.”
“Uh, yeah it is. You’re definitely too sick to be on a case if you’re laughing.”
“Come on, it was barely a chuckle—“
Spencer looks around. “Yeah, what’s the big deal? I’ve heard her laugh before.”
JJ and Prentiss snap their heads to him in tandem. “What?”
Now he looks vaguely uncomfortable. “I just don’t get why it’s such a big deal.”
“That’s cause you showed up late to the party,” Em- Prentiss says, “You didn’t meet her when she first came. She was all genius consulting data analyst.”
“I wouldn’t call myself a genius—“
“Yeah,” JJ chimes in, “I only ever saw her smile to be polite.”
“Wait,” Prentiss says, brows pinched, “You heard her laugh and you didn’t tell us? You knew we were trying to see who would make her break first.”
“You guys were trying to make me laugh? Is that what was happening all that time? I almost called Hotch like, thirty times because I was concerned for you guy’s mental wellbeing. I thought you’d had a nervous breakdown.”
JJ snorts. “Nope. Just tried to see if the rumors were true about all data analysts being robots.”
You cough into your elbow. “You guys make it seem like I was some sort of frigid bitch.”
“Frigid, yes. Bitch, no.”
“Hey!” You retort, then wince as the volume of your own voice makes your head pound harder and makes your throat sting worse, “I wasn’t that bad. Also, I was nervous! I’m the youngest person here by like, a long shot. I wanted to be professional.”
“I for one enjoyed it,” Rossi cuts in, “It was all blunt business. Straight to the point. No beating around the bush or gossiping. A few people here could learn a thing or two.”
“See?” You gesture. “Rossi agrees with me.”
Just about everyone on the plane gives you the exact same look. Hotch especially, who’s stayed silent during the entire exchange, looks troubled.
Once you land (an ordeal that normally doesn’t bother you, but today, had you worshipping the porcelain altar) Hotch pulls you aside.
“Agent,” He says before you climb into the car that’ll take you to the police precinct, “I can’t have an agent not at peak performance on this case.”
You frown. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying you’re too sick to work this case—“
“No, no, I can work, I can do it—“
“—In the field. You’re working from the station until we wrap up. Understood?”
You sigh, knowing when you’re beat. “Understood.”
He gazes at you for a second. “You might want to call out of work entirely the next time you’re sick, you know. The less time you spend resting the longer it’ll take to get better. I expect to see you taking care of yourself at the precinct.”
You blink. “Are you… dad-ing me?”
He almost smiles. “Well, I am a father. It’s bound to come out sometimes.”
The joke soothes your concerns of him being upset with you (again.) You suppose it would’ve been warranted —Hotch never gets upset without a reason— but still. He’s the only one you occasionally struggle to read.
The good news is by the time you make it to the station, your medicine has kicked in.
The bad news is when you get to the station your medicine has kicked in.
“Spencer,” You say, spinning in a spinny chair and staring at his blurry face. “Did you know that elephants have prehensile—“
“Do not finish that sentence.” He says, glancing back at the team, all in various stages of concern, disgust, amusement, and annoyance. “Did you take non-drowsy cough medicine?”
“Yes! I didn’t want to be tired.”
He scrubs a tired hand down his face, then nudges a sealed water bottle across the table to you. “Drink that.”
You wrinkle your nose. “But my throat hurts.”
“Drink it anyway.”
You snatch the water bottle, grumbling the whole time as you crack the seal and gulp down the water, not realizing how thirsty you were until this very second.
You lean your forehead on the table head still pounding from the pressure in your sinuses. You feel a prickle in the back of your neck, signifying that the team is still staring at you.
With great effort, you lift your head, tilting your chin up and trying to summon all the self confidence you don’t actually have.
“I am making a fool of myself. Please disregard my actions until I am no longer ill. This won’t happen again.”
Words are hard. Speaking is hard. With a groan, you drop your head back on your arm.
“Ah, there she is.”
“Knew that laugh had to be a fluke.”
“Cold medicine must be working.”
There are other mutterings about stubborn geniuses and workaholics and data analysis and Spencer staying at the station and—
You snap your head up. “I’m fine. I don’t need a baby-sitter. Spencer would be most useful in the field. He’s one of the best shot’s on the team.”
“And when it comes to needing a marksman I won’t hesitate to get him,” Hotch says, “But for now, I need my two geniuses to put their heads together to solve this case.”
