summary: in which the Justice League notice that Batman is infatuated with Bruce Wayne’s wife, and need to help him get over her (impossible)
pairing: husband!bruce wayne/batman x wife!reader
warnings: none? maybe mentions of slight violence. fluff.
a/n: inspired by this fic by @ilianasbruce
dividers by: @saradika-graphics and @cafekitsune
MASTERLIST part two!
it started when batman and superman were at the watchtower together.
they were doing their own work silently, at opposite ends of the table.
superman was pretending that he wasn’t secretly writing an article for the daily planet that was due within the week (that he had completely forgotten about), and batman was pretending that he wasn’t secretly texting his wife under the table.
bruce: how is the opera, my love? i’m sorry i couldn’t be there, the league has demands.
a lie. he just had a headache earlier and felt like jumping out of a window at the thought of having to put on a smile for the folk and sit through an opera. he did feel guilty about you being on your own, though.
you: it’s alright. i actually know some people here, and they aren’t all bad, bruce.
bruce: you say that now, but wait until they each give you a rundown on each car in their garage.
you: like how you give me a rundown on each gadget you come up with in the batcave?
bruce: that’s different.
you: of course it is. i actually like listening to you.
the familiar ‘ping!’ of one of batman’s gadgets interrupted the silence.
superman looked up, eager to be doing something other than whatever paper in front of him that he wasn’t even focusing on.
“what is that?” his words came out immediately, and before batman could answer, he was speaking again. “robbery? alien invasion?”
“Poison Ivy in Gotham.” Batman is already standing, beginning his exit of the watchtower. Superman follows him.
“Can I come? Please?”
Batman turns, looking at him. “What?”
“It’s boring in here!” Superman gestures around. “And if I’m on my own it’ll be even more boring. C’mon, Batman, I can help you.”
Batman considers it for a moment before sighing. “Fine. But we’re going in the Batmobile.”
“But I can-“
“You are not flying me there, Superman.”
A few minutes later, they’re in the opera hall. Ivy seems to have taken over the stage, giving a speech on ways for the average person to decrease their carbon footprint.
Batman can see a few different people caught between her weeds. Long, thick plants have people in their grip. He scans the room quickly for you, breathing a silent sigh of relief when he sees that you are not captured, but instead just huddled in the corner with a group of others.
Superman doesn’t notice the way that Batman isn’t looking at Ivy, and begins his attack. Batman quickly follows. After a swift battle (turns out having Superman as an ally cuts down on battle time), Ivy is restrained and authorities arrive. The two start on recovering civilians before they both encounter you.
You’re comforting one of the women that was tangled in the weeds. You’re sitting beside her, nodding as she talked. You recognise the familiar pair of boots coming from the side of you. Your head lifts up slightly as you catch sight of the two men.
“Are you alright, Mrs. Wayne?” Superman speaks first, the familiar concern he has for everyone clear in his voice and expression. He recognises you from articles, and he’s heard enough from Cat Grant at the Daily Planet to know you’re married to Bruce Wayne.
“Yes, I’m fine,” you answer with a small smile. Your eyes move to Batman. “Thank you.”
Superman gives Batman a side glance as he hears Batmans heart skip a beat when you smile at him. He tries to not to make his suspicion obvious. However, he turns a little when he hears that Batmans heartbeat is now quicker than it had been five minutes ago.
However, nothing on Batmans mostly covered face gave away any feelings. He just nodded and said a quick: “Stay safe, ma’am.”
And Superman didn’t bring it up again. Perhaps it was just a coincidence. A heart skip doesn’t always mean feelings of infatuation, right?
The second time is with Flash and Green Lantern.
Batman is a stark contrast to the pair. Barry and Hal are close friends, and joke around when put together. Bruce will sigh, and tell them to be quiet, and then Barry tries to be serious, but Hal will mutter a sarcastic comment that makes him start laughing again and the cycle repeats.
So Batman is already tense from working with the two.
They’re investigating a case together, and encounter you somehow. (sorry that’s so vague i literally cannot think of a specific scenario here to save my life)
Flash asks you a few questions if you’ve seen or heard anything suspicious, and you shake your head and answer. Barry notices Batmans shoulders softening a little beside him.
It isn’t hugely noticeable, but Barry senses it. Batmans shoulders loose some of their tension as he talks to you, this civilian. And when Hal opens his mouth to make an implying comment, he tenses right back up again.
Barry’s eyes narrow. It isn’t often that the Bat actually feels emotions, so when he does, his friends take an interest.
On the way back, Barry nudges Hal.
“Hey, you notice the way Bats was acting around that woman earlier?” He whispers so the third man in front of them doesn’t hear.
“You mean that really hot one? Who wouldn’t act like that around her? Did you see her, Bar?”
Barry gives him a look, “yeah, but this is Batman. Brooding, stays-in-the-shadows, feels-nothing-but-rage-24/7, Batman.”
Hal ponders before shrugging. “I don’t know, maybe Spooky’s changed. Never underestimate the power of a beautiful woman, Barry.”
Barry thinks. “She looked kinda familiar, didn’t she? I can’t think of where I’ve seen her before.”
And when they see that the familiar face they were talking to was Bruce Wayne’s wife, they give each other an alarmed look before looking at Batman from across the room.
The third time was with Oliver goddamn Queen.
A charity gala. Bruce couldn’t go because he had intel that Scarecrow was planning on infiltrating the building while everyone was distracted, something about wanting to ‘test out a new gas’, and he had to be on watch as Batman for the evening.
You, however, decided to go. You had a nice dress and were getting close to some of the women there your age. It was nice to not be a total stranger in the room anymore.
So, as you filtered around the room, you met Oliver Queen. He sometimes teases Bruce on purpose by asking for a dance with you at other galas, but without Bruce he was simply a friend to enjoy a chat with.
When Scarecrow did burst in, you actually had been dancing with Oliver. A friendly turn around the room like the others were doing. By the time Batman had taken him down, and everyone emerged from the corners or hidden rooms, Oliver checked to see if you were okay. Lord knows Bruce would probably blame him if anything happened to you.
You were fine, thank God. Oliver’s sentence was interrupted by the Bat himself.
“Was anybody harmed?” the gruff voice asked, his gaze trying not to linger on you for too long.
“I don’t think so,” you replied. Oliver looked at Batman with a certain questioning that nobody seemed to notice.
“Good.” Batman was silent for a moment before speaking again. “Perhaps you all should start making your ways home. Scarecrow might return, or someone worse.”
You don’t miss a beat. “It’s a good thing we have someone like you to protect us, Batman.”
“Only a fool wouldn’t protect you, ma’am.”
Oliver blinked. Is Batman . . . flirting? With a married woman? Also, was that sentence a sneaky diss on him?
and Oliver could’ve sworn on his entire fortune that Batman’s lips were almost in a grin during his next sentence.
“Your husband is probably waiting on you, Mrs. Wayne.”
Oliver raised his eyebrows at your response. You laughed a little under your breath before speaking, “probably. I wouldn’t want to keep him up.”
Oliver looks between you and Batman. Perhaps he’s imagining things. You turn to him as if you’ve just remembered that he’s still there.
“Oliver, you have a safe way home, right?”
“Yeah, I’ll call my driver.”
He doesn’t bring it up the next time he sees Batman as Green Arrow. Batman doesn’t speak of it either. But his eyes narrow a little at the Bats whenever Bruce Wayne or his wife is mentioned.
Eventually, it comes up in conversation when Batman isn’t there.
They’re in the common room, and Diana is flipping through the newspaper. She’s on a page that features a picture of you at the latest event with a description of your outfit beside it. Beside her, Hal recognises you.
“Hey, Flash,” he begins, stabbing the page with his finger. “Isn’t that who we were talking to a couple days earlier?”
Barry is behind the couch in a second, nodding. “Yeah, we asked her a couple questions with Batman.” He looks up a takes a quick glance to see if anyone’s expression changes. “He seemed . . . different around her.”
Clark closes the book in his hand with a loud snap, looking at the three on the couch.
“You’ve noticed too?”
Hal laughs, “that Bats has the hots for a married woman? Yeah.”
Diana frowns a little. “That is unlike Batman. He’s known for his self-restraint. It doesn’t seem likely he would harbour a liking for someone else’s wife, especially Bruce Wayne’s. Doesn’t Wayne sponsor him or something?”
Oliver joins in. “Wonder Woman, you haven’t seen him with her. I mean, it was only a few seconds but he was a totally different person.”
“How so?” Diana asked curiously.
“He . . . relaxed a little.”
She raised her eyebrows. Barry cut in.
“Wonder, you need to see it to understand it. It’s like no one else even enters his mind when he’s looking at her. I think everything else sorta faded away, you know?”
“Like in those rom-coms I’ve been shown?” She suggests.
“Yeah!”
Clark thinks for a moment, wondering what to do to help his obviously hopeless friend. How do you break the news to an emotionally constipated Bat that he has to squash his feelings before anything terrible happens?
So, they organise an intervention. A very unorganised organised intervention.
Your name gets mentioned during a briefing. About how you could be potential target for a kidnapping due to your status.
Hal’s mouth works quicker than his mind.
“What about Bruce Wayne?”
“What about Bruce Wayne?” Batman asks in his low voice, his back still turned to the team.
“Just saying, he’s probably a potential target too, right?” Green Lantern points out. “He’s her husband, after all.”
Batman turns. They all seem to be looking for his reaction.
“Right, I was just getting to that.” He says stiffly. “So I think until Joker is tracked down again, a pair of eyes should be on them. Since Gotham is my city, I can-“
“Ohhhh, hold on,” Flash says, leaning forward. “Central City has been very quiet lately, so I’m free too.”
Wonder Woman joins in. “I’m interested too. I think the more people, the quicker we could get this done.”
Batman blinks. “Why the sudden interest in Gotham from you two?”
They both shrug, mumbling incoherent words that overlap each other. Something about “new environments” and “change of pace”.
