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satoruhour · 6 months

Note

very gojo-coded‼️ like if there’s one thing mans cannot do it is keep his hands off you

a/n: UR BRAIN >>> / tagging @jabamin @osaemu @hyomagiri :3

warnings: i guess reader is a little shy in this? fem!reader, a little teasing, use of ‘mama’, pet names, humping, fingering, lovesick gojo, unprotected sex, p -> v sex, creampie / breeding kink, multiple rounds, n*sfw under the cut

“baby—” you’re quick to retract your statement when you catch your boyfriend trying to relax after a long day of fighting curses, but he’s more holding his head in his hands and just taking a moment in silence for himself. the television only does more than what it’s intended for by providing an annoying canvas of background noise but he’s just too content with finally being back home that he doesn’t care.

he reached home when you were in the shower, a little surprised he didn’t try to teleport himself into the cubicle itself, but you think it’s because he’s exhausted; maybe he needs a little . . de-stressing. gojo hums at your resigned call and doesn’t turn to face you, but you know he knows that you’re surely naked and dripping under your towel, meekly holding a bottle of moisturiser and hoping you wouldn’t have to take another shower with the actions that’s sure to occur.

“what is it, sweets?” gojo asks, head tilted back along the edge of the couch, but he finally tries to turn his head toward you, smiling a little when he sees your figure freezing from the night’s breezes.

“need you to moisturise . .” you mumble, padding over to him before plopping yourself down in front of him. he welcomes you with open arms, wanting to just have you in his embrace for a little while and you fall right into his sweet talking trap. you like it, though, the sweet nothings he tells you as he easily adjusts your body against his larger one, not caring one bit that the shower droplets wet his uniform.

“c’mon, turn your back toward me,” you murmur a soft okay, sucking in a breath when he peels away the towel from your skin. you sigh softly when you feel his nose along your neck, taking in your fresh scent of strawberry shampoo and body wash while his hands massage your shoulders, down to your shoulder blades and to your sides where you jump from the ticklish sensation.

you burn when satoru laughs against your skin, “relaax, sweetheart.”

you’re unaware but gojo tries his best to untangle the knots you’ve developed over the years from endless training and brutal missions, hands working magic on your lower back now as his thumbs continually move over the base of your spine.

“you’re so tight, here.”

“a-ah . . don’t say that, satoru,” you’re anything but innocent, but it is a little upfront the way your boyfriend never fails to talk dirty in entirely mundane situations. while you’re used to it, your body still tenses from the lewdness and suddenness of it; you’re at a loss for words and you melt in gojo’s arms.

“why?” he presses his front into your back, mouth going back to your neck to try to distract you from the actual thing he’s supposed to be doing. with each kiss along your jaw, he can only feel himself get harder. “it’s cute seeing you so shy like this.”

“satoru.” it comes out shaky, “the moisturiser.”

“okay, okay,” he laughs, using his hand to turn your cheek for a small kiss, humming into it, “i’ll get to it, mama.”

the both of you are only trying to play the part — you, the clueless one receiving a moisturising job at the places you can’t reach on your back. gojo, the ever-loving boyfriend who drops everything to help you. he giggles again when you yelp at the coldness of the liquid before he starts to spread it; he does his job dutifully, at least, rubbing it into the far ends of your shoulders right to the centre where you struggle. like earlier, he takes pride in his larger hands, rubbing and squeezing at your back as he massages the moisturiser in.

“anything else you need me to help ya with?” the voice behind you surprises you again, arms now gliding along your sides to wrap around you, “maybe . .”

“are you really gonna make me say it—”

gojo giggles into your hair, an innocent action if it wasn’t for the hard-on pressed into your lower back, “it’s only fair i would want my shy baby say what she really wants, it’s always a treat.”

“i’d— uhm,” words sometimes have a hard time leaving your mouth, but even so, the way you tenderly turn around and push him to the sofa all have a scared edge to it. being with gojo made you open up more, but you don’t think your shy disposition has any problems. plus, your boyfriend finds it cute.

your hands make quick work of his pants, pulling away the belt and zipping it down, before you’re palming his bulge softly. he hums at the relief, his encouraging hands all gentle on your arms while you remove his underwear slowly. gojo looks like you’re the most beautiful as you climb on him, freshly showered and back full of sweet-smelling moisturiser, and plop yourself onto his lap. your pussy’s already fairly dripping, small moans leaving both your mouths when your cunt meets with the underside of his cock.

“at least take me out to dinner first,” satoru jokes and laughs even harder when he sees the pout on your face, “c’mere, you.”

before you know it, your hips are already grinding down on his front while he crashes his lips into yours. while his hands are placed on your ass, kneading it and helping you, yours are simultaneously removing his jujutsu uniform, fingers in perfect muscle memory from the many, many times you found yourself making out after gruelling missions. you have to pull away against your will when his hands leave your ass, doing the work yourself as he removes the uniform one arm hole at a time.

“i’ve only rubbed your back and you’re already soaking,” he whispers against your lips once he’s unclothed, lips chasing yours as you only press yourself deeper into him.

“and you’re already hard,” his eyes express pure glee at your words, letting you grind your cunt into his now dripping shaft. you can feel him twitch at the way your folds fit nicely along him, hands periodically squeezing your waist when you move your hips back and forth.

gojo has the luxury of sucking on your neck when your head tilts back at the tantalising feeling, clit bumping against his cock in all kinds of friction while you hump him, fingers losing themselves in his stark white hair that you love so much. tugging and pulling on it, there’s a plethora of sensations that only heighten the lewd situation; your nipples rubbing against his chest, his fingers stealthily playing with your hole, his teeth marking your skin.

“’toru—” you moan into open air, body arching into his hold as he hums in response, bringing your mouth back to him for a rough kiss. you can feel his fingers enter you gently while he swallows your sounds, his own hips also chasing ecstasy against your needy clit. “s’good . .”

one arm tight around your waist and the other pumping his fingers in you, you’re overwhelmed when he starts curling them in your cunt, making you whine out at the spot he’s found. everything about gojo drives you crazy, and it’s clear you do the same to him from the way his length twitches again under you.

“you’re so tight, baby,” he murmurs into the kiss, eyes struggling to stay open from the way you grind against him and push your ass against his digits. you’d expect a smart comment about him saying the exact same thing as earlier but he’s too lost in pleasure to give a shit, “can’t wait to feel you around my cock.”

you whimper at the blatant filthiness of his words, pulling away and hiding your burning face in his neck while he only chuckles softly, cut off by a grunt when you clench around him.

“need you to cum, princess,” his fingers reach deeper than any of yours, spreading you and getting you ready for his dick. your hips are working overtime, grinding the most that you can to feel something, anything against your bundle of nerves. paired with the grunts of satoru in your ear and the slickness of your pussy, you can feel yourself getting closer to your climax until—

“f-fuck . . shit,” gojo’s eyes are squeezed tight when you continue to hump the underside of his shaft while he spills all over himself, fingers faltering while he continues to cum all over himself just from your grinding, a breathless laugh escaping him when all your face held was surprise, “this is what you do t’me.”

the twitch of his cock sends you hurling over the edge as you cum over him as well, thighs closing around him and the grip on his shoulders only strengthens while your cum drips down his fingers — the declaration of the strongest sorcerer being weak only for you was something you didn’t take lightly, and yet you’re in wonder everyday how it came to be. you let out a surprised shriek when he carries you swiftly, a small question of sofa or bedroom? posed to you before you silently point to the room.

it’s all loving laughter about the abandoned towel, or him walking with his trousers halfway down his legs as he princess carries you there, messy kisses shared before you’re both plopped down and your face is smushed into the pillows (“don’t wanna mess up my moisturising job, now, do we?”).

“fuuck yeah . .” gojo groans once he slips into you, hands holding onto your hips as he eases his cock inch by inch and you’re left to softly moan at the stretch. your hands scramble for sheets and pillows, already clamping down on his shaft like a vice and he hisses. “tryna snap my dick off?”

you giggle as you turn your head so you can at least see him, a drunk smile on your face as you take in your boyfriend: chest glistening from sweat and his usual unkempt hair looking even messier and his mouth dropped open at the feel of your wet pussy.

slowly, his hips set a pace once he’s bottomed out in you, thumbs digging into your lower back and having the opposite effect of his massage from earlier; it’s bound to leave some bruises, but the drag of your cunt along his cock is just too hypnotising. he grinds himself into you, tip just about brushing your g-spot so easily.

“pretty, pretty girl . .” satoru mumbles, eyes trained on you, he admires your silent noises and limp body rocking against the bedsheets before his eyes fall on your centre, a clear sheen of slick along your folds that shines under the moonlight, “with the prettiest cunt.”

the words, as grossly filthy as they are, warms your cheeks as he continues to speed up, hips driving into you so violently you wouldn’t think he loves so softly. his hands span your lower back, triggering your arch and accentuating your ass, mesmerised with how it jiggles each time his hips meet them. but one look back to you and he’s already saying moisturising job be damned because of the lovely curvature of your lips as they fall open in pleasure together with the rolling back of your eyes.

your boyfriend leans against your back, one elbow supporting his body while he just has to litter your nape with kisses as he continues to rail you. you’re blessed with his incoherent words, only making you wetter and more pliant for him. your hips start to move back against him, too, and your hands try your best at cradling his face.

“s’good, s’full, ’toru,” you mumble, eyes barely keeping open as his fat cock stretches you and sends you reeling with each brush of his tip along your spots, “love it s’much, love you.”

he coos at his baby, body flush against yours while he muffles you with his love and lust. and while satoru has stamina, your lower back begins to hurt and he lets you lower yourself down to the bed, grinning at the feel of the sheets that smell like him.

“you feelin’ better?” he smooths his fingers along your back, and he knows you nod without even looking at him because he just knows you that well, “well, good, ’cause—”

gojo re-enters you with one hand spreading you and the other guiding his cock into you, the position only emphasising your thighs and your ass and the squeeze of his length is too good. he pulls your cheeks apart just to look at how you take him, pussy spread to accommodate him.

“’cause you feel too damn good for me not to be in ya for even a sec.” he grunts as he pushes in and you only suck in a breath at it, wiggling your butt back into his for him to start moving. his eyes fixate on your tight cunt, lost in a trance as he starts up a moderate speed, but he makes sure to thrust all up into you.

“touch yourself for me, baby,” he mumbles out, groaning when you push your butt high enough for your hand to slip in. he can feel you rubbing your clit, eyes fluttering close from the overstimulating sensation that all that falls from your lips are satoru, satoru, satoru.

“just like that, that’s it, mama,” gojo watches your expression, hips stuttering at having witnessed your beauty in such a lewd place, “wan’ me to cum in you? hm?”

you unconsciously nod, more whines falling from your lips and babbles that just shows him how fucked out you are. “i’ll need my princess to cum first, though . .” and he takes over just like that: one hand next to your face and the other swatting your hand to replace the messy circles you’ve been rubbing into your puffy clit.

“want to feel her — fuckin’ hell — clench around me, want her to cum all over my cock,” he speaks through gritted teeth, slapping your pussy briefly and you cry out in pleasure, “can you do that, sweetness?”

your eyes scrunch in euphoria, “yes, yes, satoru—” every breath you take is a struggle and every word you speak is slurred, grasping onto his wrist for an anchor and try to angle your head, “w’nna cum, i’m gonna cum, baby—”

“’toru—!” you see white before you can feel it, tearing just a bit at the intense feeling and hiding as much as you can behind his wrist as his other hand increases his speed on your clit. it happens all too fast; the slap of his pelvis against yours and the clear, audible sound of your pussy dripping and the precise thrusts in how he rams into you.

“that’s it, there we gooo . .” gojo coos when you cum silently, little pants and mewls leaving your mouth as your body convulses around him. your cunt’s gripping onto his cock so harshly he has trouble moving but it’s fine considering the way he gets to see you come undone by his doing. you’re gushing all over him, a small squeal leaving you when he pinches your clit playfully.

he slows a little just to let you ride out your orgasm, clear in the way you continue to grind back against him but soon he’s picking it up again and you’re left to hold tight onto his arm as he uses your body to reach his high. your gummy walls were just too warm and gripping onto him so well, and when you’re holding so gently onto his arm, filling you up is all he can think about.

“gonna c—” a loud groan sounds out from satoru when his thrusts are interrupted by his orgasm; all it took was one involuntary clench from you to get him to empty himself in you, sensitive tip spurting ropes and ropes of cum deep into you as he paints your insides white, “take it. take it deep in ya, mama.”

you moan softly at the obscene words and later, at the obscene noises of how he pulls himself out of you and you can hear your mixed juices coalesce and drip onto the sheets below you. although, before satoru can make a funny joke or kiss you, you’re knocked out cold on the bed sheets.

“passing out on me?” is all is says with a laugh, turning you over and gives you a spare pillow to cuddle before he leaves you with a forehead kiss and a promise to clean you up just like you deserve.

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maraxp · 9 months

Text

⚓ ♰ . ࣪ 🪨 ♡‌ ㅤ۪ㅤ ⏖ ꒪ 𓉼

⟣ character : live action!roronoa zoro // fem!reader

⟣ synopsis : after witnessing the fight with zoro and dracule mihawk with the rest of the strawhats, you were by zoro’s side as he healed, comforting him and so on, not knowing that he was secretly listening to you.

⟣ word count : 672 words.

⟣ tags : not proofread (i’ll fix that later), strawhat!reader, female / afab reader, mentions of injury, praise, pet names “dear” and “jerk”, no use of “(y/n)”, fluff, swearing, mentions of alcohol, semi-soft! reader, comfort, eventual smut (not in this post / slow burn), will add more as the series progresses

⟣ note : yes, it is the live action zoro we all know and love. this is my first fanfiction here but it’s not my very first fic ever. english is not my first language so if i made any mistake, please let me know !

it scared you. the fight between roronoa and that mihawk guy scared you, and you didnt know why.

was it because of the fear eating your mind when you saw roronoa’s huge gash on his chest? was it remembering zoro asking to duel mihawk to “fight to the death” while you secretly doubted that he was going to lose? probably both.

when luffy rushed to search for help, you stared at zoro laid out on the ground. you weren’t disappointed, you weren’t disgusted either. you were afraid that he was going to die from how deep the wound was.

when he was brought in, your heart was racing. you didn’t know that zoro being severely injured would actually make you have a heart attack. then again, you saw that he was a skilled swordsman, you knew it was a rare chance for him to get cut up like that.

everyone took turns visiting zoro as he slept with his wounds treated, telling him stories and what not to keep him closer to life than death. when it was your turn, your heart raced. you didn’t know what to say, so you nervously walked in the room, playing with your fingers.

you sat by zoro’s side as he laid, staring at his features. what made your heart slow was the soft rise and fall of his chest, and the sound of his relaxed breathing. time flew by as you sat by his side, humming a soft tune to let zoro know that you were there with him. your hand rested on top of his, rubbing your thumb against the top of his hand.

what you didn’t know was that you were the best comforter for him. you didn’t even realize it until now and it made you smile. you sighed as you gave zoro a soft, reassuring squeeze to his hand. all it took was a small ‘i miss you’ for your thoughts to actually cooperate and think about a genuine thing to talk about.

“you didn’t even have time to think about your actions, you jerk.” you smirked, scoffing at the memory. “nami, usopp, and i worry for you, dear. why did you want to fight that mihawk guy all of a sudden? was it the drinks? were you drunk? i don’t mind about that but still, you scared me back there, roronoa. please don’t do that again, my dear.” you whispered, it truly did frighten you but at least you’re glad that he’s alive now.

you gave his hand another soft squeeze as you raised it to your lips, giving it a small peck. “but you did very well back there, i can give you that. great job, roronoa. i’d love to see more of you in action.” you mumbled, scooting a bit closer to zoro. “we miss you, roronoa. i hope you realize that, dear.” you continued as you brought your hand up to stroke his hair.

what spooked you was when you looked at zoro’s face, you could’ve sworn you saw a tiny smirk displayed on his lips. did he hear all of that? it made you shudder a little, now feeling embarrassed.

you stumbled over your words, clearing your throat while you felt the heat rush to your face. “i’ll– uhm.. i’ll– go get—” you cleared your throat again. “uh.. i’ll go get luffy.”

when you scooted away, you gave his warm hand one more soft squeeze before gently hopping off to leave the room. that sleeping swordsman in the center of the room took your breath away, you could admit that. but you didn’t admit the sudden burn in your chest whenever he would talk to you, especially when you sat next to him back at the baratie.

was it what you thought it was? or was it just a regular heartburn without any other reason behind it? it confused you, but you would be lying if you said it didn’t make you feel at home. he made you feel at home. and you liked him for that.

if you want me to add you to my taglist, click on this link [ 🥋 ] and you’re all set !

#one piece #one piece netflix #one piece live action #one piece x reader #zoro x reader #one piece zoro #roronoa zoro #zoro roronoa x reader #zoro roronoa x you #one piece x you #roronoa zoro live action #reqs open. ﹒✮#opla #opla spoilers #opla zoro #opla zoro x reader #opla roronoa zoro

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supernovafics · 4 months

Note

With your I’ll be there for you series would you be interested in writing about Steve discovering that he has feelings for reader? I think it would be sweet for him to just find even the silliest things she does cute and then him having a little melt down because he realised he’s liked her along. The series is such a great idea! 💭

𝐖𝐇𝐈𝐋𝐄 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐖𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐒𝐋𝐄𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐍𝐆

"i'll be there for you" universe masterlist

pairing: bestfriend!roommate!steve harrington x fem!reader

word count: 4.4k words

warnings: explicit language, alcohol consumption, drunk!steve, mentions of steve's dad being shitty, angst

summary: in which steve’s drunk and you don’t hesitate to cancel a date to take care of him

author's note: thanks for the request! probably from the moment i started this series/universe i knew that i wanted to have steve realize his feelings first so this request was quite literally perfect for that lol. this is slightly “while you were sleeping” by laufey inspired hence the title. the slow burn is finally starting to come to an end !! (i’m both happy and sad about that lmao) anyways enjoy<3333

general note: everything in this universe/series can be read as standalone oneshots but to understand the full “lore” it would prob be best to read the other stuff too<333

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

Winter 1986

You were in the middle of debating between a black skirt and a brown plaid one that Robin convinced you to buy when you two went thrifting just a few days ago when the phone rang.

Leaving both options on your bed, you went to the kitchen to answer it, bottomless aside from the stockings you had already put on because of the cold late February weather.

“Hello?”

“Steve?” You recognized his voice for the most part, but he sounded a little different. A little far away, like he was calling from the oldest phone in the universe.

“Oh, hey.” The way he said the simple two words both confused and amused you because it sounded as if he didn’t expect you to be the person on the other end of the line.

You laughed a bit. “‘Oh, hey’? Don’t sound so disappointed. You called me.”

“I know. Sorry. I meant to call Eddie,” He said, and it was then that you heard what should’ve been obvious from the moment he said “Hello” to you— the way his words weren’t necessarily slurry, just slower than usual.

He was drunk, and you now recognized the voice that you had become so used to hearing since Steve’s sixteenth birthday when he snuck his dad’s whiskey and you both only had two shots of it before feeling it fully.

“Why would you call him? Aren’t you two together right now?” You asked, your confusion taking precedence over the amusement you felt in this moment.

Earlier that day, before you left the apartment to head to your twelve o’clock class, he told you that he was going to tag along with Robin, Vickie, and Eddie to some art show thing after his shift that night at Family Video; you would’ve gone too if you didn’t already have plans for the night.

“Also, I didn’t know that you could get drunk at an art show,” You added. “I’ll definitely make sure to go next time.”

“I didn’t go with them,” He told you, and before you could ask where he was, he answered the unspoken question. “I’m actually at a bar right now.”

Your eyebrows furrowed. “What? Why?”

“Very long story. Dad shit. What else is new, right?” Steve answered with a breath of a laugh.

He made his words sound lighthearted and as if whatever happened didn’t really affect him, but you, of course, didn’t see it that way. Without even being with Steve right then, standing in front of him and reading his facial expressions, you still saw through what he was trying to play off as “no big deal.” You’d known him more than long enough to know that anything involving his dad was usually always serious. And whatever shitty things his dad said to him this time around drove Steve to a bar rather than back here to the apartment to frustratingly rant to you, and that only worried you.

“Which bar are you at?” You asked softly.

“The only place in town, other than The Hideout, that doesn’t card,” He said and then immediately continued. “But, wait, don’t come here, though. I don’t want you to come get me. That’s why I was trying to call Eddie. I know you have your date tonight.”

Just for a second— actually, probably the entire time you’d been talking to Steve— you’d forgotten about the date, forgotten about the reason why you’d just been debating which skirt to wear, forgotten about what you were supposed to leave for in twenty minutes. And that slightly surprised you because, for the last couple of days, you’d been really excited about it.

Meeting Jamie felt like a sort of “meet cute” moment that was straight out of a romcom, one that you probably would’ve laughed at because of how cheesy it was. You bumped into him in the hallway on the floor of your apartment. He was your neighbor’s, Miss Johnson’s, nephew, and you learned that even though he went to a college about an hour away, he was trying to visit her more often. He had been in the middle of leaving when you saw him, and you gave a friendly wave and smile at first and he started a conversation with you. You two then spent an hour talking in the hallway before you headed inside your apartment to start studying for a test and he asked for your number, which led to more long conversations over the next few days until he asked you on a date.

In a way, it startled you how giddy you found yourself feeling about him after only those few days, how easily and quickly you liked him. It was the first crush that you had in a while that didn’t feel completely hopeless.

But now all of that was the last thing on your mind. It quickly became pushed to the side because you knew that your best friend needed you.

You shook your head in this moment even though Steve couldn’t see you. “No, it’s okay, I’ll come.”

“No, don’t, don’t. I’ll just call Eddie.”

He’s probably not home right now, was what you wanted to tell Steve, but you refrained from doing so at that moment. Instead, you said, “I’ll call him for you.”

The drunken sigh in relief Steve let out was immediate. “Okay, thanks, I don’t think I have any more change for this payphone, anyway.”

“Okay, just stay put and stop drinking.”

“The bartender already cut me off.”

“Good,” You said before saying a final goodbye to him and hanging up.

You then picked the phone up again to dial a different number. You, of course, didn’t attempt to call Eddie and you instead called Jamie. He was completely understanding when you told him that you had to cancel the date because of an emergency, and he said that you two could do the dinner and movie on a different night, which you quickly agreed on.

