#thinking about my writing and all of the ideas i have that would feel so good to get out and maybe someone else will read it and like it -

[inthelittlewood]

Questions about Eyes And Ears AU

I had somebody ask for a brief interview regarding my storytelling for their university project and thought I'd lend a hand.

I thought those of you that follow the story might like the insight too, so here ya go:

When you first introduced the Listeners in Evo SMP, did you have a broader narrative or concept in mind, or were they more of an atmospheric element at that point?

The honest answer is that I didn't want to write too much about somebody else's character(s), that being Grian's Watchers. If I could write the conflict from the side of the Listeners then we could continue the narrative with a pre-designed opposing force but have them be relatively mute for the most part. Partly to build anticipation of when they might act or retaliate but it also worked for behind the scenes purposes too. If the series hadn't slowed/stopped as suddenly as it did, I definitely would have poked Grian to pick his brain about what story elements fit his original imagining of the Watchers. So it was mostly narrative reasoning but they also served a mechanical behind the scenes purpose of transporting us to a new area which was necessary due to bugs we'd encountered with world gen etc.

What inspired you to flesh out the Eyes and Ears AU more in recent years? Was that mostly a personal creative decision, or was it influenced by fan interest?

Honestly I hadn't premeditated too much their reintroduction into anything that I was working on. Sure I'd seen a little chattering here and there about the Watchers but I honestly just wanted to write an individual story beat (albeit a tropey one) of c!Martyn snapping and turning on Ren but that never came to fruition due to Scar taking us out. The plan was always to backstab Ren then say a cool line like "Red Winter is over, Red Spring has begun" or something else punny. Seeing the fevered reaction of the audience though gave me some confidence that I could try my hand at some layered or entirely post-production storytelling, so heading into Last Life I was all guns blazing.

The Eyes and Ears AU is quite open-ended — do you intentionally approach it with the idea of leaving narrative space for fan interpretation?

It really is right? Yes, it's a very mindful decision to leave it open-ended but not so much for the audience's benefit or interpretations, but to give myself creative freedom to take the story wherever I'd like to. Committing to too many power scale, multiverse or narrative shackles early can really strangle stories I've noticed (from reading comics and manga) meaning back pedalling or aggressive retcons are required to explore certain paths, which is rarely a good experience for the reader. I do enjoy their versatility and capability to be applied to any Minecraft or adjacent story too. Some might call it too broad, I call it malleable.

How do you feel about fans expanding the lore through headcanons and theories? Have any fan interpretations stood out or surprised you?

I think it's brilliant! People inundate my inbox on Tumblr seeking permission to write stories or create characters / AUs but I've literally no authority on that. I suppose it might be a different conversation if they were profiting off of those works, but 99% of people simply want to write for fun which I highly encourage!! I'll be honest that I haven't read a great deal of AUs or headcanons, my exposure to them is mostly via chat messages during lore talk streams or questions that come through regarding the Eyes And Ears AU. As a general rule I try to avoid reading too much of other people's works on the topic because I worry I'll accidentally regurgitate it in some way then stumble into plagiarism, you know? It's why I focus more on digesting stories outside the fandom whether it's manga, Sanderson books, reading old Japanese folk tales and the like. I can source inspiration from those on how to weave narrative and execute plot twists without having to glance in my front yard.

Has fan content (art, theories, animatics, etc.) ever influenced how you think about or approach the AU?

Oh for sure they have. It's literally why after every season we'll do a sit down stream and talk about the lore in detail. Figure out the puzzle and potential trip wires of plot points from the episodes and how we can neatly pack them into the pre-existing story. A lot of people wouldn't do that as they'd be precious about their work and believe their opinion is th only correct one, but I looooove soundboarding with the audience on it. I also take that mindset in game and sometimes think about the scenery of an impactful moment whenever I'm able to control / design it. I'll have little quips or quotes cooked in my mind for how I'd ideally deliver a blow or plot twist, buuuuut given the nature of the Life series you very rarely get to execute things how you'd like haha! I definitely wouldn't have done as many of the poems had their not been such a positive reaction to those. I often see individual lines or entire passages make their way into art pieces as typography or highlighted in animatics which is really gratifying. It's why I also put such an emphasis and priority on audio production in my editing. If I can craft something that feels atmospheric, driving and punctuating with music, staggering vocals or sound effects then the auditory portion is already done, they can focus solely on the visual aspect of things. I try and be as cinematic / TV like as my skillset allows for that reason.

You’ve mentioned trying not to fully canonise the AU, but still referencing it consistently — how do you balance telling your own story effectively, while trying not to involve other creators, particularly on the Life Series, when a lot of your time is spent in a group?

The easiest way to do this, is to not do it. For the most part the only storytelling done with the AU is done in post-production. I never name drop the Watchers or Listeners in world (believe me, I was as surprised as all of you when I saw that Secret Keeper statue in Secret Life!!) and in recent seasons they haven't even reared their head as an influence whatsoever. They're on holiday, they deserve it. But when they do whisper in my ear, they're motivated decisions that I would likely make as a player/character anyway because the win objective is always the thing I'm striving towards. I can just pepper angst around it to make things seem more manipulated rather than selfish ha. I think that's why the open ended nature of the Watchers has served me well because as much as they have a singular motive which is to feed on negative emotions, that can be achieved in so many ways ranging from bloodlust to deception, heartbreak to panic. It's versatile for storytelling. It can be in your face, or a slow burn.

What do the Watchers and Listeners represent to you, symbolically or narratively? Do they serve a specific function in the stories you tell?

The Watchers used to represent the audience when Grian first introduced them, but after departing EVO I've definitely breathed more of an egotistical and sinister air into them. They're very much a unique entity / faction now, they in some ways represent gluttony, selfishness and neglect in achieving their goals. The Listeners on the other hand, are a lot of the opposite traits, but I'm still wanting to explore how being the hard end of most conflicts can be dangerous. I want to explore that at some point, whether it be with infighting or failures. They shouldn't be seen as simply bad/good, they're just, different. It shouldn't be too hard navigating that nuance but I want it to reflect elements and motives that we find in our own lives.

[aliteralsemicolon]

FUCKING FINALLY DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW LONG I'VE BEEN SUFFERING IN SILENCE. And still suffering but not in silence anymore

I'd like to start by reminding you, Samantha, of how traumatic of an experience this was for me. And how you've now put me through it twice now. So I've been through this a total of three times. And it literally hurts worse each time. HATEE. I HATE YOU!!!

Spencer is looking at you like he loves you. He doesn’t know how to look at you any other way.  Sometimes you don’t feel like this. Sometimes it’s easy. That doesn’t make the guilt in the pit of your stomach any smaller when it’s not.  The only thing you know is that you’ll want it again. This is what you’ll want tomorrow morning, or in an hour, or the second he’s gone. You’ll want it so badly you’d humiliate yourself for it. And humiliation in front of him is a fate worse than death. So you find ways to want him in the present. 

It's personal because I feel perceived even though this isn't about me but you know exactly what the fuck I mean you [redacted]. PLEASE I'M SO SCARED RIGHT NOW I'M LITERALLY HAVING HEART PALPITATIONS.

That’s all you need—you just need him to keep trying.

You can't hear me but I'm still screaming. I literally can't even write down what I'm thinking and you know why but it's okay because you know what I'm thinking and you should also know to start RUNNING because I'm literally on my way to blow up your place of residence 💞

March 9th. I'm gonna highlight things and then you have to interpret them using your memory.

“Don’t twist my words. I do care about you. A lot. I just—when we started this a few months ago you knew where I was at with commitment, and we agreed we’d be honest and communicate about what we were feeling—and what I’m feeling is that I’m not ready for this to be more than what it is! You knew that was a possibility, I knew that was a possibility. It doesn’t mean I don’t care about you. It just means I’m not ready for… for labels, or telling the team, or—or putting pressure on ourselves to try and be something we don’t have the time to be right now.” Spencer looks at you with something close to disdain. It’s sort of like a bullet to a flack-jacket—it won’t kill you, because you’ve made sure to protect yourself. But it hurts.  “I make the time. That’s what you do when you care about someone. I mean—where am I, when we’re not on a case? I’m here. I coordinate my entire life so that I can be here when you want me to be. Do you think I do that because it’s convenient for me? We have the same 24 hours. We have the same job. It’s not about time. Don’t insult me by saying that’s what this is.” “I’m not trying to insult you.” The words come out an unsure waver—but it’s not because you don’t believe what you’re saying.  I coordinate my entire life so that I can be here when you want me to be.  Why? Why would he do that? Spencer is not gracious in the face of your silence. Maybe he interprets your inability to put words together—the way you froze as soon as he casually admitted something that feels so oppressive and suffocating—I coordinate my entire life so that I can be here when you want me to be—as your silent way of admitting he’s right, and you don’t care about him.  But he’s not right. You just can’t breathe. Why does he care about you so much? Someone would have to be looking very closely at you in order to care that much. To think you’re worth the trouble. But you’ve taken steps, your whole life, to ensure that nobody will ever be able to see you close enough. If they did, they’d notice all the structural flaws. The deep cracks and the sagging floorboards and the mold you’ve been covering in paint.  You feel your throat closing as he stands.  Yes. Leave. Get out. Don’t look at me. 

So this is a theme with a lot of what I've just read and to save you a 50K word reblog, I'm only now highlighting THE MOST important bits to me.

Even now, even drunk as you are—a very small part of you knows this is cruel.

So like. You might already be aware of how relatable reader is to nobody in particular, but this is very real. Like the worst part is the self-awareness throughout the entire course of the relationship.

They believed—they believed when I said you’re my boyfriend. They didn’t even question it at all. Like, what? They thought I was good enough to deserve you.”

How it feels*

You want to say it before you can’t. 

Bitch. Biiiitttttchhhhh. BITCHHHHH. And then the next do OHHHHH the things I am planning for you. Good things are not in your future Samantha. There is no future in your future Samantha. POST NUT CLARITY (no nut version) IS SO. AND REMEMBERING IT ALSO. EVILLLLLLLLLLLL (I get her). AND THE WAY HE CALLS HER OUT ON IT OH MY GOD YESSSSSSSS. AND THEN THE WAY IT GOES HOT AND COLD. Like obv that's a recurring theme, but still it's SO. OH MY GOD. NONE OF THIS CAPS IS EXCITING I'M LEGITIMATELY YELLING AT YOU.

The whole ice cream scene. I hope you have a good memory bc I am NAWT repeating that 💙 and then after when

The rest of the day, you’re almost… clingy.

Vicious cycle I'm telling you...

He respects your wish for privacy, but leaves the bathroom door cracked. You’d never tell him how much you appreciate that. 

SCREAMED GET OUT OF MY HEAD. Acts of service, literally taking care of her while not making her claustrophobic

“I don’t know. I don’t want you to be alone. I’m… I’m considering sitting this one out, too.”

Too much, understandable reaction by reader. But then the way reader wishes she told him VICIOUS FUCKING CYCLE SAMANTHA*

 Over the phone he insists that you don’t come over. So you show up at his door and use your key.

Count 1: Ignoring his wishes despite lashing out when he ignores yours. Count 2: Going far beyond what's required to take care of him and being unable to handle him doing the same (as seen earlier). Verdict: Jail. Samantha. You're going to PRISSSSOOOONNNN.

Also the fact that she's basically high on cough syrup will never not be funny. The events the occur due to this were never funny I hate you. Also, once again, the fact that she only ever confesses her love when she's under some sort of influence. It would be funny if it wasn't real. Actually ykw reader's so real.

“I have been patient with you. You were taught that the people closest to you are going to let you down and hurt you. It is not your fault that those lessons are biologically ingrained into your nervous system. I understand that sometimes it doesn’t feel safe to let someone in, and you’re just doing what you think you have to do. But you are an adult. I’m done letting you use me as a scapegoat for your own attachment issues. I love you, and I care about you, and I’m never going to punish you for caring about me. I’m not going to hurt you for it, ever. But I am not your doormat. So I need you to understand that the smokescreens and the manipulation tactics are not going to work anymore. If you leave, it’s going to be because you are afraid. Not because I’m clingy or obsessive or exhausting to be around. You’re going to take accountability for what this is.”

Oh my god yesterday was not the worst day ever, today is the worst day ever. Spencer putting reader in her place is supposed to be hot and sexy and 😜 not...this. If this was irl he would be catching fists. This would be my final crash out before I killed myself on the spot and left him with trauma he can never fucking escape.

Then you think awwwww they're gonna be friends now. WRONG. NO. IT'S A TRAP. They can never be 'just friends'. It's literally two steps back straight into that same vicious cycle.

You yelp in surprise when he grabs your hair and uses it as a handle to direct your attention toward the sofa.

Just as good as the first time. Actually can I put in a formal request for you this use this as a prompt and give me another smut piece. Please. Samantha. For all your evil sins this should be your reparation. To me. Or you can just not also. But remember when you and Lia blew up my house...

He’s so fucking strange. You missed him awfully. 

It be like that fr fr. Also, have I ever mentioned that I love the way you write smut. Because it's not a fantasised version of smut, it's raw and real. It's awkward and intimate like real life sex. And I cringe while reading it in the best way possible. You know like. When you're hanging out with a couple and they're very like lovey dovey and you feel like you're interrupting and they should get a room? That's how it feels. Like it's just that real. You're using your evil which powers to emulate the feeling of real intimacy for me as a reader, in both first and second person perspective. And this shit would get you burned at the stake once upon a time btw. Then in that same breath, it is exactly a fantasy. Because it's never really as pretty as you write it. It's funny and awkward and intimate, but real life never really feels that pretty. What I'm saying is, Spencer Reid being real would fix all my problems.

as even when you’re the one on your knees, he worships you. Christens you his own little angel, angel, angel—whispered like he really believes it, like you’re a miracle. Spencer loves in a way that feels like soothing, that feels like an apology for all the bad things that have ever happened to you and a nullifying of all the bad things you have ever done. 

Also the yearning. You always get the yearning right. I hate you. God I hate make up sex. Because why is it so bittersweet even when things are going good. Like the whole act of it is just so heavy. There's just so much emotion. AND

Spencer continues with those murmurings, like spells—things nobody who knew him would ever imagine him saying. Things that have you making promises, breathing uh-huh’s, telling him you love him. Things that have your vision going black and your throat tightening around choked moans. He’s never had you this vulnerable before.

This whole paragraph. Idk. I can't explain. Just the part where Reader's making half-baked promised and Spencer's physically comforting her while fucking her. GOD. I hate you. Truly. You are one of my biggest opps. And the fact that even as it ends, there's just SO MUCH fucking emotion. But then it ends so sweet and light hearted. Idk the contrast is confusing me.*

“You are my person, and I need that to be clear. Is that okay with you?” His sincerity has stunned you speechless, and the proximity isn’t helping either, so you can only let your fingers catch on his lapel and nod—quick, eager little dips of your head. Yes, yes, you think. I can’t say it like you can. But yes. Please. That’s what I want. 

You’re like… a lens I see the entire world through. I can’t do anything, or make any choice, without thinking about you. I’m always thinking about you. When we’re not together, it feels like I’m waiting for my life to start again. Nothing really counts unless you’re there to experience it with me, you know? I think of you as… I don’t know. Everything. You’re why I know it’s all real. Why it matters.  It was so much, you had to hide in the curve of his neck. It made you nervous. The bigger it is, the harder it falls.  But, because it mattered so much to you—because he matters so much—you found the courage to whisper against his neck: Me, too.

One of my assignments this week is to talk about a recent piece of literature we've read that inspires us and invokes strong feelings. How the fuck am I supposed to stand in front of my class and say "I haven't been reading much lately but this one Spencer Reid fanfiction by nereidprinc3ss..." Bitch.

Let me be good enough for him. Let me be someone else. Anything. I’ll do anything, just—please. Take this feeling away. Make me into a girl who deserves this kind of love.  God does not answer. 

Samantha I am tired. I am on my last straw. "Why can't you ever just be alright?" Samantha Last name. Excellent fucking question. Better question: WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU.

It’s not his job to fix you. That’s not what he’s for. 

Kill. Murder. Btw.

“Not yet. They’ll—it’ll change things. But… but maybe we don’t have to hide it quite as much.”

Oh my god wanting to keep it private because then you have more control....which is not what I'm saying this is. So.

Sometimes when you miss him it feels like a threat to your autonomy, and by extension, your safety. You sure as hell don’t know how to just admit this to him.  So instead you pick fights. Not as much, anymore, but sometimes when you’re in need of comfort and just can’t ask for it, you’ll start pushing your luck with inflammatory comments.

I'm trying I really am*

“You. This thing you always do. I do not have it in me to make you feel better about yourself right now.”

So remember when he said he'd always be there but then reader kept pushing and it's almost like she knew this would happen because she doesn't know when to stop pushing 😂 but she also keeps making it worse 😂

See, this is why—this is exactly why you’ve done what you’ve done, why you’ve been the way you have and treated him the way you did for so long. Because of this inevitability. Because of your nature,

Oh 😂 right 😂 so maybe reader should be more self aware 😂 and Sam maybe you should [redacted] 😂 Oh it gets worse 😂 great 😂

I know I encouraged it but for my sake of mind I have nothing to say to you. Except I'm glad you did it because it's pivotal for a writer to experiment but as the current reader I have nothing to say to you 💙*

“Please,” you whisper. A trembling breath. More than a plead for sex. You are asking that he be kind. Perhaps it’s more than you deserve, but you can’t do this if he doesn’t touch you like he loves you. Not with him. 

I can't talk about this either*

He needs you to be predictable right now. No sudden movements. No derailments. To the best of your ability, you are quiet and good and gracious and docile. 

It’s not supposed to feel like this. 

I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU

Your jeans have ridden up. One sock is striped purple and green. The other, brown, dotted with horseshoes and cacti. They’re visibly too big for you. 

“Nice socks.” You sigh, pausing just a moment before you finish pulling your boot on.  “Sorry. I need to do laundry.” You stand, and Spencer opens the door for you. “What socks you choose to wear are none of my business.” Halfway inside, you pause, glancing up at him. “Do you want them back?” He narrows his eyes thoughtfully.  “That’s okay. I have a pair just like them at home.”

BECAUSE HE HAS THE OTHER HALF. Idk if it was intentional but the English subject enthusiast in my sees the deeper meaning.

The problem is that with the two of you, there is never any stopping. Not definitively. Never permanently. You can say it as emphatically as you’d like. You can even sort of mean it. But the cosmos has other plans. 

The push and pull in this section god it's everything*

Ok then everything is okay because they ended up back in the cycle. Which is not good. But it's good for me because you didn't write anymore of that cycle so I can pretend it's good without having to reap the consequences. And I really like that you stayed true to the title and the fic went from spring into summer. Literally full year. It was very poetic. As I've mentioned before, this is the most graphic piece of media I've ever consumed, more than gore, and it was spectacular. Don't ever do it again 💙

spring into summer

the highest highs and the lowest lows of your on-again off-again relationship with spencer reid, tracked through the seasons of a year.

18+ (smut, angst, fluff) warnings/tags: (spoiler tags at the bottom of post) reader gets drunk a few times, questionable consent (not between Spencer and reader), much codependence, softdom Spencer/sub reader, oral m receiving, finger sucking lol, deep pen piv/intense sex, mention of marks being left, praise tho dw he is soso nice and loves her, fighting/yelling/sex as reconciliation, general toxicity and lots of it DDDNE!! avoidant!reader, panic attacks, joke abt r being high off cough syrup when she’s sick and Spencer is taking care of her, implied trauma, IM MAKING IT SOUND CRAZY BUT THERE IS A LOT OF STRAIGHT UP FLUFF IN HERE GUYS PLS THEY ARE SO CUTE A BUNCH OF TIMES. wc 23k (!) longest nereid fic ever!also had to squish 167 lines together so the first half is a bit compact I apologize!! a/n: yeaaaah…. Thanks for being patient w me guys :”)) I miss posting sosososo much and I out genuinely probably days into this fic like once I was writing for 15 hrs straight. So. Yeah. I so so hope u enjoy and I love u miss u MWAH

February 17th

You don’t know when you last blinked. 

Flickering blue and white light washes deep into the backs of your eyes as you stare at some old film without watching it. A knight atop his steed warps and stretches gruesomely under your apathetic observation, and whatever noble speech he’s giving turns to monotone slurry before it hits your ears—old-fashioned English smeared in 1960’s transatlantia. A buzzy drone in iambic pentameter. The sluggish pound and gush, pound and gush, of a failing heart. 

Spencer said you’d love this movie.

“You okay?”

The question draws you from your fugue state, and you turn, eyes so dry they sting when you finally blink. He’s comfortable. You’ve been here for hours—enough time for his hair to tousle, enough time he decided to trade his contacts for glasses. When you look at him, there is only static. 

You must be having one of those nights again. Something in your body refuses to succumb to the comfort his presence should offer, regardless of how many hours you’ve spent together. Or days, or months. 

It’s awful because you fought to be here, sitting on his couch, sharing a blanket. You fought every instinct in your body for so long just to get to this point because you wanted it so badly, and now that you have it—now that you’ve had it, this weekend, and last weekend, and every weekend you haven’t been out of town on a case for months—you struggle to let it feel good. 

Spencer is looking at you like he loves you. He doesn’t know how to look at you any other way. 

Sometimes you don’t feel like this. Sometimes it’s easy.

That doesn’t make the guilt in the pit of your stomach any smaller when it’s not. 

The only thing you know is that you’ll want it again. This is what you’ll want tomorrow morning, or in an hour, or the second he’s gone. You’ll want it so badly you’d humiliate yourself for it. And humiliation in front of him is a fate worse than death. So you find ways to want him in the present. 

This is the right thing. 

“I’m fine,” you promise. His brow flickers. The knight’s shining armor makes a glare off the lenses of Spencer’s glasses. 

Before he can say anything, you lean into his side, dropping your head to his shoulder and settling your weight against him. Immediately he’s wrapping an arm around you like you knew he would, because he doesn’t have a choice. Not when it comes to you. You don’t give yourself time to feel bad about that. Instead, you press your lips to the bit of collarbone visible over the neckline of his shirt. A series of kisses litter the warmth of his throat. You take and take like an invasive species. A hand pushes into his hair. 

There’s hesitance in the way he kisses you back as you sling a leg over his lap. So you take more. You kiss him harder. You need his hands on you, you need him to hold you by your thighs or your hips or your waist like he’s not afraid. At least one of you mustn’t be so scared. 

Spencer only requires a few more moments before his will melts, and he grabs you how you knew he would. Like he’s going to make something of you. He’s going to make you his. He’s going to break you and put you back together stronger, and he’s going to tell you what you are. That’s all you need—you just need him to keep trying. This is a promise you need him to keep making. 

“Pause the movie,” you breathe into his waiting mouth. 

He’s warm. He keeps you safe. 

March 9th

The heat in your apartment kicks on with a rumble that seems to shake the whole place. It’s the first noise in minutes. 

Spencer is at your little wooden dining table, hair mussed, pajama pants rumpled, staring into a chipped mug half-full of black coffee. You stand in the kitchen, countertop digging into your hip as you watch him. Outside, the sky is still spilled winter ink. The only light comes from a lamp you’d bought with him months ago at an antique shop. The stove clock flicks from 1:31 to 1:32. 

The ringing silence is killing you. 

“Spencer—”

“I—” he stops and you watch his throat bob. “I don’t understand—”

“I explained it to you—”

“You explained what? That you—you don’t care about me as much as I care about you, and you want to be together, but you don’t want me to think of it as a real relationship, and you’re letting me know out of courtesy? What am I supposed to do with that?”

“Don’t twist my words. I do care about you. A lot. I just—when we started this a few months ago you knew where I was at with commitment, and we agreed we’d be honest and communicate about what we were feeling—and what I’m feeling is that I’m not ready for this to be more than what it is! You knew that was a possibility, I knew that was a possibility. It doesn’t mean I don’t care about you. It just means I’m not ready for… for labels, or telling the team, or—or putting pressure on ourselves to try and be something we don’t have the time to be right now.”

Spencer looks at you with something close to disdain. It’s sort of like a bullet to a flack-jacket—it won’t kill you, because you’ve made sure to protect yourself. But it hurts. 

“I make the time. That’s what you do when you care about someone. I mean—where am I, when we’re not on a case? I’m here. I coordinate my entire life so that I can be here when you want me to be. Do you think I do that because it’s convenient for me? We have the same 24 hours. We have the same job. It’s not about time. Don’t insult me by saying that’s what this is.”

“I’m not trying to insult you.” The words come out an unsure waver—but it’s not because you don’t believe what you’re saying. 

I coordinate my entire life so that I can be here when you want me to be. 

Why? Why would he do that?

Spencer is not gracious in the face of your silence. Maybe he interprets your inability to put words together—the way you froze as soon as he casually admitted something that feels so oppressive and suffocating—I coordinate my entire life so that I can be here when you want me to be—as your silent way of admitting he’s right, and you don’t care about him. 

But he’s not right. You just can’t breathe. Why does he care about you so much?

Someone would have to be looking very closely at you in order to care that much. To think you’re worth the trouble. But you’ve taken steps, your whole life, to ensure that nobody will ever be able to see you close enough. If they did, they’d notice all the structural flaws. The deep cracks and the sagging floorboards and the mold you’ve been covering in paint. 

You feel your throat closing as he stands. 

Yes. Leave. Get out. Don’t look at me. 

March 13th

“Spencer.”

The name drips from your lips like melted sugar. Like a term of endearment. Just saying it makes you warmer. It’s maple syrup in your veins. You try to tug your dress down your thighs and stumble in place. The bartender holding your phone twists his wrist to speak into the microphone. 

“Hey, man. Your girlfriend is wasted. Cabs aren’t running and you need to come pick her up before she throws up all over my bar or wanders into traffic or some shit.”

“I’m not—I’m not wasted,” you mutter, pushing hair out of your face. Neither of them are listening as the bartender relays your location and assures Spencer that an eye will be kept on you until his arrival. As soon as they’re done, you’re leaning forward over the bar. “Gimme him,” you whisper-shout, making a grabby-hand. 

The bartender passes you your phone with raised eyebrows. “He’ll be here soon.”

“But he’s—he’s not on the phone?” You realize, closing your eyes and frowning as the heartbreak processes. 

“Nah. Drink this and sit tight. And don’t fuckin’ throw up. Please.”

You sigh and sip on a lemon water, smearing lipgloss all over the rim of the glass and wiping a dribble off your chin after you swallow. “Spencer’s my boyfriend,” you tell the man, dreamily. 

“So you’ve told me.” 

“He’s so handsome… and smart… and we’re in the—the FBI. Can you believe that?” You cackle and slap the bar top. Mr. Bartender only hums an uh-huh as he focuses on making someone else a drink. 

When Spencer does finally arrive, you’re elated. Glitter courses through your veins. More than that, you’re relieved—you catch his eye and light up, and when he makes his way through the throng to you, you’re ready to melt all over him. You haven’t spoken to him in��days. 

“You’re here!” You sing, hooking an arm around his back and resting your head on his bicep, looking up at him with big, bleary eyes. Spencer supports you with an arm and doesn’t let go even as he’s fishing out his wallet to settle the bill you racked up. “Wait, Spence—we should have one more drink.”

He’s not looking at you as he speaks. “Absolutely not.” And then, to the bartender, “Thanks, man.”

“Spencer,” you begin again, savoring his name on your tongue and admiring his profile as he walks you out of the bar. “I told everyone I met tonight that you’re my boyfriend.”

“I heard,” he says simply, scanning the street before you cross. Presumably the wind is whipping at your bare legs, but you don’t feel it. “Why’d you do that?”

“Because…” you hum thoughtfully. “Because I like you so much. And I liked thinking about you being my boyfriend.”

He doesn’t respond. Even now, even drunk as you are—a very small part of you knows this is cruel. Just last weekend you’d let him walk out of your apartment precisely because you weren’t willing to label things. 

In the morning, that will still be true. But this is just play-pretend. 

“Also, because—isn’t it—isn’t it crazy, that you’re the nicest, prettiest, smartest, best guy ever, and they believed me? I showed them pictures and told them about your degrees and everything and they still believed me. They believed—they believed when I said you’re my boyfriend. They didn’t even question it at all. Like, what? They thought I was good enough to deserve you.”

The sidelong glance he casts you then is like a grappling hook, and you stumble into his side. His brows are knit over eyes that have gone glassy black in the dark, illuminated only by the shifting reflection of each haloed street lamp you pass. It’s hypnotizing. “You think you’re not good enough for me?” He asks. 

You hiccup and clap a hand to your mouth, stickying your palm with remnant gloss. “Oops. No. I mean, yes.”

He’s on the verge of replying when the smell of something fried and sweet has you perking up like a bloodhound. A blinking neon sign behind him catches your eye. “Oh my god,” you interrupt. “They’re—holy fuck, Spencer. That donut shop across the street—oh my god. We have to go. Please? Pleasepleasepleaseplease?”

One thing about Spencer you know to be true—and, perhaps the characteristic of his that defines your entire relationship: he has a profoundly difficult time telling you no. 

Which is how you end up eating donuts in his bed. The ones you couldn’t finish end up in a paper bag on his bedside table—tomorrow’s hangover remedy—and you end up safely tucked under his comforter, in his shirt, smelling of his bodywash. His touch still burns everywhere, like the paths of his fingertips had etched glowing tributaries into your skin. 

All of this to say, you couldn’t possibly be happier with the way the night unfolded.  

It takes a moment for your eyes to adjust to the complete black of the room after he flips the bathroom light off on his way out, but you manage to track him nonetheless. You relish in the familiar dip of the mattress under his weight, the careful tug of the blanket as he gets in bed with you. As he pulls you into him, without hesitation, it’s like ecstasy. Everything is okay again.

It doesn’t take long for you to get close to sleep—it’s been days since you’ve been able to. Just before you go under, Spencer secures you to him. He presses his lips to your temple. 

“I love you,” you mumble. You want to say it before you can’t. 

He strokes your hip. And then you’re gone. 

March 26th

“Did you mean it?”

You look up from the transcripts you’d been studying—the latest victims both had behavioral issues at school. Spencer is across from you, on the other end of the big glass conference table at the Memphis field office. Binders and notebooks and thick Manila folders form a sort of abstract frame around him as he leans back in his chair, gripping the plastic arms. His eyes are laser-focused on you. How long has he been staring at you, thinking about this?

“Did I mean what?”

“When you said you loved me.”

The door is closed and the blinds are shut. You almost wish this were more public so you could reasonably (and urgently) change the subject. Instead, you laugh awkwardly and cast your gaze sideways as if something in your peripheral vision could save you. “When did I say that?” 

It is very clearly the wrong question to have asked. Spencer blinks and looks down through the table at nothing, brows knitting slightly like he’s accounting for new information and adjusting his frameworks accordingly. You swallow. The trouble is, you remember saying it with perfect clarity. You’d just been hoping he would let you off the hook for it. 

“Okay,” he says, after a few eternal moments with only someone’s ringing landline in the office beyond to bridge the gap of silence. 

“… Okay what?”

He picks up his pencil without making eye contact. Twirls it between nimble fingers. Pulls his chair close to the table like he’s going to settle back into his work. There are times where he is capable of immersing himself in whatever he’s reading completely and immediately, but you know this is not one of those times. The petulant flash of his eyebrows, the chin balanced on his fist to hide his mouth. And that perpetually tapping pencil. For all his genius and every one of his quirks, you know he can’t focus on reading and fiddle at the same time. You’re not a profiler for nothing. 

“Spencer.”

“What?”

The immediacy of it is almost enough to have you wincing. 

“I… I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything. I asked you a question and you didn’t know what I was talking about, so it’s fine.”

“But you’re obviously upset.”

“I’m not obviously anything. You’re reading into it.”

You can’t help but roll your eyes. “Oh my god. Says you.”

The pencil hits the table—as does the other hand. Spencer sits up straight and looks you right in the eye. Uh oh. 

“You responded to my question with another question to avoid giving me a real answer because you think I won’t like what you have to say. Am I wrong?”

Your face goes hot as your mouth opens and closes uselessly a few times. A moment passes and you hate watching that vindication, that hurt, freezing him over, more solid with each second you don’t speak. Mostly you hate that feeling in your throat—it’s either bile or the truth. You’re not sure which one will come out when you open your mouth. But you have to try. He’s backed you into a corner. You swallow. 

“Yeah. Yeah, actually, you are.”

Spencer blinks. “Oh.”

“Oh,” you huff mockingly, averting your eyes to the paper in front of you and strangling your pen as your cheeks positively burn. 

More buzzing silence. 

“Sorry,” Spencer tries, having softened considerably and now obviously remorseful. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean… I’m sorry. You don’t have to… say anything before you’re ready. I shouldn’t have pushed.”

Still avoiding his gaze, you hum. It’s a manic, anxious sort of sound. The nail of your thumb wears away between your teeth before you switch to picking at the dead skin on your lip. Your foot bounces as you read the name of the victim over and over again, just to have something to do. Kelly Shelton. Kelly Shelton. 

You don’t realize he’s rolled his chair over to you until there’s a gentle hand around your wrist. 

“Stop,” he murmurs, not letting go even when you look at him indignantly. He produces chapstick from his pocket, because of course he does, and presses it into your palm. His eyes are so big and so brown and so warm, almost calf-like, that it’s very difficult to stay mad. “I’m sorry. That was unfair of me.”

“Yeah. It was.” You drop your eyes to where you’re fiddling with the lip balm. His hand still rests over your wrist. If he won’t let you pick at your lips, you’re at least going to chew on them—especially with the concession you’re about to make. “But… I mean… you held out for a while. I guess I’d probably be curious too.”

“So you do remember saying it.”

You look up at him with eyes that you hope effectively say don’t push your luck. At this, he has the audacity to smile—something smitten and stupid and cute. God, he really is easy on the eyes.

“If you tell anyone, you’re dead,” you warn, but it comes out all wrong when you’re fighting back a twisty grin of your own. “And they’ll never know it was me.”

“Noted.”

“Because I could really get away with it. Like, really. I know exactly how to throw off an investigation.”

“Easy, tiger. Put that on. I’m going to get you some water so maybe you’ll stop dessicating your lips.”

“Why are you so worried about my lips?” You ask his retreating back. 

Spencer barely looks over his shoulder as he clicks his tongue, like you should already know. “Vested interest.”

You slink low into your seat and try not to be flustered. 

April 15th

“That tastes like lawn clippings.”

You laugh at the face Spencer is pulling as he lets your gelato melt on his tongue. “No it does not! It’s so good! You seriously don’t like matcha?”

“Matcha is fine.” He points at your cup with his dinky wooden spoon. “That is grass.”

It’s the first warm night of spring, and you and Spencer weren’t the only ones who had an itch to get out of the house. Bars and restaurants have set up their sidewalk seating. Food trucks seem to dot every corner, and on this street alone there have got to be nearing a hundred people, milling about or seated, all talking and laughing. The two of you are ambling back toward his apartment. Efficiency has not been a priority of the journey. 

“The lady said it’s one of their most popular ice cream flavors. It wouldn’t sell if it actually tasted like grass. You’re just delusional.”

“Not ice cream.”

You frown and suck on the wooden end of your spoon, looking up at him through narrow eyes. His hair is getting long. “What?”

“It’s not ice cream. Gelato and ice cream are fundamentally different.”

“How?” 

“Gelato uses more milk, less cream, and usually doesn’t contain eggs. It’s also meant to be served at a warmer temperature. And they have entirely different regional origins. Thus, not ice cream. If your opinion is going to be wrong, you should at least try to get the facts right.”

Spencer is smiling at his cup when you shove against him. “If mine is so bad, let me try yours.”

“No,” he laughs, eating another pitifully small spoonful. “Because I know if you try mine, you’re going to realize it’s better, and then we’ll have to go back.”

“That is not going to happen. Just let me try! Please? I let you try mine!”

“Forced me to,” he mutters, smile still pulling at the corners of his mouth as he slows to a stop in front of a mostly-budded spindly tree. You stand toe to toe on the sidewalk as he scoops a bite for you and holds out the spoon. As soon as you lean forward to taste it, you realize he was completely right. His is infinitely better than yours. Spencer’s lips twist and his eyes sparkle at this recognition, and you’re pissed it’s so visible on your face. 

“You’re making me go back, aren’t you?”

“… No. Yours isn’t even good.”

“Oh my god,” he laughs. “Come on.”

“Mm… okay.”

You turn around, and immediately freeze. There, at the edge of the crowd of food-truck goers, you see a distinctly colorful and familiar silhouette. Penelope Garcia is facing away from you, but even from the back you’d never mistake her for someone else. Those metallic green platform heels had very nearly crushed your toes in the elevator just this afternoon. 

“We need to go.”

Spencer frowns when you turn right back around and he has to take a few quick steps to catch up when you feel no qualms about leaving him in the dust. “What? What happened?” He asks, craning his head to scan the crowd shrinking behind you. “Is that Penelope?”

“And Kevin,” you agree. 

“Oh. You don’t want to say hi?”

At first you think he’s joking. But when you feel his eyes on the side of your face for a moment too long, you meet his questioning gaze. “No, I don’t wanna say hi.”

A familiar pause. The one that always comes right before he starts a fight with you. “You don’t want them to see us together?”

You sigh. “I—no. You know I don’t want the team to know yet. And if Garcia finds out, it’s gonna be the whole team. They’ll just… they’ll make it weird.”

“I think you’re making it weird right now. We’re allowed to spend time together outside of work. I sincerely doubt that if they had seen us back there Penelope’s first assumption would be that we’re together.”

We’re not, you want to say—but you bite it back. Because, even if not by name, in effect you are. The only reason to remind him of that at this point would be to hurt his feelings. And you’re not cruel. Or at least—you don’t try to be. 

“I just—I’m not ready for that.”

“We wouldn’t have to tell anyone.”

“Can we please just drop it?” 

You didn’t mean to snap. Luckily your brisk pace has taken you far enough away that the ambient sounds of the city will surely muffle your voices before they reach your coworkers. 

Spencer is silent. Your gelato hits the bottom of a nearby trash can. 

Back at his apartment, things remain slightly tense. You don’t like it—his reticence, the physical distance he maintains. 

Spencer’s getting water in the kitchen when you wordlessly excuse yourself to his bedroom. A few minutes later, you emerge, padding quietly across the antique tile, and he turns around—eyes shamelessly scanning you up and down as he notes your lack of shoes. And pants, probably. 

“I thought you were planning on going home for the night.” He sets the glass down on the counter when you don’t stop coming. 

“Don’t feel like driving.” You wrap your arms around his middle and rest your cheek against his chest. “Can I stay?”

He’s quiet a moment. You don’t always reward him with overt, unapologetic affection like this. Especially not after the recurring what are we argument. “You know you can.”

“Thanks.”

After one more moment of hesitation, or reluctance, or something—his arms snake around you. You relax further into him, eyes fluttering shut. “I’m sorry about earlier. With Penelope.”

The thrum of his heart could lull you to sleep. 

“Me, too,” he murmurs—and there is something like grief laced into the words. You pretend not to notice. 

April 29th

“Sorry I’m late. Crash on the beltway,” you breathe as you blow into the roundtable room one morning, tossing your bag on the table and falling into a seat. 

JJ nods, leaning back in her chair. “Oh, yeah. Spence got delayed, too. Maybe it was the same one.”

You clear your throat and focus on flipping open a file. “Yeah. Maybe.”

Spencer is holding back a grin so bright that you can practically hear the crystalline twinkling as it fights to be freed. 

Later, you corner him by the coffee machine. 

“You have to stop doing that,” you mumble. 

He’s leaning against the counter, one hand in his suit pocket—your favorite suit of his—as he watches you smugly from behind his cup. “Doing what?”

The look you give him then could boil water. He maintains his innocence. 

“Are you accusing me of something?”

“Yeah, asshat. Making us late,” you hiss, only after a proprietary scan to make sure nobody’s standing close enough to hear. 

“Friday is statistically the most dangerous day of the week on the beltway in terms of vehicular collisions. But there’s nothing I can do about that. You look nice today, by the way. Had a good morning?”

The audacity on him. Your face burns as you try to think of a retort, but all the signals have been intercepted—playing clips from your rather leisurely morning in a hazy highlight reel that is most certainly not appropriate for the work place. But he doesn’t let you flounder for long. Instead, he’s pushing off the counter and standing too close, just barely resting a hand on the small of your back as he reaches up to grab your mug from a shelf and you try not get dizzy from the proximity. 

“I’ll bring the coffee to you, sweetheart. Go sit down.”

The words, the gesture, are all too subtle for anyone else to notice. They turn you into a puddle of idiot. He’s never called you sweetheart. He’s never condescended to you like that before. You’re pretty sure you’re not supposed to like it so much. 

A few minutes later, the mug hits your desk. With ten words, he’d reduced you down to something shy and nervous, and you look up at him as he slides the coffee toward you like he might do something else crazy and unreasonably attractive. “Thanks,” you murmur, accepting the drink and exerting excessive willpower in order to turn your attention back to the computer screen. 

Rossi calls from the catwalk. “You do deliveries now? Fantastic. I’ll take a cappuccino.”

“Yeah. I’ll get right on that,” Spencer mumbles, and makes a beeline for his desk. You hope his face is red. Serves him right. 

The rest of the day, you’re almost… clingy. At lunch, you silently slide your chair over to his and begin eating without a word. It’s not like you have anything to say, really. You just crave the comfort of his knee against yours. When he fleetingly rests his hand on your thigh under the desk, for the briefest of moments, you’re far too pleased. 

Soon, JJ joins you, and then Penelope. But you don’t mind. Sometimes the nature of your relationship with Spencer and the secrecy of it all is a major source of stress for you—but today, it feels more like an alliance. Something special between the two of you that nobody else gets to share in. 

You keep casting glances at him, just for the pleasure of the view. Hoping he’ll be looking back. The third time you make eye contact, he shakes his head subtly and smiles down at his salad. You bite back a grin of your own, and try to focus on the story Penelope is telling. Sometimes, keeping secrets is fun. 

May 3rd

When Garcia said the case was local, you didn’t think you’d know the final victim. You didn’t think you’d have to watch her die. 

