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gaybananabread · 2 months

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☾༺Just a Bit Longer༻☽

~So I’ve been brainrotting over RW&RB for a solid month now. The goblins need a walk, and I cannot productivity until they get one. I love these two’s dynamic; they’re just so silly. Not my best work, but writer’s block be damned; I needed to post something this week. This is completely self-indulgent, but if it’s your thing, I hope you Enjoy!~

Lee: Alex

Ler: Henry

Summary: Alex is overworking himself, going late into the night and working hours without breaks. Sick of his lover’s dreadful work-life management, Henry takes it upon himself to get Alex to sleep.

Warnings: mild Red, White & Royal Blue spoilers! This is a tickle fic, so if you don’t like that, scroll away!!

Life for Alex Claremont-Diaz was the best it had ever been. Henry came over almost daily from his Brownstone, and he finally felt like he had a definite idea of where his life was headed. The only downside: he was still in school.

The NYU Law course was a bit more rigorous than he’d expected, but it was definitely what he wanted. Sure, that meant long, painful hours of reviewing for extremely difficult exams, discovering that tort is a real word, and trying to figure out a system for coursework that didn’t make his brain want to explode.

His sleep schedule was already shit, so he didn’t think any of it would be a problem. If he just pulled a few all-nighters and pumped out some late-night essays, he’d be fine. What he didn’t think about, however, was how Henry would take it.

Alex was working late on another essay, running off of coffee and pure determination. He hadn’t meant to put it off, but with the three exams he’d had that week, his mind was a scattered mess.

Henry had put up with it for most of the night, but as two AM rolled around, his understanding had run dry, replaced by concern.

Knocking the “shave and a haircut” pattern on his lover’s door, Henry entered the room. He was immediately greeted with the strong smell of coffee and desperation.

There sat his boyfriend, hunched over a computer with a half-eaten ham sandwich (he couldn’t handle turkey anymore) by his side. The blonde couldn’t help the sad sigh that escaped him.

Alex looked up, his glasses nearly all the way down on his nose. It was unfairly cute, though Henry shoved that feeling down for the moment.

“Uh…hey, Hen. Not done yet; gimme, like, another half-hour.” Alex’s gaze was back on his computer in seconds.

Henry rubbed his temples, already feeling a headache brew. For once, why couldn’t Alex just use common sense?

“Alex, darling. It’s two in the morning. You need to sleep.”

Alex scoffed, not stopping for even a second. “Says you. You stay up later than I do most of the time.” While that wasn’t untrue, Henry’s problems were because of insomnia. Alex was just a stubborn asshole.

“Look, I’m going to be brutally honest here. You look terrible, you seem exhausted, and the bags under your eyes could fit the entirety of the Royal Wardrobe. Go. To. Sleep.”

Henry laid things out bluntly, crossing his arms. It was meant to leave little room for negotiation, but defying Henry’s expectations was Alex’s special talent.

“This is due at eight AM…uh, today. I’ve only got six hours to finish this thing, but I’m almost done. I promise, just a bit longer.” This would have been more comforting if Alex hadn’t already said that three times.

“Alex, please. If you sleep now, I’ll wake you up at six, and we’ll work on it together. It hurts to see you like this, dear.” He used pet names, trying to sway Alex to listen. It was a last-ditch effort; if he still refused, Henry didn’t have much of a plan left. Sure enough, he did.

“It’s fine, Henry. I’m all good, just a little spacy. I promise, the moment I’m done, I’ll eat your face. Okay, baby?” Alex flipped the other man’s strategy back on him, hoping to fully bury the concern. He was fine: end of story.

For Henry, though, the tale was just beginning. He racked his brain, searching for anything to help him get Alex to cooperate. He could only remember one time anyone was successful.

Alex had invited him to the White House for June’s birthday party. As the night dragged on, everyone but Alex was drunk and exhausted. To tire him out, June had employed some rather…unconventional methods.

Methods that would be extremely useful to him at that moment.

Casually approaching his boyfriend, Henry put a hand on the laptop. Then, after making sure the work was saved, he closed it. He pointedly ignored Alex’s scoff and protests, grabbing his chin and pulling him in for a kiss. Alex still squirmed, though a smile was breaking out on his face.

That was all Henry needed to continue. He gripped Alex under his thighs, lifting the man up and plopping him down on his nearby bed.

A surprised sound left him, his cheeks gaining a nearly imperceptible red hue. He was expecting some push-back from Henry, but nothing this active.

“Just couldn’t wait for me, could you~?” Alex weteased, starting to sit up on the bed. Henry was quick to stop that, grabbing Alex’s arms and pinning them above his head.

Before his lover could make another joke, Henry tapped a few fingers on his side. That shut him up, if only for a second.

“Henry, I swear to fucking god, if you try anything-” He was cut off when Henry squeezed his side, resulting in an indignant squeak.

“Sorry, dear, but I’m afraid I already have~” With that, Henry clawed his fingers into Alex’s stomach, straddling him.

The tired man tried to bite his lip, but the coffee wasn’t quite enough to give him that energy. A few giggles slipped out, quickly followed by tiny curses.

“What’s the matter, Alex? Something bothering you?” Henry chuckled, leaning down further to try and hold him still.

Kicking and squirming, Alex tried anything to get away from the evil fingers. He was tired, though; his brain was moving at half-speed and felt like it was running through soup.

“Gehehet ohoff me, youhuhu prihick!” Henry has decided to move up to his ribs, scritching and scratching between each bone.

Even on a good day, it’d be hard for Alex to get out from under him. With no sleep, coffee fumes and pure spite, he had no chance.

“Why on Earth would I do that? I’m quite comfortable here. Besides, you seem to be enjoying yourself, if that blush is any indication,” Henry taunted, jutting his chin out. He didn’t really need to, but it was a sure-fire way to rile Alex.

“Fuhuhuck off! Hehenry, I swehehear- quihit!” Alex tried to bury his face in his shoulder, though he only drew attention to a new target. Henry leaned down, blowing a raspberry on his boyfriend’s neck. Alex would rather die than repeat the squeal that left him.

“Wow, Alex. Perhaps the Barbara Streisand accusation wasn't so far off,” he teased, his voice about as smug than Alex had ever heard it.

The typically witty man was in giggly shambles, trying his best not to sound like a child. He wasn’t very successful.

“SHUHUhut uhup, youhu douche!!” Laughing like a toddler, Alex was still pumping out insults. Henry was about to put a stop to that. Going for the kill, he hooked his thumbs into Alex's hip divots, kneading and squeezing the area.

That seemed to work quite well.

“GAH- HEHENRY! You- YAHAHA! FAHAHACK!” The law student lost his shit, practically cackling under his boyfriend.

Alex arched his back off the bed, only bucking into the ticklish feeling. There was no room in his mind for witt; the best he could do was “fuck fuck fuck it tickles oh my god-”

Hearts practically formed in Henry’s eyes at the adorably hysteric reaction. Still, as cute as it was, he had a mission.

“This all ends the moment you agree to rest. Or…would you like me to continue? I bet I could just tickle you senseless all night. You’d surely be exhausted then, wouldn’t you?”

Alex couldn’t even get a word out, shaking his head as he laughed. His curls went wild, getting in his eyes and puffing up. Henry wanted to brush it from his eyes, but he had to keep his priorities in order. There would be time for fawning over him later.

“HEHENRY! PLEHE- snrk” It took a solid minute, but Alex’s resolve was weakening. He was already tired beforehand, and laughing his ass off wasn’t helping. The squirming had died down almost completely, snorts slipping into the lax cackles.

While it wasn’t an agreement, the Prince could tell that his lover would be out in seconds. Henry stopped, switching to gentle traces down his sides. The first son tried to calm down, a steady stream of giggles pouring from his lips.

“H-hoholy shihihit… Thahat was evil.” He tried taking some deep breaths, rubbing his cheeks. Alex hadn’t laughed that hard in a while. He was close to just passing out right there, pure exhaustion hitting him like a freight train.

“Possibly. You deserved it, though.” Henry leaned down, gently kissing his curved lips. This sight was one of his new favorites: Alex, his toned skin flushed, practically a puddle of giggles beneath him.

Alex flipped him the bird before melting into the kiss. He weakly pulled his boyfriend down, snuggling against him. He’d all but forgotten about his essay, eyes closed the moment he laid still; the poor guy was wiped. It wasn’t terrible by any means, but all his energy was gone.

Carefully grabbing his phone, Henry set an alarm for six AM.

They’d finish that research paper; he was certain of that. With a bit of sleep, Alex would be a writing machine. True, the slightly rushed grammar would be atrocious, but that’s what Henry was there for. Pulling the sheets up over them both, Henry breathed a happy sigh.

“Good night, love.”

#rwrb tickle #lee!alex #ler!henry #ticklish!alex #sfw tickling community #tickle #tickle fic #red white and royal blue tickle #rw&rh tickle #rwrb alex #rwrb henry #alex claremont-diaz #henry fox mountchristen windsor #rwrb

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irish-dress-history · 4 months

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Identifying J.C. Walker's Illustrations

An Historical Essay on the Dress of the Ancient and Modern Irish by Joseph Cooper Walker published in 1788 was the first major work published on Irish dress history. Due to a combination of the limited information known at the time, and his erroneous assumption that Irish dress didn't change for the entirety of the Middle ages, Walker got a lot of things wrong, so his writing isn't cited much anymore. Some of his illustrations, however, are still used.

Because Walker lived before the invention of photography, he used drawings of historical Irish art created by colleagues and family to illustrate his book. I decided to track down the original works of art to see how Walker's drawings compared. I am resorting these into roughly chronological order, because Walker's lack of regard for chronology makes my head hurt.

The High Crosses, 9-10th centuries:

Ireland's high crosses have unfortunately lost a lot of their detail due to erosion, making these hard to identify. Sadly, the breeches with a fitted knee-band and the skirt gathered to a waistband look more Late Medieval or Early Modern than they do Early Medieval, so I don't think these are reliable depictions of the lost detail.

Plate 1: Figure 1 (right) is supposed to be from the Clonmacnoise Cross of Scripture. At a guess, it's based off the guard on the right arresting Jesus:

Figures 2 and 3 are based off a high cross fragment at Old Kilcullen, County Kildare. Unfortunately, I don't think the original carving survived. I initially blamed its loss on the United Irishmen, but this drawing from 1889 convinced me that acid rain was the real culprit.

Plate 5 Figure 1 is supposed to be a king from Muiredach's cross. The closest image I could find on the actual cross is Cain killing Able:

Ironically, Cain and Able have more embellishment on their clothes than the "king" based off of them.

12th century:

Plate 1 Figure 5 is from the capital of an arch at St. Saviour's Priory in Glendalough, County Wicklow. The drawing gives the impression that the sides of the head were shaved and the hair was deliberately curled at the end. In the actual carving, the hair is slicked back at the sides and interlaced with adjacent design elements. These are stylistic elements of Irish Romanesque art and not intended to be a realistic depiction of an Irish hairstyle.

13th century:

Plate 4 is the late 13th century effigy of Felim O'Connor, Dominican Priory of St. Mary, Roscommon with a frontal of gallowglasses added in the 15th c.

This drawing is pretty accurate, although the gallowglasses are lacking some details like their quilted cloth gambesons.

photos by Edwin Rae

I cannot find a good photo of Felim O'Connor's effigy, but Conor O'Brien's contemporary effigy at Corcomroe Abbey, County Clare wears the same style of clothing.

13-14th century?

Plate 6 is based on a sculpture from Athassel Priory in County Tipperary. I can't find a solid date for this one. Athassel Priory was built c1200 and then burnt and rebuilt twice before it was dissolved in 1541. The clothing style of the carving makes me think it's from the earlier part of this time frame.

The biggest thing the drawing gets wrong is the gender. This is a man, not a woman. The "necklace pendent" on his chest might have actually been a brooch holding his cloak, but the sculpture is now too damaged to tell. The drape of fabric at his side, which Walker calls a train, is actually the edge of his cloak. The drawing also leaves out the way his become more fitted below the elbow.

15th century:

Plate 3 Figures 1-3 are based off a painting at Knockmoy Abbey.

I'm pretty sure those are houppelandes on the left and center figures. This continental fashion influence shows up elsewhere in 15th c. Ireland (Dunlevy 1989). The drawing omits the massive houppelande sleeves and shortens their hems.

The painting is now badly weather and difficult to see. This is a more accurate drawing published in 1904. Recent photograph here

Plate 5 figure 2 and plate 1 figure 6 come from a 15th c. grave at the Dominican Friary, in Strade, County Mayo.

Figure 2 is a decent representation, although it adds a center front slit to the leine which I don't think is actually there. Figure 6 gets the silhouette of the cotehardie a bit wrong and omits the hanging belt accessories, but its greatest crime is that it makes the top of the hood look like a separate object. Walker actually misidenifies it as a Scotch bonnet.

photo again by Edwin Rae

Plate 7 is Anne Plunket's effigy at St. Mary's Church, Howth, County Dublin. This drawing is decent, though the sleeves are a bit too slim. The cross necklace and belt decorations are no longer visible on the effigy.

photos by MVP Edwin Rae

Plate 8 figures 1 and 2 are both based on a late 15th c. tomb at the New Abbey in Kilcullen, County Kildare. Figure 1 is based off a carving which is probably depicting St. Brigid, which makes her headwear the wimple of an abbess, not a laywoman's kerchief Walker. The drawing, however, omits her telltale crozier. The drawing makes it look like she has cuffed sleeves, but that is actually just the folds of her brat draped over her arm. It also shows her as wearing 2 layers of skirts when she is actually wearing a single lower garment with a hem circumference so large that it puddles at her feet.

Figure 2 is based of Margaret Janico's effigy. The effigy is now too badly eroded to make out details, but it originally probably looked very similar to Margaret Janico's other effigy in St. Audoen's Church, Dublin. Unlike Anne Plunket's effigy above, the necklace and belt decorations are still faintly visible on the Dublin effigy. Figure 2 distorts the construction of the gown and headwear. This drawing makes the bodice of the gown look heavily stiffened or even boned like 17th c. stays. The houppelande on the effigy does not have stiffening in it.

effigy of Margaret Janico and husband at St. Audoen's Church, Dublin (photos, once again, by my man Edwin)

The headpiece in the drawing looks like a linen kerchief wound up to form a turban with a decorated fillet tied over it. The headpiece on the effigy is probably actually a truncated hennin with a veil pinned to it like the one in this mid-15th c Burgundian painting by Petrus Christus.

16th century:

Plate 9 is based on Katherine Molloy's early 16th c. effigy at Fertagh Church, in County Kilkenny. According to the artist's notes it was in "nearly perfect" condition at the time. I wish he had put more detail into the drawing.

(photo also by Edwin Rae)

17th century:

Plate 10 is based on The Taking of the Earl of Ormond in anno 1600. Walker's artist clearly fabricated some detail here, falsely giving the impression that triús were ankle-length. We know from extant examples from Kilcommon, Dungiven, and Killery that triús actually extended past the ankle, covering part of the wearer's foot (Dunlevy 1989, Henshall et al 1961).

Plate 11 was taken from the tomb of Sir Gerald Aylmer (died 1634) and Juliana Nugent. Sadly, it appears to have been destroyed in the early 19th c, so I have no further pictures of it. The clothing looks to me like typical 1630s English fashion with loose gowns over doublets, falling bands, and linen cuffs.

? Century

Plate 1 figure 4 is apparently from Old Kilcullen, County Kildare. I am not sure what this is based on. I haven't seen any Santa hats at Old Kilcullen. Or anywhere else in Medieval Ireland.

Bibliography:

Dunlevy, Mairead (1989). Dress in Ireland. B. T. Batsford LTD, London.

Henshall, Audrey, Seaby, Wilfred A., Lucas, A. T., Smith, A. G., and Connor, A. (1961). The Dungiven Costume. Ulster Journal of Archaeology, 24/25, 119-142. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20627382

Edwin Rae's invaluable collection of photographs of Late Medieval Irish art accessed via TARA.

#15th century #irish dress #dress history #irish history #art #early medieval #16th century #historical women's fashion #historical men's fashion #historical fashion #hiberno norman #gaelic ireland #headwear

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jolandbooks · 3 months

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"The Woman In Me" by Britney Spears

*Warning: These are just my thoughts on the work. I would not discourage anyone from reading a book please form your own oppinions.

Growing up I knew who Britney Spears was, I mean who did not? She was an amazing pop singer, known for being wild and having a drug problem. I remember seeing pictures of her shaved head, people said she shaved it to avoid giving a hair sample for a drug test. I am old enough to recall the #FreeBritney movement. A core memory for me was the "Leave Britney Alone" video from the early YouTube days. When the news of her conservatorship ending broke I recall friends celebrating online and much fan fair. As a casual enjoyer of her music I was vaguely aware of her situation but I never knew the extend of her plight.

When "The Woman In Me" came out the internet was a buzz, I recalled seeing this work everywhere and people saying how powerful of a read it was. I finally got my hands on it and over the last two weeks I read "The Woman In Me" and here are some of my thoughts.

The book starts out with a family history focusing on the women in the family. From violent emotional outbursts to self deletion, there is clearly a history of mental illness which is an overarching theme. Growing up her family was poor, her father was abusive, and her mother was erratic. This is a difficult situation for any child and Britney found her solace in creativity, specifically writing, music, and dancing. Her passion for singing and dancing got her on Broadway before the age of 10 and on mickey mouse club after. After a brief stent in her home town during middle school where she played basketball she sang for a record company and became a huge celebrity. From then on her private life was over, she was scrutinized by the public and the paparazzo was all over her.

No one can prepare you for fame, you life changes in ways that you cannot imagine. When she talks about her relationship with Justin, how his family was so stable her her family was so abusive and cold it highlights the disparity between the rich and poor. This concept does not only refer to monetary security but also emotional security. Britney was raised monetarily and emotionally poor, the lack of a solid foundation of caring encouraging people in her life is the greatest tragedy of this whole story. She was not prepared to be ogled by grown men as a teenager, she was not prepared to be hounded by paparazzo, she was not prepared to be put under a societal microscope and be blamed for corrupting the youth. The lack of an emotional foundation and people to confide in, in my opinion, contributed heavily to depression and sparling. Before I move on I wanna make it clear that Justin did cheat first and he did not receive the cultural backlash that should have followed. Also I'm insinuating that Justin has a much more stable home and family life than Britney which, in my opinion, contributed to his success.

Fathers protect your children, is a phrase I often heard growing up. To children the father is a protector and a shield against the world. Britney did not have a shield, her father was abused by his father and he intern abused his children. He inflicted emotional, verbal, phycological, legal, and financial abuse on Britney. Abuse by a parent/guardian is such a betrayal of trust. As a child you want to trust your parents, as an adult you want to believe that even if the whole world is against you your parents have your back. But not for Britney, her father used her like a work horse to enrich himself through a conservatorship that should not have existed in the first place. Also, warning tangent, the abuse of the legal and medical system accounted here is atrocious. Based on what I have been reading a conservatorship of Britney should have had shaky legal ground to proceed. Did they drug test her? Was her fathers history of abuse and financial situation taken into account when appointing him? The system seems ripe for abuse and I hope its changed soon.

Ok rant done back to the work, now under these conditions of restricted freedom and being controlled more than a toddler the next logical step would be to get out as soon as possible. But remember this person is being held captive by their abuser who removes access to the outside world and anyone who would be willing to assist the abused person. To add to this Britney has children who were used as leverage over her to make her comply with their demands. The extend to which her children were used to control and manipulate her echo the tactics of the past employed by men to control women.

I read this work and it reminds me of so many instances in the past. Here we have a wonderful, kind, talented, and beautify woman forced to bow and bend to the will of a man who exploits her body for his own gain. If this is not a pimp I don't know what is. This book made me mad, it was emotionally taxing, I know alot more about conservatorships now and I pray this happens to no one else.

I give this work 5 kittens out of 7.

#book review #booklr #books & libraries #book blog #the woman in me #conservatorship #britney spears #free britney #britney bitch #essay writing #celebrity memoir #celebrities

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mackerelphones · 1 year

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The Emerald City of Oz, Thrilling (?) Conclusion (?) of L. Frank Baum’s Oz Series

Introduction

Since October, I have been writing about L. Frank Baum’s original Oz novels, beginning from the less familiar second installment. They have almost no connection to the better-known 1939 musical, which already shaved the edge and personality off Baum’s work. I recommend readers of this post not familiar with the Oz books check out my earlier articles first. The Emerald City, in particular, follows up the plot of Ozma of Oz. Prior to this one, only the Ozma of Oz post is available in full on Tumblr. You can also read it (and all of them) on my website, along with many other things. Please do! And let me know if you liked it! I value that kind of feedback.

At last, I reach the sixth book, The Emerald City of Oz, the grand finale (or not). In addition, The Emerald City serves as a thematic capstone and statement of the series’ overall values with some interesting political implications, as I will explore in a second post, “The Politics of Oz.” Putting these considerations here would make this post so lopsided it would lose balance and tumble off the countertop.

The original 1910 printing of The Emerald City of Oz used sparkly, metallic green ink in John R. Neill’s many lush water color illustrations. Is it supposed to be emerald? Subsequent runs of The Emerald City removed this feature, something like the later printings of The Road to Oz dropped the colored pages, removing what made the book unique. However, as with the previous installment, my Books of Wonder edition restores this feature for the first time in decades, allowing me to view the drawings as Baum and Neill intended. The metallic shininess of the ink, sadly, cannot be preserved in the scans you see here.

(For some reason, I notice that the Archive.org edition of The Emerald City includes at least one color illustration my print edition lacks, the above one depicting Dorothy seated with the King of Bunnybury.)

Neill has continued developing the scratchiness and intricate detail of his drawings to an extent that some of them are difficult to interpret at a glance. The colored illustrations in particular often feature baroque detail in such flat and muddled color, most of the things depicted absent from the text because Neill had to fill the space with something that they demand deciphering more than viewing. But can non-color illustrations end up similarly opaque.

The above scary picture of the Nome King beating a gong to summon his minions took me particularly long to figure out, his face, contorted with rage, all wrinkles.

The Art Nouveau style is confident and distinct, trendy at the time and today full of the foreign strangeness that adheres to the aesthetic tastes of a past generation. Now at the height of his form, Neill completely avoids (sadly) the scary and upsetting style of illustration that fills The Marvelous Land of Oz, and so I have little else to say about them (except that I wish he drew the Wizard as tiny as Denslow depicted the “little man”).

The Emerald City features an escalated conflict and brings back concepts and characters from the past novels. Notably, for the first time since The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Baum addresses the existence of danger in Oz: the Kalidahs, Fighting Trees, and Hammer-Heads. Trying to keep Oz a heavenly utopia, Baum feels the need to address that the Hammer-Heads are “Wild People” but do not harm anyone who stays away from their mountains in the Quadling Country and adds that the Kalidahs, so menacing before, “[are] now nearly all tamed” like the Cowardly Lion and Hungry Tiger (32). “I suppose every country has some drawbacks, so even this almost perfect fairyland could not be quite perfect” (33), Baum says in the narration, getting defensive against, I can only assume, me specifically. At least he does not advocate killing the Hammer-Heads.

Despite this attention to detail, the continuity, as usual, seems careless to a reader today. Baum forgets the basic geography of Oz. In The Emerald City, he depicts a number of towns under the protection of Glinda, the Good Witch of the South, but apparently situates them in the northern Gillikan Country (242). On page 46, he even has Guph say Glinda lives in the northern country, not the south! For a writer whose most famous villain has a name emphasizing her cardinal direction, you’d think Baum would remember which country is on which side. He introduces a region outside of Oz, the Ripple Lands, where the land shifts like an ocean, perhaps to display his total contempt for consistent geography.

