#so so excited to edit CM though ehehrhfhenehenhenheebherhdhhdbshhehehehehhehe

[necroangelz]

moon wanted to do the cemetery Mary graphics first (totally not favoritism erm...) but maybe shi will work on the jjk grfx instead, just to get them out of the way, and save Mary's requests for last...

#💫﹕ the stars glow 𝜗𝜚 ︵ #so so excited to edit CM though ehehrhfhenehenhenheebherhdhhdbshhehehehehhehe

[shemarmooresfedora]

Sugary Sweet Apologies

Summary: You and Reid never really got along but when he saves your life, you decide to be the bigger person and thank him and hopefully start over. Unfortunately, it isn’t that easy.

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Fem!Reader

Content/Warnings: light to mild angst with fluffy ending, swearing, spencer reid being an annoying bitch, brief mentions of case stuff (if you watch cm, you should be fine)

A/N: this is for @willowrose99 ‘s 1 year anniversary on tumblr writing challenge!! congrats! i literally wrote and edited this whole thing in less than one day because i got so excited, anyways i hope you enjoy!

Word Count: 1.8k

“Reid and Y/L/N, go to David Whitney’s house. He was the therapist of two of the three victims. He could have some insight into the victimology and know of any overlap between them. He has no criminal record of past aggressive behavior but we can’t rule him out as a suspect entirely,” Hotch stated.

“Hotch, you stuck me with her yesterday for the geographical profiling. Send Prentiss with her instead,” Spencer whined.

“I don’t mind going with Y/L/N. She is a great partner in the field,” Emily glared at Spencer.

“No. Reid, go with Y/L/N or be taken off this case. I’m a unit chief, not an elementary school teacher. I don’t have time for temper tantrums,” Hotch chided.

“Fine,” Spencer grumbled as you grabbed the keys to an SUV.

You don’t know what it was but ever since you started at the BAU four months ago, Spencer had never liked you which resulted in you disliking him as well. Everyone else on the team was super friendly and welcoming but Reid always was jabbing snarky remarks your way like “I don’t have time to explain it to you” or “This was in the FBI handbook. God, you need more training.”

Luckily, the others were quick to defend you. Once Garcia even heard him snip at you over the phone and as soon as you all got off the elevator after the case, Reid was being dragged by his ear into Garcia’s lair with him going “ow ow ow” behind her. So, you didn’t really pay much mind to him because you could deal with one annoying know-it-all to have such an amazing job with great coworkers minus the one.

“Look, I’m not happy about this either,” you said as you climbed into the driver’s side of the SUV, “But at least I’m not being a whiny bitch about it and being rude to the other person’s face.”

“Oh wow, I’m so sorry that I hurt your feelings,” Spencer mocked.

“Fuck you, Reid,” you shook your head.

-

David Whitney was on edge the second you arrived and showed him your badges. He was bouncing his leg up and down, he couldn’t sit still, and he kept avoiding eye contact.

He knew way too much about the other victim that wasn’t even one of his clients but you didn’t have anything solid on him. His house seemed very neat so you doubted he kept anything incriminating here. Organized offenders usually have a secondary location. So, you decided to push his buttons a little.

“I mean blitz attacks, leaving the bodies on the side of dirt roads,” you combed through the crime scene photos, “This guy was a real coward.”

Spencer picked up on what you were trying to do and his eyes widened, he was subtly shaking his head and mouthing “no”.

“Excuse me?” David asked.

“Well, I’m just saying a real man wouldn’t cower in the bushes and blindside a woman. He must not be very strong,” you stated, “He probably can’t even get it up.”

Before you even had time to react, David pulled out a switchblade knife from inside the couch cushions and put you in a chokehold, pressing the cool metal up to your throat. You closed your eyes tightly.

“David, you don’t have to do this,” Spencer stood with his gun pointed at you both.

“This bitch insulted me,” he snarled.

“She insults me too. That doesn’t make you any less of a man,” Spencer spoke carefully, “Just put the knife down and I’ll escort you out.”

David sighed, dropping the knife to the floor and releasing you.

Spencer put David in handcuffs and walked him outside as reinforcements came running in.

“Are you okay, Y/L/N?” Hotch asked.

“Yep, a little shaken up but fine. Thank you,” you stood.

“Let’s get you to the medics,” Morgan grabbed your arm to support you as you walked over to the ambulance.

Spencer never checked on you.

-

You knew your decision in the field was a little rash and you wanted to thank Spencer for essentially saving your life.

However, there was no way in hell you could verbally get out an apology while staring at his smug face, but you could bake. You settled on a note tucked inside a tupperware container of your Grandma’s special recipe of chocolate chip cookies. It was a good peace offering, maybe even a chance to start fresh.

During your lunch break, you took the tupperware from your desk drawer and approached the break room where Reid had entered about 5 minutes ago.

“I’m just saying I could not have been more clear in my message to her that it was too dangerous but of course, Y/L/N didn’t listen cause Y/L/N is going to do whatever she feels like,” Spencer stirred his coffee.

No one had noticed you standing in the doorway yet.

“Reid, you’ve got to be nicer to her. She earned her spot here just like the rest of us,” Emily defended you.

“Did she though? How much do we really know about her? She couldn’t even tell me how many pages the FBI protocol manual was,” Spencer said.

“That’s not a normal thing people know,” Morgan retorted.

“Well, I’m just saying the team was perfectly fine before her and it would probably be better off if she left,” Reid finished.

Garcia looked up from her yogurt to see you standing there, “Oh, Y/N”.

Spencer turned around in his chair as you angrily stormed up to him.

“Here’s your cookies, asshole,” you seethed, grabbing the note from inside and crumpling it up into a little ball and tossing it into the trash.

“Y/N!” Emily called after you but you were already gone.

The whole team glared at Spencer and picked up their lunches, leaving him alone at the table.

Spencer retrieved the balled up paper from the trash, having to fish through Rossi’s week old pasta and Anderson’s half eaten tuna fish sandwich.

Dear Reid,

Thank you for saving my life, I guess. These are my Grandma’s secret recipe for chocolate chip cookies so I hope you enjoy. I think we got off on the wrong foot and I would like to start over. I think cases would be a lot less miserable for everyone if we got along.

Thanks again,

Y/L/N

Spencer, you’re such an idiot, he thought to himself.

You never came back after your lunch break ended and Derek made Spencer go tell Hotch why it’s his fault you were missing the rest of the day.

He tried to call you multiple times but they always rang out before going to voicemail.

Spencer hesitantly knocked on Penelope’s door at the end of the day.

“Is she okay?” he asked softly.

“You don’t get to ask that as the person who hurt her in the first place. Also, she told me to tell you that don’t you dare go to her apartment to ‘check on her’. I’m headed over there myself actually,” Penelope collected her things and shut off her monitors.

“Will you at least tell her I’m really sorry?” Spencer followed her to the elevator.

“Absolutely not. I’m not doing any apologizing on your behalf,” Penelope huffed as the elevators shut.

-

You came in the next morning, keeping your head down. You grabbed a pen from your cup holder and the first folder on your stack before getting to work.

You were on the second page of the file when your clean, empty tupperware was placed in front of you plus another baking dish with aluminum foil over the top.

You glanced up to see Spencer guiltily looking down at you and you returned your eyes back to the file.

“I-I made you cinnamon rolls,” Spencer broke the silence.

“Are they poisoned?” you asked, not sparing him another glance.

“No, they’re not poisoned,” he assured you.

“I’m just saying how can I trust you as you have made it very apparent you would like me off this team.”

“I didn’t mean that,” Spencer was quick to reply.

“Then why the hell did you say it, Reid?” you slammed your pen down.

You grabbed your empty coffee mug and briskly walked to the break room but unfortunately, Spencer was right behind you.

“I didn’t eat any of your cookies by the way. Not that I didn’t want to but I felt like I didn’t deserve them so I handed them out to everyone else.”

“Oh how kind, taking credit for my work,” you tried to close the door in his face.

“I told them that they were from you,” Spencer insisted.

You rolled your eyes as Spencer grabbed the coffee pot before you could get to it, pouring your mug of coffee for you.

“What do you want from me, Reid?” you asked defeatedly.

“I want you to try a cinnamon roll and let me explain.”

“Fine but only because I didn’t have breakfast yet and I want to critique your baking skills,” you huffed, walking back to your desk.

Spencer gingerly placed one of the sticky frosting-coated rolls on a napkin and pushed it towards you. You tentatively bit into it. Damn it, it was actually delicious.

“It’s okay,” you understated.

You knew Spencer hardly ever used his kitchen let alone be up baking all night. He even chose a recipe that required more time and effort because the yeast dough would have to rise for a few hours.

“That’s good. The first batch didn’t come out as great...or the second,” he smiled softly.

“Well, the floor is all yours, Reid. Please explain to me why you talk shit about me to my co-workers when I’m in the other room,” you leaned back in your chair and crossed your arms.

Spencer muttered something incoherent.

“I have to hear the apology, you know,” you said, enjoying watching him uncomfortable.

“You’re intimidating to me because you’re intelligent, beautiful, and courageous. I think I was a little jealous that my spotlight as the ‘kid’ of the BAU was coming to an end so I said some harsh, completely untrue things and I’m sincerely sorry.”

“Oh my god,” you smirked, “Hotch was right, you are an elementary school kid.”

“In what way?” he curiously asked.

“You like me like like like me. You don’t know how to talk to the girl so you pull her pigtails on the playground,” you giggled.

“I take it back. You’re a horrible profiler,” Spencer was getting up from his seat, completely flustered.

“Awww,” you were laughing at Spencer’s bright red face as he went to go to the break room to fill his coffee mug.

When he got back to his desk, a sticky note was placed front and center.

In typical elementary school fashion…

Will you go get coffee with me?

Check:

Yes

or

No

Spencer smiled before picking up his pen and checking one of the boxes, crumpling the sticky note up into a ball and throwing it over to your desk.

“Good choice. See you Saturday at 9 at the cafe down the street,” you grinned.

“It’s a date,” he smiled.

#willsannievent #spencer reid x you #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid angst #spencer reid fluff #spencer x reader #reid x reader #spencer reid #cm fanfic #criminal minds

[thesiriusmoon]

Do you love me?

Pairing: Spencer Reid X Derek Morgan

Characters: Spencer Reid, Derek Morgan

Summary: picture below

Word count: 2.6K

A/N: I’ve been out of the writing game for a little while so I hope this is alright! I like the idea of Derek being the one being taken care of because the majority (all) of things I’ve read have been Spencer, so I was really excited to get going with this!

Edit: this was my first ever CM fic, go easy on me!😅

Requested by @thewistlingbadger 💕

After the fortnight long case in Texas, the BAU had finally landed back in Quantico and were dying to let loose. The most common way to do that was to go to the bar downtown that was fairly familiar with the agents faces now, well- the droopy eyed and flushed cheeked agents that is.

With Spencer’s head resting on Derek’s lap, Derek had asked Spencer on the plane if he’d be joining the rest of the team for drinks, but he had declined. Instead he would much rather go back to their apartment and bury himself under a pile of warm blankets while the tv plays quietly in the background to comfort him into a well deserved sleep.

Spencer wasn’t a drinker anyways, he never saw the point in it. He didn’t understand why someone would want to not have control over their body, their thoughts, or even their emotions. Derek on the other hand thought it was great. Losing the feeling in his legs made him forget about their cases and let him feel free from the troubles in the world. It was a peaceful numbing. Sure Spencer would join the team most nights, but tonight his bed was calling for him and who was he not to answer?

So when the jet came to a stop, Derek kissed Spencer goodbye before they headed their opposite ways. Spencer to the cosy apartment where he’d make himself instant noodles and not have to worry about some drunken stranger touching him, and Derek to the loud bar where there would hardly be a centimetre between hot and sweaty bodies.

Just like he had planned, with an empty cup of noodles and another cup of jelly in the kitchen bin, Spencer was drowning in one of Derek’s large T-shirt’s while Doctor Who played quietly on volume 4 in their bedroom. The T-shirt gifted Spencer Derek’s leather scent that soothed him into a peaceful state while being alone.

Outside, the sky was pitch black, dotted with the shining stars and full moon. Turning his head towards the window, Spencer could see the Orion constellation looking back down on him. He loved space! Without a second though he had rolled over to his side to tell Derek all about the hunter Orion and his dogs, only to be met with cold, empty sheets. The spark in his chest faded away.

With a deep sigh, Spencer turned his attention back to the night sky, and felt himself longing and wishing for Derek to hurry up and drag himself home to him. Sleeping after a case in general could be rather difficult, but with Derek by his side Spencer would be out like a light in the older mans arms. Despite that, he did hope that Derek was cooling off well, it was just a slight shame the two of them had conflicting methods of relaxing.

After a little while more of watching Doctor Who, Spencer’s ears twitched as the sound of the front door shut, rather loudly- but that was expected of a drunk person who was trying their hardest to be quiet. Derek was finally home, and Spencer was anticipating his arrival to their bedroom so he could finally rest with peace and forget about their case. Even with all of these blankets, nothing could ever compare to Derek’s large arms holding Spencer to his thick chest that acted like another pillow for him to fall asleep on.

Not only that, but Spencer was a typically cold person who was always wrapped up in a scarf or a jumper, while Derek was the opposite. His body just radiated heat. Derek was the perfect cuddle buddy when it came to those cold and snowy winter nights that froze the tips of Spencer’s fingers and nose, and of course when it came to comforting the younger man.

Still laying in bed, Spencer glanced at their clock and noted that Derek had arrived 34 minutes and 26 seconds ago… Normally it didn’t take much time at all for Derek to go to bed once he arrived home from the bar. The man would have a quick shower, get a glass of water, then meet Spencer where he’d dress and climb into bed. Straining his ears, Spencer realised that he hadn’t heard the shower turn on in all the time Derek had been home, in fact, he couldn’t hear anything.

That’s what worried him. A drunk Derek meant a careless and playful man who would climb a mountain just for fun, so maybe he’d wandered out of the apartment to go for a stagger, or more hopefully- some fresh air instead, but what if something was wrong? He swore the front door hadn’t opened again.

The blankets Spencer cocooned himself in dropped to the floor as he wriggled his way out, and while rubbing his tired eyes, dragged himself out of the bedroom and down the hall to where he found Derek sitting on the couch with his head in his hands, bent over his legs in the dimly lit living room. The top of his shirt left unbuttoned revealing his sweaty collar bone, and his tie no where to be seen which wasn’t unusual. Almost every time they went out drinking after a case, Derek’s tie magically disappeared and they had to go shopping for new one.

“Hey, tough night?” Spencer chuckled, assuming Derek had went a little overboard in the drinking and was deeply regretting his decision as a headache sank in.

Though, when Derek lifted his head to face the wall, Spencer’s heart sank at the sight of watery eyes.

He’d seen Derek cry before, multiple times. They always told one another what was bothering them so they could chat and cuddle their worries away, but Derek had been sitting out here for a rather long time alone, not bothering to go to Spencer at all.

“Sweetie what’s wrong?” Concern flooded Spencer’s entire body feeling like ice. Derek refused to look his way, biting down on his bottom lip to keep it from wobbling, and keeping his eyes directly on a slight crack of the wallpaper which he ought to fix now coming to see it.

Not wanting him to get up and leave, Spencer took a small step forward to test the waters, but retreated immediately as Derek shuffled away uncomfortably.

“It’s stupid.” Derek’s dry voice cracked as he let out a cold laugh, shaking his head. If the apartment wasn’t as silent as it was, Spencer never would have been able to hear him.

Spencer felt his heart sink looking at the sullen face of the man he loved most in the world, and even more so to think that he hadn’t came to him, was he feeling that low? That low that even Spencer couldn’t make things better? “Nothing you can say to me is stupid honey… you can tell me what’s wrong. Did something happen at the bar?” Spencer’s mind immediately jumped to the worst things imaginable. He should have went to the bar too… he shouldn’t have left Derek without him…

Derek sniffled and lowered his head into his hand yet again, his forehead resting on his palm and his eyes directed down at the floor where tears began soaking the carpet.

A small gasp of surprise left Spencer’s mouth, and he couldn’t stay away any longer.

“Hey… please tell me what’s wrong, I hate seeing you upset baby.” Spencer soothed and dropped himself to his knees to wrap an arm across Derek’s back, hoping his touch would provide some sort of comfort if his words wouldn’t.

The strong smell of alcohol had him forcing down a gag, Spencer hated it, but seeing Derek like this, he’d cross rivers and mountains just to make sure he was alright.

The two stayed in the position of Derek sitting with Spencer’s lanky arms around his buff body for a couple of seconds before the bigger man moved away.

Derek softly pushed himself out of Spencer’s arms and with a wobbly effort, stood up to put a distance between himself and the younger. He most definitely wasn’t sober. But, Spencer couldn’t blame him. Dealing with what they deal with will take a large toll on someone and in the end all you want to do is forget.

“Spencer…” The way Derek said his name had him on edge. It wasn’t happy, it wasn’t loving, it was sad… depressing even. Spencer was used to being called ‘pretty boy’, ‘Spence’, ‘baby’. ‘Spencer’ was left for moments with a lot of feeling. He used it when he tells Spencer he loves him, when he’s upset, or in serious discussions with the rest of the BAU.

Had he done something wrong? Did Derek not want him to be around?

The younger man waited as patiently as he could for Derek to continue, wringing his sweaty hands together. “What is it?” He encouraged Derek who took a deep breath.

“Do you really love me?” Spencer’s mouth fell open.

“Or do you… just put up with me? You could have someone so much smarter than me… someone who’s on your level and can relate to the things that you say. I’m just some guy. I’ll always just be s-some guy I’m not special I’m not-“

“Hey, slow down alright?” Spencer hushed Derek who was stressing just a couple feet away from him, hands behind his head, tears in his eyes, breath heavy. “Derek baby I’m right here.” The younger mans voice was so soft you could fall asleep on it as he held his hands over his chest, protecting the heart that was falling apart at the sight in their living room.

“B-but you-“

“I love you Derek Morgan.” Spencer stated strongly, not allowing Derek to talk down on himself any further.

“I really do trust me.” He couldn’t have meant those words any more. The love he had for Derek could never be beaten, he meant everything to Spencer. To see someone you love so sad and doubtful over their own worth killed him, and he needed Derek to know just how much he truly needed and wanted him.

Derek wiped his eyes and distracted himself with the outside of their window, eyeing the bird house Spencer pleaded that he build so they could have ‘wild pets’ and feed them whenever they visit. He hadn’t wasted in any in getting to work.

“Baby look at me… please” Spencer begged quietly, and Derek hesitatingly turned around, their glossy eyes meeting for a split second. The sadness in Derek’s eyes faded for a moment, but came rushing back out of regret for being so stupid, so here he was further doubting his ability to love and be loved by Spencer.

The birds came back into view as he felt the same. Derek hated others see him cry, and right now there were tears escaping the corners of his eyes at a quick rate, and he couldn’t get a single word out because of the sobs bubbling in his throat ready to burst the second he opens his mouth.

With his feet moving on their own, Spencer stopped just a couple of inches away from Derek, and gently cupped the mans cheek with his palm, redirecting his face to his own. With his thumb, he swiped away the wet stream on his lovers face that glistened via the moonlight outside. Derek instinctively felt himself lean into the comforting touch. Spencer’s hand was safe. It was soft and inviting. No matter how he was feeling right now, the simple gesture would tell him that Spencer cared.

“Derek…” Spencer whispered while his thumbs rubbed circles into Derek’s cheeks.

The older man listened without a word.

“I love you. I really do. I still remember the first time we met too, it’s one of the most important dates for me. It was September second, two-thousand-and-four, at exactly nine pm. I had just started working in the B.A.U and you said to Gideon-“

“W-who’s the scrawny kid.” Derek’s brittle voice almost laughed as more tears spilled from his eyes and his breath hitched.

Spencer felt his lips turn upwards into a fond smile looking into Derek’s warming brown eyes.

“That was it exactly. I thought to myself, who is this guy? But as I got to know him I began realising that I was falling in love with him. I fell in love with his passion for his work, putting others before himself, and saving lives left right and centre. I fell in love with how caring he is, how he’s always been there for me if I’m feeling down and taking care of the victims he saves. God Derek- I fell in love with everything about you! I-I’m so sorry that this is how you feel… I want you to know that you’re so important to me, and that I’m never going to stop telling you until my last breath.”

Now Derek’s tears had a whole other meaning. They were happy… touched… loved.

“I-I’m sorry I just-“

Spencer shushed him quietly, he knew, and Derek fell forward and crashed into his chest. The alcohol smell was the furthest of his worries, it was practically non existent at this moment.

Spencer’s arms wrapped around him immediately, allowing Derek to let everything out, because he knew from experience that holding in tears can sometimes only make things worse, even once the situation was resolved.

For a while they just stood in each other’s arms, hearing each other’s heartbeat and breaths become steady. Spencer rubbing circles into Derek’s back until the older had relaxed and was almost asleep on his shoulder.

“Hey baby?” Spencer asked and heard Derek hum tiredly. “Feeling any better?” To which he felt his lover nod his head. Spencer smiled, pecking Derek’s forehead before he pat his back for him to come back up.

With Derek now standing without tears, Spencer smiled, “now you better go get in the shower and sober up, I’ve got blankets and a soft mattress with your name on it love.” And felt lighter seeing Derek grin.

A hint of embarrassment still hid behind his eyes, but they could get passed that. The amount of times Spencer’s cried to Derek or had a meltdown with Derek by his side had far more tally marks than Derek even tearing up.

Spencer was just glad he could be there. To hold Derek, to whisper that everything would be alright, and most importantly, to love him.

Later when Derek entered the bedroom, Spencer opened his arms widely for the other to dive into, and greeted his partner with a loving kiss.

“God it’s good to be home.” Derek muffled into Spencer’s neck, and the younger man immediately snuggled closer to the added warmth of another body.

“Couldn’t agree more handsome.” Spencer groaned tiredly, letting himself finally embrace rest now that Derek was by his side.

They really were two peas in a pod.

Doctor Who switched off, and before the couple drifted off to sleep, Spencer mumbled tiredly, “I love you Derek Morgan.” From the position of laying his head on top of the older mans chest.

“I love you too pretty boy.” Derek hummed, running his fingers through Spencer’s curls, gently caressing his head.

Derek knew he wasn’t alone anymore. His drunken state had released a vulnerable side to him, and to call him lucky to have Spencer would be an understatement. The man he loved most in this world was right here with him, snoozing soundly- half on top of him- and Derek wouldn’t have it any other way.

#criminal minds #cm #spencer reid #derek morgan #moreid #spencer reid x derek morgan #hurt/comfort #aaron hotchner #jennifer jareau #david rossi #emily prentiss #penelope garcia #fan fiction #criminal minds fan fiction #literature #thesiriusmoon moreid collection #thesiriusmoon writes cm #thesiriusmoon requests

[atlafan]

Office Neighbors - Part One

a/n: OKAY! this is my new love, professor!Harry x professor!Y/N. This is a slow burn, so buckle up because it’s going to be a longgggg ride. enjoy! (also reblogs/feedback is super helpful) not proofread

warnings:none yet...I suppose some fluff? slight angst?? 

words: 20K

masterpost

You were all cozied up in bed, in a cocoon of blankets. Even though it was August, your apartment had central air, and it was glorious. You loved nothing more than practically sleeping in a burrito of blankets year round. It was a new place to go along with your new job.

Y/F/N Y/L/N, Adjunct Professor, Communication Department: that was your new title. You had your master’s degree, and now you could finally move on to get your PhD. Your specialization was social media and the like, but you also had background in rhetoric and film. The few faculty that served on your search committee were quite impressed with the research you had already started conducting. Your main research was about the pros and cons of anonymity online. The school was a perfect fit. You would be teaching a couple of the intro courses for the major, and some special topics courses.

Today was faculty orientation. You would be given yet another tour of the university, go through some technology workshops, and be shown to your office. You were excited because you hadn’t been able to meet all of your faculty yet, and you’d be going to your first faculty meeting towards the end of the day.

You check your phone and see that it’s going to be in the mid 80’s today. You sigh and get up to start your morning routine. Once your face is washed and your teeth are brushed, you rummage through your closet to see what would be the most appropriate thing to wear. A flowy dress, in theory, would be a good idea, but the idea of sweating between your legs didn’t sound all that great. You settle on a pair of emerald green shorts that fall just above your knee, perfectly appropriate length for school. Plus, they were just a cute pair of shorts in general. You pair it with a white short-sleeve blouse, and tuck it into the shorts to show the shape of your body. Next, you needed to tackle your hair. You could leave it down, but sweat and humidity were not your friends. You had gotten into the habit of parting your hair down the middle more, you were twenty-six now it was okay to go with your natural part. You thought it made you look more adult, whatever that meant. So, you part it, and pull up each side to make pig tails, then you create a bun on each side. You looked professional, but fun. Just the vibe you were going for. You only apply a little makeup, in fear of it melting off of you. You slip on a pair of white tennis shoes for comfort, gather your laptop and other things, and head out.

Rolling through Dunkin Donuts, you treat yourself with a vanilla late instead of your usual, it was your first day after all. You’re not feeling too hungry yet, so you don’t get anything to eat. A college habit that just hasn’t died yet: barely eating anything until the late afternoon. You park at the building where your last meeting of the day will be, always thinking ahead. You sip on your coffee and enjoy your stroll across the beautiful campus to your first meeting of the day. There were a few people in the classroom, and you shyly smile and wave as you take a seat.

Policies and procedures are talked about after everyone in the cohort introduces themselves. You notice that you’re the only CM hire, there were three math hires, two for history, one for CS, two for art, and two for CJ. Some seemed to be around your age, and other seemed older. Everyone was friendly enough. You observed everyone’s posture and body language. You couldn’t help it, you were practically trained to read rooms and people.

The campus tour isn’t anything new. This was about the fifth time you had been walked around by some students to show you where things were, but it was nice to get outside for a good walk. You’re given a break for lunch, and you opt to eat outside at one of the open picnic benches. You notice that most people wanted to eat alone. It was a lot of social time, you yourself didn’t mind the break from talking and sharing.

After lunch are the technology workshops, making sure your account was set up and that you knew how to edit your courses in moodle. It wasn’t terribly difficult, but it was something everyone had to do. Luckily, as a first year professor, you wouldn’t be given any advisees. That you were thankful for. You had taught before, of course, and you loved helping students, but you wanted to make sure you had a good handle on the curriculum before telling students what they should be taking for courses.

Around 3PM a student comes to show you to your academic building, and escort you to your new office before your faculty meeting. There’s a bit of chit chat between the two of you before they open the door to the overly hot building. You cough when you first enter from the humidity.

“Don’t worry, it’s only like this for the first couple of weeks.” She says and you nod.

She guides you straight in where the communication lounge was. Wow, an entire lounge, you think to yourself. There were a few couches and three offices on the main level. A flat screen TV projecting student projects across from one of the couches. She takes you down a spiral staircase where there were four other offices, one vacant for you. There were two computer clusters, a projects and screen, and more couches. You already liked that it seemed to be an interactive space for students.

“Looks like you got the one with the window.” She smiles. “Have a nice day.”

“Thank you so much.” You beam at the student that you’ll probably never see again.

The door was open for you, and two sets of keys were sitting on your desk. The office was bare just waiting for your interior design ideas to be splashed all over it. Your desk was L-shaped with two monitors and a laptop plugged into a docking station. At least you didn’t have to wait to be given your school sanctioned computer. You smile when you see that you were given a Mac as requested. You look at your one window and take a picture so you could find curtains for it. You open and close all of drawers just to make sure there was nothing left behind inside the desk. There were two seats on the other side of the desk for what you would assume would be for student meetings. You could get better ones. You also definitely had room for a small couch, a love seat perhaps.

“Well, look at that, I finally got a new neighbor.”

You jump slightly and turn around. There were a couple of reasons that you were slightly started. Whoever it was that was speaking to you had a deep, gravel-like voice, and they had a British accent. Not totally uncommon at a university, but still something you weren’t expecting. You were also started because no one else was downstairs with you. As you turn around, your cheeks flush when you take in the man with the toothy smile before you.

He was wearing a loose pair of jeans with a couple of rips in them, beaten up white sneakers with different color laces, and a light blue t-shirt. You barely have time to take in his tattoos, or the thick rim of his glasses before he speaks again.

“I’m so sorry, did I startle you?”

“Only slightly.” You give him a half smile. “I’m Y/N.” She extends her hand out to him and he takes it, shaking it gently.

“I’m Harry.”

“Ah! Dr. Styles, yeah. You were away when all of my interviews were happening.”

“Yes, I was away at a conference, but I heard great things. And please, just call me Harry. We’re not a very formal group.” He smirks.

