Yippee Thursday

Nobody wanted to take on a six-hour side mission—three hours there, three hours back—to speak to the ex-wife of this week’s unsub, yourself included. So, naturally, Rossi had raided the local PD of their toothpicks, snapped the ends off of two of them, and presented them to the team with this devilish smile that said I know exactly how this is going to go. You don’t even know why you agreed, if we’re being honest, because you too knew damn well what would happen when you plucked that toothpick from his conniving hands.

You pulled the first short straw, and you got to watch in silent, not at all surprised frustration as Spencer pulled the second one. You had had half a mind to take your stupid toothpick and jam it into Rossi’s eye, but you restrained yourself; after all, you’re supposed to be the better, more mature half of your duo with the world’s most idiotic genius. He had tried to protest, arguing that he was too valuable of an asset to essentially abandon the investigation, but the team were quick to throw the two of you out of the police department and into an SUV that had spent all day boiling in the Louisiana sun.

That leads us into rule number two: never trust an SUV.

After three hours of suffocating in that cursed car, choking on the thick, oppressive air, you had arrived at the home of the mysterious ex-wife. Another hour-and-a-half of questioning later, you were free to embark on your journey back to the team.

Tragedy struck not even an hour even into the drive. The car stuttered, screeched, and stopped dead in the middle of traffic. You’d tried just about everything you could to breathe life back into the overheated corpse of the SUV, but it was no use; you had broken down. 

And just like that, the dam broke and the tense, carefully maintained silence between you and Spencer shattered into pieces.

Standing there, on the side of the road, Spencer had yelled at you—or you had yelled at him; you don’t remember who started it—until you were red-faced and people in their functioning vehicles were craning their necks to watch the scene unfold as they drove on by. 

You called Hotch. Spencer dialled triple-A. Both phone calls crushed whatever remnants of hope you dared cling to.

On your end, Hotch informed you that the unsub had just taken a hostage—surprise! The BAU needed every bit of information you had gathered from the ex-wife, and they needed it now. He barked orders at you over the phone, telling you to check yourselves into a motel and call him back ASAP, and abruptly hung up.

On Spencer’s end, triple-A had kindly told him that the car was fucked—hurray! Something was wrong with the engine, apparently, and you needed to wait for roadside assistance to bring their tow truck. 

But you didn’t have time to wait, not when there were lives at stake. So, you dialled Hotch’s number right there and began relaying everything you had learned over the sound of cars speeding by: details about the unsub’s failed marriage, his childhood, and—

Spencer had snatched the phone from you the moment you dared stumble over a word, damn near tearing your arm off with it. He promptly appointed himself leader of your botched hostage negotiation, and he left you to explain the situation to the very confused—and rightfully a little concerned—roadside assistance workers.

The negotiation continued into the back of some good samaritan’s car, and the two of you were dropped off at what looked to be the shittiest motel in the entire state. It was at that point you stole the phone back and ordered Spencer to speak to the receptionist whilst you walked the team through the safest way to approach the unsub.

In the motel room, you were finally able to put the team on speaker. You set the phone on the desk and, after two hours of anxious pacing, the unsub was finally detained.

And that brings us to the present, and to rule number three: never expect the BAU to come to your aid, no matter how desperately you may need it.

You’re lying face-down on the bed, listening to Hotch’s static-laced voice as he informs you, in essence, that all is well. Spencer is still standing, hands stuffed into his pockets, nodding along with everything being said.

“When can we expect to be picked up?” he asks.

The pause that follows his question is a damning one. A death sentence delivered through thick silence.

“The two of you will be staying at the motel for the night,” Hotch says. You can hear it in his voice, a slight awkwardness; he knowswhat he’s doing, yet he’s doing it anyway.

It’s fine, though. It’s just one night in a shitty motel. Really, it could be worse—

“But I only booked one room.”

Your head shoots up so fast you’re sure you almost break your neck. You scramble up onto your knees, already shaking your head in disbelief—refusal to believe.

“You’re fucking kidding.”

Spencer looks mortified.

“Reid,” you warn, “tell me you’re not serious—”

He huffs, like you’re somehow the idiot in this situation, and crosses his arms. “I didn’t think we’d be staying here!”

“You didn’t— oh my God. How?” You bark out a hollow laugh. “How are you so fucking stupid?”

The phone speaker crackles, picking up the faint sound of Morgan’s laughter.

Spencer’s cheeks are starting to turn red. “I just assumed that—”

“IQ of 187, they said” you mutter, exasperated. “God help us all.”

“I’ll— I’ll go to the front desk.” He’s already heading for the door, raking his fingers through his hair as he walks. “I’ll get us another room—”

“The front desk closed thirty minutes ago.”

“...oh.”

You take a deep breath, turning away from him as you redirect your attention to the phone. Your lifeline. Clearing your throat, you put on the calmest, most amiable voice you can manage and say, “...Hotch?”

“You’re two hours away,” he says plainly.

“Please.”

“By the time we get you back here it’ll be almost three in the morning.”

“I’m begging you.”

“The answer’s no. The two of you will handle this like adults, and we will see you tomorrow.”

Just when you think he’s about to hang up, another voice comes through the speaker. Morgan’s.

“Have fun, lovebirds.”

Spencer scoffs so loud you’d think he was choking on something. “Excuse me?”

“Nothing!”

The call disconnects just as he lurches forward to grab the phone. He holds it in his hand for a moment, staring down at it with frustration that amounts almost to rage, before tossing it to you with a strangled huff.

“I can’t believe this.”

“I can’t believe you only booked one room,” you counter. “Seriously, what did you think was going to—’

“Alright, I get it. I’m an idiot.”

“Mhm.” You flop back onto the bed with a sigh, letting the silence hang in the air for a moment before adding, “Hey, at least we did it.”

“We?”

“Uh…yeah?”

Spencer pulls this face. Disgust mixed with disbelief. It would be comical if it weren’t directed at you. “You barely contributed.”

“Oh, come on—”

“You spent half of that negotiation just…lying around whilst I gave all the information—”

“Information that I got from the guy’s ex-wife.”

“Only because you wouldn’t let me speak to her.”

“Because you don’t know how to talk to women.”

Spencer’s pacing ceases, and he turns to you with a scowl. “Sorry?”

“I was doing you a favour.” You look up at him with a mocking smile. “You would’ve embarrassed yourself if you’d spoken to her.”

His lips curl at the corners, and you’re sure that he’d be shooting lasers from his eyes if he could, zapping you into oblivion. He opens his mouth to speak, closes it, then opens it again to say, “You are such a—”

“A what?” you ask, raising an eyebrow.

And he closes his mouth once more.

Sitting up, you shuffle to the edge of the bed and cross your arms expectantly. “Go on.”

You can see the tension in his jaw, the way he’s grinding his teeth subtly. He spends a good few moments just staring at you, probably trying to explode you with his mind, before he turns away with a sharp, catty huff. 

“I’m never agreeing to anything like this again,” he mutters.

“Good. Me neither.”

There’s nothing provocative about your words—you’re actually agreeing with him, for once—yet Spencer spins back around to face you all the same. 

“You’ve been nothing but irritating all day,” he spits.

“And all you’ve done is complain.”

“At least I’m not incompetent.”

“Beats being an arrogant little bitch.”

Again, Spencer turns on his heels and begins walking away. “That’s it,” he announces, “I’m taking a shower.”

“Running away. Real mature—”

The bathroom door slams, and you swear it shakes the very foundation of the motel room.

Closing your eyes, you take a deep breath. Try to calm yourself as the reality of this horror movie-worthy situation catches up to you. You’re to share a room with Spencer Reid—share a bed—because of his stupidity, and he had the gall to call you incompetent. 

The shower turns on. You can hear it through the paper-thin wall, and part of you wants to barge into that bathroom, drag him out by his hair and leave him, naked, on the side of the road. It’s the only way you’ll get any semblance of peace tonight, that’s for sure.

But what would that say about you? That you’re just as childish—as petulant—as he is? You’re supposed to be the bigger person here, the better person.

So you resign yourself to lying in wait, dreading whatever bullshit the next twelve hours have in store for you.

—

Thirty minutes later, Spencer emerges from the bathroom muttering about the disgraceful state of the bathroom. He doesn’t seem to notice, or care, that you aren’t listening to him; you’re frankly too distracted by the state of him. His hair is still wet, and his white shirt has been left untucked, held closed by a total of two buttons. Your gaze lingers, rather unapologetically, on the curves of his exposed collarbones.

Whilst he was showering, you rummaged through your go-bag and pulled out whatever pyjama-esque clothes you could find. You are, as Spencer is always so keen to point out, terribly disorganised; your bag hasn’t been restocked in over a month, and there are more “complimentary” hotel toiletries hidden in there than there are clothes.

In the end, you settled on a plain black compression top that you don’t remember owning, and a pair of grey sweatpants that you’re sure can’t be yours on account of the fact that they are far, far too big for you.

You watch as he unzips his own go-bag—no doubt perfectly organised, alphabetised, colour-coded, and packed with enough supplies to last him weeks in case of an emergency—and raise an eyebrow.

“Calmed down yet?”

Spencer spares you a single, fleeting glance out of the corner of his eye before exhaling sharply through his nose; a punctuated, silent no. But then he seems to pause. Seconds pass as he stares at his bag, unmoving, before turning his head slowly to look at you again.

You’re splayed out diagonally on the bed, taking up as much space as possible as you flick listlessly through the same beat-up book you’ve been nursing for over a month now. In your peripheral vision, you can just about make out the way his focus strays to your clothes. To the thin sliver of skin visible between the hem of your top and the waistband of your sweats. And then he clears his throat.

“You’re paying for the repairs,” he mutters stiffly.

You set your book on your chest and turn to him with a frown. “I am not—”

“I paid for eleven of your coffees last month,” he says.

“And I covered the bill for that stupid Doctor Who edible experience bullshit you took me to the month before.”

“You still owe me a dollar for that.”

“Forty-nine cents,” you correct. “We agreed to round down.”

“No, you insisted that we round down. I told you I wanted the change.”

“Are you really that broke that forty-nine cents makes all the difference?”

“No,” he mutters, pulling a folded pair of pyjamas from his bag. “Are you?”

“No.”

“Then you can pay for the repairs.”

You scoff. “There’s a big difference between some pocket change and a busted car, Reid.”

“The Bureau will reimburse you.”

“Then why can’t you just pay?”

“Because,” he unbuttons his shirt and, honest to God, throws it at you, “it’s your turn.”

“You—” You groan as his shirt lands on your face, and you throw it back at him. “You are such a child.”

Spencer catches the shirt with a cold, sarcastic laugh. “Really?” he asks. “Because it seems to me I’m the only adult here.”

You roll your eyes as he continues changing, but you can’t help but let your gaze wander across his body; his bare neck and chest, now free from the usual confines of his shirt and tie. You’d quite happily take a bite out of him if you thought you’d live to tell the tale.

As he pulls on his pyjama shirt, you sigh. “How much is it gonna cost?”

He shrugs, methodically folding his work clothes before tucking them neatly into his go-bag. “Timing belt replacements typically cost between four-hundred and one-thousand dollars.”

Your face contorts in disgust at his words and, for a moment, you think he may be joking.

Unfortunately, he isn’t.

“Fuck off,” you say. “I’m not paying that.”

“Neither am I. I wasn’t the one driving the car.”

Somehow, your expression manages to sour further. You cast your book aside and prop yourself up on your elbows. “So this is my fault?”

“Is that what I said?”

“It’s what you implied.”

“A timing belt doesn’t just break out of nowhere,” he says, perching himself on the side of the bed. He speaks slowly, clearly, like he’s explaining something to a child. “There are signs—”

No sooner has he sat down do you stand up, effectively swapping places with him. “The check engine light never came on.”

“Still, you should have—”

“Sitting in the driver’s seat doesn’t make me omnipotent, Reid,” you snap, crossing your arms as you glare at him from the other side of this much, much too small room. “You had just as much information as I did—”

“It isn’t the passenger’s responsibility to check for faults—”

“So you didn’t notice, either?” you ask. Not my responsibility is just Spencer-speak for I’m a hypocrite refusing to admit my own oversight. “You’re the one with a fucking PhD in Engineering, you know—”

“And? I’m saying it isn’t my job to notice—”

Oh, and he’s doubling down. Amazing. 

“Oh my God.” You’re talking over him now, raising your voice as you rake your fingers through your hair. “Grow up. You’re a federal agent, Reid. Act like one.”

Spencer snorts. “That’s rich coming from you.”

You really wish you were making this up. You wish this were some frustration-induced hallucination, but it isn’t. You’re actually standing here in some run-down, shitty fucking motel, arguing with a genius who was too stupid to book two rooms. You’re sure you’ve seen this be used as a set up to a straight to DVD romcom, for Christ’s sake.

You have half a mind to walk back over there and smack him across the face, but it would only make this worse.

“Maybe,” Spencer continues, entirely unprompted, “if you treated me with the slightest degree of decorum, I would act in kind.”

This is Hell. The car crashed, you died, and this is Hell. It has to be.

“And maybe if you respected me,” you snap back, “I would act—”

“There’s nothing to respect.”

The laugh that escapes you in response to that statement isn’t a pretty one. It’s somewhere between a cackle and a murderous screech. You have to laugh; you’d kill him if you didn’t.

You’re sure that, in the animal kingdom, a laugh like that would be heeded as a warning—and a serious one, at that. A real don’t fuck with me or I’ll kill you noise; a universal language.

But Spencer Reid isn’t of the animal kingdom—at this point you aren’t sure he’s from earth at all—because, in spite of your warning, he keeps talking.

“You’re unprofessional, aggressive, short-tempered, bitter, frustrating—need I go on?”

“You forgot smart and sexy—”

“There is nothing about you worth respecting,” he declares, “not when you’re…on my ass all the time.”

It’s the way that he still hesitates before saying ass, even though he has said far worse things to you in the past, that momentarily clears the resentment clouding your mind. Spencer Reid, genius supreme, the man who apparently hates you more than any unsub you’ve come across, can still barely bring himself to curse. 

…and it’s the way he’s implying that you are somehow the perpetrator in all of this that has that resentment rushing back tenfold.

“I’m on your ass?” 

“Yes,” he says. “You are. It’s infuriating.”

“Infuriating, right…”

“You do nothing but antagonise me,” he adds. “You’re pestiferous.”

“Mhm. And you’re a fucking saint.”

He shrugs. “I think most would agree I’m better than you.”

You purse your lips into a tight smile, letting your gaze wander across the room before returning it to him. “And if they knew you were fucking me?” you pose. “Would that tarnish your pristine reputation?”

Just like that, Spencer’s cocky, confident attitude vanishes in an instant. He scoffs, visibly recoiling at the mention of your relationship as his expression morphs into something half-disgusted, half-defensive. “That’s—”

“I mean, the team are already calling us lovebirds, but what if they knew?” you continue, ignoring the way his cheeks are beginning to flush. “What if the BAU knew that their obnoxious golden boy was sleeping with someone so unworthy of respect?”

When he doesn’t respond, you step closer to him.

“You know it’s funny, actually, that you say that,” you say, “because the only person on this team who doesn’t respect me, Spencer, is you.”

“You don’t respect me, either,” he mutters.

“Why the hell would I?”

You sound almost amused as you cross the room. You close the space between you, drawing closer until you’re standing right in front of him.

Spencer raises his head, arms crossed, to look up at you. He’s glaring, or trying to, but his gaze spends only a fraction of a second on your face before it begins to wander. Lingering on the outline of your chest visible through your top, and then on the waistband of your underwear that peeks out over the top of those baggy sweatpants—embroidered, ironically, with the word sweet.

You watch the way his jaw works, chewing on whatever insult he has lined up, as he finds himself painfully distracted by the sight of you before him.

And you straddle him.

“Why would I respect someone like you, Reid?” you ask as you settle into his lap. 

He makes no effort to push you away (why would he?), but he doesn’t exactly welcome you with open arms, either. He tenses up, heat rushing to his face despite his attempts to appear perfectly neutral.

“Tell me,” you purr, placing a finger under his chin so he’s meeting your gaze, “why would I respect someone so— what was what word you used? Pestiferous? Someone who goes out of his way to piss me off, even when I haven’t done anything wrong…and for what purpose, hm?” You rest your other hand on his chest and lean in close, brushing your nose against his with a barely suppressed smirk. “You wanna know what I think?”

“...not really,” he says stiffly.

“I think you like it when I’m pissed off,” you say. “I think that my short temper, and my aggression, and all those other flaws you listed, are all things you like about me. Am I right?”

“No,” he mutters. “Why would I—”

“Because you’re pathetic, and you’re a shit liar.” Smiling, you shift slightly, pressing yourself down against the tent in his pants that has been there far longer than he’ll ever admit. “And your, um, body has ways of giving you away. And I bet you’re real glad the rest of the team aren’t here, right?” you murmur, leaning down to ghost your lips along his jaw. “Because that means we can make as much noise as we like.”

You feel him suppress a shudder as you press a gentle, open-mouthed kiss to his skin. He tenses, but only briefly, as your hand moves into his hair, cradling the back of his head as you trail kisses up his jaw, and it doesn’t take much for him to melt. One hand settles instinctively on your hip, keeping you pressed against his erection, but the other tries, gently, to push you away.

“What’s wrong?” you murmur. “Can’t handle a bit of—”

As you raise your head to mock him, Spencer’s lips collide with yours. He kisses you with a kind of desperate hunger that sends a rush of heat straight to your core and, for a moment, you find yourself wanting to drop the act completely and let him have you—but where’s the fun in that? 

So you pull away, pressing your thumb to his needy lips as you don a sarcastic pout. He releases your hip, and his hands roam your waist and stomach, working their way up to your chest. You can’t help but admire him even as he’s feeling you up; he already has that look in his eyes. Weakness. Soft and pretty in all the ways that drive you crazy.

Your throat tightens. Contracting around something terribly familiar and wholly unwanted. Something you’re bound to choke on if you sit with it for too long.

So you pull him into another, harsher kiss, letting a moan slip into his mouth as his thumbs graze your clothed nipples, and it’s a sound that he mirrors as you slowly start rocking your hips against his. His hands drop down to the hem of your shirt, and you pull back long enough to let him tear it off over your head before your lips are on his again.

You set your hands on the back of his neck, gluing the two of you together as you grind yourself against him. You feel the way his breath hitches with each roll of your hips, and you’re certain you could make him finish just like this, without needing to lift a finger, but that would be far too easy on him. It would be merciful, almost, and that isn’t what you’re here for. 

Before you can start formulating your evil plan, Spencer pulls away. His lips latch onto your neck, peppering the skin with feverish kisses as he works his way down to your collarbones before dipping down, further, to your chest. Your fingers weave into his hair as his teeth graze a nipple, and you pull hard. Hard enough to make him moan as your mouth meets his and you catch him in another bruising kiss. His hips buck up into yours, shamelessly begging for more friction, but all it does is make you withhold it.

So, with impatient hands, he forces your hips down, rubbing your aching cunt against his cock through the layers of fabric separating them. You break the kiss with a sharp gasp as a violent heat twists in your core, and you push him away.

You watch the rise and fall of his chest as you catch your breath—it’s hypnotic, almost—before meeting his gaze with as calm a look as you can muster.

“I’m gonna go grab a towel,” you say, keeping your voice equal parts soft and firm. “When I come back, you better not have any clothes on. Got it?”

Spencer nods eagerly and without question. You lean back, admiring him for a moment longer before you finally dismount him and disappear into the bathroom.

You take more time than you should, deliberating between two identical motel towels as you listen to the faint rustle of clothes as Spencer strips himself of his pyjamas. You catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror, shirtless, red-faced, and you feel that familiar pang of self-awareness in your stomach. The kind strong enough to re-awaken your voice of reason, and that voice tells you that this has got to stop. 

How many more times are you going to fall into bed with him before this blows up in your face? Before you fall further into this grave you've dug for yourselves, and find yourselves utterly unable to climb back out?

Being the bigger person is a myth. It always has been. It's just a lie you tell yourself—the same one that he's probably been tellinghimself—to further stifle the latent realisation that you are, undoubtedly, just as bad as each other. You're no better than Spencer is, and he is no worse than you are.

You can tell yourself that you're the bigger person, that you're more mature, more sensible, but that doesn't erase the reality you're in. You're standing, half-naked, in a grotty motel bathroom waiting for your coworker to strip himself bare. You're terrible.

And you can’t imagine being anywhere else.

You return to the bedroom with all the confidence in the world and find Spencer sitting, naked, on the edge of the bed, caught somewhere in the space between nervous and excited. He’s wringing his hands, trying to avoid tending to his persistent erection as he awaits your return. Hugging the towel to your chest, you watch him for a moment and let your gaze wander shamelessly over his exposed skin, savouring his anticipatory silence. His still-wet hair sticks to his forehead. Dewy collarbones shine like gold in the dim, yellow-toned light.

You feel it again. A slight tightness in your throat. The beginnings of something awful. But it’s overpowered by the palpable rush of need that takes hold of you as you gaze at him. It’s enough to drive you mad.

Tossing the towel onto the bed, you slot yourself between his legs.

"You're awfully quiet," you tease, carefully brushing his hair out of his face as he looks up at you. You could drown in those eyes, if you let yourself. 

His gaze hardens slightly. "Nothing to say." 

"You always have something to say."

"False."

He's running his fingers along the waistband of your sweats, barely grazing your skin as his eyes trail across your body.

"True."

He shoots you a glare. "Do you want to keep arguing?"

"Not particularly," you murmur, smirking. Gently, you reach out a hand to touch his cheek. "I'm just surprised. You're being so good—"

Spencer swats your hand away instantly.

"Don't," he warns before returning his attention to your body.

You cross your arms. "You don't like praise?"

"I don't like being mocked," he corrects.

He presses his thumbs against your waist, watching with great interest the way the soft skin yields to his touch.

"Who said I was mocking you?" you ask, feigning innocence.

He scoffs. You feel it against your skin, hot, before he presses a kiss to your hip. "You're always mocking me."

"Not always."

It takes strength to keep your voice steady when he’s doing this; appreciating your body in silent ways whilst navigating a half-hearted argument, like it’s second nature to him. And it is second nature, you suppose. He could probably fight with you in his sleep.

He looks up at you again with this dull, almost bored kind of scepticism purposefully forged to hide something deeper. Something realer. Something that has a weight to it and is far too heavy for this. For you. He tugs gently at the drawstring of your sweats, and the knot comes apart with ease under his touch. The fabric sags, barely clinging to your hips, and all it takes is a gentle tug for them to slip down your legs, leaving you in just your underwear.

His lips meet your skin again, trailing kisses down from your navel to the embroidered elastic of your waistband. His gaze finds yours, just for a moment, in a fleeting request for permission that sends a fresh pang of heat to your core, right where his lips hover. You nod, wordlessly, and he makes quick work of removing your underwear, peeling the soaked fabric away from your needy cunt as you try not to clench your thighs. 

He drops them at your ankles, and his kisses continue. Following their path down until his mouth is dangerously close to where you need him to be. Before he can get too carried away, you thread your fingers into his hair once more and pull him, gently, away.

The second those eyes are on your face, something violent turns within you. Your fingers still in his hair, caught between moments as you bury the urge to mount him right then and there. It's not like he would complain. 

His thumbs brush over your hip bones, moving in perfect sync as he watches you quietly. Studying your micro expressions, probably, searching for a crack that he can exploit; a way to piss you off, turn the tables, put himself in control. But the more you look at him, the more you realise that this isn't what this is. He's just…waiting. Eagerly, sure, but patiently. 

He's waiting for you to tell him what to do. He's read the situation, read what you want out of this, and he's moulded himself to it without question—without needing to be told. It's perceptive. Considerate, almost. How he's letting you have this; how he knows you well enough to know that you want this. 

And that? That pisses you off.

"Sit back," you say, keeping your voice soft, "against the headboard."

He moves immediately, scooting into position without question. However brief, you feel weirdly cold in the absence of his touch.

Once he's comfortable, you join him on the bed. You settle, on your knees, between his legs, keeping your gaze on his face as hisgaze roams freely across your body. A compliment tries to crawl its way up your throat—an earnest one—because God, he looks perfect. But you clench your jaw, keeping your words at bay; compliments are for couples, and you aren't a couple. 

But the words fight back. Compliments converge on your tongue, crowding your mouth, until you have no choice but to pull him into another kiss. Pouring all the things you daren't say into him, as though he may somehow understand without you needing to say any of it out loud. His hands come to rest on your jaw, not your body, and he cradles your face like it's something precious, pulling you closer and closer until you're practically on top of him, one hand braced against the headboard and the other trailing, slowly, down his body.

His breath hitches as your fingers grasp his cock. You feel it jolt in your hand, and one of Spencer's hands moves to the back of your head, hardly giving you room to breathe as he kisses you. The adrenaline, the sheer need with which he touches you, it's all starting to make you feel dizzy. He's stealing the oxygen from your lungs but, in return, you get to steal a stifled moan from between his lips. That's more or less an equivalent exchange, in your books; to have him at the mercy of your hands. To have that stupid mouth of his occupied with something that isn't just insult after senseless insult. 

He shifts his hips with a soft groan, bucking up into your hand as you continue to tease him. And he groans again—louder, sounding more like a whine than anything else—when you refuse to change your pace.

What you do instead is pull away. You hover there for a moment, breathing into his open mouth as he tilts his head up, wanting more, and you bask in that delicious, desperate look in his eyes before sitting back. You continue working his cock, slowly, as you wipe the saliva from your mouth with the back of your hand. Spencer doesn't bother tending to his moistened lips; he just watches you, eyes wide like he's seeing you for the first time. Awestricken and gorgeous and—

That noxious dizziness lingers even as you catch your breath. It breaks down your thoughts, loosening the fibres until you're sure your brain is naught but mush. Held together by the low crackle of static that grows louder with each second you spend looking at him. 

You realise far too late that you're looking at him the same way he's looking at you. Like a complete fucking idiot.

It's the kind of self-consciousness that hits like a freight train, flattening you before you even see it coming. It throws you off balance in the worst way and you feel vulnerable. exposed. More than you've ever felt in your previous encounters. You've been in far worse, far more vulnerable positions in the past—physically, at least. When you've been under him, or bent over a desk, or at his mercy on your knees.

You're in control here. And yet this is the first time you've felt truly vulnerable. Emotionally vulnerable. 

So you do everything you can to counteract it, before it leaves you seriously compromised.

You release your grip on his cock, ignoring the way he whines in protest as you move to straddle his hips. His hands settle, firm, on your waist, moulding themselves to your curves as you kiss him again. Partly to shut him up before he says anything that'll further tangle the static-laced wires in your brain; mostly to shut yourself up before you say anything you know you'll regret. You'd rather choke on your own tongue—or his tongue—than let a single, adrenaline-driven, foolish word slip out before you have the chance to scour it for cracks, for any chance that it may contain feeling.

You grasp his chin, ensuring he’s looking directly at you as you pull back. Your other hand works its way down until it's grasping his cock, lining it up with your entrance.

"You're so pretty like this," you murmur, hot breath filling the minimal space between you as you lower yourself, just slightly, so his tip kisses your entrance, "you know that?"

You almost can't believe your own words—seriously, you had one job—but the look on Spencer's face kills any trace of regret you’d dare have. His breath stutters, you see it catch in his throat as he stares up at you with this wide-eyed expression. Surprised, yes, but voracious. Like you've flipped a switch he didn't know he had. 

"I mean, you're always pretty. Too pretty. But this—" 

A sharp hiss escapes you as you lower yourself onto his cock. The pain is familiar, not unbearable, but it's there. A stubborn reminder of the importance of foreplay when you're too tight and Spencer's dick is too damn big. 

But you can take this kind of pain. When it's controlled, like this. When you can feel your body yielding to him and the pain steadily blooms into pleasure. 

You feel him tense. He goes deathly still, muscles straining with the effort it takes not to thrust up into you as you sink, slowly, onto him—that would actually hurt and, worse, it would piss you off.

Carefully, you push through the resistance, letting gravity do most of the work as you continue speaking even as your breath comes in uneven gasps and your voice starts to shake. "When you're all quiet like this, when you aren't…being a fucking nuisance, I could just—"

His fingers anchor in the soft skin of your waist. He throws his head back, eyes shut tight as you take him to the hilt. The noise you make is somewhere between a guttural groan and a needy whine as he stretches you out, and you cup his face with both of your hands, keeping him close as you touch your forehead to his.

A weak, breathless "fuck…" is all he can manage as he exhales a shaky, barely held together sigh. You can feel the tension in his jaw under your palms. The electricity that thrums, wild, under his skin.

You give a tentative shift of your hips, testing the waters, and you feel him shudder beneath you. You pull back a little, enough to get a good look at his face; the tiny twitches of his brows, his eyes, as you move against him. 

"That good?" you murmur, letting your hands trail down from his face to his chest, tracing the curves of his collarbones as you settle into a slow rhythm.

Spencer nods, humming in quiet approval as he closes his eyes. You watch the way his lashes flutter, the way the crease between his brows deepens with each rock of your hips, and you bite your lip.

"Say it."

"It—" He flexes his fingers, as though he's just remembered he has them, and his hands drop to your hips, encouraging your movements as he tries to keep his breathing steady. "It feels good," he whispers. "You feel…so good."

His words have you clenching around his cock, hard enough to elicit another soft, pretty little moan from his lips.

"That's it…" you whisper, tone sickly sweet as you lean down to press your lips to his neck.

Instinctively, Spencer leans his head to the side, allowing you access to the sensitive skin as those hands of his grow a little more confident and begin working their way back up to your chest. He cups your tits, and you feel him press his lips to your shoulder before murmuring, "there are condoms in my bag, if—"

You hum against his skin, shaking your head as you nip at his neck. "Don't need them."

"But—"

"I went on the pill," you admit. Quickly, but reluctantly. Like ripping off a band-aid. Like you’re confessing to something that runs far deeper than a simple birth control prescription.

Spencer's hands freeze mid-squeeze, and you know immediately that he's picked up on every implication you were hoping to brush over. "You— what? When?"

"After last time." you raise your head with a sigh and meet his gaze. When he tries to speak up again, you're quick to press your thumb to his lips. "Unless your next words are thank you, I don't wanna hear them."

For a moment, he looks as though he's about to protest. Five weighted words were all it took to pull him from the moment completely, it seems. His eyes are wide, frantically searching your own for something you can't let him find. 

But then, instead of probing you with any more questions, he just nods. You can't be sure if this is him giving up, resigning himself to staying on his side of your emotional walls, or if he doesn't even need to try anymore—not when you've made it all so damn obvious. The optimist in you, wherever she may be, is hoping for the former; there'll be less fallout that way.