Feeling cowed, you avoid Spencer’s gaze as the team files out of the room you’ve all set up in, instead grabbing a file from the center of the table. You really are being stupid. You should’ve stayed home, now you’re a liability, not to mention a walking biohazard. Fuck, why couldn’t you just think before you—
“I can hear you spiraling from over here.”
You lift your gaze, eyeing Spencer who hasn’t even put down the case file he’s reading.
You look back down. “I wasn’t spiraling.”
“You’re really going to lie to a profiler?”
“We’re both profilers.”
“Yeah, well, you have an obvious tell when you’re worrying about something.”
“I do not!”
You hear the quiet shuffling of papers.
A sigh leaves your lips, and you press the heels of your hands to your eyes. “I’m really sorry, Spe— Reid. I didn’t mean to drag you here with me.”
If he notices your slip up, he doesn’t give any indication of it.
“Who said anything about dragging?”
“I know you’re a germaphobe, and I’m a walking biohazard, and now you’re stuck here going over case files and, and I’m a liability right now—“
“Slow down,” He says, interrupting your slew of word vomit. His voice has dropped an octave, gaining a richer note. You should stop thinking about his voice. “I’m fine. You’re fine. The team is more worried than upset. You’re not the first person to come to work sick. And you won’t be the last.”
“They keep staring at me.”
“Because your current state and manner of behavior are disrupting their pre-conceived notions and set opinions of your character.”
You scrunch your nose. “Don’t get all clinical on me,”
You hear a small huff of laughter across the table. “I’ve come to work far worse than hopped up on cold medicine, believe me. Don’t worry about it. Just focus on working the case.”
Slowly, the itching under your skin settles, and you manage to swallow the lump in your throat. Eventually, you peel your hands away from your face and do what he says.
Hours pass by in a blur of text and you and Spencer occasionally either bouncing ideas off each other or making small breakthroughs. Spencer handles the relay of information because you can’t really go more than three full sentences without hacking up a lung. Seriously, what is cough syrup good for?
Sometime past midday, you start flagging. The words start blending and smushing together and your head gets harder and harder to hold up. You’re jolting yourself back awake every five minutes, forcing your body to just bear through the illness for the sake of productivity. You got yourself into this mess, you deal with the consequences.
You’re just… so tired. Maybe you’ll close your eyes, just for a few minutes. To get energy. And then you can get back to the case.
Just for a few minutes.
“She out?”
“Like a light. Powered through for a lot longer than I expected. But dextromethorphan gets us all in the end.”
A low whistle. “Poor kid. The ‘proving yourself to the team’ phase is rough.”
A hum. “I think it’s more than that.”
A beat passes.
“You got her?”
“Yeah,” Something soft and good smelling, like pine and coffee and something almost rich settles over your shoulders, “Yeah, I got her.”
When you wake, your neck is sore but you’re not cold, which is strange considering you remember falling asleep in a table.
Oh god you fell asleep on the table.
You jackrabbit up in place, knees knocking against the underside of the table. Hissing in pain, you tug the warm thing further around your shoulders which is—
Holy fucking shit it’s Spencer’s sweater.
Said man is nowhere to be found, and the conference/briefing room you’re in is dark. Not only did someone turn the lights off (you’re pretty sure you can guess who) but it’s dark outside. Meaning you didn’t just take a short nap.
You slept the entire day away.
Cold dread seeps into your shoulders. “Oh my god I’m so fired. Oh shit. Fuck, Hotch is going to be so pissed—“
The door opens and you stand, whirling around to face the doorway and then instantly regretting it when spots dance across your vision and your head swims.
You stumble, grabbing the edge of the chair for support and squinting at the figure in the doorway.
“Hotch?”
“Nope,” Spencer’s voice rings out in the room, “Guess again.”
You groan, sinking down into the chair. “Am I fired?”
He snorts. “Seeing as Hotch bet that you’d fall asleep before dark, I’d say no.”
“He bet against me?”
“Actually, everyone else thought you’d only last an hour. He bet for four.”
“How long did you bet for?”
He sets a mug in front of you, steaming tea wafting up and warming your face. “Three hours. You metabolize cough syrup better than I thought.”
You take the mug in your hands, warming your fingers but not actually taking a sip. “Mmm. Told you I’ve done this before.”
“I don’t think that’s the brag you think it is.”
You chuckle, which quickly turns into a cough.
“Drink your tea,” He commands softly from across the table, sleeves pushed up around his elbows and papers spread about him.