You put on the brown plaid skirt— quickly deciding that it looked better with the white top you were wearing, anyway— before slipping on a pair of shoes and grabbing your coat, shoving your car keys and wallet into the pockets, and then leaving the apartment.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

The drive to Webster’s took less than fifteen minutes and the current emptiness of it didn’t surprise you that much. From the handful of times that you’d gone to the place with Steve, Eddie, and Robin, it became a known fact that things didn’t become “lively” until after ten, and it was currently only a little after nine.

You spotted Steve sitting on a stool at the counter, head down in his folded arms. You sat in the empty seat next to him and tapped the side of his shoulder until he sat up and looked at you.

“Glad to know you’re alive, Harrington.”

He smiled at you and you gave him a small smile back, he must have forgotten that he’d told you not to come to the bar.

“I feel barely alive, actually.”

“Still counts.”

Steve only looked at you for a moment, taking notice of what you were wearing beneath your unzipped coat.

“You look nice,” He said and then seemed to realize something and his smile dropped. “Wait, shit, your date. You shouldn’t be here right now.”

“It’s fine. We’re just gonna reschedule it.”

“I’m sorry.”

You shook your head at him. “No, don’t be. It’s just a first date, anyway. Your drunk ass needing a ride home is obviously more important than that.”

Steve laughed a bit. “I guess I’ll take that as a compliment?”

“Yes, you should,” You told him and then watched with furrowed brows as he went to grab the short glass that was in front of him, half full of some dark liquor. He was about to finish what was left in the glass, but you grabbed it from him before he could. “Steve.”

“I still had this from before I called you. I can’t finish it?”

“No, because if you end up throwing up in my car on the drive home, I will have to murder you.”

You looked away from him before he could say anything in response to that and waved at Barry, the usual bartender that you became on a first name basis with after your third time going to Webster’s. Since it was the farthest thing from busy right then, he immediately walked over to you two.

“Hey, Barry, can he have some water?”

He nodded and filled up a glass, sliding it over to Steve and then looking at you. “Glad to see you here. He’s looked like a sad little lost puppy for the past hour.”

Steve stopped mid-sip to scoff. “That’s very not true.”

“Sorry, but I think I have to believe the only other sober person here,” You said and only smiled at the second annoyed scoff he let out, which was hard to take seriously because of his current drunkenness.

Barry got called over by a group of people that just walked in and you silently watched Steve take a few sips from his glass. When he set it down, you lightly nudged his knee with yours. “Do you wanna talk about what happened with your dad?”

Steve simply sighed at first. “He came to Family Video today and went on this huge rant about me and what I’m doing with my life. He thinks my job is shit, and even me going to school part-time isn’t enough. He thinks I’m such a loser in comparison to his friend’s kids who are actually “doing things with their lives.””

You frowned and shook your head. “Fuck him.”

“Cheers to that,” Steve said with a small laugh and held up his glass of water for a second. “He also said that he wants to set me up with this job at his friend’s insurance company, and I immediately said no to that. I’m still not entirely sure what I wanna do yet, but I know it’s not that— some stupid fucking desk job. Especially not one that’s just given to me by my dad.”

“He’s an idiot,” You told Steve. “And also his bullshit is not at all worth the hangover you’ll have in the morning.”

“You might be right about that,” He responded, eyes fixed on his now half-empty glass of water and a small amused smile on his face. “But, it felt good for a second.”

You poked his arm so that he would look at you. “You could’ve talked to me about all of that instead of coming here.”

“I didn’t wanna mess up your date by coming home and talking to you about all of this sad shit. I knew that you’d just worry about me and probably not go,” He mumbled. “And I feel like a dumbass for still messing it up.”

“It’s okay. Seriously. Honestly,” You told him and then playfully smiled as you said your next words. “And you know that I would tell you if it wasn’t okay. I’d definitely hold this over you for at least a week, and force you to clean out Harold’s cage and do my laundry that’s been building up for the past week and a half. But you’re drunk and sad, and I’m way too nice to make you do any of those things.”

He laughed at that, which made you smile wider. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” You said before you stood up from the stool you’d been sitting in. “Now, come on, let’s get out of here before it starts getting crowded. Can you walk okay?”

Steve only nodded in response, which was a nonverbal answer that you weren’t sure if you completely trusted, so you stood close to him as he also got up and pulled some cash out of his back pocket and placed it on the counter.

He then waved at Barry, and you were certain that he probably didn’t mean for it to be so animated and comical, but it very much looked that way. “Goodnight, Barry.”

The bartender laughed a bit when he looked over at you and Steve. “‘Night, guys.”

Steve started heading toward the door first and you followed just a few steps behind him. When he stumbled a bit before even making it out of the door, you grabbed his hand and moved closer to him so that he could drape his arm around your shoulders, and then one of yours circled around his waist.

Leading him to your car was a feat in itself, but once he was settled in the passenger seat and you started driving, he rolled his window down completely and had it like that during the entire ride even though it was freezing cold outside, and that was worse than dealing with his stumbling.

When you made it to the apartment building, his balance was actually a bit more coherent so you didn’t need to do more than just hold his hand during the entire walk to the elevators and then down the hallway to the apartment.

You dragged him to your room and he sighed in contentment when he sat down on the side of your bed; he always liked your mattress better than his own for some reason.

“Wait, don’t fall asleep yet,” You told him before heading over to his room and grabbing a random t-shirt and basketball shorts from one of his drawers. “Here, put this on. I know you’d be mad at me if I let you fall asleep in those jeans.”

“Thanks,” He mumbled with a yawn as you handed the clothes over to him, and then you went to the kitchen as he started changing.

You filled a mug with water and then pulled open the drawer that had the bottle of aspirin in it. Neither you nor Steve were really sure why it lived there instead of in one of your bathrooms, where it probably should’ve been, but you two also didn’t make any effort to move it.

Steve was already asleep and under the covers when you walked back into your room, and you placed the mug and aspirin on the nightstand on his side. You changed into your own pajamas for the night, which simply consisted of an old baggy t-shirt and shorts, before settling in on your side of the bed.

It was still pretty early for a Friday night, barely even ten o’clock, but you didn’t mind going to bed because you were actually a little tired. Steve was turned and facing away from you, but you still watched him and his even breathing for a bit, making sure he was okay before you quickly drifted off to sleep yourself.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

Steve didn’t know what time it was when he woke up, but he could tell that it was pretty early because he could see the just sun starting to rise.

The other things he quickly noticed were that he was in your bed and he had a pounding headache, which was a little confusing at first, but then all of what happened last night started coming back to him.

The shit with his dad, the bar, the accidental phone call to you, and then you coming to the bar and bringing him home— he remembered it all.

With a soft groan, Steve slowly sat up in bed, doing his best not to wake you, and then reached over to grab the water and aspirin you left out for him.

He took the medicine and drank most of the water and then laid back down, turning on his side to face you. Your head was against the pillow and even breaths fell from your slightly parted lips. You looked so peaceful like this, he decided, so pretty.

Steve thought about you and Jamie, and how happy you had been when you talked about him. Steve also knew how excited you’d been about the date, and even though you had told him that it was okay that you had to cancel it last night, he still felt a little bad about it all.

He knew that you would probably do anything for him, and that was completely mutual. If the roles had been reversed last night, Steve wouldn’t have thought twice about canceling a date to go pick you up from some dumb bar. And making those sorts of sacrifices for one another never felt like a question, it just always felt like the obvious thing to do.

It didn’t completely make sense at first, but somehow it was that simple and crystal clear thought that managed to shift something deep down inside of him— it harshly drew the line between best friends and something more. And Steve quickly realized exactly which side he lay on.

Which was confusing because the lines of where your friendship began and ended had always felt so unquestionable— you and him were best friends; nothing more, nothing less.

But it was different now, it changed, and it was this moment that told him that it actually had been that way for a while; probably since you two moved into the apartment.

Starting from that day in August your lives became even more intertwined with one another— which didn’t feel entirely possible because of how close you’d been for so long— but it was true. He hadn’t realized how blurry the lines had been getting since then.

Since you two started beginning your days and ending them in the same home. Since so many nights became spent in each other’s beds; nothing more happening than sleeping and late night talking, but still. Since you two got Harold only a few weeks into living in the apartment, and you both immediately fell into your unserious parental roles in the hamster’s life. Since an unspoken early morning weekend routine fell into place where Steve would make coffee and toast and you’d do the eggs and bacon. Since you two became something equivalent to a married couple that had been together for at least twenty years.

And then Steve realized that actually maybe this something more had always been there— maybe it had always been so fucking obvious.

He thought back to the end of Senior year when you two went to each other’s proms and slow danced at the end of the night because you both thought it would be funny, but those moments actually turned into something really sweet and wholesome; and you’d both think back on it during the most randomest of times.

And then he also thought about smaller things, the parts of your personality that made him feel so goddamn lucky to know you. How you always fiddled with the radio and never settled on a station for longer than a few minutes during perhaps any car ride where Steve was the one driving; something that you’d been doing since the day he got his driver's license and you two went on your first solo car ride together. How pretty much anything you did would only make him smile and playfully roll his eyes or make fun of you.

Steve wasn’t entirely sure why he was having this sort of “epiphany moment” right here, right now, in your bed as he looked at you peacefully sleeping next to him.

It, of course, stemmed from you canceling something that he had known you’d been looking forward to for the last couple of days to instead take care of him, he could recognize that. But, what made that so different from everything else you’d done for each other over the years?

He immediately thought that maybe there was no one straight answer to that question because it wasn’t about what was different. Instead, it was about all of those other moments too. They had slowly built upon each other until it came to this one on this February morning— nine years into your friendship and six and a half months into you two living together— and Steve could finally recognize what it all had meant, and he was ready to accept the truth for what it was too.

He liked you. More than liked, actually. He loved you, he was in love with you.

But, you were also his best friend, the most important person in his life, and he didn’t want to be the reason that that ever got messed up. And that thought was what made him finally look away from you and mutter out a soft, “Fuck.”

Steve quickly got out of the bed, and he was surprised, but also completely grateful, that his quick and hasty movements didn’t manage to stir you awake.

He left your room and went to the kitchen. It was early and he probably should’ve been trying to get a few more hours of sleep, but he wasn’t tired anymore.

The realization was the only thing on his mind— in a matter of seconds, it managed to completely consume it.

Everything else that had been happening the past few months finally made complete sense; Steve saw it all in a different way. He now understood why he couldn’t picture any sort of future with Vanessa when he went out with her a few times back in December even though he really did like her, and why he couldn’t see anything with anyone he went out with. Because deep down, he knew that he could only see that with you. It made sense why his dating life had been in such a rut lately and why he didn’t particularly mind it all that much.

When you two would jokingly say that you both were completely okay with ending up “alone together forever,” he realized now that from his side of things, deep down, it had never been a joke. And he wondered if it was the same way for you.

In an ideal world, the answer would be yes. But, things only felt confusing, and if he was being a thousand percent honest with himself, he didn’t know if that answer was yes in this world.

Steve knew that you really liked Jamie, even in such a short amount of time, so that couldn’t mean that you had any sort of feelings for him. Right? Or maybe you just hadn’t had your own “epiphany moment” yet? Should he tell you about his? Should he tell you about any of what just hit him in the past ten minutes?

His brain felt as if it was going to fucking explode with all of the questions circling his mind right then, and the coffee he was making failed to distract his thoughts from everything.

He came to the quick decision that he wouldn’t tell you what he was feeling; it would just be easier that way. There wouldn’t be any way for him to potentially fuck things up between you two if he simply ignored what he was feeling. It was easy to imagine how drastically your friendship would change if he told you everything and you didn’t feel the same. Therefore, he could push it all away to make sure that nothing changed for the worse.

When the coffee was done, he poured some into a fresh mug and took a long sip. Any other time, he couldn’t really stand straight black coffee, but the bitterness tasted good for once; he decided to focus on that instead of anything else.

Steve wasn’t sure how long he had been leaning back against the counter and sipping from his mug before you came out of your room. It could’ve been one minute or ten; right then, time felt as if it was moving both slow and fast.

“Hey,” You said, giving him a small smile and rubbing the tiredness out of your eyes. “I’m surprised you’re up already. I definitely expected you to be passed out until at least ten.”

It felt equivalent to a light switch flipping how quickly Steve felt affected by your smile and simply you in that moment. He’d probably seen you like this a million times before— just waking up and still in your now wrinkled pajamas from the night— but it felt entirely different now. And that was when he knew how fucked he was.

“Yeah, I, uh, I woke up and couldn’t, um, go back to sleep… So, yeah, just came out here. Made some, um, coffee,” He ultimately responded and then inwardly sighed at how flustered he was right then. He let out a quick laugh. “Sorry, blame the hangover for my inability to say sentences right now.”

If that was how he was going to act around you from now on, he knew that trying to keep this a secret was probably the most unrealistic idea ever.

You laughed a bit and nodded, seemingly unfazed by his awkwardness right then, and opened up the fridge. “You think you can stomach eggs and bacon?”

“Yes to the bacon, but I think I should play it safe and say no to the eggs.”

“Makes sense,” You said, closing the fridge after grabbing the bacon. You placed the pack on the counter near the stove and then looked at Steve. “You feeling better about all of that dad shit?”

It was almost comical how even though it had been the reason for everything that happened last night, the conversation he had with his dad was the farthest thing from his mind now.

“I’m good, actually.”

“Good,” You said, smiling at him and then reaching out to grab his hand and give it a light reassuring squeeze; which, unknown to you, made his heart feel as if it was going to somersault out of his chest. “Remember, the next time this happens, come to me and we both can get drunk here for free. Or we can just run away and join the circus, or whatever it was we agreed on when we were twelve.”

Steve only nodded and gave you a small smile in response because it felt as if that was all he could do at that moment. If he attempted to say anything, he felt like his words would’ve started or ended with, “I’m in love with you.”

He changed his decision then. He knew that he had to tell you everything because it wouldn’t be easy to simply bury it down and ignore it. There was no way that he’d be able to keep this from you, at least not for a long time, it was already swallowing him whole. And although he had no idea when or how he would tell you the truth, he made a quick promise to himself that he would do it.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

let me know ur thoughts<333

(requests are open for stuff you wanna see in the universe/series!🫶🏾)

#steve harrington x reader #steve harrington fic #steve harrington fluff #steve harrington smut #steve harrington x you #steve harrington imagine #steve harrington x fem!reader #stranger things fluff #steve harrington imagines #steve harrington x reader smut #stranger things imagine #stranger things series #stranger things smut

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munson-blurbs · 1 month

Note

Hehe for since you asked for fluffy smut, what if reader has had a long day at work and Eddie maybe fixes a bubble bath and they take one together, but then it gets a lil frisky

Is this more smut than fluff? Yes. Am I apologizing for it? Nope.

Collab with @corroded-hellfire who is once again the only reason there's any fluff at all.

CW: smut (18+ only, minors DNI), roommate!Eddie, accidental boners, grinding, lots and lots of touching, mention of oral (f) WC: 1.9k

Home might have been a tiny, two-bedroom apartment that perched above the heart of Hawkins, but at the end of a long shift, it’s Heaven.

You kick off your shoes; apparently they’re one of the most supportive brands, according to the other waitresses, but your feet still ache.

The throbbing in your feet is nothing compared to the roaring pain that inflames your lower back. Just pressing the heel of your palms into it makes you wince and groan.

“You okay?” Eddie calls from his room. You hear him fumbling to put away his guitar before you can even reply.

The door swings open and he stands there, posture sagging when he sees how beaten down you look. Whatever makeup you had applied that afternoon had long faded, and the stains on your apron certainly added the finishing touch.

Eddie, meanwhile, is refreshed—infuriatingly so. Today was his day off, and though he put in a lot of work the other six days of the week, you still yearned for the well-restedness that had him bounding over to you.

“Bubble bath?” When you two had first moved in together, he used to try and talk to you about your day. He took it personally when you retreated to your room without glancing in his direction. But now he knew that you talk when you regain your energy. And there’s no shortage of gossip after eight hours at Benny’s.

You nod, offering him as much of a grateful smile as you can muster. “That would be great.” You weren’t sure how you managed to find a great friend like Eddie, but you weren’t about to question it, either.

None of the guys you’d actually dated had ever been so understanding. But Eddie…he managed to always know what you needed.

He offers you one of his signature grins that always brighten your day and heads down the hall to the bathroom. You take off your name tag when the loud gush of the tub faucet reaches your ears and you barely have time to yank your socks off before Eddie’s back in your doorway.

“Your spa awaits,” he says. “I would’ve prepared you some music but I don’t think any of my metal cassettes have the ambiance you’re looking for right now.”

You shake your head as you pass by him and step towards the bathroom door.

“Not really,” you agree. “I’ll let you know if I need it for some inspiration working out or welding or something.”

Eddie huffs a laugh and slips his hands into the back pockets of his black jeans.

“Wasn’t that Flashdance?”

“Yeah, but that music wasn’t my thing,” you admit with a shrug before you step into the bathroom. The door clicks behind you as it closes and you’re immediately shedding the stained, greasy uniform you’ve been dying to ditch all day.

A trail of clothing is left in your wake as you step up to the tub, the bubbles fizzing and giving off a calming jasmine scent. Not wanting to scald your skin as the cherry on top of this already grueling day, you slip your hand into the water to test the temperature. It’s perfect. You don’t know how Eddie does it; he must have the magic touch.

The water, the bubbles, the scent, it’s all too inviting. You lift one leg over the side of the tub and climb in, quickly bringing the other in as well. In your haste to start your relaxation, you slip a bit as you begin to sit down. Instinct has you catching yourself on the sides of the tub almost instantly, but it causes the collection of soap, shampoo, and conditioner bottles to tumble onto the floor in a large heap. You stare at the pile for a moment.

“Ah, I’ll deal with you later,” you decide under your breath and sink further down into the warmth waiting to heal you from your long day.

The bubbles tickle your skin as they gradually make their way higher. They stop around your breasts and the warm water wraps itself around every achy muscle in your body.

Suddenly, the bathroom door busts open, a frazzled Eddie charging in with wide, concerned eyes. He’s only in a Corroded Coffin t-shirt and boxers now, so maybe the loud bang woke him from a nap.

“I-Is everything okay?” he asks as he eyes the pile of bottles on the floor.

“Oh yeah, I just knocked those over when I got in,” you explain.

Eddie breathes a sigh of relief but the moment his eyes land on you, his body tenses up even worse than before. He’s clearly trying not to stare at you—especially your chest—but he’s failing miserably. You look down to find that your roommate has a pretty good view of the tops of your boobs.

When you look back to Eddie, you get a pretty nice view yourself. Since he’s only wearing boxers on his lower half, his boner is quite evident.

A smug sense of satisfaction settles over you, even seeing how uncomfortable Eddie seems to be at getting caught. But you’re not going to tease him or make him feel bad about anything. On the contrary, you’ve thought of yet another way he can help you relax.

“Do you wanna join?” you purr.

When Eddie looks your way you give him the most innocent, wide eyed look you can manage and flutter your lashes a few times.

Worry blooms within you when he doesn’t immediately respond.

Did I overstep? Is he completely freaked out? Oh my god, what if his boner was completely unrelated to me and I just assumed—

His voice, smaller than you’ve ever heard it, interrupts your thoughts. “Mhm, yeah. I mean, if that’s cool with you.”

You nod, watching as he peels off his shirt and tosses it aside, exposing the soft tendrils of hair across his chest. There’s a tattoo on one pec; you want him, need him closer so you can run your tongue over it.

He sheds his boxers next. Though you knew he was big just from seeing the bulge behind the fabric, nothing prepared you to see him fully on display. The reddish-pink tip leaks pre-cum as the shaft bobs in desperate search for the warmth of a body.

“Where should I…” He’s gained a bit of confidence from the way you stare unabashedly at his naked body, but he’s still hesitant to push his luck too far.

Scooting forward, you gesture to the now empty space behind you. Nerves buzz throughout your naked body —now wet in more ways than one.

Eddie swings a leg over the edge of the tub, getting his balance before bringing the other to join. The way he places his hands on your shoulders results in an electricity that you can only hope he feels as well.

His lower body disappears beneath the bubbles and he lets out a relaxed groan. You lean back until your head rests on his chest, his considerable length pressing against your lower back.

“Sweetheart,” he whispers. Whether he means to speak that softly or he can’t manage anything louder, you can’t be sure. “Be careful.”

“Careful?”

He nods, lips grazing the shell of your ear. He’s so close to you, and yet he’s still too far away. “You’re so fucking tempting like this.”

You shift slightly, enough to see the blush in his cheeks that you know isn’t from the steamy bath. “Maybe I want you to be tempted.”

One tattooed arm snakes around your waist, fingers trailing upwards and stopped just shy of your breasts.

“Don’t tease me,” he begs. “Don’t say it if you don’t mean it.”

“I mean it.”

You take his hand and place it on your left breast. He whimpers, and you swear you could climax from the sound alone.

Water sloshes around the tub as he hooks his legs around yours, gathering the stability he needs.

“Fuck…” His hips move as he ruts up against you, desperate for relief. The way he pinches your nipple, rolling it between his thumb and forefinger, starkly contrasts the gentle kisses he leaves on your shoulder blades.

You want him. You need him.

His other hand lays in the water and you guide it between your legs, now spread in anticipation of his touch.

“There?” He asks as he finds your clit, rubbing it when you nod in the affirmative.

Eddie increases his pace, fingers working in tandem to bring you pleasure. You arch your back, exposing your neck for him to bite and suck.

“When we’re done,” he murmurs, “I want you splayed out on the bed for me. I need to see if your pussy is as pretty as I’ve imagined.”

His words awaken something within you. “Y-You imagine me…?” You start, unable to finish your sentence.

Eddie nods. “Every time I jerk off, Sweetheart, I imagine being inside you. How you’d feel around my cock—mmph, fuck.”

“I picture you, too,” you confess. “Your fingers, or your cock, or—”

He raises a brow. “Or?”

“Or your mouth.” The admission spills from your lips.

“Yeah? You want me to eat that pretty little pussy of yours?” Your own desire for him amps up his confidence. He’s impossibly and impressively hard, and you would do anything for him to stretch you out.

You nod. “Please.”