“So just keep that pretty mouth of yours shut,” you add, slowly re-introducing that thick, mocking tenderness to your voice as you raise your hips, “okay?”

He nods again. Sharper. Eager.

You know he'll find a way to bring this up later—in the middle of the night, probably, when the air feels too heavy and neither of you can sleep—the way he always manages to bring up the things you don't want to talk about. The touchy things. The things that are bound to spark an argument, because you're uptight and he's intrusive and you both loathe each other, and you can't get along unless your tongue is down his throat or his dick is inside you, and even then you still find yourselves bickering. 

An impatient shift of his hips is all you need to know that, unlike you, a future argument is actually the last thing on his mind right now. His hands have started working again, mapping out your body like he doesn't already have it memorised as his gaze remains fixed on your face—and, really, you'd rather he be looking anywhere else. 

You raise yourself until it's only the head of his cock that remains inside of you and then, after another agonising moment, you drop back down, swallowing his length in one quick, smooth motion. He gasps, you groan, and all thought of that hypothetical argument vanishes as he thrusts up into you, burying himself deeper as your walls pulse around his cock.

Curses tumble, unrestrained, from your lips as you move against him. His hands guide you into a steady rhythm—firm, but not forceful—and you tilt your head back slightly as the tension that has been stringing you together begins to dissipate. 

Spencer takes advantage of the exposed skin immediately. He nips at your neck between messy kisses. His breath against your skin is enough to make you whine as you thread your fingers into his hair, and you raise his head just enough to bring your lips down on his, catching him in a disgustingly heated kiss. His hands stray from your hips to your ass, feeling you up with the kind of desperation that never fails to drive you insane as he moans shamelessly into your mouth.

The break in the kiss is abrupt, leaving Spencer nothing to drown his senseless whines in as you trail your lips along the edge of his jaw. You aren't sure what it is, maybe it's your breath on his skin, or the way your hand rests gently on his neck, pressing ever so slightly against his throat as you rock your hips, but something is bringing him closer to the edge. You can feel it in the way his breath catches, the way his hands begin to tremble, the way his sweet moans start to devolve into unsteady whimpers.

You kiss your way to his ear, nip at the lobe as his shoulders start to shake. "You close?"

He swallows hard. You feel it under your palm. "…mhm."

"Good. Now look at me— Reid, look at me." 

You keep your voice impossibly soft as you work your fingers into his hair, tugging on the chestnut strands to keep his head up as he tries to hide his face.

He's already a mess. face red and glistening with a thin sheen of sweat, lips kiss-swollen and parted like he's waiting for you to dive into him again, but you don't. You make him hold your gaze, keeping one hand in his hair as the other cups his jaw, and you don't stop. Not until his face is contorting in those deliciously familiar ways and he has no choice but to close his eyes because he is so, so close.

And then you stop.

Your hips come to a brusque halt, stopping just as he is about to find release. You watch him blink, confused, before he meets your gaze with this adorably desperate expression. His chest heaves against your own, and you don your most charming smile.

"You didn't think it would be that easy, did you?"

The softness of your voice seems to fool him for a moment. Sugary words fail to register in his sex-clouded mind. You lean in a little closer, brushing your nose against his.

"You're not gonna come until I say you can."

That registers. His eyes widen, and he's shaking his head before he can even find the strength to speak. The words follow shortly after; a string of breathless nos that are about as useless as they are desperate. It's cute, how he thinks he might be able to talk you out of this—as though this hasn't been your plan from the start.

"I think it's only fair, after all the shit you've given me today," you continue, pouting as you brush your thumb against his cheek, "that you learn a little…respect, no?"

"You…" tension seeps into his jaw, and it isn't the pleasurable kind. His expression hardens, just slightly—probably as much as it can given the circumstances. "…are such a—"

"And that starts with being nice." You cut him off, still maintaining that smile as you look down at him. "If you start calling me names, Reid, then this is only gonna get a hell of a lot worse for you, and better for me. Understand?"

Spencer grits his teeth. His gaze flicks between your eyes and your lips, strays briefly to your body, to where his cock is still nestled inside of you, before returning to your face.

"Unless you want me to stop?" you pose, leaning back.

You don't give him enough time to respond before you're easing yourself off of his cock, but his hands find purchase on your hips and push you back down, burying himself inside of you once more with a force that makes both of you gasp.

"No." he says quickly. "N-no, don't…"

"Thought so." Smugness seeps into your voice before you can stop it, and you cock your head to the side. "So be good for me, and I'll let you finish."

Your mocking tone isn't well-received. Spencer huffs, flexing his trembling hands as he tries to act unbothered. "…I hate you—"

"Ah," you cut him off with a click of your tongue, shaking your head as you cradle his face. "Come on, honey, you're smarter than this."

Those words must be laced with something. A sedative, maybe. Something equal parts sweet and toxic. Because they quell Spencer's protests immediately. His throat runs dry. He tries to blink it away but it's no use; his mouth moves wordlessly, and he stares at you, dumbfounded, like you've cast a spell on him. 

Honey. Who'd have thought that would be his weakness?

You aren't much of a pet names person yourself, but…if Spencer is into it, then you might be open to changing your mind. 

…let's not think too hard about what that says about you. Like the birth control, it's one of those things that you're better off notlooking too deeply into—for your own sake.

"You good to keep going?" 

He doesn't seem to hear you.

"Reid."

"Yes," he says, brain finally kicking back into gear as he gazes up at you.

"Good."

You reward him with another kiss, muffling the angelic noise he makes as you move your hips. Slowly, at first. Easing him back into it so he doesn't unravel immediately.

You fall into a dance, of sorts. A sick, somewhat cruel dance, but a thoroughly enjoyable one—for you, at least. You murmur praises in his ear, fanning hot breath over his skin as you fuck yourself on his cock, bringing him closer and closer to release until he's a babbling mess and you can feel him twitching and pulsing desperately inside of you, and then you stop. You deny him. You mock him. You let him catch his breath. And you continue.

You do this two more times, and with each instance of denial Spencer grows more frustrated. More overstimulated. More pathetic. He ruts into you, or tries to, but it’s sloppy. Too weak to make any difference. Futile, because he stops as soon as you tell him to. 

By the time you even consider letting him finish, he's inconsolable and you're exhausted. But the ache in your legs is nothing; a small price to pay for having him like this. Trembling in your arms. Clinging to you for comfort even though you're the very cause of his suffering. It's terrible, really. You should be ashamed of yourself for getting off on this as much as you do; it's sick, but by God is it cathartic.

Maybe you're power-hungry. Maybe you're desperate for any semblance of control. So frustrated with your own lack of control that you've resorted to taking it out on him. It's nothing he doesn't deserve; it's his fault you feel so out of control. He stirred these stupid emotions within you; it's only right that he be the one to face the consequences—and it's not like he wouldn't benefit from being put in his place for once.

"I-I can't— I can't…"

"Yes, you can."

Spencer's face is buried in your neck, shaking his head desperately as he mumbles nonsense between dulcet whimpers. You keep your voice low as you stroke his hair, babying him in a way he'll probably kill you for later—but it'll be worth it. 

His voice is thick, strained, sounding almost as though he's about to cry. And as you gently coax his head up, that's exactly what you see. Dark eyes glazed with tears. They sit heavy on his waterline. Unshed, but there.

You'd probably feel bad, if it weren't the most gorgeous thing you've ever seen. 

"God." The word escapes you in a breathless sigh. Awe-struck. You cradle his face in your hands, rubbing soothing circles into his burning cheeks as you admire him. "Look at you. So pretty."

What you wouldn't give to snap a photo of him like this. You'd carry it around in your purse; a trump card that you could whip out every time he dared to get on your nerves.

He's still shaking his head. Words reduced to incoherent mumblings as you continue working his poor cock with your cunt. Your legs—thighs, knees, hips—are screaming at you in protest, they have been for a little while now, and your core is impossibly tight; you've been so focused on Spencer, on keeping him on the edge, that you've all but forgotten about chasing your own release. You'll be limping tomorrow, no doubt, and the team will mask their suspicion as concern when they ask if you're okay. You wonder if you'll be able to get away with telling them Spencer hit you with the car; it's not like he'll be able to argue otherwise.

You press your lips to the corner of his eye, kissing away a tear before it can escape down his cheek. 

"You wanna come?"

The string of frantic, broken yesses that fall from his lips is enough to make your fucking head spin.

"Yeah?" You tilt your head, ghosting your lips over his as you continue the steady rock of your hips. "What do you say..?"

All you get in response is a choked whimper. One that sounds dangerously close to a sob. He's gripping your hips so hard you're sure he’ll leave bruises, ten of them, mapping where his fingers were anchored in your skin. 

"Reid." You're beginning to falter yourself. Your voice is starting to shake as you near the end of your rope—and your patience. "Come on, honey, just—"

"I love you."

It takes you a moment—an eternity, it feels—to understand what was just said. Three words, uttered with such an undeniable clarity yet you're sure you've misheard him. You must have. 

But he's burying his face in your neck, hips bucking wildly as he repeats those very words. Whispering them into your skin like a prayer. Over and over. I love you.

Shit. 

Shitshitshit.

He was supposed to say please.

When your hips stutter, uncertain, he moves them for you, bringing you down onto his cock repeatedly as his whispers devolve once more into incoherent whimpers. It's enough to knock the thoughts right out of your head, and you're left with nothing but moans to choke on as you try to reorient yourself.

"That's— fuck, that's it…" you murmur, breathless, in his ear. "You can come…"

Spencer sobs—loud and raw and fucking intoxicating—into your neck, and you feel him break immediately. His self-control shatters and he finishes inside you, emptying himself into your needy cunt as you whine and writhe in his lap. But even when he's spent, he keeps going. His hips move mindlessly, feebly fucking his seed into you as he whimpers incessantly.

"Reid." His name comes out in a shaky whisper, in the space between breaths as your heart pounds and your head spins. You cradle the back of his head, holding him close as he trembles in your arms. "Reid, honey…that's enough…"

You hear him sniffle, and you hold him a little tighter, unsure of whether he's even heard you until his hips finally give up. He slumps forward, leaning his weight on you as he finally lets himself relax—lets himself breathe. You place a hand on his back as you allow yourself to do the same, and you melt into each other. 

Your fingers trail, gently, up and down his back, tracing the curve of his spine as you rest your head on his shoulder. It's too tender of a gesture. Too kind. Too loving. You know that, but you do it anyway. 

He needs this. Comfort. Reassurance. And you're ready to provide for as long as it takes for him to—

"…fuck you."

…come back around. 

He mutters those words, quietly, into your skin. The same place he had whispered I love you just minutes ago. 

Those juxtaposing sentiments react in your stomach, twisting your insides until you’re full of nothing but tense, aching knots. You bark out a weak, exasperated laugh. You have to laugh; God knows what you'd do if you didn't.

Spencer raises his head and meets your gaze, bleary-eyed and exhausted. And soft. Perfectly, painfully soft. And beautiful. He looks like you could love him.

It could be adrenaline. Heightened emotions. Embers of lust that reignite the second you lay eyes on him. Whatever it is, it has you kissing him again. Pulling him in with such urgency you almost miss his lips entirely. Some deranged part of you wants to hear him say it again. And again. And again. Until it's the only thing he knows how to say. The only thing you know how to hear.

Finally relinquishing his grip on your hips, Spencer's hands move to your face without thought, and he kisses you with everything he has. When you try to pull back, he whines. Pulls you in closer. Refuses to let you go even for a moment. You have to reach out blindly in search of the towel. You feel around behind you, leaning back as far as he'll allow you to until, at last, your fingers graze the soft fabric.

And then you feel yourself falling.

You topple over, pulling Spencer down with you as your back hits the mattress. He groans against your lips and pulls away to find you still reaching for that damn towel. He grabs it for you and, before you can get a word in, kisses you again. You raise your hips, hoping he still has enough brains to understand what you're asking of him, and he positions the towel underneath you. 

Pulling out feels like a dam breaking. Punctuated with a wet pop and followed by a gush of something warm. He whines, you shudder, and you don't stop kissing each other until you forget how to breathe. When his lips finally leave yours, his breathing comes ragged. He sits back, kneeling between your burning thighs, and takes in the sight of you with this dazed, almost drunken look that has you throbbing despite your exhaustion. His gaze trails down your body until it settles on the mess between your legs. 

"…Reid—"

By the time you're able to find your words, his face is already level with your cunt. He spreads your folds and watches, transfixed, the way it leaks out of you. He licks up your slit, gathering his own release on his tongue, before diving into you. You're so caught off guard you don't think to try and stifle the outrageous moan that tears through you, and you promptly clamp a hand over your mouth as your head falls back. 

No amount of oh Gods and expletives can account for the expertise with which Spencer Reid uses his tongue. If he isn't fucking you with it, he's circling your clit with it, teasing and sucking on the overstimulated nub until you're writhing so much, he has to pin your hips down with one hand and finger you with the other. 

You're seeing stars before you know it, hurtling towards an orgasm so fast you can barely form a coherent thought before you're there. And you think, for a fleeting moment, that he may keep you there. That is his revenge. And you have never been gladder to have Spencer prove you wrong. Your back arches off the mattress, and you're moaning things that you can't make out through the haze of an aggressive orgasm. It could be his name, a prayer, a curse, or something worse—you don't know.

Your fingers are numb. Your toes, too. They tingle with a static that persists even as your orgasm subsides. You feel Spencer shift. Feel the weight of his head as it rests against your hip. The heat of his breath against your skin.

For a moment, it all goes quiet. Thoughts give way to white noise. Feelings evaporate into a gas that cannot be weighed down by labels.

But peace only lasts as long as it takes for the fog to clear. You return to your sweaty, exhausted body just in time to be swept off your feet by a tsunami of feelings. Anxieties. Emotions that shouldn't exist.

You aren't sure when Spencer and you drifted from the shallow end to the deep end. You aren't sure when things changed. When you crossed that line and cast aside your life jacket when you know you don't know how to swim.

The only thing you're sure of now is that you're drowning. And the only thing keeping you from sinking entirely is the fact that Spencer hasn't noticed yet. 

You nudge him with your foot, navigating your way around the lump in your throat to grumble "needthebathroom", or something vaguely along those lines. Spencer rolls off of you, mumbling something equally incoherent—or maybe you just don't care to hear it—as he rubs his eyes. 

It hurts to move, but you do it anyway. You sit up, trying not to wince as your entire lower half screams in protest, and drag yourself to the edge of the bed. Spencer asks if you're okay, you think, and you give him a vague hum in response. 

Your trembling legs barely manage to carry you to the bathroom, where you collapse with your back to the door and breathe out a long, shuddering sigh. You'd probably scream if you thought he wouldn't hear you. 

I love you.

Immediately, you're dismissing those words. Waving them away like an unwelcome guest. You tell yourself he doesn't mean it. That he can't have meant it, he just…he just…

He wasn't thinking straight. He wasn't thinking at all. Hell, he probably won't even remember it. It's insignificant. Unimportant. 

That’s what you tell yourself, at least. And you really, really hope you’re right.

And if you aren’t...then this might just kill you.

“It’s an irrational number known as phi, based on the ratio of line segments to each other and to the whole. I-It’s called the golden ratio, it’s a ratio we find all through life. In fact, most people we find conventionally attractive are based on that ratio. The unsub made an, uh, a reference to Leonardo Di Vinci, remember this? Di Vinci used it in a lot of his paintings. As a matter of fact, the last supper is the perfect example—”

The words tumbling out of Spencer’s mouth along with the pair of your footsteps are the only sounds echoing through the quiet halls of the rather antique hotel you were resting in for this case. A pleasant location. Clean carpets, which had Spencer pleased. Deep wood and golden light hanging above. The elevator was a bit on the slow side, however. Or maybe that was due to the building being so very towering in height. The ride to your room had to be at least a handful of minutes, and you and your boyfriend weren’t even sleeping at the very top.

As Spencer speaks, your eyes drift to the hanging lights above, the ones that stretch honeyed light across the winding hall. Normally, you would be nodding along, even if you couldn’t quite keep up with his mind. But this time, you stayed quiet. You just kept walking, Spencer trailing at your side, mouth moving like a motor as you both enter the old elevator as it groans and creaks.

Spencer, never one for social cues, seems entirely oblivious to your curious demeanor. Spencer keeps talking animatedly as the doors slide shut. “…and the Fibonacci sequence is directly related to phi! The way seashells spiral, flower petals arrange themselves— it’s all golden ratio-based. Even human faces… statistically speaking, facial symmetry aligned with phi correlates with perceived attractiveness at a 67% higher rate than average—” He pauses only to adjust his glasses and press the button for your floor. The silence from you feels normal to him. After all, you always listen quietly when he shares his mind.

Before the doors shut, you take a moment to peer around the enclosed space. Small, even for an elevator. The way you crane your neck around, it’s almost as though you're looking for something.

You press the floor button again before the doors can shut, and the glow of the number disappears, effectively stopping the elevator before it can begin its descent. Instead, you crouch down, absurdly choosing to press the floor at the very, very bottom, just shy of the basement.

“The whole concept is represented by the pendant the unsub had, including the logarithmic spiral created by… um…” Spencer starts to trail off, hands hovering in the air. “By- by using the fibonacci sequence, and if we pull up the towns all of the… missing are from— you, I, uh- I think you pressed the wrong floor?” He furrows his brow at your strange behavior, pointing to the row of numbers on the wall. With his infallible memory, he can be certain he had it right the first time.

But you're still poking your head about the elevator like you're looking for something, hardly acknowledging him. “Why’d you stop?” You ask.

“Uh… I mean…” He clears his throat awkwardly. “I stopped because we’re going to the wrong floor. Our floor was 7? We’ll have to go all the way to the bottom now, why’d you do that?”

You step impossibly closer to him, shuffling in front of his body to create a barrier between him and the doors as they slide shut with a creak. “Go ahead, I was listening,” you nod encouragingly.

For a second, Spencer just stares at you with a suspicious look. Then, with a furrowed brow, he remembers his train of thought and resumes talking, albeit with slightly less energy than before. “So… phi is approximately 1.6180339887…”

The elevator has begun its descent. You watch above your shoulder as the aged dial begins to slide across the numbers at a snail’s pace.

The longer Spencer’s mouth moves, he almost becomes absorbed enough again to forget you were headed to the wrong floor. “It’s- it’s funny, actually, 11235 is a Fibonacci series, each number added to the number before. So it’s what the unsub’s ticks mean, subconsciously counting out fibonacci sequences over and over in his head! I mean…”

The elevator hums, you take another step even closer, taking advantage of the way he’s absorbed with his own ramblings again. With movements as casual as you could manage, you slide his cardigan off his shoulders, gently tugging his tie loose and popping open the top button of his shirt.

It doesn’t last long. His eyes are watching your every move and he slowly trails off as he stares at you with utter bewilderment. “… it’s a Fibonacci… series…?” He blinks. Once. Twice. “What- what, uh, what are you doing?” He makes no move to run from your hands, just looking back and forth between your fingers and your face, utterly lost.

Your lips hastily press to his with a force, and Spencer’s eyes blow open wide. His back thumps against the elevator wall. His lips move clumsily against yours by pure reflex. One hand hovers awkwardly near your waist while the other presses flat on the wall beside him for balance.

When you pull back, he pants, staring at you owlishly and looking delightfully vulnerable. “Wha— what?”

It all happens so fast. As the elevator hums and creaks with slow movements, your hands slide down his shirt, trailing from his neck to his chest, to his abdomen, then latching to his crotch and caressing his dick through the fabric of his khakis.

Spencer’s jaw falls open in a gasp, body slightly curling in on itself at the touch. He stares down at your hands on him, face burning red from his hairline to his collarbone. Then his eyes snap back up to you. “Hey! What are you- ah! Wh— wha— whatareyoudoing?” He tries to ask again, voice coming out a little too high.

“What’s it look like I’m doing?” You chuckle, batting your lashes up at him.

It looks like you're touching his penis. Through his khakis. In an elevator. But that doesn’t make sense, right?

“I-uh…” He can’t seem to form words. Just staring, wide-eyed and blushing furiously. “W— we’re in an elevator!” He whisper-yells.

“Uh-huh,” you keep rubbing circles over his cock, pressing the heel of your palm into the bulge of his head under his pants.

Spencer makes a tiny, strangled noise. His hands finally move. One flies up to cover his mouth. The other holds the wall behind him uselessly. His eyes dart across your face as he sputters, panicked. “There- there are generally cameras and microphones p-placed in— mmm! Placed in elevators f… for safety reasons!”

“I already checked. I didn’t see any cameras. This place is too old-fashioned.”

He whines girlishly as her palm presses more firmly against his straining cock. “Microphones, then! M-Microphones can be quite easily… oh, fuck… hidden from view if the owner of the establishment—”

“Then you better keep your voice down, huh?”

Spencer bites his lip hard, trying to muffle the onslaught of dirty sounds threatening to escape. “Y-Yes,” he whispers, nodding frantically. “Voice down… quiet… oh, god.”

He’s trying so hard to be obedient, but every rub and squeeze and brush sends electric pulses through him and he’s already throbbing. His breath comes in short, panicked little puffs through his nose like a startled rabbit.

“W-Why?” He nearly sobs.

You tilt your head innocently. “Why what?”

Spencer swallows, his throat bobbing. “W-Why are you… doing this? I mean— we’re in a public elevator. We have a case. And I-I was just talking about math.”

The elevator continues descending, dinging as it passes floors 16… 15…

You rub your thumb over the shape of his tip and Spencer’s knees feel weak. You just shrug, “‘Cause I like to tease you.”

He whines, humiliated. “I… I like your teasing too,” he admits in a tiny, breathless voice. “B-but usually with words. Not this.” He’s completely overwhelmed by your casual dominance over him, and panicking over how much it was turning him on.

He gasps sharply when you massage his bulge just right. “Please! Please, please— hey! don’tdon’tdon’tdon’t—”

Your hand stills slightly. “Don’t?”

Spencer squirms, watching you toy with him helplessly. “I mean— yes! Wait, no— I mean—” His voice cracks. “Please, please, I-I really don’t wanna cum right now...”

You chuckle, biting your lip. “You sure?”

Spencer nods rapidly, eyes wide with panic. “No. No— I mean— yes! Just not… not like this. Not in the elevator.”

“Oh, but I wanna play with you…” You pout.

“P-Playing is fine! I love playing!” he blurts, then sheepishly lowers his voice to a frantic whisper. “But maybe… maybe in our room? Where we can close the door and— and change clothes if needed?” He’s grimacing now from the touch, his expression twisting like he’s in pain.

“Oh, you don’t wanna cum in your pants, huh?” You tease.

He ducks his head into your shoulder to stifle the sounds. “N-No,” he mumbles into the fabric of your shirt. “I—I have a meeting in an hour. With Strauss. And my pants are… they’re not stain-resistant.”

“Aww! That’d be so cute!”

Spencer lifts his head slightly, horrified. “Cute?!” he squeaks. “What? No! Not cute. Embarrassing! P-professionally devastating!”

Ding! Just then, the elevator doors fly open as they reach the floor nearest to the basement.

Spencer nearly jumps out of his skin when the doors open, practically leaping away from you, only to see an empty, dimly lit hallway. The second they close again, he exhales sharply, shoulders slumping.

You casually hit another button with your elbow. The elevator starts moving up to the very top.

“Top floor?” he asks quietly, eyes wide with hope. “Our room is on 7…”

“We’re not going to our room, I’m fucking you here, silly.”

“H-here?!” he squeaks, eyes darting around the tiny elevator. “In this… this box? B-But the— the microphones! The elevators are monitored for safety violations and— and crimes! Public indecency is a crime!”

But he stops when your hand comes up to squeeze his throat, a thrill shooting through him and straight to his loins.

His lips part slightly as he stares at you with wide, glazed over eyes. “Why don’t you keep talking to me about your math sequences? Hm?” You coo, rubbing your thumb over his adam's apple.

“I-I…” He swallows hard against your palm. “F-Fibonacci sequence… um, mmm, it’s a recursive series wh-where each number is the sum of the, uh? Two preceding ones… and um…” It’s hard for him to remember when the majority of his blood flow was going straight to his cock.

“Yeah?” You encourage him with a nod, so Spencer keeps babbling, dazed and breathless.

“S-so 0, 1… then 1… and the next is, oh, the next is two, so it’s— it builds exponentially. Like a spiral! Mm-hm. A logarithmic spiral which relates to phi again because of the golden ratio division in geometry which creates perfect aesthetics like Da Vinci’s paintings or seashells or—”

He pauses when you squeeze his throat just slightly tighter, not enough to hurt, but enough to make his voice crack cutely.

“…a-and the ratio of a shell’s chambers to its width follows, ah, phi exactly, which means nature uses math for beauty and-and symmetry, like how people are attracted to faces with phi proportions statistically but god, you’re squeezing my neck…”

You grin. “You like it?”

“Y-Yeah,” he breathes, “I mean, scientifically speaking… mild pressure to the carotid artery increases blood flow which could theoretically heighten arousal but—”

“You didn’t finish telling me,” you remind him, but math was the furthest thing from his mind.

Spencer thinks, trying to remember where he left off, but nope. All gone. Erased by your hand on his throat and the heat coiling low in his stomach. “I… uh…” He swallows hard under your fingers. “I forgot.”

“You forgot!” You laugh, “Oh, no you didn’t, you don’t forget anything.”

Spencer pouts. “I did! I swear!” he insists, voice high and flustered. “My brain… I can’t really… recall anything.”

You rub your nose against his affectionately. “Am I making you dizzy, my sweet boy?”

Spencer nods slowly, eyes half-lidded. “Yeah. Dizzy… and warm… and my heart’s going really fast.” It wasn’t only the pressure on his throat, or the hand caressing his throbbing cock. It was the way you looked at him, touched him like you wanted to devour him alive in this stupid elevator.

Dizzy wasn’t the right word, he was overloaded. But dizzy works.

“You’re so cute when you’re all spacey,” you whisper.

Spencer’s face scrunches up, embarrassed and deliriously happy. His lips twist into a tiny smile, but he quickly tries to hide it by shyly pressing his face back into her shoulder.

“Am I making you feel good?”

“Mmm-hmm,” he hums into your skin.

You glance over your shoulder to see another number lit up on the panel. “Uh, oh…” You bite back a smile.

Spencer lifts his head slowly. He doesn’t notice the new number lighting up, still lost in his stupid, blissed-out haze. “Huh?”

“We got a visitor!”

Spencer’s body tightens. He straightens up instantly, panic flashing across his face as his dizzy brain scrambles to come back online. “Oh, no,” he frantically smoothes down his shirt and fixes his tie with shaky hands. He combs his hands through his hair and wipes any trace of lipstick from his mouth with the back of his hand. He shoots you a wide-eyed look that says what do we do?!

But you are the face of indifference. You detach yourself from his side and turn your back to him, folding your hands in your lap like someone simply riding the elevator while Spencer is still panting and sweating and struggling to not look suspicious at all.

As the doors ding open, Spencer ducks his head down and half-turns his body away to hide the erection straining against his pants from view, while you are all but the picture of inconspicuousness.

A hotel janitor in a blue uniform steps in, pushing a cleaning cart. He nods politely at you, to which you respond with a small, polite smile back, then glances briefly at Spencer.

Spencer keeps his head ducked, shoulders hunched like he’s studying the floor tiles. One hand grips the railing for balance; the other crosses over his lap awkwardly to block his erection from sight.

The janitor presses button 3 and hums quietly to himself. And so, all the way back down you go, slow and quiet. Spencer stays statue-still, like he’s not allowed to breathe too loud. The janitor stands on the other side of the cart, occasionally glancing at his clipboard.

You remain perfectly calm. Not a single nervous twitch.

Every second feels like an eternity to him as they creep back down to floor 3 with this random man who could turn around and see his horribly suspicious posture at any given moment.

The elevator dings as it reaches floor 3. The janitor gathers his cleaning supplies and wheels the cart out without a word, leaving you and Spencer alone again, doors sliding shut behind him.

Spencer exhales like he’s been holding his breath for ten minutes straight. Only then does he finally unclench, shoulders dropping, and look at you with wide, traumatized eyes.

“Really? I mean, really! Th-this is why I said doing… that in an elevator was a-a ridiculous idea!”

“Doing what?” You hum as you casually press another floor on the console.

Spencer gapes. “Doing that!” he hisses, waving a hand vaguely at the space between you, where seconds ago you were touching him. “Right before, with th-the—! And the—! …You know what I mean!”

You turn around, and Spencer’s protests and complaints simply evaporate when you latch your lips onto his. Spencer makes a soft noise into your mouth and kisses back, clumsy but eager. His hands lift to cradle your face instinctively, thumbs brushing your cheeks as he tilts his head to deepen it.

Your thumb circles around the head of his cock through his pants. Spencer whimpers into the kiss, hips grinding forward slightly to chase the contact. He breaks the kiss for a second to gasp, forehead resting against yours. He breathes your name like a plea.

“Where were we?” You grin cheekily.

“We were… uh…” He swallows, eyes fixed to your lips. “I think you were— you were torturing me.” He leans in to kiss you again like your mouth was magnetic, which you greedily accept.

You laugh softly against his lips, massaging his pulsing cock once again, smoothing your palm over his bulge. “Not gonna stop until you cum for me, okay?”

The thought is terrifying and thrilling at the same time. He whines against your lips, squirming as you massage him through his pants with just enough pressure to drive him insane. “I—I can’t… I don’t wanna—” he stammers between kisses, but his hips betray him by rolling into your touch. “Please, I-I really don’t wanna ruin my underwear…”

But his body isn’t listening. Every rub of your hand sends sparks through him, and the coil in his stomach tightens dangerously.

“C’mon, it’d be so cute. I bet you’re all leaky under there anyway.”

Spencer whines, mortified. “I-I’m not leaky!”

You laugh at his childish protest.

He flushes. “I-I don’t… leak! I control my bodily functions!”

But then your hand squeezes again, firm this time, and all defensiveness withers as a sharp gasp and a whine escape him.

“Bet you wish you could fuck me, huh?”

He nods mindlessly. “Mhmm. Yeah, a lot.”

The elevator dings. The doors slide open to reveal a quiet, dimly lit hallway. He recognizes it. Your room is just down the corridor. Spencer stares at it like salvation, then back at you, eyes wide with hope.

But your hand doesn’t stop moving. Caressing him, toying with him, rubbing his bulge. You make no move to take the both of you back to your room to have sex properly. No, because it’d be silly of him to think you’d have any interest in proper sex.