Green Arrow smirks. “I wouldn’t mind accompanying. (Name) and her husband should get all the protection they can get.”
Batman isn’t showing it, but he’s confused. Less members have volunteered themselves for prison breaks. Why are three other members wanting to go to Gotham for an unconfirmed threat? And why do they keep looking at him like that?
“Yes,” Superman clears his throat. “Mrs (Name) is a kind woman who shouldn’t be in danger. And Bruce Wayne is similar in nature. He is valuable to Gotham City.”
Batman prepared his disliking-Bruce-Wayne act with practised ease. “Bruce Wayne is a spoiled idiot.”
“Of course you think that.” Green Lantern mutters with a smug smirk. Flash nudges him.
“What do you mean?” Batman asks, and Hal practically explodes.
“We know you’re attracted to (Name) Wayne!” He says, making Barry cover his eyes with his hands. Not how the conversation was supposed to go.
“Excuse me?” Batman is -frankly- appalled. Hal grimaces, instantly reminded of who exactly he’s talking to.
“You’re, uh . . .” he splutters before quickly mumbling, “you’re in love with (name).” He gains some of his confidence, and straightens up again, “and you were about to let Bruce Wayne get kidnapped, so you could swoop in and seduce her!” He tops it all off with hand gestures of the supposed ‘swooping’.
Batmans gaze sweeps the table. Nobody meets his eye except Diana, who just seems to be staring at him for his response. A few of them have to stop themselves from laughing at the idea of Batman ‘seducing’ someone.
“And what exactly gave you that idea?”
Barry is filled with a newfound confidence. “Oh, c’mon Bats, a blind man would see how you act around her!” He smirked a little. “You went a little . . . soft.”
Green Arrow snorts. “Sometimes I think you’re only protecting Gotham because she’s in it.”
Batman thinks. Has he been that transparent? He’s always careful about his expressions and body reactions. Maybe he is getting soft. He obviously didn’t take enough care.
A fleeting image passes his mind, where he declares his love for you to the team. How could he not show you off? He would love to tell them that you were with him.
But, of course, he doesn’t do that. He just blinks.
“I am not in love with (name), that’s ridiculous.” He scoffs. “Number one, I don’t fall in love with anyone. Number two, she’s married, so I think that means she’s out of the dating pool.”
Not one face looking back at him looks convinced.
However, a cold stare and a swift change of topic ensured that nobody tries to start the conversation again.
They do, however, take a bigger interest in Gotham nowadays. Whenever a mission includes you somehow, there’s always one of them volunteering to go. They all think that distance will make sure Batman goes back to his cold and steely ways of not having a crush on anyone’s wife.
Bruce crawls under the covers with a small groan, shuffling next to you. His arms go around your warm body as he rests his face near yours. He’s desperate to soak up your warmth after being out in the cold all night.
“Long night?” you ask, your voice still quiet from sleep.
“Long day,” he responds, tucking himself into you. You keep your arms around him. “The League accused Batman of being attracted to Bruce Wayne’s wife today.”
It takes you a moment to realise what he’s talking about. You breathe out a laugh. “Is Batman not in love with me?”
Bruce grins against your skin. “He might be.” He murmurs. “Just a little, though.”
You raise your eyebrows, turning to look at Bruce. “Does Batman know I’m married? And that I’m very loyal to my husband?”
“Oh, yes,” he responded, and sits up a little. he pressed his forehead to yours. “and Batman knows that there’s nobody else on this earth that loves you more than I do.”
You smile, your fingers in his hair now. he leans closer to press his lips to yours, an action that you return. Bruce keeps himself against you for a long time. He likes falling asleep with you in his arms. He likes feeling like the protector.
It’s why he needs to sleep on the side of the bed closest to the door. It’s why he needs to know where you are each night. It’s why he needs to know you’re safe. And if your safety comes along with each League member giving him looks because they think he’s harbouring a crush for another man’s wife, then so be it.
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(っ. -｡) sleeping in with husband toji & baby gumi! ᶻ 𝘇 𐰁
the cold weather had your family under a sleepy spell.
it had become so hard to get out of your comfy, fluffy and warm bed in the mornings lately.
especially when your human heater of a husband always had you tucked in between his arms, his giant leg thrown over your hips, nose pressed against your hair, breathing you in.
your own personal weighted blanket.
the alarm blared on your nightstand. you blearily opened your heavy eyes, unable to move under toji’s heavy weight.
“toji,” your sleepy mumble is barely audible, but your husband’s sharp instincts catch it anyway.
“mm,” toji’s chest rumbles, resounding his deep hum. the sound warms you up, making you scoot closer into him.
“we need to get up,” you continue, struggling to stay awake and formulate thoughts.
toji’s hand starts moving, pressing a button on your phone to silence the alarm. it then reaches the back of your head, caressing gently.
you sigh contentedly, breathing in your husband’s scent that feels like home.
how were you supposed to get out of bed?
you felt yourself drifting off again, against your better judgement.
your husband’s hand caressing your hair also started slowing down as you both fell back asleep together.
and then the alarm went off again, barely ten minutes later.
your eyes felt heavier as you tried to open them, sleep trying to hold onto you as tight as your husband was. you forced your mind to stay awake, knowing you needed to get up and get megumi soon.
you tugged at toji’s massive biceps, firmer this time.
he groaned before nuzzling his head into your neck, “five minutes, doll.”
you turned your face sideways, pressing a gentle kiss on his temple, saying, “get off me.” it came out as a gerroffme.
toji squeezed you in response.
you patted his cheek, the contact making a soft noise.
“get up, please,” you tried again, “need to get gumi.”
at that, your husband reluctantly retracted himself, allowing you to get up. but as soon as you got out of bed, a shiver traveled down at your spine from the pressure on your bladder. holy.
you turned to head to the bathroom but at that moment, the baby monitor started echoing megumi’s cries.
“toji,” you whined, squeezing your thighs together in urgency, “get gumi please.”
toji blinked his eyes open, slowly processing your words. before he was fully awake, you had already dashed to the bathroom.
he would’ve just gone back to sleep if not for his son's fussy crying. with a heavy sigh, toji threw the blanket off of him and got up.
it took him a few seconds too long to get out of his warm bed, but he pushed himself off anyways, heading to the nursery.
with every step he took, his mind became clearer and his eyes less heavy. but there was still one thought in his mind.
get back in bed with wife.
so, with a newfound determination, toji threw open the nursery door, beelining towards his baby.
"let's get you ready for bed, brat," toji mumbled, picking up your habit of talking to the baby as if he could understand you. "y'r mom would beat my ass if i left you alone and made her fall back asleep. but we're sleeping in today, got it?"
megumi, confused but content with the attention, just cooed, putting his fist in his mouth.
toji pulled megumi's hand out, striding towards the changing table and laying him down on it. he quickly put megumi into new diapers, cleaning as he went, all while making small talk with the baby.
"you sleep ok?"
"da!"
"mm, me too. y'r hungry, right?"
"uwaa?"
"'course you are." a beat of silence. a sleepy sigh. "i miss your mama."
"mama!"
toji's lip quirked at his son's giggle as soon as he heard the word mama. that boy had him wrapped around his finger, as much as he hated to admit.
finally done, and also hearing you flush in another room, toji picked megumi up and laid him across his shoulder.
he left the nursery, walking back to your shared bathroom just as you were exiting.
"good morning," you cooed at megumi who immediately leaned towards you, wiggling in toji's arm. you dutifully took him into yours, cradling him how he liked being held.
"mama," megumi babbled, tugging at your shirt.
"aww, you're hungry?" you cooed again, automatic baby voice slipping past your throat.
"nurse him in bed," toji's hands grasped your shoulders, turning you back around towards your bedroom.
"why?" you didn't protest, letting your husband steer you back in bed.
"we're sleeping in," he announced, arranging a barrage of pillows at your side so you could sit and nurse comfortably. he helped you settle in, pulling up the blankets so you were warm and cozy.
"we're literally awake," you laugh under your breath, letting your husband do his thing as you started nursing megumi.
"not for long," toji said, slipping in beside you, scooting so he could throw his arm across your lap and burrow his face in the side of your hip.
even megumi's tiny eyes started fluttering close as he fed, fists balling on his chest as he began drifting away mid-meal.
you let out a yawn, finger gently rubbing your baby's small, cherubic face. toji squeezed your hip.
soon, megumi was fully asleep.
no longer able to fight the sleepy bug, you pulled your camisole back up, laying megumi down between you and toji.
toji scooted to accommodate the baby as you lowered yourself on the bed, pulling up the covers.
your husband, once again, threw his leg over your hip, pulling you closer.
megumi was almost smushed between you two, his back to his dad while he held onto your shirt in his sleep.
toji extended his arm and you adjusted your head on it.
at long last, the three of you enjoyed a cozy, warm and sleepy saturday morning, huddled close together.
signed up for a uni course and the class is from 7am every saturday 😊 if im posted up like a vengeful spirit roaming tumblr, you know why.
megumi's clingy phase | masterlist | megumi has a nightmare
self explanatory - dennis whitaker x f!reader (blurb)
summary: dennis thought robby knew he was married...guess not!
pairings: dennis whitaker x reader
cw/tags: fluff, robby is oblivious to the lives of everyone around him, i had to write this to make me feel better after tonight's episode lmao. implied but not explicit afab!reader, mom!reader, wife!reader. NO PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION OF READER or your daughters. implied shotgun wedding between you and dennis! au where whitaker has a wife who makes enough money to support him through med school so he's not drowning in student loans! also he is not helping out you know who at the farm in this, that plot line does not exist thanks :) not proofread!!!
word count: 340(ish)
!!!!!!!contains mild spoilers for season 2 episode 9 under the cut READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!
"Hey, you wanna' do me a favour?" Robby asks.
Dennis raises his eyebrows, sitting back. "Yeah?"
"You wanna' house-sit for me while I'm gone?"
