#i have a lot of thoughts and feelings about this

[psychoticallytrans]

A commonly overlooked symptom of depression is anhedonia, the inability to feel joy or pleasure. The reason that it's easy to overlook is that it's easier to miss the absence of something that's not around all the time than it is to miss a symptom that causes active distress, such as feeling tired and miserable all the time.

Anhedonia is good at being a persistent undercurrent to your life. My aunt, who has major depressive disorder, related to me that she figured out that something was wrong when she looked at the daffodils she had planted blooming, and couldn't recognize the emotion that she felt when she looked at them. It had been long enough since she had felt happy that she lost the ability to recognize the emotion.

It's a particularly dangerous depressive symptom, because it robs you of the ability to feel those little spots of joy that keep a lot of people going, while not doing anything to impair your ability to function. If you don't know that this is a treatable symptom of depression, it's easy to assume that your ability to feel good is permanently broken, and decide to commit suicide because you don't want to live like that. It's not an irrational conclusion, but it is an uninformed one, and everyone deserves to have all the information when making a major decision.

This is what a lot of questionnaires are trying to look for when they ask about "loss of enjoyment". If you can't remember a loss of enjoyment because you can't remember enjoyment, then you probably have anhedonia. If you struggle to define how it is to feel "happy", "content", or "good", or how it feels when you feel those emotions, you probably have anhedonia. If you can't remember feeling any of those emotions for a week or more, you probably have anhedonia.

Symptoms commonly co-occurring with anhedonia are fatigue (often the cause), clear and thoughtful consideration of suicide, loss of desire to socialize or do activities that used to make you happy, and weight loss (due to lack of enjoyment of food).

This section is anecdotal. In what I have observed, anhedonia due to fatigue rarely responds well to depression treatment unless depression was causing the fatigue. If fatigue and anhedonia are co-occurring and are not both alleviated by depression treatment, consider other causes for the fatigue.

[luveline]

i have a request for roommate!spencer where he's just miserable that no one remembered his birthday at work but when he gets home his roommate just welcomes him with the most thoughtful gift and a warm hug PLEASE

thank you for requesting! <3 fem!reader

The lights are off. The air conditioning blows a shade too cold. Spencer shrugs off his jacket and acknowledges that, despite his awful, aching day, it’s nice to be home. 

The living room is clean where it hadn’t been this morning when he left. If he had to clean it by himself, he’d die. It must’ve taken a good hour or longer, even the floor shines sparkling clean. 

“Hey?” he asks into the open air, wondering where you are. 

“Spencer!” you yelp from the kitchen, “Hey, what took you so long? It’s almost seven!” 

He sighs to himself with a great dash of self-pity. “I know. Had to stay and finish something. You cleaned?” 

“I had to! Quick, come in here, I need your help with something.” 

He doesn’t want to help, he wants to lay down in bed. Spencer wonders how a normal person, a normal boy, would feel after a day like today. He wonders if Morgan would go home and lay in bed and cry. He wonders if it could ever be possible for everyone to forget Morgan’s birthday. 

Spencer hangs his jacket on the rack and puts his bag by the shoes. He’s tempted to go to bed and pretend he hasn’t heard you, but he supposes he shouldn’t. He’d sort of been hoping you’d text him happy birthday, and but that never happened. He doesn’t think anybody in the world besides his mom knows what day it is today, and Spencer had to remind her, so. 

“Spence,” you say, your smile of a calibre he’s never witnessed, standing in front of the kitchen island with your hands behind your back, “I hope you know I’ve been waiting two whole hours for you to get back. Actually, I’ve been waiting all day, but you can’t be blamed for working. Okay. Are you ready?” 

“Am I ready? What did you want help with?” 

You step to the side, grinning, the sleeves of your nice blouse like big, soft petals around your wrists and against your thighs. “Tada!” you say, guiding his attention to the silver platter on the countertop, a chocolate cake at centre stage and stuck with candles, flames aglow. “I rushed to light them when I heard the door,” you tell him, and he can hear your breathlessness now, your excitement for him evident. “A lot of candles, you’re getting old! Too old for chocolate sprinkle. I should’ve got you something sophisticated.” 

“You got me a cake?” 

“It’s your birthday,” you say happily. “Happy birthday, Spencer. I got you some presents, too, but the cake is the best, it’s from the Leaven. How fancy is that?” 

“Will you sing?” he asks. 

He doesn’t know why he asks. He’s mostly kidding, but you smile shyly and beckon him toward you. “I’ll sing. Come stand over here.” 

You sing him happy birthday, and he blows out his candles, only ten candles altogether but enough to feel like a kid as the heat kisses his chin. 