What’s making his stomach sink, however, is the way you’re not pressing another button. The way you’re letting the heavy elevator doors stay wide open as you touch him, letting all his needy little noises escape into the corridors for any unfortunate passerby to overhear.

Spencer’s voice cracks as he whispers, “H-hey… the door… it’s open…?” He tugs weakly at your sleeve, eyes wide with nervousness. The hallway is silent now, but anyone could turn the corner. “People could, um… could see us?” He adds in a tiny, embarrassed squeak. He wants this, desperately, but not like this. Not out in the open where someone might walk by and see him panting, blushing, completely at your mercy.

You simply follow his eyes, glancing at the open door, considering it nonchalantly, then wordlessly return your focus back to him and his dick, much to his frustration.

“P-Please,” he whispers shakily. “Can we… go to our room? Just a few steps? Please?”

You sharply pat his cock right where he’s most sensitive, and it sends a jolt through him. “I told you, silly, I wanna play with you here.”

Spencer yelps. His knees buckle. “O-Ow!” It didn’t actually hurt, but it stung in that electrifying way that was making his cock throb even harder. Tears prickle at the corners of his eyes from overwhelming sensation and your stubborn refusal to move this somewhere private.

Spencer bites his lip, eyes watering. “I-I don’t wanna— I don’t wanna cum in my pants… please, please…”

Teasing him, you ask, “Why not?”

Spencer blinks, baffled. “B-Because…” he stammers. “It’s messy! And— and I’ll have to change my clothes, and we didn’t pack extra underwear because we thought this trip would be short and— and—” He hesitates. “And I don’t— I just don’t wanna feel sticky and gross all day!” He whines miserably.

You chuckle, affectionately leaning your head on his shoulder like your hands aren’t down there working to make him explode. “But this cock is mine,” you murmur close to his ear.

He whimpers, tilting his head instinctively to give you better access to his ear. “I-I know… I know, I know,” he admits in a tiny voice, defeated but oddly turned on by how easily you claim him. “Yeah. Yours. But can I please cum in bed?”

You ignore him. “Mine, isn’t it? All mine? Mine to play with?”

Spencer nods frantically, eyes fluttering shut. “Y-Yours,” he breathes. “All yours. You can— you can play with me whenever you want.” The thought of being yours is almost as intoxicating as the physical sensations.

“Uh-huh. Then that’s all you need to worry about.”

Spencer hides his face in your shoulder again, breathing fast and shallow. It’s terrifying, being exposed like this. But also… thrilling. The risk makes every touch feel ten times more intense.

“Tell me how good I’m making you feel, Spencer,” you murmur to him sweetly.

“S-So good,” he whispers against your shirt, voice trembling. “You’re making me feel so good…” His face burns with shame and pleasure. “You’re… you’re the best, the best at this… I love it, I love you.” His hips seek more friction, rocking up into your touch.

“I love you too, my sweet boy. Are you getting close?”

Spencer nods against you, his breath coming in quick little puffs. “I-I think so… really, really close.”

You smile, feeling his tension, his breath picking up pace against your skin. You press a soft kiss to the top of his head before whispering, “That’s okay. You can cum if you want to.”

He swallows a moan, his body shaking. “I-I can… I can cum?”

“Uh-huh, you wanna cum for me? Wanna be my good boy and make a mess? Just for me?”

Spencer’s stomach flips. The words are filthy, and so tempting. He wants to, desperately, he’s so near to tipping over the edge. But the thought of actually doing it here and now, exposed and vulnerable, still worries him.

He whines softly. “Y-Yeah… but I’m scared.”

“Oh, baby,” you coo, “I’ve got you, it’s okay.”

Your voice, soft and loving, quells the fear, and for a moment Spencer is lulled into believing you two are in the privacy of your own bedroom. Your hand is perfect, moving with just the right pressure and rhythm.

“Fuck, feels really good. Feels really, really good,” he cries pathetically. He moans your name in a plea for mercy. “Fuck, I think I’m gonna…! Please, please, oh fuck! I think I’m gonna—”

Everything tightens. The coil in his stomach, his chest, his shoulders. He clutches your shirt like a lifeline as he stops denying himself and the pleasure crashes over him in sweet waves. A quiet gasp escapes him before he can stop it, and suddenly he’s cumming right there, still fully dressed, pressed flat against you. He moans like a girl into your skin, jaw falling open wide as his release coats the inside of his boxers. You keep working him through his orgasm diligently.

The afterglow hits, warm and floaty. But he can feel it as he pants, coming back down from his high: the horrific wetness against his skin. And when the wire in him fully snaps and he goes slack in your arms, he grimaces.

Spencer is a limp, dazed puddle. He’s panting, sweaty, and so embarrassed by the mess in his pants. He hides his face further in your shoulder with a tiny groan of humiliation.

You just hum, gently stroking his hair, quite pleased with yourself. You kiss the top of his head sweetly. “It’s okay,” you murmur, soothing. “Nobody else booked this floor, anyway.”

Spencer nods weakly against your, still hiding. “Okay…” he pants, voice muffled by fabric. “That’s… that’s good to know.”

The two of you are silent for a moment as Spencer recovers, the only sound his heavy huffs and the faint hum of the lights beyond the elevator. “…Did you like it?” You eventually ask.

Spencer lifts his head slowly, finally meeting your eyes, cheeks still pink. “Mm-hm,” he nods shyly. “A lot.”

You smile, letting out a warm chuckle. “Good.”

You press the button to slide the doors closed, giving the two of you a quiet moment in your little bubble before any reality can creep back in again. Holding his warm cheek, you press your lips to Spencer’s.

He quickly leans into your kiss, eyes fluttering shut, melting into you with lingering affection and arousal. When you part again, he sighs contentedly and rests his rests his forehead against yours.

Eventually, he interrupts the peace with a meek voice, “Can I… can I please go change my pants?”

You giggle at him and lovingly pat his cheek with a nod.

You simply needed to see that angelic face at least once a day to function properly, like a plant needed sunlight or like your phone needed to be charged, so three whole days without seeing it was simply Hell, and you were starting to wonder if maybe you'd developed some kind of addiction that no doctor could cure.

Have I become that pathetic? you thought, your eyes scanning the instant noodles in the small convenience store downstairs from your place, the lights buzzing faintly above you and casting everything in that weird pale glow that made even the most colorful packaging look slightly sad.

As you were out on a late-night run, unable to sleep because of your hunger and your thoughts that refused to shut up for even a second, and as you stood in front of the instant noodle aisle with its rows upon rows of brightly colored packages, you couldn't help but wonder — Had you truly always been this pathetic? No, that's impossible.

Well, from an outside perspective, maybe some people had already found you more than pathetic — when you found yourself having to live all alone as a little child, when you cried under the rain because things were simply too hard to contain for such a small body, when the doctor told you about your brain tumor — but all of that wasn't for the same reasons as right now, and you could distinctly separate the sadness of those moments from the ridiculous, fluttering, heart-racing feeling that currently consumed you.

You had never been this pathetic when it came to romantic relationships, because you had never loved anyone the way you loved Sieun, and you'd never found yourself standing in a convenience store at night with your stupid heart pounding over the mere thought of another boy.

"Does that mean Sieun is my first love?" you whispered between your teeth, the words feeling foreign and terrifying and wonderful all at once as they left your mouth.

You immediately looked around to make sure no one had heard you, even though the store was completely empty except for the bored-looking teenage cashier who was scrolling through his phone behind the counter.

A wave of heat washed over you, and that night you were honest enough with yourself to admit that the summer heat wasn't the reason — you were simply a young boy pathetically in love with another young boy, and that love was way too immense and sincere for you to contain it, even in public, even when you were all alone surrounded by instant noodles and cheap snacks.

You rested your forehead against one of the aisle shelves, the metal cool against your skin, trying to calm your stupid heart that kept racing without permission, but you were currently listening to Peach Eyes by Wave to Earth through your earphones, which wasn't helping at all given that listening to their song made you think of Sieun too — sending you back to one of your first shared moments together on the bus, when you had gathered the courage to ask for Sieun's number, when your hand had been shaking so badly you'd almost dropped your phone twice, when Sieun had looked at you with those big, curious eyes and said 'sure' like it was the most natural thing in the universe.

Everything reminded you of Sieun these days.

The noodles reminded you of the time you'd eaten together, the song reminded you of that bus ride, the late hour reminded you of all those nights you'd spent texting until your eyes burned, and even the stupid fluorescent lights seemed to somehow carry a memory of Sieun's face illuminated by a similar glow on some random evening you couldn't quite place but could still feel in your chest.

"Should I call him?" you murmured once more, straightening up properly and running a hand through your hair, which was probably a mess because you'd been lying in bed all day and hadn't even bothered to look in the mirror before throwing on your shorts and a loose t-shirt to come downstairs.

But if you called Sieun, then what would you say to him? Should you make up an excuse just to talk to him? No, you two had long surpassed that stage... hadn't you? You weren't so sure anymore, all of a sudden, because even though you'd grown closer and even though Sieun had visited you in the hospital and had looked genuinely worried, there was still this part of your brain that whispered cruel things like 'what if he doesn't feel the same' and 'what if you're just annoying him' and 'what if this is all one-sided and you're making a fool of yourself'.

Ugh, whatever.

Taking your phone out of the pocket of your dark blue football shorts (which you simply used to sleep or lounge around at home because they were comfortable and you didn't care about looking good when no one was watching), you decided that you didn't need to hesitate and that you should just call Sieun — and that's exactly what you did, pressing on his contact before you could lose your nerve and talk yourself out of it like you'd done so many times before.

One ring, two rings, three rings, and with each passing second your heart didn't slow down, panic quickly settling in as you imagined all the worst possible scenarios.

What if Sieun was sleeping and you woke him up, and then Sieun would be annoyed and grumpy and wouldn't want to talk to you? What if he simply didn't want to answer, and was currently watching his phone ring while sighing, annoyed that you were bothering him at such a late hour? What if he was with someone else, or what if he'd finally realized that you were just some weird, pathetic guy who couldn't even go three days without hearing his voice? Lots of negative thoughts quickly flooded your mind, and you really didn't know how to silence your inner voices, those cruel whispers that seemed to get louder the more you tried to ignore them.

"Y/N?"

Startling slightly, you snapped back to your senses upon hearing Sieun's soft and familiar voice through your earphones, and for a moment you completely forgot how to breathe, completely forgot how to form words, completely forgot everything except the way that single word — your name — sounded when it came from Sieun's mouth.

It had only been three days since you last saw each other, and since you last heard his voice, but you truly felt like it had been months when you felt your whole body relax just from hearing Sieun's voice in your ears, like a warm wave washing over you and chasing away all the anxiety that had been building up inside your chest. You could listen to that voice over and over again until your death, and you would never get tired of it, you would never grow bored of the way Sieun pronounced certain syllables, you would never stop feeling that flutter in your stomach every single time.

"Hello? Y/N? Are you there?" Sieun's voice came through again, a little more uncertain this time, and you could picture the slight frown on his face, the way he might be tilting his head or checking his phone screen to make sure the call hadn't dropped.

You could feel your heart explode in your chest, threatening to burst right through your ribs and leave a mess on the convenience store floor, and you had to take a moment to compose yourself before you could even think about speaking.

"Oh yeah, sorry," you finally answered, trying to sound completely normal and casual, like your heart wasn't doing backflips, like you hadn't just been spiraling into a pit of self-doubt moments before. "Hi, Sieun."

"Mhh, hi," Sieun's voice was low, a little rough, like he might have been on the verge of sleep before the call came through, and the thought made you feel both guilty and ridiculously pleased at the same time.

"Oh, am I maybe bothering you? Did I wake you up?"

"No, not at all," Sieun quickly replied, his voice sounding a bit more awake now. "I was studying."

You raised an eyebrow upon hearing Sieun's last sentence, and you looked at your phone screen to check the time — 1:05 AM, the bright numbers mocking you with their insistence that this was definitely not a normal hour to be doing anything productive right now.

"Seriously?" you said in a tone one uses with little kids, all condescending and slightly amused. "Do you see what time it is? Studying at this hour is crazy, even for you. Are you secretly a robot who doesn't need sleep? Did they install some kind of battery in you that lets you function on zero rest?"

You could hear a soft breath on the other end of the line, almost like a little laugh, and it made your lips twitch upward despite yourself.

"We're going to have another math test soon, so I'm studying," Sieun said simply, like that was the most obvious explanation in the world, like staying up until one in the morning to review equations was a completely reasonable thing for a teenage boy to do.

"A test?" you gasped silently, your eyes widening as the words sank in. "Wait—math?!"

The horror in your voice was genuine and unfiltered, because math had never been your strong suit and the mere mention of it sent a shiver down your spine.

A sigh could be heard through your earphones, long-suffering and exasperated, and you could practically see Sieun shaking his head at you from wherever he was.

"I told you about it when I helped you with math at your place," Sieun said, his tone carrying that familiar hint of patience that he always seemed to have when dealing with your forgetfulness.

"Oh, uh..."

You trailed off, your brain scrambling to remember that particular tutoring session, but all you could recall was the way Sieun had been sitting so close to you on your bed, the way your shoulders had brushed together, the way Sieun's voice had sounded when he was explaining complex formulas, the way his fingers had looked wrapped around your pen.

Sorry, I was too busy admiring you, you thought, but of course you didn't say that out loud, because you still had some dignity left, even if it was very small and very fragile.

"Ah, whatever, anyway classes aren't that important," you said, your free hand waving dismissively in the air as if Sieun could see it. "I'm destined to fail math no matter what, so why stress about it? It's not like I'm going to suddenly become a math genius overnight, and honestly, at this point I've just accepted my fate."

Was that a slight laugh you heard on the other end of the call, a small and quiet sound that Sieun probably thought he'd hidden? You weren't a hundred percent sure, but you knew that that slight sound was enough to make your heart explode in your chest, for the second time that night, and you had to bite your lip to keep from making any embarrassing noises.

"You could study with me," Sieun offered, his voice casual, like it wasn't a big deal, like he hadn't just sent your entire world spinning. "If you want, I mean. I could help you again, if you're struggling."

"I— yeah, of course," you managed to get out, your voice coming out a little strangled.

Your brain short-circuited at the suggestion, images of you two sitting together again, Sieun leaning close to explain problems, your hands accidentally touching — it was too much, too good, too dangerous for your poor heart.

"Oh," you continued after a brief pause, your eyes landing once again on the noodle aisle in front of you with its colorful packages and tempting flavors, and a sudden idea struck you like a bolt of lightning. "Have you eaten?" you asked, the question coming out before you could overthink it, before your brain could catch up with your mouth and stop you from being too obvious.

A brief silence settled, stretching out for a few seconds that felt like an eternity, and you raised an eyebrow, waiting, wondering what was going on in Sieun's head on the other end of the line.

"...No," Sieun murmured, almost shyly, like he was admitting to something embarrassing, and the sound was so soft that you almost missed it.

"Do you like spicy noodles?" you asked, a grin spreading across your face as you reached out and grabbed a pack, examining the label with newfound interest.

"Huh?"

Sieun's voice was confused, clearly not following your thought process, and you could easily imagine the adorable confused expression on Sieun's face, alone in his room, probably sitting at his desk surrounded by textbooks, his brow furrowed in that way that made you want to reach out and smooth it with your thumb. You bit your lower lip hard to keep from smiling like a big weirdo at the mere thought of it, but you were failing miserably, your cheeks starting to hurt from how wide your grin was.

"Well, yes, but why—" Sieun started, but you were already moving, already making up your mind with a sudden surge of confidence that surprised even yourself.

"Okay, great," you cut him off with a smile that no one could see but that you could feel spreading across your whole face. "I'll be at your place in, hum..." You checked the time on your phone once more, calculating the distance in your head. "Well, in less than ten minutes actually."

"What—" Sieun's voice was flustered, caught off guard, and you could picture him sitting up straighter.

"See you soon," you sang before hanging up, not giving Sieun a chance to protest or ask questions or do anything that might make you change your mind.

Another moment of silence settled as you held your phone tightly in your hands, your music starting to play again in your ears as soon as the call ended — Daisy by Wave to Earth — while your brain was processing what you had just done.

Holy fucking freaking shit! Oh my God—

You bit your fist to keep yourself from screaming in the store, your whole body buzzing with excitement and nervous energy as you practically danced over to the register.

Did you really just do that? Did you really have the balls to do something as bold as inviting yourself over to Sieun's place at such a late hour? You didn't know if you should feel deeply stressed or overly happy about this sudden burst of confidence, but the noodles were already on the counter and the cashier, a teenage boy, was giving you a weird look, so there was no backing out now.

But that didn't matter; after three long days, you were finally going to see Sieun's face again, and that was worth all your little happy jumps in the small convenience store in the face of this immense victory for you, your hands grabbing the plastic bag with the two packs of spicy instant noodles and clutching it like a treasure.

Being in love really makes people so pathetic, you thought as you practically sprinted out of the convenience store. But more than anything, it makes people so freaking happy, and that feeling made everything worth it.

"Beomseok did what?!"

Your voice comes out way louder than you'd originally intended, your chopsticks freezing mid-air with a bundle of noodles dangling from them, and you quickly glance toward Sieun's closed door as if expecting someone to burst in and scold you for being too loud at this hour, even though there's absolutely no one else in the apartment.

"He really got angry at Yeongi when we were at the karaoke," Sieun repeats softly, his eyes fixed on his own bowl of noodles as he carefully winds a few strands around his chopsticks, taking his time with each movement in that meticulous way of his that you've grown to find incredibly endearing. "It was so sudden and so unlike him that I honestly didn't know how to react at first. One moment everything was fine, we were all having fun, and the next he was just... furious, because she answered his phone while he wasn't there."

A small sound of discontent, as well as surprise, escapes your lips upon hearing that, as you bring your chopsticks up to your mouth to take another bite of your spicy noodles, the heat of the broth doing nothing to distract you from the information you've just received.

Sieun is sitting right across from you on the floor of his bedroom, eating his noodles a little more slowly, his posture perfect even when he's just having a late-night snack, and you find yourself watching the way his lips wrap around his chopsticks with far more attention than is probably appropriate for someone who's supposed to be listening to a serious story.

You're honestly surprised to hear that; although you aren't particularly close to Beomseok, the boy is still someone you like and spend time with at school, someone you'd consider a friend even if you weren't the type to hang out outside of the friends group or share personal secrets. And the image that you have of Beomseok is of someone very shy and reserved but who likes to take care of those he considers his friends, who always makes sure everyone has what they need and who never raises his voice or causes any kind of trouble, and you've never seen him get angry at anyone either — so hearing that Beomseok 'really got angry at Yeongi', especially for something as trivial as answering his phone, surprises you greatly and makes you wonder if there's something deeper going on that none of you know about.

"Getting angry at her for such a trivial reason is a bit much," you say, shaking your head slightly, mimicking your discontent as you chew thoughtfully on your noodles, trying to process this new information about someone you thought you'd understood fairly well. "I mean, it's not like she's doing something malicious, right? It was just a phone call."

"Yeah, but..." Sieun trails off, his voice dropping lower as if he's debating whether to continue, and you immediately pick up on the hesitation, on the way his fingers tighten almost imperceptibly around his chopsticks.

You look up at Sieun; the boy has his gaze fixed on his noodles, watching the steam rise from the broth like it holds all the answers to the universe, and you can tell that something is bothering him beyond just the surface-level story about Beomseok's unexpected anger.

"But?" you prompt gently, your voice softening in a way that's become more and more natural whenever you talk to Sieun, and you set down your own chopsticks to show you're fully listening.

"There were also some guys who came right after that," Sieun continues, frowning very slightly as he seems to recall the scene, his brow furrowing in that adorable way that makes you want to reach out and smooth the crease with your thumb. "They implied they were Beomseok's friends from his old high school, but Beomseok's reaction upon seeing them was anything but friendly. It wasn't even just anger — it was like he'd seen a ghost or something, like his entire body just shut down the moment they walked in."

Raising an eyebrow, you rest your elbow on your knee, and your chin against the palm of your right hand, all your attention focused on the boy in front of you, your eyes drinking in every little detail of Sieun's expression as he speaks.

"What do you mean? Did he get even angrier? Did he yell at them too?"

"No, he..."

Sieun pauses briefly, seeming to search for the right words, and you can practically see the gears turning in his head as he tries to articulate what he'd witnessed.

"He froze in place. He went pale, his eyes went wide, and for a moment he didn't even seem to breathe."

"Really?" Your voice is soft, thoughtful, because this isn't the Beomseok you know at all, and it makes you wonder what kind of past the other boy is carrying around without ever showing it to anyone.

"Hmm, and he seems a bit more distant and... aggressive since then," Sieun murmurs, as if remembering something that had been bothering him for a while, his voice carrying a note of genuine concern that makes your heart clench. "He's very defensive. He snaps at people for no reason, and he's been avoiding eye contact and making excuses to leave early. I tried to talk to him once, just to ask if he was okay, and he practically ran away from me."

"Is it because of what happened yesterday at school?" you ask, leaning forward slightly, because you'd heard something about a confrontation from Suho but hadn't gotten all the details (Suho was in the middle of his shift), and you want to understand what's going on with your friend.

Sieun looks surprised that you know about it, the teenager lifting his head from his noodles to plant the galaxy that is his gaze into yours, those dark eyes shimmering with curiosity and something softer that you can't quite name.

He's so cute with such an expression, his head tilted slightly and his lips parted in that way that makes him look like a confused kitten, and you restrain yourself from smiling, knowing it isn't the right time, but God, it's hard when Sieun looks at you like that.

"How do you know?" Sieun asks, his voice genuinely curious, and you feel a warmth spread through your chest at being the one who has information that Sieun doesn't, at being the one who can share something with him.

"Well, Suho called me last night to tell me," you chuckle softly, shaking your head at the memory of Suho's dramatic retelling, complete with exaggerated gestures and sound effects that had made you laugh despite yourself. "He was so worked up about it, you should have heard him. He kept going on about how Beomseok just walked away without saying anything, and how weird it was, and how he didn't know what to do. Suho gets really worried about people, you know? It's one of the things I love about him, but sometimes he overreacts a little."

A brief moment of silence passes between you, a silence that can only be described as soothing — your eyes are locked into each other's, like two magnets violently attracting one another, unable to pull apart even if you try. It seems impossible for you to tear your gaze away from this boy who holds such an important place in your soul, who has somehow become the center of your entire universe without you even realizing it was happening.

Sieun doesn't seem to want to break this eye contact either, his gaze steady and warm, and you feel like your heart is going to explode in your chest, exposing the deep feelings you hold within, feelings that are becoming harder and harder to hide with each passing day.

"I don't think we need to worry dramatically," you're the first to break the silence, your voice gentle, but your eyes remain locked together, holding onto each other like you're the only two people in the world. "Beomseok most likely has issues he doesn't want to talk about, or that he can't find the courage to express. After all, we all have our little secrets that we want to protect above all else, and sometimes those secrets are so heavy that they change how we act around other people without us even realizing it."

Something in Sieun's gaze flickers upon hearing your words — is it sadness that invites itself into those so beautiful eyes, or is it something else, something you don't know how to identify? For just a moment, the depth of emotion in Sieun's expression makes your breath catch in your throat, and you wonder if maybe you've said something wrong.

"We could ask Beomseok if everything's alright, because asking is always a good thing, but if he doesn't want to talk about it after we ask, then I think it's better to let him handle it on his own," you continue, your voice dropping lower, more thoughtful, because you're speaking from experience now, speaking from a place of deep understanding. "Forcing someone to open up when they're not ready never ends well, you know? It just makes them retreat further, and then you lose any chance of them trusting you enough to come to you when they actually do want to talk."

Really, what's the point of helping someone who doesn't want to be helped? you think to yourself, the words echoing in your mind with a bitter edge that you try to push down.

You're the best placed regarding a situation like this; since you learned a few weeks ago about your inoperable brain tumor, you've preferred to keep it to yourself and not tell absolutely anyone, because you know that if you announce this to Suho — your best friend, your brother, your entire universe — then Suho's world will simply collapse, and it will hurt him so much that you can't even bear to imagine it. And you hate nothing more than seeing your best friend suffer, you hate the thought of being the cause of that suffering, you hate the idea of watching Suho's face crumble with the weight of news that he can't do anything to fix.

And above all, you're terrified of being seen as a boy already dead, even though you're still breathing, still alive, still feeling and thinking and loving like any other teenager.

You've received so much pity from others since the death of your beloved father, and since your mother had to go to a retirement home because her mental health was at its lowest — people looked at you like a poor fragile little thing, like you were made of glass and would shatter at the slightest touch, and you hate that; you hate the way their eyes soften with sympathy, you hate the way their voices become gentler, you hate the way they treat you like you're already gone.

"You just need to ask the person, you say?" Sieun's voice brings you back to reality, soft and probing, and you blink, realizing you'd been lost in your own thoughts for a moment too long. "Is it really that easy?"

Huh...

You don't really know why, but the tone used by Sieun, and the gaze so... deep in his eyes, gives you the impression that the boy is no longer talking about Beomseok, and that simple suggestion terrifies you more than anything, because it feels like Sieun is looking right through you, seeing all the things you're trying so desperately to hide.

"Well, it's true that asking is easy," you laugh lightly, straightening up slightly and hoping the nervousness in your voice isn't too obvious, that the way your hands have started to sweat isn't visible to the boy sitting across from you. "Getting an answer, however..." you trail off, shrugging in a way you hope looks casual and unconcerned.

"If the other person doesn't want to answer honestly, or doesn't want to answer at all, then it leads nowhere," Sieun murmurs, so quietly that you have trouble hearing everything, the words almost lost in the soft hum of the air conditioner in the corner of the room.

Why is the atmosphere suddenly so weird like this?

In a way you don't really understand, you feel like your own words have led to the entrance of a path you had severely blocked access to, and it gives you a knot in your stomach, a cold and heavy feeling that makes you want to change the subject as quickly as possible. You need to shift the conversation, you need to steer yourselves away from this dangerous territory where secrets are threatening to surface.

I need to change the subject, and fast, because if we keep going down this path, I'm going to say something I'll regret, or worse, I'm going to say nothing at all while Sieun looks at me like he already knows everything, you think, your mind racing as you try to come up with something, anything, that would distract you both from whatever tension has suddenly settled over the room like a fog.

Setting your empty bowl of instant noodles aside, carefully placing it on the floor so it won't fall and stain the carpet with the leftover sauce, you decide to act by listening to the small voice in your head — you gently slide across the floor, getting considerably closer to Sieun who still has his hands on his own noodle bowl, and stop once you're right in front of him, close enough that your knees touch and you can feel the warmth radiating from Sieun's body.

To be honest, you don't exactly know what you're doing, your brain having apparently abandoned all rational thought in favor of following some primal instinct that just wants to be near the boy in front of you, but tonight, you don't care; you decided you were going to do what your body tells you, and more than anything in the world, your body wants to be as close to Sieun's as possible, wants to feel the warmth of his skin, wants to breathe in the peach scent that always clings to him, wants to memorize every detail of this moment.

"Why are you..." Sieun starts, the tips of his ears turning pink in that adorable way they always do when you surprise him, the blush creeping up from his neck to his cheeks in a way that makes your heart stutter in your chest.

"I don't know," you answer honestly, because you see no point in lying right now, no point in pretending you have some logical reason for your actions when the truth is much simpler and much more overwhelming. "I just want to be close to you. Is that so wrong?"

Sieun's ears only turn pinker — that rosy glow that you've learned to know through Sieun's cute reactions, that rosy glow that has become your favorite color of all time, the color you see every time you close your eyes — and you suddenly have the urge to press your lips against the smaller boy's, to taste the peach that seems to follow Sieun everywhere he goes, the scent that invades all your senses once again and makes your head spin. You wonder if Sieun's lips will taste like peach too, if they'll be soft and warm, if kissing him will be as wonderful as you've imagined a thousand times.

Instead, you place your hand on Sieun's, still on his noodle bowl, your fingers carefully covering Sieun's smaller ones, and you feel the slight tremor that runs through the other boy's hand, the way his breath catches slightly at the contact.

"Is your offer to teach me math still valid?" you whisper, your face getting closer without you realizing it, your voice dropping to a low murmur that seems to hang in the small space between you. "I think... I really, really want to learn math. Like, right now. I'm suddenly very motivated."

You can feel the warmth of Sieun's breath on your own lips, can see the way Sieun's eyes have widened slightly, can count every single lash framing those beautiful dark eyes.

I really want to kiss you, you think, the words pounding in your head with every beat of your heart, but you hold yourself back, waiting, hoping.

"...Yes," Sieun murmurs, his Adam's apple moving as he swallows, tightening his fingers around your hand in a way that feels like an answer, like a yes to something much bigger than just math tutoring. "I can help you. Whenever you want. I'm always here."

Your fingers gently trace along Sieun's, lightly playing with the smaller boy's fingers as if they're the most fascinating things in the world, and you watch the way Sieun's breath hitches, the way his chest rises and falls a little faster than before, the way his eyes keep flickering down to your lips and then back up to your eyes like he can't decide where to look.

A smile spreads across your lips, so sweet and so cute, your eyes filled with such adoration, that it truly hurts Sieun's heart in the most beautiful way possible, because how can one person contain so much warmth, so much light, so much of everything good in the world?

Sieun can't help but compare the wonderful boy before him to the Moon, because you truly lives up to your name — you are a person as magnificent as the Moon itself, just as bright and easy to fall in love with, with that gentle glow that makes everything around you seem softer and more beautiful. But just like the Moon, although you seem so close and within reach, you are actually so far from others, light-years away, so out of reach, always holding parts of yourself back, always keeping people at a certain distance even when you seem so open.

And just like the Sun, you are so warm, but more than anything... getting too close could result in burning your soul completely, because loving you means accepting the possibility of getting hurt, it means opening yourself up to the brightness that could blind you if you aren't careful.

But even knowing all of that, Sieun can't bring himself to look away, to stop himself from falling deeper and deeper into the orbit of this beautiful, complicated boy who has somehow become his entire world.

Your thumb continues its gentle exploration of Sieun's fingers, tracing the lines of his palm, the curve of his knuckles, memorizing the way his hand fits so perfectly against yours, and you can feel Sieun's fingers slowly relaxing under your touch, you can feel the tension draining out of him one small movement at a time. Your faces are so close now that you can see the tiny flecks of gold in Sieun's dark irises, the way his pupils have dilated, the warmth of his skin like a magnetic pull.

"Sieun," you whisper, breathless, your voice barely audible even to yourself, and you marvel at how just saying the other boy's name can make you feel so insanely alive and so terrified all at once.