You dutifully take a sip, something restless growing calm in the back of your skull.
You eye is forearms, hoping the look-over you’re giving them is subtle. (It probably isn’t, but come on. A button down with the sleeves rolled up while you’re wearing his sweater is practically sinful.)
“Do you… want the lights turned back on? I’m awake now, so.”
He flips over a piece of paper, then scribbles something on a sticky note. “You were sleeping. And you have a headache. I can see just fine.”
“My headache isn’t that bad, really, I’m fi—“
He levels you with a look, and you sink a little lower in your chair. “Do you at least want your sweater back?”
“No. Keep it.”
“Careful, maybe I’ll just keep it forever,” You joke.
“I’d be fine with that.”
What. The. Fuck.
You stand, pushing out the chair with a loud screech. “I’m just gonna— bathroom,” You splutter, your face blazing and stomach doing a gymnastics routine, “I’m gonna use the bathroom. Bye.”
You’re screaming internally the entire way to the bathroom, and once you get there, open-mouthed silent screaming in the privacy of a stall.
Because. He said. He didn’t even look up. He just. And he. Maybe he—
No, no, no. You are not about to entertain that notion. Not again. He was just being nice. That’s all. That’s all.
Collecting yourself takes about five more minutes, and then you’re walking back to the conference/briefing room when you realize you never took the damn sweater off. He watched you scramble out of that room to the bathroom he has to know you weren’t using, with his sweater on.
This is the end for you, then. That’s it. It’s over.
You mentally slap yourself. Get it together. It’s fine. It’s fine. Everything is fine.
You re-enter the room marginally calmer than you left it. You slide into your seat, sip your tea (that he made you!) and keep working on the case.
You pretend you can’t see him smirking from across the table.
The case doesn’t last too long. The team catches the guy in the act of beating his next victim. Thankfully, you manage to save the poor woman before he finishes his plan, and with being caught red-handed, it’s fairly open and shut. Case closed. Which is great, because you really aren’t sure how many more nights you can suffer through trying to sleep in the hotel bed.
You have this thing, when you’re sick. You can’t sleep anywhere but the couch. Your couch. You figured (apparently foolishly) that it wouldn’t be too bad, since the crux of the issue is that you hate sleeping in your bed when you’re sick, but no. You’d spent every night of the case tossing and turning and coughing yourself out. Your lungs were tired. Your body was tired. You were tired.
Spencer raises an eyebrow at you when you board the jet. “You haven’t been near-overdosing on cough syrup again have you?”
“No,” You grouse, rubbing your face with your hand. “I’m like, not even sick anymore. I just didn’t sleep well.” For several nights in a row.
“Mmm,” He hums, non-committal.
You practically collapse into your usual seat on the jet, hunching in yourself and attempting to make yourself comfortable in the seat.
You blink your eyes open when you feel the seat jostle next to you. “Reid?”
He’s already pulling out a book. “What?”
“This isn’t your seat.”
“We don’t have assigned seats.”
“No, but you always sit over there.”
“And now I’m sitting here.”
You narrow your eyes at him, trying to decide if you want to argue him on the point or not. You decide against it, because arguing will draw attention to the fact that you’re sitting next to each other having this conversation at all.
You settle back into your seat. “Whatever. Hope you’re not a loud page-turner.”
“Is that even a thing?”
You shrug, eyes falling shut again.
After a few minutes, you shiver, unconsciously scooting closer to the warmth of the person next to you, your sleep-addled brain barely processing the fact that it’s Spencer you’re pressing your shoulder into.
He repositions next to you, shoulder jostling you. You grumble, dropping your head to his arm. Now much closer, your nose fills with the smooth, all encompassing smell that is Spencer.
The dull chatter that fills the plane, the warm body next to yours, and, despite your earlier complaints, the quiet, gentle page-turning lull you into an easy sleep.
“Are you drugging her or something? I’ve seen her sleep more this week than I have in her entire time on the team.”
“The only drugging she’s done was voluntary.”
“Her neck is going to be so sore when she wakes up.”
“Sore? Mine would be broken if I did that.”
“Ah, the joys of youth.”
A beat passes. Then another.
“She’s a bit young, don’t you think?”
“Emily don’t start—“
“Just saying, Spence. HR would get a kick out of this.”
“Not like it never happens. We’ve all walked into supply closet B at the wrong time.”
“This isn’t meaningless sex though.”
“…No.”
Silence.
