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reiding-writing · 3 months

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

copycat [ s.r ] | 2 |

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

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

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

part one !! , part two !!

unsub!reader masterlist!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Threats hold no value,”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’ve got it,”

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

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

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

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

“I‘m fine,”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Do you believe in heaven Dr. Reid?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Me too…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“They’re dead.”

Oh.

Right.

Spencer’s eyes widen slightly at the revelation.

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

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

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

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

“I have no interest in learning about them,”

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

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

“I told you I was fine,”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Your eyes are very alive,”

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

“Alive?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I don’t know, I just did,”

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

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

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

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

‘Cover the victim’s face.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Well that’s just stupid,”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I mean come on, I figured it out after my first try,” You’re edging into a rant about the intricacies of how to most productively pierce somebodies eyes with rose stems now, and it was beginning to remind Spencer that you had in fact actually done all of these things and it wasn’t just hypothetical. “It literally takes like ten seconds per rose if you know what you’re doing and then saves you five minutes of effort,”

Morgan takes the jar from you like you’re a child with a bottle of bleach, a scowl still etched on his face as you give him an incredulous look.

“I’m not going to like eat them or whatever, god-”

“Knowing your track record I wouldn’t be surprised if you did,” Morgan places the jar down on the small table by where the victim is lying.

“One, that’s disgusting, two, what the fuck?” Spencer finds your bewilderment at Morgan’s suggestion that you might eat the victim’s eyes quite amusing on a surface level, your response sounding like something a high schooler would say rather than a prolific serial killer.

“What? You’re the type of sick bastard that would probably get off on that sort of thing,” Morgan shrugs his shoulders as he turns back around to face you once more.

“I was experiencing a manic episode, I’m not some weird sadist who has a fetish for eyeballs,”

‘Not a fetish, but something,’ Spencer chooses to keep to himself during your squabble this time, walking over to the autopsy table to hike up the blue cover sheet and check for other injuries lower down on the body.

There’s nothing truly substantial, with no defence wounds courtesy of the blow to the back of his head before the attack, another staple of your spree to keep your victims complacent. The only thing of note was the two gashes across each wrist, severing both radial arteries, the source of the bleeding-out portion of his death.

He had to give you props on that part. The average time it took somebody to bleed out was only 3 and a half minutes, meaning it was a pretty effective way to kill somebody with minimal effort and ensure they were completely dead before any first responders might have time to arrive even if they were called immediately after the gashes were made.

It was very controlled, much more of an execution than a murder if he was to really think about it, especially considering all of your victims were unconscious when it happened and therefore probably didn’t even feel anything aside from the original blow to the head.

For a serial killer, it was actually very humane. Even if you did go out of your way to desecrate their eyes afterwards. But was the real harm in that, they were already dead anyway, it’s not like they felt it.

It ruled out any sort of sadism from your spree, one of the reasons he thinks your story of a manic episode was so easily accepted in court. You weren’t killing people for the fun of it. You didn’t drag it out or make it unnecessarily painful. It was like you were just following the steps of how to kill somebody with as minimal effort as possible to satisfy whatever violent urges you had in your head at the time and then fulfilling the apparent subconscious fixation you had with eyes by covering them with roses.

“Wow, this guy really has no idea what he’s doing-” You again cause Spencer to almost jump out of his skin as you appear behind him once more, looking at the gashes over his shoulder.

You reach out to touch one of them, stopped by a harsh hand on your wrist from Morgan, who continues to glare at you like you’d set his house on fire. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Checking out the shitty incision work from this stupid ass copycat?”

“Put some gloves on you idiot,” Morgan drops your wrist with a scoff, walking across the room to pull out a pair of latex gloves from one of the boxes and shoving them into your palms.

You roll your eyes at his attitude but tug on the gloves anyway, making a show of raising your hands up in his face once you had them on. “Happy now?”

With a swat of your wrist away from his face Morgan concedes to stop antagonising you for now and let you focus on whatever you were originally doing, which you turn to do immediately like you’d completely forgotten about Morgan’s existence as soon as he exited your peripheral vision.

“What is it?” Spencer’s eyes follow yours down to the victim’s left wrist, and he watches as you prod at the gash with your gloved fingers as if trying to pry it back open.

“This is probably the shittiest attempt at bleeding someone out I’ve ever seen,” You bend down with narrowed eyes as you examine the wound. “It’d probably take like 20 minutes from a cut this shallow,”

Spencer can’t help but agree with your assessment. The cut was extremely shallow, so much so he’s sure that this victim probably could’ve survived it if he’d gotten immediate medical attention. He checks the other wrist just to be sure, and he’s granted with the same sight, an extremely shallow cut for somebody actively trying to kill people.

“So, what? He just sat around for twenty minutes whilst Youlier bled out so he could put the roses in his eyes?” Morgan furrowed his eyebrows at the revelation. “What sense does that make?”

Can they be sure that they were inserted post-mortem?

Spencer walked around the table towards the autopsy report to re-read the file in case he’d somehow missed that detail whilst reading it the first time.

Alexander Youlier. Age 22. Died of blood loss with the roses believed to be inserted post-mortem.

He hadn’t missed anything. But then that didn’t make sense. There was no way that the killer would just wait around for almost half an hour for somebody to bleed themselves dry, especially considering that Youlier was found under an open gazebo in a dog park. That would just be reckless. For it to work the roses would have had to be inserted whilst he was still alive.

“Having an epiphany over there or something?” Spencer turns his eyes upwards at your comment, leaving the report on the side table as he walks into Dr Toth’s side office without giving you an answer.

You and Morgan share a glance at his sudden departure, probably the most civil interaction the two of you had ever had, fuelled by the joined want to know what was running through Spencer’s mind.

The door of the office opened less than a minute later, Dr. Toth leaving her office with Spencer hot on her trail. “-reports from the main office so that you can cross-reference them all,”

You only catch the end of their conversation as they enter back into the mortuary, and Dr Toth leaves the room to assumedly go and gather whatever ‘reports’ she was on about from the main office, leaving you and Morgan blankly staring in Spencer’s direction with confused expressions.

“I think that our unsub might be inserting the roses into the victim’s eyes whilst they’re still alive,”

The revelation that the unsub was purposefully dragging out the death of their victims made the team have to rebuild the profile from the bottom up.

Spencer took the opportunity to do some digging. Or more accurately have Garcia do some digging.

He had her pull everything humanly possible regarding your biological parents, their life, their death, and most importantly, how they treated you.

They were 29 and 32 when they died, you having been born when your mother was only 23. They both had a history of substance abuse, and according to their autopsies, both of them had lethal levels of diazepam in their bloodstreams at their time of death.

What was interesting about their deaths though was that they were dead for three days before they were found, rotting in their own house with a six-year-old left living with them. Now that was something that could cause a mental break. A six-year-old, left for three days with the corpses of their dead parents and only found when the neighbours complained about the smell.

The file Garcia had faxed over also happened to have images from the scene when the bodies were recovered, and they were just as disgusting as he’d imagined they’d be. The two were sat paired on a couch, skin pale and turning slightly grey with the beginning signs of decay, small insects roaming on their skin, and the clothes they were wearing.

But the selling point for Spencer was their eyes. Wide open and staring blankly into open space with clouded pupils and ruptured irises. It freaked him out and he was looking at it through a piece of paper. He couldn’t imagine how it made a six-year-old child who lived with them like that for three days feel.

There was the origin of your eye fixation, and he honestly couldn’t blame you for covering the dead stare of your victims so you wouldn’t have to relive that.

The more he read the more devastating the report seemed to be. When asked why you didn’t call for any help from neighbours or the police you stated that you “just wanted them to sleep for a while,” and that your mother would “give me the sleepy pills when she wanted me to go to sleep, so I did the same for her and daddy,”

In an effort to get your parents to go to sleep so they would stop presumably treating you horribly, you’d unintentionally overdosed them both.

You were in a paediatric rehabilitation centre for almost four months after you were recovered from the house. A six-year-old. Being rehabilitated for an addiction to diazepam because your parents would solve any blip in your behaviour by feeding you sleeping pills instead of treating you like the child you were.

All of a sudden forming an addiction at 25 didn’t seem all that detrimental anymore.

He supposes that’s how you knew right off the bat. Addiction recognises addiction and all that. Although by the look of it, you’d made a full healthy recovery by the time you were adopted into your new family.

You’d been diagnosed with ASD after you were removed from the house, and Spencer is surprised by the fact that the mental impact it had on you only seemed to be acute, although, he’s sure that in hindsight the psychiatrist that diagnosed you would’ve made sure to be more thorough in their examination of your mental state.

Still, what happened had happened, and although Spencer nor anyone else could do anything to change that, he could form a greater understanding of who you were and why you did what you did.

Except he still didn’t really know why, he knew the origins, but what was the trigger that caused you to deteriorate mentally until you were back at your lowest possible point?

That wasn’t important right now.

He needed to focus on the actual case at hand and not the closed case of a serial killer from four years ago. It didn’t matter how much of a fascination he’d formed with your psychology, he needed to focus so that no one else had to die.

It was insane to think about, just how distracted he’d get with uncovering your past like it was a mystery novel that required the reader’s involvement to solve.

But now he really needed to knuckle down and actually put his intelligence forward to help the team find the unsub they were looking for or else earn a chastising from Hotch and up to 13 more victims if they followed your pattern to a T.

Why you though? Why was this unsub following your crimes specifically? Sure some people were mentally deranged enough to want to gain the same notoriety as the killers they replicated, but your case was in a small city and didn’t even make national news. Not only that, it was new. Really new.

Most copycat killers replicated national or even international-level crimes that had decades to form a legacy and settle into the back of people's minds. Your case wasn’t like that. Not to the full extent anyway. The state of California had recognised you as a prolific killer but in any other state your name was unknown.

So why you?

Spencer watched intently as the team scribbled down notes and ideas on the whiteboards taking up most of the room, leaving him sitting at the head of the conference table with his files on your background and you engaging yourself in the pass-time of making origami cranes out of discarded bits of paper to stop yourself from getting bored.

A serial killer replicating your crimes almost step by step. Bleed out the victims, put roses in their eyes, move on. Same victim pattern. Same time frame. But still with distinct differences.

This unsub bled their victims out considerably slower than you did. They used red roses instead of white roses like you did. They left the thorns on the rose stems when you pruned them beforehand.

Why did this unsub not de-thorn the roses first? After five separate murders, why would they not make their process easier by discarding the thorns to stop them from tearing up the victim’s eyes?

‘I figured it out after my first try.’

“Hey uh-” Spencer turns his head up towards you, tapping his pen absentmindedly against the table. “Do you remember what happened to your first victim? After your parents?”

“What?” You furrow and then raise one of your eyebrows at his sudden question, especially because he’d been sitting in his own little cocoon for the last thirty minutes.

It was quite a long shot of a question if you had been experiencing mania at the time, but you seemed to be remembering select details about your spree, so your first victim surely should be present in your mind at least somewhat.

“How did you… You know-” Spencer’s roundabout question was half amusing and half frustrating from your viewpoint, and you take a break from your paper crafts to indulge in it.

“Well…” You drag out the word and you divert your eyes from him to stare upwards towards the ceiling like it’ll aid your memory. “I incapacitated her first, with a… brick I think? It might’ve been a regular rock I’m not sure-”

“Him.” Morgan’s venom seeps into his correction of your account. “You killed eighteen people and you don’t even have the decency to remember the gender of your first victim? Seriously?”

“I do know my own victim pattern thank you very much,” You override Morgan’s correction with just as much ferocity. “ And it was definitely a woman. I chose her specifically because she’d be easy.”

“That’s not what our files say.”

“Then your files are wrong? What do you want me to do about it?”

Spencer runs over your victims in his head. Your first filed victim’s name was John Brandy, found lifeless on a park bench after a woman walking her dog called it in to the police.

He tried to remember any other things he’d read about your case that might indicate that Brandy wasn’t your first victim. Nothing. John Brandy was the only thing he could affiliate with the identity of the first victim from your spree. And most notably, Brandy was very male.

“…What did you do after you incapacitated her?” Spencer slowly edges his way back into a conversation between you and Morgan, mind on full alert as it continues to run through all of the details he knows about you and your case.

“I moved her against the like wall of the street we were down and then did the rest of it,” You shrug your shoulders in mild scepticism of Spencer’s sudden interest in this specific kill of yours. “You know, cut the wrists, wait a few minutes, then stick in the roses. Although I’m pretty sure I got one rose like half in because the thorns were being difficult and I gave up when she started twitching,”

You exhale exasperatedly. ”That’s probably why she’s not ‘in your files’, because the rose I did try and do wasn’t even fully inserted and probably just fell out or something,” You glare pointedly at Morgan, tilting your head back and forth in condescension. “It was my first time alright? Everyone’s gotta start somewhere.”

Sure everyone’s gotta start somewhere. When it comes to working a job or starting a hobby. You don’t usually ‘start somewhere’ when it comes to murdering people.

It’s the fact that you say it so nonchalantly that gets to him, talking about your murder spree of eighteen people like it was you learning how to bake a cake. Nineteen people. You’d actually killed nineteen people in your spree, and your poor first victim probably didn’t even get given the light of day that the rest of your victims did when it came to justice.

“Morgan,” Hotch’s voice proved to pull Spencer out of yet another spiral consisting of endless questions surrounding your psychology, even if not directed at him. “Call Garcia and have her pull up any unsolved murder cases that involved two slit wrists and trauma to the eyes in Malibu during the time they were active as a killer,”

“On it,” Honestly, Morgan would’ve taken any excuse to get out of your presence for a few minutes, feeling the overwhelming urge to punch you square in your face grow stronger with every snippet of information about yourself that you shared out loud without a single care in the world.

Did it have anything significant to catching this copycat? No. But that victim deserved just as much justice as any of your others.

One profiler down, the rest of the team turned back to fleshing out the profile, and you turned back to your half-finished paper crane, muttering to yourself under your breath about something that Spencer couldn’t quite hear.

“Okay, so we’ve ruled out mania as a possible cause of the kills because of how long it took for them to bleed out, we’ve ruled out paranoia because of the victim pattern following the original to a T instead of being random, it could be some form of ASD but that doesn’t really make sense with the rest of the profile-” Emily scans over the notes of the whiteboard as she speaks, picking absentmindedly on the red polish covering her nails and leaving small flakes of it all over the table by where you’re sitting.

“Would you stop doing that?” You make a show of wiping the table with your hand, and Emily doesn’t respond to you with more than a glance as she stuffs her hands in her pockets.

“Alright babygirl thank you,” Morgan sends a kiss through the phone before hanging it up and putting it away in his pocket and you swear you almost gag at the sight of it.

“Nothing,” Morgan shrugs his shoulders half out of resignation and half out of frustration as he takes a seat opposite you on the table. “There are no unsolved murders matching the description you gave us,”

He glares into your eyes like he’s trying to burn them right out of your eye sockets. “So? What is it? You get a kick out of lying or what?”