You don't know exactly when it happened, but your face is now only a few centimeters from Sieun's, your breath hitting the smaller boy's lips, your eyes filled with adoration desperately searching for Sieun's gaze, trying to read what is hidden in those deep pools of darkness.

"...Y/N," Sieun replies, a trembling whisper that seems to vibrate through your entire body, and that single word, your name spoken in that soft and shaky voice, is more than enough to make your heart feel like it's going to burst right out of your chest.

I'm going to die here and now, you think, your brain short-circuiting as you try to process the situation, the proximity, the way Sieun is looking at you like you're the most precious thing in the world.

You don't know if you'll be able to stop yourself from just pouncing on Sieun and devouring him whole, from closing that last tiny distance between you and finally tasting what you've been dreaming about for weeks — but you know you can't just do that, just like last time at your place when you'd almost kissed him and had pulled out another technique. You must be patient, you must wait to be sure that Sieun wants this too, you must give him every opportunity to say no, to push you away, to stop this before it goes any further.

"Please, let me kiss you," you say, your voice rough and pleading, your forehead nearly touching Sieun's now, and your eyes are no better, full of desperate longing that you can't even attempt to hide anymore. "I need to kiss you, Sieun. I've been thinking about it for so long, and I can't—I can't keep pretending I don't want to. Please. Just... let me kiss you. Just once. Tell me if you don't want this, and I'll stop, I swear, I'll never bring it up again, but please—"

You leave the choice to Sieun — all the power in this situation rests in Sieun's hands, and you would never take that away from him, would never push if Sieun didn't want this as much as you do. You hold your breath, waiting, your heart hammering so loudly you're sure Sieun can hear it.

This situation is quite amusing, when you think that the two of you aren't even a couple, or haven't even confessed to each other, although it's now more than obvious that your hearts beat only for each other, that your souls are intertwined in a way that goes beyond labels and definitions. You should certainly have bared your soul first, expressed everything you feel, let Sieun know that you are more than serious about everything you want to do, should have said the words that have been lodged in your throat for so long — but that seems so much harder to do than to simply give in to your desires, to let your actions speak louder than your words.

If Sieun allows you, then you will kiss him and make him feel every little piece of your love for him, will pour everything you feel into that one moment, and then, after that, you'll offer him your heart with your own hands, will give Sieun every piece of yourself that you have left.

"I... hum..." Sieun hesitates, looking away, his gaze dropping to the floor as if he suddenly can't bear to meet your eyes anymore.

Oh.

Is he going to say no?

Your entire body goes cold at the simple thought, at the simple possibility that you've completely misread everything, that you've been projecting your own feelings onto Sieun and interpreting every sign wrong.

You purse your lips, your eyes searching for Sieun's, but the other boy won't meet your gaze, and it makes you stressed, makes your stomach twist with anxiety. Did you make a mistake? Did you go too fast? A flood of thoughts rushes through you at the same time, each one worse than the last — what if Sieun doesn't feel the same way, what if he was just being nice, what if he's about to reject you and everything will become awkward and ruined forever?

However, the words that leave Sieun's lips are enough to cool every part of your heart, traveling through your veins and all the way to your heart, freezing it completely until it shatters into a thousand pieces, leaving you breathless and broken in a way you'd never expected;

"I know about your tumor, Y/N."

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note ∘ ∘ ∘ im really sorry, the chapter was supposed to be WAY longer but honestly ... i think ending it right here is so much more exciting lol because HELLO?!?&? SIEUN KNOW ABOUT THE TUMOR!!! 😓😓😓 BUT its okay!!! because the next chapter is gonna have their first real kiss and i can already tell you right now that it's gonna be heated lol ... Reader has been waiting patiently for far too long and he is HUNGRY you see 🫪

“Spence,” you whispered, keeping your voice low, steady and quiet. “It’s me, we’re going home.” 

He turned his head slowly, his dark eyes wide, dilated and terrifyingly vacant. He looked right through you, his jaw working as if trying to form words, but all that came out was a faint, raspy whistle. He was still back in the dirt, digging his own grave under the watchful eye of Tobias Hankel. You didn’t push, just simply laid your palm flat against his chest, right over his heart, letting him feel the slow, steady rhythm of your own pulse until his erratic breathing began to sync with yours. 

When you finally got him back to the apartment late that night, he was a silent shadow. He sat on the edge of the mattress for two hours, staring at his muddy shoes, completely unable to summon the energy or the focus to untie the laces. You knelt on the floor between his knees, unlacing them for him, pulling off his damp socks, and rubbing his freezing feet. 

He’s home, you kept telling yourself, repeating the phrase like a mantra to drown out the sight of the bruises, the raw skin where his wrists had been tied. He’s back. The hard part is over.

You had no idea that the hard part was only beginning.

For the first four days, resting was impossible. Every time he drifted off, his brain betrayed him. His mind, usually his greatest asset, a vast library of millions of facts, had been scrambled by trauma and chemical intervention. 

You woke up at 2am on Friday to the bed shaking beneath you. Spencer was locked in the grip of a violent night terror. His long arms were flailing, hitting the wooden headboard with a hollow thud. 

“No, no, please-” he gasped, his voice thin and shill, begging a dead man. “For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life-”

“Spencer! Spence, wake up,” you carefully grabbed his wrists, anchoring his arms to the mattress so he wouldn’t hurt himself. 

When his eyes snapped open, he didn’t see you. He lunged forward, gasping for air as if he were drowning, his forehead thumping heavily against your shoulder. His entire body was drenched in a cold, sour sweat that smelled of terror.

“I can’t make it stop,” he wept into your neck, his fingers twisting so tightly into the fabric of your shirt that the seams strained against the thread. “It’s so loud, it won’t stop, I can't turn it off-”

“I know, baby. I know,” you murmured, smoothing his amp hair back, pressing your lips against his feverish temple. “I’ve got you, you’re safe.”

The quiet was what terrified him most. When the house went dark, his brain demanded the noise to stop. The memory of the dilaudid, the immediate, chemical wave of blissful, quiet blackness that had been forced into his veins, echoed loudly in his thoughts. It wasn’t just a drug, it was the only thing that had made the screaming stop. He hated himself for remembering it. He hated himself for wanting it.

The first time he did it on his own, the sun hadn’t even begun to break through the curtain of night. The physical wounds from Georgia were still raw, his ribs throbbed with every deep breath, and the skin around his wrists was ugly, swollen rings of purple and black where the shackles had dragged against his bones. But the physical pain was nothing compared to the noise inside his head. He lay on his back in the dark bedroom, listening to the soft, rhythmic sound of your breathing beside him. You were sleeping deeply for the first time in ninety-six hours, exhausted from holding him through three consecutive nights of screaming night terrors.

He turned his head slowly on the pillow to look at you. In the faint amber glow of the street lamp outside, your face was smooth, but tired. The dark shadows under your eyes were a direct consequence of his broken mind. 

I’m breaking her, the thought echoed in his head, sharp and cruel. His chest tightened, air catching in his throat in a sudden, sharp panic. The room suddenly felt microscopic, the air too thick to breathe. The memory of the cabin flooded back with terrifying, sensory clarity, the damp rotting, wood, the cold bite of the shovel, the smell of gunpowder, and the soft, fanatical whisper of Tobias standing over him. 

His hands began to shake. He needed the noise to stop. He needed his brain to shut down for five minutes. He slid his long legs out from beneath the comforter, moving with extreme care so that the mattress wouldn’t shift under your weight. He stayed frozen on the edge of the bed for a full thirty seconds, his breath held, waiting to see if you would stir. You shifted softly, turning onto your side away from him, but didn’t wake. Spencer slipped out of the room, his bare feet silent on the cold floorboards. He didn’t turn on the hallway light. He navigated by memory, feeling his way along the wall to the small spare room he used as an office. He walked straight to the heavy mahogany desk in the corner, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.  

His fingers trembled so violently he could barely grasp the heavy brass base of the desk lamp. He lifted it slowly, setting it aside without making a sound, and reached into the hollowed out wooden cavity beneath the felt lining. His fingers brushed against cold plastic and glass. 

He pulled out the small, clear pouch he had managed to slip into his trouser pocket before the paramedics loaded him into the ambulance in Georgia. Two vials of dilaudid, stolen straight from Hankel’s pocket, and a small pack of sterile syringes he had bought from an all night pharmacy on his way home from the BAU yesterday evening. He held the small glass vial up to the faint moonlight filtering through the blinds. The liquid inside was clear. A wave of intense, nauseating self loathing washed over him. I’m an FBI agent, his internal voice screamed at him, raw and disgusted. I am a federal officer. I know the neurochemistry of dependency. I know the exact physiological mechanism of opioid receptors. I am committing a crime in my own home.

He closed his eyes, a single tear slipping down his cheek. But then the phantom sound of the shovel hitting the dirt echoed in his ears, and the self loathing was instantly devoured by pure, unadulterated terror. He couldn’t do this sober. He couldn’t exist in his own skin. His hands steadied under the desperate surge of adrenaline, he popped the plastic cap off the syringe, and plunged the needle through the rubber stopper of the vial, pulling back the plunger until the barrel filled with a tiny, precise dose of clear fluid. He uncapped it, flicking the plastic side once with his index finger to dislodge a tiny air bubble. 

Spencer walked into the adjoining spare bathroom, shutting the door until the latch gave a soft click. He didn’t turn on the overhead lights, he only flipped the switch for the loud, rattling exhaust fan, using the droning mechanical hum as a shield against the quiet apartment. He pulled off his shirt, avoiding the mirror as the pale skin of his forearm became exposed. He pinched at his skin, his veins rising under the irritation before he hovered the needle over the faint blue line running along his inner elbow. 

Don't do it, a faint voice in his mind begged. Walk back to the bedroom. Wake her up. Tell her.

He swallowed thickly. She can’t fix this, the fear answered back. No one can.

Spencer squeezed his eyes shut and slid the needle beneath his skin, pressing the plunger down. 

The relief wasn’t immediate, but within fifteen seconds, the icy, suffocating knot in his chest began to loosen. The frantic, screaming thoughts slowed, their sharp, jagged edges rounding out into a soft, dull hum. The phantom smell of copper and rot dissolved, replaced by a warm, heavy sensation that bloomed behind his ribs and pooled into his limbs. His shoulders, which had been raised to his ears for four days, dropped. His head leaned back against the cool drywall of the bathroom, a slow, shuddering exhale slipping past his parted lips. 

For the first time since Georgia, the screaming inside his head stopped.

He sat in the dark for ten minutes, listening to the roar of the exhaust fan, wrapped in the artificial, quiet safety of the drug. When he finally pulled himself up, he carefully hid the syringe and vial inside an old shoe box at the back of the linen closet. He washed his hands with cold water, checked his pupils in the dark mirror, noticing how small they had become, and slipped his long sleeve shirt back over his head. 

He walked back down the hallway, slipping beneath the comforter beside you. When you felt the mattress shift, you murmured something incoherent in your sleep, reaching out blindly until your hand settled over his chest. Spencer lay completely still in the dark, his heart beating with a slow, heavy, chemically induced calm. He wrapped his hand over yours, pressing your palm against his chest, a fresh tear burning hot against his temple as he looked at your sleeping face. He had survived the cabin. But as he drifted off into a dreamless, artificial sleep, Spencer knew the lie had just begun.

By the end of the first week, Spencer returned to light duty at the BAU. He said he needed the structure, that sitting in the apartment was making him go insane. You wanted to believe him. But the small, intimate rhythm of your relationship was already beginning to fracture. Spencer had always been a tactile person with you. A man who loved resting his chin on your shoulder while you cooked, or holding your hand deep inside his coat pocket while walking through the city. Now, his touch was guarded, fleeting.

One morning, you walked into the bedroom while he was getting ready for work. He was standing near the closet, reaching for a clean shirt. Usually, he would change without a second thought, unbothered by his bare chest or his thin frame. But the moment the bedroom door pushed open, Spencer froze. His shoulders hitched, and he instantly wrapped the unbuttoned flannel shirt around himself, shielding his forearms. 

“Sorry,” you said, stopping in the doorway. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“I’m… I'm going to finish changing in the bathroom,” he said quickly, his voice tight. He didn’t look at you as he gathered his tie and belt from the bed. 

“Spence, it’s only me,” you said gently, dipping your head to try to catch his eyes that were locked onto the floor. “You don’t have to lock yourself in the bathroom to change.”

“I know who you are,” he snapped, a sudden defensive heat flashing in his eyes before he quickly softened it. “It’s just cold in here. There’s a draft.” He turned on his heel and shut the bathroom door, clicking the lock into place.

You stood alone in the bedroom, staring at the painted wood of the bathroom door. Drafty? The radiator was humming warm, and the windows were completely sealed.

Two days later, the weather warmed up. It was an unseasonable warm Saturday, nearly seventy degrees, and light poured into the living room. You were wearing a loose shirt and shorts, but Spencer emerged from the hallway wearing a thick, dark gray sweatshirt, the cuffs pulled down firmly over the backs of his hands.

“Spence, aren’t you hot?” you asked, looking up from your book as he poured himself a glass of water at the sink. “You want me to get one of your t-shirts?”

His hand tightened around the glass until his knuckles turned white. A spike of pure, icy panic pierced his chest. Underneath the heavy cotton sleeve of his left arm, were tiny, reddish-purple puncture marks, bruises blooming along his inner elbow. If you saw them, the illusion would shatter. You would look at him with disgust. You would see him for what he was, a weak, ruined addict. 

“I’m fine,” he said, his voice far sharper than your casual observation warranted. He set the glass down on the counter with a hard clack. “My body temperature hasn’t regulated well since Georgia. I’m cold. Is there something wrong with me wearing a sweater?”

The defensive bite in his voice startled you. You lowered your book, searching his face. He looked utterly exhausted, the dark circles under his eyes resembling deep bruises, his skin sallow and dry.

“No,” you said carefully, treading around his sudden spike of anger. “It’s not a problem, Spence. I was just asking.”

He didn’t apologise. He just grabbed his glass, turned his back on you and retreated into his study, shutting the door until only a thin crack of light remained.

The irritability grew like a sickness, spreading into every corner of your lives. Spencer was barely sleeping, but he wasn’t letting you witness his fear anymore. He spent hours locked in the spare room or the bathroom, claiming he was writing letters to his mother or reading through a backlog of cold cases for Hotch. One evening, you walked into the kitchen to start dinner. Spencer was sitting at the wooden table, an open forensic manual in front of him, his thumb rubbing frantically against his index finger, a nervous compulsion that had grown wildly erratic over the last few days. His left leg was bouncing so fast that the table was lightly vibrating. 

“Spencer?”

He didn’t answer. He was staring at the page, but his eyes weren’t moving across the lines. Sweat glistened his hairline despite the cool room. In his mind, his blood was screaming, it had been sixteen hours since his last fix. The withdrawal was creeping in, a deep, visceral ache in his long bones, a subtle wave of nausea settling in the pit of his stomach, and a frantic, agonising itch under his skin that no amount of scratching could reach. He needed to get to the bathroom. He needed you to leave the room so he could retrieve the bag. If she sees you she’ll know, if she knows she’ll leave.

“Spencer?” You placed a warm, gentle hand on his shoulder. He reacted as if you had burned him with a hot iron. He flinched violently, his arm sweeping across the table and knocking his ceramic mug off the edge. It shattered against the hardwood, dark coffee splashing across the rug and his shoes.

“Don’t touch me!” he shouted, springing out of his chair. His face was pale, his eyes wide and bloodshot, filled with a volatile mix of rage and terror.

You took a step back, your hands coming up defensively. 

“Why do you keep doing that?!” he yelled, his chest heaving as he stared at the mess on the floor, then up at you. “Why do you keep sneaking up on me? Can I just have five minutes of peace in my own home without you smothering me?”

“I- I wasn’t sneaking up on you,” you said, your voice trembling as tears stung the back of your eyes. “I was just going to ask what you wanted for dinner.”

“I don’t want dinner! I don’t want anything!” he yelled, his voice cracking with a painful, strained desperation. “You’re constantly hovering, you look at me like I'm broken, like I'm some pathetic thing you have to fix!”

“I-... I’m sorry, I just wanted to help.” you said, swallowing thickly as the tears finally spilled over your cheeks. “I don’t know what to do when you push me away… I just want to help because I love you.” 

Spencer froze, the raw pain in your voice seemed to punch right through the thick, foggy wall of his irritability. He looked at your wet cheeks, at the shattered ceramic on the floor, and for a fraction of a second, Spencer, your Spencer, peeked through, horrified by his own cruelty. He wanted to fall to his knees and beg for your forgiveness. He wanted to tell you everything, that he was drowning, that he couldn’t control it anymore. But the shame was too heavy. She’ll leave you. She’ll see you for the pathetic, addict you are. She won’t love you anymore.

His jaw hardened, the shield went back up. 

“I have work to do,” he said quietly, his voice completely flat. He stepped over the broken mug, walked straight to the bathroom, and clicked the lock shut. The silence he left behind was deafening. You stood motionless over the pieces of the ceramic, dark coffee soaking into the hem of your socks. Your heart was pounding an erratic, painful rhythm against your ribs. The harshness of his words still hung in the heavy air, echoing off the walls. 

The bite in his tone had cut straight through you, but it was the hollow, terrified look in his bloodshot eyes right before he slammed the door that made your stomach churn with a sickening, heavy dread. You crouched to the cold floor, blindly picking up the jagged shards of porcelain, tears dripping from your chin onto the wet rug. You couldn’t breathe, you couldn’t think, the apartment felt too small, too suffocating, trapped in the shadow of a man who was slipping through your fingers like sand. You needed an anchor. 

Abandoning the broken mug, you wiped your hands on your jeans and grabbed your phone from the counter. You didn’t even have to look at the screen as your thumb hit speed dial number two. It rang twice before the line picked up, instantly filling your ear with bright, chaotic energy. 

“Speak, oh noble seeker of truth and light!” Penelope’s voice chirped through the speaker, accompanied by the rapid fire clicking of a keyboard in the background. “You’ve reached the oracle of Quantico. What magical favours do you require of your favourite tech goddess today?”

Hearing her voice, so warm, so blissfully familiar, was the final straw. A choked, shuddering sob escaped your throat. 

“Hey… hey sweet girl, what’s wrong?” her tone shifted seamlessly from theatrical to concern. The background noise vanished as she pushed her chair back from her desk. “Are you okay? Did something happen?”

“Pen,” you whispered, pressing your free hand against your forehead as you leaned back against the kitchen cabinets. “I… I don’t know what to do.”

Penelope had been your best friend long before Spencer walked into your life. You two had met at a local art gallery years ago, you had been admiring an obscure canvas, and Penelope had walked right up to you to compliment your boots. From that afternoon on, you were inseparable. It was actually at one of Penelope’s legendary, brightly decorated apartment dinner parties that she had practically shoved a shy, nervous, vest-wearing profiler into your path, whispering in your ear, "He's a genius, he's terrible at small talk, and he's completely adorable. Talk to him.”

Now, sitting on your kitchen floor, you felt light years away from that happy night. “Take a breath, mama,” Penelope said softly, her voice a lifeline over the receiver. “Where are you? Are you at home?”

“Yeah,” you wiped your cheek with the back of your sleeve, trying to steady your breathing. “Yeah, I’m on the kitchen floor.”

“Is Spencer there?” 

You swallowed hard, looking down the dark hallway toward the locked bathroom door. The faint, muffled hum of the exhaust fan was barely audible. “He’s… he’s locked himself in the bathroom,” you admitted, your voice dropping to a fragile whisper. “Pen, he just… he just screamed at me. I was just trying to ask him what he wanted for dinner, and he flinched like I was going to hit him or something. Broke a cup, he just snapped. Said I was smothering him, that I… that I treat him like he’s pathetic.”

A soft, mournful sigh came from Penelope’s end of the line. You could picture her in her dark, basement office, surrounded by her colourful plushies and blinking monitors, her face lined with deep worry. “Oh honey…” she murmured gently. “He doesn’t mean it. You know he doesn’t mean it, right?”

“I know, but it’s… it’s getting worse, Pen,” you choked out, pulling your knees to your chest. “It’s not just the nightmares anymore. He won’t let me touch him. He won't change his clothes if I’m in the room, he’s always cold, he wears these huge sweatshirts even when the apartment is warm, he barely eats and he’s just… he’s just so angry. He locks himself in the spare room all day, and every time I try to check on him or bring him tea or food, he shuts down or explodes.” 

You took a ragged breath, voicing the deep, terrifying thought that had been haunting you for weeks. “I feel like I’m losing him. I feel like the guy that came back is just a… a ghost holding a grudge at me for being alive… I don’t know.”

“Listen to me,” Penelope said, her tone suddenly fierce, firm, and ringing with absolute certainty. “Listen to me right now. Spencer Reid adores the very ground you walk on. He has loved you from the second he fumbled through his third fact about ancient greek pottery at my dinner table three years ago. That boy carries the sun in his eyes whenever you enter a room.” She paused, her voice softening into something aching and heavy. “He’s in so much pain, honey. What that monster did to him… We almost lost him. We don’t know how to handle it either. He hides behind his desk at work, buries himself in files. He’s terrified of breaking, and he’s terrified of dragging you down with him.”

“I’d go down with him in a heartbeat,” you sobbed softly into the phone. “I just want to hold him.”

“I know,” Penelope whispered. “I know, sweetie. You just have to make sure he knows you’re standing on the other side of that door when he’s ready to open it. You are the strongest person I know, and you are the best thing that ever happened to him. Don’t give up on him.”

You closed your eyes, letting her words settle into your aching chest. Hearing Penelope, who loved Spencer like a brother, but loved you first, giving words to the invisible war in your home anchored you back to reality. “I would never,” you murmured, wiping the last of the wet tracks from your face. 

“I know,” Penelope said, a tiny, warm smile evident in her tone. “Do you want me to come over? I can bring over three tubs of cookie dough, a bottle of wine and we can sit on the balcony while he cools off?”

You let out a small, wet laugh, the first genuine sound of relief you’d made in weeks. “No, it’s okay. I need to clean up before he comes out.”

“Okay. But you call me if you need anything, alright? Night or day. I mean it. I will hack the traffic lights and be at your front door in four minutes flat.”

“I know you will,” you said softly. “Thanks, Pen. I love you.”

“I love you too, mama. Hang in there.”

The line clicked off. You sat in the quiet kitchen for a moment longer, holding the warm phone against your chest. The dread hadn’t magically vanished, and the shattered pieces of ceramic were still waiting on the floor. But the suffocating fog in your mind had cleared just enough for you to stand up. You grabbed a paper towel, knelt down, and began to carefully pick up the broken pieces of the mug, completely unaware that down the dark hallway, behind the locked bathroom door, Spencer was sitting on the cold tile floor with a belt between his teeth, drowning in a secret that was about to change anything.

The nightmare space had morphed into something far more dangerous. It was no longer just the immediate memory of Georgia, the dirt, the shovel, Tobias’s frantic, weeping eyes. It was a hallucinatory nightmare woven from his guilt, a secret habit, and his bone deep fear of you finding out. It hit him on a Sunday night, just after midnight. 

Spencer was locked in a sleep so deep it resembled a coma, the heavy, artificial stupor of a dose taken too late in the evening. Beside him, you were lying awake, watching the faint rise and fall of his ribs, when his breathing abruptly cut off. 

He was standing in the middle of your bedroom, but the walls were made of damp, unfinished plywood. The smell of copper and earth was suffocating. He was holding a glass vial of Dilaudid in his hand, but the liquid inside was dark, almost black. He turned around to find you standing in the doorway. 

You weren’t crying. You weren’t reaching for him. Your face was cold, blank, and entirely devoid of love. “Look at you,” you said, your voice echoing off the cheap wood, landing distorted in his ears. “Look at what you are.”

He tried to hide his arms, but his hands wouldn’t obey him. He tried to speak, to offer a probability statistic on recovery rates, to explain the neuropathology of trauma, but his tongue was heavy and numb. You reached into your coat pocket, pulled out the leather belt and the discarded syringes, and dropped them at his feet.

“You didn’t survive,” you said, stepping backward into the black void outside the door. “Tobias killed you in that cabin, Spencer. You just brought the body home to me.”

“No! Wait! Please!” he screamed, lunging for the doorway, but the floor beneath his feet gave way, collapsing into a shallow grave of loose, cold dirt.

Spencer tore out of the dream with a strangled, animalistic scream. His body launched backward on the mattress, his head cracking hard against the wooden headboard with a sickening thump. He kicked his legs wildly out from underneath the comforter, scrambling off the side of the bed so fast he tangled his ankles in the sheets and crashed onto the floor.

“Spencer!” you gasped, throwing the covers off and crawling over to his side of the bed. “Spence, stop!”

He was backed into the corner between the nightstand and the wall, hyperventilating in loud, raspy hitches. His chest was heaving so violently his ribs looked sharp beneath his shirt. His eyes were wide, completely unseeing, moving wildly around the room as if he didn’t know where he was.

“Don’t… don't touch them! Don’t look at them!” he yelled, his voice cracking as he pulled his long sleeves down past his knuckles, burning his arms against his stomach. He was shivering so hard that his teeth clicked together. “Get away from me! Please, just get away from me!”

“Spence…” you said, kneeling a foot away, keeping your hands open, visible and trembling in the ambient light of the streetlamp outside. “You’re home, you hit your head on the headboard, you had a nightmare.”

He pressed his back so hard into the drywall that something cracked. His eyes darted frantically from your face, to your hands, then across the bedroom, searching for the plywood walls, searching for the grave. “You… you said…” he stammered, his breath catching in a dry, painful heave. “You said I died there.”

“I didn’t say anything, honey. I was sleeping right next to you,” you murmured softly, slowly inching forward on your knees. “You’re alive, you’re right here, look.” You reached forward slowly, your fingers lightly brushing his knee. 

The illusion shattered, leaving behind a cold, hollow reality. Spencer stared at you, realisation washing over him like ice water, he hadn’t been confronted, he hadn’t been caught, but he had just humiliated himself in front of you all over again. An agonising wave of panic crashed over him. His head was throbbing from the impact with the headboard, his blood was racing, and the phantom taste of dirt was thick on his tongue. He needed the chemical quiet. He needed to get to the bathroom right now, to wash the taste out of his mouth before his mind split completely in half. 

“I… I have to…” he choked out, pushing himself up off the floor using the nightstand for support. His knees wobbled dangerously under his weight. 

“Spencer, let me see your head,” you begged, standing up and reaching out to touch the back of his scalp where the thud had echoed. “You hit it really hard-”

“I’m fine!” he shouted, flinching violently away from your outstretched hand, his face twisting into that sharp, bitter mask of anger he had been wearing for weeks. “It’s fine, just stop touching me!”

He brushed past you, sprinting down the hall. The bathroom door slammed shut with a deafening rattle, followed immediately by the harsh click of the lock, the roar of the exhaust fan, and the rushing sound of the tap running at full blast. 

You stood in the dark bedroom, holding your own hand, tears of sheer exhaustion and terror burning behind your eyes. You listened to the water running through the pipes, feeling the rift between you stretch so wide it felt like standing on the edge of a canyon. 

By the end of the third week, you lived together like two strangers occupying the same lease. He came home late, claiming he was stuck writing field reports at the office. But when you called Penelope late one afternoon, she mentioned that he had packed up his messenger bag, and left hours ago. He stopped eating meals with you. Food sat cold on his plate until you quietly scraped it into the trash. When he sat on the couch beside you, he kept a strict six inches of empty space between your shoulders. You lay awake at night, tormented by your own thoughts. Did I push him too far? Is looking at me somehow a reminder of the night he was taken? Or is he slipping into a depression that I’m entirely unequipped to handle?

Late afternoon, Friday, you came home early from work and found the apartment dark. 

“Spencer?” you called out, setting your keys down. No answer.

You walked down the dim hallway, noticing the faint glow of yellow light beneath the bathroom door. The fan was running on high, a loud, droning white noise. You knocked softly. “Spencer? You okay?”

The fan abruptly cut off. A heavy, suffocating silence followed, then the frantic sound of metal hitting the porcelain sink. “I’m fine!” his voice echoed through the wood, sounding muffled, strained, and oddly breathless. “Just… taking a shower.”

“Do you want me to save you some pasta?”

“No. No, I’m not hungry. Just… give me a few minutes, please.”

You stood on the outside of the door, resting your palm against the cool wood. You could hear his heavy, ragged breathing on the other side. Every instinct in your body screamed that something was terribly wrong, but you were terrified that if you forced the door, he would snap completely and walk out forever. 

“Okay,” you said shakily. “I’m in the living room.”

When he finally emerged forty minutes later, his skin was flushed, his hair damp, but his eyes were unnaturally heavy. The sharp, defensive edge in his posture was replaced by a loose apathy. He drifted past you, laying down on the couch and staring at the wall until he fell into a deep, unnaturally silent sleep.

The lie shattered at 3:14am the next week. 

You woke up to an unnerving, absolute quiet. For weeks, the bedroom had been filled with his restless shifting or heavy breathing. Tonight, the mattress beside you was cold and empty. You sat up, shivering in the cool air. The bathroom door was slightly ajar, spilling a thin line of yellow light across the dark hallway runner. Your heart beat a slow, heavy rhythm as you slid out of bed, your bare feet making no sound on the floorboards as you walked toward the light. As you drew closer, you heard a faint, metallic clink against the sink, followed by a long, shuddering exhale. 

Usually, you would have knocked. Usually, you would have respected the wall he had built. But the overwhelming, heavy dread was back, pressing down on your chest, the instinct so loud it drowned out your fear of his anger. You gently turned the brass knob. It wasn’t locked. In his withdrawal ridden haze, he had forgotten the latch. The door swung open silently.

The scene inside was illuminated by the harsh yellow fluorescent bulb above the mirror. 

Spencer was sitting on the freezing tile floor, his back jammed hard against the bathtub. His long sleeved shirt had been discarded in a crumpled heap near the sink. His pale frame looked dangerously thin, the bones of his spine sticking through his skin as he leaned over. Wrapped tightly around his left bicep was a dark leather belt, held taut between his teeth. His skin was a roadmap of agony. Blue, yellow and purple bruises dotted the inside of his elbows, tailing down his forearms in a terrifying timeline of torture. His hands were shaking so violently, he could barely hold the small, plastic syringe. On the floor beside him lay a tiny glass vial labeled Dilaudid, its rubber stopper punctured multiple times. 

In his mind, everything had narrowed down to the tip of that needle. The sweat was cold on his skin, his muscles aching, his brain screaming for relief. He didn’t care about the risk anymore, he just needed the noise to stop. He raised his hand, lining the point of the needle up with the blue vein near his elbow-

“Spencer?” The word escaped your mouth as a breathy question, a fragile, devastating sound. 