“Okay, and I got you this,” you say, finally pulling both hands from behind your back, seemingly eager to move the focus from your performance.

It’s a bundle about as thick as an average novel. He knows it’ll be books before he opens it, because you know him, and it’s in your nature to give him your everything. 

He doesn’t look at them. He takes the package blindly and shoves it onto the counter, wrapping you in a hug so hard it makes your back click. “I’m sorry,” he says, but he doesn’t let go. You don’t make him. “Sorry, I just– I–” You’re the only one who remembered. “Thank you for the cake.” 

You hug him not quite as hard, but tight. “Hey, it’s okay. I love you, you’re my best friend ever, you can pop me like a roll of dough any day of the week.” You might be exaggerating. Spencer doesn’t know. “But especially today, you know. You can have anything you want.” 

Spencer should let go. Anything you want, you’d said. He hugs you until he’s sure you’re sick of him, your thumb pressing little circles into his shoulder, his arms tucked up under your armpits and around your back. “Thanks,” you murmur.

“What?” he asks. “For what?” 

“For such a good hug. And being a great roommate. And for not complaining about the candles.” 

“The candles are perfect.” 

You lean back in his arms. “Thank you. Now what do you want first, cake or dinner?” 

Spencer really wants another hug. “Um. Cake?” 

“Good choice, handsome.”

His cheeks are pink by the time he gets a slice, but it’s the best birthday cake he’s ever had.

#spencer reid #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x you #spencer reid x y/n #spencer reid x fem!reader #spencer reid imagine #spencer reid fluff #spencer reid fanfic #spencer reid oneshot #spencer reid scenario #spencer reid drabble #spencer reid fic #spencer reid fanfiction

[turtleblogatlast]

[ cw: violence mention / death mention / ]

Will never stop thinking about how Leo, all alone in an endless void and being beaten again and again and again by the only other living thing around, still finds comfort in that space. The situation he was in was completely hopeless, and in any other circumstances he would not have escaped, at least not fast enough to save him from permanent (or even fatal) damage, be it physical or mental.

And yet, despite the bleakness of his situation, despite the agony and helplessness, all he needs is one glance at a crumbled photograph, one glance to remember his family, and that’s enough of a reason for him to smile.

Maybe that’s why his powers center around manipulating space - because no matter how much space is between them, no matter how dire his own situation may be, just the thought of his family, alive and okay, is enough to give Leo hope.

#rottmnt #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #rottmnt leo #rise leo #the prison dimension is horrifying on its own #add in a monstrous being that towers over you and has vowed to ensure your suffering? #god I can’t imagine how scary that is #Mikey opening the portal was a miracle because if he hadn’t managed it there #it’s really up in the air what could have become of Leo #personally I subscribe by the theory that you straight up can’t die in the prison dimension #so it’s a prison in all ways #but the thought of a Leo who manages anyway who adapts and continues to have hope despite it all… #Leo saying he’s nothing without his family is a double edged sword really #because the thought of his family alone is all he needs to live. to hope. #to smile #nothing without them…but they’re EVERYTHING to him #and maybe he doesn’t realize it but…the feeling is mutual #one thing too is that hope that comforts Leo so much is not just that #should he think his family needs help - that hope can turn into determination #I’m unwell about this family #actually on my point of their powers - I truly do think the abilities tie in not only to their personalities #but to their relationship to family and love in general #kinda like love languages in a way #Mikey with his chains and time abilities values being around his family the most - he wants them to experience living in the moment togethe #Donnie is someone who is 100% a gift giver to show his love - his constructs are exactly that aren’t they? gifts of his mind #Raph is someone who willingly bears the weight of the shield - he protects his family like the best big brother possible #and Leo - he goes off on his own a lot but his mind is constantly on his family anyway #like a sailor at sea no matter how far he travels the compass always point in one direction - and for him that compass points home #even if he can’t make it back - it’s still there #and that’s enough

[caitlinbueckers]

baby daddy.

paige bueckers x reader

3.2k

like guys . I don’t even know what to say rn . this is PURE fucking filth like yas there is some exposition in the beginning and its dialogue heavy but like ✋✋ just know this is fucking porn . So sorry for anon if this isn’t up to par but the wormz took over my brain and this is all i have to show for it . Love u so much for the idea tho <3

ANYWAYZZZ !!!! you and paige buy a strap. filth ensues.

MAJOR 18+ WARNING!!!!