Dennis scoffs a little, not sure if he's being serious.
"You'd actually be helping me out, and you could save some money on rent," Robby continues, missing the way Dennis glances down at his left hand.
"Are you being serious?" He questions.
"No smoking, no parties, no pets, no babies," Robby adds. "I was gonna' ask Abbot but he does nude yoga at sunrise, and I don't think some of my elderly neighbours would survive that."
Dennis laughs at that, now fully believing that Robby must be messing with him.
"Yeah, that's gonna' be a bit of a problem," He says. "I don't think my wife would be very happy if I was gone for three months, especially if I couldn't bring our daughter with me."
Robby freezes, blinks a few times, then leans closer to him across the table. Dennis watches him process that information, wondering if he should be offended that his boss never noticed his wedding ring.
"You're married?" He finally asks. "With a baby?"
"Uh, yeah," Dennis says, raising his hand up, showing the gold band. "Two kids, actually."
"Since when?"
He shrugs. "Since forever, really. Grew up together in a small farm town, you know, got married when we were eighteen."
"How old are you now?"
"...twenty-eight."
"You've been married for a decade," Robby repeats. "And you have two kids?"
"Yep," Dennis says.
"How old?"
"Our first just turned nine, the youngest is eight months," He answers, already reaching for his phone. "You wanna' see a picture?"
Robby nods, and Dennis flips the screen around, showing him his lock screen. It's you holding your younger daughter, while the older one beams at the two of you. Dennis says your names as he points to each of you, unable to stop himself from grinning as he does.
"Wow, beautiful family," Robby says. "You never told me you were married."
"Yeah, uh, figured the ring was self explanatory."
⤿ JASON TODD was immediately obsessed with you, the second you started talking his ear off on that first date. And now, your daughter is just as talkative, and he's not complaining.
!! fluff. wife!reader. talkative!reader. girl dad!jason todd. this was so fun. i have so much girl dad jason todd idk if its too much to upload it all today LMAO. pls dont comment on the baby dialoge bc it was important for that ONE moment. ENJOY.
The apartment was never quiet anymore.
Not in the hollow, echoing way it used to be when Jason lived alone and the only sound was the refrigerator humming at three in the morning. Now it breathed. It hummed. It existed in layers of noise that felt alive. Soft rattles of toys against hardwood. The gentle rustle of a baby monitor. And, most consistently, the steady, animated rhythm of your voice.
Jason had learned the different cadences of it.
There was your distracted voice, the one you used when you were half-reading something on your phone while stirring pasta. There was your annoyed voice, quick and sharp and muttering under your breath about people who didn’t use turn signals. There was your sleepy voice, soft and syrupy in the early hours.
And then there was your baby voice.
He heard it from the hallway before he even stepped into the living room.
It was bright and theatrical and impossibly expressive, rising and falling like you were performing on a stage for a sold-out crowd of one very small, very drooly audience member.
Jason leaned his shoulder against the wall for a moment before rounding the corner, letting himself watch.
You were on the floor again, sprawled on your stomach across the rug with your hair falling around your face. Your daughter sat propped up in front of you, surrounded by plush animals and soft blocks, her tiny socks already half-kicked off.
“And another thing,” you were saying, holding up a stuffed rabbit like it was making a legal statement, “if Mr. Bunny expects to live in this house, he needs to contribute to the emotional well-being of the family. We cannot have freeloaders.”
Your daughter stared at you with enormous eyes.
Jason bit back a smile.
You continued without taking a breath. “Because in this economy? Absolutely not. We are a one-income baby. You need to start pulling your weight. Do you hear me? Pull. Your. Weight.”
The rabbit flopped dramatically as you emphasized each word, causing your daughter to squeal.
You gasped, delighted. “Oh! Oh, so you agree? You think Mr. Bunny should get a job? That’s very progressive of you, peanut.”
Jason finally stepped fully into the room, boots heavy against the floor. You didn’t even glance up.
“And while we’re on the subject,” you kept going, rolling onto your side so you were face-to-face with her, “we need to talk about your sleep schedule, little miss. I was under the impression we had an agreement. A signed contract, very official.. it was notarized by the teddy bear.”
Your daughter let out a string of babbles, hands smacking together with ferocious enthusiasm.
You sat up straighter, nodding as if she’d made a compelling counterpoint. “I see. I see. So you’re saying the 3 a.m. wake-up was necessary for character development. That’s a god argument.”
Jason dragged a hand down his face, fighting laughter while you were still going.
“And then,” you gasped, picking up a block and waving it around like a visual aid, “you threw the pacifier! Which, frankly, felt personal. I offered it to you out of love, out of kindness. And what did you do? You launched it.”
Your daughter shrieked, thrilled by the intensity of your delivery. And you couldn't help the smile that came to your lips at the sight of her excitement.
Jason stepped closer, towering over both of you, and finally you glanced up when the light was suddenly blocked.
“Oh, hey Jay,” you said casually, as if you hadn’t just been giving a forty-five minute lecture to a six-month-old. “We’re in a big big business conference right now.”
“I can tell,” he muttered, his eyes filled with amusement while flicking between you and your daughter.
He crouched down beside you, one knee on the rug, arms resting loosely over it.. meanwhile, you barely slowed down.
“Babe, tell her,” you insisted, pointing at him. “Tell her we do not negotiate with pacifier-throwers.”
Jason looked at his daughter, who blinked up at him like she had no idea what you were talking about.. because she didn't.
“She’s innocent,” he shook his head and shrugged, a cheeky and boyish grin pressed into his cheeks wen his eyes landed on you.
Your jaw dropped. “You are enabling this behavior! Unbelievable!”
He reached out and scooped your daughter up in one smooth motion, settling her against his chest. She immediately grabbed onto the collar of his shirt and began enthusiastically babbling at his chin.
“Ba! Da! Mamamama!”
Jason stilled, his hands sturdy on her small, squishy body while his eyebrows shot up.
You gasped, hands flying to your mouth. “Oh my God. Did you hear that? That was clearly mama.”
“Sounded like ‘da’ to me,” he replied calmly, glancing at you sideways while biting back a smirk. He knew that would get on your nerves, so he couldn't help himself.
Your daughter let out another stream of nonsense syllables, louder now, as if mimicking the way she hears you talk.
And that was when it happened, you started talking again. Fast. Animated. Overlapping her sounds.
“Okay but listen, peanut, pronunciation matters, because if you’re going to credit someone for nine months of back pain and literally creating organs, I just think-...”
“Ba Bababa!”
“...-that we need to enunciate and be very very clear-..”
“DaDADA!”
Jason sat there in the middle of the living room, holding a giggling baby who was now yelling directly into his face, while you spoke in rapid-fire bursts beside him, words tumbling into each other without pause.
You were gesturing, the baby was flailing... both of you were making noise at the same time.
He looked from you to her, then you to her.
Two girls. Two constant, unstoppable sources of sound.
And somehow, instead of feeling overwhelmed, he felt… surrounded. In life, warmth, just something that was loud and real.
Your daughter smacked a hand against his jaw, babbling triumphantly.
You poked his arm. “You’re outnumbered, y'know.”
He huffed a laugh. “Yeah. I noticed.”
You leaned your head briefly against his shoulder, still talking, still narrating your daughter’s imaginary defense strategy while she contributed her own very passionate, very incomprehensible argument.
Jason just sat there and let it wash over him. The noise. Your voice. Her voice... it filled every quiet space he used to carry inside him.
While he absolutely loved coming home from a rough day to be with you both.. and listen to you both.. truthfully, mornings were his favorite.
Not the early ones when he slipped out of bed before sunrise, waking you and having to leave after kissing you once, twice, and a third time before whispering a promise that he'd be back.
He loved the slow and lazy ones. The ones where the light crept through the blinds in thin golden lines and no one had anywhere urgent to be.
He was half-asleep when you stirred beside him, sheets rustling softly.
“You awake?” you whispered.
“Mm,” he grunted, not opening his eyes.
“That’s not a real answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re gettin’.”
You laughed quietly, pressed a kiss to his shoulder, his jaw, then his lips.. and while he followed the feeling of your kiss, you pulled back and slipped out of bed.
He heard the soft shuffle of your steps down the hall, the faint creak of the nursery door, and then the gentle murmur of your voice.
“Oh good morning, my favorite human. Yes, oh, I know, I missed you too. It’s been at least seven hours, which is basically a lifetime.”
A small, sleepy babble responded causing Jason to crack one eye open. His one arm slung over his forehead, his shirt discarded off by his nightstand and the sun warming his bare arm.
You reappeared a moment later with your daughter tucked against your chest, her hair sticking up in dark, soft tufts from sleep.
You climbed back into bed carefully and set her between you both. Immediately, you settled on your side, facing her and your husband, watching the both of them in a sleepy lovey-dovey way.
All the while, your daughter blinked at the ceiling fan like it was the most fascinating invention in the world.
“Family meeting,” you announced softly, settling against the pillows with a lazy laugh.
Jason rolled onto his side, propping himself up on one elbow. Your daughter turned her head toward him slowly, recognition dawning, and then she smiled. It was wide, gummy, and radiating love.
Jason felt his chest tighten, as his worn hands came up to gently brush against her cheek, as if ensuring she was still there.
“Well,” you said, already starting, “today’s agenda includes breakfast negotiations, potential park attendance, and a discussion about why socks are apparently optional in this household.”
Your daughter kicked her bare feet in response.
“See?” you continued immediately. “This is what I’m talking about. There’s no consistency.”
“Baby doesn’t care about socks,” Jason murmured.
“Hmmm... you know, once she doesn't have these cute little feet, she better. .”
Your daughter let out a delighted babble and smacked her hand against your cheek.
You gasped dramatically. “Assault at a board meeting.”
Jason laughed, low and warm, reaching out to gently grab her tiny hand before she could do it again. "Be nice to your ma."
And then you started really talking.