After the EMTs clear you, Spencer takes you to your apartment. You don’t speak a word the entire drive. Not in the parking lot, not in the lobby or the elevator or the hallway. You don’t speak in the bathroom when he quietly asks if you want help getting out of your bloodied clothes. Gently, tactfully, he coaxes a nod from you, and then he’s unbuttoning your shirt. It’s not your blood. 

The shower is started. Do you want me to come with you?

Another shake of your head. He respects your wish for privacy, but leaves the bathroom door cracked. You’d never tell him how much you appreciate that. 

After the shower, after you’re dressed, Spencer brings you tea and sits on the bed with you. At some point he changed from work clothes into pajamas he’d left here, even though he didn’t ask if he could sleep over. You’re grateful. Maybe he noticed that you’d left all the lights off, and he doesn’t try to turn them on. You’re grateful for that, too. 

“We don’t have to talk about it right now. But we can, okay? We can talk about it whenever you’re ready.”

Another morose nod. You stare into the amber depths of your tea. Not now. Not tonight. Maybe not ever. 

“I just wanna go to bed,” you whisper. All the screaming has shredded your throat. The words come out like rice paper. 

Spencer holds you until the room fills with milky grey dawn light. And though neither of you are speaking, he doesn’t fall asleep. You can tell from his breathing that he’s staying awake for you. 

-

You’re supposed to take a week off, at the least. This is not something you want. Being alone for eight hours a day sounds like it’ll be the opposite of helpful—but so what. You can handle it. When Spencer calls to tell you there’s a case—that’s when the panic starts to well. 

You pick at your lip, and then when you remember how he’d scold you for it, switch to pulling a loose thread on your sock, phone poised in your free hand. “I’ll come in.”

“You can’t,” he says, voice tinny through the speaker. “You cannot be in the field right now. You know that.”

You sit up a little straighter, nails biting into the skin of your ankle. “What am I supposed to do—just—just rot here for however fucking long you’re—you guys are gone?”

Spencer sighs. “I don’t know. I don’t want you to be alone. I’m… I’m considering sitting this one out, too.”

Your blood goes cold. “Spencer.”

A beat. “What?”

“You’re not staying behind for me.”

“I’m—”

“No. That’s not—that’s not what this is. That’s not what we do. You’re going to go do your job, and I’m going to stay here.”

“You just said—”

“I don’t care what I said! You’re not putting me ahead of the job! You’re not staying behind to check up on me. I’m an adult.”

“You don’t need to lash out. I’m just worried about you.”

“Worry about doing your fucking job. And don’t call while you’re gone.”

You hang up and throw your phone at the end of the couch. 

-

Spencer gets home at the end of the week to find his apartment broken into. The first clue was that the culprit forgot to lock the door after they used their key. The second and third clues were haphazardly untied and dropped in the middle of the living room. 

He finds you in the dark, curled up on his side of the bed under the blanket. Spencer drops his bag and rounds the bed to you, sitting on the edge and carefully taking your head into his lap, where, as if on cue, you begin to cry. For a long while, he doesn’t say anything—only pushes your hair out of your face with a gentle hand and fruitlessly wipes away tears. You’re not sure you’ve ever cried like this in front of him. 

Eventually, you try to breathe, pushing the heel of your palm into your eye as if you could forcibly hold the tears in. “I c-can’t believe that she’s gone,” you gasp. 

“I know, honey,” Spencer murmurs. “I’m so sorry.”

You sob harder. “It sounds so s-stupid, but I can’t—I don’t underst-stand how she’s dead! I saw her last week!”

“It’s not stupid. Human brains struggle with loss because we constantly function under the assumption that people are still there even when we can’t see them. Your brain is trying to contend with two incompatible realities, and it’s exhausting, and it hurts a lot. I know it does, angel.”

“I just—I saw it happen—I haven’t slept, because—” A cleaving cry pushes through your sentence, cutting you off. The air in the room is vacuous around your grief. 

“I know,” Spencer whispers again. His voice is so tender it bruises more than it breaks. “I know. I wish you hadn’t. I’m sorry.”

The fact that you went days without talking or even exchanging a text goes unmentioned. Your outburst goes unmentioned. Still, Spencer wishes you had told him what was going on sooner. He would’ve come back in a heartbeat. You wish that, too. 

May 20th

Spencer is sick. Over the phone he insists that you don’t come over. So you show up at his door and use your key. What is he going to do? Get up from the sofa and physically remove you? Not likely, in his state. 

As soon as you enter the apartment, you see his head poke up from the couch. Then he groans, hoarse and congested, and drops back down. “I told you to stay away. I’m still contagious.”

“I brought you three kinds of soup,” you say, completely ignoring his bid to send you away as you breeze into the living room and sit on the coffee table across from him, paper bag in tow. “But I think you should start with this one. It’s chicken noodle with garlic, ginger, and turmeric.”

“Anti-inflammatories.”

You give him a dazzling smile. “Exactly. So you’ll get better quicker. I looked it up.” Spencer smiles at this too. Despite the sallow skin and the darker-dark circles, the brilliance of it still has the ability to fluster you—so you move right along. “Um—I also got—I brought honey-herb cough drops, like the ones you keep in your desk. Oh! And this immune-boosting tea. I don’t know if it works, but it sounded good. And… I brought you orange juice for vitamin C—and, okay—you don’t have to try this, but it’s one of those, like, immune-boosting shots? It’s just a tiny little bottle of ginger and turmeric juice, I think. It’ll probably taste bad. But I got one for me, too, so we can take them in solidarity. And maybe then I won’t get sick.”

Spencer just watches you for a moment. You smile awkwardly and pick at a thread on your jeans. “Sorry, I know this is a lot. Sorry if I overdid it. I can go, if you want—I just wanted to make sure you had—”

“Stop. This is amazing. You’re genuinely like an angel. Thank you.” Spencer reaches out and sets a hand on your thigh. The idea that he wants to show you affection but doesn’t want to risk your health is so endearing that you can’t help yourself—you slide to your knees in front of the couch and wrap your arms around him best you can. He chuckles and hooks an arm around your back, rubbing a few short lines over your shirt. 

After a moment you pull back, and press a fleeting kiss to his warm forehead—but you stay kneeling in front of him for a bit longer. Unwisely close, most likely. His eyes are bleary, glazed with illness and watercolor soft on you. 

“What are you gonna tell the team if you get sick?” he murmurs, gaze tracing your face in gentle lines. 

You hum, wrapping your hand around his forearm. “We were doing mouth to mouth resuscitation?”

-

Turns out the immunity shots were a gimmick, because the next week, you’re sick as a dog. The team doesn’t ask any questions—it’s completely reasonable that Spencer could’ve infected you without getting his spit in your mouth. 

“Guess what?” You ask from his couch as soon as he opens the front door, making a beeline for the kitchen to set down his groceries. 

“What?”

“Penelope called me today asking why I wasn’t home. Apparently after work she stopped by to bring me soup. I told her I was at the doctor’s, and she was like, at six PM? And I was like, yeah, she’s a weird naturopathic doctor, and then she started naming all the naturopathic doctors she knows.”

“Technically you are at the doctor’s,” Spencer reminds you as he comes to sit on the coffee table, much like you’d done last week. “You still sound congested. Are you feeling any better?”

You lean into his touch when he checks your temperature with a cool hand to your forehead. “A little, maybe.”

Spencer frowns as he brushes his thumb across your febrile cheek, sporting that little worried line between his brows that you find so cute. “You’re not coughing. Have you been taking that cold medicine?”

“Plenty.”

A slow smile blooms on his face in spite of the concern. “Oh. So you’re high.”

“No!” You giggle, though you’re definitely a little loopy. “And hey—even if I was, that’s medical malpractice on your part. One, you should never share prescriptions, and two, you should never let the patient administer her own doses when she’s really sleepy and out of it.”

Spencer lets you grab his hand, running his thumb over your knuckles. “Can’t leave you alone for even a day,” he scolds through a grin that oozes affection. 

“You know what would make me feel better, Dr. Reid?”

“What?”

“A kiss.”

“Can’t risk it. The virus could have mutated. It might reinfect me.”

“It wouldn’t do that to me,” you promise. Spencer smiles even wider, squeezes your hand tighter. 

“Yeah? Why not?”

“Because we go way back. Like to last week when you got sick.”

“Right. You’re getting cut off the cough syrup, Typhoid Mary.” At that he tries to get up, presumably to go make you dinner—but you refuse to let go of his hand. 

“Hey, wait.”

Spencer, now standing and still holding your hand, looks down at you expectantly. Your head lolls on the pillow as you blink up at him. “Love you.”

He smiles, softer now, and kisses your wrist, right where the feverish blood flows closest to the surface. “I love you.”

After that, it’s hard to feel too bad. 

June 6th

“Can you slow down?” Spencer follows you into the bedroom where you immediately begin yanking open drawers and shoving clothes into your duffel bag. 

“No, because you’re going to try and fix it, and I already told you I don’t want—”

“Jesus Christ—I’m asking you to stop for one fucking second so we can talk about this.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“But I do. There are two of us in this relationship, and I want to talk about it.”

“And I just said I don’t.” Half the clothes you’ve accrued here are on his floor because they wouldn’t fit into the bag. Both of you stomp carelessly over them toward the bathroom. You’re grabbing products at blind from the medicine cabinet. 

“You are unbelievable. How many more times are you going to do this? How many times are we going to break up because you—”

You whip around, brandishing a toothbrush. “We’re not breaking up. We’ve never broken up because we have never been together. That’s the fucking problem—you always think everything means more than it does. You’re obsessive and clingy and smothering and so fucking exhausting to be around. If you want to talk about it, there. That’s why this is happening.” You shove past him and he tails you down the hall. 

“You’re pathetic,” he calls. “Truly. This is pathetic.”

“Stop talking to me.”

“You know what your problem is? You know why we keep doing this? You’re a coward.”

“Oh my god. Great, yeah, this again. Let’s have this conversation again, please.”

“If you don’t like it maybe you should fucking listen to me this time!” 

The yell rings. It might be hard for the average person to get him this angry. To you, it comes naturally. It comes like switching the shower water from hot to room temperature, washing cool down your neck and shoulders. 

“Goodbye.” You’re making for the door, and you get so far as to open it—but then, Spencer has his hand in a vice grip around your wrist, and he’s slamming the door shut. You startle, almost jumping back into him and then whirling around. He’s so close you can see the freckle in his iris. “What the fuck is your problem?” you shout—when he goes low, you go lower. “Let go.”

“I am not going to keep doing this with you,” he breathes, and his eyes are so dark, so full of gravity and swirling with anger—that for the first time, you actually sort of believe him. “I will say this one last time.” Your heart is pounding as his tongue darts over his lips. You’re frozen. Battered silence hangs all around, waiting to be broken and put back together for the umpteenth time this week. But he keeps his voice low. “I have been patient with you. You were taught that the people closest to you are going to let you down and hurt you. It is not your fault that those lessons are biologically ingrained into your nervous system. I understand that sometimes it doesn’t feel safe to let someone in, and you’re just doing what you think you have to do. But you are an adult. I’m done letting you use me as a scapegoat for your own attachment issues. I love you, and I care about you, and I’m never going to punish you for caring about me. I’m not going to hurt you for it, ever. But I am not your doormat. So I need you to understand that the smokescreens and the manipulation tactics are not going to work anymore. If you leave, it’s going to be because you are afraid. Not because I’m clingy or obsessive or exhausting to be around. You’re going to take accountability for what this is.”

Your wrist flexes in his hold. The words are like searing fire in your veins, in your whole body—burning you clean from the inside out. This is the worst thing he could have said to you. The worst thing he could’ve done while he made you look into his eyes like this. You’d rather be stabbed. If you could, you’d play dead. But you have a terrible feeling that he’s ready to stand here, watching you, for hours. For as long as it takes you to move again. 

“You need to let go of me,” you whisper. 

And he does. For a moment, you stand there, afraid to move, watching him wearily like he’s going to grab you and drag you deeper into some cave—somewhere he can wrap you in a web and keep you there to poke at forever. But he doesn’t. Not when your fingers twitch at the doorknob. Not when you twist it open. Nobody chases you down the hallway. 

He simply lets you go. 

June 11th

The team doesn’t know about your most recent split with Spencer. They never do. No matter how many times it happens, no matter how many brutal arguments you get into, no matter how many disgusting things are said, no matter how many of his dishes you shatter—always, without fail, the two of you will go to work the next morning, stand peaceably next to each other in the elevator, and your coworkers will remain none the wiser. How could they possibly suspect a breakup when they never knew you were together?

It makes you feel insane. It’s like the relationship is a shared hallucination, and the only person who’d assure you that you you’re not going crazy is the one person you don’t want to talk to. And, of course, it puts you into situations like this. You and Spencer have been tasked with going to the medical examiner. Just the two of you. Aside from the hum of the wheels spinning against the wide road and the purr of the engine, the SUV is silent. 

“Take a left up here,” Spencer eventually says. 

You shoot him an irritated glance from the driver’s seat that he does not reciprocate. “The GPS is on, Reid.”

“Yeah, but you have it on silent. You keep missing turns. It’s rerouted three times.”

You grimace, glancing between the road and the mapping system several times. “Wh—and you didn’t think to tell me?”

Spencer doesn’t respond. It’s probably for the best. 

Fifteen minutes later, car doors are slamming in almost-unison. LA is hot today—white sunlight bleaches the sidewalk and beams off the shiny car in death rays. You flip your sunglasses down over your eyes and breathe in the wind coming off the ocean, ruffling the towering palm trees and your shirt. You don’t wait for Spencer. All you can think about when you look at him is what he’d said to you against his door—how he’d laid out the truth bare and in turn made you feel stripped and humiliated. Little more than a specimen, belly up, for him to sink his scalpel into. 

“Hold on,” he calls from behind. For decency’s sake, you do. After all, he is your co-worker. You don’t take your hand off the knob as you watch him coming up behind you in the door’s paned reflection against a wide, aggressively cerulean sky. He’s got sunglasses on, too—too many layers of glass between your eyes and his. You wait for him to speak. He takes his sweet time. “We need to be functional.”

“We are.”

“We need to be more functional. No more avoiding talking on the job.”

You open the door, baptizing yourself in the freezing rush of lobby AC. “That was a you problem. I would have vastly preferred if you hadn’t spent the first five minutes of the drive not telling me that I was going the wrong way.”

“I know,” Spencer agrees, holding the door open above your head. “Sorry. You’re just… kind of scary, sometimes.”

A probable understatement. The corner of your mouth twitches as you flash your badge to the receptionist, and she picks up the phone to alert the examiner of your arrival. 

June 30th

The elevator door was sliding shut as you and JJ chatted about where the two of you were going for dinner—perhaps that new Mediterranean spot with the nice outdoor seating—and then, there was a hand. The door stopped and slid back open. Spencer clearly wasn’t anticipating that it’d be you and JJ, but only the briefest flash of hesitation is visible before he’s plastering on an awkward smile and stepping in. 

“Oh, Spence! We were just talking about going out to dinner—do you have plans?”

You bite your tongue at JJ’s invitation and stare at the glowing panel of buttons. Spencer falters—you can feel his eyes on you. 

“Uh—tonight’s not a great night for me, actually.”

“Are you sure? You cancelled on me last month. And the three of us haven’t gone out in a long time.”

That’s how you end up at a smooth wooden table in a stucco courtyard under a big blue umbrella, serenaded by the burbling of a central tiled fountain and some bouncy stringed instrument coming through a wall mounted speaker with JJ and Spencer. And then, because of course, JJ gets a call from Will—something about the kids throwing up—apologizes profusely, and then leaves. Leaves the two of you alone. Together. At a restaurant. 

Silence hangs from the umbrella. You get impatient under the pressure of it. “Wow. We’re already having so much fun.”

The sarcasm does not go over Spencer’s head. “In my defense, I tried not to come.”

You sigh, cheek squished against fist and studying the way sunlight bounces off the splashing water as you slurp forlornly from a straw. “Not your fault.”

“Should we go?”

You turn your attention back to him, squinting and nibbling at the end of your straw. “I don’t know. We already ordered.”

“So… you wanna wait?”

A shrug. “It probably won’t be that long.”

And with that, a silent treaty is signed. 

“You know,” you begin, fishing a strawberry from your glass, “JJ was right. I can’t remember the last time the three of us hung out.”

“September 24th.”

You nod. “Wow. So, like… eight months. We kind of suck.”

The reason you’d stopped going out as a group was as much the changing of seasons as it was the shifting in your dynamic with Spencer. Around that time you’d started to see him one on one a lot more. This truth goes clearly acknowledged, but unspoken, as he tracks a drip of condensation down your glass and then regards you with a cool sort of curiosity. 

“Eight months is quite a while, huh?”

You eye him right back and lean down to your straw. “Basically forever.”

Later, easy chit-chat dots the short walk to your vehicle—it’s been hours, and you haven’t run out of things to say. You could keep going, you realize once you’re standing next to your car. A month without his company, and you’re brimming over with stories and anecdotes you’d been saving for him. He’s the first person you think about when you hear a funny joke or learn something new. That doesn’t just go away when if you’re not on good terms. It simmers. Waits for inevitable release. 

The sky is a gorgeous cocktail of pink and purple and yellow. You tilt your head back and close your eyes, just briefly, breathing in, letting the setting sun soak through your skin. 

“Beautiful,” you observe once your eyes flutter open again, tracing the wispy edges of rose-colored clouds. 

“Very.”

You sigh, taking in just a bit more vitamin D—and then you’re looking back at Spencer. He’s already looking at you, gilded in the heavy aureate light. Studying, in that way of his.

“Are we good?” He asks, after a moment. 

You blink. And then you offer him a small smile. “We’re good.”

July 13th

The trouble of being friends with Spencer is this: once you allow yourself a taste, no matter how small, no matter how innocent—you’re overcome with the desire to bite down. You want him between your teeth and on the back of your tongue. Messy, starving, gnashing, you don’t care. You want and want and want. 

Victim number one of your relapse: the coat tree. It clatters to the ground and spills everything everywhere when Spencer stumbles against it, trying to walk backwards into the apartment after you blindly lock the door. Of course, he couldn’t see where he was going—he was too busy tracing the seam of your bottom lip with his tongue. 

“Shit,” he breathes, nearly tripping again as winter coats and scarves, dormant for summer, wrap around his ankles and threaten to pull him down. You giggle breathlessly, slipping off your own shoes as he kicks at the heavy fabrics like they’re going to bite. Then he’s pulling you back into him, deeper into the apartment, tongues clashing. It’s been a long time, and he’s demanding. Not that you mind—not at all. Though, when he pulls you the opposite direction of his bedroom—toward his desk, in fact—you’re certainly confused.

“Bed?” You whisper against his mouth. 

“Can’t. Rebinding books, they’re laid out on the bed while the glue dries.”

Okay. “Couch?”

Reluctantly, Spencer pulls away. You yelp in surprise when he grabs your hair and uses it as a handle to direct your attention toward the sofa. Also covered in books. It’s amazing, actually, the sheer volume of them when they’re not neatly tucked into the shelf. And he’s got them all memorized. You look back at him, a wave of renewed awe washing through your veins. He’s so fucking strange. You missed him awfully. 

Pressing close enough is impossible, then, as you kiss him hard. There is a blatant, unapologetic hunger in his touch which completely ignores the border that the hem of your short dress presents, grabbing the back of your thigh in a bruising grip. Your breath catches against his mouth at the way his fingers dig into you like you’re wet clay and he knows best, he knows how to make you into something better, as the slow ache crawls up the back of your neck and furrows your brow. Spencer’s not afraid to touch you. He knows exactly how to make sure he’s got all your attention.

Nobody else has ever been able to do that. From other hands, when you’re forced to go begging for the cheap version of what you really want, it’s little more than untrained violence. Spencer knows how to make it feel righteous. Nobody is ever him. That hand comes to slide up the front of your thigh, thumb skimming the hem of your underwear while he dives back into your mouth and you let yourself be completely washed out in the riptide of his desperate affections. All that you’d been missing for months—you want it now. You want to show him how much you missed him. 

“Spencer—” you gasp between kisses. He hums against your mouth, and you let your hand slide down his stomach to hook in his belt. “Spence, can I—please, baby—”

“You don’t have to beg me, honey. I’m gonna give you whatever you want.” Lips against your warm cheek, your forehead, as he lilts sweetly, breathily. “Anything.”

So you’re nodding, dizzy in your anticipation and your desire, wordlessly pleading for more of his mouth on yours while you take off a belt you’re intimately familiar with. The clinking metal wakes up a part of you that’s been asleep since the last time you’d had him like this. When you drop to your knees, he seems vaguely surprised, eyes soft and all love on you. 

“Really?” he croons, hand already at your temple, already smoothing baby hairs. Already being the person you want him to be, because he’s been waiting, because it’s natural. Your nod, your eyes, the way your hands find his legs—it’s all enough for him. You get what you want. 

The hardwood presses against your knees, shifting and squeaking beneath you. Spencer takes his time pushing your hair out of your face, gathering it between his fingers and holding it to the crown of your head with an impossible kind of tenderness as you move. He strokes your cheek, brushes his thumb feather-light over the soft line of your lashes, once, twice. The fabric of his trousers bunches in your hands where they rest on his legs—he’s so kind to you that it hurts, it makes you want to cry, it makes you want to stay here forever just so he’ll keep looking at you like that, so you never forget how his pinky feels against the nape of your neck or the heel of his palm feels against your temple as he plays and plays with your hair, as even when you’re the one on your knees, he worships you. Christens you his own little angel, angel, angel—whispered like he really believes it, like you’re a miracle. Spencer loves in a way that feels like soothing, that feels like an apology for all the bad things that have ever happened to you and a nullifying of all the bad things you have ever done. 

Afterward you press your forehead against his thigh, mostly to hide the welling of your eyes when there’s no longer any good excuse—partially as a kind of supplication. Never let me go again. Please. No matter what I say. I’m sorry. 

Spencer fixes himself, crouches to your level, drops your hair just to push it out of your face and make you look at him. Your chest rises and falls rapidly as your glossy eyes dart between his. But you don’t look away. You don’t want to. When a tear rolls down your cheek, he sees it, and there’s nothing you can do. And you realize you’re not sure you’d want to hide it after all. 

“Hey, it’s okay,” he murmurs. “We’re okay. What do you need? What can I give you, sweetheart? Do you want to be done? Want me to move the books so we can sit down?”

“No, no—I don’t wanna be done. I just missed you so much. I was dumb before. I’m sorry.”

He softens impossibly at this, to the point where he’s hazy around the edges, melting into the warm ambient light. “You weren’t. You weren’t dumb. Come here, stand up. You’re never dumb—here, is this okay?” He’s sat you on his desk, shoving things aside to make room—casualties for a later consideration—and he’s already littering kisses over your neck. “I missed you too. I think about you all the time, angel, you don’t need to apologize, just… god, I missed you. Please let me touch you. Please.”

It’s hard to say no to that—what with the begging, and the pull of your lip between his teeth, and the heat of his breath fogging your brain. There’s not a lot of room to work with, but you manage to lean enough of your weight back that he can tug your underwear down your thighs. They end up on the floor, and you feel his hand sliding beneath your dress again, where you’re bare for him, and he doesn’t make you wait. 

“Oh my god, you’re perfect,” he mutters upon discovering just how ready for him you are. You hiss as he slips past the initial resistance. Spencer responds with his lips pressed to your head, but he shows no mercy with the slow rock of his hand, the drag against where you’re softest and where you need him the most, the exact right place to touch you. Your arching, squirming, whimpering, doesn’t deter him in the slightest. When your thighs clamp shut and you shift back, he follows you. When you look up at him, brow furrowed, lips parted—in disbelief but without the words to say it—he’s already looking at you. “I know,” he assures you. “That’s it, huh? Right here?”

Rapidly you nod. His exhale is almost one of relief. “Yeah,” he sighs, knowingly. Melting closer to kiss you again. 

It doesn’t bother him when your nails dig into his flexing forearm as you cum. Judging by the groan, you think he might like it. 

You’re barely recovered by the time he’s lining himself up to you, but you find your bearings quickly. It’s a slow, bated burn, when he finally does it. You’re both silent, tense, hardly breathing in anticipation. What has at times been a slip feels now more like an endless push—it is its own kind of back-arching, toe curling, deep-in-your-spine ecstasy, as he breaks you open slow. Your legs part wider for him, and your hips yearn to push against his.

His words burst forth with the same expelling of pressure, at the same time, as your first sudden cry. “Fuck, angel. Jesus.”

There’s a stinging point of light inside you that he’s pushing against. You close your eyes and watch it flash and spark. “Feels so good,” you promise, nothing more than a whisper. Whatever this is, this pain and pleasure, it’s landed you in some divine plane. You never want it to end. 

“Relax for me, honey. Let go a little.”

“I am, I am,” you defend on a quick exhale, looking down when he stops fighting to get in. “Please—why’d you stop? Please—”

“You’re not ready.”

“Yes, I am, fuck, please, Spencer!”

Something in you is desperate and starving and you need it now—you’ve needed it for a long time—but he doesn’t capitulate. Instead, he kisses you. Softly. Slow and sweet, like you have all the time in the world. You have no choice but to drown in it. It’s a short-circuit in your body when after a minute of this, after he senses the way you’ve dissolved, suddenly his hips are flush with yours. You gasp and a pencil cup clatters to the ground in your search for purchase. You’re little more than a pulsing, glowing star, lightheaded at the depth and the pressure and the way that band of resistance he’d pushed past aches around him in time with the pound of your heart. Spencer is leaning against you, gripping the edge of the desk behind you hard and breathing heavily against your neck. 

Words have every opportunity to pass from your dropped jaw, but you’re actually speechless. Your heartbeat is a white flashing in your eyes. The only verbal expression at your disposal: “Spencer.”

For a moment time suspends like that, and you wonder how the fuck you could ever have made any decision that would take you away from him, away from this. This is so obviously the only right answer. 

Slowly, he draws out, and you stop breathing. Come back. Come back. Your legs spell it out as they wrap around his hips. It’s just as slow on the uptake, and you loose a shuddering, rattling breath. Your body tenses and shifts, trying to pull you up and away from the feeling—but not because it hurts. It’s just so mind-numbingly fucking deep. Everywhere. The base of your spine, the tips of your fingers. Out. While you have a fleeting moment of sentience, you whisper his name a few times in quick succession. This successfully draws his attention and he lifts his head from your shoulder, pupils blown to hell as he’s already dragging back in. A too-honest, too-raw cry pulls from your soul, turns half disbelieving laugh as he presses against your deepest part and black spots dance in your vision. 

His eye darts to the way your knee pulls up, clearly beyond your control—the way your body tries to make sense of him, tries to respond to what he’s doing to you. You watch as it happens—that flash in his eyes. That shift into a kind of determination that always ends with you dead asleep on his pillow, face streaked with dried tears borne of sheer overwhelm. Spencer fits his arm around you and pulls you flush to him, the other hooking under your knee and holding you open. He sets a new pace, and it doesn’t take long to get you gripping at the back of his shirt and tearing up on his shoulder, making due with gasping sips of air and having completely given up on holding in the keens and the pleases and the occasional sob that to the trained ear sounds much like his name. 

You feel it coming—the searing heat, the pound of your heart, the drop of your stomach. It hits as hard as you knew it would. 

Usually he’s a little more talkative—but that comes later. With you pushed over his desk, and his arm around your chest, and his lips pressed to your ear. Blindly you reach back for him—you need him, you need something—and without question he catches your hand, pressing it hard into the dark surface of the wood. His thumb strokes at your hand, his fingers curl with yours, and Spencer continues with those murmurings, like spells—things nobody who knew him would ever imagine him saying. Things that have you making promises, breathing uh-huh’s, telling him you love him. Things that have your vision going black and your throat tightening around choked moans. He’s never had you this vulnerable before. You’re dizzy, drunk on it. This time when the end comes, it’s a heavy crash. It pulls you under. It does whatever the fuck it wants with you and tumbles you in its current forever because he’s not stopping, still slowly closing in on his own peak. There are moments where it goes beyond good. It’s just complete and utter sensation, on all fronts—thoughts come as colors and textures instead of words. You don’t even feel tethered to your body anymore, your grip on reality tenuous at best. 

Eventually all the crashing does end, and you whine brokenly, and he shushes you softly, and finally, finally, stills inside of you. 

Slowly, you come back to yourself. It’s dark outside, now. You can hear weekend traffic on the streets below. His apartment is clean (aside from the shit that got knocked over and the books on the couch) and it’s sticky summer warm, and it smells like home. It’s safe. And everything is okay. You don’t know if you’ve ever felt so okay in your life. 

Spencer adjusts his hold on you when your weight signals that you want to lie flat on the desk, face pressed against your forearm, catching your breath in the wood-lacquer darkness. He follows you down, arms braced on either side of your head. His weight on your back is a comfort, as are his lips at the nape of your neck. 

“Okay?” he murmurs. Two gentle syllables, marked with exertion. You nod against your arm. “Not ready to talk?” Another nod. Another okay. 

For a stretch of time, he’s pressed his face against the back of your shoulder. You’re still seeing dancing colors behind your lids. 

The twinkly laughter comes as a surprise. “I don’t know where to put you, baby. All the places for lying down are covered in antique books.”

There’s not much air in your lungs. You spend it on laughter.

August 3rd

Spencer corners you outside the bathroom. 

“Who was that?” He demands, eyes worrisomely clear on you, voice alarmingly steady. You glance around to see if any of your coworkers can see the way he’s practically got you up against the wall down the dark passageway. The way he’s looking at you. Like he owns you. 

“Who was who?”

“I’m not willing to play stupid with you right now. Answer me.”

It’s easier to hurt your feelings these days. They’re closer to the surface. Sometimes it makes things feel really, really good. Sometimes your eyes sting at the smallest of provocations—things you would’ve brushed off without a second thought a year ago. You meet his eyes and swallow. “You’re being a fucking dick.”

Spencer is unfazed. His response is whip-fast and too loud, even among the chatter and laughter and music and clinking glasses. “Did you sleep with him?”

“What? What is your problem?” you hiss, pushing Spencer just hard enough to get some breathing room. 

“Why won’t you answer the question?”

“God, are you—you know what? No. You are so fucking out of line right now. Fuck off.”

You leave Spencer in the hallway and emerge into the bar. It’s bustling tonight. The whole BAU is here, scattered around, but suddenly, you feel aimless. Your nervous system is rattled after being accosted as soon as you left the bathroom, on what had previously been a good night. So you stand there, looking around and fiddling with your bracelet. 

It’s one Spencer recently gifted to you. A simple, delicate chain, but clearly well-crafted. The clasp is the only real ornamentation—two interlocking circles of equivalent circumference. There is no tail of wider chain loops to create an adjustable size—it is exactly what it is, and it fits you perfectly. To some, it’d be an underwhelming gift. No lavish stones, no poetic engraving, no garish costume-jewelry gold. But it means more to you than you could ever explain to somebody else. More than you’d ever feel comfortable explaining to somebody else. Spencer knows that. Two interlocking circles. 

When he gave it to you, you had a panic attack. Jewelry felt like a big step. But you didn’t do your usual thing where you start a huge fight and then dump him, and he didn’t take offense to your overwhelm. He only comforted you, and when all was said and done, you held out your wrist, and he put the bracelet on for you, and kissed the back of your hand. You haven’t taken it off since. It’s quickly become something of a talisman—you worry at it when you don’t know what to do with your hands. Even now. When you feel like punching him in the face. 

Did you sleep with him? What an asshole. What a fucking asshole. Spencer grovels and simpers and promises he’ll never hurt you, and then he goes and does something like that. The him in question—the one who recognized you when you were ordering a drink, and who held you up for maybe five minutes—is nowhere to be seen. That’s for the best. The recognition was not reciprocal. But rather than humiliate yourself in front of this man who knew your name by admitting you couldn’t place his face, you’d played along. Laughed awkwardly at his jokes like you knew who he was.

You don’t get why Spencer is so angry. He’s not the type to get jealous just because you spoke to another man. Sure, the man was perhaps a little over-familiar with you. He was flirty.

But Spencer is so overreacting. 

Before you can stop yourself, you’re looking back in his direction. 

He’s still in the dimly lit hallway. He’s watching you, hands in suit packets, and for all that you’ve seen his face, all the times you’d swore to commit every bit of it to memory—you can’t read his expression. 

That only pisses you off worse. 

You pointedly turn away, carving a path through the Friday night patrons toward the jukebox. 

The machine takes your quarter, but there’s something of a queue, and you realize you’re in too much of a bad mood to stand around getting jostled by drunk people who are having way more fun than you are. 

That’s how you end up out front, letting the rough stone wall bite into your bare arm and watching the cars go by, surrounded by patrons who’d stepped out for a smoke. 

Maybe you shouldn’t let Spencer ruin your entire night because of some stupid outburst. But you can’t shake it. 

Is that what he thinks of you? That you sleep around? That you cheat? Sure, the two of you haven’t explicitly had the commitment talk. But you thought it was pretty fucking implied. 

The moon is a bright white spotlight overhead. Despite the season, a breeze nips at all your exposed skin, and you cross your arms against the chill. Earlier, in your classy-enough white minidress and blue pumps, you’d felt beautiful. Now you just feel gross. 

Spencer comes out a few minutes later. 

“They’re playing your song.”

You can tell by the way he stops a few feet away that his tail is between his legs. Your head rolls toward him. 

“I can hear.”

It’s true—the buzzy, bouncy twang is distinctive even through a wall, and every drum beat is clear as day. So is the cheer that goes around as a bunch of drunk Generation X-ers and millennials recognize the synth riff. 

Spencer narrows his eyes and searches for the words. “I can’t help but feeling it’s slightly… pointed.”

What? Playing a song called Love Will Tear Us Apart? 

Pointed? 

Surely not. 

You don’t bother using your words—the exaggerated faux-bafflement on your face gets the message across. 

Spencer nods, looking appropriately contrite as he steps closer. You let him. 

“You were right,” he murmurs, speaking just for you now. “I was out of line.”

“Oh, really? Thanks for telling me. I hadn’t noticed.”

He says your name gently. You shut up and cast your glare sideways, watching a crumpled plastic cup make its way down the sidewalk. 

“I’m sorry. I just—I know you’re beautiful. I know people notice you. But we’re not usually in environments where I have to watch it happen. Or… or maybe it just goes over my head. That’s entirely possible. Either way, I’m not used to seeing you get hit on, and I couldn’t tell if you knew the guy, or if… maybe you were just hitting it off, and—I—I panicked, because we’ve never really had that talk before. I know what you are to me. But I’ve never clarified what I am to you. I’m not going to push you on the labels thing. You know I’m not. We should be on the same page about this, though.”

You sigh. Fiddle with your bracelet and watch it glint. “Spencer, I swear that guy—”

“I don’t care about that guy. It wasn’t about him. I’m sorry. I just want you to know that regardless of what we call it, it matters to me that we’re not doing this with anyone else.” His voice takes on that intimate tone—just barely more than a whisper. You look down as he grabs your hand, and drags it back up to his heart. Your breath catches. “You are my person, and I need that to be clear. Is that okay with you?”

His sincerity has stunned you speechless, and the proximity isn’t helping either, so you can only let your fingers catch on his lapel and nod—quick, eager little dips of your head. Yes, yes, you think. I can’t say it like you can. But yes. Please. That’s what I want. 

“Yeah?” he asks quietly, mirroring your nod and fondness twitching at the corners of his mouth. 

What you want to say is, oh, god, I love you. I love you so much it hurts. It burns inside of me, all the time, and I don’t know what to do with it all. I love you I love you I love you. 

Instead, you say, in your smallest voice, “Yeah. Yes.”

The way he slips his hand behind your neck and kisses you against that wall, under the full August moon and between clouds of cigarette smoke, cools your blood. It’s the only thing that works. 

Later in bed, you watch him sleep, that same moonlight casting silver through his hair as you comb your fingers through it, again and again. 

Before he’d fallen asleep, you’d asked him a question that had been on your mind since the bar. 

Spencer?

Hm?

What am I to you?

It’d caught him off guard. He held your hand, pressed the circles of your bracelet just to your racing pulse on the underside of your wrist, and mapped your face with darting eyes, with an intellect that can’t read minds no matter how much he wishes it could. 

Do you actually want me to answer that question?

You’d nodded. 

Is the answer going to freak you out?

At this you’d shaken your head no—which was an assurance made in haste. But you were too curious. You needed to know. 

Spencer weighed something internally for a long moment. 

You’re like… a lens I see the entire world through. I can’t do anything, or make any choice, without thinking about you. I’m always thinking about you. When we’re not together, it feels like I’m waiting for my life to start again. Nothing really counts unless you’re there to experience it with me, you know? I think of you as… I don’t know. Everything. You’re why I know it’s all real. Why it matters. 

It was so much, you had to hide in the curve of his neck. It made you nervous. The bigger it is, the harder it falls. 

But, because it mattered so much to you—because he matters so much—you found the courage to whisper against his neck: Me, too.

It was a really scary thing to admit. Scarier than when you tell him you love him. He kissed you for your bravery. 

Now, he’s asleep. 

You trace the moon-glow line of his cheek. 

Spencer lies sleeping next to you like a Renaissance angel as hot tears burn a scar down the bridge of your nose, and you bargain with god. Let me be good enough for him. Let me be someone else. Anything. I’ll do anything, just—please. Take this feeling away. Make me into a girl who deserves this kind of love. 

God does not answer. 

August 19th

Something is off. 

It started when you and Spencer didn’t take the same car to the airfield. 

Of course, that’s not unheard of—but it is uncommon. If it’s at all possible, he’ll slide in next to you. Today he didn’t even wait—got engrossed in a debate with Emily and followed her right into an almost-full SUV. 

So you stood there, blinked, and climbed into the other car next to Rossi. You didn’t say a word for the whole fifteen minute drive, watching the muddy fields and warehouses roll by beyond the window. 

Spencer isn’t doing anything wrong. 

It’s just that it’s been nearly a week since you’ve spent a night with him. And it’s starting to make you feel restless. There have been crack of dawn doctor’s appointments, and nights where one or both of you are too tired to drive to the other’s place, and preexisting plans with other people. All valid reasons to raincheck. 

But you’re not used to sleeping alone anymore. It’s not what you do. It feels like a really big deal to you that you haven’t had a sleepover for so long, and he hasn’t mentioned it, or given any hint that it’s bothering him the way it’s bothering you. 

God, when was the last time you spent more than two or three nights apart?

The last time you broke up, you realize. 

That is a sobering thought. 

On the jet, it’s not much better. Again, Spencer doesn’t wait for you before boarding. You’re slamming the car door, and he’s already walking up the steps in animated conversation with JJ. 

There is an old, familiar pang in your chest. 

No. No, please—I’m past this. I’m too grown-up for this. 

He loves me. 

But there’s that old paradox, again. If nobody except Spencer knows that you’re dating Spencer—and he’s not acknowledging it—are you really even together?

By the time you get on, he’s at the table. The three seats around him have been filled. You eye each of your coworkers and try not to feel burning rage, because they didn’t do anything wrong. 

Instead, you sit on the far end of the couch, and you pick your nails. 

The whole first day at the precinct is pretty much the same story, though you’re able to engross yourself deeply enough into the job that it doesn’t bother you so much. 

It’s only when the day is over, and you’re showered, and you’re sitting on your perfectly made hotel queen bed, that loneliness turns into gnawing, tearing panic. 

You catch your breath as it hits you—as the hairs on the back of your neck stand up and dread washes out the shell of your body. It’s bad. Worse than you would’ve imagined. 

What is wrong with you?

Why can’t you ever just be alright?

You don’t know if the solution here is to go to Spencer or to remain locked in your room like a psych-patient in a padded cell. 

Panic makes you unreasonable, you think. Pushing off the bed to pace. Moving helps. Moving tells your body that you’re evading the threat, and the panic attack ends sooner. 

Something you’d learned from Spencer, of course. 

Spencer. 

Unreasonable, right. You’re not entirely dependent on him for your mental stability. You have developed implicit expectations, sure—you’re used to being alone with him every night, so you can talk about your days and drink tea and be close. That’s not a bad thing. It’s a routine you’ve developed, and one you’ve come to rely on. Surely it’d be disregulating for anyone if it suddenly changed without warning. It’s not because you’re obsessive, or sick, or overly-needy. And it’s normal for couples to take a few days apart. 

Not obsessive, not sick, not needy. It’s normal. This is normal. 

This becomes your mantra as you pace the patterned carpet, eyes closed, lips moving, like if you stop the panic is going to catch you and swallow you whole. 

For a few minutes, it works. 

Then, for no apparent reason—it stops working. 

And it’s like watching a dam explode from the valley below. 

For a second you don’t know if you should run to the bathroom and throw up or go to Spencer’s door, and then you’re questioning if it’s late enough to go to his room, if maybe someone on the team might be out in the hallway—but your brain is screaming, if you do not go see Spencer, you are going to die. Who gives a fuck about your fucking coworkers. 

You tap lightly at his door. 

He doesn’t answer right away, and the brightly lit hallway seems to stretch on forever. You’re so profoundly anxious that there is a moment of hysterical, perverse humor. Look at you. About to die in a hotel hallway, barefoot and in pajama shorts, if he doesn’t open this fucking door. And of course. Of course he’s not going to open it. This is great stuff. Really, awesome material. Perfect. 

Just as you’re gripping the door frame to stop the building from spinning, just as you’re really, seriously about to pass out—the lock clicks. The door opens. 

Glasses. Sweatshirt. Spencer. 

“Hey! I was just about to—” he stops. Perhaps notices your slumped posture, how you’re white-knuckling the door. Maybe the sheen of sweat on your face. “Hey, okay—come here.”

Spencer wraps an arm around you and helps you in, closing the door and then leading you to his bed. 

“You look like you’re gonna pass out,” he mutters, laying you down carefully—ideally to get the blood flow back to your head. You blink. 

“Uh-huh.”

“Are you okay? Did something happen?”

“I’m fine.”