The truth is that Baum did not care about continuity whatsoever because his artistic and financial goals had nothing to do with it. This is why every book in the series contradicts earlier material, as I most especially describe in the post about Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz. Now that I am finished going “Well akshually” and pushing my glasses back up my nose, let’s proceed to the story.

Nome Plot

The Emerald City features two plotlines that intersect near the end. In the first of these, focused on in six of the 30 chapters before overlapping with Dorothy’s plot beginning in Chapter 24, the diabolical Nome King returns. Last seen in Ozma of Oz shaking his fist at Ozma’s procession crossing the Deadly Desert, he has become deranged in his obsession with vengeance for the theft of his Magic Belt and the liberation of his slaves. The Nome King is no longer named Roquat of the Rocks but instead Roquat the Red, presumably because he is so full of rage he screams until he turns red. “The reason most people are bad is because they do not try to be good. Now, the Nome King had never tried to be good, so he was very bad indeed” (39). As Neill draws him, the Nome King’s hair has also grown so much longer that it drags behind the ironically egg-shaped fiend.

The first chapter focuses on the Nome King rather than Dorothy, establishing narrative suspense. Baum layers on the buildup: “The Nome King could not forgive Dorothy or Princess Ozma, and he had determined to be revenged upon them. But they, for their part, did not know they had so dangerous an enemy. […] An unsuspected enemy is doubly dangerous” (20). The Nome King is a brutal antagonist, though no longer in so memorably unique a way as in Ozma of Oz (or Return to Oz). He evaluates the number of slaves he will be able to take from Oz, makes clear his objective is complete genocide; yells at, beats, and “throws away” his minions; and is generally a ruthless, emotionally unstable militaristic dictator. Like Darth Vader, the Nome King has a habit of killing his direct subordinates when they displease him, though continues feigning politeness:

“Will you do this, General Crinkle?”

“No, your Majesty,” replied the Nome; “for it can’t be done.”

“Oh, indeed!” exclaimed the King. Then he turned to his servants and said: “Please take General Crinkle to the torture chamber. There you will kindly slice him into thin slices. Afterward you may feed him to the seven-headed dogs” (41).

Though highly dangerous, the Nome King has become buffoonish, more like a pouting child than the terrifying sorcerer in Ozma of Oz. The brains of the operation are Guph, a particularly crafty Nome who volunteers to be General even though the Nome King has executed his predecessors. As he tells his sovereign, Guph is the only Nome who can defeat Oz, steal its vast riches, kill and enslave its people, and retrieve the Magic Belt from Ozma. This is why Guph dares disrespect the Nome King: “You want to conquer the Emerald City, and I’m the only Nome in all your dominions who can conquer it. So you will be very careful not to hurt me until I have carried out your wishes” (44). Neill draws Guph with a flower in his hair, probably because it is otherwise difficult to distinguish him from the Nome King. There is a sense to the design since flowers grow from underground, and the Nomes rule the underground.

Above: Guph on the march.

The Nomes will dig a tunnel under the Deadly Desert, like the tunnel that appears in Return to Oz, and erupt into the Emerald City to take the Ozites by surprise. Contrary to the Nomes’ steamroller victory in the movie, however, Guph warns the Nome King that they cannot simply storm into the Emerald City. Ozma’s magic is too powerful, and with Billina and her numerous offspring, the Ozites have an ample supply of eggs, which all Nomes fear. (Billina has many chicks who are attending the Woggle-Bug’s university, but she is happy to give away her unfertilized eggs for others to eat. I have no idea who the father is because there were previously no chickens in Oz.) Furthermore, the Nomes cannot send raptors to kill the chickens because Oz’s birds are protected by magic (145).

Guph explains, “There are a good many evil creatures who have magic powers sufficient to destroy and conquer the Land of Oz. We will get them on our side, band them all together, and then take Ozma and her people by surprise” (46). Though failure means the Nome King will kill him, assuming the “evil creatures” do not, Guph accepts the risk because “[h]e hated every one who was good and longed to make all who were happy unhappy. Therefore he had accepted this dangerous position as General quite willingly, feeling sure in his evil mind that he would be able to do a lot of mischief and finally conquer the Land of Oz” (59). Guph just loves his job!

Above: Guph speaking to the Chief of the Whimsies.

While the Nomes dig the tunnel, Guph spends three chapters traveling the lands east of the Deadly Desert to enlist the aid of three tribes of “evil spirits”: the Whimsies, the Growleywogs, and the dreaded Phanfasms. The Phanfasms are “Erbs” (115), “the most powerful and merciless of all the evil spirits” (126), an odd bit of worldbuilding that I doubt Baum ever again returned to. In establishing these new characters, the travelogue of the Nome chapters shows a great scoop of creativity. Guph faces enough peril and shows enough cunning to earn the reader’s sympathy, including undergoing needle-based torture by the Growleywogs. Even the ever-moralizing narration can’t quite dislike Guph: “This Guph was really a clever rascal, and it seems a pity he was so bad, for in a good cause he might have accomplished much” (118).

The recruitment proceeds along gradations of power, with the Whimsies the weakest and, in their way, kindest of the “evil powers” and the Phanfasms by far the most strong and wicked. Guph wins the Whimsies and Growleywogs over by offering them slaves, jewels, and other physical results of conquest, for “[p]eople often do a good deed without hope of reward, but for an evil deed they always demand payment” (63). (The Whimsies do not actually seem particularly evil, being hospitable to Guph and disinterested in hurting Ozma.) But the Phanfasms, living for centuries in isolation on the feared mountain Phantastico, are already more rich and powerful than Ozma. Terrified to meet the Phanfasms after evading the mountain guardian, Guph is rapidly captured and dragged to a series of crude stone huts. Guph’s meeting with and attempts to bluff the Phanfasm leader, the First and Foremost, is riveting dark fantasy:

With all his knowledge and bravery General Guph did not know that the steady glare from the bear eyes [of the First and Foremost] was reading his inmost thoughts as surely as if they had been put into words. He did not know that these despised rock heaps of the Phanfasms were merely deceptions to his own eyes, nor could he guess that he was standing in the midst of one of the most splendid and luxurious cities ever built by magic power. All that he saw was a barren waste of rock heaps, a hairy man with an owl’s head and another with a bear’s head. The sorcery of the Phanfasms permitted him to see no more (120).

Before the swarming, shapeshifting Phanfasms kill him (the First and Foremost changes shape and gender), Guph is able to persuade them to assist the Nomes by offering the one thing they lack: “the exquisite joy of making the happy unhappy” (125). The Phanfasms, who would have destroyed Oz long ago if the Deadly Desert did not block them, release Guph. Here it is clear that Guph has made a disastrous mistake, awakening an ancient evil that will doom the world. “We will use King Roquat’s tunnel to conquer the Land of Oz,” says the First and Foremost. “Then we will destroy the Whimsies, the Growleywogs and the Nomes, and afterward go out to ravage and annoy and grieve the whole world” (126). In a JRPG, after the player beats the Nome King, the real final boss would be the First and Foremost. He even changes his shape, allowing for multiple phases.

The Phanfasms are not alone in their treachery. Each of the four countries of the alliance—Nomes, Whimsies, Growleywogs, and Phanfasms—are completely self-interested, smugly certain of their own power, and plotting to betray the others once they have razed Oz and taken their slaves (the Growleywogs talk ahead of time about which of them will get Tiktok as a slave, which the Scarecrow, etc.). Guph himself schemes to overthrow the Nome King after the conquest (86). Contrasted with the legions, the Nome King seems almost tender in wanting none of “those dreadful creatures” to kill or enslave Ozma and Dorothy because he wants them to be his own slaves, transformed into “china ornaments” he will be sure his maids dust carefully (146).

Above: conflict between Whimsie and Nome.

A stark contrast to the childlike goofs and general niceness of Dorothy’s ramblings in Oz with which they are juxtaposed, the Nome chapters feature robust dark fantasy. It is clear Baum was at his best when not writing about Oz, which he had reinterpreted by this point as a utopia on par with Heaven.

Dorothy Plot

The impending assault on Oz parallels the impending loss of Dorothy’s own home in Kansas. Befitting a grand finale, the heavier tone and higher stakes continue on in the Dorothy plot as well—at least, at first.

The second chapter begins this main plot and elaborates on the poverty of Dorothy’s family. Baum has previously been unclear about the Gales’ economic situation. (I am not sure whether Aunt Em and Uncle Henry are surnamed Gale, but let’s assume so for that sentence.) The description of their lives in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz suggests an austere, miserable existence of impoverished drudgery. The family lives in a shack with “four walls, a floor and a roof, which made one room” (11) in the midst of a bleak, colorless prairie that has drained all happiness from Aunt Em until laughter shocks her, and Uncle Henry “worked hard from morning till night and did not know what joy was” (13). Their life is so lonely and hard that the moral “There’s no place like home” seems absurdly misplaced. However, the subsequent novels depict Dorothy traveling to Australia and California with her uncle. (I would bet money there is a reference to Henry having hired field laborers somewhere, but I can no longer figure out where it is, or in which book.) This suggests they might not be so poor after all, especially if they can afford this after losing their entire house to a cyclone.

In The Emerald City, Baum retcons the previous events. Instead of traveling to Australia for fun to meet relatives, Henry went there on doctor’s orders after his health began failing, and the trip put severe economic strain on the family. The destruction of their old shack in The Wonderful Wizard has left the family hopelessly in debt. Henry is too sick to continue working the fields, which yielded too little to support them to begin with, and the bank is going to foreclose on the new house Henry himself built. It is just sad: “When the banker told Uncle Henry that he must pay the money in thirty days or leave the farm, the poor man was in despair, as he knew he could not possibly get the money. So he told his wife, Aunt Em, of his trouble, and she first cried a little and then said that they must be brave and do the best they could, and go away somewhere and try to earn an honest living. But they were getting old and feeble and she feared that they could not take care of Dorothy as well as they had formerly done. Probably the little girl would also be obliged to go to work” (23–24).

So far, Henry and Em have hidden their desperate situation from their orphan niece, explaining why she never took some gold or emeralds with her from Oz, where precious metals and gemstones are so abundant that everyone has them. When Henry and Em admit what is going on, Dorothy immediately decides they should move to Oz. Certainly, they wouldn’t have these troubles there. This time around, Baum elaborates that the Ozite economy is a successful communist dictatorship (in the normal sense of “dictatorship” instead of the weird specialized sense Marxists love to use), with no money, no bosses or overseers, purely voluntary labor, and an abundance of food and material goods freely given by all to all. Ozma has effectively abolished private property because everything in Oz is legally her personal property (30), and she lets all people enjoy it without limitation. In the first two novels, Oz is an unjust, unstable country full of slavery, death, and the consistent use of money. A novel depicting how, exactly, Ozma went about changing these conditions would be fascinating and an enormously better use of time than The Road to Oz and, for that matter, The Emerald City of Oz. Someone get on that (these are all public domain).

Communism via all property being one person’s private property is ironic indeed. That must be what people call dialectics. But this would spell catastrophe if a wicked, Nome King-like ruler inherited the throne, as the characters even claim happened once. This is the issue with a monarchy: even if you have the one in a billion genuinely benevolent dictator, they will die, and some rather worse guy will come in next. But that will not be an issue here since, for some reason, Ozma seems to be stuck as a little girl. If they do not age, I have no idea how there were ever other rulers of Oz short of assassinations, but there is no way Ozma’s parents could have, well, sired and given birth to her if they were still children themselves. And clearly Ozma has aged since she is not an infant. Even within the whitewashing retcons from Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, Mombi still keeps Ozma’s family prisoner for multiple generations, indicating aging and death. Just don’t think about it! Baum didn’t. (There is a non-Baum Oz novel called Paradox in Oz about this very subject!)

While Return to Oz depicts Henry and Em concerned for Dorothy’s mental health, in The Emerald City they not mind Dorothy’s fantastical stories whatsoever, though they do not believe they are real. Henry and Em are also strangely chill about their niece frequently vanishing for weeks at a time, leading at least twice now to them going into mourning believing she is dead, but let’s ignore that. Dorothy performs her special hand signal, and Ozma, seeing Dorothy in the Magic Picture, warps her from her bedroom in Kansas back to the Emerald City. There, Dorothy tells Ozma she wants to move to Oz with her aunt and uncle. The next day, Ozma warps them to Oz without any warning. Luckily, neither of them were, say, in the middle of changing clothes or using the toilet. Though at first overwhelmed, embarrassed, and terrified, Henry and Em soon accept their new situation.

Unfortunately, the initial drama of the Dorothy plot, and the suspense of the Nome plot too, evaporates for interminable filler that comprises most of the book. Ozma sends Dorothy, Henry, Em, Toto, Billina, the Shaggy Man (now capitalized), the Wizard, and Omby Amby (the head of the non-existent Ozite military, a character I have not mentioned in these posts) on a tour of Oz. A reader might expect that, for the conclusion, this will serve as a method for Baum to revisit past locations and characters for some reflection, perhaps glimpsing Ozma’s hometown, say, or returning to the ruin of the farmhouse blown to Oz in the cyclone. Instead, with the exception of the Woggle-Bug’s athletic college, the characters only stop by places never before mentioned.

Initially, the chapters alternate between Dorothy’s and Guph’s travelogues, the former hollow hijinx and the latter suspenseful and violent exploration of new aspects of the Oz world. The book’s pacing suffers dramatically when Guph finishes his travels, not reappearing until the finale. Baum dedicates about a third of the text to golly-gee-whiz comedy and pastoral rambling with no suspense or drama, much like most of The Road to Oz. The material is especially insipid compared to the Nome plot and the serious real-world topics explored early on. Cutting directly from the treacherous Phanfasms becoming “a pack of howling wolves” encircling the conniving and alarmed Guph in their illusion-city (124) to Dorothy and her boring, vapid pals in an idyllic woods meeting a random talking kangaroo crying over mittens (130) is so jarring it almost feels like a joke. (The kangaroo plot is resolved when Dorothy and her friends assemble an old woman from jigsaw puzzle-like pieces to knit new mittens. I think there is no subsequent mention of this kangaroo episode.)

In this large filler section, chapters fifteen to twenty-three are a particularly Alice in Wonderland-style sequence. The tourists get lost and set up a camp. In the morning, Dorothy, Toto, and Billina wander off into the thick (Gillikan Country?) forest and discover a militant city-state of living kitchenware whose people have never heard of Ozma. Later in this tidal wave of puns, they find a town of sapient baked goods, where the brainless, perpetually destructive Toto eats several people (!) and gets Dorothy, himself, and Billina driven out of the city by an angry mob—which is, granted, surprisingly dark.

An earlier chapter involves the town of the Cuttenclips, living paper doll people whom Glinda’s magic protects from weather but not the Shaggy Man’s sneezes. Later, Dorothy discovers Bunnybury, a city with a high wall that Glinda also created. Bunnybury and these three cities of conscious inanimate objects seem like a callback to the “china country” in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, a walled city-state in Quadling Country whose inhabitants and buildings are all made from porcelain. Perhaps the utensil town and baked good town each once had its own local sorceress, like Miss Cuttenclip in the paper doll town, but over time they lost their founders?

The only part of these filler chapters of clear thematic significance to the rest of the story is Dorothy’s visit with the King of Bunnybury. He is actually elected to this position, unlike the hereditary monarchy that usually obsesses Baum. Glinda has created a walled city for the rabbits to inhabit, freeing them from the food chain and the wilderness for luxury, security, and “civilization” in the form of clothes, houses, balls, music, and other human customs. The King rabbit spends his days weeping and longing for his old life, as he explains to Dorothy over their luncheon:

“Rabbits are out of place in such luxury. When I was young I lived in a burrow in the forest. I was surrounded by enemies and often had to run for my life. It was hard getting enough to eat, at times, and when I found a bunch of clover I had to listen and look for danger while I ate it. Wolves prowled around the hole in which I lived and sometimes I didn’t dare stir out for days at a time. Oh, how happy and contended I was then! I was a real rabbit, as nature made me—wild and free!—and I even enjoyed listened to the startled throbbing of my own heart!”

“I’ve often thought,” said Dorothy, who was busily eating, “that it would be fun to be a rabbit.”

“It is fun—when you’re the genuine article,” agreed his Majesty. “But look at me now! I live in a marble palace instead of a hole in the ground. Every day I must dress in fine clothes and wear that horrible crown till it makes my head ache. Rabbits come to me with all sorts of troubles, when my own troubles are the only ones I care about. When I walk out I can’t hop and run; I must strut on my rear legs and wear an ermine robe! And the soldiers salute me and the band plays and the other rabbits laugh and clap their paws and cry out: ‘Hail to the King!’ Now let me ask you, as a friend and a young lady of good judgment: isn’t all this pomp and foolishness enough to make a decent rabbit miserable?” (210–211)

During Dorothy’s stay with the King of Bunnybury, she promises she will ask Glinda to return the King to the wild. But the King asks Dorothy to petition Glinda to allow him to keep his jugglers and assorted other amusements until, in the end, he realizes he wants to remain in Bunnybury, promising not to be sad anymore. “If you won’t say anything to Glinda I’ll promise to be merry and gay all the time, and never cry or wail again.” He deems his previous thoughts “foolishness” and swears “on the royal word of a King” to “enjoy [himself] and do [his] duty by [his] subjects” (224).

Ozma has a rather pushy streak in The Emerald City. She refuses, for instance, to allow Dorothy to renounce her royal title (36) because she adores Dorothy so much she never wants to be away from her (gaaaay + they kiss several times). She forces Henry and Em to dress in clothes they find uncomfortable. “Uncle Henry and Aunt Em had some trouble in getting used to the finery and pomp and ceremony of Ozma’s palace, and felt uneasy because they were obliged to be ‘dressed up’ all the time” (87). Aunt Em jokes, “[W]e’re helpless victims of high-toned royalty.” The narration states, “Dorothy was much amused” (69).

Above: Em looks miserable in Munchkin clothing in this chapter heading illustration.

Ozma is rather cruelly dismissive of Henry and Em’s life in the US, as well: “The old life can have very little interest to them, and the sooner they begin the new life here the happier they will be” (54). I am not sure what happens to all of the Gale family’s chickens or to Dorothy’s pet cat, Eureka. Presumably, they are all just abandoned to die in the bleak Kansas prairie because Baum forgot them or because Eureka, as we see in Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, is too much of a real animal to live in Oz. (Baum remembers Eureka in The Patchwork Girl of Oz and adds that Dorothy brought her along too. I guess he forgets the latter chapters of Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz. Perhaps the family had already stopped keeping chickens for some reason.)

Above: Henry and Em appearing in the Emerald Palace.

With barely any adjustment, this is a horror scene: Henry and Em vanish from their home and reappear in a dazzling throne room containing a huge lion and tiger. They behold their missing niece, now dressed up in elegant green as though assimilated into the place, says to them, “You are now in the Land of Oz, where you are to live always, and be comfer’ble an’ happy. You’ll never have to worry over anything again, ’cause there won’t be anything to worry about. And you owe it all to the kindness of my friend Princess Ozma” (55). And they recall their niece has told them of the nightmares and monsters that have faced her in this fairy land, from the various witches to the hideous cannibal Scoodlers to the vicious invisible bears who leave body parts strewn over their meadows. They are at the mercy of the capricious, inhuman Ozma now.

Or not. This is not a kidnapping, really. Henry and Em are happy to escape capitalism forever, and the people of Oz genuinely show them nothing but kindness. Baum definitely intends the change to only be positive:

It was a rare treat to these simple folk, who had lived in the country all their lives and known little enjoyment of any sort, to wear beautiful clothes and live in a palace and be treated with respect and consideration by all around them. They were very happy indeed as they strolled up the shady walks and looked upon the gorgeous flowers and shrubs, feeling that their new home was more beautiful than any tongue could describe (73–74).

The King of Bunnybury’s situation mirrors that of Henry and Em. He begins leading a harsh, more real-world life only for a sorceress (Glinda, in his case) to, without his consent, remove him into a magical paradise where he has to behave and dress in accordance with idealized nobility inside a luxurious palace where various similarly costumed subordinates put on performances for him all day and servants satisfy his every need. While Ozma concedes to find some light work for Henry and Em to do because they desire not to live idly, she refuses to allow them to have a farm in Oz. “You’d be a reg’lar lunatic to want to leave Bunnybury for a wild life in the forest, and I’m sure any rabbit outside the city would be glad to take your place” (224). This rebuke to the rabbit King applies, with a few changes, to Henry and Em: You’d be a lunatic to want to leave Oz for the brutal capitalism of the US, and I’m sure any other American would be glad to take your place.

Above: Uncle Henry in Munchkin clothing. What is he pointing at?

The End of Oz?

These two plotlines merge once, after Baum uses the Rigmaroles to make fun of bloviators and the Flutterbudgets to make fun of neurotic people, Dorothy’s caravan reaches the Tin Woodman’s gleaming palace in the Country of the Winkies. There, the reader is finally spared from filler. The Tin Woodman has heard from Ozma. She learned of the Nome King’s impending invasion from the Magic Picture, which lets her see anyone she wants anywhere in the world at any time. Dorothy and her friends are somewhat perturbed to learn they’re all about to die, or worse.

“When our enemies break through this crust they will be in the gardens of the royal palace, in the heart of the Emerald City. I offered to arm my Winkies and march to Ozma’s assistance; but she said no.”

“I wonder why?” asked Dorothy.

“She answered that the inhabitants of Oz, gathered together, were not powerful enough to fight and overcome the evil forces of the Nome King. Therefore she refuses to fight at all.”

“But they will capture and enslave us, and plunder and ruin all our lovely land!” exclaimed the Wizard, greatly disturbed by this statement.

“I fear they will,” said the Tin Woodman, sorrowfully. “And I also fear that those who are not fairies, such as the Wizard, and Dorothy, and her uncle and aunt, as well as Toto and Billina, will be speedily put to death by the conquerors.”

“What can be done?” asked Dorothy, shuddering a little at the prospect of this awful fate.

“Nothing can be done!” gloomily replied the Emperor of the Winkies. “But since Ozma refuses my army I will go myself to the Emerald City. The least I may do is to perish beside my beloved Ruler” (253–254).

After the party visits the Scarecrow at his new apartment, a building shaped like an ear of corn, they return to the Emerald City to die alongside Ozma. Dejection prevails.

Opening the novel is an ominous illustration of the Tin Woodman and the Scarecrow embracing while weeping sadly. The Tin Woodman holds a flag reading “Farewell,” implying that not only is this the end of the series but that the end will be disastrous. Although I think Baum largely fails to realize these characters’ respective alleged compassion and intellect, seeing them in this condition still legitimately moved me a little.

Above: Ozma has a telephone because Oz has electricity.

The Scarecrow counsels everyone to remain happy until the very end, for there is no reason to spoil the brief time they have left before the “country is despoiled and our people made slaves” (259). Since her behavior has become increasingly inhuman and difficult for a reader to sympathize with, Ozma herself does not worry about the Nome King the tiniest bit (263), somewhat undercutting the drama. Even after the others express their alarm, only after dinner does Ozma begin discussing whether she should do something about the impending invasion. Rejecting Omby Amby and the Scarecrow’s urging, Ozma still steadfastly refuses to fight. The explanation is no longer that Oz is too weak but that killing is unethical:

“No one has the right to destroy any living creatures, however evil they may be, or to hurt them or make them unhappy. I will not fight—even to save my kingdom.”

“The Nome King is not so particular,” remarked the Scarecrow. “He intends to destroy us all and ruin our beautiful country.”

“Because the Nome King intends to do evil is no excuse for my doing the same,” said Ozma (268).