“Are you sure you’re alright?”
A deft hand re-adjusts your head to a more comfortable angle. “I will be.”
Landing jolts you into wakefulness and off Spencer’s shoulder. It’s not embarrassing. It’s not. It’s only weird if you make it weird.
When you’re all back at HQ, you pull Hotch aside.
“Can I talk to you for a minute?”
He nods. “In my office.”
You stalk up the stairs, aware of the eyes following your back. You step into the office, shutting the door behind you and pretending it doesn’t feel like sealing your doom.
He sits, gesturing for you to do so too, but you shake your head.
“I won’t be long. I just wanted to apologize.”
He blinks. “For?”
“I shouldn’t have come in. I was a liability, and it was unprofessional. Next time I’ll act with more discretion.”
Selfish, Your mother’s words echo in your head, your father’s words following suit: Try harder.
He laces his fingers together, resting him on his desk.
“Do you know why I chose you?”
“Because Reid was gone, and you needed a ge— someone smart.”
“Every member of my team is intelligent. That’s not why I chose you.”
He reaches down, opening a desk drawer and pulling out a newspaper clipping.
Your breath hitches when you read the words on it.
“Garcia found it,” He says, scanning the piece of paper. “‘Professor’s Assistant saves college class from school shooter’. You were sixteen.”
You look down at your shoes. “It was the scariest moment of my life. I didn’t— he came in, and I was behind the door getting paper, and he didn’t see me. He… I knew people would die if I didn’t do something. I tackled him. He shot me twice before I managed to kick the gun away. I almost bled out.”
He nods, putting the clipping down. “That’s who I chose. Not the genius. Not the consulting data analyst. Someone who wants to help people.”
He puts the clipping back in his drawer. “I’m not going to write you up for not having a healthy work-life balance. No one in this bureau does, and if they say they do, they’re lying.”
You sigh, rubbing at your face. “Now I look stupid for asking to talk.”
“It’s not an imposition. You’re a member of my team. That makes your wellbeing when you’re on the job my responsibility.”
Unable to form a response to that, you manage to stutter out a thank you, and then flee from his office, collapsing into your chair at your desk with a sigh.
A mug is set in front of you. Different mug, same tea, same hand.
“I think you need to reevaluate your opinion of Hotch and what kind of person you think he is.”
You take the mug with a glare. “I was reasonably concerned.”
“You thought you were going to get written up for coming to work sick?”
“It was a logical conclusion to draw,” You pause, taking a sip of the tea, which is just as good as it was last time. Actually, it’s slightly sweeter, and it soothes your throat more. “And stop profiling me. What’d you put in this?”
“Stop being so easy to profile,” Spencer says, crossing his arms. “Honey. They didn’t have any at the station.”
It’s quiet for a few moments: him staring at you, you pretending he’s not staring and sipping your tea.
“You should go home.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re still sick. Don’t tell me you just can’t wait to write all this paperwork.”
“Maybe I am.”
“No you’re not,” He picks up your jacket from where it’s hanging off the side of your cubicle and plops it in your lap. “Go home. I’ll sick Hotch on you.”
You stand, shrugging your jacket on and pointing an accusing finger at him. “You’re a cruel man.”
“Mhm. Sure. Go home.”
You grumble all the way to the door, but quiet when you look back to see him watching you fondly. He gives you a little two finger wave, and with the sheer amount of heat that rushes to your cheeks, you have no choice but leave immediately.
Stupid genius co-workers.
The next week brings wellness and a lull in cases.
Unfortunately, that also means you don’t have an excuse to put off your paperwork any longer.
Spencer taps the top of it with a slender finger. “Did it get bigger since the last time I saw it?”
He’s hanging around your desk for… some reason. He came to drop off paperwork from your last case, and then stuck around for some unknown purpose.
“No,” You groan, setting your mug of coffee aside and grabbing the first paper off the stack. “Still the same pile I’m procrastinating on.”
“Good luck,” He huffs, finally turning and walking back to his own desk. It’s still in your eyeline, if you crane your neck a little.
You sigh, grabbing your earbuds from your desk, knowing you can’t put the paperwork off any longer. You’re pretty sure Records is going to start sending you death threats soon.
Making your way through the pile is slow going. It’s terrible. The only part of working with the BAU you hate is the paperwork. It’s tedious and never-ending and it always gives you a headache.