“Do I look like the type of person who makes the effort to lie? Because news flash, I don’t, it’s not like saying I killed one more person than I actually did benefits me in any way,” You furrow your expression with a scoff, leaning back in your chair to rest your ankles on the table.

“Right, sure, because someone like you totally doesn’t care about how they’re perceived by other people,”

“Why would I want to say I’ve killed more people than I actually have, it just makes me look more crazy than you already think I am-” You weren’t backing down on this. You were adamant that this person was your first victim and that you weren’t lying to him.

“Then why isn’t there any file of her whatsoever?”

“What if she’s still alive?” It’s like all of the puzzle pieces fall into Spencer’s mind at once, and he interrupts your arguing with Morgan yet again, except this time it’s not about keeping the peace.

“You said you gave up because ‘the thorns were being difficult and she started twitching’, was she alive when you tried to put the rose in her eye?” Spencer turns his gaze towards you, a completely different air surrounding his expression than the mildly awkward and apprehensive one you’d gotten used to.

“I don’t know, maybe?” You shrug like his question was absurd, watching as he stands from his seat to look over the whiteboard detailing the autopsies of each of the victims.

“Reid?” Hotch’s raised eyebrow asked a hundred different questions, and Spencer answered every single one of them with a single phrase muttered under his breath.

“…PTSD by proxy-”

He takes a second to study the photos on the board before continuing. “It’s a psychological disorder where victims of PTSD will project their trauma onto others,”

He pulls a few of the images from the board to lay them out on the conference table. “Of those who develop PTSD from traumatic incidents, roughly 2% then go on to try and satiate their trauma by projecting it onto other people,”

“If what you remember about your first victim was true and she survived, then there’s a high chance that the new killer we’re looking for is that first victim,” He arranges the autopsy photos in two groups, with one of the wrist gashes and the other of the eye damage.

“The victims bled out slowly, which in a lot of cases with first-time murder or murder attempts happens unintentionally because the killer doesn’t know how deep a cut like that has to be for it to be fatal,” He points towards the photos on the left first.

“And then the eyes would be pretty self-explanatory,” He turns one of the photos towards where you and Hotch are sitting. “If your first victim was in fact alive when you tried to pierce her eyes then that could explain why these victims were also still alive when the roses were inserted,”

“But that doesn’t make sense,” Emily chimes in with her two cents as Spencer gives his explanation. “We’re in a completely different city,”

“And it’s been three years since the original spree,” Rossi swirls the coffee in his mug with a furrowed expression.

“Well Las Flores is only an hour's drive from Malibu,” Spencer moves from the table to go back over to the annotated map on one of the boards, marking an invisible line with his fingers. “Maybe she decided she needed to get away from her trauma, 46% of individuals who experience life-changing trauma do,”

“But why now?”

Spencer’s eyes turn back towards you at Rossi’s question, as if you held all the answers to what the stressor was for this sudden murder spree. Your answer of course was nothing more than a shrug and an expression that asked ‘How am I supposed to know?’, which put a halt to Spencer’s theory.

That, and the fact that they hadn’t even confirmed if this woman was still alive let alone living in Las Flores.

“Alright,” Hotch cut through the team’s conversation with a wave of his hand. “Morgan, ask Garcia to track down women who went into the hospital for ocular injuries three years ago and have moved to Las Flores since then,”

Morgan gives him a determined nod as he leaves the room once more, Hotch then turning his attention towards you.

“What have you done in the last few months that would’ve been told to the public?”

“I don’t know?” You give him an exasperated expression and raise your hands in a defensive manner. “Why would I know that? It’s not like I have someone telling me when I’m on the news,”

Hotch furrowed his eyebrow at your immediate defensiveness, reminding himself to be patient and bear with your short fuse because it technically wasn’t your fault.

Although it didn’t make it any less frustrating either way.

He turned his eyes towards Spencer, gesturing towards the door and then towards you as a silent order for him to speak to you privately outside.

If anyone was going to be able to get a piece of information out of you, consciously or subconsciously, it would be Spencer.

It took him a few seconds to compute Hotch’s message, but as soon as he did he stood from his seat, mug in hand.

“I’m going to make some more coffee, do you want some?” Spencer gives you a small and slightly awkward smile as he looks at you, and you raise an eyebrow in his direction.

“You don’t know how to make my coffee,”

“You can show me,” Spencer raises his eyebrows enthusiastically, lips pressed taut into a line as he silently prays for you to take the bait. And you do.

You don’t respond with more than pushing your chair away from the table to stand, but Spencer follows after you as you leave the meeting room nonetheless, gaining a small nod from Hotch that he returns with one of his own.

In the break room, Spencer watches you prepare your coffee, taking mental notes of the precise amount of creamer and sugar you add. He's careful to keep the conversation casual, asking about your preferences and subtly steering you towards the topic of recent events.

"I got a new therapist a few months ago," you admit, stirring your coffee. "She recommended having me moved into psychiatric care." The implication hangs clearly in the air.

"Psychiatric care?" Spencer echoes, his mind eagerly piecing together the information.

“Mhm,” You give him a small nod and you leave the teaspoon on the counter, taking a sip of your coffee.

Now that was something that might’ve been made public. If you had been recommended by a specialist to be moved out of a high-security prison and into a psychiatric institute the local news was bound to know about it.

"You being moved to a psychiatric facility would definitely make the news," Spencer mutters, drawing your attention back to him. "That could be the trigger point for our unsub,"

“Me going to a hospital? Seriously?” You scoff like that being a motive is pathetic.

“Yes, seriously,” Spencer replies, his expression serious. “It could signify a turning point, a change in your situation that the unsub might interpret as you escaping justice. It could be the catalyst that pushed them into action.”

He abandons his coffee mug on the counter as he ushers you back into the meeting room with the rest of the team, and all it takes is Hotch getting a single glance at Spencer’s expression to know that there was indeed a trigger for this murder spree.

“A few months ago, their therapist recommended moving them to a psychiatric facility," Spencer shares the information as soon as you both re-enter the room, "That could have been publicised, potentially triggering our unsub-”

“We found her,” Morgan interrupts Spencer’s explanation as he hurries into the room, phone still pressed against his ear as he reaches over to scribble down the name and address Garcia had recovered.

Louise Nueves, aged 29 was born and raised in Malibu, never having left the city for more than a week her entire life. That was, until she was hospitalised for three days for a severe ocular injury to her left eye.

She left the city less than a week after she was discharged, and supposedly never returned as she settled down in Las Flores instead.

She settled down, got married, started working in a small bakery, and overall just seemed to have a well-rounded and stable life after the trauma that she had endured back in her home town.

Morgan knocked harshly on the front door of her house, gun held firmly in his hand just in case Nueves deemed the threat of their presence as an incentive to act violently. “Louise Nueves, this is the FBI,”

The silence from the other side of the door seemed only to heighten the adrenaline running through the veins of the team.

It didn’t take long before Morgan was looking for permission to force the door open, and once he gained a nod from Hotch that’s exactly what he did, kicking the door handle loose and forcing the door open as the team filtered into the house to search for their suspect.

You were an exception of course, being confined to the entranceway with Spencer as your personal babysitter in case you managed to get yourself into any trouble or think about running off.

You hear an echo of ‘clear’s from the group as they sweep the house, seemingly completely devoid of any human presence outside of the FBI team. Until…

“You guys might wanna come see this,”

Emily’s voice sounded from upstairs, and she backed out into the stairway as she gestured for the team to join her up the stairs.

You give Spencer a look before walking over to the stairs, and his curiosity overrides his need to try and keep you in the entrance as he follows after you with the rest of the team following closely behind.

“This little bitch-“ The sight you were greeted with would’ve been extremely disturbing under normal circumstances, a corpse of a man - presumably Nueves’ husband - lying in its first stage of decay on the bed of the house’s master bedroom, a red rose resting on his chest.

Instead, your response was more angry at the blatant lack of originality in the way he was killed.

"Copying my kills is one thing," you spat out, your eyes burning with rage. "But having no innovation or creativity of their own? That's just pathetic." You crossed your arms over your chest, your gaze fixed on the lifeless body in front of you.

"Unique or not, it proves our hypothesis of who the copycat is," Morgan retorted, his gaze hardening at your callous words.

You rolled your eyes, huffing in annoyance. "Great."

Ignoring your sarcasm, Hotch spoke up, "We need to find Nueves before she kills again. Morgan, Reid, you're with me. We'll check her workplace. Rossi and JJ I want you to track down some of her friends, maybe they've noticed something off."

As they left, Emily turned to you, her eyes scrutinising. "What about them, Hotch? Do we just leave them at the station?"

"No," Hotch replied without missing a beat. "They’ll stay with you as you monitor the area. Keep an eye on them. We don't know how they might react now that their 'legacy' is being threatened."

With that, they left you in the company of Emily, the silence in the room amplifying the eerie sight of the corpse on the bed.

The tension was still very apparent despite you and Emily having no previous background, and you could tell that she wasn’t exactly thrilled with your company as the two of you left the house just as the authorities arrived, presumably called by Hotch as they left the scene.

“How does it feel to babysit a grown adult instead of doing something important?”

Emily shot you a sideways glance, her lips forming a thin line. "I'd like to think that keeping an eye on a serial killer counts as important, don't you?" she retorted, her voice icy.

“You’re supposed to be finding a serial killer, I haven’t done anything in years, what makes you think that I’m the threat?” You can’t help but scoff at her intonation as she speaks to you, it feeling oddly derogatory considering that you couldn’t even remember what her name was. “That’s some audacity alright,”

Emily narrowed her eyes at you, a flicker of annoyance crossing her features. "You may not think so, but your presence here is still a potential risk," she said, her tone sharp. "And until we know more, I'm not taking any chances."

She quickened her pace, leaving you to catch up as you followed her out of the residential area and into a nearby public park. Emily’s eyes scanned the area like a hawk as she walked, making you roll your eyes. “You really think she’s just going to be hanging around right next to her own house?”

Emily's gaze flickered toward you, her expression unyielding. "We're not looking for Nueves herself. We're looking for any clues, any signs of her recent activity or whereabouts," she explained tersely. "Every detail matters in a case like this."

She continued to lead the way through the park, her pace steady and purposeful. Despite your scepticism, you couldn't deny the intensity in her demeanour, the determination to solve the case weighing heavily in the air between you as you reluctantly tailed her like a toddler on a leash.

As you walked, Emily suddenly halted, her eyes narrowing as she caught sight of a lone figure sat on one of the park benches with their back to the two of you.

“Oh come on, it’s the middle of the day, of course there are people in the park.”

“Be quiet.” Emily approached the individual with her words barked out between her teeth. As you drew closer, you could see the figure was a woman, her head bowed and shoulders slumped. Emily called out to her, her voice firm yet cautious. "Excuse me, ma'am. Are you alright?"

The woman looked up, her eyes red-rimmed and filled with tears. "I-I'm fine," she stammered, quickly wiping at her cheeks. "Just... just having a moment." Her eyes seemed to flicker downwards towards Emily’s vest in confusion but she didn’t make any move to mention it.

Emily studied her for a moment longer before nodding, her hand slowly retracting from her weapon. “Alright. Just be careful out here, okay?” she advised before motioning for you to follow as she continued on the path.

You glanced back at the woman, her eyes following you in a mix of her previous sadness and confusion, seemingly unsure of how she should feel at an apparent FBI agent approaching her out of nowhere and then advising her to ‘be careful’.

“It’s you.” The new voice turns both of your heads in its direction.

Standing a few feet away was a woman and her dog, her demeanour tense yet strangely familiar. She looked at you with a mixture of surprise and recognition, her eyes lingering on Emily’s vest for a moment before returning to you.

“Excuse me?” You raise an eyebrow at the bluntness of her recognition of who you were, furrowing your eyebrows dismissively like she didn’t have the right to have recognised you in whatever way she had.

“You don’t know me?” Her tone carried a clear betrayal, as did the furrow in her eyebrows as she took a step towards you, one which Emily retaliated to by forcing you behind her with a heavy grip on your arm, one which you did not appreciate whatsoever as you pulled yourself from her grasp.

“Mrs Nueves?” Emily’s voice held a mix of apprehension and concern as she spoke, and she reached into her back pocket to thrust her phone into your hand before holding her fingers ready over her gun holster.

“You don’t remember me, do you? The woman ignored Emily completely, her voice tinged with bitterness as she stared at you, her features filled with betrayal as she realised you weren’t even looking at her, too preoccupied with trying to figure out why Emily had given you her phone.

“Mrs Nueves, my name’s Emily, I’m with the FBI, I understand that what you’re going through right now is extremely difficult but-”

“Shut up!” Nueves’ voice was harsh and drenched in ice as she spoke, holding her hand up dismissively. “I don’t care about you or your FBI friends-”

You had your back to the two by this point, and after a message had come through from Spencer about Nueves not being at her workplace you figured that the reason Emily as given you the phone was to get backup from the team.

oh. Right.

‘shes in the park by her house’

Of course she was. Because she was continually proving to be one of the stupidest people you’d ever encountered. Who decides to take their dog for a walk in the park two minutes from their house whilst being actively pursued by the police? Stupid people, that’s who. God, couldn’t the person copying your crimes at least be a competent one?

‘We’ll be there in ten minutes. Hold tight.’

“Look at me!” Nueves’ raised voice caused multiple heads to turn from the people wandering the park, including your own, and you turn your eyes away from the phone screen with a furrowed expression of annoyance.

“Do you have any idea what you did to me? How much I suffered because of what you did?” Nueves’ outbreak was very quickly garnering an audience from passersby, and could could practically feel the tension rolling off of Emily in waves as she tried to figure out what to do.

“You lived, get over it,” You were not helping.

The look on Nueves’ face at your words was almost incomprehensible, like she didn’t know what emotion she was supposed to be feeling at your nonchalance about what happened. Like you hadn’t ruined her entire life and caused her eternal suffering.

“Get over it? Look what you did to me!” Nueves barked out her words as she brought her left hand up to her eye, pulling at it until the sclera fell into the palm of her hand, leaving a dark pink void in its wake.

Your eyes immediately widened at the action, eyebrows furrowed in clear distaste for what you’d witnessed and that uncomfortable feeling that you’d experienced in the coroner’s office rising in your stomach the longer you looked at her.

“This is my life now.” She held up the piece of glass in her hand. “This is what I have to live with because of you.”

“Mrs Nueves-” Emily took a small step forward in her direction with both hands raised to appear as not threatening as possible.

“Don’t move-” Nueves dropped her dog’s leash at Emily’s advance to pull a small kitchen knife from her pocket, similar to one that would be used to cut vegetables or peel a potato.