This is a touching and admirable, if foolish, dedication to principle. Or it would be, but why is Ozma determined to save the murderous slavers when she was so eager to kill Dorothy’s pet cat a couple books ago? Is Ozma aware of how many Mangaboos her friend the Wizard personally killed? Does she realize the Wizard also might be responsible for complete genocide in the Gargoyle Country? And these merciful principles are easy for her to cling to with the Wicked Witches and the giant spider already dead and gone (save Mombi), so she could just waltz in and rule without having to worry about them. Maybe she’ll change her mind when a Phanfasm seizes her.

When Dorothy, always more practical, proposes Ozma use the Magic Belt to escape to Kansas (which hilariously the Shaggy Man calls a “country”), she refuses on sturdier moral grounds: “Never will I desert my people and leave them to so cruel a fate. I will use the Magic Belt to send the rest of you to Kansas, if you wish, but if my beloved country must be destroyed and my people enslaved I will remain and share their fate” (269). Dorothy does not want to flee either, also having responsibilities as a Princess of Oz, while Em declares she and Henry have spent her life slaves anyway and choose to stay as well. (Quite a way for Em to put it when she was probably alive during American chattel slavery!)

At risk of lingering too long on this scene, the characters’ innocence is touching and tragic. Ozma suggests if she is there to meet the Phanfasms, who have already literally, physically stolen the Nome King’s throne and demanded to lead the charge, she “will speak to them pleasantly and perhaps they won’t be so very bad, after all” (270). Jack Pumpkinhead suggests they just offer the invaders “a lot of emeralds and gold,” since nobody in Oz values jewels or precious metals highly because of their abundance there (268).

Given the enormous power of the Magic Belt, it seems confusing that Ozma is not using its power to warp as many Ozites as possible to someplace safe. While the lands immediately outside of Oz are clearly hostile, surely one of the various fairy countries shown in The Road to Oz would be welcoming to them—why not send all the people she can to Santa Claus? Because Baum forgot about that, and this is more dramatic.

Stranger is that nobody suggests Ozma use the Magic Belt (or her “fairy wand,” which the Nome King is also wary of) to simply instantly warp the invading warriors back to their homelands. In this case, the claim cannot be the Magic Belt simply does not have that power or that Baum forgot or ignores it: this idea is already present in the book. Guph (since the Nome King has lost his capacity for complex thought if he was ever more than a dunderhead) advises the Nome King use the Magic Belt to warp the treacherous Whimsies, Growleywogs, and Phanfasms back to their own countries before they turn on him (277). This again shows that Baum made the Magic Belt much too powerful—he only finds drama by ignoring it.

Above: Dorothy awake in bed, fearful of her imminent capture.

Instead, while the others grieve and Dorothy can’t sleep from fear, the Scarecrow, no longer just the smart one but “the wisest man in Oz,” devises a way to defeat the Nome King’s legions without the need to kill anyone. To this end, Ozma uses the Magic Belt to fill the Nomes’ tunnel with choking dust so that, in the morning, the evil powers all emerge desperately parched. By coincidence, they dug the tunnel so that they will enter the palace courtyard just beside the Forbidden Fountain, and when they see the water, they will rush to slake their thirst. Not mentioned prior to The Emerald City as far as I remember, the Forbidden Fountain is another of Glinda’s creations. It contains magic water that erases people’s memories. Those who drink this Water of Oblivion become “as ignorant as a baby” (271). Does it have some relationship to the Truth Pond? In the past, a wicked ruler of Oz drank from the fountain and then, having a chance to be reeducated from scratch, learned to be good. The Scarecrow hopes the same will happen if the invaders drink the Water of Oblivion. This idea of erasing someone’s identity is horrifying and despicable and perhaps more cruel and alarming than physical violence, but it is an intriguing fantasy that raises questions of nature versus nurture. (Baum comes down on the nature side, sadly, since he has the Nome King return to his evil ways in later books, but that is probably an unintentional side effect of continuing a series he had met to end.)

Dorothy and her friends and family watch the monsters pour out of the tunnel and drink greedily of the water. I recall a photo I have seen online of swarming centipedes drinking from a dish on a Chinese farm. The Phanfasms, then the Growleywogs, and then the Whimsies shove each other aside to reach the water, one after another, until “the great warriors [become] like little children” (283) and look on their surroundings with appreciation instead of hatred. Only the Nome King himself realizes the trick when even Guph doesn’t recognize him. “The sight of General Guph babbling like a happy child and playing with his hands in the cool waters of the fountain astonished and maddened Red Roquat” (284). Before the Nome King can command his Nome army to charge, the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman grab him and toss him into the water. When the Shaggy Man fishes the Nome King out, “he chatted and laughed and wanted to drink more of the water. No thought of injuring any person was now on his mind” (285). Ozma, though an actual child, speaks to the old Nome King like a parent, informs him of his name and that he rules the Nomes, and sends him and his army back into the tunnels to return to “the pretty cavern” of their home (286). Then Ozma uses the Magic Belt to send all the other formerly evil warriors back to their homelands.

You may be thinking this ending seems weird or wonder why I am skipping over some of the ideas in this novel. I am holding my tongue to address that in “The Politics of Oz.”

With the day saved, the characters express concern over how outsiders may imperil Oz again. Earlier in the novel, the Wizard mentions that with airships and airplanes, the Deadly Desert might no longer protect the country. “I hate those things, Dorothy,” the randomly luddite Wizard says, adding, “It wouldn’t do at all, you know, for the Emerald City to become a way-station on an airship line” (229–230). Why not? He even says he wants to contrive a magic spell that will prevent airship pilots from ever being able to reach their intended destinations—I should mention that, under Glinda’s tutelage, the Wizard has now learned real magic. The Wizard’s suspicion of outsiders arriving in airships seems like projection. Ozma also worries about airships, “for if the earth folk learn how to manage them we would be overrun with visitors who would ruin our lovely, secluded fairyland” (290). To prevent this, Glinda casts a spell that hides Oz from the rest of the world, such that it appears to just be more of the Deadly Desert. As for the Nomes’ tunnel, Ozma seals it with the power of the Magic Belt. This nightmarish isolationism, especially given how open Oz was to visitors in the last book, is another odd choice.

And of course Glinda did it. Glinda has shifted from a friendly leader of her own country with some shady connections to instead be God, except as your mom instead of your dad. Her magic resolves every issue. So far, one way or another, she pops up out of nowhere to fix every problem in every installment as of The Patchwork Girl of Oz with the sole exception of Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz. The book of information Glinda attained from her spies in The Marvelous Land of Oz, creating a more colorful and fun setting, is now a magic book in which every event in the world is documented as it happens (292). Baum has made Glinda omniscient and, through the vagueness but incredible power of her magic, omnipotent.

Above: Neill even gives Glinda a halo! To which the devilish Nome King is lashed, too.

This enchanted severance from the rest of the world has disturbing implications. Will life really be good if nobody ages, for eternity, totally isolated from all art and cultural developments everywhere else on Earth? If Oz is a land of tolerance, how can they implicitly reject all outsiders, especially after most outsiders (Dorothy, Tiktok, Billina, the Wizard, and all the dozens of guests in The Road to Oz) are so beloved? Is Oz actually good to deny everyone else in the world their immense material wealth and magic? That sounds a bit like the issue in Black Panther. Later books establish that, within Oz, it becomes impossible to see anything beyond the country, so everyone there is just trapped forever under the totalitarian surveillance state of Ozma (which Baum establishes, in The Patchwork Girl of Oz, even bans and burns certain books).

But the real purpose of Oz’s magical isolationism is to unshackle the author from writing this stuff. L. Frank Baum incorporates himself as a character within the fiction. He is the Royal Historian of Oz who has, apparently, been creating these books because someone from Oz has informed him of what goes on there. But in the last chapter, titled “How the Story of Oz Came to an End,” he receives a note written on a stork feather:

“You will never hear anything more about Oz, because we are now cut off forever from all the rest of the world. But Toto and I will always love you and all the other children who love us. “Dorothy Gale” (295).

Then Baum says we have had plenty of Oz anyway (he is so burnt out) and wishes Dorothy luck. Neill closes the series with Dorothy, holding (HER GIRLFRIEND) Ozma’s hand, waving a handkerchief goodbye under the words THE END. Behind them, the Wonderful Wizard sits under a tree, reminding readers of where the series began. A touching goodbye from our friend Dorothy, safe with her family in an otherworld paradise. So The Emerald City of Oz turns out a farewell after all, but a happy one.

This is a disappointing finale. The last-minute introduction of a new magical idea that solves every problem is hugely underwhelming (though typical for Glinda, a plot contrivance more than a character). Worse, our main character Dorothy has nothing to do with how the Nome King is defeated. While I dislike that in Ozma of Oz Billina outwits the Nome King on her own with no input from anyone else, at least there Dorothy does participate in his game and wins. In The Emerald City, Dorothy and most of the other characters are totally extraneous. A much more satisfying conclusion might have all the characters play a small role in defeating the Nome King using their unique talents, perhaps in a sort of Rube Goldberg machine magic spell, or just have them cooperate to deceive the foolish, greedy Nome King by using the villains’ character flaws against them. Imagine the wily Wizard running a con that tricks the Nome King!

One also wonders why Glinda is not involved in the main conflict, only popping up afterward to say she already knows everything. In The Marvelous Land of Oz, Glinda shows herself entirely willing to kill people and commands a large army. Ozma is a figurehead—Glinda is the real power defending Oz, doing all the dirty work while the little girl make-believes she is a ruler. In The Emerald City, Baum even writes in a plot hole by giving Glinda the Magic Book that surely informs her of the Nome King’s scheme, information she apparently ignores. If Glinda arrived in the Emerald City, there could even, for the first time ever, be an interesting conflict between her and Ozma’s ideas of goodness and right and wrong, certainly a better use of pages and a more resonant, meaningful conclusion than the tiring jokes that comprise most of the book.

Look how muddled and vague the colors are in the above picture. It looks like that on the page too.

What actually happens instead is that the Ozite characters all gather around in the twilit courtyard to idly watch the invaders. Worse than the above criticism is that the Dorothy plot basically has nothing to do with the Nome plot. What purpose does the tour of Oz or Henry and Em settling in serve in relation to the Nome King’s invasion? The cruelty of the fairy lands outside Oz parallels the cruelty of the “real world” even farther away, but this thread is too tenuous to form a strong metaphor.

Final Considerations

The Emerald City is a good point to end the Oz series. Baum had clearly lost his touch and enthusiasm. The series has declined in quality since the third book, the fifth and sixth especially underwhelming. He has stripped out all space for drama or conflict in Oz, removing the magic, perilous beasts, possibility of the slightest moral gray, and even the existence of unfriendliness. Any past tension he just decides to ignore. Even the point of the original novel seems lost on its author, who decides the morally ambiguous Wizard must be a real Wizard and that the Emerald City, whose emerald color in the original novel is another memorable deception, is actually emerald now. What remains of Oz is a saccharine blob forever locked inside itself. That the segments with Guph outside of Oz are so much more dramatic, fun, and interesting than those within makes clear Baum’s excitement to write about other places. We are lucky he went on to spend his later career doing just that.

I’m kidding, kidding! Baum would never escape Oz. Turns out Oz was cut off for less than forever.

In 1910, Baum had been writing an Oz novel a year for three years. In 1911, to escape burnout, he tried to start a new series, also illustrated by Neill, about a California girl named Trot Griffiths. But Trot’s debut, The Sea Fairies, and its explicitly Oz-related sequel, Sky Island, did not perform as well as Baum hoped. (No wonder Sky Island underperformed if Baum thought what readers wanted more of from Oz was Button Bright of all people.)

Above: An AWESOME Art Nouveau illustration from The Sea Fairies.

Then Baum (wouldn’t you know it) managed to get in touch with Dorothy Gale using a wireless telegraph, resuming the series in 1913 with Little Wizard Stories and The Patchwork Girl of Oz. Baum wrote “quaint,” “queer,” “strange” Oz stories for the rest of his life, also running an unsuccessful Oz movie studio from 1914 to 1915. At least Baum seems to have utilized his ideas for Trot’s future adventures in his Oz books, in which Trot becomes a regular character.

Even Baum’s death did not end the series but simply passed on the torch to other royal historians, beginning with Ruth Plumly Thompson, a reportedly less inspired writer (whose first Oz book has a helping of racism and who notably has Ozma decide to just kill people), and then to more by others until there were at least forty novels. John R. Neill also wrote four of his own Oz books about an abrasive New Jersey girl named Jenny Jump. The series did not stop there! As the novels’ copyrights keep expiring, other authors have collectively written dozens of takes on Oz in various genres, including some questionable and unusual reinterpretations (I think there’s one where the Shaggy Man is a pedophile) and some more intriguing revisionism and sequels. Wicked by Gregory Maguire is probably the most famous of these, reimagining the Wicked Witch of the West as a terrorist battling the oppressive Oz state. And a large portion of the world met Oz not through the Oz series but through Alexander Volkov’s Magic Land novels. First published in Russian in the Soviet Union, Magic Land features a Kansas girl named Ellie Smith, rather than Dorothy Gale, and a series of adventures to save the Emerald City. One of these involves an alien invasion. This Russian-language series has also been continued by various other authors. The American Oz series still lives, too: as far as I know, the newest Oz novel is Shadows Over Oz, published in 2022 and written by David M. Keyes with illustrations by Jackson Smith. The next installment of this darker and edgier continuation, Prisoners of Oz, is slated for release in 2024. I cannot vouch for their quality.

Will I write posts about these dozens and dozens of Oz books? No. No, I will not. However, I will write one more of these Oz posts about the seventh Oz novel, the unexpected continuation The Patchwork Girl of Oz. In that one, Baum might have just got his spark back, with Oz not so tamed as the Glinda-minded might hope. You can read my post about that one on my website or just here on Tumblr.

But this isn’t the end of my commentary! Please check out “The Politics of Oz” as well. A preview of it is here on Tumblr, if that would be easier for you to share. Unlike this mess, it’s a proper essay.

By the way, if you enjoy what I do, it isn’t too late do give me a one-time donation on Ko-Fi.

#oz #emerald city of oz #baum #wizard of oz #nome king

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littleladymab · 3 months

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heads up 7 up tag!

I got tagged by @morriguscrawls this morning to post 7 lines, and great news I'm actually writing again (I FINISHED MY OUTLINE!!!) so I can actually do this!!

(Someone else tagged me in a last-line written which I saw cross my dash but it's not in my notifs so I... cannot remember who it is i'm so sorry but this also counts for that)

PS: uhhHHH if you see this you're tagged? Feel free to do it? I don't know who to tag I don't have a working list 😰

++++

ok bored outta my mind so i’m gonna just chat here while y’all godda do worky things

I still really have no idea how he’s friends with Catoir so it just extra pisses me off that Catoir refuses to tell me anything.

Our own personal texts have been silent since our not-argument after Highgate, but I don’t know how to change the topic or be polite about literally anything else after he snubbed me like that.

Another text flits in from Jonas as I sit there glaring at the screen, just as droll as the others before it (how bout it darling you can get like green hair or summit and then we’ll all stand out).

I have to scroll back to see that the ‘darling’ in question is Catoir (making sure he wasn’t talking about me) and in doing so found that his other suggestion was just shaving all my hair off and then he could make me increasingly elaborate wigs.

“Woah, you alright there?” Jordan returns with my latte, genuine concern over his face as I make the mighty and difficult choice to not hurl my phone through the cafe’s window. “The professor didn’t respond back with a huge fat failure before we even started, did he?”

#this is a joke because in the OG version of catoir he had pale green hair #he was anime as fuck #Ayn (bright red hair) and Jonas (dyed purple) kept their original looks #a lil miss original #tag game #lil miss writings #sine die #oh I'm just really going to have to start considering how to do tagging for writeblr things now huh LOL

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anhed-nia · 3 years

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BLOGTOBER 10/13/2021: TITANE

This year I feel like I've started way more posts than usual with a disclaimer about my not feeling totally qualified to discuss the movie I assigned myself...and in general, I think this is a good sign that I am challenging myself (even if I should maybe learn to be less apologetic). Today I find myself back in that boat, not because of any established analysis of the film, but because Julia Ducournaus' sophomore solo effort (WTF girl?!) TITANE practically demands to be interpreted in terms of trans identity, and a cis het lady like myself may not be the ideal person to hear from about this. I'm going to do my best! But, I welcome any comments or suggestions pointing to other, more learned discussions of this great movie, which I am about to describe in detail. If you can, see it first, without any knowledge of its many shocking delights.

*I am using the pronoun "she" for Alexia/Adrien for various reasons. The character never insists on an alternative, and I don't wish to complicate things with my own projections. But, I do want to say before I begin that I am well aware of how awkward this becomes, and I'm curious about how other writers will choose to manage this.

I can't shake the subconscious assumption that the title is actually TITAN, matching the movie's power and grandiosity, but TITANE refers to the titanium plate in the protagonist's noggin, necessitated by a childhood car crash. As an adult, Alexia (Agathe Rouselle in her feature film debut—another WTF?!) is an exotic dancer who we find grinding athletically on a Cadillac at a motor show. Said Cadillac is, to put it delicately, Alexia's boyfriend. Alexia is also a serial killer, which we discover as soon as other humans start coming onto her, whose work has reached the dimensions of a public crisis. To escape capture, she changes her appearance into that of a cadaverous androgyne, and adopts the identity of a long-missing boy, Adrien. Adrien's father, firefighter Vincent (the exceptional Vincent Lindon), is so lonely that he willfully ignores signs that Alexia is not Adrien, and together the two tortured souls find redemption in their perverse relationship. Selective ignorance can't last long, though, as Alexia has become pregnant by the Cadillac.

Bodily identity is out front and center in TITANE, in such a bold and complex manner that I'm sure people will be analyzing it for years to come. Alexia's childhood head injury may be to blame for her inhumanity, but the plate in her skull makes her more than human, capable of reproduction with mechanical objects. As Adrien, her pregnancy complicates her ability to present as male, making the binding process even more painful and difficult than it can be in the best of circumstances; but, at least it helps protect her clothing against the motor oil she can't stop secreting. Vincent knows in his gut that Alexia cannot really be Adrien—he even has a hallucination suggesting the realization that his son is long gone—but he encourages her to play along, offering her love and protection, training her to save lives as a firefighter rather than take them as a killer, and teaching her to shave her face to cultivate a more masculine presentation. Vincent himself is struggling with his body's rebellion against his self-concept, age slowly getting the better of him despite a steady regimen of steroids, so maybe it's not so strange for him to try to make a strapping young man out of Alexia.

Vincent Lindon's tremendous performance, and Julia Ducournau's compassionate examination of his body, manage to stand up to Agathe Rousselle's flashy, chameleonic charisma.

Early in TITANE, Alexia's hair gets tangled in a nipple piercing on another dancer, Justine, causing a cringe-inducing injury reminiscent of the bikini waxing scene in RAW. (Notably, Justine is RAW's Garance Marilliere) When I saw this, I thought, ah yes, of course, this will be all about the masochistic nature of female-ness, it's true, we are in a constant state of ripping out hair, scraping ourselves with blades, burning our skin with acid, et al ad nauseum, all so we can compete for the ostensible privilege of being crudely penetrated by some primate, only to wait with bated breath for the moment that our entrails agonizingly wring themselves out like an old rag... But actually, my thinking was too primitive for what TITANE was getting at. The film isn't out to confirm any heteronormative notions of essentialism, nor does it stick to a linear motion of trans-ness (from the false anatomical sex to the felt, singularly correct one); Alexia is capable of becoming Adrien, but that does not invalidate her feminine aspect, as we realize when she confronts Vincent with her biological situation. Something of a cyborg, Alexia is not so much transgender as she is transhuman, her "true self" rooted in the titanium plate rather than between her legs or in her thoughts. Her sexuality is totally separate from the male-female spectrum, aimed only at union with industrial objects: the Cadillac, a firetruck, even Justine's nipple rings, the only part of Justine that Alexia pays any attention to in their fatal tryst. And most importantly, Alexia's sexual behavior is not a perversion or a fetish, nor a trauma-induced neurosis, but a legitimate biological directive, apparently natural and fully functional. It brings about a new form of life.

I'm sure some readers will find my engagement with TITANE more than a little clumsy, but I find this general interpretation to be almost mandated by the movie. 24 hours was just not enough time for me to come up with a commentary that was more "in my lane", and I don't want to hold my breath waiting for alternative inspiration. There is certainly something to be said about human union with the artificial (an increasingly real situation in the digital age)—or, the growth of the artificial into something like a natural ecosystem—but my thoughts on that are more of a stretch at present, so I didn't "go there". I'm sure we'll all have many years' worth of opinions on TITANE to sort through in the future, as it is just that provocative. As for Julia Ducournau, I'm dying to know what she'll do next, having reached this level in the space of two theatrically-released features. I don't know how you follow this act. I wouldn't blame her if she just retired.

#titane #julia ducournau #agathe rousselle #garance marillier #vincent lindon #body horror #art house #queer cinema #cyberpunk #blogtober

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ciarawritesmarvel · 3 years

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four sunrises (+ the one you missed) - bucky x reader

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x GN!Reader

Word Count: 5k

Warnings: Canon-typical descriptions of Bucky’s past (mentions of violence, trauma, therapy), Endgame is discussed and the grief that comes with it, all with a fluffier ending

A/N: Hello loves! It’s been a long, long time. I’m by no means ‘back’, whatever that would mean, because I don’t know if this is a one off bout of inspiration or if it will stay with me. Fingers crossed. Regardless, I’m sending each and every one of you so much love and light and happiness. I hope you enjoy this little one shot with little pockets of fluff throughout <3

---

one

There was so much fire, it was a wonder you even noticed the sunrise. But still, your eyes were drawn past the death and the destruction and the wasteland laid bare before you and to the large semi-circular portion of the sun just peeking above the horizon. The new light signalled the start of a new day, a new era maybe, but there was little hope that came with it for now. Not with the wrecked sobs carrying through the air and to your ears from Tony’s body just a few hundred yards away. Not with people combing the battlefield for friends they can’t find. Friends they won’t find.

You keep your eyes on the rising sun and bite the inside of your cheek just enough to hurt a little.

“Hey.”

The voice is soft, hardly meant to be heard above the crying and the shouting and the crackling fires that surrounded you. Still, when you looked to your left at the sound, you found Bucky Barnes stood a little behind you, bruised and solemn. You looked back to the sun. You’d already had to deal with Steve and Thor and Bruce (new, hybrid Bruce) staring at you like you were some sort of ghost when you had ended up side by side at different points in the battle. You weren’t sure you could stand it anymore.

Then again, you had no idea whether Bucky had even been here. Had he been gone? Last you saw him, he was running ahead of you and into the fray in the heat of Wakanda. You’d lost him, lost everyone, once Thanos arrived and hurled you into the trees like you were nothing. And then, all of a sudden, you were nothing.

“Hi Bucky. You okay?” it was reflex, but you winced as soon as you said it because of course he wasn’t okay. Nothing was okay. You looked back at him, seeing he had now stepped up beside you properly, “Sorry, stupid question. It’s good to see you, though.”

“And you,” he said sincerely, glancing between you and the horizon, “I’m glad you’re okay. Well, not okay, but-”

“I get it, Buck, don’t worry,” you said, just a small smile on your lips. He returned it. There wasn’t any light in his eyes, but yours were likely dim too. You were trying your best.