“Okay, Sweetheart. Soon as we’re done here, yeah?” His breath hitches, his rutting becoming sloppier and needier as he nears orgasm.

Bubbly waves crest over the side of the tub, drenching the bathmat and flooding the tile floor, but neither of you care.

“Eds, little more, I’m gonna…”

He follows your every order, your pussy clenching around nothing as he takes care of your clit.

“Wanna make you feel good.” Eddie kisses your shoulder again. “Please let me make you feel good.”

You can only offer a moan as you come, chanting his name over and over. It’s a name you only ever dreamed about chanting so loudly; it was usually relegated to quiet whispers alone in your room.

A new warmth, different from the bathwater, coats your lower back and drips down to your ass when Eddie finishes, the hand on your breast squeezing tight, pain and pleasure intermingling harmoniously.

“Oh my god,” he pants. “That was…”

“Amazing.”

Eddie nods. “So fuckin’ amazing.”

He lifts a bubble-covered hand to your chin, tilting it slightly so he can kiss you. His lips are soft but move with determination, his tongue sliding between yours. You let him in, your fingers playing with the wet tips of his hair.

“Meant what I said about eating you out,” he mumbles into your mouth before stealing another kiss.

Splayed out on the bed. His to ravish. The thought has you lunging for the towel hanging behind the door in an attempt to dry off.

But when you stand, Eddie reaches out his hand and pulls you towards him, now eye-level with your pussy. “Knew she was perfect,” he says with a smirk. “Bet she tastes even better.”

The kiss he presses to your folds nearly buckled your knees.

“You wanna find out?” He nods eagerly, and you giggle. “It might be a little lavender-y from the bath soap, though.”

Eddie shrugs. “Don’t care. Need you.”

And who are you to deny a man his needs?

#eddie munson #stranger things #stranger things fanfic #fanfic #eddie stranger things #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson x you #eddie munson stranger things #eddie munson smut #smut #requests

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thefreakandthehair · 1 month

Text

I just wanna see that smile

wc: 1.1k | tags: canon-compliant injury/recovery, hospital setting, getting together, (brief and inferred mutual) pining, first kiss

a/n: happy (belated) birthday to my pal, @firefly-party! kei drew this piece last year and it was one of the first artworks we talked about when we became friends. this series has continued to live in my brain ever since, so I decided to write a little something in the universe!

Eddie woke up on March 26th, 1986 and Steve’s waited patiently for this moment ever since.

Well, patient is a misnomer— he’d waited quietly to anyone not named Robin or Dustin. Robin, because she knows him too well and there’s no point in trying to hide anything from her and Dustin, because he’d apparently grown up overnight and pieced together that Steve sitting at Eddie’s bedside and holding his fucking hand every time he waltzed into the room meant something.

Or maybe it was when Steve gave Eddie all of his rings back, sliding them carefully onto his shaking fingers with a comforting smile.

Or maybe when Eddie sat up unassisted for the first time and Steve nearly hit the ceiling, bracing him in a panic as if all of his stitches and staples would burst with the tiny movement he’d been working toward in physical therapy.

Hell, maybe it was Steve taking over some of Eddie’s care for himself, washing his hair and braiding it because the staff at Hawkins Memorial are doing nothing more than the bare minimum to make sure they don’t get sued, or even more frightening, reamed out by the new duo of Hopper and Wayne again. Either way, his hair was making Steve’s own scalp itchy.

Dustin never tells Steve what it was exactly that tipped him off but whatever it was, it’s enough for Dustin to give Steve the floor when Eddie’s getting ready to discharge back home. And that’s how, exactly two months later to the day from Eddie waking up, Steve enters Eddie’s otherwise empty room armed with a special treat in the form of milkshakes to find Eddie pouring over an unfortunately familiar stack of papers.

“NDA?” Steve asks, nodding at the papers in Eddie’s lap. He’s upright, fully dressed in the black sweatpants Jeff brought by and a cut off Metallica tee shirt, bandages around his stomach and neck.

Eddie mutters as he reads under his breath, eyes flitting across the page.

“How the fuck do they expect any of us common folk to understand a fucking word of this? Hereby? Wherein? Hitherto? What fucking year did I wake up in, man?”

“Yeah, I think the whole point is that you don’t read what you’re signing but I’ll let you in on a little secret.” Steve huffs a small laugh through his nose as he steps carefully around Eddie’s crutches. “You may as well just sign it because if you don’t, they’ll forge it anyway. Now finish signing your life rights away so you can have this milkshake with me.”

Eddie perks up, looking away from the mess of papers and smiling up at Steve with a smile so genuine, it punches the air out of his lungs. He keeps looking at him like this, like Steve’s a breath of fresh air, like he's someone Eddie wants to have around.

Steve isn’t sure what to do with that look yet, but he’s sure glad it’s there.

“Celebration milkshakes? Is this a freedom gift?” Eddie signs the NDA quickly and sets the pen down on the bed next to him.

“It sure is. Figured this could make up for all those lame popsicles from the cafeteria.”

The mattress creaks as Steve sits down on the edge, just to the side of the railing, and hands Eddie the strawberry treat. Their fingers graze, Steve’s chilled and Eddie’s warm. His hand is still a little shaky, trembling as he takes hold of the cup, but they’re warm and warm means alive.

Eddie’s hand can tremble for the rest of his goddamn life so long as it’s always warm.

They each take a sip, smooth ice cream slurping up their straws, and after a moment, Eddie sighs.

“Is it weird that I’m actually sort of worried about leaving?”

Steve’s eyebrows knit together, looking down at Eddie’s rings glinting beneath the offensive fluorescent lights above them.

“What are you worried about?”

“Uh, well, I did almost die. And the town still wishes I did. It’s a lot easier to make those dreams a reality outside of these walls, y’know? And I’m uh…” Steve watches as Eddie takes a breath and Steve suddenly misses the early days when Eddie was connected to the heart rate monitor.

“You’re…?” Steve presses, sipping his milkshake again to appear casual.

“I see you all the time here. Guess I just don’t want that to change.”

Steve’s heart skips a beat, clattering in his chest and pounding at his ribs, desperately trying to crack him right open and run to the man who’s claimed it. Eddie watches him with cautious eyes, opens his mouth to say something else but Steve cuts him off before he can take it back.

“Why do you think that’d change? Forest Hills is a lot closer than this shithole, and you won’t be kept under lock and key. And as for the first thing, well, Wayne and Nancy have a lot in common and I have a bat loaded up with nails in the trunk of my car.” Steve rests his free hand on Eddie’s knee. “No one's gonna fuck with you. Don’t worry about that.”

“You sound a little cocky there, Stevie.” Eddie lifts one eyebrow, glancing from Steve’s hand up to his eyes. “Ready to fight for my honor or something?”

“Yep.”

He hadn’t brought the milkshakes intending to use them as props, but he’s glad he has something to do to fill the space as Eddie watches him with questioning eyes. As he slurps through the straw, grating noise still preferable over the awkward silence, Eddie’s pinched expression turns softer, realization dawning between the stark white walls of the hospital and the pink ice cream in both of their hands.

“You’re serious.” Eddie says.

“Took you that long to figure that out?” Steve teases.

“I’ve been a little busy with learning how to breathe and walk again. Y’know, just little things.” Eddie rolls his eyes with that same fond smile, free hand lacing its fingers through Steve’s. “So what you’re saying is that I’ll see you just as much outside of this prison as I have inside of it?”

Steve shrugs. “Probably even more, honestly. There are no visiting hours at Wayne’s, and it’s not like I have a job to rush off to these days. You’re stuck with me, Ed. At least for as long as you want me around.”

Eddie snorts, unceremoniously scoffing in Steve’s face as if in disbelief.

“Don’t make promises like that. What happens when I never want you to leave?”

The air shifts, growing heavier as they find themselves leaning closer, two satellites orbiting one another by nothing but gravitational pull.

Steve’s not sure who actually closes the gap, but he finds himself with his lips pressed against Eddie’s— sweet, chilled, a little chapped but smiling against his. Months of waiting, of hoping that he’d get this opportunity, come to a deafening crescendo and it takes all of his discipline to not push. Instead, they pull apart and Steve smiles, tucking loose hair behind Eddie’s ear.

“That’s easy. I’d just never leave.”

fun fact: kei, I wrote your birthday down in my calendar as the 28th for some reason, a solid ten days late, so know that this was planned from the get-go but was just a tad bit late.

#steddie #steddie fic #steddie fanfic #steddie fanfiction #steve harrington x eddie munson #eddie munson x steve harrington #steve harrington #eddie munson #stranger things #stranger things fic #stranger things fanfic #stranger things fanfiction #myblurbs

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steveseddie · 3 months

Text

not so fast

rated: t | cw: none apply | word count: 6,219

tags: steve harrington has a crush on eddie munson, accidental kissing, getting together, first kiss, steve is a Disaster in this

click here to read on ao3

***

Steve is running late for work.

And not just a little late either. More like, catastrophically late.

Like, ‘should’ve left his house ten minutes ago to even hope to make it on time’ kind of late.

Why?

There isn’t just one reason for how that happened- it’s been a series of mishaps that started with his alarm not going off this morning and ended with his car refusing to start.

“Because of fucking course!” Steve groans, twisting the key into the ignition a few more times before giving up.

After a string of creative curses and smacking his palms and his forehead against the wheel multiple times in frustration, he leaves his useless car and goes back to the house. As he crosses his driveway, he tries to think of ways to get himself to work.

First, he thinks of Nancy. He knows she’s giving Robin a ride to work today, but she’s probably dropped her off by now, punctual as she is. He has no way to reach her until she goes back home, and he’s pretty sure she mentioned something about hitting the library after dropping Robin off to do research for one of her articles for The Weekly Streak, so asking her for a ride isn’t an option.

Considering Steve’s only other friends are all fourteen-year-olds with no car and no license, he’s out of any other options pretty quickly after that.

If only he had a bike he could use, but the Harringtons got rid of those years ago. He could call Henderson and ask him to ride his bike here so Steve can take it to work. The kid will probably complain, but he owes Steve for the countless rides to the arcade and to Eddie’s trailer for their nerdy campaigns and-

Eddie!

Eddie has a car!

Eddie is Steve’s friend and he has a car!

After that realization hits, Steve rushes to the phone, dialing the number to the Munson’s trailer, which he memorized at some point during the last couple of weeks.

“Please, don’t be asleep. Please, pick up,” Steve mutters as the phone rings, tapping his foot anxiously against the floor. His eyes flick to the digital clock on top of the TV and he groans. God, he’s so late.

“Ugh, hello?” A sleepy voice asks and Steve sighs in relief. Finally, something going his way this morning.

“Eddie! Oh, thank God!”

“Fuck, man, why are you being so loud this early in the fucking morning?” Eddie grumbles, and Steve feels bad for clearly waking him up. Or he would if he had time to feel bad.

“Sorry, sorry, listen, I need a favor, I need you to pick me up and take me to work, my car won’t start and I’m supposed to be at Family Video in- crap, right now actually.”

“Dude-”

“Eddie, please. I have the keys and Robin can’t get in until I get there and she’s going to kill me-”

“Steve, relax, Je-sus!” Eddie interrupts.

“Please,” he repeats, feeling desperate. “If you do this, I’ll do anything you want.”

Eddie hums. “Anything, huh?” He asks in that low voice that always sends shivers down Steve’s spine. Even now, he can feel them, anxious as he is.

God, he really doesn’t have time for this.

“Munson,” Steve hisses.

“Okay, fine, I’ll do it. I’ll be there in ten.”

Steve winces, but he doesn’t say anything. It’s not like he can ask Eddie to disregard speed limits or traffic lights or other cars just so he gets here faster, the last thing he wants is for him to wrap his van around a tree because of him. “Okay, thanks.”

“Sure thing, sweetheart,” Eddie says before hanging up.

Since Steve has ten minutes before he gets here anyway, he gives himself one to get flustered over Eddie calling him that.

Then he uses the remaining nine to make Robin her favorite snack- peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which she claims taste better when Steve makes them. It’s probably an excuse so Steve makes them for her every time, but right now it works in his favor. She’s going to be pissed when Steve shows up late- he can’t even call the video store to let her know he’s on his way! Not when she’s locked outsid e because Steve has the god-damned keys. He hopes the sandwiches will help soften her up at least.

He’s already in the driveway when Eddie’s van rolls around the corner. As soon as it slows down, he jumps in and tells him to “Go!” without saying even saying hello.

Eddie snorts. “Good morning to you too, Harrington,” he says with an amused half-smile, but he starts driving. Eddie isn’t a slow driver by a long shot, but Steve notices that he still steps on the gas a little harder than he normally would, which he appreciates.

He slumps back onto the passenger seat. “Sorry, hi, thanks for doing this.”

“No problem, man,” Eddie says, taking his eyes off the road for a moment to look Steve up and down. “Looks like you had quite the morning.”

Steve blows out a puff of air, running a hand through his hair. It probably looks like a mess right now because not only did he not have enough time to complete his routine, he’s also been anxiously running his fingers through it all morning. “You have no idea! First, my alarm didn’t go off so I had to rush through my shower and didn’t have enough time to fix my hair, then I couldn’t find my vest, then my car keys, and when I finally found those, my fucking car wouldn’t start!” He drops his hands on his lap with a huff.

“Sheesh, man,” Eddie says, somewhat sympathetically.

“Yeah!” Steve agrees as his hands start flailing again. “And now, Robin is gonna be pissed at me all day for being late, and for leaving her waiting outside the store.”

Eddie reaches over with one hand, squeezing Steve’s shoulder. “I’m sure she’ll forgive you quickly enough, Birdie can’t stay mad at anyone for long.”

“Um, yeah,” Steve stammers out when Eddie’s hand stays there, on his shoulder. “You’re probably right and I brought her PB&J sandwiches to soften her up a bit, so.” He chuckles, a little shakily because Eddie’s fingers are brushing lightly against his neck.

“See?” Eddie asks, giving Steve’s shoulder a little shake. “Give her those and flash those pretty doe eyes of yours at her, and she’ll forget why she was even mad in the first place!”

Steve shoves his hand away- because it should be holding onto the steering wheel, not because having it on him makes his stomach flip-flop.

He clears his throat. “Anyway, how was your morning, Munson?”

“My morning? Well, Harrington, it was just fine, thanks for asking. I was catching up on some lovely much-needed Zs after band practice ran late last night, but then the phone woke me up. Some guy yelling at me to come pick him up.”

Steve makes a face, chuckling softly. “That guy sounds like an asshole.”

“Nah, he’s actually a very sweet guy. Pretty, too.” He tosses a wink at Steve, who flushes pink. “And you know me, I’m so easy for a pretty face. I was already gonna say yes when he promised he’d do anything if I gave him a ride. No way I could refuse.”

“Well, I’m sure the guy is very grateful,” he says, then wrinkles his nose. “And hopeful that you won’t make him regret promising you that.”

Eddie throws his head back with a laugh. “Don’t worry, Stevie, I won’t ask for anything too embarrassing.”

“Ugh.”

The van falls into a comfortable silence, only the radio playing softly in the background. Steve is surprised that it’s not one of Eddie’s tapes playing, he’s always complaining about radio stations not playing any ‘real music’ and Steve’s witnessed, more than once, the way he dives for the glove compartment to dig out one of his tapes before he even starts the van. He can’t help but wonder if the reason why Eddie is listening to the radio is because he was rushing to get to Steve and didn’t even have time to pick a tape.

Whether it’s the truth or not, it makes a dopey smile appear on Steve’s face, thinking about Eddie not wasting any time looking for a cassette tape because he knew Steve was in a hurry. He also didn’t change out of his pajamas or pause to fix his hair on his way out, Steve thinks as he looks Eddie up and down. He’s currently in plaid pajama pants and an old band shirt with holes around the collar that Steve knows he wears to bed, and his hair is sticking out every which way even more than usual.

He looks cute like that, and Steve’s dopey smile only grows because of it.

“You know,” Eddie starts and Steve jumps, thinking for a moment that he caught him staring, but his eyes are still fixed on the road. “If you want I can take a look at your car? Old Al Munson didn’t just teach me how to hotwire them, you know? Maybe I can fix whatever’s wrong with it.”

Steve blinks. “Really?”

He’s sure that there must be hearts in his eyes right now. He was already dreading having to pay for a tow truck to take his car to the mechanic and then pay to fix whatever was wrong with it. That kind of money would really put a dent in his plans to save enough for a place of his own, so Eddie fixing it for him would be a great help.

“Of course, Stevie,” Eddie says, flashing him a dimpled grin. Yup, definitely hearts in Steve’s eyes right now. “I can drive you home after your shift and take a look at it. I’ll bring Wayne’s tools.”

The visual of Eddie bending over the hood of Steve’s car with a tool belt around his tiny waist pops up in Steve’s mind without a warning, making warmth pool in his stomach.

He shakes his head and focuses on the Eddie in front of him- sweet, cute Eddie who is offering to give Steve a ride and help him with his car. Yeah, that’s really not any better than sexy mechanic Eddie from his fantasies.

“That would be awesome, Eds, thank you,” he says, possibly a little too earnestly.

It makes Eddie a little shy. He winds some of his hair around his finger and pulls it in front of his mouth. “Don’t go singing praises at me yet, I might not be able to fix it.”

“Maybe not, but I appreciate it anyway, the ride back home too,” Steve says softly. If Robin was here she would tell him to tone it down with the googly eyes and the mushy smiles, the way she does when the three of them hang out-

Shit. Robin.

He checks his watch and a whine slips past his lips.

Eddie notices and the van takes on speed as he pushes his foot harder against the pedal. “We’re almost there,” he says reassuringly.

Steve nods, but his leg stays bouncing anxiously for the rest of the drive.

***

Finally, Eddie drives the van into the Family Video parking lot.

Steve looks for Robin in the distance, squinting his eyes, wanting to gauge just how angry she looks. If she looks like she’s about to murder Steve, he might just tell Eddie to keep driving.

When he spots her, Steve’s stomach falls. She doesn’t look angry, but that’s only because she has an apologetic look on her face as she talks and gestures wildly to a family of three. Steve can’t read her lips, but he figures she must be explaining to them how her coworker and best friend is an idiot who doesn’t know how to work an alarm clock and that he should be getting here any minute now so she can murder him but not before she sends them on their merry way with whatever movie they’re here to rent and a bunch of candy and popcorn. On the house, of course.

“Fuck me,” Steve mutters, slumping back against the seat.

They never get customers this early on Sundays. Never.

Go fucking figure.

Eddie also squints his eyes through the windshield and scrunches up his nose at what he sees. “Maybe you can bribe them with PB&Js too?”

Steve appreciates Eddie trying to lighten his mood, but all he can muster right now is a slight huff of laughter. He starts gathering his things, ready to jump from the van as soon as Eddie parks.

“What time should I pick you up?” Eddie asks as he starts slowing down the van.

“Uh, I get off at four,” Steve says, just as he makes eye contact with Robin. She manages to glare at him while keeping her polite customer service face on. It’s impressive. “If Robin doesn’t kill me first.”

Eddie sniggers. “I don’t think she’ll kill you, maybe hurt you, or put Nair on your shampoo.”

Steve whimpers pathetically at the thought. The van slows to a stop. With the keys to the store in one hand and his Family Video vest in the other, Steve pushes the door open. He already has one leg out when Eddie says, “Wait!”

Steve half turns in his seat and gives him an impatient look, but it shifts into a grateful one when he sees that Eddie is holding the Tupperware with the sandwiches.

“Not so fast, sweetheart, don’t forget your bribe,” Eddie tells him with a lopsided grin.

Later, Steve will ask himself why he did what he does next, but the truth is, he doesn’t know.

Maybe it’s because he’s in a hurry and his body is moving faster than his brain. Maybe it’s because he had a shitty morning and Eddie swooped in like a knight in plaid pajama pants and a worn band shirt. Maybe he smashed his head too hard against the steering wheel of his car earlier that morning. Maybe it’s Eddie’s dimples or maybe it’s the pet name.

The thing is he doesn’t know what does it, just that something gets his wires crossed somehow, and before he knows it, he’s leaning over the space between their seats and pressing a quick kiss to Eddie’s mouth.

He doesn’t even realize he does it. Not yet.

He just grabs the Tupperware from Eddie’s limp hands, throws a “bye, Eds!” over his shoulder, and shuts the van door.

Robin’s head snaps in his direction as he makes his way across the parking lot, attempting to put on his vest without dropping the keys or the sandwiches. The family is watching him too and luckily they don’t look mad about having to wait- Steve checks his watch- shit, thirty minutes for him to get here.

“Hi, hello, I’m so sorry,” he starts apologizing before he even gets to them. He tosses the keys to Robin, who fumbles to catch them, so he can finish shrugging on his vest. “I’m so terribly sorry I kept you waiting,” he tells the family while Robin unlocks the door and flips the sign so it says Open! “My alarm didn’t go off and then my friend had to drive me ‘cause my car wouldn’t start and I couldn’t find my godda-rn vest!” He corrects himself when his eyes dart to the kid staring up at him. “But none of that matters now! Because I’m here and we’re-”

“Open!” Robin says, sweeping her arm in front of the door with a flourish, kind of like Eddie does sometimes.

Speaking of Eddie, Steve glances over his shoulder and notices that the van is still there.

Which, weird. But right now there’s nothing he can do about that.

Instead, he starts ushering the family inside, putting on his most charming smile. “Come in, come in, we’ll have you out of here in no time!” He says, following after them.

He makes eye contact with Robin over the kid’s head and mouths I’m so sorry, grimacing when she glares at him. But at least she holds the door open for him too, instead of letting it slam on his face, which he probably deserves.

Once inside, Steve helps the family find the movie they’re looking for in record time while Robin starts the computer system. By the time he guides them back to the counter, she’s ready to log it into the system. They give them an extra couple of days to return it, for the trouble, as well as all the Milk Duds and cherry licorice they want. On the house. Then they wave at them as they head out, throwing a “Thank you for choosing Family Video!” for good measure.

When the door closes, Steve spins around to face Robin on the other side of the counter. “I’m so sorry, Robs,” he says with as much feeling as he can muster.

She pokes him in the chest several times with her bony fingers. “You owe me so much! I’ve been apologizing to that family for thirty minutes, dingus!”

“I know! I’ll clean the floors today and I’ll take care of the reshelving and you can take an extra long break and I won’t say anything!”