The only times you get up are to use the bathroom and get more coffee. JJ kindly tells you that you should probably leave your mug in the break room after your sixth or so trip. Spencer, somehow, appears in the room, and rattles off the symptoms of caffeine overdose.
You leave the mug there.
You continue working well after everyone else leaves. It gets dark, people go home, office lights go off, and while the pile has largely decreased in size, it’s still not finished.
You have to finish. Hotch had made an offhand comment about turning in your paperwork on time and now you have to finish it. To show him you’re not lazy.
You’ve only got a little bit of paperwork left when a hand taps you on your shoulder.
You yank your earbuds out, blinking blearily. “Wha?”
Spencer’s face swims into view. “Come on, time to go home.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Making sure you didn’t fall asleep and forget to go home. They do lock the doors at a certain point. Ask me how I know.”
Your brain is moving like sludge, and it takes you several minutes to process what he says. He continues standing in front of you, patiently waiting for you to respond.
“But… the paperwork.”
“Will be here tomorrow. Come on, up we go.”
You whine as he takes your hands, hauling you to your feet. You attempt to scrub the sleep out of your eyes while messily moving papers about so your desk doesn’t look like a copy machine threw up all over it.
He pushes your jacket into your hands and you shrug it on, grumbling all the way through the doors and out to the parking lot, Spencer in tow. He follows dutifully behind you, and everytime you look back at him to voice your complaints all he does is smile.
“It’s cold.”
“That does tend to happen in winter.”
When you get to your car, he reaches out, tugging on your wrist.
“Hey,” He says, looking down at you, eyes deep pools of some emotion you can’t identify, “Drive safe, okay? It’s icy.”
“My commute isn’t that bad. And I’m,” You break off with a huge yawn. “Not even that tired.”
“That doesn’t inspire much confidence, smarty-pants.”
“Oh, so we’re locked into the smarty-pants thing, huh?”
“Yep.” He says, shoving his hands in his jacket pockets and popping the P.
“Well then what am I supposed to call you? Robot-Reid?”
“How about Spencer?”
His words hang in the night air, mingling in the puffs of air from both of your mouths.
“…What rhymes with Spencer?”
“Sensor, denser, dispenser—“
“Dis-Spencer,” You say, smiling to yourself. “I like the sound of that one.”
“You know dis comes from—“
“The latin word dis, and the prefix is used to denote a reversal of absence of an action, expressing negation, or expressing completeness or intensification of an unpleasant or unattractive action.”
He chuckles, smiling down at his shoes. “That’s why you’re the smarty-pants.”
“Oh please. You know all of that and then some.”
He shrugs. “Maybe, maybe not.”
You both stand in the cold of the parking lot, neither willing to leave yet.
Before you can think better of it, you dart forward, throwing your arms around Spencer’s neck and mumbling “Goodnight, Dis-Spencer.”
You step away quickly, awkwardly giving him a small wave before hurrying into your car and driving away.
Smooth.
The next case is… really rough.
Two spree killers, working as a team. A father and a son; the son was groomed into the lower position.
Not anything you haven’t seen before. Trained for. Studied.
No amount of studying could have prepared you for the cold grip of dread that gripped your throat like a vice when you finally confronted the unsubs, and heard eerily familiar words uttered from the father:
“You’re a good for nothing son! I wouldn’t have had to do this if you weren’t such a disappointment of a child! Why couldn’t you have just been more like your siblings?”
The son was killed before anyone could intervene.
Wrapping up the case left you shaken— you’d watched with hollow eyes as the boy’s body was zipped in a body bag.
A hand landing roughly on your shoulder shoves awareness back into your body and you flinch, hard, whirling around with your shoulders raised to meet the oncoming threat.
Only it’s not a threat. It’s Hotch. And he looks concerned.
You force your body to relax. “I’m sorry, I’ll go help question the rest of the family—“
“Are you okay?”
You blink. “What?”
“Are you alright?” He asks again.
“Yeah, I’m, I’m okay. It just… reminded me of something.”
Hotch purses his lips but doesn’t say anything. He looks he’s going to say something, but then decides against it.
“Help Reid get the last of the evidence. Once you two are finished head back to the station. We’ll meet you there.”
You nod, inwardly relieved about not having to deal with the family members. You might start actually crying.
You sidle up to Spencer who’s tagging blood splatters on the carpet. He wordlessly hands you a pair of gloves. He doesn’t ask. You don’t tell.
You work side by side for the better part of two hours, occasionally conversing with the local police or helping the crime scene investigators tag evidence.