“Were you-” he began speaking, but stopped quickly, his eyes now trained on the sunrise instead. He couldn’t look at you, “I mean, were you...here? Or did you…”

He trailed off. It wasn’t as if he needed to continue anyway. He was asking you whether or not you had watched yourself turn to dust a few hours ago and then been woken up by a sorcerer who told you that it had actually happened five years ago. If he was asking, then it meant he’d been gone too. You hadn’t spoken to any of the others who’d been gone yet.

“No, I haven’t been here. You were gone too?”

You saw his body sag beside you in what looked like relief. You supposed perhaps there was a fear that you had been here the whole time and were still unbothered seeing him beside you. Maybe you should have hugged him by now.

“Yeah, I was...gone.”

He still hadn’t turned back to you yet. You threaded your arm through his and shuffled a little closer, a flare of pain shooting through your ankle that you’d forgotten about for an hour or so now. Even so, it was worth it just for a little contact with another human being. Bucky tensed underneath you, but you felt him ease up soon enough. You’d visited Wakanda a few times during his time there so you considered him a friend, whether or not the sentiment was returned.

“I don’t know what to say,” you mumbled, hoping he’d hear you anyway. The sun was well over halfway above the horizon now, looking huge and predatory as it took up its position in the rapidly brightening sky, “Not just to you, either, but to anyone. They’ve been living this whole time and we’ve just been dropped back into their lives again. Now Nat’s gone and Tony’s…”

You trailed off, lump firmly lodged in your throat. There was an unspoken question in your rambling: Where do we go from here?

“You don’t have to say it,” he said gravely, “I don’t know either.”

You looked over your shoulder, just briefly, just because you couldn’t stop yourself. You wished you hadn’t. Before you could look for too long, Bucky’s shoulder was nudging yours and you looked back up at his face. Dark eyes. An almost imperceptible shake of his head. You understood immediately. The sunrise was better for now.

When you turned back to it, Bucky’s shoulder was right next to your head, and you were so tired, so when your temple hit the leathery material of his jacket you decide to let yourself have this one. Again you feel the muscles tense, but a few seconds later they relax, and you try to do the same.

“Maybe we stick together, at least a little. Might help us get used to whatever world we’ve come back to?”

There was a pause. Then a little weight that felt a lot like he was resting his head on your own.

It was as close to a yes as you were going to get.

---

two

“If you don’t let me in, I’ll just use my key, you know. The knocking is a courtesy, Barnes!”

You were shouting a little louder than you wanted to in an apartment complex at six in the morning where the walls were thin and the tenants were cranky, but you’d been knocking on Bucky’s door for at least five minutes now and he still hadn’t let you in. He was definitely in there. Without a doubt.

This was proven not twenty seconds later when there was a few clicking locks and the door opened just a crack. There was a sliver of Bucky’s face in view, enough to notice that he hadn’t been shaving and his eyes looked more tired than you’d ever seen him. It was hard to keep the pity from flooding your features.

“What do you want, Y/N?”

“To let me in, genius, come on! I’ve got breakfast,” you shook the bag of takeout in his eyeline and watched his face fall. You tried not to take it to heart.

“Maybe some other time,” his voice was defeated and you were lucky that you saw the door slam coming before it happened. You stuck your foot out into the gap and winced when he shut the door right on your foot. His eyes widened, and so did the door as he backtracked, “Shit, I’m sorry, I didn’t-”

Ignoring him, you walked inside. He was still in the middle of apologising for your foot, but stopped short when he realised it was part of your tactic all along. Resigned to his fate, he sank down onto his couch while you busied yourself in the kitchen getting plates out for the breakfast.

“I tried bringing dinner last night, but you didn’t answer,” you said nonchalantly, whether he was listening or not, “Thought I might try and get you early morning and see what your temperament was like then.”

“I’m sorry.”

It was empty, but you didn’t mind so much. He might not have been sorry for his behaviour now, but you knew he would be eventually, when he pieced himself together a little. That was enough to keep you around, along with the little moments that made it worth it. Last week, you’d forced him into a walk through a park and mentally screamed with glee when he laughed at two squirrels chasing each other.

“Don’t be, we’re here now,” you said easily, “We’re going to eat breakfast on your tiny balcony and watch the sunrise like the world’s okay - okay?”

No response.

Still, the breakfast was all set so you brought both plates out onto the balcony and balanced Bucky’s on the rail while you tucked in to yours. You’d had to wait for him to join you before and you’d happily wait for him again.

It took him seven minutes. You were counting.

He nibbled at the food to start with but soon ate a lot more ravenously. It was likely a while since he’d had anything other than the box of cereal you’d seen in his bottom cupboard. Sam texted you yesterday to ask how he was since Bucky wasn’t replying to his texts, but it was difficult to say how he was. You’d both missed five years, but he’d missed a lot more over the last century. Sometimes it was hard for him to see what he still had.

“Why are you here?”

It was a question he’d asked you before. There was only one answer.

“Because I want to be.”

There was nothing else to say. You stood and watched the sunrise over the rooftops in a swirl of pinks and oranges until every last shade melted into the brilliant blue of the daytime. Bucky watched too, and even if his mind was elsewhere, you were just glad he was here. With you. You hoped eventually it would be enough.

---

three

“We shouldn’t be here,” your whispers were harsh in the dark room and Bucky glared at you until you lowered your voice further, “We cannot be here right now.”

“If we don’t do this, nobody will,” Bucky reminded you, still glued to the window as he kept watch of the road. Technically you and Sam were meant to be resting and your watch didn’t start for another half hour, but you were nervous and awake and the silence was beginning to get to you. Sam’s soft snores from the other room were a lovely reassurance that he was safe and peaceful, but it still wasn’t enough.

“Maybe nobody should, Bucky,” you insisted, coming over to lean against the wall he stood beside so that he had to face you, “We were just starting to get somewhere back at home. You were just starting to get somewhere, you know, with the therapy and the amends and everything. Now we’re off chasing bad guys like we’re Avengers again!”

His look towards you was sharp.

“I was never an Avenger.”

You huffed out a breath at his indignance.

“You could have been,” you said, quieter still, “You should have been. But now, after everything, I don’t want to be that anymore. I quit. I quit a long time ago.”

“Then go home.”

“You really want me to?”

It was an unfair question. You knew he didn’t, but you also knew he was too proud. That he didn’t like to think about the fact that he was the sole reason you were here, risking your life again in the pursuit of a justice you’d all but given up on. Guilt was enough to poison your conversation beyond repair, if you let it.

“I don’t want you to be anywhere you don’t want to be,” he said instead, a fact rather than a real answer. A cop out. You shook your head, frustration seeping out of you as you turned your back to the wall and tilted your head back against it to stare at the ceiling. You could see Bucky’s gaze still trained on the road outside, refusing to even spare you a glance. It was infuriating.

“And I don’t want you here but we don’t always get what we want, Barnes.”

He didn’t respond right away, but you did see his eyes flicker over to you then back to the road, and it felt like a little bit of progress. It was a good few minutes before he spoke again.

“I think the therapy is helping too,” he whispered, not reacting when you rolled your head to the side to stare at him again, “But it’s not enough. Nothing ever will be. Doing stuff like this, saving peoples’ lives? That’s the closest I can get to making up for what I did.”

“It wasn’t you-”

“I know. Doesn’t matter.”

You wondered whether you would ever be able to convince the man in front of you that nothing he had ever done to hurt others was even remotely through fault of his own. Wondered if all the therapy and the coaxing and the amends would fall short of that one simple task. Guilt was enough to poison your mind beyond repair too, if you let it.

You were beyond determined not to let it.

“Matters to me,” you said, soft and forgiving, “And to Sam. And to Steve too, when he was here. Matters to a lot of people.”

There was something else on the tip of your tongue. You matter to a lot of people. It felt too vague. Not enough and yet too much for the humid European hotel room you were holed up in. Bucky was silent again, but this time you could see that he was just getting his thoughts together. You could see the faintest tremble in his hand as he held the blinds at just the right angle for his vantage point.

“Thank you.”

You...hadn’t been expecting that. It was much more usual for Bucky to show his gratitude to you and to others over the past few months. He brought by extra groceries when he got his own, squeezed your shoulder when he got up to grab drinks from his fridge, even bought you flowers that one time. It was rare of him to say it, though.

“What for?”

“Wanting to be here.”

You scoffed at that. It couldn’t be further from the truth, and yet here you were. Maybe he was onto something. You doubted you’d still be saying that in a few hours when the so-called bad guys showed up and you had to actually fight them. For now, there was a truth to his words you hadn’t wanted to acknowledge.

“I don’t,” you said, deadpan and teasing all at once, “Want to be here, that is. But you’re welcome anyway, I guess.”

You saw his lips turn up in a smirk or a smile, it was hard to tell from this angle with only a small square of filtered light on his face from the window. Sunlight. That meant sunrise. You moved closer to the window and manoeuvred so that you could see through the slats. Sure enough, the sky was a shade of dawn peach, even if the sun was hidden from view by the cityscape.

The last sunrise you’d seen was over six months ago and had been shared with the same man. The same silence. This one was just slightly more comfortable.

“I don’t want you to go home,” he murmured, no more than a breath of air leaving his lips, “Just, by the way.”

It was your turn to smile or smirk or whatever it was. You had already known, of course, but it was nice to hear him say it. It was a good job Sam was asleep or he’d be telling you to ‘get a room’ again.

“I know,” you said with a small nod, then your smile became a grin of pure mischief, “You want to play I-spy?”

A loud groan.

“I’m not playing I-spy with you, Y/N-”

“Why not! I won’t cheat this time, I promise-”

“You say that every time, and yet-”

“Okay, I do not say it every time you-”

“You say it every time!”

When Sam walked through from the bedroom later and found you defending your choice of the word ‘Darkness’ as Bucky sat slumped with his head in his hands, he wondered why he’d let either of you take watch in the first place.

---

four

A year. A whole year. There was a lot you could do in a year. You could build a business. Grow a herb garden in a series of ill-fitting plant pots on your balcony. Learn a new skill. Forge a new friendship. Fall in love.

You could also miss people. A lot. So much, in fact, that when the date that you lost them rolls around again, any progress you made in that last year is rendered insignificant.

Especially when you’re sitting on a park bench and they’re not sat beside you.

You missed Nat. You missed Tony. Missed Wanda and Vision and Steve and Thor. Some of them weren’t even gone, just out in the universe somewhere, yet to return. You weren’t sure they ever would. Part of you hoped they had found something wonderful, something to eclipse all the grief and the loss and make them whole again. Then they’d never have to come back and see you so different to the person they used to know.

You were vaguely aware that somebody had sat down in the space next to you now, which frustrated you more than you’d admit to anyone. You pressed the palms of your hands into the wood of the bench until the contact stung.

“I thought I’d find you here.”

Bucky. Of course. Your hands relaxed without conscious thought. When you turned, there he was, looking at you with just the slightest tinge of apprehension. Like he knew he was intruding, but he did it anyway. He was growing his hair out again. It was nice.

“You know me that well?”

“This is the fourth place I came to,” he admitted, looking down at his shoes as he kicked at a particularly interesting tuft of grass, “But fourth isn’t bad, right?”

“Fourth isn’t bad,” you assured him, “But you didn’t need to come. I’m fine.”

“You’ve been out all night, Y/N,” he said gently, like he was the bearer of bad news. In fact, he was, because you had no idea it had been that long. When you looked upward and saw a murky grey instead of the pitch black that had stained the sky when you sat down, you shivered, “You’ve been here the whole time?”

“Yeah. Just thinking.”

“You know that’s a bad idea, especially today. We should do something else.”

“Like what?”

You gave him a withering look that he didn’t deserve, but he took it in stride. He hopped up from the bench and held out a hand to you, leaving it there when you didn’t take it right away.

“There’s a fair in town a couple of blocks away. We’re going.”

“A fair? Are you kidding?”

“Nope,” he said seriously, no room for argument in his tone. He even reached forward and grabbed your hands from the bench, pulling you up to a stand despite your groan of protest. It took a few moments to stretch out your legs before he let go, “We’re going to a fair. You’re going to crash into me on the dodgems enough times for me to want to press charges, then I’ll buy you all the cotton candy you can eat.”

“Is this really the right thing to do on the anniversa-”

“What would they want us to do? Sit on a park bench and wish they were sat here with us?”

You glared at him, but it was meek. Tony would laugh at you for doing this. Nat would roll her eyes at your sentimentality. It would just make Steve sad to see you sad. Bucky was right, even if you refused ever to utter those words in that order.

“Will you win me the biggest teddy bear we can find? Because if not, I don’t see the point of going.”

Bucky rolled his eyes, but he offered you his arm nonetheless and you took it as you started walking in what you could only assume was the direction of the fair. You briefly wondered how many dates he might have taken to the fair back in his day, how many had hung off his arm and grinned at him all night. None of them had been with this Bucky before though, you reminded yourself, this new rough-around-the-edges Bucky, trying-his-best Bucky. Shiny, polished 1940s Sergeant Barnes was far less your type anyway.

“You know, if I do try and win you a teddy, it’s going to look like we’re on a date.”

So clearly his train of thought had aligned with yours. Without much care for the consequences and with a courage that only came from the thought of missed chances, you slid your arm out of his and took his hand instead, sliding your fingers through his gloved ones. It was his metal hand, you could quickly tell, but you weren’t going to let him pull away when he realised which hand you’d latched onto.

“Would that be so bad?”

He looked down at you like any second now you were going to realise which hand you were holding and want to swap sides, or like you were going to throw him away and ask for a new one. You held firm. When he realised you had no intention of changing anything, you felt his hand push a little firmer against your own, his fingers slot further into place. You really wanted to pull the glove off and entangle your fingers with the metal underneath to make a point, but you decided that could wait a little longer.

“So...this is a date?”

He just had to spell it out. You’d just held his hand, but he still had to check. It was endearing honestly, so despite your reluctance to share too much, you knew you needed to be forthcoming for him to believe that this was anything real.

“I would really like it if it was, Bucky,” you said, in an attempt to be as clear as possible. You curled your other hand around his bicep and suppressed a wide grin when you saw the smile your statement had brought out of him. He was trying to keep his cool too.

You were both failing miserably.

“Well, that works out then.”

You laughed, squeezing him a little closer and relishing in the fact that he didn’t move away, but instead pulled you into his side. The shadows of the street were brighter every minute that passed, even though the actual sunrise was hidden from view by the apartment blocks and skyscrapers that surrounded you.

And if the newfound warmth you felt was from the sparks that flew each time your shoulder bumped his rather than the break of a new day, you weren’t giving anything away.

---

+the one you missed

“Bucky?”

You’d managed to get the door open with a little more effort than it should have taken. Your muscles were still sore from training the new recruits yesterday, though you wouldn’t have had it any other way. The fact that Sam had found something so perfectly suited to your skill set without the danger you had been trying to avoid was something you were still trying to repay him for.

Now, you were up on the roof and stretching out your left arm as you looked around for some sign of the man who’d called to invite you here last night and insisted that, yes, it was necessary to meet this early in the morning and no, he couldn’t tell you why.

“Over here, genius.”

You turned. There he was. A blanket was set out next to him and when one corner of it folded over in the chilling breeze, he scrambled to smooth it out again. You chuckled quietly as you made your way over to him and gestured to the little oasis he’d created for the both of you.

“What’s all this, mister?”

“Our anniversary, baby.”

It was a newfound nickname, one that still sent a thrill through you every time you heard it. The fondness laced within it was something you hadn’t even gotten used to yet, but you could see yourself wondering how you ever lived without it sometime soon.

“We’ve been together for four months, Buck, I don’t think we have an anniversary just yet,” you said, just a little nervous that you were forgetting something. Bucky looked smug enough that you thought he was more likely to be concocting a scheme instead, but you took his hand and let him lead you to sit down anyway.

“I haven’t told you what anniversary it is,” he assured you as he sat down beside you on the other cushion, pulling a picnic basket from behind him into the center of the blanket. You hoped that he wasn’t about to pull out a plate of chocolate covered strawberries, because the idea of him feeding you anything was enough to put you in stitches.

It was a pleasant surprise when he pulled out two styrofoam cups that smelled chocolatey. When he passed you one and you took an eager sip, you hummed at the hot chocolate in the cup. When he then pulled out a couple of plates and a half and half pizza that suited both of you, the elated laugh you let out was practically involuntary.

“Whatever it is, can we have this anniversary more often?”

You both laughed and although you wanted to push more on what the occasion was, Bucky plated up your pizza for you and you ended up fully distracted by the delicious food and the dashing company.

There was a comfort that came with being by Bucky’s side that you weren’t sure you’d ever found previously. A certain sense of pride came too, from knowing that you could provide some of that same comfort to Bucky in return. Sam was sick of the two of you already. Of course.

“You want to play I-spy?” you asked quietly once you’d finished eating, lying back on the blanket and tugging on Bucky’s jacket to encourage him to join you. He grumbled slightly, but he soon lay back beside you until the back of his fingers were just brushing your own. You didn’t tangle them together just yet, because the anticipation was still so sweet.

“You know I don’t.”

“What if I promise not to choose ‘darkness’?”

“Let me guess, you’re thinking of something beginning with U?”

“Oh come on- wait, how did you know?”

He rolled his head to the side to look at you and you mirrored his position, noses just an inch from each other.

“Y/N,” his voice was soft and you could feel the words against your lips, “You can’t see the universe.”

You were ready to argue your case, but Bucky’s face was just too close to your own. Letting the discussion go (only for now), you leaned in and pressed a series of chaste kisses along the underside of his jaw. You were only cut short when he became impatient, cupping your face in both hands and bringing you into a kiss that made your toes curl in your shoes.

You had to turn over onto your side properly, shuffle around on the blanket a little, but the kiss still felt pretty perfect. When he sat up, he took you with him, pushing further into you as the kiss grew heated. One of his hands was in your hair, the other wrapping around your waist under your shirt, the cold metal contrasting feverish skin sending sparks up your spine. You tugged on the hair at the nape of his neck and grinned at the groan that escaped him as he pulled back just enough to breathe.

“It’s been a year,” he panted out urgently, like he’d been waiting all night to tell you because he had been waiting all night to tell you. He’d been waiting a whole year, if he were being honest.

“A year?”

“Since I fell in love with you,” he explained simply, only continuing when you stared at him dumbfounded and didn’t say anything, couldn’t say anything, “That day I wouldn’t let you in and you brought me breakfast. We watched the sunrise in silence and that...that was it for me.”

You’d exchanged ‘I love you’s before, just a few weeks ago. Not that it was intended, but he had sent you a postcard while he was on a week long mission - an actual postcard, full of innocuous details about the location rather than anything mission related. A cheesy little ‘wish you were here’ at the end that made your heart swell. It was inevitable, really, when you called him three minutes after you read it and told him you loved him.

You got his voicemail, but you said it anyway, and the reaction you got from him when you were finally reunited a few days later told you that you’d made the right call.

However, him telling you exactly when he’d fallen in love with you? That was new. Unexpected. Another part of his soul laid bare before you even though you were content with the pieces he’d already shared. You had always kept them safe, tucked away in your top pocket, close to your own heart. Now you had another piece of him to carry around with you and you couldn’t feel more honoured.

“You…” it was natural to want to question it first, but you stopped short. Accepting what he’d said first time would be a much better sign of your trust, and you needed him to know how much you reciprocated everything, “You’ve been it for me for a long time.”

You were still short of breath, but there were no complaints when he pulled you in for another kiss. Softer. Slower. The heat from before now spread through to your fingers and your toes and became an overwhelming warmth instead. It was a warmth that Bucky had brought into your life ever since you’d decided to stick together amongst the death and the destruction.

Some of that warmth might have been from the sun, which was steadily rising and painting the dark sky and with a whole new colourful palette. Bucky had chosen this time in the morning specifically so that you could create a new tradition of watching the sunrise every year just like this, had planned to create something that the two of you would remember forever.

He only realised this about half an hour after the sun had fully risen but it didn’t matter. The memory was already carved in stone and outlined with gold marker in both of your minds.

---

Thank you for reading this far! <3 I’m not tagging anyone, because it’s been a long time and I’d hate to suddenly pop up in people’s mentions without any warning after so long when they may not want me there. If this has found you anyway, then I count myself super lucky to have you here, thank you!

#bucky x reader #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes #bucky #bucky barnes imagine #bucky barnes fanfic #bucky barnes oneshot #bucky barnes drabble #bucky imagine #bucky oneshot #bucky drabble #bucky fanfic #marvel #marvel x reader #marvel fanfic #marvel imagine #four sunrises

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rdmdani · 4 years

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Sing to Me? {Spencer Reid}

honestly I couldn’t help but write this. I wanted to make it a smut but I suck at smuts soooo here ya go. If I get enough asks or comments I may make a Spencer smut. Up to yall!!!!

word count: 2338

“Hey Reid?” you called from your desk as you prepared to leave. Reid perked his head up from his seat and made eye contact with you, “I rented this movie and Emily was supposed to come watch it with me but she ended up bailing. You want to join me? I have popcorn.”

Reid laughed lightly, packing up the remainder of his belongings, “Depends, what are we going to watch?”

“Some horror movie? I don’t know really, it was Emily’s turn to pick.”

Reid looked at you with furrowed brows, “Wait you two have regular movie nights?”

“Yeah, every other Friday if we’re off, why?” you asked but already knew the answer.

“How come I’m never invited?” he pouted, making his way over to you. Out of the corner of your eye you could see Emily and Derek watching the two of you. It was obvious why Emily canceled. She picked a scary movie, which is the one genre you cannot watch and then canceled on you? Plus, she knows that you were going to end up watching it regardless of her coming or not, you spent your money on that movie. You were going to watch it. Nightmares or not.

“I’m inviting you now?” you teased him, scrunching your nose playfully. Spencer laughed humorlessly and leaned against your desk. His eyes scanned your body for a short moment, but you weren’t going to mention it. Especially not right now where the entire team was listening to your conversation not-so-inconspicuously.

“Fine, but I have to make a quick stop before I come by,” he told you. You nodded simply as you slung your bag over your shoulder, “But don’t start making the popcorn until I get there. It’s better when it’s fresh.”

“Yes sir,” you mock him with a salute. Spencer raised his eyebrows at you before shaking his head.

“You’re ridiculous. I’ll see you at yours.”

Normally you would watch him walk away, but you had a feeling that Derek, Emily, and Penelope were going to mock you about that as well as (what she can only assume they’re going to call) the date night you just got planned.

“Got condoms waiting at home?” Derek said as he and the girls ran up to you, trying to make it to you before you could escape.

“Derek Morgan,” you sighed, turning and looking at your three desperate teammates, “it is a simple movie night. Me and Emily do it constantly and, though I have tried, there has been no lesbian action. So no, I will not be having this discussion with you.”

The girls perked up at the last sentence, noticing that you had not specified you wouldn’t spill to them, but you quickly shut that down as well, “Or you two. Especially not you, Emily. You knew that I wouldn’t watch that movie alone. You set this up, but I am sorry to inform you that it will not be going in that direction.”

“You say that now, but I have watched scary movies with you,” Emily teased, “You sure there hasn’t been any lesbian action?”

Derek and Penelope burst out laughing, but you just glared at her, “You are no longer my favorite. Hotch is my favorite.”

Hotch walked by you with a sly grin on his face, “Oh no, I was listening the entire time. I’m on their side.”

“Honestly!” you groaned, “Does no one have my back on this?”

The second Derek’s mouth opened you knew that you were in trouble, but he didn’t get to speak. Instead Penelope cut in and spoke the words you assumed Derek would’ve spoken, “Spencer will have you on your back, does that count?”

“I hate you. I hate you all,” you huffed as you turned around and headed towards the elevator, “Nothing is going to happen!”