He froze. The belt slipped from his teeth, slapping loudly against the tile. His eyes, wide and bloodshot, hazy with panic, snapped up to meet yours. For three endless seconds, neither of you moved. The world narrowed to the small bathroom, the smell of rubbing alcohol, and the sharp glint of the needle in his hand.

“N-no,” Spencer whispered. 

The syringe slipped from his trembling fingers, landing on the bathmat silently. He scrambled backwards, his long legs kicking out as he pressed his spine harshly into the porcelain of the tub, trying desperately to cover his arms, to pull his knees up, to hide the physical proof of his lies. 

“No, no, please… please don’t…” he sobbed, his voice breaking into a terrible, desperate sob. He pulled his knees to his chest, the jagged line of his thin elbows sticking out, trembling with fear. “Don’t look at me… God, please, don’t look at me…”

The shame radiating off him was a tangible, crushing weight in the room. You swallowed thickly, a wave of profound, devastating grief washed over you, breaking the dam in your own chest. He hadn’t become cruel, or malicious. He was terrified, a broken human being drowning in a hell he couldn’t escape from. Slowly, you sank to your knees on the cold tile, right in front of him. 

“Spence…” you whispered, tears finally streaming down your cheeks. 

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he sobbed into his hands, refusing to uncover his face, his whole body shaking. “I tried… I tried to stop, I swear I tried…”

“Spence…” you repeated softly as you carefully reached out and pulled his trembling wrists away from his face. He resisted, trying to hide his scarred arms from your view, but you held tight, forcing them down by his sides. 

You reached over, picked up the syringe and vial, and placed them high up on the counter out of his reach. Then, you moved into his space, sliding onto the floor between his legs, wrapping your arms around his neck and pulling his chest against yours. He stiffened, completely overwhelmed by the warmth, by the total absence of the punishment he believed he deserved. He hovered in your arms for a fraction of a second before your soft voice completely shattered him. 

“It’s okay.”

That was all it took for him to collapse into you, burying his face into the cook of your neck, his fingers twisting into the back of your shirt with a terrifying, desperate strength. He sobbed until he couldn’t breathe, his tears soaking through your shirt and into your skin, his body trembling against yours as the withdrawal and the shame hit him all at once. “I couldn’t stop it,” he choked out, the words torn out of his throat like broken glass. 

“I know,” you murmured into his hair, holding him as tight as you could, rocking him slowly on the bathroom floor. “It’s not your fault, Spence.”

“I ruined everything,” he wept. “You’re going to leave me-”

“Who said that?” you asked firmly, pulling back just enough to frame his pale, wet face in your hands. You looked directly into his dark, terrified eyes, letting him see the fierce devotion in your own. “I love you, Spence. I love you no matter what. I’m not going anywhere. We are going to get through this. Together.”

Spencer stared at you, his chest heaving, searching your face for any trace of disgust. When he found none, a long, shuddering breath escaped his lips, and he leaned his forehead against yours, his hands coming up to clutch at your wrists. “I need help.” He whispered, raw and broken.

“I’m here,” you promised, kissing cracked, dry lips softly, lingering for only a moment before pulling back to hold him tight against your chest as the dark night outside finally began to fade into the pale light of morning. “Always.”

The physical detox was an agonising, cruel reality. Once the initial shock wore off and sunrise filled the apartment, you helped Spencer off the bathroom floor. He couldn’t stand on his own, his long limbs were loose, trembling, and devoid of strength. You wrapped his arm around your shoulders, taking his weight, and guided him into the bedroom. You didn’t leave his side. You called in sick for the week, offering no details, and cleared the schedule completely. 

The physical withdrawal slammed into him with terrifying force. Without the drug in his system, Spencer’s nerves fired rapidly, sending phantom pain screaming through his bones. He lay in the center of the bed, curled into a tight, defensive ball. Sweat drenched his shirt, followed by severe, violent chills that made his teeth chatter so hard that it sounded like glass breaking. “It hurts,” he groaned, his voice raspy, his face buried in the pillow. 

“I know, baby. I know,” you hummed, sitting beside him with a basin of warm water and a soft washcloth. You gently peeled his shirt from his skin, and for the first time, he didn’t try to hide his arms. The bruises were raw and ugly in the daylight, but you didn’t flinch. You gently wiped the sweat from his neck, his collarbones and down the inside of his bruised forearms, your touch light and tender. Every time a cramp seized his muscles, making him cry out in breathless frustration, you lay his head in your lap, letting him squeeze your hand until his knuckles turned white. When the nausea hit, you held his hair back over a bucket, rubbing his trembling spine, whispering soft reassurances into his ear between dry heaves. 

“Statistically,” he murmured during a quiet lull at 3am one night, his head resting heavily on your thigh, his eyes bloodshot and hollow, “the relapse rate for opioid dependency after physical withdrawal alone is over eighty percent.”

“Well we aren’t just doing physical withdrawal,” you hummed, running your fingers through his soft, clean hair, untangling the knots. “I’ll call a therapist in the morning, we’ll look into support. And you have me.” 

“I lied to you for weeks,” he whispered, a tear slipping from the corner of his eyes, cutting through the red blotches on his cheek. “I yelled at you, threw things… I made you cry…”

You leaned down to press a gentle kiss against his damp forehead. “I know,” you replied softly, “you were sick, Spence. It’s okay, you didn’t mean it.” 

He closed his eyes, his pale fingers tightening around your hand, letting your calm voice anchor him against the pain.

Over the next two weeks, the apartment shifted back into a home. The process wasn’t instant, or easy. You worked together to sweep the apartment, clearing out every hidden reminder. Spencer sat on the edge of the bed, watching with a heavy gaze as you emptied his hollowed out desk lamp, checking the back of books and the bottoms of drawers. He handed you a final, unopened vial he had stashed inside a hollowed out copy of War and Peace, his hand shaking, but his eyes clear. You threw it all away together. 

You established a new routine, one built on transparency and gentle grace. He began seeing a specialised therapist outside the Bureau, someone who understood both severe trauma and chemical dependency. Hotch was brought into the loop discreetly, granting Spencer extended medical leave to focus on his health without the pressure of active cases dragging him down. 

Slowly, the real Spencer began to float back to the surface. On a warm, sunny afternoon three weeks after that night on the bathroom floor, you were sitting on the couch, reading a book. The door to the bedroom opened, and Spencer stepped out into the living room. He was wearing a simple, short sleeved, blue t-shirt. 

He paused in the hallway, his posture slightly tentative, his hands fidgeting at his sides. The bruises on his inner elbows had faded from dark purple to yellow shadows. He looked pale, and was still noticeably thin, but the volatile, dark haze in his eyes was gone, replaced by the familiar warmth you had missed. You set your book down, a soft smile spreading across your face. “Hey.”

“Hey,” he said softly. He walked across the room, his movements unhurried. He didn’t keep a six inch distance anymore. He lowered himself down onto the couch right beside you, sliding his long frame down until his head rested gently against your shoulder, his long legs stretching across to the coffee table.

You rested your cheek against his soft hair as he let out a long, peaceful sigh, his fingers reaching out to lace securely through yours. “Thank you,” he murmured into the quiet room, his thumb tracing soft circles over the back of your hand. 

“Ugh, yes I am, hanging out with my totally awesome self! Why the fuck did you even follow me here?” Your Adrian snapped, like he was talking to their mother.

Why was he speaking so rudely to you? The small twitch of your bottom lip showed it hurt to be treated poorly, despite the pretty smile you quickly plastered over the top.

“Just making sure you're safe. Wow, you really do look like twins!” You gasped, still trying to wrap your head around all of this inter-dimensional travel.

“Obviously, he’s alternate me.” Your Adrian rolled his eyes at you, folding his arms.

“H-hi.” Other Adrian waved, feeling stupider by the second, more than he ever had before when your gorgeous sharp eyes swept over him.

“Hey,” You smiled introducing yourself, holstering your firearm.

Nice, a PSA Dagger model pistol with custom scope, red accents and a tactical harness belt.

Very smart choice.

Your name was like honey, sweet and syrupy, eyes hypnotic, smile intoxicating. Drenched in your beauty, Adrian felt caught in amber, suspended in time, just for the single purpose of admiring you in this very moment.

Had he known you his whole life?

It certainly seemed that way, like an invisible thread bound you to him, stringing Adrian along to this very moment.

Eventually he caught up to the speed that you were awaiting a reply and was able to squeak out, “I'm Adrian…”

Putting out a hand for you to shake, his other self cruelly swatted it away and pulled him down on the couch.

He stared back at your outstretched hand, quickly relinquished to settle back at your hip, poised and prepared for anything.

God your hands…they were finely manicured, blood red paint, sharp and deadly, calloused from wrapping around the pistol at your muscular yet plush looking hips.

What would they feel like gripped around his neck? Squeezing tight, or raking down his chest, maybe a little gentler when grasping his thick…

“Pfft duh she already knows that!” Adrian laughed wildly, breaking his other-self’s lewd train of thought, “don't mind her, let's keep up our things we have in common game!”

Earth-X Adrian tried not to glare in return, readjusting his gold-rimmed glasses with a slight pout.

“Sounds like fun, but we might not have much time…” You began to say and Adrian scowled that you were a party pooper.

“Okay just a little more, but then we need to figure things out–” You relented.

“Is your favorite Pokemon Infernape?” Adrian asked, eyes gleaming with anticipation.

“Uh duh yes!” Other Adrian grinned just as widely.

"Mines Flareon.” You said softly with a small wince, as if anticipating you weren't to get involved.

"Literally nobody cares, right other me?” Adrian scoffed, but was ignored.

“Flareon is cool, um if it's in your universe do you also play magic the gathering?” He asked you tentatively, feeling like a total moron as soon as the question left his lips.

But you smiled, no sense of recoiling, a calm washed over him lost in the trance of your eyes.

“Yeah we have MTG, it's rad!” Adrian replied, blocking other his view of your gorgeous face with their big dumb goofy head.

"I usually go with a control deck.” You offered with a shy smile, still standoffish.

“Of course you would, total control freak agent of the fun police.” Adrian huffed petulantly, annoyed to have his alternate self bonding time cut short.

At that your face fell slightly, the mask dropping, and Earth-X Adrian hated his other self for it. What was his damage?

Then he realised suddenly, jumping up and patting the leather couch down, “Wait a second I'm being super rude, you should have a seat, I'll stand!”

“You will?” Adrian looked at himself like he was an alien. What was his damage?

“Oh uh thanks, I'm still a little shaky from the whole other universe thing to be honest.” You admitted, sitting down with a small reserved laugh.

Fuck.

How did he make you laugh like that again? Could he get you to laugh louder? Was there something other him knew to get you to giggle? Surely he did all the time to hear that melodious sound.

But instead his other self only looked disgruntled at having to sit next to you, “What a frigging baby.” He muttered.

Earth-X Adrian ground his teeth watching on, why the hell was this other him not feeling grateful for getting to sit next to you?

“Can I get you a drink? Something to eat?” He hastily offered, heading over towards the mini fridge.

But your hand stopped him. Gripping gently at his elbow.

He stared down at the motion transfixed and you quickly recoiled, thinking it was perturbation.

How wrong you truly were.

“No thanks, hey did you know there is a key difference between you two?” You mused with a cat-like grin.

"What is it?” They asked at the same time, making you giggle.

"This Adrian has gold-rimmed glasses. My Adrian has silver-rimmed glasses.” You explained, giddy to have noticed well before either of the Adrians had.

My Adrian.

He bit down on his lip at that, why couldn't that be him? He wanted to be your Adrian.

Not the other Adrian.

It was a dark thought that webbed away in the back of his mind, watching you closely.

You were like a black widow spider in every sense of the word, beautiful and deadly, a trained killer for an agency, dark eyes gracing him, everything was a potential threat.

He loved how practical you were, your outfit a simple black combat suit with minimal red accents, yet a corded jacket over the top.

It made for a perfect disguise, you had to know where to look for the bullet proof padding and cladding.

Not that you needed any padding…

Every look, glance, stare, gaze, that you gave other him, cocooning that undeserving insect into your fine silk web should be his.

He wanted you to devour him in those eyes, with your rows of perfect teeth when they smiled.

Bite down into his shoulder, jaw, claw at his back, anything to leave a mark that was yours.

“Huh, I guess you're right.” Your Adrian frowned, squinting at the glasses, they were the same make but gold where his were silver plated.

“You're so smart.” Earth-X Adrian beamed, leaning on the couch arm at your side. Inching ever closer, hoping you wouldn't mind the slight contact of his knee touching yours.

You didn't seem to, even somewhat relaxing into it idly.

“Thanks, I have to say I do like the gold. Also, is your hair maybe a little longer? You also seem a tad broader.”

Adrian went to answer you, mouth dry at the thought of you preferring his frames, differentiating and hopefully categorizing him into a shiny box.

He was like a new and improved action figure, ready to be played with. But before he could get a word in edge wise, lame old version him interjected.

"Dude is your best friend Peacemaker too?” Adrian asked next, the question whipping a tension in the air as the other him visibly clenched full-body at the mention of that name.

“Peacemaker? Best friend? Fuck that guy he's my arch enemy!” He snapped, glancing over at you he saw a shocked look whisk across your lovely face for a moment.

“Woah, how come?” Adrian couldn't believe it, a world where he hated Peacemaker? That just didn't seem possible.

"Because he's a piece of shit Nazi like his dad White Dragon, his brother Captain Triumph and my stupid dipshit brother Gut who went off and joined them.” Other Adrian spat back, seething at seeing himself upset at the thought.

He'd been dedicating his entire life to taking out that asshole. The thought of being friends with him in any universe made his blood boil.

“Nazis?” Adrian and you asked, alarm bells ringing off.

"Yeah duh, they rule the world ever since they won World War II?” He scoffed, watching both you and Adrian turn to one another.

“Holy shit.” You whispered, face paling as you realised the severity of time slipping away with your friends split up.

“It's not like that in your universe?” Adrian asked, tilting his head in confusion. “That's why I became Vigilante to try and stop this injustice and turmoil going on in the world.”

“Nah, but we still have terrible crimes like graffiti, it's like dude that's not yours to draw on!” Your Adrian replied with a lazy stretch and yawn.

"No, they lost the war. We need to go find our friends now!” You grabbed both Adrian's by the wrist and led them up the stairs, not allowing for any more self-bonding time to occur.

Racing around the neighborhood, you were on full alert for tracking down your friends, and trying to keep out of view.

Which was difficult with two Vigilantes jumping from bush to bush in a Looney Tunes fashion.

You were relieved to find Ads and Rip had made a safe house, playing Scrobble together, leaving behind a pool full of corpses.

“Aw man, I missed something dope again.” One of the Vigilantes whined, the other nodding with an identical whine as they checked over the pool.

“Damn you two are eerily identical.” Adebayo noted as you all approached the Smith mansion.

"Maybe we could differentiate them by calling our Adrian and the other one Bdrian?” Rip snickered and you caught one of them tense at that, fist balled.

Earth-X Adrian frowned, livid behind his visor at the prospect of being called Bdrian.

Again there it was, he was the other one.

“No, he's a person. We call him Adrian just the same as our Adrian.” You vetoed the idea instantly.

“But it's confusing, who cares.” Rip argued petulantly.

“I care, we don't just other people. Haven't you seen what happens when you start doing that enough here?” You snapped and Rip registered your fair point with a begrudging nod.

“I concede, and that was not my intention.” Rip offered to Adrian, one who shrugged, the other nodded.

"What about Vig 1 and Vig 2?” Your Adrian suggested.

“I'd obviously be number 1.” Other Adrian replied. But with the visors it was actually difficult to tell which one said what to be honest.

“Seeing as your visors are the same but not the glasses, how about Gold Adrian and Silver Adrian?” You joked.

Gold.

Gold trumped silver.

It was ridiculous but that made Adrian so fucking happy inside to be ranked above silver Adrian.

“Is she uh, is there anything like you know between you two?” He fiddled with his combat knife anxiously between thumb and index finger.

“Between us?” Adrian frowned at himself, why was he acting so…weird? He never had that strange expression on his face. “Us who? Adebayo is my third best friend and Judomaster is a little thorn in my ass.”

“No,” Earth-X Adrian shook his head frustrated at himself, leaning over to whisper, “her.” He secretively pointed directly at you when he ensured your back was turned.

“Her?” Adrian asked incredulously, much too loud but thankfully you didn't seem to overhear, busy formulating a plan with Adebayo and Judomaster.

Nodding in reply baffled Adrian, what the heck was wrong with this other him?

“What about her?” He scrunched up his nose at himself, trying to figure out what the heck other Adrian was going on about.

You were just another ARGUS stooge in his opinion, sure a friend and an 11th Street Kid, but he held you in the same regard as he did Harcourt.

Stern, mean and down right boring, never letting him use the chainsaw on missions.

“Is she your girlfriend?” He whispered, urging himself to be a little quieter with a shushing gesture.

"Ugh! Yuck no she is definitely not.” Adrian felt like retching at the very thought.

“Yuck?” Earth-X Adrian frowned at that.

What was there to consider being even remotely gross about you?

The way you looked at him, laughed and smiled, pierced his heart over and over.

Desirous arrows barbed and filled with a passion laced poison, the only antidote in order was throwing himself at your sweet mercy.

Hands and knees he'd beg on, maybe you'd be so kind to even give him the heel of your boot?

Did his other self really not feel or think the same way about you? Feel the magnetism drawing him to you?

“Adrians? We need to get going.” You gently called out to them both.

“Yeah yeah I know.” Adrian rolled his eyes behind the red visor, marching over.

The audacity of his bitch-ass alternate self! He had to let you know that he wasn't like this other rude Adrian too.

“Of course, let's get to it!” Earth-X Adrian replied cheerfully and raced to be at your side.

“Anything you need.” He'd be your good reliable boy if you'd let him.

You looked taken aback by that change in demeanor, cheeks settling into a nice shade that he wanted to replicate and see if it would deepen.

“How can I help?” He asked, taking the opportunity to join the huddle at your side, brushing shoulders.

“Yeah, we can totally help out rescuing John!” Your Adrian joined in as well, elbowing past to stand right in between the two of you.

“Well, we need a plan to get into the house.” You explained, Adebayo nodding and giving you a side-eye that read what the hell is up with those two weirdos?

You responded with a slight head tilt that read I have no literally no idea.

“I can easily scale the balcony.” Other Vigilante suggested taking the lead, enjoying the impressed look on your face.

Your Vigilante looked a little startled at the response, “I can?”

Then he straightened up a bit, puffing out his chest, “I mean duh I totally can. No problem.” “Is Other you in better shape?” You teased, but those words drove a competitive edge into Adrian's loins.

“Definitely.” He replied sharply, your Adrian sputtering that it wasn't the case at all.

“Maybe you'd like to compare sometime?” The words slipped out of his mouth before he could stop them, but the adorably startled expression on your face left him without any regrets.

Then the two Adrians competitively scaled the mansion wall to the kitchen balcony, not being rather subtle with their squabbling.

“...did that other Adrian just flirt with you?” Adebayo couldn't let that one lie down without an interrogation.

“I have no idea…” You replied, trying to shake the thought away.

“This is all super weird, I can't wait to leave this place.” In your own universe Adrian had made it painfully clear to you that he didn't consider you a romantic candidate.

“Agreed girl.” Rip nodded, then thoughtfully gazed up at the two clambering morons.

“Which one is on the left? Because that Adrian has a slightly more caked-up ass.” You and Adebayo made a similar assessment with a considered hum.

“This fucking little guy…” Your Adrian, on the right, rolled his eyes.

“I think I like him.” Other Adrian chuckled, offering hand down to help pull you up.

“Upsie daisies!” He chirped, holding you longer than was necessary, green eyes intense behind the visor.

"T-thanks.” You couldn't help but be breath taken by the simple gesture.

It was so out of character, your Adrian was already lockpicking the door, not caring to help anyone else up. His one mission was to find his BFF Chris and save him.

Bursting through into the place, two Adrians were better than one at dispatching White Dragon it seemed, brutally murdering him and the cops when they showed up.

You helped John out of the ropes, chaos ensuing all around as Chris tried to stop them all from killing his brother on a path from revenge.

Trying to escape into the study, you took point with the Vigilantes blasting any cops that got too close down the hall, but one snuck in around a corner.

There wasn't enough cover, you were completely exposed, no time to duck or break for a safe spot, point blank range, this was going to hurt.

Bracing for impact, you were crash tackled out of the way, Vigilantes teal white and black kevlar dizzying in a blur as he pulled you behind him.

The bullet struck a crimson red in his side, dampening in a patch down his leg.

“Oh my god, Adrian! Are you okay?” You cried out, dispatching the perpetrator with a clean shot before catching your savior Adrian as he stumbled.

“‘s fine…it'll heal quickly.” Adrian grunted, watching you in awe add pressure to the wound with your gorgeous hands.

“I can't believe you took that bullet for me.” You marveled, at first thinking it was your Adrian.

He'd been so courageous, in a way that he only exhibited for Peacemaker in the past.

“Of course, I can't let you get hurt.” Adrian replied with a crooked smile, making your heart nearly beat outside your chest.

“Adrian…” You murmured, taken aback.

“Dude, she's a meta human. Her skin is practically bullet proof.” Your Adrian scoffed at how silly this other him was being, ruining the moment entirely.

“Sorry, I should've told you. My skin can transmutate into metal scales.” You showed it off, beautiful like an opalescent snake they simmered in the light.

“Woah I love the pattern, terrazzo, this might sound kinda ghoulish but I love snakes,” Adrian smiled lovingly at your ability, enjoying the cool feeling of the scales.

“But even knowing, it wouldn't change a thing.”

“Huh?” You asked, helping him limp along into the study to rejoin the others.

Adrian murmured back, head resting on your shoulder for support, “I'd still step in front of that bullet.”

“But you don't even know me.” You stared at him perplexed, as the group rushed to barricade the room.

"That's what heroes do right?” Adrian replied, straining to keep a composed stance, holding his side, the other hand pressed at the wall.

“Yeah I uh guess so,” You murmured.

This Adrian really took the moral code a lot more seriously than the one you knew that had once taken a frightened group of innocent vet nurses hostage.

After convincing Chris to head back, Harcourt took out his brother to ensure he wouldn't come after them. Leaving you, the Adrians and Harcourt.

“It had to be done.” She stated, and you conceded it was the wise decision.

"See ya other me!” Your Adrian hugged himself goodbye, heading through the door. Nothing ever did seem to phase him.

“Well I suppose this is goodbye…” Adrian turned to face you, lifting the visor his unfocused green eyes were forlorn watching you all leave.

Despite how brief the encounter had been, there was something connecting the two of you, unspoken and raw.

A red thread tied cicatrice rings around your wrists, garroting at the tension of separation, unbelievably painful to let go.

“I suppose it is, but Em are we sure that we can't take him with us?” This wasn't right, leaving him here to die from an incoming fire fight where he was outgunned.

“What? No, we can't. It's time to go!” Harcourt insisted, the portal was closing, she gripped your arm.

“I’m sorry, but this is wrong...maybe I could stay, help even the odds.” You offered, there was something binding you to him.

The entire time you knew your Adrian, you'd secretly loved him, or more so the idea of him.

It felt like there was a piece missing, you'd chalked it up to an over idealized crush, but maybe that's because this Adrian was your true soulmate?

“No, you can't stay here.” Adrian replied firmly, he wouldn't allow you to bear the horrible burden of this place.

"But I think we're meant to,” You tried to tell him, but Adrian hurriedly pushed you through the door to ensure your safety.

“It's fine! I'm fine!” He lied, giving you a thumbs up, before kicking the door closed.

Adrian wasn't fine. Anything but really as the door slammed shut.

Cold and empty.

The only fraction of warmth was crimson, blood knitting and clotting too fast from his healing factor.

Twisting to do that spin kick started the bleeding again, and Adrian forcibly dug a gloved finger into the wound, reopening it, thinking back on how he took that bullet for you.

Hot red liquid swathed his palm, your gorgeous eyes had widened in such fear for his life. Nobody here in this miserable universe ever cared about him that way.

Pain at the thought of you leaving him riveted against the pounding drum that was his heart when you put pressure on the wound. His blood dried on your shaky palms, concerned tears welled in the rims of your eyes.

You knew he could heal faster that ordinary people, yet it didn't deter how upset you got.

Digging with the point of his blade, he shucked the bullet out clean, ensuring to leave behind a crude bumped scar as the skin threaded over.

A small insidious reminder, a badge of honor that he'd been the one who protected you.

Not the other him.

“It was me. I saved you.” He grunted in a longing pant to the door.

But there was no response, only silent timber and a metal panel.

There was no more you.

Police scum breached the study, their incessant banging finally coming to an end.While Adrian was ready for another fire fight, instead a strange gas filled the room, meant to incapacitate him.

The Vigilante visor and mask could only do so much and as the room was surrounded with agents, Adrian twitched uselessly on the ground.

Wrist stubbornly curled around his honshu blade handle, like an enraged porcupine ready to stab if anyone got too near.

A gaggle of caped douchebags sauntered past, three men and two women in red and charcoal grey regime uniforms.

These assholes who dared call themselves super heroes.

A part of the terrible JAA like Peacemaker, White Dragon and Captain Triumph had been.The Justice Axis of America. Hourman watched Adrian still barely conscious with a twisted fascination.

“Huh my tear gas ring usually operates quicker through the blood stream. Our once elusive Vigilante must have meta abilities.” He surmised, prodding him with a boot.

Blitzkrieg dashed in and tied Adrian up to annoyingly ensure he couldn't pull the pin on the grenade he secretly had lined up.

“He's not Kryptonian.” Overgirl determined with her enhanced vision.

Black Arrow held a bow up at Adrian mockingly, aiming for a lethal shot before tearing his mask off.

“He's a fucking dork, not worth the ammunition.” He decided, slinging the bolt back into his quiver.

“Aww but he's cute, can I keep the big bad Vigilante as a pet?” Siren-X giggled cruelly at him trying to see without his glasses.

“After he's properly neutered and had his rabies shot.” Hourman snickered, that voice frustratingly familiar.

“Where's the fun in that?” Siren-X rolled her eyes, cupping Adrian's jaw firmly. With all of his drowsy might, speech and vision slurred, Adrian spat right in her dumb Nazi bitch face.

“I'll gut you and ring you up by the intestines for that you fucking insolent…” She never got to finish that thought as the snapping at attention of police and military silenced her.

A barking robotic voice boomed, “Supreme Science Commander, Lex Luthor approaching!” Red Tornado, Luthor's android lapdog announced.

The line of Nazi soldiers and fake heroes all snapped to attention and saluted, strolling in a bald man dressed in full officer regalia.

“A door to another universe for the conquering. This will make the Fuhrer very pleased. Leatherwing is going to be so upset that I discovered this before he did.” Lex grinned, shark-toothed and cold.

“Shouldn't we contact Overman or Captain Atom, sir?” Overgirl asked, eyeing him rigidly.

“No, this is my victory Kara. Not another conquest for your cousin to steal from me. You'll do well to remember that.” Lex snarled, jabbing the Kryptonian with his globe topped walking cane.

“Of course sir. I see, very well I will not contact the rest of the Justice Axis until you permit it.” Overgirl replied stiffly.

“Justice…what a fucking joke.” Adrian muttered, starting to properly slip into unconsciousness.

“What did you dare say in my presence, worm?” Lex demanded, having Black Arrow shrug him forcibly awake.

"The whole Justice Axis of America is a joke, JAA...” Adrian slurred, trying to think of a clever come back as his curly hair was being wrenched back.

“More like the Jerk Asses of Asshole-ica!” He landed on.

Ha, got 'em.

With that amazing one-liner Adrian was promptly knocked the fuck out with a nasty backhand from Black Arrow.

Days later, Adrian lost count how many before the morning when Lex Luthor marched into the room, sycophants following him.

"I can't believe they totally killed White Dragon and Captain Triumph!” Eve Taschmacher gasped, live streaming her false tears for her devoted followers.

“So sad to lose true American heroes to this rabid dog Vigilante!” All of her followers booed at Vigilante in the comments section as she poised the camera to a beaten man tied up in a chair.

“He still won't tell us the code for the door, my supreme scientist.” Prometheus said regretfully.

“You're going to have to kill me. Also your torturers toolkit is dull as fuck.” Adrian spat, letting out a torrent of spittle mixed with blood in his wake.

"And what kind of dumb fuck name is Prometheus anyway? You don't even have any powers outside being a dick!”

Prometheus bristled at that, glaring down at Adrian and then the row of torture implements to try shutting him up with next.

Adrian frowned a little, this had been killing him, trying to figure out where else he knew this jerk-off from.

Then he got it, “besides, hey I know you, you're Tommy Meryln from Evergreen high right? You were in my brother Gut’s year– that kid who pissed his pants at school camp in junior year!”

“I'll make you regret saying that in front of the Supreme Science Commander.” Prometheus seethed, picking up a bone saw to start hacking at Adrian's fingers.

“You can't saw off my pinkie finger! It's the most important one. Without it you can't drive, shoot guns and your balance goes completely off!” He whined, still withholding any real information.

Adrian couldn’t afford to let these fuckers infect your universe and tear it apart, he had to try and protect you. Even if the pinkie finger was really valuable for writing with clean penmanship and throwing knives.

This went on for a few hours, lame torture, Adrian whining but not giving up any crucial details and singing loudly to try and distract himself from the pain.

“Enough.” Lex had witnessed enough of this buffoonery. “What do you want? Name your price.”

Adrian mulled that over and decided to shoot his shot, asking where you were in this universe.

At the very least, he could see a pretty photo of you before dying.

"Dead. She was a freedom fighter killed in a resistance rally three years ago.” Red Tornado recited clinically.

“Well no deal then. I don't give a fuck, torture me and toss my body on the pile. I'm not giving you anything that lets you guys ruin another planet with your Nazi bullshit.” Adrian frowned, his dogged stubbornness wearing down even the formidable Lex Luthor.

“Get him out of my sight. He's executed publicly tomorrow in the streets like a dog. I'll figure out how to get through the portal.” Lex snarled, through with the faux bartering.

Adrian was given a hood to wear which was stupid because he knew where they were already in the deservedly deceased White Dragon mansion.

Tied to another chair, likely in the study again, he sat there for what felt like hours until some bozo came over for his execution.

“Let's get this over with, hey can I make a request? You should kill me with a chainsaw, I bet it'll look awesome as fuck! I've always wanted to try it.”

“Adrian, you're such a moron.” A gruff annoyed voice remarked, bringing back a flood of memories.

Hourman took off his cowl, a familiar punchable face staring down at him, squinting until he got his glasses on.