Robin doesn’t speak, just glares. Steve grabs his Tupperware, his last resort, and pushes it across the counter toward her. “I made you PB&J sandwiches. Your favorite.”

She heaves out a long sigh. “Okay, fine, I forgive you, but you’re doing all of that and you’re letting me pick the movie of the day and you’re watching it with me.” Steve nods profusely. The corners of her mouth twitch up, and even if it’s not a full smile, Steve feels relief flood through him. “Now come on, let’s finish getting this place ready for business, and then we can have those sandwiches and you can explain how you got here so late.”

“Yes, ma’am!” Steve says, giving her a two-fingered salute like he’s seen Eddie do many times.

Speaking of Eddie, Steve squints at the parking lot before following Robin’s lead- turning on lights and straightening cardboard cutouts.

He notices that the van is finally gone, and so is Eddie.

***

“Then I almost left the sandwiches in Eddie’s van!”

Robin gasps dramatically, cradling her half-eaten PB&J against her chest. She’s in a much better mood now, after one and a half sandwiches, more apologizing from Steve and his dramatic retelling of this morning’s events.

“Which would be just my luck today, I swear! But Eddie wouldn’t let me forget them,” Steve says, his smile turning dopey the moment he brings up Eddie. He knows this because he sees Robin rolling her eyes. “So I grabbed them and then I-”

And that’s when it hits Steve. What he did. Almost an hour after the fact.

The fact being- He kissed Eddie.

“Oh God,” he mutters, horrified. “Oh fuck, oh God.”

“What? Are you having a stroke? What is it?” Robin asks, eyes widening in alarm. “Steve?” She waves her hands in front of his face and bread crumbs fly everywhere. Steve knows he’s going to have to clean those, but right now he doesn’t care about that at all.

He lets out a pitiful whimper, his hands flying to his face. “Oh my God!”

“Steve, what?”

“I kissed Eddie,” he says, but the words are muffled by his hands over his face.

He hears Robin let out a sigh. “Steve, my best friend, my platonic soulmate with a capital P. I know we joke about it but I can’t actually read your mind. I’m gonna need you to speak more clearly.”

Dropping his hands onto the counter, Steve’s eyes meet hers, then he says, loud and clear, “I kissed Eddie.”

Robin’s face goes through many different emotions in like, twenty seconds. Shock, confusion, something that Steve dubs her fucking finally, dingus! expression, and then, outrage.

“Wait! So you were late because you were busy kissing Eddie? Steve!” She says on her way to get angry again, but Steve starts shaking his head before she’s done talking.

“No! Robs, I was running late and then I kissed Eddie as I was getting out of the van!”

The outrage disappears and she grins at Steve. “Fucking finally, dingus!” She says, and yup, that’s the one, Steve got it right. She holds her hand up for a high five, but Steve grabs her hand between his instead, shaking his head.

“No, Robin, no, this is bad.”

“Why? You like Eddie!”

“I do! I like him so much, but he was never supposed to find out, and definitely not by me just- kissing him!” He says, shaking his hands wildly and Robin’s too since it’s still trapped between them.

“Okay, first, I need my hand back,” Robin says, extracting her hand from Steve’s hold. “Now, what did Eddie do when you kissed him? Did he kiss you back or did he go like, ahhh and pushed you out of the van?”

“I- I don’t know. Nothing?” Steve tries to remember, but his whole morning was a blur. It’s just his luck that he finally kisses the boy he likes and he can’t even remember it. “He just- sat there. Actually, he sat there for a while because he was still here when we were helping that family. Oh my God, is that bad? Do you think he’s mad? Robs, what do I do?” He drops his head on the counter and feels Robin pat his head. He doesn’t even care that her hand is sticky with peanut butter and jelly.

“You said he’s picking you up later?” Steve makes what’s supposed to be a noise of assent. “Okay, so you talk to him.”

“If he even shows up.”

Another pat. “I’m sure he will and then you just tell him the truth. That you kissed him because-”

“I was having a stroke?” He says, twisting his head to one side so he can look at her.

Robin rolls her eyes. “I said the truth, dingus.”

“But the truth is so embarrassing. So, Eddie, I kissed you because I think you’re cute, I kissed you because you came to my rescue this morning, I kissed you because you called me sweetheart and it might’ve melted my brain. I kissed you because I finally let myself do what I’ve wanted to do for weeks!” He groans pitifully. “What if he doesn’t like the truth, Robin? What if he doesn’t like me?”

“You know what I think about that,” she says and Steve does know. She’s told him that she thinks Eddie feels the same way over and over while trying to convince him to make a move, but Steve doesn’t believe her. “But if he doesn’t, then at least you’ll know. And whatever happens, you’ll have me and an endless supply of romantic movies we can both cry to! And ice cream, lots and lots of ice cream!”

Steve lifts his head fully from the counter and smiles gratefully at her. “Thanks, Robs.”

“Of course, Steve, now come on! I know what movie I’m picking today!” She says, hopping onto the counter and swinging her legs over it, barely missing Steve’s head.

“Ugh, not Children of Paradise again, please.” Steve groans when Robin grabs hold of his wrist and pulls him in the direction of their romantic drama section.

She does pick that one again and Steve has no choice but to go with it, but at least with a two-part movie, he’s distracted for a whole two hours and forty-five minutes so he doesn’t think about Eddie or what he’ll say to him later.

Not that much anyway.

(Okay, maybe he does.)

***

Steve half expects Eddie to not show up, and a part of him wishes he’s right, so he doesn’t have to talk to him yet- or ever.

He’s surprised when, at four o’clock, he sees the van roll into the Family Video parking lot.

That surprise quickly turns into horror and he must make some kind of noise that alerts Robin and makes her follow his gaze.

“I told you he’d come!”

He turns to her with a pleading look. “Please let me hitch a ride with you and Nancy, Robs, I can’t do this.”

“You can, Steve,” she says, putting her hands on his shoulders to guide him toward the door. Steve tries to put up some resistance, digging his heels into the floor, but she puts her whole body into it and manages to get him moving.

“What if I kiss him again?”

Robin snorts. “Maybe try to have a conversation with him first,” she suggests, pulling the door open and shoving Steve through it. “And if it turns out that he wants to kiss you then go for it!”

“But what do I even say?”

“You’re asking me that? Pfff. I’m hopeless, you know that. Just be honest, okay? And call me as soon as you get home to tell me everything!” And with that, she shoves him toward Eddie’s van. Steve stumbles a few steps, thankfully catching himself just before he eats dirt.

When he looks up, he sees Eddie staring at him through the windshield. He probably just saw Steve nearly faceplant in the parking lot- and Steve’s supposed to hope Eddie wants to kiss him after that? Yeah, right.

With a sigh, he starts walking towards the van. He reaches the passenger door sooner than he’d like, and after bracing himself, he opens the door and climbs inside.

“Hey,” Steve says, wiggling his fingers in a wave.

He notices that Eddie’s hands are clinging to the leather of the steering wheel. He gives Steve a smile that looks a little strained. “Hey, Steve.”

An awkward silence falls over them and Steve’s fingers itch to open the door and run away, but he can see Robin chatting with Nancy, the two of them standing next to her car, and he’s sure that if he makes a run for it, Robin will chase him down and drag him back to the front seat of Eddie’s van herself.

So he stays where he is and glances at Eddie, noticing that he looks different from this morning.

“You changed your clothes-” he starts, but Eddie chooses that moment to also start talking.

“Seems like Buckley’s in a better mood-”

They both cut themselves off when the other speaks, looking at each other and laughing a little awkwardly.

Eddie looks down at himself. He’s wearing ripped jeans, a self-made Corroded Coffin shirt, and his hair is pulled back into a ponytail, which allows Steve to see the earrings adorning his right ear. “I did change clothes. I don’t just hang around and do nothing in my pajamas all day. Sometimes, I wear jeans,” he says, making Steve snort. “So, did the PB&J sandwiches work?” He asks, gesturing at Robin across the parking lot. Steve can see her glancing towards the van every couple of seconds. She’s not being subtle.

“They did, but I also had to let her pick this long French drama for movie of the day and let her take an hour-long break. And also apologize like, three hundred times.”

“Damn, Buckley’s tougher than I thought,” Eddie whistles, eyebrows shooting up in surprise. “But she let you off the hook?”

“Yeah, we’re good.”

Eddie nods. “Cool.”

Another silence. This one’s less uncomfortable, but it still feels like something is hanging over their heads. No, not just something.

Steve sighs. Might as well get it over with.

“So,” he says.

“So,” Eddie echoes, flexing his fingers around the steering wheel.

“I kissed you.”

There, he said it. It’s out there.

Eddie inhales sharply. “You did.” His knuckles start to turn white with how hard he’s gripping the wheel. “Um, why did you?”

He remembers Robin’s words. The truth, Steve. Just tell him the truth.

“Honestly, I don’t know. I didn’t even realize I did it at first,” Steve says, running a hand through his hair, keeping his eyes on his lap.

“So it was just- what? An accident? You- you didn’t mean it?” Eddie’s voice sounds uncharacteristically small, quiet. Steve risks glancing at him, and when he does, he finds that Eddie has shrunk in on himself. His eyes meet Steve’s for a split second and he looks hurt, like he wanted the kiss to mean something.

And Steve can’t have him thinking that it didn’t. No way.

He turns sideways on his seat, leaning forward, closing some of the distance between them.

“I didn’t realize I did it because I’m so used to thinking about kissing you,” Steve admits. Eddie’s eyes snap up to meet his- wide, hopeful.

“You- you are?”

Steve nods, feeling his cheeks turn pink, but he doesn’t let that stop him. “I’m just usually better at stopping myself from doing anything about it, but today,” He shakes his head, letting out a shaky laugh. “You swooped in to help me and were looking so cute in your pajamas and you were smiling at me with your dimples and I- I just did it, without thinking. So I didn’t mean to do it, but I meant it.”

Eddie’s lip is trapped between his teeth as he chews on it nervously. It’s very distracting, but Steve does his best to keep his eyes off his mouth and on his eyes, which are sparkling as he thinks over Steve’s words. “Holy shit, you did?”

“Yeah, I meant it so much that when I realized what I did, I started panicking.”

Finally, Eddie lets go of the steering wheel, slumping back against his seat, and huffing out a burst of air. “Thought I was the only one who was panicking.”

Steve’s eyebrows knit. “Why would you be panicking?”

Eddie shoots him an incredulous look. “Because! You kissed me and then just- said goodbye like- like you didn’t turn my world fucking- upside down with that kiss, pun absolutely intended. I didn’t know if for you it was like, a friend thing or a mistake or-”

“Not a friend thing,” Steve says, “and not a mistake.”

Eddie lets those words sink in then starts nodding in a way that makes him look like the Chewbacca bobblehead toy he keeps next to his bed. Steve has to bite down on a smile. “Okay. Okay, good, because I want you to do it again.”

“Huh?”

Eddie meets his gaze. “You took me by surprise this morning, but I want you to kiss me again. So I can kiss you back this time.”

Steve’s stomach flips. “Holy shit.” He doesn’t move right away and Eddie looks at him expectantly, not taking it back, waiting for Steve to kiss him again. And what the fuck is Steve even waiting for? “Shit, yeah, okay.”

His hand catches Eddie’s jaw, cradles it with his palm, and he leans over the space between the two seats for the second time that day. Only this time, he moves slowly, committing everything to memory- the way Eddie’s breath hitches when Steve touches his face, the way he goes cross-eyed staring at Steve as he moves closer, the way he whines when their lips brush, not quite touching yet.

And finally, the way Eddie fists the lapel of Steve’s Family Video vest, and in an impatient move, pulls him towards him, crashing their mouths together.

And Steve- well. Steve doesn’t know how he did this already and didn’t remember until an hour later. Because this? He’s never forgetting this.

Eddie’s mouth is warm and soft. There’s a small cut on his bottom lip, no doubt from him chewing on it hard while panicking. When Steve flicks his tongue over it, Eddie yelps, but then he’s tugging Steve even closer by his vest and he’s licking into Steve’s mouth and Steve’s brain goes offline. He gets lost in the kiss. Lost in Eddie. He’s drowning and he never wants to come up for air.

But sadly that’s not something he can do. At some point, he has to breathe so he breaks the kiss but he doesn’t go far. He stays in Eddie’s space, his hand stroking over his jaw. And even if he wanted to move he wouldn’t be able to go anywhere, not with the hold Eddie has on his vest.

“I say this should count as our first kiss,” Eddie whispers, his forehead resting against Steve’s.

“What’s wrong with our actual first kiss?”

“Dude,” Eddie says, and the fact that he’s calling him that while their faces are a few inches from each other after kissing, makes Steve giggle. “The kiss lasted like, a second and you ran away right after!”

Steve’s face scrunches up. “Yeah, maybe it wasn’t my best work.”

Eddie snorts. “It really made me question everything I heard about Steve Harrington’s kissing prowess.”

“My- what? Where did you even hear that?”

Eddie shrugs, making Steve’s hand fall from his jaw to his shoulder where he starts playing with a curl that slipped free from his ponytail. “I used to hang out under the bleachers a lot, and heard many girls gossiping about your mad kissing skills.” He waggles his eyebrows, making Steve laugh. “So imagine my surprise when you go and kiss me like- like my grandma used to kiss me! I thought they had to be talking about someone else.”

Steve’s cheeks go red, but he tries to save some face by asking, “And after that second kiss, do you still think they were wrong?”

Eddie gulps. “Nope.”

“Good,” Steve says with a pleased smile. “Then maybe we can count this as our first kiss, I wouldn’t want my reputation to be ruined when we tell people about this.”

Eddie doesn’t laugh at the joke. He’s back to chewing on his lip, which is significantly more distracting now that Steve knows what those lips feel and taste like, but right now he focuses on the way Eddie’s eyes start flickering all over the inside of the van, not meeting Steve’s when he quietly asks, “This?”

“What?”

“You said this like, what do you mean? What is this?” He lets go of Steve’s vest to gesture between them. “Is it like, just kissing or do you, uh, do you want to be with me? Like, boyfriends or something?”

“Exactly like boyfriends,” Steve says, making Eddie squeak adorably. “If that’s what you want.”

“Steve, God, there’s nothing I want more,” Eddie says with a dopey smile that rivals Steve’s.

Except it doesn’t because Steve is beaming at the thought of being Eddie’s boyfriend. Of Eddie being his boyfriend. Christ. He would be embarrassed about how giddy he feels if he couldn’t tell Eddie was riding the same high as he is.

“Then I guess I should give my boyfriend that ride home that I promised him, hm?” He asks, leaning back on his seat, but not before he leaves a fleeting kiss on the corner of Steve’s mouth.

And God, hearing Eddie call him that makes Steve feel like he’s floating. “Yeah, you should.”

He leans back too as Eddie starts the van. Steve glances across the parking lot before he drives them away and realizes that Nancy’s car is gone. They must’ve taken off around the time Steve kissed Eddie after Robin realized Steve wouldn’t try to run.

“I promised you something too, if I remember correctly,” Steve says, looking out the window as Eddie drives them onto the main street. His eyes flick towards Steve, one of his eyebrows raised. “I promised I’d do anything if you gave me a ride to work, remember?”

Eddie’s eyes widen as he realizes what he’s talking about. He teased Steve about this all morning and now it’s his turn to return the favor.

“And now that we’re together the list of things I can do got significantly bigger so you might want to think about how you want me to pay you back,” he says with a smirk.

Color starts rising from Eddie’s neck to his cheeks and then to his ears. “I- shit, you want me to think about this while I drive?” His voice goes higher in pitch as he stammers more words out. “Do you want me to crash this fucking van, Steve? Jesus!”

Steve just laughs, relaxing back against his seat. He trusts Eddie not to get them into an accident, but just to be on the safe side, he stops teasing him and reaches for the volume dial on the radio, turning the music up.

He steals glances at Eddie as he drives, thinking how the end of his day did a complete turn from how it started. His morning had been a disaster, especially when he thought he ruined things with Eddie.

But now, Steve is heading home after kissing the boy he likes, and he gets to watch him play sexy mechanic while fixing his car, and he gets to do something about it if he wants- like kiss Eddie stupid against the hood of his car.

So, in retrospect, Steve thinks, his alarm not going off this morning might actually be the best thing to ever happen to him.

#steddie #stranger things #stranger things fic #hello this is my 8th fic in three weeks who else is impressed by this because i definitely am #steve harrington #eddie munson #monse writes

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huskersbooze · 2 months

Text

Sick

Alastor x Reader

Summary : You get sick and Alastor keeps you company <3

Warnings : Swearing(lots of it)

Pairings : Alastor x F!Reader (M!Reader here)

Additional Tags : ALASTOR POV CUZ YES. Sick reader, implied relationship, h/c, fluff, comfort

Word count : 1.01k

“Hey, you alright, kid?” Husk tilts his head to the side, wiping down the last glass of the day.

You don’t respond. Instead, you’re staring off into the distance, dozing off in your own world.

“Kid?”

“Huh? What?” You finally snap out of your thoughts.

“Geez, ya’ look like hell.” Husk acknowledges. “Are you sick?”

“I don’t know.” You shrug. “I don’t think so?”

“Go rest. I’ll work alone today.”

“What? No! I’m fine I swear-” Before you’re able to finish your sentence, Husk flips you off.

“Bullshit. Go find your radio boyfriend.”

“Don’t bullshit me-”

You try arguing but Husk only smirks when he catches a glimpse of Alastor who’s appeared right behind you.

“Well, I just did.” He says. “Now stop being so stubborn.”

“I’m not being stubborn I-”

You feel a hand being put to your forehead and try to fight back, only to realise it was Alastor.

“High fever.” He lets go. “You’re being stubborn.”

“Oh, fuck you, Al.”

“We’ll fuck when you’re better, darling.”

You blush. Alastor grins. Husk tries to hold in a laugh but ultimately fails.

“You’re sick and you need rest, my dear. Come along.”

“I’m fine-”

Alastor can only sigh, picking you up as you yelp.

“This is completely, and utterly, your fault single-handedly.” He smiled as you pouted. “You're very much welcome, darling.”

“Whatever.”

-----

You managed to escape Alastor as he leaves to mess with Vox. (Ep2 lmao)

Upon returning to the bar, Husk was not pleased to see your ass out of bed, emphasising on how important sleep was to someone sick.

You couldn’t care less.

Though, after wiping down a few more bottles with him, your eyes doze off and your eyelids feel droopy.

“Kid?”

The world spins and fades away.

“Fuck! Kid, ya’ alright?! Alastor!”

-----

[Alastor’s pov]

I heard a little groan as my eyes widened.

"Darling." I whispered, hoping not to startle her.

"Al..?" She breathed out.

"Good morning." I joked, though so grateful she was now awake.

"Wha.. What time is it?" She asked, struggling to get up.

"Be careful." I ushered, helping her sit. "I'm not so sure myself. It's very late at night."

"Where am I?" She asked, finally waking up as she stopped slurring through her words.

"My room. ‘I’m not sick’ my arse." I replied.

"Oh. Well, I guess you and Husk were right. I just thought I was a little sick." She murmured.

"You are sick." I replied. "Just worse than you expected."

"Real humorous, Al." She gave a small, yet weak, giggle.

Silence filled the air between us, and we didn't say anything else after that. That was, until she gave a small sneeze. I could tell she tried to suppress it, but seeing it was late at night and so quiet, it was hard not to notice.

"Are you cold?" I asked. I could barely make out the silhouette of her nodding lightly. Without hesitating, I took off my coat and handed it over to her. "Better?"

"A lot. Thanks, Al." She replied. After another few seconds of silence, she spoke up once more. "Why aren’t you asleep?"

"You do remember your dear partner does not need, nor does he enjoy, sleep?"

"Excuse, excuses." She joked, earning a chuckle from me.

"I can't really sleep now." She suddenly says out of nowhere. One thing I really like about this girl, she says the most random things in the most random situations. "Could we do something else?"

"Are you trying to get me killed?" I laughed. "You need to rest."

"I'm aware. That's the initial plan, anyways." She joked. At least, I hoped she was joking.

"You sneaky little deer."

"Yes. That's me. Hello." She replied, sitting on the edge of the bed with her legs crossed as she proceeded to look at me in the dark room. “Besides, it’s not like anyone here at the Hotel is actually powerful enough to kill you.”

"Very well, then. What do you have in mind?"

“Some jazz and cuddles would be nice.”

-----

She chokes on another cough.

"Are you sure you're alright? You should really rest in such vulnerable state."

"I'm," Another cough. "Fine. I swear."

"If you insist."

After a while, I turned to face her, worried she wasn't enjoying herself anymore, only to find her sound asleep, clinging lightly to my shirt. See? I told you were sleepy. You just refused to listen to me. I stopped and watched the girl, moving little by little, afraid of waking her up.

She looked so peaceful. Though, it wouldn't be the first time I find her sleeping in my presence. I tugged a small strand of hair behind her ear as she shifted a little. I immediately paused. Shit, had I woken her? Though she soon returned to her slumber and she curled up into a ball in front of me.

I suppose this would suffice.

"Goodnight, darling." I whispered softly, laying next to her in the bed. "See you in the morning."

-----

[2nd person]

You awoke early in the morning, feeling well rested. Your bed was awfully more comfortable than you had remembered. You sat up and rubbed your eyes, finally opening them for the first time, only to find that you weren't in your own room. It took you a while to let things simmer in.

That's when you heard snoring next to you.

You turned to find the Radio Demon cuddled into a ball next to you in bed sleeping oh so soundly. The poor man probably hadn't had sleep in days. Before you could process what was happening, you checked the time and realized you had to be back at the bar for work in 5 minutes. Not wanting to wake Alastor up, you left him a quick note to thank him and left.

----

The whole day passed and you never caught sight of Alastor. After closing the bar, you headed to Alastor’s room,hoping to find him there.

You stop at his door and break out a tiny laugh.

On the door, a rushed sign saying — Sick. Keep out.

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euphoricimagination · 9 months

Text

How they react to you having them as your wallpaper

Feat. Atsumu, Bokuto & Oikawa

Atsumu

You were taking a shower when in Atsumu’s apartment when you phone started ringing. He didn’t want to answer it, he wasn’t that sure if you were okay with him just using it.

He heard the shower turn off, so he went to the door of the bathroom.