“So, your office is the one next to mine?”

“That’s right.” He nods towards it, and you step out to look at his door.

Dr. Harry Styles, PhD was on his door along with a paper with his office hours printed on it.

“You’re lucky you got one with a window right away, I’m surprised no one wanted to snatch it up. The two across from us don’t have windows, but maybe some people don’t really care about that. I happen to enjoy looking out the window to see what’s happening when my eyes need a rest from the screen.”

You nod your head and peep inside his office. He had put his desk in the back corner of the room. So if students were to come see him, his back would be to them and they could easily see whatever he was doing on the computer, but you notice he also has a corner set up with a few chairs and around coffee table. Perhaps he’s able to discuss things easier this way. Many ideas pop into your head about how you might like to set things up.

“There’s a really great consignment shop downtown with quality furniture for cheap. That’s where I got those that table and chairs.”

“Thanks.” You squint at the three diplomas framed one the wall, and a couple of certifications as well. He had a small shelf with a couple of awards too. “What’s your PhD in?”

“At the base level, Media Studies, but my master’s was in Literary Dynamics. I’m a bit of a book worm as you can see.” He points to the bookshelf full of worn books and you smile. “Got my doctorate here, same as you’re doing, and they offered me a tenure position. Been here about six years total now, I love it.”

You think for a moment to try to put together how old he might be. There was a boyishness to his features, but he also had crinkles around his eyes and a few specs of grey in his hair. Then again, so did you. You greyed early, not that anyone would know since you get highlights in your hair.

“I turn thirty-two in February, if that’s what you were wondering.”

“Oh…I wasn’t, um, I-“

“It’s okay.” He chuckles. “Shall we head up to the faculty meeting? They sent me down here to get you.”

“Yeah, let’s get to it.” You quickly grab your laptop and follow him up the spiral staircase, trying not to look at his butt too much.

He leads you down a hall to a room used for meetings. A large table with people sitting around it casually, a few you recognize from your search committee.

“Y/N!” Lisa, the department chair, exclaims. “Glad Harry found you, come in.” Everyone turns their attention towards you and you smile. You sit down, and Harry goes to sit at the other end of the table. “Right, so let’s go round the table to introduce ourselves to Y/N. Let’s tell her what courses we all teach as well. I’m Lisa, obviously, I teach Game Design and Senior Seminar. I used to teach more, but so it goes when you’re the department chair.”

“Hi, Y/N, I’m Andre, I teach Communication Theory, Digital Media in the New Age, and Journalism.”

“I’m Mateo, good to see you again.” He smiles and you nod. “I teach Tech Comm, Intercultural Communication, and Strategic Communication.”

“I’m Sandra, I teach Global Perspectives in the Media, Film and Video Production Techniques, and basically any other film production courses.” She laughs.

“I’m Harry.” He gives you that same toothy smile. “I teach Communication, Media, and Wellness, Media Effects, Analyzing Screen Media, Literature into Film, and The Craft of Screenwriting.”

“I’m Janette, I teach Philosophy of Communication, Advanced Composition, and Interactive Web Communication.”

“Wonderful, thank you everyone. Don’t worry, Y/N, our admin Lucas will email you all of this info if he hasn’t already.”

“That’s alright, thank you.” She smiles.

“Why don’t you tell everyone what courses you’ll be teaching this fall and spring?”

“Well, this fall I’ll be teaching Communication and Media Studies, Media and Cultural Studies, and Social Media: Technology and Culture. Then in the spring I’ll teach the two intro courses, along with Professional Social Media, and Rhetoric and Semiotics.”

“We’re so happy to have you aboard.” Lisa smiles.

Lisa goes on to explain any policy or curriculum changes. Y/N notices how casual the group is, and also how diverse the group is. It was nice to see.

“Now, I know it’s your first day, and you just moved to the area…feel free to say no, but we’re all headed downtown to the pub for dinner if you’d like to join us.” Lisa says at the end of the meeting.

“That would be great! I haven’t gotten the chance to eat downtown much.”

“Oh, you’ll love the pub.” Sandra says. “Best nachos I’ve ever had.”

You smile and stand with everyone. You notice that everyone just simply walks downtown. You run to your car quickly to drop her bag off, and continues the walk. You all go in and grab a table for seven. You slide into the booth and Harry slides in next to you, followed by Janette and Sandra. Lisa, Mateo, and Andre all sit in the chairs across from you. You weren’t sure if you felt comfortable drinking in front of your colleagues just yet, but you order a vodka-tonic anyways just to be social.

“Sandra’s right, they do have the best nachos here.” Lisa says. “Should we just get a couple of orders of that? We could do one with chicken and one without.”

“I can just pick it off, don’t be silly.” Harry says.

“I, uh , don’t eat meat either, and I can also just pick it off.” You speak up.

“Oh, please.” Lisa scoffs. “We can get one with and one without, no problem.”

“You don’t eat meat?” Harry turns to you slightly.

“Um, no.” He was very close to you, and you weren’t sure how you felt about it. You just met him. You take a sip of your drink so your mouth doesn’t feel so dry. “My doctor told me to cut out red meat, and then I got sick of chicken and stuff, so I just cut it all out.” You shrug.

“Things were sort of the same with me, I just didn’t like how it made me feel after eating it. There’s other ways to get protein. I eat a lot of beans and nuts.”

“Right.” You were curious as to why he was being so open with you.

“Course, I feel like I’m starved half the time, don’t know if that happens to you, but I always keep granola bars in my office if you ever need one.”

“Oh! Um, thank you. Are we allowed to bring mini fridges? I’m really into overnight oats right now, so if I could just leave that stuff in there…”

“We are! It can’t be one of those huge ones though, it’s gotta be one of those ones that looks like a cube.” Harry makes a fake outlines of a box with his fingers. The waitress comes over and takes the orders for the nachos. “Excuse me, love, could I also get a separate order of chicken fingers and fries to go?”

The waitress nods and Harry smiles at her. You raise an eyebrow at him.

“Got someone at home who requested it.” He says before turning his attention to the other conversations at the table.

You wondered whom might me home waiting for him. A wife, a girlfriend…boyfriend? Harry wore a lot of rings, and his nails were painted, but a lot of men were doing that these days so you didn’t want to make any assumptions.

“So, Y/N, where’s home for you?” Andre asks.

“Oh, I’m from Boston originally.”

“Wow! And you moved up here to the mountains. Do you miss the hustle and bustle yet?”

“Not yet, I sort of don’t mind the quiet, although, when I first moved I had trouble falling asleep at night. It was almost too quiet.” You laugh. “But I’ve gotten more used to it. I’m in a great little apartment building, nice neighborhood. I think there are some grad students that I’m neighbors with.”

“Do you going hiking at all?” Mateo asks. “There are some great trails around here.”

“I haven’t gone yet, but I’d certainly be willing to give it a go.”

“We usually all go together before the semester starts.” Lisa says. It surprised you at how close everyone seemed. All different people of different ages. “There’s this really easy mountain about twenty minutes from campus with a beautiful view of the lakes region.”

“Well, I’ll certainly give it a go. Just let me know when.” You smile.

Sandra was absolutely right, the nachos were incredible. Lots of layers of chips and cheese, fresh veggies and guacamole, not to mention the sour cream and salsa. Everyone squares up their checks and heads out. Harry grabs his to go order from the bar. The sun was just barely setting, god, you loved August.

“I parked in the same lot as you, mind if I walk back up with you?” Harry asks after you all say goodnight.

“Not at all.” You smile.

“So, how was the first day? Is your brain ready to explode?”

“Only a little. I think if I take in anymore new information today I’ll pop.” Harry chuckles at that.

“I remember my faculty orientation.” He smirks and shakes his head. “I think I wore a suit, if you can believe it.”

“I’m sure you clean up really well.” You say playfully and he rolls his eyes.

“Well, you’re right about that, but it was super embarrassing at the time. No one told me how casual it was.”

“A little initiation ritual perhaps.”

“Maybe.” He looks at her. “I like your little, um, what do you call those.”

“Oh! My buns?”

“Yeah! Didn’t know if you’d still call them that, or poofs, or something.”

“Poof works.” You chuckle. “I wasn’t sure how humid it was going to be so I just did it up like that. They’re nice for keeping pens or pencils in.”

“Brilliant.” He smiles and reaches his car. “Well, I hope you enjoyed your first day. Feel free to email me if you have any questions. I know being new the area and campus can be overwhelming.”

“Thanks, I appreciate that.” You nod and get into your own car. You take a deep breath as you drive away. “I can do this.” You tell yourself. You enjoyed how friendly everyone was, you could definitely see yourself fitting in with everyone.

//

Harry gets home soon after he leaves campus, only living about fifteen minutes away. He owned a quaint ranch-style home.

“Andy, I’m home, bud!” He yells out. “Got your dinner.” He walks into the living room and sees his son playing video games. “Please don’t tell me you played all day…”

“Hey, dad.” He pauses the game and takes the to go box from Harry. “No, I didn’t play all day.” He rolls his eyes. “I went to the skate park at with Brandon, and then we swam in his pool, remember?”

“Right, I’ll have to say thanks to his parents.” Harry sits down on the couch and sighs.

“Tired?” Andy asks with his mouth full.

“Yeah, it was just a day full of meetings, then we all had dinner. Being social is draining.” He laughs. “How’s the chicken, good?”

“Mhm.”

“Let me get you some napkins…water?”

“Yes, please.”

Harry nods to his son. Harry usually got to be with his son all summer, but this year Andy asked to stay for the school year. It was a rather large discussion that Harry had to have with him and Andy’s mother, who Harry wasn’t on bad terms with, but he certainly didn’t live the one on one chat.

“I just feel like he didn’t get this idea on his own.” She whispered to him in the kitchen.

“I swear I didn’t put the idea in his head. He just asked me out of the blue if he could be enrolled at the middle school. He’s going into fifth grade, maybe he wants a fresh start. He has good friends here, Paige.”

“He has good friends at home too…” She sighs. “I just…so what, now I only get to see him on weekends? I’m his mother, Harry.”

“And I’m his father.”

“You get him for the entire summer.”

“You know it’s not enough time with him. I miss him a lot during the school year.” He drums his fingers on the kitchen counter. “Do you think…I mean…your boyfriend moved in with you, right? Do you think he feels uncomfortable with the change?”

“I don’t know, when Noah and I spoke with him about it he said he was fine with it. He was used to him sleeping over anyways. He’s knowing him for two years now, it’s not that weird.”

“I didn’t say it was weird, I’m talking about comfort. Maybe he just doesn’t want to share his space. It’s not just Noah that moved in, he has a daughter too…”

“Andy and Rachel get along really well. She’s only a year younger than he is.” She sighs again. “I don’t want him thinking he’s being replaced, Harry. What if he doesn’t want to come back into my life once he’s with you all the time?”

“I don’t think that could happen, I’ll make sure it doesn’t.”

“And you’d be able to handle him all year long?”

“Sure, I’d have to change when I’m offering my classes so I’m home at a reasonable time, but I can make it work.” He rubs the back of his neck. “I could always send him home to you if I can’t be around anyways, like how you do with me.”

“Right.” She looks into the living room where Andy had his headphones in, and then back to Harry. “That’s my little baby in there. How can I let him go?”

“You’re not letting him go, you’re letting him grow up a bit. Why don’t we tell him we’ll see how this year goes, and then we can talk more seriously about custody and all that?”

“Alright, yeah, that seems fair.”

“You only live thirty minutes away, I could always drop him off for dinner sometimes, or-“

“Yeah.” She nods. “Well, um, let’s go talk with him then.”

That conversation happened after the July 4th holiday. Andy went home every other weekend to his mother’s, and Harry always talked with him about how his time with her was. Andy would always say that had a great time. He really did just like his friends better where Harry lived, and he was getting older. Maybe he just wanted to live with his dad.

“Alright.” Harry hands him the napkins and water. “Shall we watch a movie and then get you ready for bed?”

“I’m not a baby.” He scoffs.

“You are though, you’ll always be my baby.”

“Dad.” Andy groans. “Don’t be gross.”

“Can’t help it, you’re too stinkin’ cute.”

“Please stop before I barf up my chicken.”

Harry laughs and switches the TV to Netflix. Andy looked a lot like Harry in that he had curly hair and green eyes. He had his mother’s button nose and freckles. Andy liked dressing in basketball shorts and t-shirts, but he also like using a scrunchie or bandana to keep his hair off his face the way Harry did. It was cute.

“Am I going to mum’s this weekend?”

“You are, my darling.” Harry sips on a beer while lounging on the couch during the movie. “That alright?”

“Course.” He shrugs. “I actually have a new skate trick to show Rachel.”

“Do you to go boarding together?”

“Sometimes. She’s better on her skates, though.” He munches on some popcorn. “I kinda like going there on Friday nights because her and Noah go to temple on Saturday mornings, so mum and I get up late and make breakfast together.”

“Good, I’m glad you get that quality time together. I hope you’re paying attention to the culture that Rachel and Noah are bringing into your life, though. She��ll probably have a Bat Mitzvah someday and you’ll have this big party to go to.”

“Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you ever…I mean…it’s sort of weird that you like Noah…”

“Is it?” Harry sits up. “I’ve got no problem with him. He’s a nice guy, takes care of your mum.”

“That’s just it, I have friends with divorced parents and they-“

“Well, mum and I aren’t divorced, Andy, you know that. We never got married.”

“Even still…”

“We wanted to do right by you can be good co-parents. I’d be a real brat if I was rude to him.”

“How come you and mum never got married?”

Harry nearly chokes on his drink. He clears his throat and pauses the movie. Andy never really asked questions like this. He never even saw Harry and Paige as a couple, he never knew them together.

“Um…well…we were really young when you were born. I was twenty when we found out about you, and I was twenty-one when you born, I was just barely finishing school when you came along. Your mum was a year ahead of me, so luckily she got her degree before you were born.”

“Were you together then?”

“Yeah.” Harry nods. “Mum and I dated for about two years in undergrad, and then…well…we found out about you, and we were nervous, but excited.”

“But you didn’t want to get married?”

“I asked her, but she said no.”

“Why?”

“She thought I only wanted to marry her because she was pregnant.” He sighs. “Things like that sort of get complicated when you’re older. I also had a lot going on for school, and she didn’t want me to put my career on hold, she already had a full time job and all that. We tried to make things work, but we both realized a relationship shouldn’t be made to work because of…a baby. We both love you very much, Andy, make no mistake about that, but mum and I make better friends than a couple, I can assure you.”

“Oh.”

“Do you wish we were together sometimes?”

“Sometimes.” He nods. “But only because I hate going back and forth.”

“I’m sorry.” He sighs. “We live as close to each other as we can.”

“I know.” He furrows his brows. “I just don’t like when Noah acts like he’s my dad because he’s not, you are.”

“True, but you should still be respectful. Rachel lives there full time too, so-“

“I can’t stand that either, honestly.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know…ugh, she was on the phone with one of her friends and she referred to me as her brother. Not even step-brother, brother! I’m not her brother.” He huffs.

“Andy…come here.” His son gets up and sits next to him. Harry puts an arm around him and holds him close. “You’re going through a lot of change right now, huh?”

“I guess.” He looks up at Harry. “I think Noah’s gonna ask mum to marry her…which I guess is nice for her, but I’d rather just be with you.”

“You are with me.”

“Permanently, though. I’ve felt better just going over on the weekends, it’s plenty.”

“Mum and I said we’d see how this year at school goes, and then we could decide. I want you here, but I have to respect what she wants too.” He smiles down at him. “Poor you, having two parents who just love you so much.” He kisses his forehead.

“Blegh!” He wipes the spit from his forehead away. “What is wrong with you?” He gets up and goes back to his own seat.

“What? A father can’t love on his son anymore just because he’s in the double digits?”

“Exactly, press play.”

Harry laughs and shakes his head as he starts the movie back up.

//

Your semester was off to a great start. You got your office decorated nicely, and you were able to make it a cozy and homey space, which was good because you spent a lot of late nights there. Balancing teaching multiple sections of three different classes while also making time for research was proving to be a little difficult. Sometimes students were hanging out in the lounge while you were working, so you didn’t feel truly alone.

You were on an incredible team. You met bi-weekly with Lisa just for wellness check ins. She knew how overwhelming the first year could be, and she recommended chatting with Harry. He was the last one to go through all of it, so he would have the best tips. Harry was often out of the building by 3PM most days. He held virtual office hours from his home office. You weren’t entirely sure why he always needed to get home so early. Well, you weren’t sure until the answer slapped you in the face.

“And this is my new neighbor, Y/N.” You hear him say as he knocks on your door. “Got a second?”

“Um…sure.” You stand up and see a young boy with Harry.

“Y/N, this is my son, Andy. He had a half day from school today, so he’s hanging out until it’s time to go home.”

“Oh! Hi, Andy. It’s nice to meet you.” You had foolishly assumed the picture of Harry holding a baby on his desk was a nephew or something since he himself looked so young in the photo.

“Nice to meet you too.” He mumbles.

“What grade are you in?”

“Fifth.”

“Oh, so you just started middle school? How’s that going?”

“Okay, I guess.” He shrugs. “Dad, can I go get a snack at the grille?”

“Sure.” Harry fishes for his wallet and hands Andy a ten dollar bill. “Don’t pig out though, I want you to be hungry for dinner.”

“Okay.” He walks away from them and Harry shakes his head with a smile.

“He’s a human disposal right now.”

“I…didn’t know you had a son.” You say awkwardly.

“Yeah! Yikes, have I not mentioned him before now?” You shake your head no. “Guess that means we haven’t spent enough time together then.” You blush slightly and Harry clears his throat, then pushes his glasses up his nose. “He, um, just turned ten in May…sort of had him young.”

“I see.”

“This is his first time being with me during the school year. He wanted to give this school system a try, couldn’t say no to that.”

“Oh…um…so his mom…?” You didn’t want to pry too much. Harry wore a lot of rings so you weren’t sure if he was married or not.

“She lives about thirty minutes away, closer to the lakes. She’s a para at a law office, does well for herself. We were college sweethearts, but it didn’t work out.” He shrugs and you nod. “She’s got a serious boyfriend and he has a daughter a year younger than Andy. I think he felt like his personal space was closing in on him, so he asked to live with me. I usually just get him for the summer when I’m not teaching, it’s been great having him around more.”

“He has your eyes.” You wanted smack your forehead for making such a weird comment.

“He does! One of the first things I noticed about him when they stopped being that weird, dark color babies have when they’re first born.” You simply nod your head. “Well, I’ve taken up a lot of your time…um…let’s plan a lunch or something sometime soon. I’d love to know how your classes are going. I know it can’t be easy teaching the intro courses.”

“I’m doing well with it, actually. I taught a lot of the first-year courses at my previous institution. I’ve just been more bogged down with my research than anything else.”

“I’d like to hear more about that too, if that’s alright. Didn’t get to hear about like everyone else since I was gone during your interviews.”

“Sure, we could do lunch sometime then.” Harry smiles at that.

“Great. You know, we get together to do a monthly game night with the faculty from the English department. It’s in a couple of weeks, I hope you’ll come. A lot of their classes double count within our major, so it would be good for you to meet them.”

“Yeah, just let me know when it is. I enjoyed the hike a couple weeks ago.”

“I was pissed I missed that.” Harry groans. “I had to take Andy-“

“Dad.” Andy comes back, handing Harry his change. He was biting into a BLT.

“Thank you, let’s go into my office, yeah? You’ve got some homework that needs to get done.”

“Fine.” He goes into Harry’s office with a huff.

“Anyways, I’ll let you know when the game night is.”

“Okay, thanks.” You smile at each other and go back to sit down in your office.

He had a kid, a ten-year-old…holy shit. You couldn’t imagine going through your master’s and doctoral program while also raising a child. Good for him, you think.  Andy was a pretty cute kid, a mop of curls, just like his dad.

//

You gave yourself Saturdays off. Saturdays were for sleeping in, doing a quick pilates workout, grocery shopping, laundry and whatever other chores you may have. Saturdays were for curling up on the sofa with a cup of tea and good movie. Saturday nights were for you and Janette, who you have become pretty close with, to go have drinks.

“You need to find someone to bring home with you tonight.” Janette says, as you both begin your second drinks of the evening.

“Oh stop.” You laugh. “I don’t think I have the energy to pretend to be into someone enough to fuck them.” She rolls her eyes at you. “So…what’s this I hear about a game night with the English department?”

“Oh! It’s so much fun. Once a month someone different hosts it. Sometimes we play board games, sometimes it’s card games, one time we even played Heads Up, that was a hoot.” She giggles. “You should definitely come, Lisa’s hosting the next one. Her house is huge and has a beautiful view of the lakes and mountains.”

“I think I might, yeah.”

“Who told you about it? I think Lucas was planning to add you to the email about it.”

“Oh, Harry mentioned it the other day. He said it would be good for me to get to know the other faculty.”

“He’s certainly right about that.”

“I met his son…”

“Andy was in the office! Damn, I try to keep candy in my office for him. He’s so sweet. He was just a little guy when Harry started, can’t believe he’s in middle school.”

“Yeah, he was really polite. Sort of closed off at the same time.”

“Harry seems to think he’s become more self-aware. It’s a big deal for him to want to live with Harry year round.” She sips her drink. “Shouldn’t gossip too much about it though.”

“Right.” You sip your own drink.

“The students seem to like you so far, we’ve all heard good things from our advisees.”

“Really?! That means a lot.”

“Your teaching must speak for itself.”

“Students are always in the downstairs lounge, it’s nice to chat with them sometimes. They always seem to be visiting Harry. Andre and Sandra are down with us too, and they don’t have as many frequent flyers.”

“I know you’re new and all, but I didn’t think you were naïve.” She chuckles.

“What do you mean?”

“Harry perfectly fits the hot teacher trope, Y/N. He’s slightly mysterious with his tattoos and his nail polish, but still totally approachable. He’s dorky, but funny. He’s got a little muscle on him, but he’s not terribly intimidating, plus he’s fucking brilliant. You should sit in on his Literature and Film class.”

“One might think you have a crush on him from the way you speak about him.” You tease her.

“One would have to be straight, my dear.” She winks at you, and you laugh a little too loud. “However, I know an attractive man when I see one. Girls swoon over him all the time. It was really bad when he first started because he was a little closer in age with students, things have calmed down considerably though.”

“He dresses nicely too, I like his style.”

“It’s a little out there, but it works for him.”

“Sometimes I can smell the nail polish remover from my office.” You giggle. “He really hates when they’re chipped, huh?”

“God, you have no idea. Sometimes in the faculty meetings I’ll catch him chipping away at, next time I see him they’re freshly painted again.”

You take an uber home after having four drinks with your friend. You gossiped about some other people, Harry didn’t remain the topic of conversation for long. You get home and strip yourself of your clothes, and wash up before getting into your blanket burrito.

//

Sundays were for getting a head start on the week. Sometimes you worked from your office at home, but today you forgot something at your office at work, so you decide to just grab all your things and work from your office for the day. You were making some progress on your research and you wanted to keep riding the wave you were on.

You had a tie-dye t-shirt on under your coat that had a picture of Goofy on it, and a pair of jeans on. You didn’t need to be super dressed up for some weekend work. No one was usually in the building anyways. You get some up and put some music on while you do some reading and highlighting.

“Hey! Look who it is.”

“Jesus!” You flinch and look up. “Scared the shit out of me, Harry.”

“Sorry about that.” He rubs the back of his neck. “You’re a tad jumpy.”

“Hard not to be when you’re always coming out of nowhere.” You turn your music down and stand up to walk over to him, crossing your arms over your stupid shirt. “What are you doing here?”

“Well, Andy’s with his mum this weekend, and I needed a change of scenery from the home office, so I thought I’d come here.”

“Oh.”

He looks you up and down and smiles.

“Is Goofy your favorite?”

“Huh?”

“Your shirt.” He points to it. “Personally, I’m partial to Mickey Mouse, but Goofy’s fun.”

“This is a really old shirt, I did laundry yesterday so this is what I was left with.”

“Ah…and I suppose you weren’t expecting to bump into your colleague.”

“Correct.”

“Well, I think it’s proper cute, so no worries, I won’t make fun.” He winks and goes into his own office.

You feel your cheek and it’s considerably warmer than it was from before he got there. You shake your head and return to your seat, opting to put your headphones in to not disturb him. Just as you’re getting going in the zone again, he comes into your office and plops down on one of the reupholstered chairs you had on the other side of your desk.

“Yes?” You ask, taking your headphones out.

“I want you to come observe my wellness class this week.”

“Why?”

“Because I think you could use some time to distress. You don’t teach any 8AM’s, right?”

“No…um…what makes you think I need to distress?”

“You just look like you’re carrying a lot of tension. It’s a great class. We chat, we meditate. Sometimes students fall asleep, but I’ve told them it’s okay. If their bodies are telling them they need sleep, then they should sleep. We do a bit of yoga as well. Plus, I just think it would be good for you to observe me.”

“I was told your literature class would be fun to observe, couldn’t I do that instead?”

“And let you get out of a bit of meditation?” He scoffs. “I don’t think so, sister.” You laugh at that.

“Alright, which day should I come?”

“It’s my Tuesday/Thursday course. You can pick which morning you’d prefer.”

“Anything else?”

“Tell me about your research.”

“Are you just using me to procrastinate?” You raise an eyebrow at him.

“Hey, what happens between me and the stack of papers I need to grade is none of your business.” You laugh at him again. Harry was funny, no doubt about that. “Come on, just a few minutes, tell me what you’re working on.”

“I am researching anonymity online, the pros and cons, how social media is mixed into it, stuff like that. People carry themselves different on the various social media platforms, trying to show specific versions of themselves, but when you’re able to remain anonymous, you somehow are truly able to be yourself without fear of judgement.”

“So, what are the cons then?”

“Oh, there are tons. There’s the fear of someone finding this anonymous version of yourself and being exposed. Then there are the people that forget there’s someone else behind the screen and send nasty messages to other anonymously.”

“That’s my biggest fear with Andy. He’s been begging me for a smart phone, but I just don’t feel comfortable with that yet.” He runs a hand through his hair. “I told him when he was thirteen we could talk about it.”

“It’s funny, I didn’t get my first phone until I was fifteen, and it was one of those ones that slid open and had a keyboard. Literally had to use the family desktop if I wanted to go on Facebook.”

“Do people even use Facebook anymore? Feel like it’s just forty-year-old wine moms and Home Depot dads.” Harry snorts.

“No one uses it anymore because it’s not fun. It may as well be LinkedIn.” You scoff.

“Well, I’ll certainly be looking forward to reading what you whip up when the time comes.” He smiles.

“Thanks.”

“I’ll let you get back to it…um, feel like grabbing a bite later?”

“If you don’t disturb me for the next two hours I’ll consider getting lunch with you.”

“Oh, I love a challenge.” He grins and stands up, leaving your office.

You smile and shake your head. Perhaps your neighbor was becoming a pretty good friend.

//

“You’re coming to Lisa’s tonight, right?” Harry asks you as he slings his bag over his shoulder on Friday afternoon.

“I believe so, six, right?”

“Yup! Do you need directions?”

“I have this thing called a smart phone, and get this…it has an app where if I put in an address, it shows me the route!”

“I really hate it when you’re sarcastic with me.” He rolls his eyes. “Get it enough from my son, you know?”

“Will he be joining the fun as well?”

“Nope, he’s with his mum this weekend. I gotta go get him from school and get him all packed up for her.”

“Does she always pick him up?”

“She picks him up on Fridays, and I pick him up on Sundays.” He shrugs. “It just works for us.”

“Makes sense.”

“Right, well, I’ll see you later.”

“Okay.” You smile and wave him off.

After knuckling at your eyes, you head home around 4PM. You wanted to shower and freshen up before heading to Lisa’s. It was a beautiful, chilly Fall evening, so you opt for a light sweater and black jeans, and a pair of boots. You run your fingers through your hair, reapply some makeup, and grab the bottle of white you had chilling in your fridge. You plug the address into your phone, and get going.

It was about a twenty-five minute drive. Lisa lived in a neighborhood with a lot of beautiful homes. Her driveway was long and winding, and on top of a hill.

“This must be a bitch in the winter.” You say to yourself. Maybe that was why she was hosting the September game night. There were a couple of other cars there, so you didn’t feel totally awkward. You walk up to the door and ring the bell.

“Y/N!” Lisa exclaims and hugs you. “Come on in, so glad you could make it.”

“Thank you for having me. I brought some wine.” You hand the bottle to her as you step inside.

“Oh, thank you, dear.”

“Shoes on or off?”

“On is perfectly fine, it’s all hardwood.” Lisa leads you inside. “I’ll get this open.”