Emily’s shoulders tense at the emergence of the weapon lips pursed into a tight line, and you’re sure that you might’ve been mildly concerned yourself if the knife blade wasn’t smaller than its handle. It didn’t make her look as intimidating as you assume she thinks she is, more like a teenager who carries around a switchblade in an attempt to make themself look tougher than they actually are.

Then again, this woman had actually killed people. Just not very well.

Still, if she thought that was a ‘big’ knife then her husband must’ve not been very satisfactory when it came to the bedroom.

"Put the knife down, Louise," Emily's voice was stern yet calm, her gaze unwavering. "We can talk about this, help you get the help you need. But first, you need to put the knife down."

Nueves seemed to consider this for a moment, her grip on the knife wavering. But then, her expression hardened, her eyes filled with a cold determination. "No," she stated firmly, "I won't."

“Mrs. Nueves,” Emily tried again, her voice laced with a calm authority, “you're not a killer. You're a victim, and we want to help you.”

Nueves let out a bitter laugh at this, her gaze never leaving Emily's. “A victim?” she echoed, her voice filled with scorn. “I stopped being a victim the moment I stopped letting them control my life.” She thrusts her arm forward with the knife in hand to point it in your direction, thankfully too far away for it to actually be anywhere near harming you. “You left me alive and it ruined everything.”

“I had to live with the pain, the nightmares, the constant fear. I had to watch my life fall apart while you just moved on to your next victim and left me without so much as a footnote in your confession." Nueves continued, her voice shaking with barely suppressed rage. "You think I'm the one who needs help? You're the monster, not me!”

“You had a hard time. Boo-hoo. But guess what? You're not the only one who's had to deal with shit. You're not special, Nueves.” You replied, your voice dripping with sarcasm.

Nueves' eyes flashed with anger at your dismissive words. "You don't get to talk to me like that. You don't get to belittle my pain. You don't get to decide how I should react to what you did to me."

"Actually, I do," you retorted, crossing your arms over your chest. "I'm the one who put you in this position. I'm the one who made you who you are today. And you know what? I'm not sorry. Because without me your life would’ve been completely insignificant.”

“Maybe I am a monster. But you, Nueves, are just a sad, pathetic little girl pretending to be a serial killer.” Nueves' face twisted with rage at your words, her grip on the knife tightening. But before she could react, Emily stepped in, her voice calm and authoritative.

“Enough,” she commanded, her gaze fixed on Nueves. “This isn't helping anyone. We're here to bring you in, Louise. To make sure you get the help you need.”

“I don't want your help,” Nueves spat back, her eyes still fixed on you with burning hatred. “I just want them to pay for what they did.”

“They are Louise, they’re paying for their actions every single day in a high-security prison,” Emily stated, her gaze unwavering as she shook her head gently. “They’re getting their punishment, you don’t have to do this, please, just put down the knife…” Emily’s eyes caught the SUV that parked on the side of the road as she talked. Looks like she’d managed to buy enough time for backup to arrive.

For a moment, it looked like Nueves might actually consider following Emily’s suggestion. But then she glanced back at you, her gaze hardening at your stare of indifference. “No,” she said, her voice filled with determination. “I won't let them get away with this. I won’t let them have control of how I live my life anymore.”

Nueves’ ramble deemed her oblivious to the agents approaching her from behind, ushering the few lingering witnesses to a safe distance away so that they could contain the area, and your eyes caught Dr Reid carefully scooping up the leashed dachshund into his arms after it’d scampered away from Nueves in her fit of rage.

“You don’t remember me?” Her eyes turned from seething to desperate in the split second she looked at you, voice raised as she tried to force your attention back onto her from your seeming uninterest in the confrontation. “You will.”

Morgan didn’t even have time to un-holster his gun before Nueves utilised the knife in her hand. Not on Emily, nor on you, but on herself, impaling the blade of the knife directly into her operational eye and forcing it deeper by slamming the palm of her hand into the wooden handle until it was almost completely encapsulated into her eye socket.

The sight was ghastly, blood spurting out of her eye as she fell onto the ground, convulsing from the pain and shock. You watched, a morbid fascination in your eyes as Emily quickly called for medical attention, her gaze flitting between you and the dying woman on the ground.

As the medics rushed to stabilise Nueves, Emily looked at you, her face pale. “You-” She said, her voice barely a whisper, “stay here.” She then hurriedly joined the medics, leaving you behind. You watched as the medics tried to recover her, but it was clear that her chances were slim. The sight of her writhing in pain, the blood pooling around her, was oddly satisfying to watch. A small, twisted part of you felt a sense of triumph at the confrontation's results, if not a little discontented with just how dramatic this woman proved to be.

The rest of the team moved to properly secure the area now that it was officially a crime scene as Emily, still with the medics, was applying pressure to Nueves' wound, her hands smeared with blood.

As you watched the scene unfold, a bizarre sense of calm washed over you. This chaos, this pain, was a result of your actions, your legacy, and despite the horrific circumstances, you couldn't help but feel a twisted sense of satisfaction.

From a distance, you could see Hotch talking to Emily, his expression unreadable. Emily nodded, her eyes briefly meeting yours before diverting away. She looked shaken, the dark red of Nueves’ quickly oxidising blood on her hands a stark contrast against her pale skin.

You tried to imagine the emotions she was grappling with. After all, she was a part of a team that had sworn to protect innocents from people like you. And now, because of you, she had blood on her hands.

The medics finally lifted Nueves onto a stretcher, rushing her towards the waiting ambulance. Emily stood there for a moment longer, watching as the ambulance sped away, before finally turning her eyes towards you, unfocused on how Morgan was gently trying to usher her towards another pair of EMTs so that she could be checked over.

There was zero chance Nueves was going to make it to the hospital in time.

Emily’s gaze was hard, filled with a mixture of anger, confusion, and something you couldn't quite place. Fear, perhaps? Or maybe disappointment? Regardless, it was clear that the events of the day had left a deep impact on her.

As you watched them walk away, the satisfaction from earlier began to fade, replaced by a strange emptiness. You were alone again, left with nothing but the aftermath of your actions. And as you stared at the spot where Nueves had fallen, the blood still fresh on the grass, you couldn't help but wonder if this was all worth it.

But then, you remembered the look on Nueves’ face, the horror in her expression at her own pain. And you knew, without a doubt, that it was. Maybe she was right, you just might remember her for that stunt she pulled, although most definitely not in a positive light.

“Are you alright?” The ever-calm voice of Spencer Reid pulled you away from mulling over your own feelings, and you give him an animated sway of your head back and forth as a silent communication of you not falling in either emotional direction.

It truly was fascinating how removed you were from everything, and as twisted and convoluted as it might sound, Spencer wasn’t looking forward to your departure from accompanying the team. It meant that he didn’t get to speak to you anymore. Didn’t get to slowly peel away the layers of protection you’d built over your psyche so that he could pry at your inner workings.

And he didn’t exactly mind having you around. But that was something he was going to keep to himself for a multitude of reasons.

“It’s all too over the top for my taste,” You shrug your shoulders nonchalantly, stretching your arms above your head. “Here, it’s the one with the ponytail’s,” You hold the cell phone out between your thumb and index finger like it might give you a disease if you hold it properly.

“Why-” Spencer starts his question and is immediately interrupted by your answer. “She gave it to me to message one of you where we were,”

So it was you who’d messaged him then. He thought the punctuation was different.

“Right, that makes sense,” He takes the phone from you with an awkward smile as he puts it away in his back pocket. “Thank you,”

You give him a short hum in reply, crossing your arms over your torso and leaning back and forth on the balls of your feet like you were becoming bored with just standing around. You’d just been a potential hostage at knife point and then watched someone graphically commit suicide specifically to gain your attention and less than five minutes after it was over you were looking for something new to capture your attention.

It utterly fascinated him. You were fascinating.

And you were leaving.

Literally.

You were walking away, obviously having had enough of Spencer’s silence and wandering off to find Hotch and maybe experience something more enticing.

“Hey-” Spencer called out to you as you began to walk away, and you stopped with a glance over your shoulder and a raised eyebrow. “What are you feeling right now?”

You stuff your hands in your pockets at his question, turning 180 degrees to face him once more with a slightly furrowed expression as you tried to figure out the motive behind his question.

“I wonder if she saw the afterlife.”

Spencer’s shoulders drop at your admission, his expression morphing into a mix of understanding and confusion, contradiction written all over his features.

You seemed more objectively curious than humanly concerned, but you still were curious nonetheless.

That was another fascinating part about you, or just about sociopaths in general, he supposes. But he wasn’t speaking to every sociopath in existence, he was speaking to you. So it was less about sociopathy and more about you specifically.

“Do you think she saw the afterlife?”

“Logically, she didn’t have any eyes so she wasn’t ‘seeing’ anything, but metaphorically I’d like to believe so,”

Spencer has to stifle a surprised laugh at your morbid joke about Nueves’ condition, pressing his lips into a tight line with a small nod as he tried to focus on the second part of your statement. “Me too,”

There was a small sense of deja vu surrounding your conversation as the two of you fell into a mutual silence, hastily interrupted by Hotch calling the two of you to gather with the rest of the team now that the case was officially over.

You noticed the distaste in Emily’s gaze immediately, looks like you’ve gained yourself another detractor. She and Morgan stood side by side with matching expressions as the two of you joined them, although neither had time to make any comments as the team loaded up in the SUVs to head back to the station.

It was rather hard to believe it’d only been six days in Las Flores, but dates don’t lie, and by the time you stepped back onto the BAU’s private jet, it felt like you’d only left it for a matter of hours.

Nueves’ face was fading from your mind by now, as was her name, and as you plopped yourself down on the same seat you’d occupied on your flight from Quantico, you’d almost forgotten that she even existed.

Your mind was more preoccupied with what was going to happen next. You were going to fly back to Quantico, be recovered by California state officials, and taken back to the concrete hell of the California Correctional Institution until your appeal to be moved to an inpatient psychiatric care facility was considered and ultimately rejected because they still deemed you ‘too dangerous’ to be around vulnerable individuals despite sharing mental issues with a lot of them.

Spencer gave you an awkward wave as he walked down the aisle of the cabin and stopped at the seat opposite you, hoping the movement would grab your attention.

“Do you-” He half gestures to the seat facing you with his hand, and you dismissively wave him into it as you return your attention to the window. “Thanks…”

You give him a hum at his politeness but otherwise remain uninterested in his presence, fastening the seat belt over your lap as the jet pilots prepare for the five-hour flight back to Quantico.

“What’re you thinking about?” Spencer abandons his original plan to sleep through the entire flight the second he sees the pondering in your expression.

You glanced at Spencer, contemplating whether to confide in him about your concerns. Out of everyone, he was probably the one person you’d met on the team who seemed genuinely interested in your experiences. He was one of the few who could understand the complexities of your situation. With a sigh, you decided to open up a little, "Just thinking about what happens now. Back to the concrete hell of my enclosure I guess.”

“I thought you were appealing the decision? That’s why you agreed to help, isn’t it? So the officials are more likely to accept your appeal?” Spencer tilts his head slightly in your direction, raising an eyebrow in your direction as he curled his legs under him in his chair.

“You really think that it’s actually going to do anything?” Your voice is dripping in sarcasm as you let your head fall back against the seat. “They’re seething enough that I didn’t get the death penalty, there’s no way they’re going to cut my sentence,”

“I don’t see why they shouldn’t,” Spencer blinks at you with a mildly furrowed expression. “You’re not an active threat to anybody, and having the help that you need could greatly improve your quality of life,”

“Yeah well you’re not the person who’s going to be analysing my case, so your opinion doesn’t really matter in the greater span of things does it, Dr. Reid?” Your tone carries no malice in your statement, although it comes off much more rude than he’s sure you mean it to be.

His opinion could matter. He knows that as a part of the evaluation you’ll have to go through Hotch will have to write a report on how you acted during the case. Maybe he could put in a few extra things he’d experienced with you. He’s sure that the psychiatrist assessing whether you were actively violent would benefit from knowing how much you adored your parents, how you wondered if your childhood pet was in the afterlife and how you engaged in a genuine emotional conversation with him despite all of your social stunts from your disorder.

You obviously still had your humanity, so he didn’t see why they wouldn’t allow you to have the facilities to improve your mental state to a point where one day you could possibly be a functioning member of society, or at least be in a position to help researchers understand more about your condition.

“Having optimism about an upcoming situation has proved to actually affect the outcome of said situation, with 36% of people who had been optimistic about negative situations physically affecting the outcome of those situations based on their outlook alone,” Spencer presses his lips into a line, another one of those awkward smiles that you’d become used to over your time with him.

“I prefer realism, but I suppose I’ll take that into account,”

“That’s all I can ask,” Spencer gives a soft exhale at your inadvertent agreement to take his advice, brushing a strand of hair behind his ear. “I’ll visit you once your appeal has gone through,” The statement fell out of his mouth without any real thought behind it, simply a reflection of his brain deciding he wasn’t quite done with your company yet despite the case officially being over.

“Of course you will,”

Spencer gives a short laugh of mild embarrassment. “Of course I will.”

#spencer reid x reader #spencer reid #criminal minds #criminal minds x reader #spencer reid angst #criminal minds angst #asks 🫶#mgg #bloodied roses 🥀

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yumeka-sxf · 8 months

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My thoughts on Spy x Family: EYES ONLY Guidebook (English ver) - part 1

I finished reading through my copy of the English version of the SxF manga guidebook "EYES ONLY." There's tons of fantastic information about the series, but I wanted to share my thoughts/commentary on parts that were the most interesting to me. Since there's so much content to cover, I'll be dividing it into a few different posts. Also, rather than go in the order of the book's sections, I decided to group the content based on topic. This first post will cover Endo's comments about the characters individually, as well as information about Garden.

Endo's Q&As and comments about the characters

Loid:

I like that Endo provides a reason for why Loid wears a WISE logo pin as it's something more than one fan of the series has questioned! And I totally agree with Lin about his "lack of distinctive features." Compared to so many other anime characters, especially shonen main characters, Loid's design is so plain, particularly in his hair and clothes. At least in his spy outfit he has a gun to make him a little flashier, but when he's in his casual clothes, he literally just looks like "some guy," haha. But that also makes sense for his character.

I love how Endo gave specific numbers for comparing Loid and Yor's strength (Yor: 10, Loid: 6-7)

Anya:

I did notice what Endo is talking about how Anya's design changed over time. But that can be said for all the characters really, and it's definitely not uncommon for manga-ka's styles to evolve as they get a better feel for their characters and world.

He mentions the classical language thing that was also brought up in chapter 42. Definitely makes me think that will somehow tie into her backstory.

Speaking of Anya's backstory, there was this little excerpt about the researchers at the lab. So one thing we can say for sure about her past is that she was not treated well there at all (which has been hinted at in the series).

Endo also discussed the origin of Anya's pink hair (namely, there really isn't any origin, lol).