“babe.”

it’s deadpan, borderline exasperated as you turn your head, meeting a wildly unimpressed expression from paige that makes you snort out loud, hand coming up to cover your mouth.

in your girlfriends hand, dangling from her fingers, is a dildo of some sorts, shaped horrifically in the form of an anatomically incorrect fist, and it’s almost impossible to keep your surprised laughter from bubbling out, taking a step closer with a look of awe.

“dude, you’re kidding,”

“babe, why are we even here? like, deadass i have two hands and ten fingers, this is so extra.”

to be fair, she had a point— those two hands and ten fingers had never done you wrong in the slightest, but this was simply an act of impulse, deciding just that morning after you guys had spent the time with each others hands down each others pants, you’d declared in a sudden rush of post-nut clarity, that you simply had to see paige in a strap.

which, was met with a bit of intrigue and then, obviously, because paige bueckers is competitive in anything she can consider herself good at, couldn’t help but interrogate you in outright disbelief.

‘so, what i’m hearing is that i’m not enough?” it was said in the tone she uses when her sarcasm is over the top, and you can’t help the laugh that bubbles out of you, slapping her arm.

‘baby, stop being so dramatic, oh my god.”

you’d kissed her to silence her delusions as to why you’d even brought it up in the first place, before explaining ever so gently that it was never a matter of what paige couldn’t do, and more so about the capabilities of what she could do, and that you promised it would be fun.

truly, she was on board after you’d told her that for some girls it was hard to use, so that, ‘if she couldn’t handle it, she could give up’ — of course paige would never back down from a challenge.

“you do have two hands, and i love them just the same. i just wanna try it, okay? is that okay?” you say it in your quiet, softest voice, and maybe you’re kinda being a brat because you know paige could never say no to you when you talk like that, or when you walk up to her, tracing a thumb against her cheek before pulling her down to peck her nose.

it’s immediate the way she chases your lips, presses a quick one to your mouth before she’s rolling her eyes, “anything for my baby, i guess.” but, she’s smiling, and that feels like more progress than before.

in the end, you guys end up picking something pretty beginner level— it’s only six inches, has a dual ended pleasure vibrator nestled in the crotch for the one wearing it and due to paige’s prompt request, it is in fact purple, which only makes you laugh at the excited shimmy she does as you both walk out, hand in hand, black, privacy sack swinging between her fingers.

“thought you were so against the idea?” you couldn’t help but tease her once you guys are in the car, music already blasting— you know all her music without really knowing it, but it’s definitely something by brent faiyaz.

“yeah,” she shrugs, “until i thought about getting to fuck you with it.” she says coyly, glancing over at you with a raised eyebrow before she’s pulling out of the lot, hand secured on your thigh.

you guys don’t really get to it that night, or the next day— instead settling for the slow, tired morning sex that you guys indulge in before her practice and then after, the languid, loving type of sex you both revel in for the evening when she’s back at the dorms.

no, for some reason, it isn’t until a week or so later that it suddenly comes up— and even then, you weren’t necessarily thinking about it too hard, not until the teams all at dinner. you, paige, KK, and aubrey all sit together, and it’s really in moments like these that you love to actually participate in conversations with the team— KK and aubrey had been one of the first to welcome you in with open arms after you and paige had begun dating, so you really felt most at ease with them, even if they could be complete idiots.

not like paige was any better.

it had started with someone making a tiktok, going around asking who they’d never let their son or daughter date— resoundingly, enough people said paige, which was both parts hilarious for you, and astounding for paige.

“bro! literally i’m like, the best girlfriend, that’s some bull.” she couldn’t help but scoff, even if she’s smiling just a little, “baby, i’m a good girlfriend, right?”

you purposely take a minute to answer, pretending to think about it until she grasps your thigh beneath the table, making you snicker as she squeezes, and suddenly, you know exactly the angle she’s playing.

“girl, i don’t trust you,“ KK snorts, making a face, “you’d probably get my kid pregnant or somethin’, like—“

KK’s words make paige snort, shrugging a bit, “shoot, i mean, no wonder they call me baby daddy.” she sticks her tongue out, entirely too immature for the setting of the restaurant, but it makes you warm all over anyway— you love her, even when she’s being childish, which is pretty much most of the time.

the conversation continues after that, and though you pay attention, laugh when it’s funny and answer when you need to, you can’t quite get that out of your head— baby daddy.

it makes you think.

it’s late by the time you guys get home, and true to paige’s fashion, the door is only shut and locked for a second before she’s behind you, pressing kisses to your neck and sliding hands up your shirt, humming quietly— “i’m a good girlfriend, yeah?”

it’s not often that paige asks for reassurance, mostly because she usually already knows, but it’s why it makes it extra special when she does.