If he knows what’s bothering you, he doesn’t say. You wouldn’t have an answer anyway. You’re far too gone in your own head.
You follow Spencer to the break room back at the station, watching him quietly make two mugs of tea. He presses one into your hands with a gentle command to let it cool for a few minutes. The mug is warm in your hands. Spencer is standing next to you, a mug of his own in his hands. Your parents aren’t here. You’re fine.
You chant this mantra in your head while you wait for the rest of the team to come back.
Your parents aren’t here. You’re fine.
Spencer doesn’t ask before sitting next to you on the jet. He just does. He hands you a book, then opens his own.
You don’t read a single page. He must know. Still, he says nothing, just presses a little closer to you when he sees your hands shaking.
The team gives the two of you space when you finally land. You stumble off the jet, trip backpack slung over your shoulder, legs wobbly and breath uneven.
You’re not sure why the case upset you this much. Your parents don’t upset you this much. They just— they make the same kind of comments, and so did that father, except now his son is dead because he killed him—
“Hey,” Hotch approaches you slowly, makes sure you can see him. You hate that he feels the need to do so. “Take tomorrow off. Stay home. Recuperate.”
“I’m fi—“
“We all have tough missions and I would do the same for any agent,” He says, clasping you gently on the shoulder. “Besides. We both know you haven’t been sleeping well.”
Your lips twitch. “Isn’t there a rule against profiling each other?”
“That rule is for all of you. Not me.”
He gives your shoulder one last squeeze before departing.
You manage to haul yourself into HQ and out to the parking lot, cursing as your cold fingers fumble with your keys. Frustrated tears begin to well in your eyes and you press the heels of your hands to your face, sucking in a shuddering breath and begging it all to just stop.
Someone gently pries your hands open, pulling your keys out of your clenched grip. Your shoulders shake as you heave, gasping for cold night air that burns on the way down.
A hand finds its way to the back of your head, pressing it forward into something warm and solid. Another arm wraps around your waist, keeping you close, while the hand on your head drifts down to your neck, squeezing and rubbing intermittently.
“I’m sorry,” You cry, rubbing your face and smearing your tears across your hands, “I don’t know why, it just—“
“You don’t need a reason,” Spencer says, spreading his hand out wide so it covers the entire nape of your neck, “Sometimes it all just gets to you.”
You nod into his chest, lowering your hands from his face to wrap around his torso, clutching it like a lifeline.
“I don’t want to go home tonight,” You whisper, ashamed. “I’ll dream of it. And them. And it’ll be cold and alone—“
“Come home with me,” He says, voice a little breathless while he holds you closer, “Come home with me.”
He says the last part a little desperate.
You sniff. “Okay.”
You hesitantly pull away from the hug, but not before Spencer’s hand moves from your neck to your face, his thumb brushing away the tear tracks on your face. He drops his head down, and you feel the gentlest brush of lips against the skin in between your eyebrows.
“Let’s go home.”
He tugs you along by the hand, helping you into his little old car, tucking your bags into the backseat. He lets the radio play softly while he drives, loud enough to quiet your thoughts a bit but not so loud as to overwhelm you.
He helps you out of the car when you arrive to the apartment building, carrying one of your bags up the stairs- you’d insisted on carrying the rest of your stuff.
He unlocks the apartment door, ushering you into the warmth and comfort that is Spencer’s home.
It’s exactly like you pictured, if not tidier. A bit more modern than you’d imagined. Books are everywhere of course, but so are knick-knacks and trinkets and other little bits of things that are so decidedly Spencer. There’s even a quilt on the couch.
He sets your bag down by the door. “The shower is down that hall to the left. Use whatever products you need to. Do you have any clothes to change into?”
You chew on the inside of your lip. “In my luggage, yeah, but they need to be washed.”
“I can put them in the wash while you shower. In the meantime, you can borrow something of mine.”
You shuffle in place. “I don’t wanna impose—“
“Please let me do this for you.”
The raw, rough edge to his tone makes you pause. You nod in acquiescence.
He takes your hand in his again, tugging you into his bedroom. With one hand, he opens drawers, handing you his smallest pair of sweatpants, and a large, worn, and incredibly soft Caltech sweatshirt.
“I’ll have to cuff these,” You mumble when he hands you the sweatpants, “My legs are half the length of yours.”
“You’ll make it work, I’m sure. Now shoo. I’ll have laundry and food finished when you get out of the shower.”