You say it because you’re embarrassed. Spencer says your name with an edge that wants the truth. 

“It was just a panic attack.”

This doesn’t satisfy him. 

“Do you often pass out from panic attacks?”

“Um… not never.”

Your vision clears. Your ears stop ringing, and you push yourself up to sit against the headboard. Spencer has a bottle of water locked and loaded, holding it out for you as soon as you’re settled. 

The way he’s watching you as you drink, with so much unabashed and scrutinizing concern in that knit brow, is almost too much. You look away and screw the lid back on. 

“What triggered it?” He asks. 

“I don’t know, I was just sitting there—I was literally just sitting there, and suddenly my brain was like, by the way, you have five minutes to live, and—and I don’t know. I tried walking it off and breathing and stuff. I’m sorry I came here. It’s not your problem.”

“You’re not a problem. This isn’t a problem. You should’ve come before it got this bad.”

When he sets his hand on your knee, you close your eyes and try not to let it feel like medicine. 

It’s not his job to fix you. That’s not what he’s for. 

“Yeah,” is all you say. 

A pause. 

“Why didn’t you come sooner?”

It’s clear he’s putting the pieces together. You sigh and fiddle with the bottle cap. Untwist. Twist. Untwist. 

“I… don’t know. I was overthinking.”

“Overthinking what?”

You flash him a look, because he knows he’s pushing you—but he’s unrelenting. 

Spencer’s hair is a corona of unruly curls. He hasn’t shaved in a few days. You don’t want to have this conversation—you want to put your head in his lap and fall asleep to the hotel TV. 

“It’s stupid. It doesn’t make sense. I just—I don’t know, we didn’t talk all day, and—”

You take a quick, shuddering inhale, and close your mouth. Because you realize you’re about to cry. And now you can’t even soften the blow of your insanity—you can’t tell him, I know I’m being crazy, I know nothing is wrong, I know it’s okay for us to not talk for a day or to spend a few nights apart and it doesn’t mean you hate me. 

But you can’t say any of that. It wouldn’t be true, anyways. You don’t know any of those things. 

Spencer is observing you and you can’t tell what he’s thinking. You look down at your folded legs to hide your wobbling chin. 

There’s no hiding the plunk of a fat tear as it hits the mattress, or the subsequent bloom of saltwater grey turning the sheet into a ghostly, sad little garden. You wipe your face with a furious, punishing hand, and speak hoarsely. “Sorry.”

Spencer catches your wrist before you can take out your own eye. “Stop.”

“I’m fine,” you insist, snatching your hand away though you desperately crave the contact. “I don’t even know why I’m crying. I don’t know—I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Everything is fine.”

“Don’t say that. Don’t—you need to stop doing that. Minimizing everything all the time. If everything was fine, you wouldn’t have had a panic attack and you wouldn’t be crying now.”

“Everything is fine,” you assert. Anger—not at him—begins seeping through your tone, burning you at the edges. “Everything is fine, but I’m obviously not, and I’m sick of getting so fucking upset about nothing all the time.”

“Tell me why you’re upset.”

“Because I’m crazy! Because we haven’t been together all week, and you didn’t sit next to me in the car today, or on the jet, and—and ever since I actually stopped holding you at arm’s length, I’m so fucking involved, and I care so much, and I knew this would happen. Before, it wouldn’t have mattered if we didn’t spend the night together for a week, because I wasn’t all in, and I knew if I was always giving you just a little less than you were giving me that the dynamic would be in my favor, and I would never have to feel like I was the unwanted one. But I can’t do that anymore, because—’cause I let myself care all the way, and I was so afraid of this happening, and it’s happening. I don’t have any fucking control over myself anymore. I’m so worried, all the time—it’s like, I have a doomsday clock inside of me, but instead of the end of the world it’s measuring how close you are to breaking up with me at any moment. Which is fucked, I know it’s fucked. I know I can’t read your mind, but I don’t have any perspective anymore. And the worst part is that it’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy. I know the more insane and hyper-vigilant and codependent I get, the likelier you are to actually break up with me. It was never a problem before. It was never this scary because if I was the one who kept breaking up with you it meant I was in control, but I don’t wanna break up with you at all. I’m terrified of it. But it—it’s like my karma, I—”

“Okay. Slow down.” Your head snaps up—wide, teary eyes on Spencer. You almost forgot he was there. “Breathe. Just—take a deep breath.”

Fuck. You drag your hands to your face, fully prepared to curl in on yourself and die rather than face your own humiliation. 

“No, no—look at me. Come on.”

“I’m going insane,” you sniffle as he peels your hands away and forces you to look at him. “I c-can’t say anything that will make me sound less crazy.”

“You’re not crazy. Your nervous system is just shot, and you’re probably exhausted. Did you eat? I didn’t see you have dinner.”

Guilty, you shake your head. You didn’t realize he was paying attention. 

“I’ll call room service,” he decides. 

“I’m really not hungry.”

Spencer ignores this and picks up the phone anyway. You sit back against the headboard and hug your knees to your chest, staring at nothing as he orders something you’ll like. Waiting for the click of the phone back in its cradle. 

When the call is over, there is tremulous silence. A tension you’re not sure how to go about breaking. 

Spencer does it for you—finding your ankle and carefully pulling your leg straight, so he can run the length of it back and forth with his hand. You watch it go, like waves rolling in and falling back on sand. 

“I’m sorry we didn’t get to spend enough time together this week. I missed you, too. I absolutely do not want to break up. Not one part of me wants that.”

“I should be able to know that without you telling me.”

“But you aren’t, yet. You’re going to learn.”

“But—until I do—you’re gonna have to—to reassure me constantly. I’m going to be exhausting and irritating and you’re going to get sick of me.”

He regards you. 

“It makes me really sad that you feel that way. I think you severely underestimate how much I like you.”

“Why, though?” Immediately you’re rolling your eyes and throwing your hands up. “See? Fucking right there. Already. I’m already doing it.”

Spencer is holding back a smile when you look at him. You shrink. 

“No, no—” he laughs, leaning in. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m not laughing at you.”

You end up nearly lying down, with him over you. Breathing in his mint and eucalyptus bedtime smell. The smile fades slowly, as he thumbs over your cheek, your lips. Your lids flutter at the relief of it all. 

“I’m hoping… we’ll never have to do a week like that again. I didn’t like it very much, either.”

You lean into his palm, and don’t speak for a long while. 

“Spencer?”

“Hm?”

“Can—” you swallow involuntarily. You’re scared to ask. But you know what the answer will be. “Can we… I know I’ve messed up a bunch of times, but—can I be your girlfriend? We don’t have to tell anyone, I just… I want to be your real girlfriend.”

The slow blossom of his smile is like a swell in your favorite song as he grins down at you. 

“You’ve been my real girlfriend for a while.”

“I know, but… I want you to tell me that’s what I am. I want to know that when you think of me, you’re thinking about your real-life serious girlfriend.”

He hums. 

“And am I allowed to tell other people that you’re my real-life serious girlfriend?”

You chew your lip. “Some of them.”

“Which ones?”

He’s angling for something, and you know what, but you’re not sure you’re ready for that particular step. 

“I don’t know. We’ll find some.”

“I have a few in mind.”

“We can’t,” you murmur, hugging his arm to your chest. “Not yet. They’ll—it’ll change things. But… but maybe we don’t have to hide it quite as much.”

“Like… no running away when we see someone we know in public?”

You nod. “And I have a rule.”

He strokes your hair. 

“What’s that?”

“You have to always save a seat for me in the cars and on the jet. Always. Capiche?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

You tilt your chin up. He kisses you. 

Now that you’ve got him, you’re not going to let go. 

September 1st

“You’re delusional. Truly, you’re acting insane.”

“For wondering why you had to stay three hours late at work to review one interview transcript you could’ve done during lunch?”

Spencer drops his bag onto a chair and rounds the counter, pushing a hand through his hair. You remain leaning against the back of the couch, arms crossed.

“It is not that simple.” He insists. “You’re being paranoid and unreasonable. Again.”

“Or you’re being defensive.”

Spencer’s eyes narrow, like he’s just now seeing you for the first time since he got home. That is to say—his home. 

“Am I being accused of something?”

Words catch in your throat. Normally you’d hurl a ridiculous indictment as a matter of anything being possible—but not this time. It would be abjectly absurd to accuse him of cheating at anything other than cards. 

“No,” you huff after a weighty moment. 

“So what? What’s the point of this? I come home after staying at work three hours late listening to a man recounting in excruciating detail how he killed and ate an entire family because nobody else wanted to do it, and as soon as I walk through my own front door you start a fucking fight with me? Over nothing?”

The sudden slope in volume is startling as it rings off the walls like a gunshot. Rarely does he raise his voice before you have the chance to. 

For the few moments you’re stunned into silence, you take note of a few things you hadn’t before. The pound of his heart in his throat and just beneath his eye. Exhaustion evident in the strain of his voice and the mess of his hair, hanging over his face limp in some places and frazzled in others. The fragile glaze over his eyes, even as they widen and crackle with heat. It takes a lot out of a person to sit and listen to what he listened to for as long as he did. Even Spencer—even a man who can intellectualize and pathologize any human atrocity into microscopic pulses of electricity coursing through grey matter. 

It gets to him like it gets to everyone. You know that. 

Fuck. 

The most embarrassing part is that you started this fight because you missed him, and you still haven’t quite figured out how to not be afraid of that feeling. Sometimes when you miss him it feels like a threat to your autonomy, and by extension, your safety. You sure as hell don’t know how to just admit this to him. 

So instead you pick fights. Not as much, anymore, but sometimes when you’re in need of comfort and just can’t ask for it, you’ll start pushing your luck with inflammatory comments. You’ll trigger a meaningless argument. Spencer will eventually whittle your fighting words down to a simple, familiar truth. He will realize that this is your way of telling him you need something, and then you get the sweet after: where he rewards you for nothing, where he tries to apologize for a conflict you’d created with gentle touches and murmured words of comfort. Sun after a storm. It’s easy to accept affection and tenderness if you’ve intentionally scratched open all your old wounds—if you’ve earned it through trial by blood. 

Tonight, he’s not having it. You sense no reality where this ends with a sweet kiss and whispers so soft you can hardly hear them. 

Which means you need to backtrack. 

So you swallow your pride and your shame and your fear. Choke on it, really. But the words come out all the same. 

“I’m sorry.”

Spencer’s chest is still rising and falling quickly. The purple paisley silk of his tie catches your eye. It’s all astray. You want to fix it. He could breathe better if you took it off. And there’s no way he’s not bothered by his hair falling over his face. 

How can you make this go away?

Could it go in the other direction these quarrels sometimes do? Maybe it could end with you achey and tired in his arms, after he kisses the marks around your wrists, the little purple splotches on your hips and the starburst clusters of broken blood vessels on your thighs. Here, too, he’ll end up being sanguine—there’ll just be more steps in between. 

Just as you’re running scenarios in your mind, calculating outcomes and trying to chart the best plan of action, his tongue darts over his lips. It’s enough to stop you in your tracks. 

Why hasn’t his brow relaxed? Those eyes, still darting over your face with a kind of urgency—is that hunger or dissatisfaction with what he sees?

“You should go.”

A beat. 

This does not process instantaneously. You blink and shake your head as if you could clear it that way. 

“What?”

Spencer’s eyes are a forge on you, but he diverts them to the wall. Sparing you from the edge of a glowing sword. You don’t know how you’d prefer it—cool to the touch and sharp enough to cut, or soft and burning and prolonged. He’s probably decided he’s being civil. Doesn’t realize it lasts so much longer this way. 

“I think you should go home for the weekend.”

“Why?” It bursts from you, trembling and affronted. 

“Because I can’t—” he stops himself. Shutters his eyes and takes a deep breath that doesn’t seem to do much of anything. “I am not in the right headspace for this. I need you out of here.”

“What do you mean, this?”

“You. This thing you always do. I do not have it in me to make you feel better about yourself right now.”

It would’ve been quicker to just kick you in the stomach. 

For a moment you’re too stunned to speak as he blurs through a thick cloud of tears. 

“You are such a fucking asshole.”

The words come out too hurt, too quiet.

Spencer is unfazed—leans in closer as if to make sure you understand. Lowers his voice, and the tremor there is not the kind that comes from hurt feelings. You don’t know what it is. 

“Go. Home.”

It’s the kind of quiet that you’re afraid will culminate in a burst eardrum or something worse. He’s not like that, you know he’s not. Even at his worst. Even when you push him to his absolute wit’s end. But you can already hear it. Feel it. Ghost echos that have been rattling around in your head for years. 

A part of you—a rather large part—wants to cover her ears hard and sink to the ground, or otherwise apologize and beg him to love you again. 

But you are an adult. He’s asked you to leave. 

So you do. With an awful pulling in your gut and a hollowing in your chest like a sinkhole falling into itself. 

The static starts outside his door. The raking breaths. That awful warmth on the back of your neck and the greying of your vision. 

You stumble to the stairs and cover your face, letting the waves of panic wash over your shoulders. 

Was that a breakup? Does he still love you? Did he ever? If love can be so quickly taken away, was it ever really there? See, this is why—this is exactly why you’ve done what you’ve done, why you’ve been the way you have and treated him the way you did for so long. Because of this inevitability. Because of your nature, and what happens when a child tells himself he can enjoy a broken toy just the same as a regular one, until he keeps playing with it, and it keeps breaking worse and worse until it’s completely unusable. 

Something snaps inside of you. Gears grind and groan. The static doesn’t go away, it only gets louder, and it sounds a whole lot like his name over and over again—so you’ll just have to drown it out. 

-

It’s hot in this place, and it’s loud—so loud you can feel the throbbing techno beat in your teeth. The flashing lights wash over you like a tide of blood, rising and falling, filling your lungs. 

Whatever is coursing through your veins is not enough to dull the ache. In the middle of the dance floor, and you’re still thinking of Spencer. Spencer. Spencer. With every beat of your heart. Not enough alcohol. Not enough anything. 

It’s so hot in here—sweat drips down your spine and the room is spinning, but all the writhing, shadowed bodies prop you up as you stumble toward the bar. No chance in hell the bartender would keep serving you in the state you’re in, so you find someone to buy the drinks for you. 

And you fall, fall, fall—chasing some wicked, Cheshire gleam at the bottom of that glass, and the next, and the next. 

That gleam is, of course, an illusion. It will shine so brightly you can taste it. It will convince you to reach just a little further. And it will wink at you from the impossible end of a bottomless pit. 

You don’t care. You tip over the edge and let the darkness swallow you whole.

Nothing but stardust, now. 

You blow across the silent black ether. 

September 5th

You’re practically dripping from Spencer as he locks your door.

“Help me out, a little?” he grunts as you make no effort to support your own body weight. 

“Sorry sorry sorry. I’m up.”

He breathes a laugh and walks you deeper into the apartment. It’s a slow process. 

“If I set you down on the couch… are you going to be able to get back up?”

“I don’t know,” you sing-song, stumbling, giggling, and grabbing onto him tighter. “Let’s find out.”

Your ankles threaten to buckle all the way across the room, but he holds you fast. 

“Easy,” he murmurs as you slip your arms from around his neck and drop heavily to the cushions. You blink at him, exhausted, admiring the view. At some point, you’d managed to pull off his tie and undo the first few buttons on his shirt before he’d caught your hands and given you a warning look. Looking at him now, you have absolutely no regrets.

Spencer kneels in front of you, undoing the delicate ankle strap on your shoe. Your blood is pleasantly warmed as you let your head loll to your shoulder—warmer with every sweet way he handles you. Carefully. Like it’s an honor. 

After he slips the heels off, he presses a kiss to the top of each knee. You lace a hand through his hair. “Excellent view.”

There’s a lazy sort of smirk on his face when he tilts his head back up toward you. 

“I’m sure. Don’t get any ideas.”

You grin. 

“Too late.”

Spencer slides a gratuitous hand up your leg, fingertips just brushing the short hem of your dress, and raises his other. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Easy. Six.”

He snorts, pressing his face against your thigh, and you melt into a puddle of giggles. 

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding! It was three. See—hey, you can make me say my ABC’s backwards, and I’ll walk in a straight line—”

“I’m not sleeping with you.”

Even that sweet, placating kiss to your thigh isn’t enough to temper the immediate and profound disappointment you feel at his proclamation. “What? Why?”

“Oh—why am I not going to sleep with a woman who couldn’t get up the stairs on her own?”

“Nonono, I’m dead sober. Please?”

He pushes off the ground, towering above you once more, and leans down to press a kiss to your lips. “Sorry. You’ll have to go find someone just as drunk as you.”

You linger there, your head tilted up, so he hangs in your silence, suspended less than an inch above you. 

“What?”

It comes out thin, with the crane of your neck. Quiet because your blood is frozen in your veins. 

Spencer pauses only briefly and then drops one more kiss to your mouth. At the contact your eyes flutter, in spite of yourself. 

“Nothing, baby. It was a joke.”

Then he’s up again, moving toward the kitchen. 

“Why would you joke about that?”

Spencer stops at the end of the couch and gives you an odd look. “Did it bother you?”

“Yes. Don’t—you can’t say stuff like that.”

Why are you breathing so quickly?

Now you’ve really got his attention. He turns fully back toward you, slipping his hands into his pockets.

Spencer doesn’t say a word. His eyes narrow almost imperceptibly. 

There’s a long stretch of silence. You can hear a faucet dripping and try to match your inhales to each plunk of water. 

“What’s wrong?”

One blink of hesitation and you realize your name is halfway signed on your own death sentence. 

“Nothing.”

“Don’t say nothing, you clearly—”

“Oh my god, I said it’s nothing. Just let it go. Jesus.”

And that final utterance, that subtle roll of your eyes, was practically a flourish of the pen. 

You haven’t gone the offense-as-defense route in a while. 

Immediately, something about Spencer’s demeanor goes cold. 

“Did something happen?”

The question is quiet enough to chill your bones and dry your throat. 

“Nothing. What? Nothing happened. I just don’t think it’s funny to joke about stuff like that.”

Fuck. Fuck. There may as well be a giant blinking sign over your head that says I’m lying. 

You watch it wash over him. 

The worst part is that he doesn’t say anything. He stands there for a moment—and then he turns, walking toward the kitchen again. For a moment, you’re frozen. Then you panic. 

“Spencer,” you call, and it breaks down the middle as you try to get up and sit right back down. He will not want to be followed. You take in a deep, grating breath, digging your nails hard into the sides of your legs and staring at the ground, willing the room to stop spinning. Willing your lungs to fill with air. 

Your entire body waits in suspense, taut like a steel guitar string, for shattering glass, or splintering drywall, or a slamming door, or something. It doesn’t come. He’s still here. You know he hasn’t left. 

But he’s going to. 

This is it. 

The unforgivable thing. 

Maybe five minutes later, you hear movement. When he reenters the living room, you keep your head down, tracking him only with your eyes. A yawning chasm seems to open up between your spot on the couch and where he stands, across the room. 

For a moment, neither of you speak—and then both of you try at once. More silence follows. You cover your face with your hands.

“We weren’t together,” you mumble into the cup of them. 

“What did you say?” 

His tone bites. 

“We weren’t together.”

“In your mind we were never together, so I don’t really know what you mean by that.”

“No, we—we got in a really big fight—”

“When?”

You swallow. Because you work together, you should be familiar with this part of him—this relentless part, this I-will-run-you-into-the-ground part. But you’re not. 

“Spencer…”

Spencer recognizes this type of quiet. This quiet which means things can only be worse than they seem. The punishing anger is quickly slashed and bled until you feel it swirling around at your feet like water waiting to be swallowed down the drain. Displaced by massive grief, so heavy that you hear the break. The word is small. Too small to be a real question—it is a plea for mercy on a dying breath. 

“When?” 

You try to inhale and choke on it. 

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I didn’t think we were together—”

He snaps. “We are always together. You know exactly what we are. Take some fucking responsibility.”

“I didn’t mean to,” you whisper, desolate. “I didn’t.”

A tremulous pause. Your skin is crawling and you can’t get out of it. 

“What does that mean? What do you mean, you didn’t mean to?”

Snippets come from a reel you’ve been working hard to bury. The blisters on your palms burn. There is blood and dirt caked into the half-moons of your nails, too heavy and too fresh. 

A phantom ache has taken up residence in your bones. It throbs. 

You only shake your head.  

Spencer comes to you again. Gets on his knees for the second time this evening, sets his hands over your legs again in some backwards sort of supplication. Some bastardized retelling of a sweeter story from a few minutes ago. Like he’s pleading with you to recant, rewrite—to fix it so he doesn’t have to leave. 

“What do you mean? Just tell me what happened,” he begs. 

“I can’t,” you whisper.

“Why?”

The pain in his voice pounds at the base of your skull. 

Words dance on the tip of your tongue. Because there is too much I don’t remember. 

But something deeper in your gut keeps them tethered. Pulls hard. Shame, perhaps. There is no excuse for what you did. There is no explaining it away. No circumstance in which you are innocent. A girl goes dancing. Looking for something. She gets drunk. She chases the thing she’s looking for into dark corners and down alleyways. She needs to know what it is she’s chasing—she needs to hold it by the throat and squeeze, thumb against hammering pulse, until it doesn’t have so much power over her.  

She wakes up in a stranger’s bed. That’s the part of the story that matters. 

“I just can’t.”

The words are too quiet, but he hears. Your lungs burn in the pulsing silence that follows. 

No solution. 

He gives you a few minutes in the dark living room to change your mind, to say the right thing. It doesn’t come. 

So he gets up. 

“Wait, wait wait—” your heart is pounding as you stumble off the couch and follow him, barely avoiding tripping over your own feet. He’s at the door. How did he get there so quickly? You catch the wall just behind him. “Spencer, wait.”

The tear in your voice is desperate enough you flinch. 

But it gets him to turn around. 

He looks exhausted. 

The pallor of his skin—the shadows exaggerating where his cheeks sink in and where the troughs beneath each eye get darker in purple half moons.

You fucked up so badly. 

How much more of you can he handle?

Is this the one thing to push him over the edge, for good? 

“I’m sorry,” you breathe. “I’m so sorry. It wasn’t—I can’t explain it, but it wasn’t right—I didn’t—” heat wells behind your eyes as you flounder and dig your grave helplessly, flexing and clenching your hands. “I’m never, ever gonna do that again. Something was—I wasn’t myself that night, and it’s not going to happen again, I don’t know why I did it. I was stupid, and I love you so much, and—please. Please, don’t go. I really need you not to go.”

Spencer regards you, gaze flickering up and down, swallowing. His eyes are all foggy and waterlogged. It makes you feel sicker.

“I know you’re sorry.”

Your chin wobbles. 

There’s nothing to fight with in his words. There’s nothing to scratch or kick or bite or cling to. 

“You’re gonna leave?”

A beat. 

“Yeah.”

“Are you gonna come back?”

It hangs in the air between you for a very long time. 

September 12th

When you see him at your door a week later, you’re not sure what to say. Spencer has hardly spoken to you at work. It’s not that he’s been cruel, he just… he’s been distant. Understandably so. 

This lack of words, you realize very quickly, is not going to be much of a problem. 

What he wants to do with you does not require a lot of speaking. 

In fact, you start to suspect he doesn’t want to hear you talk at all. It would be hard to form words when he’s kissing you like this.

But you have to try, don’t you?

“Spencer—”

He pulls away, leaves you reeling and head sparkling with fresh oxygen. Disoriented. Desperate to have him in any way you can. A thumb presses against the seam of your lips and you open for him without hesitance. 

He has you against the back of your door, locking it with one hand and pushing down on your tongue with the other thumb. You wish you could do more than let it happen. Do anything but suckle like a lamb. Make him talk to you. Fix it while you can. 

But for the first time in a week he’s close and he’s looking at you like he wants you and you could cry. 

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” he whispers, eyes darting rapidly over your face like he’s hungry for the sight of you. “You are going to listen to me. If I ask you a question, you can say yes, or you can say no. If we need to stop, or if something doesn’t feel right, you tell me. Otherwise, you don’t talk. Do you understand me?”

Your delirious nod is not enough for him as he slips his thumb from your mouth and grips your jaw, angling you carefully upward so as to look right at him through shuttered eyes. 

“Do you understand me?” He repeats lowly, and your breath catches. 

“Yes.”

Those eyes slow, taking you in, that gaze dripping from you like honey. Just barely, he strokes the line of your jaw. He ducks to kiss you again and this time it is not so urgent. 

“Do you want this?” Spencer asks just shy of your own mouth, soft without warning. 

The fabric of his coat bunches in your fist. 

Only if you still love me, you want to say. But you know why he doesn’t want you to talk. So you can’t say things like that. So he doesn’t have to tell you of course I do. Please spare me the humiliation of admitting it. 

“Please,” you whisper. A trembling breath. More than a plead for sex. You are asking that he be kind. Perhaps it’s more than you deserve, but you can’t do this if he doesn’t touch you like he loves you. Not with him. 

You are asking for him to fix something big, something thus far unspoken and which you don’t totally understand yourself. It’s too complicated. He shouldn’t have to do this for you. He doesn’t owe you anything. 

Erase it, you want to say. Make this feeling I can’t talk about go away. I know you love me enough to do it. 

All this, with one please. 

Spencer exhales. And he kisses you again. 

Of course, Spencer’s not good with enforcing rules. Not when you’re opening up to him in this way. Even now he looks at you like you’re a marvel. Touches you like you’re a miracle. As soft and as careful as you could’ve asked for if you’d used the words—he may as well be tracing love letters into your skin. 

All you can do is try and respect his wishes. You hurt him, badly, you know you did. Don’t add salt to those wounds. He needs you to be predictable right now. No sudden movements. No derailments. To the best of your ability, you are quiet and good and gracious and docile. 

But you are only human. Those times you gasp his name under your breath, he just holds your hand tighter. A plead or two are lost against his skin or into the sheets. He takes pity on you—murmurs gentle questions just to give you an outlet. Kisses your teary cheeks as you give your shaky answers. 

He loves me, you think, in absence of the words, over and over, until you feel it, until your whole body is buzzing with it. Until you’re buoyant and nothing is hard anymore. 

Afterwards, his stillness is what draws you back. His heart pounds against yours, he’s exactly the weight and the pressure you need. But he’s still. The momentum of the passion is wearing off, and you can sense it. 

So you allow yourself one quiet, distressed little chirp. One nervous bid for reassurance. Spencer comes to his senses and quells you with a chaste kiss. 

And then he’s out of bed. The weight of all the air in the room, the heavy cold, comes crashing down—pressing into your skin, your stomach, all at once.  

Suddenly you’re paralyzed, unable to look away from the ceiling as he dresses, grabs the glass from your nightstand and disappears into the bathroom. A few moments later he returns bearing a cloth and a full cup. The cup hits the nightstand. The edge of the bed dips. He slides one hand up your calf like always, and you acquiesce, letting the weight of your leg fall against him. A warm washcloth finds your inner thigh. 

Your mind is screaming, deafening static. 

“You okay?” Spencer asks gingerly after a few beats of silence. There is a hesitance, there. A feigned lightness, like he’s afraid of asking. Afraid of opening up this line of conversation and too good not to. 

Your tongue is heavy in your mouth as he cleans up any evidence of his having been here. 

“You got up pretty quick.”

More static. Something fights its way up your throat and you swallow it down. 

“Yeah. An old professor of mine is town. We have dinner plans.”

You don’t know what to say to that as he retrieves a few things from your dresser and returns. Normally he’d slide underwear up your thighs for you and pull a shirt over your head, but today you’re grabbing the garments from him before he has a chance. 

“I can do it,” you mutter, hurrying to yank the clothes on under his measuring gaze. Under other circumstances he might take offense to this. Might at least ask you about it. Now he only stands to give you space and pockets his hands. 

Because he knows. He knew the whole time. 

He’s not sticking around. 

“I’m sorry,” he finally says. Dust particles swirl through thick beams of molasses light, pouring in from the windows and warming rumpled sheets. How long was he here?

You hug your bare legs to your chest and settle your chin over folded arms, mapping dust like stars in a galaxy. “Why’d you even come?” you murmur.  

The world quiets down. Waits with you, holding its breath for his answer. 

“I don’t know.”

Light glares off the floor in a blinding white pool. Sends shooting pains into the back of your eyes as you fiddle with your own shirtsleeve. 

“Were you trying to… hurt me back, or something?”

“No.” The answer is firm and immediate. “No, I am not trying to hurt you.”

You say nothing. Wood creaks under shifting weight, but you’re not looking at him as he sighs. 

“You have to give me some time.” Your name on his tongue is reprimand, a thing he shouldn’t have to tell you. “It’s been a week. I don’t have any of this figured out. I’m not thinking straight.”

“You were thinking straight enough to drive over here and tell me not to talk while you fucked me.”

“I—” he sighs. At a perpetual loss with you. “I told you it wasn’t well thought out. I’ve been spiraling. All week. I’m not sleeping, I’m not making good choices. I mean—you—you fucked me over!” The words burst out, the way they do when he curses. “I haven’t had anybody to talk to about this. You are the only person. Do you see why that would be difficult? You hurt me so much and I miss you and I’m furious and you’re the only one I can talk to about any of it. That’s insane, right? I think you owe me some grace.”

“Did I owe you that, too?”

You gesture toward the unmade sheets and then bury your face against your arms once more. 

Humiliated. Like usual. 

Spencer is stunned into silence for a moment. 

“No. No, you didn’t. Did I—did I make you feel that way? If that didn’t feel right—”

“No,” you assuage tearfully. “I just wish you t-told me you weren’t going to stay, ’cause I wouldn’t have—I just can’t do that with you.”

“Can’t do what?” he asks, sitting on the bedside once more, hand twitching but ultimately leaving you be. 

“I can’t have sex with you if you’re gonna leave after. I’m sorry, I know you didn’t know that. But, like—you are the one person who can’t—I just really really can’t do that with you, because—” you stop yourself and change course with a shuddering breath, pressing your palms to weeping eyes. “I’m sorry. I know this is literally all my fault. I don’t get to ask for things. I know that.”

Fireworks dance against the back of your lids. Spencer is quiet. 

Then there are hands around your wrists. A thumb smoothing the delicate skin under your palm. You hiccup a gasping cry and melt toward him. It might be the most you get from Spencer, so you focus on the small touch until it burns. His voice is soft—a balm you don’t deserve. 

“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.”

“Don’t apologize to me,” you sniffle, hands falling an inch, then two, as you go lax under his touch. “You don’t owe me an apology. Just—I can’t do that with you again until… until we have things figured out.”

The stroking thumb stops, and then restarts. 

“Okay.”

Finally, you open your eyes. Can’t make sense of the neutrality on his face.

“What?”

He only shakes his head. Nothing. 

Too tired to push him, you let your hands fall to your lap, and he keeps hold on your wrists. Sweeping. The lines he makes entrance you. 

“I’m sorry I put you in this position,” you whisper. 

No response. Back and forth. 

“I know you’re mad at me. You really, really have the right to be mad at me. I’m sorry for making you be nice to me. That’s so stupid, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for—”

“Angel.”

You bite your tongue and sink your gaze. What a ridiculous petname it is, now. How terrible of him to keep using it. 

“Sorry.”

Afraid to tell him he can leave, and too ashamed to let yourself enjoy his presence while it lasts, you remain in limbo. His silence does not tell you exactly how much he hates being here, but you think if the tables were turned, you wouldn’t be able to stomach it. Is it really better, his lingering, if it’s not because he loves you? With each pass of his thumb, you imagine him hating you more. He loves me. He loves me not. He loves me. He loves me not. 

“I’m not going to do this again,” he murmurs, jarring you from your obsessive contemplation. 

Now, when you look up, he’s focused on your wrist. 

“… I know.”

“No, honey. I mean… it needs to end.”

This sinks in slowly, with a heat in your face and the back of your neck and a sick tide rising in your stomach. 

The first thing you feel is panic. Drops of adrenaline in your bloodstream like you’ve just realized you’ll need to run for your life. 

“Why? Because—if this is because I said I can’t sleep with you until—”

“That was completely appropriate. You were right. It’s not good for either of us.”

“So why does that mean we can’t try again? I mean—I know you need time. You can have it. You can. We always do this, and then we get back together and it’s better. I already did the worst thing I could do—we’ll get better.”

The breath he takes is quiet, uneven and pronounced. The kind of breath you take when something hurts more than you thought it would. 

“You’re asking me to get over something I haven’t even fully wrapped my mind around.”

You falter. 

“No, I’m—I’m just telling you I’m going to wait, and you can have as long as you need—”

“Stop,” he says, more sad than angry. “You need to stop.”

“I can’t stop,” you whisper, closer to forlorn every second as you tear up and spill all over again. “I have to try.”

Spencer’s voice shakes as he speaks. “Do not do this to yourself. There is nothing you can say, alright? This needs to be over, so it’s going to be over. It’s not good for us.”

“But—but… you can’t just say it’s over, Spencer, we put so much—I’ve been trying so hard. I know I keep messing up, I’m sorry, I’m trying so hard. I don’t know what happened, I’m—I can do more, I know I can.”

“You can’t—this isn’t going to work. You can’t fix it.”

“But I love you. I want to be with you. I did it all for you, all the hard stuff, not for me, I just—I love you. I want you.”

You don’t realize you’re sobbing until he’s wrenching your hands from your face once more and pulling you into him. 

“I know you love me. I wish we were better for each other, angel, I do. But it’s not supposed to feel like this.”

It’s not supposed to feel like this. 

You shudder a cry. 

“I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean to hurt you, really. I’m so sorry. I didn’t want that. You d-didn’t deserve it. I’m so, so sorry, Spencer, I ruined everything, I—”

“Shh. Just… I’ll stay for a little bit longer, okay? Just a while.”

And he does. Until the room goes dark, and the stars watch silently from above.

October 29th

It’s not going to be warm enough to enjoy the outdoors for much longer—but today, the beams of sun are still thick through the turning leaves, still gold when you close your eyes, and the sweet smell of autumn is enough to keep you out criss-cross on Rossi’s swing. 

The seal on the glass door suctions open and then slides shut again, and Penelope is joining you. You accept the mug of apple cider, holding it carefully in your lap. 

“What a gorgeous day,” she sighs, and you hum in agreement. “Probably one of the last good ones. I saw rain on the forecast later this week.”

“It begins,” you mutter. 

“Yeah. And I haven’t even found a suitable mate to hibernate with yet.”

Your brow knits. “You’re not with—”

She pauses mid-sip as you turn to look at her. Right—you weren’t supposed to have seen her with Kevin last spring. Your face warms and you try to play it off. “Oh, right. You guys broke up forever ago.”

To her credit, she doesn’t actually confirm or deny. Instead, a quiet settles. Or—a sort of quiet. Down the yard, in grass that is still lush and green, JJ and Spencer are playing some sort of game with Henry and Michael. One that seems to invoke a lot of delighted screeches from the young boys as they run around and fall over and get back up. 

“What about you?” Penelope asks. 

Apple and clove melt on your tongue and warm your throat. 

“What about me?”

“Are you hunkering down with anybody?”

“No,” you admit without fanfare. Garcia doesn’t respond—probably hoping to get more information out of you. You hesitate, and then go on. “I mean—I was seeing a guy. But it ended a little while ago.”

She speaks her pity gently, in a tone like the velveteen undersides of flower petals. 

“You didn’t tell me.”

You shrug. 

“It wasn’t… official.”

“How long were you seeing him for?”

“It would’ve been a year next month.”

This time, she’s silent for too long. 

When you finally glance over at her, she’s not looking at you, as you would’ve expected. 

She’s… looking at your feet. 

You glance down, ready to be very confused—and then you see the problem. 

Your jeans have ridden up. One sock is striped purple and green. The other, brown, dotted with horseshoes and cacti. They’re visibly too big for you. 

Quickly you try to tuck them further under yourself. But you’re sure it’s too late. 

You could explain this. You could say you forgot to bring socks on a case, and Spencer let you borrow a pair. 

Before you can, she speaks. 

“I worried that maybe you guys had split up.”

You flash her an alarmed look. “What?”

Penelope glances toward the house to make sure nobody’s about to come outside. 

“I mean… honey, you guys weren’t very subtle. I don’t think anyone who lacks my perceptive genius and emotional intelligence would have noticed, but I noticed. Like, I really noticed.”

You swallow, opening your mouth before you’ve decided your plan of action. Deny? 

“When?”

“Well, everyone always knew that you liked each other. But there was this one time—and this was a total invasion of privacy, and I will never do it again unless I have to—where, you know, you… weren’t answering your phone about a case, and I got worried, because no offense, but this team kind of has a track record when it comes to going missing, and so… I checked your location… and it pinged at Spencer’s apartment… who had just told me he didn’t know where you were. And then you both showed up. I’m so sorry, but in my defense, I was not trying to snoop—”

“Penelope, it’s fine.”

“Well—okay—and there’s this other thing that I haven’t told you about because it would’ve been mutually assured destruction, so I kind of don’t ask don’t telled it, which was… me and Kevin saw you guys on a date last spring. And me and Kevin were not supposed to be on a date. And you were not supposed to be sharing spoons—spooning, if you will—with Spencer. But I did see it. And I didn’t tell you and I felt really squicky about it for a long time and I’m sorry.”

You blink. Try to process. 

“You didn’t tell anyone else?”

“No! God, no! I like to gossip, I don’t like to ruin people’s relationships.”

“Who’s ruining whose relationships?” JJ asks breathlessly, carrying a tuckered out Michael on her hip and holding Henry’s hand as she approaches. Your head snaps up. Spencer is trailing a few feet behind her, eyeing you. 

Heat blooms in your cheeks. 

“Theoretical conversation,” Penelope supplies quickly. “Are we finally ready to harass Rossi about dinner?”

JJ looks anything but convinced—and in typical fashion, lets it go. 

“I think we are. What do you think Michael—pizza?”

“Pizza!”

Everyone cheers at that—aside from you and Spencer. Penelope hurries inside after JJ and the boys. Spencer lingers. You quickly try to get your shoes back on before he can tell that you’re wearing his—

“Nice socks.”

You sigh, pausing just a moment before you finish pulling your boot on. 

“Sorry. I need to do laundry.”

You stand, and Spencer opens the door for you. “What socks you choose to wear are none of my business.”

Halfway inside, you pause, glancing up at him. “Do you want them back?”

He narrows his eyes thoughtfully. 

“That’s okay. I have a pair just like them at home.”

This is the first time you’ve exchanged more than a few work-related sentences since he ended things for good. 

It’s sort of ridiculous, after all the melodrama. 

It’s sort of a relief. 

January 1st

Garcia’s New Year’s party was a success. There’d been the most FBI agents you’ve ever seen crammed into her apartment at once. There was a chocolate fountain, three kinds of champagne, and an elaborate charcuterie setup spanning nearly the entire counter. At midnight, you’d popped a confetti gun and blew into a noise maker and cheered and jumped around and hugged your friends. 

An hour and a half later, you’ve taken over as impromptu host—Penelope is decidedly out of commission, snoring atop her bed, still in heels and sequins. 

“Bye, guys! Happy new year!”

You wave as the last stragglers head out the door.

When you close it, and turn around: “Holy shit.”You wade through confetti and streamers and napkins, kicking a few balloons out of your way. Any flat surface is covered in sparkly plastic cups and champagne flutes. “We trashed the place.”

From the kitchen, Spencer chuckles. “It’s pretty bad.”

You frown when you notice him stacking plates. “Hey, you don’t have to do that. I told Garcia I’d handle clean up.”

He checks his watch. 

“The odds of being involved in a fatal car accident are up 208% percent right now, and they won’t be going down for a few hours. Plus, my own blood alcohol content is probably hovering around point zero four, which is well under the legal limit to drive, but I’d prefer for it to be zero flat.”

You shrug and make your way over to the record player, which had finished up A Night At The Opera a while ago. “If you want to ring in the new year by helping me clean, I won’t stop you. Blue or Abbey Road?”

“Neither?”

“Boring,” you accuse, and put on Coltrane. The jazz comes slow and crackly and warm through the speakers. 

Spencer steps aside as you enter the kitchen and hunt for trash bags under the sink—compostable, because it’s Garcia. 

When you stand back up, you’re unprepared for how close he’s going to be—barely an inch separates you and you stumble on your quest to pop backward. “Whoop—” instinctively, he reaches out and steadies you. You grasp onto his arms, eyes flickering up to his and laughing nervously. “Hey.”

Spencer’s gaze is warm and easy on you as he pulls a little smile of his own. “Hi.”

A stuttering inhale. 

A moment that is just too long. 

His fingers seem to relax against your arms, just fractionally, for just a split second. Like he could hold you. Like you could stay this way. 

“Sorry,” you breathe, releasing your grip on him and stepping back. 

“You’re okay.”

A lazy sax solo traces its golden fingers around your thrumming heart until your skin is buzzing. His eyes are the same color as the music. Just as soft. Just as leisurely as they vamp the distance between your own. 

Bio-derived plastic dampens under your fingers as you flee to the living room. 

The next fifteen minutes are spent kneeling in front of the coffee table, cleaning drips of chocolate and splashes of champagne, and trying not to think about the way his eyes caught on your lips. 

Spencer doesn’t miss you. Not like you miss him. Apparently he even went on a date a few weeks ago. 

And with the way things ended, you’re lucky that he doesn’t despise you. Being on decent terms should be enough. Letting your perpetually smoldering want trail its smoke under his nose isn’t fair. Not to you, not to him, and certainly not to his mystery girl. He’s trying to move on, and you don’t have the right to drag him down.  

But, just—that one little moment. One touch, and you’re totally thrown off your game. Now, you’re reading into the silence. You’re wondering what he’s thinking about you. If he’s thinking about you. 

Later—much later—the living room has been mostly cleaned. You’re taking the final trash bag to the kitchen when you notice something on the ceiling fan and pause, frowning up at it. 

“Spencer?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you come here?”

He appears. “What’s up?”

You point at the fan. 

“I think somebody put a cup up there.”

Spencer makes a face and reaches up to grab it. He reads the name Sharpie’d on the side and snorts, before showing it to you. 