“duh.” you whisper out, tilting your head back to grant her more access while she sneaks a hand into your jeans, forgoing the button entirely. her fingers are prodding against your clit when you let out a soft moan, your fluttering eyes only opening for half a second before they spot the black sack from across the room, your own hand gently grasping her wrist to still its movements.

“baby, why don’t we…?” your tilt your head in the direction, leaning your head sideways to try and capture her reaction.

surprisingly, she looks just as interested.

it’s comes out quietly, pressed to your temple, “get on the bed then.”

you don’t waste much time, stepping out of your jeans and your top until there’s nothing left but the black, simple thong that rests against your hips, crawling back against her purple sheets with an inquisitive look on your face while she pulled the thing from its plastic package.

“remember what you said earlier?” you say offhandedly as you watch paige’s muscles flex and tighten, looping the belt around her before she glances up at you, “which part?”

“baby daddy,” you can’t help but grin, tossing your head back against the bed, “just wanted to see how true that is.”

paige scoffs, and it’s obvious she likes that, plays into it even as she crawls onto the bed, looking down at you with a narrowed glance, “how true what is? that i could get you pregnant?”

it’s almost immediate the way your body flushes at that, the subconscious squeeze of your thighs together as you look up at her through lidded eyes, “mhm. is that bad?”

“i mean,” she’s smirking though, and her hand wraps around the strap on slowly, as if simulating it to be an extension of herself— it’s really fucking hot, “it’s sexy that you even thought about it like that,” she whispers, and you can practically see the confidence rising within her at the prospect, before her eyes flicker up at you. “wanna suck me off, ma?”

it makes something within you go haywire, and your mouth practically fills with saliva as if to prepare for it before you nod slowly, propping yourself up on your elbows before you stick your tongue out, paige’s blue orbs never leaving you for one second, before she’s sighing, hard under her breath, “fuuuck.”

she gets up on her knees, running her hands through your hair to gently guide your mouth down to the tip, her teeth teasing the bottom of her lip as you slowly slid the length into your mouth. it felt foreign, heavy on the tongue, but the texture was so lifelike, it almost felt like it was attached to paige.

“shit, baby,” she sounds out of breath as she thumbs your hair from your eyes, wanting to catch every dirty look you send up to her, mouth full and eyes watering, “god, you’re such… a slut.”

it must’ve been the strap or something, that had the endless string of dirty talk spilling from paige’s mouth, not entirely too uncommon and yet it had shifted the atmosphere completely. it felt lavacious, provocative, tantalizing even.

still, it makes the arousal pool between your legs, making you practically squeeze your thighs together again and again, chasing the feeling of some type of friction as paige pushed her hips up slightly, the tip only then touching the back of your throat and eliciting the first drop of a tear from your eye.

she notices, because she doesn’t miss a thing, and is slow as she pulls it from your mouth, eyes lingering on the string of saliva that connected your bottom lip from the tip of the strap.

she’s breathing heavy, blonde strands falling into her face, loose from the usual braid she kept her front pieces in as she grasps your jaw, “does that hurt?”

it doesn’t, but it makes you smirk that she even asks, shaking your head before you lean back now, head hitting the mattress as you open your thighs, raising an eyebrow inquisitively.

“you can make it hurt,” you suggest, and paige lets out a slow exhale, a teasing grin on her smile as she grasps it by the hilt, “you’re driving me fucking crazy, y’know that?” the words are hissed down at you, spoken between her lips, chapped from how hard she’d been breathing as she rubs the tip of the now warmed, messily lubricated length against your cunt, eyes narrowed and focused as she drags it up, then down.

“you’re so wet,” it sighs out of paige as if she doesn’t even realize that she’d said it, a whine puffing past your lips involuntarily, ready to spit some type of urgency towards her, until she pushes in, finally, and you fucking gasp.

it was unlike what you’d really ever felt before— especially having never been with men or experimenting with penetration on this degree. it’s thicker than you expect, thicker than paige’s fingers combined, and your back arches upwards off the bed, right as paige grasps your hip to keep you right in place. “shh, shh— fuck, you’re so good, baby.”