When you stepped into the elevator, you didn’t see the faces of your friends. All of them had evil smirks on their faces, even Hotchner. If you would’ve looked, you would’ve been scared. But instead you looked down at your phone and saw a message from Spencer:

“Favorite candy?”

When you got back home, you saw Spencer standing at your door holding a few grocery bags. You laughed at the boy, seeing that he was struggling to carry it all as well as his own work bag.

“Why did you bring your work bag?” you asked with a soft chuckle, unlocking the door and taking a few bags out of his hands. He smiled sheepishly at you.

“Well neither of us had eaten dinner so I thought it would be nice if I cooked for us,” he spoke bashfully and followed you into the apartment.

“Well aren’t you a sweetheart,” you cooed, setting the bags on your kitchen table, “Anything I can help with?”

“No I think I have it, why don’t you shower and get changed?”

You looked at the boy with furrowed eyebrows, “You sure? I promise I won’t poison you.”

Spencer turned to you, “I’m not afraid you’ll poison me. Let’s just say I’m hoping I start getting my invitations to movie night from now on.”

You raised your hands in surrender, a small smile on your face, “Alright I’ll shower. And maybe if you don’t poison me you’ll be invited.”

Spencer rolled his eyes at you, shooing you away, “Go shower. It won’t take long for me to cook this.”

You wanted to stay there and help or at least stay and continue to tease him, but you decided that it would probably be best to just follow along with his plan. So you grabbed your clothes and headed to the shower. And maybe (just maybe) your friends got into your head and you ended up shaving your legs.

When you left the bathroom you could hear Spencer humming in the kitchen. So you stood there in the hallway and listened, a smile on your face. Something about him and his voice was so intoxicating and pure that it made it difficult for you to push yourself off the wall to join him. But eventually you did. You did because you heard Morgan’s taunting voice in the back of your head. So you pushed off the wall and shook away Morgan’s voice, joining your favorite team member in your kitchen.

Spencer turned around when he heard you walking in. He couldn’t help his eyes wandering down your body, enjoying the sight of you in shorts and a baggy shirt. When he finally met your eyes again, he smiled a sweet yet shy smile. He knew you saw him checking you out, he just hoped you wouldn’t mention it. If you don’t mention it then maybe the night would play out the way that everyone in the BAU was hoping. Including him.

Of course Spencer had no idea of Emily’s plan, but it wasn’t too hard to decipher. That’s why he decided on cooking dinner. He wanted her to see that he didn’t want to view this as just another friendly movie night. If you wanted it to stay friendly, then it would. But he wanted to show you that the option was definitely open for more if you wanted. He just hoped you wanted it.

“It’s almost ready,” Spencer said sweetly, “Do me a favor though? Don’t tell Rossi about my cooking. He’ll probably end up forcing me to learn actual cooking.”

“I promise I won’t,” you crossed your heart with a childish smile. Spencer watched you with an adoring smile on his lips. He liked this version of you. At work you’re a lot like him. You’re quiet because you have a lot of theories just roaming your head. Thousands upon thousands of random facts packed away in the files of your mind. That’s why the two of you got along so well. You and him are one in the same. But Spencer is like that 24/7, whereas you have this whole other personality outside of work. You were like a little ball of energy and smiles. He thought you were absolutely adorable. But he wouldn’t say that right now, no matter how much he wanted to. He wanted you to be the one to initiate it if you wanted anything to happen. So he swallowed down the words he wanted to say and settled with a simple smile, returning to his cooking.

“So Emily decided on some horror movie,” you said in an attempt to keep the conversation alive, “I think it was like Nightmare on Elm Road?”

Spencer snorted, setting down the wooden spoon he was stirring with and turning to look at you, “Nightmare on Elm Street.”

“Don’t laugh at me!” you huffed, crossing your arms and rolling your eyes, “I don’t exactly like horror movies.”

“Then why are we watching it?” he asked, moving the food off of the hot stovetop.

“Because Emily already had it rented and I’m weird about renting movies and not watching them. It bothers me.”

Spencer nodded his head slowly, taking in the information, “Okay, how about this… we play the movie but it’s on mute. We eat, watch the movie, and make up our own dialogue. I have seen it before so I can warn you when you need to look away. How does that sound?”

You looked at the gorgeous boy across from you with a giant smile on your face, “I have to admit that sounds really fun.”

“Then let’s do it. I’ll make the plates, you just set up the movie.”

As you walked into the living room you thought to yourself… maybe you should’ve listened to your friends before.

After an hour and a half of coming up with the stupidest dialogue possible for this movie, as well as hiding your face in a pillow when Spencer would tell you scary parts were coming up, you thought that maybe tonight could go the way everyone wanted. Including Reid. You’re smart. You knew exactly what Spencer was thinking and what he was wanting. You also knew that he was too much of a gentleman to initiate anything himself. At first you wanted to mess with him a little, tease him until he begged kind of thing… but when you looked over at him and saw how the sides of his eyes crinkled when he laughed you melted right there.

“Hey Spence?” you whispered, turning your body to face his. Spencer looked over at you, holding a confused expression on his face at the way you were facing.

“Yeah?”

“I know that Derek, Penelope, JJ, Emily- well practically all of our team had set this night up to where we would… you know,” you paused for a moment, taking in the expression on his face. He looked shocked, but you knew he wasn’t actually. Spencer knew you better than to think that you wouldn’t figure it out.

“We don’t have to,” Spencer spoke quickly before facepalming, “That was possibly the stupidest thing I could’ve said right then.”

You laughed at the boy, watching as he peeked out from behind the hands covering his face just so he could see your face as you laughed. He was adorable.

“I know that,” you finished laughing, smiling at him, slowly climbing into his lap. Once you got into a straddling position, looking down at the wide-eyed doctor, you spoke, “What would you say if I said I wanted to though?”

“I would say that there is a God and that he apparently loves me,” Spencer choked out, his hands moving to rest on your waist, “But then I’d ask you if you were playing with me because there is no way that you want me the way I have wanted you.”

“And what if I tell you I’m completely serious?” you asked in a near whisper, curling your fingers into his shirt. Spencer struggled to keep down a smile as his grip tightened on your waist.

“Then I’d kiss you a million times.”

“Do you promise?” as you asked, you lifted your pinkie finger up.

“One hundred percent,” he replied, twisting his finger around yours. Before you could say anything else, Spencer unraveled his finger and wrapped his hand around your wrist and pulled you forward. As you came towards him, he leaned forward, extending his free hand across your back and holding you in place before pressing his lips sweetly against yours.

Suddenly the entire world faded away. All that mattered was the way his lips perfectly curved into a smile as you kissed. There was only raspberry chewing gum and buttery popcorn. There was no BAU. No horror movie. You were in a dark room with just Spencer. That became your favorite place in the world. The kiss was slow and beautiful. There were atomic bombs and fireworks. Everything a Hallmark movie made you believe was real. Everything was perfect, but then Spencer pulled away. You pouted at him but didn’t say anything about it. Instead you brought something else up.

“I heard you humming in the kitchen earlier. Do you sing?”

“No,” he chuckled, “I don’t think anyone would want me to either.”

“I do,” you corrected him, cocking your head to the side, “Will you sing for me?”

“It’s hard to say no to you when you’re so cute, y’know?”

“I know,” you boasted, cuddling into his chest, “It’s my special gift. Helps me get whatever I want.”

“I’m not singing, no matter how cute you may be,” Spencer stated, but he didn’t understand how determined you were to hear him.

“I can change your mind.”

Spencer’s eyebrows shot up in question, an amused smile on his lips, “Oh really? How?”

“Let’s go to my room,” you whisper to him, dragging a single finger across his jawline, “If you’re lucky you can hear me sing.”

Spencer didn’t need you to say it twice. He lifted both of you up, keeping your legs wrapped around his waist, and took you to your bedroom.

Good thing you actually did have condoms at the house.

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princesscandijane · 3 years

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Males Reasons to Shave with some tips

A quick guide for those wanting to shave, but cannot seem to find the reasons to. As well as some tips on how to shave.

Groin

As a favor for someone going down on you. Think about how much you enjoy pulling pubes out of your teeth. I shave my groin every morning, as part of my morning routine. Takes me no less time to shave my face if you do it daily, and I could probably go every other day without notice.

Shaving Groin

From various blogs and articles

Trim—Bust out your trimmer and prep the area by trimming off a good chunk of the bush before you dive in with a razor. This helps ensure that you have total visibility and don’t miss any important areas. Take your time, trimming in small sections starting at the bottom and working your way up to the stomach.

Shave—Generously apply shave cream that you can see through, creating a layer of cream about a millimeter thick on top of the areas where you want to shave. Holding the skin taut with one hand and taking it extra-slow with the other, lightly shave IN THE DIRECTION that the hair grows. Avoid using too much pressure. Rinse the razor with every pass and, when completely done shaving, rinse the body with warm water.

Use a new/sharp razor– DON’T use a dull blade or disposable razor.

Shave Your Balls—The golden rule of ball-shaving is to always hold the skin taut so there are no wrinkles or curves that could catch skin or cause cuts.

Rinse with Cool Water—Make sure you give your junk a good rinse in cool water after you’re done shaving to soothe the skin and close the pores. This will also help prevent any ingrown hairs or irritation.

Asshole

Dingleberries. If you have ever had to wipe away a dingleberry, that should inspire you to at least trim around the asshole. Full shave can be difficult, but again, how attractive do you find a hairy ass? So consider trimming. I don’t shave completely because I’m worried about nicking something, so I wear a butt plug and shave around it.

Guide to Asshole shaving

https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/27dh1x/how_do_i_shave_my_asshole/

Use a moustache/nose hair trimmer to trim off all the excess hair until it's short enough to feel like 2 day old stubble, and then apply good hair conditioner or shaving gel and exfoliate using a loofah or washcloth. The idea is to get all the hair up and on end and stimulate the skin while opening the pores; this avoids ingrown hair and razor burn, which you do not want on your butthole.

Now wash your butthole. Intensely. You do not want to leave any stone unturned, so to speak. Shove your soapy finger up there and really get your sphincters squeaky clean. Don't hurt yourself, just make sure you don't have any icky fecal matter or tiny sharp hair nuggets trapped in the mysterious crevices of your anal caverns.

Use a BRAND NEW 4-blade disposable razor/razor blade cartridge. Don't use a dull blade or you will regret it. Shave with the grain, first, not against it. Rinse after each and every stroke of the blade against your skin. Re-apply conditioner/gel and shave again, this time against the grain and again be sure to rinse after every stroke. Rinse completely and then give it a quick wash with some plain antibacterial soap (kills bacteria on the open skin so should avoid irritation from fecal matter etc that you may have missed during your butthole cleansing).

Now comes the rough part - preventative care. Grab a bottle of witch hazel and spritz it on a washcloth, and pat the fuck out of your butthole with that shit. IT WILL BURN LIKE HELL FOR A SECOND IF YOU DO IT RIGHT. It is not the end of the world. Your butthole is not on fire and you will live to poo another day. After witch hazel-ing the hell out of your ass, lay tummy-down on your bed or on a towel on the floor and either:

When your butthole has been sufficiently aired out and dried, apply non-scented women's roll-on deodorant. This sounds stupid and weird but trust me, it helps. Dove no-scent is the best I've found. This will avoid chafing while walking, irritation as the hair grows back, general stink, and will provide you with some cushioning.

Chest, Back, Arms, Armpits

Do you think any of them are naturally smooth? Once a week I take a nice hot bath, relax with a bowl and shave everything below my neck. Takes me an hour at most.

I think we can acknowledge that a smooth body is sexy regardless of gender. How weird would it be for there to be hair

Vs. how is this for hair?

Once a week shaving. The more often you keep up with it the easier it is and the less time it takes.

Shaving Chest Tips

various blogs

Before beginning to shave, be sure to trim any long chest hairs to make the process easier.

Apply plenty of shaving gel over your chest and any other areas that you intend to shave.

Begin shaving, using short, gentle, and slow strokes for a clean shave without any nicks or cuts.

After each stroke, rinse the blade to avoid getting it clogged and causing a messy shave.

Once you’ve completed shaving and removed all unwanted hair, rinse your chest thoroughly and apply an aftershave product, such as the one that you use for your face.

Remember to also exfoliate the area twice a week with a quality body scrub to reduce the risk of ingrown hairs.

As the nipple is really sensitive and may not want to risk a nik, I recommend using a tweezer. Before you tweeze, take a hot shower—the heat will open up hair follicles, so it’s easier to grab the root—and pat the skin around your nipples dry. Pull each strand quickly and firmly in the direction your hair grows.

Shaving Armpit

from Men’s Health

Trim Your Armpit Hair First

If you’ve never shaved your underarms before, chances are you’ll need to trim those patches down for the easiest and most comfortable shave . It’ll make less of a mess in the shower as well (because nothing is worse than a clogged drain full of man-hair).

Exfoliate Your Under Arms Before Shaving

Sure, you don’t have to exfoliate, but you should to avoid pesky, painful ingrown hairs. A loofah or exfoliating body scrub will do the trick to remove dead skin cells and bacteria (along with any deodorant gunk) to help you achieve the smoothest shave without razor burn.

Shave Your Armpits Wet in the Shower

You can cut it dry, but Whitely recommends to do it in the shower. Hot water softens the hair and reduces the risk of pulled hair or nicks, he says. Shave towards the end of your time in the shower and use shaving gel for added moisture to prevent irritation.

Shave Slow and With a Good Razor

It's not a race, folks. To avoid razor burn and skin irritation, take it slow with your razor blade to make sure you get the closest shave. Unlike the hair on your face, underarm hair grows in all different directions, so make sure to shave sideways, as well top-to-bottom. Toss your old dull razor, and opt for one with a sharp blade and a pivoting head to move with the curves of your armpits for a more effective, easier shave.

Legs

First shaved legs feel amazing. Everyone deserves to know the feeling of freshly shaved legs. Second how are hairy legs, feet, and toes sexy?

Quick guide to shaving legs

Taken from Glamor and Cosmopolitan

1. Trim

If it's the first time you're removing your leg hair, you might want to carefully trim the area with an electric razor. This will stop your razor clogging up, causing you to miss patches of hair.

2. Soak your skin before shaving

“Hydrating the hairs makes them up to 60 per cent easier to cut”, says Dr Anita Sturnham, Venus Ambassador. “Soak your skin for two to three minutes before shaving.”

Use warm water when you're bent over the bathtub in the middle of winter with goose bumps on your legs, it's tempting to have the shower on boiling hot. But hot water is not your friend when it comes to shaving because it closes your pores. Warm water opens your pores, allowing your hairs to soften (making the whole shaving process a lot smoother).

3. Do not lather your legs with shampoo

Dr Sturnham says using shampoo or body wash as shave prep can, “increase your risk of redness and irritation, and blunt your razor blades.”

4. Don't go ham on the shaving cream

You really only need a thin layer of shaving cream to do the job. Too much will clog up your blades, slowing down your shaving time and making it impossible to see where you already shaved. Of course you don't really need to buy shaving cream in the first place, hair conditioner works just as well (if not better).

5. Always shave against the direction hair growth

To get your closest shave possible, shave against the direction of your hair growth. For the legs, start at the ankle and work your way up towards the knee.If you’re using a good blade, this won’t cause any irritation and will cut the hair right at the root for a longer-lasting shave.

6. Don't apply too much pressure to your razor

Your razor shouldn’t make a dent in your skin in order to work.“ The razor should glide across the skin, not drag”, says Adam Boulding, Venus Scientific Communications. “Remember to use a light touch, exerting as little pressure as possible.”If you need to press your razor firmly to work, it can be a sign your blades need changing.

7. Short strokes

If you're shaving from your ankle to your knee in one long stroke, you are guaranteed to have missed hairs. It's just impossible for your razor to keep contact with every single hair for that long. That's why you need to shave with short strokes. Short strokes = less missed hairs.

8. Change your razor blades regularly

A blunt blade not only increases friction against the skin, but also the likelihood of missed hairs. There are many factors that can impact blade life, including your hair type, how much of your body you’re shaving and how you store your razor. Roughly every ten shaves. If you shave daily then about every 1-2 weeks, if you shave 2-3 times a day then every 3-4 weeks. You should also change your blades whenever you start to feel tugging or pulling during your shave.

9. Don't use razors with less than four blades

The number of blades you use is actually super important. The less blades you have, the higher the chance of cuts and nicks.

“A razor with more blades means that the pressure is distributed across more evenly”, says Boulding. “Therefore less pressure is applied to any one spot of skin during the shave, reducing the probability of cuts.”

10. Use a manoeuvrable razor head

The second thing to look for in terms of razor quality is the manoeuvrability of the razor head. When it comes to the backs of knees and areas like ankles, where the bone is close to the skin surface, you need a razor that moves with the curves of your skin to glide over trickier areas. A stagnant blade will only increase the chance of missed hairs or cuts.

11. Always bend a knee

Knees are notoriously the most tricky spot to shave. The solution? Sarah says to slightly bend the knee.

“This will pull the skin tight before shaving, as folded skin is difficult to shave.”

Try propping your leg up on the side of the bath.

12. Don't forget your aftercare

If you suffer from red bumps after shaving, rinsing properly is a must post-shave. If you can bare cold water, this is even better to ensure the pores are closed.

Sarah also recommends leaving the skin to rest for at least 30 minutes before applying lotions or moisturisers, to avoid inflammation.

“If you must moisturise immediately following shaving, select a cream formula rather than a lotion, and avoid exfoliating moisturisers that may contain alpha hydroxy acids,” she adds. If not, it will sting!

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softboywriting · 3 years

Text

Don’t Go | Nathan Bateman | Ex Machina

Summary: One difficult boss, one contraband cat, and a whole lot of emotional turmoil. That’s your life these days. When you leave for a few months to get things settled back home before moving into the facility officially, Nathan doesn’t cope with your absence well. Upon your return you have to deal with Nathan being moodier than ever, hiding your cat Baxter in your room, and sorting out just what your relationship with Nathan is. [Light Angst] [Swearing] [Insecurity] [Daddy Kink if you squint] [Fluff] [No use of Y/N] [Sexual/Flirting Situations] [F!ReaderxNathan] [Assistant!Reader]

Word Count: 5.2k

|Masterlist In Bio|

Four months. You're gone from Nathan's facility for four months while sorting out fully moving to Alaska with him, closing your leased apartment, and finding a home for your cat. Everything was squared away finally. All of your furniture and non personal items were sold and you were ready to move into his place in the middle of nowhere. Of course you couldn't find a home for Baxter, your cat, and you refused to put him up for adoption, so he was coming with you.

Nathan didn't want a cat he explicitly said don't bring him but here you are in the helicopter with your bags and totes full of what you have left of your old life, and strapped in the back is Baxter in his tan cat carrier. You had to get special medication to help him stay calm but it was worth it. Surely Nathan won't kick him out once you've snuck him in. You'll just keep him in your room.

You never see Nathan. He didn't help you carry everything in, he never saw Baxter, he didn't even leave a message. It's not until after you've unpacked the essentials and gotten Baxter settled into the bedroom that Nathan calls to you on the intercom system.

"Meet me on the deck."

You jump, startled by the sudden break in silence. You slip out the door quickly to keep Baxter inside and head for the outdoor deck where the punching bag is hung. You round the corner of the kitchen and stop dead, eyes on the man on the deck, back to you.

"Nathan?" You call out, walking forward carefully. It can't be. This man has hair. Quite a bit actually. But it looks like Nathan from the back. That is surely his ass.

Nathan turns around and oh, it's definitely him. He looks so different without the buzzcut, he looks softer, sweeter. "About time you came back."

"Did I miss a day of work?" You roll your eyes. He may look softer but that snippy attitude was ever prominent. "Don't act like you missed me."

"You worked? I barely noticed." He quips, stepping down and unwrapping his hands.

You fold your arms. "So you just remembered to go shopping for groceries, to get your hand wraps, and to get the mineral water from the specialty place on your own? You just remembered that you had to eat every day? You don't need an assistant?"

"I'm an adult. Of course I can do all of that without you."

"So you definitely didn't use those alarms and reminders I set?"

He scoffs.

"Oh no, you did." You click your tongue. "Because they're linked to my tasks app and every time you shut one off I got a notification. And look!" You gesture to him. "You're not starved to death or bloody knuckled from training with no wraps!"

Nathan rolls his eyes.

"No come back?"

"Fuck off." He sneers, grabbing his glasses off the table.

You walk around the table and run a hand over his hair. "What's this?"

"Hair?" He pushes your hand away.

"You've never had hair. Ever." You shove your hand back into his hair. It's short, but long enough you can grip the top. Curly, thick, dark. It's beautiful. It must grow like a weed, and with his genetics, you're not surprised it's this long in only four months. "Why now?"

Nathan growls, shoving you back away from him gently. "Quit touching it!"

"Then answer my questions!"

"Fuck you!"

"Fuck you too, Nathan!"

He narrows his eyes at you, glaring daggers. This is how it always is with him. Constant fighting about stupid shit because he doesn't know how to express himself around another human being eighty percent of the time. You're sure it's why he hired you, so he didn't go feral out here on his own. The other twenty percent of the time he is bearable and you actually really like that twenty percent.

You let out a soft sigh and relax your shoulders. Yelling at each other isn't going to get you anywhere right now. You'll take the initiative and soothe the room. "Did your clippers break?"

"Yeah." He grumbles, no longer looking at you, but to the bar behind the dining table.

"And you didn't buy a new one when you went for groceries?"

"I didn't go."

"What?"

"I didn't go for groceries."

You close the gap and step in front of his line of sight. "Nathan, what have you been surviving on?"

"What was left. I've got some MREs in the office for emergencies. Well, I did." He runs a hand through his hair and turns away. "I'm fine. I'm alive, obviously."

"So you just dismissed my alarms? Why didn't you go? I know the flight is a pain in the ass but it's better than starving. Is there nothing left?"

He walks out of the room, toward the kitchen.

"Nathan!" You groan and let out a yell of frustration. If he ate everything and didn't replenish anything, then you're going to have to call the pilot back tomorrow and ride another two hours into the city, go shopping, then ride two hours back.

"Fuck!"

_____________________

After a grueling day of travel and shopping you start making dinner. You've not seen hide or hair of Nathan since you found out he's been barely living for the last four months. You can't fathom why he wouldn't go out, why he wouldn't even get you to bring him something. Sure you were in Seattle for the time you were gone but you probably could have managed to get on a plane and bring him some protein bars. It just kills you, knowing he just let himself suffer. But why? To prove a point? What was it?

"Dinner is almost ready." You say, pressing the talk button on the kitchen com system. He probably isn't listening but it's worth a try. The man must be desperate for a real meal.

As soon as you get everything plated, on the table and glasses of wine poured, Nathan appears. You can only assume he watched you on the cameras, so he knew exactly when to show up. He is always checking in on you with those cameras. It was alarming at first, when you arrived about a year ago now. But these days it's alright, a sense of security, knowing that if something were to happen he would be there in a heartbeat.

"Steak, spinach salad with bleu cheese, and a potato." You say softly, presenting the food like a gameshow host with your hand as he sits down.

"I can see what it is."

"Mmhmm." You stuff a fork full of spinach in your mouth. "Can you see the poison then?"

A small smile plays at the corners of his lips and you don't miss it for a millisecond. "Must be tucked into the cheese crumbles."

You grin around the rim of your wine glass. "Soaked the steak in it actually."

"Clever." He mutters dully, biting a piece of said steak off his fork.

You eat a few more bites in silence, just staring awkwardly at each other. You have so many questions about what he was doing while you were gone. But you know he won't answer them, not now at least. He will have to be exhausted or perhaps less sober. That actually is another question. Has he been sober for all this time? Or did he ration his alcohol?

"Good food?"