Kevin, scrawled next to the worst smiley face you’ve ever seen. 

“How do you mess up a smiley face?” you laugh. 

“I’m sure he’d be able to tell you.”

You suck your teeth. “God—do you think they’re together again?”

“Kevin and Penelope?”

The trash bag drops to the ground as you flop onto the couch, exhausted. Spencer crushes the cup and tosses it in, standing just in front of you, studying you as he thinks. “I don’t know. Wouldn’t entirely surprise me. They’re pretty good at remaining inconspicuous.”

You hum, slinking lower in the faux-leather. Maybe some friendly chit-chat is in order. Friends ask each other questions, don’t they? “Speaking of inconspicuous relationships… I heard you went on a date.”

He slides his hands into his pockets and picks his words in silence for a moment—you hate that. You hate feeling excluded from whatever internal conversation he’s having. Knowing that he’s measuring how much truth he’ll dole out to you. 

“Who’d you hear that from?”

You track him with your eyes as he takes a seat next to you. 

“Did you?” you ask, ignoring the question—more focused on the stubbled line of his jaw. 

Spencer considers his answer for a moment, head reclined on the back of the couch, charting the glittery paper stars suspended from the ceiling. 

“I did. Two, actually.”

Two dates? With the same person?

“How’s that going?”

He approximates a smile. 

“You’re not being very subtle.”

“I’m just curious. You don’t have to answer.”

Spencer meets your eyes. Studies them in turns, like there’s a secret language etched into the fractals of pigment.  

“I like her,” he decides. And your stomach sours. 

“But you didn’t bring her tonight?”

Spencer rolls his head back toward the ceiling—and very nearly his eyes, as he dryly reminds you, “We’ve been on two dates.”

“If you like her, you should’ve brought here. You could’ve kissed her at midnight and sealed the deal.”

A ditch in the conversation. The perfect depth and width for hiding a body, as something in the air changes. Drops a degree or two. Thickens. 

“What are you doing?” he murmurs, looking back at you and finally putting an end to your game. Your face gets warm. Oops. Too far, maybe. 

“I’m being supportive.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Yes, I am. Is that allowed?”

“You’re sure it’s not surveillance?”

“Yes!”

Even to you, you sound overly defensive. 

“Fine.” A moment passes. He’s staring at you, in this lazy sort of way. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“You didn’t bring anyone either.”

“Well… I’m not seeing anyone.”

It’s embarrassing to admit. You pinch at the fabric of your skirt, worrying the glitter sewn into black like drops of silver. Stars, or beads of rainwater. 

“Why not?”

“Do I need an excuse to be single?”

“Just curious. Is that allowed?”

Evidently the look you cast him then is not as withering as you’d it to be. Not if he’s so unfazed. Still reading you like a familiar book. 

“God, this is frustrating,” he mutters, as if to himself, tongue darting over his lips and frowning like you’re a question he doesn’t have the answer to. Your own brow pinches, ready to be offended. 

“What is?”

“I just… I thought I’d stop wanting to kiss you by now.”

Behind the safety of a bone cage, tucked where he can’t see, your heart does a somersault. It probably shows in the way your spine straightens, the catch of your breath. 

“Oh. I’m… I’m… sorry.”

Spencer cracks a dry smile. 

“You’re sorry? Why are you sorry?”

“Well—I don’t know. Because… I don’t know. it just seems like… the wrong thing to want. You have a girlfriend.”

The softening of his eyes, the tilt of his head, all spell pity. Like you’re naive. 

“That’s not what she is, honey.”

Honey. You try to remember to breathe. To think.

“Then what is she?”

He hums. 

“Not you. As much as I tried to tell myself that was for the best.”

Scratch somersault. Back handspring. Or maybe a round-off. You swallow. Pick at your nails. 

Did you think this into existence? Was all your desire really so loud?

“Spencer…”

“What?”

“That’s… that’s not fair.”

His eyes are melting glass on yours, voice lowered in a way you’ve sorely missed. “How so?”

It takes you a moment to remember yourself. “Because I’m—I’m trying to be better. I’m really trying. I don’t want anyone to get hurt ’cause of me. So if this girl likes you—”

“Angel. Nobody’s getting hurt. She knew I had someone else on my mind.”

“You can’t call me that,” you whisper brokenly. But he’s close enough you can feel his breath. You don’t know how he got close like this—when you gravitated toward him, charmed as a snake by a flute. When the inevitable outcome limited itself to brilliant, disastrous collision. “We can’t do this.”

“Why not?”

“Because… because we’re not together.”

“When has that ever stopped us?”

All your air comes out at once. “This is so stupid.”

“You’re so pretty.” Delicately he cups your jaw. Strokes the tips of his fingers along the hollow of your cheek. “I was thinking about it all night. Noticed the glitter as soon as I saw you. Did Penelope do it?”

“Spencer, please.” Breathless. Pathetic. Desperate for him to put you out of your misery, one way or another. 

His throat bobs. “Come here.”

So you do. You lean in, one hand balanced on his knee, the other on his shoulder, and your lips brush so softly it can’t even be called a kiss. Still it sends a high-voltage shock through your whole body. He tastes like champagne as you kiss him deeper, as his hand wanders to the back of your thigh and hoists you across his lap. The other roots in your hair and your head spins. 

“Missed you so much,” he breathes into your mouth, not even bothering to pull away, or even to stop kissing you really. Mellow ivory and brass do a good job of concealing your soft breaths. Less so the undignified noise you make when Spencer shifts you roughly on his lap to pull you closer. 

“This isn’t a nice thing to be doing on ’Nelope’s couch,” you gasp between kisses, gripping at the front of his shirt like someone’s going to try taking him away from you. He alters his course from your mouth to trail down your neck. Lets fingers dip just beneath the hemline of your skirt until you shudder. 

“Then we’ll stop.”

Your jaw drops in a silent squeak as he nips at a delicate spot on your throat. 

The problem is that with the two of you, there is never any stopping. Not definitively. Never permanently. You can say it as emphatically as you’d like. You can even sort of mean it. But the cosmos has other plans. 

Outside, silent snow falls from a blue-black sky. There is nothing but the headlight glare from the occasional passing car. The popping and crackling of distant fireworks set off by the over-imbibed, ringing twelve o’clock in hours after the bloom of the new year. It must be midnight somewhere, you suppose. 

It’s just like you and Spencer, to be in the wrong place at the right time. It’s like you to slip through time-space cracks until you find each other in the accordion folds of the universe. 

It’s basically tradition.

spoilers: reader kinda cheats on Spencer but the consent there is questionable seeing as she was incredibly intoxicated

if u read this far WOW ily I hope u liked it :D I put blood sweat and tears into this bad boy. also shout-out @aliteralsemicolon for helping me so much with this fic she is a very helpful and willing consultant I think this never would've seen the light of day without her!!!

[yoiisa]

It is possible to write with Blue Lock Bys (Yukimiya, Reo, Rin, Michael, Shidou and Isagi) with a s/o who has high libido. Please😫😈

of course darling hehe (⸝⸝> ᴗ•⸝⸝)

all characters aged up (20+)! Tags: pwp ( ˶ˆᗜˆ˵ ), dirty talk, unprotected sex, p in v, begging, thigh humping (yukimiya), lingerie kink (reo), fingering (rin), oral sex f! receiving (kaiser), car sex, slight degredation (shidou), and body worship (isagi), please proceed with caution as this is smutty!!

➜ yukimiya kenyu would be such a tease with you, but like, in a knowing way ➜ like he'd pretend to jump at the opportunity to sate your appetite, but actions speak louder than words, and he would tease you by continuously putting sex off until you're actually dying for it ➜ he wants you begging for it, because then he can finally take care of you fully, caring for your every need with intense diligence ➜ he's very particular about enjoying every little detail about you, so by teasing you and drawing out your need so much, he thinks it helps him experience everything more intensely ➜ and it most certainly ensures you feel everything more intensely

"Kenyu, please~" you whine as you sit on his lap. "Please..." "What is it baby? he coos softly. It's sarcastic, you know, but still the rumble of his voice is something, and you're so desperate right now you'll take something over nothing any day of the week. Your hips begin to rub against his thighs in an unconscious effort for friction. Your eyes close as you rest your head on his shoulder. A small sigh of relief escapes your lips as Yukimiya allows the ministrations, and a tiny smile pulls at your mouth. At least there's this. Something over nothing, remember that- "Baby, I told you, at the end of this chapter, I'll-" Yukimiya's hand moves to you ass, gripping it tightly, trying to still your hips. "Kenyu, you said that three chapters ago!" your voice is high pitched and almost manic as a particularly sharp sensation of pleasure echoes through your body. You fist his shirt and nuzzle into the crook of his neck. "Mmmmm- please Ken, I . . . I can't take this anymore~" With a sigh, he closes his book. He sets it off to the side and wraps his arms around you, pulling you tighter against him. You begin kissing at his neck and jaw, your tongue darting out to taste his skin. You feel like you're floating, everything about Yukimiya furthering how deep you spiral into a sweet needy mess for him. "Okay, come on," he says sweetly, kissing your temple. "I'll give you exactly what you need my sweet baby." You can only preen at the idea that you're finally getting what you want as he lifts you bridal style from the couch and kicks the bedroom door closed behind you two with his heel.

➜ oh reo mikage my king ➜ i think reo's favorite hobby when it comes to people he cares about is spoiling them rotten, so if you have a high drive, he's all for it, 100% ➜ if you come calling, he'll drop everything for you. ➜ also, bonus! in my mind, this man has a thing for lingerie, so you better fucking believe that this man has an entire section of your closet just dedicated to different sets. ➜ maroon, black, lavender, navy blue, gold, in silk, satin, lace, and whatever else your mind can conjure up. If you can think it, he has probably bought it and fucked you in it ➜ after all, he has the time and the resources, and he's nothing if not generous, so why not make the most of it?

Reo ran his hand over his face, then threading his fingers through his hair. The hour was wearing on him, he could feel the ache settling into his bones. He stands and walks to a chaise in his study, pouring a drink for himself and sipping it. However, he barely gets two sips down his throat before the glass is being forced away from his lips. His eyes widen and he looks down to see you, with your fingers gently pushing at the rim of his glass. You're dressed in a lavender silk robe, the fabric hanging loosely over a peak of lace hugging your skin. His pupils enlarge as he takes in the teasing glimpse and you laugh softly at his expression. "I . . . thought you might be stressed," you say, taking the glass from him and setting it on a table next to the chaise. "I wanted to come help." He's silent for a moment, before a smirk tugging at his lips. A soft blush paints his cheeks and he cups your face lovingly in his hands. "Is that the only reason?" You pout and wrap your arms around his neck, giggling softly. "Hmmm . . . no~" And that's how you end up on the chaise, your legs bent over his shoulder. Your panties are pulled to the side, and your bra is still on, but your robe has been tossed somewhere far behind the two of you. Reo hovers above you, dragging moans and cries of pleasure from your mouth with each deep thrust into you. He's intoxicating, and you can't seem to get enough of him. And as you stare deep into his eyes, you know he feels the same. As you reach your peak for the third time that night, your eyes flutter closed, your back arches, and he welcomes it with a sharp inhale of his own and a kiss pressed against the hollow of your throat.

➜ i feel like rin itoshi's drive isn't the highest thing in the world ➜ like, he enjoys sex and he with you he really enjoys it, but it's never been his priority in the relationship ➜ also I feel like between soccer practices and other responsibilities he gets tired pretty easily ➜ that being said, he does still want to help you out whenever you get needy, so when he's too spent to use his cock, he resorts to his next best thing ➜ or in my opinion, my fav thing about him: his fingers

"Rin!" you gasp, clinging to his body like a madman. His fingers delve deftly inside of you, curling at all the right angles, and sending sparks of pure bliss throughout your lower body. When your hips give a particularly harsh buck, he tsks and grabs your ass with his free hand. "Stop moving so much," he growls. The deep cadence of his voice sends another thrill of pleasure in you and you nuzzle your head deep into neck. "Sorry, 't just feels so good," you mewl. "I love it so much . . . ah~!" A smirk appears on Rin's face, but just as quickly as it comes it vanishes. He licks his lips as he stares down at your disheveled appearance. Your hair is disheveled, and your bare from the waist down. You're not wearing a bra, so he can see the outlines of your chest as it heaves beneath your shirt, which hangs loosely over your frame. When you pull back from his neck, the look in your eyes almost makes him finish right then and there. They glisten with tears of pleasure, and are lidded. He can see the pleasure you're feeling etched into every line of your iris, and love is mixed within that. He feels a tight pull in his chest and he can't help himself from leaning down and catching your lips in his. His tongue immediately delves into your mouth, exploring your mouth. You moan softly into his mouth and he sighs. His fingers don't let up at all, continuing to tease and prod and touch every crevice it can reach. You start to writhe in his arms, but he holds fast, keeping you still. You have no choice but to succumb to his assault on your core. Rin kisses you as you finish on his hand, groaning as you go all sweet and pliant in his hands. When he pulls back, you slump against him like a rag doll and he huffs out a hoarse laugh. As you regain your bearings, he lifts his fingers to his mouth and licks them clean.

➜ michael kaiser operates entirely on his own schedule, so to be honest, if he's not in the mood, you're kinda screwed ➜ but if he is in the mood, YOU are in for it ➜ all his want and desire make your neediness seem like nothing ➜ also, kaiser's got some good ass stamina, so if you set him off, you better pray your drive doesn't fizzle out because this man is getting his fill of you ➜ whether it's on his tongue or on his dick

You squeal as your boyfriend practically chucks you onto the bed. You look over your shoulder and your heart stops beating after you catch a glimpse of the sheer delight on his face. His smile is cocky and powerful and is so goddam sexy. You match his smile and flip onto your back, pushing yourself up on your forearms as Kaiser practically crawls on top of you. Kisses on your mouth turn to kisses on your neck, which turns into kisses along your chest, then your stomach, and before you know it, he's shirtless, you're naked, and his kissing the inside of your thighs. Your hands thread through his hair and he stares up at you, his blue eyes lidded and wanton. His tongue is gentle at first, testing the waters of your arousal, but soon he's lapping at you like a madman. His tongue works wonders on your core, leaving you fully satisfied but still achy for more at the same time. You know it doesn't make any sense, but the "Please" and the "More" still drip from your mouth even as he's delivering everything you've been craving since morning. And he is well aware of the effect he's having on you. You can feel his mouth twist into a smirk against you and it only drives you crazier. Your hands tug at his hair and he hisses, sending sweet vibrations through your core. Your whimpers and moans continue to build in pitch and volume, before finally, you're exploding on his tongue with a sharp call of his name. When Kaiser pulls back, he takes in your mussed appearance with a heat in his eyes and a smirk on his lips. His lips and chin glisten with your fluids. He licks his lips as he settles his hips in between your thighs and gives a sharp grind. "Don't give out on me just yet liebe," he coos. "I'm not done with you yet."

➜ shidou ryusei matches your freak the best on this whole list I think ➜ he will be down for whatever and whenever you want, but also . . . wherever you want ➜ shidou lives for the thrill of life, and chases the high of something new and exciting, so if you're high sex drive comes with promises of that, sign him the fuck up!

"Ryu!" you cry out as he yanks on your hair. The two of you have climbed into the backseat of the car. You're pressed up against the leather of the seats, with his chest flush against yours. You squeal and a slutty smile etches itself onto your face as he licks your neck. "Ryu~ ah . . . oh my god- slow down-ah." "Slow down, huh?" Shidou growls, his lips pulling into a smug smile. "Why~? You were just begging for it a few minutes ago." "I-I know, but- holy shit, you- ah!" You didn't even know it was possible for someone to fuck like this, but here he was. One hand perched on the roof of the car, the other holding the dip of your waist. His face moves from your neck to between the shoulder blades, and he litters kisses there, and sucks bruises down your spine. He travels back up to your shoulder and nips at the skin there, his hips never faltering once in their rhythm. "God I love this little body of yours so much," Shidou whispers hotly against the curve of your ear. "Every single time I see you, fuck, you don't even know how hard you make me." "Mmmmmm," your head tilts back, resting on his shoulder. "I think I do," you whine. "Yeah, can you feel it babygirl? It's all hard and deep inside of you isn't it?" he laughs, the sound sharp and hoarse in your ear. To anyone else, it might be grating, but all it's serving to do right is bridge you closer and closer to the edge. "Fuck! Ryuseiii, I'm gonna- uh! Wait- I, I-!" your eyes go cross and your body shakes with violent tremors. You bite down on your lip to try and keep quiet, but Shidou presses his hand to your lips, prying them open. "Come on now, lemme hear those sweet, sweet- fucking I'm gonna come too. Oh, fuck, fuck, yes. Fuck!" The two of you lean into one another, sweat slicking your bodies as you reach your peak together.

➜ my babygirl isagi yoichi is the easiest to get seduced by you ➜ i had this idea for a fic a long time ago where he comes home and your really needy and it was this whole ovulation type thing, but basically the point boils down to, if you want it isagi will give it ➜ in my mind, he's the most flexible to appeal to whatever type of sex you want, whether it be hard and rough or soft and loving ➜ as we all know he's super adaptable and that carries over during sex, so yay to anyone who's dating him!

Sunlight filters in through the window, the early morning glow giving everything a soft halo to it, including you. You and Isagi are laying on your sides, your chest pressed against his and your leg tossed across his hips. One of your arms are wrapped around his neck and the other trapped between your bodies, your hand intwined with his. A soft blush paints your cheeks and his, and you stare into Isagi's deep blue eyes through your lashes. His strokes are deep and send soft whimpers flowing from your lips. Each whisper of his name only sends Isagi down a path for more, more, more. "Pretty," you whisper, "you look so pretty like this Yoichi, mmm!" He huffs out a dry laugh and shakes his head. Compared to how you look right now- flushed cheeks, dilated eyes, plump lips ready for kissing- he can't imagine how he could even compare to your beauty. You clench down around him and he groans. "You feel so good," he sighs, closing his eyes. His hand squeezes yours and he leans in to nuzzle his nose against yours. "Even this early in the morning . . . how do you always feel so good?" You giggle softly, the sound dissolving into a moan. "Mmmm . . . Yoichi, I love you . . . I love you so much- mmph!" He cuts you off with a firm kiss. He can feel himself getting closer and closer to the end and an embarrassing threatens to escape his lips. For the sake of his dignity, this is the best move. His tongue brushes against yours, and your quick to return his kiss with just as much fervor. He finishes before you, but that's okay. As he says while your panting from the kiss, "It's still early. We have enough time for two- maybe three rounds. Are you okay to keep going?" All you can do is nod, and he continues earnestly, flipping you onto your back and ensuring this time you finish.

a/n: this was a beast to write, especially Shidou. Although I appreciate his freak, I fear I cannot match it as well as I would like lol, so I had to really brainstorm with his to make sure they all didn't just sound the same (˶˃⤙˂˶)

[lostinlovingrevery]

Van i gotta ask…

what do u think Logan would be like when ur on ur period. and im talking about the smutty stuff sjdjjd

OKAY OKAY I GOTCHU

I'm gonna write a fic about this but ill put my thoughts below (it'll give you an idea of what im writing...)

(SMUTTY NASTY PERIOD STUFF BELOW)

(PERIODS AREN'T NASTY BUT LOGAN IS!!!!)

This man is WILD

an absolute menace

period sex doesn't bother him. blood doesn't bother him.

sorry yall be he will eat you on your period. idc if its nasty this is logan nothing gets worse than this man. hes an animal

im sorry but not really sorry but he'll definitely love that extra wetness going on down there

hes extra affectionate, for your sake of course but also periods mean ovulation coming soon. i feel like your hormones are going to set his hormones off. yknow cause. mutant, animal stuff???

any excuse to touch you. but if you want to be left alone he'll do it (he'll go into the corner like an injured animal and frump)

i think he'll love to see the relief on your face when he fingers or fucks you.

will use the "orgasms help period cramps" excuse to get in your pants. I mean sure- he definitely wants to make you feel better, but he also really wants to get in your pants. the smell of your hormones drive him insane.

He won't care about the mess, bed, shower, floor- wherever the fuck. He'll start by being real smooth about it. Wanting to give you a full body massage- you need to relax. You're obviously tired, and sore. His big strong hands can help loosen those such tense muscles, belly massages would feel SO good from him (oh my goooooood pls just imagine it)

Of course, he has ulterior motives. First he has you sitting down, maybe on the edge of the bed to give you a nice neck and shoulder massage- complete with kisses, of course. Convinces you to take your clothes off- to really relax. His hands move down massage your sore breasts, and to be honest you really can't complain. They're warm, gentle. Maybe he'll mess with your nipples a bit and even thought they're sore to the touch the stimulation feels so good at the same time. Maybe you start picking up what hes up to but you wait before you say anything

Then he gets you on your belly, massaging your back. It seems like it went back to being innocent again. Logan is cooing sweet things to you, hands careful in the areas that are touchier than others. moves down to your butt and thighs too. Personally I hurt really bad in my thighs and hips during my period- so a good massage there would be HEAVEN

and then, before you know it- you're back on your back and hes "massaging" between your legs. You can't complain though, his thumb is rubbing over your clit, two fingers buried inside you, gentle in his stroking motions in and out. The feeling brings relief to your cramps- like your body is getting exactly what it wants.

and no one knows your body better than logan.

Don't worry about the messy, he'll clean it up. (and how he cleans it up ill leave it up to yalls imagination....)

It just happens to be an accident when he slips his dick inside you.

You're half asleep, enjoying this so called "massage" from him, that feeling in your belly is wound tight but not quite there. The relief from your cramps is enough to make you happy though- so you let him have his fun. Then you feel the bed shifting, and his pants unzipping. Hes pressing kisses against your neck.

"Yknow darling, I learned something new earlier."

rea;ly, he just wants you to feel better!!! Logan is all about making his love feel safe, protected, happy. What better than being wrapped in his arms while he gets rid of those pesky cramps?????? (while also giving you orgasms

he'll draw orgasm after orgasm out of you. its not even about any of his own pleasure at this point (altho with logan really when is it ever??)- he just loves seeing the relief on your face. thats really all its about. the stretch his cock gives you, relieves that tight feeling going on down there- its almost like he's supposed to fit right in there

will be very gentle about it, checking in on you- however if you want it normal, or rough- he'll happily oblige. Prepare for lots of loving, cheek kisses, wrapped up in warm hugs while he buries himself in you- maybe your sheets are getting ruined but maybe he purposely set out an extra pair for a quick change when things are done (its gonna be awhile. the longer he smells you, the more feral he feels)

trilogy logan i think can be very animalistic over it, or very sweet. or both. both would be good. hes' gritting his teeth while thrusting into you because you smell so damn good and he's trying not to lose control. Muttering sweet things and letting you know he's not going to stop until all those pesky like aches are gone. plays with your boobs too.

old man logan will eat you out. he's old, doesn't really care. its adds flavor. Anyhoo. Thats his go to, fingering and oral. He'll have to shower afterwards cause maybe he gets all messy in his beard but oh well. Knows all the tricks in making you feel good. all the massages too- i mean, you give him massages. gotta take care of each other right? then will make you both a nice meal.

origins logan does everything, including doing it in the shower so he can wash you up after. He's very gentle and sweet, constantly checking up on you. He'll hold you and fuck the daylights out of you until youre good and tired, then draw you a nice warm bubblebath where he'll wash your hair and you both can have nice conversation.

Worst wolverine DEFINITELY AN ANIMAL OVER THIS. I think he'd want to get rough but will hold himself back until you give him the okay. Eat you out, kisses you after. Will fuck you doggy style for hours, nearly breaking the damn bed and pissing off your neighbors.

dofp logan will go missionary on this bitch. bury himself inside you, won't stop till youre literally about to pass out bc your period is giving you bad insomnia and this is solution to tiring you out. i feel like he would use a vibrator on your clit too will stuffing you full of him. double the pleasure amiright. sex in the bath.

70s logan will suck your sore tits for a long time. his hands massaging your achey thighs. if you even complain once about your cramps he's going to have you pinned (or tied up) to the bed and take care of them. great! no cramps! now you can't walk. also will kiss you after eating you out.

2013 wolverine mmm i feel like hes a mix of dofp logan and worstie. a animalistic vibe but considerate. teases you over and over to get you wound up as if you already aren't enough. you'll get your relief soon. its all part of the game.

[cherie-doll]

Can you write a scenario where the reader (non binary) is extremely possessive and touch-starved, always needing physical affection/reassurance from their partner? They get clingy when the partner is busy or distracted, insisting on cuddles, kisses, or just being held.

Your writing is amazing. It would be so cool to see more characters from COD: Ghosts—just a thought, no pressure.

Aw, this is a really heartwarming request! You guys have got some great ideas <3 And tysm! I added a few more characters from cod:ghosts in hopes that you can enjoy reading about them. I didn't add all of them but settled on these, im still not sure if i'll add them to my lineup for future posts but thx for the idea!

!!: not proofread btw

=͟͟͞♡ Price, Ghost, Soap, Gaz, Roach, Alejandro, Rudy, Phillip Graves, Makarov, Keegan, Hesh Walker, Logan Walker, Merrick, König, Horangi, Nikto

‹𝟹 Price can't ever go out in public alone. You get too lonely waiting at home for him, so it's only reasonable you tag along and make him hold your hand or have an arm around you at all times. He doesn't find it one bit annoying, it makes him smile softly every time his hand loosens around yours and you're correcting it. In a way, it's something that makes him proud. You always seeking to feel him is nothing but a pleasure and privilege to him. Which is why he doesn't ignore you when you silently come to him when he's in his office at home. The moment he feels your arms go around his shoulders, he knows it's time to put the paperwork down and let you sit in his lap for some quality time together.

‹𝟹 Simon and you liked to just lay quietly; the soft pattering of rain against the window as you were enveloped in his embrace. The warmth you felt comforting you right now was coming from him rather than the blanket thrown over you. You took a deep breath; basking in this peaceful moment. This evening could not have been spent better had it not been for Simon's phone vibrating. It must have been multiple calls and texts he was getting because it nearly fell off the nightstand. He kept his phone on 'silent' but it irked him to still be receiving notifications. You frowned when you felt him pulling away from you to grab his phone. You immediately felt the cold on your back as he got up. Well, you weren't going to stay and wait for him! You got up, trailing after him like a puppy follows their owner around. He furrowed a brow but you only replied with silence as you took one of his hands. "Is your call that important? Come back to bed with me" Well he wasn't about to say no...

‹𝟹 Johnny always jokes about how you can never keep your hands off of him. And it's true, but not for the reasons other people may think. You deeply value the intimacy of enjoying one another's presence in a tender and caring way. He knows this too, which is why he'll put himself aside and relax when he knows you need it. And you don't like to receive this from anyone else; only him. Which is another reason why he won't ever push you away even when it can be seen as pushy or annoying to others, because where else are you supposed to get that reassurance from? He doesn't mind stroking your hair, at some point even petting your head like a cute pet because it is surprisingly comforting. You are never more at peace than when you get home after an overstimulating day and get some love from your favorite person.

‹𝟹 Kyle knows that when you're extremely anxious for his hold, you're like a magnet that will be attracted to him no matter what he's doing or where he's at. You won't always be so blunt about your needs but he understands it when you just come over and lay on him. No questions asked from his part, he'll stay silent if that is what you need right now. You can lay there as long as you want and he'll give you the kisses and cuddles you need. He even enjoys it when you spontaneously do it, maybe even surprising you with a kiss on the cheek as soon as your face is within reach. You feel relieved when you feel his fingertips graze your skin, so relaxing it lulls you to sleep. You fall asleep and it'll become his sole mission to not move so as to not wake you up. It could be hours later that you wake up feeling like it was the best sleep you've ever gotten.

‹𝟹 Roach is already pretty clingy himself so he turns weak af the second you ask for him to stay in bed a little longer. He'll be silently mumbling about how he needs to get up now, but you so desperately want him to meet your eyes. He's purposely avoiding them, knowing the moment he meets them he'll give in. You tug at his clothes, asking softly in the way that you know will pull at his heartstrings to let you cuddle just a little longer. What's the rush? You can already sense him on the verge of giving in, but still he won't look at you. His heart already pounds just having you call out to him like this. How much more do you yearn for his warm embrace. It takes another moment for him to act carelessly and maybe a little selfishly to dive under the covers again.

‹𝟹 Alejandro loves physical touch as is, but he definitely noticed how you sought it. And it almost felt like instinct for him to start wanting to give it to you whenever you asked. He didn't want you seeking it from anyone else, all you had to do was extend your hand out to him and he'd pull you in and give you all the kisses and embraces you could ever ask for. And what if he's busy and can't get to you? He always leaves reminders of him scattered about for you to use. Since you're so keen on your senses to perceive his love; maybe going to bed with his clothes and hearing his voice over the phone help you fall asleep. He wants to remind you he's still there and willing to give you anything just for you to feel safe. He needs you to feel secured with him, needs it as much as you seek shelter from him. You're perfect for one another.

‹𝟹 Rodolfo had been doing this with you even before you had begun officially dating. Sometimes you'd desperately want touch, so much it disturbed your sleep and no matter whatever you did it didn't work to just keep pushing it down. You would be fumbling with your fingers, asking for him to help you fall asleep. It started small, like holding your hand until you drifted off to sleep. But came the time when that wasn't enough. And him, being the sweet and caring person he is, would not mind occupying that cold and empty spot in your bed if it would give you reassurance that you were safe. Over time that arrangement became permanent and so naturally did it happen. Now you never had to worry or be anxious, even when he was occupied with other matters. He never overstepped or neglected his time with you, knowing his priorities helped him protect the time he had reserved specifically for you.

‹𝟹 Phillip had been away for longer than you had expected. There was something that required his attention; attention that usually went to you. You had held him back, both hands on his arm and with pleading eyes asking if he really had to leave you. His demeanor softened, and how could be possibly say no? You were his weakness, but some things required his care right away. He left with the promise that he'd be back in two hours max. He walked out thinking you'd occupy yourself with something to do, but the reality was that you couldn't focus on anything other than when he'd be back. You kept opening and turning off your phone, hoping a message from him would come through saying he was on his way. You huffed and frequently looked outside. When you finally heard that door open you ran as fast as you could. Phillip barely had a moment to put the snacks he had bought on the way back down before you were running into his arms. You did not let go as he struggled to take off his shoes and jacket. Until he finally sank into the couch did he chuckle at seeing your grip as tight as ever on him.

‹𝟹 Makarov was quite confused the first time you had held onto him. He had gotten up only to find that he couldn't take a step forward without feeling a tugging on his clothes. He looks back to see you sitting up and looking up at him, almost pleading with your eyes for him to do... what? He looked down at you in confusion, his eyes trailing from your hand tightly gripping onto him up to your face that was observing him. You awaited for his reaction. In a way, he liked seeing you clinging onto him, as if it were crucial. He liked feeling like he was needed, that you adored his touches and attention. But he also liked giving it to you. It was adorable to him in a way, your reluctance to let him go even for a moment.

‹𝟹 Keegan sometimes didn't know what to do with you. He could spend his entire day off in bed with you, enjoying the feeling of your skin against his and you'd still refuse to let go of him if he wanted to get up the next morning to go out. You were practically glued to him, whining and complaining if he made any moves to get you off of him. It's not your fault that you couldn't resist the urge to cling onto him when he was right there within your reach!! He would sigh as if it was the most tedious thing ever but on the inside his heart was clenching at seeing how much you needed his touch. You swear you'd go crazy if you weren't able to see or touch him every morning. What helped you sleep at night was knowing that he was right there beside you, holding you.

‹𝟹 Hesh somehow always notices when you're craving his touch but hesitating. Despite you being quite clingy with him, you're hesitant to start it. You don't want to seem so desperate when you so badly wish for it. He chuckles softy and then brings you closer, he watches as your eyes dart away, as if surprised. He knows you're secretly melting on the inside though, but he also feels you slowly opening up to him. You're getting comfortable already; leaning into his touch and resting your head on his shoulder. Even if it's a little embarrassing to admit sometimes, you like to think that he cares so much for you that he notices when you want to be close to him.

‹𝟹 Logan was usually the one asking for affection from you. He liked receiving it almost as much as you. But he felt the way you also rubbed up against him when he would lay his head on your chest, feeling like you needed this more than he did. And he would stay still, hoping it would give you the warm sensations he received from you. Like a cat that knows what its owner needs at the moment, he kept close to you and did not move. He allowed you these moments a lot more frequently and would try to initiate it as much as he could if it made you happier.

‹𝟹 Merrick used to get quite annoyed with it, until he realized how much it mattered to you. It had been a long time since you had felt the comfort from a loved one, and you had also been learning how to ask for it. Once he realized this, he had no trouble giving it to you. It became natural for you to come up to him on evenings when even though he was tired, he'd always leave a spot for you because he knew you'd occupy it. You no longer had to ask him, he knew it by your body language when you wanted to spend extra time with him. Sometimes words didn't even need to be said, all he needed to do was shift his body to fit yours and you'd be content.

‹𝟹 König isn't one to use his words much if he needs to give you reassurance or comfort. And in a way he is relieved when he realizes he doesn't have to do that. Sometimes you startle him when you reach out and take his hands, guiding him to wrap his arms around you. It's like he stops his breathing for a moment to see what you'll do. But once he sees you stop and just let out a sigh showing that you're content with the position you're currently in, he'll try to relax too. He's a bit awkward because he's not sure if you want him to pat you, stroke your cheek perhaps? But he learns overtime that any touch from him is what you want.

‹𝟹 Horangi has no problem with you being all up on him all day long. He doesn't let it interfere in his routine. He can go about his day with you from behind, arms around his waist as he's trying to wash the dishes or get something from the fridge. You'd be fine with it if you weren't so set on getting his attention to come back to you. So it turns into a game where you're calling out to him and asking if he's almost done with his current task. He'll give a reassuring pat on your head and turn his attention back to what he's doing. He's not intentionally ignoring you, he just has trouble keeping still unless he's tired. So for now you'll have to settle with being dragged along behind him until your battery is charged.

‹𝟹 Nikto is competing with you for who can be more clingy. At times, you are both interlocked and neither of you wants to be the first to let go unless you absolutely have to. He enjoys following you around, being your shadow so that he can slip in next to you at any opportunity that arises and get some hugs from you. He just likes holding you, and he wants to feel you do the same to him. It's like you both actively are calling out for one another, and it is impossible to ignore it. With a single glance you can tell when the other needs to be held for a moment, Nikto more specifically implemented this habit between you two. You still tell him when you would like to have a moment with him and he no questions asked will drop what he is doing to take care of you.

[lamentationsofalonelypotato]

@waynes-multiverse

Wayne, as soon as I saw the title I knew I was in for a ride 🤣

Mostly because Florida is my home state and the "florida man" stereotype is not an exaggeration. Let me tell you. The things I have witnessed as someone who worked in retail and the service industry- just ugh.

Because no matter how pretty the scenery looks – sugar-powder beaches and sea-glass tides, slats of the boardwalk bleached bone-white under a honeyed sky – the whole damn state feels cursed. It’s humid enough to drown standing still, and the sand sticks to everything, including parts of him he’s not ready to confront.

Yep, you literally got it down in two sentences 🤣

It’s too hot, too wet, and too damn weird and crazy. Every breath here tastes like sweat, regret, and a hint of swamp water. Florida’s not even a real fucking state. Can’t be. Dean’s convinced it’s a bad trip someone had in the ‘70s that somehow got voted into the union. The sun feels less like it’s shining and more like it’s attacking. Everyone’s either a retiree, a guy named Skip with a neck tattoo of a flaming dice, or some batshit meth-head who thinks they saw Bigfoot behind the Waffle House. Dean hates it with every fiber of his being. Florida is Satan’s back porch.

GIRL I'M DYING 🤣🤣🤣 THIS IS SO REAL and you are so real for this

Focus, he barks at himself. For the love of fucking God, focus, Winchester.

I'm also dying at Dean trying to keep it together. Literally the idea of him sitting there all tense, sweating, maybe his eye twitching a little from too much concentration on anything else. It's so funny to think about- especially with the reader just being completely oblivious to the whole situation, made me cackle.

The reader to Dean the whole time:

Dean literally trying to think of anything else:

The sun beats down, hot and merciless, painting everything in shades of clementine and burning copper. Apricot umbrellas dot the beach like slices of candy. The ocean blinks lazy and endless, a rolling quilt of bottle-green and blue-fire sapphire. Seagulls wheel overhead, shrieking insults.

Also I don't know if I've ever told you this, but the way you write is just so pretty and I am in love!!! 😍 I honestly think I did when I read Time after Time, BUT I'M going to say it again (and scream it from the rooftops).T his little bit of text was just so beautifully put and descriptive as was the entire fic. It was very immersive and from the moment I started reading the first sentence I was completely enthralled. 💚

Dean frowns, looking down at himself: worn boots, jeans, his favorite faded black tee with a sun-bleached flannel thrown over it. Practical. Battle-tested. Entirely inappropriate for beachside Florida.

The image of Dean wearing his usually outfit in a recliner next to some one who is completely full Florida Beach ready is just the funniest thing 🤣 I can so see him giving other men the stink eye as they walk by staring at the reader LOL.

But honestly this entire fic is so SO beautifully written and I LOVED every torturous moment for Dean. That poor (hot) man sitting in FULL flannel sweating, suffering...

Me the whole time:

I'm a terrible person probably, but I don't care, Wayne I absolutely loved this! If you ever decide to write more between this reader and Dean I would be so excited to read it (no pressure at all) 💚

Florida!!!

Summary: One fishy monster hunt, one sweaty afternoon at the beach, and one innocent popsicle – Florida is fucking hell for Dean.

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Reader

Warnings: +18 language and smut in the form of dirty fantasies, severe pining, one idiot in love, humor, Florida, one popsicle, unresolved ending & feelings

Word Count: 2.8k

A/N: My entry for @chevroletdean's 500 Follower Celebration! Congrats again, lovely, and thank you so much for hosting this challenge and creating this awesome moodboard!! I was immediately inspired (and have wanted to write something set in Florida for an eternity). This was perfect and so much fun! 💛🧡🩵

Main Masterlist || DW Masterlist || Tag List

Florida can eat his ass.

Dean’s decided this at least seventeen times today. He has known this little fact since the first time he set foot here at nineteen, chasing a ghoul through backyards full of pink lawn flamingos and chainlink fences.

And Dean doesn’t mean the good kind of eating ass, either. Nope, he means the swamp-ass, sunburned, get-mauled-by-an-alligator kind.

Because no matter how pretty the scenery looks – sugar-powder beaches and sea-glass tides, slats of the boardwalk bleached bone-white under a honeyed sky – the whole damn state feels cursed.

It’s humid enough to drown standing still, and the sand sticks to everything, including parts of him he’s not ready to confront.

And between the humidity thicker than chowder and the scent of fried seafood and moldy flip-flops lingering like a bad decision, every drone-sized mosquito here is carrying at least three diseases and a vendetta. The crime rate also looks like a Mad Libs page: “Florida Man assaults alligator while wearing tutu and high on bath salts.”

It’s too hot, too wet, and too damn weird and crazy. Every breath here tastes like sweat, regret, and a hint of swamp water.

Florida’s not even a real fucking state. Can’t be.

Dean’s convinced it’s a bad trip someone had in the ‘70s that somehow got voted into the union. The sun feels less like it’s shining and more like it’s attacking. Everyone’s either a retiree, a guy named Skip with a neck tattoo of a flaming dice, or some batshit meth-head who thinks they saw Bigfoot behind the Waffle House.

Dean hates it with every fiber of his being. Florida is Satan’s back porch.

And now, thanks to a string of weird drownings at a no-name beach town outside Destin, Dean is trapped in the sweaty armpit of the country, baking alive in jeans, while trying very hard not to stare at you.

Which is impossible.

Because you’re right next to him in a little turquoise lounge chair and a skimpy bikini the color of wild citrus – or tangerine, maybe. You hum a little tune – that stupid Weezer song that only plays on the radio during summer. You kick your feet lazily in the sun, flashing him a smile so bright he’s pretty sure it could get him legally blinded.

The bikini strings are tied in neat bows at your hips, a popsicle melting bright mango-orange between your fingers, and you’re working the thing over like it owes you goddamn money with the most sinful mouth he’s ever had the misfortune of knowing.

All tanned legs and unapologetic sunshine. A vision of temptation under the molten saffron sun.

Dean sweats. Internally and externally. Better than that: He is cooked. Absolutely fried. Every casual motion of yours is branding itself into his frontal lobe forever.

Your tongue flickers out again – pink and wet and glistening – smoothing a drip from the rounded tip, completely oblivious to the fact that you’re currently starring in every X-rated daydream Dean’s ever had.

His vision whites out at the edges.

You hum absently, flipping through the manila folder in your lap. Your voice floats over, sweet as saltwater taffy. “So,” you say, casual and sunny, “are we thinking mer-creature, or like, a shapeshifter with a thing for boats and aquatic cosplay? Or what if it’s a water demon? Like a kelpie, but more murdery?”

Dean makes a strangled sound that’s supposed to be a word but comes out more like a dog’s dying whimper.

You blink at him. Tilt your head. Wait.

Dean clears his throat. “Yeah. Mer-thing. Whatever.”

“Or,” you muse aloud, tongue darting out again to lap at a drip, “maybe it’s like–… like a water wraith? Something that sucks the breath outta your lungs?”

You pop the popsicle out of your mouth with an obscene little smack. Dean’s mouth works soundlessly. Because all he can imagine is you on your knees, tongue slick against him, big eyes wide and innocent while you–

Focus, he barks at himself. For the love of fucking God, focus, Winchester.

Dean swallows hard, dragging his eyes off your mouth and back down to the battered folder in your lap.

This isn’t normal. He’s doomed. Maybe even cursed.

Yeah, that’s gotta be it. He’s probably been hit with a lust spell. Florida is full of weird shit, right? That would explain why he’s three seconds away from dropping to his knees and offering to be your loyal, desperate, sunburnt servant.

But then again, this isn’t entirely new either.