Yor:

Interesting that he spent the most time designing Yor, and also about the origin of her stilettoes. And his apology to the cosplayers for that bonus feature about Yor's hair, haha.

I had to chuckle when he said they can't measure her strength because she keeps breaking the instruments! Also the fact that she hasn't learned how to make a single successful meal since the stew…Endo is such a savage sometimes, lol. But keep in mind that this book was originally published over a year ago, and obviously we know from recent chapters that her cooking is improving. I also like that he mentions that she has left witnesses to her work, like in Extra Mission 2. I wonder if that will be a bigger plot point somewhere down the line.

Like Anya having pink hair, Endo expresses some regret about making Yor an assassin (but his laugh makes it clear he's not terribly hung up about it!)

Bond:

I know some people are bothered by the fact that Yor is Bond's least favorite. But I think Bond's (initial) dislike for her originated from the chapter where he assumes he would have died from her cooking. Also the fact that Anya put the idea in his head that she would "murder" him if he did something she didn't like, like shun her food (which is obviously heavily exaggerated). But again, this book was published over a year ago, and the most recent chapter revealed that he definitely doesn't dislike her even if she's not his favorite. It's perfectly normal for pets to have family members they prefer over others for whatever reason.

Franky:

I love that Franky does charity work. I hope we'll see that in a future chapter.

Fiona:

It's interesting that he ranks Fiona's combat ability so low, especially when you consider what she did to Wheeler in the recent arc. But to me, that wasn't so much a display of combat prowess as it was totally raw, uninhibited willpower.

Yuri:

I love his blunt answer about whether Yuri has other interests besides Yor. Also intriguing that he mentions Nightfall when discussing Yuri's combat ability…maybe those two will meet eventually?

Information about Garden

Since Garden is still such a mysterious entity in the SxF universe, I tried to gather everything about them that the book mentions.

It's interesting that Yor sees Shopkeeper as her mentor since he taught her survival skills in her youth. The book also raises the question about how Yor found Garden in the first place…maybe something Endo will expand on in the future?

So the information Franky gives us about Garden is exaggerated? Gah, that just makes them even more mysterious!

The above was a cool bit of trivia...so it seems like the secret police might know more about Garden than WISE. Perhaps Yuri will find out about Yor's real identity before Twilight?

Continue to Part 2 ->

#spy x family #spy family #sxf #spyxfamily #loid forger #yor forger #anya forger #bond forger #yuri briar #franky franklin #fiona frost #sxf manga #sxf manga spoilers #sxf spoilers #tatsuya endo

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hanafubukki · 3 months

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Summary: “Marry me Lilia Vanrouge! I’ll make you the happiest fae in the world.”

You and Lilia walked through Malleus’ garden. The roses were in peak bloom, making the scenery perfect for a stroll.

The floral scents in the air calmed your racing heart…somewhat.

It’s not as if you were nervous being around Lilia, you dated him for many years now.

It’s more…what you planned to do that made you nervous.

“You seem nervous, my dear.”

“I’m not nervous…just overthinking.”

Lilia hummed. Knowing him, he probably knew something was up but chose to let you come to him in your own time.

You love him.

It was a fact.

Looking at him, amongst the roses. His gaze fond as he took in the nearby flowers. The scenery framing him exquisitely as if he is a work of art that belongs to a museum.

You couldn’t keep your next words in even if you tried.

“Marry me Lilia Vanrouge! I’ll make you the happiest fae in the world.”

Lilia stilled, looking at you in surprise.

You wanted to clam up, but for some reason your mouth didn’t listen to your brain.

“W-well, I’ll make you the happiest fae in the world in the romantic sense! I mean, your sons and Sebek already make you happy in the platonic sense…what am I saying? Why am I saying-”

Lilia burst out in laughter. Your mouth decided to stop sprouting words at the beautiful sound.

You started walking away, feeling shy and embarrassed.

“You know what? Forget what I said. I’ll think of a better one. Oh Sebek is going to-”

A hand stopped you, you looked to see Lilia gazing at you with love that would last centuries.

“Yes.” Lilia pulled you closer to him, his forehead touching yours, “Yes, I will marry you.”

Hiding away from the recently engaged couple, three young men watched the scene with varying reactions.

Silver smiled at the scene before him before sighing at his fellow knight who’s yelling up a storm. Luckily, the barrier Lord Malleus made around them not only hid them, but deafened Sebek’s voice.

“You call that a proposal YN?! Did you learn nothing from the books we had read?! That proposal was the least romantic method you could have gone with!”

“Sebek, father agreed. YN’s proposal was a success.”

“That’s not the point!”

Malleus had a slight smirk on his face, enjoying the unexpected situations you always brought about before an unexpected thought came to mind.

“I wonder if we will hear the pitter patter of tiny feet soon.”

The shining eyes that faced Malleus conveyed how excited they were at such a prospect.

It has been a long time since such sounds were heard.

They all looked forward to it.

As was promised in my poll ☺️💞🫶, hope you enjoyed. 🌺🌸

The need to marry this fae increases ever day 🥹💞 I love him so much.

#lilia vanrouge #twisted wonderland #lilia vanrouge x reader #twisted wonderland x reader #twst x reader #twst x you #twst lilia vanrouge x reader #lilia vanrouge x you #lilia vanrouge x mc #twst #twst scenarios #malleus draconia #twst silver #sebek zigvolt #x reader #x you #twst lilia

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dyaz-stories · 5 months

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an indentation in the shape of you || Cha Hyun-Su x f!Reader

summary: Hyun-Su wants to learn how to make you feel good. The two of you experiment some more.

word count: 2.8k

warnings & tags: fluff, smut, reader is afab, explicit consent, pwp, porn with feelings, fingering, dry-humping i guess?, they're both virgins and pretty awkward but they're getting better at this, all very vanilla.

first one-shot · previous one-shot

This one-shot can be read independently as there is nothing intense plot-wise that requires having read the other parts, but I do recommend reading them for context.

A/N: this is my first hyun-su one-shot without angst lol (...don't get too used to it). anyway, this is more smut, and i think it's more intense than the previous one. hyun-su is more confident in this one, and he takes charge a little more (but in other ways he's pretty subby, so do with that what you want). hope you enjoy!

There is something about watching Hyun-Su moving around in your house that warms your heart in a way you can’t quite explain. He’s seemed more confident there lately, no longer tiptoeing or stiffening around you like you could kick him out any second. It reminds you of days forever gone, when your mom used to sit at the table while doing her crosswords and your dad put music on the second he walked in through the door.

It reminds you of when this house was a home.

Right now, Hyun-Su’s fixing up a spear he’s brought here with some of your dad’s tools. It’s not his, you know that much. ‘Yi-Kyeong asked me to take care of it’, he’d said when he had set to fix it. There was something to his tone that had stopped you from asking for more, even if you think he’d have told you. He’d said her name respectfully, but with deep sadness, and you had known that there was a lot more to this story. You’d get there some day, you were sure, but not tonight.

Hyun-Su glances up at you, and you almost whip your head away to pretend you weren’t looking at him, like you’re a highschooler with a crush. Instead, you don’t even try to make it look like the long forgotten book in your lap is of any interest to you, and you give him a smile.

He stills his movements.

“Is something wrong?”

His voice is calm and deep. He sure has come a long way.

“Just like looking at you,” you answer, because it’s true, and even with all that progress, you’re not surprised when Hyun-Su looks away from you, cheeks turning red.

When he gets the courage to look back at you, though, a bashful smile illuminates his features, and you don’t think that would have happened even as recently as a few weeks ago.

“You do?”

There’s just something in the air. Something fresh and sweet and new, something that makes you bite your lower lip while you nod, suppressing the giggle that’s forming in the back of your throat. Hyun-Su’s eyes on you feel intense, and you’re not used to getting that kind of look from him. After a few seconds of that, he abandons the spear behind him to stand up and walk towards you, eyes not leaving yours for a second.

A long, intense shiver runs down your back. Under his hoodie, you can see the muscles of his shoulders moving as he walks, and fleetingly, you wonder if you’d have had a chance with him, in a world without the Apocalypse, but even that is quickly swallowed by the fact that you have him now.

He puts a hand on the back of the couch as he leans close to you to kiss you, the other coming to rest on your waist and oh, if he keeps doing things like that, you think you’ll just turn into a puddle. Your heart is fluttering, and when his hand sneaks under your t-shirt, long, cold fingers carefully caressing your skin, you think it just might fly out of your chest.

His lips move slowly against yours, and you tilt your head back as he towers over you. You feel like you’re going into overdrive from how sensual he’s being, how his tongue dances with yours as the soft sounds of the kiss fill the room. It’s not long before he’s gently pushing you onto your back on the couch, and he goes down with you, putting one knee between your legs to support himself.

And it’s all just so much. Hyun-Su’s lips, his taste on your tongue, his warm body half-covering yours, his fingers running over your ribs, and, fuck, now his knee just almost, almost pressing right where you need him to.

But this feels nice, too, and you’re not trying to initiate anything sexual just yet, so you do your best to be patient. You wrap your arms around his neck to pull him closer, and find some satisfaction in the way Hyun-Su loses his rhythm at that. Knowing that you still have that kind of effect on him, even as you’re unraveling completely under his touch, makes you just a little more confident in what you’re doing.

It isn’t long before Hyun-Su’s gotten his bearings back though, and then he kisses you with renewed passion. The kiss turns less controlled, mouth crashing against yours harder, his hand tightens on your waist— before he pulls away, panting.

“Sorry,” he says before he can catch himself, cheeks flushed.

“I didn’t mind,” you answer, but your voice is squeakier than you had intended.

“I didn’t mean to— I wanted to ask you something.”

His black eyes are wide, and as much as the blue eyes are like an electric shock running through you, you love them so much. You love how you drown in them, you love how kind they are, love that they are, truly, a window to his soul.

“What is it?” you whisper, not trusting your voice anymore.

“Just— What we did. Last time.”

No need to be a rocket scientist to figure that one out, so, even if you feel blood rushing to your face, you nod.

“I wanted to, uh, return the favor. If you don’t mind.”

It’s your eyes’ turn to widen, and you push yourself onto your elbows to better read his expression. The skin of your face tingles with how burning hot it is.

“I mean I— Sure but you don’t— You don’t have to do anything—”

“I know,” he says, shaking his head. His voice is soft. “But I want to.”

You swallow, but you lay back down. You’re more nervous in this situation than you would have expected, feel vulnerable, exposed, even if you’re all clothed for now. But you trust Hyun-Su, you do, with all of your heart, and you cannot imagine a better person to have this experience with. So, slowly, you nod.

“Are you sure?”

“Very sure,” you whisper.

“Then can I…?”

He pulls on your shirt, but without putting any force into it. His eyes are on you, waiting for your approval — or whatever you decide to answer with.

You swallow.

“Um, yes, but could you— could you also…?”

He understands your meaning without you having finished, and acts on it faster than you would have expected, almost immediately pulling his own hoodie over his head and letting it fall to the floor. You’d noticed before that, for all his shyness over other things, he doesn’t seem to care about nudity all that much, but you’re not sure what to do with it.

For now, you can at least admire the work of art that is his body, his well-defined muscles and hard pectorals, and since he’s out in the open now, you give him a nod.

“Go ahead.”

He takes off your shirt like you’re made of porcelain, pulling it slowly and softly over your head, and taking his time so it doesn’t get caught in your hair. It is such a sweet sight, how focused he gets on the task, on making sure he’s doing right, so that he doesn’t hurt you in any way. It’s only once he’s done that his gaze lands on your body. He stills, Adam’s apple bobbing up and down, and you can’t help but stiffen.

It might be silly, at this point in your relationship — and when the world has literally ended outside your window — but you’re feeling self-conscious. You want to fold your arms in front of your breasts, hide your stomach and any imperfection.

“You’re beautiful,” Hyun-Su says, so obviously in awe, and the weight on your stomach is replaced by sweet, sweet butterflies. “Is it— is it okay to—”

“Touch me,” you ask instead of letting him stutter through the rest of his sentence, and he almost gasps at that, pants suddenly feeling a lot tighter.

“You shouldn’t say things like that to me,” he mumbles, bright red once again, stealing a kiss from you when you open your mouth to tease.

Then he’s kissing down your neck, and you can tell that he’s mimicking the things you did to him the last time something like this happened between the two of you. You barely have time to find that sweet, though, because soon the only thing on your mind are the open-mouthed kisses he’s pressing against your skin, and how they make you so desperate to buck your hips against he’s oh so well placed thigh.

He doesn’t linger on your neck, though, soon moving down to your chest, sneaking a hand behind your back to try and unclasp your bra — something he ends up struggling you with so much that you’re the one that eventually reaches back to get it done. He’ll have all the time to learn that kind of things later. For now, there’s something on your mind, and you don’t want to have to wait any longer.

You let him slide it down your arms, then discard it, letting it fall with the rest of your clothes.

“Can I…?”

“You still don’t have to ask.”

He hesitates for a second, before going back down to press a shy kiss under your collarbone, right where your breast starts to form. He keeps kissing his way down, hands for now cautiously staying away. Finally, he reaches your nipple, and you cannot hold back a distinct gasp when he carefully wraps his mouth around it. It turns into a full moan when he flicks his tongue against it — and you could swear you feel his mouth stretching into a grin right after that.

It’s then that he cups your other breast with his hand, and you shiver. His body may be radiating heat, but his hands are cold. They don’t stay that way for long though, not with how hot you’re running right now yourself. He starts off shy over there too, at first massaging your breast gently, before his fingers dare brush against that nipple. It’s hard already, and with his mouth on the other side, all you can do is arch into his touch, moans still falling freely from your lips.

Pleasure’s running wild in your body, each and every sensation going straight down to your core, more so when his fingers experimentally pull on your nipple. You’re dripping wet already, desperate for relief, and it’s not long before you can no longer hold yourself back and buck your hips up against his leg.

He lets go of you almost immediately, glancing down at your lower body as if he doesn’t understand what’s happening. When he looks back at you, his eyes are impossibly wide, his pupils dilated.

“Did you— Did you just—”

“Hyun-Su,” you call out in a sigh, running your fingers over the nape of his neck. “Touch me.”

For a second, his whole body tenses and he just stares at you. Then he exhales.

“Fuck,” he mumbles under his breath. “Fuck. Um. Then I’ll— I’ll just—” He starts fiddling with the button of your jeans, and just the anticipation of his touch where you need it the most sends pleasure rushing through you once more. This time, he manages to get them off of you without your help, and there’s another slow exhale. “You’re so— You’re so—”

Wet is the word you think he’s searching for, and he’s not wrong about that. The urge to reach down between your leg to take care of the ache you’re feeling is strong, but the desire to feel him down there is all-consuming, and so you wait for him, your breathing loud and ragged.

“Tell me, okay? Tell me what feels good to you.”

