#ca$h

Spencer “Spider” White x Reader!

In which a tough night leads you into someone in particular’s arms

WARNINGS; Mild Cursing; Slight mentions of Sex; Mentions of Parental Issues.

No mentions of a specific gender

Spider x reader

    You felt hot tears pour down your face. This was the third time you had called Sasha. Yet to no avail, she hadn’t picked up the phone. You’d think your best friend would answer in your time of need. 

       You scrolled to the next person in your contacts list, Missy. After three rings, Missy had finally picked up. “Hey Y/n.”,she answered cheerfully. “Hey.”,you sighed. “Are you home by chance?”,You asked, attempting to choke back tears. 

    “Uh no I’m out of town right now. I won’t be back till tomorrow”,she said dodgy , like that wasn’t the entire truth. “Are you okay?”,she follows up. “No no everything is okay.”,you lied, trying not to be a bother. 

    “Um enjoy. I’ll talk to you tomorrow”,you sigh before hanging up.

                       <~>~<~>~<~>

  You don’t remember exactly how you got here. All you knew was that you parked your car a few blocks up and ended up outside Spiders Window. You lightly tapped on his window praying that Ant and Dusty weren’t at his house. All you needed was to be even more embarrassed. 

       Spiders light flickered on before he peered his head out his window to see you standing at the window, face soaked in tears, mascara, and rain water. “Shit. Y/n you okay?”,he asks in a concerned tone. “Can I come in?”,you asked in barely a whisper. He eagerly nods before helping you climb through his window. 

    “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to impose, I didn’t know where else to go.”,you said as tears started to roll once again. “You’re not imposing. My mom actually isn’t even here. She’s..uh..out of town“,he says,hesitant yet still glancing at you with that concerned glance on his face. 

    He eyes the darkened expression on your face, “Are they fighting again?”,he asks only glancing at you slightly. You let out a deep sigh, “Yeah. And it’s really bad this time.”, you wipe your face. 

You hated feeling weak. You weren’t a weak punk ass bitch, your words not mine . And you made sure you never cried in front of ANYONE. But when it came to Spencer, for some odd reason all your walls came down. In your eyes nobody knew him like you did. Yea he could be a dick and a narcissistic asshole but it wasn’t completely his fault. And he could be surprisingly sweet when it came down to it. 

   Your parents always fought. It was what you grew up hearing. But recently the fights had been getting worse and worse. They’d been getting more volatile, sometimes even ending in screaming matches that made you flinch at the mere sound of a raised voice in school. 

       “I..I can’t stay there. I really can’t Spencer”,you breathed out. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to Y/n. You know you’re always welcome here”,he walks over to you, caressing your arms before engulfing you into a hug. You pulled him tight as you possibly could. Truth be told, he was your safe space. He was who you went to when you needed a shoulder to lean on when it came to real shit. 

     “Okay your clothes are sopping wet, do you wanna take a shower and I’ll grab you some clean clothes?”,He asks, eyeing the damp sweats that were clung to your body. You just nod up at him with a slight smile. You make your way to his bathroom before getting into the hot shower. This seemed to make all the bad thoughts melt away. It was just you and the water, until you heard the door creek open. 

    “Ok just coming in to drop off your clothes”, Spider walks in, a hand over his eyes to shield his eyes from you. “Um why are you acting like this is something you’ve never seen before?”, You laugh at the site in front of you. 

   “Oi, I’m tryna be respectful ya’know “,he shrugs. “I mean you could always join me”,you give a smirk. Spider eyes you,shocked as if he’s considering it and then it looks as if he snaps out of it. “I will be in my room when you’re done”,he says almost tripping over his words before disappearing from the bathroom entryway . “Am I losin my edge’?”,you asked yourself aloud.   

     You rinse off before stepping out the shower and drying off with the fresh towel he had put out for you. You slip into the seemingly somewhat oversized basketball practice jersey of his and the basketball shorts that felt gigantic. You eyed yourself in the mirror, loving what was looking back at you in the mirror. 