You’ve been driving him nuts for goddamn years. Laughing too loud at his dumb jokes. Sitting too close in motel beds when you both casually watch movies. Calling him Winchester in that honeyed voice that makes him feel like he’s being dared to fuck up and kiss you.

And still, he’s always been good. Good at pretending. Good at stuffing all that want somewhere deep under rib and bone and battered leather jackets.

But this? This is fucking torture. This is some bikini-clad Greek tragedy, starring one dumbass in boots on a beach who can’t stop fantasizing about licking saltwater off your thighs.

He should be thinking about the case. About that water-witch or whatever the fuck they are hunting this time. He should be thinking about hex bags and salt rounds, not about how your bikini bottoms ride up just a little when you stretch your arms over your head–

Stop it!

You lean forward to show him something on a photocopied page and tap a newspaper clipping about the latest victim – some unlucky fisherman who swore he saw a “golden-scaled woman” before getting dragged into the shallows.

But the little bow at your hip shifts, skin glinting like bronzed sugar under the clear sky. Dean makes a small, wounded noise in his throat, and his brain immediately supplies another vivid fantasy:

You perched in his lap, that bow coming untied with a lazy pull of his fingers, your thighs slick and hot against him, the ocean thundering in the tropical background while you ride him so slow it borders on a religious experience.

He blinks against the burning sun, feels himself slipping again, heat and blood rushing downward. The image hits him so hard he has to adjust himself in his jeans, subtle as a heart attack.

His dick twitches miserably.

He slouches lower, trying to think of anything not filthy – taxes, Sam’s hair care routine, the time Bobby caught him naked in the kitchen with a meatball sub – but it’s useless.

“Dean? You even listening?” you ask, laughing, poking his leg with your sandy toes.

Dean grunts something noncommittal that might be English, jaw clenched so tight he’s surprised his teeth don’t shatter. He tries to answer. Really, he does. But the words get bottlenecked behind the visual of you dragging your tongue slowly up the side of the melting treat.

You bite your lip, thoughtful, tapping the end of the popsicle stick against your mouth. “Maybe it’s something worse,” you continue. “Like a siren who doesn’t seduce you to death, just… I dunno. Sucks you off and leaves you floating.”

Dean’s soul physically leaves his body.

You tilt your head, grinning wickedly. “You want me to suck you off too, Dean?”

Time freezes. The ocean quiets. The gulls still midair. Dean’s pulse slams loud and dizzy in his ears. His world narrows to you, your suntanned legs, the glint of sea-salt crystals on your skin, your bright and glistening mango lips.

Jesus fucking Christ.

You just–

Did you–

He stares at you, mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. “Huh? What?” he croaks, voice pitched embarrassingly high.

You blink at him, then repeat – slowly, sweetly, “I said: Should we check if it sucks the breath outta people like a leech?”

“Uh, yeah,” he croaks. “Suckin’. Life. Outta dudes. Totally.”

You stare at him a second longer, suspicious, before shrugging and going back to the file.

Dean exhales, trying to will his hard-on into submission through sheer force of shame. You’re systematically dismantling his ability to think in complete sentences. His entire brain is on fire.

His internal organs shut down one by one. He drops his head back against the lounge chair, squeezing his green eyes shut. He is too old, too tired, and too desperately in love with you for this shit.

The sun beats down, hot and merciless, painting everything in shades of clementine and burning copper. Apricot umbrellas dot the beach like slices of candy. The ocean blinks lazy and endless, a rolling quilt of bottle-green and blue-fire sapphire. Seagulls wheel overhead, shrieking insults.

Dean’s mind drifts again.

He imagines dragging you down into the frothy surf, your hands curling into his hair, your giggles swallowed by the sea.

He imagines you mouthing at his jeans, impatient and greedy, while the sun sets behind you in a tangle of electric clementine and bruised lapis skies.

He imagines you kneeling between his legs, licking a stripe up the underside of his cock like you’re taste-testing it, humming around him, sweet and filthy and happy about it.

He imagines you under the boardwalk, hips rocking against his like the waves, bikini strings snapping loose with frantic fingers.

He imagines you bent over the hood of the Impala, bikini tangled around your ankles, hands bracing against the hot metal while he rails you like a man possessed.

He imagines your thighs caging his head, that same lazy, teasing look on your face, and him savoring your taste of sugar and salt and heat, while the whole crazy, humid, goddamn state of Florida spins off its axis.

“You’re quiet,” you chirp, tossing a sideways glance at him. “Florida getting to you?”

Dean clears his throat, gruff. “Yeah. Somethin’ like that, sweetheart.”

You raise your sunglasses, peeking at him over the frames. “You know, Winchester, you’re the only guy on this beach dressed like he’s about to sell used beach towels out of the back of a van."

Dean frowns, looking down at himself: worn boots, jeans, his favorite faded black tee with a sun-bleached flannel thrown over it. Practical. Battle-tested. Entirely inappropriate for beachside Florida.

“First of all,” he says, lifting a finger, “this is classic Americana ruggedness. Chicks dig it.”

You lean your head back and laugh, all bright and cruel. “You’re sweating through your ‘Americana ruggedness.’”

Dean scowls, dripping like a busted fire hydrant. “I told you. I’m not gonna wear fucking board shorts like all the other frat boy idiots here.”

You laugh again, the sound bright as bells, and Dean’s heart trips hard enough to hurt.

“You’re gonna die of heatstroke,” you tease. “Right here. Buried in Florida sand. Some old lady’s gonna find your corpse and knit you a ‘Bless Your Heart’ sweater.”

He snorts a chuckle. “I’ll haunt this beach just to piss you off.”

“Promise?” you ask, giving him a cheeky wink.

Dean is about five minutes away from lighting himself on fire. And honestly? Florida would probably consider it normal Tuesday behavior.

Your gaze drifts out to the ocean beyond your feet and sandy calves with a blissful little sigh. “It’s kinda pretty, though, isn’t it?”

Dean looks at you – skin kissed by flame-petals and sunset sugar, hair blowing soft in the briny breeze, popsicle stick clutched between your fingers like a crime scene weapon.

Yeah. Pretty.

Pretty much the goddamn end of him.

“Victim said he saw orange,” you murmur thoughtfully. “Bright, like-… like a koi? A clownfish?”

Dean is about to make a dumb Finding Nemo joke when you lick a bead of melted popsicle off your wrist, slow and absentminded.

And all Dean wants is to dig a hole right here in the sugar-white sand and bury himself alive in this cursed, gator-infested sandpit.

“Dean?”

He snaps back to reality so hard he gets whiplash. “What?” he wheezes.

You arch an eyebrow. “I said, should we check the tide charts? Maybe the creature only comes out during low tide.”

Dean coughs into his fist, face hotter than the sun overhead. “Uh, sure. Tide charts. Definitely. Research.”

But all he can think about is those legs locked around his waist, sand clinging to your thighs as he fucks you into the waves. You moaning into his neck, salty and sweet, fingers yanking at his shirt like you can’t stand to have him dressed another second.

You nibble at the edge of the popsicle, teeth scraping the melting mango sheen, and Dean watches helplessly as a single sticky bead runs down your wrist.

He fantasizes about leaning over, licking it off your skin, trailing his mouth up your arm to your shoulder, your throat, your mouth. He imagines you gasping against him, laughing breathless.

He fantasizes about hauling you out of that chair and onto his lap, mouth on yours, sticky hands sliding under the knot of your bikini top, tugging until you’re bared for him and only him, sunshine turning your skin to gold, and–

Greatly frustrated, Dean runs a hand down his freckled face. Why the fuck can’t he bring himself to stop? You’re unraveling him atom by atom.

But then, the fucking frozen treat drips again, and you lean forward to catch it with your mouth, lips wrapping tight around the end. Dean watches you hollow your cheeks slightly when you suck, head tilted thoughtfully like you’re considering footnotes and not absolutely wrecking his entire being. You pull the melting syrup back again with a soft, wet pop.

At this point, he wants to fucking throw himself into the ocean and let the sharks tear him apart like Hellhounds. He’s pretty sure his soul leaves his body, too.

He grips the arms of his chair so hard they creak in protest, knuckles turning white as he’s trying to tether himself to reality and not his fantasies.

Florida is hell.

You are hell.

And he’s a good man being punished for crimes he hasn’t even committed yet.

Dean shifts in his chair, crossing one leg over the other like that’ll hide the state of emergency going on in his jeans. He’s surprised no one here has asked any questions yet or called fucking 911.

Meanwhile, the world keeps spinning. The ocean rolls in lazy, glassy sheets of turquoise and teal. The sun licks liquid gold down your shoulders. The salt air curls the loose strands of your hair into a halo. And Dean – miserable, desperate, wildly in love – watches you polish off the last inch of your popsicle, tongue flicking the stick clean.

“Earth to Dean,” you sing-song, waving a hand in front of his face and kicking sand lightly at his boots.

Dean jerks back into consciousness. “Yeah?”

“Should we check out the marina witnesses after this?” you ask, tossing your popsicle stick into the trash bucket next to your chair.

Before he can say something catastrophic (like “Marry me right now” or “Please put your mouth on me, I'm begging”), Sam comes jogging up the beach, waving his phone like a savior in flannel.

“Got a lead! Marina worker said he saw something with gills and claws dragging people under.”

Dean launches out of his chair like his ass is on fire. A man escaping execution.

“Awesome. Let’s roll!” he barks, voice too loud and way too eager.

You tuck your notes into your beach bag and sling it over your shoulder, grinning wide and bright as the sunset. The same grin that ruined him long before the bikini did.

You hop up beside him, laughing, brushing sand off your thighs with maddening slow sweeps, and Dean bites back a groan so hard it nearly gives him a hernia.

“You sure you’re okay, Winchester?” you ask, teasing. “You looked like you were about to pass out there for a second.”

“I’m great,” Dean lies, voice strangled, letting the sun melt him into roadkill. “Peachy.”

“You sure? Seriously, you’re a walking heatstroke PSA,” you quip, hip-bumping him lightly as you fall into step beside him.

Dean coughs. “'M fine, sweetheart. Just… dehydration. And Florida. And mermaid murder.”

As you brush past him, the smell of your sunscreen and coconut shampoo punch him square in the gut. Dean follows, trying very, very hard not to watch the way your hips sway like you own the whole damn coastline.

He thinks about how easy it would be to slip his arm around your waist, how natural it would feel to lean in, to kiss you like he’s wanted to for years. Instead, he shoves his hands deep into his jeans pockets and marches grimly through the sand, already planning a quick, ice-cold shower and about eight beers after this job’s done.

Yeah, Florida is one hell of a drug, but you’re the one that fucked him up.

Okay, I may have had way too much fun with torturing Dean here. Forgive me, guys 😂☀️🏝️

Hope you enjoyed this one! 🩵

Tag List Pt. 1:

@alwaystiredandconfused @xlynnbbyx @lyarr24 @deans-spinster-witch @blackcherrywhiskey

@deansbbyx @foxyjwls007 @ladysparkles78 @roseblue373 @zepskies

@agalliasi @yvonneeeee @hobby27 @iamsapphine @globetrotter28

@lori19 @lacilou @feyresqueen @suckitands33 @onlyangel-444

@syrma-sensei @perpetualabsurdity @yoobusgoobus @jessjad @dayhsdreaming

@hunter-or-the-hunted @k-slla @just-levyy @mrsjenniferwinchester @illicithallways

@muhahaha303 @ultimatecin73 @nancymcl @leigh70 @brightlilith

@nesnejwritings @samslvrgirl @xx-spooky-little-vampire-xx @fromcaintodean @barewithme02

@impala67rollingthroughtown @star-yawnznn @spnaquakindgdom @thej2report @americanvenom13

@lamentationsofalonelypotato @supernotnatural2005 @stoneyggirl2 @kr804573 @m0e0v0v

[psformybss]

could u write an interview fic w drew n an actress reader or costar

Wired Chaos

drew starkey x actress!reader

warnings: sarcastic chaos, emotional exposure, lie detector mess

an: i had so many ideas but i decided to do a wired interview because i honestly love these. i went a little too extra with this one tho and it’s lowkey chaotic af.

You’re not nervous.

You’re just strapped to a machine that monitors your pulse, breathing, and capacity for deception, sitting across from your real-life boyfriend-slash-former nemesis while cameras roll and a complete stranger watches for signs of romantic weakness. Totally normal. Very chill.

Drew’s already grinning like he’s been waiting his whole life for this. His legs are sprawled out in that irritatingly confident way, and he looks like someone who definitely still texts “u up?” for fun.

“Try not to lie,” he says, tilting his head. “I hear the machine hates liars.”

You blink once, slowly. “Good luck, then.”

The technician gives a thumbs up. The camera starts rolling. You resist the urge to roll your eyes so hard they leave orbit.

It begins politely. Names. Roles. Basic stats.

Then Drew gets cocky. “Would you say I’m your favorite cast member?”

“No.”

The needle stays flat.

He gasps. “Cold-blooded.”

You smile sweetly. “You’re top five.”

“There are six of us.”

“Exactly.”

Your turn.

“Did you or did you not call my character ‘forced’ before ever speaking to me?”

Drew shifts. “Allegedly.”

The machine screams LIE like it’s offended on your behalf.

You hum. “Interesting.”

“In my defense,” he says, “you walked into that readthrough like you’d already fired half the writers.”

“And you looked like you hadn’t slept since 2017.”

Someone off camera chokes. You don’t look. Drew’s trying not to smile. He’s failing.

You get off track quickly.

“Be honest,” he says. “You rehearsed your Truth or Dare roast, didn’t you?”

You pause. “Maybe.”

The machine beeps loud enough to make the intern flinch.

Drew laughs like he’s just caught you cheating on a test. “Knew it.”

“You told the entire table that I looked like a ‘girlboss-themed Bond villain.’”

“Yeah, and that was improv.”

“That’s what concerns me.”

You try to sabotage him next.

“Did you know you liked me when you sent that stupid meme about Rafe needing therapy and a father figure?”

He stares. “No comment.”

BEEP.

You press your lips together. “Joseph Andrew Starkey. You caught feelings over a shitpost.”

He mutters, “It was a good meme.”

It spirals from there.

“Did I annoy you during season two?”

“Yes.”

“Do I still?”

“Yes.”

“Are you in love with me?”

“Shut up.”

Truth.

You raise both brows. He looks like a man deeply regretting his life choices.

“Say it again?” you ask.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’ll make it your ringtone.”

He’s not wrong.

Eventually, the technician cuts in, trying to regain order. You and Drew both ignore him completely. Someone behind the camera whispers, “Just let them go.”

You’ve lost all structure now. It’s just chaos and bad decisions.

“Have you forgiven me for the hoodie I stole in Atlanta?”

“Which one?”

He closes his eyes like he’s praying.

“Would you trust me to act opposite Timothée Chalamet?”

He blinks. “Absolutely not.”

“Why?”

“Because you’d fall in love and I’d have to fight him.”

“…You think you could win?”

A long pause.

“…Emotionally? No.”

You nod solemnly. “That’s fair.”

Somewhere around the fifteen-minute mark, you stop remembering this is for Vanity Fair. That millions of people will see it. That you’re both supposed to be promoting a show and not emotionally exposing yourselves on camera like two feral raccoons in love.

Drew looks at you like he always does—like you’re either going to kiss him or ruin his life. (It’s always been both.)

You cross your legs, lean back, and say, “So… still think I was a bad fit?”

He smiles, slow and sheepish. “No.”

Truth.

You lean forward, elbows on the table, voice low. “Did you fall for me before or after I told you to grow up on set in front of the sound guy?”

He grins. “Right then.”

Truth.

You hum, pleased. “Knew it.”

When it’s over, you both stand at the same time. The technician is sweating. The producer looks like he needs a drink. The footage will need a thousand disclaimers.

Drew bumps your shoulder with his. “You gonna be nice to me now?”

You eye him. “Define ‘nice.’”

He leans in, smirking. “You’ll text me later.”

You scoff. “You’ll text me first.”

He shrugs. “Yeah. Probably.”

The machine would call that the truest thing he’s said all day.

[rexhya]

any of your chosen oc’s who fancy reader, on valentine’s day, receive a typed love letter and their favourite chocolate —- of course they’re quick to assume that it’s reader right ? same initials marking the end lines ?! the same quiet, unassuming reader who barely holds eye contact with them telling them yes ! i love you too !!! but oh actually it’s NOT them, just someone with the same initials.. watch chosen oc go crazy over thatLMAOO

(tldr - [character] crushes on y/n, thinks they like them back but it’s a misunderstanding]

yandere!loser who is exceedingly when he receives a letter on valentine's day, it read the sweetest words he could practically imagine your voice he read it

Dear Claude,

I like you a lot! I write this letter to you in hopes you receive it and can return my feelings as well.

— Love, [XX]

Claude is in pure disbelief, he immediately writes back and says yes, slipping the note straight into your locker with his number on it, desperately waiting for a text, he never gets ones. (Aww, your problably just shy...right?)

The next day he's even more confused when you walk right past in in the hallways, did you not see him when he waved?

He trys again to catch you attention in the lunch room, you're sitting with your friends on the complete opposite side of the room when he walks the shameful distance to your table to ask you why you've been ignoring him.

Your friends get quiet not so subtly laughing at the image of Claude and his baggy clothes, but he's used to others and there comments, it was only you he cared about.

"That's not my handwriting, I didn't write that." you deadpanned, slapping the arm of your friend who began a trail of laughing voices that rung in Claudes ear. Tears pricked at his eyes as he exited the lunchroom.

"Oh, yeah, right, that totally makes sense. This doesn't even look like your handwriting." you save Claude the embarrassment and direct his attention to a girl who Claude now noticed was looking at him, "I think this came from her, Claude, sorry about that."

Claude jumped as you placed an hand on his forearm. You knew his name? He didn't have it in him to ask as he walked towards the tabled where the girl was sitting, her eyes visible lit up as he walked over, but he wasnt here to accept a confession.

"You, what's your name?"

"My name? It's-"

"Actually I don't care, because it doesn't matter. Don't ever consider contacting me again you hear me? Do you know how embarrassing it was to see her look at me so pitifully? Like I was a lost kid without his mommy?"

"I–"

"Fuck off, [Name] is the only person i'll ever want."

✦ ✦

Later that evening Claude stalked your social media pages as comfort, you looked so beautiful it made him more angry when he thought of that girl and how she tries to come between you two.

The only goid thing that had come of today was the fact you knew him, i mean you did have 3 classes together but you'd never looked his way, he had no idea. Oh god the way you'd said his name made him feel so hot inside.

Claude, Claude, Claude he was very aware of the rising boner he had from replaying the sound in his mind.

To his surprise he receives a message and lo' and behold its from you. He practically screams at the sight, and with shaky hands clicks to respond.

hey, how did it go?

He's confused, if you were asking how he was feeling he felt great, was the message meant for someone else? He clenched his hands at the thought, of course it wasn't. You had texted, him. He wouldn't miss the chance.

did what go?

Much to his delight you reply immediately.

you and XXXXX duhhh, are u guys dating now or what?

He scowls at the thought of the girl.

No, it was playing a prank lol

awwe, that's too bad, anyone would beclycky enough to date you 😕

Claudes eyes bulged from their sockets, his nails clicking away at a response. What were you implying, maybe you were in love with him after all?

fghdsasf, lol uhm yeah. i could say the same for u xx

Xx, God he has to marry you.

awe thx!! anyways i'm gonna be honest tge reason why i was asking is bc my friend thinks ur cute..i was wondering if she could have ur number?

He's accidentally smashed the computer before he gets a chance to respond.

[dragonnarrative-writes]

‘Generative AI invites users to bypass mindfully engaging with the physical act of creating’ this hit me like a bag of fucking bricks, you’re a gem darling

I've been thinking about this again, and I want to expand.

A lot of us look at writing or making art as focused on the end goal. The point seems to be that final, publishable draft, the thing that makes us look at it and say "yeah, that's it! that's the idea, the feeling, i've captured it!"

But in our world of instant gratification, the sense of satisfaction involved with the process is diminished. The actual practice of creating, and learning how to create, has been framed as the thing "keeping" you from reaching the goal. It's almost a punishment - the time and effort is a cost to pay for an end product.

So of course people would try to reduce the time and effort. They think they're saving something by doing it. But the time and effort saved come at the cost of fun and connection and physical satisfaction.

This isn't a surprise. A lot of the things that are "good" for us have been muted and dulled and repackaged for "convenience" or "maturity" or a demonstration of "natural skill."

The easiest comparison I can make is movement. How many of us would look forward to moving if we were playing low-stakes kickball, or taking a walk and chatting with friends, or splashing and laughing in some water? Who remembers Pokemon Go summer, and how people were out and about? And how many of us have ever felt anxious, uncomfortable, or discouraged by the very idea of hopping on a treadmill or going to the gym? For a lot of us (me included) going to the gym feels like working toward a goal, not an actually fun time for its own sake.

Writing, in my experience, can be enjoyable as an action, not just a means to an end. I like writing! I love putting pen to paper, and I love the purple ink I use. I love my dot grid notebook, I love writing in messy cursive and rediscovering my penmanship. I love typing on my computer (except when my E key sticks when I'm typing really fast), and I like using scrivener and figuring out the music for the story I'm working on. I love using a thesaurus to look up just the right word. I love sharing a first draft with my partner, my boyfriend, my friends, and asking them "does that make sense?" so we can all laugh and screech and cackle. I love looking back on some of my writing and saying "what was I thinking????" I love rediscovering some of my favorite lines and saying "yeah, that? that slaps."

When you have generative ai make your process more "efficient," you don't learn what physically feels good about writing. You don't figure out what gives you those warm fuzzies, what makes you smile about your own action. And you deserve to feel good in that way.

[megs-1800]

I was wondering if you could do some dad Mason of twin babies (boys). And take them for the first time to the family trip the Mount's take with Jazz, Lewis (and all of them) in Greece (sorry, I still can't get over Mason with his family in Greece 🤣) and that's where for the first time the babies take their first steps.

Sorry for my bad English, I'm Latin American.

Paradise

Notes: So sorry its taken me so long to complete this. I had lost so many ideas and really struggled to write. Please send me some more requests!

Summary: Its your twins 1st holiday with the Mount.

Pairings: Mason Mount x Reader

Word Count: 4.9k

Warnings: Fluff and Smut

I learn oven the bed as I zip up the side of my suitcase, I feel a pair of arms wrap around my frame pushing me further onto the bed. “Uhmm I like this position”. Mason mutters breathing onto my neck. I push him off of me and turn around so I am pressed face to face with him.

“Well unfortunately we don’t have time for this position as we are getting picked up in an hour”. I say throwing my arms around his neck and place a small kiss to his lips. I watch him pout as I pull away.

“Well we are all packed and ready to go so we have an hour, so do you know what we can do in an hour? Well we probably could do it twice?” Mason raises his eyebrows and smirks. I giggle at his enthusiasm.

“Yeah well me and the twins are packed but you” pointing over to his empty suitcase in the corner of the room “ are not packed. So you have an hour to pack and get everything sorted. If you packed last night like I asked maybe we would of have time for that now ” I wined which caused Mason to huff in annoyance and roll his eyes. I watch him start throwing things in his suitcase and I walk out the room into the twins room to continue getting them ready.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Oh y/n!” Debbie screams as she wraps her arms around me. We agreed to meet the family at the airport so everyone can come separately as its so much easier with the kids. “And how are my gorgeous grandbabies?” she asks crouching down to the double pushchair and undoes Elijah and wraps him up, Jaz is in her shadow and gets Ezra out and swings him around. “I cannot believe how big they are getting”. Jaz states placing a kiss to my cheek.

“I know it feels like yesterday I gave birth” reminiscing of that day a year ago.

“Yeah tell me about it. I am still traumatised at how hard you were holding my hand”. I feel Mason approach me as he wraps his hands around my waist from behind.

“I had to push a whole baby out of me Mason next time you try it”. I pull away from Mason’s grasp giggling.

“Next time yeah?” Mason cocks his eyebrow. I shake my head and roll my eyes. All Mason has spoke about since we had the twins was when the next one is coming, but right now I am happy with my boys.

I go to say hello to everyone, it’s the first time I am going away with the whole family at once as Stacey and her gang have flown over from Australia. I have been for weekends away with the others but nothing this far. We are off to Mykonos and I cannot think of a better venue for Elijah and Ezra’s 1st holiday.

Mason has arranged a private plane for us as we thought it would be easier then trying to get Mason through the airport. We prepare for take off, I have Elijah and Mason has Ezra in arms as we both give them a bottle to try and equalise their ears. They are so well behaved the whole flight, they haven’t cried once and they are sleeping away, I look at the time and we should be preparing to land anytime soon. I quickly make my way to the bathroom before the seatbelt sign comes on, once finished I open the door and almost scream as I wasn’t expecting Mason to be stood there.

He pushes me inside and locks the door behind “What are you doing?” I question watching his eyes darken. He walks towards me trapping me between the sink and his chest. I can feel his hot breathe on my neck making the hairs stand up.

“Well I wanted to give my insanely hot girlfriend a good start to her holiday and since you were being mean earlier I suppose here will have to do”. Mason begins nibbling on my neck and I can feel my body melting into him.

“Well I have always wanted to join the mile high club” I giggle and move his face to mine as I connect our lips. Mason deepens the kiss as I can feel his tongue darting around my mouth causing me to moan into the kiss.

Mason pulls away and looks me in the eyes “you are the most gorgeous women in this world. I am so lucky” I can feel my heart melt as he connects our lips again. I pull Mason closer into me and I can feel his length harden between us. Mason reaches down underneath my joggers and pushes my thong I am wearing out the way and starts making circles on my clit, I lay my head back on the mirror as I let the pleasure overwhelm me.

I am taken out of my trance by a knock at the door, Mason suddenly detaches himself from me. “I don’t want to know what you are both doing in there but they are preparing for landing so you both need to return to your seats” we hear Lewis shout from the other side of the door. I let a large groan out as Mason replies saying we were coming. We haven’t been intimate in a while so our bodies needed this. “I promise to finish this off later” Mason winks and I follow him out the bathroom.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Oh my god this place is unreal!” I gleam as I walk around investigating the villa. I place Ezra down on the floor as he begin crawling away quickly “We need to keep an eye on them” I turn to Mason indicating how quickly they are crawling now.

“We are on it!”  shouts Mila as she chases after the boys which causes me and Jaz to smile. Mason helps me carry all of our suitcases up stairs into our room. “Wow!” I am gobsmacked at the size of the room, its absolutely breathtaking with an unreal view of the sea on the balcony. “I still cannot get over things like this. You treat me too good”. I place a kiss to Mason’s cheek as I move the twins suitcase to the side of the room with the cot.

“Well only the best for you!” he smiles as he places a kiss to my neck.

“Right 40 minutes and we meet back down here for dinner!” Tony shouts. I quickly run downstairs and grab the twins. I have created a little playpen for them in our room where I know they cannot escape whilst I get ready.

“You go shower and start getting ready I will sort the twins out as I know its going to take you forever! Well as me on the other hand just need to have a quick shower and I am done”. I start to undress as I watch Mason’s gaze monitor all of my movements.

“Well beauty takes time, its not my fault that you look that unreal and take 2 secs to look like that”. I giggle as Mason smacks my bum as I turn around to make my way to the bathroom.

I turn the shower on and let the warmth consume my body, I turn my back to the shower door and run my hands through my hair and all the tiredness from travelling is fading away. I complete my shower routine as I am about to leave I suddenly feel a body on the back of me, I jump at first and then relax myself as soon as I know its Mason.

“W-what are you-“ Mason cuts me off with a kiss and I cannot help to look at his naked body which is starting to have flex of water run down his chest. Still now it makes me nervous. “You are staring sweetheart” I chuckles.

“Well can you blame me?” I wrap my arms around his neck and bring him closer. The kiss is deep and passionate, both us fighting for air. All I know at this moment in time is I need this, I need him. I reach down and feel Mason’s dick harden underneath my grip.

“f-fuck” he moans into neck as I continue my pace. “that feels so fucking good” Mason continues to moan which is fuelling me to carry on.

“Mase can I borrow your- whoah” I hear Lewis shout, we quickly pull away from eachother.

“What the fuck are you doing?!” Mason shouts quickly pulling a towel around his waist and chucking me one so I can do the same.

“I didn’t see anything I promise!” Lewis laughs putting his hands up in surrender now with his back to us. “Believe it or not me and Myles forgot to pack body wash so could we borrow yours until we can go shopping tomorrow please? You two really cannot keep your hands off eachother, just be grateful it was me that walked in and not mum”. Lewis turns around now that we have signalled that we are covered. Mason chucks him his body wash and Lewis quickly runs out the room. I shake my head knowing that Lewis has killed the moment.

I gesture to Mason that I am going to start getting dressed which he groans and goes for a shower probably knowing he is going to be taking a cold shower. I get the twins ready and start getting ready myself, Mason walks out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist and I have to stop myself staring with the small specks of water running down his toned chest. “Take a picture it will last longer” Mason winks. I quickly get my phone out and snap a quick picture of him which makes him chuckle.

“Well you said it” I state in defence. I finish getting myself ready and opted for a maxi skirt and a plain white tshirt I can tuck in for the 1st night, I give myself a once over in the mirror which I feel Mason come up behind me and snake his arms around my waist and nestles his face in my neck and I feel him breathe me in.

“You look unreal” he squeezed my hips and placed some kisses to my neck. Which I melt into his arms. That’s when the door suddenly flies open. “For fucks sake can’t you two keep your hands to yourself for 5 minutes” Lewis burst through the door joking.

“Well its our room bro so maybe if you could learn to knock that will be great”. Lewis doesn’t reply and him and Myles invite themselves into our room and flop onto our bed and pick up the boys. Mason rolls his eyes and we make our way downstairs to the join the rest of the family.

We make our way to a little Trevena near us, the family basically takes up the whole of the restaurant where we have such a big table. I have decided to sit away from Mason and sit with the girls as its been ages since I have had a proper catch up with Mason’s family.

It’s a night full of laughter and good vibes, its nice to get away from reality for a week. Once dinner is finished the boys are asleep in their pushchair and all the other kids are getting tired which I think us adults are feeling as well as it’s been a busy day travelling. We all tiredly walk back to the villa. “I cannot wait to go to sleep” I state flopping on the bed. Mason and I each take a boy and get them ready for bed slowly trying not to wake them and place them in their cot.

I complete my bedtime routine and Mason and I curl up in bed, I can feel something start to poke into my bum as he is spooning me. “Mase as much as I would love to be doing this right now I am shattered I can hardly keep my eyes open” I groan and I hear Mason wine a little but I know deep down he is as tired as me. He turns over so I can spoon him and we let sleep overcome us.

I wake up to sun shining through our room, I stretch but feel disappointed to not feel Mason’s warmth next to me. I sit up and Mason and twins are no where to be seen. I sleepily trudge over to the balcony and see Mason and Jaz in the pool each with one of the boys whilst some of the other family watch. I smile as I feel my heart melt as I watch Mason interact with them, “Wave to mummy!” He shouts to the boys as they spot me, which causes me to smile more.

I quickly go back inside and decide what to wear, I wanted to bring swimming costumes with me as I am still a bit insecure about the last bit of my mum tummy that I just cannot seem to shift but Mason made me bring bikinis as he said that he loved my body and if anything he loves it more now, to be honest he has been a lot more touchy since we had the boys, he always makes me feel amazing especially when I am at my lowest he always finds a way to make me feel better.

I opted for a little blue bikini and a sky blue overdress to put over the top and make my way downstairs. Mason is stood in the kitchen in his swimshorts dripping water everywhere. “I made you an ice coffee” he passes me the glass and places a small kiss to my lips I thank him and follow him outside. I settle on a sunbed with my ice coffee enjoying the view of Mason and his family playing around with the children in the pool. I am going to love this holiday.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Oh my god I think its happening!” I shout to the others bringing their attention to the boys who have just started to stand up. This wasn’t new they were able to bring themselves to a standing position however they were too unstable on their legs. Ezra stands up first bringing himself to stand using the sunbed and then Elijah stands up too the same way both holding hands, they look directly at me. At this point Mason is watching apprehensively in the pool with a couple other of his family members gathered round us with their phones. I get my phone out, to record. “Come on babies come to mummy” I encourage and hold my hands out. We all watch excitedly as they take their 1st unstable steps. I feel my eyes water in proudness as my babies walk, we all cheer as they reach my arms and I pick them both up. “You are getting so big my baby boys” I gleam in proudness as Mason jumps out the pool and wrap his arms around us all, right now I really don’t care that he is soaking us I am just happy how good everything is right now.

“I love you all” Mason smiles kissing me and then places a small kiss to both their heads.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Right its our last night here I say parents night out!” Mason shouts from the patio area to all the others. I can see all the adults debating it.

“Not going to lie I would love to have a night out without the kids!” Jaz replied. They all turn their heads to Tony and Debbie. “We would look after the children” Debbie laughs. We all thank them and start getting ready.

“I really have nothing left to wear!” I moan as I throw all my outfits onto the bed trying to sort through them. Mason winks at me. “Well you know I only suggested parents night out so me and you can finally get some alone time, so you can go out wearing a paper bag for all I mind, you are going to look fucking sexy in whatever you wear and all I am going to be thinking about is taking it off”. Mason hums into my neck as his hands and placed onto my bum.

I don’t blame Mason I am exactly the same, its been hard to find intimate time at home with the babies and Mason’s schedule so we were looking forward to this time away to actually have some alone time, but one of us as either come home too drunk, the babies wouldn’t settle or one night we ended up with the kids in our bed as they wanted a sleepover with uncle Masey so here we were. I would be lying if I say I don’t want it as much as him but I needed to remember that we were on holiday with his family so I couldn’t be totally all over him.

The night is amazing, we have all had too much to drink. We went out for some dinner and then found a local nightclub near by to the villa. I am on the dancefloor with Jaz and Stacey with a drink in my hand trying our best to dance but after a few too many we are probably more stumbling all over the place. I can feel Mason’s eyes on me as I sway my hips to the music, Mason is sat with the boys as his gaze becomes more apparent as I continue to wiggle my bum to put a show on for Mason, which I don’t even have to look at him to know that its winding him up.

“I think I am done!” Stacey shouts to us trying to be heard over the music.

“Yeah I agree.” Jaz states. We walk over to the guys. “We’re done boys!” Jaz flops herself next to her husband as he places an arm over shoulders. The boys start to grab all the stuff from the booth we were sat in and start to lead us out.

“Me and Y/n will meet you back at the villa. We are going to stay out a bit longer” I look at Mason confused as I thought he would want to go home and have some alone time.

“Okay get back safe though both of you” Jaz says and we hug all of them goodbye. We wave them off as they share a taxi and Mason goes to lead me back inside the club.

“I thought you would want to go home, you know have some mummy and daddy alone time” I throw my hands around his neck and place a needy kiss to his lips.

“Patience baby! I promise we will definitely be having some alone time when we are back but just for now I am liking having you all to myself. I wanted to spend a couple of hours with you, just us. Have a couple of drinks and a dance. Sound good?”

“Of course it sounds good you dickhead” I pull away from the kiss I placed on his cheek and make my way to the bar.

Another couple drinks down and I am very tipsy and I know I am going to be regretting my decision in the morning when I got to get ready for our flight home, but right now in this moment all I can think about is Mason. I know Mason is as tipsy as me, he doesn’t usually drink so when he does it hits him quickly. Our hands are no stop over eachother, its like we are scared to not be touching. I can feel Mason start to harden as I turn my back towards him and grind my bum into him to the music. “I think its time to leave” I feel his breathe on my neck which gives me goosebumps.

Mason basically drags me out the club and into the taxi, we are attached again and we are both fighting for air. I can feel his tongue slip against mine and he lets out an audible moan into my mouth. The taxi pulls outside the villa, Mason throws some notes at the driver and pulls my hand inside. We are slowly walking through the villa trying not to make much noise as its early in the morning. The sound of my heels are loud on the marble floor so Mason crouches in front of me and helps me take them off, I lean on him for balance as the alcohol is starting to effect my balance. “This way” he whispers.

“I feel like naughty teenagers sneaking around” I try and keep my voice low. Mason slides the patio door open and I am confused as to where he is going. “You wanna do it out here? Isn’t that risky?” Mason ushers me over to the other side of the patio, its barely visible from inside but I am still worried. “Mason they could see us out here. You cannot be serious?!” Mason ignores my concerns and wraps his arms around my sides, slowly lowly a hand to my bum.

“They are all asleep. No one is going to see us. Now I want time with my incredibly sexy Mrs so can you stop coming up with ideas not to do anything and start taking your clothes off” it gave me goosebumps with how forward he is being. He starts kissing my neck and slowly making his way up and nipples my earlobe as he knows that’s my weakness, I can feel my legs start to buckle underneath me, I am not sure if it’s the amount of alcohol confused or his affect on me but I am thinking that it’s a combination of both.

Mason starts stripping until he is completely naked, I look down and see how excited he is already becoming. “Come on!” he shouts but still in a whispered tone and dives into the pool. I shake my head at his antics and remove my clothes and slowly dangle my legs at the side of the pool. He swims over to me and pulls me in with him. I naturally wrap my legs around him. I can feel his dick start jabbing my entrance, I grind my hips down teasing him which results in a moan escaping his lips. Mason floats us to the end of the pool which is furthest away from the villa, Mason places one hand on the side behind me and another on my bum. As he continues to kiss me, this time its sloppy and needy.

His hand drops from the side above us and inbetween us, his hand travels down to where I need him most. He starts to run his fingers across my clit and through my folds. “Someone is wet!” He smirks I know he loves what affect he has on me. “Don’t flatter yourself sweetheart it’s the water nothing to do with you”. I kick back, Mason shakes his head as we both know its definitely his fingers that have caused that.

“Honestly I am so horny right now! I want to tease you so bad but I don’t know how long I can last” Mason looks deep into my eyes, his eyes have darken and I can see the lust in them. I grind my hips down on him again knowing that I am winding him up as I know he is already aching for it. “You know what fuck it! I have waited all holiday for this!” with this Mason lifts me up to the side of the pool and spreads my legs, he nestles inbetween them and starts giving open mouth wet kisses to the inside of my thighs.

“Mason!” I shirked. “someone could see!” I try and close my legs but the ache inbetween them are too much.

“You really want me to stop?” He comes up from them and all rationale is out the window and he continues kissing all the way to the area I need him most. I don’t respond but just let out a moan as Mason licks a long strip across my core. “You need to be a little quiet baby we don’t want anyone hearing now” I hold my hand across my mouth as Mason continues, I never know what he does to make it so good but its honesty he gives the best head I have ever had. He gives a mixture of licks and kisses and as soon as he sucks on my clit I am a gonna cum. Mason inserts 2 fingers as he continues to suck on my clit as I try my hardest not to suffocate him, I can feel the ground beneath scratching at my skin but right now I cannot focus on how uncomfortable it is all I can think about is what Mason is doing to me. Its not long before he has me cumming, I cover my mouth as tight as I can as I scream my name into my hand but some moans do escape which I can feel Mason smirking into me. He quickly laps up all my cum on his fingers and cleans them with his tongue.  “I love the taste of your cum” He smiles and places a small open mouthed kiss to my thigh.

“I love how you make me cum” I reply joining him in the pool again. “So your turn?” I question. Mason shakes his head and traps me between the edge of the pool and his body. I can feel his dick throbbing between us.

“Honesty I don’t think I could cope if you touched me right now, I need to be inside you, I need to feel that tight..wet…pussy” kisses along my neck inbetween each word which made me shiver.

“Oh my god! Mason Mount is turning down a blow job” I joke. Mason shakes his head and I know he isn’t in a playing mood. I haven’t seen him this needy in a while, but I think the lack of intimacy lately we are both desperate for it. Mason places his hands on either side of my legs and wraps them around his waist. He gives himself a couple of pumps and lines himself with me, he slowly pushes himself in.

“F-fuck y/n that is so good!” he moans, I feel his grip on my waist tightened and I clench around his cock which causes him to moan loudly in response.

“Shhh remember we gotta be quiet” I repeat his words to him that he said to me earlier.

“I cannot help it  this pussy is insane. You are insane. I am the luckiest man in the world.” My heart melts at his words. I haven’t been the most confident with my body and having the twins I have become more insecure but he always has a way of making me good about myself.

“You can move” I say as I have adjusted to his size. “I really need you right now Mason. You know like I really need you”. I start kissing along his collarbone and his neck not caring about the marks I am leaving.

“Say no more baby girl. I am ready to ruin you” and with that he pulls out and gives me a massive thrust resulting in a loud scream from me which I try and block out by screaming into his neck. Mason continues a pace which is damaging  and I can feel myself unravelling around him.

I tighten my grip of my legs around his waist “fuck you are so sexy y/n you have no idea how long I have waited for this” his breath causes me goosebumps over my skin. I am clenching around him and I start to become dizzy with the amount of pleasure that is shooting through.

“I’m gonna cum baby” I feel Mason pick up his pace and reaches between us and starts to put pressure on my clit. “Mase f-fuck” I scream he kisses me at the same time to silent my moan.

“I know baby I am with you”. Mason pace becomes sloppy and I know he is struggling to keep us both upright right now. “Uh that’s it y/n, right there. Fuck you are so fucking sexy” with that Mason shoots his load into me and wraps his arms around my body so we are both bobbing around the pool. Mason eventually pulls away after a couple of seconds.

“That was incredible” I smile. Mason tucks a stand of hair behind my ears.

“You are incredible” he replies. “Lets quickly get out of here before we get caught. I think I left two towels on the beds earlier”. He quickly jumps out the pool still knackered and runs over to the sunbed and grabs the towels. I get out the pool and we both quickly dry off as much as we can and wrap the towels around us and pick up the evidence of our clothes at the side of the pool.

We tiptoe quietly through the villa trying our hardest not to wake anyone up as we make our way upstairs to our room. Our sleeping babies in their cot melts my heart. We get ourselves cleaned up and ready for bed. I lie on Mason’s chest as he brushes his fingers up and down my back.

“I don’t wanna go home” I say into Mason’s chest. He hums in response.

“I agree this has been paradise” Mason places a small kiss to the top of my head as we slowly fall asleep.

