avatar/sterek/pjo❤️‍🩹

The dream of flying the skies with the same heartbeat as the mighty animal had come true. Except, the yearning for the freedom to fly to the edge of the forest–to see the ocean– had become a distant fantasy. There was nothing freeing about fleeing for your life or flying into battle, hoping–praying to Ewya, that you might live long enough to fight the next battle. Praying that you might live long enough to hug your family one last time. 

In another life, you would be embarrassed and full of shame at how good you had become at running for your life. A warrior should stand their ground and fight. But you had seen enough death to know when to give up. When to leave. You had developed an advoident style of surviving.

Together, you and your ikran, Leya, had become very good at retreting. Fast and proficient. Flying quickly and smoothly above trees, through the crevices of the flying mountains, above the clouds.

Someitmes you could almost taste the freedom, just there, on the tip of your tongue. Like a word about to be spoken. In the moments of stillness that came from flying above the clouds. Leya’s strong wing beats would level out and a loud, windy silence would settle over the two of you. There was nothing in moements like this. No commands. No explosions. No war. Just the fleeting presence of peace. 

Those moments had become rare: far and few between.

By the age of fifteen, you had become the main source of protection for your two younger siblings. The job had once been split between you and your older brother, but when he died in battle against the sky-people, the weight of his loss fell heavily on your shoulders. 

That was the first time you had painted the white kxetuve line of mourning down the center of your body. 

A body that had become a killing machine. 

You weren’t skinny and frail anymore. The years had begun hardening you. Muscles had grown where they previously hadn’t been. Your legs now taut with stamina to carry your body nimbly through the forest. Your arms and shoulders tense with lethal precision; always ready to aim for the kill. 

Killing the sky demons got easier the more you did it. Poison-coated arrow tips did most of the work; even if the hit wasn’t clean, they would eventually die. Even so, no matter how many humans you killed, they seemed to come back faster, and with their metal abominations were killing off your clan faster than you would comprehend. 

The longer the war went on, the more devastating the losses were. Death had become a friend to your clan.

Bones rattled against themselves, hung in patterns on new garments. Some even had them braided into their kuru’s. The warriors around you wore the human bones with pride. It was an honor to wear so many; to have killed so many. You might have participated in the trend; however, your mother demanded you never adorn the alien ones. 

And you obayed her wishes for a while.

By the next year, you had lost your father and youngest sibling. You didn’t even have time to truly mourn them. No, wave after wave of the aliens came, bringing death and destruction with them. The RDA had begun burning the forest around your clan in an effort to force your clan from their home. From your home. 

The white paint had become as familiar as the yellow and purple war paint. In fact, the white paint had become a second skin. A layer of emotional armor to coincide with your physical armor. 

Just like your paint your armor also hardly left your body.

A traditional necklace of muted teal and bone-toned river stones—once belonging to your older brother—rested heavy against your slender neck. A leather chest band, crafted by your mother after your iknimaya, crossed your torso, doubling as a sheath and resting atop a green, beaded chest covering that echoed the earthy tones of the leather loincloth at your hips. Soft purple riding leggings clung to your legs, their surface marked by wear. Your younger sister had made you an armband as well, adorned with two feathers—one deep violet and one pale yellow—to mirror the colors of your war paint and ikran. You treasured every gift they had given you, but your favorite piece of armor was the sheath you kept after your father’s death.

You took great pride in replacing his knife with a bone balde you had spent weeks crafting out of the remains of the human who had killed him. That had been the first time you had dragged the killing out for your own pleasure. 

If your mother had been displeased at the alien bone you wore daily, she never mentioned it.

By the age of sixteen, the size of your clan had been cut in half in just two years time. 

Traditional celebrations were slipping through the cracks. Effort and time could no longer be wasted on pretty weaving and dancing. Everyone was making sacrifices in hopes that the aliens would give up or die out.

Your presentation was not a clan-wide celebration, like it once should have been, but a quaint meal with your two surviving family members in your family’s hut. 

You hadn’t even been excited when you had presented as an omega. 

At one point, the clan would have called you a gift from Eywa. Your second gender was considered a sacred honor; Eywa’s promise of the next generation secured in your body.

Now survival meant lasting the day, not the procreation of the next generation. 

During war being an omega was less than ideal. 

Your first heat was a war in itself. The pain was unbearable. Heat and sweat coated your body. Your senses shifted. The smell of the people around you shifted; their pheromones appeared louder, sharper than before. The change was an assault to your nose. Shifts in vocal tone had made your body have a physical reaction that only the angry tone of your deceased father could have elicited. Obedience. 

Maybe in some other life, you could have lived out the delicate tradition of going through your first heat with a potential mate. Spent days alone together, feeling out the new changes in your body with soft embraces. But that was not reality. 

No, reality was sudden and rough and all consuming. War waited for no one; granted no reprieve from its constant drumbeat. You fought your way through bodies of pink skins while your biology fought its way through you. 

The years following your presentation were harder. Stress had caused your body to stop going into heat. Which you were glad about; in war, there was no time to be incapacitated with throbbing pain and aching need. There was no need for your body to bring you more pain when the pink skins flourished in their afflicting torment.

By your twentieth year, there were almost as many scars on your body as stripes. Some small injuries, from training too hard or scraping your body against the rough bark of the forest trees when bolting from unwinnable battles. Others, like the one on your left side just above your hip bone, were bigger and deeper. You had been nicked by a bullet and had almost lost your life from the blood loss. The wound had resulted in a raised scar that you preferred to keep hidden under the ties of your green, leather tewng. 

You had developed a true hatred for the metal machines they used to slaughter your people. If it weren’t for the seemingly endless bullet rounds the pink skins had and their metal flying birds, you were sure they wouldn’t have even lasted this long. If they fought like real warriors, with skill and knives instead of cowering in their metal skins and their skin walker suits, they wouldn’t last very long on Pandora. That much you were sure of. 

Humans fight dirty and kill dirty too. They never went for a clean kill. Never spoke to Eywa for guidance. No, they killed for no reason and cared little about how their actions affected the forest. How they had they affected you. 

The kxetuve mourning line hadn’t left your body in all that time. Every time it faded, there seemed to be a new reason to repaint it on your body. Loss was felt each time you had to apply fresh paint…it was hard to keep track of when one friend's death was repainted over by the loss of a fellow warrior. 

And now you had another reason to freshen up the pigment.

A fresh wave of tears was seemingly never-ending despite the wind’s effort to instantly dry them. 

You had been crying for days now. The most recent attack from the sky-people had been devastating. They had attacked while your camp was sleeping. There had been no time to prepare or to defend. 

The cries of your mother echoed loudly in your head. 

You had awoken to her screams.

To your little sister's last breath. 

To the sounds of skin walkers raiding and killing off the last of your people. 

You had begged, pleaded, and implored your mother to flee with you. But she was more than broken; she was lost. After so much grief–the death of her first son, then her husband, then her most recent child, and now her youngest daughter lay dead in her arms–she could take no more. Her eyes, once bright and golden, had been turned dull. Between her screams, she whispered for you to go–to flee; to leave her to die and finally be with the rest of her family. 

You had felt like a child. Not the warrior you were. You were a coward and left sprinting–and soon flying– as fast as you could instead of fighting like you should have. 

That had been nearly two days ago. Leya was begging for rest through the bond; she was tired from the endless flying. You were sore from sitting for so long and wanted to stop just like her, but you were scared to stop. 

You needed to find toruk makto.

You need revenge. 

The thought was the only thing keeping you going. The thirst for blood–for justice–was all-consuming. It outweighed the hunger in your belly and the pain from the windburn on your face. You craved senseless, brutal, savage violence. 

The younger, softer version of you would be terrified of the monster you were willing to become. 

You would have to kill off the last little pieces of her that still lived in you. And if you had lost that soft, innocent version of you for the justice of your younger siblings who would never reach the age of sixteen; for your older brother who you had aged past; for your father who died protecting your clan; for your mother who had given her children to a senseless war; then you would kill off every soft and weak verson of yourself. You would become harsh, rigid, and lethal to avenge their lives. 

You lost count of the different types of terrain you had flown over.

You couldn’t remember when the forest had turned to water, but now the shoreline before you had shifted into another woodland jungle without much time to register the abrupt change in landscape.

Your body ached, protesting every shift in position as Leya descended lower.

The blue ocean that had stretched endlessly before you, its waters darker than you had imagined in all your childhood fantasies, was now a green sea of trees taller and brighter than you had expected. 

Just a little further, you told yourself, though exhaustion made your vision blur at the edges. Just a little more.

The Ometicaya clan came into view gradually—first the massive Hometree rising like an ancient sentinel, then the movement of Na'vi below. So many Na'vi. The sheer number of them made your chest tighten. You hadn't seen this many people alive in one place in years.

Their lives continued. Training. Laughing. Living. Like the war was something distant. Manageable.

The sight of it twisted something violent in your gut.

Leya's landing was far from graceful. Her legs nearly buckled as her feet touched the ground, and you dismounted more like falling than descending. Your own legs shook, muscles screaming from days of sitting astride her back.

The moment your feet hit earth, the noise hit you like a physical force.

Voices—so many voices—shouting, laughing, calling to one another. The clash of weapons from sparring warriors. The thud of bodies hitting dirt. Somewhere, someone was singing a war chant, deep and rhythmic, and others joined in with aggressive harmonies that made your skin prickle.

The Na'vi around you didn't just stop their tasks to stare. They turned. Warriors mid-spar froze with weapons raised. Hunters with fresh kills slung over their shoulders pivoted to track your movement. Even the children stopped their games, wide eyes fixed on you.

You must have looked feral to them. War paint faded and smeared. Mourning line stark against your blue skin. Eyes red-rimmed and wild. Covered in days of grime and dried sweat and blood that wasn't all yours.

Your hand instinctively went to the knife at your hip—the bone blade made from your father's killer was more comforting than you might care to admit—fingers wrapping around the handle.

A low murmur rippled through the crowd. You caught fragments of words. Omega. Alone. Look at her war paint. Is she one of ours? 

The weight of their stares made your shoulders hunch. Made you want to bare your teeth. These people were whole. Their clan was thriving. Their warriors were strong and unbroken and looked at you like you were something strange. Something other.

Everything about them screamed what you weren't. What you'd failed to be.