“ohhh- oh fuck, paige—“ the words come out in a mess of noises, as you fling an arm over your face to try and focus on the comforting rub of paige’s thumb, the smell of her cologne, instead of the stretching, hot pressure that’s collected between your legs.

it only takes a couple moments before it doesn’t completely hurt, but the second that it does, you can finally blink your watery eyes open, letting out a soft moan at the furrowed eyebrows on paige’s face, her own lips parted as she carefully gives a shallow thrust into you, the subsequent friction of the dull, now audible buzzing of the vibrator on the other end of the dildo against her clit and it’s obvious.

it’s in the way she grunts, tongue darting out to seek attention to her bottom lip. “s’that feel good?” she’s panting already, and it makes your stomach swirl in arousal, nodding quickly as she gives another slow, but shallow thrust that sends immediate shivers up your spine, a rush of rampant pleasure up your stomach as you let out a groan, “more?”

it doesn’t take long for paige to find a rhythm— surprising considering her dancing abilities— and once she does, you can practically sense the confidence that radiates off of her. it’s in the way she wraps an arm around your thigh to hoist your leg up, higher, higher, until your cunt is on full display, and she’s leaning atop you, pressing wet kisses to your breasts as she drags her hips into you, each push making you both shudder out a moan.

“shit, baby— so fucking— so fucking wet. wan’me to fuck a baby into you, huh?” paige always has a habit of going on these fuck-drunk tangents, ones that usually send you careening over the edge in due time, but this— it makes you mewl into her ear, the thick, heavy weight of the strap punching into you, deeper than you or paige could ever reach, and it makes your hips jerk upwards, wanting more of it, all of it.

for half a second, you hoped, by some weird anatomical technique, she could get you pregnant.

“ohhh— fuck! paige, paige— pleasepleaseplease—“ what you’re begging for, even you can’t decipher, but it’s really just to make sure that she rocks into you like that again.

and she does— again and again, drool collecting in the corner of your mouth from how long your lips have been parted, and paige looks at you, delirious and flushed as she drags her thumb over your mouth, wipes away the spit and reaches between you two.

before you can figure it out, you feel her finger tracing the outside of your stretched cunt, the wetness that’s collected there as she lets out a wanton sigh, something more high pitched than what paige usually grunts out, “stretching you s’good, baby— fucking- take it, jus’ like that— fuck, wanna fuck you stupid, baby.”

it’s almost too much. your head presses hard against the comforter as paige’s hips push flush against your own, the final stab of the length being inside of you makes your head swim, your body acting upon it’s own accord as your thighs, shaking, squeeze around paige’s hips, your stomach flexing and jumping as paige gives up whatever bit of composure or control she has left, before she’s quick to fuck into you without a single strand of resistance.

it’s hot, heady, and the sweat that collects on the surface of your skin is almost like a sense of accomplishment as her face falls into your neck, your thighs pushed impossibly high to give her the best angle, as she ruts into you. the slight curve of the dildo somehow gives a direct angle to your g-spot, and it punches a shout out of you, one that’s followed with a crying whine that even you knew was bound to get you both caught.

“fffuck— shhh- shut the fuck up—“ her mouth is on your neck in an instant, other hand quick to clamp over your mouth, but the friction against paige’s clit has her bottom lip quivering, struggling to close as each of her gravelly, breathy moans launch right into your ear, and it’s clear that she’s being greedy, grinding the strap into your cunt for the effort of chasing her own high, and it’s fucking sexy.

this deep, you can almost feel the fucking vibrator, and it reduces you into nothing— fingers twine into paige’s hair, sweaty and sticky, as she fucks into you with reckless abandon, the bed frame squeaking in protest, your cunt wet enough that you can fucking hear it, can feel it drip onto the bed below, feel it coating the sheets and paige’s thighs and you think she’s about to orgasm with how quick her breath has gotten, how shaky her hips are with each incessant thrust, like an earthquake pulsing through your body and it makes you sob, because it feels so fucking good, and paige is so deep, you can feel her everywhere.

“wanna cum inside of’you— ohmyfuck- please, wanna fuck my babies into you— iloveyou, so, fucking- so fu-ucking sexy, baby, fuck.”

it’s all gibberish really, a promise that makes you turn into a pile of mush, because you can feel your cunt tighten around it— delusionally, you imagine paige can feel it too— because even her declaration of love is enough to send you flying over the edge as your legs tighten around her hips, the vibrator nestled deep against paige’s clit until she’s coming too, and it’s a glorious thing to hear— ripping from her throat in a cacophony of throaty groans and whines that mimic yours, only deeper, grittier.

she thrusts into you, sloppy and out of control until you can feel her release on your cunt, spread against your thighs, the dull vibration now pressing hot and wet against you, so much so that it makes your body flood in aftershock, pleasure wracking through you in earnest as your body twitches and jumps, every embarrassingly high pitched noise ripping from your throat, as paige’s go muddled and unintelligible against your neck.

it’s like a cathartic release of sorts, leaving you feeling boneless and jellied in the wake as you slowly return to your senses, fucked out and exhausted as you try to experimentally move your hips, but the soreness between your legs is almost unfathomable.