[beefrobeefcal]

The Mandalor-y Hole feat. Young Din Djarin

Summary: A young Din (pre-The Mandalorian TV Show & Beskar Armor) takes his first steps towards being a man... with his helmet.

Virgin!Din Djarin x his helmet | Rating: 18+ MDNII | Word Count: 1,592

Content Warnings: din fucks his helmet, first time masturbating, improper use of butter, yes butter exists in space, butter enthusiasts rejoice, loss of virginity-ish, mention of purity culture and shame around masturbation, everyone has a good time and consents - helmet included

Author's Notes: thank you for your patience and I am only a little sorry that this is my first foray back into writing since the holidays. Life is basically on a lemon-giving hiatus so I'll take what I can get! Thank you to @strang3lov3, @noxturnalnymph, @whocaresstillthelouvre and @bitchesuntitled for their love and eyes. thank you also to @yopossum for the fic name! Thanks also to @saradika-graphics for the dividers.

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“Dank farrik.”

Din muttered as he pulled his helmet off his head and examined the perfectly round blaster hole, almost smack dab over where his mouth was. He could still feel his lips burning slightly from the heat of the blast hole and knew he’d need to get some salve on them quickly to avoid chapping. 

He pulled his glove off with his teeth, and ran his finger around the hole opening. The heat of the laser blaster had melted the hole instead of punching through it, making the opening smooth. He pushed his finger through the hole and hooked it, feeling the smooth edge inside. The residual heat of the metal helmet mixed with his sweaty finger gave him a filthy-feeling idea and he recoiled, tossing the helmet on the floor. As he stared at the helmet, Din breathed heavily, almost scared of the thoughts that manifested in his brain. 

He’d sworn to abstain from carnal pleasures until he met his partner - that hadn’t happened yet - and only then would he give in and let himself have that connection with his baser self. At least, that’s what he swore as he took the Mandalorian Oath and took up the creed. 

In hindsight, the response when he spoke about this seemed more and more accurate - maybe he was in a cult. He had to swear off things that could potentially make him happy, as well as things that could very well alleviate certain issues that arose at terribly timed moments. Like right now: the raging hardon that pressed almost painfully on the inside of his flight suit zipper could be shuffled away with just his hand, if he only gripped and pulled - 

“No. This is the way.”, he spoke aloud, reminding himself that this was in fact the way that he had sworn to, regardless of how stupid it sounded when he tried to apply horny logic to it. 

He got up and went to the fresher, leaving his helmet on the ground. He took one last look at  the face eyelessly watching him, feeling it's cold judgement staring back at him. He slid the door closed and scowled.

The helmet sat on the floor in the same place Din had hucked it hours before as he laid in his cot, feeling the ship's movement as it coasted on autopilot. He was staring at the ceiling in the dark, knowing he was still hard from earlier. While he’s managed to bring his cock down to a softer erection with thoughts of getting a blow job from one of the Hutts, it still had not gone away fully, and now that he was laying just a few paces away from his helmet, his mind wandered back and caused him to be achingly hard again. 

All he could think about was how smooth the hole was, and how perfect a size it would be. Just so easy to slip his cock into it and feel the metal against - 

“No!”, he barked out loud, bolting upright in his cot. Again, his breathing was heavy and he could feel the goosebumps roll over his skin in waves. His hardon was peeking out from the opening in his sleep shorts, every movement causing the fabric to shift and make him shudder from the feeling. This was pure torture, and his arousal-clouded mind could not make sense of it.

Maker, why would his creed want him to suffer like this? To be forced to endure something so barbaric as a boner and not be allowed to relieve himself of it? His hips bucked involuntarily at nothing and he whimpered, feeling the sweat trickle down his temples from his hairline. His eyes shifted to the blank face of his helmet on the floor, still staring at the door to the fresher. His shoulders sagged and he grimaced as his mind swirled back into depraved thoughts about what that hole could really do for him. 

Din had tried to stay strong, but the silent siren song of the blast hole was too alluring for him to resist. His hands shook as he reached for and grasped the helmet between them, lifting it gently with reverence. The blank face gazed back at him, and the hole looked even more perfect.

His first attempt at it could only be described as MAN SHOVES SAUSAGE IN HOLE DRY.  It wasn’t unpleasant per say, but the way the skin of his cock tugged on the smooth, dry metal wasn’t the experience he had envisioned.

After he gently eased his organ out of the tight, metal hole and placed the helmet like he would a lover (at least he imagined this is how he would do it) on the bed, Din got up and walked naked into the kitchenette. He found a few things that he could use to lubricate his member; various cooking oils, dish soap and finally, a stick of butter. Holding the chilled brick of butter wrapped in wax paper in his hand helped make up his mind; the butter was easy to handle, offered little mess and wasn’t a liquid that would get everywhere. With a solemn face, Din walked back to his quarters.

He gently opened one end of the butter stick and peeled back the wax paper, exposing enough that he could rub the butter on his cock and in and around the hole on his helmet. Din then tossed it on to the crate beside his bed. 

The butter was chilled, and his warm hand felt so good as he wrapped it around his achingly hard member. He’d never allowed himself to feel gratified like this before, never giving in and taking what he needed from his own hand to relieve his body from the pain of an ongoing boner. He slowly moved his hand up and down the shaft, the long overdue introduction to his cock having begun. 

He sucked a sharp breath in between his teeth when he squeezed just a little too tight and tugged a little too hard. 

“Okay… I gotcha… I got it…”, he breathed out, his hand going slower and with less of a grip. 

He began to make longer strokes, pulling back his foreskin. He shuddered, the sensation almost too much on the red and leaking head of his cock. Maker, he’d never felt anything like this before. Why would this be forbidden?

He looked at his hand on his cock and felt something swell within him; a sense of pride? accomplishment? Maybe it was the fact that he finally felt like a man, a real grown up man who held his own cock in his own hand and made himself feel good. 

“Yes…”, he grunted as he closed his eyes and continued his slow and steady pace. “I am a man - a mandalorian!”

Din felt like he was ready to cross over from the five knuckle shuffle to actually shoving his dick in a well lubricated hole. He picked up the butter and rubbed it on his cock again just to be sure, and then picked up his helmet. Gazing down on it in his hands, he suddenly felt a bit nervous. He was taking this step and there was no going back. 

Inhaling a deep breath, Din slid his generously buttered cock into the equally lubed hole of his helmet and groaned. It. Was. Perfect. 

He brought the helmet to the base of his cock and his breath shuddered from him and he swallowed hard, feeling his jaw slacken as he let out a low groan. The hole was just slightly smaller than the circumference of his hard, thickened cock and the squeeze was perfect. He steadied himself as he pulled the helmet off his cock then pushed it back on, and Din thought he might pass out from the overwhelming sensation. He did this motion again and again, each time going a bit faster, while his hips remained stationary. 

The repeated motion was becoming a bit taxing on his arms and he wasn’t sure how to solve this. He needed to keep going, needed to keep feeling this perfect feeling…

Clumsily, he stumbled to his bed, crawling onto it on all fours while his cock remained in the helmet, fully intending to move up his bed and lay on his back. But the helmet had pushed the blanket up and caused him to shove himself harder against it and Din let out a gasp-turned-whine at the pressure it caused. His hips bucked slightly and it was like a light went off in his head. Use your hips, not your arms!

Din began to rut his hips against the helmet, getting the angle and the friction he needed. He felt a deep seeded sensation then felt a tightness in his lower belly and his balls. His mouth pulled into a frown as the rhythm he set for himself faltered. Din tried to prolong the feeling, but to no avail. 

Din came for the very first time into his helmet, with his eyes crossed and his breath coming out in tight, short grunts, and he’d never felt anything so good in his entire life. 

He didn’t care that butter was smeared all over his lower stomach and arms, nor did he care that his cum had saturated the soft material that buffered his head from the metal of his helmet. He would care eventually, but that was a problem to be dealt with later.

He was spent, and fell asleep, ass up and dick softening in the buttered blaster hole. 

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[sticktothestars]

𝐬𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐚𝐢𝐝 , " 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐢 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐡𝐨𝐩𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐢𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐠𝐞𝐭 𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 '𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐢 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐧𝐨 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 . " ⋆✴︎˚｡⋆

a/n: *walks in, twiddling my thumbs* so i watched thunderbolts. we're just gonna say that i totally didn't fall in love with bob. AVENGERS FOUND FAMILY FANFICS ARE SO BACK GUYS. FHDSFFJ I'LL MAKE A SEPARATE POST ABOUT WHAT I THOUGHT ABOUT THE MOVIE, BUT YEAAH. I LOWKEY AM SUPER EXCITED & I CAN'T WAIT FOR YALL TO READ THIS 'CUZ I'VE BEEN HAVING THIS IDEA STUCK IN MY HEAD & IT WON'T GO AWAY. ANYWAY, IMMA STOP YAPPING NOW. ENJOOOYY!!1 (ALSO. you have the powers/fighting style of deadpool!)

paring: robert/bob reynolds x male!reader

word count: 1k+

warnings: slight spoilers for thunderbolts* if you haven't seen it. takes place post movie. slight cursing. contains a shit ton of angst & hard topics like anxiety attacks, child abuse, gore, & character death are mentioned throughout this oneshot. yeah i lowkey kind of spiraled while writing this lmfaooo.

════════════════════════════════════════════

──★

IF you told the [Y/N] from 3 months ago that you'd be working with the new avengers, you would've laughed HARD in your own face. Seriously. It would've lasted for like 7 minutes before you'd probably go tell you to fuck off or something. But now that you was here - saving people instead of being the one to end people for money - it felt trippy thing to even consider. Especially with the things you've done in your past. Despite your initial hesitation on even teaming up with this unstable group of people, you couldn't help but feel a LOT more happier than how you was before.

Maybe it was just the fact that saving people felt good or that you finally had a purpose in life - but no. It was something completely different. You was finally around people who understood what it felt like to not feel like they didn't deserve anything good or be stuck in an endless loop that just hurted you even more. It felt like a HUGE breathe of fresh air. Or maybe it was because you were around him like 99.99% of the time now after everything.

You met Bob in... troubling circumstances, to say the least. Bucky - a good friend of yours - contacted you while you were in New York in retirement from your mercenary past. You were honestly struggling a little. Working as an unsuspecting barista for some cozy coffee shop was nice & all, but it felt.. meaningless. So with one last second thought, you put your suit on & rode your motorcycle to a new mission. Which ended well overall, but with a lot of memories you wanted to lock away unfortunately.

But since then, the two of you have grown closer - especially since you were living together amongst the others in the Avenger's base. Bob obviously couldn't go on the missions due to not being able to control his powers all that well. You try to help him out the best you can when you're there.

...But sometimes that helping could go sideways.

──★

[Y/N]'s flicked open as he noticed the surroundings around him. Where was he? Just a moment ago he was sparring with Bob in the training room & then..

" Oh fuck.. " you muttered with a sigh as you realized what's happening. Your gaze fixes on a teen version of you - freshly scarred, WAY more defensive - yet afraid. Like there was something out for him. You knew what this was. You knew it all too well.

Back before you became a mercenary, you were a cage fighter in Orlando - trafficked at 7 & escaped at 16. 9 years of horror. Yeah that fucked you up pretty bad. Of course it would. But you had friends. It what kept you sane.

But they took that away too along with your dignity.

One night - when you were 16 - a new match was starting. They didn't tell you who the opponent would be. They never did. To them, it was just another body to throw away for entertainment. Having survived for so long & having so much blood on your hands, you'd think that you'd get used to it by now. But it only just got worse from there.

You stood there, watching yourself as your younger self enter the cage - a look of uneasiness on your younger self's face, tuning out the crowd of people as they cheered for blood. But you? You just wanted to know who else? Who else's blood would you have on your hands? As your opponent stumbles out into the cage with a shove from one of the guards just outside the cage, you saw your heart drop. Just by the horror on your own face.

Your opponent was your best friend, Liam. The Liam who stuck by your side through the last 9 years you've been here. The Liam who managed to make you laugh when things got that dark. The Liam who was your anchor. The Liam who you absolute adored like an older brother. You couldn't do it. You refused to. You couldn't do it if you tried.

" ... No.. No I'm not hurting him. You can't make me kill him. " You refused, backing away & banging on the cage's exit. Liam just watched you. He watched you try to figure out something. Anything to stop this match from happening. Liam knew this would happen soon. He was prepared for this. Hell, maybe he even prepared this moment from the start. You know that now. You wish you knew it sooner.

" [Y/N]. " Liam says gently, his voice calm - causing the younger you's attention to snap towards him, eyes tearing up as you tried to say something. Anything. But only a mournful silence filled between the two of you as the crowd cheered for the two of you to fight. You shook your head, keeping your head down.

" [Y/N], you have to. " Liam says gently, putting a hand on your shoulder as he approached. You just shook your head. " No- No- I-i-i can't- " You stammered out, clenching your fists so tight you felt as though you were bleeding slightly through your bandages.

" They'll kill you if you don't, kid. " Liam states. " I don't fucking care. " You say back, holding yourself close as you look back up at the 20 year old you've grown to be so attached to.

Liam sighs. " Well start caring. You're surviving. Even if it means killing me too. " The brunette says sternly.

" No! I'm not losing you! And I'm not listening to them anymore just to survive! " You call out so everyone can hear. The crowd boos, insults rolling out into the arena like a hurricane. The ringleader scoffs, motioning the guards to ready & aim at you.

Liam clocks this & horror enters his face, shielding you as bullets & sparks fly - the crowd falling silent. The bullets stop. Everything stops as a body slumps onto the ground. But it wasn't yours. It was Liam's. You stare at the hole covered body for what feels like a lifetime. You couldn't breathe. You couldn't even think straight.

Only when a guard grabs you is when you react is when you scream, absolute anguish & horror in your voice as it breaks as you're dragged out of the arena - new plans settled for you that changed your dna & life forever. The present you doesn't look away from Liam's corpse. You felt yourself spiraling within your regrets over the What If's.

What if you had let Liam kill you that day? You didn't deserve to live. Especially with the blood on your hands. The things you did without mercy. But Liam? He was kind. He was good. He deserved way better. He was so good & no one else ever got to see that goodness in him.

You scratched at the collar of your shirt, trying to force yourself to breathe but you couldn't. Everything felt so meaningless. You were meaningless. You were the problem because you couldn't keep your mouth shut.

Fuck. Everything felt so heavy. You collapsed to your knees, squeezing your eyes shut but Liam's lifeless body kept coming in again & again like a broken melody.

๋ ࣭ ⭑꒷꒦

" 'M sorry- M' so sorry- I-i should've known this would happen- I'm so fucking sorry- " A panicked & oh so familiar voice called out, snapping you out of your vision to feel Bob holding you in his arms tight as you sobbed. You hold onto his warmth, clenching his shirt. The two of you stay there for a while. Which seemed like forever. But neither one of you complained.

You sniffle slightly, letting your head nuzzle into the crook of the other's neck. And Bob just held you tighter. He couldn't let you go through this again. He couldn't bear seeing you hurt because of him.

You were probably one of the coolest people on the team, but seeing you fall apart like this felt gut wrenching. He mutters out more apologies, his chin resting on your head.

He's made everything worse again.

And to you of all people.

The man he absolutely adores.

──★

lowkey locked tf in on this one idk. hope yall enjoyed tho lowkey !! lemme know if yall want a part two or smthin cuz i'm down. SEND ME MORE REQUESTS PUHLEASEE.

anyways, that's it for now !! BUH BYEEE ^^

── DAMIEN ★

[kiragecko]

Do you think Cass's writers KNEW how harmful Babs' teaching methods were?

Cass and/or Babs fans who have read the first Batgirl series and/or No Man's Land, what do you think?

I'll get into the details in a moment, but my guess is they were trying to write Babs as a fallible mentor, but were ignorant about just how much damage she would realistically be causing. I'd like to get second opinions, because I've spent enough time studying communication with nonverbal people that I no longer know what people actually KNOW.

Anyways, here's the stuff I want to know if you guys think is intentional:

When we first meet Cass, Babs is trying to teach her to read. Babs is showing her the word 'stop' and getting Cass to sound out the letters. This is ... not a good idea.

Some of the errors Cass makes (starting with a 'd' sound and correcting to 't', for example) suggest that Cass is still learning HOW TO MAKE SOUNDS. She's still teaching her body how to shape her mouth and throat, when to vibrate her vocal cords - the physical aspects of speech. That's HARD, and deserves focus so it can be learned properly!

We later learn she only knows a small number of words. She's still learning to associate sounds with meaning. That's HARD, and deserves focus so it can be learned properly!

She's also still learning to match letter shapes to sounds. THAT IS ALSO HARD AND DESERVES FOCUS SO SHE CAN LEARN IT PROPERLY!

By conflating reading, speech, AND understanding, Babs is making Cass' job MUCH MUCH more difficult! Each of those, and a dozen smaller aspects of communication, all need months of prioritization, without competition from other aspects.

-

Throughout Batgirl, Babs pressures Cass to read. Cass is still learning to parse meaning from the words downloaded into her head. She struggles to organize them into sentences. She struggles to understand the nuances of what other people are saying. Once again, these are all important things that she should be encouraged to focus on! Reading is nice, but at this point it shouldn't be the priority. By ignoring the skills Cass IS building, and pushing Cass towards competing skills she doesn't have the prerequisites for, Babs is slowing down Cass' progress and providing negative feedback loops.

-

Babs seems to equate reading with communicating. Possibly because of her past as a librarian and the obvious value she gets from reading. Possibly because her current job is as an information broker and hacker. Possibly because her own disability limits her physically, and reading and writing has become necessary for interacting with the outside world. Possibly because she is living vicariously through the new Batgirl. And possibly because her eidetic memory suggests she thinks in words and can't actually imagine thought in other ways.

Cass is probably never going to use reading as a primary communication method, and would have benefited froma learning regimen that works with her skills, rather than pushing through her weaknesses.

-

Here's the stuff I'm pretty sure was intentional:

Babs calls Cass stupid for not being able to read during a high pressure situation that is triggering Babs. This is obviously wrong, and she feels awful about it.

Babs is frequently impatient with Cass' progress, and sometimes accuses her of not trying, or not caring enough. She makes comments in front of other people without thinking. These are all shown as problematic and hurtful.

-

Here's the things I think Babs did right:

Babs sets up a computer system that can be navigated by voice, and can interpret vague instructions. It provides visual, as well as verbal, information for everything Cass asks about. Cass is never pressured to use a different system.

Babs mostly allows Cass to explore, and builds lessons around Cass' interests. She integrates life skills into her lessons, and actually does a REALLY good job at helping Cass build enough of a foundation to start getting curious about the world.

She usually backs off when Cass gets stubborn, which lets Cass recover, and keep some agency.

She MOSTLY doesn't co-opt Cass' growing friendship with Steph. She supports them, and doesn't try to use Steph to push Cass in the directions Babs wants her to go.

Other than stuff around speech and literacy, I actually think the writers did a good job of writing a flawed but caring mentor who actually helped more than she harmed.

-

What do you guys think?

[theseventhdimension]

Hi!

I have a request for early seasons Spencer in a relatively new relationship Sleeping over at readers place the first time. Spencer being nervous about cuddling and affection in general.

Just straight up the fluffiest fluff imaginable.

Thank you! I’ll be waiting

The First Time— Not Like That.

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Gn! Reader

Word count: 1.4k+

DNI: All are welcome!

Author's note: This is such a cute idea, i just knew i had to get to it straight away! Honestly I'm writing this from experience, based on how I acted when i went to my fiance's house for the first time lol. Hope you enjoy!! :))

Idiot.

That's the one way Spencer would describe himself as of this current moment.

Sure, he has the vocabulary of the entire oxford dictionary stuck in his head, but right now? He's an idiot. An awkward idiot. An awkward idiot who's standing in your bedroom doorway as you make yourself comfortable, urging him to join.

And he’d nodded, murmured a quiet “okay,” and then proceeded to do absolutely nothing that resembled any form of movement towards you.

He’s been stiff all evening.

Like, noticeably stiff.

His satchel is still sitting by your front door, half-unzipped, like even his belongings aren’t sure if they’re allowed to stay. He’d perched on the edge of your couch like it was some sort of Victorian chaise reserved for royalty. You’d offered him tea—made it exactly how he liked, with three sugar packets already stirred in and the fourth one left on the saucer in case he wanted to make it obnoxiously sweet, the way you’d teased him about once before. And he’d smiled, almost shy, like the gesture meant more to him than he could put into words.

But the cup’s still full. Barely touched. Lukewarm now. He had just been holding it, fingers wrapped too tight around the ceramic, eyes flicking around your apartment like he was trying to memorize every detail while simultaneously calculating the fastest exit route in case he accidentally makes a fool of himself.

He didn't know where to put his shoes. You had to gently nudge him into taking them off when he stepped onto the carpet like he was entering hallowed ground. He apologised when he used your hand towel. He asked if he should sit somewhere else when you curled up next to him during the movie.

You’re not offended. Not even a little. You know this is new for him—being in someone else’s space like this. Being wanted, and welcomed, and safe. You know he’s used to chaos, to hotel rooms and BAU briefings, to walls that aren’t really his and spaces that don’t feel like home.

So this? This quiet apartment. This night off. This soft bed with the creaky springs and the extra blanket you laid out just in case.

This is probably the most foreign territory he’s had to navigate in a while.

You’d kissed his cheek earlier—casual, sweet—and you felt the way he shivered. Not from discomfort. From something deeper. Reverent. Like he couldn’t quite believe it was real.

Now, he’s standing in your bedroom doorway like crossing the threshold might set off some emotional tripwire, and you're here, inviting him to bed— WOAH. Not like that. At least.. he thinks so? No matter how fast he thinks, that's a little too fast for him right now.

But he wants to cuddle. Of course he does. He’s been thinking about it all evening, the way your arms would feel around him, the weight of your hand between his shoulder blades, your heartbeat steady under his ear. And now you’re right here, just a breath away, and he’s… frozen.

He can't. He just can't. What if he starts sweating really badly? Like, from his hands. Or worse, his pits. And then you’ll wrinkle your nose and shift away, and then you’ll think he’s gross and never invite him over again. And what if—God—what if he drools in his sleep?

Woah. He paused. That was a spiral. He needs to take a deep breath, like you taught him. You'd never do something like that.

..Right?

He inhales.

Then exhales.

Then does it again, slower this time—like you’d coached him through after a particularly stressful case, sitting knee-to-knee in your living room with his hands in yours, teaching him how to ground himself. You’d said it so gently. "In through the nose, Spence. Hold it. Out through the mouth. Good."

He should do that now. He really should. Because you're not even looking at him like he's weird. You're just… waiting. Lying there on your side, propped up on one elbow, watching him with the softest little smile. You even patted the space next to you, like some sort of romantic invitation he’s terrified to accept.

Spencer wrings his hands, then stops when he realizes that might just activate the dreaded palm sweat. He drops them to his sides instead and shuffles a little closer, still hovering awkwardly by the bed like a stray cat that doesn’t quite trust the food bowl isn’t a trap.

“You okay?” you ask, voice light and full of affection. Not mocking. Never mocking.

“Y-yeah,” he croaks, which is exactly what someone not okay would say. “Just—uh. Processing.”

Your brows lift, amused but patient. “Processing whether or not you’ll survive cuddling me?”

“Exactly,” he says, pointing at you like you’ve just solved a riddle. “That. Yes.”

You laugh, and god, it’s the prettiest sound. You hold your arms open toward him like a promise. “Come here, you dramatic little beanpole. I won’t bite.”

He flushes immediately. Beanpole? He’s going to think about that for the rest of his life. But he moves, slowly, carefully, like he's approaching some sacred relic. He climbs into bed next to you with all the grace of a baby giraffe learning to walk, knees knocking into yours, elbow accidentally jabbing your pillow, and—

Then your hand finds his.

Soft. Sure.

He shuts his eyes and takes a breath, like you taught him to. In for four. Out for four.

"Spence?" Your voice cuts gently through the quiet. He feels it before he hears it—low and close, humming through the mattress. "You okay?"

He turns his head slightly, cheeks already pink. “Yeah. I just… don’t really know what to do with myself.”

There’s a pause. Then: “Do you wanna lie here?” You tap your chest lightly with a crooked smile. “Just for a bit.”

He blinks. Looks at you. Then nods, tiny and quick, like a secret.

He shifts slowly, like you’re a museum piece he doesn’t want to break. When he finally settles on your chest, it's with an exhale he didn’t realise he was holding. His ear rests just over your heart, and your arm curls instinctively around his back, hand coming to rest between his shoulder blades.

You’re warm. And steady. He can feel the way your chest rises beneath him, the slow rhythm of your breathing, the soft pressure of your palm.

And Spencer?

Spencer dies.

Or at least it feels like it. His heart is racing, and his lungs might have just stopped functioning, and he has no idea what to do with his free hand because oh, God, it’s touching your waist, and you’re warm and your hair smells so good and he’s probably holding his breath again but—

You sigh against him, content and safe, like you want to be here.

And suddenly it’s not so terrifying anymore. His muscles begin to loosen. He dares to stop holding his cheek up, like he's scared that his brain a made of a million sand bags and will crush your heart if he dares to allow himself to relax. You push his head down onto you completely, and hum in approval.

“Is this okay?” you ask.

He nods against you. “It’s… really nice, actually.”

You hum, thumb brushing slow circles into his spine. “Good. 'Cause I was worried you’d combust from overthinking.”

Spencer huffs a laugh into your shirt, eyes fluttering shut. “I almost did.”

There’s a study—somewhere in his head—about how 20 seconds of hugging can significantly reduce stress levels. He remembers reading it on his computer once, the details etched into his eidetic memory. But more than that, he remembers the day vividly because you had brought him a croissant from the bakery across the street!

The study involved nearly 200 participants who were subjected to a stressful task. Those who received a 20-second hug from their partner beforehand exhibited lower cortisol levels, the hormone associated with stress.

Now, lying here with his ear pressed against your chest, he counts the seconds. Not because he wants to leave, but because, for once, the math feels kind. He recalls that oxytocin, the "love hormone," is released during physical touch, promoting feelings of trust and bonding. This hormone can reduce cortisol levels, the body's primary stress hormone.

He thinks about how this simple act of cuddling, something so foreign to him, is now providing a tangible sense of calm. The tension in his muscles eases, and he feels a sense of peace wash over him. It's as if the scientific principles he's studied for years are now manifesting in real-time.

Spencer smiles softly, his eyes closed, and thinks, "So this is what all the research was about."

[youdontknowe]

OK take two for this week cus I took a bit longer to read the last chapter 💙

(Gonna start using numbers cus I always have to cross reference when I read your replies lmao)

1. He’s so caring it’s sickening (I’d melt)

2. Cackling ‘proposing is probably off the table’ and the funniest part is it’s not even off the table if he did ask

3. lol cas being concerned about her drooling

4. I love a good cas drop in cus he has all the lore

5. I hope you include Dean enjoying cooking when/if the bunker comes along. My favourite thing about Dean is he can cook

6. Lmao she’s always gotta throw in some words that can be taken suggestive by Dean. Keep him on his toes and horny

7. Dean you will ALWAYS be better than your arse of a father. I bet John wasn’t even that good of a husband compared to how Dean already is (I have no base for this I just feel it in my soul)

8. Dean really has a power kink huh like he just finds her being powerful a huge turn on

9. ‘Dean needed to steal one of those and give it to Cas, just to know what the hell She was thinking about all the damn time.’ And you’d love it if you knew

10. “No.” “You got a better idea?” “…no” that just sums up their dynamic mostly

11. Dean isn’t god fearing he’s Bobby fearing

12. Lmao sammy snitching is so fucking funny and then he’s got a oh shit moment and then He’s back to it

13. It’s funny he always considers the possibility of being stabbed for risk factors like she wouldn’t personally check herself into hell if she hurt Dean

14. These fuckers are about as bad at procrastination as I am

15. Oh ho ho I do love me a cat fight with ruby

16. ANOTHER GODDESS REFERENCE! (I’m keeping track of that from now)

17. Awh flashbacks of Bobby??

18. ‘The word—words?—are glowing, and sinking into Dean’s skin,’ oooooo unintentional equivalent of cas marking ribs thingy?

19. Poor Jo she’s gotta learn to knock otherwise she actually might walk in on them mid sex

20. “he’s gonna get like, all fuckin’ commanding. And you’d be into that.” I see you and your kinks 🫵 (me too, me too)

21. “ Sam told me he’s been moanin’ your name in his sleep” OH MY GOD?!

22. Jo ‘just fuck him already’ harvelle

23. Awh Jo would be an amazing sound tech

24. Oh he’s so gonna short circuit when he finds out he’s the first EVERYTHING

25. Her just throttling the damn thing is so awesome

26. Anndddd the wheels fell off the car (the roof fell off the church?)

27. Oh no I’m scared for jo please don’t let this be the ‘ehehe secrets’ from weeks ago 🥲

28. Oh no

29. Oh my god I don’t usually cry but I’m crying. Owie

30. Oh god poor Dean first Jo now she’s leaving again

31. Oh god everyone’s crying even Dean

32. End note: the ultimate fridging but atleast YOU gave her a personality (take note directors)

33. Your mean, why would you put me in a false sense of security and Rip it away that fast??? Do you want me to just cry why way through this fic??? But seriously that’s some fucked up goood writing. none does angst like you do, and imma just go eat my pasta and cry some more. See you next week 💙💙 pls be nice to my lil heart (even if your not I’ll keep reading anyways cus I love you)

Chapter 20 - Wait For Me

Series Masterlist - Main Masterlist

Author's Note: first chapter that made me cry writing it. Enjoy.

Chapter Title from Little Talks by Of Monsters and Men

Word Count: 18.8k

Chapter Summary/Warnings: Dean has a lot of feelings, and you make a plan. Usual Warnings.

Tags: Dean Winchester/Female Reader, enemies to friends to lovers, canon divergence, slow burn, angst, fluff, pining, action

Chapter 19 - Chapter 21

Read on A03!

“What happened?” 

Sam’s question was low. Quiet. Careful, because the last thing they wanted to do right now was disturb Her, passed out on the back bench of Baby. 

She hadn’t moved since Dean guided Her there. Her eyes had fluttered, She’d hummed his name in the prettiest sound he’d ever heard, and then slumped right over. And Dean had indulged himself. He’d wrapped Her in a blanket, and carefully shifted Her around until she was in a comfortable position. He’d even pulled off Her shoes and placed a kiss on Her brow, scanning over Her one last time, just to be positive nothing was wrong.

And it wasn’t.

Visibly.

There was no blood, and Her hair was a little matted, but he had found Her lying in the ocean. 

No blood. No wounds or scars. 

Nothing but Her eyes and lips a little puffy from crying. 

And the taste of Her back on Dean’s lips. Fruit and sugar and salt, and Dean got damn well why She liked those colorful girl drinks so much. They tasted like heaven. 

But he wanted to keep tasting them on Her. 

She’d kissed him. She’d kissed Dean. She’d been crying and freaking the hell out, but son of a bitch, She’d kissed Dean, and that had to mean something. His shirt was still wrinkled where She’d grabbed him, and he wasn’t going to smooth it out. He kept touching his lips like a teenage boy, and running his tongue over Her teeth because She’d done that during the kiss, and he wanted to feel the rush of it again.

And what happened was that Dean was addicted. There had never been a chance of him going back, but now he was gone. Her’s. Only Her’s. He’d have sat down in the ocean at Her side—until they were both just salt and brine—if it meant the mud washed off, and Dean got to be Her’s.

He wasn’t sure now was a good time to tell Her that. He didn’t have the words for it yet, and he didn’t trust that kiss to mean She’d be his. She’d been emotional. Sobbing in Dean’s arms then trying to climb him, and he’d never have Her any other way but blinding and demanding, but Jesus, he wouldn’t know what to do if She turned him down. 

Dean couldn’t get on his knees and swear that he was Her’s aloud, only to be kicked back down into the mud. It might make him a pussy, but he wouldn’t survive it. Then She’d leave, and Bobby and Sammy and Jo would kill him for making Her leave, and they’d be fucked because they couldn’t do this without Her.

But that’s not what Sam meant by what happened. Sam wanted to know about the seal. The case. He didn’t want to hear about how Dean was trying to work out what Her wanting him would look like.

Probably like kissing him, and crying for him, and climbing onto his lap in the dead of night. 

He didn’t have a damn clue what to after he worked it out. Proposing was probably off the table. They’d kissed twice, hadn’t even slept together, and weren’t technically dating. 

He’d figure it out. When all of this was over, Dean would figure it out. Right now he had to answer Sammy’s question. 

“Found her on the beach.” He muttered, glancing to Her in the rearview mirror. Her hair was shiny again. That was a good sign. “She was just lying in the water, dude. Tide was rising and she was just fucking lying there. Nobody else around, no blood. Nothing.”

“Did she say-“

“Nope.” Dean’s jaw twitched. “Mentioned that she took care of it, but that’s all I got. Sammy, I’m…” Dean trailed off, looking to Her again. He couldn’t damn help it.

“I know.” Sam muttered, and Dean wasn’t sure he did—Sam didn’t live in Her orbit, didn’t feel like the world was worse when She was sad, didn’t dream about Her and crash down into Her all the time—but he let it go. “But you know we might have to go back, right? After we drop her back at Bobby’s, we can’t just leave the seal unresolved.”

“She said she took care of it.” Dean grunted, and Sam sighed.

“Dean, it’s- We can’t risk it. I trust her, I do, but I’d go back and check your work too, just like you’d go back and check mine-“

“No. I wouldn’t.”

“Yes, you would-“

“I wouldn’t.” Dean snapped, shooting Sam a glare. “You told me you took care of it, I’d take you at your word. And let’s face it, Sammy, between the three of us, she’s the most likely to deal with one of these by herself.”

Sam gave Dean a sad, too soft look. “She was trying to drown herself, Dean. We still don’t know what happened, while she was gone-“

“Sammy. Drop it.”

“I’m not doubting her, man, but she’s always been- You know-“

“I do know.” Dean hissed, his grip strangling the wheel. “I know better than anyone, Sam. I’ve seen it a hell of a lot more than you have, and I’ve seen it worse, and you know what? At least she’s fucking eating and sleeping. And I know shit happened, I’ve had to stitch up her goddamn stomach because shit happened, but she says she took care of it, and I’m trusting her, because that’s what you do, when you-“

“Do not crash the car.”

Sam started, and Dean sighed, glaring back to see Cas sitting in the backseat. He didn’t care that he’d gotten cut off. It was good he’d gotten cut off. 

He cared that Cas was in the backseat. Where he could’ve disturbed her. 

“Jesus, Cas.” Sam muttered, running a hand through his hair. “That was- I mean, I appreciate the warning, but shit.”

“My apologies.” Cas muttered. “I needed to speak with you as soon as possible, and I could not wait for a better time.”

“Fine. Just keep your voice down.” Dean grunted Her name. “She needs the sleep.”

He glanced back to see Cas nodding, watching Her with an odd expression. She’d slumped into his side. Not like She slumped into Dean’s—where She’d fall half over his lap and Her face would end up buried in his body—but with Her head on Cas’ shoulder and her body relaxed.

That was good. Dean could trust Cas with Her. He’d seemed to respect Her, and he’d been willing to bend further stupid Heaven laws for Her, so Dean didn’t have to worry.

“Should she be sleeping like this?” Cas looked up to them with a small frown. “It doesn’t seem like a peaceful environment, and there is drool falling out of her mouth-“

“She does that.” Dean muttered, and Sam smirked. “Shut up, Sammy.”

“I didn’t say anything-“

“You were gonna. She drools Cas.” And it was freakin’ adorable, but that didn’t feel like the point right now. “What’d you need to talk to us about.”

Cas said Her name slowly. “The seal is… dealt with. Thanks to her.”

Dean shot Sam a smug look. “Told you.” 

“Yeah, alright. You did.” Sam sighed, twisting in his seat to frown at Cas. “Is that it? You just wanted us not to worry about the seal?”

“No. I am here to…” Cas took a long breath, his frown deepening. “Warn you. We are displeased. With how this case was handled.”

Dean scowled. “We? Is that you talking, Cas? Or just the asshole angel department managers?”

“I do not know what a department manager is-“

“He’s asking if you’re mad about the case.” Sam interjected carefully. “And I’m wondering too, Cas. If you’re mad at us-“

“I am not mad at you.” Cas said, and Dean didn’t miss his weary glance at Her. “I was not told the details of what happened, only that we are angry.”

“You keep saying we.” Dean muttered, narrowing his eyes at Cas in the mirror. “I don’t care what a bunch of holy dipshits think of what happened. Hell, I don’t even know what happened, but-“

Cas cut Dean off with Her name, and his whole body tensed. 

Sam cleared his throat. “Cas, we’re really not following-“

“It is her.” Cas repeated Her name, his words slow and careful. “She is… complicating things. Lilith made a move to break the seal that crossed several lines. We are not sure her intention was to break the seal.”

“Well, what the hell does this have to do with-“

“She stopped the seal, but she is not supposed to be involved with the seals. Or you. At all.” Cas met Dean’s eyes in the mirror. “I warned you to be careful. This is why.”

Dean’s teeth were going to break. He had been careful. He was always careful with Her, because he’d been real goddamn reckless before. When when Dad was in his ear, telling him that women were mostly good for longer nights and better days, but nothing compared to family. That careful wasn’t any way to treat a person, because they had to be able to fend for themselves.

She could fend for herself. She’d stopped a seal by herself. That was why Dean needed to be careful with Her. He couldn’t just fuck around with the living, breathing star, dropped right into his hands. He had to hold it, soothe it, care for it.

“We were careful.” He grunted, and Cas sighed.

“Not careful enough.”

Sam shook his head. “But you haven’t told us why, Cas. We’re not sending her away, and we can’t be careful if we don’t know what we’re being careful against-“

“Because I cannot tell you.” Cas snapped. “There are things at play that I do not understand. That I suspect my superiors don’t understand. My brothers and sisters are still dying, Lilith is still opening seals, and all I have been told is that the girl can’t be allowed to interfere. That precautions will be taken if she continues to step out of line.”

Something was tight around Dean’s throat. “You said she couldn’t get zapped-“

“And that is still true, but there are… other ways. To put her back in line.”

“In line?” Sam’s voice had risen slightly. “In- In what line-“

“I do not know.” Cas sighed, and She was still fast asleep. 

Dean hoped She was dreaming well. That She was entirely obvious to the conversation, thinking of only pink-sand beaches and movies and sugary drinks. That maybe, in Her sleep, he was there. He didn’t even had to be wrapped around Her or kissing her stupid. He just wanted to be there, for Her, by Her choice.

“We’re not ditching her, Cas.” Dean muttered, making his words firm. Final. “She stays with us. And if you’ve got a problem with that-“

“I have no problem with it.” Cas muttered, glancing down to Her peaceful face. “But I have no sway in what Heaven desires. And they have deemed her a threat. We cannot account for her, and that makes her dangerous.”

“She is not dangerous-“

“We both know that is not quite true.” Cas gave him a flat look. “I am risking a fair amount by being here, Dean. By warning you.”

Sam swallowed. “Warning us?”

“Be careful. I am still trying to learn more about exactly what the Magdalene is meant to be, but…” Cas sighed. “My progress is slow. And if it comes down to it, I will not be able to interfere directly. So be. Careful.”

There was a whooshing sound, Cas vanished, and She was left curled on the seats. 

Sam and Dean didn’t fight for the rest of the ride. They barely even spoke. Cas had said more than enough.

They needed to take care of Her.

And Dean wasn’t good at a lot of things. 

He could sing, but he couldn’t really carry a beat. He couldn’t bake, but he was fine with that. Wasn’t like he’d ever had a kitchen to practice in anyways. He didn’t have a damn clue how to do all that art critic shit, because as far as Dean understood it, color was color and words were words. He couldn’t take apart a painting and point to all the ways it worked. He liked things because he liked them, there was no fucking reason to justify it, and that was all anyone needed to worry about.  

He was alright with kids. Sometimes, in the dead of night, he’d be able to see a little kid with his nose and bright eyes, laughing the way Dean did and grabbing at shiny hair. Then he’d push that though way far down because now wasn’t the time for that. That wasn’t something he even got to have. No apple pie life was barreling in his direction right now. Maybe not ever.

He’d like one. He’d always liked one. Years ago, he would’ve lain on the bed and imagined a time that Dad would tell him and Sammy to hang it up, and Dean would’ve been allowed to build something like that.

Dad never did that, though. He left Dean and Sammy to deal with Hell and demons and angels and the rest of the shitshow, and he’d yanked Dean’s chance for that away. Told Her to leave. Made Her leave. And the what-if game wasn’t useful—it’s never been useful—but Dean still had a secret fantasy that helped him fall asleep sometimes. One where She was in his arms, but nightmares weren’t a worry. He would be allowed to bury his face in Her hair, and in the morning he’d wake Her up with kisses all over her face. Then She’d giggle, and let Dean pull Her into the shower, and he’d touch Her everywhere as She dropped her brow on his chest with a soft, happy sigh. 

But it was just a fantasy.

And Dean had done that to himself.

Because most of all, he wasn’t good at being good. A good man didn’t torture people. A good man didn’t damn the rest of the world for one woman, a good man got the job done, and a good man didn’t make pretty girls cry. If Dean was good, he would be guarding all the seals without a problem. If Dean was good, Dad would be proud of him, and Dean was pretty goddamn sure Dad would beat him into the dirt if he could see what Dean was doing now. 

Parking the car, and carrying his girl to bed. Grinning to himself when She nuzzled her nose into his neck.

“Dean.” She mumbled, her eyes fluttering up onto his, and his cock twitched in his pants. 

She needed to stop doing that and pouting. 

It was going to make him lose his damn mind.

“Hey, Princess.” He muttered, keeping his voice low. Sam had called and told Bobby they’d be home early, so they wouldn’t get killed for walking inside, but if Bobby woke up and saw Dean carrying Her bridal style into her room, Dean might end up on the wrong end of a shotgun.

“Where’r we.”

“Home.”

She hummed. “You smell good.”