About the dream you had. About the grocery list. About how you thought maybe you should try that new coffee place down the street because the reviews were suspiciously enthusiastic. About how your daughter’s hair was starting to curl at the ends and how that was unfair because you had spent years trying to get your own to cooperate.
You didn’t pause. You talked to the baby. You talked to him. You talked to both of them at once.
“And then,” you continued, brushing a finger over your daughter’s round cheek, “when you’re older, we’re going to tell you how your dad pretended he didn’t want pink onesies but then he folded them like they were sacred.”
“I did not-..”
“You did. It was cute.” You smiled and winked, your hand coming around from your daughter's back to poke his chest
Your daughter began babbling again, long strings of syllables that rose and fell like she was telling her own story.
You immediately turned to her, nodding seriously. “You’re right. He did cry at the first ultrasound.”
Jason froze. “You promised you wouldn’t tell people that.”
“She’s not people yet,” you teased gently, "And, to be honest, that was the hottest thing I had ever seen. I like when you're emotional."
“BA BA DA!”
You gasped softly. “Oh my goodness, she’s backing me up.”
Jason dropped back onto the pillow with a groan, staring at the ceiling as both of you continued.
You talking, her babbling. The words blending together in a warm, chaotic melody.
He turned his head to look at you.
Your hair was messy, your eyes were bright. You were smiling down at your daughter like she’d just solved world hunger with that string of nonsense syllables.
And he felt it again.
That overwhelming, steady sense of being exactly where he was meant to be.
Your daughter rolled onto her side, pressing her tiny body against his chest while still making soft, insistent sounds.
You leaned across her to kiss his cheek.
“Good morning, handsome,” you murmured in a playful tone.
He wrapped one arm around both of you, pulling you closer, letting the noise continue without trying to quiet it.
Two talkative girls.
One very large, very soft man in the middle of it.
Jason closed his eyes, listening to you both.
And for the first time in his life, the sound of constant noise felt like peace.
author's note: This has been in my drafts for one and a half years man. Never say never 💀 And thank you so much for 10k, lovelies! 🤍 xx
The ad is three lines long.
You agonise over it for a week—drafting and redrafting on the back of a grocery receipt at the kitchen table while your husband is on deployment, crossing out words and rewriting them until the paper is soft and furred at the edges from erasing.
Three lines. That's all the local paper allows for the personals section, which is a relic from another era that you didn't even know still existed until you were flipping through the classifieds looking for a vintage bookshelf and your eyes snagged on the column header.
SEEKING CONNECTION
You'd laughed at first. Then you'd read a few. Then you'd read them all, sitting cross-legged on the sofa with your tea going cold in your hands, and something small and sharp turning over in your chest.
The ad you eventually submit reads:
Married woman, mid 30s, seeks interesting conversation and perhaps more with a like-minded gentleman. Discretion essential. If you enjoy good food, dry wit, and don't mind a woman who can out-drink you — I'd love to hear from you. Reply to Box 64.
You pay for four weeks in advance and feel sick the entire drive home.
Because here's the thing about being married to Captain John Price.
You love him desperately and completely, in a way that has settled into your bones over the better part of a decade and become indistinguishable from the architecture of who you are.
Adore the way he smells—stale cigar smoke and sandalwood and old gun oil, a combination that should be repulsive and instead makes you want to bury your face in his neck and stay there. Love his hands, broad and scarred and capable of violence you'll never fully understand, and how gentle they are when they cup your jaw or fix the clasp of your necklace.
And you melt for the rumble of his voice on the phone at two in the morning when he calls from whatever godforsaken corner of the world he's operating in, tired and tight-lipped but always, always asking about you first.
You love him, and he loves you, and it hasn't been enough for a long time.
Not because the love ran out, because he did.
John Price gives everything to his work. Every deployment bleeds into the next. The gaps between homecomings stretch longer—three weeks become five, five become eight, eight becomes ‘I don't know yet, love, I'll let you know when I know’.
And when he does come home, he's there but not there; hollow-eyed and distracted, reaching for his phone at dinner, falling asleep on the sofa before nine, making love to you the first night with a desperate urgency that fades by the third morning into perfunctory kisses on the forehead and an apologetic mumble about an early briefing.
Someday, you stopped asking when he'd be home six months ago; stopped leaving the porch light on four months ago, and you stopped wearing the nice knickers three months ago because what was the point again.
Two months ago, you realised you'd gone an entire week without hearing his voice and hadn't noticed until Thursday.
That's when the panic set in. Not the sharp, clean kind, but the slow, creeping kind. The one that makes you lie awake at three a.m. staring at the ceiling and wondering if this is it, if this is what the rest of your life looks like. A nice house in Hereford with a well-maintained garden and a husband who exists primarily as a name on a bank account and a voice on the other end of an increasingly rare phone call.
You don't want to leave him. The thought alone makes you nauseous.
You just want someone to see you again.
John finds the newspaper three days after he gets home from a six-week deployment in eastern Syria.
He's not snooping; he's looking for the TV remote, which has migrated into the crack between the sofa cushions again, and his hand closes around the folded section of newsprint wedged beside it. He pulls it out, intending to toss it on the coffee table, and his eyes catch the circle of biro ink around one of the small ads in the personals column.
John reads it, and then again.
Then he sits down very slowly, the remote forgotten, and stares at the far wall for a long time, connecting puzzle pieces like his life depends on it, which it very well does apparently.
Married woman, mid 30s. His wife is in her thirties.
Dry wit. His wife is the driest, sharpest-tongued woman he's ever met. It's one of the first things he fell in love with—the way she could dismantle a man's ego with a single raised eyebrow and a well-timed "Bless your heart, love".
Can out-drink you. He's watched his wife put away Whisky Sours at the SAS Christmas do with a composure that made seasoned operators look like lightweights.
Discretion essential.
John sets the newspaper down on his knee. His jaw works and his eyes don't leave the wall.
And he doesn't confront you.
Not over dinner nor in bed that night when you roll towards him and press a kiss to his shoulder—a habit you've kept even through the worst of the distance, even when you're angry with him, even when he doesn't deserve it.
Instead, he waits, and he replies to Box 64.
The letter that arrives for you a week later is postmarked locally. Plain envelope, no return address. Inside, a single sheet of paper, handwritten in a bold, slanted script you don't recognise.
I enjoy good food, better whisky, and I've never met a woman who can out-drink me, but I'd enjoy watching you try. Friday, 8pm, O’Malley’s on St. George's Lane. I'll be the one who looks like he doesn't belong in a place that posh. — J
Your hands are shaking when you finish reading it, and you have to sit down at the kitchen table and press your palms flat against the wood to steady yourself.
You could throw it away. No. You should throw it away. This was a mistake—a stupid, reckless, selfish mistake born out of loneliness and too much wine and that ugly, gnawing ache in your chest that flares up every time John leaves.
But John has left again. Three days at home, then a call from Kate Laswell, then a bag packed and a kiss on your forehead and a quick ‘Be back soon, love’ and the sound of the front door closing and the silence that rushes in to fill the space he used to occupy.
You read the letter once more.
I'll be the one who looks like he doesn't belong in a place that posh.
Something warm and reckless curls in your stomach, and you hate yourself for it, and you fold the letter into the pocket of your cardigan and carry it around for three days before you decide you’re going.
Friday night. O’Malley’s.
You arrive twenty minutes early because you're a control freak in crisis, and you take the farthest booth in the corner because your back needs to be against a wall and your eyes need to be on the door—a habit you picked up from your husband without realising it.
You order a gin and tonic to give your hands something to do, and you check your reflection in the blank screen of your phone for the third time. You look good, like you tried again—not the kind of effort you make for John when he comes home, all desperate and over-polished, but a quieter kind; wearing your favourite dress with subtle makeup and your hair done the way you like it, not the way you think someone else wants to see it.
You look like your old self, and that's terrifying, because the whole point of tonight was supposed to be about being someone else.
When your wedding ring catches the light as you reach for your drink, and you stare at it for a long moment, the slim gold band John slid onto your finger nine years ago with steady hands and unsteady eyes, and you don't take it off.
You should, but you can’t, and you did say you’re married.
Eight o'clock comes and goes. Five past, then ten. You're about to convince yourself you've been stood up, which would be both a relief and a humiliation, when the pub door opens and a man walks in, and every nerve ending in your body fires at once.
Because the man standing in the doorway, scanning the room with those sharp, assessing eyes, is your husband.
John is wearing civvies. Dark jeans, a black henley pushed up to his elbows, boots that have seen better days.
He looks like he came straight from the base, which he probably did. His hair is freshly cut but his beard is full, and there is a tiredness around his eyes that you can read from across the room, the same bone-deep fatigue he carries home from every deployment and tries to hide and fails.
He spots you and your stomach plummets.
Meanwhile, his expression doesn't change; not a flicker. He holds your gaze across the crowded pub, and then he walks towards you with the kind of unhurried, deliberate stride that you've seen him use in exactly two contexts.
When he's approaching a superior officer, and when he's about to do something that no one in the room is going to enjoy.
Your heart is hammering so hard you can feel it in your teeth. Your hand tightens around your glass until your knuckles ache, and every instinct in your body is screaming at you to run to the bathroom, to the car park, to another country, but your legs won't cooperate, because Captain John Price is walking towards you and you have never in your life been able to move when he's looking at you like that.
He reaches the booth, stops, and looks down at you. And a beat of terrible, electric silence follows.
Then he smiles, though not the tight, exhausted smile he gives you at the front door when he's been gone for weeks, but something warmer, something almost boyish, and then he slides into the seat across from you, settling in with an ease that makes your blood run cold.
"You must be Box 64," he says casually, calm, like he's meeting a stranger for the first time, which is insane, because he is your husband and he is sitting across from you at a pub where you came to meet another man and he knows. He fucking knows.
"John—"
"John," he repeats, tasting the name like he's hearing it for the first time. Then he extends his hand across the table. "That's right. Pleasure to meet you."