Your clan was dead. Your family was dead. And you had run.

Survivor. Failure. Coward.

"I need to speak to Toruk Makto." The words came out harsher than intended, your voice hoarse from disuse and crying. Your accent was different from theirs, shaped by a different forest, a different way of speaking. "Now."

An older woman approached, her movements slow and deliberate. She carried herself with the kind of authority that didn't need to be announced—power that radiated from her very bones.

This clan’s Tsahìk you assumed. The title fit her like a second skin. Behind her, a younger woman followed as if she were the older woman's shadow. 

But it was the crowd pressing closer that made your pulse spike. Too many bodies. Too much noise. The scent of so many Na'vi—alphas, betas, omegas, all mixing together in a cacophony that assaulted your nose after days of nothing but wind and Leya's familiar musk.

Your fingers tightened on your knife.

"I am Mo'at, Tsahìk of the Ometicaya," the elder woman said, her eyes sharp as they cataloged every detail of your appearance. Every scar. Every weapon. The mourning paint. Her gaze seemed to pass right through you. Like she was looking into your soul. "This is Kiri, my granddaughter. Toruk Makto is not here.” 

Of course he wasn't here.

Of course.

You had flown for days. Days. Pushed Leya past exhaustion. Fled your mother's corpse and your sister's cooling body and the ashes of your home. And he wasn't even here.

The laugh that escaped your throat was sharp and broken. Several warriors shifted, hands moving toward weapons. You couldn’t care.

"When will he return? Who leads in his absence?" The desperation in your voice made you sound young. Weak. You hated it.

"When Eywa wills it," Mo'at replied, her tone giving nothing away. "What is it you seek, child? His son speaks for him in his absence.”

“I must speak with him then.” You can’t help but growl out in frustration. Child. The word scraped against your pride like a blade. You hadn’t felt or been innocent like a child in many, many years.

“He and his brother fight the sky-people as we speak." Her voice never wavers in tone as she answers your questions.

"And when will they return?” You demand.

The Tsahìk doesn’t answer right away. She tilts her head and, with a hum, begins to circle around you like a predator. 

You straightened your spine despite the trembling in your limbs. Despite the way your vision swam. Despite the crowd pressing closer with their whispers and their stares and their wholeness.

She was assessing you. Decided if you were even worth giving any information to. Only once she's completed a full circle around your weak, shaky form does she speak.

“They will be home by tomorrow evening.” She holds eye contact with you for what feels like a lifetime before you realise she wants an exchange of information. 

The disappointment and frustration of the situation tasted bitter on your tongue. You had flown for days with the singular focus of finding him. Toruk Makto. Jake Sully. The warrior who had done the impossible—tamed Toruk, the great leonopteryx that hadn't been ridden in four generations. The alien who had traded his life to become Na'vi rather than stay with the sky-people he had arrived to pandora with.

Stories of him had reached your clan even in the darkest days of the war. Whispered around fires. Passed between warriors. Legends that felt too grand to be real, and yet the evidence of his existence was undeniable.

He had united the clans. United them. Something no one had accomplished in living memory. Rode a beast of pure fury and death itself into battle against the sky-people and won. Drove them from Pandora with nothing but the will of Eywa and the strength of the people behind him.

Your older brother had spoken of him with reverence before he died. Had said that if anyone could save the Na'vi, it would be Toruk Makto. That he was a lethal legend—a warrior unmatched, tactical and brutal in equal measure. He didn't just fight; he destroyed those who threatened his people.

You had clung to that hope. Through every loss. Every death. Every moment you thought you might break. The thought that somewhere, Toruk Makto was still fighting—still winning—had kept you going.

And now you were here, and he was gone. Off fighting while you stood hollow and broken before his Tsahìk, surrounded by his strong, living, thriving people.

People who looked at you like you were a ghost.

Maybe you were.

"I seek Uturu." Your voice came out flat. Empty. "My clan is gone. I am all that remains."

The murmuring around you grew louder. You caught more fragments now. She seeks uturu? Sole survivor? Her whole clan? 

The girl Tsahìk called Kiri shifted beside her. Her expression shifted to something soft. Sympathetic. It made your skin crawl. You didn't want sympathy. You wanted revenge. You wanted the sky-people to burn the way your home had burned. You wanted them to scream the way your mother had screamed.

Mo'at's expression remained unreadable, but her eyes—those sharp, knowing eyes—narrowed slightly. You watched as she scented the air, and her gaze sharpened further.

"You are omega."

Not a question. A statement. Another assessment.

Around you, the whispers exploded. Alphas in the crowd shifted, their postures changing. Some leaned forward, seemingly interested in the Tsahìk's observation. Others stepped back, wary. You could feel their attention like insects crawling across your skin.

"Yes." You lifted your chin, defensive, aggressive. Daring any of them to make it a problem.

Mo'at exchanged a look with Kiri that you couldn't decipher. The silence stretched long enough to make your teeth grind.

Was there something you didn’t understand? Why was your second gender so important?

"And unmated," Mo'at said, and somehow it sounded like an accusation. 

The crowd's reaction was immediate. Shock rippled through the gathered Na'vi like wind through leaves.  Clearly and unmated omega was wrong to them.  Apparently shameful, even. Given the number of people who stepped further away from you. 

Your jaw clenched so hard it hurt. "There was a war," you bit out. "Mating was not a priority when survival—"

"I understand," Mo'at interrupted, though her expression remained severe. "But you must understand our customs. An unmated omega of your age...it is unusual. It will draw attention. Challenges for you."

Challenges. Of course. You hadn't even considered—

Alphas here probably had rights. Claiming rights. The Ometicaya were thriving, which meant their traditions were intact. Their social structures were unbroken by war. Which meant unmated omegas were probably claimed young, properly courted, and bonded according to ancient customs you'd never had the luxury of following.

Which meant you walking in here unmated, unclaimed, smelling of no alpha, was probably the equivalent of ringing a dinner bell.

Fuck.

"I can fight," you said quickly, and your hand was still on your knife. Still ready. "I have killed more sky-people than I can count. I have survived unimaginable battles. I am not some delicate—"

Mo'at silences you with a raised hand. 

Your mouth snaps shut. It takes the rest of your willpower to keep a frustrated growl inside your throat. This was not a battle of strengths but a test of submission. Obedience. Willingness to obey their clan's hierarchy of leadership. 

You hated it. Hated how your biology was seen first and your skill second. Hated how you were willingly subjecting yourself to be reduced to a weak version of yourself that was helpless, all for the sake of claiming uturu. Claiming uturu for the chance, Toruk Makto will help avenge your clan–your family. 

Mo'at's expression softens, just slightly. "I will grant you temporary uturu. The law is sacred, and you have asked. But you will follow our rules while you are here. Until the Olo'eyktan returns and decides rather to grant you permanent uturu, you will respect our ways."

Relief should have flooded through you. Should have made your knees weak. But all you felt was hollow. You were going to have to play a role to fit in here. Another sacrifice of your character you were willing to make for vengeance.

"Thank you, Tsahìk," you managed. The words tasted like ash.

"Kiri will show you where you will stay." Mo'at turned to her granddaughter, and something passed between them. A look you couldn't read. "The large tent near the edge of the gathering space. It has not been used in some time."

Kiri's eyes widened. "Grandmother, that's—"

"It is available," Mo'at said firmly. "And it is far enough from the main camp to give our guest some... peace."

Mo’at turned to dismiss the gathered crowd. She mumbles a few words to a girl much younger than you. The girl nods and starts to make her way past you and towards Leya. You go to stop her, but a hand on your shoulder stops you.

"Go. Rest," Mo'at said, her tone slightly gentler now. "You look as though you might collapse where you stand. We will speak more when you have slept."

“My ikran…” You trail off, watching as the girl starts to untie your ikrans' saddle straps.

“Nita will take care of her. Now go.” Tsahik’s tone leave no room for argument. 

So you find yourself following Kiri through the clan's settlement, and it was wrong. All of it.

The Ometicaya didn't just survive—they thrived. Their tents were well-made, sturdy, decorated with trophies and weavings and signs of life. Warriors sparred with a viciousness that spoke of skill, not desperation. Their strikes were precise, practiced, and confident. Not the frantic fighting of people who expected to die.

You passed a group of young warriors—barely older than you—laughing as they wrestled, their bodies covered in scars that they wore like badges of honor. Scars from victory. From surviving battles they'd won.

Children ran through the paths, playing with toy ikrans, their laughter high and bright and so fucking innocent it made your chest ache.

Everywhere you looked, you saw what you should have been. What your clan should have been.

Strong. Whole. Alive.

The weight of eyes followed you. Whispers trailed in your wake like smoke.

Omega. Alone. Unmated. Survivor. Failure.

That last one you supplied yourself.

The tent Kiri led you to was far more spacious than you expected. Luxurious, even. Woven mats covered the floor, soft and carefully crafted. Weapons hung on the walls—a bow with arrows that looked like they could tear through metal, several knives with edges so sharp they caught the light, a spear that had seen use. All well-maintained. All belonged to a warrior who clearly knew their worth.

Furs were piled in one corner, creating a sleeping space that looked absurdly comfortable compared to the hard ground and cold stones you'd grown accustomed to.

Trophies lined the walls. RDA dog tags. Pieces of shattered equipment. And bones. Human bones, carefully cleaned and displayed.

This wasn't just any warrior's tent.

This belonged to someone important. Someone lethal.

"This is..." you started, uncertain.

"It's available," Kiri said quickly. Too quickly. Her eyes darted away from yours. "You can rest here. I'll bring you food later, okay? Just... just rest."

She left before you could ask questions. Before you could protest. The tent flap fell closed behind her, and you were alone.

Finally and blessedly alone.

The silence pressed down on you like a physical weight.

You stood frozen in the center of the tent, surrounded by signs of a warrior's life. A successful warrior's life. Someone who fought and won and came home to comfort and safety and a clan that celebrated their victories.

Everything you weren't.

Everything you'd failed to be.

Your legs gave out just as you reached the edge of the furs and you collapsed onto the thick, padded bed, and the scent hit you immediately.

Alpha.

Strong and woodsy with undertones of leather and high-altitude winds and something sharper— something you couldn’t seem to name, maybe some type of oil. It was overwhelming after days of nothing but your own fear-sweat and Leya's musk.