You wait for her to pour you a glass, and then she leads you into the living room. Sandra and Mateo were already there. You wave hello and grab a seat.

“Y/N, this is Dan, the English department chair, Alice, Joe, and Fred.”

“Hi, it’s nice to formally meet you all.” You stand up and shake a few hands.

Everyone mingles and eats the snacks Lisa puts out. Her husband was quite the co-host. Janette shows up next, and you end up sitting with her. Harry’s the last to arrive. Lisa gets him a glass of red right away. He looked handsome. A tan cardigan over a white t-shirt and a pair of light wash jeans.

“Sorry I’m late everyone, Paige was over an hour late picking Andy up. There was an accident on the highway and she got stuck behind it, it was a whole thing.”

Paige, it was the first time Y/N heard Harry actually say the name of Andy’s mother.

“No worries, H.” Andre says. “Relax, we haven’t even decided on the game yet.”

“Thank god.” Harry plops down next to you on the couch. “Janette, did Y/N tell you she observed my wellness class yesterday?”

“She did, she told me she fell asleep the second you turned the lights off.” She snickers.

“Please, keep talking about me like I’m not even here.” You roll your eyes. Harry and Janette both lean over you so they can pretend to speak closer. “Okay, okay.” You push them both away. “That’s enough, thank you.”

“Alright, everyone, I was thinking we could play charades, yeah?” Lisa announces. “It’ll keep us limber.”

“English vs. CM?” Dan asks.

“You know it.” Lisa grins.

You were pretty good at charades so you weren’t worried. The couple of glasses of wine certainly helped boost your confidence. It was fun to let a little loose with your colleagues. It was some much needed bonding. Harry was quite competitive, which surprised you because he was usually so chill about everything. It was down to the final points, Harry needed to guess the name of your film correctly.

You put up two fingers.

“Second word.” You nod and he licks his lips in concentration You pretend to open a book and write it in it. “Uhhh, book…” He furrows his brows. You look up like as if you’re reading something, and then you pretend to write the book some more. “Notes…notebook, oh! The Notebook!” You tap your finger on your nose and your team cheers. “Ha!” Harry stands up and hugs you. He lets you go and looks back at everyone. “That was exhilarating. Better luck next time.” He says to the English team.

“Wasn’t exactly a difficult film to guess.” Alice says playfully.

“I had zero control over the slip of paper I chose out of that hat.” You grin.

You all help clean up before heading out. You slip your coat on and head outside after saying your goodbyes.

“Y/N?” You hear Harry from behind you. “You’re good to drive, right?”

“Yeah, of course. Wouldn’t get behind the wheel if I wasn’t.”

“Alright.” He smiles. “Just wanted to be sure.” He walks with you outside.

“It would be pretty bad if I got so fucked up I couldn’t drive home from our department chair’s house.”

“Lisa would actually get a pretty good kick out of it.” He smirks. You get to your car and press the button to unlock it. “Well…I hope you enjoy the rest of your weekend.”

“Same to you, any big plans while Andy’s gone?”

“Not really, I try to save the fun stuff for while he’s with me.”

“Aw, no hot dates.” You wink at him. Okay, maybe some of the wine was still in your system. He blinks at you for a moment and then he bursts out laughing.

“Right, the ladies are really fighting to knock my door down.” He wipes a tear from under his eye. “Can’t remember the last time I went on a proper date to be honest with you. Not exactly a turn on when you bring someone home and they see kid’s toys hanging around.”

“Oh come on, you’ve totally got the hot single dad thing working for you.” You nudge his shoulder. “Janette I usually go out on Saturday nights for drinks, you should come out tomorrow.”

“Um…which, uh, which bar do you go to?”

“Firefly, little more adult. We don’t really see the college kids there.”

“Sure, yeah, I know that place well. Um, what time?”

“Nine?”

“I’ll be there.” He smiles.

“Great! Goodnight, Harry.”

“Night, Y/N.”

He watches as you get into your car and drive away. It wasn’t until you woke up the next morning that you realize that you essentially asked him out, and that you sort of flirted with him. You text Janette immediately and let her know he may show up.

Jan: Yay! Harry’s so much fun to go drinking with, this’ll be great!

Will it? You think to yourself. It was one thing to have a couple of glasses of wine with colleagues, but you usually got pretty drunk with Janette, always taking an uber to and from the bar. You were a nervous wreck all day, and you weren’t sure why. You were hoping all of your Saturday chores would distract you, but they weren’t.

As you get ready, you decide on a blue dress that showed a tasteful amount of cleavage, pairing it with patterned nylons, and boots. Your hair is down and wavy, and your makeup looks cute, for now. You put on your leather jacket and head out. Well, not before doing a quick shot at home. Your leg bounces the entire time in the uber. Janette is already there at your usual table. She waves you over and you sit down.

“I texted Harry earlier.” She says to you. “Just so he really knew he was invited.”

“I don’t have his number, otherwise I would have. Sorry, I feel like I should have asked first. This is sort of like our girl’s night.”

“Are you kidding?! Like I said earlier, Harry is super fun to drink with.”

After you both guzzle down your first drink, Harry arrives. He’s got a black button up on with the first few buttons undone, exposing the birds on his collar bones. He smiles when he sees the both of you.

“H!” Janette says, getting up to hug him and give him a kiss on the cheek.

“Hello, love.” He gives her a squeeze and a returned kiss. He looks at you and you give him a shy smile before giving him a side hug. “Thanks again for the invite, haven’t been to this place in a while.” He slides into the stool.

“Oh, of course!” Janette says. “I was excited when Y/N said you were coming.”

“Apparently I need to do more fun things when Andy’s with his mum.” He nudges you.

“What do you usually do when he’s gone?” You ask him.

“I usually clean up the house, stalk up on food, wash his sheets…dad stuff.” He shrugs with a laugh. The waitress comes over and smiles.

“Can I get you started with anything?”

“Rum and coke would be great, and I’ll start a tab.” He hands her his credit card and she nods.

“Nother round for you two?”

“Please!” Janette says.

“Yes.” You say with a smile.

The waitress nods and smiles. She walks away and looks back at Harry, blushing.

“Oh boy.” Janette grins. “I think you may get lucky tonight, H.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Our waitress did a double take.”

“She’s probably, like, ten years younger than I am or something. Not my style.”

“Fair enough.” She shrugs.

“What about you? Any ladies you’re trying to take home?”

“Well, if I weren’t in a long distance relationship, sure.”

“You and Sadie are still together?” He asks almost in shock.

“Of course we are! You would have known if we broke up.”

“Doesn’t it get difficult?” He frowns.

“I really don’t mind. When we’re able to be together it’s nice, but I like having my own space.” Janette turns to you. “Sadie is a photographer, traveling for National Geographic.”

“That’s incredible!”

The waitress brings all of the dinks over and you clink your glasses.

“Alright, what’s the gossip, ladies? Who are we shitting on?”

“Hmm.” Jaette taps her chin. “Perhaps Dan? He’s obviously still in love with Lisa.”

“Still?” Your jaw drops.

“Back in the day,” Harry starts, “he and Lisa were quite the item. She met Arnold at a conference. He’s a chef.”

“Ah, that’s why the food is so good.”

“Mhm, he’s retired now, but at the time she had to make this big choice between the two of them, and she chose Arnold. Built an entire life with him. Dogs, kids, big house, you name it.” Harry explains.

“And Dan’s been married and divorced twice. Lisa’s the one that got away.” Janette sighs. “Course, Lisa’s incredibly oblivious, or she pretends to be. You’d think they were simply best friends.”

“I wonder what made her choose Arnold over Dan.” You say.

“Good dick.” Janette says. “Simple as that.”

“Oh, come on.” You roll your eyes.

“You come on! Are you going to tell me you’d give up good dick?”

“So you’re telling me she was seeing both of them at the same time, and she chose Arnold because he hit it better?”

“That’s what I’m inferring, yes.” She sips her drink. “Getting to come every time you fuck is worth it, don’t you think?”

Harry nearly chokes on his drink from laughing.

“I forgot how nasty you can be, I love it.” He says and looks at you. “So, Y/N, what’s your answer? Is an orgasm reason enough to choose one guy over another?”

“Well, considering that I dated some real fuck when I was in college just so I could get some good dick, I’d have to say yes.” You say, enjoying the look on both of their faces. “I mean, it’s hard to remember how much you can’t stand someone when they’re railing you to completion.”

“Very true.” Janette agrees. “Also, Arnold is a really sweet man, sort of the whole package for her. I don’t think Lisa liked be challenged, and Dan, I heard, would challenge her on everything.”

“I’m usually up for a debate, but I get that. I don’t need to be in control of everything, but agreeable people are better.” You say.

“I wouldn’t say it’s because he’s agreeable.” Harry says, finishing his drink, and gesturing towards the waitress for another. “Arnold is smitten, not just in love, big difference.”

“How so?” You ask.

“When you’re…oh, thank you.” He smiles at the waitress brings him a new drink. “When you’re smitten, you walk around with rose colored glasses, to some that can be a bad thing, but I think when you’re that in love, you should really adore the person you’re with too. Arnold adores Lisa, Dan doesn’t. You can tell by the way they both look at her.”

It was nice discussing things like this with people who also observed people the way you did. It makes you wonder, though, what they may have picked up on about you.

After a few more drinks, you knew you needed to stop when your vision began to get hazy. Harry only had his two drinks since he drove himself. He drank some water as the night went on.

“H, Y/N lives not too far from you, help her save a couple bucks and drive her home, would you?”

“Jan…” You scold her.

“She’s right, I could give you a lift, if you want?”

“Um…well…sure.”

You both say goodnight to Janette, and Harry helps you into his car. He keeps the music low as he pulls out of the bar.

“So, where am I taking you?”

“To The Ledges, do you know where that is?”

“Sure do.” He chuckles. “Lived there myself when I first moved to the area.”

“Really?! It’s a great size place. I love it.”

“Got any pets or anything?”

“Nope, just me, myself, and I.” You grin.

“And you prefer it that way?”

“Well, after living at home my whole life, and then having various roommates over the years, I’d say that I’m quite enjoying living alone.”

“Good for you. I’m glad you’re liking it here so much. The person you replaced was such a twat.” You burst into laughter. “I’m serious! He never came to any of the outings. It was like he didn’t even care that we were trying to get him to engage. The second he got his PhD he left. Good riddance.” Harry scoffs.

“I really like it. It’s a lot different than being at a college in the city. I wasn’t sure how I’d do working in a college town, but I’m really enjoying it. I feel safe, you know? I didn’t always feel safe in the city.”

“I’m sorry, that had to have been difficult.”

“On the late nights it was. I usually had UPD walk me to my car. I don’t really have to do that here. I feel like I gained a lot of independence back.”

Harry pulls up to the apartment building, and parks. He turns the ignition off and you raise your eyebrows at him.

“What are you doing?”

“I was going to walk you to the door…”

“Oh…you don’t have to.”

“I insist.”

“Really, it’s okay. Um, thank you for the ride, it was really nice of you.”

“Thanks for the invite, I had fun.” He smiles.

“Me too.” You smile back and get out of the car.

You hear the car turn back on, and you know he waits to drive off until you’re inside.

//

“Paige, I get him for Christmas, why are you trying to change things?”

“You usually get him for Christmas because you don’t usually get him for the school year.” She crosses her arms as she stands outside in the frigid early December air.

“But you just got him for Thanksgiving.”

“You don’t celebrate Thanksgiving!”

“I observe!” He takes a deep breath. “His plane ticket is already paid for, he’s coming with me to London like always, and he will be back to you for New Year’s, like always.” He steps closer to her. “He looks forward to seeing my mum and Gem every winter, please don’t take that away from him.”

“It’s just…we’re hosting a Hanukkah party, and Noah really wanted him to be a part of it…”

“Shit.” Harry rubs the back of his neck. “There’s Jewish holidays all the time, couldn’t Andy be a part of the next celebration?”

“Dad! Come on, the Pats game is starting!”

“One second, just saying bye to mum!” He yells to Andy, and looks back at Paige, eyes pleading.

“Alright…he can still go with you.”

“Thank you.” Harry breathes. “His cousins would miss him terribly.”

“I know, I’d feel terrible doing that to him. I’m just trying to balance all of this. I wanna be a good partner to Noah, and somewhat of a mother figure to Rachel, but I don’t want Andy to feel like I’m favoring them over him. He comes first, he always will.”

“I’m sure he knows that.” He puts his hand on her shoulder. “Have a latke for me, yeah?”

“Yeah.” She smiles and gives his hand a squeeze before getting back into her car.

Harry heads inside and sits on the couch while Andy sits in his usual spot on the love seat, entranced by the football game.

“What was that all about? I heard shouting.”

“Could barely hear each other over the wind outside. Nothing to worry about. We were just confirming plans for your holiday break.”

“I’m still going to London, right?”

“Of course! No question about it.”

Andy smiles at Harry before returning his attention to the TV. Harry was usually very honest with Andy, but he didn’t need to worry him with any of the drama.

//

“You survived your first semester, congrats!” Janette says, popping a bottle of champagne as she walks into your office.

“Not over yet, I have finals to grade.”

“Whatever, the kids are gone, that’s something to celebrate.” She nods towards the plastic cups you keep in your office, and you grab two. “Any plans for the holidays? Going home at all?”

“Oh sure. Doing the Hanukkah thing with my folks, and then doing New Year’s in Boston with some friends.”

“Fun!”

“Wait.” Harry says, overhearing, grabbing the bottle for a swig. “You’re Jewish?”

“Yes?” You raise an eyebrow at him and take a sip from your cup.

“Brilliant. Paige’s boyfriend is Jewish, and I think it’s confusing for Andy. He doesn’t much like asking th guy questions, maybe he could talk to you sometime.”

“Sure.” You shrug. “Any plans for the holidays?”

“Yeah, Andy comes home to London for Christmas, and then I send him back for New Year’s with his mum.”

“You send him on the plane alone?”

“I haven’t always, but they let me walk him right to the gate, and he flies first class, so it’s very safe. They let his mum wait at the other gate too. I like to stay home for a few weeks if I can. I’m afraid I’m a bit of a mama’s boy.” He takes another swig of the bottle. “I am not looking forward to grading these papers. I really should just have each class do a presentation, can grade those right on the spot.”

“Tell me about it.” Janette groans. “My Advanced Comp class is going to be the death of me.”

“Well, clearly this champagne is going to keep us all awake enough to get through it.”

The three of you stand there laughing. You were looking forward to the long winter break. It would give you plenty of time to work on your research, and you wouldn’t be disturbed by any students popping in and out of your office, as much as you enjoyed the chats.

//

It was the beginning of January, there you were, working away in your office. You had a long flowy dress on, for some reason, and your door bursts open.

“Y/N! I’ve traveled across the pond for you!”

“Harry! You’re back.”

“That’s right, darling, I’m back.” He pushes everything off your desk, walks around to your and pulls you close to him. He crashes his mouth to yours.

“Oh, Harry.” You moan.

“Oh, Y/N.” He moans back before laying you on your desk. “I’m going to make you feel so good.” He rips your dress of and kneels in front of you, diving his head between your legs.

You wake up in a cold sweat, panting. Your eyes snap open and you grimace. Your legs feel sweaty, so you kick your blankets off.

“What the fuck?” You say to yourself as you sit up. Harry was attractive, but you never once fantasized about him. You reach between your legs and gasp. “Did I just fucking have a wet dream?!” You lick at your sticky fingers and shake your head in disbelief. “Shower, go shower Y/N.” You were talking to yourself, yes, but it was needed to help you calm down.

You were incredibly embarrassed. Harry was your friend, not someone you wanted to fuck, and certainly not on your desk in your office at work. Most people would be turned off, but doing it in a professional place was a big turn off for you. The idea of getting caught was also not a turn on for you. If you were ever caught you could be fired, and it just wasn’t worth it. Neither was dating a colleague. It wasn’t against the rules or anything, nor was it frowned upon, but dating in the workplace could lead to a lot of problems. You had a PhD on the line. Maybe it was time to just suck it up and go for a one night stand.

//

You had forgotten all about your dream by the time the January faculty meeting hit. That is, until Harry was the last to walk in. Your face flushes immediately. His hair was a little longer, and he had a bit of scruff that he normally wouldn’t have. He smiles and says hello to a couple of people, and then sits down right next to you.

“Hi.” He whispers with a smile.

“Hello.” You swallow and don’t look at him.

“How was your-“

“Can we get started?” Lisa addresses the group. “Much to go over, we need to start talking about the fall schedule.”

You were grateful for the distraction of the discussion, but you felt Harry’s eyes burn into you every few moments. He had to have known you were acting weird, you wouldn’t fucking look at him. Even if you thought to try, you just couldn’t. Two hours later, and the meeting finally ends. You gather your things quickly and head out, and down to your office. Just as you’re able to take a deep breath, you look up and see Harry standing in your doorway, hands in his pockets, squinting at you.

“Are we good?” He asks.

“Um.” You focus on the space behind him. “Yes, why wouldn’t we be?”

“Because you refuse to look at me. Even now, you’re not really looking at me.” He shifts his weight so he’s stand up normally. “Are you mad because I didn’t reach out over break?”

“What? No! I could care less about that, it wasn’t like I reached out to you.”

“So…what is it then? You make eye contact all the time, it’s not like you to not.”

“I…” You suck both of your lips into your mouth. “It’s nothing, it’s stupid, I’m being stupid.”

“If it’s stupid then just tell me.” He comes in and sits down on your loveseat.

“Harry, please.” You shake your head and sit down in your desk chair.

“Come on, Y/N. Clearly something’s bothering you.”

“Ugh.” You groan and get up to close your door. You sit on the edge of your desk. “I…had a rather odd dream a week or so ago…”

“Okay?”

“And you were in it.” You whisper.

“What was I doing in your dream?” He whispers back.

“That’s just it, I don’t know.” You rest your chin in your palm as you cross your arms over your chest.

“Well I must have done something to make you not even look at me. Did I hurt you, do something scary?”

“No…I suppose I wouldn’t call it scary, but I was certainly disturbed when I woke up.”

“What then?” A smirk grows on his face. “Don’t tell me you had a sex dream or something.” When your face stays the way it is his smile fades. “You had a sex dream about me?” You nod yes. “Where were we?”

“Here.”

“In your office?!”

“Shh!” You swat your hands in his direction. “Do you want the building to hear?”

“You had a dream that we fucked in your office?”

“Well, it wasn’t fucking per say…you sort of…I don’t know…it doesn’t matter.”

“No tell me, let’s talk this through.”

“You wiped everything off my desk, ripped my clothes off, sat me on top, and then…” You wince slightly. “You sort of…got your head between my legs, and then I woke up.” You say the rest of it quickly. “And I was utterly concerned when I woke up because I swear I don’t see you that way, Harry. You’re my friend, just my friend. I forgot all about it, and then I saw you and got all embarrassed again.”

He stands up from his seat and gives you a shy smile.

“It was just a dream, you don’t need to be embarrassed. We’re adults, yeah? Let’s act like it.”

“I just don’t want you thinking I’m some…sex maniac or something.”

“I don’t.”

“Okay…I’m sorry if I worried you during the meeting. It really is good to see you, I’m glad you’re back. We could have lunch soon, I’d love to hear about London.”

“Yeah, maybe.” He smiles, but you can tell it’s fake.

He heads out and goes into his own office, closing the door behind him. For whatever reason, your words hurt him. Just my friend rang through his mind. It wasn’t as though it were a lie, you were just friends, but you made it clear you didn’t want him to be the one between your legs in a dream. At first he was flattered, but now…well, now he just felt sad. Was he not good enough to be the one to get you off? Even if in a dream? He hears a knock on the door.

“Yes?”

You open it slowly.

“I hurt your feelings…”

“A little.” He admits. “Not sure why, though.”

“I just didn’t want you to think I was objectifying you.”

“It was a dream, Y/N, you have zero control over it.”

“But I must have been thinking of you subconsciously, right? Isn’t that how that works?”

“Okay, so maybe you were thinking of me and maybe that got mixed in with…whatever else.”

“I just don’t want you thinking I want to fuck you, that’s all.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better.” He mumbles.

“You want me to want to fuck you?!”

“Now who’d being loud?!”

“Sorry…”

“It’s just, well, how would you feel if I told you I didn’t want to fuck you, you probably wouldn’t feel too great about yourself.”

“It’s not that you’re not attractive, Harry-“

“This is making it worse.” He runs his hands over his face and looks at you. “It was just a dream, nothing to worry about, okay?”

“Things won’t be weird between us?”

“No.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

“I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have acted the way I did in that meeting, then we wouldn’t have needed to talk about it.”

“Did you tell Janette?”

“I resent that, just because I’m close with her doesn’t mean she knows every bit of my business.”

“I just didn’t know if I should be expecting some teasing from her.”

“No, none, and you better not tease me either.”

“I won’t.” He smiles. “London was good by the way…”

“Good, I’m glad.” You smile at him. “Talk later?”

“Yeah.”

//

“Not that I’m not happy to be out with the two of you, but why are the three of us out to dinner?” Andy asks.

“Mum and I thought it would be nice to see what you wanted to do for your February vacation. Usually you come see me and we go skiing, but mum knows how to ski too-“

“You’re canceling our trip?!”

“No! We were just thinking mum could take you this year.”

“But it’s your cabin.”

“And I don’t mind sharing.”

“Andy…I thought it would be nice for the four of us to go together. Noah knows how to snowboard, and Rachel wants to take a skiing lesson.”

“Great, so now this going to be a huge family trip? I don’t wanna do that, Mum.” Andy groans.

“Andy.” Harry sighs. “I think Mum and I have been very accommodating to you this year. Could you please just try to help us out a little? Do you know how many kids would kill to have their parents take them on a ski trip for their breaks?”

“I’m not trying to be ungrateful, I’m sorry.” He looks down at his plate and then back up to Harry. “Can’t you still come? The house is big enough.”

“It’s not a bad idea, Har.” Paige says to him and his eyes widen.

“Would Noah and Rachel feel comfortable with that? I wouldn’t want to overstep…”

“I’ll talk to them, I can’t see either of them feeling weird about it. She refers to you as Uncle Harry as it is, and it’s your cabin, I don’t think Noah would care.”

“Would you be alright with it?”

“Sure.” She shrugs. “There’s that spare room on the other end of the house, so you could have your own space and the kids could stay in the bunk room.”

“Wait, so this is happening?” Andy perks up. “You’d really come, Dad?”

“Yeah, if it’s not weird for anyone, I’m in.”

Andy gets up from the table and moves to hug both Harry and Paige, both of them looking at each other surprised. They give each other mental high fives for being able to figure things out.

“I’m really excited now.” Andy says as he sits back down.

“Okay, now that we’ve got that out of the way…” Paige grins and looks back at one of the waitresses, giving her a nod. Happy birthday starts being sung throughout the restaurant.

“Oh my god.” Harry closes his eyes and groans. “This dinner wasn’t about me…”

“Nonsense.” She chuckles. “How often do we all get to celebrate together?”

A small cake with candles is brought over in front of Harry. The singing continues and he feels thoroughly embarrassed.

“Wanna help me blow ‘em out?” He asks Andy.

“Yeah!” He leans over and blows out the candles and the restaurant claps.

Harry looks at Paige and shakes his head. She laughs and thanks the waitresses.

“Andy, go get in Dad’s lap, I’ll take your picture together. I’ve got your gift for him in the car too, I’ll go get it.” Andy crawls into Harry’s lap, and Paige uses Harry’s phone to snap the photo. She beams when she looks at it. “You should get this one printed, it’s adorable.” She gets up and leaves to go get the gifts.

“Did you know about all this?” He says to Andy giving him a squeeze before letting him go.

“She just told me we were meeting you for dinner instead of going straight to your place.” He shrugs.

Paige returns shortly with a few cards and bags.

“Alright, this is from Rachel and Noah.”

“They didn’t have to get me anything…”

“They insisted!”

Harry takes the card out and smiles. Rachel had clearly drawn him a picture, it was cute. His smile grows wider when he takes a nail kit out of the small bag.

“I was due for one of these, I’ll have to text Noah a thank you.” Harry opens the next bag and sees a card from Andy that he also drew. In the bag was a new set of pocket squares for his suits, that he desperately needed, some bandanas, scrunchies, and a gift card to his favorite clothing store. “Went all out son, thank you.”

“Thought your…what was the word you used, Mum?”

“Wardrobe.” She chuckles.

“Yeah! Thought your wardrobe could use an update.”

“Should I be offended?” He says, raising an eyebrow.

“I think you should be happy your son has your keen eye for fashion.” She slides another card over. “That one’s from me.”

“You’ve done enough.” He says before leaning over to kiss the top of Andy’s head.

“Just open it.”

Harry rolls his eyes and opens the card. He starts laughing. There was some joke about being close co-parents, and a gift card to one of his favorite restaurants.

“Thank you.”

“More than welcome.”

Andy hugs Paige goodbye in the parking lot before hopping in the backseat of Harry’s car.

“Were you surprised, Dad?”

“Very! Thank you again for the gifts, it was very thoughtful of you.”

“I’m more excited about going skiing now.”

“Sorry if we scared you. I just wanna make sure Mum gets to see you.”

“I know.” He sighs. “Hey, Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“How come Mum has Noah, but you don’t have anyone?”

“I have you.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I just…I don’t know, I don’t have much time for dating.”

“What do you do on the weekends when I’m not with you?”

“Sometimes I see friends, or I catch up on some grading, I clean up too. You’re gonna start doing more chores, that would be the ultimate birthday gift.”

“It’s okay if you wanna date, you know…”

“I don’t exactly need your permission.” He chuckles.

“I know…but I want you to know I’m okay with it.”

“Well, I appreciate that, thanks.”

//

When Harry walks into his office Monday morning he’s surprised to see a vase full of flowers. There’s a small card with it:

Happy Birthday, H!

-        Y/N

Harry smiles to himself and smells the flowers, he couldn’t believe you remembered. He only mentioned it once when his birthday was. Thirty-two was off to a great start. He hangs his jacket up and gets his computer set up. His first class wasn’t until 9AM, so he had some time to prep and wake up a bit more before heading to the lecture hall. He sees you walk by on your way to your office.

“Oh! You’re here!” You had two coffees in your hands. “My gift wasn’t complete yet.” You walk in and hand him his coffee. “Black coffee.” You smile.

“Thank you, the flowers are lovely.”

“Not that I thought you needed more plants in here.” You joke. Harry had a fuck ton of plants in his office windowsill.

“Well excuse me for enjoying nature.” He scoffs, and takes a sip of his coffee. You sit down on the couch in his office.

“Did you have a good weekend?”

“I did, Paige and I took Andy out to dinner to talk about his February break, and it turned into a little surprise birthday thing, it was nice. Can’t remember the last time we did something like that as a family. I mean, we have shared birthday parties for him and stuff, but I think he enjoys when it’s just the three of us.”

“If you don’t mind me asking…did he ever know the two of you as a couple?”

“No.” Harry sighs. “I think he was almost two when she and I called it quits. Now look at us, we’re all going on a ski trip together, including her boyfriend and his daughter.”

“That won’t be weird?”

“Not really, I’ve known Noah a while.”

“How long have they been together?”

“Well, they’ve been a couple for almost three years, but they were friends beforehand. He’s one of the lawyers at the office she works at. He came on, like, a year after she and I split, they were friends for a while, and I think once he knew she and I weren’t getting back together he made his move.” Harry shrugs. “No skin off my nose, I just wanted her to be happy. His daughter Rachel is as cute as a button too.” He takes another sip of his coffee. “Poor thing, her mum died in a car accident when she was really little. Paige is a great mum, so it was a good fit for everyone I think. The only thing I don’t love is that Noah is, like, almost forty.”

“How old is Paige?”

“Almost thirty-four, so it’s not super weird, but…I think that’s another reason why he waited to ask her out, you know?”

“I’m surprised he doesn’t have his own cabin to take her too.”

“Nope, just a massive house on the lake.” Harry chuckles and looks at his flowers again. “Thank you again for these, it was a nice surprise.”

“Oh, don’t mention it.” She sips her own coffee and gets up to go to her own office.

“How’d you know I’d like these?”

“Everyone likes getting flowers, Harry.” She smiles and leaves.

//

Harry had cancelled his classes during the week of Andy’s February break like he always did. He had forum posts for them to work in in his absence. Going to the cabin wasn’t ask awkward as he thought, and it was good bonding for Rachel and Andy. Harry, Noah, and Paige could hear the two of them giggling as they watched movies at night, it was sweet. Harry mostly stuck with skiing with Andy during the day, and he and Paige took him for a run or two as well. As Andy got older co-parenting got easier, for whatever reason. Any lingering feelings between Harry and Paige had simply fizzled into a normal friendship. There was no malice between them which was good for Andy to see.