"Fucking amazing." He says, voice barely above a whisper.

"Oh?"

"Yeah." He rubs his last bite of meat around in the bleu cheese. "You can cook like no other."

You feel a flush rise in your chest. "I think that's the nicest thing you've ever said to me."

"Don't get used to it."

"Oh I won't."

Nathan stands and takes his plate to the kitchen. "Did you get my shaver?"

"Yes." You follow close behind and drop your plate in the sink beside his. "But I like it."

"What?"

"Your hair. I like it." You lean against the counter and he runs a hand over his head. "It looks... different."

Nathan rolls his eyes.

"It's up to you, obviously. I'm sure you keep it shaved for whatever reason." You shrug and look away from him. "The shaver is in your bathroom."

"Thanks." He mutters and heads off into the house. He's going to the lab no doubt.

_____________________

Finally two weeks later. Nathan is wasted. Gobsmacked, shit faced and three sheets to the wind. You got an allegory for it, that is this man right this second. Your chance is now, you can get his ass on the spot and start interrogating him. Well. That is if you can get him out of his lab.

"Nathan, I have something for you." You coo softly into the com beside the door to his lab. "Something you'll like."

"Go away."

"Come on!"

"Unless you're out there in some red panties and stockings then I'm not coming out."

You flush and close your eyes. He did not just say that. Surely he cannot mean that he actually wants to see you like that. God that's hot. Does he really want to see you like that? No. He's your boss.

"What if I am?"

"You're not."

"I could be."

"You aren't. Fuck off."

"You wanna see me all undressed hmm?"

Nathan groans and opens the door, glaring you down. "You lied. Fuck off."

"No, I never said I was out here undressed. But now I have you." You shove your way into the lab office and plop down on his sofa. "You're not gonna get rid of me."

Nathan stands at the door and sways on his feet. He seemingly is perplexed how you managed to overcome him and slip into his space. "You're a pain the ass."

"Mmm and you're a thorn in my side." You lay back on the sofa, and prop your legs up on the armrest. "C'mere, I wanna talk."

"You wanna talk? What do I look like? One of your gal pals?"

"Maybe with a little mascara, some eight inch pumps...yeah."

"I'll give you eight inches alright." He sinks into his desk chair and grabs a bottle from the desk to press to his lips. "What do you want?"

You sit up and brace your elbows on your knees. "I want to know why you didn't leave here in four months."

"I didn't need to."

"Nathan, you were living on MRE rations like a bunker crazed maniac. You barely called me, and when you did it sounded like you were doing fine. What happened?"

"You left."

"Yeah?" You chuckle softly. "I had to settle things back home. I told you that, you knew where I went."

Nathan takes his glasses off and sets them aside. "I think...I think I rabbit holed into my insecurities and loneliness."

You raise your eyebrows. This is going deeper than you imagined it would. "Okay. How so?"

He tips the bottle up against his lips. "I thought, well maybe you wouldn't come back. Why would you? You got out, I let you go willingly. I felt like I just deserved to suffer alone." He shakes his head.

"Nathan, why didn't you tell me this sooner?"

"And make me look like a desperate fucking idiot? How would that look? Desperate lonely billionaire misses assistant so much he begs her to come back."

"So you did miss me."

"Fuck." He rubs his palm into his eye and lets out a yell of frustration. "You're the only person I've had proper physical contact with in like three years, I've gotten attached to you, and you just don't even understand how messed up I am!"

You stand and walk over to him. "Nathan, do you have feelings for me?"

He stares up at you, and sets his bottle aside. It's sloshes, mostly empty. "Don't play with me."

"No one's playing."

"You hate me. I'm so mean to you, and I yell at you and piss you off everyday."

You chuckle softly. "Oh yeah, that's all true. But when you're not being difficult, that's when you're incredible. You're so hot and cold I should have run away but somehow I still wanted to come home."

"Home?"

"Yeah." You run your hand over his hair and his head slumps forward. He hasn't shaved it off. It's been a few days. "You're insufferable but I can't get enough. I love how you talk, how you think, how you are always making sure I'm comfortable and happy even if you think I don't notice. I love how you look at me, glancing to make sure I'm still there, to make sure I'm real. I know how you need me."

"Don't want you to leave." He mutters, eyes heavy.

"I'm not leaving." You kneel down, arms across his lap and he looks at you, hand going to your cheek.

He strokes his thumb over your lower lip. "Be my good girl."

"Nathan," you whisper and your heart threatens to explode and you're flushing, heat pooling between your legs. "You're really out of it."

He smiles lopsidedly, pressing his thumb between your lips and you open your mouth automatically.

You lick the pad of his thumb and give a quick suck before pulling back and standing up. "You're way too drunk."

"Come back here."

"I'm going to bed." You lick your lip, the taste of his thumb is salty. If he weren't wasted you would consider exploring this further. You've wondered if there would be more between the two of you. It felt natural. But he's your boss. This is your job and as much as you would like to be more with Nathan you know this has to end here. He's not a relationship guy.

Nathan pushes up from his chair and slumps over onto the couch. God he's fucking gone. He won't even remember this in the morning. It's for the best.

"Good night."

_____________________

You make your way to Nathan's room with a bottle of water, two Tylenol and a banana. He's going to be so hungover it's not funny. You hadn't realized how much he was drinking until you found the empty bottle of vodka in the kitchen trash can and the rest of a small bottle of whiskey in the office trash and you had only bought both just the other day. Not to mention all the beers he sucked down while in the lab, a good six of the eight pack. Oh boy is he going to be hurting.

"Nathan, hey," you call softly, sinking down beside him on his bed. "It's almost noon."

"Lea'me 'lone." He grumbles into his pillow, wrapping his arms around it tightly.

You run a hand up his back, settling between his shoulder blades. "I brought water and a snack."

He turns his head, face smushed into the pillows as he looks at you. "What happened last night?"

"You got very drunk and drank literally everything we had. I'm not sure how you're alive."

"Did I do anything?"

"Nothing I wouldn't expect of you."

He shoots you a leery glare. "The fuck's that mean?"

You shake your head. He doesn't need to know he started spilling his guts and coming on to you more than playfully. "Nothing. You were a dick."

"I'm always a dick sweetheart. I told you that when you started."

"You did." You rub his shoulder and he groans. "Come on, get up. Have your banana, pills and water. Get a shower. You've got a video call in an hour."

"Oh fuck off." He presses his face into the pillows. "Attend for me. I want to sleep."

"It needs to be you. It's an HR meeting about hiring new staff to run diagnostics on Blue Book backlog data."

Nathan grumbles unintelligibly.

"I'll make your favorite lunch."

"Mm'not hungry."

"I'll join you in the shower."

He pushes up fast, nearly knocking the Tylenol from your hand. "No take backs."

"Nathan! I'm not actually going to shower with you! You're my boss for God's sake. I just said it for shock value to get you to roll your hungover ass out of bed. Shit."

"Yeah but no take backs." He grins and swallows back the pills you hand him. "Come on, it's not like you haven't seen me naked."

"Uh no, I most certainly have not."

"Oh yeah you have." He smirks, eyes holding yours in a challenging gaze. "You liked it too."

"What?!" You shove him and stand up, throwing the banana at his lap. "Eat your snack and get your shit together. I'm going to take a hike."

Nathan rips his banana top off to peel it and takes a bite. "You're not gonna set up the meeting stuff?"

"You just turn on your webcam when they call, Nathan."

"What if I need help?" He says teasingly. "You're my assistant after all."

You pinch the bridge of your nose. "Would you like me to wait until they call? You want me to stand beside your desk and click the button to answer with a video camera on? Is that it?"

"You could sit on my lap." He pats his legs. "Keep it nice and warm for me."

You twist your face quickly into an expression of distaste before a flush begins to heat your skin. This is just Nathan. He isn't flirting. He's being an asshole to get a reaction from you. He's like a child. Don't reward bad behavior.

"Oh you're thinking about it." He murmurs, voice dropping lower than usual. It's almost sultry. You've not heard this tone but maybe once before. "You wanna fuck your boss don't you?"

"Absolutely not." You grip the side of the door a little harsher than you mean to. Just another step and you're out of the room. Away from his eyes. Fuck. His eyes. What is that look for? It's so...commanding.

Nathan presses the door closed and you lean against it. "You're a horrible liar."

"You're projecting."

"Am I? Or were you on your knees in front of me last night?" He raises his eyebrows. "Oh you think I don't remember? That's cute."

"You know that isn't what happened."

"I know you let me put my thumb in your mouth. I know you licked it, sucked it, willingly." He catches your chin between his thumb and forefinger. "You really want me don't you?"

You narrow your eyes. "Maybe I want you, but I have morals. You're my boss, I'm not going to just fuck you for no reason and I intend on keeping it that way."

Nathan drops his hand from your face. "You'll come around. You can be my employee and still fuck me. I'll allow it."

"Yeah, whatever." You pull the door open and he steps back. "Go shower. You've wasted enough time."

_____________________

Days later you go for a supply run and come home late in the afternoon. As you haul the bags from the cart you use to get them from the helicopter to the front door you see Baxter on the sofa in the living room. He's curled up, the fireplace is on, he's living his best life. Wait. Baxter. No.

"Bax what are you doing in here?!" You set the bags down and hurry to the fireplace to snatch the little gray cat up from his warm nap spot. "How did you-"

"You're back." Nathan says sleepily from the couch. He sits up and runs a hand through his hair. God it looks so good, it's gotten longer you swear and fuck the curls are just maddening. "You wanna tell me something?"

"I'm sorry. I couldn't leave him with anyone and he is like my child. I couldn't just abandon him." You cradle Baxter against your chest. "I'll leave, if I have to. You can fire me."

Nathan chuckles softly. "Fire you? For having a cat?"

"You said he couldn't come with me. You specifically said no pets under any circumstances."

"Yeah, but maybe I can make an exception for this guy."

You set Baxter down as he begins to squirm. He hurries over to Nathan and winds around his legs.

"Come here." Nathan pats his lap. "Come see daddy."

Baxter jumps up and curls up on Nathan's lap, head butting his hand for attention. It's the most bizarre thing. Baxter has never taken a liking to anyone this fast. It's as if he's been living with Nathan for weeks.

"He never likes people like this. What did you do to him?"

Nathan strokes his hand down Baxter's back and massages his ears. "I didn't do anything. I gave him affection."

"How did you find him?"

"He's loud." Nathan laughs, looking at you with a soft smile. "You were on a walk in the woods and I heard him crying one day-"

"Wait what? You've known about him before today?"

"Yes." He gives you a look that says you're not fooling anyone. "I've been seeing him for days now. Almost two weeks."

You groan and press your back against the fireplace. "Why didn't you say anything?"

"I wanted you to tell me. I wanted to see how long you thought you could lie to me."

"I didn't lie. I never said he wasn't here."

"Very true."

"So he was meowing? That's how you found him?"

"Mmhmm." Nathan chuckles again. "You must have forgotten to feed him before your walk. Because as soon as I gave him food he was happy."

"Fuck. I probably did." You sigh and laugh softly at yourself. "I'm terrible at hiding things."

"Yes you are." His eyes catch yours and you glare at him. "What's the look for? You jealous?" He pats his leg where Baxter isn't stretched out. "You wanna sit on Daddy's lap too?"

You cover your face with your hand. "For fucks sake you're a freak. No, I would not like to sit. I'd like help with these groceries." You point to the long forgotten bags by the door.

Nathan peeks over the back of the couch.

"Come on," you shoo Baxter off his lap and as you turn away to go get the bags, Nathan pulls you backwards down onto his legs. "Nathan."

He chuckles deeply against your back. "What?"

"I'm not sitting on your lap."

"Mmm, yes you are."

"Nathan," you sigh softly and stand up just long enough to turn around and straddle his legs, facing him on the couch. It stuns him silent for a second as he stares up at you in bewilderment. "This what you want?"

He grins big, hands running up your thighs. "Just remember that you escalated this, not me."

"I just sat down."

"Oh no sweetheart, you sat down with a purpose." He pulls you flush against him. "I thought you had morals."

"I do." You lean in and his lips part instinctively. "I haven't done anything against them."

Nathan grips your ass and you collapse against him, foreheads together. "You're pushing it."

"I just wanna see you weak, Bateman."

He narrows his eyes and shoves you off his lap. "Little late for that." He mutters as he retreats into the house and you climb up off the floor. If he thinks you're not going to push him to admit he wants you more than sex then he has something else coming.

_____________________

Two days later you're making breakfast and out of the corner of your eye you see Nathan walk in. You pay no mind. It's not unusual that he comes and grabs a water or a cup of tea before breakfast. You turn, plates in hand to put the eggs on and the moment you see Nathan you drop them.

He shaved. Holy fucking shit he shaved his beard very close and his hair is still grown out. He doesn't have his glasses on and who...who the fuck is this? How does one person literally shapeshift?

"Oh fuck, are you okay?" Nathan looks down at the shattered plates. "What happened?"

"What- you! What happened?!" You gesture wildly to his face. "Who are you?!"

He laughs, straight up laughs at you. "Is it that bad?"

"Bad? I wouldn't call it bad." You run a hand over your hair and look around for a tea towel to pick the glass up with safely. "It's not bad." You can't help but continuously glance at him.

Nathan grabs a large bowl from the cabinet on his side of the kitchen and you both kneel down to clean up the glass. "You like it."

"It's different."

"Good different."

"Yeah." You sit back on your heels and take another good look. "I almost couldn't believe it was you."

Nathan drops the last piece of glass into the bowl and brushes his hands off on his sweater. "It's been a while since I went this short. Ten years maybe."

"Damn."

He smiles and it's like he's a different man. You cannot stop staring. It's all familiar, like if you were seeing his brother, or maybe twin. It's the same teeth, same turn of his lips, but that beard being nearly gone makes him so...fucking attractive. Not that he wasn't attractive before, you dug the buzzcut and beard combo, you dug the beard and grown out hair combo. But this is...this is hard.

"Hey, your eggs are burning."

"What! Fuck!" You scramble to your feet and sure enough the sunny side up eggs are hard yolked and brown around the edges.

Nathan dumps the bowl of glass in the trash and places the bowl in the sink. "Let me make something."

"I- what? You?"

"Yeah." He wraps his hand around yours on the pan handle and moves it back off of the burner. "I can cook y'know. I did it a lot before you moved in."

You step back and let him carry the pan to the trash. "Is it April fool's day?"

"No? It's November."

"You're being nice to me."

"Am I?"

"Yes?" You fold your arms across your chest. "Suspiciously nice."

Nathan turns and quirks one eyebrow up. "Suspiciously nice? I don't think I'm being suspiciously nice. Maybe...considerate."

"Not a word I would associate with you either."

"Well, I can just have a power bar and get out of your way if you like." He folds his arms, mimicking your pose.

You chew on your lip. "Are you okay? Seriously, you've never offered to cook and you've managed to not insult me for a solid ten minutes. You even helped me clean up the glass. You're not...you."

"I had a good night's sleep."

"So you've been a dick because you haven't slept properly since I met you?"

"Maybe."

"Maybe? Okay y'know what." You raise your hands and let out a little laugh. "I get it. You are trying to get me to sleep with you. You have been for weeks and I can't just sleep with someone without being in a relationship. You've changed your appearance, knowing I'd like it. You're being nice, acting like you're some normal guy as if you think I'm into that. You just want to get in my pants so bad that-"

"Or maybe I am trying to be a better person because I realized I'm going to run you out of my life if I keep being the way I am." He runs a hand over his hair and tugs. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have come on so strong."

You're floored. He's left you speechless. Never has he said he's sorry, for anything.

"You don't have to say anything. It's fine. I understand that I'm a lot to handle. You have been so patient, and understanding in this last year, and you go toe to toe with me and you don't stand for my shit, so I think you must have been put in my life to force me to make a change. I've been trying to get in your pants, yes, but I don't just want that. I want you."

"Oh."

"I've been thinking about this since you left, and even since you came back. It's consumed me for the last five months and I-" He bites his lip and looks away from you. "I'm in love with you."

Your eyes widen. "You....Nathan..."

"It's fine, I understand if you don't love me. I've been awful and selfish and-"

"You're really in love with me?"

"I don't waste words, you know that."

You step forward and reach out to touch his cheek. The beard is so short, still there, but not bushy in the least. "I love you too. Even if you're a pain in the ass and a little egotistical."

"So I don't have to be disgustingly nice?"

"I didn't fall for disgustingly nice Nathan."

"Thank fuckin God." He grabs your hips and pulls you against him. "Felt like I was playing house."

You giggle and he groans. "Nathan."

"I love your laugh." He grips your hair and tilts your head back, kissing your throat. "I love how you say my name."

A little moan escapes your lips as he scrapes his teeth along your neck. "Hey, easy, relationship first and sex later."

"Mmm. What do you want sweetheart? A date? Gifts? Long walks in the moonlight?" He leans back and looks at you. "I've got a proposal for you."

"What's that?"

"Be my girlfriend. No, be my wife." He bites his lip and cradles your face. "Yeah, you'd be a damn good wife."

You raise your eyebrows. "Not sure I like the implications of that."

"You don't like the implication that you'll be the richest woman in this country, own half of Blue Book, have everything you could ever want, and be a goddess to a god?"

"A goddess to a god huh?"

He smiles and presses his head against yours. "That's right. Besides, we already have a kid."

"We do?"

"Mmhmm. Baxter. I'm his daddy and he knows it."

"Oh hell. Shut up." You roll your eyes.

"I'm your daddy too." He hauls you against him, hands on your ass. "You like it, admit it."

"No!"

"Yeah you do." He kisses across your jaw and down your neck. "It's okay, it's just us you can admit it." His tongue lavishes against your sensitive pulse point. "Come on, tell me you like it."

"Nathan," you moan softly and he rolls his hips against you. "Please."

"Just say it."

"Never."

He chuckles and pulls back, leaving your neck damp and aching. "I'll get it out of you. I know you wanna say it but you're too shy." He bumps his nose against yours and your head swims "I will bide my time."

"Yeah, a long time." You press your lips to his and he hums softly. "I'll think about your proposal."

He chases your lips as you pull back. "I'll be waiting."

"Relationship first." You run a hand over his hair and push him back. "Gotta show me you truly want more than what's in my pants."

"Absolutely." He pushes his sleeves up. "I'll be the best husband."

"Let's stick to boyfriend for now."

"Husband sounds better." He grabs a clean pan from the rack over the stove. "So, breakfast?"

You hop up on the counter and watch as he moves about easily. "I'll take whatever you got."

"I've got a lot." He smirks and you roll your eyes. "But let's start with breakfast."

"Yeah, let's."

End

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#nathan bateman #nathan bateman fic #nathan bateman x reader #Ex Machina #ex machina fic #ex machina fanfic #ex machina fanfiction #ex machina fan fiction #Oscar Isaac #oscar isaac character #oscar isaac characters

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spencersawkward · 3 years

Text

switchblade faith // spencer reid - chapter 1

summary: one month after joining the BAU, Clea is still settling in. between solving murders and getting acclimated to DC, the only comfortable thing in her life is her friendship with Dr. Spencer Reid.

relationship: fem!OC/Spencer Reid

word count: 3.4k

hi all! welcome to my new story.

I've never written a baby Spence fic before, but I'm gonna try my best. I just wanted to get something out of the way before the book starts:

aside from the fact that it's young Spencer, this book isn't placed in a specific season. I might pull cases from different episodes, but the characters will remain the same. I've included Emily and Rossi as characters because I couldn't bear to have a story without either of them (wouldn't want to subject any of you to a Prentiss-less world).

that's pretty much it. I'm glad you're here. if you wanna read my other stories, my masterlist is here.

happy reading :)

"HA!" I slap my hand down on the pile of cards and slide it towards me, organizing them in a neat pile with a smug expression.

"this game is a sham." Spencer sighs, reaching for his book.

"you're just mad you lost." I raise an eyebrow and shuffle the cards again. "you don't wanna play another round?"

"why would I? the only skill this game requires is fast reflexes." he runs hazel eyes down the page with an alarming quickness. I scoff at his disinterest.

"maybe if you trained those reflexes as much as you trained that big genius brain of yours, you'd get a leg up." Morgan teases from his spot next to me. Spencer glances at him with a frown, his cheeks turning a light pink, before looking to me. I throw up my hands.

"he said it, not me." secretly, I smile at the fact that Derek is backing me up.

"I could beat any of you in poker." Reid defends.

"easily. it helps that I don't even know how to play." I slide the cards back into the holder and cross my arms over my chest with a sigh.

"you don't know how to play poker?" he's shocked.

"I told you, I hate card games like that!" I emphasize. things like poker, blackjack, anything that involves multiple players, I usually don't enjoy much. Emily glances up from her case file with a tiny smirk.

"why?"

"I'm a sore loser." I admit, averting my eyes. there's also the risk factor involved, which includes giving up coins or pretzels or peanuts if I lose. I tend to cling tightly to all three. Prentiss lets out a laugh and Spencer flips the page of his book.

"and winner, apparently."

"you're sassy today, aren't you?" I grin at him, pleasantly surprised.

in the month I've been working here, I haven't spoken to Spencer very much. he's been polite and I've gotten to know his intellect quite well, but he doesn't spend a lot of time with us outside of work. when we go out to get drinks, he either declines or heads home before we can even ask, a bag full of books pressed to his side.

I think he just takes a while to get comfortable around new people-- that's what JJ said when I asked why he seemed to be avoiding me. the fact that he played cards with me today felt like a victory in itself, so I'll take what I can get.

Spencer doesn't reply to my dig, only crosses his long, narrow legs and settles into his book.

"we should start briefing before we land." Hotch and Rossi walk over from their spots at the front of the plane to sit on the couch by our table. I nod eagerly and watch as Emily flips open her laptop to FaceTime Penelope about the case.

the first couple cases were more difficult than I expected because I had never worked in the field before joining the BAU, but I'm starting to get used to flying around constantly and examining actual dead bodies. working sex crimes meant I spent most of my time in front of a computer screen or just staying in the office. this is incredibly different-- which I'm starting to find might not to be a bad thing.

"--the virus killed her hard drive and left that on the screen." Penelope explains, referring to the picture of Heather Woodland's computer.

"'for heaven's sake, catch me before I kill more. I cannot control myself'." Morgan reads the message aloud from the case file. the words feel familiar in my mind and I try to remember where I've heard them before.

"that's exactly what William Heirens left behind." Spencer sparks the memory. I sit up straighter.

"the Lipstick Killer?" my fingertips trace over the case details. it's a weird aspect of the murder to emulate, especially because he didn't even leave the message in lipstick. I guess he's not really concerned with that; based on the unsub's previous victims, we have just under 36 hours to find her.

"his first victim was Melissa Kirsh, 26," Reid scratches his nose as he reads, frowning so hard that I start to think he'll form permanent wrinkles. he's got such a baby face, it's almost funny. "stab wounds, strangulation."

"so he stabbed her first, and then strangled her to finish the job?" Morgan repeats.

"what's with using a belt for the second murder?" Emily flips through the papers, confused. Spencer stiffens in his spot as he realizes this is the perfect time to share his freakishly expansive forensic knowledge.

"strangulation with your bare hands actually isn't as easy as you would believe. he probably tried it, found that it took too long, then stabbed her. and blood takes a long time to clean, so he decided a belt would be more efficient."

"he's perfecting his method." I can't tear my eyes away from the photos, despite the roiling sensation they put in my stomach. even with the things I've already seen, I don't think I'll ever get over photographs like this.

"we'll be landing soon and then we're meeting up with the Seattle field office. be ready to split up once we hit the ground." Hotch snaps shut his case file and stands up, breaking off to go sit alone. Rossi takes note of the old card deck that sits on the table.