“Gut?! You're Hourman?” Adrian unfortunately could believe it, this dumbass loser was a part of the same youth group Christopher Smith joined in high school, ready to fight for the so-called ‘greater cause’.

“Yep.” Gut smirked like his little brother should be impressed but all he got was a blank frown of disgust off Adrian.

“But you don't have any powers, you can’t control time.” Adrian pointed out.

“No, but I made gadgets the same as you with Mom in the basement growing up.” He argued and showed off a utility belt that had a few baubles.

“She made us read the anarchist cookbook and IBM instruction manuals over and over again.” Adrian recalled, yet she had intended them both to be vigilantes against the regime, “still that has fuck all to do with time. Stupid name.” He couldn’t let that go, what was up with the JAA and their superhero moniker process?

“Do they get you to draw names out of a hat? What does Overman mean? Over what? Captain Triumph, sounds like a cereal box mascot. And White Dragon, the dude couldn’t even breathe fire. Fucking lame asses everyone single one of you.” Adrian laughed.

“Yeah whatever dude, look I'm only letting you escape because Mom begged me to and cried a ton.” Gut huffed, hands square on his hips.

“Aw how nice of you big bro.” Adrian grinned, enjoying how he got a rise out of him for a change.

Gut muttered something and began to lead him back towards the study, but once his back was turned, he clocked his dumbass brother on the skull.

“Still you're working for Nazi fucks though, only reason I won't kill you is because of mom and dad.” He went to examine the secret wall panel. Plugging in the code, the portal opened.

“They’re only still together because of the fucked up laws on divorce and bans on open homosexuality by the way, dad is gay.” Adrian informed his unconscious older brother with a lecturing wag of his finger.

“I'll see you again, much sooner than I expected or dared dream, my beloved.” Adrian was determined to leave this awful wretched world behind and enter the one where he could try to be Vigilante with something that mattered, something important.

Someone who seemed to understand him.

His one true soul mate.

You.

𓍯𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𝜗ৎ♡

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On the night before your wedding, you sit on the end of your bed and try not to tremble with nerves. You should go to sleep. You know you should go to bed, but you can't. If you go to bed now, it means that the next time you open your eyes will be your wedding day, and you can't fathom that right now.

It's not so much that you don't want to marry Valarr. You don't mind the prospect of being his wife— he is handsome, kind, chivalrous, everything that you could hope for in a husband. The problem is that you don't know him well enough to be able to hold a conversation with him beyond base pleasantries, and in roughly twenty-four hours you will be expected to lay naked beneath him and let him claim you as a man does his wife. You don't know what to expect from him, in that regard. Will he be gentle, as he is when you normally speak to him? Will he be forceful? Harsh? Angry?

You close your eyes. The very idea of it threatens to set your stomach churning. You have been sitting on the end of your bed with your head in your hands for roughly an hour now, but your anxiety is only seeming to mount tenfold each time you turn it over in your head. What you will do tomorrow with a man you barely know. You barely have it in you to move. You feel as though, if you do, the walls will come crumbling down around you.

Perhaps it's for the best that a knock at your chamber door rouses you from this stasis, finally permitting you to straighten and clear your throat. "Enter."

"M'lady." One of your chamber maids enters, looking a bit piqued, but keeping her voice hushed. "Lord Valarr has sent for you."

"Valarr?" You glance around the room wildly. Beyond the whorls in the window panes, black night falls over the Red Keep. You expected that the entire castle would be asleep at this hour, as you should be. What could Valarr want with you now?

What indeed. Your mind trips over itself, your anxiety spiking again. But you stand, your back straight as an arrow, and you follow her out the chamber door. It would not do to keep your future husband waiting.

Your chamber maid takes you as far as the stairway to the prince's apartments, where a serving boy you have never seen before meets you. The two eye each other meaningfully, and then your chamber maid abandons you quite unceremoniously, making your skin crawl beneath your dressing gown. You open your mouth to protest, but the serving boy looks at you apologetically and holds a single finger to his lips.

"All is well," he whispers, when you snap your mouth shut, looking mildly insulted. "Follow me, m'lady."

You follow the boy to the door of the prince's apartments, where he leaves you with a nod of his head. You do not dismiss him before he leaves— at this point, you surmise that he is following orders already given by someone whose authority outranks you. You steel yourself, fighting not to grind your teeth as you knock on the chamber door.

There is a quiet word from within bidding you entry, and you push open the door as quietly as possible. You are standing in what appears to be Valarr's study, surrounded by books of all size and description, stacked neatly in rows on floor to ceiling shelves. You cast your gaze around at the Myrish carpets, chaise longues and chairs, candles and other opulent comforts afforded a prince of House Targaryen, and you feel slightly out of your depth.

And then your eyes fall on him. The prince, in his shirtsleeves and breeches, sitting almost dejectedly on the couch by the fireplace. Either he or one of his servants had taken the liberty of building a small fire, enough to cast an amber glow throughout the room without overheating the chamber. The orange light catches on the strands of silver in Valarr's dark hair, making him appear as though fire dances along the edges of his being.

You stand with your back to the chamber door. You wait.

It takes your betrothed several moments to lift his eyes to you, and his face is drawn with a perplexing amount of stress. You wouldn't have imagined that he would have anything to worry about; as far as you know, he has not been opposed to your union in any way. But the longer he looks at you as though he carries all the weight of the heavens and the earth on his shoulders, doubts begin to creep in.

"I apologize for the secrecy, my lady," Valarr finally says quietly, his fingers twitching against the edge of the seat that he grips. "I hope I did not wake you."

"No, my lord." You are still standing, stalk-still in front of the chamber door, wondering what exactly this visit is about.

"I felt it necessary to be discreet," Valarr continues, as though he must explain himself to you. It's more than any other lord has ever done for you, when it comes to ordering you about, and it takes you slightly aback. "Talk runs rampant in the Keep. I wouldn't want there to be cause for gossip so near to our wedding day. You understand?"

"I— yes, I understand that. But, my lord," your eyes flit from him, to the fire, and back, "If you… wish to bed me, could it not wait until we are wed?"

That startles him. Valarr lifts his head, blinking up at you with a painfully concerned look on his face. "Oh— no, my lady, this is not…" He licks his lips, and looks to the fire again. "Ah. I fear there has been a misunderstanding. I did not call you here for that, on my honor. Forgive me."

"There is nothing to forgive." You tilt your head, watching as his pulse jumps against his throat. "I— please, do not think me insolent, but… why have you called me here tonight, if not for that?"

Valarr closes his eyes. You take a moment to admire his profile. The warm glow of the fire makes his skin look all the more ethereal, flushed and freckled as it is. Valarr is beautiful in a way that bards should write songs about— have written songs about, in ages past. It nearly pains you to see that beauty so laden with trouble.

"Would you like some wine?" He blurts the question like it supersedes something worse, something that he doesn't quite know how to approach yet. He seems to be weighing it in his mind as he stands and crosses to a table set with a decanter and two goblets, without waiting for an answer from you. You do not fail to notice that his hands are shaking.

"My lord."

You watch his back, tight with tension beneath the soft linen of his shirt, the sleeves rolled to the elbows in a rakish and informal way, as though he hadn't truly been meaning to have an audience tonight. He does not turn to look at you, just pours the wine like he hasn't heard you.

You take three steps toward him, and tentatively reach out to place a hand on his upper arm. "Valarr."

Valarr freezes. His head bowed, he holds the wine decanter aloft like it's a shield, a solid wall between him and whatever it is that's weighing so heavily on his mind. As though, if he draws out the night long enough, he may not have to put words to whatever it is that's bothering him.

But then the moment passes, and Valarr takes a deep, shuddering breath. "I'm sorry, my lady." His voice is so quiet, as to barely be heard over the crackling of the fire. The words practically break in his throat. "I'm so sorry."

"For what?" you ply gently, trying not to startle him. You feel as though you are approaching a cornered animal, with how tightly wound he is. Slowly, you stroke the flat of your hand down his bicep, trying to give him a reassuring touch without overstepping. You fear, perhaps, that you might be, but Valarr does not pull away.

Instead, he simply picks up a goblet of wine and offers it to you. You look at it for a moment dumbly— it is an ornate piece, carved with dragons and inlaid with red jewels that glitter in the firelight. For lack of an alternative, you take the wine from him without a word.

"I—" he starts, then stops again, like he is still weighing the words in his head, trying to find the right ones to convey his particular issue.

The longer he takes to say what's on his mind, the more your own starts to come up with things to fill that void. He has a secret wife already. He is stricken with some disease he procured in a brothel. You are not what he wants. All of these thoughts and more flit through your head, and all seem to ring the very same at the end. He wants to call off the wedding.

But then he takes another deep breath, and he turns to you, though his eyes are still downcast. "Tomorrow. When we— The wedding. It's… there will be a ceremony."

You blink. "Yes, your grace. That happens at weddings. So I'm told."

"No." Valarr shuts his eyes, turns away like he's chastising himself. "After. The—" He pinches the bridge of his nose, the wine in his own goblet threatening to slosh over the rim. "When we are wed, and we… when I take you to our bed. There will be a ceremony. A bedding ceremony."

The words tumble from his mouth and land with a splat on the carpet like some viscous, globular thing. Bedding ceremony. It conjures an image in your head of leering heads watching you from behind sheer curtains, pompous men making comments, taking notes. Bedding ceremony. Humiliation, degradation. A crowd of spectators to observe you in your most intimate and private moments.

You say nothing. Like him, you struggle to find the words to say to describe what you feel at the prospect. But now that Valarr has gotten the point of contension out in the open, he seems to be unable to stop talking. You watch him pace around the floor of his study, like a man on the eve of battle.

"I only learned of it today. It's not customary. But because I am second in line for the throne, the small council wants proof of legitimacy, that the marriage will not be annulled. That you will bear me an heir. As though we are incapable of doing anything for ourselves." He shakes his head, scoffing with an incredulous, irritated smirk. "I begged them to tell you, my lady, I truly did, but they would not have it. They intended for you to simply walk into it, unaware. I believe they fear you will abscond in the night, or some such nonsense. My father was against it, as I knew he would be, but the rest of the council would not be swayed."

"Does your father… does he know that you've told me? About the ceremony?"

"He encouraged me to." Valarr's hand finds his hair and rucks it up into a mess, his cheeks pink in the firelight. "We were in agreement. If there's going to be an audience, you should be told. What you do in response is for you to decide."

You turn your eyes down to the wine quivering in your cup. The thought of an entire council of men conferring about what goes on in your marriage bed without your knowledge sends a finger of disgust clawing up your back.

"I called you here tonight because I wanted you to know. I wanted to tell you myself, without any eyes and ears on us. I do not wish to begin our marriage with any kind of deception."

He stops pacing, finally, and takes a step towards you. You lift your gaze to his— his mismatched eyes, one brown, one violet. The eyes of his father. You stare at them and find yourself wondering if your children would have them, as well. A mark of their father's beauty.

"I will always be true to you," Valarr says softly, though his face holds a certain amount of frantic desperation that makes you nervous for him. "I will always be honest, and frank with you when needs be. I never intend to be anything less. Do you understand? Let us be frank. Please."

"Frank. Yes," you echo, reaching out toward him. His eyes flutter when your hand finds his cheek, and you stroke your thumb against the point of his cheekbone. "Valarr. Please calm down. You have nothing to fear from me."

"I—" He swallows, his eyes flicking over your face like he's trying to map it out in his mind. "I know." He nods, seeming to let your words sink in slowly. "I know."

"Good. Drink your wine." You sound more sure of yourself than you feel.

Valarr follows your instructions in earnest, chugging the contents of his cup without a second thought. You do the same, although slower, the dry red wine hitting your soft palate with a sharp tang. You sink onto the couch and, without pretense, pull your knees up to your chest, your feet curled against the cushion beneath you. It's a protective posture, meant to calm you, but all it does is make you feel small in comparison to him when he sits heavily beside you, his elbows on his spread thighs.

"They only want proof of consummation," he adds after a moment of silence, still swallowing back the remnants of his wine as it brings a rush of saliva to his mouth. "If… when you bleed, if it stains the sheets, perhaps then I could convince them that it isn't necessary to sit in—"

"I won't bleed."

Valarr stops talking. When he turns his head to look at you, you hide your face in the folds of your robe against your knees, your eyes closed against the blackness. Your heart pounds in your chest for fear of what he might say.

But, true to character, Valarr is gentle in his response. "Forgive me, my lady. I thought that you were…"

"A virgin?" Your voice is muffled by your robe. "Yes, and you'd be correct. I've never lain with another person. But hands and fingers can do enough damage, my lord. And… various other implements."

"Oh. Oh, yes. I see." There is nothing for a few seconds but the crackle of the fire and its heat on your back. "Well, I… I suppose that it— it's a good thing. I do not wish to cause you any discomfort on our wedding night."

The sentiment brings tears to your eyes. They bubble up out of nowhere, and you feel them leak out without warning, dampening the fabric pressed to your eyelids. You let out a quiet little sob, without even meaning to. "Why are you so good to me?"

You feel him shift. His knee knocks against your ankle as he turns to look at you, and a warm hand settles on your arm. "Well, it's the only way you should be treated. Why wouldn't I be?"

"Because—" You're crying. It is not a soft, dignified weeping. It's ugly. It shakes your body and leaves you with wracking sobs that come from a place deep down inside you, where you had pushed all of your anxiety and reservations and fears, about your future husband and your wedding, and everything that's to come after. The tears come so suddenly and in such force that you can't rein it in, and you find yourself unable to say anything but, "Because."

"No," Valarr replies, and his hand slides around your back. "Not me. Never to you. Come— oh, come here, love."

He manages to get your limbs untangled and pulls you to him, your legs slung over his lap and your head hidden in his neck. You're thankful for it; you don't really want him to see what you look like, crying yourself snotty the day before your wedding. His hand pets idly against your thigh, and it occurs to you that this position is more intimate than you've ever been with anybody, including your husband-to-be. It's the first time he's held you. The first time anyone has, since you were a babe in your mother's arms. You sober quickly against his shoulder, clutching at him like a child clutches their favorite toy.

"I thought you wanted to call the wedding off," you admit to him. "When I came in and you— you wouldn't look at me. I thought you didn't want me."

Valarr tuts, holding you closer. "I'm sorry. I never intended to raise any doubt in your mind. You needn't ever worry if your husband wants you, darling. I do. Gods above, I do. You have me utterly beguiled." Then, he asks you tenderly, "Have I not told you that I am more than happy to marry you? I suppose I haven't had a chance, have I? Too many people around all the time."

And that thought brings you back to the issue at hand. "I can't— Valarr, I can't do it. Not with them watching. Listening." A shudder runs through you at the thought. And then, your temper flares. Who do these men think they are, to play you and your husband for fools this way? "I won't."

Valarr's hand goes still. "My dear—"

"When I fuck you, my pleasure will be for your eyes and your ears, alone." You lift your head, gripping the open collar of his shirt in a fist strong enough to tear the fabric, if you were to pull it. Your eyes are still vaguely watery, and you're sure that you don't look as fierce as you want to, but at the very least, you know you look adamant. "I will not have these old men partake in something I give only to you, just because they feel like it. I refuse to give them that satisfaction. It is not theirs. Do you understand?"

"Yes. I understand completely." Valarr gazes at you, an unreadable expression on his face as his hand coming up to stroke a lock of hair away from your brow. He fixates on your lips for a few seconds before saying, "When I fuck you, I will not have anyone else witness what I do to you. That is for only you and I to know. What you do to me, however… I suppose that could be up for negotiation. I'll never let it be said that I am not pleased by you."

He winks, and in spite of everything weighing on you, you giggle. Then he smiles, and it's the loveliest thing that you've seen all night.

You brush your nose against his. "We are alone, now."

"Yes, we are." His voice has dropped low, to reflect your proximity to his lips.

"I don't suppose there's a chance that we could just…" You drag one finger across his exposed skin, where the collar of his shirt hangs open. "Do it now?"

Valarr sucks in a rueful breath, tilting his head back and away from you. It exposes the length of his throat for your wandering eye, and you suddenly have a great urge to sink your teeth into something. "I'm afraid honor demands that I don't take advantage just yet."

"Honor," you grumble, resting your fingers just at the hollow of his throat. "Is it honorable, what they're doing to us?"

"No, it isn't." His head tilted back against the backrest of the couch, he peers down his nose at you. "Even so. I mustn't. Not until we're man and wife." He sighs. "Even though I really, really want to."

You make a short, perturbed sound. "You're so…"

"What?"

"Decent."

Valarr lets out a laugh, his hand coming up to smooth over the back of your head. "You say that as though it's a bad thing."

"In this instance, I rather think it is." You fall silent for a few seconds, tracing your finger through the smattering of hair exposed on his chest. "It doesn't matter," you say suddenly, "whether there's an audience. I doubt you'll be able to change their minds now, and they'll still want proof. There will be questions when there is no blood. Oh gods, Valarr—"

"Shh. There's plenty we can do. We'll think of something."

"Like what?"

Valarr is quiet, but his hand moves. He catches your wrist, stopping you where you draw idle patterns against his chest with your finger. Without a word, he lifts your hand so that it catches the light, his thumb brushing upwards to flex your fingers back as he examines them, scrutinizing the length of your fingers like they are the most interesting and complex things he's ever seen.

"I may have an idea," he says softly, and then presses a kiss to the center of your palm.

The wedding is a joyous affair, which is only to be expected from a royal celebration. The vows are in High Valyrian, which you don't understand but which you repeat to the best of your ability. As per the custom of House Targaryen, your lips are cut and your foreheads smudged with blood. Your hands, sliced and bound together to let your blood become one. The wine you sip and share with Valarr stings the cut on your lip, but the smile he gives you before he kisses you makes it worthwhile.

There is a feast of wild boar and venison, and various other intricate dishes which you're sure the cooks in the kitchens labored over for days, but which you barely even register. Your stomach is too busy turning at the prospect of what happens after the feast, and what you and Valarr had spoken of the night before.

Beneath the high table, Valarr's hand finds your knee. Through the fine silk of your gown, you feel the warmth and weight of his hand, and it's one of the only things that can ground you to reality, to the here and now. When you look up at him, your husband— not your betrothed, your husband, now— gives you a knowing look and a coy smile that makes your blood sing in your veins.

And then, all too soon, it's over. The music, the merriment, the laughter. You are herded away by your ladies' maids to the prince's apartments, and you're ushered through a door you have not passed through the night before.

The prince's bedchamber is just as opulent as his study, with heavy wooden furniture carved in ornate fashion, tapestries and heavy curtains around the bed. When your eyes fall on them, you tangibly relax. There are no sheer drapes, nothing to suggest that you will be seen in the bed with your husband.

As you are undressed and wrapped in linen and brocade, an embellished robe draped over your shoulders to protect your modesty. You have yet to be told by anyone— servants or otherwise— that there will be a bedding ceremony. The fact sends a rage boiling inside you; if your husband were not as honorable as he is, if he had not taken the chance to secrete you away in the middle of the night and speak to you as an equal, you would have absolutely no idea of what is to come. You have half a mind to reprimand all of your ladies' maids for being a part of it.

But then Valarr enters the room, and the mere sight of him, dressed down in his own shirt and robe, makes the swelling rage within you quiet. He reaches for you, takes the hand that is bandaged from your vows, and presses a kiss over the cloth, his breath fanning across your pulse.

It does enough to keep you from screaming when a majority of the small council files into the room. Prince Baelor is notably absent— but, then again, Valarr told you to expect as much. You don't imagine that Valarr's father would want to sit in on his son's bedding ceremony.

Then— and only then— is the truth of the matter explained to you. That the small council will remain in the room to ensure that, "things are well in hand." You have to stifle a snort at that, and Valarr's own hand tightens slightly where he holds yours. You keep your eyes on your husband, refusing to look at the councilmen who have so grievously tried to humiliate you.

You are fussed over, annointed with holy oils and prayed over, beseeching the gods to bless your union with many children. It's the use of the word many that makes Valarr's own resolve threaten to crack, a small smirk curving the edge of his lips.

In the blink of an eye, you are shut in with Valarr on the bed, the curtains drawn, and the light blocked out. You swallow hard, sitting still in the dark for only a second before you're moving, reaching across the sheets in search of your husband, in search of his warm touch and comforting presence. You find his knee, and follow it upwards, over the expanse of his thigh to his hip as you bring yourself towards him.

His arms come around you, and then you're being pulled, his chest flush to yours, his hand finding your ass and lifting you to seat you on his lap. You gasp, your hands blindly fumbling in the dark for something to hold onto, and you find his hair. Soft as silk and threading through your fingers, you tighten your hold on it hard enough that he lets out a soft groan in response.

"Relax," Valarr whispers, just loud enough for you to hear, and his lips find your jaw. As you settle onto his lap, his fingers draw your robe and the neckline of your chemise to the side, exposing your shoulder to the air. He presses another kiss there, soft against the newly bared skin, and he repeats, "Relax."

"Can't see shit," you mutter angrily, and he snorts. You feel his smile against your skin, his breath fluttering in soft bursts across your shoulder.

Valarr reaches back, feeling for something over his head in the dark. He finds it, and there is a whisper of something, a spark. A candle is lit in the darkness, suddenly illuminating the enclosed space with dim light, just enough for you to be able to see him and the expanse of the bed sheets, the dark wood of the headboard.

The candle flame creates a halo around his head, painting his hair slightly golden. Your hands find his face, trace along his jaw and thumbs finding the pulse point under his chin. "My beautiful Prince," you whisper to him, watching his pupils widen just slightly before you finally dip to kiss him.

His lips taste of blood and wine, the cut on his lower lip still raw from the wedding ceremony. Your teeth latch around his lower lip and give it a tug, and he gasps sharply, his arms tightening around you. You smile, remembering his words from the night before, as he told you his ingenius plan for how to trick your unwitting audience.

They will be listening for anything that suggests we're doing what we should. Gasps, moans, the creak of the bed. They can only draw their conclusions from that, and what we leave on the bed sheets.

Valarr reaches behind him again, this time down between the mattress and the headboard. He searches for something, his brow drawing and lips pursed in frustration for a moment, before he grips something and pulls it out from where the sheet tucks beneath the mattress.

A knife, small and discreet enough to be slipped into a pocket or a boot, but made of valyrian steel. The edge of it, so sharp that it practically whispers on the air, glints ominously in the candlelight.

You will already have a cut on your hand from the wedding ceremony. They won't be surprised to find it in the morning.

Valarr kisses your forehead, just above the smudge of blood he'd painted between your brows with his thumb during your vows. Then, he lifts your bandaged hand, and begins unwrapping it with the care of someone unpackaging the most delicate work of art they've ever held.

Your nose scrunches as the bandage is peeled away from the cut on your palm, stuck to it with clotted blood. The wound is not deep, but fresh— the gash wells with little beads of blood already, but not enough for what you intend to do.

Valarr lifts the knife with one hand, cradling your own hand with the other. He peers up at you from beneath his lashes, his eyes apprehensive as he waits for your permission.

You nod, and Valarr slices the cut open with one small flick of the blade. The sound you make is loud, and slightly obscene— a visceral reaction, one that you did not intend to make, but which sounds quite like something your audience would expect from your wedding bed.

Beyond the curtains, someone audibly clears their throat. You look at Valarr and roll your eyes, making him bite back a snicker.

The blood needs to be in a reasonable spot on the sheets for it to look believable. You must put it where your hips meet mine. If it gets on your clothes, even better.

While he cradles your bleeding hand, you ruck your nightgown and robe up your thighs. The cut is shallow enough that the blood is already beginning to slow, but there is enough for you to smear it against your cunt, and then wipe it directly onto the bed sheets below you. The result is a blotch of pinkish blood, mixed with your own arousal, on the white linen.

When you meet Valarr's gaze, he nods at you in approval. Then, he takes your hand, and lifts your bleeding palm to his lips.

This was not something you had spoken about. This, you imagine, is something that he does purely for himself. His tongue flicks out and drags the length of the cut on your hand, mopping up blood and arousal alike. His eyes on you the whole time, dark in the dimly lit canopy of his bed, he makes a noise in his throat like he's found relief after a long period of torment.

A deep burning want coils in your core, willing you to do something insane and unscrupulous. You have the urge to resent him for it, and for not letting you fuck him on the couch in his study last night, while he told you what to do. When it was just you, and him, and the crackle of the fire as your witness.

After that, we need only sound convincing. You may do anything you want to me, and I will try to make my performance believable. Whatever you do, I shall bear it happily.

You want to make him regret that. You want to make him regret looking at you as he licks your blood and your arousal from your hand, as he moans like a whore about it, as he bats his mismatched eyes and kisses the cut on your skin before rewrapping it like you are the greatest gift he has ever received. You want to crack him open and spill his contents all over the bed sheets for them to find in the morning, and know that you did.

There are noises beyond the shield of the opaque curtains that remind you of just who is on the other side, listening to everything that you do. It bothers you, enough that you feel the cold fingers of dread tightening around your throat. But you cannot allow it to stop you when you've come so far already.

So, you kiss Valarr deeply, capturing the taste of your blood on his tongue and swallowing his moan as it bubbles up out of his chest. He catches you with his hands on your hips as you lift yourself over him, planting your knees on the mattress. You reach down and unravel the tie of his robe, allowing it to fall open and off of his shoulders, leaving him in naught but his linen shirt.

You may do anything you want to me. He has no idea of the things you want to do to him. He cannot possibly fathom how vicious your desire for him is— it's an all-consuming thing, and the only way you'll be able to survive it is if you just give in to your urges.

As you slide his linen shirt up his torso, you slide your lips along his jaw, sucking once against the curve just below his ear. He gives a startled gasp and a small jerk of his hips, which you think was unplanned. You don't think he intended it, because he shudders just a bit when you smile and scrape your teeth along his throat.

You pull back to help him out of his shirt, letting it fall to the mattress beside you. He gazes up at you, wide-eyed in the candlelight, entirely naked beneath you. His cheeks flushed, the V drawn in blood between his brows looks darker than it should. You place your hands on either side of his head and bend down to lave your tongue across the mark, tasting his blood the way that he did, yours.

Valarr's mouth drops open on a silent moan. His fingers tighten against your hips, the flush from his cheeks reaching down across his freckled shoulders and chest. You drag your hands down his chest, lowering them down towards where his cock rests heavily against his navel, hard and leaking. His core muscles tighten beneath your touch, his breath falling from his parted lips in a stuttered rhythm.

And then, you stop. Just short of touching his cock, you pull your hands away and lift yourself from his lap. His hands tighten once— just once, just enough for you to know that he wants you to stay, to keep going. But you do not yield, and he doesn't argue. Just releases your hips with a soft sigh through his nose, mildly disappointed at the distance.

But your hands keep feeling him. That's the thing that seems to vex him the most. You start again at his shoulders, your palm running flat across his pectorals and over to the other shoulder as you shift, rocking onto your knees beside him. You can see the questions spinning around in his head, the look of what are you doing etched on his face like words on a page. He turns his head, following you with his eyes as you move, until you swing your leg around his body from behind and sit against the pillows behind him.

Valarr's breath audibly hitches, and his head snaps forward. Your legs bracket his hips, your pelvis nearly crushed up against his lower back. You rest against the headboard of the bed and smooth your hand over his shoulder, down between his shoulder blades, and begin to trace around the vertebrae of his spine with your thumbs.

"Oh." The word leaves him on an exhale, and he hangs his head. You trace your way down his spine, applying gentle pressure and watching goosebumps raise on his skin. When you reach the bottom of his ribs, you begin tracing your way back up and watch a full body shudder roll through him.

You reach his neck and wrap both hands over his shoulders, digging your thumbs into his trapezius muscles. As you drag downwards, Valarr lets out a moan that makes you both freeze at how loud it is.

You drag your knuckles lightly up and down his back, and lean forward to press a kiss just below his ear. "When was the last time anyone rubbed your back like this, husband?"

"Never." The word is slightly more than a breath in your direction as he turns his head, but you hear it. He looks practically sun burnt with how red his face is.

"Hmm. No more." You pepper him with kisses across his shoulders, massaging your way down his back again and pressing into knots as you go. You aren't surprised to find him so tense— he is a knight, a soldier by station and a Prince of the Realm. He has more than enough reasons to be wound tight, and so you spend a decent amount of time working it out of him, bit by bit, until he nearly sags back against you.

Once you're sure that you've disarmed him enough, you slide your hands slowly around his waist to hug him from behind, pulling him back against you. He goes willingly, but turns his head to look at you questioningly, as though he's still trying to figure out what your plan is. You merely smile at him, press a kiss to the corner of his mouth, and begin running your palms across his chest, down toward his stomach.

He grumbles a low sound, his jaw clenched tight and his brow drawn as he watches your hand sweep low, and lower still, until you're nearly an inch away from his cock. His legs twitch, and his hand moves as though he means to grab your wrist, to stop you or urge you on.

You lift one hand, moving your arm around his shoulder to cradle his jaw in your palm and turn his head towards you. Valarr's eyes find yours, and— he's desperate. You shake your head at him, your nose nearly bumping his as you move, telling him not to fight you. But his brow is drawn in consternation, his pulse jumping beneath your hand like pure adrenaline is pumping through his veins, just from the touch of your hand against his core.

"Let me," you whisper to him. You trace your finger back and forth, feeling his chest leap with his breath the longer you hover there. But you wait, until he gives you the smallest nod of assent, and then you're on him.

You wrap your hand around his cock, your thumb immediately brushing over the flushed tip. He jerks in your grip, a moan breaking in his throat at the contact. He's hot to the touch, hard and growing harder as you flex your fist and stroke him once.

Valarr makes a rough sound in his throat and takes your hand, momentarily stopping your movements. He lifts your hand in his, just to bring it to his mouth and drag the wet swath of his tongue over it. He gets you dripping with his spit, taking his time with it, until you find yourself grinding up against his back just from the feeling of his tongue on your hand and the wetness dripping between your fingers.

And then he moves your hand back down to his cock, and he wraps his hand around with yours, guiding you where he wants you. He uses a firm grasp, harder than you would have given to him on your own— but you like watching him squirm, and he seems more intent to do things quickly and efficiently.

Which, perhaps, is a good idea in this scenario. But you make a mental note to spend some time in another instance, another night, taking him to pieces, and taking your time doing it.

"Make it believable," you whisper against his skin, following the pace that he sets in earnest.

Valarr chuckles hoarsely, an airy thing that barely even meets your ears. "Anything for you," he breathes as he fucks his hips up into your joined fists with a quiet growl.

You press an open-mouthed kiss to the juncture of his neck and shoulder, as his tendons strain and his chest leaps with his breath. You let your tongue dance over his skin, salty with sweat and warm from the heat of the enclosed space and the exertion you're putting him through.