“shit—“ you hiss as paige finally lifts her head, her own hand slow to guide the strap from your abused cunt, and it’s clear by, not only the tired, almost loopy smirk on her face, but the redness in her eyes, the wetness coating her lashes, that she’d enjoyed herself as much as you had— and while sex between you had always been mutual, it wasn’t often you got to see her fully release like that.

“was that good, hm? did i do okay?” she’s always quick to look for approval, her hand coming up to brush the tears from your face, to pepper a light array of kisses against your lips, chapped and puffy, as you let out a tired laugh, “fucking duh, that shit was… so hot,” you trace her blonde strands, plastered to her forehead, away from her face, “don’t think i’ve ever heard you sound like that.”

it makes her cheeks red, eyes rolling with a scoff, as she lets out a quiet laugh, already trying to play it off as cocky instead of flushed, “well- yeah, ‘cause, i was watching you take my dick.” you slap her arm weakly with a snort, wincing at her usage of words, “ew, you’re so gross.”

“and you’re so pretty,” she counters, before pressing a quick kiss to your mouth.

you both don’t really try to address the fact that there was probably no way you’d both been quiet enough to not at least alert one of the girls, but you ignore it anyway.

besides, it’s only KK that ends up putting you both in a group message the next morning, sending a string of angry emojis and a text that says, ‘bye im moving rooms’.

you both laugh, because you know she’s not, and more so, you all three know it wasn’t the first time and definitely not the last.

#paige bueckers x reader #paige bueckers smut #writing asf #paige bueckers #smut #wlw #still feel like i could get even worse

[januaryembrs]

THE KID HITS BACK | Spencer Reid x Prentiss!Reader [4]

Description: The THREE times things feel weird between Spencer and you because you're just best friends.

Length: 21k (this is HALF of what I wrote for this chapter before I split it into two parts :0)

Warnings: explicit hints of suicidal ideation, as I have said in the last two chapters, Bugsy has really struggled with losing Emily and has been in a bad place. it is mentioned once or twice but please read with caution if you feel topics of mental health, not vividly described but the effects of it, are mentioned. Spencer's addiction is also mentioned. Violence, blood, swearing, usual CM warnings. Also there is a brief mention of SA (bugsy gets spanked by a stranger in a casino), again if this is triggering please be cautious. EXPLOSION. Emily and bug argue + fight. Bug + hatch fight. Bugsy takes no prisoners in this one won't lie. Spencer and bugsy turn each other on accidentally.

authors note: this was supposed to be a lot longer (I've had to split it with the next part released in a few days time) and yet every time I tried to upload to Tumblr, it crashed because it was over 30k words ;-; OTHER HALF IS COMING SOON.

previous chpt | next chapter

The one where Emily comes back.

She felt the headache as soon as she woke up. She’d experimented with Molly her first week of college, hated every second of it after she had prattled on for two hours to some other random freshman about the breakthrough research in enzyme-replacement therapy like she was catching him up on an episode of the Kardashians. She’d tried the odd few brownies, though they usually turned her stomach the next day and made her paranoid for about a week, before she swore them off entirely for their yummy, sober counterpart. 

She should have known what to expect when she woke up, but then again, if she had been smart enough to pre-empt how awful she’d feel the next day, she probably wouldn’t have taken the little pink pill with a candied love heart on the top at all. 

The duvet was soft against her face, and for a moment she didn’t care about anything except chasing the warmth it provided; just that she was cosy and it smelled nice, smelled familiar. 

Her eyes pinged open when she realised that whatever that familiar smell was, it was very much not her own sheets. And she was very much not in the clothes she left the house in last night. 

Bugsy sat up too fast, that much she knew, because in the time it had taken her to swing her legs over the edge of the bed, reach for the side table where she hoped to find her phone, a home phone, or just any working phone she could call someone off, she felt the room that smelled like a dream spinning around her. 

Her legs turned to jelly, her stomach tossed with a mix of nerves and nausea, and, graceful as ever, she fell face first to the ground with a thud, smacking her temple off the corner of the bedpost on her way down. 

“Fuck,” She whined, raising a hand to her brow that thudded with more than the side affects of last night, and she was quick to hear footsteps approaching as if in a half run. The door to the bedroom dragged on the thick sherpa carpet as it swung open, and she blinked wearily up at the culprit. 

“Alright, up we get,” There were hands slipping under hers before she got a chance to see anything that wasn’t a blurry mess of brown hair and worried eyes, and it wasn’t until she heard his voice she felt herself sigh in relief, “Of course you wake up the second I turn around,”

“Sencer?,” She cleared her throat, hands latching onto his shoulders as he lifted her back onto the bed, “Spencer?” She tried again, her lips chapped, her skin clammy. 