This was an alpha's space, but the scent was faded, and with one last look around the room, you decided that whoever had lived here hadn't been home in a long time. The thought made you unreasonably sad. 

You should leave. Should demand different accommodations. Should drag yourself back to Mo'at and insist on being placed somewhere—anywhere—else. 

You couldn’t stay in the home of a deceased warrior. This hut belonged to someone’s dead son, to a dead brother. It was wrong to stay, but your body had other ideas.

The exhaustion was too much. The furs too soft. And despite the faint foreign scent—or perhaps because of it—something in your omega biology insisted this was safe. Protected. An alpha's den–even a dead one–meant security. 

Your eyes slipped closed against your will.

Just for a moment, you told yourself. Just long enough to catch my breath. To gather my strength.

But the moment you relaxed into the furs, your body made the decision for you. Sleep dragged you under like a riptide, swift and merciless and ruthless.

You didn't even remove your weapons.

The bone knife pressed against your hip, the bow across your back dug into your shoulder blades. Your armor stayed laced tight, a second skin you couldn't bear to shed.

You were safe for now, and that was enough.

Chapter 2:

Tonight you had your date with Neteyam, earlier Yuna'te and Kiri had been fussing over your hair and outfit. They took out your braids, leaving your hair in soft curls that reached your waist. But when it came to your outfit a whole argument broke out.

"I am NOT wearing that Yuna'te," you said, lips curled in disgust at the top she dangled in front of you.

"Why not?" she pouted, "it's cute."

"It is too revealing you're acting as if we are mating before Eywa!"

"Who knows you might..." Kiri muttered, you turned to glare at her sharply, "isn't that the point though? If it is too revealing you will come off as strong and that will put him off surely."

You sighed contemplating, it was a bit out of your comfort zone but if it was going to do the job who were you to refuse?

Even Anuk contributed, putting his favourite little beads in your hair and giving you a bracelet which he made in school that day. Amidst, all the excitement you were feeling a queasy, it was your first date after all, albeit a fake one. Kiri, as if she sensed your anxiety, held your hands gently.

"Hey, it's just my brother he won't bite if it were Lo'ak I would be worried but this is Neteyam, he's responsible besides if he messes up just tell me okay?" she said, giving you a soft smile.

You nodded.

You sat on a rock near the lake where the two of you were scheduled to meet, the water glistened in the moonlight ripples forming as you dipped your fingers in whilst letting out a deep sigh. You thought back to the advice Kiri and Yuna'te gave you.

"Be rude, aggressive even, that will surely scare him off."

Your thoughts were interrupted by a soft voice.

"Yuna'te?"

You turned to face the figure behind you, eyes widening in shock.

You knew that he was attractive based on your observations from afar, many girls would fawn over him and you never fully understood why, but now you did. The Na'vi standing in front of you was too pretty up close. His hair was in neat braids which reached his well-toned shoulders, stripes mapped his neck down his stomach which was littered with scars from battle. Luminescent freckles scattered along his cheeks and upwards to the curve of his eyes, flickering with a warm shade of gold. You watched his long lashes flutter, his lips forming into a frown.

You realised you had been staring. You cleared your throat flicking your tail on his calf, which earned a surprised jilt from him.

"You are late," you said monotonously. He wasn't actually late, he was 30 minutes early like Kiri had predicted but you came earlier to make him look bad.

"I apologise I was caught up with-"

"I do not want to hear your lame excuses," you interrupted, turning away from him flicking his leg again with your tail, "Come."

You walked further into the forest, sensing he wasn't following you, you paused letting out a relieved sigh.

Well that was easy.

Before you could celebrate, you heard steady footsteps approach you.

You let out a hiss flicking his leg impatiently with your tail, "You are too slow," you walked further not even bothering to hear his response.

The both of you approached a clearing, where your ikran, Nil'ah, was waiting patiently. You nuzzled her face, patting her neck.

"Hello paskalin," you cooed, "I am sorry for making you wait."

You climbed up sitting on her back, before noticing that the Na'vi behind you was just standing there awkwardly.

"Where is your ikran?" you snapped.

It made sense that Neteyam didn't bring his ikran, you hadn't given any indication that were flying today beforehand. But you of course, just wanted another excuse to try his patience.

His mouth opened as he stared at you with flushed cheeks, attempting to form a response but you interjected, "Forget it, just get on."

He hesitantly got behind you, his earthy scent immediately entering your senses. He smelled too good, you were suddenly hyper aware of how close he was behind you, his breath ghosting your bare shoulders and his front pressing lightly against your back.

Oh Ewya help me.

You grabbed his hands placing them on your waist, ignoring the feeling that they belonged there.

"Hold on tight, it would be a shame if you fell to your death," you sneered, however you couldn't prevent the softness from creeping into your tone. You shook your head. You needed to make this the worst date possible.

Your ikran did flips, dives and loops in the night sky, as you encouraged her to fly as fast as possible. Any normal Na'vi would be sick by now. Keyword: normal.

When you briefly looked back at Neteyam he had a bright smile plastered on his face as he gripped your waist tighter. He had the nerve to look happy.

You tched, patting Nil'ah's neck whispering soothingly in her ear, "it's okay, go slow."

After a few minutes of flying slowly, admiring the stars which were dispersed across the night sky, Neteyam finally spoke up.

"When we were younger, me and Lo'ak used to sneak out in the night and go flying," he whispered, "He would always want to race and somehow we would get into some accident. I took the blame of course, like I usually do." You noticed the exhaustion in his tone as he said the last bit.

You tried to look disinterested, tried ignoring him but you couldn't help but feel empathy towards him, you knew how tiring looking after your siblings is, it's the whole reason why you were here.

So you let him ramble about his siblings for a while.

"I'm sorry that I made you wait, I had to deal with Lo'ak's mess before coming here he-"

"It's fine," you said curtly, ignoring the heat that crept onto your cheeks after hearing his soft, gentle tone. He was too nice, you almost felt bad for being rude to him earlier.

A few minutes of awkward silence passed between you both.

"Let's go eat something, I bet I can hunt better than you," you challenged, giving him a smug look.

"Oh really sevin?" he smirked, your brain short circuited at the nickname but shook your head quickly, telling Nil'ah to land.

You remembered your conversation with your younger sister and best friend earlier.

"You have to make sure you mess up when hunting," Yuna'te said.

"Why?" you replied, almost feeling insulted at the idea of making yourself look bad in one of your best talents.

"Because you need to look incompetent," Kiri chimed, "Neteyam hates arrogance, you need to act like you're one of the best hunters he has ever seen then screw up when the time comes."

"But I am one of the best hunters," you grumbled.

"Come on tsmuke," your sister giggled, "at least you won't have to lay a finger once it happens, he will do the work for you."

You sighed, your mind back to the present. You slouched your shoulders and loosened your grip on your bow as you aimed, internally cringing at how awful your form was. You didn't even notice Neteyam come up behind you his hands brushing against your shoulders gently.

"You're doing it wrong," he whispered, his breath hot against your ear.

He slowly corrected your form, angling your muscles and stance towards your target and you couldn't help but feel flustered at how intimate this all felt.

You shook your head, letting the arrow go on purpose, missing.

You turned around to face him hissing, "You made me miss."

He didn't obviously.

He looked at you, surprised at your sudden outburst, "I-"

"Forget it," you snapped, "Since you are such a great hunter, go hunt yourself and get us food,"

You shoved your bow in his hands and stormed off, internally cringing at your actions, but it was necessary. Surely, his patience would snap by now.

It didn't.

He came back later with some fresh meat and presented it to you with an almost shy look.

"I thought you would like this," he murmured timidly.

You examined the meat, it was a clean cut, perfect, but you couldn't tell him that. Instead you gave him a side glance.

"It is good enough, now go cook it," you demanded.

He didn't even look surprised at this point, as if already used to your behaviour.

As he prepared the food you couldn't help but admire the muscles contouring his back.

Oh Ewya help my dirty mind you thought quickly wiping the drool of your mouth, as he turned to face you with a sheepish smile handing you some food.

You gobbled it down, making sure to look like an absolute slob. Yuna'te said guys hate it when girls eat too much.

He frowned as you finished your food in a matter of seconds.

You smirked internally, thinking that he had had enough of you by now.

But all he did was reach out and wipe some crumbs off the corner of your mouth.

"You should eat slowly, or else you may get sick," he advised.

He was too nice, if you were here without any ulterior motive you may have just fallen in love, but unfortunately you weren't. Him, this date, the entire possibility of being his mate, was a problem for both your sister and you.

You scowled slapping his hand off, "Do not tell me what to do."

He sighed, as if he anticipated your reaction and stood up.

"I think we are done here," he reached his hand out to yours, "I will walk you home."

You snarled slapping his hand away again, "I can walk by myself, I do not need your help."

Before he could say anything you got up, flicking his leg with your tail in annoyance and strode off.

"And that's it?" Yuna'te asked in confusion. You, Kiri and her had been sitting in your room where you told the two of them how your date went.

"Yes," you sighed, "I feel really mean, he was too nice Kiri you should've warned me otherwise I wouldn't have such a guilty conscience."

Kiri raised an eyebrow, "Perhaps, but it wouldn't have made much of a difference. Besides, like I said he has to go on one date with every one of his potentials from the list Grandmother made he's probably forgotten by now."

Your mother burst into the room, looking at Yuna'te with a proud smile.

"He has requested a second date!"

You rock forward, slow and deliberate — just enough to drag your body against his — and his breath catches on a quiet sound he probably doesn’t even realize he making.

The cushions dip under your knees, and everything smells like him: old paper, bergamot soap, something faintly spicy underneath. He tastes like a heavenly mix of breath mints and the honey tea you made for him earlier.

Spencer always kisses like he’s studying you — memorizing pressure points, cataloging every hitch of breath, every soft sound. The drag of your bottom lip. The little touches that make your spine arch.

But there’s tension in him, too.

You feel it in the set of his shoulders, the stiffness in his hands, the twitch of his thighs when you shift your weight. Something’s holding him back.

You slow the kiss, draw away just enough to trace the line of his cheekbone with your nose, letting your lips brush the shell of his ear.

“Spence,” you murmur, breath warm against his skin. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

He stills.

“I—” His voice falters, eyes wide behind his crooked glasses. “I haven’t really, um… done this before.”