The bathroom, like the rest of the house, is clean and neat, and to your relief, houses more than just a five-in-one in the shower. Spencer actually owns multiple products for you to choose from and it hits you while you’re lathering the body wash you chose because of how good it smelled that you’re in Spencer’s shower, showering with his body wash, about to put on his clothes.
You’re going to smell like him. His clothes will smell like him. Everywhere in the apartment smells like him.
You decide to blame the near permanent flush on your cheeks on the heat from the shower.
When you exit the shower, fresh and drowning in Spencer’s clothes, he’s standing at his kitchen island, putting the final touches on two bowls of soup.
You almost tear up again. “You made me soup?”
“It’s widely regarded as a comfort food for people who are ill or otherwise sad, and is most commonly made in the wintertime.”
He gives you a little jazz hand, gesturing to the soup as if saying ta-da!
You really do tear up then.
He’s in front of you in an instant, hands poised to help. “Hey, hey, what’s wrong? Do you not like soup? I can make something else, or we can order in, or—“
You scrub at your face with the sleeve of his sweatshirt. “You’re just, you’re just really sweet.”
His face softens. “Oh, honey.”
He envelops you in the second hug of the night, except this time you’re crying in earnest now. Your crying about your parents, about the nights you went to bed hungry because your Dad told that you were smart, and to figure something out, but you were too young to work any of the kitchen appliances. You’re crying about your first best friend, who ditched you the second your brother asked her out. You’re crying about all the classes and friendships you missed out on while you were in the hospital with gunshot wounds. You’re crying about how your parents didn’t visit you once. Not even when you were in the ICU.
Spencer holds you through it all, a steady rock against the battering waves crashing in your head.
After a few minutes, you wear yourself out, quieting down to sniffling, your shoulders hitching.
He pulls back, studying your face. “Are you ready to eat some soup now?”
You nod, blinking the final tears out of your eyes. “I got snot on your shirt.”
“That’s why we invented washing machines.”
He keeps up a stream of idle chatter while you eat, explaining all the different major soups in the world and where they came from. It’s a balm against your weary mind, lulls you into peace and safety.
Or maybe that’s just the effect Spencer has on you.
When you finish your food, he takes your bowl, deposits it in the sink, and then takes your hand and leads you to his bedroom.
“I don’t have a guest room, so you can take the bed,” He says, voice soft. “There’s extra blankets in the closet next to the bathroom if you get cold.”
He turns to leave, but a stab of panic slices down your chest, and your hand is reaching out and grabbing his wrist before you can stop yourself.
He pauses, turning back around. “You want me to stay?”
You take your lip between your teeth. “I don’t want to be alone.”
He studies you in the dark of the room— clad in his clothes, face puffy from crying.
The muscles in his jaw work.
“I can’t do this platonically. If we do this—“
You surge up on your toes, grabbing his face and smashing your lips together so quickly your teeth clack.
He goes rigid, then kisses your right back, hands coming up to cup your face, squeeze your neck, smooth over your shoulders.
You pull away first, looking at him through your lashes with hazy eyes. “I can’t do this platonically either.”
He traces the planes of your face with his thumb. “You have no idea how long and how much I’ve wanted to have you right here, just like this.”
“Crying and sad?”
“Dressed in my clothes, in my apartment, in my bed.”
You pause. “You know, tonight, I can’t, I’m not going to have—“
“I’m not interested in sex with you tonight,” He says, reading your mind, “I just want to get that empty look in your eyes gone.”
“Just?”
“Well,” He says, tugging you down onto the bed with him, crawling under the covers and covering you both, “There are other things. A lot of other things, Like this,”
He presses a kiss to your forehead.
“And this,”
He pulls you flush against him under the covers, tucking your head under his chin.
“But mostly this.”
He presses one last kiss to the crown of your head.
“Really?”
“Really.”
It’s quiet for a moment before his voice breaks the silence.
“After I got out, all I wanted was something soft and gentle. Having something, someone soft and lovely to hold was all I looked forward to. And then I came back and I met you, with your polite introductions and the way you care so deeply about so much and I knew. I knew who I wanted to hold.”
“Wow,” You breathe, “Yours sounds so poetic. Mine is much less so.”
“Mmm,” He hums, “And what might that be?”
You press your face against his chest and mumble so quietly you’re wondering if he can ever hear you:
“I just wanted you to choose me. I wanted to be someone’s first choice.”