You stare at his outstretched hand, then at his face, and back at his hand.
"John, I can explain—"
"Nothing to explain." He keeps his hand where it is, steady and patient. His eyes don't leave yours. "I'm J. You're Box 64. We're here to have a drink and see if we get on. That was the arrangement, wasn't it? What your ad said?"
Your mouth opens and something inside you dies a little, along with the words in your throat; anything but one.
"John."
"You gonna leave me hanging, love? Already?" He nods at his hand, one eyebrow raised, and there is something in his expression—beneath the calm and the performance—that you can't quite read.
It's not anger, not even hurt. Something closer to resolve, like he's made a decision about tonight and he intends to see it through, and nothing you say is going to alter the trajectory.
You take his hand, shake it weakly.
His fingers close around yours, warm and rough, and he gives one firm shake before releasing you. Then he flags down the barmaid, orders a whisky neat, and turns back to you with that same easy, unreadable smile.
"So. Tell me about yourself."
You stare at him owlishly.
"I—I don't—" You can feel heat crawling up your neck, your throat tightening with the precursor to tears. "John, please, can we just—"
"Tell me," he says again, and his voice is gentle, but his eyes are steel. "What do you do? Where are you from? What made you put that ad in the paper?"
The last question lands like another slap, even though his tone doesn't change. You swallow hard, your fingers wrap around your glass for something to anchor to.
He waits for you to answer; patient as a sniper in a ghillie suit.
"I'm—" You exhale shakily. "I'm from here. I live in Hereford. I'm—" Your voice threatens to crack, and you bite the inside of your cheek until it steadies. "I'm a teacher."
"A teacher." John nods, like this is new information and not something he's known for the better part of a decade. "What age?"
"Year four."
"Year four. That's—what, eight? Nine?" He takes a sip of his whisky. The barmaid left it quietly and shot you a look like she sensed the tension. "Brave woman. I've faced insurgents with less fight in them than a nine-year-old with a grudge."
The laugh that escapes you is wet and startled and completely involuntary, and John's eyes soften for a fraction of a second before the mask slides back into place.
"What about you?" you ask carefully, because two can play this game, and if he's going to make you sit through this surreal performance, you might as well commit. Your voice is still unsteady, but there's a spark of something underneath the fear—defiance, maybe, or the stubbornness that made you put the ad in the paper in the first place. "What do you do?"
"Military," he answers briskly, which is what he always says at parties and barbecues when civilians ask, offering nothing further.
"What branch?"
"The kind that doesn't let me talk about it." He leans back in his seat, one arm resting along the back of the booth leisurely and looks at you with an expression that's half amusement, half something hungrier. "I travel a lot. Gone more than I'm home unfortunately."
"That must be hard," you reply, and you mean it in a raw way that has nothing to do with the roleplay and everything to do with the long years of lonely nights and unanswered phone calls sitting between you.
John hears it and you watch it land. A brief tightening around his eyes, a muscle jumping in his jaw before he takes another slow drink.
"It is," he says quietly. "Harder on the people who wait, I'd imagine."
Your breath catches. You look down at the table, at your ring, at the condensation pooling around the base of your glass.
"Yeah," you whisper. "It is."
The silence that follows is different from the others. Not tense or loaded. Just heavy, in the way that true things are heavy, settling between you like something solid.
Then John clears his throat. "Another round?"
You nod, not trusting your voice, and he waves the barmaid over again.
The second drink loosens something.
Maybe it's the gin, perhaps the sheer absurdity of the situation, but somewhere between your second and third drink, the fear recedes enough for you to actually talk.
And John—your husband, who has spent the better part of a year giving you monosyllabic answers over dinner and falling asleep during films—is talking back.
He's always been charming. It's how he got you in the first place, at a mate's wedding eleven years ago, when he cornered you at the bar and spent forty-five minutes making you laugh so hard you snorted champagne up your nose. Though you'd forgotten what it looks like when he aims it at you with intent.
John asks about your students and listens to the answers. He asks about the book you're currently reading and offers an opinion on it that tells you he's been paying more attention to your nightstand than you thought. He tells you stories from deployment that are carefully scrubbed of classified details but still make you laugh; the kind of stories he used to tell you when you were dating. Absurd, self-deprecating, designed to make you think he's funnier than he is.
He is funny. You'd forgotten that, too.
"You've got a nice laugh," he says at one point, swirling his whisky, and the way he says it, like an observation, like he's hearing it for the first time, makes your stomach flip.
"Don't flatter me, J." The letter feels strange in your mouth, this thin fiction stretched over the truth of him. "I'll think you're after something."
"Maybe I am." He holds your gaze and doesn't smile. "That a problem, love?"
Your mouth goes dry.
Three drinks in, you're leaning across the table towards each other, and his hand is resting on the tabletop close enough to yours that your little fingers are almost touching, and you're telling him about the time one of your Year Fours brought a live frog to class in his lunchbox and it escaped during maths, and John is laughing—really laughing, with his head tipped back and his eyes creased—and for a vertiginous moment, you manage to forget.
You forget that this is a performance; that your husband is sitting across from you pretending to be a stranger because you put an ad in the newspaper looking for someone else. Everything except the sound of his laugh and the warmth in his eyes and the way he's looking at you like you're the most interesting person in the room, which is how he used to look at you all the time, before the deployments ate him alive and left you with the husk.
Then his eyes drop to your left hand, and the warmth doesn't leave his expression, but something sharper slides in alongside it, like the glint of a blade edge, and then he reaches across the table and takes your hand, turning it over in his.
His thumb presses against the band of your wedding ring, holding it there.
"You know," he says, and his voice is still easy, still conversational, but there's a new undercurrent to it that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up, "if you were really going to go through with this little adventure of yours—"
He taps the ring once with his thumb, clicks his tongue.
"—you probably should've taken this off first."
The blood drains from your face. The pleasant haze of gin and good conversation evaporates in an instant, replaced by a cold, lurching clarity.
"John—"
"Bit of a deterrent, love. Even when you mentioned it in the ad." He's still holding your hand, still running his thumb over the ring, and his expression is unreadable—not angry, not hurt, just steady, the way he looks when he's holding a position and waiting for something to break. "Any bloke worth his salt would've clocked that you're not really in it five minutes in."
Your eyes are stinging. "I wasn't going to—I would never have—"
"I know." He replies simply and releases your hand. "I know you wouldn't."
The lump in your throat is enormous and razor-edged, and you have to look away at anything that isn't his face, because if you keep looking at him, you're going to cry in the middle of this pub and he will never, ever let you live it down.
"I'm sorry," you manage, barely a whisper. "John, I'm so sorry, I didn't—I was just—"
"Don't."
You look back at him. He's leaning forward now, strong forearms on the table, and the mask is gone. All of it, the J performance, the first-date charm, the controlled amusement. And underneath is just your husband. Looking at you with an expression that is not anger, that has never been anger, that is something far worse.
Guilt.
"I should've been home more," he murmurs; too honest for a pub on a Friday night. "I should've—" He stops, his jaw clenches before he tries again. "I should've given you a proper life. A family. A husband who's actually fucking present. And I didn't, and you—"
He gestures vaguely at the booth, the pub, the entire premise of the evening.
"—you shouldn't have had to do this to get my attention."
The first tear slips down your face before you can catch it. You swipe at it furiously with the back of your hand before the barmaid, who has become somewhat intrigued by whatever is happening at your table, can clock it.
"I wasn't trying to get your attention," you lie, and you both know it's a lie, and his mouth twitches; not quite a smile, something more tender and much more broken.
"Yeah, you were." He reaches across the table again and takes your hand, properly this time, threading his fingers through yours and squeezing. "And it worked."
You let out a breath that's half laugh, half sob, and squeeze back.
For a long moment, neither of you speaks. The pub buzzes around you. Glasses clinking, conversations flowing, some '80s song you can't name playing from the speakers. And you sit in the middle of it, holding hands across a sticky table, and the nine years of silence and distance and loving each other badly feel, for the first time, like something that could be survived.
"I need the loo," you announce eventually, because your mascara is probably wrecked and you need thirty seconds of privacy to pull yourself together before you dissolve entirely.
John releases your hand with a nod. "Take your time, love."
You slide out of the booth on legs that feel slightly unsteady with gin and adrenaline, and make your way to the back of the pub, past the bar and down the short corridor to the ladies'.
It's a single-stall bathroom. Small, clean enough, a lock on the door that you click shut behind you before bracing your hands on the edge of the sink and staring at your reflection in the mirror above it.
Your eyes are bright and glassy. Your mascara is, as predicted, smudged. You look wrecked and flushed and alive in a way you haven't in months, and you hate that it took this—a dating ad and a Friday night charade—to put that look on your face.
You run the tap and press your cool, damp fingers against your closed eyelids. Breathe. You can do this. You can go back out there, finish your drinks, go home with your husband, and figure out the rest in the morning like adults who have been married for nearly a decade and know how to have a difficult conversation.
You're drying your hands when the lock clicks.
You freeze. Your eyes snap to the door in the mirror's reflection as it opens, and John slips inside and closes it behind him with a soft, definitive click of the lock.
The bathroom shrinks to nothing.
He fills the space. Not just physically, though he does that too, broad shoulders and solid frame taking up far too much of the small room, but atmospherically. The air changes when he's this close, gets heavier and becomes charged, like the pressure drop before a storm front.
"John, what are you—"
He moves. One step, then two, and then his big hand is flat against your lower back and he's pressing you forward, gently but firmly, until your hips meet the edge of the sink and your palms catch the porcelain on either side.
His body moulds against your back. Chest to spine, hips to arse. One hand sliding from your lower back to your waist, gripping and anchoring, while his other forearm braces against the wall beside the mirror.
You can see him in the reflection; towering behind you, head dipped, mouth hovering at the shell of your ear, and your breath stutters at the look on his face.