You blink.

“You haven’t…” you echo, tilting your head.

His ears flush deep red as he shakes his head.

“I mean— some stuff, yeah,” he says quickly. “Kissing. A little touching. But… not much more than that.”

There’s something raw in his expression, like he’s waiting for you to flinch.

Instead, you kiss him. Soft and steady, nothing showy — just the kind of kiss that says I want you anyway.

When you pull back, his eyes are still closed.

“Spencer,” you whisper.

He opens them slowly.

“You being a virgin isn’t gonna scare me off.”

You thread your fingers into his hair, pushing it back gently from his forehead. His curls are soft, and he shivers when your thumb grazes his ear.

“I kind of like the idea of it, actually,” you murmur.

“You do?”

You smile. “I think I’d like being the first person to show you how good you can feel.”

He goes quiet again, clearly overthinking.

“You’re not afraid, are you?” you ask softly, brushing your nose against his.

He swallows. “No, no. I just… I don’t want to do something wrong. I don’t want to mess it up.”

“Baby,” you whisper against his mouth. “You’re not going to mess anything up.”

You kiss him once more — slow, deep — and feel the hitch in his breath when your tongue brushes his.

“I’ll teach you,” you murmur with a smirk.

You shift to straddle him more fully, your skirt hiking higher around your hips as you settle across his lap. You can feel him under you, hard and twitching through his pants, and he gasps when your hips press down.

“You okay?” you ask, voice low.

He nods too fast.

You raise an eyebrow. “Use your words, Spencer.”

“Yes,” he breathes. “I-I’m okay.”

You smile and roll your hips again, dragging the lace between your legs over the firm outline of his cock. You kiss along his jaw, down the column of his throat, mouthing at a spot above his collarbone until he shivers.

“You like that, don’t you?” you murmur against his skin.

“Yes,” he chokes, hips jerking upward. “Fuck—yes.”

You laugh softly as your hands slip under the hem of your top, peeling it off slowly and tossing it aside.

Spencer stares like a baby deer caught in headlights.

Your black lace bra is sheer, nipples already peaked beneath the fabric. You reach behind you, unclasp it with one practiced motion, and let the straps fall from your shoulders.

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t even blink.

“Touch me,” you murmur.

His hands are shaking when they rise — gentle at first, tentative. He cups your breasts like he’s sure he might be dreaming. His thumbs brush over your nipples and you let out a soft moan, pressing forward into the touch.

“Harder, baby,” you whisper. “Don’t hold back.”

He obeys. His touch deepens, massaging one breast as he catches the nipple of the other between his thumb and forefinger, upping the pressure as he rolls and twists. His confidence grows.

And then his mouth replaces his hands.

His tongue is hesitant at first, then deliberate, then filthy. He sucks your nipple into his mouth and his teeth scrape, just barely, as you grind down against him in response.

“That mouth,” you gasp, threading your fingers into his hair. “God, Spencer. You’re doing so well already, sweet boy.”

He groans into your skin, and you feel every twitch of his hips beneath you, the desperation in every movement.

“So good for me,” you murmur, letting your thumb trace the flush on his cheek. “Such a fast learner.”

He whines — helpless and sweet — and you cradle his jaw, bringing his face back up to meet yours to kiss him again, messy and open-mouthed, before guiding his hand between your thighs. Your skirt slips higher, lace panties exposed, already damp.

You press his fingers down against the wet spot.

“Feel what you do to me,” you whisper. “I’ve been wet since the first time you kissed me tonight.”

You move his hand against the lace, helping him slide two fingers along your covered folds. He gasps when he feels how wet you are — not just damp, not just eager — soaked.

“Oh my god,” he breathes.

“Not God,” you murmur cheekily, smirking as you kiss the corner of his mouth. “Just me.”

You draw his fingers upward to circle your clit once — slow, precise — and then pull his hand away.

Spencer watches, dazed, as you slide off his lap and lay down against the couch cushions, hiking your skirt up higher and moving your panties to the side. His breath shudders out in a long, low exhale, his eyes fixed on your bare core.

Then you touch yourself for him — slow, deliberate strokes, dragging through your slick and back up again to circle your clit. Your eyes never leave his.

“This is how I want you to touch me,” you murmur. “Not too fast. Just enough pressure. Like this, okay?”

He nods, transfixed.

You slide two fingers inside yourself, moaning softly, then draw them out again. You hold them up to him with a smirk.

“Want a taste?” you ask, voice thick.

He nods greedily.

“Say please, baby.”

“Please,” he whimpers.

You press your fingers to his mouth, and he sucks them in without hesitation. His tongue curls, eyes fluttering shut as he moans, licking you clean like it’s the only thing he’s ever wanted.

“Good boy,” you breathe, pulse skipping. “Taste how much I want you.”

He sucks harder. You see the way his hips shift — searching for something to rut into and failing. He’s panting now, tension coiled so tight you can feel it.

You pull your fingers from his mouth, slide your hand down, and curl your fingers around his wrist again.

“You try now,” you murmur.

You guide his hand back between your thighs and help him find your clit. His fingers are a little shaky, but you hold him there and let him feel the way your body responds beneath his touch.

“That’s it,” you whisper. “Just like I showed you. You can go slow.”

He moves carefully, eyes flicking between your face and your core, trying to memorize every twitch and sound.

You sigh, low and breathless. “Good job, baby. Feels s’good.”

Your praise lands like a spark — his shoulders straighten, his strokes grow bolder, more confident. He draws tight little circles over your clit, then dips down, gathering more slick before coming back up again, mirroring your earlier actions.

“Jesus,” he breathes, staring at you. “You’re so wet.”

“For you, Spence,” you pant, arching into his touch. “I’m like this because of you.”

He groans, and you can feel the effort it takes for him to keep his hips still, to stay focused on you instead of chasing the heat building in his own body.

“Fuck,” you whisper. “You’re gonna make me come like this if you keep going.”

“I want to,” he says eagerly. “I want to make you feel good. Please let me make you come. Please.”

God, does he sound desperate for it. You lean up just enough to kiss him messily before gently easing his hand away.

“And you will,” you murmur, shifting your legs open wider. “But not like this. Want you to do it with your mouth.”

His breath hitches. His pupils dilate. And within a few seconds, he’s nodding with excitement.

You smirk and hook your fingers into the waistband of your panties, peeling them down slowly and letting them fall to the floor.

He’s between your thighs in a heartbeat — laid out on his stomach, elbows braced on the couch, arms wrapped around your thighs, chin tilted up and eyes locked on your cunt.

You run your fingers through his hair and smile down at him softly as you guide him closer. His warm, shaky breath ghosts over your skin.

“Start slow,” you whisper. “Use your tongue and lips together. Don’t overthink it. Just feel.”

He nods, then leans in.

The first lick is cautious — a single drag of his tongue from bottom to top — and he pauses at the end, waiting. When you shiver, he breathes out like he’s been given permission.

“Good,” you murmur. “So good, baby. Keep going.”

He does.

The second lick is more confident. By the third, he’s circling your clit with shaky precision — steadier each time.

“That’s it,” you breathe. “Such a fast learner, aren’t you, Spence?”

He groans — low and hungry — the sound vibrating through your deepest parts as he nods against your core.

And then he devours you.

There’s nothing careful about it now. His tongue moves in messy circles, his lips parting, mouth opening wider. He sucks at your clit and moans like a man possessed.

Your thighs clamp around his shoulders and his rhythm falters — gets sloppier, wetter, better. He’s all-in now, relentless, eating you out like he’s starving, like this is what he was made for. Like he’s been waiting his whole life to make you fall apart. He’s taking cues from your reactions — repeating his movements when you moan, experimenting with his tongue as your hand tightens in his hair, reading every twitch of your hips as if it’s an answer key.

“Oh, fuck—Spencer, YES. Good boy. My good boy.”

The words land heavy, and he whimpers loudly in response. His hands grip your thighs hard, and that’s when you feel it — the tension in his body, the way he’s moving. Subtle at first, then more desperate. You glance down and catch the flex of his hips as they grind into the couch cushion beneath him.

“Don’t stop,” you pant. “Don’t you fucking stop, Spence. You’re doing so good for me. ‘M so close.”

He groans — guttural — as his lips close around your clit once more, and your orgasm rips through you like heat lightning. It hits all at once, spine arching, thighs locking tight around his head as you cry out his name, shuddering through it.

He doesn’t let up. His tongue keeps moving, soft but focused, even as you writhe under him. The aftershocks roll through you, deep and dizzying.

Somewhere in the haze you hear it — a quiet, choked sound. A sharp inhale. A low groan.

You don’t register what it means until you feel him go still. His arms lock. His mouth freezes.

When he finally lifts his head, his face is flushed and slick, lips swollen, and his eyes…

His eyes are wide. Embarrassed. Almost guilty.

“I—I didn’t mean to,” he stammers, voice wrecked. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t— I just—”

You blink, confused for a moment before it hits you:

Spencer Reid, your perfect, sweet boyfriend, just came in his pants, completely untouched.

Came. In. His. Pants.

Untouched.

Your heart stutters.

“Oh,” you whisper. “Spence.”

He flinches. “I’m so sorry—”

“Hey.” You sit up a bit, still breathless, and reach down to cradle his face between your palms. His skin is hot — not just blushing, but burning.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” you say, voice low but sure. “Please look at me.”

He does, barely.

“That was the hottest thing I’ve ever experienced.”

He blinks. “What?”

You smile. “That mouth of yours just gave me an orgasm that made me see stars. And then you came in your pants just from eating me out? That’s so hot, Spence.”

He swallows, stunned. His gaze softens. The worry’s still there, but it’s quieter now. His eyes shine.

“You’re okay,” you whisper, straightening his glasses and smoothing his hair. “You’re more than okay.”

You guide him up, help him collapse against your chest, your fingers still threading through his hair as his breath slows. He’s quiet, pliant, curled into you like a lazy puppy.

Eventually he shifts, wincing a little at the sticky mess in his pants.

You giggle.

“C’mon,” you murmur, kissing his temple. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

You tug him gently off the couch and take his hand, leading him toward the bathroom. He hesitates, glancing down at the wet stain on his slacks, embarrassment rising again, but you squeeze his fingers and smile.