“Good morning, to you too,” His voice was soft, quieter than usual, like he knew just how delicate her head was and changed his tone accordingly, “Did you sleep well?”

“Morgan- where’s Morgan, I thought we…” She murmured, turning her head in confusion to the window where Spence had gone so far as to pull the curtains closed for her, seeing just the smallest crack of daylight filtering over the bed sheets. Her hands ran down his chest, her eyes lost and dazed, like someone had taken her batteries out, and Spencer took it as an opportunity to hand her the glass of water he’d got her and two advil. 

“Morgan’s safe; he went home, he said he had a wonderful night,” Spencer lied, hoping she was just a little out of it that she didn’t catch him in it. She always knew when he was lying. But, as he’d suspected, she barely picked up on it, her lips pouting in confusion when she took note of the medicine he’d given her, “Drink up, Morgan said you did a lot of dancing last night, you’re probably dehydrated.”

“I did…” She echoed him, trailing off when the blur of the nightclub caught up to her, and she remembered exactly the last time someone had handed her a little tablet like those ones. Her heart plummeted, her eyes widening into saucers, and she swore she might have felt the glass crack beneath her palm with how tight her grip became. She looked up at him, and instantly picked apart the pity and the sadness swimming in his honey pooled eyes, “You know,” 

He nodded softly, his hand coming up to stroke her hair away from her face, his gaze falling to where she felt something sore and achy forming on her forehead, bleeding into her brow. 

“Spence-” Her own groan of pain cut her off when he brushed over the bump on her temple, and she understood she had perhaps hit it much harder than she’d initially thought.

“Let’s get you breakfast, and then we’ll talk,” He whispered softly, concern thick in his voice, and for the first time in months, she didn’t fight it. She just listened, and let him love her.

-

“God, I am truly pathetic,” She muttered, sipping her coffee with a scowl in between the maple ladened pancakes going down with a vicious chomp on her fork. Her other hand was occupied holding a bag of frozen peas to her head, where a nice dark bruise was spreading its way over the right side of her face, spider webbing out into a black eye. 

“You’re not pathetic, everyone makes mistakes,” Spencer tried reassuring her, but he couldn’t help but smile as she devoured breakfast with the anger of a raccoon being dragged from a garbage bin, “You’re safe, that’s all that matters,” 

She sighed, and Spencer didn’t actually think she had ever been so grumpy around him before, “Spencer, look at me,” He did, he had been all morning, but he did as he was told anyway, “I’m a federal agent who took molly from a frat boy all because I can’t just grieve like a normal person and cry my pathetic little heart out and be done with it. I crashed your night because I can’t even handle a little ecstasy without needing supervision and I just got into a fight with your bedframe,” She finished with a huff, dipping her next mouthful of pancake in the puddle of maple syrup she’d created on the plate, “And the fucking bedframe won.” 

He smiled despite himself, reaching out to hold her wrist gently, making sure it was her turn to listen to him now, “Bug, I grew up being shoved into lockers and swirlied my whole life. I was the only kid in a classful of seniors that used to wedgie me so hard I had to have the school librarian, Mrs Addler, walk me between classes. Believe me, I’ve seen pathetic and you’re not- why are you crying, Bug, don’t cry,”

He remembered this bit, the mood swings, when he would pendulum between exhaustion and irritation straight into sadness and hopelessness, like there would never be an impasse between them unless he did more of the thing that had made him feel so awful in the first place. Still, he gently took the bag of now slightly soggy peas from her head, wrapping an arm around her back and scooching his chair to sit next to hers as she dropped onto his shoulder with a weepy sniff. 

“I’m crying because I just thought of baby you all alone with Mrs Addler-” She sobbed loudly, and his heart bled out in his chest with warmth. No one had ever cried for him. “How could they be so cruel to you, I swear if we ever see those bastards, I’ll show them how we settled things in Russia-” 

He chuckled, shaking his head, and she snuggled closer to him the way she had last night when the only thing keeping her on earth had been his body heat. 

“It wasn’t all bad, she used to share her butterscotch with me,” He said with a small smile when she raised a wet glance at him. 

“You know, you never have to be alone again, right?” Bugsy murmured, and he swore his heart might have just jumped right up into his mouth then and there, “You’re my best friend in the whole world, and I promise I’ll never leave you again. That was… selfish of me, I’m sorry I was so selfish.” 

Spencer felt his throat tighten as he looked at her, innocent and entirely truthful, like he could ask anything from her right this second and her god’s honest words would be ‘Anything for you, Spencer, I’d do anything for you.’ He had never had anyone look at him like that, nothing even close. 