“Oi! Angel! Yer phone is ringing!” he calls you

“Really? Who is it?!” you scream back

“It says… Ken…Kenma!”

“Can you answer it and tell him I’ll call him back?”

“You want me to answer him?” He asks, lots of emotions coming up. Who was Kenma? What did he want? Why does it feel wrong to answer it? There were so many things in his head that the call ended before he could even think of answer it “Ehh… angel? The call is over”

“Well, can you send him a text ? The password is 3476” you say simply.

He doesn’t really know what is taking you so long for you to come out, but the fact that you gave him your password make him feel so special. When he unlocks your phone he immediately sees your wallpaper. An image of him when he was half asleep, cheek squeezing the pillow with a half smile. He froze in place, blush creeping into his face and ears.

“Did you… something interesting in my phone?” you smirk coming out of the bathroom

“Ehh… N-no, I just…”

“You like my wallpaper? That’s one of the cutest photos I have of you”

“Photos? Ya have more?!” you nod your head while chuckling “Jezz, yer’re worse than Suna… let me delete some”

“What? No!” you snatch your phone back “you loved taking photos, why would you want to delete mine?”

“Because I don’t look good in them”

“I won’t let you!” you move away as far as you could

“Ya know, yer’re just in a towel, ya can’t really run away from me” he smirks at you, now you turn to be blushing.

He’s not letting you know yet that his wallpaper is a photo of you sleeping in his chest.

Bokuto

The lack of messages from your boyfriend confuses you. You were out running some errands at around the time he should be at home, in normal occasions he would send a bunch of messages calling for you, being the clingy lovable boyfriend he is. But this time there was nothing.

Everything is a mess when you arrived home. Couch moved, drawers open, pillows on the floor and a Bokuto looking under the arm chair.

“What are you doing?” you ask him, making him jump and hit his head.

“Ouch!” he exclaims before looking at you with sad eyes “Babyyy, I lost my phone”

“You lost it? What were you doing?” you say before kissing his pouty lips, you knew that if you didn’t he would pout even more

“I don’t know, I had it when I enter but when I threw my stuff on the couch it disappeared”

“Babe, how did you managed to do that” you chuckle “here, call your phone. I’m going to prepare dinner”

With that you pass him your phone and leave the room. He stays sitting in the floor with a dumbfounded look; yes, he knew your password, but he has never actually seen your phone outside of what you show him. He never felt the need to.

It take him a few seconds to realize that he is staring at himself when he unlocks your phone, but when he does he has a big grin on his face. Specially seeing the photo that you chose. It was him in his MSBY uniform, when he was wiping away the sweat in his forehead with the t-shirt showing his abs. He has seen the photo many times, it went viral on twitter, but seeing it in your phone made him a warm feeling.

“Found it?” you lay on his back in a lazy hug, snapping him out of his thoughts.

“Not yet, I was just… watching your wallpaper”

“It’s really hot isn’t it? One of your fansites took it and tagged me on it”

“I love you!” he cuts you hugging you tightly, leaving kisses all over your face “Let’s go take some new photos for our phones!”

Oikawa

You were laying in Oikawa’s chest, your back to his chest while watching one of his matches in preparation for a tournament. He had his chin on your shoulder, eyes completely focused in the screen of his phone while occasionally pressing kisses in your skin.

While the players were changing sides is when he unfreezes himself, and it’s when his eyes decide to trace your form. Your face was enlightened by his phone’s light, hair in some messy braids, and your hoodie, hoodie that you wore when he took you back to Japan a few weeks ago. Which remind him of something

“Love, did you send me the photos that we took in Miyagi?” He asked poking your side, making you making you flinch slightly

“Eh? No, I forgot! Stop laughing!”

“Sorry, sorry, you just looked so cute” says squishing your cheeks

“Shut up or I’m not going to send you the photos” he quickly stays put at the thread; no matter how cute he finds you, he knows that your threats can hurt him “Good, I’ll send them right now”

He watches you while you take your phone out and unlock it, his eyes widen slightly at your wallpaper before a smirk found its way.

It was a photo that you made Iwaizumi take when you went to Japan, in the Date Masamune Culture museum. He was dressed in a samurai armor and you were wearing a simple kimono, laughing at how he looked alongside his old teammates. He remembers how hesitant he was at wearing that big armor, especially knowing that his friends were going to tease him by calling him a foreigner, but he had set his mind to make your first trip there as memorable as possible.

“Oh, so you put one of the photos as your wallpaper but forget to send them to me, huh? Me? Your wonderful boyfriend?”

“Oh god. I said I was sorry!”

“I made a joke of myself there for you just so you forget it” he says dramatically, making you roll your eyes.

“I love the photo, so thank you for acting like an idiot”

“Hey!” he laughs out before pecking your lips “Well, at least my idiocy makes you happy”

“You make me happy” you say without much care, you didn’t know how much those simple words meant to him “There, I send them now”

“Thanks love” He hugs you tightly, all signs of teasing disappearing. He once thought that living in another country would make him feel homesick, and while he does sometimes, he found you, his new home. Of course, he still enjoys going back to Japan, but now he rather go with you by his side “Let’s take more when we go back”

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blueraineshadows · 2 months

Text

A Kiss Between Friends

Sebastian Sallow x You ♥️

A one shot fic based on this artwork here by @rhewart As soon as I saw it, I was inspired ✨️

4.5k words. Tags: first kiss / teen romance / fluff / friends to sweethearts

“Are you going to ask Violet to Hogsmeade this weekend?” You asked, looking up from the book that lay open before you on your spread out robe.

The sun was warm on your head, and Sebastian had to shield his eyes against the rays as he turned his head to look towards you from where he lay on his back, his own robe shrugged off and spread out beneath him on the grass. His face was a riot of freckles from the early summer sun, and his unruly hair was beginning to show hints of coppery gold through the brunette. His brow furrowed slightly as he glanced your way, his fingers pinching at his lower lip as he considered your question.

“And, why would I do that?” He asked.

“Because you fancy her,” you smirked, one hand propping up your chin whilst the other flipped the page in your book.

“I do not,” he scowled, a pink blush spreading across his cheeks as he feigned interest in a blade of grass he had plucked, twisting it between his fingers. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

“You stare at her in class, and at the dinner table. I’ve seen you,” you said, your smirk widening into a grin. “You should ask her to Hogsmeade. You might even get a snog.”

Sebastian blew air through his lips in a huff of amusement. “I do not stare at her, and how would you know?” His eyes swung back to her, narrowing slyly. “Does that mean you have been staring at me?”

You felt your own cheeks flood with colour. “Absolutely not. There are far more attractive boys to drool over than you, Sallow.”

He slapped a hand to his chest dramatically and groaned. “Oh, you wound me, sweetheart. Such cruelty from your lips. Who do you drool over, then? Please, don’t tell me it’s Weasley or Prewett. I’m surprised I managed to lure you away from them this afternoon as it is, I shall go mad if you start snogging one of them.”

Your laughter spilled from your lips as you sat up straighter, reaching across to shove your Slytherin friend on his shoulder. “You’re not jealous are you? At least one of us would be getting some action if I managed to get a snog with one of them. I feel like I am the last girl in my dorm to even hold hands with a boy, let alone kiss one.”

Sebastian rolled onto his side, his lips twisted into a smirk as he caught your hand in his, his long fingers grazing gently along your palm as he grasped you more firmly. “I’ll hold your hand. I can’t have you feeling left out.”

Looking down at your joined hands, you uttered a little sigh, appreciating his efforts to be playful with you. The banter was not unusual between you both, you had been best friends for quite a while now, shared many adventures and secrets. Whilst chatting with the girls after lights out in the dorms was always fun, especially when it came to snogging, you appreciated the fact that you could also talk to Sebastian about such things. You knew he would never judge you, and he always had your back.

“Maybe I do feel left out,” you said quietly, your gaze dipping shyly. “I really am the last girl to kiss anyone in my dorm. Sometimes, I wonder if there is something odd about me.”

Sebastian immediately sat up. “There is nothing wrong with you at all. Just because you are waiting for someone worth kissing, it doesn’t mean you are odd. I think it’s actually quite lovely. I mean, I’ve never kissed anyone either.”

Your lips parted in surprise, your eyes meeting with his. “Really?”

His lopsided smile was unbelievably adorable, his blush spreading quickly as he shrugged his shoulders. He let go of your hand and brushed strands of hair from his forehead. “I’ve just never really had the opportunity to, I suppose.”

“If you ask Violet to Hogsmeade you will,” you suggested brightly.

Sebastian pulled his knees up, wrapping his arms about his legs as he frowned. “I hear you, however, I’m not sure it’s such a good idea. Violet has definitely kissed someone before, and I would rather not make an idiot of myself.”

You raised an eyebrow as you looked at him. “Sebastian Sallow, top duellist and currently top of the 7th year academic table, is scared of kissing a girl. What would your fan club say?”

“Oh, shut up,” he muttered, shaking his head. He poked his tongue out at you before throwing his blade of grass into your lap. “You are supposed to be a brave Gryffindor, and yet you haven’t dared to kiss anyone either. I guess that makes us both scaredy cats.”

“We could always practise on each other,” you joked, hoping to take the frown off his face. It worked. He turned stunned eyes your way, his mouth agape.

“What?”

For some reason your pulse fluttered, heat flooding your cheeks at the stupid suggestion. “I…I was joking, of course. Don’t look so horrified.”

His face deepened into thought as he sat up straighter, his fingers pinching at his lower lip again. “Hang on, though. You might be onto something there,” he said slowly.

His eyes met yours, the depths gleaming with the excitement of an idea. You knew that look and swallowed hard. “If we kiss, it would break that pressure of the first time for both of us. A little bit of practice between two friends who trust each other, without all the expectation that comes along with impressing someone. It’s perfect!”

“Merlin…you’re seriously considering it!” You gasped.

“Think of it as unsanctioned research,” he smirked, wiggling his eyebrows.

You stared at him, stunned, your eyes drifting down to gaze upon the shape of his mouth, and you actually began to wonder what it would feel like to press your own lips against the pink softness. Heat flooded your cheeks and you pressed your hands to them. “Wouldn’t…wouldn’t it be weird? I mean, we’re friends…”

“I guess there is only one way to find out.”

“Now?” You gasped, glancing hurriedly around you to see if anyone was nearby. There wasn’t. The pair of you had chosen a well secluded spot to sit and read during a free afternoon. The only sounds were the gentle waters of the nearby Black Lake, and the buzzing of summer insects.

“Why not?” He grinned and leant towards you, puckering up his lips with a teasing glint in his eyes.

Suddenly, your lungs felt rather tight, and your pulse throbbed with panic and anticipation. This was not how you had envisioned your afternoon with Sebastian panning out. Half of you was tempted to shove him away, scolding words on your tongue about him being indecent and a scoundrel. The other half of you was licking your lips and fighting the urge to lean in closer, to jump off the ledge into exploration, just to see what all the fuss over a snog was about.

Was Sebastian right? What harm could it do? You were friends. You trusted him.

“Okay,” you said quickly, summoning that Gryffindor courage.

Sebastian’s eyes widened and he stilled, sucking in a shaky breath. “Alright,” he said, a little nervously, perhaps not expecting you to agree.

But, you were all in now.

Staring at him, you shuffled a little closer, your robe scrunching up beneath your legs. You were sure you were breathing too quickly, too loudly, and tried to steady the rush and flutter of nerves in your stomach as you wiped a sweaty palm against your knee. “One kiss on the lips, agreed?”

Sebastian nodded, his hair bouncing, his eyes fixed firmly on yours. Your breath was shaking as you leaned your head towards him, closer and closer, his scent filling your nose. It was familiar and comforting. He had hugged you before, many times, but you had never been this close to his face. You were sure you could see each defined freckle, the pores of his skin over his nose, long enviable lashes that framed wide, expectant eyes. You could pick out flecks of hazel and gold in the brown of his irises, the pupils enlarging as you came within inches of his face. As his lips parted with a soft breath, your gaze dipped to the slope and curve of his mouth. Bloody hell, you were going to kiss him!

Nerves squeezed you, a shaky breath quickly becoming a giggle that burst from your mouth, your cheeks flaming as you brought your fingers to your lips. Sebastian looked mortified. “I’m so sorry,” you gasped, more giggles spilling from you. “I’m sorry. I’m nervous…”

Sebastian flinched and pulled back, his own cheeks flooding with colour. “We don’t have to, you know,” he said awkwardly, pushing a hand through his hair. “Not if you don’t want to.”

“I’m sorry,” you said again, reaching out to put your hand over his. “My nerves got the better of me. Perhaps I am more shy than I thought. Maybe…maybe if you closed your eyes or something, so that you aren’t looking at me. It might be easier.”

Sebastian’s brow furrowed with uncertainty as he shifted, but then he nodded. “Alright,” he said, rubbing his nose with the back of his hand. “Try again. I’ll close my eyes this time.”

You watched as his eyes closed, his lashes fanning out across the tops of his freckled cheeks as he tilted his face expectantly towards you. Taking a deep breath, you leant forwards again, nerves making your heart thunder in your ears.

Aiming for his mouth, you closed your eyes and pressed your lips to his in a quick kiss that made a smacker of a sound in the quiet surroundings. The soft warmth of his mouth was a shock against yours. Bloody hell, you had just kissed a boy!

Leaning back, your heart in your mouth, you opened your eyes to see his reaction. You were almost rigid with nerves, expecting him to have hated it. Sebastian’s eyes were still closed, his lips slightly parted, and his cheeks crimson.

“Again,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Properly this time.”

Again?!?

Speechless, you stared at him, but his eyes remained closed. Eyes fixed on his mouth, you brushed the tip of your finger over your lips, taking a deep breath before leaning forwards again. Now that you had done it once, you felt bolder, and you took your time as you pressed your mouth against his in a soft kiss. Lingering against the warmth, your pulse flickering like a dancing flame, you felt his lips apply pressure to yours in a return kiss.

Oh my…

All of a sudden, one kiss became two kisses, soft and tentative touches that made your lips tingle, and your stomach felt like liquid warmth. Three kisses…four…

Each press of lips became longer as you relaxed into the feel of it, your body feeling so hot and flustered, and yet, you also wanted to melt against him. Who knew that kissing could feel so…nice?

Sebastian’s lips were soft, and they slotted so perfectly against yours that it was so easy to keep doing it. As he tilted his head, the tip of his nose brushing against your cheek as he pressed a longer, harder kiss against your mouth at a different angle, a thrill of searing heat spiralled up through your core. It was shocking, exciting, but also overwhelming. Gasping softly, you pulled back, your eyes opening to meet the deep, warm brown of Sebastian’s.

“Well, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” He said, his habitual smirk on his mouth.

No, it really wasn’t. In fact, you were at a loss for words as you looked at him. Managing a shy smile, you shifted backwards, biting your lip as they burned with the feel of his kisses. It was hard to ignore the rush of heat, the flutter of every nerve ending as you thought about it. The sneaking suspicion was already creeping over you that you had enjoyed kissing him a little too much, and that could make this very awkward.

“I guess that breaks the kissing barrier now,” you said, tucking strands of hair behind your ear. “There is nothing to stop you asking out Violet anymore.”

“Perhaps,” Sebastian said, adjusting his trousers and fiddling with his tie as he looked out over the lake, his cheeks still flushed. “I’ll think about it.”

Closing your book with a soft thump, you slid another glance his way, a strange, crushing disappointment beginning to snake up through your stomach at the realisation that he might actually ask Violet out this weekend. It was a rather startling and unnerving realisation that you didn’t want him to.

Touching your fingertips to your lips, you wondered if you had just made a huge mistake kissing Sebastian, because now it was all you could think about.

….*....

The Great Hall was bustling with students having dinner, the ceiling mirroring the soft summer sky outside filling the room with a warm, evening glow. You sat at the Gryffindor table, poking at the food on your plate as you replayed, yet again, the soft kisses you had shared with Sebastian near the lake this afternoon. Your head was consumed with the memory, your fingers straying to your mouth to touch where his lips had pressed so softly against yours. It left you breathless to remember the tingles and flare of warmth that had awoken within you, leaving you confused as to what this meant now.

What had been a playful suggestion of experimentation between friends was now a suggestive promise of something new and enticing. Even now, sitting at the table, surrounded by your fellow housemates, your gaze was drawn towards the Slytherin table where Sebastian was sitting with Ominis.

Keeping your eyelids slightly lowered, you watched Sebastian through your lashes, noticing the way his hands moved when he spoke, the little tilt of his mouth when he was amused. How had you not noticed how handsome he was before? Was it simply that he had been right in front of you, so close that you hadn’t taken a moment to really study him? Was it because you were so comfortable within your bubble of friendship that you had not thought to seek anything more from him?

The touch of his kiss had changed all that, and you were staring at your Slytherin friend through new eyes.

“You have been poking at that potato for a good five minutes, and I’ve not seen you eat a mouthful yet,” Garreth said, leaning towards you. Looking up at him, you could see the glimmer of concern in the depths of his green eyes. “Is everything alright? Are you not hungry?”

Looking down at the dinner you had been pushing around your plate with an awkward smirk, you put down your fork with a sigh. “Not really, but I’m alright,” you said, managing a small smile for him. “I was just miles away.”

“Somewhere nice I hope,” he smiled, lifting his juice goblet.

Your gaze drifted back towards the Slytherin table. Somewhere very nice.

Sebastian was smiling, leaning across the table as he spoke to someone, and you realised it was Violet. Perhaps he had plucked up the courage to ask her out after all. The dreamy look on your face froze, your eyes dropping down towards your uneaten dinner. Sickened at the sight, you pushed the plate away and moved to stand. Pausing as Garreth spoke your name with a look of concern, you waved him off with a strained smile. “I’m fine, honestly. I think I just need some air.”

Avoiding any more glances Sebastian’s way lest you see something you didn’t wish to, you swiftly left the Great Hall, wishing you could turn the clock back a few hours and get that comforting feeling of friendship to return that you feared you had lost.

….*....

The sun was setting when you returned to the castle, lights beginning to appear in the windows as you walked slowly through the huge doors and into the coolness of the corridors. Walking around the lake hadn’t really done much in the way of easing your troubled thoughts. Worried that you had damaged your friendship, you debated bringing it all up with Sebastian, worried that doing so would just hammer in a whole new level of separation between you.

Unwittingly, your feet took you towards the Defence Against the Dark Arts Tower, the soft tap of your boots on the marble echoing down the halls as you headed towards the Undercroft. Checking over your shoulder, you slipped behind the staircase and entered through the clock, making your way down into the depths of the secret chamber. Laughter reached your ears, and as the iron grate lifted to grant you access, you could see Sebastian and Ominis sitting on a rug playing Exploding Snap.

You smiled as Sebastian turned at the sound of your entrance, his gaze lingering on you, making you wonder if you were imagining the look in his eyes as they wandered downwards as you approached. Of course you were imagining it, he wanted to ask Violet out after all, you were just his practice kiss. Heart squeezing, you turned your attention towards Ominis, his head tilted as he listened to your steps, his lips curving into a slight smile.

“Good evening, little lion,” he said softly. “Would you like to join us?”

Glancing at Sebastian, you nodded and moved to sit down, choosing to situate yourself next to Ominis. The move didn’t go unnoticed, your gaze meeting with Sebastian’s as warmth flooded your face, the look between you lingering as he reshuffled the cards.

Pushing away any tempting thoughts about staring at his mouth, you focused on the game, feeling some of the tension relax from your shoulders as you laughed along with your two favourite Slytherins. Ominis was as sharp as ever, still managing to win two out of three games you played, his haughty smug pride making you chuckle as your gaze met with Sebastian’s yet again. Each look felt loaded with something heavier this evening, his eyes seemingly drawn to you and lingering for longer, your own gaze seeking him out and noticing more things that just hadn’t occurred to you before.

His shirt sleeves were rolled up exposing his forearms, and this wasn’t something you hadn’t seen before, and yet now you noticed the defined lines of his muscle, the graceful way he held his hands. How had you not noticed how his long fingers splayed out in a way that made you wonder how it would feel to have them against your skin. His shirt collar was loosened, a tempting glimpse of collar bone peeking through the gap above where his tie was hanging scruffily about his neck, and your eyes were drawn to it against every effort not to stare at him.

The angle of his jaw, the slope of his nose, the way his hair flicked around his ears, the dusting of freckles on his arms that had you wondering if he had them elsewhere on his body. His laughter sounded richer, his smiles more beautiful, and the wicked gleam in his eyes when he teased was now fanning the new flames that were igniting swiftly inside of you.

Godric’s balls. You were getting a crush on Sebastian.

….*....

After a night of restless dozing, any sleep filled with dreams of smothering heat and soft lips, you struggled to keep focus in potions the next morning. The lack of concentration led to a rather impressive failure that rivalled anything Garreth could have caused, much to Sharp’s disgruntled disapproval. Feeling like a failure, and utterly baffled by the way your body was betraying you, it was with a resigned smile that you left potions as Garreth gave you a conspiratorial pat on the shoulder.

Wandering along the corridor on the way to lunch, you wondered how long this apparent crush was going to cripple you, making you stare longingly across the classroom at Sebastian’s gorgeous face, only to blush furiously and dip your gaze when his eyes shifted your way in return. It was all rather foolish really, and he was going to wonder what on earth was wrong with you if you kept this up for too long.

“There you are,” a deep voice sounded in your ear, making you jump. Clutching your bag tighter against you, a blush staining your cheeks, you looked up at familiar brown eyes. His hand ghosted at the small of your back, invoking a shiver that you immediately tried to suppress, but he was already taking hold of your elbow. “Come on, I need to talk to you.”

Pulse quickening, you let him hurry you along, your other hand nervously tucking hair behind your ear. “Where are we going?”

Sebastian merely smirked and turned corners, marching along until he came to a door set amongst portraits in a quiet corridor, a swift unlocking charm had him dragging you inside and the door closed behind you both with a soft click. It was a cupboard stuffed full of all manner of oddities, your eyes glancing around in confusion.

“Did you just drag me into a cupboard?” You asked, incredulous, turning to look at him.

Sebastian blushed furiously, his hand scratching at the back of his neck. “I did,” he said, biting his lower lip. “I er…well, I was wondering...I was hoping…”

He groaned and closed his eyes, turning to pace up and down, tugging at his collar.

You frowned and began to fiddle nervously on the hem of your sleeve. “What is it?”