“Don’t look so ashamed,” you whisper. “You made a mess because you were too turned on by me to stop. That’s nothing to be ashamed of, baby.”

You lean in, lips brushing his neck.

"It's incredibly sexy.”

He groans softly — part laugh, part surrender.

“We’re not done, you know,” you add as you push open the bathroom door. “That was just your first lesson.”

He swallows hard. “N-not done?”

You shake your head as you step closer, fingers unfastening his belt with ease, and press a wet kiss just below his ear.

Your lips curve.

“You’ve still got so much to learn.”

ᝰ.ᐟ

PSA: likes do very little for promoting posts on tumblr! if you'd like to support a fic, please reblog!

If you had to remove one state from the contiguous union, it would be Iowa. 

You’re standing in a rusty hotel room, which, according to Hotch, is the best they could do to accommodate you. And Spencer. He’s one room over. Your feet vibrate against the rug. You tell yourself it’s the thought of him, one wall over — thinking, sitting, reading, whatever he’s doing — and not some rare kind of bacteria you’re going to catch from the stink of this place.

Hotch sent you and Reid here for a death row interview. One of the inmates, having spent the past seventeen years as a self-proclaimed monk, decided he was done with silence. He answered the bureau’s request for an interview in a letter addressed to Hotch’s desk, written in red ink. It’s your first prison interview — you usually wear the bad guys down before they’re locked away forever — but Spencer has done one or two, he said. You think it might be more.

You’d never been to Iowa, never had a case here. You’re not great with time off, even worse with real vacations. You don’t look out your window for fear the corn fields have gotten closer since you last peeked through the curtains. You swear you can see twenty miles out; the flatness makes it easy to mistake the horizon for something that never, ever ends. 

You’re picking at the skin of your fingernails, toes curled as they still rest but resist against the carpet, when there’s a knock at your door. You don’t check, because you’re not really fearful. It might make you a shitty FBI agent, but you doubt anyone is tracking you down in Iowa. (Iowa. It gets worse each time you think it.)

“Hi,” Spencer says, lips pulled flat. Flat. You think of fields. Corn. Emptiness. Your stomach churns then lurches when you think of your own bed in your own home in a state that has real hills and mountains and trees. 

“Hi.” 

“Thought you might want to look over the file before tomorrow?” He frames it like a question, and you offer a soft smile at his hesitancy before opening the door to let him in. He turns his body to the left to avoid making contact with you as he accepts the invitation and walks on through.

Your bed is still made, your suitcase resting on top of it. He scrunches his nose before recovering.

“I’m not a germaphobe, like someone we both know,” you mock.

“Maybe you should be.” You laugh. You’ve been his teammate for three years now, and it still gets you when he decides he can lighten up and make a joke.

He looks around, still awkward in the yellow tint of the hotel lamp, then decides to sit in the desk chair in the corner.

“You look so ominous,” you say, shaking your head as you pull the file out of the nightstand. 

“Why is your casefile in there?”

“Where do you keep yours?”

“I never put it away.”

“Checks out,” you say, raising your eyebrows and sitting criss-crossed on the edge of your bed, facing him.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Gary Foster,” you read off the top of the page, ignoring his bait. “Killed twenty-three women in his basement. His wife never knew.”

“Or claims she didn’t know,” Spencer corrects. 

“You think she did?”

He shrugs. “It doesn’t really matter what I think.”

You glance up at him to find him staring intently at the file in his hands. He’s gripping onto it like it’s all he knows. You store your observations away in your head under a tab titled Perhaps Ask Later. 

You’ve gone over this file a dozen times. It’s virtually seared into your memory. Still, you let him tack off the rest of the information to you, compile the intensive profile Hotch gave you into a bullet point list. 

“He’s gonna focus on me,” you say once he reaches a lull in speech.

“Because you’re a woman?” he confirms. You nod. “Maybe.”

You tap the file a few times with your fingers as a yawn creeps up your throat, threatening to escape. Spencer seems to get the hint before you even let it out. 

“We’ve got a long day tomorrow,” he says before standing. He takes a step forward before turning around and tucking the chair back into the desk. You smile at the politeness. “See you tomorrow?”

“Is that a question?” you tease as you lead him to the door. “I promise I won’t jump out of the window.”

“There’s not much out there.”

“No, there isn’t.” He fumbles with the key for the door across the hall. You wait for him to open it before you start to close yours, the way you would after driving a friend at home. “Night.”

“Night,” he says, though the latter half of the word is muffled by the shut of the door. 

The room is barren again. You open the curtains now that it’s nearing total darkness outside.

It takes six more hours for you to drift off into sleep.

– 

Your hand is immediately on your temple when you awake, rubbing at the budding headache you know will consume you once you get up. This is the punishment you get for allowing yourself only three hours of sleep.

The sunlight hits your bed in fluttering intervals of perfect warmth and scorching heat. This time, when the hindmost rolls around, you force yourself up and place your feet on the ground. You hold your tongue to refrain from releasing a long string of fucks and shits and realize your hand is still refusing to move from its spot rubbing circles in your face. When you make your way to the bathroom, you realize the bed is so hard you’ve left no indent. 

The sting of the shower is pelting, boiling enough that it feels purifying. After a night spent in sheets you’re sure dozens have sweat through, it’s more than welcome. The heat is the perfect substrate for the anticipatory dread of today’s interview. Speaking to monsters as if there’s a hint of human behind the stitching has never pulled at you in the right way. 

If anything, it’s slowly pulled you apart.

The outlet in your bathroom is broken so you’re forced to dry your hair sitting on the carpet of the room, right next to that window that stares out into nowhere. You feel itchy just sitting on it. You swear the fibers are pressing into your skin, merging with your skin. 

The file is open on the floor in front of you, and you use your thumb to wipe the water falling from your damp hair. The pages already begin to curdle like the feeling in your stomach. 

You put your hair in a ponytail, then worry it’s too sexual — because you’ve absorbed the profile and you know what earns a check on this guys list —- so you take it down and let it rest on your shoulders again. Your knees crack when you stand up and your hip tenses up like it might, too, when you slip your legs into your pants. 

There’s a knock on your door and you mutter fuck as you balance your time between finishing the rest of the buttons on your blouse and stumbling to the door.

“I need a couple minutes,” you say, before you say hello. You leave the door open as you retreat farther into the room. “You can wait in here.”

You squeeze your feet into your heels — half a size too small, and in your head you call the saleslady who insisted on that being necessary for this brand a word that would make your grandmother sour — and peripherally watch him step into the room, hands stuffed in his pockets. 

“You ready?” he asks. You can feel his eyes on your unmade bed. 

“Mhm.” You glance in the square mirror facing the bed and smooth out your clothes. 

“I mean for the interview,” he says after clearing his throat.

“My answer remains.”

“Cool.” He says it in the way that feels fraudulent, but is really just the way he speaks, you’ve come to realize.

“Are you ready?” you ask back, muffled by the file placed between your teeth as you fumble around your desk for your car keys and room card. You make eye contact with him as you head for the door.

“Don’t really have much of a choice, do I?”

“Stand up straight,” you say, holding the door open for him as you both step into the hallway.

“What?” he mutters. He does it anyway.

“He’s gonna zero in on you if you seem to lack confidence.”

“Right.”

It’s silence between you two in the hallway, the elevator, the lobby, and until you’re pulling out of the parking lot. There’s overgrown wheatgrass in the field to your left and plowed corn crop to your right. The furrows stretch on until the curve of the earth swallows them up.

The sky is dull, slate-colored, and bears striking resemblance to something that could wipe you clean. Grain silos whir by every couple of minutes. These people really own a lot of fucking land. Every few miles, a new one, along with a rusting tractor or collapsing barn or crop that looks about ready to dry up and blow away. It gets predictable after mile seven. 

The prison doesn’t appear so much as it settles into your vision. It’s low to the ground, sprawling, gray. A scar pressed into the ground. 

You feel like Spencer the way you’ve completely memorized the profile. You flash your badge at the gate, sign some kind of form and drive into a parking lot that feels as far from the prison as your hotel was.

Spencer lingers in the car two seconds after you get out. He’s nervous, and he’s trying not to show it. You don’t want to mention it, but you need to be on the same page, so you don’t stop your lips from unfurling.

“You’re doing that thing again.”

“What thing?”

“The anxious math,” you say. “You’re calculating the probability of saying the wrong thing before we even walk in.”

“That’s-” He seems to think better than arguing and redirects his sentence. “That’s not entirely inaccurate.”

You give him one of those closed lip smiles. “He’ll spot it in five seconds. He feeds on nerves like that. First, he’ll comment on your hands, because you fidget when you’re trying not to.”

“You sound like Hotch.”

You scoff out a half-laugh and choose to ignore the comment otherwise. “And he’ll ask how long you’ve known me. If we’re sleeping together. He won’t say it like that, of course. He’ll be crude. He wants to gauge what version of you shows up when you’re off-balance.”

“Why would that knock me off balance?” he asks. The hesitancy has stolen his tone again.

“You fluster easily.”

“Do I?”

“Mhm. You blink three times, touch your collar, and then deflect with statistics. You did it the first time I challenged you during a case.”

He tuts then holds the door of the prison open for you. “You’re profiling me.”

“Of course I am,” you say, then turn your head over your shoulder, waiting for him to walk back up beside you again. He’s close behind you, so close you can almost feel his breath on you. It makes you feel warm. “So will he.”

You greet two more guards inside before shaking hands with the warden. He thanks you for coming with that grim look on his face that everyone in this field seems to have permanently etched into the creases of their skin. The prison is colder inside than it has any right to be, as if the concrete has learned to hold onto every winter it’s ever survived. 

“Still nervous?” you whisper to Spencer. 

He smiles, shakes his head no. 

Good, you mouth.

You pretend not to notice his eyes fixate for a beat longer than necessary on your lips. You lick them in response. When he meets your eyes again, you pretend not to notice that something undecipherable is hidden behind his lids, too. 

—

Foster smiles when you walk in. He doesn’t look at Spencer. You let Spencer pull your chair out for you, which immediately catches the guy’s attention. You think of still water, use it as a guide for being calm.

“Well,” Foster says. He hasn’t dropped the smile from his face. “They sent a good-looking one.”

“We, the FBI, are really grateful you chose to cooperate with us,” you say. “You know, in your final days.”