“Uncle Harry?” Rachel asks one night at dinner.

“Yes, love?”

“How come you have an accent, but Andy doesn’t?”

“Because Andy wasn’t born and raised in a country where people sound like me. Although sometimes you sound like me when you’ve been around me a lot.” Harry looks at Andy.

“My friends tease me for how I say pasta sometimes.” He chuckles. “I say that like you.”

“It’s true! You say taco like Dad too. It’s pretty funny.”

“Well, those are my two favorite foods so it makes sense.”

“How come you have so many tattoos?” Rachel asks.

“Honey, tattoos can be really personal.” Noah explains.

“It’s alright, I got a lot of them when I was younger. Think my last one was when Andy was born, got his initials my forearm.” He extends his arm out.

“Harry.” Paige clears her throat, nodding towards his mermaid tattoo and shakes her head no.

“Oop! Sorry.” He blushes. “Sometimes I forget she’s there.” He chuckles.

“Can we paint nails after dinner, Uncle Harry?” Rachel pleads.

“Sure! Brought that nail kit you and Dad so nicely got for me.”

“Yay! It’s okay, right, Daddy?”

“Of course, princess.” Noah says lovingly towards his daughter.

After dinner, Harry sits with Rachel at the kitchen table, to not make a mess, while Paige, Noah, and Andy sit in the living room watching TV. On the outside looking in the scene may be odd, but this was working well for all of them. Andy was having a good time and that was all Harry cared about.

//

It was a Thursday night, you both swiped right, and you met him at a bar. After a few drinks you climbed into the backseat of his car and before you knew it you were bouncing up and down on his dick while he pressed hot kisses to your neck. His name was Gabriel, and he was just what you needed right now. Or he would have been if he had been able to last a moment longer. You were so close, and he came into the condom before you had a chance to have your own release. He didn’t even ask if you got yours, he just kissed your cheek and lifted you off him.

“Care to take this back to my place?” He says.

“Think I’ve had enough for one night, thanks.” You say as you button your pants back up.

“Let me at least drive you home.”

“No, that’s okay, I can take an uber.” You get out of his car and slam the door shut. He gets out and looks at you, you turn around and look at him.

“Another time?”

“No, I don’t think so.” You say bluntly and his face falls.

“Thought we just had a nice time.”

“You had a nice time because you got to finish.” You huff as you fix your jacket. You take your phone out and order your ride.

“Thought you did, my bad.”

“Right.” The car pulls up, and you get in.

This is why you hated doing things like this. Men on these dating apps just wanted to get theirs. They just wanted a place to stick it and they didn’t care if you were left satisfied or not. You take a nice, long shower when you get back, scrubbing the smell of Gabriel away from you. You grimace when you see the kiss mark he left on your collar bone. Luckily a shirt and scarf would cover it, and it didn’t look like it would last longer than a couple of days anyways.

//

“Well, were you being vocal about what you needed?” Janette asks you as she sits on the edge of your desk Monday morning.

“I said things like right there or like that…he didn’t even warn me that he was coming, he just did. Then he wanted me to come back to his place with him…”

“Maybe he would have put on a better show for you.”

“The previews certainly didn’t leave me wanting to see more.”

“Preview for what.” Harry says, peeping his head in. He had a slight tan from skiing, and it was sort of cute.

“Y/N saw a really bad preview for this movie about this loser, that’s all.” Janette says. “How was your week away?”

“Actually, not too bad. I think it was good for us to all do something together. Andy had a great time, that’s all I cared about. He even agreed to be with his mum for the entire April vacation.”

“Oh? What’s she going to take him to do?” You ask.

“They’re gonna go to New York to see some shows, I thought it was a great idea. It’ll be good for him to get some real culture.”

“And that’s not a trip you wanted to join in on?” Janette smirks.

“Hmm, large cabin where I have my own space or cramped hotel room?” He weighs his option. “I’ll take the bitter cold and the cabin, thanks.”

“What do you think you’ll do while he’s away?” You ask.

“No idea, I’ve got time to figure it out. Honestly, it’s perfect timing because that’s right during advising weeks so I’ll actually be able to help my students without him sitting in the corner complaining that he’s bored.” He rolls his eyes. “I don’t what’s gonna turn my hair grey first, him or the college students.”

“Oh please.” Janette groans. “Men look so much better with a little grey, makes you look distinguished, it’s us who look like old crones when we let our greys out. I don’t wanna hear it.” She shakes her head and looks at her watch. “Gotta get ready for my next class, so you later.”

“Is it true?”

“What?”

“Do men look better with a little grey.” He runs a hand through his hair.

“Depends on the guy, I think. I mean, I’m twenty-six so a little grey wouldn’t scare me away, but I’m not exactly looking for a silver fox.” You laugh and so does he.

“I missed your sense of humor last week. As good of a time it was, I felt like I had to be very careful about the jokes I cracked.”

“Well, no need for a filter here.”

Harry nods and goes into his own office. He thinks for a moment and then peeps his head back into yours.

“So, what movie preview did you see that you didn’t like?”

“What?”

“When I first came in, you and Jan were talking about-“

“Oh! Um, it was so bad I don’t even remember the name.” You tug slightly at your scarf out of nerves.

“Too bad, I could’ve searched it and had a good laugh.” He shrugs and leaves again.

Sometimes you wondered what Harry’s dating life was like, not that it was any of your business. He had mentioned a couple of times he didn’t make a lot of time for it, but what about one night stands? Did he make sure women got theirs when he was with them?

//

“I’m going to look like a fucking idiot compared to all of you.” You pout as you get your robe and hood on.

“You will not. Sort of miss the master’s robe, honestly, they’ve basically got pockets. You’ll have your doctoral one soon enough.” Harry says, putting on his own robes.

“I can never get this thing right, could you help me?”

“Of course.” He steps behind you and adjusts the blue hood for you.

“Do I need the cap? It’s just an honor’s ceremony.”

“You certainly do, and get used to it. This is one of three times a year you’ll need to put this on.”

“Three?”

“Grad commencement and undergrad commencement are separate ceremonies.”

“And we have to go to both?”

“We do.” He sighs. “You’re also not the only professor on this campus that isn’t a PhD yet, so don’t get down on yourself, yeah? You’re working towards it.” You turn towards him and his hands place gently on your shoulders.

“Thanks, Har.”

He smiles at the nickname and lets go of you. You and the other CM professors head over to the CM Honors Inductee Ceremony. It was a nice event for the honors students within the major. As soon as it ends you rip your cap off. You didn’t enjoy wearing it at all. You mingle with a few parents and take pictures with some of the students that wanted you in their photos.

“Y/N?” One of your students, Kayla, says.

“Yes?”

“I was wondering…for our final assignment, instead of writing you a paper about signs, could I make you a video instead?” She was in your Rhetoric and Semiotics class.

“Hmm, I think that could be really interesting. What would a video entail?”

“Well, I thought I could go to the grocery store and show unwritten rules, like how someone will put a divider down on the belt without having to be asked, or how when you go up to the deli you just grab a ticket, how branding works, stuff like that.”

“As long as you still send me a references page I think that could be fine. Of course, I’d have to show it to the rest of the class.”

“Deal.” She smiles. “Thanks.” You nod and then she walks away.

You head back to your office to hang your robe and hood up in your closet. You grab your back and smack right into your Harry.

“Jesus.” You say and back away. “I’m sorry, I didn’t even see you.”

“No, that was me, I was walking too fast.” He unzips his robe and hangs it up same as you in his own closet.

“Why were you in such a hurry?”

“Single mum at the ceremony got a little too liberal with the hugging, had to get out of there.” He chuckles. “You hungry?”

“I could eat.”

“Wanna go down to the pub? I don’t have Andy’s still in New York…”

“Sure! That sounds great, actually. Let me just drop all this off in my car.” He nods and you both walk down to the parking lot before walking the rest of the way to the pub.

You both sit down at the bar and order drinks. You both end up getting Mediterranean wraps, not feeling quite hungry enough for nachos this time around.

“Any summer plans yet? I know it’s early, but-“

“Paige and I need to sit down with Andy to figure all that out. He got to stay with me all year, so it would be make sense for him to be with her for the summer, but I have a feeling he won’t like that. School gets out in June for him so I’ve got some time…but I have a feeling it’s not going to be easy.”

“Why do you think he wants to be with you so much more?”

“I just think he’s at an age where maybe he feels more comfortable being with me. He’ll be eleven soon, changes are starting to happen.” He chuckles. “Maybe Paige and I could split up the summer or something.”

“How have his grades been? Wasn’t that part of the deal?”

“His marks have been great, he’s doing well. He has some great friends and he loves his teachers. He really enjoyed playing basketball this winter in the town league too.”

“Not that I’m an expert on custody agreements, but couldn’t you do what you’re doing now? Wednesdays and every other weekend with Paige, and the rest of the time with you?”

“He hates the back and forth in the summer, that’s why we agreed on summers with me. I mean, she still sees him in the summer, obviously, but he usually doesn’t have to go every other weekend. We’ll see.” He sighs. “We try to give him what he wants to not make waves, but at the end of the day we’re the parents and he’s the child and what we say goes.” He finishes off his drink and asks for another. “Need a refill?”

“Sure, I could probably handle two.” You shrug.

Two turned into three, then, four, and finally five. The sun had gone down and it was dark outside. You two had split a chocolate lava cake. The bar was starting to fill with college students.

“Holy shit, it’s almost ten!” You say. “Should probably go before some of these kids try to buy me a drink for a passing grade.” Harry laughs at that and agrees. You split the bill, and nearly lose your balance as you hop off the bar stool, clutching as his bicep.

“Wanna split an uber? I can’t drive, and I don’t think you can either.” He chuckles.

“Yeah, good idea. I’ll order it.”

“No, I’ve got it.” He takes his phone out as you both head outside. The car pulls up after a couple of minutes and you both get in. “We’ll drop you off first.”

“Alright.” You smile. “This was fun tonight. I like when we get to hang out.”

“Me too.” He smiles at you. “Can’t believe your first year is almost done.”

“I know, it’s really flown by.” You crane your neck from side to side and sigh. “Maybe now that I know the area better I’ll feel more comfortable trying to really meet someone.”

“Meet someone for what?” You look up at him, making a face as if the answer is obvious. “Oh! That’s cute you think you have time for a relationship.” He laughs.

“Excuse me?”

“Y/N, you spend all your free time on your research.”

“I just spent some free time with you, didn’t I? Janette and I go out, and-“

“Janette travels with Sadie in the summers.”

“Guess that leaves me stuck with you then.” You nudge him. “Actually, I’m hoping to go to Boston for a bit, visit friends and family. I’m hoping to get to the beach too. I love summer.”

“You should come hiking with me. Despite the black flies, May is great because it’s not humid yet.”

“Might have to take you up on that, I really enjoyed it this fall.” The car pulls up in front of your house. “Have a good night, Harry.”

“You too.” You both reach over and hug each other. “See you Monday.”

“See you Monday.” You smile and get out.

//

Once the school year was over, you sat with Lisa and went over your course evaluations. Overall you did really well, and she reaffirmed how happy she was that she hired you. She wishes you a happy summer, and that’s about it. You ask if you’re allowed to use your office in the summer, and she says yes but it gets really hot so it’s not as great as you may think.

Saturday night as you’re having your last girl’s night with Janette you get a text.

Harry: Hey! Know it’s last minute, but I’m taking Andy up Rattlesnake tomorrow morning, care to join?

Y/N: sure! As long as he doesn’t mind…

Harry: got his permission already, we’re all set ;)

You bite your bottom lip and smile, and Janette peaks over your shoulder to see what you could be smiling at.

“God, what a gift it would be if I come back in the fall and you two are dating.”

“Oh, stop.” You nudge her. “We’re friends.”  

“Would it be bad to be more?”

“I don’t really think it’s a good idea to go out with someone you work with…”

“Good luck finding anyone else who’s decent around here then.”

“I could meet someone in Boston, do the long distance thing.”

“That gets old.”

“You’re doing it!”

“Yeah, but I’m more of a free spirit. Sadie and I don’t care about marriage or kids or a house in the hills. You, my sweet friend, would like all of those things.”

“True…” You finish your drink. “Well, if I don’t want to puke on this hike tomorrow I should probably get going.” You both stand and hug and kiss and wish each other fantastic summers.

You get a restful night’s sleep, and get yourself ready in the morning. You had invested in a pair of hiking boots in the fall, so you were feeling prepared. You put on a pair of spandex shorts, and put on some mesh shorts over those. You opt for a sweat resistant short sleeve shirt, and pull your ponytail through a baseball cap. You get everything in your small pack that you’ll need: sunglasses, sunscreen, water bottle, granola bar, rag, and bug spray. You drive out to the trail and park, lathering your arms and legs with sunscreen. You see Harry’s car pull up, and Andy hops out, bandana and clip keeping his hair back, just like Harry’s. Harry had a sleeveless shirt on and you could really see the definition in his shoulder muscles. You put your sunglasses on and head over to them.

“Morning, boys.” You smile.

“Morning.” Harry smiles back.

“Hi, Y/N.” Andy mumbles shyly.

“Hi, Andy. Dad told me you’re doing well in school. Bet you’re about ready to be done, huh?”

“Yeah, only a few more weeks.”

“Can’t believe he’s going into sixth grade. Makin’ me feel old.”

“You are old.” Andy giggles.

“Mhm, thanks.” Harry rolls his eyes. “Let’s get going, shall we?”

Andy walks a few paces ahead of you and Harry.

“His birthday is soon, yeah?”

“Yeah, next weekend, actually…um…Paige is hosting his party this year.” Andy looks back at Harry making a face, and Harry makes a face back at him.

“That’ll be fun.” You say, not noticing the exchange as you look at the various trees surrounding you.

“Yeah…it will be. Um…it’s Saturday afternoon…”

“Weather looking good?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s great. Probably still cold to swim at the lake, though, right?”

“Yeah, but the kids will still have a water balloon fight.”

“Dad, just ask her!” Andy groans as he turns around again.

“Ask me what?”

“He wants you to go with him to the party.”

“Andy!” Harry snaps at him. “Keep walking.”

Andy rolls his eyes and continues to walk ahead of you.

“Is that true, you want me to come?”

“Is that weird?”

“Not really.” You shrug. “Although, I’d only know you and Andy.” You chuckle.

“See…it’s just…Paige’s parents will be there, and that’s fine, but Noah’s parents are coming too, and it would be nice to have a buffer other than my son. He’ll be off playing games and eating junk good, I don’t want him to think he needs to babysit me…”

“I totally get it. I don’t think I have plans, I could go for a little while.”

“Really? I’m not asking too much?”

“Not at all, what are friends for?” You smile and he smiles back.

You walk a few paces ahead of Harry, but still behind Andy, giving Harry the perfect view of your bum in your shorts. He wasn’t staring, but he certainly wasn’t not looking. When you get up to the top your jaw drops. The view of the mountains and the lakes were even better in the late spring. You snap a few photos, taking one of Harry and Andy, Harry taking one of you looking out, and then you all sit down for some water and snacks.

“Andy, do you enjoy hiking with your Dad?”

“Yeah, it’s a lot of fun. We go a lot over the summer.”

“Andy’s hiked two of the 4,000 footers, hoping to get a couple more done this summer.”

“Wow! That’s incredible.”

“You should come with us, Y/N. We’re going to camp overnight at one of them.”

“Oh, you don’t wanna go camping with me, I’m a real snob. I need running water and indoor plumbing.”

“It has that.” Harry says, taking a sip of his water. “There’s bathroom, no shower or anything, but working toilets. You bring all your own camping gear. It’s pretty cool.”

“I’ll consider it. Think I should probably go on hikes that are longer than a mile up.” You laugh.

“You guys can do during the week now that school’s over, right?” Andy says.

“I wouldn’t want to exclude you, Andy.” You smile.

“Don’t worry about me.” He crunches down on his granola bar. He shares another look with Harry, but again it goes unnoticed by you, too busy looking out at the beauty of the mountains and lakes.

You all hike down the mountain in not time and say your goodbyes. Harry tells you he’ll text you with more details about the party later in the week.

“I told you she’d say yes.” Andy says from the backseat of the car.

“I wish you had let me work up to it a little more.”

“You were taking too long. Sometimes you just need to pull the trigger, Dad.”

“Is that so?” Harry laughs. “Things are a little more complicated at my age. Sort of awkward asking a colleague out on a date.”

“If you two are friends does that make it a date?”

“Well, she’ll be attending with me, so that makes her my date.”

“Does that mean you’ll kiss her goodnight?”

“Andy!” Harry looks back for a moment and then gets his eyes back on the road. “No, I’m not going to kiss her. You heard her, what are friends for, that’s all she sees me as.” He sighs to himself.

“That’s why you need to step up your game.”

“Son, do me a favor?”

“Yeah?”

“Just, shut up for the rest of the drive home.”

Andy bursts out laughing, but does as Harry asks, knowing he’s being a bit annoying.

//

It was a beautiful day on Saturday, but you were worried about being cold out by the water, so you opt for a pair of high-waist jean capris that flare a bit at the bottom. You find a sleeveless white blouse and pair it with a blue cardigan. You put your hair up in your two buns, and throw on a pair of wedges.

Harry: I’m outside

“Shit.” You say, just finishing your makeup. You run around, grabbing your purse, and the box you had wrapped for Andy’s gift, and head out.

You open the passenger seat and get settled, smiling at Harry.

“You didn’t have to get him anything.”

“I know, it’s just a new basketball. I saw it at WalMart when I was picking up a card. I hate showing up to these things empty handed. What did you get him?”

“A new bike.” He grins. “It’s in his mum’s garage already.”

“Oh! He’ll be so excited. He skateboard too right?”

“Yeah, I really don’t know where he gets his coordination from. Other than skiing I’m pretty clumsy.”

“Don’t you go to a boxing gym?”

“Yeah, and I look like a proper oaf.” He laughs and looks at you. “You look nice by the way. Your outfits are always so put together.”

“Oh, um, thanks.” You blush slightly. You wanted to tell him that you did your hair the way you did because you know he sort of likes it, but you thought that might be a weird thing to say. “Does, um, Paige know you’re bringing me?”

“She does.” Harry nods. “You’re not, like, nervous to meet her are you?”

“No.” You scoff. “Why would I be?”

“I don’t know.” You shrug. “What did you say to her about me?”

“Well, before I got a chance to say anything last night when she picked Andy up, he spilled the beans.” He rolls his eyes. “So I told her you’re a friend from work…is that okay?”

“Yeah, that’s what I am so it makes sense.” You drum your fingers on top of the box to the beat of the music. “None of your family will be there?”

“They’re going to FaceTime in for it. They came for his tenth birthday since it’s a bit more sentimental.”

“Do you miss them?”

“Oh sure, but I love here too much to go back permanently. I like going during winter break, that’s enough.”

“You don’t go during the summer?”

“Sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t. Sometimes they come to visit here during the summer too. My sister has two kids of her own so it’s not always easy to travel.” You nod your head. “You know, I’ve known you almost a year and I don’t know a thing about your family.”

“What’s there to know? My parents are still together, somehow, I’ve got an older brother who’s a sous chef at a restaurant in Boston. He’s not married, but he has a partner and he’s just lovely. I usually stay with them if I go home for a visit.”

“That’s great! How much older is he?”

“He’s around your age, actually, so not a huge age difference.”

“And when’s your birthday?”

“Beginning of August.” You grin.

“Wow, so you had just turned twenty-six when you came to us.”

“Pretty much, got hired at twenty-five, not too shabby.”

“Not at all.”

The conversation went on for the entire drive. That’s how it always was with you two, always a lot to talk about. When you get out of the car you’re able to get a good look at Harry’s outfit. His outfits were usually well crafted, you’d call his style dad-chic. He was in a pair of tan slacks that he had cuffed at the bottom, a pair of white loafers to go with them, a white tank top tucked in with a floral open short-sleeve button up. Very handsome. You smile at each other and then he leads you around back to where the party was. You weren’t the first people there, but you weren’t the last either.

“Dad!” Andy exclaims and runs over to you both. Harry picks him up and swings him around before setting him down.

“Happy birthday, kiddo.”

“Thanks! Look, all my friends from school came.” He points over to them. Harry recognizes Brandon and his father out of the bunch.

“That’s great, bud, let us come in and say hi to everyone, can you say hi to Y/N?”

“Hi, thanks for coming.” He gives you a surprising hug.

“Oh! You’re welcome, Andy. Happy birthday.”

He runs back over to his friends and you walk further into the backyard. It was stunning. Grass that led to sand that led to the lake water. A boat parked further down by the docks, and just gorgeous views for miles. The house itself was huge, you couldn’t believe it.

“Harry!” A woman, who you would assume is Paige, comes waking over. She was beautiful. Shoulder length blonde hair, sort of thin, but not quite a stick. She was wearing a yellow sundress. Her and Harry share a slight hug. “He’s eleven.” She pouts.

“He’s eleven.” Harry agrees with a sigh. “Oh, this is Y/N. Y/N this is Paige, Andy’s mum.”

“It’s so nice to meet you.” She says to you. “Let me take that for you, thank you for bringing him something. I’ll put this with the others.” She takes the box from you. “There’s wine and beer for the adults if you like, but we also have soda and water if you’re not up for drinking. I certainly had a glass after my folks showed up.”

“Did your mother put her white glove on and see if there was any dust?” Harry teases her.

“She may as well have.” Paige rolls her eyes.

Harry puts his hand on the small of your back and leads you closer into the party.

“This is a lovely home.”

“Oh, thank you. I sort of inherited it. It’s was my grandparents’.” She sets your gift on the table with the others. “There’s snacks inside and outside. Feel free to hangout wherever.”

“Where exactly are your parents?” Harry asks.

“Up on the deck.” Paige points up towards it. “Feel free to avoid them as long as you like. They’re speaking with Noah’s parents at the moment. My sister should be here soon.” She looks at her watch. “I’m gonna go check on some things.”

“Alright, love, thanks.” They smile at each other. You get a bad taste in your mouth hearing him call her love, for whatever reason. “Wanna meet some of the parents. I know that guy, Ed, the best. He’s Brandon’s dad, Andy’s best friend.”

“Sure.” You nod and Harry leads you over. “I never quite understood why some parents stay at kids parties.”

“Well…look around you, wouldn’t you wanna hang for a bit?”

“Got me there.”

“Harry, hi.” Ed shakes Harry’s hand.

“Good to see you, this is my friend Y/N, we work together at the university.”

“Hi.” You shake his hand.

“Great to meet you. Brandon was so excited when he got the invite. He and Andy get along so well.” The three of you watch them and the other kids playing tag.

“Born to be friends I’d say.” Harry says.

“Uncle Harry!” A young girl comes running over to Harry and he picks her up, kissing her check, and then setting her down.

“Hi, Rachel, can you say hello to my friend Y/N?”

“Hello.” She beams up at you, a couple of teeth missing. “My grammy and grampy are here.”

“Are they?” Harry says.

“Mhm, I love them a lot.”

“I’m sure they love you too, sweetheart. Are you having a good time for Andy’s birthday?”

“Yeah! We’re going to have a water balloon toss soon.”

“Oh, that’ll be fun!”

“Daddy said he’d be on my team for it.”

“Well, that’s good.”

She smiles again and then runs off.

“Your ex’s boyfriend’s daughter calls you Uncle Harry?” You ask.

“Yeah…she sort of started doing that on her own. She knows I’m Andy’s dad, but I don’t think it quite registers with her yet how we’re all mixed together.” He runs a hand through his hair. “Can I get you anything to drink?”

“A glass of white would be great, thank you.” Harry nods and leaves you standing with Ed.

“So, how long have you and H known each other?”

“Well, I started working at the university last August, so less than a year. We’re office neighbors.”

“Ah, how nice. He’s a really great guy, isn’t he? I coach the boys’ basketball team and he was the first to sign up for snack duty.”

“He’s definitely always thinking of others.”

“How long have you been seeing each other?”

“Oh, um, we’re not.” You shake your head. “He just asked me to come with him, ex in laws, you know?”

“Shit, I’m sorry for just assuming.”

“It’s alright.” You assure him. Harry comes over with a glass of wine for you and a bottle of beer for him.

“Sorry that took a moment, I ran into Noah inside and had to do the hellos. Still managed to not bump into Paige’s parents though, so that’s good.” He chuckles, taking a sip from his drink.

“Bad blood?” You ask.

“Even though things between Paige and I are perfectly fine, in their eyes, I’m always going to be the guy that got her pregnant and didn’t make an honest woman out of her.”

“That’s annoying.”

“Very.”

An hour or so passes and then Paige announces that the balloon toss will be beginning soon.

“Dad, be my partner?”

“You got it, buddy. Mind holding my drink?” He says to you.

“Not at all, have fun.” You smile.

More people had come down off the deck so they could watch. Some parents partnered with their kids, and other kids just partnered with kids. Everyone starts about a foot apart. This should be fun, you think, knowing Harry’s competitive nature.

“Would you look at Harry, he looks like an old man from Florida.” You hear a woman scoff.

“Notice how he’s been avoiding us, always a child.” You hear a man say, and this makes you turn towards them. They must be Paige’s parents.

Everyone playing was further apart now, some balloons had popped, but Harry and Andy were still in the game. The balloon pops at Rachel’s feet and she giggles loudly. There were only a few people now. You watch as Harry lobs the balloon perfectly to Andy, and Andy catches it with ease. It was Brandon and his dad vs. Harry and Andy now. Brandon overthrows it, causing the balloon to pop on the sand.

“We won!” Andy shouts running towards Harry.

“Great job.” Harry jostle’s Andy’s hair. Everyone cheers for them.

“What do you say, honey, cake and gifts now?” Paige asks Andy.

“Yeah.” He smiles.

All of the kids sit around a large glass table while Paige goes inside to get the cake. Harry walks back towards you and you hand him his beer.

“What were you saying about you have no coordination?”

“I had to win, it’s his birthday.” He laughs and then stops when he sees Paige’s parents. “Lydia, Nathan, how are you?”

“Oh, are you speaking with us now?” Lydia says playfully, giving him a hug. Harry shakes Nathan’s hand.

“You know how it is when you first get to a party, lots of excitement. I’d find you eventually.” He clears his throat. “This is Y/N, we work together at the university.”

“Hello.” You smile and they both look you up and down.

“How nice for you to bring a friend.” Nathan says, his tone laced with sarcasm.

“I’m gonna go see if she needs help with the cake.” Harry says to all of you, and you also decide to move away from the rude people you were standing with.

Paige and Harry stand on either side of Andy’s chair as everyone sings happy birthday. After cake the gifts come out. Noah takes Harry into the garage to grab the bike.

“Alright…this one is from…Y/N!” Paige says brightly as she hands the gift to Andy. He tears the wrapping paper off and gasps.

“Alright! A new basketball, thank you!” Andy says looking in your direction and you nod with a smile.

“Okay, Andy, Dad and I got you something really special.” Paige says pointing over to Harry who was wheeling the bike over. Andy’s jaw drops.

“Are you serious?!” He stand up and walks over to the bike.

“Know you’ve been wanting it for a while, and your grades have just been so good this year, we just had to do it. Mum’s got a new helmet, elbow and knee pads for you in the house.”

“Thank you so much!” He hugs Harry and then he hugs Paige.

“You’re more than welcome, baby doll.” Paige says to him and then he squirms away from her.

“Mum.” He huffs.

“Right, sorry, not in front of your friends.”

Paige’s sister helps her clean up the remains of the cake while the kids continue to play yard games. You find yourself sitting in a lawn chair when a man you have yet to meet takes the chair next to you, but you recognize him as Rachel’s father.

“We haven’t gotten to meet yet, I’m Noah.” He shakes your hand.

“I’m Y/N, nice to meet you.”

“Likewise.” He smiles. “I was happy to hear Harry was bringing someone with him. Takes a bit of the pressure off.”

“Exactly.” You nod.

“How’d you meet?”

“We’re office neighbors, I started working at the university less than a year ago.”

“Oh! Right, you went hiking with them last weekend.” He says in understanding. “Andy told us. He’s quite the gossip.”

You observe Noah as he speaks. His hair has turned to salt and pepper, definitely had crow’s feet, also wore glasses, but he had a warm and inviting smile, similar to his daughter’s.

“He certainly speaks his mind.” You chuckle. “He’s very sweet though, I have to say.”

“Very sweet. He’s a good kid. It’s nice for Rach to have someone to grow up with a little She adores him, definitely sees him as a big brother.”

“That’s good. I’ve always found blended families to be interesting. You all are doing it well.”