He doesn’t take off your panties, probably because he hasn’t gotten your jeans fully off, and instead just pushes them to the side. He’s cautious here too, at first barely brushing against the lips, which still makes the muscles of your thighs tense. It feels like you’ve been waiting for it for centuries when he finally inserts a long finger inside you, sliding in so easily from how dripping wet you are. Your hold on his shoulders tighten, fingers digging into his skin, and even with your lips pressed tightly together, your moan reverberates through your body.

“Good?” Hyun-Su asks, and his low voice in your ears does absolute wonders to you right now.

“You can add another one,” you say, except it’s probably more of a whine, but you can’t tell for sure, not with how much your head is buzzing right now.

Hyun-Su obeys almost immediately, and you bury your head in his neck to muffle the groan that follows. You feel so good, so full, and he hasn’t even moved yet. You let yourself adjust, before giving him more instructions.

“You can— You can spread them open and— ah!— m-move them in and— Ah!”

Hyun-Su follows your advice diligently, and soon you no longer even have the strength to hold on to him, falling down onto your back with your whole body arching into his touch, following after him if he pulls out. It’s so, so fucking good, nothing you’ve ever done on your own can compare to this and you don’t know how you’ll be able to go back after that.

You’re gasping and writhing underneath him for you don’t know how long, and you’re so, so close to the edge, but you need— You just need something more, so you push yourself back up on your elbows, something harder than you’d think, when your muscles feel like jelly, and that’s when you realize that his hips are bucking against your leg. You hadn’t paid any attention to it, but now you see how obviously hard he is, and the small, almost shy movements of his hips as he ruts against you.

“Hyun-Su,” you call — you’re no longer paying attention to how your voice is coming out —, “here—”

You grab his wrist, and even if it means he pulls his hand out, something that immediately has your walls clenching around nothing at the loss, guide him so his fingers brush against your clit.

“There,” you whisper. “You can keep, uh, keep your fingers inside and— and touch me there, too.”

He nods, pushes the fingers back inside. There are a few seconds as he figures out how to best put his hand, and then when he strokes your clit with his thumb, you almost immediately lose it. You only have the presence of mind to lift your leg up, just a little, so it presses against his hard cock.

It’s his turn to freeze and to let out a moan then, one obviously surprised out of him.

“You should feel good too,” you manage to mumble through the haze of pleasure.

“But I— I want to make you feel—”

“We can both feel good,” you answer, and Hyun-Su just cannot resist kissing you again. It’s messy, tongues clashing together without much control, but fuck, he cannot explain or control the way he feels about you.

You come just a few moments later, waves of pleasure crashing through you all at once as his thumb circles your clit, fingers deep inside you, moving at a tranquil pace that lets you feel all of his movements inside you.

When you open your eyes again, he’s above you, staring at you lovingly.

“Good?” he asks.

Better than that.

“That was incredible,” you tell him though even that feels like an understatement. You love the way he obviously preens under your compliment. “But— But what about you? Didn’t you—”

You reach out, but he grabs your wrist before you can touch him.

“I, um, I’ve already—”

He’s turning bright red again, but you understand without another word. His jeans are still on, and you haven’t even actually touched him, and yet he still came in his pants, against your thigh, while fingering you.

Blood rushes to your face so fast you feel light-headed.

“Oh,” is all you can truly think to say. Then, shyly, “Want to go get cleaned up?”

“Together?” His voice is soft, questioning, but his eyes are in yours, comfortable instead of avoiding. You nod.

Later, you’re still in his arms, your back pressed against his chest, his face buried in your neck. And you, too, are comfortable.

There’s just something in the air, something fresh and sweet and familiar, and you think something you haven’t let yourself explore all that much, even if you’ve known, deep down, for a long time.

It just might be love.

and here we are! this one felt a lot smuttier to me than the previous part, but it was fun to write about this relationship in a less angsty way, too. maybe i should let them be happy a little more lol. anyway, i hope you liked it! next part probably won't be smut, but i don't know when it will be out. i have a new, time consuming internship that doesn't give me a lot of free time, so i don't know how much/when i'll have time to write. but i definitely have more stuff i want to write for this couple! so don't hesitate to comment and/or reblog to give me the motivation to write after work lol, and i'll also be answering my asks when i have time!

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gay-dorito-dust · 2 years

Note

❛ c’mon, we’d look cute together. ❜ promt with Aegon! I feel like he would be a little shit even to the ones he likes.

Summary: Aegon has been on your ass for a while now, so you barricade yourself within the library for a moment of reprieve.

Aegon Targaryen, second of his name, bane of your existence and a pain in your fucking backside. The twerp was like a thorn lodged in your side, too fickle to be removed by traditional means. For as long as you could remember Aegon had been your shadow, following you wherever you went whether that be the gardens, courtyard, library, kitchen, even to your own fucking chambers, Aegon was there with a smug smirk that you’d love nothing more then to wipe off by the means of your first to his face. His entire existence annoyed you to the point that you intentionally hide from him in whatever room was within the closest vicinity.

Once you hid in the library for an entire day knowing for certain that Aegon wouldn’t ever dare step foot in there; Especially when Aemond was known to occupy the library as though it were his chamber. The younger brother was made more then aware of Aegon’s incessant pursuit towards you by how often he would see you rush into the room; Slamming the door shut behind you whilst looking as though you had just set one of the dragons loose within the castle. “I have never, not once, ever seen my brother so determined about something before.” He said as he quickly finished reading a passage out of his book. “You haven’t slipped anything into his drink by any chance.” You only gave the prince a glare, “ha ha, very funny Aemond, don’t you think I would’ve done that just if it meant getting him off my arse for a fucking second?”

“Considering that this is Aegon we are talking about, I’m certain he’d rather be in your arse then on it.” Aemond put it bluntly, his lips graced with a small smirk when you groaned in annoyance, “all joking aside, I have never seen him this determined in perusing someone. It’s quite frankly horrifying to see him up so early.” Aegon was known to be a heavy sleeper, more so during his ventures out to the streets of silk; So seeing his brother get up anytime other then midday brought a lot into question for Aemond. The answer to all of his inquiries was currently attempting to blockade the door with a chair. “Well tell him to quit it or find another, less invasive method in perusing me before I end up hitting him where his future kids will most definitely feel it.” You replied, stepping back to view your work before turning your attention to Aemond who’s eye was gleaming in amusement.

“So your telling me there’s an slight window of opportunity for you to accept my brothers advances?” He hummed, his chin resting within the palm of hand as he caught onto the look of realisation that flash across your face as you recollected the phrasing of your prior words. “No I didn’t.” You curtly answered. “I’m afraid you did, sweet y/n.” Aemond taunted, thoroughly enjoying what he was now learning, “your putting words in my mouth.” You hissed as you turned to addresses the prince who looked about as smug as a cat in his chair. “Am I? Or are you in denial of the possibility that you do, in fact, like the attention my brother has been giving you recently?” You knew what Aemond was doing but you weren’t going to give him the satisfaction of getting under your skin, edging you to the point of an accidental confession; Mind games have always been his forte.

So you did what you could’ve done in that situation, change the subject and put him in the hot seat. “Why are you so invested in your brothers love life all of a sudden Aemond? Normally you wouldn’t give two shits with whom he fucks but right now your acting as though you were a gossiping lady of the court.” Aemond scoffs, fully aware of what you were doing. He didn’t blame you, forcing to admit favouritism towards his brother’s company was damming to one’s pride indeed. Even he has a hard time finding anything remotely favourable out of his brother’s company, especially ones that didn’t involve chasing him down the streets of silk and flea bottom whenever he were to allude his duties. “Oh please why would you-“ just as Aemond was about to finish his sentence, a voice from the other side of the door belonging to that of Ser Criston Cole.

“Prince Aemond, the Queen Alicent requests your audience.” You knew that Alicent didn’t liked to be kept waiting, so you walked over to the door and dislodged the chair from underneath the handle before suspicions were raised. “You wouldn’t want to keep the Queen waiting.” You told him, you see his eye linger on the stack of books on the table he was occupying and you sighed, “I’ll clear away your books, just get going.” Aemond wordlessly got up and crossed the room to the door, though not before casting you a thankful gaze before leaving the library with Ser Criston hot on his heels. With nothing else to do and no one else to talk with, you began clearing up and putting away books to their proper shelves which took you a substantial amount of time, and before you knew it afternoon had already fallen upon KingsLanding.

“I think I’ll head down to the gardens for a bit, just to stretch my legs and get some fresh air.” You told yourself for no other reason then verbal confirmation of what you were planning on doing as you stepped out of the Library, making sure to shut the door behind yourself before you were greeted with a pair of mischievously beautiful lilac eyes and a head of short platinum locks. “Aegon.” You breathed out, “what do I owe the pleasure of your company on this fine afternoon.” You continued through gritted teeth when the prince only smirked in response as he proceeded to grab a hold of your arm, linking it with his own before leading you both down the hallway. “No need to act so cordial towards me, I merely wanted to spend time with you today but couldn’t seem to find you anywhere. Little did I know you were tucked away in the library with my brother.”

The way Aegon’s voice seemed uncharacteristic towards the end made you look at him properly, just in time to see his lilac eyes darken with insecurity as his jaw subtly clenched whilst his grip on your hand tightened over yours absentmindedly. You almost completely forgot that underneath the facade was a boy born into a loveless family and crippling expectations; You almost felt upset for ignoring him, only to be rudely remembered that this was the same boy that tripped you over into a mud puddle and faked innocence along with the time he stole your clothes while you were bathing. How he had gotten in without you hearing his heavy ass breathing still alludes you and frightens you simultaneously. “Apologise my prince, I didn’t know my absence would affect you as much.” You replied, squeezing his hand.

“You can make it up to me by walking through the garden with me.” Aegon quickly suggested and when you didn’t reply fast enough for his liking, he began to whine and lean his weight into you. “C’mon, we’d look cute together, strolling through the gardens, hand in hand, arm in arm. Don’t you think?” Aegon at this point was on the brink of desperation. He hadn’t been lying when he said that he had been trying to find you, almost turned the red keep upside down in the process throughout the duration of his search for you. All he wished for is that he got to have your company even if it was for a short period of time. Aegon just wanted to let his guard down and the only way he could do that was whenever he was with you. So when you sighed and agreed to accompany him, the prince was practically dragging you do the hall with his long strides as you struggled to keep up.

Despite regretting your easy acceptance towards his offer, you found yourself looking upon Aegon’s face to see that the shadows of doubt and regret have retreated from his features and the worry lines usually seen across his forehead had subsided for far happier ones. If Aemond’s words from earlier were to be believed and that Aegon had been determined in being within your presence and how your body receipted to his…peculiar advances. Then yes, you might’ve favoured Aegon’s undivided attention being on you and solely you. The mere thought of being desired and sought after to the point it drives that person into desperation because of how sorely sought after you were. It made you feel things. It made you feel wanted. “You’re a brat you know.” You said softly as you rested your head against his shoulder, feeling the muscles within his body tense at your words, “however I’d rather you be my brat then anyone else’s. I’d want you to be my problem to deal with for the rest of my life.”

“As long as you be mine in return,” Aegon replied softer then usual, pressing a kiss to your head, “for now and for always.”

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absolutebl · 3 months

Text

This Week in BL - It's 2024 & I'm talking about TayNew... really?

(They pretty much told us all to sit down and shut tf up, 'cause they got this. AND THEY DO.)

Organized, in each category, with ones I'm enjoying most at the top.

Feb 2024 Wk 3

Ongoing Series - Thai

Cherry Magic (Sat YouTube grey) ep 9 of 12 - I broke. In my defense, it was Monday, I needed comfort, and TayNew were right tf there. Ya know what? They are great in this show. It's a great adaptation. I might like it more than the JBL live action. You know why? Really, honestly WHY...?

That was a PHENOMENAL KISS. Those boys did Thailand fucking proud. They did fandom a solid. Thank you OGs for reminding us how it's done. I was getting used to SloppyHot. And SloppyHot has its place, but that TayNew rooftop kiss was a top tear class act. It was tender and sweet and respectful and joyful. It was eye work and breath work and years of practice. How very far BL has come while still staying so much the same. TayNew - I salute you!

(Read all about distribution issues here.)

The Sign (Sat YT) ep 12fin - we waiting, I guess? Bah.

Cooking Crush (Sun YT) ep 11 of 12 - The recipe book thing was so damn cute and I love a claiming. YOU KNOW I LOVE A CLAIMING!

In fact, I love OffGun.

I love food based BL.

I adored seeing a reboot of "the infamous dragging".

But I don’t love anything else about this show. Sigh.

1000 Years Old ep 1 of 12 - Finally we get our gay vampire BL from Feel Good Bangkok. Stars Shane (My Engineer) and fresh face Opal, directed by Champ (2gether). It’s kind of odd but enjoyable. A group of teen UFO seekers find a vampire instead. Opal looks a bit like a mix between Newnu + Leo (VIXX) - so cute + edge. Also, nice to see Shane again on our screens after so long.

Finally, I like the subtle (and sometimes not subtle) presence of ghosts permeating this show. Do the friends know she's there? Do they know she's dead? Is the existence of paranormal accepted but not that of aliens? Or are the two combined? Is this lazy writing or just fun world building? Who cares! It's enjoyable.

For Him (Thurs iQIYI) ep 12fin - the nail painting bit was very cutie queers and I've not seen it done in BL before, so that was nice. For some reason captions never dropped for me on this last episode, but it didn’t really matter. Not much happened and I understood everything anyway.

Quick pitch?

From the people who brought us Unforgotten Night based on a y-novel, about a young man nursing a heartbreak who has a one-night stand, but the other boy didn't want it to end. This turned out to be a pulp that wasn’t half as good as it should have been and even less memorable, but not terrible. 5/10 DON'T BOTHER unless you're v bored

City of Stars (Fri iQIYI) ep 3 of 12 - Oh it is such a pulp: the acting is not good and the script is terrible. Of course, I’m mildly enjoying it. Very good dream kissing. There's something appealing about these main characters - I think it's the moot crushes. We rarely get to see that. These days everything feels very one sided, this... isn't.

A Secretly Love (Thai WeTV) - Khonprot, a third-year hazer of the engineering faculty, has a secret crush on Pluem, a tsundere fourth-year head hazer. Over the years, he's seen Pluem cycle through girlfriends. Recently, after a public breakup, however, Khonprot thinks maybe a boy has a chance.

I tried but I can't get into my WeTV account anymore and I'm way too lazy to figure it out. I'll catch it grey if I can, since I've rebooted the bootlegging side of my BL life for Cherry Magic anyway.

So this show may stay in this section, or I may bump it down to "it's airing but..."

If anyone is watching it, let me know if it's good?