“Hm.” He turns to Spencer, finally. “She yours?”

You don’t look at him, and you will him to ignore him, to start asking him the standard questions. What’s your name? What year were you born? 

“She’s her own,” he says instead. It comes out even and flat. 

“You hesitated,” Foster says. His smile shows his teeth, now. “I suppose that’s not a crime.”

“No,” you agree. You open your file and lay a picture of his mugshot on the table. You can tell he was expecting photos of one of the women whose life he stole away. “But murder is.”

Spencer clears his throat and nudges your ankle with the tip of his shoe. You give him no reaction, but the next time you reach for the file, you let your fingertips brush against his wrist. 

—

“That wasn’t awful,” Spencer says when you step out, though he says it like he’s releasing one big breath born out of a collection of accumulated air trapped in his lungs. 

Foster did say something crude. You’d prefer not to repeat it, mostly because you’re not sure if Spencer was blushing or if he was just hot. 

The prison was freezing, you remind yourself. Then you shove the thought back down. 

“It wasn’t great,” you say. “I wish I’d pushed him further about—”

“Stop,” he says. His hand is on your bicep now. “Don’t overthink it, you did great.”

“Okay,” you say. “Don’t profile me, now.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

The walk back to the car leaves you sticky and hot. You note, aimlessly, that Iowa gets hot enough if you let it — if you stay long enough to let it swelter.

“Our flight’s not till the morning,” you groan, slamming the car door shut.

“Not a fan of Iowa?”

“In how many languages do you know how to say fuck no?”

“Twelve," he says. His eyes flit to the ceiling. “No, fourteen.” 

“Ridiculous.” 

—

You crash as soon as you get back to your hotel room. You sleep for what feels like two hours but you know is way longer than that, and when you finally peel your eyes open you’re sweating. You’re clinging to your sheets, and you consider yourself bed-ridden as you roll over and check your phone. Hotch has sent you three messages asking for updates. Your stomach twinges with guilt for not answering, though you figure he probably moved on and texted Spencer.

Spencer.

You feel bad. You had ditched him, retreating to your hotel room the second you guys got back. You wonder what he did, if he got food, though there’s not much to do in Iowa. In fact, there’s nothing to do in Iowa. 

You slip out of your clothes and take a quick rinse-off in the shower. Your hair is still wet when you adorn yourself in a gray t-shirt and sleep shorts and creep over across the hall. Your fist raps against the door three times, then twice more for good measure. 

“Hi?”

“Hi,” you say, inviting yourself in as you push past him. It’s identical to yours, but everything’s on the opposite side. “Nice room.”

“Much nicer than yours.”

“Oh, for sure.” You clap your hands together, then flop down on the bed. “So, whatcha been up to?”

He nods his head at a book on the nightstand. You stretch over and pick it up. The History of Iowa’s Small Towns.

“Little on the nose, isn’t it, doctor?”

“It’s interesting.”

“Your mind amazes me,” you whisper, then place it back on the nightstand.

“Have you eaten?” he asks.

“I’m not really hungry,” you say. When he quirks his eyebrow, you add: “Really, I can’t eat for, like, at least two hours after I wake up.”

“You were asleep?”

You nod. “Couldn’t last night. You didn’t think I just ditched you, did you?”

He shrugs. “I wouldn’t have minded.”

You place a hand over your heart. “Well, doctor, I’m just plain offended.”

He smiles, real, genuine. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“How’d you mean it?” you ask. You move up on the bed, as if it’s your own, making space for him to sit next to you. 

He sighs, like he really doesn’t want to indulge in this conversation, but his lips pry open and you know he will. “Morgan always says I ramble too much.”

You shrug. “What’s much, anyway?”

“Well, if you’re not hungry,” he starts, lifting himself off the bed and over to the mini fridge, “are you thirsty?”

“My, my.” You smile, teeth and all. “I didn’t know you drank on the job.”

“Not technically on the job anymore, am I?” He holds up a little bottle. “It’s not exactly a martini, but it’s all I’ve got unless you want lukewarm ginger ale.”

You accept the bottle with mock ceremony and open it the second it’s in your hands. “Guess federal per diems only cover motel whiskey. Honestly, this is probably the classiest thing happening in Iowa tonight.”

He laughs softly, twisting open his own cap. “From what I’ve read, and seen, that’s a low bar.”

You raise yours. “To meeting the bar.”

He tilts his head, scrunches his nose. “To stepping over the bar with minimal effort.”

You both take a sip. It’s terrible. You make a face.

He sees it and raises an eyebrow. “Too refined for hotel whiskey?”

“Just surprised it didn’t come with a warning label,” you say, setting the bottle down on the nightstand. “Or a tetanus shot.”

“Don’t worry,” he says, taking another sip of his. “I’m sure the Iowa Department of Health is on it.”

You nod solemnly. “They’re probably just as fast as the Wi-Fi.”

That gets a small smile from him. He sits on the edge of the bed, a little closer than before, but still careful. He’s always so careful.

There’s a lull, full of quiet until the nighttime air-conditioning kicks on and you’re too tired to pretend anything really matters for a while.

“You ever drink from the mini bar before? Like, during a case?” you ask eventually.

“Only when I expect to be stranded somewhere like this.”

“Smart,” you say. 

He glances at you, amusement tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Can’t profile your way out of a cornfield without it.”

You hum in agreement. “I’m not sure if that’s depressing.”

He shrugs, taking another sip. “Probably.” His hand falls to his side, dangerously close to your thigh.

You accept another one. And then another one. You’re sure he’s going shot for shot with you, but you can’t really tell because your head is full and everything’s hazy and suddenly this bed is so, so comfortable. 

You lie back, legs still dangling off the edge, and stare up at the popcorn ceiling like it might reveal state secrets. “Did you know Iowa had one of the highest populations of covered bridges?”

Spencer blinks. “Iowa doesn’t.”

You squint. “It doesn’t?”

“No,” he says, amused. “That’s Madison County. Which is in Iowa. But it’s a specific — actually, nevermind. I’m not sure either of us are in a state for nuance.”

You wag a lazy finger at the ceiling. “I knew that.”

“Sure,” he says, and leans back beside you with a soft thud, hands crossed over his stomach. “Next you’ll tell me Iowa invented jazz.”

“It didn’t?” You cant your head to the side, a smile playing at your lips. 

“God, no.”

You sigh dramatically. “And here I thought this trip was educational.”

He turns his head just slightly toward you. His breath is hot, hotter than it was earlier, and his words are all slurred. You think you might sound the same but don’t keep yourself in line long enough to actually check. “You’ve learned a lot. For example, you’ve learned not to trust the minibar.”

“And that your idea of a good time is reading municipal histories.”

“I sensed you were captivated.”

You pull an arm over your face. “Do you always get this cocky after drinking?”

He tilts his head like he’s genuinely thinking about it. “I think I just feel safe knowing I’m not the only one embarrassing myself.”

You haul a leg up to bend into the bed with you and nudge him with your knee. “You’re not embarrassing. You’re weird. Like, in the good way.”

He doesn’t say anything for a moment, but you can hear the smile in his voice when he finally says: “Thanks. You’re weird too.”

“Weird and drunk.” You repeat the word drunk a few more times, drawing out a different syllable each time. “Spencer?” 

“Hm?”

“Don’t let me fall asleep here.”

“You say that like I have any control over you,” he murmurs. Your breath catches. Neither of you move.

You peek at him from under your arm. “Are you flirting with me?”

“What?” 

“Whatever. Then don’t speak with that— that tone. Or I’ll start to think you’re flirting with me.”

“I’m not really flirting with you.”

You let the arm drop, but not to the mattress; it finds its way to the sleeve of his shirt, playing with the fabric. “Not really or not yet?”

“That depends,” he says, voice dropped low to a whisper. “Would yet be a problem?”

You roll onto your elbow, looming over him. “Guess we’ll have to find out.”

It lands like a match.

“What are you doing?” he asks. Your lips are the closest they’ve ever been.

“I don’t know.” Your eyes move to where his hand has started to creep onto your thigh. “What are you doing?”

He moves first, but only barely. His head tilts up, lips parting like he’s about to ask a question. 

He gets his answer in the shape of your lips.

Your hand finds the edge of his jaw, fingers skimming up the side of his face. He’s warm. Still flushed from the whiskey or maybe just from you.

You’re kissing, you think. You. Spencer. Kissing. It should make you pull back. You work with him. This is strictly forbidden — that should definitely make you pull back.

But then his fingers press into your hips, grounding you, and you shift, and you’re straddling him before you’ve thought it through. It’s automatic, desperate, like the tension finally cracked open and all that’s left is the pull.

“Still not on the job?” you murmur between kisses, breath brushing his lips.

He shakes his head. “Not even a little.”

He starts to kiss you deeper, like he wants to memorize it. You wonder if he is. Your hands move up under his shirt, and his breath slips, just for a second. Just long enough to make you smile into his mouth.

There’s nothing quiet about any of this. Just heat. And want. And finally.

You roll your hips once as a test. When he tightens his grip on you, you have half the mind to do it again, and again, and again. 

Suddenly, all you can think of are your clothes on the ground and him inside you. 

“Fuck,” he mutters. You release his lips from yours.

“Fuck?”

“Shh,” he hushes, trying to silence you, but you’re already laughing.

“Oh my god, Dr. Spencer Reid, esteemed supervisory special agent, holder of three PhDs, just said fuck.” You whisper the last part, hand clutching at your chest.  

“Will you please resume what we were just doing?”

“My fucking pleasure.”

“Jesus,” he squeezes out. Your hands remove themselves from where they were resting under his shirt and head to the waist of his pants. You watch his chest rise a little quicker, fall with a little more readiness. His hands release your hips and come up to grip your wrists. “I say fuck one time and I’ll never hear the end of it.” 

“Maybe we can put it in another context.” You unhook your legs from their desired place around his hips and scooch yourself down his body. Your fingers, which were just barely, ever so delicately toying with his waistband, curl into both the cotton of his pants and his boxers and tug down at once. He helps you, hips coming off the bed just enough for you to drop them both to his ankles. 

He’s already hard, and your mouth is already hollow, already anticipating something to fill a long-lasting void. You say his name, but it sounds off, because your mouth is already imagining itself wrapped around something far less innocent than words.