   You make your way into Spiders room, he’s on his video game, as usual. You glance over at him and he’s already staring back at you. “I reckon you look better in my clothes than me,eh?”, he smiles. “I will admit it looks really good on me”,you smile at the mirror placed across from you beside Spencer’s bed. 

   “Well in all fairness you look good in everything you wear”, he says looking up at you from his seat on the edge of the bed. You shove him, “oh shut up”, with a laugh. He gives you a wide grin, and the comfortable silence sets in. Your mind starts to wander back to the scene that had unfolded 2 hours previously. 

      “You wanna talk about it?”, he looks up at you solemnly. You just shake your head no before taking a seat next to him. “Thank you for letting me stay here Spider. Seriously”,you grab his hand. “You know it’s no problem”,He smiles over at you. 

    “I do have one question though”,he says hesitant as if he doesn’t want to ask. “Hmm?”, you turn your attention back to him. “Why’d you come here? Like I know you said you didn’t have anywhere else to go but I can’t help but wonder.”,he asks. 

      “Truth is , I did call Sasha and Missy. But Sasha didn’t answer and Missy is out of town.  But when I sat and thought about it I only wanted to be around you. You are for some crazy reason I can’t understand, the only person who understands me. And sometimes you’re the only person I can stand to be around.”, you let out a deep sigh. 

Heartbreak High really said: what if the guy everyone writes off is actually one of the most emotionally complex people in the room—and then committed to it with Cash. You don’t get all of him at once. You earn him, piece by piece.

Cash’s whole character is built on contradiction. He looks like danger, like someone hardened and unreachable, but underneath that is someone painfully soft who just never had the safety to show it.

At the centre of him is survival. Growing up around addiction and instability means Cash learned early that love isn’t always safe, and trust definitely isn’t guaranteed. So he attaches himself to the only structure he can find—his gang. It gives him rules, identity, protection… but it also traps him. You can feel that constant tension in him: loyalty vs. freedom.

He is deeply, painfully loyal. Probably to a fault. Cash sticks by people even when they don’t deserve it, because abandonment is worse to him than being hurt. That’s why breaking away from his old life is so difficult—it’s not just leaving a gang, it’s unlearning the only version of “family” he’s ever had.

He wants out—but doesn’t believe he deserves out. That’s the real tragedy of him. He’s trying to be better, trying to choose differently, but there’s this underlying belief that maybe this is all he gets. That he’s already ruined, already too far gone. Watching him slowly challenge that idea is one of the most satisfying parts of his arc.

Cash isn’t a redemption arc wrapped in a bow. He’s a work in progress. Messy, defensive, soft in ways he hates, and trying anyway.

And then there’s his relationship with Darren.

Darren Rivers doesn’t just challenge Cash—they see him. Fully. And that terrifies him more than anything else.

Because loving Darren means:

confronting his asexuality out loud

unlearning everything he’s been taught about masculinity

accepting that he deserves softness, not just survival

and risking losing the only “family” he’s ever known

Cash’s asexuality is handled in such a grounded way too. It’s not treated like a flaw or something to “fix.” Instead, you see his confusion, his fear of not being able to give Darren what they deserve, and then slowly… acceptance. It becomes part of his identity, not a limitation. That’s huge, especially for a character who’s otherwise boxed into hyper-masculine stereotypes.

Another thing that hits hard is how quiet his growth is. Cash isn’t loud about becoming better. There’s no big speeches. It’s in the small choices:

hesitating before doing something he knows is wrong

pulling away from the gang even when it costs him everything

choosing Darren, even when he doesn’t fully believe he deserves them

trying—again and again—to be different

And that’s what makes him so compelling. He’s not instantly redeemed. He’s still messy, still makes bad calls, still carries all that damage. But he wants to be better. And he actually does the work, even when it’s hard and terrifying.

He’s also a really sharp critique of how people judge others on sight. Cash is exactly the kind of person society labels as a lost cause—but the show forces you to sit with his humanity until you can’t ignore it anymore.

By the end, he’s not “fixed.” He’s just… trying. Learning how to exist outside of survival mode. Learning that love doesn’t have to hurt. Learning that he can be more than what he was shaped into.

ca$h defender tomorrow