“Yesterday…” He paused, his look sheepish as he stepped closer. “Our unsanctioned research by the lake…”

Heat flooded your own cheeks and you shifted awkwardly. “Oh no, it’s going to be weird between us, isn’t it,” you said, your voice wobbling slightly.

“Oh, no, no,” he said quickly, his eyes widening as he held his hands up. “I don’t want it to be weird, not at all! You know me, I rather enjoy research, particularly the unsanctioned kind, and especially with you.”

You stilled, staring at him, your heart beginning to thump a beat harder.

His lips twitched with a hopeful smile. “I was wondering…maybe we should try a proper kiss, just in case…”

A gasp left your lips as you stared, your blood now fizzing madly with your racing pulse. You could see the hope and fear in his eyes, knowing him well enough to see that this had taken some courage to drag you in here and ask this of you. A glimmer of hope bloomed in your chest that maybe, just maybe, he had been thinking similar thoughts as you after yesterday.

As on edge as he looked, it was just too tempting to taunt the poor boy further, and you let a slow smirk spread across your face.

“Are you suggesting that yesterday, I did not kiss you properly, Sebastian?”

His mouth worked as a slight wince creased his brow, and your smirk widened. Then, his eyes narrowed, and his stance shifted into something much more like his usual bold, confidence. “I wouldn’t say that you didn’t kiss me properly, it’s more a case of I don’t think we gathered enough evidence to make a definitive conclusion.”

You raised one eyebrow and folded your arms. “Oh really?”

The smirk that lifted his lips made you swallow hard, threatening the demeanour of control that you were aiming for. How had you not noticed how utterly gorgeous he was before? It was borderline shameful how you had missed it.

Sebastian stepped even closer. “Absolutely, and therefore, I recommend a second experiment. A more thorough experiment, if you’re willing.”

Dropping your bag to the floor, you stepped forward to meet him, tilting your head just so in order to look up into his eyes. Staring into their depths, you couldn’t even begin to question how right this felt. Apart from one little niggle.

“Did you ask Violet to accompany you to Hogsmeade?” You asked, holding your breath.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “How could I when I’m already going with someone else?”

Your brow furrowed. “Who?”

He leaned in, his mouth dangerously close to yours, his eyes blazing like a glorious sunset. “You, of course,” he said softly.

It was his turn to make the first move this time, pressing his mouth against yours in a firm kiss that made your eyelids flutter closed, your hands sliding up the front of his green plaid waistcoat. You had no idea how good it would feel to have his fingers glide along your jawline and sink deeply into your hair, pushing loose any pins you had used to try and make yourself look respectable this morning.

This had never been the plan when you had talked about this yesterday, you had only been meaning to prepare yourselves for kissing someone else, but your head was empty of anything but his kisses and touch in the low light of the storage room. It felt so right to cup his face, holding him in place as he kissed you with a slow thoroughness that made you part your lips in a soft gasp. But, he wasn’t done yet…

Taking advantage of your parted lips, he swiped a deliciously slow slide of his tongue along your lower lip, your heart racing as he tentatively pushed it into your mouth. You had read about kisses such as this, the very thought of it invoking day dreams that filled you with longing. The real thing stole your very breath, your mouth welcoming the silky, soft warmth of him with a low moan. His quickened breaths filled your ears as he kissed you deeply, the taste of him making your head spin as his hand moved to grasp your waist.

Sliding your hands up the back of his neck, your fingers explored the soft strands of his hair, your back arching as he urged you closer against him. He was solid and warm, he was everything you found comforting and familiar, and yet his mouth and hands were waking something new and so very exciting inside of you.

It probably wasn’t skilled, or refined, your hands and mouths carefully exploring with daring and curiosity, but it felt so good. Sebastian felt so good. Why didn’t you see it before? How could it be anyone else but him?

Pausing, his lips damp and his breaths quick and hot against your cheek as he pressed his forehead to yours, you gazed up at him with your hands still curled into his hair.

“What’s the conclusion?” You asked.

His hand caressed your cheek, his smile warm and soft as he brushed back your hair and traced the curve of your ear. “We need to keep practising,” he whispered, his thumb tracing the curve under your lower lip. “I reckon, in time, we could be rather good at this.”

“Well, don’t stop now,” you said, returning his smile.

“So, I’m worth all the waiting then, am I?” He asked, that teasing gleam in his eyes.

“Easy now, Sallow,” you chuckled, a grin curving your mouth. “It’s going to take a few more practice sessions before I could possibly comment on that.”

“That can most definitely be arranged,” he murmured, before claiming your mouth once more in a bone melting kiss.

As always, huge love and thanks to my Discord girls for keeping me inspired. 💜✨️

#hogwarts legacy fanfic #sebastian sallow #mc x sebastian sallow #blueraineshadows #hogwarts legacy

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reiding-writing · 3 months

Note

hi author your writing is great btw i just wanted to see when you would post part 2 of copycat??

copycat [ s.r ] | 2 |

The replication of a disturbing 2004 serial murder case calls for the BAU to get involved with the assistance of none other than the original killer themself. And whilst Spencer didn't work the original case, he was eager to learn every detail about it, including its offender.

WARNINGS: relationship between spencer and reader is not inherently romantic, sociopathic reader, graphic details of murder, graphic eye descriptions, mentions of spencer’s addiction and overdose, morgan and reader really don’t like each other, child abuse, childhood addiction, death by overdose, suicide

s3!spencer/gn!unsub!reader || mystery || 14.3k || masterlist!!

part one !! , part two !!

unsub!reader masterlist!!

a/n: after a whole 22 days of writing this, it’s finally finished 😭 sorry for making you all wait for so long this one was a nightmare to finish-

taglist (slashed blogs couldn’t be tagged): @devilsadvcte @marvellover98 @evvy96 @arlovesper @h3rt8k @pathologicalreid @sideshow-b0b @sunflowersndpeaches @mera3luna @madameparkerreid @fandom-mania @melaninsugababy @meyaareads

“Let’s go Doctor. I’m ready to get out of this beige abomination.”

You push yourself off the table and leave out of the same door that Morgan had, Spencer following closely behind you.

He was oddly grateful about your decency to respect his title, and it only made him want to read you like a book even more.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

The coroner's office, whilst not as bland and beige as the police station was still extremely muted, with light grey walls and a smooth tiled floor that was so shiny you're sure you could see your face in it if you focused enough.

“The second I see a change in your features I am booting you out of the mortuary understood?” Morgan’s tone held nothing but contempt for you as he walked step in step with you like you’d disappear if he looked away for more than a second.

“You keep speaking to me like that and I’ll shove the next rose I get down your throat.”

“Did you just threaten me?” Morgan’s contempt fizzled into a rising frustration, his eyebrows knitted into a tight line and his arms crossed tightly over his chest as if trying to puff himself out like a peacock to look more intimidating.

“Threats hold no value,”

“We should go inside now,” Spencer’s voice was much less confident than either yours or Morgan’s, but it held enough volume to be heard over your argument.

He was seriously beginning to question whether inviting you to come along was a good idea. He knew Morgan despised you, and yet he’d asked you to come along anyway out of his own selfish want to crack open your brain like a book and read your neuron pathways like pages.

He just hoped you’d actually find something valuable in the victim’s autopsy so that all of your arguing with Morgan wasn’t in vain.

“Ah, you must be the agents working on the case, I’m Dr. Toth,” The doctor introduced herself politely as Spencer opened the mortuary door, and Spencer gave her a small nod of recognition as the three of you entered.

“That’s right, thank you for allowing us here,”

“Of course,” The doctor walked her way around the autopsy table, where you assumed the body of the most recent victim was lying, covered by a blue sheet from head to toe and leaving only the silhouette in its place. “I should warn you in advance, due to the damage caused to the eyes whilst removing the rose stems, we had to excise them from the body during the autopsy,”

“Do you still have them?” Your question seems to strike a nerve with Morgan, probably thinking that you want to see the victim’s eyes as a part of a sick fantasy running through your mind, but he bites his tongue to keep his mouth shut so that he doesn’t accidentally air the fact that they’d brought a serial killer into a coroner’s office and freak out the pathologist they’re talking to.

“We do yes, they were professionally removed and placed in hypothermic storage, I can retrieve them for you if you’d like,”

“That won’t be necessary for now,” Morgan’s interjection elicits a roll of your eyes. You weren’t interested in seeing them because it would get you off or whatever, you wanted to see what kind of damage they went through to the point where they had to be fully removed from the victim’s body.

“Well, I’ll leave you to it, but if you need my assistance please don’t hesitate to ask,”

“Thank you,” Spencer, the peacekeeper that he is, gives the doctor a polite smile as he picks up a pair of latex gloves and pulls them over his hands, and you and Morgan follow suit after him as he takes place at the end of the autopsy table.

“You’re looking for differences, not entertainment.”

“Yes yes, I get it, Jesus Christ.” You scoff at Morgan’s tone, tugging the sheet down from the victim’s head until it was halfway down his torso.

“His name was Alexander Youlier, age 22, died of blood loss with the roses believed to be inserted post-mortem,” Spencer read through the autopsy file as you examined the boy’s face.

He was pale, much too pale for a normal person, but you suppose that’s what happens when you barely have any blood in your body, and the blood that he did have completely lacked oxygen. His cheeks were sunken, his lips almost blue from the lack of oxygen, and of course, in place of where his eyes would be, there were instead two holes lined with a dark reddish pink muscle that made it look like the cavity was much deeper than physically possible.

The minute you looked at his face you felt like you were going to throw up. So much for being ‘entertained’.

“Oi.” Morgan’s voice ripped you from your state of disassociation. “What did I just say, you’re here to identify the differences not get off to the victim’s body in your head.” He turned his attention towards Spencer with a disapproving look. “I told you we shouldn’t’ve brought them here,”

You didn’t respond to Morgan’s chastising with anything more than a tiny twitch of your eyebrows as you tore your eyes away from Youlier’s face.

“Are you okay?” Spencer’s voice was considerably softer than Morgan's, his eyes big and round, glistening with worry underneath the overhead light in the room, and his eyebrows furrowed in concern at the way you’d suddenly shut down.

“I don’t want to be here anymore.” The end of your sentence is marked by you tearing the gloves from your hands and leaving them in balls on the floor as you retreat to the door of the room.

“What do you think you’re doing? You’re not allowed to just leave. You wanted to be here. You chose to be here. So you’ll do your goddamn job.” Morgan’s anger falls unrecognised as you open the door and slam it behind you after you leave, and he begins to follow after you only to be stopped by Spencer at the door.

“I’ve got it,”

Morgan’s glance is unconvinced, and Spencer reiterates himself once more. “I’ve got it, I promise, they’re less likely to get angry if it’s me and not you,”

Morgan doesn’t get the chance to argue before Spencer runs off down the hallway to catch up to you, leaving him alone in the mortuary to continue his analysis of the autopsy by himself.

“Hey!” Spencer calls out to you as he jogs in your direction, catching you right as you open the door to leave the coroner’s office. “Wait up a second-” You don’t stop at his callings, but he can tell that you’re also not trying to deliberately get away from him, your pace slow and even as you leave the coroner’s office with him hot on your tail.

He’s very clearly out of breath by the time he reaches your side, but he pays no attention to his lungs’ cry for him to take a second to breathe and supply them with more oxygen as he begins questioning you. “Are you okay?”

“I‘m fine,”

He’s not at all convinced by your statement despite your tone conveying genuity. You looked paler than usual, any natural flush was gone from your cheeks and your lips, and you were absentmindedly picking at the nail bed of your thumb with your middle finger, something he assumes is a self-soothing act for you.

People getting disturbed at the sight of a freshly dead body wasn’t exactly something for Spencer to be astounded at. It was a natural human reaction to the incomprehensible knowledge of death that your brain desperately tried to work out with no results.

But you didn’t exactly fit the definition of ‘normal’. You were a sociopath. So for you to be put off by the sight of a dead body was something for Spencer to be astounded at.

Sure he was aware that sociopaths could still feel things like dread and fear of the unknown, but you weren’t just a sociopath. You were a sociopath who killed eighteen people.

You’d seen your fair share of dead people, manic episode or not. So why was this body making you react like you were?

He supposes it’s just another layer he’ll have to peel from your mind like the skin of an onion.

“Did you know that sociopaths have heightened emotional pathways? Every emotion sociopaths experience is allegedly 3 times stronger in intensity than that of someone without it,” He didn’t exactly know what to say to you considering you’d shut down any attempt to talk about how you were doing emotionally, and so he fell back on what he always did, niche facts and statistics.

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Your hardened expression didn’t falter, nor did the underlying monotony in your tone, but you did finally look him in the eye.

“I always feel more at ease when I fully understand whatever I’m dealing with,” Spencer smiles at you softly with a shrug of his shoulders, attempting to empathise with you the best he could.

“I already knew that fact,” You take a seat on the small half-wall lining the outside of the coroner’s office, gripping the edge of the brick with your hands. “And it doesn’t make me feel any different,”

“Well…” Spencer purses his lips slightly as he takes a seat next to you, running through things in his head that might hold some sort of value to you. “Did you know that roses symbolise different things based off of their colour?”

He was definitely grasping at straws now, but he didn’t want to end your conversation yet. He wanted to know what had you so perturbed that you felt the need to leave the minute you got a close look at the victim’s body.

If anything he’d expected you to follow Morgan’s accusation about getting some sick gratification from the body, not actually feeling sick because of it.

“Why do you think I used white roses? I’m not stupid you know,”

He’d never thought of that. “You used white roses for a specific reason?”

You shrug, swinging your legs back and forth over the edge of the wall. “When I was younger we had a dog, and when it died my parents planted a white rose bush over where they buried it,”

Your tone is rather emotionally removed as you divulge this little snippet of your past to him, like you were recounting something you’d read from a fictional story rather than an event that most children would find extremely distressing. “Mom said that the roses were white because they symbolised mourning and new beginnings, something about how it would help him pass over into heaven or whatever, and I guess even in my episode I held that knowledge subconsciously,”

“You don’t believe in heaven?” Spencer’s eyes scanned your face as he tried to decipher your micro-expressions, noting the small softening of your eyes once you brought up your parents. Looks like you did indeed still have some humanity.

“Do you believe in heaven Dr. Reid?”

No. Maybe? He knew that once your brain functions stopped working your consciousness was permanently ended and that was it. “I thought I saw the other side once,” His admission shocked himself more than it shocked you. Great, he was spilling his traumas to a sociopath he’d known for less than a week. What a riveting social life he had.

He could see the flicker of intrigue in your eyes at his sentence, and he pursed his lips into a line before deciding to continue. “I uh- 11 months ago I was kidnapped and forcefully injected with Dilaudid, and I- was overdosed…”

He could see the cogs turning in your head as you connected the fragments of earlier conversations with him in your mind to form a cohesive story, and you nodded at him as if encouraging him to continue with his story.

“I blacked out first, but it felt… warm? and I could see the beginnings of a light and I honestly still don’t know what to think of it,” He could feel himself squirming from the recollection. He was a man of science. Someone who only believed in what he could physically see and test. But that brief moment where he was sure that he’d died and was experiencing an afterlife that he didn’t think existed had carved a hole into his brain and settled itself into the back of his mind.

“I hope there’s an afterlife,” Your tone continues to carry that same monotonous drawl, but he can see the genuity in your eyes and the way your hands clench around the edge of the brick wall.

“Me too…”

It’d be easy for Spencer to forget you were a serial killer in moments like this. Sure you were still extremely emotionally stunted, but you felt human. And he’s sure that that’s the real difference between a sociopath and a psychopath.

Psychopaths were born without human ‘defects’. Sociopaths were made.

“Were your parents good to you?” Spencer’s question was full of hesitation. He didn’t want to assume anything, after all, your parents were the one topic you seemed to treat with genuine care in your words, but he knew something had to have happened. Something had to have made you the way that you are.

“My parents were perfect.” Your eyebrows knit into a small line, as if defensive at the fact that Spencer would suggest your parents were anything other than the perfect model of what two caregivers should be.

“What about your biological parents?” He could feel himself retreating back into his own mind the further he pressed for answers out of you, his conscience begging him to just stop talking before he accidentally crossed a line and ruined any branch of communication he’d formed.

“I don’t remember them,” You shrug lightly and your expression cements your nonchalance.

“You’ve never wanted to… seek them out?” It wasn’t entirely surprising that you don’t remember your biological parents. Most children who get adopted really young don’t.

“They’re dead.”

Oh.

Right.

Spencer’s eyes widen slightly at the revelation.

By this point, he’s completely forgotten about the fact that he’s supposed to be convincing you to go back into the mortuary to continue looking at the victim.

You had a great adoptive family and a pair of dead biological parents. Was that what broke you? Was them dying what caused your mental state to shatter and rebuild itself as a fragmented version of its previous state?

Maybe that’s why you didn’t remember them. Maybe your brain had built a wall in your memories to protect you from your own trauma of losing your parents. But he wasn’t sure it was enough for you to have a mental break like you did. There had to be something more.

“I can do some digging on them if you want,” He airs the suggestion like he’s not going to do it even if you say no.

“I have no interest in learning about them,”

Oh well. He’d get Garcia to do it anyway. Maybe you’d find more interest in the topic once there was actually something for you to learn.

“Are you- feeling alright now?” Spencer knew he was going to have to bring up the topic eventually. They couldn’t stay out here for too long both for the sake of the investigation and because if they did Morgan would probably jump to the conclusion that you’d killed Spencer and run off somewhere.

“I told you I was fine,”

“I don’t think I believe you,” Spencer could see the small shift in your expression at his hesitant accusation. But it wasn’t anger this time, it was something else. Something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. “Something caused you discomfort, and in order for you to be able to help us we need you to be relaxed,”

You turned your face away from Spencer as he spoke, eyes fixed on a bird flying overhead and then on the cloud that was behind it.

“What was it that caused you to feel like you didn’t want to be there anymore?” There was clear caution in Spencer’s tone as he questioned you, although that had essentially become a staple of every conversation you had with him by this point. “We can fix it,”

Spencer’s compassion for you left you feeling a little confused. You were a spree murderer. He was supposed to dislike you for that. That’s how the human mind works is it not? People are supposed to have a distaste for those who break the moral codes of society, and you did it 18 times over.

“I… don’t know,” It felt like every second you allowed yourself to be confused the feeling multiplied tenfold until you weren’t even sure that you could remember your own name if somebody asked you for it.

Your emotions were written all over your face, not like you really had the capacity to hide them even if you wanted to, but it was clear as day just how internally confused you were with your own feelings about the situation at hand.

“Let me help you figure it out then,” Spencer’s tone continued to carry that gentle compassion in it and it wasn’t helping you sort out your thoughts.

“I don’t need your help, I can figure it out on my own,” You knew enough about Psychology to be able to figure out your own thinking processes. At least you thought so. You didn’t go through three laborious years at university wishing during every hour of it to be doing something else to not even get anything useful out of it at the end.

Spencer took that as a direct invitation to shut his mouth and just let you think to yourself, although his eyes continued to scan your expression and your body language as he waited for you to come to your own conclusion on how you were currently feeling and what exactly made you feel that way.

“Will you stop staring at me?” Despite your gaze focused downwards towards the pavement your frustration at his lingering gaze made it sound like he was making direct eye contact with you.

“Sorry,” Spencer averted his eyes from you immediately after your order, flickering them around the parking lot of the coroner’s office and absentmindedly reading all of the number plates he could see from a distance so that he didn’t frustrate you anymore than he already had.

You gave up psychoanalysing your own mind after a few minutes, partly because it was an effort you didn’t want to expend and partly because it felt safer for you to just lock your emotions behind a wall of glass and leave them for another day.

Instead, you turned your gaze back to the doctor sitting next to you and watched him as he watched his surroundings.

“Your eyes are very alive,”

It’s an odd thing to say Spencer thinks. The concept of his eyes being ‘alive’. Of course, he’d heard the term ‘dead eyes’ before in reference to the lack of emotion shown on someone's face. He’d consider you to have rather dead eyes if he was thinking about it. Although he’s not sure if you’re referring to his eyes in terms of expressiveness or genuinely being ‘alive’ in a physical sense.

“Alive?”

You give him a short nod. “They have a lot of life in them,”

“Thank you?” He chooses to take your odd statement as a sort of compliment. Surely having ‘alive eyes’ couldn’t be a negative thing, right?

Now that he’s thinking about it you really did seem to have some sort of fixation on people's eyes. You constantly chased eye contact with the people you spoke to. You apparently had a habit of studying people’s eyes and how ‘alive’ they were. You pierced roses into the eyes of your victims.

Spencer’s gaze focused on you as he came to the conclusion in his head. You’d become uncomfortable in the mortuary because you couldn’t see the victim’s eyes. Because instead of being able to judge him based off of the look in his eyes you were instead greeted with a blank slate where they were supposed to be.

But why? Why was your judgement of somebody based off of what you could see in their eyes? Something had to have caused it.

“Why did you put roses in your victims’ eyes?” He could see the flicker of intrigue in your expression at his question, although he was unsure whether it was conscious or not.

From the way you’d spoken earlier about your discomfort, it seemed that your apparent fixation was unknown to even you, a subconscious thought process that even you were unaware of for whatever reason.

“I told you this already, I held subconscious knowledge about what they represented.” You furrow your eyebrows at his question, one that you’d answered a little over five minutes ago. Why was he asking you again? “I thought you had an eidetic memory.”

“I do-” Spencer’s not sure whether to be surprised that you remembered that small snippet of information or not. “I mean, why did you put them… you know, in their eyes specifically?”

A small amount of discomfort seeped into Spencer’s tone as he asked the question. As much as he’d become desensitised to the gruesomeness of what his job held, actively thinking about having somebody’s eyes being physically pierced with a blunt object was something that anyone with two functioning eyeballs would feel uncomfortable about.

“I don’t know, I just did,”

So it was subconscious. Something that the dark void in the back of your mind was aware of but wouldn’t let your conscious self have any knowledge of.

“Would you like to help me analyse the victim’s eyes? The pathologist said they were still being stored,” Your eyebrows turn from furrowed to raised, clearly confused by Spencer’s sudden fixation on eye-related things.

“They could be a useful asset to the investigation,” Spencer shrugged softly, lips pressed into a line, an awkward smile present on his face as if his suggestion was completely unrelated to the conversation.