“Took us a while to get to this point, but it’s all been worth it.”

“Y/N?” You both turn to look at Harry. “Party’s starting to dissipate a bit, are you about ready to head out?”

“Sure!” You stand up. “It was nice talking to you.”

“Same here.” Noah stands up and gives Harry a thumbs up without you seeing.

You both say your goodbyes, Andy gives you another hug and says thank you again for the gift. Harry tells him he’ll see him Sunday night, and then you head to his car.

“Hope you didn’t mind when I had to leave to chat a couple of times.”

“Oh, it was fine. I enjoyed just hanging out. It was a beautiful day.” The sun was just starting to set.

“Yeah, I’m glad the weather was nice. I think it’s supposed to rain tomorrow.” He looks at you and then gets his attention back on the road. “You really did look nice today.”

“Thank you, Harry.” You smile and give his shoulder a squeeze.

“Am I…taking you straight home?”

You blink a couple of times before looking at him.

“Where else would we go?”

“Well, I’ve got a back deck of my own. We could sit out, enjoy the sunset…if you want.”

“That sounds nice, actually. Yeah, let’s do that.” You smile.

“Great.”

You notice his jaw and shoulders relax. Were you making him tense? You both listen to the music on the radio as he drives you to his home. You smile as he pulls up. It was a decent size ranch. Cream color paneling and red shutters, very cute.

“Here were are.” He says awkwardly as you both get out.

“Do I get a tour?”

“Of course!”

He unlocks the front door and leads you inside. There was an open concept kitchen and living area. The house smelled like fresh coffee. He noticed you taking a whiff.

“I have an automatic air freshener.” He says and you nod.

“I like it, should get one for my place.”

“There’s a full bath down the hall, Andy uses that, and then I have my own bathroom. Three bedrooms totally, and then you can see I technically have two levels, that’s what I use for my office.”

“It’s a huge loft.”

“Yeah, it’s partially why I bought the place. I didn’t feel cramped. Basement’s partially finished which will be great for Andy when he’s over if he wants to have parties or whatever. Uh, and then the deck is this way. Can I get you anything…I only have red wine, I know you like white…”

“Red’s fine, maybe just put an ice cube in it for me?”

“Can do, make yourself comfortable outside.” He smiles.

You slide the glass door open and smile. It was a decent sized deck. There was a small glass round table with chairs, a grill, and some Adirondack chairs as well. You sit in one of those after taking a glance at the flowers and plants he had in pots. You also notice the various flower beds he had in the yard.

“Here you go.” He says, sitting down next to you, handing you the glass of wine.

“Thank you.” You smile and take a sip. You cross your cardigan over yourself.

“Are you cold? I can get a blanket.”

“Oh, no I’m fine, thanks. It’s beautiful out here.”

“Thanks, took me a while to get it landscaped the way I like.” He lights the citronella candle on the small table between you to help keep any bugs away. “I’ve been thinking of getting an above ground pool for Andy, he loves to swim, but it’s a lot maintenance, and his mum as the lake right there.”

“That house is incredible.”

“Noah’s helped her revamp it quite a bit, and the boat’s his.” He takes a sip of his drink and looks at you. “Thanks again for coming today.”

“Of course, I had a really good time.” You smile.

“You’re not just saying that?”

“Not at all. It was nice to finally meet the people you’ve told me so much about.”

“Are you hungry or anything? I could bring some-“

“Harry.” You put your hand over his that was resting on the arm of the chair. “Relax, yeah? I’m all set, thank you.”

“Alright.” He blushes and looks straight ahead. You notice him check an app on his phone. “Are you free Tuesday morning?”

“I think so, why?”

“Weather’s looking good, how about we go on one of those longer hikes?”

“I’d like that.” You smile. “Anything special I’d need to back.”

“Just a lunch, maybe some T.P.”

“You’re funny if think I’m going to take a piss in the woods.”

“Everyone does it.” He shrugs. “Don’t worry, I’d keep lookout for you.”

“You men have it so easy, you can just whip your things out, go quick, and you’re all set. Me, I’d have to roll my pants down, squat, hope none of it got on my shoes, wipe, and then get dressed again.”

“I’ve had to do that before, sometimes you just need to take a shit in the woods.” You burst out laughing at that. “Course that only happened because I went out drinking the night before.”

“Good to know.” You wipe a tear from your eye. “But seriously, I’d love to go hiking with you Tuesday.”

“I know it was more so Andy that invited you on our little camping trip, but you’re welcome to join in on that if you feel comfortable.”

“I would just feel like I’m intruding on your quality time.”

“You wouldn’t be, he likes you…um…I like you.” Your head snaps in his direction and your eyebrows shoot up. “I mean, like, I like hanging out with you, is all.” He was internally cringing at himself.

“I like hanging out with you too.” You swallow. “I’m glad we’ve gotten to know each other so well. You’ve been a great help with my classes. You’re so progressive, not always using the same syllabus and being willing to make things work for the students. It’s refreshing.”

“Please, go on, the narcissist within me is loving it.” He smirks and you roll your eyes. “Don’t sell yourself short, you’re doing really well. I enjoyed observing your rhetoric class. It was a nice refresher. I hope you won’t work yourself to much this summer. I know it’s more time for research and writing, but it’s also time for you to clear your head.”

“Thanks, I’ll try to keep that in mind.” You finish off your wine just as the sun it setting, the light from the candle being the only thing to keep things bright enough to see.

“I can, uh, bring you home now if you want.”

“I could just get an uber so you don’t have to go out again.”

“Don’t be silly, it’s no trouble.”

Harry drives you home, and you find yourself lingering in the car.

“So…Tuesday?”

“Tuesday.” He smiles. “Bright and early.”

“How early?” You raise an eyebrow.”

“How’s six sound? I’ll come pick you up, we’ll get to the trailhead by 6:30. It’s always better to summit earlier in the day.”

“You’re the expert.” You shrug. “Works for me.”

You both lean across the console to give each other a hug a goodbye, like you normally would, only this time…you press your lips to his cheek before getting out of the car. His gaze stays fixed on you, and it’s not until you’re inside your building where he lightly presses his fingers to his cheek to feel where you kissed him.

#harry styles #office neighbors #harry styles series #harry styles au #harry styles imagine #harry styles fic #harry styles fanfic #harry styles x reader #harry styles x y/n #harry styles y/n #harry styles fluff #harry styles angst #harry styles smut #professor!harry #singledad!harry #professor!y/n

[fandom-monium]

For the Holidays - Part 2

Summary: In which Spencer doesn’t want to go to his high school reunion, but you tagging along changes things. “It’ll be nice... having a friend there.”

WC: 1.8k

Tags/Warnings: Spencer Reid x GN!Reader, fake-dating trope, pining (so much pining), insecure and in-denial Spencer, light cursing, (tbh with all the shit that happens in CM they should be cussing way more)

Spencer doesn’t text you. But he’s tried.

First thing he got home, he tossed his bag aside and ripped off his blazer before he threw himself on the couch, digging through his pockets for his phone. Screw reading, taxes, dinner. There are more important things at stake here.

But he’s been sitting there for an hour, glaring at the empty text box with disdain, willing for words to appear.

No such luck.

Spencer writes essays and academic journals in an hour but formulating a simple text? He curses the universe for only making him academically gifted.

He runs a hand through his hair. Maybe he should call? No, you said text. And he doesn’t trust himself enough to have a verbal conversation with you. He will get tongue-tied.

Shit, what does he even say?

It’s not entirely his fault, alright? He’s never been put in a position like this before, except when he goes undercover. And even then everything is planned for him with little contribution on his part⎼he makes small edits to better fit the profiles but that’s about it. All he has to do is scan the file once and in seconds he has his fake identity, his fake backstory, and whatever fake details make up his fake life.

But this. This is different. He has to be brave because it’s you, and he has to chill out because this is supposed to be fake, he reminds himself. Both are tasks within themselves. And yeah, he’s a genius but as Albert Einstein once said, knowledge has its limits.

Shit, his thoughts are so jumbled he can’t even quote properly. This is all your fault.

You.

He still has to text you.

Spencer groans and flops on the couch, the phone clattering to the floor. He doesn’t bother, laying there until there’s an imprint of his butt in the cushions. He stares at the ceiling.

He remembers that you were the one to say yes. He hadn’t directly asked you but you agreed anyway, which means you are willing to spend time with him. Which means you like him (enough). Which means you are friends, and friends help friends out when they are in trouble.

Like needing a fake date.

He rolls onto his stomach, lips pursed as he stares over the edge of the couch. His phone glints in the lamp light.

Just friends helping each other out. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Spencer takes a deep breath and picks up the phone.

He can do this.

⎼

He can’t do this.

“I’m so excited,” Next to Spencer, you nestle into the seat and adjust the fuzzy blanket over your lap, eyes gleaming. “It’ll be nice to see where you grew up.”

Spencer only offers you a tight smile. His eyes dart about as the other passengers settle in, switching seats and fiddling luggage into the overhead compartments. Some of them already requesting for airplane food. Who in their right mind actually wants airplane food?

Spencer really wants to be as excited as you, and he is; he finally gets to spend some time with you outside of work, without the rest of the team hovering (waiting for one of you to make a damn move). It’s almost nice.

If only he can enjoy himself.

His knee bounces nonstop. Against the armrest his fingers tap a rhythm matching the thrum of his heart. And his hair is even more wild having run his hands through it repeatedly before meeting up with you.

He isn’t used to this, being alone with you. Sure, you partner up at work, in cases⎼hell, you've even accompanied each other to a few events. But those were as friends.

Technically, you’re his date. His romantic partner.

Spencer’s never let himself delve deep into his fantasies; he’s imagined (more times than he’d like to admit) taking you on dates to your favorite places, you in his arms, him in your arms⎼you know, minus the imminent danger. All the sweet things that couples do. But they always seemed out of reach. So he’d cut them off, squash the ideas before they went any further. False hope only hurts if you give in.

But now you’re on a plane, rocking in your seat as you hum to yourself, genuinely thrilled at the prospect of seeing his hometown.

This is more than he’s ever imagined. He feels like his heart’s about to burst.

Someone needs to call the bomb squad, real quick.

“Reid.”

"Hm?"

"Are you alright?" You're looking at him, voice drenched in so much concern his stomach twists. He made you worry. He feels guilty.

“Yeah-uh-” He clears his throat, attempting a smile. It’s a sad parody of the real thing. ”I'm fine.“

You raise an eyebrow and scoff, "Okay, I think I know why you're being weird. At least, weirder than usual."

Spencer’s heart drops. He leans back as you lean across your shared armrest, catching the sympathy in your eyes. He stiffens, bracing himself for the rejection. He should have known sooner or later you’d notice his not-so-friendly affections towards you. Of course you did, he isn’t exactly subtle; all the lunches, the museum tours, the stars in his eyes when you wrestle down unsubs⎼

"You’re nervous about seeing your old classmates again."

⎼Or, he’s much better at hiding it than he thought.

Spencer can only watch in awe as you continue, “And it’s totally natural. I mean, I haven’t been to a reunion, but I’d feel weird too if I got to see my classmates after all these years. But have no fear, (Your Name) is here.” You cringe, suddenly abashed. “Unless I’m completely off the mark and now you regret bringing me along. Oh no, that’s it, isn’t? You’re uncomfortable with the whole couples act.”

Spencer shakes his head, and for the first time since take off, he chuckles, “What? No, I’m happy that you’re here. And I couldn't think of anyone better to play my partner.” A relieved smile from you and he shrugs, feigning nonchalance. He fiddles with his sleeve. “But yeah, you got me. I am nervous.”

Which isn’t exactly a lie. You're here, next to him. That's more than enough reason to be.

If he had to be honest, between you and organizing the trip, he almost forgot about the reunion. Then again, he never liked reflecting on his high school years. For obvious reasons.

But your perception is a bucket of ice water over his head. Now he’s wide awake.

You’re doing this because you’re friends. You just want to help.

Friendship never hurt so much.

“I didn’t mention it before, but I’m sure you’re aware I wasn’t exactly the most popular kid in school, being 6 years younger and all,” Spencer swallows the ache. You nod in understanding.

Bright, brown eyes meet yours. He bites his lip. “So, I appreciate you coming with me. It’ll be nice... having a friend there.”

A split second.

Spencer glances away as he says 'friend'. The word leaves such a bittersweet taste he has to hold back a grimace, look anywhere else but you. The word just doesn’t sit right with him.

If he hadn’t looked away, he would have caught the way your smile dropped.

You nearly forgot, though you’re on holiday, this is a mission of sorts. This isn’t about you or how you feel. This is about Spencer. You berate yourself, remembering you're not a teenager anymore; you're a fucking adult and mature adults don't squee at their coworkers.

No matter how cute and adorable they are.

“Of course,” You plaster on a smile and finger the edge of your blanket, unintentionally mirroring him. "Your welcome."

Spencer gives you that white-person smile you love so much. You have to bite back a laugh.

To distract yourself, you pull out your phone and open the Chess app, holding it out to him. "Now, how about that rematch?"

Spencer's face lights up like a Christmas tree.

And as you immerse yourselves into another close match, you feel your confidence grow with every move, chuckling as Reid grumbles about you cheating (you’re not, he’s just a sore loser). You’re an FBI agent, for fuck’s sake. You played spouse and romantic partners for weeks, months. A weekend is nothing.

You can manage playing pretend with a coworker. Just operate like this is any other undercover assignment.

You can pretend you’re in love with Spencer Reid. You can handle it.

You can handle it.

⎼

You can’t handle it.

As one would expect, it’s hard to not fall in love with Spencer Reid. Just as it’s hard not to show it.

It feels like only yesterday the lanky man quite literally stumbled his way into your world and you decided, ‘Him. I will protect him with my life.’ And while you’d totally do that for anyone on the team, with Reid, it hits different.

After you landed in Las Vegas, you had a couple hours to kill before the reunion started, and as the good friend and partner you are, you suggested he show you all the places he frequented when he was little. For research, of course. After all, you’re playing his partner, so the more you know the better.

It’s definitely not because you’re invested in his life. Because that would be unprofessional.

(The way he beamed at you was totally worth it though.)

Then one step in the direction of his favorite eatery and he slipped on a patch of ice. You caught him in time, but the way he looked at you, brown eyes wide and filled with awe, made you feel things you shouldn't feel for a coworker.

It only snowballed from there. Everything about him is just so… endearing.

But you’re at your limit.

Love and affection threatens to spill out of you. Your hands flex in your coat pockets, itching to grab Spencer’s pretty face. Even your chest aches from your heart having swollen twice its size. You feel like you’re about to explode.

This might be the most difficult mission you’ve ever worked.

But this is it, you realize as you stand in front of the closed auditorium doors. This is the final lap. Where everything you’ve practiced really matters. You just have to keep up the charade for a few hours, then you won’t have to struggle to fight back the hearts in your eyes.

Although, your clothes fit tighter than you remember and you’re trembling. Why the fuck are you trembling?

Next to you Spencer eyes the double doors, almost like he’s daunted by them.

Multi-colored lights filter into the dark hallway, silhouettes flickering and shifting from the crack under the door as cheery holiday music faintly streams from behind them, accompanied by shouts and laughter. From his old classmates. Who are most likely making jokes at his expense.

Spencer already wants to go home.

“Ready, Doc?” As if sensing his hesitation, you offer a smile and an arm to him. Your eyes gleam with resolve. It’s more than enough for the both of you.

You can do this.

A deep breath, he slips his arm into yours. “Yep.”

He can do this.

Together, you open the doors.

AN: 2/4?? 

note: don’t expect part 3 to come out as quick. it’ll contain panic/anxiety descriptions and id like to take my time to write it best :))) i hope you enjoyed the last bit of happiness for a while :))))

also i apologize that i havent gotten to all the requests!! the ones posted on my masterlist are the ones currently being dealt with, but i’ll get through them eventually thx for the patience :D

i remember seeing a post ab Hotch x Prentiss and I didn’t get it but watching CM over again 

i get it i so get it. when theyve both gone to each other’s homes? *tears up*

and my hate for seaver has been reinforced :)))))

#spencer reid x reader #matthew gray gubler x reader #spencer reid x you #spencer reid x y/n #spencer reid x original female character #spencer reid x oc #mgg x reader #mgg x y/n #matthew gray gubler x oc #matthew gray gubler imagine #spencer reid imagine #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid

[burningcowboyhoagietaco]

A Way to Learn a Lesson

written by:

@burningcowboyhoagietaco

illustrated and edited by the amazing, the one and only:

@lenle-g

Before I publish the story id like to thank @lenle-g from the bottom of my heart for being patient with me, being nice to me the whole time, and for making my story even better and more exciting. Without her I would have stayed in my normal, not that good English story. so thank you for everything!!! <3<3

And here's my part at @tagminibang submission:)

☆☆☆☆☆

Scott, no!!! No way! I am not going to give any lectures to anyone." John's voice comes out tight. "Especially not in front of a crowd. No way."

"Why not?" Scott raises a brow, his voice honeyed with ‘big brother wants something’. "It's not like you're gonna get executed by some children just for talking space at them, right? You love talking about space. It's all I've heard since you were, like, seven."

"No, that's not it." There's a sharp shake of the ginger’s head, "Scott, come on!" John knows for a fact that his oldest brother knows he's the most socially awkward person to have ever lived on Tracy Island (and maybe the entire planet). "You’ve lived with me long enough to know how much I hate social.... anything." John complains. "Why would you ever think I'd want to do this?""

"Well, yes, I know that," Scott shrugs, "I've seen that look you get on your face when there's a lot of people around." He’s well aware that his brother is an introvert who hates socializing with anyone, so he quickly changes the subject to try and make his younger brother feel a little more at ease. "But hey... everyone knows how much you like it when anyone talks about space or anything about astronomy. You'd be amazing at it."

"That's a different thing." John says flatly. Flattery, it seems, wont get Scott very far. "It's like, whenever you guys ask me anything about space, I like to answer them for you, but from random people…? And in huge crowds? I just simply can't." Surely he doesn’t have to explain himself much more than that?

"Oh trust me, everything is going to be fine." Scott was a flippant hand around, talking without really thinking, because all he wants is for his brother to get out of Thunderbird 5, to visit Earth for a little bit, to mingle with people a little. It can't be that bad. "If anything happens, Gordon and Alan'll be in Thunderbird Five doing Space Monitor duty, me and Virgil are gonna keep an eye on everything, and you’re in safe hands with Lady Penelope and Parker. It's all set up, so please go have some fun for once and teach the children something cool."

"My answer is still no." John says persistently, without hesitation. He's pretty sure it'd be worse than being in the middle of a hurricane, or testing one of his Grandma's new cooking experiments. It’s lucky Scott misses his involuntary shudder.

Scott, though, is so done with him at this point, that he's pretty sure there's no choice but to use plan b and hope that that works instead on his unwilling, stubborn, red haired brother. They've got to get him down from orbit and to that lecture somehow. Scott's just not going to stand for anything else.

"Are you sure that's your last answer?" Scott asks, with a heavy sigh, already planning the best way to call in the big guns.

"Yes," John scowls, arms folded. "Yes, it is."

They'll see about that.

...

"Is everything ready?" John adjusts his sleeves, smoothing down his vest and putting the last touches on his collar. Neat, simple, formal. Can't go wrong. "My presentation papers, laptop, and my mini simple dimple?”

"Yes, all in the bag." Scott calls back, rapidly checking everything, "But do you really need that little fidget thing of yours?" He picks his younger brother's old toy up between forefinger and thumb to examine it, remembering the day John made their Mom buy it for when he gets stressed.

"What fidge- oh, yes I need it." The look on John's face leaves no doubt about that. "I've used it ever since Mom bought it for me."

"Hey… Mom would've been proud of you, you know?” Scott tells him, in a quick flash of brotherly pride. “For, you know, going out of your safe zone for a little while and teaching the children and all that."

"Yeah, I know…" John finds him a nervous smile, "But I'm not doing this voluntarily, you've forced me with that plan b of yours."

The second John says that Scott's cheeks dimple, the corners of his eyes crinkle, and he grins victoriously, his teeth a bright white in the earliest rays of morning sun.

“All I had to do was make a call." He shrugs, "Lady Penelope did all the talking and somehow convinced you to go." Scott got a little more excited. He took a couple of steps forward, slightly standing on his toes reaching John's level asking"How did she convince you?" Clearly waiting teasingly for an answer to come out of John's lips

"Huhhhh." John exhales loudly, a little despairing. "She promised me we'd go to the Pagasa Astronomical Observatory after I finish the lecture with the children." He shrugs, keeping his eyes down, embarrassed.

"The what now?" Scott stares at him, thoroughly confused.

"The Pagasa Astronomical Observatory in the Philippines.” John says, like that was obvious, “It's equipped with a 45-cm computer-based telescope. It's so powerful that astronomers and astronomy enthusiasts can now conduct effective observations of stellar bodies and other distant space objects! Scott, it’s been my dream to go since I was, like, 17."

Scott always knew how much of an astrophile his younger brother is; he never cared about his physical appearance, nor his poor eating habits and he always used to make excuses to read his books alone, yet no one has ever interfered in his personal life.

"Okay okay space lover boy,” Scott grins at him. He'd expected Penny to be persuasive, but resigning herself to hours stuck with John in full excited-about-space mode would hardly be in his top ten. Either he's gonna owe her one, or Penny's more resilient than him. “You can go, no one is holding you back."

The short silence between them was broken by a ringing sound from a nearby table, which John answers.

“...Mhm, yes? Oh, the lecture." It must be Penelope calling, "Yeah, I'm ready, I'll head out now." John grabs his bag, wandering toward where the FAB1 must already be idling on the Tracy runway. "Time to go."

"Mhm,” Scott makes an agreeable noise, watching him go. “Please stay safe and please don't make an idiot of yourself." He's teasing… mostly.

"Yeah yeah," John waves at him over his shoulder, not even looking back. "I won't."

…

"Are we there yet?" Despite the consistently amazing views out of FAB1’s windows during the flight, John’s found himself mostly looking down, fidgeting with his fingers. He’s worrying, just a little, about what awaits him in the Philippines - a whole different tropical island to his own, though still in the South of the Pacific Ocean.

"Just give Parker ten more minutes, darling,” Her Ladyship smiles at him, “We'll arrive in no time."

There’s a moment of silence before, unexpectedly, it’s broken by a call flashing up from, of all places, Thunderbird Five. There’s a prickly sense of discomfort as John realises that, of course, it’s not him calling. Gordon must be trying to reach them.

"Heeeeey Lady Penelope,” The kid greets, as Penny flicks it on, seemingly a lot less bothered by the change than he is. “Oh, and Mr. Tracy.” There’s a huge smirk on his face. “How's our newest teacher holding up?"

"Firstly, my name is John.” John points out, flatly, “Second, I'm not your teacher so please don’t call me Mr. Tracy ever again. Thirdly…” He concedes, quirking an eyebrow, “Yeah, I'm good for now, but fourth… How are you holding up, up there in my Thunderbird? She’s not much like Four, is she?"

"Ooooooooo that's a good question,” Gordon looks half like he’s considering it, half like he’s really missing his own ‘bird. “I'm holding up pretty well thanks to Alan. He’s taken all the Monitor duty stuff, so all I gotta do is keep an eye on you guys." He sounds a bit… sarcastic about that. “It’s pretty boring, honestly. How do you survive up here without a pool?”

"Young Master Gordon, are you quite done talking?" Parker glances, unimpressed, at the little floating hologram of John’s brother in his rearview mirror, "Because we're about to arrive at our destination."

"Huh… oh yeah,” Gordon doesn’t seem too bothered about that, but he waves merrily at them all the same, “Okay bye and John, please have fun, you too Lady Penelope, okay bye guys."

It’s only a few moments later that Parker opens his mouth to tell them that they’ve arrived at Chino Roque Theater, pulling up out front to let them both climb out.

John's eyes widen: it’s nothing like what he saw on the internet. It was more enormous, more luminous, more spectacular than anything he’d seen or read online. All he remembers reading is that it's a sphere shaped building located in the Philippines, in Anilao Hill, but the pictures on the webpage didn’t do it justice like being there in person does.

The building was smooth and round; the auditorium shaped like a massive egg nestled in amongst the other buildings. They were early enough that the sun was just cresting the horizon, colouring the sky with reds and oranges, visible through the geometric front of the building - where giant triangles of glass intersect together to give the people inside an amazing view of the sky at night.

"M'lady, you and John can go ahead. I'll park FAB 1." Parker said, before going to the parking lot - unaware just how tiring and long his journey to find a place to park is going to be.

They both head inside the building, admiring the sweeping glass fractals of the roof high above them. It’s incredibly beautiful, really a feat of engineering. So much so, that John almost forgets why he’s even there, until he spots a couple of buses arriving on the other side of the building, and the panic sets in. He was expecting to be a little bit anxious, but this feels like his heart is going to beat right out of his chest. He presses a hand hard against it, trying to calm his racing pulse and stop the sudden shake of his fingers, and Penny must notice, because a little hand settles, ever so lightly, on his shoulder, drawing his attention to her.

"Hey John," Lady Penelope looks him steadily in the eye, projecting warmth and reassurance. "They're just a small, mixed group of children and teens. They can’t possibly hurt you, now can they? They just came to have a small lecture because all of them like space and astronomy just like you. Imagine yourself at their age, meeting a real life astronaut.” John tries very hard not to remind her who, exactly, his Father was, as she goes on - trying to visualise being a kid that didn’t get ‘take your son to work days’ at NASA’. It’s a pretty horrifying concept. “Most importantly,” Penny adds, “it's only for an hour or so, so you don't need to worry so much." She had to smile just to reassure him. “You’ll have filled their heads with space facts and be out before you know it.”

"O-okay,” John takes a deep, steadying breath, “I don't know if I'm supposed to trust you on this, or whatever, but I really don't have any other choice." He also wants to add that they forced him to go, but at the last second he remembers that they never forced him - he agreed to go because Lady Penelope promised him a trip to the observatory.

It seems like a pretty weak reason, now that he’s outside the stage door, knees shaking.

"Mhm, I think it's time to go inside.” She nudges him callously in the right direction, and John’s palms meeting the solid metal of the double doors is the only thing that keeps him from following gravity’s call and landing on his face. “Again, if anything happens, I'll be at the back of the room and I have a plan b if things get too much." John, pretty shocked by just how many plan b's the Lady Penelope might have prepared for the day, can only shake his head, bemused. “So stop worrying and get out there!”

She vanishes off into the atrium, and John can’t help the loud exhale that escapes his mouth before he musters up all the courage he can, and enters the room.

Bright lights startle him for a moment, and he’s pretty sure he does an awful, awkward impression of a blind baby giraffe as he stumbles out onto the stage and freezes as he notices the first smatterings of audience are already taking their seats.

The moment he placed his foot on the smooth wooden floor, his heart had started to beat faster, his hands began to sweat, the more steps he took forward the more he felt anxious. It was, he’ll think later, one of the toughest moments of his life, and he’s been to space. Multiple times.

Come on John. He tries to straighten up, shake off his anxiety, This can’t go worse than your first EVA.

Taking another deep breath, John waits patiently for all the attendees to take a seat inside the room. Waiting doesn’t help his anxiety levels at all, and he can feel them increasing by the second, but, determined, John doesn’t let it stop him from starting his lecture.

"H-Hello everybody,” He starts, incredibly conscious of the hushed silence that falls across his audience. “I'm John Tracy, M.Sci, PgDip, B.Lang Hons,” he rattles off his credentials, his nerves almost blurring them together, “I worked with NASA as an astronaut for three years before going… uh… solo in my astronomical studies, and I'll be your guest lecturer for the day.” He swallows around the lump in his throat, as a ripple of hushed oohhhs and ahhhs goes through the crowd. John’s pretty sure his face has gone bright red. “Thank you for having me at the Chino Roque Theater,” He goes on, before his embarrassment can bet the better of him, “I hope everyone’s had an amazing day so far. We'll be spending the next hour or so talking about astronomy and space physics, so shall we get started?" John thought it was a good opening, and yet his back was really wet from all the people's eyes on him. Glancing offstage, Penelope throws him a thumbs up, and he feels a little better.

"Um,” He blinks. “So does anyone here know how old the universe is?" John ventures, only to be surprised as almost everyone answers at once;

"Almost 13.8 billion years!"

"Yes,” The edge of a smile works its way onto John’s face. Clearly this was going to be a shout out the answer kind of lecture. He can work with that. “That's correct, now does anyone know how the universe started?"

"The Big Bang!" Most of them answer, and John feels a surge of relief. These guys really are into space.