“Thanks.”

“S’ like… cinnamon.” She blinked up at him again. “You’re so big.”

Jesus fucking Christ. “Ba- Sweetheart, you should go back to sleep-

“Are you going to sleep?” She poked his chest as Dean set Her down on the bed. “You need it too, Deano.”

“I know, I just gotta get you down first.”

“‘M not a child.” She started to pout. She was trying to kill him. “I can put myself to bed.”

Dean just raised his brows. “You want to put yourself to bed?”

“No.”

He chuckled, letting himself be a little fucking greedy, and brushed some hair from Her eyes. “I know, Princess. I’ve got you.”

She made another cute grunt, and let Dean help Her to bed. He faced the door while She changed—managed to fight off a boner when he realized She was wearing his shirt—smiled to himself when she flopped onto the bed, and felt like he was goddamn flying when he scooted in next to Her, and she wiggled right into his side.

Dad wouldn’t have wanted him to be a good man like this. Being Her shadow and falling into Her every single fucking second, not doing the hard thing and leaving Her to focus on the seals. Dad would’ve called Dean weak.

But Dad hadn’t been a good man, either.

And Dean still had too much of Dad in him. Too much anger, too much hate, too much mud built up under his nails to ever fully be clean of it. People had always said he looked like Dad, too. And he used to stand a little taller because of it. Because John Winchester was the best fucking hunter in the world. A shield of a man.

Just as Dean had wanted to be.

But Dad hadn’t been a shield. He’d been a bludgeoning, dull-edged blade that hacked up everything then left it behind him. He’d hacked up Ellen, and Sammy, and Dean, and Her.

Dean was a blade too.

A weapon that carved things up and spilled blood and would follow whoever wielded him around like a sick fucking dog.

But in all of Dean’s sins, he’d always have one thing Dad never did.

Her. 

Dad had Mom. He’d lost Mom, and lost his goddamn mind trying to get her back. And Dean needed that to be the difference. 

Dean wouldn’t lose Her. He wouldn’t even think about it. 

So he wasn’t good at being good. Or being gentle. Or knowing when to stop, or keeping himself in check, or keeping peace.

But he was good of taking care of things. Baby was in perfect condition, and she’d stay that way until Dean was in his grave, then a long while after that if Sammy didn’t want to get fucking haunted. He folded all his clothing in his bag, and washed out all the stains on his jacket because it was all he’d ever really had. His guns were always clean, and whatever they needed for a hunt, Dean always found. 

And he took care of Her. When he kept himself in check, Dean took damn good care of his girl. Even if She only got to be that in his head, Dean would always take care of his girl. Since She’d gotten back, he kept some of Her favorite snacks in his bag, like he was trying to lure a damn stray into his house. Sometimes he’d be showering and check on Her fancy shampoo and conditioner that no one else was allowed to use—not that Dean would know how to use it—just to make sure She didn’t need any more. He always ordered Her a drink, because that was another way to take care of Her. He’d started to leave his shirts casually on the dresser, trying to bait Her into wearing them.

It was working. She started sleeping in them almost every night after Florida, and—just like how neither of than slept without the other anymore—they didn’t talk about it.

They didn’t have The Conversation.

But for now, Dean just wanted to have Her. And if this was how he got Her, that was all he needed. 

Still Her shadow, because—for reasons Dean couldn’t begin to understand—he didn’t need to be a good man to be Her shadow. So until She banished him from Her side, he’d stay. All the way down. 

If Dad had a problem with that, he shouldn’t have tried to take Her away.

Dean had found Her anyway. He’d always find Her. 

If Dean knew anything, he knew that Heaven and Hell could do whatever the fuck they wanted to him, but he’d always come back and find Her. And until that hand was forced, he’d do fucking anything to keep Her at his side. Maybe kiss Her, just one more time. Just to say he had. 

She’d been sleeping in his shirts. She’d kissed him. And Dean had been risking soft touched on Her arms when he wanted Her attention, been getting sweet smiles in return, and son of a bitch, he didn’t have a fucking idea how Dad could’ve ever hated Her. 

She was awesome.

She called Dean smart when he told Her about how he’d worked out the magician case. She’d sat with him while he fixed the Firebird’s headlights, smiling at him and holding his beer as they talked about anything but the everything. She was still crawling over Dean in bed and looking at him with bright, hopeful eyes, asking if he was hungry then holding his hand as they drove back to the convenience store. Leaning Her head on his shoulder as they ate in the car. 

And Dean still had all his fantasies. He was still a sick, rotten asshole, because when She called him smart, he wanted to swallow Her pretty words with his lips. Wanted to roll his body over Her’s, to kiss Her stupid into the couch cushions and not stop when he got hard enough to poke into Her thigh. Maybe She’d moan his name, grinding up into him, and Dean would get to love Her until she was shivering and whining under him. 

She’d whine. Dean knew Her, even if he’d never been Her shadow like that, and She’d be pretty and snarky and bratty under him, and son of a bitch, he wanted to see it. He wanted to indulge it and tame it and hold Her when she was a writhing mess, doing that eye-flutter thing as she came. While he’d been fixing the Firebird, all his thoughts that weren’t devoted to fix the car you got Her—you idiot, because she deserves Heaven at her feet and the best you can offer her is a car—were made of setting down his wrench, walking between Her legs, and seeing if she’d push him away.

If She didn’t, and he’d been brave and wrong enough to push his luck again, Dean would’ve palmed Her over her jeans until she was panting and begging for him. Maybe he’d shove two fingers into Her pussy, and see if he could get Her eyes to glow silver again. 

See if he could worship and hold Her well enough for Dean to be the only person She needed.

And it was getting out of control.

Everything was rushing around them—Lilith had broken more seals, and Ruby still had her claws sunken in Sammy, and the angels kept being fucking douchebags—but all Dean couldn’t stop thinking about Her. About a life where She’d still crawl over him in bed, but he’d roll Her over and fuck her into the mattress. They’d still go to the Convinces store, and still hold hands, but there wouldn’t be any looking over their shoulders for demons or monsters. She’d lean on him all the time. She’d love him all the time, and Dean would find a way to give Her all the comfort and luxury She deserved. 

He wouldn’t get that world. Not anytime soon, while they were still dealing with everything. But at least, for now, he didn’t have to worry about losing Her.

She’d benched Herself. When they’d gotten back from Florida, and carefully told Her what Cas had said, she’d benched herself.

“Are you sure you’ll be okay with that?” Sam had asked, watching Her carefully, and She’d nodded.

“I can still help.” She’d mumbled. She’d been writing on a napkin again, that same repeated word from the resort. Dean needed to steal one of those and give it to Cas, just to know what the hell She was thinking about all the damn time. 

Bobby had said Her name, his voice low and firm. “It’s not that I don’t love havin’ you home, but you’re gonna drive us both up the damn wall if you’re just sittin’ around-“

“I won’t just sit around. That angel girl is still missing-“

“Anna?” Sam had frowned, and She’d nodded.

“Yeah, and I can try to find her. If she hates heaven, she might be willing to help us. And, Bobby, the book I made you guys get before...” 

She’d trailed off, and there had been a glossy look in Her eyes as she was picked at Her nails-

Dean had grabbed Her hand. Just to stop more blood from being drawn, he’d grabbed Her hand in front of Sam and Bobby. 

He hadn’t gotten shot.

Bobby had barely even scowled. But he’d also been mostly focused on Her.

“The one in Romanian?” He’d grunted, and She’d nodded.

“It’ll take a while, but I want to try and work through it. See if there’s anything we can use.”

Bobby had nodded, and She’d gotten the book. That was, apparently, how She spent most of Her days while Sam and Dean were gone. Bobby said that She’d curl up in the library and translate until she passed out on the couch, and Bobby carried her to bed. 

It wasn’t as bad as in those few months before Dean’s death.

But it still wasn’t good.

She hadn’t told them exactly what had happened. How She’d stopped the seal. But when they’d asked, She just shrugged it off, refusing to look Dean in the eyes. All he knew was that they hadn’t kissed since, and that She was trying to goddamn kill him. 

Because the benching had lasted for exactly a month before She was gathering them in the kitchen, the table scatted with a lot of loose papers, all of them fucking covered in Enochian. 

Sam picked up one of the papers—squinting at it like it might suddenly turn into something he could read—as Dean dropped at Her side. 

There was nowhere else to be.

“Any luck on Anna?” Sam asked, and She shook Her head.

“I still haven’t figured out how to summon an angel. I mean there’s like, prayer. But they don’t have to answer that.”

Bobby frowned. “Could ya’ figure out how to summon an angel? I mean, I know you got all your rituals, kiddo, but we ain’t even sure how angels work-“

“They’re beings.” She shrugged, sorting through the papers. “And they don’t have souls, but they can still be summoned. I remember seeing something about it in the original book-“

“The one you lost?”

She nodded at Sam. “Yeah. So it’ll be in here,” She tapped the Romanian book, her gaze never leaving her papers. “But I just have to find it.”

“You never told us how you lost it.” Dean muttered, and She sighed, giving him a soft smile.

He got a soft smile. Between Dean, Sam, and Bobby, Dean was the one who got a soft smile.

His grin back took up his whole face, even as She dodged around his question. She’d smiled at him.

“The hunter people in Mexico stole it.” She hummed, twisting the skin on Her finger, and that was a lie. Dean wasn’t sure which part, but it was a goddamn lie.

“If you don’t have Anna,” Sam said, before Dean had a chance to push Her. “Then what’s, you know.” He gestured to the table. “This.”

She grinned at Sam, a smug sort of light dancing in Her eyes. “I’m so glad you asked, Samuel. This is our way out.”

“Out?” Dean frowned. “Out of what?”

“The seals.” Her smile was almost manic. It was still pretty. “Anna said that there were 600 of them, right? If Lilith fails one, she can probably either try again, or move onto another. But,” She grabbed the paper out of Sam’s hand, presenting it to Dean. “I can lock them.”

They were all silent for a long moment. Staring at Her as she looked around the room, sitting tall in Her chair with her chin raised. It was a chipped, old, wooden piece of shit that Dean knew had been broken before, but under Her, it looked like throne. 

Dean cleared his throat, glancing back to the paper. “I can’t read this, Princess.”

“Oh, right.” She flushed slightly, pulling it back and scanning over the Enochian words. “It’s basically just a recipe. We can either do a trial run, scale it down and have me lock one, or we can go for the big game and I’ll lock all of them at once.”

Bobby frowned at Her. “What does lock ‘em mean?”

“It means Lilith will try to break it, and it won’t do fucking shit.” She glanced down at the paper, then grabbed a chewed-up pencil to scratch another note. “I think if we had more time, I could maybe re-make the already broken seals, but she’s already gotten thirty-four of them. I don’t want to wait.”

“How do you even know this will work?” Sammy frowned around the papers. “I mean, was it in the book?”

“No.” She shrugged, spinning the pencil between Her fingers. “I thought of it. Myself.”

“Course you did.” Bobby grumbled, and She stuck her tongue out of him. 

“You raised me like this-“

“I ain’t complainin’ kiddo, I just.” He sighed, running a hand over his face. “I don’t know how ya even begin to think of this shit. And Sam’s got a good point, we don’t got anythin’ to prove it’ll work-“

“It will work.” Her words were firm as She rubbed her wrists, and She gave Dean an almost desperate look. Like he was the only one in the whole world, the only one who needed to hear Her and stand by her side. “Please, I just- I know it’ll work. And I can do it, I promise. Cas said I’m made of magic. He said I’m half Magdalene. Maybe this is my thing. My change. I’m not making super-demons, I’m stopping the rise of Lucifer. Lilith doesn’t get to win.”

Dean just stared at Her. He couldn’t even find any words. This was way above his paygrade, even if that same paygrade had been getting higher and higher every year. It was too big a jump, going for just stopping one seal to trying to lock all of them, but She was always making insane plans and moves like that. And She always said there was another way, and Lilith doesn’t get to win, but there must be a catch. A cost. There was always a fucking cost, and Dean wouldn’t pay it if it was Her, but Her eyes were blinding and consuming and pleaded on his, and She’d never led him wrong before-

Sam coughed, and Her attention turned away. 

“What’s a super demon?”

She shook Her head. “Don’t worry about it. I just- I can do this. And I think that we should go for the big one, because once I do this the angels are going to be on my ass-“

There it was. 

The price.

“No.” Dean snapped, and Her gaze shot back to him as Bobby sighed.

“Dean-“

“No. We’re not doing this.” Dean grunted Her name, gesturing around the table. “You’ve been staying off the radar to avoid the angels, not give them a big, neon sign to come and take you.”

“They won’t take me, Dean, I’ll be fine-“

“You said it would take big game to lock all of them-“

“And I have that big game.” She folded Her arms over her chest raising Her chin. “And I’m ready to do it. Jo’s got all the ingredients for us, we just have to meet her at the roadhouse.”

Sam blinked at Her. “Jo’s been helping you with this?”

“Yeah.” She sighed, rubbing Her wrists. “I- I was talking to her about Florida and Bolivia, and she- That’s not the point. We can do this. I can do this.” Her attention turned back to Dean. “Please.”

Son of a bitch. She was saying please and giving him the flutter eyes, and Dean had a horrible, boiling and dreadful feeling about this, but She said please.

And he should’ve known better than to think She’d just bench Herself. Of course She’d been working on something like this. A way around. A risky, insane way around.

“I don’t like it.” He muttered, and She gave him a flat look.

“Do you have a better idea?” 

Son of a fucking bitch. “No.” 

She gave him a sweet smile, and he sighed. 

He’d back Her up, because it was Her. Dean had to back Her up. That was how this worked. He was Her shadow, and he couldn’t protect Her if he didn’t back her up. She’d just fuck off and do it anyway. At least this way, Dean could take all the blunt ends of the fallback. Bobby could have someone to blame if it went wrong. If She lost it, Dean would take care of Her. 

She needed to do this, so Dean would do it with Her. Whatever She needed to be happy. If She thought this was Her Magdalene thing, then Dean would stay with Her all the way down. 

But he’d need to have some fucking words with Jo, after. He was trying not to think about how She’d told Jo about Florida and Bolivia—about everything Dean didn’t get to know—but that wasn’t what the words would be about. They’d be about encouraging Her to push herself, to make stupid fucking plays that might end in Her getting hurt. 

Some small voice in his head kept muttering that if this worked, it wouldn’t be done—there would always be more monsters, more horrors, more problems to solve—but all those fantasies he had would be closer to reality. Maybe Dean would finally find the guts to take Her face between his hands and have The Conversation. 

Princess, I want you. Always want you. Even when we were kids and I was a fucking idiot, I wanted you. Wanted you since you walked into my life, and it felt like you shoulda been there the whole time. I’d want you if the world was ending. And if you’ll have me, I’ll worship the goddamn ground you walk on and build you a million cars. Buy you a house. Give you the apple pie life you deserve. 

That was it. What he’d have to say.

If they got through this, he’d just have to say it. 

And he’d faced literal fucking Hell, and walked out on the other side with Her still staying. And nothing Dean could do that made Her happy, made Her satisfied, could ever be a sin. 

She was more than angelic. She was bigger than anything in the sky. 

So Dean would do this. For Her.

“What’d you boys know about what Thing One and Thing Two have been plannin’?” Ellen asked, and Dean sighed.

They’d left Bobby’s soon after the kitchen meeting. The longer they waited, the better chance Lilith had of getting more seals. Of getting some type of wind of their plan, and stopping it. She’d explained how this was a Magdalene spell, so even if it wasn’t directly from the Book, if Lilith heard about someone ordering dirt from Jerusalem to the States, she might put two and two together, and it would end poorly. 

Dean was already pretty sure it was going to end poorly. And he’d been trying not to drink when they’d gotten to the roadhouse. When She’d been sitting right next to him—close enough for him to smell fruit and sugar, close enough for their thighs to be pressed right together—but then She and Jo had scrambled off early, and he’d made Ellen give him the strongest shit they had. 

He wouldn’t get drunk. She never said She hate it when he drank, but he’d seen Her nose twitch at the smell of it. So he’d moderate, just enough for Her to still want to share his bed and press into his side.

But he’d still drink.

“Ain’t nothin’ more than you.” Bobby sighed, frowning at his own bottle. “Ya know, I got half a mind to beat Cas’ angel ass, tellin’ her ‘bout it like that. Know he meant well, but, fuckin’ Christ.”

Sam frowned. “I thought we wanted to know what she was?”

“We wanted her to have some peace.” Bobby grumbled. “I’d been hopin’ we’d find out she’s just some typa fallen angel or hybrid or somethin’. Not this.”

“Jo mentioned your angel friend said she was like Cleopatra?” Ellen gave Dean an amused look. “That make you Antony, or Caesar?”

Dean scowled, ignoring Sam’s snort. “I don’t know what the hell that means.”

“Cleopatra was married to Caesar, and had an affair with Marc Antony.” Sam shrugged, a shit-eating grin on his face, and Dean just stared at him.

“What.”

Sam said Her name, giving Dean a pointed look. “She’s Cleopatra-“

“She ain’t Cleopatra.” Bobby snapped. “She ain’t anythin’ but her, not matter what heaven seems to think.”

“It doesn’t sound like she has a choice, Bobby-“

“Always a choice.” Dean muttered, cutting Sammy off with a glare. “If the angels got some sort of contract with her that she didn’t sign, we get her out of it.”

Something scratched at the back of Dean skull. It was made of how She’d told him about her family tracking their bloodline, while the Magdalene’s were genetic. And how she was destined for some sort of crazy marriage, and Cas had said there was more about Her. He couldn’t talk about it now. Dean had promised not to tell anyone about Her family, and he’d rather cut off his own arm than betray Her trust. 

But he’d have to talk to Her about it later. She’d probably take all the pieces in Dean’s brain and connect them quickly, because She always understood him like that. 

He missed Her. She was just upstairs with Jo, but he fucking missed Her-

“Do you think it’s like, a predetermined thing?” Sammy said, and they were talking about the Magdalene thing. “You guys made it sound like heaven doesn’t even know what the Magdalene’s bring-“

“That’s cause Cas made it sound like that,” Dean muttered, turning his bottle in his hands. “Said they tracked them, but didn’t know where they came from.”

Ellen frowned. “Ain’t those big boys supposed to know everythin’ about everyone?”

Dean shrugged. “Apparently not.”

“Good they don’t.” Bobby grunted. “Means we got a leg up on ‘em. Cas said he ain’t been able to track her-“

“No,” Dean shook his head. “Cas wouldn’t tell me how he tracked her. But he could. It’s just one of his dramatic secrets.”

“But she’s still off the angel’s radars.” Sammy frowned into the air. “Did Cas mention anything about the soul stuff she can do?”

Dean shook his head, and Ellen cleared her throat. 

“I wouldn’t worry about the angels findin’ her. That one could hold Her own against an army of gorillas and robots.” Ellen paused, tilting her head slightly. “In fact, I ain’t that worried at all. She’s strong, and stubborn, and less somethin’ drastic happens, She’s not goin’ anywhere that Dean isn’t.”

Dean choked on his beer, shooting a quick look at Bobby. Silent on his stool. Staring at his own bottle. 

Likely still carrying a gun.

“I, uh- I don’t-“ Dean stuttered Her name, trying to find his way out of a hole he hadn’t even dug. “I’m not- We’re don’t- I mean, she’s-“

“Jesus, Dean.” Ellen gave him an amused look. “You’re give yourself a damn heart attack, if you don’t slow it down.”

“But-“

“Look,” Ellen gave him a flat look. “I’ve been tryin’ to be subtle ‘bout it for a few hours, kid, but that clearly ain’t workin’. What the hell is goin’ on with you two.”

“I, uh- Nothing. We’re friends.“

“Friends.” Ellen didn’t believe him. 

Dean didn’t need Ellen to believe him. He just needed the horribly silent Bobby to believe him. 

“Yeah.” He said quickly. “I mean, we’ve always been friends. Good friends.”

“Really good friends.” Sam drawled, grinning like a fucking bitch. “Such good friends that you’re sleeping in the same bed, right?”

Bobby already knew that. That was fine. “We get nightmares, asshole-“

“I get nightmares too. Do you think I can cuddle with-“

“No.”

“Why not?” Ellen looked far too fucking amused at Dean’s torment. He was starting to worry this had been some sort of trap. “She and Sam are friends too. What’s wrong with her sharin’ his bed?”

Dean was going to fucking vomit. Bobby still hadn’t looked at him.

“She doesn’t want to share my bed.” Sam sounded amused, and victorious, and Dean was going to knock his teeth out. “I don’t call her princess, or make her cars, or drive her to the corner store in the middle of the night-“

“How the fuck did you-“

“I was taking a shit when you guys got back last night.” Sam shrugged. “Saw all the food wrappers.”

Ellen sighed, giving Dean a look that was almost disappointed. “Dean, if you really think you two are just friends-“

“He doesn’t.” 

Dean needed to run. 

“I mean, they are friends, but he knows there’s more.”

Before Sammy ran his big mouth, Dean needed to run.

“Because you don’t make out with friends, do you, Dean.”

Later, Dean was going to run Sammy’s head through a wall, then throw some very stainable foods on all of Jo’s clothing for snitching. 

But for now, he was dead. Dean was fucking dead. 

Bobby was looking at him. Probably sizing up where the best place to shoot him would be. If Dean got a vote, he’s like it to be the brain. Gone quick, no pain. Just put down like the wet, mangy dog who’d been trailing after Her, who’d never deserved Her light and beauty, let alone Her love or touch. And Bobby knew that better than anyone. Bobby might be the only other person who understood just how vital She was to the world continuing to turn. And Bobby knew Dean. Knew what Dean had done. That Dean could never, ever be more than Her shadow, and even that was pushing it-

“You kiss her?” Bobby grunted, and Sam’s eyes widened slightly. The little shit seemed to have been so caught up in snitched to Ellen, he must have forgotten Bobby was there. 

Dean hoped that this time, he’d get to come back as a ghost and haunt to fucker to his own grave.

“Yes, sir.”

Bobby scoffed. “Don’t sir me, Dean. She kiss you back?”

Dean nodded, and Bobby let out a long, slow breath. This was it. He was dead-

“Thank fuckin’ Christ.” Bobby muttered, shaking his head. “Finally.”

Dean froze. “I- Uh-“

 “I ain’t fucking stupid, ya ijdit.” Bobby gave him a flat look, and Dean swallowed. “I got eyes. Ears. A damn brain. If you think I ain’t noticed how you look at her all the fuckin’ time, then I’m worried about your brain.”

Dean blinked, and shook his head. “It’s- I didn’t- We only kissed. That’s it. No funny business, and she kissed me the second time-“

“The second time?!” Sam looked far too happy about this information. “When was the second time?”

“Florida.” Dean grumbled. “That’s not the point, Sammy. She kissed me-“

“You two bein’ safe?” Ellen raised her brows, and maybe Hell could do him a favor, open up, and swallow Dean whole. 

“It was just kissing, and we’re not fucking idiots-“

“So you will have sex-“

“Sam-“

“Dean.” Bobby voice was low, but they all fell silent. “Listen. I meant it. I’m… glad. She needs someone who gets her, and you two- I ain’t able to be mad at ya for makin’ her happy. But if you break her heart. You leave her waitin’ for you, make her cry even one fuckin’ time.” Bobby narrowed his eyes. “I’ll make your time in Hell look like a fuckin’ nunnery.”

Dean gave a small, firm nod. He could live with that. If he ever hurt Her, he’d more than deserve whatever Bobby fulfilling that promise looked like.

And Dean didn’t bother to tell them that The Conversation still hadn’t happened. That Dean’s brain kept running away from him and calling Her his girl, but in reality, that wasn’t anything different than before.

Nothing Dean felt or thought about Her was different from before. Parts of it were amplified—he’d had a very firm and now impossible rule about never fantasizing about Her outside of touching himself, but now he couldn’t listen to her talk without imagining what She’d sound like when Dean shoved his face into Her cunt or stuffed her mouth full of his cock—but it was still the same. 

Even before the kiss, he would’ve spent the rest of the conversation thinking about Her. If it wasn’t those fantasies, it would be Her siren-like voice haunting him on the wind, all while he tried to figure out what the hell She and Jo were doing, and if he’d get stabbed for trying to crash it.

He would’ve found a good reason to leave a little early before, as well. Would’ve ended up slowly opening the door to Jo’s room, and grinned at just the sight of Her. All the lights were off, save for the glow of the TV—still playing some sort of chick-flick Dean didn’t recognize—and She still looked like a goddamn dream.

She and Jo had fallen asleep against each other, under the same blanket. 

And It was good She had Jo. A friend that didn’t have anything complicated. Sure She had Sammy, but at the end of the day, the kid was still Dean’s brother. So if for some reason Bobby ever had to fulfill that oath, She’d still have Jo. 

And Sam was also right.

Dean wasn’t just Her friend. He’d never been just Her friend. Even when he’d been keeping Her away from Dad, hunting with Her in secret, they’d never been just friends.

They had to have The Conversation. Dean would find a way to survive if She ripped his heart out of his freakin’ chest, but Bobby hadn’t been mad. If Dean was really bad for Her, Bobby wouldn’t have thanked God Dean kissed Her. If She didn’t want Dean, on some level more than just a quick fuck or two emotional kisses, Bobby wouldn’t have said She needed Dean. 

Maybe She craved him too. 

Maybe.

Princess, I want you.

He could do it. 

Later.

He’d do it later.

For now, Dean would pick up Jo’s beer and Her soda, brush all the hair from Her face and smile at Her in the dark—there didn’t need to be any witnesses, because Dean wasn’t touching for anyone but Her and his own selfish hunger—before detangling Her from Jo to get her to bed. 

She made an adorably disgruntled sound as Dean hauled Her up his chest. And it amazed him sometimes. How the same glowing, soft eyes blinking up at him could give dagger stares that made demons afraid. How those slightly parted, soft lips could curl into deadly sneers, and the same haunting voice that was mumbling his name could spit the most venom he’d ever seen. 

“Dean?”

“Yep.” He walked slowly, trying his goddamn best not to disturb Her more than he had to. “It’s late, you know.”

“I’m not clock.” She grumbled, giving him the cutest fucking pout in history. “How do I know you’re Dean?”

He frowned at Her. “Cause, uh- I’m me, sweetheart. Unless you got another Dean on the side-“

“Just you.” She shoved Her face right into his neck, and he had to be fucking dreaming. “’S always just you, De.” She giggled to Herself. “Was a stupid question. I know you’re you.”

“Yeah?” He hummed, shouldering their door open. “How do you know, Princess.”

“You’re gold.” She hummed. “And strong right here.” She poked a little to the right of his heart, and Dean stopped in the center of their room as She blinked up at him. “Only my Dean is gold like that.”

She might as well have fucking shot him. Her Dean. He was Her Dean. 

He’d be Her whatever. Son of a bitch, Dean would be Her court jester if that was the only place She offered him.

It wouldn’t be. 

Court jesters weren’t allowed to share the Princess’s bed. They didn’t get to help Her into one of their shirts, keeping their eyes firmly fixed away from the bounce of Her breasts. Jesters didn’t get to kiss Her brow and have Her wrap her arms around their neck.  

That was a job for shadows. 

She’d told him that She could sense when souls wanted each other, and hadn’t really explained it, but Dean needed his soul to start doing some fucking work for him. To make it real fucking clear that, the moment She said the word, Dean was going to wrap around Her and never let go. Do half The Conversation before it even started, so that Dean could finally be allowed to kiss Her brow and trail down Her nose, ending on Her lips and pulling every perfect sound She had to offer from her throat. 

Make Her happy.

Bobby had said Dean could make Her happy.

It was a little fucking terrifying. Just how much She was to him. More than the world. More than all the stars in the sky. 

And laying in the dark, Her curled into his arms, Dean was glad Dad was Dead. That he’d gone a fucked-up kind of heroes death.

The alternative was that Dean would’ve kept crashing up into Her—covered in mud and feeling so fucking good every time She took him all the same—and then Dad would’ve kept prying Her away. Making Her leave. Making Dean lose Her.

And Dean would’ve killed him, or punched him, after simply losing his fucking mind trying to convince himself he didn’t want Her on Dad’s orders.

Princess, I want you. Always want you.

He’d always wanted Her. It didn’t matter what anyone did to him or told him, Dean would never stop wanting Her. The only thing that would keep him away was Her saying no. 

But son of a bitch, if She said yes. 

Dean fell asleep to fantasies of Her saying yes. Of Her telling him she wanted him. 

He woke to Her still in his arms. 

And he didn’t stray for the rest of the day.

For as long as Dean could manage, he stayed at Her side. Hanging over Her shoulder as She and Jo went over the plan on last time, running down the ingredient list. Guiding Her to the Firebird with a hand on Her back, and tailing after Her in the Impala as they headed away from the roadhouse. 

She’d wanted space. Just in case, She’d demanded that they do this somewhere with space. Just a few towns over, where it was mostly field and birds. Bobby and Ellen would be on standby just in case. Sam, Dean, and Jo would bring their guns, just in case. They’d get a motel and wait a day, just in case. 

“I thought we wanted to move fast?” Sam frowned at the Firebird ahead of them, and Dean sighed.

“Apparently there’s a sweet spot, Sammy. Not slow enough for Lilith to hear about it. Not fast enough for demons to show up and have us miss them.”

And no demons showed up. They got a two bed to share, did routine sweeps of the town every few hours, and found no demons.

But one demon found them. 

There was a knock on the door, and they all froze. Jo one the bed with a book, Dean on the couch with the TV and Her and Sammy at the table, doing something on the laptop. 

“Dean?” Sam’s voice was slow as they all stared at the door. “Did you order food?”

“Nope.” He muttered, and Jo stood up slowly, her gun in hands. Dean reached for his own, he knew Sam was doing the same, and She-

Her grip was white-knuckled on her knife, and She was staring at the door with a little more intensity the rest of them. Her face was colorless, and Her eyes were wide, and Her mouth opened as Jo touched the door handle.

“Jo, wait-“

Jo pulled back, but she’d already unlocked the door. 

And when it swung open, Ruby was grinning on the other side.

“Could you guys at least pretend you’re happy to-“ Ruby’s eyes landed on Her, and the bitch paled. “Fuck.”

A lot of things happened at once. Jo slammed the door shut before Ruby could run, Dean aimed his gun at Ruby’s temple, and Sam threw himself in front of Ruby as something in the room started to shift.

She wasn’t advancing with the knife. It was just spinning in Her hands as she stared at Ruby, and Dean had never seen her look at anyone with that much pure fucking hated. Usually there was some sort of starlight dancing or flickering in Her gaze, even if She was angry. 

Maybe Dean just hadn’t seen it up close last time. Because it was the same as Boston. She was amplified, and everything seemed to be revolving around Her, and her pupils were silver.

And it wasn’t just starlight anymore.

It was a supernova.

It was wrathful. 

“What the fuck,” She hissed, and Dean could swear Her voice was echoing around the room. “Is she doing here.”

“I don’t know.” Sam said quickly, giving Dean an almost desperate look. “Dude, I swear I don’t know. I didn’t bring Ruby, I didn’t even tell here where we were-“

“He didn’t!” Ruby jumped in quickly. “Fucking- I’m here to help, I’m always here to help, and that’s not going to change, no matter how much you id-“ The world grew technicolor, and Ruby stammered over herself. “I’m trying to warn you! Alistair knows you’re here!”

Dean felt his blood go cold. Alistair. Alistair had promised to take Her, to hurt Her, and he knew they were here. 

Sam said Her name slowly, not moving from in front of Ruby. “She doesn’t have any reason to lie. And if Alistair does know-“

“Then we’ll move fast tomorrow.”

Ruby frowned. “Move fast on what-“

“Shut the fuck up.” She snapped, and Ruby paled. “How do you know Alistair knows.”

“Because I’ve been tracking Hell’s Assassins. And they’re headed here.”

Jo blinked. “I thought they’d been takin’ orders from Azazel-“

“They take orders from the top dog.” Ruby said, still watching Her wearily. “Right now that’s Lilith. And she’s passed them onto Alistair, to help him however he wants. And he’s sending them after you guys.”

Her cold glare on Ruby didn’t waver. “And why are you telling us?”

“To help-“

“Don’t lie.” She hissed. “You fucking left me-“

“Because Lilith pushed me out of my meat-suit! I- I told Sam-“

She raised Her hand, and Ruby fell silent. Dean felt like he should be doing more than just standing here. Maybe he should be going out and getting every bit of candy and sugar, and a collector edition copy of Indiana Jones, and a whole lot of body scrub and makeup, and forming some sort of fucking alter to the goddess in their motel room. 

And it was still just Her. It was just Her, everywhere. In everything. The whole fucking world was Her, and Dean could feel it. 

He wanted to live in it. Live in Her.

Another thing that would have to wait for later. Because right now, it seemed like Ruby was pretty damn close to getting killed, and Dean wanted to see that.

“Here’s how this is gonna go.” She said, Her eyes still locked on Ruby. “I’m not going to kill you, because Sam’s my friend, and I care about him, and I want to trust him. But if anything goes wrong tomorrow, if anything other than a few, easy-to-kill Hell’s Assassin’s show up,” her eyes narrowed. “I won’t kill you. I will obliterate you. Literally. Got it?”

Ruby nodded, and She smiled. A toothless, mocking, crude smile that made Her look a little like a Queen. 

Dean shouldn’t be this turned on by how mean She was being. Knowing that didn’t stop him from wanting to launch himself at Her and pin Her to the wall. Kiss Her until all that raw fucking power was directed at him, and he could throw it right back at Her with only his hands and dick and mouth and care.

Not in front of Jo and Sammy. 

But later. If Dean got Her, he wanted to figure out what that fun little trick could do in bed. If he could use it to fuck Her, if She’d be able to see his soul while they fucked, if maybe he could bury himself deep enough inside of Her that he’d be enough of Her to see Her soul.

It would be beautiful. All of Her was beautiful, so Her soul would have to be too. 

Dean would have to wait for later. A lot of things were going to happen later. 

But now, he watched Ruby shuffled back out the door, and ran to Her side as the world collapsed back into Her. She was swaying slightly on Her feet, as the world became just the world again. And Dean caught Her.

That was his job. 

“We should go to bed.” She mumbled, Her head rested slightly on Dean’s shoulder. “We’ll need to be up early tomorrow.”

“Can we do it tonight?” Sam suggested, and She shook Her head. 

“Need the Sun for it.”

“Oh. Sure.” Sam gave Dean a confused look, and Dean just shrugged.

His job wasn’t to question about Her methods. 

It was to orbit around Her as they all got ready for bed, crawl into the mattress at Her side, then pull Her right into his chest and lean down to whisper in Her ear. Low enough that Sam and Jo couldn’t hear, because this wasn’t for them. 

“I still don’t like this.” He murmured Her name, and She met his gaze in the dark. “There’s gotta be another way-“

“This is the other way,” She whispered, offering him a soft smile. “And I can handle some Hell’s Assassins-“

“I know you can, b- Sweetheart-“

“Then let me-“

“I will.” Dean leaned forward, their noses bumping slightly. “This is what we’re doing, I’m backing you up. All the way down. But I want you to know I still think it’s a pretty shit idea.”

She giggled. “Your objection is noted. Go to sleep.”

He rolled his eyes, unable to fight his grin. “So bossy-“

“Can’t hear you,” She burrowed Her face his neck. “Night, De.”

“Night, Princess.” He muttered, running a hand through Her hair, and the boiling dread was back. 

But he’d still do this. 

For Her, Dean would do anything.

He clung to Her, through the whole night. Kept his face buried in Her hair and his body half on top of Her’s, because he was allowed to. Maybe She’d feel it. See it with Her magic soul pheromones.

And if She didn’t, Dean would tell Her in the morning. 

—————

“Look.” The big man made of green—who hadn’t hurt you and all the birds and flowers seemed to adore—was kneeling down to meet your gaze. “I don’t know if you ain’t able to talk, or if you just won’t, but I can’t keep callin’ you kiddo. You know what a name is?”

You know what a name is. You have one. This man has one too, although you’d forgotten after he told you. You’ve just been calling him the Big, Green Man.  

And he’s still looking at you. You’re supposed to answer his question, but you don’t remember how. You know your own name, but you’re also the pressure of the house foundation, and the weight of all the beer the Big Green Man is keeping in the fridge, and the tension of the guns on his wall.

You hate guns. The last gun you saw had been in your father’s hands, and it had been aimed at the head of your cousin. 

He’d gotten in trouble because he’d tried to touch you. Hurt you. Half his face was already covered in boils, because you’d screamed and all the Silver light in your body had surged up to protected you. And you’d just wanted him to go away. You’d just wanted all of them to go away, and leave you alone again. They hadn’t stopped hating you, after the ritual. They only hated you more, because it wasn’t supposed to be you.  

You hadn’t wanted him to die.

But your father had apologized to him, and pulled the trigger. 

He’d never apologized to you. Nobody did. 

Most of this is your fault anyways. And nobody wanted to hear you talk. To plead for it to stop, because it was too much and you could see your cousin putrid, greasy sort of brown sinking down into the floor, and his blood on your clothing already missed him, and you wanted to go home.

You didn’t get a home. You were on hold until the Sky decided to take you.

And you haven’t seen the Sky, since you ran. 

You haven’t spoken for a while before that.

So you’re just blinking at the Big Green Man. And he’s blinking back, scanning over your face for an answer you don’t know how to give him.

“You know how to write?” He grunts, and you blink at him. “Shit, wait here kiddo-“

The Big Green Man walks away, and you wait. He’s safe. His guns aren’t angry like your fathers are, and there’s beer in his fridge but it’s sad. Not violent like the wine your grandmother and aunts poured down your throat to keep you satiated. 

You’d vomited that up, before you ran. It made you tired, and you couldn’t afford to be tired. 

But the Big Green Man was making you sleepy. You could rest in his big house with all the books, and nothing would try to hurt you. 

He comes back with a pen, before you can curl up to sleep. 

“If you’ve got a name,” he grunts, placing a paper on the coffee table and passing the pen into your hands. “Write it here.”

You look between him and the pencil, and give it a little testing scribble. Its ink is red, and that’s wrong. You’re not red.

The Big Green Man frowns as you push the pen back across the table. “You able to write?”

You nod, and he sits up a little straighter. 

“Somethin’…” He glances down to the table. “Wrong with the pen?”

You nod again, and slowly push to your feet. The Big Green Man has a desk, and the desk must have a pencil, and-

There it is. There’s a yellow highlighter too. And it’s not Golden, but it’ll do. 

The Big Green Man watches you as you return to the couch, and scribble your name on the paper. The graphite is a little silver. And that’s you.

“Huh.” The Big Green Man repeats your name back to you, and you nod. “You remember my name?”

You shake your head, and the Big Green Man reaches for the highlighter. You snatch it away with a frantic shake of your head. That’s not for him. That’s for the boy the Sky says he hates and doesn’t want you to find.

And you—not the you staring at the Big Green Man, who’s going to grab a pen from the desk until he finds the right color and writes down that his name is Bobby, but the you now—don’t remember that part. But these types of dreams tend to have small things that you’d forgotten, or maybe made up in the first place. You’re never sure if it’s real or just another dream at all until-

“Hi, Princess.” 

There he is. “Hi, De.”

Dean’s pressed right into your side on the couch, and suddenly Bobby isn’t so big anymore. You’re not that small, either. And it’s a little like you’re flickering back and forth between the little girl who’d sat on the couch and the… Whatever you are now. Who’s leaning into Dean’s side.

“Why does Bobby look so young?” Dean mutters in your ear, and you laugh. 

“This was eighteen years ago, Deano. Would be a little sad if he didn’t look young.”

“Huh.” Dean frowns at the air. “Eighteen years ago I was…”

“Ten.”

“Uh, yeah.” He raises his brows at you. “How’d you know that?”

“I did math, Winchester.” You grin at him, resting your chin on his shoulder. “It’s this thing with numbers, where you add them together and take them away, and then you get other numbers-“

“Alright, alright.” He rolls his eyes, but his arm his looped around you, and you’re lying against him on the couch as Bobby keeps talking.

“You didn’t add a last name,” Bobby mutters, and he looks back to you. “You got anyone, kiddo? Family?”

You shake your head, and Dean tenses beside you.

“You’ve got me.” He mutters, sounding a little like a dejected puppy, and you give him an amused look.

“I didn’t eighteen years ago. This me,” you gesture around the room. “Didn’t have anyone.”

“But you had me.”

“I didn’t know you.”

Dean scowls, like the very fucking idea of that is intolerable. “You coulda. I coulda found you.”

You hum, your smile never wavering. He’s adorable, and you love him, and you can’t say it aloud, but you grab the yellow highlighter from the table—Bobby seems to be caught in some kind of static as your attention remains on Dean—and hold Dean’s gaze. “Do you want to have me, Dean?”

And it’s a dream. You have to remind yourself it’s a dream.

But the open, hopeful, sheer look of desire on Dean’s face isn’t as foreign as it should be. 

His voice is low, almost hoarse. And the whole dream seems to be filling with a golden haze that makes you feel a little high as he leans down, holding your gaze.

“I always fucking want you, Princess.” He mutters, and you swallow. “Wanted you since you walked into my life and it felt like you shoulda been there the whole time. I’d want you if the world was ending. And if you’ll have me, I’ll worship the goddamn ground you walk on, baby.”

Baby.

You know I love you, baby.

But this sounds more real, and yet it’s just as fake, and you don’t know why your mind hates you so much. 

Yet you’ll take all of Dean you can get. Even if it’s just a dream. 

“Okay,” you whisper, uncapping the highlighter and slowly moving it to his brow. 

You’re not sure what you’re doing. Dean clearly isn’t either. 

But you let the Silver take over, and start to write on his forehead, just like you’ve been practicing. His name, but running away from you as you add more, and suddenly it’s your name too, and then-

The word—words?—are glowing, and sinking into Dean’s skin, and he’s holding your gaze, and you love him, and the Sky can never be allowed to take him away or you’ll do a hell of a lot more than just scream and beg-

Your eyes flutter open, and you’re staring at the ceiling, covered in a big, warm weight and drowning in the smell of spice. 