You found yourself agreeing to Spencer’s suggestion despite that lingering discomfort in the back of your mind, and as the two of you stood up to re-enter the coroner’s office, Spencer pulled out his phone to send an email to Morgan.

‘Cover the victim’s face.’

Morgan had clearly read the message before the two of you arrived back at the mortuary, shooting Spencer a glance of confusion as you entered the room ahead of him, eyes already locked on Youlier’s body as if you were drawn to it by some unexplainable force.

Of course, with the blue sheet now placed back over the victim’s head, you couldn’t actually see anything, but you still had the image of his face in your head, causing a sense of unease to remain in your stomach, although not as bad as when you were originally presented with it.

Spencer gave Morgan a small shake of his head as if to shut down this conversation for later, leaving your side to seek out the pathologist so she could retrieve Youlier’s eyes from storage.

He returned not two minutes later, freshly gloved with a glass jar in hand, two vaguely spherical shaped objects floating inside it.

Morgan saw them before you did, his expression widening and then furrowing at the sight of just how ripped up these eyes seemed to be. “How on earth did they end up like that?”

Morgan’s question is enough to pique your curiosity and rip your gaze away from the victim's covered-up face, walking up behind Spencer to look at the jar over his shoulder.

“Dr Toth said the damage was from the thorns on the roses,”

You examine the jar as Spencer explains how they ended up in the state they were in, and you had to agree that Morgan’s bewilderment was right.

They barely even looked like a pair of eyes anymore. They were more ovular than spherical, with two gaping holes where the pupil and iris should be, and countless tear lines all over the scleras, presumably where the killer had struggled to push the stems through the eyes from the resistance of the thorns. Although, you couldn’t deny that seeing them somehow ailed any lingering discomfort in your stomach.

“Well that’s just stupid,”

Spencer jumped from your statement like he hadn’t even realised you were standing behind him, almost fumbling the jar out of his hands in the process.

“…maybe you’re just stupid…” Morgan’s muttering doesn’t go unnoticed, and you shoot a glare in his direction that he mirrors right back at you with just as much venom.

“What’s stupid?” It takes Spencer a second to regain his bearings, but once he does he turns his attention to you with round eyes and a slightly tilted head, eyebrows furrowing ever so slightly.

He watches as your focus shifts back and forth between the eyes in the jar and his own as if you were trying to visualise what he’d look like with the ripped-up excuse for a pair of eyes instead of the ones he currently had.

“Obviously you should de-thorn the roses first,” Your tone carried your phrase like you were telling him that you shouldn’t put metal in a microwave rather than de-thorning a rose before piercing someone’s eye with it. “This guy’s on what, their fifth victim? You would’ve thought they’d figured that out by now,”

You take the jar from Spencer’s hand to get a closer look at the remnants of the victim’s eyes from a better vantage point.

“I mean come on, I figured it out after my first try,” You’re edging into a rant about the intricacies of how to most productively pierce somebodies eyes with rose stems now, and it was beginning to remind Spencer that you had in fact actually done all of these things and it wasn’t just hypothetical. “It literally takes like ten seconds per rose if you know what you’re doing and then saves you five minutes of effort,”

Morgan takes the jar from you like you’re a child with a bottle of bleach, a scowl still etched on his face as you give him an incredulous look.

“I’m not going to like eat them or whatever, god-”

“Knowing your track record I wouldn’t be surprised if you did,” Morgan places the jar down on the small table by where the victim is lying.

“One, that’s disgusting, two, what the fuck?” Spencer finds your bewilderment at Morgan’s suggestion that you might eat the victim’s eyes quite amusing on a surface level, your response sounding like something a high schooler would say rather than a prolific serial killer.

“What? You’re the type of sick bastard that would probably get off on that sort of thing,” Morgan shrugs his shoulders as he turns back around to face you once more.

“I was experiencing a manic episode, I’m not some weird sadist who has a fetish for eyeballs,”

‘Not a fetish, but something,’ Spencer chooses to keep to himself during your squabble this time, walking over to the autopsy table to hike up the blue cover sheet and check for other injuries lower down on the body.

There’s nothing truly substantial, with no defence wounds courtesy of the blow to the back of his head before the attack, another staple of your spree to keep your victims complacent. The only thing of note was the two gashes across each wrist, severing both radial arteries, the source of the bleeding-out portion of his death.

He had to give you props on that part. The average time it took somebody to bleed out was only 3 and a half minutes, meaning it was a pretty effective way to kill somebody with minimal effort and ensure they were completely dead before any first responders might have time to arrive even if they were called immediately after the gashes were made.

It was very controlled, much more of an execution than a murder if he was to really think about it, especially considering all of your victims were unconscious when it happened and therefore probably didn’t even feel anything aside from the original blow to the head.

For a serial killer, it was actually very humane. Even if you did go out of your way to desecrate their eyes afterwards. But was the real harm in that, they were already dead anyway, it’s not like they felt it.

It ruled out any sort of sadism from your spree, one of the reasons he thinks your story of a manic episode was so easily accepted in court. You weren’t killing people for the fun of it. You didn’t drag it out or make it unnecessarily painful. It was like you were just following the steps of how to kill somebody with as minimal effort as possible to satisfy whatever violent urges you had in your head at the time and then fulfilling the apparent subconscious fixation you had with eyes by covering them with roses.

“Wow, this guy really has no idea what he’s doing-” You again cause Spencer to almost jump out of his skin as you appear behind him once more, looking at the gashes over his shoulder.

You reach out to touch one of them, stopped by a harsh hand on your wrist from Morgan, who continues to glare at you like you’d set his house on fire. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Checking out the shitty incision work from this stupid ass copycat?”

“Put some gloves on you idiot,” Morgan drops your wrist with a scoff, walking across the room to pull out a pair of latex gloves from one of the boxes and shoving them into your palms.

You roll your eyes at his attitude but tug on the gloves anyway, making a show of raising your hands up in his face once you had them on. “Happy now?”

With a swat of your wrist away from his face Morgan concedes to stop antagonising you for now and let you focus on whatever you were originally doing, which you turn to do immediately like you’d completely forgotten about Morgan’s existence as soon as he exited your peripheral vision.

“What is it?” Spencer’s eyes follow yours down to the victim’s left wrist, and he watches as you prod at the gash with your gloved fingers as if trying to pry it back open.

“This is probably the shittiest attempt at bleeding someone out I’ve ever seen,” You bend down with narrowed eyes as you examine the wound. “It’d probably take like 20 minutes from a cut this shallow,”

Spencer can’t help but agree with your assessment. The cut was extremely shallow, so much so he’s sure that this victim probably could’ve survived it if he’d gotten immediate medical attention. He checks the other wrist just to be sure, and he’s granted with the same sight, an extremely shallow cut for somebody actively trying to kill people.

“So, what? He just sat around for twenty minutes whilst Youlier bled out so he could put the roses in his eyes?” Morgan furrowed his eyebrows at the revelation. “What sense does that make?”

Can they be sure that they were inserted post-mortem?

Spencer walked around the table towards the autopsy report to re-read the file in case he’d somehow missed that detail whilst reading it the first time.

Alexander Youlier. Age 22. Died of blood loss with the roses believed to be inserted post-mortem.

He hadn’t missed anything. But then that didn’t make sense. There was no way that the killer would just wait around for almost half an hour for somebody to bleed themselves dry, especially considering that Youlier was found under an open gazebo in a dog park. That would just be reckless. For it to work the roses would have had to be inserted whilst he was still alive.

“Having an epiphany over there or something?” Spencer turns his eyes upwards at your comment, leaving the report on the side table as he walks into Dr Toth’s side office without giving you an answer.

You and Morgan share a glance at his sudden departure, probably the most civil interaction the two of you had ever had, fuelled by the joined want to know what was running through Spencer’s mind.

The door of the office opened less than a minute later, Dr. Toth leaving her office with Spencer hot on her trail. “-reports from the main office so that you can cross-reference them all,”

You only catch the end of their conversation as they enter back into the mortuary, and Dr Toth leaves the room to assumedly go and gather whatever ‘reports’ she was on about from the main office, leaving you and Morgan blankly staring in Spencer’s direction with confused expressions.

“I think that our unsub might be inserting the roses into the victim’s eyes whilst they’re still alive,”

The revelation that the unsub was purposefully dragging out the death of their victims made the team have to rebuild the profile from the bottom up.

Spencer took the opportunity to do some digging. Or more accurately have Garcia do some digging.

He had her pull everything humanly possible regarding your biological parents, their life, their death, and most importantly, how they treated you.

They were 29 and 32 when they died, you having been born when your mother was only 23. They both had a history of substance abuse, and according to their autopsies, both of them had lethal levels of diazepam in their bloodstreams at their time of death.

What was interesting about their deaths though was that they were dead for three days before they were found, rotting in their own house with a six-year-old left living with them. Now that was something that could cause a mental break. A six-year-old, left for three days with the corpses of their dead parents and only found when the neighbours complained about the smell.

The file Garcia had faxed over also happened to have images from the scene when the bodies were recovered, and they were just as disgusting as he’d imagined they’d be. The two were sat paired on a couch, skin pale and turning slightly grey with the beginning signs of decay, small insects roaming on their skin, and the clothes they were wearing.

But the selling point for Spencer was their eyes. Wide open and staring blankly into open space with clouded pupils and ruptured irises. It freaked him out and he was looking at it through a piece of paper. He couldn’t imagine how it made a six-year-old child who lived with them like that for three days feel.

There was the origin of your eye fixation, and he honestly couldn’t blame you for covering the dead stare of your victims so you wouldn’t have to relive that.

The more he read the more devastating the report seemed to be. When asked why you didn’t call for any help from neighbours or the police you stated that you “just wanted them to sleep for a while,” and that your mother would “give me the sleepy pills when she wanted me to go to sleep, so I did the same for her and daddy,”

In an effort to get your parents to go to sleep so they would stop presumably treating you horribly, you’d unintentionally overdosed them both.

You were in a paediatric rehabilitation centre for almost four months after you were recovered from the house. A six-year-old. Being rehabilitated for an addiction to diazepam because your parents would solve any blip in your behaviour by feeding you sleeping pills instead of treating you like the child you were.

All of a sudden forming an addiction at 25 didn’t seem all that detrimental anymore.

He supposes that’s how you knew right off the bat. Addiction recognises addiction and all that. Although by the look of it, you’d made a full healthy recovery by the time you were adopted into your new family.

You’d been diagnosed with ASD after you were removed from the house, and Spencer is surprised by the fact that the mental impact it had on you only seemed to be acute, although, he’s sure that in hindsight the psychiatrist that diagnosed you would’ve made sure to be more thorough in their examination of your mental state.

Still, what happened had happened, and although Spencer nor anyone else could do anything to change that, he could form a greater understanding of who you were and why you did what you did.

Except he still didn’t really know why, he knew the origins, but what was the trigger that caused you to deteriorate mentally until you were back at your lowest possible point?

That wasn’t important right now.

He needed to focus on the actual case at hand and not the closed case of a serial killer from four years ago. It didn’t matter how much of a fascination he’d formed with your psychology, he needed to focus so that no one else had to die.

It was insane to think about, just how distracted he’d get with uncovering your past like it was a mystery novel that required the reader’s involvement to solve.

But now he really needed to knuckle down and actually put his intelligence forward to help the team find the unsub they were looking for or else earn a chastising from Hotch and up to 13 more victims if they followed your pattern to a T.

Why you though? Why was this unsub following your crimes specifically? Sure some people were mentally deranged enough to want to gain the same notoriety as the killers they replicated, but your case was in a small city and didn’t even make national news. Not only that, it was new. Really new.

Most copycat killers replicated national or even international-level crimes that had decades to form a legacy and settle into the back of people's minds. Your case wasn’t like that. Not to the full extent anyway. The state of California had recognised you as a prolific killer but in any other state your name was unknown.

So why you?

Spencer watched intently as the team scribbled down notes and ideas on the whiteboards taking up most of the room, leaving him sitting at the head of the conference table with his files on your background and you engaging yourself in the pass-time of making origami cranes out of discarded bits of paper to stop yourself from getting bored.

A serial killer replicating your crimes almost step by step. Bleed out the victims, put roses in their eyes, move on. Same victim pattern. Same time frame. But still with distinct differences.

This unsub bled their victims out considerably slower than you did. They used red roses instead of white roses like you did. They left the thorns on the rose stems when you pruned them beforehand.

Why did this unsub not de-thorn the roses first? After five separate murders, why would they not make their process easier by discarding the thorns to stop them from tearing up the victim’s eyes?

‘I figured it out after my first try.’

“Hey uh-” Spencer turns his head up towards you, tapping his pen absentmindedly against the table. “Do you remember what happened to your first victim? After your parents?”

“What?” You furrow and then raise one of your eyebrows at his sudden question, especially because he’d been sitting in his own little cocoon for the last thirty minutes.

It was quite a long shot of a question if you had been experiencing mania at the time, but you seemed to be remembering select details about your spree, so your first victim surely should be present in your mind at least somewhat.

“How did you… You know-” Spencer’s roundabout question was half amusing and half frustrating from your viewpoint, and you take a break from your paper crafts to indulge in it.

“Well…” You drag out the word and you divert your eyes from him to stare upwards towards the ceiling like it’ll aid your memory. “I incapacitated her first, with a… brick I think? It might’ve been a regular rock I’m not sure-”

“Him.” Morgan’s venom seeps into his correction of your account. “You killed eighteen people and you don’t even have the decency to remember the gender of your first victim? Seriously?”

“I do know my own victim pattern thank you very much,” You override Morgan’s correction with just as much ferocity. “ And it was definitely a woman. I chose her specifically because she’d be easy.”

“That’s not what our files say.”

“Then your files are wrong? What do you want me to do about it?”

Spencer runs over your victims in his head. Your first filed victim’s name was John Brandy, found lifeless on a park bench after a woman walking her dog called it in to the police.

He tried to remember any other things he’d read about your case that might indicate that Brandy wasn’t your first victim. Nothing. John Brandy was the only thing he could affiliate with the identity of the first victim from your spree. And most notably, Brandy was very male.

“…What did you do after you incapacitated her?” Spencer slowly edges his way back into a conversation between you and Morgan, mind on full alert as it continues to run through all of the details he knows about you and your case.

“I moved her against the like wall of the street we were down and then did the rest of it,” You shrug your shoulders in mild scepticism of Spencer’s sudden interest in this specific kill of yours. “You know, cut the wrists, wait a few minutes, then stick in the roses. Although I’m pretty sure I got one rose like half in because the thorns were being difficult and I gave up when she started twitching,”

You exhale exasperatedly. ”That’s probably why she’s not ‘in your files’, because the rose I did try and do wasn’t even fully inserted and probably just fell out or something,” You glare pointedly at Morgan, tilting your head back and forth in condescension. “It was my first time alright? Everyone’s gotta start somewhere.”

Sure everyone’s gotta start somewhere. When it comes to working a job or starting a hobby. You don’t usually ‘start somewhere’ when it comes to murdering people.

It’s the fact that you say it so nonchalantly that gets to him, talking about your murder spree of eighteen people like it was you learning how to bake a cake. Nineteen people. You’d actually killed nineteen people in your spree, and your poor first victim probably didn’t even get given the light of day that the rest of your victims did when it came to justice.

“Morgan,” Hotch’s voice proved to pull Spencer out of yet another spiral consisting of endless questions surrounding your psychology, even if not directed at him. “Call Garcia and have her pull up any unsolved murder cases that involved two slit wrists and trauma to the eyes in Malibu during the time they were active as a killer,”

“On it,” Honestly, Morgan would’ve taken any excuse to get out of your presence for a few minutes, feeling the overwhelming urge to punch you square in your face grow stronger with every snippet of information about yourself that you shared out loud without a single care in the world.

Did it have anything significant to catching this copycat? No. But that victim deserved just as much justice as any of your others.

One profiler down, the rest of the team turned back to fleshing out the profile, and you turned back to your half-finished paper crane, muttering to yourself under your breath about something that Spencer couldn’t quite hear.

“Okay, so we’ve ruled out mania as a possible cause of the kills because of how long it took for them to bleed out, we’ve ruled out paranoia because of the victim pattern following the original to a T instead of being random, it could be some form of ASD but that doesn’t really make sense with the rest of the profile-” Emily scans over the notes of the whiteboard as she speaks, picking absentmindedly on the red polish covering her nails and leaving small flakes of it all over the table by where you’re sitting.

“Would you stop doing that?” You make a show of wiping the table with your hand, and Emily doesn’t respond to you with more than a glance as she stuffs her hands in her pockets.

“Alright babygirl thank you,” Morgan sends a kiss through the phone before hanging it up and putting it away in his pocket and you swear you almost gag at the sight of it.

“Nothing,” Morgan shrugs his shoulders half out of resignation and half out of frustration as he takes a seat opposite you on the table. “There are no unsolved murders matching the description you gave us,”

He glares into your eyes like he’s trying to burn them right out of your eye sockets. “So? What is it? You get a kick out of lying or what?”

“Do I look like the type of person who makes the effort to lie? Because news flash, I don’t, it’s not like saying I killed one more person than I actually did benefits me in any way,” You furrow your expression with a scoff, leaning back in your chair to rest your ankles on the table.

“Right, sure, because someone like you totally doesn’t care about how they’re perceived by other people,”

“Why would I want to say I’ve killed more people than I actually have, it just makes me look more crazy than you already think I am-” You weren’t backing down on this. You were adamant that this person was your first victim and that you weren’t lying to him.

“Then why isn’t there any file of her whatsoever?”

“What if she’s still alive?” It’s like all of the puzzle pieces fall into Spencer’s mind at once, and he interrupts your arguing with Morgan yet again, except this time it’s not about keeping the peace.

“You said you gave up because ‘the thorns were being difficult and she started twitching’, was she alive when you tried to put the rose in her eye?” Spencer turns his gaze towards you, a completely different air surrounding his expression than the mildly awkward and apprehensive one you’d gotten used to.

“I don’t know, maybe?” You shrug like his question was absurd, watching as he stands from his seat to look over the whiteboard detailing the autopsies of each of the victims.

“Reid?” Hotch’s raised eyebrow asked a hundred different questions, and Spencer answered every single one of them with a single phrase muttered under his breath.

“…PTSD by proxy-”

He takes a second to study the photos on the board before continuing. “It’s a psychological disorder where victims of PTSD will project their trauma onto others,”

He pulls a few of the images from the board to lay them out on the conference table. “Of those who develop PTSD from traumatic incidents, roughly 2% then go on to try and satiate their trauma by projecting it onto other people,”

“If what you remember about your first victim was true and she survived, then there’s a high chance that the new killer we’re looking for is that first victim,” He arranges the autopsy photos in two groups, with one of the wrist gashes and the other of the eye damage.

“The victims bled out slowly, which in a lot of cases with first-time murder or murder attempts happens unintentionally because the killer doesn’t know how deep a cut like that has to be for it to be fatal,” He points towards the photos on the left first.

“And then the eyes would be pretty self-explanatory,” He turns one of the photos towards where you and Hotch are sitting. “If your first victim was in fact alive when you tried to pierce her eyes then that could explain why these victims were also still alive when the roses were inserted,”

“But that doesn’t make sense,” Emily chimes in with her two cents as Spencer gives his explanation. “We’re in a completely different city,”

“And it’s been three years since the original spree,” Rossi swirls the coffee in his mug with a furrowed expression.

“Well Las Flores is only an hour's drive from Malibu,” Spencer moves from the table to go back over to the annotated map on one of the boards, marking an invisible line with his fingers. “Maybe she decided she needed to get away from her trauma, 46% of individuals who experience life-changing trauma do,”

“But why now?”

Spencer’s eyes turn back towards you at Rossi’s question, as if you held all the answers to what the stressor was for this sudden murder spree. Your answer of course was nothing more than a shrug and an expression that asked ‘How am I supposed to know?’, which put a halt to Spencer’s theory.

That, and the fact that they hadn’t even confirmed if this woman was still alive let alone living in Las Flores.

“Alright,” Hotch cut through the team’s conversation with a wave of his hand. “Morgan, ask Garcia to track down women who went into the hospital for ocular injuries three years ago and have moved to Las Flores since then,”

Morgan gives him a determined nod as he leaves the room once more, Hotch then turning his attention towards you.

“What have you done in the last few months that would’ve been told to the public?”

“I don’t know?” You give him an exasperated expression and raise your hands in a defensive manner. “Why would I know that? It’s not like I have someone telling me when I’m on the news,”

Hotch furrowed his eyebrow at your immediate defensiveness, reminding himself to be patient and bear with your short fuse because it technically wasn’t your fault.

Although it didn’t make it any less frustrating either way.

He turned his eyes towards Spencer, gesturing towards the door and then towards you as a silent order for him to speak to you privately outside.

If anyone was going to be able to get a piece of information out of you, consciously or subconsciously, it would be Spencer.

It took him a few seconds to compute Hotch’s message, but as soon as he did he stood from his seat, mug in hand.

“I’m going to make some more coffee, do you want some?” Spencer gives you a small and slightly awkward smile as he looks at you, and you raise an eyebrow in his direction.

“You don’t know how to make my coffee,”

“You can show me,” Spencer raises his eyebrows enthusiastically, lips pressed taut into a line as he silently prays for you to take the bait. And you do.

You don’t respond with more than pushing your chair away from the table to stand, but Spencer follows after you as you leave the meeting room nonetheless, gaining a small nod from Hotch that he returns with one of his own.

In the break room, Spencer watches you prepare your coffee, taking mental notes of the precise amount of creamer and sugar you add. He's careful to keep the conversation casual, asking about your preferences and subtly steering you towards the topic of recent events.

"I got a new therapist a few months ago," you admit, stirring your coffee. "She recommended having me moved into psychiatric care." The implication hangs clearly in the air.

"Psychiatric care?" Spencer echoes, his mind eagerly piecing together the information.

“Mhm,” You give him a small nod and you leave the teaspoon on the counter, taking a sip of your coffee.

Now that was something that might’ve been made public. If you had been recommended by a specialist to be moved out of a high-security prison and into a psychiatric institute the local news was bound to know about it.

"You being moved to a psychiatric facility would definitely make the news," Spencer mutters, drawing your attention back to him. "That could be the trigger point for our unsub,"

“Me going to a hospital? Seriously?” You scoff like that being a motive is pathetic.