"Okay, okay, not bad at all." He nods affirmatively at them, and the screen behind him lights up with an artist’s rendition of the Big Bang happening. "Now if I were to go and search ‘how old is the universe’ in, say, Google, the answer would be 13,772 billion years. It’d be the same thing if we looked at NASA, or even Wikipedia - so how did people get to know the age of the universe? How do you even start calculating something that old? Well I'm going to explain it for you in two ways: the good, nice way, and the kinda not that good and not that scientific way." There’s a bit of an awkward pause as John wonders whether or not he’s explained that well. When only silence greets him, he very quickly realises he needs to press on.

"So, uh, the good way.” He folds his fingers together behind his back, trying to resist the urge to fidget. “Well, in the middle of the previous century, as telescopes developed, we noticed something strange. We found that stars in very distant galaxies tend to look red… Umm, which is something that’s not supposed to happen.” A chuckle escapes John and, to his relief, the audience laughs with him. Scott never gets his space jokes. “So why’s that?” He asks, “See, if a chemical element gains or loses energy it’ll emit light in certain frequencies, thereby creating certain colors.” A small movement of his hand signals the slide to change, and a picture of the visible section of the electromagnetic spectrum appears, colouring the room with rainbow light. “For example,” John goes on, bathed in blue and violet, “Consider something like… a desk lamp, as like an element. If you give a lamp electrical energy, it’ll release that energy in the form of heat and light, yeah?" There’s a murmur of uncertain understanding in the room. “Electricity goes in, the bulb gets hot, and it gives off light. Well, we know stars do pretty much the same thing - only powered by nuclear fusion rather than a nine volt plug.”

"From studies of the sun and stars that are near Earth, we know that they’re made of helium and hydrogen, yes?” There’s another murmur of agreement in John’s crowd, “Well, hydrogen and helium can create red light, but they don't have the ability to create these shades of red that we see in deep space." The slide behind John clicks to a comparison of the two shades, on two different stars - making the difference clear.

"So, if stars are made of helium and hydrogen then why do distant stars have different colours? Are their compositions different?uh, well It’s possible, but not likely. The strongest explanation is that the color difference is due to the movement of the stars." The room gives a soft gasp at this news, and John knows he’s onto something good.

"So there's something called the redshift and blueshift phenomenon that says that if an object radiates light and approaches you, the color of the light begins to turn blue, and if the object is moving away from you, the color will turn red. This happens because the wavelength of light contracts and expands with movement meaning that something stretching equals red and contraction equals blue."

"And the strange thing is,” John adds, his audience listening raptly, “That most, if not all, stars show the same behavior, so, if we think about it, if all stars are moving away from us, that means that they were close to us at some point, and if we follow their path, we find that everything in space meets at a point named ‘singularity’."

"It was believed, in the past, that everything in the universe, or at least in the visible part that we have observed, that is to say,” John flicks to a graphic on his next slide. “All the galaxies, planets and stars, were all gathered at one point - the singularity. The theory is that this point exploded in what we call the ‘Big Bang’, and from that time onward, the universe has been in constant expansion.”

"So it’s with data from this knowledge that we can calculate the age of the universe:” With a wave of his hand, John puts a series of bullet points up on the screen behind him, then reads them aloud.

“One, the universe began as a very small, single point.” He reaffirms, “Two, the universe is constantly expanding outward from that point, and three, from these we have the ability to calculate the expansion rate of the universe, by calculating the speed of the stars that are moving away from us. If we take the furthest accelerations and enter them into this equation,” John’s board merrily does it’s thing behind him, “Then, we get the age of the universe."

"And, so we don't forget, all this talking was about the good way. There is another way to calculate the age of the universe, the, uh, not as good way, or, more specifically, the less scientific way.” A ripple of laughter goes through John’s audience - and he relaxes a little more. Maybe Scott was right. Maybe these are his kind of people. Scott’s never laughed at a space joke for sure. “There's no problem with it,” He quietens them again with a gentle gesture, “and it does support our theory and calculations, so I guess we should talk about it."

"Since ancient times, humans have been looking at the sky, watching the stars, and giving them names like Cygnus, Canis Major, Orion.” All names any young astronomer in the Southern Hemisphere would recognise, and be able to enthusiastically point out in the night sky. “In those days, there wasn't the internet so they were looking up at the stars instead.” Much like John himself, when he’d been a boy.

“As a way of calculating the age of the universe, astronomers set out to search for the oldest celestial bodies in space.” He goes on to explain, “The idea was that if we find a star whose age equals X, then the age of the universe must be greater than the number X. So we pointed our telescopes up there and started trying to find out their ages from birth, to youth, to their old age until their end."

"Can anyone guess the age of the oldest star we've found?" A lot of answers were guessed, some of them were pretty close, but some, amusingly, were way too far. "Ok, ok…” John puts his hands up to pacify his excited crowd, “Umm I see there are a lot of answers, but the oldest star people discovered was actually estimated to be 13.5 billion years old. The HD-140283, or as you might know it, the Methuselah Star. That number is very close, you’ll notice, to our estimation of the age of the universe."

"But if we found a star that is 13.5 billion years old today, then we could find an even older star next week and that would ruin all of that,” He chuckles, mostly to himself, “We also should note that this method alone isn't suitable for determining the universe’s age, but as long as we have two methods with corroborative results, we can be reassured that the estimate is correct.” He pauses for a second, “So, does anyone have questions?" A couple of hands raised, and John found himself suddenly answering a lot of questions - but he managed all of them despite his fear of the huge crowd.

He’s starting to feel more than a little overwhelmed.

"Umm… W-well that was a lot of questions,” John tries to pull it back in, his allotted lecture time ticking away on the big clock at the back of the hall. He feels a little panicky from the bombardment, and his palms have gone sweaty. “We’d better move on.” To distract himself from the people, as much as anything, “Our next topic is the theory of relativity, so l-let's get started on that."

Lady Penelope, from her fold-out seat at the back of the room, frowns. It’s clear John’s terrified and she wants to use plan b, but as long as he’s still standing on his feet, and giving the lecture, he's probably fine for now. If anything, it’d cause more of a disruption to drag him away now.

"Umm,” John takes a breath, trying to centre himself in the science of it all. “Let's start with a supposition, a hypothesis if you like, and consider it together. Okay, you’ll have to bear with me on this one, but let us suppose that we were all asleep, and the universe suddenly inflated by a thousand times.” There’s a murmur in the crowd at how odd everything abruptly getting that much bigger sounds, “Your bed, your pillow, your desk,” John extrapolates, “even the meter we measure stuff with. If humans became a thousand times bigger, when we woke up would we feel something strange? Would we even notice anything had changed? You’d think so, but no.” John’s settling back into his rhythm now, “So why is that? Because the bed and everything became a thousand times more inflated and our bodies also inflated a thousand times, with everything scaling in parallel relation to each other so that this percentage, this scale, was preserved throughout the room. You’d never know the difference."

"Henri Poincaré, the well known mathematician and theoretical physicist, says that we will never be able to discover that something like this has happened, even if we use all the mathematics and calculations ever invented.” John drives the point home with another illustrated slide, “This hypothesis is called the Poincaré hypothesis, and simply, because the meter with which we measure things will have also expanded a thousand times, there’s never going to be any equation or calculation or any analysis possible that could lead us to the truth, because the ratio is preserved in all parts."

"Now, this is important, because the same thing also happens with time. If everything suddenly got a thousand times faster, we’d still never feel anything different. Why’s that?” He asks, rhetorically, “Because time is also a thousand times faster, your heartbeat is also a thousand times faster, your body would function a thousand times faster to keep up with it all. As long as everything is increased by the same amount, the ratio is preserved, and none of us will be able to detect any change."

"So Poincaré asked the scientific community; is there no way to know that time increased or that things inflated?" John tells the room, "Well, it was Albert Einstein who answered him, deciding that the one and only way to tell, would be to have someone observing what happened to the world from another galaxy, from another world, lightyears away. For someone to point a telescope in our direction, and look through it at us, and say what happened to the Earth? Why are humans walking a thousand times faster than in the past? But this person who realized the situation,” The astronaut waves a flippant hand, starting to feel much more confident again, “would have to be a person standing on a fixed external platform in a different world, so that what happened to us was not also happening to him."

"But, as Einstein commented, this hypothesis is impossible for a simple reason and it's that there is no fixed platform in the universe - the entirety of it is in constant, turbulent motion. For example, the Earth rotates at a speed of 460 meters per second, revolving around the sun at 30 kilometers per second, and at the same time, the sun and it’s planets and dwarf planets and moons and asteroids, all revolve around our galaxy, The Milky Way, at a speed of 300 kilometres per second, and so the whole universe revolves. That's,” John takes a deep breath, finding himself out of air after so much explaining, “why it's impossible for us humans to completely accurately judge the motion of any astral body."

"Because there is no fixed berth, we can only offer relativity. This is the first part of the theory that Einstein came up with, in summary; it cannot be said that the monotony of a body is absolute motion."

"Another thing he said was that, because of the vastness of the universe, it’s impossible to synchronize, what does that mean? Well, I will give you an example.” He flicks his slide, “Say I’m a person in the Philippines, and I'm talking to someone from the United States. We synchronize, and hear each other in real time, because we have a method of fast communication. I can hold my device and say; hello, how are you?” John holds up the slim, sliver slice of his phone to show the audience, “How’s the weather there? And they’d answer me with something like; I’m fine thank you, it's night here so it’s a bit hard to tell what the weather’s doing! What’s the weather like there? And I’d answer them; it's daytime, and maybe ask them something like, what are you eating? They’d answer me; a burger, and then I’d tell them that I'm eating kaldereta, and it’s much better than a burger."

In the audience Penny quietly hopes that Gordon, who's probably listening in with the rest of his brother’s, missed the fact John was making jokes on stage. The poor little bugger’ll never live it down otherwise.

"These two events, each person talking to the other, are compatible.”  John goes on, absolutely oblivious, “It’s possible because the two wireless devices, be they mobile phones or more sophisticated comms systems, are on the same globe, creating a fast means of communication.”

"But,” John postulates, “If I was talking to someone from another galaxy and I used the same means of communication to make a call, do you know how long it would take to get to them? It would be about five to six thousand years until my signal reaches the phone of our friend, and they’ll have married, had children and died, and their children would have married and had children and died, and so on, for thousands of years before then."

"And that's why it's impossible to synchronize between the ends of the universe,” John balances his palms like he’s weighing two invisible ends, “It rather puts a damper on our chances of finding and communicating with extraterrestrial life, for sure, but at least it’s possible to synchronize within one system, like the system of the Earth. "

"This is a thing that also applies to light, for example: any star you could look up and see now, the light emanating from it may be coming from thousands of years ago. This means that it’s possible that the star you see shining could have exploded and disappeared, and hasn't existed for a long time. Why? Because it takes a couple of thousand years for the light from that explosion to reach us."

"There isn’t any proof for the hypothesis that the universe is linked by time, but the thing that happens that we’re sure of is that the universe is made up of, sort of, separate islands of different times that have no connection between them. The connection between movement and time in space is something we all know about, for example, a day on Earth equals twenty-four hours, yes?” There’s a chorus of agreement from the audience, “But on Saturn, a day is ten hours because it rotates faster. Astonishingly, a day on Mercury is the same as fifty-eight whole Earth days, which, infact, is also a Mercurian year, because the planet revolves around the sun for the exact same period as it revolves around itself."

"Okay, so, to what extent is movement related to time?” John asks, well and truly into this whole teaching thing now, “Well, Einstein was the first person to discover the connection between them and suggested that; suppose you’re on board a very fast rocket, 100,000 miles per hour for example. The mechanical watch on your wrist would be delayed over the flight, but you wouldn’t feel like time is being delayed. Why’s that? It’s because the rhythm of your heart would slow down - all of the vital processes in your body that are inside the rocket will slow down."

"As you move more, something called the dilation of time will happen.” He steps to the side, as if to illustrate the point, only to find himself stumbling a little, like if the ground beneath his feet had moved. “T-Time slows down,” John tries to recover it smoothly, but everything’s starting to feel, weirdly, like it’s shaking, and he doesn’t think it’s the anxiety anymore, “and that's-"

John doesn’t get to finish his sentence because there’s an abrupt shift and a loud cracking from under him, and getting off the stage suddenly seems like a good idea. Someone screams outside, and the volume in the room skyrockets as the children start panicking. John’s one hundred percent sure this wasn't anything planned.

He knew he shouldn't have come.

Earthquake? He wonders first, then; Tsunami? Ground slip? Hurricane? Whichever it is, John has to prioritise calming the people and evacuating them out of the building. The giant glass panels above them are trembling with the force of the shaking, and, as a professional at this sort of thing, Thunderbird Five’s Space Monitor doesn’t like the look of it one bit.

"Everyone calm down,” He has to shout to make himself heard over the roar of people, even with the microphones pointed his way, “This is a normal thing. All we have to do is evacuate immediately, as calmly. as. possible. I don't want anyone crowding the exits, do you all understand what I just said?" The front rows, white faced with fear, nod encouragingly at him, and he watches as they begin to lead the way toward the glowing green signs that signal the emergency exits. Immediately after making sure the crowd is moving, John pulls up his comm to contact Gordon.

"Gordon, are you on the line?” John’s a little breathless and he climbs down from the precarious stage, into the throng of terrified bodies, “We have a situation in here."

"Let me guess, you caused it?" Gordon seems so excited to hear something other than his brother's boring lecture that humour has outweighed his professionalism.

"Gordon,” John grits his teeth, “I'm being serious right now, there was a huge movement in the ground beneath the Chino Roque Theater, and it's still ongoing. Tell Alan to do a check on what's happening beneath us using the Ground Penetrating Radar." He orders.

"F.A.B." Comes the far more serious response, before Gordon clicks off the line to do just that. Squashing down any fear he’d about the now swelling, shuffling crowd, John opens his arms wide and walks toward them, the motion sort of like he’s trying to herd sheep, as he tries to evacuate the people safely out of the building.

He’s not exactly an expert at being on the scene during rescues.

"John, there's a landslide going on right now,” Alan’s worried little voice comes ringing out of his comm speakers, “Right next to the theatre. You’d better get out of there. I’m monitoring the situation, but it’s looking like you’re going to need International Rescue to get you and the people out of there. The debris field is spreading fast." John would do almost anything to be up there instead, at his own screens. “I've contacted Virgil and Scott, I’m patching them through now.” Alan clicks Scott and Virgil, both clearly just finishing their suit up sequences, into the conversation. It seems important to keep them up to date with John's developing situation.

"Hey Mr. Tracy, how are you holding up?" Scott jokes over the roar of his launching Thunderbird, the sound filling the background of the call with white-noise, "Oh, and how was your lecture?" John thinks he sounds far too casual in contrast to the impending danger all around him.

"Oh my God, Scott, is now really the time?” John groans, and a kid with mousey blond hair not dissimilar to Alan’s looks up at him, very confused, before the astronaut waves him on, “You are an adult person,” He reminds his big brother, “Please don't be like Gordon right now. He’s practically still a child."

"Hey!” Gordon had clearly overheard the conversation between his brothers, and springs up to defend himself. “I'm only two or three years younger than you!" He complains, not about to do the math.

"Gordon, we don't have time for arguing about that now,” John frowns, “and Scott, I'm holding up alright at the moment. Please don't ask me anything about the lecture until I get back home." If his voice cracks a little on that last bit, he’ll never admit it.

"Okay, okay I won't ask anything about that,” Scott reassures him, his amused, big brother grin very much in place, “Keep on evacuating the people safely until we arrive John, you’re doing great. It won’t take us that long. ETA at 15,000 mph is sixteen minutes.” He reassures, “We’ll be there before you know it."

"F.A.B. Scott." He reluctantly signs off. Now that he’s finished talking with Scott, John’s pleased to see that a lot of people have already made their way out of the atrium’s three sets of double doors, evacuating the building to get as far away from the landslide as possible. His fingers itch to pull up the schematics from Thunderbird Five on his comm, no matter what the people around him might think. He quickly caves, and it feels worth it to be able to see the incoming tide of slipping land.

They don’t have much time.

“Let’s go!” He shouts, chivvying. He’s a little breathless with the tension, so he keeps things short. “Come on! Let’s move guys!”

From his vantage near the crumbling stage, John can make out Lady Penelope and Parker by the main doors, ushering people through, and the sight of them fills him instantly with immense relief.

“Okay, that's a good amount of people out.” John has to jog to catch up with them, skirting around a little old lady with a zimmer frame and taking a second to correct her course, “Lady Penelope, Parker, I think you should go and check on the people who’re out. They could have minor injuries from the stampede, and International Rescue are still ten minutes out. I'll make sure the last few stragglers exit safely."

Penelope just nods, pale and worried. Her blond brows are all pinched in together, nervous and Parker looks practically haggard as he claps a reassuring hand on John’s shoulder, her faithful old companion following her pink shape dutifully out the doors. Hopefully they’ll go make sure that no one was badly injured in any way.

Turning back to the slow cascade of cracking rubble behind him, John finds the stage area has been all but obliterated, and his heart aches for the patrons of the Chino Roque Theater who’ll have to rebuild from scratch when this is over. He imagines the Tracy fund can contribute a significant amount toward that though. They often do for worthy causes.

John pushes the damp curl of his slightly sweaty bangs out of his eyes and climbs over what looks like a twisted piece of ceiling girder toward the sound of people, possibly trapped stragglers, who are calling for help.

"I miss Thunderbird 5 so much,” John mutters, keeping it under his breath so that no one hears him, as his palms are scraped raw against the concrete he’s trying to clamber around. There’s a rippp of fabric on a jagged piece of metal and the knee of his previous pristine brown jeans meets much the same fate as his poor, scuffed hands. “Oh, come on!” He’s having no luck today, “I'd so rather be assisting the situation from space. I can’t believe I’m stuck here." John grumbles, to no one in particular. He’s just not built for this kind of thing. Heavy labour and getting sweaty pulling people out of scrap heaps is what his other brothers do. At least rescues in space don’t have all this… gravity to contend with.

"John?” The crackle of a comm cut’s across his complaints, “What’re you still doing in there?” Gordon’s voice breaks him from his thoughts, little brother’s tone heavy with concern. “The building could fall any moment! You're so lucky the landslide isn't moving very fast, but it’s not gonna stay that way forever." Gordon was really worried about the fact that his older brother was still inside. “It could engulf the building! You need to hurry it up, bro.”

"I'm evacuating the people as fast as I can,” John gets both hands under the armpits of a boy who couldn’t be older than seven, and swings him above a pile of rubble toward safety, “I'll be out in no ti- Ah!"

John’s voice gets cut off with a startled cry, and it takes Gordon a second or two, time John might not have, to remember how to breathe so that he can yell in any way coherently into his comm. His eyes are wide, his anxiety levels through the roof as he tries, and fails, to rouse his brother on the other end.

"SCOTT! You need to get there now.” Gordon’s aware that he’s totally losing his cool, panic creeping in over his weak layer of professionalism, “I just lost contact with John.” He gasps, “He was evacuating people and I heard him yell and now he’s not responding! And- and it's not just him. There were other people he was trying to get out."

"Hey Gordon,” Scott tries to keep his voice steady to inject some kind of stability into the conversation, “Don't lose your cool yet. I'm sure nothing that bad happened to John. Just stay your positive self, okay? I’m arriving right now and Virgil isn’t far behind me."

Thunderbird One is panning over the city, low enough to ruffle the hair of people looking up, but it’s not a problem until the usually so sure and steady pilot finds his hands nearly slipping off her controls as Scott catches his first, horrific glimpse of the building that he knows his younger brother is inside.

“What the…?”

The Chino Roque Theater is almost flat.

"Virgil,” Scott swallows hard to try and remove any of the tremor from his voice, “A-Are you seeing what I'm seeing right now?" He almost succeeds.

"Scott this isn't a joke, it looks like half of the building has come down with the landslide! John’s in there!" Virgil sounds more terrified than Scott thinks he’s ever heard him. What scares him the most is that the exit was on the side that has fallen in, which means that a lot of people are trapped under it, their John included. "Scott, we need to help them right now.

"Okay, here's the plan,” Scott’s hands tighten white-knuckled on the steering yoke, “You wear your exo-suit and go clear the debris out of the way so that we can save them, and I'll get rid of that roof with Thunderbird One and check for life signs. Remember that saving lives is our top priority, got it? No matter what’s happened to John."

"F.A.B." Virgil sounds incredibly tense. He lands Thunderbird Two as fast as he can in the crowded, limited space. Local people are beginning to make their way out of their houses to see what all the commotion is about, and the cramped city streets aren’t ideal for International Rescue’s four hundred and six ton workhorse.

Two’s pilot struggles into his exo-suit, rushing to get the Jaws of Life prepared despite Scott’s insistence that he focus and take things slow and sensible. It’s not long until he finds himself digging among the debris looking for buried people and, in the white rush of it all, Virgil’s not even sure how he got there.

"Scott,” he presses on his comm, “Please tell me you’ve got something?"

"Fortunately and thankfully yes,” It’s hard to find the hopefulness in big brother’s clipped Mobile Control voice, but it’s there to Virgil’s expert ear, drizzled in nervous relief. “I've got a whole cluster of life signs,” Scott reports, “BPM signalling in the green. "I think they’re just trapped under the debris." Alan’s echolocation report came back suggesting that there’s a big space under what could be folded sheet metal from the ceiling, that they’ve huddled in. I'm really sure there's nothing that bad, but still we have to continue otherwise it will take a bad turn for us and the people in there."

“I can use the grappling cables in Thunderbird One to take the strain off the roof,” Scott adds, “But I need you in there to get those people out.”

“Already on my way,” Virgil ducks under some rebar, skirting around the rubble and pulling away loose debris as he goes. His heart is loud in his own ears, and Virgil hopes the creak and groan of metal and concrete above him is Scott lifting the weight off the roof, keeping it from collapsing any further onto the people below, and not anything more sinister. Virgil gets peppered by a slide of small stones, but the roof holds steady.

He presses on until he catches sight of the cluster of around forty people, all huddled together around a tall, central figure with a shocking amount of rubble dust smeared over his face, and powdered through his ginger hair.

“John!” Two’s pilot makes a beeline for his brother, despite the fact three of the people are stuck under rubble. Clearly John’s in control of the situation here, and he’s never wanted a mission update from their Space Monitor so much in his life. He can’t help but hone in on the fact John's left arm is crudely wrapped in a piece of cloth from his sleeve, which he must’ve ripped off in order to tie it.

"You have to tell me exactly what happened,” Virgil drops the controls for the Jaws of Life, and grasps his brother’s biceps in both hands instead, resisting the very strong temptation to pull the spaceman in for a hug. “And what happened to your arm?!?" There’s a river of blood seeping from beneath the make-shift bandage, but John, it seems, isn’t bothered by it in the slightest.

"Not now Virgil.” His concerns get thoroughly dismissed, “We’ve got to get these people out of here, and then I'll tell you everything." Virgil didn't like the idea that something happened to his brother and he's silent about it, but after all John was right about saving the people first since his arm is under control for now.

John crouches by the nearest injured person; a pale, skinny teen with a sizable piece of rebar keeping him pinned.

“You’re gonna be out of there in just a second, Lito.” Virgil watches him reassuring the young man for a long moment, “Uh, Virgil?” John prompts. “Any time?”

“What?” He blinks, “Oh, yeah!” His brother is clearly waiting expectantly for him to use the Jaws of Life to get the poor kid out. "I’m on it, but you better tell me everything after we're done saving them." Virgil demands. “But, uh, Scott’s kind of holding the roof up right now, so you’re probably right.”

"Okay,” John literally rolls his eyes, busy stealing a pair of blue rubber gloves from the Med Kit Virgil brought with him, and snapping them on to protect his hands and the fine cuts he’d gotten from climbing over rubble. “I promise I'll tell you everything, but can we start actually rescuing them now?" Rolling his eyes right back, the bigger man uses his exosuit to heft the rubble off Lito, before John swoops in to apply pressure to his injuries.

“Give me the fold out stretcher from your sash.” He orders, hands bloodied “Then go get the next person out. Efifania, Sergio?” John beckons a pair of nearby dad’s in closer, clearly having singled them out as capable stretcher bearers. “Think you can manage Lito here for me?”

As Virgil starts removing the rubble from above the other two trapped people, a middle aged man and a younger woman, it becomes immediately obvious that both of them have more severe wounds than young Lito. They both need medical treatment immediately.

“I’ll carry one of them.” Without the three extra sets of hands he’d need, Virgil has to leave a couple of crowd members applying pressure to their wounds, as he moves back to where John is helping Lito unsteadily to his feet. “Think you can walk, young man? We’re gonna need that stretcher for the big guy.”

“I won’t let you fall.” John promises, and Virgil feels a real swell of pride at how well his brother is handling the situation whilst being outside of both his space station and his comfort zone. It looks like having a rescue and a job to do really gives him no time for anxiety. "I agree that that's our best plan.” He adds, nodding, short and sharp, to confirm it, then John turns, an arm around Lito’s waist and the kid’s arm slung over his shoulder, to address the crowd.

“Anyone not so severely hurt needs to help get the injured out of here.” John instructs, the small crowd listening raptly. The look on the faces of these scared people is one Virgil is all too familiar with, but he knows John has far less experience of in person. They’re really looking to him as their saviour. “Virgil here is going to lead us through the path he just made.” Which is news to Virgil, but does seem like the best plan. “International Rescue will then be able to take us all to the hospital to get checked out, and then I’m sure you’ll be released to go home to your families before you know it. Got it everyone?"

In that moment Virgil finds himself struck with amazement at how John seems to have become almost as fearless as Scott, as they started carrying the two injured people out to safety. It was really a new side to him that Virgil doesn’t think he’s ever seen before.

"Virgil… I need you to check on Lady Penelope and Parker.” John’s keeping pace at his side, helping the boy they’d dug out along as he goes, “I told them to check to see if anyone was hurt."

"Hmm, yeah you're right.” Virgil frowns. If Penny and Parker have any more injured party members, even minor ones that just need a check up, Thunderbird Two will need to evacuate them to the hospital as well. “Have you got any idea where they might be?"

"Well, I told them to get somewhere away from the landslide,” John frowns, as their limping, shocky party stumbles out into the bright light of day, to be greeted by the roar of Thunderbird One’s engines high above them. “They should be near here.” He yells over the sound of it.

As usual, it turns out that John is completely right. Penny and Parker are waiting for them, but neither John nor Virgil find the look on Lady Penelope's face all that reassuring.

"JOHN!” She rushes toward the battered, bloodied spaceman, her arms outstretched. Virgil very quickly and carefully finagles poor Lito out of the way as his brother gets ambushed. “Are you okay?!?” Penelope demands, frantic, “What happened to your arm?” She reaches for the bloodied bandage, and John winces, “I'm so sorry,” All of John’s carefully constructed rules around personal space are shattered as she cups his cheek, inspecting his face for injury. It’s lucky that John is by far the most patient of the Tracy boys. “I shouldn't have left you there.

"She’d been so terrified, perhaps more than anyone else here. The horrific view she’d seen with her own eyes is going to haunt her for a long time yet. One second she was getting out of the building to reassure and check up on the people, and the next she was watching half the structure collapse completely, with John under the side that fell. She still feels a little sick.

"I'm so, so, so sorry John,” She repeats, before he can get a word in edgeways to reassure her, “Please, you must tell me if there's any way I can make it up to you. Ask me anything and I'll do it."

"Okay guys,” Virgil chuckles, “while you talk things out I'll go to get the injured people aboard Thunderbird 2. Make it quick though, we’ve still got people who need immediate medical treatment, got it?"

"F.A.B. Virgil.” John nods, “We'll be quick. Penny, I..."

“I’m so sorry.” She repeats again, and pulls his good arm over her shoulder as if to steady him as they make their way at the back of the crowd toward the big green Thunderbird.

"No no no, Penny, please stop apologising.” John’s fingers tighten for a quick moment on her shoulder, in brief reassurance, “I'm not going to ask you for anything because it was never your fault.” He insists, “It was just some bad luck, that's all. Fortunately I, and most people, got out safe with no severe wounds. These things happen.”

“Your arm.” She points out softly, hoping that all that blood looks worse than it is, “John I can’t believe you stayed behind like that, it’s so...”

“Tracy?” He grins, amused but very weary.

“Scott Tracy.” She corrects, scowling a little as she holds on just that little bit tighter around his waist as his adrenaline from the rescue starts to flag. “I thought you had more common sense.”

“Hate to disappoint.” She feels the warmth of him chuckling, “I’m lucky it was nothing worse than his cut from some shattered glass that fell on my arm while I was helping one of the guys who got stuck. I don’t think any arteries or anything have been damaged, but it is... kinda deep." And he might be getting a little lightheaded from the blood loss. Still, he really wants to reassure her, just like she had reassured him before he’d gone in to give the lecture.