"poker?" he looks between the four of us.

"nope." Emily chuckles.

"this one doesn't know how to play." Morgan gestures to me, causing Rossi to turn to me.

"were you raised in a barn?" he asks in his usual manner of speaking: blunt sarcasm with a hint of mockery. I frown sarcastically.

"something like that."

"at some point this week, we'll sit down and I'll teach you." he gets up, pats my shoulder, and walks over to join Hotch. I lower my voice once he's far enough away.

"is he actually gonna make me do that?"

"you don't know Rossi." Morgan shakes his head slowly, slides his headphones back on, and sinks into his seat.

"I'll join and bring JJ with me." Emily winks at me reassuringly, noting the tapping of my nail against the surface of the table. Rossi is a legend in the field and I've read all of his books, but didn't want to freak him out by telling him so. it was embarrassing enough when I met him and got tongue-tied while shaking his hand. he's got an elusive energy that intimidates me, and I'd prefer not to showcase that by humiliating myself with poker.

instead of dwelling on thoughts of how I'm going to fail in front of my idol, I open up one of my books and try to pass the time.

...

while I'm writing some notes on one of the many white boards scattered throughout the field office, I realize that I'm one of four other women in the room, including Emily. she's talking to Hotch and another agent at the opposite end of the room; Reid is unpacking his signature book bag and seems deep in thought. Rossi is reading a document. everyone around me seems to be in a hurry to do something, and I begin to feel dumb.

"you okay?" Morgan asks me. I realize that I've been standing with my marker hovering over the board. my fingertips press into my temple before I turn to him.

"yeah, definitely. just thinking." my mind travels to the map we've got pasted up and the red marker lines that Spencer has already created with the geographical profile.

"looks like we're getting the classic Seattle treatment." Derek points outside to the rain pelting the windows, streaming down the glass and distorting the glow of the city outside. it's gloomy today, with a slight chill running through the streets. I nod and turn back to my task, suddenly realizing something.

"he's willing to travel with the body." I mutter to myself. Morgan steps up next to me, crosses his arms across his chest.

"he must drive a vehicle that can conceal one, then." he glances over to Hotch to see what the unit chief has to say, but Spencer speaks up first.

"one in seven point four drivers in Seattle owns an SUV." it's like a flip switches at the mention of a statistic, diverting his attention from something nebulous in his mind to the tangible case. he's a little similar to a robot.

"an Explorer with tinted windows?" Morgan speaks again as he looks over the case photos.

"those rate higher among women." Spencer again.

"sure, but how do we know it's his car?" I wonder.

"what about a Jeep Cherokee?" Hotch chimes in, almost startling me with the deep register of his voice. I pull my bottom lip between my teeth as I think on it.

"Jeeps are more masculine." Reid comes close to me in order to examine the picture I'm holding. he smells like clean laundry and some nice soap scent that I can't place. maybe it's the gel he uses to slick back his hair. no cologne or aftershave. I don't think he'd need to shave, what with his smooth baby face.

Spencer has some special quirks that make him a little more interesting. he usually avoids physical contact with other people-- doesn't shake hands-- but at other times, he doesn't seem to have self-awareness. like right now, where the shoulder of his red sweater is just barely touching mine. I hand him the picture and step away.

"unsubs love to assert their masculinity."

Hotch nods along, encouraging me to share more of what I'm thinking. after swallowing down a lingering nervousness, I tap the push pin marking where the last body was dumped. "he dropped her out-of-state, so he probably has a previous knowledge of law enforcement. maybe he's got a criminal record?"

"good, Williams." Hotch praises me. my fist clenches triumphantly at my side as he turns to the agent who has been watching us intently. "when do we meet with your task force?"

"four." the man replies. I balk at this, my posture shifting. the shortest time constraint I've ever had here has been a full day. it's already one in the afternoon.

"you want an accurate profile by four today?" I glance between Morgan and Spencer, but the latter is rocking back and forth on his heels with his eyes glued to the white board. Morgan doesn't seem put off by it.

"we can do that." Hotch scowls, snapping shut the case file with a finality that tells me we're about to split up. "Dave and Morgan, head to the last dump site. Williams, Reid, I want you to talk to Heather's brother and try to find out what you can about her life. Prentiss and I will stay here in case of new developments."

I nod curtly, grab my jacket, and glance over at Spencer. he runs his hand over his hair, although I can't imagine what there is to smooth down, then walks over to me.

"you ready to go?" I ask, brandishing the file. he and I have only done two interviews together; I spent most of my beginning weeks working with Emily to get a feel for the job. both times with the boy genius have been fine, if not a little awkward.

he nods in answer to my question. "would you mind driving?"

"no license?" I tease to lighten the mood, but he doesn't get the joke. instead, he frowns at me with something of a distracted expression, adjusts his bag.

"no, I don't like driving in the rain."

"oh," I recover quickly and put a friendly smile on my face. "no problem."

"thanks." he walks ahead of me and I cringe at my own behavior. he acts so differently from earlier on the jet that I start to wonder if I did something wrong. maybe he's just in his head or something; I know I would be if I had an IQ that enormous.

when we get to the house of Heather Woodland's brother, a gorgeous golden lab greets us in the entryway. she puts her paws up on my legs and I reach down to scratch behind her ears with a smile on my face.

"Sandy, calm down." her owner grabs her collar gently to calm her. "sorry."

"no, it's fine, I love dogs." I wave it off and step inside. Spencer is eyeing Sandy warily, but she seems just as eager to say hi to him as she was to me. when she lets out a singular, enthusiastic bark, he startles.

"Mr. Woodland," I suppress my laugh by changing the subject. "I'm Special Agent Williams and this is Special Agent Dr. Reid."

we shake hands, my colleague giving his usual wave and polite smile. the interviewee takes in Spencer's appearance. I know what's coming.

"you look too young for medical school." Woodland says to Reid. this has happened a couple times since I joined the team, but Spencer never seems to mind. if anything, he lights up at the opportunity to share the reason for his official title.

"they're PhD's. three of them." he gives a little smile as we walk into the house, me shaking a few stray raindrops from my hair.

"so... are you a genius or something?" Heather's brother leads us past the hallway into the living room, which is unkempt and littered with pictures, catalogs, and toys. he must have kids in school right now. that would also explain the breed of dog.

"I don't believe that intelligence can be accurately quantified."

"he's being modest," I glance over at Spencer. "Dr. Reid can read 20,000 words a minute-- he's definitely a genius."

Woodland stares at Spencer for a second as he tries to fathom the speed at which someone's mind would have to turn in order to process all that information. I still can't imagine it. Spencer's eyes avoid Woodland's shyly. instead, he watches me as I pet Sandy.

soon after, we ask him about Heather's personality and tendencies. her brother is more than willing to give us all the information we need. I'm surprised, however, by my partner's ease at wandering around Woodland's house, flipping through the magazines on top of the TV and reading the spines of books on shelves. he's quite conspicuous about it.

about halfway through my mental list of questions, Sandy keeps jumping up and wagging her til.

"I'm gonna take her to the backyard quick," Woodland tells us. "one second."

he ducks out of the room and I wait until I know he's out of earshot before sidling up beside Reid.

"there's an immediate relationship established between a buyer and a seller," he tells me, holding up a Datsun Z catalog. we know that she was in the market for one. "if I want to coax a young woman into my car..."

"offer her a test drive." I finish his sentence. of course, within ten minutes of sifting through this woman's house, Spencer has figured out the ruse used to lure her. Woodland returns a moment later with a smile, but we tell him that we've gotten the information we need before leaving.

in the car, Spencer theorizes about the unsub's mental condition as I try to navigate traffic in the storm. thunder rumbles overhead, occasionally sending a vibration through the car. my knuckles tighten around the wheel a bit. I also hate driving in the rain. his rambles fills the silence, however, and somewhat soothe my nerves.

"he doesn't have the MO of a paranoid psychotic. dumping the bodies out in the open, with a weapon nearby... that doesn't align."

"he covers their eyes with duct tape multiple times over, though. he knows he's going to kill them, but he doesn't want them to see his face?" my fingertips drum over the wheel nervously.

"what's wrong?" Spencer asks suddenly, glancing at my hands and then at my face. I still my movements at the change in subject.

"huh? nothing. I just don't like driving in the rain, either."

"oh. I'm sorry." he straightens a bit in his seat. the apology surprises me a little, but he seems genuinely sympathetic. I guess I really don't know him that well.

"it's cool."

we fall into an awkward silence and I bite my lip. we should get back to talking about the case. heaven knows Spencer has more facts to spew, more theories to share about this unsub. anything is better than the gap in conversation. I open my mouth to say more about what we learned at the house, except Spencer speaks first.

"so... how are you liking working here?" he asks awkwardly. it takes a second for the question to register with me. he sounds uncomfortable whenever we're alone and that makes me uncomfortable in turn. where everyone else was quick to include me in their jokes and discussions, Reid always sounds like talking to me exhausts him. it's obvious that he's socially awkward. there's no judgement from me; I'm just surprised that he's pushing to talk about non work-related subjects.

"I like it," not really an accurate summation. I don't think a heart-to-heart is exactly the right move when talking to him. "a little stressful, though."

"you worked in sex crimes before, right?" he looks out the window. there isn't much to see except for the rain-blurred skyline. I nod.

"yep."

"that sounds... hard." he shifts in his seat as he tries to come up with more points of conversation. it's kind of endearing, honestly. I throw him a bone.

"so is profiling."

"why'd you switch?" his eyes flit over to mine as he quickly adds, "if you don't mind me asking."

I take a second to come up with an answer. of course, there's the classic response: I've always wanted to help people— which isn't wrong— it's also not the whole answer. all through college and the Academy, I had my head focused on one thing. I could interview killers and get inside their heads, but there's something entirely different that you don't get from pure research. and one person inspired that in me before I had finished high school.

"don't tell him I said this, but I really wanted to work with Rossi." I say in a hushed tone. there's a slight smile on my lips because I haven't told anyone on the team in fear of being teased. I don't think Spencer is likely to gossip with Rossi about me, though.

"really?" now he sounds surprised.

"I've read all his books and I've been to a couple lectures. he doesn't remember me, evidently." the thought is more funny than embarrassing. he spoke at my college a few years back and I recall being on the edge of my seat, trying to come up with the courage to ask the questions that filled my head. I was too shy.

"does he know you're a fan?" Spencer loosens up a bit.

"nope," we pull off the freeway as we near the field office. I stop at a red light and look over. "I didn't want to embarrass myself with the whole 'your work changed my life' spiel."

at this, Spencer lets out a short, nervous giggle. it's a nice sound, that laugh. it makes me smile when he seems to relax in his seat.

"that's exactly what I did." he says. I frown.

"you told him his books changed your life?" I blush as I realize I just inadvertently made fun of him.

"I, um... well, I got excited to talk about his research." he averts his gaze again and his cheeks turn a slight pink. there's a dimple in his cheek, I notice, that keeps tugging upward. this is my first time having a non-forced moment with Spencer alone; a wave of satisfaction washes over me as I realize the potential for another friend here.

"trust me, I get it." I laugh. we pull into the parking ramp for the field office and I find a spot by the door. Spencer hoists that bag into his lap and runs his hand through his hair. when I pull the key out of the ignition, he waits for me to get out of the car before we start walking toward the door.

it's small, but I appreciate that he doesn't run off without me. we don't talk as we walk, our footsteps echoing along the cement walls.

oh my god first chapter holy fuck! it's short, but I don't wanna overwhelm. I'm so excited for this book!

#spencer reid #matthew gray gubler #dr. reid #criminal minds #mgg #fanfic #fanfiction #wattpad #friends to lovers #BAU #slow burn

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saphirered · 3 years

Note

Lovely Caleb fic! Could I get a confession of love fix that involved Caleb kissing the hands of a bewildered reader?

Thank you for the request! I hope this is to your liking!

It’s rather late. Well, you think it is. It’s kind of difficult to tell in Rosohna’s eternal darkness. At least you were sure it’s been a long day. You find yourself wandering the halls of the Xhorhaus. The last few months have been crazy, hectic and you’d have to admit your life has been turned upside down but you wouldn’t change if for the world. You found friends, family even. Reminiscing you find your mind gravitate towards fond memories of your favourite wizard. Dragging him along on a little shopping spree for spell components, the excited rants he goes on when you ask for his advise on this new spell you found, the talks about nothing when you shared a watch, holding his hand while Yasha shaved his beard with her sword, giggling about a little prank you played on a very grumpy looking halfling shopkeeper in Zadash, drunken nights sharing a bottle after a successful job completed, him falling asleep with his head on your shoulder, caring for each other’s injuries, the rare dance in the tavern…

Not as insightful as Caduceus may be but you weren’t blind either. It’s clear Caleb seems more comfortable around you than anyone save for Nott maybe, a different kind of comfort still. You’ve been consciously picking up on a shift in his behaviour for a while now. Your favorite wizard has been getting closer and more affectionate towards you but you’ve known him for a while now and you can’t help but pick up on this. His recent shift in behavior gave you butterflies in your stomach, something more than friendship but you didn’t feel it was the right time to tell him how you feel. Besides, what his feelings don’t extend beyond care right? This is no different than his relationship with Beau or Nott. Love is a strong term and one you may not hand out so freely but you know yourself well enough these feelings you’re experiencing are love. You just don’t want to ruin your friendship because he’s not ready, not comfortable or doesn’t reciprocate your feelings in the same way after all. Caleb has come out of his shell and made so much progress, growing more comfortable and open around you and that’s extending to those around him too. You don’t want him to crawl back into that shell again. You value him more than that.

Quietly you get some dried herbs from a sleeping Caduceus’ stash and wander into the kitchen to make some tea. You’re pretty sure you’re the only one still awake as everyone was quite exhausted after your return. Trying to start a flame to boil the water proved more difficult than you had hoped. Growing frustrated with the flint and steel you slam them on the counter a little too hard. You cringe squeezing your eyes tight shut and listen. Okay… seems like no one woke up from that. You glare at the kettle half the mind to toss it out of the window. Stupid tea. Stupid fire. You take a breather leaning your head against one of the shelves above the counter.

“It looks like we had the same idea.” You almost jump out of your skin quickly covering your mouth to prevent a scream to escape from your lips. You see a bleary eyed Caleb looking about as disheveled as expected standing in the doorway of the kitchen.

“Don’t scare me like that you idiot!” You toss a towel at him. It hits, draping over one shoulder and he just gives you a ‘really?’ expression as you feel the blood rush from the scare fade.

“You’re having trouble, ja?” He says more than asks referring to the still cold kettle.

“You have to make me feel worse about not being able to get a flame going to brew some tea?” You say in jest as you grab another cup for him. Caleb walks over taking your spot and with a snap of the fingers the flame is lit.

“It is not that difficult.” He jokes back fully aware that your expertise lays not with fire magic. You have many other talents, he’s told you so himself many times praising you for them. You grab the towel draped over his shoulder, fold it neatly and put it back on the counter.

“Your help is appreciated oh grand master magician.” You give him a side hug which he returns wrapping his arm around your shoulders as you wait for the water to boil.

“Couldn’t sleep?” You ask watching drops of condensation build up on the outside of the kettle.

“Ah, no. Uh, wandering thoughts.” Caleb sounds like he’s only half paying attention. Wandering thoughts indeed.

“Wanna talk about it?” You offer as the kettle starts whistling and you remove it from the heat before it gets too loud and begin preparing the teapot. You take a step closer to the counter, Caleb’s hand falling from your shoulder to your lower back.

“I… uh-“ He hesitates and you swear when you look over your shoulder for just a second you can see a slight blush creep up his cheeks.

“Caleb, you know you can tell me anything, right?” He manages to get out a ‘yes’ under his breath so you grab a tray, put the teacups and saucers, the teapot and grab some biscuits from a jar hidden behind the vast array of herbs and spices to avoid a certain Tiefling from claiming them all. Balancing the tray on one hand you turn around and grab his hand, guiding him along into the living room. You put the tray on the table and make Caleb sit down on the couch as you sit down next to him. You can see him take a deep breath and he refuses to meet your eye. Though, that’s not entirely out of character for the wizard so you give him time and space as you pour the tea in each of your cups. With a wave of your hand you cool the hot water to a less scalding but still warm level.

“I know. But in this case I don’t know if that makes this any easier.” You frown and grab his hands in yours. Almost absentmindedly he begins drawing circles on the back of your palms with this thumbs. While he won’t look at you you can see he’s trying to find the words.

“Should I be worried?” Many questions rush through your head. Was everything alright? Did something happen?

“No. No. No need to worry.” He musters a quick half smile before it disappears. You hated seeing him like this. So much conflict and inner turmoil. You give his hands a soft squeeze. Whatever this is it must bother him a lot if he’s so affected by it!

“It’s alright. Take however long you need. I’m here for you no matter what.” He takes a deep breath as you finish your sentence.

“I’ve had some revelations lately and I’ve tried so hard to push them away, deny them or hoping that maybe I was interpreting them wrong but I can no longer just brush them aside. I don’t think it’s fair…” Another deep breath.

“What’s not fair to who?”

“This. All of it. What I’m doing. It’s not fair to you.” He has trouble forming a sentence.

“Slowly. Just keep breathing.” You try to calm him down.

“It’s not fair that I freely take your comfort, affection, kindness and even companionship. I’m afraid my actions in return, they do not come from friendship but selfish motives instead. I don’t want this to end but I cannot treat my own actions as rooted from friendship when they are not.” He scrambles on stumbling every few words and you try to make sense of his words but you’ve known him longer than today so you get where he’s going.

“Caleb…” You begin but he cuts you off.

“No, no I need you to hear this before I cower back and lose the courage to do this. You are heaven sent. You are patient and kind and every time you smile at me I feel my heart skip a beat. Every hug, touch or kiss feels like the warmth of the sun after endless winter. I thought perhaps I felt this way because this is who you are and what you do; making the lives of those you care about brighter where you can. I know you care about me as you’ve reminded me many a time, and I care about you a lot, but I do not think it ends with just care. My realisation showed me that you’ve brought about a feeling I thought myself no longer capable off; love.” He pulls your hands close to his chest. You’re bewilder, confused at this open confession but above all surprised he so openly confides in you. You think hard taking in every word.

“So I think it’s unfair to you when for me this kindness and affection from my side will always be out of love and I cannot in good conscious give you my love when you do not want it. I cannot ask you to feel the same but I also don’t think me returning your kindness and affection can ever be anything other than love. So please, I don’t want what we have, our friendship to end but I don’t want to take what you don’t have to give me…”

“Caleb, I need you to listen to me very carefully.” You watch as his shoulders slump. So insecure when it comes to other’s feelings and opinions of him it hurts you every time he sells himself short. You look for the right words yourself. If he can muster up the courage then so can you!

“You can be so blinded by your own thoughts and insecurities you don’t even consider the fact that I feel the same.” He finally looks at you wide eyed freezing in place for a second.

“You underestimate your ability to be loved and if I can prove you different, if you will let me prove you different I will.” Caleb scans your face for any sense of insincerity, deceit or even jest but he finds none. He takes a minute but eventually pulls your hands to his lips pressing a long soft kiss to the backs.

“Thank you. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve this but you truly are a light in the darkness.” He kisses the backs of your hands again.

“You were you; all you ever need to be.” You shift leaning into his side, head against his shoulder and his arm wrapping around you. Intertwining your fingers with his at your waist you grasp his other hand and bring it to your lips. That small kiss right where his wrist meets his palm makes him melt. He leans back on the couch pulling you with in a slouched relaxed position. If only the rest of the Nein could see you now. They’d go crazy…

#critical role x reader #mighty nein x reader #caleb widogast x reader #caleb widogast

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mass-effect-a-companions-react · 4 years

Text

Mornings Off

oh whats this? a post? How the ME:A romances wake up next to Ryder on a morning off

--- Liam - Liam likes lazy mornings. Days were he can just wake up next to Sara and relax. They usually wake up around the same time, pressing small kisses to each others faces with giggles and whispers. He prefers to have her sleep curled against his chest, one arm wrapped around her (even if it fell asleep ages ago) so that he can run his fingers along her arm while they talk about last nights dream “have i died in my sleep and gone to heaven? because surely your an angel” “its too early in the morning for pickup lines, Costa” “its never too early for pick up lines”

Cora - Cora wakes up first, laying on her back with Scott practically pressed on top of her. She never really could relax, even on days off. It was always an endeavor trying to wiggle out of his grasp without him waking up and he pouts like a puppy when he realizes shes gone. Normally Cora shoves a pillow in her place to keep him sedated and gives him a forehead kiss, before she does her morning routine and puts on a fresh pot of coffee, making it jsut the way he likes it and leaving the cup by the bed. By the time Scott even bothers to sit up she's already pressed, dressed and watering her plants. ”Im starting to think you love the plants more than me” ”good morning to you too, Scott. Did you sleep well?” ”yes i did. Thank you for the coffee, by the way” Peebee - Bold of you to assume PeeBee even gets up in the mornings on the days off. Shes a heavy sleeper, so she can and will sleep in any time she gets. (She sleeps alot to regain all that goblin energy)Ryder, bless their hearts, cannot escape PeeBee’s octopus grasp, as she raps herself around them and clings to their warmth, happily snoring until its nearly noon. When she actually does wake up, she still remains in bed for another 10 minutes and always jokingly calls ryder a weirdo for watching her sleep. please, please let go peebee, they really have to pee. “i know your awake. Come on babe, my legs are going numb” “snore” “did- did you just say snore instead of actually fake snoring?”

Jaal - Jaal tends sleep with Ryder on his chest, the skin to skin contact really does him in. He tends to be an early riser, though unlike cora hes content staying where he is. He watches them sleep, carefully running his thick fingers through their hair committing every detail to memory as if it were the last time he will see it. He just holds them until they wake up, giving them soft rapid fire kisses (that he totally doesn't use that as a tactic to wake them up early what are you talking about). Every time Ryder cracks open their eyes they are instantly met by his vivid blue ones, grinning at them as he nuzzles their face.

”Good morning my darling one” ”I swear if you ever wake me up in any other way i would never forgive you” ”*Chuckling* good to know” Vetra - Early riser by nature, and usually gets out of bed instantly , even if ryder is clinging to them. However, modern problems require modern solutions and she will literally carry ryder around while doing her morning routine and checking her logs for any supplies she has to pick up. Vetra is a busy body,even on days off and it isnt untill she’s resituated on the bed when ryder wakes up, pushing her data pad down and demanding kisses “ugh do you ever stop? Can i at least get my morning kiss before you start jumping into work?” “Not with that morning breath you’re not. Go brush your teeth.” “oh, so cruel to me”

Gil - Like PeeBee, gil tends to sleep in. Though not as late. He usually tends to take his time wake in up in increments, always ending with a big stretch and loud, obnoxious yawn before “gracefully” flopping back down on the bed full force, causing it to bounce a bit. Gil runs like furnace, so Scott usual has his arms rapped around him as soon as he sits up, nuzzling into his neck befoe the two go to do their morning routings together, constantly messing with each other as they do.

“Did you just give me a shaving crème moustache?” “you look ever handsome with it” “Scott i don't even shave. And i already have a great beard and mustache, thank you.”

Suvi- Suvi sleeps curled into Sara, and Sara complains the moment she rolls away from her. Suvi is a long time practicer of “late to bed, early to rise” often sliding in and out of of bed at the weirdest fucking hours. Though is alot more difficult on days off because ryder wraps around her like a vice grip, knowing that Suvi actually doesn't have anything to do and is forced to stay in bed jsut a little longer. Suvi can easily be convinced.