Ongoing Series - Not Thai

Love For Love's Sake (Korea Weds iQIYI) 7-8fin - Ugh it was GREAT, despite some pretty telling flaws. I ended up feeling like some of the filming was amateurish (very overworked low angles - director's first feature, I assume), and the narrative is a little disjoined and on the nose, AND the subs are clumsy (which I don't expect from KBL) BUT I still loved it. (FYI - I wouldn't be so harsh on a BL for this kinda thing except one from Korea.)

Quick pitch:

This isekai-based KBL is about a man who must win a game by convincing a reserved teen outcast to fall in love with him. Of course, that teen represents himself and his own unhappiness. Like many queer narratives, this show is actually about self worth, trust, and found family, and it is VERY on the nose. But I don’t expect subtlety from my BL and I enjoyed it's truly lovely redemption arc and earnest performances. While I found the narrative a touch disjointed with overworked filming angles and poorer than average captions, this is certainly much better than early KBL in terms of consistency of tone, script, and immersion. Highly rewatchable and charming, which counts for a lot. 9/10

Trigger warning for suicide depicted.

Perfect Propose (Japan Fri Gaga) ep 4 of 6 - Gosh, it’s so lovely. But I do just constantly want to give them both hugs.

AntiReset (Taiwan Fri Viki/Gaga) ep 4 of 10 - Oh look, Taiwan has created yet another BL where I spend most of the time watching it grinning like an idiot. Surprise surprise. The pet name thing was fucking adorable. Also Taiwan once more proving they come by their "kings of kissing" title honestly. I mean to say. In a week of good kisses this one was just... WOW.

On the other hand, some of the underpinning themes are starting to v worry me (ownership, consent, age), and we only just got started, and I don't trust this production company so... I have concerns.

But also... YAY KISSES!

(I'm made of weak moral fiber.)

Although I Love You and You AKA Sukiyanen Kedo Do Yaro ka (Japan Thurs Gaga) ep 6 of 10 - Like many other shows on this list. I just enjoy it the most when the two leads are on screen together. So this episode was kind of lacking because they were apart for most of it. I also am starting to agree with the tone of the plot, that maybe they ARE better off as friends not lovers. (And I'm sure I'm not supposed to want that.) Oh Japan, must you?

My Strawberry Film (Japan Gaga) ep 1 of 8 - Oh it’s good. In the arthouse lane so don’t expect sweetness & light or an HEA. If there’s no cartoon aspect to a JBL, there’s usually no joy. But it is certainly good. Teens uncover some old film and a mystery around a pretty girl. The background music is wildly annoying (and rarely in the background).

It's Done

What Did You Eat Yesterday Season 2 AKA Kinou Nani Tabeta? Season 2 (Japan Gaga) 10 eps - will binge when I have any spare time. 2024 is crazy busy for me so far.

The Servant and the Young Master - from Vietnam, it's on YouTube. I will give it a try when I have a window of time.

Began Beginning (Myanmar YouTube) - A Burmese BL? @heretherebedork vouched for it, so I will give it a watch.

7 Days Before Valentine (Weds WeTV) - Gave me Luminous Solution vibes have decided not to watch.

It's Airing But...

Dead Friend Forever (Thai iQIYI) - rumors are it's interesting. I'm waiting to know how it ends.

Ossans Love Season 2 (Japan Gaga) - 5 years later, will anything have changed? This is Japan so… probubly not. I won't be watching this. I disliked Season one and actively hated the follow ups. No thank you.

Playboyy (Thurs Gaga) 14 eps - Dear Playboyy, it's not you, it’s me… I hate you. You’re about as deep (and as palatable) as a shot glass of cum. While I'm sure you’re someone’s kink, you're my weakest link. Goodbye. I DNFed this at ep 5. Frankly I'm impressed with myself for getting that far.

Time the series (Tue Gaga/YT) 10 eps - dropped it at ep 4.

Next Week Looks Like This:

2/24 Unknown (Taiwan Youku) 12 eps - Older brother tough guy breadwinner looks after his sister and defacto adopted little brother. Little bother falls in love with him and is sent away after a stolen kiss. But when he comes back…

Sam Lin has a cameo so even if I wasn't already excited, I'm in. We should be on our guard though, Taiwan will occasionally go edgy, dark, and sad... this could go there.

One assumes GMMTV is filling in the BL time slot with something queer on their YT Channel after Cooking Crush ends, they gonna lose subs if they don't. But I've not been paying attention to the chatter so I don't know which of their line-up it will be. I think G4 are filming/off radar now, and Earth is in that het noona thing? Plus they gotta sort out the IP for MIx-Up and Ossen. So it won't be one of the announced adaptations. They'll hold My Golden Blood for the high season, so I think it'll be one of the lesser known lead-outs. Wandee or Only Boo maybe? But they only just started filming those. Are we getting our long awaited GL? Anything else left from 2023 that I forgot about?

Upcoming BLs for 2024 are listed here. This list is not kept updated, so please leave a comment if you know something new or RP with additions.

THIS WEEK’S BEST MOMENTS

Two crawling kisses from Thailand this week. Now this is a fetish I didn't know I had. Turns out, we love this one! (*waves hand in air* I speak for all of us now.)

Cooking Crush

City of Stars

Possibly the best tsundere to cinnamon roll pivot we've had in a long time.

Also the best asshole to KING pivot. Could we have a whole drama staring this character now? Please?

And finally our sunshine learning to love himself.

SIGH. what a lovely show.

And a good SMILEY kiss from a KBL.

And then some cute cuddles? Korea is spoiling me these days. I'm catching expectations now. What's next? Japan learns to kiss in their light BLs? Ha! I kill me.

(All Love for Love's Sake).

(Last week)

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ilguna · 13 days

Note

Piano Sessions: Style + Finnick Odair -- reader x Finnick faking a relationship to gain favor in Capitol, but real feelings develop, maybe have them towing that line in the lead-up to Quarter Quell

☼ style (Finnick Odair) ☼

warnings; swearing, use of the term 'good girl' kinda in a gross way, mention of gore, brief mention of the morphlings.

wc; 2.9k

notes; Piano Sessions: songfic, Style by Taylor Swift.

Finnick Odair is one of those victors that you have never been able to properly figure out, despite knowing him for almost eight years.

Every time you think that you’ve finally got a handle on his thought process and the way he acts, he strays, surprising you. Over the years, his impulse decisions have slowly declined, as his situation with the Capitol and District Four stabilized. However, with recent problems rising, it’s brought back his unpredictability.

For some reason, you don’t have this issue with any of the other victors. In fact, you could read them like an open book, cracking their spines in the process because you can delve deep. It’s really not that hard to sniff out secrets in their seemingly perfect facades when you’ve been doing it for so long.

It’s a talent, really. One that not a lot of people appreciate. What happens is that they find it irritating when you know their intentions before they’ve had the chance to approach you. Most of the time, they have this look in their eye, giving it away. You don’t even need to search half the time because of it.

That’s why you can tell that Finnick is up to something right now, but you don’t know exactly what it is. From what you’ve gathered so far from the stolen glances in your direction, is that it has something to do with you. He’s just waiting for the right moment to talk to you.

Which is driving you crazy. You’re not sure what the right moment could possibly be, especially now that the two of you are on a train being shipped to the Capitol in their custody. This is not just another year of mentoring, where every thought can wait until you’re ready. You’re District Four’s tributes in the Quarter Quell, unspoken words could mean life or death. They can change the trajectory of the Games.

He knows this, of course. Probably better than anybody.

You suck in a breath through your nose, rolling your head in his direction, making eye contact right as he glances at you again. Instead of looking away immediately, the two of you enter a silent staring contest.

It doesn’t last for long. “Are you going to say it or are you going to keep looking at me?” You ask.

Finnick offers you a small smile, getting up from where he’s sitting on the plush train couch to go to you. Where you’re sitting at the dining table, enjoying the bottomless pot of sweet tea that the avoxes provide.

A laugh leaves him. “I was thinking, while we’re in the Capitol, we could fake a relationship to gain more favor.” He says nonchalantly. It’s so relaxed coming from his mouth that you almost feel ridiculous when you choke on your drink. “So that we have nothing to worry about with sponsors in the arena.”

You raise a napkin to your lips, clearing your throat, trying to get the burning pain to subside quicker.

“And it could work out in your favor too, you’ll get allies.” He continues. “Since we both know that you have a special talent for driving people away.”

You raise your eyebrows, blinking, absolutely speechless. This is exactly what you mean when you say that Finnick makes it so difficult for you to pin him down. And you’re not referring to the add-on at the end. You’re talking about the way he just casually suggested for the two of you to fake a relationship.

“Have you hit your head recently?” You ask.

“No.” He lets out a light laugh. “You can’t tell me I’m wrong, especially about the sponsor part.”

You know he’s not wrong. Your ability to anticipate intentions have lost you a good handful of friendships over the years, particularly in District Four. Your former friends saw you as an opportunity for money after your win, despite having plenty of it for themselves. So, you lost them. You told them to get lost.

It’s stunted a lot of potential friendships since, and it’s because you’re entirely too suspicious to let new people in right away. It happened with Finnick, even though he was the one to really mentor you before going inside. You couldn’t quite place your finger on him, which makes sense seven and a half years later. He doesn’t have a consistent personality.

Still, on the other hand, your gut feeling has given you a chance to grow in other areas. Like with the Capitol, for example. You used it to your advantage during your Games, like when you interacted with the tributes around you. You knew what the Gamemakers were looking for with scoring, giving you a higher one than you deserved.

You simultaneously flattered the Capitol while talking about yourself during the interview with Caesar, getting you a step in the door. It truly isn’t difficult to sweep the Capitol off their feet in the first place, but you managed to do it so effortlessly that they held onto you. They cared about what happened to you in the arena.

When you won, it only continued from there. You became the Capitol’s favorite female darling, because Finnick was their male. It wasn’t long before you were the good girl, you couldn’t do anything wrong. Even when your tongue accidentally slipped and you showed some of your true colors.

So, while Finnick isn’t wrong about allies, he’s far off about sponsors. It’ll work more in his favor than it will in yours. Although, with his own fairly decent sized sponsor list, you two could blow the competition out of the water with your combined efforts.

But then again, you don’t really care about having allies right now. They don’t inherently matter until you’re in the Capitol, and even then with the chaos going on in the districts, you need to figure out who will be good to have around. You volunteered knowing full well you were signing up to go blind, which is why your whole plan revolves around analyzing the mindsets of the other tributes.

Especially when it comes to Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark, but you know how difficult they can be. You’ll be looking at Haymitch for real direction when it comes to the rebels. His teenagers sparked the rebellion, and the rest of you will make sure that it gets set ablaze.

Finnick’s plan is almost meaningless. And so is he, to you, in some capacity. You don’t need him, you haven’t in years. If he’d been paying attention to that recently, he’d know that you’re self-sufficient in the Capitol, and you’ve never been afraid of approaching other tributes. This year will be even easier since you’re all victors, anyway.

Finnick’s proposition is just so bizarre.

Here’s the thing—it’s been a while since you’d heard from him. The last time you held a genuine conversation beyond the formalities was a year and a half ago, when you’d decided that you were done with his whirlwind romance. He would suck you into his own personal vortex, and the only reason why you’d get spat out would be because he wasn’t interested anymore.

And it’s not like this happened once, it was multiple times. The reason why you kept going back was because your relationship before hadn’t been like that. It changed a couple months after Annie Cresta won her Games. One day, you two were stable. Next, there were more issues than you could take care of, which would be the beginning of the end.

Of course, you tried to fix every problem you had, but it didn’t feel like you were making progress. So, the next solution came to be an on-and-off relationship. You would get together, everything would be fine for a couple months, and then you’d break up. By the time he wanted you back, you’d be over the fight, and you’d go right back to him.

You thought that after the last time, he’d be done. Yet here he is, surprising you again.

“Come on, (Y/n), it’ll work out in our favor.” He wiggles his eyebrows.

“It’ll work out in your favor.” You correct him. “I don’t care either way, and I think you knew that already.”

Finnick tilts his head with a knowing smile. “You caught me, but I meant what I said about allies. I have an in, and you don’t. You’ll be able to skip the processing time with me.” He winks.

He must be talking about the rebels. It makes you wonder how he’s been talking to them, especially Haymitch, or anyone else that might be involved in higher places, besides District Four. Your home has been making quite the uproar since the news of the Quarter Quell, it’s just gotten worse recently. They’ve basically flooded every possible open space with the Peacekeepers, afraid of the Mayor being overthrown. Or worse, joining in on the rebellion. Which is why they replaced the old Head Peacekeeper with a new one, and she’s a fucking bitch.

“Let me guess, I’ll have to follow your lead?”

He makes a face, “Not exactly. I can’t be in charge of an alliance that large, so I’m sure we’ll all be given a part to take care of.”

You squint at him as the realization that this is a terrible idea dawns on you. You have to admit, it’s a creative way to get you back into his arms after so long, but if it’s anything like the past ten times, you know where this leads. And you know that you should tell him to leave, but you won’t.

“Fine, I’ll pretend to be your girlfriend.” You emphasize.

Finnick gives you a dimpled smile. “I knew you’d agree.”

—

The Capitol has been eventful in its own boring way this past week.

In terms of training and impressing the Gamemakers, there wasn’t anything new. You showed up to the gym, you played around with their toys, and you’d go back to the apartment at the end of the day. From the outside looking in, no one’s been able to tell that there’s more going on in the background.

If they looked closer, they’d see that you’ve been conspiring with victors that you haven’t shown interest in the past. That you’ve been getting along with Johanna and morphlings, when rivalries and distaste haven’t been hidden from the public. That you haven’t been their perfect little darling all week.

With the Games quickly approaching, and happening as soon as tomorrow, it’s been hard to keep the anticipation from boiling over. Especially since Haymitch’s plan has finally been smoothed out, after days of working out the kinks.

At the beginning of training, you scoped out Katniss and Peeta. Truth be told, they weren’t sure about how they felt about you. After some proving, Katniss was able to admit to Haymitch that she knows something is off with you. LIke you can read her thoughts and act on them before they’re fully formed. All Peeta could say was that he thinks you’re nice and looking for peace.

This gave Haymitch an idea, which eventually led to him giving you a role—just as Finnick said he would. It’s pretty obvious how distrustful Katniss can be with Finnick, and so you’re expected to placate her, in hopes that Finnick will be able to keep control of any given situation. You told them that you’d try your best.

If Katniss can already sense what you’re doing, it’s only a matter of time before she fully catches on and shuts you down. Once that happens, there will be no coming back. She’s stubborn, so she’ll go out of her way to ignore you and your advice. You can see it coming.

Until then, you’ll keep your promise.

“And you’re finished!” One of the prep team members sighs. He backs up, hands pressed against his chest with a dreamy look in his eye. “We’re right on time, too. They haven’t been waiting long.”

You get up from where you’re sitting on the stool, watching as your dress glimmers in the soft light. Immediately, someone jumps to fluff out the back, not wanting it to be flat. A floor-length mirror is moved to be in front of you, allowing you to see the iridescent dress. It’s primarily blue, sometimes purple, rarely pink unless you move a certain way.