"Gonna make you remember why you married me, darling," he mutters into your ear, and his breath is hot and damp on the side of your neck, sending a shiver cascading down your spine. His hand tightens on your waist, pulling your arse back against the hard line of his cock already straining behind his zipper.
"John—"
"Shh." His lips graze the spot beneath your ear. No kiss but a warning. "You wanted to be seen, love. I see you."
His hand slides from your waist to the hem of your dress and drags it up slowly, bunching the fabric around your hips until you're exposed from the waist down. The cool air of the bathroom hits your bare thighs and makes you gasp.
"John, we can't—We're in a pub—!"
"Should've thought about that before you went looking for a date, shouldn't you?" His voice is rough and threaded with something dark and tender at the same time, and his fingers hook into the waistband of your knickers, tugging them down your thighs in one smooth motion. They pool around your ankles, and he doesn't bother removing them fully—just leaves them there, tangled between your heels.
"Anyone could—"
"Door's locked." His hand trails up the inside of your thigh, calloused fingers dragging against the soft skin, and you bite your lip to keep the sound that wants to escape inside. "And you're going to be quiet for me, aren't you, hm?"
You hear his belt buckle. The clink of metal, the drag of leather through belt loops, then the rasp of his zip, and your hands grip the sink so hard your arms tremble, because the sound alone is enough to make your pussy clench around nothing in anticipation.
"Nearly a decade of marriage," he murmurs against the back of your neck, and his free hand slides between your thighs from behind, two thick fingers dragging through your supple folds, finding you already embarrassingly wet. He lets out a low, dark sound of approval that vibrates against your skin. "And I let you forget."
His fingers circle your clit once and your hips buck back against him involuntarily.
"That's on me," he continues, his voice dropping to that gravelly register that makes your toes curl in your pumps. "My fault. My fucking failure. Not yours."
He presses one thick finger inside you, then two, stretching you open with a slow, curling thrust that makes your breath hitch and your walls clench around him. He groans quietly and his forehead drops against the back of your head.
"'M finally gonna put our baby in you," he declares, and the words are rough and raw and utterly certain, a promise sealed against your skin. "Should've done it years ago. Should've given you that. Should've given you everything."
He withdraws his fingers and you whimper at the loss with a needy, desperate sound that you'd be mortified by in any other context, and then you feel the blunt, plump head of his cock pressing against your entrance and every other thought in your head goes static.
"John—" you mewl. John pushes in slowly.
He stretches you open around him with a fullness that borders on too much, and the sound that tears from your throat is muffled only because you clamp your hand over your own mouth.
More than a decade and his fat cock is still enough to make you go stupid.
"Fuck," John breathes, his hips flush against your arse, buried to the root, and his grip on your waist is bruising. He doesn't move yet just holds there, letting you feel every inch of him, letting your body adjust around the thick, throbbing weight of his cock.
Then he starts to move, and it's not the perfunctory, tired sex you've been having for the past year. The kind where he finishes quickly and rolls over and you stare at the ceiling and pretend you came.
This is John Price. The real one, the one you fell in love with. The one who backed you against the wall of your old flat on your third date and made you see God by eating you out through your knickers before he'd even taken anything else off.
He fucks you deep and deliberate, one hand gripping your hip while the other wraps around the front of your throat lightly; his fingers curled against your pulse point, feeling the frantic beat of your heart against his palm.
"Look at yourself," he orders, and your eyes—which had screwed shut at some point—fly open to meet his in the mirror. Pupils blown.
The sight of it is obscene. Your dress bunched around your waist, his thick forearm braced beside the mirror, tendons flexing, his body curved over yours, and the slow, powerful roll of his hips driving into you from behind with a rhythm that's making the mirror rattle against the wall.
"That's my wife," he grunts, and his reflection's eyes are fierce and fixed on yours. "Mine. Not some fucking stranger's from a newspaper ad."
You can't speak, only feel his cock dragging against your walls, his hand on your throat, his chest solid and warm and present against your back for the first time in what feels like forever.
He picks up the pace; harder and deeper thrusts, the wet slap of skin on skin echoing in the small bathroom while his ragged breath puffs against your ear. And then his rough hand leaves your throat to reach between your legs, flicking your clit and rubbing tight, fast circles that make you bite down on your own fist to keep from screaming.
"Quiet," he reminds you, and the bastard sounds smug. "You want the whole pub to know what I'm doing to you in here? Huh? Want them to know ‘m fucking my wife?"
You shake your head frantically; cunt fluttering and squeezing his shaft, because dirty talk from John Price is its own kind of sweet torture.
"Then cum for me quietly, love. Right now."
A few more hard, precise thrusts with his cock dragging inside your quivering cunt, massaging that spot that keeps swelling inside you, and you shatter.
The orgasm rips through you so violently that your knees give out, and the only things keeping you upright are the sink under your hands and John's arm locked around your waist. You clamp your teeth into the heel of your palm and muffle the cry that wants to tear out of you, your walls clenching and fluttering around his cock in rhythmic, milking pulses.
"Christ—fuck—" John's hips stutter, his rhythm breaks, and he buries himself deep—so deep—and holds, his cock kicking and pulsing inside you as he cums with a low, guttural groan pressed into the curve of your neck.
He spills himself empty inside you, balls throbbing with each little jerk of his hips. Hot and thick, deliberate this time. No condom, no pulling out this time, and the significance of that isn't lost on either of you. His hips roll lazily through the aftershocks, working every precious drop into your messy cunt, and his hand slides from your waist to your lower belly, pressing flat.
"There," he murmurs, and his voice is wrecked and satisfied, unbearably tender. "That's where it belongs."
You're shaking. Your entire body is trembling, your legs are useless, and there are tears streaming silently down your face that have nothing to do with pain.
He stays inside you for a long moment; breathing, his lips pressed against the nape of your neck, beard scraping your skin, his hand warm on your lower stomach. Then he pulls out slowly, carefully, and you feel his cum start to leak from you immediately, warm and slick against your inner thighs.
He reaches down, picks your knickers up from around your ankles, and slides them back up your legs with an almost clinical efficiency. When they're settled back into place, he pats your arse once, light and proprietary, and tugs your dress back down.
"There we go," he says, like he's just helped you with your coat. "Good as new."
You let out a sound that's somewhere between a laugh and a sob, your forehead dropping against the mirror.
"How about a 'thank you,' love," he adds while he tugs his softening cock back into his jeans, and when you lift your head and catch his eyes in the reflection, the smug satisfaction on his face is so thoroughly, infuriatingly Price that you want to slap him and kiss him simultaneously, "for stuffing your pretty cunt full of my cum, hm?"
"John."
"Mm." He presses a kiss to your temple, achingly gentle after everything he just did to you, and reaches past you to turn on the tap. He wets his hand and wipes beneath your eyes with his thumb, cleaning up the mascara.
"Ready to leave, love?" he asks, straightening up and buckling his belt with the same unhurried ease he does everything. "Or would you like another drink before your husband takes you home?"
Your legs are still shaking, his cum is slowly but surely soaking into your knickers, and your heart is so full it might crack your ribs.
"N-No," you manage, small and hoarse. "I'd like to go home now, John."
He looks at you, really looks. And there is nothing left of the J performance, not the Captain Price mask, just John, your husband. The man who drove to a pub on a Friday night not to punish you but to remind you both of what you'd almost let slip away.
"That's my girl," he replies softly.
He unlocks the bathroom door, checks the corridor, and guides you out with his hand on the small of your back. You walk through the pub on shaking legs, past the booth where your half-finished drinks are still sitting, past the barmaid who gives you both a knowing look that you pretend not to see.
The night air hits you like cold water when you step outside, and you suck in a breath that fills your lungs properly for the first time in hours.
John pulls his car keys from his pocket, presses the fob, and opens the passenger door for you without a word. You climb in. He closes the door, rounds the bonnet, and slides into the driver's seat.
Neither of you speaks on the drive home. His hand rests on your thigh, squeezing gently every other minute, and your hand rests on top of his, your fingers tracing the ridges of his calloused knuckles and the band of his own wedding ring, which he has never, not once in nine years, taken off.
When he pulls into the driveway, the porch light is off. You haven't left it on in months.
John kills the engine. Sits for a moment, looking at the dark house.
Then he turns to you, and his voice is quieter now, stripped of the previous smugness, the heat, the performance. Just the raw thing underneath.
"I will do better."
No grand speech or a promise wrapped in flowers and apologies and all the things you've heard before and stopped believing. It's four words, plain and blunt and offered without decoration, and they land heavier than anything else he's said tonight.
You reach across the centre console and take his face in both hands, and you kiss him slowly, like you have time, because you're going to make time.
"I know," you whisper against his mouth.
And when you get inside, John turns the porch light on.
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you know how women's libido gets higher as they age? yeah- that.
Bruce knew he was getting old. He was slowly taking less patrols, letting the kids carry the heavy load. Understanding that he needed more time to recover from injuries. But nothing could have prepared him for this. For needing extra help in the bedroom.
He knew that women's libido became higher with age and he'd always been able to match your needs if not go above and beyond for them. But lately, he'd been having a hard time getting it up. Which didn't make sense because he loved you, he loved your body, he loved everything about you.
Sure, you were getting older too but your body was a map of everything it had seen and endured and he found it fucking sexy.
So it took him a while to accept that it may not be you or him. It was just... age.
However, he was determined to keep it from you. So you wouldn't see him in a lesser light. But the spontaneity of the relationship started fading quickly when he no longer wanted to be pulled into broom closets during parties or copier rooms whenever you visited the office. And all that started to make you feel insecure. That maybe Bruce just wasn't interested in you like that.
And the moment Bruce realized what was happening, he came clean immediately.
"It's not you, sweetheart." He sighed, thumbs rubbing circles at your thighs. "It's me."
You rolled your eyes and pulled back from his touch, not believing him.
"I-" He swallowed. "I've been having difficulty getting hard."