“Let go, Sara. I have some reports i need to go over in the lab.” “5 more minutes” “....You’re lucky you’re cute”

Reyes - Waking up next to Reyes was rare in itself, so you bet your ass Ryder is going to take advantage of it. Reyes wakes easily and normally slides away from Ryder without being seen or heard, leaving them feeling just a bit colder. But after things settle down, so does he, slowly but surely. If they ever do share the same bed, Reyes likes to sleep with his arms wrapped around Ryder, holding them close to convince himself that they are actually there. He always wakes up first, no matter what, and sits up with their head in his lap, letting them rest as he checks his omni tool, running one hand through their hair. “ Hmh- wait. Your still here?” “Dont sound so surprised to see me, amore” “Its a good kind of surprised, Reyes”

Bonus Evfra (i will never not be thirsty) - Like Vetra this man does not know the meaning of the words “a day off” and will rise with the sun in order to get to the resistance base. He wakes giving Ryder a kiss on the face before getting ready for the day, taking extra preparation to make them breakfast before he leaves and placing it on the nightstand as a form of apology, kissing them again before leaving. on the rare days Ryder actually does convince Evfra to stay in bed (usually after a long night of “passion”) he sleep on his stomach with ryder on his back (he likes to feel their weight, it grounds him) and he is content just lying there and listening to them breath with his eyes closed until they get up, placing g a kiss along his spine. “oh ho? what's this? a handsome stranger in my bed?” “Firstly this is my bed. Secondly, you just woke up how are you this annoying already?” “Good morning to you too, big blue.”

#Liam Costa #cora harper #PeeBee #jaal ama darav #vetra nyx #gil brodie #suvi anwar #reyes vidal #mass effect andromeda #mass effect romance #mod di #evfra de tershaav

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ashintheairlikesnow · 4 years

Text

I Want It Back

CW: References to negative stimming resulting in self-injury, description of injuries, brief reference to past noncon, trauma response, traumatic memory recovery, internalized guilt, victim-blaming, and ableism, grief, PTSD

Found Out, Akio, Chris Sees, and Tell Me Everything.

“Will you talk to me, today?” They crouch in front of him, their hair limp and badly in need of a wash, settling along the back of their neck, hanging lank over their forehead. They take his hands in theirs, rubbing at the cold, long fingers to warm them, the pale of his skin against their own deep warm brown.

He rocks, forward and back, but he doesn’t look at them. His eyes are focused off to the side, one something they can’t see, something entirely inside his own mind.

They wait, but nothing changes.

“Okay, so no words, yet.” Laken tries for a smile, soft and loving, but it gets no reaction. “That’s okay, Chris. That’s okay. You don’t have to speak before you’re ready.”

Jake managed to even out his hair, using a tiny pair of scissors from his shaving kit to get everything about the same length, and it’s shorter than Laken has ever seen it, shorter than they ever imagined it would be. Clipped close to his scalp, only the occasional visible hint of the blue they’ve always known him with, the coppery strawberry blond makes him seem even paler, makes his green eyes more intense and saturated, fades out his eyebrows almost entirely.

He looks alien, here, curled up in the corner of his room at Jake’s house in Jake’s big shirt and loose, long pajama pants. Without his compression shirt his arms and his neck are so bare, so vulnerable.

Like this - lit dimly in ways that seem to bring out a glimmer from beneath his skin - Chris is an unearthly, almost eerily pretty thing, human only in the barest outline of his form, in the bandages affixed over his forehead, his neck, one on his cheek. The other scratches weren’t deep enough to need covering but they’re still red, darker and bruising, healing so slowly and standing out even more than his freckles.

Laken thinks, with a sickening twist inside of them, that they are seeing what the people who hurt him saw, once.

A broken, beaten, frightened boy, locked up so he had no way to escape, not even from himself. They are seeing what was molded into whatever he was when he was found. They are seeing what Jake recognizes from back then, and what sets the lines of his face deeper, harsher, with an anger he doesn’t dare express where Chris can see him.

Jake is at some other safehouse right now, talking to someone else, getting all his rage out while Laken, Kauri, and Antoni take turns making sure Chris isn’t going to hurt himself again. It feels strange, surreal, a sort of at-home suicide watch only Chris isn’t trying to do that, he’s just… lost, deep inside himself, in the cycle of crying and screaming and rocking married with long periods of near perfect stillness and silence.

The light is not total, Antoni had told them earlier, strange and enigmatic, with his own sad soft smile. They cannot truly erase us. We are only pushed beneath our surfaces.

He'll cycle for a while, Kauri had said, and he's easier for them to talk to, really. When it comes back, you either push it back down like I do, or you don't. He's not. So it's… gonna hurt.

What's going to hurt?

Knowing. Kauri's smile had weakened, then. Knowing that they tore you apart and told you that you wanted it that way. Knowing that it wasn't always like that, and knowing that it didn't ever have to be, except for bad fucking luck.

Laken doesn't understand, not really, but they're here for him, and it's all they know how to do.

He needs someone to put their hands between his head and the wall, to get his feather into his mouth, get his fingers on the stimming bracelets on his wrist, at last resort to give him a pillow so he can get the motions out without causing himself any physical damage. They can do that.

Laken hasn’t slept in two days, except sometimes dozing on Chris's bed, and Chris hasn’t spoken in that long except to tell them to leave, that he’s too difficult, there’s too much pain in him that Laken didn’t sign up for, and they don’t know how to tell him that they’re not scared of his pain, they’re scared of losing the chance to help him carry it.

He’s barely recognizable as the brightly shining smiling boy they met on their first day at college, but he’s still their Chris, their sunshine, their light and life and love. Going through hard shit is what you do, sometimes, and they can carry him, for a while, but he has to let them.

He has to believe that he deserves their love.

How do you tell someone they deserve to be loved when their mind is screaming at them, louder than you could ever speak, that they are too broken, too used up, too far gone?

“Baby, I still love you,” They whisper, and lean forward, resting their temple against his. He makes a low, soft sound, wordless, but he leans into the touch. His fingers are slowly warming under theirs. “I do. You can’t make me stop loving you, nothing that happened to you is too much for me to love who you are.”

His feet lift and drop, tap on the ground. His head tilts to one side and then the other, but the hair that he used to like feeling rest against his cheekbones is gone, and there’s nothing to feel. The empty spaces in his ears where his piercings go seem strangely haunting, to Laken, now.

Places where Chris made himself look how he wanted, removed. The hair he painstakingly dyed, gone. Giving himself back over to whatever is in his head telling him that it’s not his decision to make.

“I’m sorry it happened this way,” They whisper to him, keeping their voice low. A bird calls outside the window, a plaintive mourning dove, coo-coo, coo, coo. “I am so, so sorry. I know that it’s hurting you, and-”

“Go, go, go away,” He says, voice flat, and their heart cracks open, spills out sadness in a waterfall, but Laken knows what it means to push down grief in their own way. They’ve seen their mother bury her parents with stoic compassion for her children’s grief even while never really showing her own. They don’t let anything out but the same love that’s been written across them from the beginning.

He's not trying to hurt them. He's trying to hurt himself, first, before anyone else can do it again.

He rocks, and they shift back to give him even more space for it. Despite his words, though, his hands still hold theirs, tightly, refuse to let go. He’s lying, Laken thinks, and there’s hope there. He's a terrible liar, he doesn't know how to make his body tell the same lies his mouth does.

He doesn’t really want them to go. He can say the words to shove them away but he can’t stop holding on.

“Chris-”

“You, you, you can, there’s-... there’s other people, easier, easier people than, than, than than… than-than-than, than-... silence is better than stammering-”

“No it’s not fucking not, Chris.” Laken’s voice is a firm and certain hiss, and they duck their head, catching his eyes. “It’s not. I’d rather listen to your stammer for the rest of my life than live one more day with you silent when you don’t want to be. Listen to me, okay? Please. Please listen. I don’t care about easier people.” Laken sighs, rubbing his knuckles with their thumbs, but his eyes are moving over their face, more focused than they’ve been since Jake led him out of the bathroom. “Okay? You keep saying that, that I deserve someone easier, but I don’t want anyone easier. I have my shit, too, that I carry everywhere with me.”

“Not, not, not-not like this.” His eyes are so huge, so wide, so very, very green. Glimmering with the tears he can’t stop crying, shimmering wet marks down his face over the scratches he made on himself. Making himself ugly, Jake had explained, but Chris doesn’t look ugly to Laken.

He just looks like the same beautiful man they love, but drowning.

“No,” Laken admits, pulling his hands to their mouth, kissing lightly at his fingernails, one by one. Some of them cracked and broke while he was scratching himself, and the rough edges pull at Laken’s lips, catch on chapped places. He watches them move, his eyes finally, finally focused on them, for the first time since he saw the video. His fingers twitch, a little, against Laken’s kiss. “Not like that, no. But Chris, what you went through doesn’t make you less, baby. It just makes you stronger for surviving it.”

He shakes his head, but his hands are tightening on theirs again, refusing to let go. It’s a lifeline, a rope they can throw him, something maybe he’ll grab and let them pull him up with. Please let me help you, please want to breathe air, please let us pull you up above the water.

“I-I’ve been… taken so, so, so many times, b-by so many people, handlers, and I-I-... I didn’t, didn’t remember, and I did, but I didn’t, and I do, now, and…” Chris rocks forward one more time, his forehead landing on Laken’s shoulder, and they take the hint to slide their arms around him, hand moving up through the soft shorn hair along the nape of his neck. “I, I, I had a mom, Laken."

Laken has heard bits and pieces from Jake, now - heard what Ben has found in his own searching and his conversation with the Akio guy and his mom - but they hold still, and they’re quiet, letting his hands move over them, the familiar welcome taps of his fingers over the curve of their shoulders, down their sides, to their back where he likes to tap them the most. It’s a good sign, they think, that he’s tapping. Tapping is his good stim, his comfort stim, that means he’s coming out of himself a little, if he’s not hiding it. “Yeah,” They say softly. “I, um. Ben and I were looking for some stuff, and we found-... what we think is a news article about it?”

He nods into their shoulder, nuzzling against the crook of their neck. “I, I had a dad, and a, a, a a-a-a mom, and they-they died, b-because I moved when I was, was supposed to, to, um, to, to stay still-”

“No,” Laken protests, but he shakes his head, and they go quiet again.

“And, and, and I did gymnastics and went to, to-to-to state and re, regionals once and I was… I was, was, was okay. I think. I had had had friends. I had, had real friends. I think I, I was a good person, until I-... until I moved, and they d-died… my, my, my dad liked dinosaurs.”

“So do you,” Laken says, gently, and they feel his lips move, the hint of a smile, an attempt at one.

“Mmhmm. He, he, he had dinosaurs he kept from, um, from when he was a kid and g-... gave them to, to to me. When, when I was six I had a-a racecar bed we got secondhand from, from, from my mom's friend and, and, and my dad bought those, um, Hot Wheels cars. We-we watched the Tour de France on, on, on TV every year. My, my mom took me everywhere. I, I remember holding her hand in, in in in parking lots. We, we, we did everything together. She, she, she said, she said… said said, y-you and me, Tris, we, we, we can do the hard shit, together.”

“Sounds like a badass mom.” Laken speaks against a closing throat, the flush of their skin, tears threatening in their eyes, too. They move back to finally sit on the floor, and Chris moves with them, keeping himself pressed against their warmth, their solidity, their beating heart, their life.

“Yeah,” He breathes out, and there’s so many layers of pain in that single simple word. “They, they, they took… they took my mom and dad a, away from, from from-from me. Out of, of my head. They, they took them and I… I didn’t-... I knew I lost, lost something, but it was like I could, um, could see the shape of them in the-the light but I couldn’t have their faces any, any… more. And I, I, I see them… now. I see-... but, but, but I have to see it all. I can't see only, only them. I, I ,I… see the bad stuff, too." His breath catches, and when he whimpers Laken is already tightening their arms around him, anticipating the sound, the shiver through his body, the grief that rocks through him like a wave crashing against a fragile shore.

Grief is love with no place to go. When their abuela died, Laken’s mom had said that to them once or twice when they were angry-crying all over the house. They hadn’t really understood it, then, but they got it now - Chris’s whole body vibrated with the force of grief that had been pushed down, sublimated, forcibly given no firm subject to focus it on, but the love had never been gone - and neither had the grief at the loss.

Only simmering, under whatever they’d done to remove him from himself, tension building all unknowing, a volcano beneath the placid sunny surface waiting to erupt.

“I know, know, know she loved me and I know how sh-she died and I know that it was, was my Sir who hurt me, me, me me me first, and I know how, how how how… how he, he, he hurt me, and… I can’t, can’t, can’t make it be different things. It’s… all… all one awful everything. I can’t remember one, one, one thing at a time, I keep getting-... too, too, too much.” Laken’s thumb moves over his soft short hair, rubs the wrong way to feel its slight resistance to their touch. “It’s, it’s, it’s all one hurt and it’s so-so-so… so so so, so big.”

“You don’t have to carry that hurt all by yourself, baby,” Laken murmurs. “We’ll carry it with you. Your brothers, and me. Ben wants to help. We’ll carry your hurt with you, and maybe it’s not so heavy if you share it with us?”

He shakes his head, rocking again, but it’s the gentle low rocking he does to calm himself, not the out-of-control rocking where he could hurt himself without help, so Laken just holds him and lets him rock. Short hair and scratches and pain and all, he’s still their sunshine boy.

He’s just… he just needs help to find the sun again.

“We found one of your friends,” Laken tries, and Chris goes still, then rocks again. They let out a breath they didn’t realize they were holding when they feel him gripping onto his feather on his own, rubbing at the ridges of the vanes in the silicone. Controlling himself, redirecting himself, it’s all important, it’s all more ways he can throw his hand out to grab the lifeline they are desperately trying to throw him. “Akio Nakamura.”

Chris nods, in rhythm with his rocking, and whispers, “Ah, Aki. We, we, we, in the video-... we did a bunch of, of, of those. We, we did-... he, he, he was better than me, he was going to, to, to be professional, I just-... my, my, my dad thought I’d go to the Ol, Olympics but I just wanted to be moving.”

“He really misses you,” Laken says, and feels Chris pull back and away, raising his head to look at them. There’s an expression of uncertain confusion on his face, disbelief. He can’t imagine anyone wanting to remember him, they think, and that hurts. He can feel grief like a knife inside him remembering his parents, but he doesn’t think anyone ever felt that for him.

“He, he does?”

“Yeah. Ben, um… Ben went to meet with him and I guess his mom. He… he wants to see you, Chris. He misses you. Do… you want to see him?”

Chris is silent, watching them, and in the dimness of a room where they don’t dare turn on any lights, his pale skin seems to give off its own light, and underneath it all their sunshine boy is still there. Hurting, and scared, and sad, but he’s there.

“You don’t have to,” Laken says gently. “You don’t, I promise.” They take his hands again, move them to their own stomach, press his fingers there to encourage him to tap, to feel the certainty of a warmth that isn’t going anywhere. “But he wants to. He missed you, he and his mom. They want to see that you’re okay.”

For the first time in three days, Chris smiles. It’s faint, and weak, but it’s there. “I’m, I’m, I’m not okay, though.”

“They want to see you anyway,” Laken repeats, softly. “Ben says this Akio guy was… was really broken up about not knowing you’ve been here all along. I won’t pressure you. No one will. But if you think you can… there are people who remember you, Chris, people who missed you.”

Chris swallows, nodding more to himself than to them. "People who, who, who missed Tristan Higgs."

"Tristan Higgs is you, Chris. You're the same person he was. You're both."

There’s a long pause, and Laken sees dust motes catching the light, and thinks to themself that Chris can stare at dust motes for hours on what he calls bad brain days, lost in the way he says they sparkle in sunlight.

“Do, do do… do you think… do they know where, where, where my, my parents are?”

Laken nods, slowly. “I’m sure they do.”

He pushes himself back into the corner, but the distance isn’t there this time, and Laken feels like this isn’t retreating, but simply finding somewhere secure to think it through. “I, I, I hope I was a good, good person when I was, was Tristan. I hope I, I was… good. Like, like a nice person."

“I’m sure you were. You’ve never been anything but good, Chris. Nobody made you that way. That’s just who you are. Nothing that's ever happened to you has been able to change that."

His eyes flicker to theirs and then away, but something has shifted in his expression. Determined, not distant. A firmer set to his jaw, a flintier look in his eyes. “I, I, I remember Aki. But, but I can’t… remember him without remembering, um, without, without the guns and, and, and blood, and my Sir, and s-signing, and-... and… all, all of it. I want-... I want to, to, to have the good things all on their, their own.”

“Give it time,” Laken says, wishing they knew that for sure, wishing they weren’t just bullshitting their way through this, wishing they knew anything about the trauma that Chris has survived. Wishing they could be anything more than just a partner, arms to hold him, a heart to love him. “It’s new, still. Give it time.”

Chris slumps back against the wall. “May, maybe. My, my, my aunt… gave me away. Because I, I, I was too hard when I was, was sad. For them. My, my, my aunt-... they, they told me when I signed, they, they said-... I remember it. I remember asking for, for, for help…” He looks down at his hands, opening them, staring at his palms. “I was, was too hard when I-I was hurting. Too, too, too angry, too bad, too much. She she said-”

“Fuck her. No, you weren’t.” Laken holds their own hands out - and this time he reaches for them on his own. They sit there, holding hands in the dark of his room. The only light comes from the sun cutting through the blinds. “You were a kid missing his parents, and if she wasn’t up to the job of being a halfway decent human being, there were other people who could have stepped up. Listen to me. You’re hurting right now, and not a single person who loves you thinks it’s too hard or too much to help you. You’re not too hard, it’s not too much, you’re our Chris and we love you. Nobody’s walking away from you now.”

He swallows, watching them.

“Chris.” Laken squeezes his hands, just a little. “We're all here. We're not going to leave you alone to hurt, you have people who will hold you through it. I love you."

He manages, one more time, the slightest smile for them. “I, I, I love you, too. I… I want you, you, you here. Please… please, please don’t-... don’t leave me.”

“Never.” They kiss his hands again, and this time he presses his knuckles into their lips, chases the reassurance in the sensation, the gentle platonic affection. “Everyone’s here for you, Chris.”

“I, I, I just want-... want someone to love me, even-... even like this,” Chris whispers, his head tilted back against the wall. Laken grabs onto the smile he still has, and holds on tight. “Even when when when I’m too hard, when, when it’s too much. Love me even when when when it hurts."

“I do, Chris. I love you, like this, like before, like any way that you are, I love you.”

They kiss every cracked fingernail, every bruised or bloodied knuckle, as they speak. He watches them, and they can feel inside themself that he’s ready to be pulled up out of himself, that for the moment he’s ready to grab the lifeline.

And the next time he drowns, they’ll be there with another one.

“I’m not leaving you, Chris.”

“Pl-please-”

“Not ever. No matter what happened or who hurt you, I’m not leaving you.”

There’s a silence, and he nudges himself back against them, eyes closed, and softly - slowly - he hums, tuneless and toneless, and Laken lets out a deep sigh of relief. Self-soothing, comforting sounds, but ones he can’t always make when he’s scared, sounds he hasn’t made in two days now. They sit with him, holding him, feeling the comfortable movements of his body trying to put itself at rest, the gentle taps, the vibration of his hum, the slight rock of him against them.

Finally, he says, softly, “Do, do, do-do-do you remember Oliver, Oliver Branch?”

“Who?” Laken blinks, turning to look down at him, so fucking young even though he’s three years older than they are. “Wait, the, um, the… the, shit, the Governor who was on trial for trying to sell a Senate seat, right? And then he died?”

“Um. Yes.” Chris tucks his head against them, and they shiver at the brush of his soft hair over their jaw.

“Yeah, kind of. We went to see him my freshman year, he used to host all these field trips for high schools…”

Chris swallows - the sound is audible - and then whispers, “I, I, I remember.”

“Did you go on one?”

Chris breathes, in and out, slow but not quite steady. They can feel the warmth of his breath against their skin. They run their hands over his bare arms, his arms that are never bare except when he’s sleeping, skin that feels raw, exposed, covered in scratches from his own fingernails. “I was… there.”

Laken blinks, caught off-guard, confused. They rub their thumb over the ball of his wrist, feel him shaking against them. “What?”

“Un, under his desk.” Chris swallows, eyes shut tight. “He, he, he kept me under his-his desk when the, the kids came to see him. Or, or in the hall, or… on the bed…”

“Chris, what are you-... are you saying-”

“I was-... his.” Chris licks his lips, and Laken stays very still, afraid if they move he’ll flee back to his corner, hide under the bed, disappear like dew in the sun. “The Governor’s… pet. For-... he, he, he used me for-”

“Jesus.” Laken’s stomach flips, a drop down to their knees and back again.

“When, when you came to-to-to see…”

“Chris-... no-”

“When you came… I was, was probably… un-under his, his, his-his… his desk. He drugged-... drugged me, to, to to to to-to keep me quiet.”

Laken thinks about Chris, having a headache after a long study session, nerving himself up to take nothing more than a couple of Tylenol, the way he always hesitates before he takes his ADHD meds in the morning. Something clicks into place.

Chris’s hands twist into the fabric of their shirt, and his face reddens, fading out the freckles over the flush. The white bandage over one cheekbone suddenly seems too white, garish. “Some, sometimes he would have me-... or, he would, um, hide me. Down, down, down the hall. On his bed. Waiting for him to, to, to come back and-”

“Jesus Christ,” Laken whispers. “Jesus fucking Christ. So that night you got all fucked up because it’d been a year since your-... you called him your Sir-… died... you were talking about Governor Branch?”

He’s quiet again, for a long time. Then, as if confessing a sin, he whispers, full of shame, “Yes.”

Laken needs very badly to go throw up all the anger and disgust and loathing they feel, and worse than that – the guilt that they were maybe a few feet way and never knew there was someone who needed help. They couldn’t have known, and yet Laken felt some sense that they should have, that they should have had some sense that something was wrong, and… they didn’t.

They need to throw up, but Chris needs them to stay right here. That, they can sense – that if they walk away from him, he won’t understand that they are not disgusted with him. “Does Jake-”

“Yes.”

“Oh, Chris.” They kiss into his hair, feel the warmth of his scalp underneath. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so, so sorry. Te quiero, cariño. So much. I’m so sorry.”

“Me, too,” Chris murmurs, and they hold while he rocks, gently, into their solidity. “I’m, I’m, I’m… I’m-I’m sorry, too. I… I didn’t know how to, to, to… be anything but good. They, they took everything else away from me, Laken.”

“I know, baby. I know.”

“They took m-my parents, and, and, and my friends, and my… my fight… away.” Chris sniffs. “They took eh-everything and, and, and it-… it-it hurts, but… but it’s coming back. It’s, it’s… it’s, it’s, it’s coming back. I, I, I want to-to-to see Akio.”

“I’ll text Ben,” Laken whispers, feeling a twinge of something like fear at the sudden burst of strength in Chris’s soft, sweet, sad voice. Not fear of him, exactly, but fear… for him. For his heart, and his head, and everything he was tearing down inside it.

And what all that darkness and weight would do to his solid, determined sunshine.

“They, they, they took my, my, my-my-my mom and dad, and, and… and Aki, and everything, and… I, I, I…” He looks up at them, then, and his eyes are bright and so, so very green, and brilliant with all the pain and courage inside him. “I want it all back.”

---

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#whump #trauma recovery #trauma recovery whump #recovery whump #ptsd tw #grief tw #parental death #memory loss #traumatic memories #pet whump #oliver branch is gross #chris the strawberry blond romantic #laken mamani: frankly I want to date them #referenced self-injury #victim-blaming tw #ableism tw #past noncon reference

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