"Hate to interrupt your moment, but are you guys done?" Scott pops up from who-knows-where amongst the crowd to yell at them. He’s clearly joined the relief effort. "Virgil’s just finished getting everyone aboard Thunderbird 2, and he's ready to launch." He adds, squinting at the pale, wobbly mess of his brother. "And you really do need to check your arm. That looks nasty.”

"Yeah Scott,” John wipes a tired hand over his dirty face, dislodging dust, “We're done. Don’t let Thunderbird Two wait for me, I'll hitch a ride with Lady Penelope, uh,” He turns to her, bashful, to check, “If that’s okay?"

“Of course,” Her Ladyship concedes, “Scott?” She is mildly concerned that big brother might want to have the injured member of his flock under his wing so he can smother him.

"Yeah sure, ride whatever you want.” Scott flip flops a dismissive hand at them, “You can ride a pod, I won't care as long as your destination is the hospital."

"How about you, Gordon?” John knows his little brother is still on the line, probably sulking. “Is it okay if I take the ride with Lady P?"

"W-what do you mean by that?” Gordon sounds confused and maybe a little embarrassed, like he’s been caught out. “Scott already said you should go, why’re you asking me?"

"Well, she's your girlfriend.” John grins, teasing, as Penny helps him into the back of FAB1. “Of course I have to get permission from her boyfriend.

"Penny swats at him for that, amused, but careful not to hit his injured arm. She doesn’t need anyone’s permission to do anything, but it is fun to see Gordon squirm - especially as Scott and Virgil both crack up, and even Alan in space starts teasing him.

"What?!?” Gordon’s face, bless that darling young man, has gone bright red. “J-Just go already." He ducks off the comm screen to try and hide his embarrassment, but it’s far too late for that.

He’s lucky that Penelope finds it incredibly endearing.

"John,” She nudges him, as the Tracy’s all click off the line to go do their actual jobs. She’s a little concerned that he’s looking a bit spaced out, if you’ll excuse the pun, and it’s probably a good idea to keep him talking. “You know we're still going to The Pagasa Observatory, just like I promised you, right?"

"Wait really?” John’s head tilts, a little floppy, towards her from where it had been sinking into FAB1’s luxurious headrests. He’s looking a little grey, but it’s good to see his eyes open. “After all that happened?” A ginger eyebrow quirks, “Are you sure there's time for that?"

"Well, we’re on our way to the hospital now, but there’ll be plenty of time this afternoon.” As long as the medics give him a clean bill of health. “You can change your clothes after we're done checking your arm then there should be time for you to go see that big telescope you've been dreaming of visiting. After all, I did promise you we’d go there after we're done."

"Well, that sounds good to me!” John smiles like there’s a supanova fuling him, “Penny you’re the best."

They reach the hospital a little after International Rescue has dropped off the fourty or so injured people, and so there’s quite a wait for a Doctor to be free so that they can have a look at John’s poor, sliced arm. Penny seems to be doing a worried hover at his side, while he waits, shaky from blood loss, and though he’s not used to having so much company, John has to admit it’s nice to have a chance to catch up with his old friend with no rescue alarms blaring.

Alan reports in that the two worst injured in the landslide have been hospitalized as fast as possible, that they were stable - the doctors have said their prognosis looked good. He also tells him that Lito’s family had been asking after the redheaded lecturer who’d helped him out of the rubble, and that John Tracy, M.Sci, PgDip, B.Lang Hons, should probably expect a gift basket in the mail quite soon.

John gets quite flustered about that. He’d just been doing his job.

The spaceman's arm was eventually treated, and Scott calls in to ask what actually happened to his arm. It still hurts, a properly bandaged throb just under his elbow, but not like before. The painkilling injection and little bit of morphine they’d given him when they stitched it up had probably helped with that.

Alan’s reports dug up that the landslide had been caused by a water main leaking under the building, and destabilizing the soil. Over time, water can do a lot of damage, washing away vital infrastructure if it’s not been properly reinforced during construction.

As the Chino Roque Theater was a new build, there must have been a mistake in the installation of the pipes during construction.

Someone was getting a big lawsuit heading their way, and Tracy Enterprises will be more than happy to fund the lawyers for the theatre.

As Lady Penelope promised him, they found John a change of clothes and went to the Pagasa Observatory. Penny’s quite sure she’s never seen anything as wholesome as the moment John sees the telescope - his eyes went all shiny, and the smile on his face was massive.

"Lady Penelope, Parker come take a look at the stars!!!” He calls, over his shoulder, with the enthusiasm of a boy half his age, “They’re really beautiful from here!" With such a high-powered lens pointed up at the cosmos, it rivals even his view from Thunderbird Five.

"Indeed, they are." Lady Penelope and Parker both step up to take turns, but John was the one to look through the telescope the most. With all the stealth her years as a secret agent offered her, Lady Penelope took a picture of him.

"Parker, come take a look." She whispers, beckoning her old companion gleefully over. "He looks so happy and innocent in this picture. Wouldn’t it be lovely to see his face like this always?"

"We still have some time before they close,” Parker points out, a sly grin creeping onto his nosey old face. “How h’bout we leave him like this for a little longer?"

"That, Parker.” she smiles, “Is an excellent idea.”

The End

#tag mini bang 2021 #tagminibang2021 #thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds #john tracy #scott tracy #gordon tracy #virgil tracy #alan tracy #Lady Penelope #Parker #tag #my writing

[literaryeagle]

For my seventieth Evangelion book review, here is EVANGELION Millennials 2, published by Poplar Sha. This is a new mook (magazine-book hybrid) that came out just a few weeks ago, and as you can probably guess by the title, it is a sequel to the first EVANGELION Millennials (which I covered back in my sixty-sixth review). So this is another mook that is focused on fashion, which is why the cover art in the above image shows Tentative Name: Rei Ayanami wearing a hoodie over her plugsuit. Wow, she looks super stylish like that!

Of course, this publication has new looks for the other pilots as well. Check out this illustration of Asuka, Shinji, Rei, Kaworu, and Mari:

The pilots are wearing clothes from the RADIO EVA brand. Even the bandanna tied around Kaworu's right ankle is from RADIO EVA! By the way, this mook is not available in English or French (although there are a few little bits of English text here and there), but there are plenty of full color pictures. There are also some extra special goodies… more on that later. Keep reading for the rest of the book review, plus a few more pictures!

After the Table of Contents, this mook starts with a recap of the first three installments in the Evangelion New Theatrical Edition (AKA the “Rebuild” movies). This recap mainly consists of several pages of screenshots, accompanied by brief story descriptions and quotes from the movies. There are also a few trivia questions about the dialogue, plus some pics of the Eva pilots in their plugsuits.

The next section is the MAI YONEYAMA Drawn Illustration Collection, which showcases art that Mai Yoneyama has done for the RADIO EVA clothing brand, including the first two images shown in this review. And yes, the cute cover picture of Asuka and Shinji from the first EVANGELION Millennials is also in here!

This is followed by the EVANGELION GOODS 2020 section, which starts with a catalog of new stuff from RADIO EVA. As I explained in my review of the first EVANGELION Millennials, the RADIO EVA brand specializes in everyday wear, and many of their garments tend to reference Evangelion in a subtle way. For example, here is a dress that has flowers on one arm, with the Spear of Longinus embroidered among the flowers:

Usually I find that RADIO EVA's clothes are a bit too plain for my tastes, however I have to admit that dress is kind of cute. Good job, RADIO EVA!

For those who don't need subtlety and would rather express their love for Evangelion in a more overt way, RADIO EVA has a few things for that as well. For example, one of the items shown below is a tote bag that has a Mai Yoneyama illustration of the Eva pilots:

In the above image, the two items underneath the tote bag are subtle ones again. The first is a simple purple hair tie that says "NERV" (the purple color is supposed to represent Evangelion Unit-01), and the other is a red key ring (the color represents Asuka). Oh, and for those who prefer more character merchandise, at the bottom of that page is a figurine of Rei wearing RADIO EVA clothes.

Moving on, the next part of this mook is a catalog of some items from the Evangelion Store, including a mug and a T-shirt bearing the name of the next movie, Evangelion: 3.0 + 1.0 Thrice Upon a Time. After that, there is the OFFICIAL SHOP GUIDE section with pictures and info about various Evangelion shops in Japan. The stores are described in both Japanese and English, to make things easier for tourists... once it's safe to travel again, I guess. Sigh.

Next is the EVANGELION NEWS section, which covers some Eva-related merchandise, events, and exhibits. For example, one of the exhibits is a huge Evangelion Unit-01 in a pool of LCL, located in Kyoto. This Eva is so big that you can pose for a photo standing in the palm of her hand!

After the NEWS, there is a page promoting the Eva Extra mobile app, and then an advertisement for the Evangelion Battlefields mobile game. Here is the Evangelion Battlefields ad:

And finally, on the back cover of the mook, you can see poster art for the upcoming movie Evangelion: 3.0 + 1.0 Thrice Upon a Time. Yay! Sure, you've probably seen this image online already, but it's nice to actually own a physical copy! The picture shows Shinji standing on train tracks. Here it is:

Yes, Shinji is there. He's standing in the distance, so he's very tiny in that picture. As for the film's release date, as you've most likely heard by now the movie was originally supposed to come out a few months ago (June 2020), but unfortunately it had to be delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. So the Japanese text at the bottom of the poster simply says "Kinjitsu Koukai" (Coming Soon). Sorry, folks. I know that's disappointing for many people, however it's understandable that safety should come first. Until then, I hope you all stay healthy and safe, so when the movie does come out we can get excited together!  (EDIT, March 2021: The movie's new release date is March 8, 2021!)

Anyway, that's it for the mook itself, which is only 35 pages long. But wait, we’re not done yet! As I mentioned before, some extra special goodies are included. The first item is a white T-shirt that says "The Beast", courtesy of RADIO EVA:

If you're wondering why "The Beast" is written backwards, it's because of Mari's words "Invert mode. Backdoor code... 'The Beast'!". So the designer was inspired by the words invert and back, get it? Well, that and I'm pretty sure the font is a reference to The Beatles. I would make a joke about playing the Evangelion movies backwards to listen for hidden messages, except that actually works in the Evangelion 2.0 movie, during the scene when the Dummy System is activated inside Unit-01! Seriously, it's creepy.

Anyway, getting back to the T-shirt, it's one size only, but of course people come in different shapes and sizes. So in case you're concerned about the fit, I have translated the shirt's measurements as stated in the mook...

Length: approximately 70 cm

Width: approximately 52 cm

Shoulder Width: approximately 46 cm

Sleeve Length: approximately 21 cm

Sleeve Width: approximately 19 cm

I hope that helps! Moving on, the second bonus item is a RADIO EVA sacoche (pouch) with a cross-body strap. It can carry small items, such as a wallet and/or mobile phone. Check it out:

In case it's not clear in the above photo, the pattern on the sacoche consists of Evangelion heads. Here's a closer look at the pattern, so you can see it better:

Overall, I think the best thing about EVANGELION Millennials 2 is Mai Yoneyama's illustrations. She has a good eye for detail, and I think she draws some great poses as well. However, most of RADIO EVA's clothes aren't really to my taste, so when it comes to fashion-related publications I prefer Mode EVANGELION and Mode EVANGELION2. That's just my personal opinion, though. If you love RADIO EVA, you'll probably find this mook a lot more interesting than I did. And that's cool! There are plenty of brands that make garments inspired by Evangelion, so it's nice that they cater to different preferences.

So if this mook (or the included goodies!) looks interesting to you, then please support the artists by purchasing it if you can! Check if your favorite source for buying Japanese books has it, and if not then ask them if they can order it for you. ^_^

Well, that’s it for my seventieth Evangelion book review. I have plenty more Evangelion books to discuss, so keep checking my blog for new reviews!

#Evangelion #Asuka Langley Shikinami #Shinji Ikari #Kaworu Nagisa #Rei Ayanami #Tentative Name: Rei Ayanami #Mari Illustrious Makinami #Spear of Longinus #Evangelion Unit 01 #Evangelion Unit 00 #Evangelion Unit 02 #book review

[neotan-astrology]

Not astrology related but how will you describe Jungwoo’s relationship/dynamics with 127?

this post just turned into me rambling sorry 🙈

Taeil - I think first of all their humor really matches each other. Like Taeil has thing where he doesn't let the age difference come into play and that specially shows in the case of Jungwoo and Haechan. Their ‘debate’ during that punch punch show really proves it. And apparently they have these kind of debates at their dorm too. And Taeil always indulges Jungwoo and he is one of the members Jungwoo is always clingy with. Like since Jungwoo joined 127 Taeil was one of the members Jungwoo was comfortable with so yeah I am really grateful for that.

Johnny - Jungwoo has consistently mentioned that he would like to have Johnny as his elder brother and yup that just explains their dynamics. And Jungwoo also mentioned he feels protected around Johnny so yup they really feel like they have a siblings kind of relationship. And the way Jungwoo talks about Johnny you can feel how much supportive Johnny is and how much he takes care of Jungwoo.  Also in that Chilling Mukping video Taeil and Johnny both treated Jungwoo as the maknae. He literally did not have to do anything and while they both set everything up. 

Taeyong - I think they have the perfect leader x member dynamic. Taeyong has always reminded everyone that even though Jungwoo might have joined 127 later but he has still been with them since the start. in the recent Men’s No No interview and even behind the scenes Jungwoo mentioned that Taeyong liked his clothes which makes me feel that Jungwoo really cares about Taeyong’s opinion. 

Yuta - Okay Yuta is definitely one of the members Jungwoo is closest with. Yuta always confidently mentioning how much Jungwoo loves him and yes Jungwoo really does. I think Jungwoo really relies so much on Yuta, Yuta literally mentioned he thinks Jungwoo cant live without him. I personally feel they both are kind of opposites but they still have their perfect dynamics where they understood each other. This interview is perfect to get to know their dynamics. Also Yuta was the only member who updated about Jungwoo during his hiatus and I cannot accentuate the fact how thankful I am for that.

Doyoung - Okay Doyoung has literally been with Jungwoo since his debut. Jungwoo got overwhelmed before his debut stage and it was Doyoung who calmed him down. And he has been supporting him ever since. Jungwoo likes to tease Doyoung a lot and the playfully argue but yup he indulges Jungwoo a lot. (not at Doyoung’s room getting locked and his first though was Jungwoo is playing a prank on him even though they live on different floors)  Also not Doyoung saying he knows Jungwoo better than Jungwoo knows himself.

Jaehyun - Okay their dynamics really underrated. Ngl since they became roommates it literally feels like they share the same braincells. Jaehyun saying that he thinks Jungwoo is not that weird and Mark saying that maybe it means that Jaehyun is equally weird just sums up everything about them.And Jaehyun really laughs the loudest at anything Jungwoo does. Jaehyun saying watching Jungwoo eat makes him happy i am like 

Mark - BEST FRIENDS!! after the relay cam do I really need to say anything about them. But yeah Mark has been supportive of Jungwoo since he joined in 2018. He literally said he was more excited about Jungwoo debuting than even Jungwoo himself. They dropped honorifics soon after Jungwoo joined 127. Mark saying he misses Jungwoo the most when he is away! And how he is just thankful Jungwoo is beside him just as he is. Also plugging this edit because this makes me emotional.

Haechan - Another underrated duo! I genuinely feel they got close during 2020. I think during the To You video Jungwoo said Haechan feels like a same age friend to him. And in that video Haechan mentioned how they cannot go on without Jungwoo and just his entire message to Jungwoo was so heartfelt I cry every time. My most favourite moment of them has to be Haechan cheering for Jungwoo when he was jumping that 2m 30 cm vault thing and he was all I really want Jungwoo to win and then after Jungwoo won he was all running to hug him. Anyway I am going to pester SM about a hyuckwoo subunit for the rest of my life!

#jungwoo #taeil #johnny #taeyong #yuta #doyoung #jaehyun #mark lee #haechan #nct #nct 127

[rurifangirl]

Aight new oc time babeiiii🤩

(hsjdj I'm sorry for some walls of text 😔)

Name: Lyva

Pronouns: She/her

Gender identity: Cis woman

Sexuality: Greysexual homoromantic

Age: 19

Height: 1.68 cm

Mbti type: Enfj

Spieces: Human

Likes: Picnics, white dresses, her lil hat, owls, earrings, interests in some kind of rock/gems stuff

Dislikes: Feathers, High places, sharp things (Ex. Spikes)[which Is ironic considerin she's besties w Rui n i just realized It😭😭], humidity, eyes

Personality: A responsable and kind of hot headed girl, she's one of the main people to guide the group that will soon form. Despite her appereance she's really good at taking care of herself and not giving up easly nor being told what to do. She's also kind at heart, but will still do whats necessary for her to live on.

Magical ability in general: Her powers were influenced by the kind of zone she lived, which was a little town; (I'll expand on that in the hcs/facts part) her ability grants her protection through the use of Lyva's earrings, bein the two stones on each ear. It can protect her for a maximum of 54 seconds all at once, but, after using the protection ability, she can change its usage onto the attack part, which instead gives her a small/medium weapon of her choice, though its duration is fairly lower, which being 45 seconds, before disappearing, and having to wait 2 minutes before a reusage. (The duration can also be split, in the sense that Lyva can use for example her attack ability for 20 seconds and then, as her will, being able to use It after a while, though still maintaining the 45 seconds rule, so in this case she'd only have 25 seconds left.)

Bitch i explained a lil too much into that but fuck it

(edit: soo basically, i kinda forgot to say how her powers were influenced? It's more of like hinted, but Imma say that it's cuz of merchands n shit so dw😭)

Hcs/lil facts bout her📙

She used to live in a sort of little town, near the woods, n it's safe to say that she didn't have financial problems, as her parents were succesfull merchants, so she could have afforded more stuff. Or It would've been. Thruth is that, even tho her parents did buy her stuff, they were never around her, nor really treated her w kindness. Her social status didn't help either, as It was belived that Lyva was just some spoiled brat, so despite her actually capable of holding convos/ approaching people, she didn't have any friends, and rather talked to inanimated objects.

I can see ya bein "how did she found rui???", so, remember how I mentioned the forest? Yup, the same shit. Basically one day she was done up w everything there n decided to just, walk off. She took some earrings that were left there (which are the ones she's using btw!;also she already knew they were like that, as she already used em in the past), n then said bye 💃hwkdjfh, she got lost, eventually. So like, she sat down n like , was thinkin of what she'd do rn, so the scene basically was this. (They then invited lyva over n then overtime they became besties btw)

She's actually pretty responsable, mainly because of being left alone, so she had learned how to take care of her.

Mom friend. Yes. I'm intendin her to actually bein the chillest in the group, cuz Rui's pretty excitable, but to hard lvls.

Likes to sketch if stressed n actually keeps a tidy sketchbook

Likes to tease Rui bout their gem obsession, n makin them going like: "Don't talk to me OR MY CHILDREN ever again >:(", but lovingly 🧡

Tbh Rui n her actually don't share the same house, it's near yeah but not the same. (Basically an excuse to make another house design but shush)

Lyva usually also likes goin out a bit, seein if she can find some stuff to decorate both herself n her home, such as like those lil plants, tho she doesn't exxagerate

Also Lyva's good @ fightin, wanna specify that cuz she's not really a bimbo, she's just neutral tbh.

Hwksj forgot to say that she doesn't like feathers tho cuz they're not her style n doesn't really vibe w em🤡

AIGHT I FINISHED, Y'ALL ARE FREE 😍

#rurusocs #ocs #oc #lyva #my ocs #my ocs stuff #my ocs art #my ocs drawing #character sheet #oc card #art #my art #tradtitional art #artists on tumblr #traditional artists #sketch #doodle #doodles #honestly next bitch im gonna do is gonna be chaotic #cuz ye rui sure they're somethin in terms of excitment but i need a chaotic ho #Is this a sneak peak on the character name on the pinned post? mayperhaps🤍 #my ocs info #my oc info #beginner artist #beginner art #artwork #*gonna mention this in the tags cuz she really doesn't belive in any god but understands that they exist #just that she doesn't care bout any of em

[7theavenbye]

*  𝙶𝙴𝚃𝚃𝙸𝙽𝙶  𝚃𝙾  𝙺𝙽𝙾𝚆  𝚃𝙷𝙴  𝙼𝚄𝙽  :

NAME :  victoria  NICKNAME : tori, vivi, vick . . . . FACECLAIM :   idk,  coconut  head ? PRONOUNS :  she / her or they / them HEIGHT :  5′4  (163 cm)  BIRTHDAY :  april 24th

AESTHETIC :    wait.  aesthetic in  a  sense  of  my  aesthetic , tifa  or  what  i  think  of aesthetics ?     (¤﹏¤)    is  the  3rd  option  safer   probably.  well  I  think  as  long  as  you’re having  fun,  as  long  as  you’re  comfy  exploring  your  character  aesthetic  you  can  do  anything  you  want,  if  it  is  100%  required  to  rp  with  me?  DEFINITELY NOT. 

LAST  SONG  YOU  LISTENED  TO :    rhinestone  eyes,  gorillaz

FAVOURITE  MUSE(S)  YOU’VE  WRITTEN :  zatanna zatara, lulu ( ffx ), yuna, marshall eriksen, eileen galvin  &  sam (totally spies)

*  𝙶𝙴𝚃𝚃𝙸𝙽𝙶  𝚃𝙾  𝙺𝙽𝙾𝚆  𝚃𝙷𝙴  𝙰𝙲𝙲𝙾𝚄𝙽𝚃 :

WHAT  INSPIRED  YOU  TO  TAKE  ON  THIS  MUSE :  nostalgia.  FFVII  is  definitely  a  game  that  symbolizes  of  my  childhood  and  how  much  I  had  any  to  worry  unless  escaping  MIDGAR  ZOLOM  TO  REACH  MYTHRIL  MINES  or  if  there  was  a  way  to  escape  Aerith’s  death  cause  i  was  naive  like  that  ( says  the  human  being   that  stalls  reaching  to the end of disc 1 so she doesn’t see her favorite flower girl dying and tifa reaching her hand  to  her  face and  later  running  cause  that’s  how  she  is  :  emotions ?  NOPE  *races*  )    but anyway, I  think  clinging  onto  Tifa’s  character  does  bring  me  a  comforting  energy  in  all senses.  I  indeed  used  to  comb  my  hair  and  tie  the  tips  to  look  like  her  and  Princess Garnet,  so  the  admiration  still  remains.  So  summarizing,  Tifa  does  have  a  big  role  in  my  life  and  she  inspires  me  to  be  a  better  person    . . .   I  hope  this  doesn’t  sound  silly  but  if  does  I’m  sorry  folks  but  I’m  that  cliché  cause  of  everything  she  has  been  through  that’s  just   admirable.

WHAT  ARE  YOUR  FAVOURITE  ASPECTS  OF  YOUR  CURRENT  MUSE:  I have a huge list of tifa’s favorite aspects,  what drove me to write tifa the most is even with a traumatic past she still remains kind and doesn’t close herself to people in terms of shutting off or having limited interactions, as much as she keeps to herself her emotions and feelings, she has a facade of keeping moving on and I think that’s so inspiring.  The way she represents to sector 7, like a true heroine to them,  a helper, even though she is always putting other needs before hers which is not healthy at all she still remains so STRONG. I think we would all be blessed if we had a friend like Tifa Lockhart, remember the mideel scene? WTF. That woman is literally an angel. But at the same time one of my favorite aspects of her is not just her strenghts but also her flaws cause they make her so human to me. I remember a scene in Golden Saucer where Red XIII is doubting of his abilties cause HOJO and Tifa tells him to be strong and when he questions her she is just STOP IT, RED XIII  ! BE STRONG ! in all caps lock cause she also has an edge y’know ? And don’t make me start on her fighting skills cause women with hand in hand abilities are my kryptonite.  So yes, I do love that Tifa can be soft but if you step on her toes . . .  damn you’re cursed.  

WHAT’S  YOUR  BIGGEST  INSPIRATION  WHEN  IT  COMES  TO  WRITING:   i like looking at tifa’s arts on twitter: spykee, s_maii_i, jenbartel, _shillo, xxx_7R  &  kikifjwr  ( these last two only illustrate CLOUD so far, but I’m innerly manifesting them to draw Tifa )  are definitely my favorite artists and also on pixiv.  Music, I love listening to Final Fantasy OSTS in general usually I opt for FFIX, FFVII & FFX songs cause they’re super chill for me (well a few let’s not forget ONE WINGED ANGEL) or Silent Hill OSTS are my favorite to focus cause for a horror game they’re so pleasing to my ears. I also sometimes goes to tifalockhartedit hashtag on instagram cause seeing my gurl in slowmo in Play Date’s song it does balance my chakras when I see Tifa content and reading fanfics in general inspires me to write cause I do get excited to see other tifa’s interpretations and ideas + people who love tifa like has a dear spot in my heart. Photoshop weirdly helps too cause editing Tifa ( firstlovetifa bro. . . )  or her aesthetic does bring ideas & last, replay the games or watching the movie or reading the novels. 

FAVOURITE  TYPES  OF  THREADS : I don’t really  have  a  favorite  ty . . .   ANGST.   *phew phew *    Tagged by: @aceparagon  (thank you  !  ) Tagging:   @gainsborro  .  @webslings  .  @asakishi  .   @hercbled​   &   you   !

#* ◞ [ ⋆彡 ] ﹕ misc / info ── endless cycle of idea and action #( i talk too much sorry )

[tetsunova]

Adjldsjdhgkf hi love! I am so happy that you reached 50!

For your ask game ;-;

My pronouns are she/her, I’m about 164 cm (5’3-5’4? i am so short). I’d say i’m and introvert, Libra and I’m an INFJ

My personality is like one third chaotic energy, one third mom energy and another third social anxiety 💃 I’m a good listener!

I don’t wear anything too special (courtesy of being a broke student) It's sort of a mix between soft & grunge aesthetic?

Hobbies! Okay uh, I like baking, drawing and editing

I don't like loud noises/places, v v toxic people and olives (they're rlly bitter 0.0)

I lovee food, winter, reading,writing, watching movies and physical afffection!(speaking of which, lemme give you hugs <3)

uh, i don't really look for anything specific in a person, but loyalty is important :))

Okay thank youuu! You deserve plenty of hug after this 🥰

a/n: hi omg thankyouu!! hugs for you too. pls i’m shorter

I match you with...

Akaashi Keiji

How you both met: You’re practically Bokuto’s best friend after Keiji of course so he both called you over one day thinking he could be cupid and tried setting you both up. He told you both to sit in his room and left ‘to make dinner’ on which you both insisted helping but he refused. Of course you guys thought it was weird of him but let him be anyways. You both has just started talking and broken the ice when Bokuto yelled from the kitchen. He set the stove on fire. Don’t ask how I don’t know either

Random Headcannons

Asks if you’re okay with him reading your work and instantly falls in love with it when he reads it

He’s not the talkative kind but will not shut up about how good it is and hugs you so intimately because he’s just so glad you are comfortable enough to share a part of you with him

Libraries on Saturdays, compulsory.

Reads the books you like so that he can discuss them with you

loves loves loves it when he’s all alone with you. He’d just sit in silence while you lie on him, trying to match his breath with yours

Will make you tea before you go to bed

Gets so excited when you bake him something

Will take you for long walks when you have a creative block

He’s so flustered when he sees you in the bleachers at his matches even though you come there so often 

Keiji is the kind of person who’d play songs in the kitchen and slow dance with you there. His head resting on your shoulder as he engulfs you while your head is right on his heart

A song that reminds me of you both

nobody else - LANY

#nova hits 50

[darnittumbleweed]

mgg / spencer netting ur parents!

Mgg

He’s so nervous but he’s good at hiding it

He’s afraid your parents might find his profession and the attention that comes with it to be disconcerting

He just wants to make the best impression

He buys your mom a bouquet of wildflowers because his mom and his step mom like flowers. Moms love floral arrangements he insists

He agonized over what to wear which is amusing because he’s always been so confident about his fashion sense

In the end he plays it on the safer side wearing a nicer button down shirt he’d usually reserve for a movie premiere. He does wear his mismatched converse with some encouragement though

His palm is sweaty and he prays your mom and dad don’t notice when he shakes their hands

Somehow he manages to turn off his anxiety and rely on that charming enthusiastic personality that he always manages to pull up for interviews and less stressful situations

He manages to make it through small talk and get to know you talk talking about his family back in Vegas

He manages to be charming when talking about how most people don’t realize that there’s more to do in Vegas than the strip

He manages to ask the right questions about your hometown recalling the stories you’ve told him about it

He tries hard to express his adoration for you recalling stories you’ve told him about ballet recitals and piano lessons during your youth and the family pets.