You frowned. "I can change how I dress maybe? Or I could-"
Bruce laughed and shook his head. "Not like that. You're beautiful. I love you." He paused, smile fading. "It's just age and biology. I started taking Viagra but it takes half an hour to work. More if I've just eaten." He explained. "That's why I need to... schedule our moments more."
"Oh..." You nodded. "Why didn't you tell me?"
He let out a harsh laugh. "Darling. We've been married for quite a while now. I think you know I'm not good with communication."
You rolled your eyes but hummed in acknowledgement. You looked at him carefully then asked. "So ... How long have you been taking it?"
"Since August." He avoided your gaze.
"August?!" You gasped. "That's why you didn't want a quickie at the gala in-" He sighed and nodded. "So... uh.. when do you usually take it?" Bruce shrugged, trying to come off as nonchalant. It didn't work. "Honey..."
"Depends. I usually try to anticipate when you'd like to have sex. Or I take one before coming to bed." He explained. You stared at him for a bit and he looked down, ashamed. "I didn't want to disappoint you."
"You... Tell me you didn't think that I'd get upset or leave for this, would you?" You blinked in shock.
He shrugged and didn't look up. "I'm not unaware of what years of being Batman has done to my body."
"Bruce..." You touched his cheek and made him look at you.
"Darling-" He held your wrist but didn't push you away. "You're beautiful and vibrant and I know what the years have done to me-" His voice lowered. "You're everything and I- I need a pill and a 30-minute head start."
You smiled and climbed into his lap. Instinctively, his hands settled on your hips. "Isn't preplanning your whole thing?" He rolled his eyes but smirked. "Besides, who says that I will always need your dick for fun? Hm? We can do plenty of other things while the pills work their magic, you know."
"Oh, really? Like what?" He felt lighter now.
"You could eat me out- Finger me- We could make out like teenagers until our underwears are a wet mess." You giggled and counted.
"So... If I took a pill right now-" He hummed, pulling your closer until your tits were pressed against his hard chest.
"Then I would let you tongue-fuck me, pull as many orgasms as you can from me before you fuck me properly." You cooed at him. "Sound good?"
Hi, could I please make a request with baran X wife!reader, where r comes in as a trauma (maybe like a pretty bad car accident or something like that) and baran is really worried and protective while everyone is treating r? Thank you !!
first, do no harm (baran al-hashimi x wife!reader) .ೃ࿔*everyone at PTMC knows chief emergency attending baran al-hashimi does not play about strict adherence to medical procedure. but when her wife is injured in a car accident, she has to decide whether she's willing to compromise on the rules.
tags: hurt/comfort, established relationship, married, canon-compliant setting, medical inaccuracies, irl baran would be on a power trip if she did this but we ignore that for the sake of the hurt/comfort, you are totally high
Baran’s hip hurts. She’s standing against the nurse’s station with all of her weight shifted to the other side, and it still won’t stop throbbing. She’s supposed to go out to dinner with you tonight, but she thinks if she has to take more than 20 steps between now and the time she goes to bed her body might just give out. Maybe she’ll suggest making stir fry instead.
In a few minutes, she’ll join Abbot for her final rounds of the night, which won’t be hard, just names and presentation. Then she’s off. She is thinking, with a small and guilty pleasure, about the leftover rice she knows is in the refrigerator at home. By extension of that, she is thinking about you.
Baran’s personal phone has been sitting in her locker in the staff room for the better part of two hours, the dark screen facing the metal locker’s door, receiving nothing, buzzing for no one. She'd meant to take it out at seven-thirty when her shift was supposed to end, but she'd gotten pulled into the consult that ran long, and in a few minutes she’d have to lead the shift-change. Besides, Baran was hardly a phone-addicted woman; she felt no pull toward it, no itching craze to check it. It wasn’t on her mind at all.
She only thinks of this because Dana is across from her, pressing the clunky red phone to her ear that was ringing incessantly up until a few moments ago. Baran hates that fucking phone. It was helpful exactly one time, during the blackout, but now just serves as a medium through which they can get forty spam calls again, and the sound of it ringing is shrill and piercing and makes her ears ring. She would chuck that phone from the rooftop if given the chance.
Ten seconds pass. Then twenty. Baran quirks an eyebrow at Dana and all her shoulders-back brows-furrowed gruffness, something about the call very clearly not going right. Dana doesn't have a good poker face, and Baran immediately wants to know why. She may pride herself on her composure, but she’d never claim she isn’t nosy.
"What?” Baran mouths with a quirk of her lip, which quickly morphs into a frown as Dana holds up a single finger, silently commanding her to wait.
Dana’s voice drops low, gruff with an edge Baran rarely hears from her. “And how soon will you be here? Okay. Yes. Okay. Thank you.”
Dana exhales through her nose sharply before covering the receiver. Baran waits for Dana to scan the bay, look for a resident or a charge nurse or to assist with what Baran assumes is an incoming trauma. But Dana looks at Baran specifically, her eyes don’t drift. Baran lifts her chin, trying to wrest away the nausea that just swept over her.
“What is it?”
Dana crosses the desk, grabbing Baran’s arm and trying to lead her away. "Can I pull you aside for a moment?”
Baran plants her feet. "Tell me here. What’s wrong?”
Dana purses her lips. “Dr. Al-Hashimi, please, follow me.”
“No,” Baran snaps, and a few heads turn their way. “Tell me, Dana. Who was that? What’s wrong?”
Dana levels her with a mom-glare, but Baran is a mom too and is impervious to it. She won't be moved. Dana breaks quick enough.
"There was an MVA,” Dana says carefully. “EMS called ahead because they couldn’t get a hold of you but they know you work here. They’re about eight minutes out.”
“Couldn’t get a hold of me?” Baran breathes, head spinning. “Why would they— was it Y/N?"
"The incident was reported at seven-forty-nine," Dana is saying. She's watching Baran with that careful, steady look. "ETA is four minutes. A teenage driver, illegal street racing, ran a red at the intersection of—"
"Her injuries," Baran says. "What did dispatch tell you?"
"Head trauma, possible rib fracture, lower extremity injury. She was responsive at the scene,” Dana replies. “GCS of thirteen."
Thirteen out of fifteen. Disoriented but not unconscious. Thirteen is not fourteen, which is where she’d want it, but thirteen is also not eight, which is where she’d start to make very different preparations.
"Baran,” Dana takes one step closer. She must’ve been calling Baran’s name, who didn’t hear it. "What do you need, hon? What can I do?"
Baran takes one breath in through her nose and releases it slowly through her mouth, hand coming up to squeeze tightly around her wrist.
"Please get Abbot and Langdon, if he’s still here," she says. "Tell them incoming trauma, MVA, head injury and possible rib fracture. I want imaging on standby and I want ortho paged."
Dana is already reaching for her radio. "Done. Anything else?"
"Yes." Baran straightens. "Would someone grab my phone from my locker? The code is 4-7-1-9."
Dana nods once, her movement slowing to a stop, and her eyes drift back up to Baran. "Are you going to—" She finishes the sentence without words, instead raising a single brow.
Baran only offers one singular nod before she's beelining to the ambulance bay. She hears the siren before she sees the lights, the Doppler shift of it growing closer, and she forces herself to stand still and breathe even as other doctors rush out to help her receive you. Her wife. Baran has been in room after room after room delivering this kind of news about someone that someone loves, and she has watched what they do. There’s usually the one who crumples, or goes rigid, or flees. She always had empathy, but now she has a direct understanding. She wants to do all three. Her chest feels like it’s going to implode. She feels both weightless and leaden, like she’ll either crack through the earth and plummet to its core or float off, somewhere far away.
The ambulance pulls in. The back doors open before the vehicle has fully stopped and the paramedics are already yelling: "-y year old female, restrained driver, T-bone impact on the driver's side, airbag deployment with delayed activation, she's been in and out—"
Your body jolts around like a rag doll as the stretcher bumps its way out of the back of the ambulance. Your head lolls this-way-and-that as if weightless. There’s a C-collar on you, a line in your left arm, a pressure bandage along the hairline where your head must’ve slammed into something. Baran can hardly breathe at the sight of it all as Langdon and Mel descend upon your stretcher, jogging with it as you’re rolled in.
A treating physician cannot have a primary care relationship with an immediate family member. It compromises the objectivity of clinical judgment in ways that can lead to either over-treatment or dangerous minimization, because love is not a diagnostic tool and it never has been.
But Baran is also the chief attending on duty, which means it is ultimately her call to make, which means she can assign Abbot as the primary and oversee, or she can assign Abbot as the primary and step back entirely, or she can (and the protocol is grayer here than people admit) take primary herself on the grounds that she is the most qualified physician in the building and that the injuries in question, while serious, are not so acutely life-threatening as to require surgical intervention, and that her training is specifically relevant to every item on this presentation. Baran is someone whose hands do not shake. They are perfectly steady now, even as her pulse thrummed in her teeth, in her spine, behind her eyes.
She is through the door, back into the ER and coming up alongside your moving stretcher before Langdon can finish his first thought. "Hold on," she says. "What's the reasoning on that?"
Langdon looks up, eyes a little owlish.
"Dr. Al-Hashimi—"
"The reasoning, Langdon."
"I'm cautious about the rib given the mechanism. I want to rule out pneumothorax before we—"
"Breath sounds are equal bilaterally," Baran says, because she can hear them from here, has been hearing them since she walked in. "Trachea is midline. Sat is ninety-seven. This isn't a pneumo." She pulls a pair of gloves from the box on the wall. "Order the CT chest anyway, I want to see the full picture. But we're not holding on that basis."
Langdon holds her gaze for a moment. He is a good doctor and a careful one, and she respects him. But it is more important in this moment that he respects her.
"Sure," he says slowly, letting the words go reluctantly.
"I'll take primary," she says curtly. "Someone get Abbot in here, and Langdon, stay. I want you on the imaging review because I want your eyes on it independent of mine, and you are to say something if you think I'm wrong about anything."