Dean’s snoring above you. And you don’t know when you flipped over, but he’s pinned you between the mattress and his body, and his face is in your neck. 

You could stay here forever. 

But you have a job to do. And you have to move. Fast.

“Dean,” you whisper, running your fingers through his hair, and this isn’t overindulging. He’s on top of you. You’re just trying to wake him up gently. “Wake up. We’ve gotta go.”

The snores hitch, and your smile grows.

“C’mon. Up.”

“No.” He grumbles, and you giggle softly.

“I know you’re awake now, Deano.”

He pauses, tensing slightly. “No, ya’ don’t.”

“Sleeping people don’t talk.”

“Could be sleep talkin’,” he mutters, still not moving. “You don’t know.”

“Yes, I do.” You push at his shoulders lightly. “Up, you big baby.”

His head turns, eyes blinking open, and if he doesn’t decide to get up now, you’re not going to have the strength to push him. 

He’s so pretty. And in the morning light, there’s no part of him you can see that isn’t Golden. It’s in his eyes and soft on his skin and woven through his hair, and you love him, and you’re not allowed to say it. 

You can’t let it affect work either. And it can’t show on your face. 

So you’re trying to smile at him the same way that you’d smile at Sam or Jo. But he’s perfect, and all around you, and it’s not affecting work if Sam and Jo aren’t even here to do the work-

The door slams open, and Jo waltz through it with the timing of some sort of sick joke. 

“Oh, good, y’all are-“ She freezes in the center of the room, eyes widening. “Shit, I didn’t mean to- I can come back, if you’re- y’know-“

You flush and Dean twists to shoot Jo a glare.

“If we were, it would’ve been ruined already, Jo.”

Jo’s eyes are going to burst out of her head. “So you were-“

“Not yet.” Dean pushes up off of you, pauses, and leans down to press a kiss to your brow. 

Not yet.

Baby. I love you, baby. 

You’re just staring up at him with wide eyes and parted lips, and you’re going to melt into the mattress. The Spiderweb loves this. It’s bursting and sparking everywhere, the ache between your legs building as you just stare up at Dean, and his lips tighten slightly.

“You good?”

You smile at him, nodding a little stupidly. “I’m awesome.”

His mouth twitches slightly, and he nods. Brushes a little hair from your face before he moves away. 

And you just keep lying there. Dean and Jo are talking about how Sam’s at a shitty diner down the street, and Dean should go join him so they can case the old church you’re using before the ritual starts. Jo will stay with you, going over the plan one last time, and Dean will survive one damn hour without you.

“But she needs to eat-“

“And I brought food.” Jo calls your name. “You want some pancakes?”

“Yes, please.” You might be whispering. You still feel sort of molten. 

“See.” Jo’s talking to Dean again. Her voice isn’t ever really firm like that when she’s talking to you. “Go get your own food, Dean. And I already yelled at Sam ‘bout Ruby, but double teamin’ never hurt.”

Dean grumbles something about killing Ruby himself, if she shows up, and you hope he does. Sam and Dean fight about that kind of stuff all the time, and you really don’t want to be the one who has to kill Sam’s demon friend.

Dean can do it for you.

Dean’s always doing stuff for you.

“See you at the church.” He mutters, suddenly hovering above you like the angel he is, and you smile at him. 

“Okay.”

“Eat what Jo brought you.”

You nod, still a little dizzy and lost in just the sight of him. “Okay.”

His lips twitch slightly. “You sure you’re alright down there?”

“Yeah.” You’re definitely whispering, and Dean’s face splits into a grin.

“Don’t do anything insane.”

“I would never.”

He rolls his eyes. “Jo-“

“Nothin’ insane. I heard ya, Dean. Now go.”

“She’s so mean to me.” Dean mutters, his fingers brushing so easily through your hair, and the Silver has never been this happy in your body. “You’d never be that mean to me, Princess.”

Jo snorts. “Yes, she would-“

“Nah.” Dean grins at you, and you can only grin back. “Pinky promise you’re gonna eat.”

You nod again, not trusting yourself to speak, and lock your pinky with Dean’s. His smile is the best thing you’ve ever seen. This plan has to work, so Dean can smile like that all the time. 

“Good girl.” He mutters, and his attention turn away just before your love and need for him escapes, splattering all over your face. 

Dean and Jo exchange a few low words, and you just keep staring at the ceiling. Baby. I love you, Baby. You know I love you-

“Y’all are so gross.” Jo groans, dropping down on your mattress. “I mean, that was worse than if I did walk in on you fuckin’-“

“Jo.” You mumble, giving her a flat look. “We aren’t fucking.”

Jo sighs. “You’re not holdin’ out on him cause of... that thing, are ya?”

“I don’t wanna talk about it-“

“He won’t care.” Jo’s voice is firm, and you turn to see her almost glaring at you. “Don’t ruin this for yourself just cause you think he’s gonna get weird about it.”

“I’m not-“

“You are. Dean’s not gonna give a shit if you’re a virgin. I think he might get all caveman about it, actually. He seems like the type.”

You need to stop telling Jo everything about you. At this point, all she doesn’t know about is how you-

“I mean, you love him. Don’t think you’d love him if you really thought he’d get all fuckin’ shitty ‘bout something like that.”

Fuck. “Jo, I- I don’t-“

“You don’t need to say it.” She shrugs, holding your gaze. “’S why I’m sayin’ it for you. Dean wouldn’t do that to ya’. I really think if you tell him, he’s gonna get like, all fuckin’ commanding. And you’d be into that.”

“Jo-“

“C’mon. You can lie to each other, but you can’t lie to me.” Jo is lucky she’s basically your sister. Anyone else would’ve been stabbed by now. “You love him. Sam told me he’s been moanin’ your name in his sleep, when you ain’t there.”

“He has?” You need to sound less hopeful. It’s not selling the I don’t love Dean angle that well. “I- I mean, I don’t care-“

“Yeah, you do.” Jo smirks at you. “You want him to kiss you, and hug you, and fuck you- Shit!”

You slam a pillow over Jo’s face, and when she tries to retaliate, you let just enough of the Silver out to make the pillow burst into only feathers.

Jo scowls. “I hate when you do that.”

“Yeah, well, I hate when you tease me about Dean-“

“But you deserve it! You are so obvious, it’s like- Oh my god, you remember when we were at the roadhouse a few months back, and that hunter from Louisiana started talkin’ to you?”

You blink at her. “No?”

Jo rolls her eyes. “Course you don’t. You were lookin’ at Dean.”

“Hey-“

“Well the asshole was tryin’ to get in your pants, and you were just makin’ those fuckin’ I love you eyes at Dean-“

“I don’t-“

“Yeah, you do. It’s like,” Jo flutters her lashes, pouts slightly with an open mouth, and you hit her with another pillow.

“I do not fucking do that.”

Jo seems completely unfazed, which is really annoying. “Yeah, ya do. And you were makin’ those eyes at Dean, and the hunter didn’t see ‘em, but you didn’t see him. You were bein’ polite, but you’re real fuckin’ shit at flirting-“

You gape at her. “You’re really mean this morning-“

“I’m sick of you and Dean dancin’ around each other!” Jo throws her hands up in the air, flopping back down on the mattress. “And you keep interrupting my story! The point is that Dean got all barky and mad at the hunter, and you didn’t even notice cause you were too busy eye-fuckin’ him!”

“Barky?”

Jo grins. “I think he fuckin’ growled. I’m tryin’ to tell you that you’re not good at pickin’ up signals, and you love Dean, and he wants be allowed to love you, and if you’d just fuck ‘im, shit would be so much easier.”

You let out a long, slow breath, and before you can even open your mouth and ask Jo to drop it, she’s holding up a finger.

“Look, how about this. What’s your dream life?”

Dean’s asked you that before. And you’re not sure where Jo is going with this, but she’s going to get the same answer he did. “I’ve never thought about what else I’d do-“

“I’m not askin’ what else you’d do.” Jo shrugs, holding your gaze. “I’m askin’ about your dream. If everything works out and you get a perfect world, what’s it look like?”

You stare at Her, and the Silver is rioting inside your body.

A perfect world. Not a realistic one, where you’re either still locked up, or the Sky has taken you, or you’re just hunting until it kills you, or everyone around you dies and you turn to stone, waiting for them to return. 

A dream. 

You can see it, forming far too fast. It’s just water-painted colors and ideas, but it’s still clear. No monsters or demons or angels, and the Sky is gone. Bobby’s just running his yard, and Sam’s back in college, doing whatever he wants to do. You and Jo get coffee every weekend, and these kinds of conversations never have an underlying sense of danger around the corner.

And Dean’s everywhere.

All his clothing doesn’t stay in a room he never sleeps in, but is tucked into the same drawer as yours. He works in the scrapyard with Bobby, and you don’t know exactly what you’re doing—you’ve really never thought about it—but it’s something useful, where you get to read a lot and talk a lot, and nobody ever gets hurt. 

And you come home to Dean every night, and he kisses you everywhere. He falls asleep with his head in your lap and your fingers in his hair, and all your rules are broken because you tell him you love him all the time. And there’s a future. It’s not just the thing to get to tomorrow.

Tomorrow is promised. 

The longer you think about it, the more the Silver spreads. And you’re a little afraid to say it aloud. Aloud makes it real. 

So you just shake your head, twisting the skin on your finger. “I don’t know.”

Jo knows you’re lying. She raises her brows, and her lips tighten into a line, but she doesn’t push it. She knows you well enough not to. 

“Think about it,” she shrugs, and you nod. Now that it’s in your head, you don’t think you’re ever going to stop thinking about it. 

“Do you have one?” You ask, lying back down at her side, and Jo frowns at the ceiling. 

“I think it used to be this.” She mutters. “Huntin’. But I dunno, I’d just wanna fuckin’ chill. Get a cat.”

You give her an amused look. “A cat?”

“Yeah. I’d relax and get a cat, work in somethin’ with sound. I was really good at that,” she says your name, giving you a grin. “The sound shit? From the lich case. I liked it. Lotta buttons.”

You snort. “You want to work in sound cause there’s a lot of buttons?”

“Yep. And don’t act like buttons ain’t fun to push.” She sticks her tongue out at you. “I’d love to have a job that’s just pushin’ buttons. This job is… you know.”

You do know. And if this works, Jo could have an out. Your dream world is just a dream. You have too much hanging around you for it to be any more than a dream. But the Sky doesn’t watch Jo. Demons don’t hunt her. She’s not a Magdalene, or salvation, or damnation. 

That’s why you’re doing this ritual in the first place. For Jo. 

You didn’t tell Bobby, because he’d tell Ellen. You didn’t tell Sam, because that would involve explaining that Jo got the idea from hearing Ruby talk about it, and then he’d say that’s not what Ruby meant, and try to make your talk to Ruby. 

You couldn’t tell Dean. If you told Dean that Jo had overheard Ruby talking about the possibility of locking all the seals, then came to you to see if it was a possibility, he’d get mad at Jo for pushing you. And she hadn’t pushed you. Not on purpose. But she’d wanted to know if that was in the cards, and it had been, and then she’d wanted to do it. 

“If you think you can,” she’d said over the phone, her words slow. “I don’t think we’re getting’ a better solution.”

“I know.” You’d sighed, frowning at your notes. “But I- I don’t trust it.”

“If you think it’ll take too much-“

“No. I’d be fine. I just- I don’t know. We’ll do it.”

“I’m serious, if you ain’t on board-“

“I’m on board. I’ll pitch it to them tomorrow. Can you start-“

“Been workin’ on the ingredients since you gave me the list.” Jo had said your name carefully. “Thank you. I know this is dicey, but it’s gonna work. You’ve got it. We can do it.”

You’d nodded, and hung up. 

You’ve got it.

You don’t feel like you’ve got it, but you had to have it. This ritual was volatile, and the Silver still feels like a muscle that spams and tenses and seizes up under the wrong amount of pressure, but you’ve got this.

Ruby showed up last night, and that was making the Silver roll and howl in a kind of alarm over your skull, but you could deal with Ruby. You’d meant it. If she’d set this as some sort of trap, and you showed up tomorrow to find hundreds of demons, or a pack of hellhounds, or Alistair himself, you’d crush Ruby with the Silver until she was fucking nothing. 

And you want to tell Dean about it. Tell him that you have this itching, rash-like feeling over your wrist and along your bones, and something just feels wrong. You don’t know if you can do this, but you’re repeating it over and over until it feels a little more true. 

But if you’re going to use the monster for something, you might as well use Her for this.

It has to stay between you and Jo.

And you’ve got it.

“We should start movin’.” Jo mutters, pushing up off the mattress. “Ready?”

You’re not ready. 

You nod anyway. 

Jo runs over the ingredients one last time while she waits for you to change, and everything is in order. You’ve got your jacket, your knife hidden safely inside, and the flask in your pocket. Filled with whore tears.

You don’t really want to know how Jo got those. 

“I think you should tell him where we’re done.” Jo hums in the Firebird, and you shoot her a glare.

“Don’t you have your own love life to worry about?”

“Ha! So you admit it’s a love life-“

“I’m gonna crash the car-“

“No ya won’t. Dean gave it to you.” She bumps your shoulder, and you can’t stop your small smile. “And I was serious, before. You don’t even have to jump right in with the love shit. You can just say I like you, and if you wanna fuck, I’m down.”

You sigh. “Can’t I make you do it for me? Like we’re in middle school?”

“Nope. Cause then you’re gonna tell him that he’d be the first, and like, I know we don’t wanna fetishize that, women are more than their bodies, he’d want you if you’d fucked a million dudes-“

“Jo-“

“He would. Right now, it probably ain’t even occurred to him that you haven’t. And I want you to see his dumb little monkey brain explode when you tell him.”

You shoot her a glare. “Dean’s not dumb.”

“I know.” Jo shrugs. “But he’s gonna short-circuit. Promise.”

You just shrug, and try not to think about it. It’s easier if you don’t think about it.

There are just too many other things to think about, besides is Dean going to like you back. The Romanian translations, and the ingredients, and if the Silver is going to settle the heel down and cooperate. If Hell’s Assassin’s do show up, how you’ll handle them.

But he might. Everyone can’t be wrong. There might be a world where you can wrap your arms around Dean, rest your chin on his chest, and say Deano, I like you, and if you wanna fuck, I’m down.

You’ll rephrase it.

And you’re not supposed to overindulge. Asking Dean to fuck would definitely be overindulging. 

But he smiles at you, the moment you and Jo walk into the church. Dean grins at you like you’re not about to take a huge, deadly fucking gamble. Like he’s about to ask you to go get some food and watch a movie.

Like a date.

Softer than just fucking. And instead of sweeping the pews for lingering sulfur and demon marks, you could lean over the table and hold his hand. 

Maybe.

If he asks you, you’ll never be strong enough to say no. It’s why you’re not telling him you don’t want to do this.

He’d say don’t do it, Princess. And then you’d go home.

He’ll talk you out of it. You don’t really want to be talked out of it, not when it could be the way. Not when you promised Jo.

So you’re going through with it. It won’t be rushed or experimental. Jo tracked down all the right ingredients—and you’ve really decided to not ask questions about it—and the Church is supposed to help the spell draw power as holy ground, but you’re mostly using it for your own peace of mind. 

Because this all on you.

“Do you guys-“

“We’ve got everything.” You mutter, turning over the skull of a sickly bird in your hands. “Sun’s almost through the windows, and we- There needs to be one thing in every cardinal direction. This,” you hold up the skull. “Comes with me to the dais. Jo’s taking the South and the tooth, Sam’s West and the blessed fruit, and Dean’s-“

“Black pearl covered in lamb’s blood, East.” Dean frowns down at his item. “How the hell did you get this stuff, Jo-“

“Don’t worry about it.” You and Jo say in unison, and Sam snorts. 

“Is that really it?” He asks, frowning at his apple. “Just stand in the corners of the room and all the seals will lock?”

“You have to stand in the corner of the room.” You mutter, pulling your flask from your jacket. “Bottoms up.”

You down the whore tears in one gulp, trade the flask for the knife like it’s a security blanket, and turn on your heels before you can lose the nerve.

Everyone finds their places fast. And all they’ll have to do is stand there, with their items at their feet.

You have to work.

Sam’s looking around the room. Jo’s looking between you and the teeth, a taut but hopeful expression on Her face. 

Dean’s looking at you. Only at you.

If you look at him, you’ll run to him. But you have to focus.

You squeeze your eyes shut, and let the Silver move out. You’re the freedom of the wind and the wisdom of the Earth, the warmth of the sun on a river miles away, and every single leaf on the trees. It’s all bending toward you, as you continue to expand. 

And you keep your eyes squeezed shut. You’re the dirt and the flowers and the stars, you’re flying up and you’re all the invisible stars in the Sky, and it’s watching you, closer than usual. So fucking closely.

Then you bite your lower lip until you drawn blood, grab everything by the fucking neck, and focus. 

You’re not sure what you’re throttling. Only that you’ve found it, deep, deep, deep under the Earth, and you’re choking it.

Lock. You hiss at it, and it balks. Close and lock.

There’s a boom through a little more than the world and the Sky is flaring in warning. 

It’s angry. 

That means you’re fucking doing it. 

Lock.

This time there’s a rattling sound like bones and insects.

Fucking lock.

Something hisses and crashes, and Dean roars your name. Sam’s shouting too, and so is Jo, but you can’t really hear any of it. 

You’re in the blur.

You’re fucking everything, and you and feel the wind ripping and biting at your skin, but it doesn’t hurt because you’re not you. You’re all Silver, and you’re everything, and the hissing is growing. Like something is fusing together. And you’re so big, you’re fucking everything, and you’re close. You’re so fucking close. You can fucking do it- 

Then you feel it.

 The Silver building too high, and the hissing starts to ring in your ears. It’s blaring and going fucking wild, ripping through the world to try and get back to you, because something is wrong.

You’re everything, but you’re not the Gold. And He’s roaring for you and running with Silver, but there’s no need to grab it and command it like to rest of the universe. Because you could grab the blue and the infected purple, and command them. Will them. But you could never touch the Gold like that, because it’s not something to be played with or harmed. The bit of Silver in it is pure. 

And He’s calling for you, so you have to answer.

Something is wrong.

Your eyes shoot open, still in the blur, and you’re crashing back down into the Gold.

But every falls apart so fucking fast, and you’re not fast enough to piece it all together until it’s done. 

The roof of the church is gone. Half rubble around you, and opened up for the Sky to see. Sam’s knocked out on the floor, and there’s an angel. Not Castiel, because even in another vessel, he’d still be running with electric blue. This angel is filled with yellow.

Not yellow like Dean’s gold. 

Yellow like poison. 

She’s got a long blade aimed at Jo’s throat. And you’d rip her apart with your bare hands.

But Dean. 

Dean’s surround by Hell’s Assassin’s. Three of them. Two holding him on his knees, the third aiming a shotgun at his skull.

The Spiderweb is going haywire. The Silver is scratching at your ribs and skin to be let out, but you’re keeping it pinned down your knife on your forearm. It’s too uncontrollable. If you let it get too far from you, it might not just be the angel and the demons who die.

So you’re frozen. 

And Dean’s in danger.

“What-“ You clear your throat, because you sound a little like a scared fucking child. You are a scared fucking child. But you can’t let it show. “What do you want.”

“I don’t know about the girl scout.” The demon with the gun hisses, jerking it’s head at the angel. “But we’ve been sent by Lilith to warn you to stop. She says that you’re meddling in things you don’t understand, and that if you don’t back up, we’ll kill your little human toy for real this time. Lilith don’t need him no more. And this time.” It’s lips curl into a horrible smirk. “There won’t be no coming back, so-“

“I’ll stop.” You say it quick, and it’s the easiest trade in the world. You’re not losing Dean twice. “Please, I’ll stop, just-“

Dean groans your name, and there’s a little blood trickling from his temple. You hadn’t stopped it. You’d been to fucking big, and you’d let him get hurt. “Finish it- Don’t- I’m not worth it-“

“Shut up.” You snap, and Dean just shakes his head, coughing a little bit of blood. 

He’s staring at you. Blinking once, over and over and over. Not safe. 

You know it’s not safe. That’s why you’re going to stop.

“Is that it?” You ask, looking to the angel. “If I crawl back to my hole and stop interfering, will you leave?”

“I don’t care about the interfering.” The angel says, and she almost sounds sad. “You can’t be trusted, and if you don’t come with me, I’ll kill her.” The angel gives Jo an apologetic expression. “Sorry.”

Jo just glowers at her, and you swallow.

“If I come with you-“

“No!” Dean’s roar echoes around the ruins, and the even the demons flinch slightly. “You’re not going fucking anywhere. Anna, you’re being insane-“

“I am being rational. Seeing clearly.” The angel—Anna, the one they’d told you about—sighs. “Ruby’s right. She’s been warning you, but you wouldn’t listen. And she may be a demon, but she,” Anna nods to you. “Is far worse. I know she’s a Magdalene. Castiel is not as good at snooping as he thinks. And she’s warped your mind.”

You shake your head frantically, the Silver still pounding. “I- I’ve never- No-“

“Men of God are drawn to Magdalene’s.” Anna mutters. “You are the Magdalene. You’re unstable, and too dangerous. You’ve blinded them-“

“I’m not fucking blind!” Dean shouts. “I don’t give a goddamn fuck about all of heaven’s drama and politics. Ruby’s the unstable bitch, Anna, you’re being insane-“

“Dean, please be quiet.” Anna presses the blade further into Jo’s throat, you’re fucking dizzy, and there’s a soreness deeper than your muscles. “I’m trying to help. We can do this peacefully. She’ll go, and the demons will release you. Or we can finish the seal ritual, then go. But she can’t be allowed to live. Her name is written in languages humans can’t even read. I’ve seen it in the parts of Heaven Castiel has never been allowed. She’s their tool-“

“I’m not.” You mumble, and it’s somehow enough to make Anna listen. “I’m not their tool. And I- Dean, I’ve never warped you-“

“I know, Princess-“

“But I’ll go with you.” You keep your eyes on Anna. On the blade, poking into Jo’s throat. “Let Jo go, and I won’t even fight.”

Jo’s eyes widen, and Dean’s shouting your name, but you can’t look at him. You have to keep looking at Anna, or you’ll see the gun pressed against his skull and the world will split in half. And the Sky is watching, and it’s always hated you looking at Dean. You can’t afford making it angrier. Not right now.

Anna’s trying to protect Dean. You can understand that, more than anything. You’re going to do more than just kill Ruby, but you won’t blame Anna for trying to protect Dean. And maybe you have warped him. She’s not wrong that you shouldn’t be allowed to live. That you’re unstable and dangerous. 

Maybe she’ll be strong enough to do what John Winchester couldn’t. 

“I’ll let you take me.” You whisper. “Just let Jo go.”

Jo’s trying to shake her head, but it doesn’t work with a blade pressing against her skin. And Dean will be fine. He’ll have Sam and Jo, and they’ll explain to Bobby, and everyone will be fine. If anything, you’ll be saving everyone a whole lot of trouble, by going with Anna. Sam won’t have to worry about you killing Ruby. Jo can use this as her reason to get out. Dean and Bobby will have a harder time, but Bobby will never have to deal with your insanity again, and Dean can find that sweet, easy girl he deserves, without you in the way.

And the Sky is watching. If it wanted you to live, it would do something, but it’s only watching.

So you’ll-

“Anna.” A horrible cold voice is coming from right behind you. “You’ve done so well. Much better than we expected. Almost enough to be forgiven for your… Transgressions.”

Dean’s lips curl into a sneer. “What the fuck are you doing here, you bald douchebag-“

“I believe you were told to be quiet, Dean Winchester.”

And Dean’s voice just… dies. Goes silent. 

You move before you think. Whirling around, your knife raised, and aimed for the neck of a balding man that vanishes with a ruffling sound, then reappears a little off to the side.

“Oh! You’ve got a bite!” The man laughs to himself, soothing his suit, and there’s a clattering sound as Dean starts to struggle against the demons.

“Do I just, uh, shoot him-“

“Don’t be insane, Fiona.” The bald man gives the demon a flat look. “If you kill Dean Winchester, we kill you and bring him back.”

Another demon scoffs. “You ain’t ever been strong enough to kill us, Zachariah-“

“But she could.” The bald man—Zachariah—nods to you, and the room goes quiet. “Anna is quite correct. Which is a little more impressive than usual, as she is so often wrong. The best thing to do would be put the beast down, but I’m afraid that might cause quite some problems with my bosses, so for now, just a muzzle will do. Kill the girl.”

Dean’s mouth his still opening and closing, but no sound is coming out. You feel like a haze. Like this is just a horrible waking nightmare, and soon the Sky will crash over you in a fury, and you’ll wake up.

You need to wake up.

But you don’t.

And the Sky just watches.

“The girl?” Anna whispers, glancing down to Jo in her arms. “No I- That would be wrong Zachariah, even for you. I don’t think it’s even her time-“

“Yeah, but it would’ve been.” Zachariah shrugs. “What’s a year, really? And this’ll be faster, and- Look! I’m thinking outside the box! Blondie still goes, and she’s barely consequential. The whore heads back to her place, the bosses are happy, and you get off scot-free! You don’t even have to come home, but we can reset you. Give you that vile little human life you always wanted, two point oh.”

Anna’s still not moving. You need to do something, but if you do it wrong, you’ll just kill Jo yourself, and take Dean with her. And you can’t hurt them, you were supposed to stop hurting them, but it feels like something is keeping the Silver coiled, and when it explodes, too much might go with it.

Zachariah sigh. “C’mon. Be honest with me, Anna. I know you hated being one of us, but she,” he points to you. “Is not an angel, or a human. And aren’t you mad at her for taking what might have been yours? For ruining everything, and making Dean Winchester barely give you more than a second glance? She will be damnation. She’s reckless and emotional. I mean, even more than you.”

You need to move. To do something, other than standing here and being sick, but it’s all moving in the stupid fucking blur.

Anna looks at you. Then Jo. Then Dean, and all the spineless fucking demons, who aren’t even trying to do anything. They might see this as a win. You’re dealt with. You’re put down. That’s all they needed to do. 

Then Anna looks to Zachariah, like a nervous fucking child, and he nods. 

“You’d be free.” He says, and Anna’s throat bobs. “And you could come home. We’d listen to you, this time. About the humans.” He holds his hand up. “Promise. You just need to give us something, and it’ll be like you never left.”

The world falls apart all at once. 

Anna’s blade tilts down, drives into Jo’s stomach, and you lose control.

Zachariah’s gone. The Silver tears through the world for him, but he was fast, and may have known what was coming. Must have known. He killed two birds with one stone.

You. 

And Anna. 

Because when the Silver can’t wrap around Zachariah, it wipes out the Assassins in one wipe, atomic blow, and moves into Anna. Into every single arm and eye and wing, and grabs them. Shreds them. Rips them apart, all of Anna’s grace moving out and out and out into the world and evaporating into nothing, bigger parts falling onto the floor and being ground into the same, and then she’s gone. 

Her vessel’s body is dead on the floor, and there are no wings splayed behind it.  

Dean’s skull and soul are still intact. 

But Jo-

You sprint over the rubble, not caring as pipes and brick scrape at your skin. Your knee’s burn as you skid onto the ground at Jo’s side. 

“Shit-“ She’s coughing blood as you pull her off the ground, into your lap. “’S bad, ain’t it-“

“I can fix it.” You mutter, and it’s mostly to yourself. You can fix it. It’s just a wound, and the Silver can fix it.

“Can you tell my mom I’m sorry, and-“

“I need to focus, Jo.” You swallow, laying your hand on her stomach. Already hot and sticky. 

Your fingers already stained in red.

But you can fix this.

The Silver leaks out. Carefully at first, just enough to start the flow and mend. You just have to stop the bleeding. If you can stop the bleeding, you can get her to a hospital, and she’ll be fine.

She’ll be fine.

Every time the Silver patches over something, it rips back open, but Jo will be fine.

She has to be fine.

Jo mutters your name, and you shake your head, biting down on your inner cheek. “It’s okay-“

“No.” You mutter, and the Silver runs itself deeper into Jo’ body. Fuck stopping the bleeding, it’ll just weave into her and offer her a little while longer, and- “I need- The car, we need to start the car-“

Dean says your name, his hand carefully on your shoulder, and you don’t really care when he got there. “I don’t think-“

“Start the fucking car.”

It’s almost a screech, but Dean doesn’t flinch. He just offers a hand in your periphery to Jo, who meets it with shaking fingers. 

“Don’t be dumb.” Jo whispers, and you can’t tell if you’re choking on your own blood or the air. She’ll be fine. There’s no need for this, because you’re going to make her hold on, and she’ll be fine-

The Sky flashes above you, and the Silver is almost rocketed out Jo’s body. Her whole body shakes with the cough.

Dean squeezes Jo’s hand, kisses to the top of your head before walking away.

You’d screamed at him. You hadn’t meant to scream at him. And you want him to come back. You can’t do this without him. 

And you’ll get through this. You always do. 

But every time you find a new way to keep Jo, the Sky rips it away. 

She’s too pale. The pastel blue in her body is faded. Washed out. Like a river draining, leaving only a mud bank. 

She says your name, and you shake your head again. 

“Can ya look at me instead of tryin’ to fix it-“

“I am fixing it. It just keeps- Fuck-“ Your fingers curl against her, and this re-tear is bigger than it had been before. “No-“

“Please stop.” Jo mumbles, her voice wavering. “You heard ‘em, I’m gonna die anyway-“

“Don’t say that word-“

“But I’m gonna. It’s alright. Least you already avenged me. No hauntin’ for me. Maybe I can have a grave.”

“Jo.” You whisper, and the Silver retreats one last time. 

The Sky won’t let you fix her. 

And you don’t know what to do.

“Is it gonna hurt?” Jo’s voice is too soft, and you shake your head, fighting the lump in your throat to speak. You won’t let her go alone.

“For you?” You ask softly, and Jo nods. “No. I don’t think so. I- I think it might feel a little weird at first, but then it- It won’t matter.” 

“What about for you?” Jo blinks up at you. There’s almost no blue left. “Is it gonna hurt for you?”

“For me…” You don’t want to tell her. She doesn’t need to hear the truth.

But you’ve never been good at keeping things from Jo.

“For me it’s going to hurt a lot.” You can taste the salt as you speak, but you push on. For Jo. “For a really, really long time. But I’ll be ok.” 

“Promise?” She mumbles, and you swallow.

“Promise what?” 

“Promise you’ll be ok?”

“I-“

“Please.”

You’re not sure.

But Jo deserves something.

So you nod.

But the blue is already gone when you find your voice. “Promise.”

You sit with her. Until Dean comes back to take you from the desolated church, you sit with Jo. And think you whisper to him that she wanted to be buried, and not burned. And he might have told you that Sam’s up, and he’ll make sure it’s taken care of. 

You’re not sure though. 

It’s hard to think past the little remnants of blue, still on the tips of your fingers. Clinging to you, because the rest of them is gone. And you press your fingers into Dean’s neck as he carries you to the Impala. Hard enough for a little to stick to him as well. 

You might be crying. You’re not sure of that, either. The world is horribly blurry, and you can’t speak because it’s too much.

You feel like the little girl again. The one who hadn’t wanted anyone else to get hurt, and never knew what to do, so she never spoke. The only difference is now, Dean’s wrapped around you. The car stopped at some point, and Dean’s covered you in him. It numbs everything. Makes you breathe a little easier. And his thumb is running down your nose as he murmurs in your ear, and the world is still awful, but at least you can breathe. At least Dean is here.

“I’m sorry,” he mutters. “I’m sorry, Princess. That- I’m sorry.”

Your body shakes with something, and it’s probably a sob. 

He’s sorry. You did this, but Dean’s sorry. You should’ve gone with Anna, and Jo should still be okay, but Dean’s sorry.

You curl into him. He’s the only thing you don’t think you can hurt, so you sink your fingers into Dean’s back and hold on. And he stays. You’re certainly sobbing and shaking, and you’d screamed at him, and it should be your body on the ground, but Dean stays. 

It’s twice now. That it should’ve been your body. That you should’ve done better, but you lost. Failed. That all that stupid fucking power you don’t even want failed.

And this is different than Dean’s death.

Dean came back. Cas saved him.

Jo was killed by an angel. 

She’s gone.

And you did this. You should’ve told her no, I’m not doing to seal thing. We’re already pushing our luck. You should’ve been in more control, and killed Anna the moment she showed up. You shouldn’t have drowned in the power, and been faster when everything went to shit.

You don’t think you can hurt Dean. The Silver’s always moves around him.

But you killed Jo. You were weak and emotional and sick, and you killed Jo. Everything that’s gone wrong has been you. The lich. The boto. The angels have been angrier because of you, and Hell’s Assassins had a gun to Dean’s head because of you.

And you can’t hurt Dean. And he’d never hurt you. 

But a gun had still been pressed to his head, in your name.

And you know what you have to do.

“Dean?”

He grunts, and the sun might have set then broken back into the sky. It doesn’t really matter either way.

“I need to go.”

“Yeah,” he sighs, and you know he doesn’t understand. “Sammy’s getting her home, Princess, so we’ll meet him there-“

“No.” You whisper, leaning back to meet his gaze. “I need to go.”

You can see the moment it hits him. And his features harden, and his jaw clenches as his grip on your body tightens. Like he can keep you there with force. “No.”

You give him a sad smile. “You can’t stop me, De-“

“Wrong.” He snaps. “I can stop you. I- I’ll fucking call Bobby, and I’ll siphon all your gas, and I- I’ll sit on you-“

“You’ll sit on me?”

“You’re goddamn right I’ll sit on you!” He’s shouting now, and you don’t flinch. He’s not mad at you, and you can’t really stand to be angry right now. “You’re not allowed to just leave, you-“

“You owe me a favor.” 

Dean’s eyes flash. “That was fucking years ago-“

“Less than two.” You shrug. “I need to go, Dean. I- I can’t stay here. I can’t. I’ll hurt someone-“

“No, you-“ He shakes his head, and you hope his hold leaves a bruise. “You fucking promised you’d stop running. You promised.”

You did.

But you also promised Jo you’d be okay.

And if you stay somewhere that you’re the problem—the sickness, the monster, the damnation—and Sam or Bobby or Dean get hurt because of it, nothing will ever be okay again.

“I’m not running.” You curl your fingers at the top of his shirt, keeping your words gentle. “I can’t be here, but I told you. You can’t lose me. You’ll know where I am, and we’ll call, and I’ll come back.” You scan over his openly pained features, and try not to feel it too deep in your own body. “You and me, Dean. All the way down. I’ll come back.”

You’ve never seen Dean cry before. It’s nothing different than his usual sadness. Just a little bit more. Tears rolling down his cheeks that catch the light then fall between your bodies. And he knows you’re not moving on this. Dean knows you, and if it comes down to it, he won’t really try to stop you.

“You gotta come back.” He mutters, his voice barely a rasp. “If we’re using old shit, you owe me a dance, Princess.”

“Okay.” You whisper, and it’s hard to smile. You’re so fucking tired, and you’re not going to sleep in Dean’s bed for a while, so it will only get worse.

But you have to smile.

Otherwise you’ll be selfish, and breakdown again in Dean’s arms. And he might not be fighting you, but once again, if you let him hold you and care for you, you don’t think he’ll ever let go.

Dean holds his pinky up with raised brows. He doesn’t need to say what it’s for. 

You’ll come back.

So you hook your pinky through his, and when he uses it to pull you down into another kiss, you let yourself have it. 

Long and slow. He’s not trying to rush it, or take more. You think Dean knows that the moment this is done, you’ll be gone. So every bit of this kiss is about time. His hands roam your body slowly, and his lips mold and nip and press into yours, and you let him have whatever he wants. Soft sighs and moans, knuckles brushing back under your shirt, a hand tangled in your hair to pull your hair back. He kisses over your neck and collarbone, and you only let out a soft hum of his name.

It’s more of him that you’ll get to have. More Gold on your skin, some of it covering over the blue. Preserving it.

And you don’t tell Dean you love him, when he pulls away. Or when you both refuse to say goodbye, and Dean just ghosts a softer kiss over your lips before you climb off of him, and stand in parking lot alone. 

But you still broke a rule. You’re too tired to keep your love off your face. And if Cas sees it, when he takes your prayer and lands at your side, he doesn’t say anything. 

“You wish to go.” He mutters before you even open your mouth, and you sigh.

“I need you to fly me away. Far.”

“Will you be returning?”

You nod, and you can’t look over your shoulder. Dean’s still in the car, and if you look at him, you’ll run back to him. 

“And this is really what you-” 

“Yes.”

Cas sighs, and nods. “Alright. It will be… uncomfortable.”

“I can handle it.” You mutter, and you can’t look back. “Cas?”

He tilts his head at you, his hand already resting on your shoulder, and you sigh.

“Please be careful. And make sure Dean…”

You trail off, but Cas understands. “Dean will be in one piece, when you return. I swear it on my grace.”

“Thank you.” you mumble. “I’m ready.”

It’s right before you’re gone, that you look back.

You never could help it.

And Dean’s watching you, and you want to run back to him, but it’s too late. The world turns into a rush of color and cold, and you’re gone.

You’ll come back. 

You promised.

End Note: Fridging Jo for a *woman*, now that’s what I call progress (i’m joking because if I don’t I’ll start crying again)

Thank you so so so much for reading!! If you like this story, please reblog, share, or leave a comment! <3

Buy me a coffee!☕️

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@funkenniffler

[polyamorouscultureis]

I need to get something off my chest. I have no one irl who will understand this.

I have been with my Fiancée for almost 8 months. Before meeting her, I identified as gay and strictly nonmonogamous. HRT turned me bi around the time we met, and we got together. Before we did, I explained that I was strictly nonmonogamous, and she said she was fine with that.

Fast forward a couple months, and it turns out she is very not okay with that. After our relationship got serious, she changed her mind. At this point, she was the most important person in the world to me, and I couldn't imagine my life without her. After a couple months of thinking and talking, we made a deal. We would be sexually monogamous and emotionally nonmonogamous. She was significantly more bothered by the idea of me having sex with other people than anything else, and for me, emotional nonmonogamy is a necessity, while sexual nonmonogamy is just a preference.

This deal is totally fine for me. While I would prefer sexual nonmonogamy, I am perfectly fine giving it up for the health of our relationship. But I fear she is trying to shift us into full monogamy and I don't know what to do.

I used to be very proud of my nonnormative identity. But now I'm in a straight monogamous relationship, and we're going to get married, something I swore I'd never do. She constantly makes jokes about me being straight (but jokes about herself being a lesbian) and how much of a jealous person she is. It makes me uncomfortable. Sometimes, I feel like I've lost a part of myself, like I'm being forced into the role I used to reject so harshly.

I miss being gay. But I love her more than anything in the world. But recently I've been really yearning for a boyfriend. But I feel like I can't tell her that. And leaving her is not an option. I know she loves me and she's willing to make sacrifices for me and she wants to communicate with me. Outside of this, we do actually have a very happy and healthy relationship. I want to be with her forever. And I also want to be with a man. And I don't want to feel like my queerness is being erased. And she's queer to, it's not like she's some straight woman trying to convert me.

We had the (non)monogamy talk over text during a brief period of long-distance. I checked the messages to write this. She was very adamant that it is okay for me to have very close relationships with others, that I can go on dates with them, and that I can be affectionate with them. The only thing she took issue with was cuddling, but ultimately said that I deserved the freedom to do so, even if it bothered her. We did not discuss kissing. I don't feel like this is actually how she feels. She acts jealous generally, especially when I think a guy is cute. I feel like, while she might say she's okay with it, if I actually got in a relationship, she would get upset.

I know that the obvious solution is to talk to her, and I'm going to. But I'm nervous. I know that it'll be messy and we'll probably both get upset. I'm going to tell her that I don't want her joking about me being straight anymore. And we're going to go over her boundaries again, especially with cuddling and all the things we didn't actually touch on, like kissing and labels. I can do it, but it'll be scary, and I'm going through a tough time rn separate to all of this. Thank you for listening to me ramble <3

This is a hard situation, and I'm so sorry this is happening. Nothing about this is easy, or is going to be easy as you work through it.

From what you have written here, I too get the vibe that she is trying to slowly transition you into being monogamous, by first agreeing to poly, and then excluding sex from the poly arrangement, then excluding cuddling from the poly arrangement... I would expect more and more gestures of affection to be slowly excluded if your relationship continues this way. All this on top of "joking" about being such a jealous person and invalidating your identity even though you have expressed that it makes you uncomfortable makes me worry she is trying to make you feel bad about being poly and decide on your own to be monogamous with her, even though you were upfront about your polyamorous identity from the start. A partner should be making you feel proud of who you are, not making fun of your insecurities about how you are perceived.

I do have a few questions for you -- not necessarily ones you need to answer, but things for you to consider. First, you said you swore you would never get married. What changed your mind? Who proposed? Are you looking forward to the wedding? Is there any chance she believes that marriage inherently means promising monogamy and exclusivity? Are you prepared for the additional level of enmeshment that comes with a legal marriage (insurances, taxes, possible name changes, etc)?

Second, you said breaking up is not an option. Why is that? Do you live together? Are kids involved? Keep in mind that you can absolutely love someone and choose to not be in a relationship with them if you recognize you want different things from life. I do not doubt at all your love for her -- you're sacrificing a lot for her comfort, which you wouldn't do if you didn't love her! -- but I do question what this relationship does for you. What would change if you changed the label on your relationship so that you are free to pursue others as you like, and she is free to pursue someone who wants the same things she does from a romantic partnership?

You hit the nail on the head when you say you know the answer is to communicate all of this to her. My concern is that she will say what she thinks you want to hear, and then when problems arise again you will find yourself in the same place you are now, if not a worse one. This sort of thing can go on a downward spiral pretty quickly.

I hope that the conversation you have with her goes well, and that she is truly understanding of your feelings. You should never erase any part of who you are to make someone else more comfortable, or because it feels like the polite option. A partner should love you because of everything you are, and if you erase all of that, there is nothing left to love. Best of luck to you, anon. <3