You encourage him to talk about work soothing his worries and reassuring him that he doesn’t sound like he’s arrogant about any of it. You’re proud of his work and always encourage him to share his excitement about upcoming projects he’s eager to be a part of.

He’s anxious when your parents admit they’ve seen cm

Do they think of him as being Matthew their child’s boyfriend or is it weird to have seen him on tv. Can they only see him as Matthew the tv star and not Matthew the man who wants to marry their daughter one day, hopefully soon.

That anxiety fades when your mother asks if Shemar Moore is that handsome in person much to your fathers groans and grumbles. It’s all in good fun at least

The question melts away Matthew’s anxiety and by the end of the dinner it’s clear that he’s a welcome edition to your family

Reid

He’s so nervous he wants to puke

People think he’s weird. Your parents will probably think he’s weird

You have to reassure him and soothe him a lot on the days leading up to your parents visit

He cleans the apartment a million times and reminds Emily he can’t be called away on a case, while your parents are visiting for a few days, a million and one times

He is so nervous that he can’t even pick out an outfit

You do it for him handing him his favorite red cardigan to wear over a dark button down shirt and slacks. You reassure him that converse is an acceptable choice. You’re just doing delivery for dinner on your parents first night in town.

He’s shifting in place checking his watch as you wait for your parents to arrive

When they do he stands back feeling awkward unsure of what to do or say as you hug your parents

You hold your hand out to him pulling him forward as he stumbles over introducing himself

He feels faint when your father shakes his hand but he feels a little better when your mom takes him by surprise hugging him

He ignores his germaphobia knowing pulling from the touch will make the worst impression

When everyone settles in and it’s time to visit Reid feels sick when your parents bring up his job.

You’ve already explained it but he explains it again

Feeling even more sick when your mom innocently comments that his parents must be proud of his accomplishments

You soothing him and answering that his mom and you are both proud of him everyday

He feeling faint when your dad wants to have a man to man talk

He takes a deep breath telling himself he’s faced down Unsubs he’s got this

Your own anxiety is at an all time high as they head back to Reid’s office leaving you and your mother alone

They’re gone for longer than it seems

You’re in shock to see them laughing as they leave the room your father smiling at you “You didn’t tell me he’s a Doctor Who fan. You know that’s one of my favorite shows”

Reid smiling at you his voice soft. “Your dad saw the cosplay pictures we took at that convention we went to with Garcia.”

You chuckling watching as your father insists on debating on who the best companions were with Reid

Who thought nerd culture would bring Spencer Reid into your family.

#mgg #spencer reid #headcannons

[imagining-in-the-margins]

Assorted Anon Answers 🥳

1. Girl, you and me both. I got one (All Legs) in editing right now 🥰 I have a bunch of Dom!Spencer ones coming out right now/in the works because they are all requests I’ve had for over a year now. I feel like those people have waited long enough 😅

But I’m super excited to build my Sub!Spencer repertoire. I really do firmly believe he’s a switch (like me!), which I’m sure people don’t believe after a cursory glance at my Masterlist. I just simply get WAY more Dom!Spencer requests.

I’m still taking Sub!Spencer requests, by the way! Just might be a minute (and, as always, please check my Request Guidelines).

2. ( 🚨 TW: SA mention, discussion of sex 🚨 )

First off, not poor boyfriend - he is very lucky to have you.

Second, you can be asexual and enjoy smut! People often conflate smut and sex, but they are very different in my experience. I prefer writing smut to the physical act of sex, although I like to do that, too. I view smut as an exercise in emotional connections, as most of my smut writing revolves around power, love, pain, etc. It’s more of an exercise of the mind for me (and can be fairly exhausting).

It’s also possible that it is stemming from trauma (I relate to that, although I became hypersexual in response). In that regard, smut may simply feel safer and offer you more control over the situation than physical interaction with another person would allow.

Either way, your feelings are valid, your pleasure is valuable, and you deserve to be safe and happy. I hope that you accomplish that no matter the label!

3. It’s definitely not just CM from my experience. I honestly don’t get it, though. Usually people equally dislike Reader-inserts. In my opinion, they are one in the same. I think people just like Readers so they feel closer to the material. Most OCs are explicitly white, thin, and beautiful. Although these things are implied in most Reader inserts, it’s easier to imagine.

I really don’t get it. I love writing OCs - which is why I write original works!

4-5. I adore you both and I hope you’re having the best of days. You deserve a lifetime of hugs and happiness. I love you. Thank you for thinking of me 💕

6-7. [Link here] Thank you so much for showing me! I have this in my likes and it makes me smile all the time. Especially since it’s for my Wattpad, which is by far my least popular profile! (probably because of the mass reporting not letting me post most of my works there, but I digress)

I love you all so much. Thanks for thinking of me and taking time to share your joy with me. I cannot thank you enough!

#answer #answered

[kpopfanfictrash]

The Supers and the Not

Member: Jimin (BTS)

Prompt: Okay. The original request was for Cyborg!Jimin, but I made a few tweaks. I’ve been recently intrigued by this Stephen Hawking excerpt, where he warns about the future of designer genetics v. humanity. So.... Jimin is not a cyborg, but a genetically engineered superhuman. AND, GO. (OH, + this dialogue: “Are you warm enough?”)

Rating: PG-13

WC: 3,637

↳ part of my 30K milestone drabble game

The term superhuman has held many meanings throughout history.

In comic books, superhumans are superheroes. They are beings who use their powers for good, who protect society from unnatural adversaries. The term has changed greatly since then. When science grew bolder and human curiosity surged, the word superhuman began to transform. It became a label; one which separated a new category of human from old.

The supers from the not.

Back in the old days, designer babies (as they were called) were edited merely for defects. Scientists easily identified potential genetic diseases like sickle-cell or Huntington’s, sending in nanotech to modify and fix the code. Obviously, there was debate around this and obviously, humans were wary – but the benefits were proven to outweigh the cost.

Scientists did not stop there. No longer did they research disease, but the human psyche itself. As the map of human DNA filled in its corners, their research became riskier, more complicated and far more exciting. Once all human defects were eliminated, what else remained but the good traits?

Good traits – which could become great.

The first superhumans were not called super. Super was a nickname generated by an overenthusiastic media before they grasped what their existence truly meant. The supers were a class of human beings all on their own – able to see further, hear better, run faster. They were taller, more beautiful and far more intelligent. This was the real kicker – humans have survived extinction based on their wit alone. The appearance of supers meant regular humans could no longer compete.

The so-called supers were turned against the not.

You are not super. Your parents could not afford you to be. While many your age were conceived in a tube; their embryos tested, operated on and perfected; you were conceived the old-fashioned way, with a virtual roll of the dice.

Still, you have always done well for yourself. In a world where you were born at a natural disadvantage, you have always managed to survive. Survival is truly the best-case scenario given your circumstances. Always, you have harbored the unique ability to assess a situation, determine its risks and choose the right outcome. Some call it luck, others skill, but you know it for what it truly is – the only option.

Take now, for instance.

Currently you sit in a white, pristine lobby on a white, pristine couch in front of a white, pristine receptionist. She keeps glancing your way, wrinkling her nose as though you have a strange smell. Warily, you shift in your seat and wonder if somehow you do. Maybe her sense of smell is so acute she can pick up on an aroma you cannot.

Or maybe she is only an ass. This option seems more likely to you.

When the door to the waiting room swings open, you look up. A woman holds it ajar with her hip, checking the hologram hovering above her wrist. 

“Y/N?” she asks, sounding utterly bored.

“That’s me,” you say, rising to your feet.

Swiftly, she looks your way and wrinkles her nose. “Follow me.”

She turns, the door nearly falling shut behind her. You are forced to run in order to catch it, barely grasping its edge before it closes on your hand. From behind you, the receptionist snickers and, glowering, you step through the door. The hallway beyond it is equally pristine and white.

The assistant is already halfway down the hall.

“So,” you pant, practically jogging to keep up with her stride. “The ad didn’t mention what specifically I would be doing. Do you have an overview?”

For the first time since meeting, the woman smiles. Paused in the middle of the hall, she looks at you as though you are something to be pitied and you repress the urge to slap the look from her face.

“And yet you still answered the ad. Most peculiar.”

Drawing yourself to your full height – which is still several centimeters below hers – you glare. “As though I have a choice,” you say coldly. “There aren’t many jobs left which accept normals.”

“Pity.”

She walks past you, opening a doorway you had not yet noticed. The seams of it blend into the wall, barely even noticeable unless you have super vision. The room beyond seems darker than the hall. Finally, the walls surrounding you are not white – it takes you a second to adjust to the lighting.

“He’s waiting,” the assistant says, as though you are a gigantic waste of her time. Maybe you are.

Walking forward, you hear the door fall shut behind you. The new room is utterly silent, nothing to be heard but the sound of your breathing – and his. Your potential employer stands behind a large desk, as though this were a formal gathering of businessmen, and not a rather sketchy job interview.

Fuck, supers are beautiful. 

It is hard not to be dazzled by his outward appearance. A sculpted jawline, bright gaze and sharp nose – standing before him, you feel rather meek in comparison. Before you can speak, the man clears his throat.

“Sit,” he says, waving at the chair opposite. “Please, Y/N, sit. Are you warm enough? Sometimes the temperature of this room is far too cold.”

Of course, he would need confirmation of this. Most supers can sustain greater temperature fluctuations than normals. It is one of their many improvements.

Warily, you take a step closer. “You know my name.”

He smiles politely. “You did fill out an application, you know.”

“I know.” Stiffly, you pull the chair back to sit.

Silence stretches between you, both of you staring and trying not break first. Finally, he speaks. 

“How silly of me.” Chuckling good-naturedly, the man ducks his head. “I haven’t introduced myself. I’m Park Jimin, but you may call me Jimin.”

“Most supers prefer to be addressed by their surname.”

Jimin’s smile falters. “Yes, well… Ah. All the same, I prefer to be called Jimin.”

“Alright.” You say this as though it is neither here nor there. “Jimin, it is.”

“Wonderful.” Jimin flicks a hand over his desk. A blue hologram appears. “Down to business, then. You’re probably wondering why my ad was so cryptic.”

Uncaring, you shrug. “Not really.”

“Why not?” Jimin pauses. “That would have been my first question.”

He seems genuinely curious and in response, your gaze narrows. The underlying implication is obvious – you normals do not think things through before acting. Not in the same way they do. Normal thought is somehow ages behind that of the supers.

Gritting your teeth, you lean forward. “The ad didn’t surprise me because, based on prior experience, supers tend to be vague about illegal requests.”

Jimin’s cheeks color. Slowly, he lowers his hand and the blue hologram fades. “I see.” Quickly, he glances at the door you entered from. “You’ve answered this kind of ad often, then.”

“Not a question.”

“No, merely an observation.” His gaze becomes shrewd. “I can see you don’t trust me.”

Not wishing to implicate yourself any further, you remain silent.

Jimin arches a brow. “Well, do you?”

“No,” you say simply. “I do not.”

“I can hardly blame you for that. My kind can be… well, cruel to yours.”

Again, you say nothing. Part of survival is knowing when to hold your tongue. Part of survival is knowing when to play the part of the lower, sub-species and when to let them know you understand.

“I need you to trust me, though,” Jimin says quietly. “I need you to trust me, since I’m going to be very, very honest with you.”

Despite your best interest, his words pique your curiosity. Supers do not often care about honesty. 

“It will be difficult to undo years of training,” you note.

Jimin laughs. The noise escapes before he can help it. “Yes,” he muses, leaning back in his chair. “I suppose so. Perhaps it would be good, then to tell you who I am.”

“You’re Park Jimin. You’re a super.”

His eyes are dark brown with flecks of gold at the center. The effect inspires warmness, emotion and you trust absolutely none of it. Everything about this man is designed to draw people in. Idly, you wonder how much his father paid for it.

“True,” Jimin says. “But I am also Park Jimin, of Park Enterprises.” Launching into what can only be assumed to be his Wikipedia biography, he continues, “My father is Park Jiwoo, researcher and entrepreneur. I have no siblings. I am 169 cm tall, which is considered below average for a super and I –”

“Okay, none of that matters to me,” you interrupt, waving your hand. Jimin ceases talking immediately, blinking owlishly and you wonder if this is the first time he has been interrupted. “God,” you groan, slouching low in your seat. “You supers are all the same, aren’t you? Listing facts and figures like that’s all people care about.”

Jimin bristles. “That is what most people care about.”

“Not normals,” you say, softening a tad. “Not humans, really. Tell me something different. Tell me something personal.”

The blue light from his desk makes him seem almost haunted. Likely, the lights in his room are intelligent; designed to reflect his mood and adjust appropriately. You wonder what they glean from him now, since he seems stressed in your gaze. Dark circles shadow his eyes, his grip tense on the table before him. Uneasily, you wonder what a super could have to be worried about.

“I don’t really know what you mean.” His brow puckers. “Do you want my government ID number, or something? That’s personal.”

“God, no,” you choke out, trying hard not to laugh. “If you gave me that, they’d just think I stole it.”

His lips lift in a ghost of a smile. “You’re right, they would.”

“I know I’m right. I want something different. I want to hear about…” Glancing around, you wonder what could possibly make you trust this man. What could possibly make you relate to this super. There are photographs on his desk – a family photo, which is interesting. Looking up, you meet Jimin’s gaze. “Tell me the last time you cried.”

“The last time I… cried?”

“Or, can you not?” Politely, you cross one knee over the other. “Are you supers so far removed from humanity that you no longer feel? Were your tear ducts removed along with your defects?”

“I can still cry,” Jimin mutters, gaze heated.

“Then, prove it. Tell me.”

Slowly, he leans back in his seat. “Last Thursday. 10:12 AM.”

“And what happened to make you cry?”

“I learned information which scared me.”

His honesty catches you off guard. Either Park Jimin is a very good actor, or he is telling the truth. He truly does look fearful, which does not bode well for you. Fearful people tend to make bad decisions – and fearful supers tend to make cataclysmic ones.

“What information?”

Jimin shakes his head slowly. “I can’t tell you that. Not without you trusting me. Not without me trusting you.”

“Then, trust me.”

“You say that like it’s so simple.” Jimin slowly exhales. “Meeting you like this goes against everything I stand for. There are so many things which could go wrong... I have done the probability calculations over and over – twice while we were sitting here – and it is ludicrous to think I might find the solution, when –”

“Jimin.” Quietly, you interrupt.

He pauses before he looks up.

You meet his gaze. “Why am I here?”

Jimin’s expression morphs from stoic to helpless. “Because... you’re normal.”

“And?”

“And,” Jimin says, closing his eyes. “That means you are immune to the problem.”

The way he says problem sends a chill down your spine. He speaks as though he has exhausted every option and this is his last resort – and likely, you are. That is what tends to come from meetings like this.

This is not your first meeting from an unlisted number. This is not your first interaction where a person has disguised their voice while answering the phone. It isn’t your first time meeting someone in an unknown location and receiving details of a task said person needed performed. 

You do what you must. You receive payment. You survive.

This seems different, though – Jimin seems different.

With his eyes closed, Jimin looks almost human. You suppose that he is, but not in the same way you are. His skin is flawless, the milk of it dusted with blue veins and dark lashes. When he opens his eyes, you expect the illusion of his beauty to fade. It does not.

“What’s the problem?” you say, pushing these distracting thoughts aside.

“It’s easier… if I show you.” Reluctantly, Jimin reaches out to pull up a hologram. Blue strands of DNA twist before you in mid-air. “There have been many accepted edits of the human genome. Some are more progressive than others. The ampliointelligens procedure, for example, is the most widely known. It is where –”

“A person’s intelligence is increased,” you interrupt, bored. “I know. It’s Latin.”

Jimin quickly covers his surprise. “Of course. Anyways, the procedure was considered the first of the… super procedures. The ones which diverted from genetic correction to genetic improvement. And, as with any new field… there were errors.”

“Errors?”

This fact is news to you – nothing about mistakes was reported to the public, which explains Jimin’s trepidation on the matter. In the entire history of the supers, there has never once been any admittance of error. Their strength is their narrative, after all. The supers deserve their positions, their wealth and their influence because they are better. Because they can foresee things normal humans cannot. All of this fails to be relevant if they are proven to be imperfect.

“The concept of intelligence.” Jimin uses air quotes on the word. “Is hard to understand and even harder to change. Gene editing is simple. Take something like Huntington’s disease – we know the genetic defect which causes it. We can simply screen the DNA, cut out the harmful bit and replace it. That’s an over-simplification of the procedure of course, but – there’s low risk of something going wrong.”

“If you say so.”

“However, with something like intelligence… there’s still debate about which portions of the human genome are the most impactful. There are several accepted versions of the ampliointelligens procedure because of this disagreement.”

Hearing him say this, you blink. Again, this is news not known to the general public and you wonder why Jimin is telling you this – any one of these tidbits would be worth a fortune if the supers have covered them up for so long.

The surprise on your face must be obvious, because Jimin then sighs. “The variables increase with intelligence. There isn’t one DNA strand to consider, but millions. Trillions. Each tweak a surgeon makes has far-reaching repercussions; ones which geneticists admitted were impossible to know definitively at the time. And yet…”

“And yet, people underwent the procedure.”

“People were greedy. They are greedy,” Jimin corrects with a tick to his jaw. “Once a reasonable procedure was created, people wanted it – no matter the cost, no matter the risk. If there was a chance their children could be super, they took it.”

You notice Jimin says the word super with a bitterness usually reserved by your kind. This surprises you, if nothing else. He doesn’t seem to enjoy what he is any more than you do.

“So.” You tap your fingers against your knee. “Back to the problem you mentioned.”

You assume this problem is why you’ve been asked here. There’s something Jimin needs and the sooner he asks it of you, the sooner you can leave. The sooner you can cease sitting before him, becoming oddly charmed by a man you despise.

He nods. “We’ve known about a mutation for years, but it has recently transformed into something insidious. One of the ampliointelligens procedures is the cause of this mutation. The DNA edit takes over, it spirals out of control and overpowers the human ability to empathize. This leads to rash decision-making, high levels of narcissism and the inability to relate to others. It can be… crippling.”

“Narcissistic and unable to relate?” Pressing your lips together, you keep them from twitching. “However will you separate them from the rest of the supers?”

“It isn’t the same,” Jimin says, a bit heated. “Supers can empathize, even if they place less value upon emotion than normals do. Supers still factor in an emotional response.”

“How noble.”

“You don’t understand.” Jimin leans forward. “Those afflicted by the mutation are incapable of decision-making – and what’s worse, they control every major resource in the country. Yes,” he says, spotting the look on your face. “The problem is bigger than just supers versus normals. If this disease spirals out of control, there won’t be a world left to save.”

“Is that what you intend to do?” you ask, unable to help yourself. “Save the world?”

“I intend to try,” Jimin says quietly.

Maybe it’s this that convinces to you how serious this is. Jimin stares, brow furrowed, and you get the idea he doesn’t lie very often. Slowly, you tilt your head and observe him.

“How many?”

His brow furrows. “I’m sorry?”

“How many supers are afflicted?”

Staring at you, Jimin seems to sag in his seat. If he had a glass of alcohol in his hand, you imagine he would drink it. 

“About half the existing supers underwent the affected procedure,” he admits. “And it does not seem to be a question of if, but of when.”

“Oh.”

“Take my father, for instance,” Jimin continues, not looking away. “He began to exhibit symptoms last Thursday morning. I, on the other hand, have yet to show any.”

“How…” You pause, licking your lips. “If the procedure is as certain as you say, how does the public not yet know? How has it been kept quiet so far?”

“Those in power have methods of silencing.”

Not wanting to know more than that, you glance away. “I take it you think these methods will not remain effective for much longer?”

“I do not.”

“So, then why am I…” Glancing sharply upwards, understanding dawns. “You want me to be your guinea pig. You want to perform experiments on me because I’m immune. Because I’m normal.”

“Lord, no.” Jimin winces. “At least – not in the manner you speak of. I would like to compare samples of our DNA, yes. I’d like intelligence testing, brain scans – all of that would be on the table, but what I need you for most is observation.”

“Observation. Like, me in a glass room and a strait jacket?”

“It’s the other way around, I’m afraid. I need you to observe me.”

“You?” 

“Like I said.” A sliver of desperation seeps into his tone. “I have no idea when my mind won’t be… my own. I’m seeing firsthand how my father has changed. I need someone neutral – someone not prone to the problem themselves – to weigh in.”

“And that person… is me?”

“Based on this meeting, I think so.” Jimin meets your gaze. “Y/N, has your intelligence ever been tested?”

“Are you serious? Intelligence testing is reserved for supers. Surely, you know that. Normals have no need to be tested.”

“And yet,” Jimin says calmly. “Since you entered this room, you’ve corrected me multiple times, synthesized complicated arguments and even translated Latin to English. Whatever you are,” he says, leaning forward. “It is more than what you let on.”

He sounds so self-assured in this statement, you almost believe him. Pushing the idea away, you glance at the door and gather your thoughts. No matter what choice you make, there’s no good way out. You were stuck from the moment you agreed to this meeting. Jimin has revealed too much to you – and yes, information is power, but not the kind that you hold.

Knowing weaknesses about the supers places a target on your back. Slowly, you return to him. 

“I don’t have a choice, do I?” you say softly. “If I don’t agree to your terms, you’ll just send people after me when I leave.”

“No. I won’t.”

“Why not? I would, if I were you.”

“Because.” There’s something hard, something unreadable to his gaze. “I really need you to trust me.”

Variables flash through your mind, a fight or flight instinct warring in your bones. Eventually, you ignore all of it and instead, listen to the voice which whispers in the back of your mind. 

“Find,” you say slowly. “I’ll do it.”

Jimin sags into his chair. “Thank the fucking gods.” He sighs. “I didn’t really have a Plan B.”

“You didn’t?”

“No,” Jimin says. “I’m afraid this is my final resort.”

“Then, why –”

“I think that’s enough chit-chat for today.” Pushing back his chair, Jimin stands from his desk. Pressing a button on the side, a noise buzzes in the hall. “I think it’s time you reviewed the terms of the contract. One of my assistants will show you to your rooms.”

“Rooms?” 

Without thinking, you stand as well.

“Of course,” Jimin shrugs. “You’ll be staying with me for the duration of the work period. Everything is outlined in the contract – which you will have until the end of this week to make amendments to. Will that be that satisfactory?”

“I…” Blinking at him, your mind reels. “Yes.”

“Good.” 

Clasping both hands before him, Jimin morphs back into the image of super. Banished is the distressed man you saw briefly but still, he lingers around the edges. 

“I look forward to working with you, Y/N,” he says quietly.

The door opens to reveal the tall assistant from earlier. She glances in surprise from you to Jimin, as though she did not expect you to stay.

Seeing her reaction, your smile broadens. “I look forward to working with you, too, Jimin,” you announce, walking towards the door.

It is mainly for the benefit of the assistant, but you cannot help but realize there is some truth to the words. Despite all you have said, that voice still exists deep within you. The one which usually warns you of danger is unusually silent in his presence. This unsettles you for a moment and then you walk past, stepping into the hall.

  © kpopfanfictrash, 2019. Do not copy or repost without permission.

#bangtanarmynet #btsbookclub #jimin fanfic #bts fanfic #jimin drabble #bts drabble #bts scifi au #jimin scifi au

[bella-blogz]

Hi there! My name is Isabella Cinquepalmi and I use she/her pronouns. I am a Communication Studies major who took a gap year and will now be graduating in the class of 2025! I was born and raised in a suburb of Dallas called Plano, Texas, which is just as it sounds- plain and old. While it isn't farmland and cowboys, like most people I've told over this past week have immediately assumed, it’s not exactly exciting by any means. Having never moved out of Plano my whole 19 years, I was very much anticipating arriving in DC and can’t wait to start exploring the city!

Now, from glancing at my photo, surface level thinking could lead one to conclude that my phone is the object that “exemplifies me/ my personality”. This is where I ask you to stay with me. While my phone is objectively the most important object in my life, what I want to discuss is the little 5.5 x 8.5 cm piece of cardstock with a korean popstar printed on it. This is called a photocard and comes in most kpop albums. Photocards have become quite a phenomenon, as people trade and sell collector’s versions for up to $3,000. So what's the deal with these tiny prints and why are they so valuable to me and millions of others? Well I mentioned I did a gap year, and of course had a lot of time on my hands, and with too much free time comes stumbling across random youtube videos, like BTS singing carpool karaoke with James Corden. Long story short, it’s been a year and I have developed a strong liking toward Korean pop music and all the specific culture that comes with being a fan. For all who know me though, this wasn't exactly a surprising development. Loving all things pop culture has been my “thing” since I can remember, having been raised on movies, musicals, and melodramatic TV. This obsession is what led me to run twitter and instagram fan accounts for over eight years in which I was constantly editing photos and videos on Picsart and iMovie of my favorite celebrities. It’s what led me to join the social media committees in multiple organizations in my High School, like Student Council, where I would design flyers and general announcement posts through Canva. It’s what ultimately led me to desire a career in media, as it had been the only thing I was consistently passionate about since I became aware of my own thoughts.

While it obviously represents my love for popular culture, I also associate this photocard with the 18 months I spent at home truly figuring out and reflecting on what kind of person I am and want to become. Of course, I still have a lot of maturing to do, but I’m so grateful for the extra time I had to focus on myself and my mental health, even if that also meant spending some of that time learning the choreography to a few iconic BlackPink dances.

[otomehonyaku]

DIABOLIK LOVERS VANDEAD CARNIVAL ♠ SPECIAL BOOKLET CHARACTER INFO: LAITO [ENGLISH]

♠ This is part of the special booklet in the Vandead Carnival Genteiban/deluxe package, consisting of character information and a short interview with the corresponding voice actor. These are quite fun to do, and I haven’t seen these around yet, so I’m planning on translating the other characters’ parts in this booklet as well. Enjoy! ♠

DO NOT REPOST MY TRANSLATIONS ON TUMBLR OR OTHER PLATFORMS, TRANSLATE MY TRANSLATIONS TO ANOTHER LANGUAGE, OR USE MY TRANSLATIONS IN ANY FORM ELSEWHERE WITHOUT MY PERMISSION. IF YOU ARE CONSIDERING DOING ANY OF THESE THINGS, PLEASE ASK FOR MY PERMISSION FIRST.

“You’re so cute, Bitch-chan, I want to eat you all up.”

The triplet problem children! The one who loves persistently perverted behaviour SAKAMAKI LAITO (CV: Hirakawa Daisuke)

Species: Vampire School: Second year high school student at Ryōtei Academy Age: 17 Height: 174 cm Weight: 61 kg Blood type: O Favourite food: Macarons Hobby: Crossword puzzles

Laito is one of the three Sakamaki triplets, and like the other two, he’s also in the second year of high school. His perverted behaviour has gotten him expelled a few times. He’s the clingy type, and is very good at wooing people with his words.  Laito has a habit of talking very fast when he gets excited. He’s a pervert who loves his partner’s displeased expression more than anything, and the more she hates him, the more things escalate. 

Cast comment ♦ Hirakawa Daisuke

Q. In this game’s Present from Sakamaki story, the Sakamaki brothers surprise the heroine for her birthday. If you have experience in being surprised in a similar way, please tell us the impression that left on you. Or, have you ever devised a plan to surprise someone yourself?

A. I’ve had plenty of surprise birthday celebrations thrown for me while doing events. One time—I don’t know whether it was meant to be a surprise for someone or an event though—I sang along to the ‘happy birthday’ song with some people, and then I suddenly noticed that they were singing my name... That’s happened to me as well. But still, it made me really happy.

Q. This question will be about the ‘sleeping together’ scenario in this game. Do you have any recommendations for pillows to sleep comfortably? (For example, a memory foam pillow, or a health pillow.) If you happen to be very picky with pillows, please tell us.

A. A couple of years ago, I had a pillow tailored to the size and curves of my head and neck, which is the pillow I’m still using now. I could choose the amount of filling and the hardness exactly the way I wanted it, so I’m sleeping very comfortably [laughs]. I recommend it [laughs]. 

Q. Lastly, I’d like to ask you to leave a message to those who bought this limited edition.

A. Thank you for purchasing this game! I think you’ll be able to appreciate the Diabolik Lovers that you’re used to, but in a slightly different setting this time. I would be happy if you all enjoyed it!

#diabolik lovers #dialovers #diahell #diabolik lovers translation #diabolik lovers translations #Diabolik Lovers Vandead Carnival #vandead carnival #sakamaki laito #laito sakamaki #my translations #otomehonyaku #otome translation #otome translations #Japanese Translation #japanese translations