“Like a soap bubble.” Your stylist remarks. “Clean.”

Of course, the colors were done with a purpose. To continue to project the idea that you’re the Capitol’s perfect darling. Maybe it’s done with the hopes that they’ll take it easy on you inside of the arena, but their opinions will change over time. They’ll smile through the gore and murder. They’ll be outraged when you try to escape.

“Thank you.” You murmur, heading for the door.

The boy seemingly jumps to open the door for you, and then he stops. You look over your shoulder at your stylist, face twisted, hoping he’ll tell him to get out of your way. Instead, you’re met with an open box, and laying right in the middle of black satin is a pair of white gloves.

They’ve got to be kidding, you think. As you force a smile to your face, you reach for the gloves, pulling them on one at a time. They’re foreign, material slightly uncomfortable against your soft hands.

Now they open the door, letting you out.

You leave your room, going down the hall and into the living area to find Mags and Finnick. You’re greeted with a warm smile, Finnick moving across the room to hold your hand as you go down the few steps.

“Gloves?” He questions, rubbing his thumb over the material.

“I’m clean.” You roll your eyes, he lets out a breath through his nose.

“Of course you are.” He reaches to tuck a stray hair behind your ear, eyes fixated on yours.

“You’ve got that daydream look in your eye.” You murmur, stroking the side of his cheek with the back of your finger.

It’s a look that you’re familiar with. It’s sexy, sultry. It’s what your mind clings on to when you think about him, when you dream about getting back together with him. You know that it’s a facade that he puts on for the Capitol, but he’s perfected it over these years. You can’t help falling for it, too.

“You have that red lip, classic look that I like.” Finnick murmurs. “My type in every way.”

Yes, you know. You’re Finnick’s type, because you started it. You’re the girl he loves so much that he can never get enough of, even when you’re not together. So every girl that he dates now has to have some quality of yours, because you’re the blueprint. And all the girls that come after are the copies, second editions. Clones.

But he never really needs them, because when you go crashing down, you come back every time. By your will, or the universe’s, you can never stay apart for long. You thought that the last break up was it, yet you’re here again, back to taking care of each other. You love him.

You think you love him.

“It’s time to go, we’re going to be late for check-in!” Your escort warns you two, coming down the steps. “To the elevator, let’s go.”

You reluctantly pull away from Finnick, offering him a small smile. He motions for you to go first, following behind you casually. Your escort is the last to leave the apartment, but she’s quick to enter the elevator first. She presses the buttons, holds the doors to ensure you all make it on, and then relaxes.

Once you’re on the ground floor, she loses interest in control, pushing you and Finnick to join the rest of the victors, while she takes care of the rest. This is the last time you’ll see your stylist, prep team and Mags for the night. They’ll be in the crowd, somewhere in the front row, where you’ll be able to see them when you’re on stage.

The interviews haven’t started yet, but they will be soon, judging by the giant clock on the wall, counting down from ten minutes. There’s victors scattered everywhere, friends having their own conversations. Johanna catches you two through a brief glance, waving you over to join her.

Your pace doesn’t change. You play with one of the fingers of the glove. “What’s your plan for the interview? I heard an idea going around, and I was thinking of joining in, but I wanted to hear what you’re doing first.”

“I wrote a poem.” Finnick shrugs, “For a girl.”

You blink, face twisting as you slow down. “Why would you do a poem for me when I’m with you?”

Finnick opens his mouth, and then closes it.

Your body warms as you come to a stop in the hallway. Finnick’s lips are pressed together, head slightly tilted. “It’s for Annie, isn’t it?” You ask. “I heard you’ve been out and about with some other girl.”

Some other girl, you mock in your head. It’s Annie. He’s been out with Annie, part of the reason why you think your relationship has failed in the past. It’s no coincidence it started after she won. You had a feeling there was something going on between them before you left District Four, but you were just going to ignore it because it couldn’t have been true. Finnick wouldn’t cheat.

“What you heard is true, but I can’t stop thinking about you and I.” Finnick reaches to take your hands, squeezing them.

You sigh, “I’ve been there too a few times.”

this was part of my 3k celebration!!

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lvrslvt3 · 11 months

Text

ROMANCE BOOKS | s. reid

main masterlist | spencer masterlist

pairings : reader x spencer reid

summary : established relationship, reader begins to feel inferior for her boyfriend spencer reid.

warnings : reader feeling insecure

notes :

ofcourse i knew that spencer reid was a genius — it was one of the first things that anybody noticed about the agent except from his beautiful face — but even after dating him for almost two months i was still in shock everyday of his brain.

he never put me down, or purposely made me feel little, but i had been recently finding ways to do so myself. it started when he would ramble on and i couldn’t comprehend what he was saying. when he would have to repeat things multiple times until i understood.

somehow i had managed to hide the nagging emotion despite him being a behavioural analyst until finally it all boiled over the first time he visited my house.

“i’ve never been in here before.” the curly headed man seemed nervous to be in my bedroom but i sent him a comforting smile in hopes of calming him. “well, make yourself at home.” i placed myself down on my bed, “you can look around if you like.”

“are you sure?” spencer seemed hesitant. he stood by my doorway as if he had never seen a bedroom before mine but i assumed it was because he hadn’t been in many girls rooms — a fact i didn’t believe until he promised me it was true.

“ofcourse, go ahead, i’ll go and change.” i climbed off of my bed and walked over to him, “if you’re uncomfortable, you can leave, okay? i promise i won’t hold it against you.” i placed a chaste kiss on his cheek before grabbing clothes and leaving.

it only took me ten minutes until i was ready for bed. i wore sweatpants and a simple tank top, then braided my hair so it would stay out of my face while i slept. i made sure to take my time before finally re entering.

luckily, he was still in my room. he was by my bookshelf, studying each of my books and making me rethink every book i had ever bought. when he turned to me, he smiled but didn’t move from his spot.

“i brought your favourite sweatshirt.” he referred to the folded item of fluffy clothing on my bed. spencer took awhile before he was able to share his clothes but after he started letting me it was hard to stop.

“i knew i invited you for a reason.” i giggled to let him know i was joking while i slipped the fluffy material over my head. when i was done he had turned back to my bookshelf, picking up another book.

“what’s this one about?” he flipped over the cover so i could see, but i knew that he already knew after he read the blurb on the back. i shrugged, “nothing, it’s just a silly romance book.” i brushed it off.

he furrowed his brows, “do you like romance?” he questioned although i already knew that he was aware of the answer since most my bookshelf was romance, mixed with a couple dramas and thrillers.

i didn’t answer audibly — simply shrugged but he continued to stare at me, he knew something else was up. “you don’t have to pretend to like my books, spence, i know they don’t interest you.”

he placed the book back in where he found it. “why would you say that?” he sat beside me on the edge of my bed, “i may not read romances but i understand it’s appeal. just because i wouldn’t read it doesn’t mean it’s a bad book.”

i shook my head, “compared to yours, they’re silly.” i muttered, leaning my head against his chest and hoping that he would just let this conversation die without any confrontation.

“people read for lots of different reasons, y/n.” he held me closer and brushed his fingers through my hair, “i do it for facts, to learn. but you do it for entertainment, and that’s okay. both are okay.” he tried to comfort me.

“i’m sorry, spence, it’s just sometimes i feel…” i wasn’t sure how to place my words in a non offensive way, “stupid compared to you, but that’s not your fault. i just get in my own head.”

“you’re way smarter than i could ever be.” he retorted quickly, “you always know what to say to people, how to comfort people. you always make me feel safe and welcomed no matter how hard i close myself off.”

“sometimes i struggle when i see you approach things so easily. like when we had to babysit henry and you knew how to react to his every single move and i couldn’t even talk to my own godson.”

i shook my head, “henry loved you, spence.” i remind him, but he continued. “you already let me know that and left no space for me to doubt myself. now it’s my turn.” he laid a kiss on top of my head afterwards.

“did you realise that romance helps grow our understanding of other people. it encourages empathy.” he stated while i hummed along, a soft smile on my face at his sweet words.

“trust me, i won’t.” i smiled while leaning further into him. “did you know, romance books can help you identify what turns you on or what gives you pleasure because sometimes you just don't know until you read about it?”

i chuckled — caught of guard by his question — but answered as if it was a normal thing to ask. “nope.” i chirped back. “well i guess you didn’t know that doing a buddy read with a partner may also spice up your relationship as well.”

i giggled slightly at my boyfriend, causing him to chuckle. “well i have the perfect book for us.” i grinned at him before hopping off of my bed and trying to find what i was referring to.

#spencer reid #spencer reid one shot #spencer reid imagine #spencer reid x reader #criminal minds #criminal minds x reader #criminalminds imagine

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sukunaology · 4 months

Note

Hello, I am a first time reader. May I please request for Yandere Nanami Kento one shot wherein his darling is trying to hide from him inside their shared home.

𝚗.𝚔. — 𝚓𝚓𝚔

a/n: hihi !! thank you for requesting!! i was so excited to see my first request! i hope i fulfilled what you asked for you! kento is a new character to write for me so i hope i do him justice lolol

w/c: 758

synopsis: in which you screw up royally

trigger warnings: pet names (dear, darling), general yandere scariness, kidnapping mentions, forced financial dependency, mentions of violence, mention of punishment, forced domestic roles and spanking. MDNI, read under the cut.

it hadn't been long since kento had brought you back to his home. you still have nightmares of that moment when you had been knocked out and taken to the home that he had recently bought. he told you that it was perfect, it would be just you and him, in a shared domestic bliss.

though in your eyes, it did not feel that way. even though you greeted him every evening at the door, you never ever truly loved him. it was a matter of survival for you.

you quickly learned kento's pattern, if you had disobeyed or made any attempt to run away, he would bend you over his knee or he'd lock you up in that strangely large basement depending on the severity. kento isn't quick to anger, in fact, compared to everyone else, he has loads of patience toward you. he didn't mind that dinner was not always ready when he came home. he didn't mind that learning how to sow took you a long time. it was only when you decided to challenge that domestic fantasy he had created that were you subject to the worst of kento.

"dear, i'm going to work now"

his voice pulls you from the chasm of your mind, and you look up at him. you feel his lips press gently against your forehead, his hands cupping your cheeks. you lean into his touch, feeding his fantasies. you began to notice that he trusted you more than he did in the past.

he lets you watch tv for a certain amount of time, he lets you outside when he is home. he also started letting you access the knives in the kitchen, you hadn't tried to test his patience since the last time he had locked you in the basement.. but today you felt brave.

you walk kento to the door, giving him a final goodbye kiss. you wave as he enters his car and he drives away.

closing the door, you decide to occupy your time by reading books or doing menial chores around the house, it's the only thing you can really do. you watched carefully as the clock ticked by, waiting for that very specific time. 3'oclock. this busiest hour of kento's office job.

when that fated time clicks on the clock hands, you get up and carefully head to the farthest window down the hallway that connects the living room to the stairs. you push up the window lock and you cheer mentally as it opens with no problem. it seems easy.. almost too easy, but you pay no mind to the minute details of the moment.

pulling yourself up to the window ledge, you freeze as you notice the green light reflection in the window. your hands feel clammy as you jump down, closing the window. you turn slowly, meeting face to face with the camera. damn it. you should have seen that coming

kento plans everything

he knows everything you do

he must be coming home now.

in the distance, outside the door, you can hear the tires of kento's car tires screech. you shake out of your stupor to find a place to hide. instinctively, you go where you always hide when kento gets like this. the bedroom closet. predictable, but it allows you a moment to get ready for what is to come.

like clockwork, you hear the door slam. his footsteps stomp up the steps and you can hear as he enters the bedroom. "dear, come out. now" he speaks evenly, but you know of the hell that will come to you. you might as well face it now. you get up from your fetal position and you step out of the closet door.

kento sits on the edge of the bed, and he gives a stern yet disappointed look. "i expected better from you, darling. you know what to do, come here"

you do as you are told and you come to him, you bend over his knee. he hikes up your pants, "we'll do fifteen. this will help you remember exactly what happens if you do this again" clenching the sheets from where you lay, you prepare yourself for the first hit.

then the next

the next

and the next

it feels like forever before it is over. he rubs his hand up and down your back as you sob, the stinging pain hitting you like a freight train. "i know it hurts, but you'll do good to remember that this is for your own good darling"

#yandere kento nanami #yandere jjk #𓆩♡𓆪 juni writes #jujutsu kaisen #yandere jujutsu kaisen #oh god i hope i did this right ue ue

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squash1 · 4 months

Text

THREES THREES THREES:

Oh hello. I want to talk about the stylistic/textual role of Threes in The Raven Cycle.

Threes – as a general concept and as a number – are a major symbol and motif in the series. Maggie tells us that threes are important from the very first book: from Maura’s favorite saying being “good things come in threes” to Persephone telling Adam that “things are always growing to three or shrinking to three,” threes are discussed at length in the text of the narrative. Maggie also shows us that threes are important as a motif/symbol for important aspects of the story: three Raven Boys, three Fox Way women, three Lynch brothers, three main ley lines, three sleepers, etc. Threes are, textually, incredibly significant in The Raven Cycle, and we know this because we are shown AND told it throughout the entirety of the books.

We all know the significance that is given to threes in the story itself, but what I want to talk about is the usage of a thrice-repeated word or short phrase (going forward I’m referring to this as “Threes” or “a Three”) as one of Maggie’s writing signatures (across the series, there are 65 Threes). This creates a meta level to threes being an important aspect of The Raven Cycle universe. A classic example of a Three (one of my favorites, in fact) is from The Dream Thieves:

“As they walked, a sudden rush of wind hurled low across the grass, bringing with it the scent of moving water and rocks hidden in the shadows, and Blue thrilled again and again with the knowledge that magic was real, magic was real, magic was real.” (TDT, 12)

In a way, the Threes join the intradiegetic (what is happening within the narrative itself) with the extradiegetic (what the narration is communicating solely to the reader). The reader and characters are told explicitly that the number three is significant, important, notable, and powerful. In using Threes as a writing signature after giving the reader that information, the Threes are designed to signal to the reader that this line, this moment, is important.

So the question is: What Are The Threes Trying to Tell the Reader???

Amazing question.

In my recent TRC reread, I was already keeping track of Threes, because I was curious to see how many times they appeared. And then my sister, who was also rereading, said something interesting (after reading this Three from The Raven Boys):

“He was full of so many wants, too many to prioritize, and so they all felt desperate. To not have to work so many hours, to get into a good college, to look right in a tie, to not still be hungry after eating the thin sandwich he’d brought to work, to drive the shiny Audi that Gansey had stopped to look at with him once after school, to go home, to have hit his father himself, to own an apartment with granite countertops and a television bigger than Gansey’s desk, to belong somewhere, to go home, to go home, to go home.” (TRB, 370)

My sister said: “Adam’s like Dorothy.” And then she said: “Wait. Do you think the Threes are like a spell? Or… a wish?”