He moves your hand up and down in time with his, tightening your grip around him harshly each time you reach his leaking tip. The feeling of his cock sliding through your fist sets your body alight in a way that you can barely fathom. You turn your face into his neck, fitting your teeth around his skin to muffle the quiet moans that threaten to spill out of your mouth. You told him that they were for his ears only, and you meant it.

But one does escape. Quiet, and soft, and probably too low to make it past the curtains and to your audience. It vibrates against his skin, falls upon his ears like a sigh.

"Seven fuck—" Valarr's his snap violently up into your hand, making the bed shake, the wood creak with the strength of it. "Fuck. Fuck."

"Cum for me," you say quietly, directly into his ear. His breath hitches, a startled noise leaving him at the sound of your voice. "Valarr. Cum."

It takes him two more strokes. Warmth coats your joined hands, and he cums with a strangled moan that he half-swallows as he turns his face toward you, seeking out your lips. You cradle his face with your free hand, taking to him with an open mouth and a gracious tongue.

You've never felt so needy in your life. His hand still holding yours on his cock, his tongue in your mouth, you have to remind yourself why you aren't going to fuck him tonight. Why this is all that will happen on your wedding night— or, at least, until the audience leaves and your husband has a moment to collect himself.

You let Valarr lift your joined hands, covered in his spend, and you meet his eye as you both lick the evidence of what you've done from your hands. Between your fingers, your tongues meet in a depraved, possessive dance. Then, he lifts the bed sheet roughly and wipes his stomach with it, letting his cum stain the linen.

He collapses back against your chest, heaving a sigh that you feel resonate in your body. He closes his eyes briefly, and then opens them again, before he says aloud, "It is done. Begone."

You listen to the scraping of chairs, footsteps, low voices as the witnesses leave the room one by one. You think you hear a septon say a final prayer at the foot of the bed, which then makes you have to bite down on Valarr's shoulder to stop from laughing. Which then makes Valarr moan in the midst of the prayer, and you hear the prayer stop abruptly, and you have to struggle twice as hard to silence your laughter.

By the time the chamber door shuts with a resounding bang, Valarr is laughing, too.

After a moment, he squeezes your thigh and disentangles himself, crawling on all fours to the end of the bed. You watch from your seat, unabashedly, as he pokes his head out of the curtains to look around the room and confirm that no one remains. You admire his backside, his ass, the firmness of his thighs and the strong muscles of his back that you still intend to knead and push until you've heard every sound of relief that you can possibly steal from between his lips.

Valarr ducks his head back inside of the canopy. "The knife?"

You feel around awkwardly in the sheets until your fingers brush the hilt of the knife, and you hand it to him by the blade. He takes it gingerly, careful not to cut you, and leans out to tuck the knife under the cushion of a nearby chair.

"Servants are nosy, but they won't be looking there in the morning," he says with an easy smile as he straightens himself, and then turns to you. His face screws up as he looks at you, arranging the pillows and turning back the bed sheets. "What are you doing?"

"I'm… going to bed?"

"No." Valarr shakes his head, beginning to crawl up the mattress towards your seated form. "No no no. You will do no such thing, dear wife. Not after that."

"Wh— Valarr." You yelp when he grabs you by the ankle, yanking you down the bed towards him.

"We are quite alone, now. And you've tasted me," he murmurs as he guides your robe and your nightgown up your legs. He kisses the inside of your thigh and breathes a small sigh against your skin. "So now it's my turn."

Trauma changes people, ergo this job changes people, and in his time at the BAU Spencer Reid has endured worse than the rest of his team combined (factually, this isn't true, but it's how he feels; Emily and co have never had to serve three shitty months in prison).

Long story short, Spencer is lost, and he might possibly be going through some kind of early-onset, stress-induced midlife crisis, but his experiences haven't made him senseless. Sure, he makes mistakes, but you'd be hard-pressed to find him making the same one twice.

Unfortunately, as with any standard, there's an exception. 

You.

You're the flaw in his programming. The anomaly that keeps him guilty. The mistake that he just keeps making, no matter how many times he tries to stop.

You were the girl in the library, the one he had no intention of flirting with. Not until he was at your side, cracking poor jokes about long-dead authors you'd likely never heard of. It was out of his control, as though his mouth had developed a mind of its own, and a remarkably stupid one at that.

It wasn't a conscious choice to stop and talk to you, nor was complimenting your outfit, nor asking for your number—it all just happened. To say that Spencer had approached you with a plan of action, a grand scheme to get you into his life, into his bed, would be giving him far too much credit.

—

You were too young, for one, or he was too old. He certainly felt too old, but feelings aren't much of a reliable metric, especially not his own.

Thirty-five isn't old, anyway, objectively speaking. It isn't exactly young (he let go of his young adult title when he turned thirty), but it certainly isn't old. If thirty-five is old, then what's forty? Fifty?

But what's thirty-five compared to twenty-three, if not old? What's a man with enough baggage to sink a ship compared to a wide-eyed woman twelve years his junior if not painfully, undeniably old?

The guilt he feels from being with you is the kind that sits behind his ribs, pushes up against them when he's desperately chasing sleep, builds and builds until he's sure the bones'll crack under the pressure. It'll shrink during the day, when he can distract himself with work, but it'll leave him with this hollow feeling. An ache that he can never quite give words to. One that, ironically, only you seem to be able to ease.

But it's only a temporary fix. Being with you alleviates the ache, but it exacerbates the guilt. Leaves him feeling worse. Needing more.

It's a paradoxical craving. A torturous feedback loop. An addiction, in layman's terms. One of those lovely self-destructive spirals that won't let up until you hit rock bottom. 

You'd think he'd know better by now; he's been through this before, seen the seven wonders of the addiction world, yet he made no effort to stop himself from falling back into old habits.

He'd argue that it's different this time; he isn't using, you're not a narcotic, this isn't going to kill him, but he knows that's no excuse for what he's doing. He may be on a different branch of the path, but he's still using.

He's using you, and you're letting him. Sometimes it's that fact that bothers him more than anything else.

You've no business with him, really. You're young, ambitious, attractive; you could have anything you wanted, but you choose him, repeatedly.

There's a part of him that resents you for it, and it's at a constant war with the part of him that so adores the attention you give him.

He's projecting, he knows he is, but he truly doesn't understand how you can waste so much of your time, and your youth—things that have such an impossible value to them—on him, when you could be with someone better. Someone who isn't as damaged. Someone who can stomach something more than just casual sex.

The sex is another prison thing (he's dubbed every uncharacteristic behaviour that's emerged following his time at Millburn a "prison thing"). Meaningless sex was never something he was interested in before his arrest; he valued emotional connection above all else, and he had found it, briefly, before it was torn from him. Spencer's desire for intimacy, be it emotional or physical, died with Maeve. He was fine with that.

But his three months at Millburn left him with an acute, sickening awareness of his own mortality. Time was something he was already used to feeling slip through his fingers, no matter how hard he tried to hold on to it, but prison took his pre-existing anxieties and multiplied them tenfold. Twisted them into something that bordered almost on obsession.

Somewhere along the line, sex stopped being so sacred. He no longer saw the point in treating it as such; a lifetime of saving himself had earned him nothing and, with his emancipation affording him a second chance at life, he wasn't going to take what time he had remaining for granted.

So yeah, maybe he was desperate, but who could blame him? Anyone would be if they had as little relationship experience—as little life experience—as he did, especially at his age.

And there you were, over a decade younger than him with ten times the life lived, a poignant reflection of the very youth he felt he had wasted. He was jealous of you, the same way he was jealous of anyone—anything—that wasn't himself. He'd envy the birds for their wings, the insects for their inability to form conscious thoughts, and you for…everything.

You think he's a bitter old man, and he supposes you're right; his jokes are sardonic, his attitude is dry, and apparently he had a major case of "resting bitch face" (your words, not his. He prefers to call it his "resting thinking face"). He hasn't given you reason to believe he's anything other than a morose pessimist, a ghostly shell of someone you never had the privilege of knowing. 

Prison soured his temperament, cracked his ribs and stuffed his gaping chest cavity with rocks, sharp-edged and saturated with all the nasty feelings he refuses to put a name to, because then they'd be real and he'd have to face them head-on and he really, really doesn't want to do that.

He wonders sometimes if you'd still like him, had you met him last year, or if it was all of that nastiness in him that drew you in. Maybe you're attracted to baggage. It's not like he'd be able to judge you for it, if you were; your entire relationship is built on Spencer's need to expel his frustrations, and the masochistic enjoyment you get out of bearing the brunt of it all.

It isn't the healthiest foundation, he'll never try to claim otherwise, but it's something. And that's all he needs right now. All he can handle.

—

He only calls you when times get hard (which sounds like a decent plan, except times are always hard); he'll dial your number like a prayer, hold his breath whilst the phone rings, ask if you're busy like a dog begging for treats.

Without fail, you'll say no, you're not busy. You'll keep up the lie even when he can hear the club music and the chatter in the background, and you'll always be back at your apartment by the time he arrives.

Like tonight, when you were out with friends, enjoying the freedom of your early twenties, but you were still there in time to let him in.

He doesn't know how you manage it, and he never asks—it's one of those things you've conveniently left unaddressed, for both his benefit and yours. If he were to question it, you'd be forced to admit to caring about him more than you let on. The carefully maintained illusion of casualness would be shattered, and Spencer doesn't have the strength to bear the weight of the truth. He isn't sure you do, either.

The first thing he sees when you answer the door is your dress. Tight, black, clearly something you didn't have the time to change out of before he arrived; you don't dress up, not for him. But today, by total coincidence, you are: your hair is styled, your makeup is perfect. You look like something straight out of a dream. Straight out of his dreams, the few he has nowadays.

He's staring. You're smiling. You both know, yet neither of you comment on it. You let him in without a word, and the silence persists for as long as it takes you to close the door.

You're moaning after that. Back pressed up against the wall, fingers tangled in his hair as he kisses you senseless. His hands map your body like he doesn't already have it memorised, hikes up your dress as he tells you just how pretty you look. You respond by hooking your leg over his, canting your hips so there's no questioning what you want.

The break in the kiss arrives sooner than either of you would have hoped, punctuated with a potent wet sound, shallow breaths, and a saliva string that refuses to break.

His lips venture to the side of your neck, just below your jaw, and he breathes in your perfume as his palms trace the soft curves of your exposed thighs. He pulls you in by your hips, pressing them against his as he whispers a muffled "I missed you" into your skin, words unapologetically earnest. Almost delicate.

Your response comes in the form of a sigh—light and breathy, simmering with need—as you lean your head back, allowing him better access to your neck. "You saw me last…week— God…"

Two fingers press up against your panties, massaging your clit through the already sodden fabric as he brings his lips to your ear, and you can't help the little yelp that escapes you when his teeth nip at your lobe.

"Still too long," he murmurs, breath hot against your skin as he nudges the shell of your ear with his nose, and he can feel the way he makes your knees go weak. "You have no idea how badly I've needed this. Needed you."

"Mm…" You're rocking your hips now, grinding against his fingers as you turn your face to meet his gaze, and fuck, the way you look up at him with this kind of quiet, tempered reverence, like he hung the very stars visible through your window, is unlike anything he's ever seen. "Rough week?"

He leans down to kiss your lips, once, twice, before softly answering, "Something like that."

You nod along with his words slowly, almost thoughtfully, and trail your hands down his chest, over the freshly pressed fabric of his shirt. "Want me to make you feel better?"

As tempting an offer as it is, Spencer shakes his head. He catches both of your wrists with one strong hand, preventing you from advancing any further, and brings his lips to your forehead. "Not tonight," he says. "I don't want you to do anything."

"But—"

"Shh." He cuts you off with another kiss, fingers dipping under the elastic of your panties. "Just let me make you feel good, okay?"

Whatever protests you have lined up ("That's not fair", "What about you?") are silenced by the feel of his calloused fingers parting your slick folds. He keeps his touch light and slow, and you respond with a petulant whine; he knows what you want, what you can handle, yet he insists on being a tease.

His gaze doesn't stray from your face, and when you try to look away he's quick to grasp your chin so he can continue studying you, watching the twitches in your expression as he circles your entrance. The pressure, however gentle, seems enough to drive you mad.

The pad of his thumb brushes your lower lip, sinks into the plush as he tilts your head up. "Is that what you want, angel?"

"Spencer…"

"Hm?"

He raises an eyebrow as his name leaves your lips, and he shakes his head before leaning down to kiss your cheek.

"Not Spencer," he says softly. "Try again for me."

You roll your hips against his hand, shameless in your desire for more of him as you correct yourself with a smile and murmur, "…Daddy."

He has to bite his lip, withhold a guttural groan, like the sound of your voice alone is threatening to finish him off. "There we go," he says, maintaining that calm, measured tone as he trails his lips along your jaw. "You want Daddy to take care of you, hm?"

If this weren't your established dynamic, Spencer would be on his knees. The look on your face as you nod along with his words, whispering "yes, please", could bring down mountains, part seas, he's sure of it.

And God, the way you moan for him when he finally gives you what you want leaves him feeling lightheaded; it's paradisal, far too good to be true. He's never been a religious man (he's too logical, too ruined), but the electricity that surges through him when he has you like his is almost enough to drive him to worship. Like he could find God in you, if he only allowed himself to take that plunge.

Your fingers are in his hair, bringing his face to your neck as you rock your hips, desperate for him to take you further, and you're clenching, walls fluttering around his slender digits, like you're trying to suck him in. His teeth graze the delicate skin of your neck, and you let out this unholy whine that goes straight to his groin, almost shatters his composure entirely—all soft and needy and perfect, just aching to be taken care of.

Every curse that falls from your lips feels like some depraved reward as Spencer pumps his fingers with calculated precision, working you like it's second nature; he knows exactly what to do, what pace you love, what angles drive you crazy. He's perfectly tuned to your body, yet it never feels mechanical or boring—God knows it could never be boring, not with you. Spencer gets off on your pleasure almost as much as you do, the times he's finished untouched are proof of that.

He's determined to not let tonight add to his tally of premature finishes; as much as you enjoy knowing what you do to him, he would much rather make it to the main event, take his time, finish in you, or on you—or both, if he's feeling particularly greedy.

But it's hard, in a number of ways, to keep his composure when you're like this, and by the time you're teetering on the brink of your first orgasm, he's half-convinced he'll follow suit, that this will be another instance of him being too into you for his own good. 

He used to blame this little problem of his on prison, and on the life he led before it; he'd argue that his years of minimal sexual experience, of being married to his job, made him overly sensitive, too starved of touch to last as long as he wanted to. And maybe that was the case, at the time, but now it's something else entirely. 

Now it's just you. 

He's found his weakness in you; one he never knew existed at all.

Spencer's had crushes in the past. He's been in love. He knows how it feels to be so struck by someone he forgets his own name, but this…this is different. 

This isn't anything he's felt before, and he's spent every day since meeting you wondering how he had lived so long without it.

It's a feeling he'll be sure to bury once he's left your apartment; the weight of this rotten infatuation isn't something he has any use for when he's away from you, it'll only cause him pain.

But, for now, he lets it overcome him. Face pressed to your neck, he inhales your scent as he curls his fingers, guides you over the edge in a matter of seconds—and he has to close his eyes, bite his lip, to prevent himself from coming apart, too.

When you slump back against the wall, he sets his free hand on your waist, keeping you grounded as he eases his other hand out from between your trembling thighs. He brings his slick fingers to his lips, sucks them clean as you watch in a breathless haze, expression coloured with all shades of lust—and, looking past it, adoration. Spencer would be lying if he said it didn't make him feel a little smug, knowing that you're as besotted with him as he is with you.

He wastes no time before he's picking you up, hands planted firmly on the backs of your thighs, gripping the soft skin tight as you yelp in surprise.

"It's okay," he murmurs, "I've got you."

You press your face to his neck, eyes shut tight. "You're supposed to warn me."

"And you're supposed to trust me," he counters, craning to press a kiss to the top of your head before moving to the bedroom. "I'm not going to drop you, angel, I promise— whoops!"

The way you squeal as he dips forward, pretending to lose his grip, has him cackling—full-volume, loud and whole in a way he hasn't laughed in a long time. You kick your feet in protest, heels coming loose and clattering to the floor as you whinge about how you "hate him".

"Hate me?" Spencer parrots the notion with a grin as he sets you down on the bed. He hurries to take off his shoes before joining you, mattress sinking under your combined weight as he settles between your legs. "You hate me?"

Your response, no doubt full of snark and sarcasm, is quelled by the quiet, distinct sound of a zipper. Spencer's undoing the back of your dress, exposing your skin to the warm bedroom air as he awaits your answer with patience, but you bite your tongue, and you turn your face away to avoid his perceptive gaze.

His mouth finds your collarbone, trails slow, sensual kisses along your skin whilst his hands skim over your sides, wandering down to the bottom of your dress. You lift your hips without needing to be asked, inviting him to take it off. But he doesn't.

Instead, he raises his head, brown eyes searching your face for an answer he already knows—he's just buying time to look at you; to admire how gorgeous you look in this light, soiled with the need that palpates between you. 

"You hate me?" he repeats. Softer, this time.

He wants you to look at him. Not out of his desire for dominance, though it's certainly there, but because he wants you to see the way he's looking at you. He needs you, in that moment, to see him, and all the things he can't say. 

But when you do meet his gaze, he regrets it almost instantly.

"…no," you breathe.

Spencer can hardly hear you over the blood rushing in his ears. The seizing of his nerves as that familiar pang strikes him right in his gut. All of his lust turns cold, bitten by the frost of a split-second nervous response.

And the thought of you seeing him, really seeing him, is terrifying. More than anything he sees on the job. More than prison. 

He fidgets with the fabric of your dress, trying to kill the urge to pull away before it overwhelms him and grappling, stupidly, with the thought that you should hate him; that you would hate him, if you knew him.

You see it, he knows you do. The way his mind turns into a war zone the second the fog clears. He's waiting for you to speak up, to ask if he's okay, to smother him with concern he doesn't deserve, but you don't. You just wait. Quiet. Patient. Beautiful.

"…I don't hate you."

It's entirely likely that he's imagining things, clinging to whatever false hope he can find, but your words, as soft spoken as they are, are laced with something meaningful. A promise, maybe. Is he selfish for thinking that way? Stupid?

You've always been careful not to veer too close to the sensitive parts of him. The volatile, unhealed parts. You don't acknowledge the unease that runs through his veins, not outright; that would only do more harm than good.

It's as much a part of him as his red blood cells and his platelets, that constant, thrumming discomfort. The fraught static that's been there all his life, crackling around the edges of his vision. Building and dissipating, never truly going away.

He's scared. 

He doesn't remember a time where he hasn't been.

So when he kisses you, it's desperate. Unapologetically so, like he's trying to expel it all before it kills him. Poorly coordinated. All teeth and tongue and a breath he doesn't even realise he's holding until he's gasping into your mouth, grasping at your dress like he's seconds away from tearing it from your body.

It's equivalent to screaming into the void, he supposes; pouring his feelings, his frustrations, into something that accepts them so willingly. And it's another thing he'll regret once he leaves, as he always does.

He tugs your dress off and tosses it aside, and he's on you again before it hits the floor. On your neck, your shoulders, your chest. Every inch of skin that isn't covered, claimed by his demanding mouth.

Your bra is the next to go. Discarded, replaced by large hands that suit you so much better than any lace. His tongue dips between your tits, leaves a glossy trail of saliva in its wake as you shudder under the intensity of his affections.

"God…" he groans into your skin, lips pressed to your left breast like he's speaking directly to your heart. "I missed you."

"You said that already."

You're smiling. Laughing, almost. He can hear it in your voice; your words have this warmth to them, one that settles in his stomach, makes him feel as though he's floating on air. He doesn't dare steal another glimpse of your face; he'd never be able to look away, if he did.

"And?" His hands drop to your hips, and he pulls you forward until you're lying flat on your back. He takes your leg, presses a kiss to the inside of your knee as he says, "I mean it."

"Uh huh." He can feel your eyes on him. The weight of your gaze burns. "Careful, I might start thinking you like me."

He looks at you then. He can't help it. That smile makes him queasy, but not in a bad way (which is weird, because he isn't sure such a thing as "good nausea" exists; maybe he's the first to discover it). 

He feels very much like a deer in headlights when he's caught in your line of sight like this. That kind of vulnerability isn't something he's felt in years, but that, too, isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Lips now pressed to your thigh, he lets out a soft scoff. "Like you?" he asks, barely suppressing a smile of his own now. "What gave you that impression?"

"Oh, I don't know." You reach for his tie, giving it a gentle tug as you pull him closer. "Just a…hunch, I guess."

As he leans over you, he tilts his head to the side, eyebrow raised. "A hunch?"

"Are you going to keep repeating everything I say as a question?" you ask. "It feels a little patronising."

"Patronising?"

"Oh my God—"

He cuts you off with a kiss, cradling the back of your head as you work on loosening his tie. You hook your legs over his waist, and he feels you cross your ankles to prevent him from scurrying away—as if he'd ever dream of it. 

"You missed me, too," he murmurs, grinning against your lips.

All you give him in response is a low hum. Your hands tremble slightly, impatience curdling with adrenaline, as you fumble with the buttons of his shirt.

Tutting, he breaks the kiss, and as he pulls away he catches your wrists once more. 

"Say it," he says, taking on a firmer tone as he looks down at you.

Biting your lip, you cast your gaze to the side, playing coy for as long as you can stomach before you quietly admit, "I missed you."

Whether you mean it or not doesn't matter (of course, he hopes you do); it elicits the same response either way. Spencer latches onto your jaw, releases your wrists, lets you remove his shirt as he tries to swallow the urge to bite, to leave marks on the sensitive skin—symbols of ownership that no amount of makeup would be able to cover up. But that would be reckless, if not a little cruel, so he just settles for kisses. Possessive ones, simmering with the desire for something more, something real, be it hickeys or…more.

"Oh, I know, angel." His voice softens, but the words remain hot against your skin as he nips at your neck. "You missed your daddy, didn't you?"

You answer with an eager nod, nudging his belt with the heel of your foot as you grow increasingly desperate. "Please…"

Spencer lifts his head, brows raised like he doesn't understand what you're asking of him. "Please what?"

"You said you'd take care of me," you say.

"Is that not what I’m doing?"

His faux display of cluelessness does not amuse you as it does him. You're pouting now, fingers tangled in his hair as you try your best to withhold a smile. "You're gonna make me ask?"

"I believe communication is an important—"

"I need you to fuck me," you interrupt.

Need.

How many times has he told himself that's all this is? Base need. A carnal void that needs filling. Nothing more. 

There's so much certainty behind your words, like you're stating scientific fact. You need this, the same way you need food and water.

You need him. 

That isn't what you said, but it's what he hears. And it sends him fucking reeling.

"…that's not very polite."

He has to force the words out around the lump in his throat, around his own need that's scorching his insides. Singing every nerve, every cell, until the only thing his debauched body can process is you. Your legs around his waist. Your hands in his hair. Your perfume mixed with the stench of sweat. Yours, and his.

And then you go in for the kill. Tilt your head to the side. Bat your eyelashes. Like you don't already have him wrapped around your finger.

"Please."

…and that's good enough for him.

He springs into action without thinking. Deft fingers unbuckle his belt as he sits up, and he ignores your whines as he untangles himself from you. He sheds his trousers, his underwear, and casts them aside with a warrior's confidence, only to pick them back up again when he realises he forgot the condom in his pocket (but come on, no one's perfect).

When he rejoins you on the bed, he wastes no time in getting you into position. He flips you onto your front, manipulates your body like a doll's, and you let him; face pressed to the mattress, knees folded, ass in the air right where he wants it. The stitching pops and tears as he tugs at your panties, and the head of his cock is pressed snug against your entrance before you can get a word in—and by that point all you can manage is a low, anticipatory moan and an impatient wiggle of your hips.

"Oh, fuck—"

There's something holy in the way you curse in unison as he sinks into you; your words muffled by your hands, his grunted through his teeth as he channels his focus into not finishing too soon. But you're clamping down on every inch like you'll never let him go, and he has to close his eyes, dig his teeth into the inside of his cheek, to keep himself in check.

He bottoms out with a whimper, fingers pressing into the soft plush of your hips, oblivious to the bruises he'll leave behind as he tries to steady himself. He allows both of you some much needed time to breathe, enough time to press his lips to your shoulder, ask in a whisper if you're "doing okay?" before he goes any further. Your response is physical; a shift of your hips, making you both moan as you take him that little bit deeper.

"Shit…feel that?" He trails a hand down to your lower stomach, presses his palm flat against the skin before giving a tentative roll of his hips, and he isn't sure what he gets off on more; the fact that he's buried so deep inside of you he can feel the slight bulge when he moves, or the noise that escapes you when he presses a little firmer. It's animal. "You feel how fucking deep I am?" 

He punctuates the question with a thrust, one that pulls another filthy moan from your lips, and another, and another, as he settles into a rhythm, making sure he hits that sweet spot each time he pushes into you.

Keeping one hand anchored on your hip, he runs his fingers across the expanse of your arched back, drags his nails across the soft skin, makes you whine into the mattress as he marks you up. You'll no doubt complain about the red lines that bloom in his wake, how they'll get in the way of any backless outfit you have planned, but Spencer thinks they're beautiful. In fact, if he were any more wicked, he'd scratch his initials into your skin and tell you to wear those clothes anyway—that way, when you go out to all those clubs and bars, there'd be no doubt about who you really belonged to.

Ragged breaths and the hypnotic sound of skin against skin fill your dimly lit bedroom as Spencer's hand slips down the side of your neck. He grasps your jaw from behind, encourages you to lift your head so he can better hear how he's ruining you, and God, it's intoxicating.

He'll ride this high for the rest of the week, when he isn't letting the guilt churn in his stomach, safe in the knowledge that he'll always have some semblance of purpose, even if it's just in bed. After all, it's better than nothing, especially when his life has felt so…devoid of it. Purpose. Meaning. 

It's weird, if not downright depressing, but in the time that has passed since prison (since well before then, if he's being honest), the only time Spencer has felt any semblance of peace has been with you. Using you. Partaking in this obscene give-and-take. Leaving claw marks in something that isn't his. 

It's catharsis. It's a backwards cleansing for all of his foulness. A perverse ritual to satiate his desperate need for control. It was a quick fix, uncharacteristically selfish because he felt he had earned the right to be. It was superficial, and it was simple.

He isn't sure when it stopped being simple. If it ever was to begin with.

You're grasping at the sheets, arching your back and calling him Daddy through sinful, broken moans, on the cusp of another orgasm, and all he can think about is how much he likes you. It's pathetic. Worse than that, it's dangerous.

"Fuck…"

But he can't help it.

"Come here…let me see you."

He flips you onto your back, holds you by your jaw so you've no choice but to look at him as he fucks you. Your leg over his shoulder, knee pressed almost to your chest. Teary-eyed and drooling, looking like everything he's ever dared to want.

It doesn't take much from there to push you over the edge—a little pressure on your stomach, his breath hot on your face—and as your body contracts around him Spencer finally reaches the end of his rope. His vision blurs, and he gives a few more weak thrusts before he collapses on top of you, reduced to little more than a sack of leaden limbs and shaky breaths.

Moments pass before he's able to process the wetness on his cheeks, the two narrow rivers finding the path of least resistance through his stubble, and it takes even longer for him to process what really should be obvious: he's crying. Face buried in your neck, probably crushing you under the weight of his trembling body, and crying.

That kind of realisation should be enough to snap him out of it. He should have the sense to pull it together before he humiliates himself in your arms, but he doesn't. Something has messed with his brain chemistry, be it his heightened emotional state, or the adrenaline crash, or whatever else, and Spencer is helpless against it.

Even his efforts to stay quiet are thwarted by a rogue sniffle, wet and pathetic and full of all the things he doesn't want you to know. But as he lays there holding his breath, heart hammering against his ribs, dreading your reaction to his wretched state, all he feels is a hand gently smoothing out his hair. And that, as innocuous as it is, is almost enough to break him completely.

He counts each steady beat of your heart, matches the rise and fall of your chest until he can breathe on his own again. Your warmth seeps into him, keeping him grounded with unspoken promises—and a silent invitation, equal parts irresistible and impossible.

The only thing more powerful than Spencer's desire to stay is the is the crushing feeling that he has to leave. That to stay would be to open doors he'd never be able to close again; to nail himself to a cross for you to watch. To judge. Or maybe, if you're a fool, to love, even though it would be wasted on him.

So he forces himself up, excuses himself to your bathroom, and disappears before you can call out after him. He finds comfort in the cool ceramic of your sink, so different to the warmth of your pliant skin, and safer. So, so much safer.

He splashes his face with cold water and forces himself to think of anything but you, lying in that bed, alone with no one to keep you warm. He reviews cases in his mind, avoids his gaze in the mirror as he mops himself up with one of your soft towels.

The knock comes eight minutes into his self-imposed solitary confinement. The door isn't locked, so you push it open when he tries to ignore you.

You're already in your pyjamas, Spencer's clothes clutched to your chest. The weak smile you offer falters when he refuses to look you in the eye, and you hand over his crumpled clothes without a word, opting instead to chew and choke on the dense silence as he gets changed.

His movements are mechanical. Shirt, boxers, slacks, shoes. He stuffs his tie into his pocket, and half of it comes spilling right back out, dangles from his hips like his own scarlet letter, and he's mumbling his half-hearted goodbyes before he can dare to have second thoughts.

"I—"

He has one foot out the door when you speak up. You've followed him back into the living room, arms crossed in a poor show of confidence that starts to waver as soon as he meets your gaze.

"You'd, um—" You clear your throat, shrugging as you don an ironic smile. "You'd tell me if this was…it, right?"

Spencer blinks at you, bewildered, but you barely allow him to take a breath before you continue.

"I know I sound stupid, asking that. But…I'm kind of sensing something here, maybe? And I—" You sigh, but your smile remains intact. "I'd just prefer it if you told me outright, that way I won't waste my time, you know…sitting by the phone. Waiting on a call that'll never come."

What isn't betrayed in your expression is visible elsewhere; your eyes, the drumming of your fingers against your arms, the tension in your shoulders that makes you look cold even though your thermostat is always turned up. As far as facades go, though, you've got a pretty decent one; anyone who wasn't a profiler might think your nonchalance was genuine. But Spencer knows an illusion when he sees one, he's spent too long wrapped up in ones of his own not to.

So, when he does eventually speak up, he does so earnestly. He studies your face, your smudged mascara, the desperation hiding behind those sharp eyes, and he tries to swallow all of the undesirable notions clawing at his throat when he says, "I'll call you."