He’s so quiet after that you think he must not have heard you.
You’re on the verge of sleep when you hear his whisper:
“There couldn’t be anyone else for me.”
જ⁀➴
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dunmeshistash · 1 day ago
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Realized that the reason I found so many pictures of the Ryoko Kui Exhibition is cause taking photos and sharing them was specifically allowed! Thank you Ryoko Kui exhibition, I owe you my life.
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I wanted to share some more pics I came across that I don't see often, if you wanna search on twitter or bluesky to see more the hashtag are #九井諒子展 and #ダンジョン飯展 (you can copy paste that on the search bar)
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According to google translate the plaque says "Ryouko Kui | analog manuscript | Original picture | A manuscript from when I first started drawing manga"
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Ryoko Kui doujinshi (self published work) from 2009 and 2010! Google translate says they're called "Precognitive Dream or Oracle" and "Roleplaying Game"
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Promotional drawings for "The dragon's school is on top of the mountain"
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Promotional drawings for "Terrarium in Drawer"
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Some pages of extras I don't think I had seen before
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Castle town where they fight the red dragon
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Photo sources: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5
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You can check this tag to see my other posts about the exhibition
Or these links (since the posts are super long)
English pamphlet + transcription
Interview
Covers
Works
593 notes · View notes
syoddeye · 2 days ago
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simon doesn't pursue people, he operates more like a one-man strike team. his approach to human connection is transactional, pragmatic, a matter of logistics.
on the rare occasion he's looking for company, he wants someone easy, who won't fuss when he introduces them to a thin motel mattress. won't ask what he does for work or try to make plans for the morning. won't bother him about 'next time'. nothing long-term. no strings.
he doesn't have a 'type' so much as a protocol: pick someone malleable, pliant, and preferably on the pill.
then you start working at his local.
the first time he sees you, he doesn't notice much beyond the basics: efficiency, attentiveness, pouring pints and bantering with the regulars with aplomb. by the second or third time, he's paying closer attention. you're not just good at your job—you're quick, always three steps ahead of the chaos. you give out smiles left and right, but it's more muscle memory than genuine warmth. and you're clever, too. funny, even, when someone manages to earn your attention for longer than a transaction.
you could probably keep up with his humor. go toe-to-toe.
you're off-limits, though. that's the rule. bartenders are switzerland—neutral territory. don't shit where you eat. it's a system that works, so long as he doesn't let himself think too much about the view when you lean over the counter or the lilt of your voice when you ask what he's having tonight.
then one evening, you take another man's number. some leering idiot, too comfortable with inserting himself into your space, grinning like he's cracked your code because you haven't humbled him. simon doesn't react, not outwardly. he nurses his drink and watches as you smile, slip the napkin into your pocket, and turn back to the bar.
but that's when you become a problem.
he tells himself it doesn't matter, that it's nothing. he doesn't want a number or a date. but the thought of someone else having you—someone who doesn't know what to do with a woman like you—it's a splinter buried just deep enough to keep him thinking about it. irritating, prone to fester.
how to approach you, though? he can't be as direct as he'd like, can't pin you down with a look or crass words. no way to corner you when you're safe behind the counter, or disappearing through a staff door. hanging around until you're off would be pathetic. dog behavior, he thinks, with a twinge of contempt for the mental image. he's got too much self-respect for that, at least.
no, he's got to actually make an effort. use his words.
the next time he comes in, he waits. no more corner tables or watching from afar. he sits close, pretends not to notice how your hands look slicing a lime. he orders his usual and tries not to overthink your tone when you set it down in front of him.
"you alright?"
you reach for his card, fingers pinching the plastic, but he holds on, smirking when you tug and then huff.
this is the moment. his moment. the one he's been building toward in his head for days. but there's a hitch, a blip in his usual confidence, and he fumbles. he blames your perfume.
"so…you come here often?"
not what he meant to say, but not the worst.
the shockwave of his nuclear-level failure doesn't register until your lips twitch, and it finally sinks in. his eyes widen a fraction as the realization lands. oh, he's fucked it. all his rehearsing, for nothing.
"…yeah," you say, voice flat, a single brow raised as you gesture vaguely toward the bar around you. "i work here?"
his mouth dries, but his face doesn't change. he doesn't fight it when you pull the card out of his grasp. there's the barest glint of something in your eyes—amusement, maybe, or pity. he's not sure which is worse.
you turn away to ring him up, but when you glance back, he's gone.
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