Which was……. Interesting.

What I have determined, after completing my reread and spending way too much time analyzing this, is that a Three is either a wish, a hope, a longing, a prayer – or, alternately, a warning, a curse, a negative promise.

In either sense, Threes are a foreshadowing of what is to come – whether it be good or bad. Threes exist to signal to the reader that they should be paying close attention to whatever is being said or observed.

Threes in….. Everything Else:

Before we get too far into TRC Threes, let’s talk about the precedent for three being an important number in art, math, storytelling, etc. I found some interesting information about how three is a satisfying number for the brain:

Grouping things in threes leverages the power of repetition to aid memory; denote emotional intensity or importance; and ease persuasion (research by Shu & Carlson (2014) found that three positive claims is the most effective for persuasion).

Three is the smallest number that the brain can still recognize as a pattern, and the brain loves pattern and repetition. This is true in visual art – having three main compositional figures to create a pleasing image – and also in storytelling and narrative. Using threes for repetition in storytelling is a very common occurrence.

Some classic examples of repetitive threes are Shakespeare’s “tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” or Lincoln's “a government of the people, by the people, for the people.” In each of these examples, a repetition of three is used to create pleasing auditory rhythm. There is something inherently memorable about literary Threes.

Perhaps the most interesting information I found while digging into the precedent for threes is about the rule of threes in folktales. This information happens to come from Wikipedia (side note: Wikipedia is a modern tool of collective consciousness and we should utilize it more). This page describes how in its most basic form, the rule of threes in storytelling is just beginning, middle, and end. Because this is such a common convention, writers tend to “create triplets or structures in three parts.” It then talks more directly about the use of threes in folktales:

“Vladimir Propp in his Morphology of the Folk Tale, concluded that any of the elements in a folktale could be negated twice so that it would repeat thrice.”

This is especially interesting to me. The idea that an element of a folktale “could be negated twice so that it would repeat thrice” shows up prominently in the plot of The Raven Cycle – a book that is heavily influenced by folktale motifs – but also in so many of the folktales/fairytales we all know. A classic example of this would be Goldilocks and the Three Bears – Goldilocks must try porridge that is too hot, too cold, and then, finally, just right. The journey of these three actions is satisfying to the brain because it is a complete pattern: the third and final result of “just right” porridge is only satisfying because of the two “not right” porridges that preceded it.

Getting back to Stiefvater Threes:

For anyone who’s seen The West Wing (and even those who haven’t), here’s a good way to explain what I think the Threes are doing. You know that thing they do during a The West Wing “walk and talk” where two characters will be throwing information and little quips back and forth at each other rapid-fire, and then suddenly, they will both stop walking, and the camera will stop moving, and they’ll say a line that contains really important information that you need to know to understand the storyline of that episode? That’s what Maggie’s Threes are doing for the reader. That’s what 6:21 is doing for the characters. It’s intentional: the writers/directors/actors/camera operators on The West Wing know that they’re throwing a lot of information at you, and know that they need to get you to pay attention to the most important parts somehow, so they do it by forcing the viewer to lean in and listen. It changes the focus and energy of the scene from something with momentum to something that pauses, and therefore makes you pause.

The Threes compel the reader to pause and consider the information being delivered as more important than they might consider it if it was not written as a Three. “Maura’s expression was dark” does not read the same as “Maura’s expression was dark, dark, dark.” And in a text where characters directly state the magical importance of threes, compounded by three as an overarching motif, there is clear intention and meaning behind these written Threes.

In the context of TRC, Threes act as a fourth-wall break.

They are essentially a way to poke the reader and say: “Are you paying attention? Because you should be.”

These Threes use a symbolic motif – the rule of three – that is already heavily discussed in the text – to get the reader to pick up on the internal motivations of the character who is “wishing” their Three or the narration which is using a Three to foreshadow some important aspect of the plot.

The Threes are like the literary equivalent of a record scratch. It stops you in your tracks, breaking the established rhythm and making you take notice of what is being said in a new way.

Let’s Look at Some More Threes (but just a few don’t worry)!

1. We get a classic Three, and a very Gansey Three, right after the group comes out of Cabeswater:

“‘What about that thing in the tree?’ Blue asked. ‘Was that a hallucination? A dream?’

Glendower. It was Glendower. Glendower. Glendower” (TRB, 231).

Finding Glendower is one of Gansey’s core wishes, one of his core longings. Although this line is a literal answer to Blue’s question – he saw Glendower in the tree – in making it a Three, Maggie has given it added weight and meaning. It is prayer-like in its intention. It is almost an incantation: by saying it in Three, Gansey wishes it into being.

2. In The Raven Boys, after Gansey has bribed Pinter to keep Ronan at Aglionby and has learned that Noah has been dead the whole time they’ve known him, we are given this Three:

“The Pig exploded off the line. Damn Ronan. Gansey punched his way through the gears, fast, fast, fast” (TRB, 311).

This moment foreshadows what directly follows: a distinct lack of fast as the Camaro breaks down and Gansey is held at gunpoint by Whelk. This Three is not a prayer, but a warning, and an indicator to the reader that something important is about to happen. Had Gansey not been trying to go so “fast fast fast,” the car might not have broken down; because the Three incanted it, disaster follows.

3. To return to a Three I have already mentioned, but follows the typical Three structure:

“...to go home, to go home, to go home” (TRB, 370).

In this scene, Adam’s wish is less about actually wanting to return to his literal home, because his house was never really a home for him. Adam’s wish/longing is for a home that he could return to, that he would want to return to. He is longing for a place/feeling/experience that does not exist for him. The Three in this sentence comes after a string of active wishes/longings, and by ending with this Three, it casts a spell of sorts, honing in on the truest underlying wish that Adam has. In using the phrase “to go home” three times, the narrative is making sure you, the reader, know that this want, this need, this wish, is the most Important to Adam, and will drive his actions for the rest of his story.

Most of the Threes feel like this. They are often tacked on at the end of a sentence or embedded in a sentence. They’re an addendum to the action of the story. They’re like casting a spell – once to manifest, twice to charge, three to cast.

…..And Some Other Types of Threes:

Then there are the Threes that don't follow the typical pattern of the same word repeated three times one right after the other, but are still a Three in a different way.

There are short phrases/sentences that are repeated three times throughout a page or chapter. In the prologue of The Raven King, we get this:

“He was a king…

He was a king…

He was a king.

This was the year he was going to die.” (TRK, 1-3)

In this case, the Three acts as a promise of Gansey’s kinghood, but in ending the sequence with “this was the year he was going to die,” the promise of the three is given a condition: it is not going to be a joyful kinghood, but instead a kinghood intertwined with the death we’ve known is fated for Gansey.

One of Adam’s Threes from Blue Lily, Lily Blue, uniquely breaks the mold of Threes in a format that does not appear anywhere else in the four books:

“It was his father.

He opened the door.

It was his father.

He opened the door.

It was his father” (BLLB, 242).

❋ (We’ll talk about this one more in-depth later.)

There are also a few “unfinished” Threes:

In The Raven King when Ronan is having a nightmare (infected by the demon) about Matthew and the mask, he has this Three:

“Ronan’s throat was raw. I’ll do anything! I’ll do anything! I’ll do anythi

It was unmaking everything Ronan loved.

Please” (TRK, 96).

With the uncompleted Three, there is an uncast wish. Ronan’s wish is about Matthew, yes of course, but also about being willing to do anything to keep those he loves (ie. Adam, Gansey, Blue, his brothers) out of the reach of the “unmaking.” This unfinished Three serves to foreshadow the harm that does ultimately befall first Adam and then Gansey as a result of the unmaking of Cabeswater by the demon: without the Three spell completed, his wish is not fulfilled.

*This is Not all the uncommon/mold-breaking Threes, just a few that are interesting!

Do All Threes Come to Fruition???

The short answer is: No. Or at least not in that way.

Once again looking at the text of The Raven Cycle, we are given an answer of sorts. In discussing Gansey’s predicted death, Maura says:

“First of all, the corpse road is a promise, not a guarantee” (TRB, 155).

This seems to apply to Threes as well. Threes are not a guarantee. They are a promise. Not all Threes come to fruition the way one might expect – or at all, for that matter. The important part of Threes is not that they will definitely come true, it’s that they could come true, because the Three gives them the potential to come true.

Structure, Structure, Structure:

The main Threes structures are:

Three of the same word separated by commas:

“magic, magic, magic” (TRK, 59).

A short phrase/sentence separated by periods:

“My father. My father. My father” (TDT, 369).

A short sentence that is repeated three times throughout a page/paragraph:

“Gansey did not breathe…

Gansey did not breathe…

Gansey did not breathe” (TRK, 209).

A word that is repeated three times and is connected by “and”:

“Round and round and round!” (BLLB, 224)

Italics vs. Non Italics:

Italics in The Raven Cycle are often used for character’s inner thoughts/anxieties. This continues to be true in the context of Threes. A Three that is not written in italics indicates a promise, or some foreshadowing of a plot point being foretold through the Three – it is typically more “real” – whereas a Three that is written in Italics seems to indicate a wish/hope/longing that is unattainable in some way. Italics almost always indicate a Three that may never come to fruition, or at least not in the way the character hopes it will.

An example of this distinction can be found in chapter three (hah) (I don’t believe in coincidences and neither does Gansey) of The Raven King:

First we are met with Ronan wishing/hoping to return home:

“That morning, Ronan Lynch had woken early, without any alarm, thinking home, home, home” (TRK, 24).

This home, home, home, is in reference to the idea of home rather than the reality. Ronan is wishing to return to a home that does exist physically, but is not the same as in his memory – he wants to be at the Barns as it was in his childhood.

Then, in the very same chapter, Ronan actually returns home and we are given this Three:

“Slowly his memories of before — everything this place had been to him when it had held the entire Lynch family — were being overlapped with memories and hopes of after — every minute that the Barns had been his, all of the time he’d spent here alone or with Adam, dreaming and scheming.

Home, home, home” (TRK, 27).

This second home, home, home, is about the actual reality of being in his childhood home – the good and bad that has existed in the years since the childhood he longs for.

The Addition of AND:

The most notable use of “and” is in Noah’s very last chapter:

“Sometimes he got caught in this moment instead. Gansey’s death. Watching Gansey die, again and again and again” (TRK, 416).

When “and” is added into a Three, it becomes circular, cyclical. The “and” gives the Three a sense of infinity, or creates a loop of sorts.

This Three operates in the same way “tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” does in Macbeth – it is meant to convey the endlessness of time, a relentless cycle of tomorrows.

❋ While there are not many of these Threes with “ands” in The Raven Cycle, there are other examples of Threes or Three-like occurrences that fulfill the same purpose as the “and.” For example, remember this Three:

“It was his father.

He opened the door.

It was his father.

He opened the door.

It was his father.” (BLLB, 242).

In this case, instead of the word “and,” the Three (It was his father) is connected by “he opened the door.” This Three is accomplishing the same feeling as “again and again and again” – the feeling of being caught in an endless loop.

Another example of an (implied) “and” in The Raven Cycle is: Gansey’s life. Gansey starts out alive and then dies as a child only to be reborn, and then killed again through his sacrifice, and then reborn for a final time. Gansey is Alive, Dead, Alive, Dead, Alive. And so Gansey’s life is a cycle of Three.

As with the Threes that contain “and,” Gansey starts where he ends: alive.

Other Ways Threes Show up in The Raven Cycle:

I will state the obvious once again: there are three Raven Boys, three Lynch brothers, three Fox Way women, three sleepers, three main ley lines (the lines that “seem to matter” to Glendower’s story), Gansey the Third (Gansey Three, Dick Three).

There are also the more obscure: the “three kinds of secrets” in The Dream Thieves prologue and epilogue; each Lynch brother inheriting three million dollars from Niall Lynch; the three figures with Blue’s face on the tapestry and later as a vision in Cabeswater; Adam and Gansey going to DC for three days; the shield pulled from the lake having three ravens embossed onto it; Ronan having dreamt Matthew at the age of three; the door to the Demon’s room needing “three to open” it; Aurora Lynch staying awake for three days after Niall died.

And of course, we have the ley line symbol/chapter header:

And then there are the 300 (three hundred!) Fox Way “villain” readings. (This was something that was particularly interesting to me.)

The first antagonist we meet is Whelk. When he comes for a reading at 300 Fox Way, he first pulls the Three of Swords.

When the women all draw cards together, they pull identical cards for Whelk: three of the Knight of Pentacles, then three of the Page of Cups. After drawing, essentially, three threes (the Three of Swords, then two sets of three matching cards) in this reading, the first Three of the entire series appears:

“Maura’s expression was dark, dark, dark” (TRB, 124).

The second “antagonist” we meet is the Gray Man, who comes to 300 Fox Way in The Dream Thieves to “observe.” Maura, Calla, and Persephone are predicting which card is on the top and bottom of the stack and the first card, predicted by Calla, is the Three of Cups off the top of the deck that Mr. Gray is holding (a remarkably happy card in stark contrast to Whelk’s Three of Swords).

When the third antagonist, Greenmantle, comes for his 300 Fox Way Reading he also draws the Three of Swords. The fact that each of the three antagonists come for a reading is in itself a sort of Three, but to further the importance of these moments, each of them draws some sort of three-related card.

All of the examples I have touched on have been more symbolic references to Three as a motif of the books as a whole. However, Threes also show up in the literal number of times important quotes are said/written.

I was tracking some of the most well-loved TRC lines to compile them, and noticed that the lines “don’t throw it away” and “safe as life” happen to appear exactly three times throughout the series. This was honestly pretty surprising based on the importance of those quotes – I would have assumed they showed up far more. Actually, they both appear twice in The Raven Boys and once in The Raven King. Threes, and the importance of Threes, is embedded so strongly into the narrative of The Raven Cycle that even the quotes we all think of as the most beloved of the series follow this rule of Threes.

Now, could you chalk some of these up to coincidence? I guess. But Gansey doesn’t believe in coincidences so I don’t either. So what’s the point of all these Threes?

Conclusion???

In a literal, literary way, Threes are a fourth wall break to make the importance of a moment obvious, but I’m not sure what the larger “point” of Threes is. My best analysis comes from the idea of The Raven Cycle being all about time and Threes playing into the importance of time as a sort of record scratch or loop. The Threes, as a stylistic, written motif, seem to connect the time-based cycle the characters experience to the time-based cycles the reader experiences by reading the books.

But my conclusion feels incomplete and so I would like to rely on the collective for this one – just about the most Raven Cycle thing you can do. So I’m asking you, the collective you, what conclusion would you draw? What do you think?

What I do know for sure is that Threes are magic, magic, magic.

For Your Convenience: Here is the textual significance given to threes within the books (chronologically):