His words barely penetrate your smile. It thins, struggles, but its cynicism persists. You don't believe him.

"Tomorrow?" he adds, letting a small, reassuring smile of his own cross his face.

After scrutinising him for a moment longer, your shoulders drop, and you concede. "Sure. Sure."

Spencer nods, and he takes an instinctive step forward before thinking better of it; nothing good could come from kissing you goodbye, not tonight. 

So, with nothing left to do, he flashes you one last parting smile, repeating "I'll call you tomorrow" before stepping out into the hall.

But not even he can be entirely certain he's telling the truth.

The mercury was a beauty, and what a year ‘76, Ford was president, Cold War against those damn commie Russkies still in its prime offering Auggie plenty of mercenary work, the Eagles released their greatest hits, Hotel California graced the radio and that year his first son Keith had been born. 

So much promise there in Keith, lost in an instant. He was the perfect soldier, followed orders to a tee, easily manipulated but not to the point of stupidity like his younger brother. Nor did he have that attitude and all the rest of it that came with being a girl like his sister. 

A true weapon, one that he could’ve used to conquer nations. Only a fool would try to use a dull blade, too heavy handed and prone to making mistakes, or an overly sharp blade, edge too unstable and prone to losing control. 

Captain Triumph would’ve been his moniker, the suit sat in the display of his interdimensional workstation, along with Peacemaker, Precision and of course his own mantle White Dragon. 

Now it was 2006, and he had sired a waste of space pansy-ass son Chris and an acting up, wilful daughter that needed to learn her proper place in the world. Where had the fucking time gone and where had he gone wrong?

Auggie turned back to you, a silent question on his thin lizard-like lips, pursed as if begging you to give him a reason to get the car battery cables out again.

Suspended by a chain bolted to the garage wall made it difficult for you to really seem imposing. All you could do was glare back, not wanting to give him the satisfaction. 

Pangs of hunger clawed desperately at your gut, vision failing, but still you had to keep eye contact. 

You had to try to let him know that he hadn't broken you yet. And he never would. 

That belief had to reside in you somewhere at least. It was literally keeping you alive. 

Auggie didn’t appear to notice nor care about your deep set scowl, returning an effortless one of his own. Like a haunted house two-way mirror. “Summer camp is over. A hungry dog is most obedient,” he led waiting for you to continue, mockingly shaking the set of keys for your release in front of your gaunt face. 

Your literal meal ticket, to finally leave the basement and get to the dinner table. There was no rejecting your basic instinct, biology was screaming at you to eat. 

“..a hungry dog hunts best.” You finally replied to finish that stupid favorite saying of his.  

“That’s my girl.” The dark grin made your stomach turn, you’d lost this bout, as he anticipated, a chess game with your hands cut off would’ve been easier. “Let’s go upstairs and get ready for supper, your brother’s going to be home soon and it’s an important day.”

Stumbling up the basement stairs, you let the shower pelt you with cold water, trying to wash off the grime with an old bar of soap. The drain spiralled with a dark mix of dirt and blood, you watched it intently, until the water eventually went clear.

An old Linkin Park hoodie from a concert Chris took you to helped hide the swollen marks at your wrists and across the landscape of torture you’d endured over the past week. Auggie was more clever than he let on though, your face was left unmarred, so when Chris got home from his job at the local ammunition store, he was none the wiser. 

“Dinner!” Auggie roared at you to hurry up, despite how much you wanted to collapse in a heap into your cramped cot bed and sleep. 

“Good to see you sis! Did you enjoy summer camp?” Chris asked as he walked through the door, a wide stupid open-mouthed smile on his face. 

Auggie glared at you from across the dining room table, knife and fork squealing across ceramic pointedly for you to keep your story straight or else. 

“Uh-huh, it was so much fun.” You lied robotically, stabbing a fork into the peas on your plate. 

“Make any friends?” Chris looked so hopeful, as if it was ever a possibility that you could ever connect with another human being in that way. 

“Not really.” You replied, trying to keep the story realistic. “I enjoyed learning archery, wood carving, fishing and hunting though.” The bullshit lines Auggie told you to spout out were easy coming off your liars tongue. 

“Glad you enjoyed yourself at least.” Chris nodded, none the wiser. “Thanks for cooking dad, this steak is awesome!”  

“It’s fine.” Auggie grumbled back, glancing over at you. “This one was too lazy to make anything, you’d better sort out a birthday cake quick smart young lady if you know what’s good for you.” 

It took everything within yourself to cut the steak and not your father’s trachea with the steak knife in your hand. “What cake do you want?” You asked instead, rigidly facing your brother. 

“Chocolate!” Chris exclaimed, already salivating at the thought. 

“Twenty-five, still living under my roof and you’re excited over chocolate cake. What a pathetic fuck up you are.” Auggie suddenly announced, fist slamming on the table, iron-clad.

“Sorry sir…” Chris started to make excuses, how he’d gotten himself a place with his pal Gut Chase, a trailer at the local trailer park and would be moving out soon. None of it seemed to impress Auggie, who wordlessly finished off his meal. 

“You’re moving out?” You were shocked that the big lug had managed to keep it a secret from you, or that he managed to save enough from his job. 

“It’s in the works, sorry Strawberry, I was gonna tell you…” He winced, as if you’d be upset to see him gone. 

“Who cares, do whatever you want.” You shrugged, scooping more gravy onto your mashed potatoes, refusing to make eye contact with him either during the rest of the meal. 

Afterwards you got to work baking the chocolate cake with whatever batter mix of cooking chocolate and half-used Betty Crocker packets you could find in the pantry to make something edible. Piping with cream on top you spelt out 25 in bold letters, your handwriting precise and clean, it read more as a statement than a heart-felt addition. 

“Candles?” Chris had the audacity to ask when you emerged from the kitchen, baking tray in hand with a big stupid cake on top. 

“What are you going to wish for? Another sock to jerk-off into?” Auggie put an end to that with one fell swoop of his poisonous ire. 

That zipped Chris right up, who cut the cake up in silence, passing paper plates round. All of you ate up that chalky chocolate, a little too soft in the middle mess you’d baked while still half-dead from being tortured for a week straight, all pretending to be a regular family. 

“Time for your present son, it’s down in the garage.” Auggie announced gruffly, wiping his face off of chocolate and enjoying how wide your eyes got. 

“A present? Holy shit!” He was just as shocked, neither of you ever got gifts on special occasions, outside of when Auggie forgot what day it was and handed you a new weapon or ammunition absent mindedly. 

Following the pair back into the basement you’d only just escaped from would have made most go into a hyperventilating mess, but you weren’t most people. You didn’t feel things like normal people did. 

“Woah dad thanks so much! Oh man, I'm gonna call it the Peace-Mobile!” Chris was so excited, pumping the air and running around the car like a dog. 

He forgot himself in his excitement and went to try and hug your father, who shot him a look of pure scorn and disdain at the act of affection.  

“Fucking pussy.” Auggie shoved Chris back into the wall and shook his head thoroughly disappointed. When he went storming off to get himself another beer, you glared at Chris for poking the rabid bear. 

“Thanks a lot big bro, bet I’m gonna have another shiner for school tomorrow for that now.” You snapped venomously, eyeing the car with intense jealousy. 

In a sick twisted way, you felt owed the vehicle for what Auggie put you through. That had been your daughter-daddy bonding project over the summer. 

Chris was left alone with the cold car keys in his hand, trudging back to eat the rest of his birthday cake, hoping food would fill the loneliness he felt in the pit of his stomach. The warmth of a family who cared and loved him wasn’t something he could rely on, Chris knew for his sanity that he had to get out of this house. 

But he still worried, abandoning you with Auggie. Yet the way you treated him with such malcontent, he couldn’t lie, that helped with the decision to get the fuck outta dodge. 

It was fine, you were totally okay, Chris lied to himself after moving out, he went to family dinners on Sunday evening to do a welfare check-in. 

At school you didn't interact much with anyone, keeping to yourself. A true loner it opened the gateways of would be bullies, had they not been terrified of you. So any teasing about how horrible your home life or financial situation judging by your clothes was usually done well outside of your periphery.

However at times you did hear hushed whispers of your fellow female kind, discussing the new trends that you clearly couldn’t afford. What bothered you wasn’t their vapid murmuring, gaping stares or exclusionary tones. It was that they had something you couldn’t attain. 

Money was paramount to keeping appearances, blending in, getting what you wanted, climbing the ladder, being left the fuck alone. You needed to get money. But your father wouldn’t let you get a part-time job, and you didn’t want one. 

Being told what to do for minimum wage? You’d likely snap within the first shift at McDonalds and the greasy managers atlas cervical vertebrae in one swift motion. 

Stealing was easy, you had been trained for warzones and operative missions by your father, swiping some clothes from Hot Topic was child’s play. Speaking of, there was a neat Child’s Play t-shirt along with a Poltergeist shirt that you proficiently snapped up to wear at school tomorrow. 

The emo grunge style suited your wants to be left the fuck alone and spoke to you the most of the cliques that hovered around the school yard. A nice camouflage to be the strange girl that kept to herself, listened to MyChemicalRomance and smoked cigarettes under the bleachers. 

“Heya, a little help there goth lady?” 

A voice called out to you one frosty morning during your routine of dragging a pack stolen off your dad's wardrobe of Marlboros and imagining his rage-filled shout tear through the house as he turned it upside down trying to find them.

Looking directly up at the source of the irritating sound landed you with the sight of a scrawny bespectacled boy hanging suspended by his underwear on the bleachers. A seriously heinous wedgie.

“Kinda a lot of effort for them to haul you out of middle school to do this. Who'd you piss off?” You replied, standing up to get a better look at how pathetic he was.

His face was riddled in acne and a couple bruises, curly hair a frizzy mess alongside a metal monstrosity of head gear. A striped polo shirt with a precious pocket protector, washed high-waisted khakis and bright white sneakers finished the geeky ensemble. “And why are you dressed like the weirdo host off Blues Clues?” 

“Steve? Wow that's an honor you think so! But I'm not a middle schooler, I'm Adrian Chase, a senior just like yourself!” Adrian explained, swinging helplessly back and forth, trying to keep the position where he could bask in your beauty most.

Adrian knew that your makeup was urban decay graveyard themed, banned apparel black knit cardigan with holes down the sleeves, a military green skirt and combat boots with red and black striped tights. While he didn't approve you stealing from Hot Topic, he had to admit it all looked great on you.

“My condolences.” You blew a line of smoke right into his face. 

“We're actually in math class together and share the same lunch period!” Adrian knew this because he sat in a prime spot to watch you eat your lunch. 

It was the same thing every day, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He had counted how many bites it took you to finish it and that was how many motions he was allowed to finish his own meal. 

Totally normal behavior and he didn't use that measurement to finish anything else off later at home while surfing the world wide web on the family computer in the basement. 

“What's in it for me?” You asked, stamping out a cigarette and considering putting the next one out on his sweaty forehead.

“Justice?” Adrian suggested.

“Not very lucrative.” You shrugged.

“I could hold your book bag for the rest of the year?” Adrian offered.

“Gross. You look like you'd love being my little slave, no thanks.” You pulled a face of disgust at the very idea.

“Nuh-uh…” Adrian tried in vain to hide the half-chub forming by swinging to the other side. “Hm well what about something super valuable, it's in my locker if you let me down it's yours!” 

“What is it?” You frowned, his clothes weren't overly preppy but not super discount store looking either. Maybe he did have something valuable.

“Payment only after the kind deed is performed, milady.” Adrian wouldn't budge and you sighed, flicking open your switch blade to cut him down. 

“Fine, but a deal's a deal. Better be worth my time.” Slicing through the tightie whities, Adrian bellyflopped to the grass with a groan.

It wasn't worthwhile at all.

It was a fucking toy.

“A priceless Spinner the spider beanie baby for your trouble madam!” Adrian proclaimed proudly, green eyes sparkling behind those insanely punchable frames. 

“You've got to be shitting me.” You grumbled, holding the stupid PVC bean bag with beady eyes and for whatever reason a tiger patter on its abdomen.

“Nope! She's all yours.” Adrian grinned, retrieving a spare pair of underwear of which you could see there were several folded and slammed his locker shut. “Totally gonna be worth like a million dollars soon, she’s discontinued by TY!” He whistled cheerfully along to the Gilmore Girls theme on his way to English class. 

Without another word you marched off and never really spoke with that geeky Chase kid again. The spider toy remained in your locker, a reminder to never do a favor without the payment negotiated clearly and first half upfront, second half after the job is completed. Via wire transfer.  

But you’d been staring at the photograph of Chris with his new car, you beside him, after he painted it over with an American flag decal and that stupid beanie baby on your mantle for too long now. Note to self, never let either of those idiots into your room, lest they believe you hold sentimentality for them. 

Another morning, another run around Evergreen park. This time though, no sign of Rick. Finally you could be left alone, taking a slightly different trail than usual. The thought made you nearly crack a smile, until a man in a gaudy teal lycra sweatsuit right out of the late 80s came bounding up to you, waving profusely to get your attention. Curly bob of hair was bouncing above a thick silver framed set of polarised running goggles. 

Fuck. This was worse. Much worse. 

Mostly because Adrian was in great shape and could keep up with you, and talk at the same time. “Woah! You run around the park too? What a coincidence.” He flashed you a genuinely toothy grin, one that spelt out indeed he hadn’t been following you around. 

“Yes, quite the coincidence.” You muttered back, mentally checking off to never change your morning routine or run path again, ever. Upping the pace, Adrian smiled even wider, happy for the challenge that he frustratingly met. 

“What are you listening to?” Adrian wondered, motioning to your noise cancelling headphones. 

You really should get a refund for those, they clearly didn’t work on whatever whiny annoying frequency Adrian operated at. “Hotel California.” You replied stiffly. 

Her mind is Tiffany-twisted, she got the Mercedes-Benz, uh

She got a lot of pretty, pretty boys that she calls friends...

How they dance in the courtyard, sweet summer sweat

Some dance to remember, some dance to forget...

“Oooh nice a classic, I’m listening to In This Skin by Jessica Simpson.” Adrian showed you his ancient teal iPod nano. 

To be worthy! To feel beautiful in this skin

Be beautiful in this skin, love the skin I'm in

Love me for me! Have confidence in this skin!

Be confident in this skin!~

“I didn’t ask.” You rolled your eyes, what a weird song choice, did he need the early morning boost of body empowerment or some shit? 

“I listen to it for a boost of body empowerment early in the morning, to know I am beautiful in this skin and while I run for fitness it’s not to define my self-worth.” Adrian explained and you hated how you got that right and were unraveling his insane logic so easily.

He truly was a toxin of insanity infiltrating your mind.  

Parasitic in every sense of the word, blathering on. 

“I’m getting a coffee after this.” You said it to try and stop the conversation, but Adrian of course took it as an invitation, dawdling behind you all the way to Jitters. 

At this point after hearing him drone on during your run without skipping a breath about the MTV reality series Newlyweds: Nick & Jessica and his opinion on every one of forty episodes, you’d become immune to being annoyed any further for today. 

After you ordered your usual of an Americano, iced today as it was getting hot, before you could pay, Adrian stepped forward. “I don’t really drink coffee, I’m already high energy. But I’ll get a caramel frappe with extra whipped cream thanks!” Then he unexpectedly got his credit card out, a pithy low-rate blue American Express, and paid for your drinks. 

“Why did you do that? I make exponentially more than you do. Also the low-rate cards are a scam, you shouldn’t fall for those gimmicks.” You lectured him and despised how he smiled sweetly at that, as if you were giving advice from the bottom of your heart. 

“It’s my mom’s card and I wanted to be a good boyfriend and buy you a coffee!” Adrian insisted, not at all seeing how cringe that was and gesturing for you to both sit down at a booth. 

Right, you’d nearly forgotten. You were fake dating Adrian. 

“We have a lead on the aliens, Guan Tai or some shit, sounds like yoga.” Adrian informed you, slurping down his sugary drink. 

“Don’t you do pilates?” You scoffed, checking over the newspaper for your favorite orange cat. 

“That’s totally different! It’s like awesome for my core strength…” Adrian whined, peering over to read the cartoon with you. 

Today Garfield was sitting at a laptop, typing away, John behind him. ‘I’m creating a new organizational chart, I’m supreme overlord of course…’ Then he classically turned to the idiot John. ‘Do you want to be called Food Servant or Litter Box Flunky?’ Garfield asked with a smirk. 

Adrian was in total stitches, laughing horrendously loud, milk snorting out of his nose, hand clutched to his side, another banging the table with a closed fist. “GARFIELD YOU’VE DONE IT AGAIN!” He didn’t care about the looks glaring his way in the slightest, wiping tears out of his eyes before smiling adoringly at you. 

“That was a good one.” You admitted quietly, finishing your coffee to stand up and leave. Adrian wasn’t at all finished with his drink, but chugged it down in two choking gulps to race out ahead with you towards the Hennelotter video hideout. 

There was a game plan in motion, hit up the warehouse, secure whatever they were making and get out of there. Simple enough. 

Then Vigilante started setting off a chainsaw loudly in the back of the van. “I can’t wait to fucking kill someone with one of these bad boys!” He exclaimed, Harcourt viciously telling him to knock it off. Everyone denied him the fun toy, as it wasn’t great for espionage. 

Despite how annoying Vigilante was, you did feel a little disappointed to not see or get to participate in the next Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The group split up to cover more ground and be inconspicuous, you and Vigilante paired together with Harcourt who bitterly lost the paper scissors rock with Adebayo for who would babysit the psychopaths. 

Adrian wouldn’t know quiet if you put it into a cement brick and hit him upside the head with it, something you imagined out frequently. “Hold up! I remember this warehouse, it was the old hideout of that asshat and where we first met Pris.” He attempted to whisper but barely contained a shout. 

“Yes, the job for taking out that mafioso wannabe.” You agreed upon survelling the warehouse more closely. 

Heading through the coast was not clear as your brother Chris immediately fucked up and it was a fire fight that with your skill was easily dispatched of. Closing in to reconvene as a larger group, Adrian was still wandering down memory lane for some reason. 

“Oh wow, right here you were, Pris, gosh you looked so beautiful bent right over in this spot…” Vigilante began dreamily, and the gang all wondered how he still had his voice box intact with you standing next to him.

“UGH DUDE I AM RIGHT HERE!” Chris shouted, looking close to vomiting. 

“...as you shoved that live grenade down that fuckers throat, fuck still gives me tingles!” Vigilante continued, clasping his hands together into a full swoon.

“That was fun.” You admitted, sauntering past Vigilante to continue investigating the warehouse.

“Right?” Vigilante beamed.

“I don’t know if that’s better or worse.” Adebayo shook her head and Harcourt merely rolled her eyes. Murn wasn’t participating at all, actually getting to work at finding another hidden door at the back and waving them to join him. 

“Do you seriously have an erection right now dude?!” John asked with a disgusted frown on his face, everyone looking down at a tent that had formed at Vigilante’s crotch.

“No, it's just the crotch padding to protect the merchandise. Which is definitely flaccid at this current moment in time.” Vigilante boldly claimed, his voice getting a few octaves higher. “Don't be staring at my dick!” He squealed at everyone, who walked past him to check out the secret back room. 

“They’re making that goo stuff Goff was eating here!” Chris exclaimed, picking up one of the jars and turning it around. 

“More like transporting it from somewhere…” Adebayo noted, there didn’t seem to be any production plants, only conveyor belts for transporting onto trucks. 

John logged into the computers to try and figure out where else they could be, and all in all you were quite bored until the next wave of whoever you were allowed to kill turned up. The entire warehouse was surrounded, Murn, Chris and Harcourt all leaving to deal with the exterior, Adebayo below with you and Adrian as John tried to hack into the computer for the location of the cow like creature these aliens were milking the goo from. 

It was all going great until Adrian unleashed a shotgun shell into a shelf of goo jars above you both, glass shattered across the ground, and the thick honey like ooze was dripping helmet to boots, obscuring your visors. 

“You fucking idiot Vig…” You grunted, trying to wipe the goo off, you blasted away the final stragglers. But there was no use clearing the visor, you only achieved smearing it more, sticky residue coating your glove. 

“Sorry Pris!” Vigilante similarly had to take his helmet off, the goo was everywhere. Then you caught him doing something insanely heinous. 

This motherfucker assessed the goo on his gloved finger and licked it. 

“Did you just fucking eat that?” You demanded, like an owner discovering their dog eating some mysterious item off the ground. 

“...no.” Adrian lied, trying to hide his shame, some of the honey still on his bottom lip. “It does taste good though.” He admitted when he realised there was no point in lying. 

“So this is how we figured out which mushrooms were poisonous in the middle ages.” You scoffed at him, rolling your eyes. “Nice knowing you.”

“It was?” Adrian cooed, over the moon by that, “Awww it was nice knowing you too!”

“Gross this stuff is all over my gloves,” You tried to remove them but it was tricky with how stuck together the fingers were. Using your teeth, you got one of the gloves off to remove the other, not noticing the intense stares until they flopped to the ground. 

“That’s better.” You sighed, then took in their bewildered expressions. “Oh fuck.” 

“Vig ate some of that weird alien goo and now Pris has also ingested some…” Adebayo updated the others outside. 

“They did what?!” Harcourt shouted back. 

“That’s not great, you two might want to get a wide berth…” Murn said, sounding as if he could anticipate what might happen next. 

“Uhh guys they're fighting!” John called out over the comms. 

You and Adrian were circling one another, interlocked in an equal sided sparring match. Swiping a leg to underpin his own, you smashed an elbow at his sternum, but Adrian caught it and wrestled back a shaky control. Kneeing you in the gut, you returned the favor with a sharp jutting punch to the chest, winding him.  

“What the fuck?” Harcourt replied, “why would they do that?” 

The two of you unsheathed the blades at your backs and began to clash swords, dodging, ducking and weaving, each with dazed grins plastered on your faces. 

“I wonder if it tasted any good?” Chris wondered and Harcourt slapped his hand from grabbing a nearby jar in the van. 

“Ugh Adrian also suddenly smells awful, like he rolled in pig shit.” John bemoaned, pinching his nose shut.

“No I don’t! How dare you say that around my girlfriend!” Adrian gnashed his teeth back towards John. Did that fucker just growl at him? 

“Male butterflies emit an anti-aphrodisiac for other males to leave when about to mate.” Murn explained calmly. 

As if on queue there was a new wave of pheromones in the air, palpable enough to cut with a blade, the two of you dropping your blades to the ground. 

You swallowed dryly, starting to feel overwhelmed as his scent hit you like a freight train, sending shocks right to your core. Sure Adrian was meticulous with his skin care routine and used pleasant smelling deodorant, it never had this visceral reaction before. 

Adrian had a similar experience, because oh god, you smelled way too good, like a bakery putting out their sugar buns out on a spring morning, fresh pastries, vanilla, big plush, bouncy…

Okay the bakery metaphor was gone and he was fully staring at your tits now. He felt himself hardening at an alarming pace, which wasn’t all too strange around you to be honest, but there was something a little off this time. 

“About to mate? Oh god they aren't fighting anymore…” John raced for the door before he could witness anymore of this insanity.

The imperative took over, the two of you stepping closer, only inches away, before taking a deep long breath of each other's intoxicating, alluring scents, eyes locked in an amorous war.  When Adrian reached out to touch you, pulling in an arm around your waist, you moaned lowly. He responded in kind with a deep purr, pressing his tenting desire against your thigh, biting down on his lip with a swear when you ground back. 

“Sweet baby Jesus...” Adebayo was well ahead of him, dashing down the hall. 

You had come out victorious, and slammed Adrian to the ground, unbuckling his belt. His hands were desperately groping out for your own. 

“Once the female is satisfied with her suitor, she allows him to attach himself by extending and offering her abdomen towards the male for coupling.” Murn continued to inform them flatly. 

“How long do butterflies usually mate for?” John asked, Adebayo giving him a weirded out look. “So we know when to go get them!” He qualified. 

“Anywhere the coupling could be from one to twelve hours…” Murn replied with an awkward clearing of his throat. 

“I think I'm going to actually throw up, please can we stop talking about this.” Chris retched.

“Let's leave them there and go before more show up!” Harcourt said, stepping on the gas. 

“What about their safety?” Adebayo asked. 

“Trust me, they were even more psycho than usual in there. They'll be fine!” John shouted back, buckling his seatbelt.

“I guess you’re right.” She supposed, looking back a little worried through the window at the warehouse now in the distance as Harcourt peeled out onto the highway. 

Duran Duran’s A View to a Kill started to spill into the van, slightly muffled, with gun fire riveting over top. 

Meeting you with a view to a kill, face to face in secret places feel the chill…

Nightfall covers me but you know the plans I'm making…

“You know what Vig, keep that on.” You had to give it to him, that song was a certified banger while killing enemies. 

“You mean it?!” He was so excited, a murderous puppy wagging its tail as he shot through another line of enemies. 

“Yeah, but don’t keep those pants on, get them off.” You ordered him. 

A very unsettling unzipping and ruffling sound echoed throughout the van communication system. “Dude, turn it off.” Chris nudged John to hurry up. 

Dance into the fire that fatal kiss is all we need….

“I’m trying, there’s some interference with the signal,” John typed away, but it was far too late. 

“Hurry up and give me your cock Vig! Put it inside– now!” Your sharp voice boomed. 

“Ohh baby, it’s all yours, uhh fuck you’re tight!” Adrian’s panting love struck voice was met with an unspeakable sound. 

Choice for you is the view to a kill between the shades assasination standing still…

First crystal tears fall of snowflakes on your body…

“Shut up and stop talking, just move your hips!” You demanded coldly. 

“C-choke me harder Pris…ohh y-yeah make quiet...” Adrian strangled out adoringly. 

First time in years to drench your skin with lovers rosy stain…

“TURN OFF THE GOD DAMN COMMS!” Chris wailed in a pitch that could break glass, John quickly shutting down the comms in the van. 

The rest of the drive to the Hennelotter video was in complete silence outside of Chris’ sobbing about how he could never enjoy Duran Duran ever again. 

Meanwhile the two of you were in a heated lock together, it was like a frenzy, and now that you had gotten a taste, you needed to have all of him. 

Adrian was trying to keep a proper pace, but you were so fucking tight and gripping him so well, that restraint or coordination weren’t really an option, so it had to be fast, unrelenting and awkward. He’s huffing underneath you, eyes rolling in the back of his thick skull, mouth wide open, jaw shifting in gasping silent cries as your hands squeezed around his neck. 

“You’re so fucking big Adrian, it’s really good,” despite yourself the words tumbled out, body reveling in how his hip bones struck against yours. 

That was strange. Why did you say that?

Adrian glanced at where you were both connected, a delirious grin on his face from the compliment. “You’re so fucking b-beautiful…” He cooed, his next thrust incredibly rough and making you mewl. 

“Y-you’re handsome…I think you’ve got gorgeous green eyes.” Your brow furrowed, what the fuck was happening? 

That encouraged him to rut against you harder, “Ohhh Pris, you’re so kind to me,” Adrian looked so taken aback and pleased. “I don’t deserve it!” The room filled with the sounds of desperate slapping flesh from his thick cock fucking you in earnest.

“I also love your music taste.” You clapped your hands over your mouth while bouncing at every thrust, it had to be goo doing this. What else might you accidentally reveal with this truth serum? Or rather false serum, obviously you hated his music…obviously! 

“Really, you do?” He leant back bewildered by your kind words, watching you ride him in amazement.

Adrian was looking completely wrecked underneath you, pure putty, sending another shock of lust through you. Not satisfied by being the only one moving, you tugged him by the hair to direct Adrian, unleashing a moan in appreciation of his overeagerness at that to participate, driving his hips mercilessly against yours, bodies rejoicing at the slick sloppy connection. 

He hummed as your hands traveled to his stomach muscles and the V at his hipbones, pawing at the outline through the combat gear. He allowed his own hands to find their way to your figure, squeezing your hips and thighs, hoisting you up so you could wrap your legs around him. 

When you complied, both working purely on instinct that shouted in bright lights that you needed to fuck whatever this was burning hot within eachother, and god fucking damnit had to do it now. 

“Ahh fuck, I want you to have my babies!” Adrian groaned, hands latched to your waist, thumbs pressing where the outline of him was at your lower abdomen. 

“Give me them, I need you to finish inside!” You moaned back, wrenching a fistful of his hair to urge him to move. A cry ripped through you, back arching as Adrian properly split you, rough hands holding you in place as he sawed in and out, pushing deeper with every thrust. 

“Shiiiiit,” he growled, he could tell he was insanely close, his balls were tightening, cock twitching and legs weakening as he drove himself closer to his release.

But a good feminist, Adrian sucked the tip of his fingers before rubbing your clit to ensure you’d hopefully finish alongside him too. 

“That’s…amazing, Adrian, feels so fucking good!” You hissed, head tipping back, swollen lips parted, eyes squeezed shut. 

Adrian had noted you’d been letting a couple things slip this time and broached the topic he’d been wanting to ask for a while, “do you love me Pris?” 

“Wh-what?!” Your eyes snapped open and were just as magnificently murderous as he thought they’d be when he popped the question. “Why would you ask that you fucking moron?” There was a deeply seeded part of you glad that those words left your lips. 

Another sentence had grated to a halt, entirely unwelcome. 

“Sorry, I think it’s the goo making me tell the truth…but seriously I love you,” Adrian hung his head into the crook of your shoulder, blubbering as he felt his gut tighten. 

“I’m g-going to--” words failed him, his sentence ending with a sharp guttural cry. With a final breathy gasp, you bucked against him, jolting as you came, savoring how good his twitching cock felt inside of you until your mind caught up to speed. 

The alien goo haze had left, and you pushed yourself off him, Adrian sitting there dumbfounded, brain still rebooting. 

Damn it, he’d completely finished inside.

“You're a fucking moron. I'm going to the pharmacy, then a shower.” You said and stood up.

“What for? I have wet wipes here.” Adrian helped clean you up and you slapped his hands away when done.

“Obviously for pregnancy tests and some plan b.” You snapped. 

“You don't want my kids?” His goofy face fell.

“No, I only said that because of the fucking insane alien goo was ruining my brain chemistry.” You firmly rolled your eyes.

“Ohh. Yeah totally me too…” Adrian replied, twiddling his thumbs awkwardly. “But it did kinda seem like that goo was acting like a truth serum right?” 

“Ughh. I can't even look at you right now.” You grumbled, not wanting to engage with this lunacy any further. 

“Can I still look at you? Your pretty face is all red…” Adrian was met with Precision’s visor and the barrel of her gun. “Okay, no looking, got it– I’ll drive.” 

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