Langdon nods once as Mel rushes off to get Abbot, and Baran steps up in her place.
Close up, it's different. She can see the blood at your hairline more clearly, a gash of maybe two centimeters that has been partially dressed by the paramedics, still oozing slightly. Your hands are resting open at your sides, which is either calm or the absence of enough presence of mind to close them. Baran puts her gloved hand over yours, heart pumping hot blood through her veins. “Y/N, eshgham, can you look at me?"
Your eyes drift around aimlessly for a moment before arriving on hers. She shines her penlight in your eyes as your stretcher keeps moving, apologizing with a raspy voice as you whine.
“Do you know where you are, hon?” Dana asks as they finally reach a room, getting ready to transfer you onto the bed.
"Hospital," you croak.
"That's right. Do you know what happened?"
You groan as they start to jostle you. "There was a car."
"You were in a car accident. Someone hit you,” Baran confirms, "I need you to tell me where it hurts. Can you do that?"
"Head," you wheeze with visible effort: "Side. My side."
"Your ribs?" Baran is already reaching to palpate, carefully, feeling for crepitus. You hiss at the contact, trying to pull away. "I know, I know. I'm sorry,” she responds, blinking the tears out of her eyes, trying to push it all back, down, far away. There’s a fracture, possibly two. "What about your ankle? How does it feel?"
You squeeze your eyes shut, trying to locate that specific pain among the throbbing ache everywhere. You can’t really pinpoint it, so you just supply: “Ouch.”
Langdon huffs out an amused breath as Abbot bursts in, still pulling his gloves on. "What the hell is going on here? Y/N? Baran, you're primary?"
"Yes."
"And you want me—"
"To help. Eyes on everything I do. You countermand me the second you think I'm compromised, you have my full authorization and I mean that." She glances at him then, just briefly. "Jack."
His crossed arms drop as she rounds the bed. "Jesus," he exhales. "Okay. Right. Hi, Y/N. You’re not lookin’ nearly as bad as I thought you would be going off of Baran’s face.”
You hold up a loose-armed thumbs up. “I always look good. Tha’s why she calls me hot stuff,” you slur.
Jack’s eyes shoot up to Baran in amusement. “You drug her?"
"She got two of fentanyl in the field," Baran says. She's already peeling back the paramedic's dressing at your hairline, gazing down at the still-oozing wound. She holds the pressure and looks up. "Langdon, I need this closed."
"On it." He's already moving to the supply cart to get the staples.
She turns back to the room. "C-collar stays until we have the head CT. Cardiac monitor, second IV right arm, supplemental O2 at two liters. Any update from ortho?"
"They said ten minutes,” Dana says.
"Please ask them to be down here in eight."
Dana gives her a look and picks up the phone anyway as the beeping of your heart rate monitor ticks up. All eyes fall on you.
"Baran." Your voice has gone thinner, frightful. Your fingers scrabble at the bed rail. "Baran, I can't— something's wrong, I can't— "
"It's the medication," she softens her voice. Langdon has come back with the stapler and is setting up at your head; she shifts fractionally to give him room without releasing your hand. "Keep your eyes on me."
"Wait,” you gasp, “‘t doesn’t feel right."
"I know it doesn't." She keeps her voice even as an anchor. She has done this ten thousand times with people less important. She can help you through this. "Find my face, honey. Right here." Your eyes find hers and then skate off, glassy and searching. You're trying to reach for something with your left hand, the one with the line in it, fingers splaying open uselessly.
"Hey." Dana catches your wrist before you can pull the IV, "Leave that alone, Y/N. That's keeping you comfortable."
"Well, I don't feel comfortable," you moan.
"I know," Dana says sympathetically, guiding your hand back down on the bed. "But you gotta try to stay still."
"Tracking's better than field report. I'd call her a fourteen,” Abbot updates the room.
Baran knows this, she's been watching. She just nods without taking her eyes off of you. You make a low, distressed sound, head moving restlessly against the pillow, C-collar shifting with it.
"I’m serious, something really feels wrong."
"Nothing is wrong, Verstappen," Abbot says. He has moved down to your ankle now, palpating carefully, watching your face for the pain response. "Your brain is lying and telling you that because of the medication. Your vitals are good."
"It doesn't feel like it's lying," you repeat miserably.
"I know," Baran smooths her thumb along the uninjured side of your hairline, gloved and careful. "That's what makes it convincing. But you’ve got several doctors in here to make sure you’re okay. Including me."
Your eyes squint at Baran, something finally clicking behind your eyes. Then, small and muzzy: "You're not supposed to be my doctor."
Abbot coughs noisly behind you, then oofs as Dana juts her elbow into his ribs.
"No," Baran agrees, ignroing them both. "I'm not supposed to be your doctor."
"Are you in trouble?"
Still hunched, Abbot mouths ‘yes’ behind Baran with an exaggerated nod of his head while Baran’s own expression remains impassive. "Not yet."
You grin, letting your head thunk back against the bed. Your eyes drift shut, then drag back open with visible effort to glare at Langdon who’s approaching you with the stapler. At least he has the courtesy to offer you a sympathetic smile.
"I’ll make it really fast,” he promises. “Just a few small pinches.”
You flinch at the first one and make a sound through your teeth.
"Three more," he says.
"I hate this stupid ED," you inform him, though your syllables are all jumbled. His grin spreads wider across his face.
"Two more."
Your grip on Baran's hand tightens with each one, which she happily allows (it makes her feel at least semi-useful.) Her gaze flicks between the cardiac monitor — rate 104, sinus tach, no big deal — and watching your chest rise and fall and watching your eyes.
"Done," Langdon says. He steps back, strips his gloves, reaches for a fresh dressing. There are four staples across your forehead now, injected in a clean line. "Lac's closed."
"Good." Baran looks across at Abbot. He's finished with the ankle, already straightening.
"Displaced, probably," he says quietly, just to her. "Ortho's going to want to look at that tonight." She nods. That's a problem for twenty minutes from now.
"We're going to take some pictures," she tells you. "Head first, then chest. The collar has to stay on until we rule out a neck injury. I know it's uncomfortable."
"S'fine," you murmur.
"Is it?"
You purse your lips. Caught. "No."
Abbot steps up on your left. "Radiology's ready. You want to take her down?"
"Yes," Baran replies quickly. “Please.”
Dana has already moved to the head of the bed, hands on the rail. "Ready?"
"Where are we going?" you ask the ceiling.
"To get your picture taken," Dana reminds you.
A loopy frown pulls at your lips, memory already lapsed. "For what? I look terrible."
"You look fine, hon."
"Liar," you groan, slurred enough to make Dana laugh. Baran takes your hand as they start to move, fingers lacing through yours. Your grip tightens immediately around hers, a tiny little breath puffing from your mouth in what she takes to be near-contentment.
"Close your eyes,” she whispers, leaning down to place one soft kiss to your forehead. “I'll tell you when we get there."
'cause love's never lost when it's shared ᥫ᭡.ִֶָ𓂃.
pairing: spencer reid x fem!reader
tags: fluff, like, tooth-rotting fluff, girl dad!spencer, husband!spencer, marriage, parenthood, wife!reader, spence is js so so in love w his family.
a/n: i have no clue where this spawned from. it's 6am. I have not slept. I had a thought. I started writing it. now we're here. it's a little funny to me that i've been yapping abt age gap fic and now i'm suddenly posting something completely different. but i'm still working on it. do not be alarmed! not proofread aha
masterlist. w/c: 490. reblogs appreciated ♡
"genny, shhh!" spencer whispers urgently as genevieve—their toddler—bursts into the room at a time far too early for noise, gesturing wildly at his sleeping wife in his arms.
genevieve nods, super seriously, yet manages to make climbing onto the bed and plopping down in front of you the noisiest task ever.
you don't stir, though, content in spencer's arms, your back to his chest, face buried in the pillow, fists curled in front of it.
"why you awake but mama is not?" genevieve asks, wide hazel eyes sparkling with the genetic curiosity passed down from her father. her hair is absolutely unruly, sticking up in every direction, astronaut pajamas rumpled from a good night's rest.
spencer finds himself smiling, increasingly endeared by her every single day. he can hardly believe he'd helped create such a human—perfect in every way, all the best parts of both of you, gentle and curious and utterly adorable. he just hopes he's good enough to keep her that way, hopes he doesn't taint her perfection.
"s'cause mama's really tired. she deserves some rest," he whispers, fingers absently tracing a line down your arm.
genevieve blinks, the beginnings of a pout on her lips, "but... i want mama awake."
"i know, but that wouldn't be very nice, would it? i don't think she'd be happy 'bout that."
before genevieve can complain, spencer speaks up again.
"hey. wanna see a little trick?"
her eyes widen, curious as ever as she nods, scooting closer.
"okay. look how mama reacts when i do... this," he whispers, leaning over you and pressing a featherlight kiss to your temple.
genevieve watches in awe as you immediately tilt your head up—subtle enough to go unnoticed, apparent enough for the pair of geniuses to smile—in search for more affection.
genevieve can barely contain her giggles as she watches spencer do it again, and again, on your forehead, the tip of your nose, your cheek. each time, your head tilts just a tiny bit closer to his, leaning into his touch even in sleep.
"wanna try! can i? please?" genevieve practically bounces in her place, failing at keeping her voice down to a whisper. spencer is very glad you sleep like the dead.
he smiles, "sure, sweetie. jus' be gentle, okay?"
genevieve nods, super duper seriously, tilting her head, and spencer's heart feels too big for his chest. it's the exact mannerism he's loved in you for years. the way she tilts her head to the side, the tiniest wrinkle between her brows as she focuses so very hard on your face.
slowly, genevieve leans in, pressing a clumsy kiss to your cheek.
and you do, in fact, slightly tilt your head up.
she places pudgy little hands over her mouth, trying to stifle her delighted giggles, finding her mother so receptive to affection to be the sweetest and most entertaining thing.
she's just like her father in that way too, spencer thinks.