His hand comes up to your face, brushing your cheekbone, and the feeling is too soft to name but impossible to ignore. You feel as though all the heat in the room has gotten sucked between your legs, and it pools low, desire biting at the edges of restraint.

“You don’t have to,” he says, watching you spit in your hand. You roll your eyes before wrapping the newly wet hand around him. 

“I’m going to. Just stay like that.” 

You stroke him softly, just a few times before spitting on the tip and working it back down. He whispers your name like its wax, made to melt. You’re not thinking and your voice is velvet when you ask him how long it’s been since he’s been touched like this, the way he deserves to be. Too long, comes his response, and you vow to yourself to show him what he’s been missing.

The next time you bring your lips up to release more spit, you reach down and kiss it. Just the tip, and just ever-so-slightly. You’re not sure he noticed at first, so you do it again, this time more pronounced, and then he’s removing his hand from your face and bringing it up to your hair. His grip is firm enough to anchor, not enough to command. 

When you open your lips more, he tightens his grip. When you make your way down, syrup-slick and mouth dripping of sin, he coils his want at the nape of your neck and pulls. You moan around him, which earns you another tug. 

“That feels good,” he whispers. “So fucking good.”

You’re drunk enough that the praise feels more than trembling and temporary. You take it for more than it probably is and pick up your pace.

He lasts not a minute longer before he’s guiding you off of him, and you couch as you come up for air. 

“I don’t want to finish yet,” he mumbles.

“No?”

“No.” He pulls you up off the ground, one hand on your wrist and the other still in your hair. “Wanna take care of you too. Do you want that? Yeah? Lie down for me.”

You do as you're told, nodding along the way, agreeing fervently and with little free will. You’re drooling, enough that it slips past your lips. He brings his index finger up to your face, collecting it on the pad of his finger and pushing it back into your mouth. Instinctively, you suck. He groans, low, a noise you never would have expected to hear from him, and it makes you shut your legs, thighs rubbing together slightly as you try to fight the feeling festering around your limbs.

He kneels before you, the same way you had with him. “Is this what you want?” You nod. “No, use your words.” He pries your legs open, blows between them. 

Your back is coming up off the bed, enough for him to bring a hand up and grab your waist again. “Yes.”

He wastes little time attaching his mouth to you, tongue everywhere, while his fingers leave bruises in your side. One of your hands is gripping the sheets so hard you can feel your fingernails digging into your palm even through it. This can’t be real, you think, because nothing real feels this good. And this feels so, so good. 

You feel fucked out and he hasn’t even put anything inside of you. It’s just his tongue swiping against you, swirling around your clit, sucking your clit, kissing your clit. You can’t think. At some time you stop being aware of what he’s doing and just let him do it.

His hand leaves your hip and you feel it pulse, throbbing at the loss of harsh connection. Then, he forces your fist to open, to release the white fabric, and he locks your fingers together. It feels intimate, more intimate than his mouth on you, and if you were sober you might have shrugged him away. But you’re not. You’re drunk. Very drunk. So instead you hold his hand harder.

His free hand is trailing along your thigh, and when you glance down at him his eyes are closed, and he looks content, satisfied, and you’re not sure you ever want to unfold from this position. He uses his other hand to trail up and down your thigh before his errant fingers find their way farther up your legs. 

When he slips two inside you, both at once, no warning, you mewl.

He detaches his mouth from you, like he wants to focus solely on finger fucking you. When you glance down at him again, he gives you a perfunctory smile before focusing back at the task he’s chosen to take up. He’s practically gift-wrapping your orgasm. 

“Right there,” you choke out when his fingers curl at the exact right moment in the exact right spot. You don’t announce that you’re coming, but Spencer is a genius. You’re sure he can figure it out. Everything comes undone in waves, the way seafoam spits back into the sand before dissipating, carrying itself back out into a vaster part of the water. 

“Good job,” he says. He kisses you. You can taste your slick on his lips.

“Spencer.”

“You’ve said that already.” You’d laugh if you weren’t so unraveled. “I’m gonna fuck you now, okay?”

“Mhm.”

“What did we say about using our words?”

“To… use them?”

“You’re so smart,” he says, and you can hear him breathing in the way that means he’s trying not to laugh as he presses scattered kisses across your cheek, jaw, lips. “Can you speak up and show me how smart you are?”

“I want you to fuck me.”

“Knew you had it in you.” One of his hands is pressed into the mattress next to your head, and the other is absent from your body. When you finally open your eyes, you look down to see him lining himself up with you.

There’s a pinch in your throat as you feel him ease himself inside, slowly, deliberately, like he’s scared you might crumble and break beneath him. You won’t, which you assure him by using one hand to grab onto his bicep and the other to rest on his hip, guiding him all the way inside of you. 

"I got so mad, earlier," he says. "When he was talking about you like that."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize," he whispers. "Don't fucking apologize."

The heat is back, swirling in your stomach, rushing up your chest like every vein you have has replaced blood with feverish fire. Spencer throws more gasoline on it when he slides almost all the way out, then pushes himself back in. You’re quiet, and even the air around you seems to have hushed itself. 

When he finds a rhythm, he takes advantage of it. Fucks you a little harder, just enough that you can’t close your mouth, can’t quiet yourself even when you try. You’re trying to tread carefully, but you don’t have it in you to not tip your chin up and search for a kiss. You move your other hand to wrap around his forearm, the one right next to your head, and you can’t stop yourself from digging your nails into the skin when he gives you one particularly hard thrust.

“Do that again,” you whisper.

“This?” he asks, though it’s more of a mock. He does it again, this time a little slower. You feel like crying, because you have no other outlet for what exactly it is you’re currently feeling. When he does it again you have no choice but to squeeze your eyes shut. He kisses you again, idly, like you’ve got all the time in the world. You’re not sure you have more than five minutes in you before you pass out. “You feel so good.”

“Needed you.”

“Yeah?” he says. Your words seem to have made him snap his hips against yours a little harder. 

He uses one of his hands to grab under your thigh, then pushes your leg up. You let out a broken moan you don’t even register as your own until he stretches you farther apart and you do it again. You’d be embarrassed if you weren’t clawing at an indescribable edge. You feel ripe. Nothing holy is coming for you. You arch your back like it might. 

"Mine." He says it while looking down at you. He says it with his chest. He says it like it's an absolute.

You bring your hand to the back of his neck and make him kiss you. Once for the thrill, twice just to feel the burn of it really settle in. 

Then you come. And everything else does, too. It’s unraveling. Not fingers but friction, not skin but static, not breath but flood. The room is slipping sideways, hips first, mouth second. you forget your name or maybe you give it away. There's no shape to anything, to the sting between your legs, only pulse — wet, reckless, existing in the hollows of your thighs. When he bends down and lets out a sound that sounds suspiciously like your name, your teeth catch on his shoulder like a warning. He doesn’t flinch. You bite down harder.

Nothing makes sense for a while except the sound of the air-conditioner. 

Spencer says something. Then again. Then, he taps your cheek twice, says your name until you come to.

“Hm?”

“You okay?”

“‘m okay. Are you okay?”

He laughs. It’s quiet and hoarse and still warm. “Yes ma’am.”

“Hmmmm.”

“Hmm what?’

“I like that. We’ll use that ‘nother time.” You let out a heavy sigh as he chuckles. He slips out of you and you suck in a breath that catches in the pockets of your teeth, cold and shocking against the roof of your mouth.

“Sorry.” You shake your head and hope it conveys that he has nothing to apologize for. He rolls over next to you. “You should pee.”

“Pee schmee.”

“I think I’m gonna retract my previous statements about your high level of intelligence now.” You smack him with your hand and laugh, hearty and probably too loud.

“I’m still drunk,” you say after a few more moments of silence.

“I think that’s how that whole drinking thing works, yeah.”

“Do you regret it?”

“No.” His answer comes quicker than you were expecting.

“Okay. Me neither. Just checking.” You blow hair out of your face, and when that doesn’t work you bring a palm up and use the strength of four fingers to wipe it away from the sweat gathering in satin sheets across your skin. “I hate this room.”

“Me too.”

“I don’t hate you,” you whisper.

“Well,” he whispers back. “I don’t hate you either.”

“Do you wanna maybe… I don’t know. Not be on the job tomorrow morning?”

It might just be the alcohol, but his expression is soft and lush, like when dawn’s light shudders through early morning fog. 

So does the lack of teasing, of begging—at least, a lack up until this point. Right now, there’s only him, patient and content to let you play at being in charge. You pull back and reach down to grab him gently, aligning him at your entrance with a trembling hand. This part, you’re not usually responsible for. 

He assures you with a hand to the small of your back, rubbing soothing circles. “You got it. Slowly.”

You do as he says, brow furrowing in focus as you sink down an inch or two onto him. Spencer’s breathing grows erratic as you take more and more of him, and in a heroic display of overachieving, you take the rest of him at once with nothing but a squeak. He laughs breathily as his fingers dig into your hips. 

“Fuck—I said slow.”

You can’t think. The overwhelm of it all is too much as you crumple forward onto his chest. The subtle rocking you’re doing to try and alleviate some of the pressure in your core is apparently too much as he stops you by the hips, fingers pressing into those same tender spots.

Spencer’s breath is ragged. “Don’t… do not move.”

“Fuck,” you breathe into his shoulder, long and drawn out as despite his wishes you wriggle around, trying to get comfortable. “Oh my god.”

“My lovely girl, please… please don’t move,” Spencer gasps, a plead, and you try to stop for him, nuzzling even deeper against his neck. “I need a minute.”

“It’s too much,” you slur, dizzy as you try to adjust to the feeling. “Please.” You don’t know what you’re asking for. Maybe relief from the sensation that he can’t offer you. Maybe more. 

Spencer is undone by you—the way you writhe on top of him, the way your voice shakes, the way you’re so totally and completely overwhelmed and he can feel it and he loves it. 

“Baby,” he breathes, and he meant to say a lot more than that, but it’s the best he can manage when he is this overstimulated. “Baby,” he whispers again, wrapping his arms around you in an effort to ground you, to give you something else to focus on as you both get used to the feeling. 

It’s going well—for a moment, before your back is arching. 