“Yes, seriously,” Spencer replies, his expression serious. “It could signify a turning point, a change in your situation that the unsub might interpret as you escaping justice. It could be the catalyst that pushed them into action.”

He abandons his coffee mug on the counter as he ushers you back into the meeting room with the rest of the team, and all it takes is Hotch getting a single glance at Spencer’s expression to know that there was indeed a trigger for this murder spree.

“A few months ago, their therapist recommended moving them to a psychiatric facility," Spencer shares the information as soon as you both re-enter the room, "That could have been publicised, potentially triggering our unsub-”

“We found her,” Morgan interrupts Spencer’s explanation as he hurries into the room, phone still pressed against his ear as he reaches over to scribble down the name and address Garcia had recovered.

Louise Nueves, aged 29 was born and raised in Malibu, never having left the city for more than a week her entire life. That was, until she was hospitalised for three days for a severe ocular injury to her left eye.

She left the city less than a week after she was discharged, and supposedly never returned as she settled down in Las Flores instead.

She settled down, got married, started working in a small bakery, and overall just seemed to have a well-rounded and stable life after the trauma that she had endured back in her home town.

Morgan knocked harshly on the front door of her house, gun held firmly in his hand just in case Nueves deemed the threat of their presence as an incentive to act violently. “Louise Nueves, this is the FBI,”

The silence from the other side of the door seemed only to heighten the adrenaline running through the veins of the team.

It didn’t take long before Morgan was looking for permission to force the door open, and once he gained a nod from Hotch that’s exactly what he did, kicking the door handle loose and forcing the door open as the team filtered into the house to search for their suspect.

You were an exception of course, being confined to the entranceway with Spencer as your personal babysitter in case you managed to get yourself into any trouble or think about running off.

You hear an echo of ‘clear’s from the group as they sweep the house, seemingly completely devoid of any human presence outside of the FBI team. Until…

“You guys might wanna come see this,”

Emily’s voice sounded from upstairs, and she backed out into the stairway as she gestured for the team to join her up the stairs.

You give Spencer a look before walking over to the stairs, and his curiosity overrides his need to try and keep you in the entrance as he follows after you with the rest of the team following closely behind.

“This little bitch-“ The sight you were greeted with would’ve been extremely disturbing under normal circumstances, a corpse of a man - presumably Nueves’ husband - lying in its first stage of decay on the bed of the house’s master bedroom, a red rose resting on his chest.

Instead, your response was more angry at the blatant lack of originality in the way he was killed.

"Copying my kills is one thing," you spat out, your eyes burning with rage. "But having no innovation or creativity of their own? That's just pathetic." You crossed your arms over your chest, your gaze fixed on the lifeless body in front of you.

"Unique or not, it proves our hypothesis of who the copycat is," Morgan retorted, his gaze hardening at your callous words.

You rolled your eyes, huffing in annoyance. "Great."

Ignoring your sarcasm, Hotch spoke up, "We need to find Nueves before she kills again. Morgan, Reid, you're with me. We'll check her workplace. Rossi and JJ I want you to track down some of her friends, maybe they've noticed something off."

As they left, Emily turned to you, her eyes scrutinising. "What about them, Hotch? Do we just leave them at the station?"

"No," Hotch replied without missing a beat. "They’ll stay with you as you monitor the area. Keep an eye on them. We don't know how they might react now that their 'legacy' is being threatened."

With that, they left you in the company of Emily, the silence in the room amplifying the eerie sight of the corpse on the bed.

The tension was still very apparent despite you and Emily having no previous background, and you could tell that she wasn’t exactly thrilled with your company as the two of you left the house just as the authorities arrived, presumably called by Hotch as they left the scene.

“How does it feel to babysit a grown adult instead of doing something important?”

Emily shot you a sideways glance, her lips forming a thin line. "I'd like to think that keeping an eye on a serial killer counts as important, don't you?" she retorted, her voice icy.

“You’re supposed to be finding a serial killer, I haven’t done anything in years, what makes you think that I’m the threat?” You can’t help but scoff at her intonation as she speaks to you, it feeling oddly derogatory considering that you couldn’t even remember what her name was. “That’s some audacity alright,”

Emily narrowed her eyes at you, a flicker of annoyance crossing her features. "You may not think so, but your presence here is still a potential risk," she said, her tone sharp. "And until we know more, I'm not taking any chances."

She quickened her pace, leaving you to catch up as you followed her out of the residential area and into a nearby public park. Emily’s eyes scanned the area like a hawk as she walked, making you roll your eyes. “You really think she’s just going to be hanging around right next to her own house?”

Emily's gaze flickered toward you, her expression unyielding. "We're not looking for Nueves herself. We're looking for any clues, any signs of her recent activity or whereabouts," she explained tersely. "Every detail matters in a case like this."

She continued to lead the way through the park, her pace steady and purposeful. Despite your scepticism, you couldn't deny the intensity in her demeanour, the determination to solve the case weighing heavily in the air between you as you reluctantly tailed her like a toddler on a leash.

As you walked, Emily suddenly halted, her eyes narrowing as she caught sight of a lone figure sat on one of the park benches with their back to the two of you.

“Oh come on, it’s the middle of the day, of course there are people in the park.”

“Be quiet.” Emily approached the individual with her words barked out between her teeth. As you drew closer, you could see the figure was a woman, her head bowed and shoulders slumped. Emily called out to her, her voice firm yet cautious. "Excuse me, ma'am. Are you alright?"

The woman looked up, her eyes red-rimmed and filled with tears. "I-I'm fine," she stammered, quickly wiping at her cheeks. "Just... just having a moment." Her eyes seemed to flicker downwards towards Emily’s vest in confusion but she didn’t make any move to mention it.

Emily studied her for a moment longer before nodding, her hand slowly retracting from her weapon. “Alright. Just be careful out here, okay?” she advised before motioning for you to follow as she continued on the path.

You glanced back at the woman, her eyes following you in a mix of her previous sadness and confusion, seemingly unsure of how she should feel at an apparent FBI agent approaching her out of nowhere and then advising her to ‘be careful’.

“It’s you.” The new voice turns both of your heads in its direction.

Standing a few feet away was a woman and her dog, her demeanour tense yet strangely familiar. She looked at you with a mixture of surprise and recognition, her eyes lingering on Emily’s vest for a moment before returning to you.

“Excuse me?” You raise an eyebrow at the bluntness of her recognition of who you were, furrowing your eyebrows dismissively like she didn’t have the right to have recognised you in whatever way she had.

“You don’t know me?” Her tone carried a clear betrayal, as did the furrow in her eyebrows as she took a step towards you, one which Emily retaliated to by forcing you behind her with a heavy grip on your arm, one which you did not appreciate whatsoever as you pulled yourself from her grasp.

“Mrs Nueves?” Emily’s voice held a mix of apprehension and concern as she spoke, and she reached into her back pocket to thrust her phone into your hand before holding her fingers ready over her gun holster.

“You don’t remember me, do you? The woman ignored Emily completely, her voice tinged with bitterness as she stared at you, her features filled with betrayal as she realised you weren’t even looking at her, too preoccupied with trying to figure out why Emily had given you her phone.

“Mrs Nueves, my name’s Emily, I’m with the FBI, I understand that what you’re going through right now is extremely difficult but-”

“Shut up!” Nueves’ voice was harsh and drenched in ice as she spoke, holding her hand up dismissively. “I don’t care about you or your FBI friends-”

You had your back to the two by this point, and after a message had come through from Spencer about Nueves not being at her workplace you figured that the reason Emily as given you the phone was to get backup from the team.

oh. Right.

‘shes in the park by her house’

Of course she was. Because she was continually proving to be one of the stupidest people you’d ever encountered. Who decides to take their dog for a walk in the park two minutes from their house whilst being actively pursued by the police? Stupid people, that’s who. God, couldn’t the person copying your crimes at least be a competent one?

‘We’ll be there in ten minutes. Hold tight.’

“Look at me!” Nueves’ raised voice caused multiple heads to turn from the people wandering the park, including your own, and you turn your eyes away from the phone screen with a furrowed expression of annoyance.

“Do you have any idea what you did to me? How much I suffered because of what you did?” Nueves’ outbreak was very quickly garnering an audience from passersby, and could could practically feel the tension rolling off of Emily in waves as she tried to figure out what to do.

“You lived, get over it,” You were not helping.

The look on Nueves’ face at your words was almost incomprehensible, like she didn’t know what emotion she was supposed to be feeling at your nonchalance about what happened. Like you hadn’t ruined her entire life and caused her eternal suffering.

“Get over it? Look what you did to me!” Nueves barked out her words as she brought her left hand up to her eye, pulling at it until the sclera fell into the palm of her hand, leaving a dark pink void in its wake.

Your eyes immediately widened at the action, eyebrows furrowed in clear distaste for what you’d witnessed and that uncomfortable feeling that you’d experienced in the coroner’s office rising in your stomach the longer you looked at her.

“This is my life now.” She held up the piece of glass in her hand. “This is what I have to live with because of you.”

“Mrs Nueves-” Emily took a small step forward in her direction with both hands raised to appear as not threatening as possible.

“Don’t move-” Nueves dropped her dog’s leash at Emily’s advance to pull a small kitchen knife from her pocket, similar to one that would be used to cut vegetables or peel a potato.

Emily’s shoulders tense at the emergence of the weapon lips pursed into a tight line, and you’re sure that you might’ve been mildly concerned yourself if the knife blade wasn’t smaller than its handle. It didn’t make her look as intimidating as you assume she thinks she is, more like a teenager who carries around a switchblade in an attempt to make themself look tougher than they actually are.

Then again, this woman had actually killed people. Just not very well.

Still, if she thought that was a ‘big’ knife then her husband must’ve not been very satisfactory when it came to the bedroom.

"Put the knife down, Louise," Emily's voice was stern yet calm, her gaze unwavering. "We can talk about this, help you get the help you need. But first, you need to put the knife down."

Nueves seemed to consider this for a moment, her grip on the knife wavering. But then, her expression hardened, her eyes filled with a cold determination. "No," she stated firmly, "I won't."

“Mrs. Nueves,” Emily tried again, her voice laced with a calm authority, “you're not a killer. You're a victim, and we want to help you.”

Nueves let out a bitter laugh at this, her gaze never leaving Emily's. “A victim?” she echoed, her voice filled with scorn. “I stopped being a victim the moment I stopped letting them control my life.” She thrusts her arm forward with the knife in hand to point it in your direction, thankfully too far away for it to actually be anywhere near harming you. “You left me alive and it ruined everything.”

“I had to live with the pain, the nightmares, the constant fear. I had to watch my life fall apart while you just moved on to your next victim and left me without so much as a footnote in your confession." Nueves continued, her voice shaking with barely suppressed rage. "You think I'm the one who needs help? You're the monster, not me!”

“You had a hard time. Boo-hoo. But guess what? You're not the only one who's had to deal with shit. You're not special, Nueves.” You replied, your voice dripping with sarcasm.

Nueves' eyes flashed with anger at your dismissive words. "You don't get to talk to me like that. You don't get to belittle my pain. You don't get to decide how I should react to what you did to me."

"Actually, I do," you retorted, crossing your arms over your chest. "I'm the one who put you in this position. I'm the one who made you who you are today. And you know what? I'm not sorry. Because without me your life would’ve been completely insignificant.”

“Maybe I am a monster. But you, Nueves, are just a sad, pathetic little girl pretending to be a serial killer.” Nueves' face twisted with rage at your words, her grip on the knife tightening. But before she could react, Emily stepped in, her voice calm and authoritative.

“Enough,” she commanded, her gaze fixed on Nueves. “This isn't helping anyone. We're here to bring you in, Louise. To make sure you get the help you need.”

“I don't want your help,” Nueves spat back, her eyes still fixed on you with burning hatred. “I just want them to pay for what they did.”

“They are Louise, they’re paying for their actions every single day in a high-security prison,” Emily stated, her gaze unwavering as she shook her head gently. “They’re getting their punishment, you don’t have to do this, please, just put down the knife…” Emily’s eyes caught the SUV that parked on the side of the road as she talked. Looks like she’d managed to buy enough time for backup to arrive.

For a moment, it looked like Nueves might actually consider following Emily’s suggestion. But then she glanced back at you, her gaze hardening at your stare of indifference. “No,” she said, her voice filled with determination. “I won't let them get away with this. I won’t let them have control of how I live my life anymore.”

Nueves’ ramble deemed her oblivious to the agents approaching her from behind, ushering the few lingering witnesses to a safe distance away so that they could contain the area, and your eyes caught Dr Reid carefully scooping up the leashed dachshund into his arms after it’d scampered away from Nueves in her fit of rage.

“You don’t remember me?” Her eyes turned from seething to desperate in the split second she looked at you, voice raised as she tried to force your attention back onto her from your seeming uninterest in the confrontation. “You will.”

Morgan didn’t even have time to un-holster his gun before Nueves utilised the knife in her hand. Not on Emily, nor on you, but on herself, impaling the blade of the knife directly into her operational eye and forcing it deeper by slamming the palm of her hand into the wooden handle until it was almost completely encapsulated into her eye socket.

The sight was ghastly, blood spurting out of her eye as she fell onto the ground, convulsing from the pain and shock. You watched, a morbid fascination in your eyes as Emily quickly called for medical attention, her gaze flitting between you and the dying woman on the ground.

As the medics rushed to stabilise Nueves, Emily looked at you, her face pale. “You-” She said, her voice barely a whisper, “stay here.” She then hurriedly joined the medics, leaving you behind. You watched as the medics tried to recover her, but it was clear that her chances were slim. The sight of her writhing in pain, the blood pooling around her, was oddly satisfying to watch. A small, twisted part of you felt a sense of triumph at the confrontation's results, if not a little discontented with just how dramatic this woman proved to be.

The rest of the team moved to properly secure the area now that it was officially a crime scene as Emily, still with the medics, was applying pressure to Nueves' wound, her hands smeared with blood.

As you watched the scene unfold, a bizarre sense of calm washed over you. This chaos, this pain, was a result of your actions, your legacy, and despite the horrific circumstances, you couldn't help but feel a twisted sense of satisfaction.

From a distance, you could see Hotch talking to Emily, his expression unreadable. Emily nodded, her eyes briefly meeting yours before diverting away. She looked shaken, the dark red of Nueves’ quickly oxidising blood on her hands a stark contrast against her pale skin.

You tried to imagine the emotions she was grappling with. After all, she was a part of a team that had sworn to protect innocents from people like you. And now, because of you, she had blood on her hands.

The medics finally lifted Nueves onto a stretcher, rushing her towards the waiting ambulance. Emily stood there for a moment longer, watching as the ambulance sped away, before finally turning her eyes towards you, unfocused on how Morgan was gently trying to usher her towards another pair of EMTs so that she could be checked over.

There was zero chance Nueves was going to make it to the hospital in time.

Emily’s gaze was hard, filled with a mixture of anger, confusion, and something you couldn't quite place. Fear, perhaps? Or maybe disappointment? Regardless, it was clear that the events of the day had left a deep impact on her.

As you watched them walk away, the satisfaction from earlier began to fade, replaced by a strange emptiness. You were alone again, left with nothing but the aftermath of your actions. And as you stared at the spot where Nueves had fallen, the blood still fresh on the grass, you couldn't help but wonder if this was all worth it.

But then, you remembered the look on Nueves’ face, the horror in her expression at her own pain. And you knew, without a doubt, that it was. Maybe she was right, you just might remember her for that stunt she pulled, although most definitely not in a positive light.

“Are you alright?” The ever-calm voice of Spencer Reid pulled you away from mulling over your own feelings, and you give him an animated sway of your head back and forth as a silent communication of you not falling in either emotional direction.

It truly was fascinating how removed you were from everything, and as twisted and convoluted as it might sound, Spencer wasn’t looking forward to your departure from accompanying the team. It meant that he didn’t get to speak to you anymore. Didn’t get to slowly peel away the layers of protection you’d built over your psyche so that he could pry at your inner workings.

And he didn’t exactly mind having you around. But that was something he was going to keep to himself for a multitude of reasons.

“It’s all too over the top for my taste,” You shrug your shoulders nonchalantly, stretching your arms above your head. “Here, it’s the one with the ponytail’s,” You hold the cell phone out between your thumb and index finger like it might give you a disease if you hold it properly.

“Why-” Spencer starts his question and is immediately interrupted by your answer. “She gave it to me to message one of you where we were,”

So it was you who’d messaged him then. He thought the punctuation was different.

“Right, that makes sense,” He takes the phone from you with an awkward smile as he puts it away in his back pocket. “Thank you,”

You give him a short hum in reply, crossing your arms over your torso and leaning back and forth on the balls of your feet like you were becoming bored with just standing around. You’d just been a potential hostage at knife point and then watched someone graphically commit suicide specifically to gain your attention and less than five minutes after it was over you were looking for something new to capture your attention.

It utterly fascinated him. You were fascinating.

And you were leaving.

Literally.

You were walking away, obviously having had enough of Spencer’s silence and wandering off to find Hotch and maybe experience something more enticing.

“Hey-” Spencer called out to you as you began to walk away, and you stopped with a glance over your shoulder and a raised eyebrow. “What are you feeling right now?”

You stuff your hands in your pockets at his question, turning 180 degrees to face him once more with a slightly furrowed expression as you tried to figure out the motive behind his question.

“I wonder if she saw the afterlife.”

Spencer’s shoulders drop at your admission, his expression morphing into a mix of understanding and confusion, contradiction written all over his features.

You seemed more objectively curious than humanly concerned, but you still were curious nonetheless.

That was another fascinating part about you, or just about sociopaths in general, he supposes. But he wasn’t speaking to every sociopath in existence, he was speaking to you. So it was less about sociopathy and more about you specifically.

“Do you think she saw the afterlife?”

“Logically, she didn’t have any eyes so she wasn’t ‘seeing’ anything, but metaphorically I’d like to believe so,”

Spencer has to stifle a surprised laugh at your morbid joke about Nueves’ condition, pressing his lips into a tight line with a small nod as he tried to focus on the second part of your statement. “Me too,”

There was a small sense of deja vu surrounding your conversation as the two of you fell into a mutual silence, hastily interrupted by Hotch calling the two of you to gather with the rest of the team now that the case was officially over.

You noticed the distaste in Emily’s gaze immediately, looks like you’ve gained yourself another detractor. She and Morgan stood side by side with matching expressions as the two of you joined them, although neither had time to make any comments as the team loaded up in the SUVs to head back to the station.

It was rather hard to believe it’d only been six days in Las Flores, but dates don’t lie, and by the time you stepped back onto the BAU’s private jet, it felt like you’d only left it for a matter of hours.

Nueves’ face was fading from your mind by now, as was her name, and as you plopped yourself down on the same seat you’d occupied on your flight from Quantico, you’d almost forgotten that she even existed.

Your mind was more preoccupied with what was going to happen next. You were going to fly back to Quantico, be recovered by California state officials, and taken back to the concrete hell of the California Correctional Institution until your appeal to be moved to an inpatient psychiatric care facility was considered and ultimately rejected because they still deemed you ‘too dangerous’ to be around vulnerable individuals despite sharing mental issues with a lot of them.

Spencer gave you an awkward wave as he walked down the aisle of the cabin and stopped at the seat opposite you, hoping the movement would grab your attention.

“Do you-” He half gestures to the seat facing you with his hand, and you dismissively wave him into it as you return your attention to the window. “Thanks…”

You give him a hum at his politeness but otherwise remain uninterested in his presence, fastening the seat belt over your lap as the jet pilots prepare for the five-hour flight back to Quantico.

“What’re you thinking about?” Spencer abandons his original plan to sleep through the entire flight the second he sees the pondering in your expression.

You glanced at Spencer, contemplating whether to confide in him about your concerns. Out of everyone, he was probably the one person you’d met on the team who seemed genuinely interested in your experiences. He was one of the few who could understand the complexities of your situation. With a sigh, you decided to open up a little, "Just thinking about what happens now. Back to the concrete hell of my enclosure I guess.”

“I thought you were appealing the decision? That’s why you agreed to help, isn’t it? So the officials are more likely to accept your appeal?” Spencer tilts his head slightly in your direction, raising an eyebrow in your direction as he curled his legs under him in his chair.

“You really think that it’s actually going to do anything?” Your voice is dripping in sarcasm as you let your head fall back against the seat. “They’re seething enough that I didn’t get the death penalty, there’s no way they’re going to cut my sentence,”

“I don’t see why they shouldn’t,” Spencer blinks at you with a mildly furrowed expression. “You’re not an active threat to anybody, and having the help that you need could greatly improve your quality of life,”

“Yeah well you’re not the person who’s going to be analysing my case, so your opinion doesn’t really matter in the greater span of things does it, Dr. Reid?” Your tone carries no malice in your statement, although it comes off much more rude than he’s sure you mean it to be.

His opinion could matter. He knows that as a part of the evaluation you’ll have to go through Hotch will have to write a report on how you acted during the case. Maybe he could put in a few extra things he’d experienced with you. He’s sure that the psychiatrist assessing whether you were actively violent would benefit from knowing how much you adored your parents, how you wondered if your childhood pet was in the afterlife and how you engaged in a genuine emotional conversation with him despite all of your social stunts from your disorder.

You obviously still had your humanity, so he didn’t see why they wouldn’t allow you to have the facilities to improve your mental state to a point where one day you could possibly be a functioning member of society, or at least be in a position to help researchers understand more about your condition.

“Having optimism about an upcoming situation has proved to actually affect the outcome of said situation, with 36% of people who had been optimistic about negative situations physically affecting the outcome of those situations based on their outlook alone,” Spencer presses his lips into a line, another one of those awkward smiles that you’d become used to over your time with him.

“I prefer realism, but I suppose I’ll take that into account,”

“That’s all I can ask,” Spencer gives a soft exhale at your inadvertent agreement to take his advice, brushing a strand of hair behind his ear. “I’ll visit you once your appeal has gone through,” The statement fell out of his mouth without any real thought behind it, simply a reflection of his brain deciding he wasn’t quite done with your company yet despite the case officially being over.

“Of course you will,”

Spencer gives a short laugh of mild embarrassment. “Of course I will.”

#spencer reid x reader #spencer reid #criminal minds #criminal minds x reader #spencer reid angst #criminal minds angst #asks 🫶#mgg #bloodied roses 🥀

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