“Spence, I need to move, I can’t—”

“Okay, okay.” He takes a deep breath, returning his hands to your waist and mentally preparing himself not to cum early. He’s desperate to give you want you want, to feel you like this. “Go ahead. Move, honey. Please.”

By the time you slowly lift your hips up and drop back down with a low cry, Spencer’s lost. His head falls back against the pillow and his eyes squeeze shut. 

“Fuck,” he groans. “Oh, angel, I missed you.”

You do it again, motivated by his praise, and he can hear your little gasps and desperate gulps of air. 

“I missed you so much,” you whine and clench around him, pleasure so intense it’s a resounding ache in the far reaches of your body. “Oh, fuck, Spencer.”

Spencer shivers. He loves when you make it personal, when you say his name like that and it becomes clear this isn’t just about the physical.

“My girl. Just like that. Doing so well, baby, just like that.”

Each pass of your hips has you whining. Your lips skim over his neck, not cognizant enough to actually kiss—only to know that you want the contact. 

“Please can I go faster?”

Spencer almost doesn’t realize you’re speaking to him he’s so lost in pleasure. The idea of faster is as compelling as it is troublesome. Spencer doesn’t know if he can’t take faster, not when he has you like this, but he certainly wants to find out. 

“Yeah, lovely. Do whatever feels good.”

You readjust and begin to pick up the pace, stumbling over a few false starts as it’s clearly more sensation than you’d been prepared for. 

Spencer, on the other hand, has his eyes screwed shut tight, and is attempting to draw a two-dimensional Császár polyhedron on your back, but he loses his place with every twitch of your hips, so eventually he decides to trace imperfect Mandelbrots down your spine—anything to avoid thinking about how the pH of your body interacts with sweet vanilla perfume to create a scent so deeply intoxicating he’d leave his entire life behind just to trail after it, or how you fucking feel against him, on top of him, around him, how miraculous it is that you keep letting him touch you—

“Oh—” you whine quietly, a strangled sort of noise that has his heart skipping. Your hand tangles desperately in his hair as you rock your hips faster and faster and he lets out a tortured groan. “Spencer, oh my fucking god.”

“I know, baby,” he manages, endeared by the fact that you feel so good you have to share it with him. Even now you’re trying to explain it because you want him to be part of it—as if he doesn’t know exactly what you’re feeling already. “That feels good, huh?”

“Mm—f—eels—” you cut yourself off with a cry into the crook of his neck, and he holds the back of your head, vision greying as he stares unseeing at the ceiling because if he looks down this’ll be over too soon. 

“You’re so good,” he breathes, “you’re perfect.”He hears you gasp at the same time as your rhythm falters, and presses a kiss somewhere indiscriminately on your head. “Gonna cum?” He murmurs in your ear, and you nod desperately, rutting against him hopelessly as your thighs tremble from exertion. 

Even the smallest drop-off in friction has his head spinning like he stood up too quickly, so he gives himself enough leverage to start fucking you. You cry out and shift your weight like you’re going to try and evade the feeling—self-sabotage, you always do this—and he again has to hold your hips in an iron vice, just to force you to feel it. 

“You’re okay, I’m gonna get you there.”

“Fuck!” You very nearly yell, still trying to wriggle away up until the very last second like the tide going out before the tsunami comes. When you do cum, your demeanor instantly changes—you get heavy and clingy and whiny as you rock back and forth through your orgasm. 

“Good girl,” Spencer murmurs, being careful in the way he continues to fuck you until he reaches his peak as well, not long after. You shudder, and Spencer feels the way your entire body tenses the way it sometimes does after a particularly strong orgasm, and he fights his way out of the brain fog to rub your back with the skimming tips of his fingers. “Shh. You’re okay. Relax, baby.”

And you do, unwound by the dance of his hand and with a few shallow breaths that gradually deepen, until you’re once more slack on top of him. 

“You’re incredible,” he exhales, with his lips pressed to your hairline. 

So clearly overwhelmed, the only response you can muster is a soft squeak. Spencer laughs fondly, still mapping the soft curve of your back. He feels the way you’re still attempting to train your breathing and kisses your hair again. “What do you need, angel?”

“I’m s’posed to be taking care of you,” you slur. Spencer chuckles again and his brow knits. 

“According to who?”

“According to… I was on top…”

“Yeah. You did all the hard stuff. Your legs are shaking.”

You whine softly. “No they’re not.”

His hand slides down to your thigh, and he rubs the trembling muscles. 

“No? No Bambi legs for me this time?”

You squeeze them around his waist like you could shrink away from his touch. “Spence…”

“I’m teasing you, honey,” he murmurs, pressing kisses wherever he can reach. “You’re cute.”

“Hm.”

“Look at me,” he murmurs, angling his head expectantly as you slowly raise yours. The look on your face is so sweet—eyes half lidded, lips swollen and much higher in color than usual. Your cheek is warm to the touch. His heart flutters like it did on your first date, and the first time he kissed you, and the first time you fell asleep on his shoulder. This view will never get old. “Wow. Look at you, beautiful girl. Can I have a kiss?”

And you grant him his wish, with a long, soft kiss that’s worth every second of that burning feeling in his lungs, every time. 

Eventually you huff out the remainder of your air against his well-kissed lips and your head flops to his chest. 

“I’m sleepy.”

“So go to sleep,” he murmurs, so warm from your kiss he feels nothing could be wrong in the world at this moment. 

“I can’t.”

“Why’s that?”

“’Cause you just got home ’nd I missed you and I wanna spend time with you.”

“We have three days to spend together. If you go to sleep now, we’ll actually get more time together tomorrow.”

“But it’s more about, like, how it feels—how much time it feels like we spend together right when you get home, and if I go to sleep now, it’s gonna feel like less time, and—basically you’re just not understanding my math.”

“What math?” He laughs, continuing to rub your legs all the way up to your hips, at which point you hiss and buck—a very visceral feeling when he’s still inside of you. “What? What hurts?”

“You tried to fucking tear my hip flexors from my body, is what hurts,” you grumble. 

“Tender?”

“Mhm.”

“I’m really sorry, angel. Tylenol?”

“Mm-mm. Can you kiss me better?” Sleep stains your voice. Spencer smiles to himself. 

“Yeah?”

“Mhm.”

“Lie down.”

Again you whine as you slip off of him, landing heavily on your back. He sits up, watches with so much affection the way you squeeze your thighs together and arch ever so slightly against the empty feeling. 

“Spencer?” You whisper as he cups the top of your knees. 

“Hm?”

“I love you.”

He pushes your legs apart gently so he can settle in between them and kisses you again. “I love you. So much.”

“Glad we’re on the same page.”

He presses a kiss to your head, down your neck, taking the scenic route to your hip bones, but you don’t seem to mind. 

The feeling of his lips gentle on the tender flesh has you humming softly, eyes fluttering shut as he showers you with gentle kisses. His traces every place his fingers had pressed earlier—feels the way you relax further underneath him. Nobody’s ever let him in this deeply before, but you trust him with everything you have; your body, your soul, in life or death, awake and in sleep. He’ll never take that for granted. He will never pass on an opportunity like this, to be the one who takes care of you, who puts you back together, as long as you’ll let him. 

Still dancing the line of consciousness, you part your legs, the slow drag of your bare thigh like a jumper cable to his heart. Fingertips trace desirous paths up your inner thigh and back down again. He recognizes this invitation for what it is, and he knows exactly how to give you what you want, but he asks first anyway. 

“Was that on purpose?”

“I d’know what you mean. I’m so sleepy,” you slur, and he believes the second half of your statement to be fact. 

Spencer pushes your thigh a little higher, and you’re completely pliable for him, completely gorgeous. As soon as he skims your thigh with a barely-there kiss, exactly the way you like, you’re lacing a hand in his hair. 

“Please, Spence…” you murmur, and he can’t argue with that. He especially can’t argue when you widen your legs just that slightest bit more, and your arousal is opalescent between your legs. 

He hums, trailing more kisses up until he’s setting the softest one yet against your clit. “Beautiful girl…”

The following gasp is so tiny he could’ve missed it if he wasn’t so attuned to your noises—and then he gets lost in you, making sure to keep his ministrations light as you already came twice recently and are sure to be sensitive. He doesn’t want to wake you from whatever twilight half-slumber trance you’re in, either, sensing that if he does you’ll fight all over again to stay up.

And admittedly, he adores being trusted to take care of you like this.

Your back arches as much as you’re capable of in this state, and he can’t help the way he just barely suctions onto you at that moment, coaxing a sighing moan so sweet and vulnerable and open it gives him chills. Fuck. He really wants to make you cum. But instead he practices patience, tracing you with the tip of his tongue, pressing gentle kisses everywhere you need them—he draws it out. For he doesn’t know how long. 

The first time you get close, your hips begin to roll, and you spout little ah’s, but he talks you back down again, laughing lightly at your angelic cooing, your little sounds of sleepy pleasure. Even now you’re so responsive, moving against his mouth as he slips a finger into your soaked entrance, fucks you for a moment, and then retreats. Maybe he’s being unfair, but you don’t seem to mind. 

In fact, you’re slipping in and out of sleep as he devours you for what feels like hours, one hand pressed lovingly to your stomach, stroking the soft skin there. Spencer’s never had this long to explore you with his mouth and he takes full advantage of every moment, but he keeps all his kisses and licks and touches gentle and reverent and so loving. 

You don’t know how long it’s been, or how many times he’s made you cum when he finally retreats—you half-wake just as he’s finishing cleaning you up. Soon he tosses the towel aside and presses feather-light kisses to each of your cheeks, tear-stained and warm with pleasure. You feel completely drained and completely loved. 

“Hi, sleeping beauty,” he murmurs, climbing into bed with you, at some point having gotten dressed. 

You manage an embarrassed little laugh. More tears crawl down your cheeks as you roll to your side. Spencer brushes them away and pulls you into him, slinging your thigh over his waist. He chuckles. 

“Shaky?”

“Stop,” you whine, embarrassed by his teasing, and hide your face against his chest. “That’s not my fault.”

“It’s nobody’s fault. It’s sweet,” he insists as he rubs your back. And then, a moment later, “So—do you think we’ve spent enough time together for tonight?”

“No.”

He sighs good-naturedly. 

“You’re gonna wear me out, you know that?”

“’F you… can’t handle the heat… get outta the kitchen.”

When he next speaks you can hear the smile in his voice.