“You’re my best friend too. And you weren’t selfish, you were grieving,” He choked out, and she tucked herself beneath his chin then, satisfied with the response, but his stomach turned sour when he remembered what he was going to tell her last night, what he should have told her months, years, ago instead of lying to her. Because he knew she would understand, knew she would get him the way no one else had even tried to, because she was just her. “I have to tell you something,”

She sat up straight, sensing the seriousness in his tone, and looked at him with imploring eyes, still sleep-addled and slightly wet around the edges. 

He cleared his throat, “When I told you I was allergic to narcotics since I was born, that wasn’t entirely true, and I’m sorry I lied to you,” Her brows softened, creasing in a way that told him she was worried, or she knew where he was heading but couldn’t find a voice in her to say anything. He ran clammy palms over his pyjama pants, “There was a case, a while back, where we were tracking an UnSub to this farmhouse in the middle of Atlanta. Me and JJ got split up and the UnSub took me hostage in his father’s shed,” 

She stayed quiet, but she quickly took his hand in hers when she saw him fidgeting with it in his lap. He smiled at her weakly, and squeezed her fingers gently, telling her he was okay to talk about it no matter if his chest was rattling and his face felt like fire. 

“He was very sick, the UnSub. Tobias. He took on an alter of his dead father because he couldn't handle life without him. Even though his father was extremely violent and abusive, he still loved him enough to never want to let him go,” His lip pulled between his teeth for a moment, and he couldn’t look at her for what he was about to say, “Tobias tried giving me something to stop the pain of his father’s beatings when he would front and being a drug addict himself, the best thing he had was dilaudid. So, he gave it to me for the three days I was with him before the team found me,” 

“Spence,” She said softly, knowing he would hate to hear an ‘I’m sorry’ because she hated those two words with a passion, “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” 

“No, I want to, it’s just a little… fuzzy in parts,” He whispered, and she nodded, gently knocking her head against his jaw to let him know she was there to listen, “After the case wrapped up, everyone got home and just sort of pretended things went back to normal, even though I felt like I was drowning in everything that had happened, and the only thing I could think that had stopped the pain was the dilaudid. So I took more, and more, until I was using every other day, sometimes even at work to cope with the cases,”

“Did anyone know?” She asked, lips pressed tight as she scolded herself for talking, but he stroked her hand with his thumb to show he didn’t care if she asked questions, “Did Emily know?” 

He nodded gingerly, “Everyone knew, but no one could do anything, or say anything, because otherwise Hotch would have to file a report on me, and I’d be forced to leave the team,” 

“So no one helped?” She said, and there was an unexpected trace of anger in her tone that he knew too well. He’d be lying if he said that there were more than a handful of times when he was at his lowest he didn’t curse the team out for not giving a single shit about his condition. But when he’d sobered up, when he’d got clean and back to his usual self, he knew they were trying to do what was best, that they were in uncharted waters as to what would be the correct approach to helping him that wouldn’t diffuse a bomb that could ruin all of their careers. 

“There was nothing they could do, Bug. If they said anything they would be just as liable as me for what I was doing, the same way Morgan and I aren’t going to say a word about what happened last night,” He pointed out, and she seemed bitter as if she knew he was right but hated the point of it anyway. 

She held onto herself for long enough hearing that, and he saw it coming before it came as a shock when she threw her arms around him, hugging him tighter than she ever had before, not crying like she had been, but full to the brim of sadness and grief and mourning, as if she was trying to squeeze it all out of him so she could take it on for herself. 

“You’re never going to be alone again, I swear, Spencer,” 

And he believed her with everything in him. 

–

Bugsy had been back in the field for five weeks now, looking healthier than ever thanks to Hotch’s insistence she joined Beth for triathlon practice despite the fact she really had started feeling more like herself. 

It had only taken six months, but who was counting, right? 

Sure, walking past Emily’s desk had stopped her in her tracks the first day she got back, and Morgan had quickly jumped in to distract her with a cup of coffee, leading her over to the kitchenette and far away from the empty table her sister’s things had once been on. 

She was still adjusting to this alternate reality version of the BAU where Emily wasn’t there to protect her and watch out for her, and where they didn’t bicker about who got to ride shotgun with Hotch because Bug loved when he would drive fast (he pretended not to notice but would floor it when they hit the freeway), or when they would butt heads over who finished off the biscuits Emily kept in her secret stash (it was almost always Bugsy sharing them with Spencer and Penelope, when the three of them would gossip in Pen’s lair at lunchtime.)

She was adjusting, slowly yes, but there was one thing to keep her going, to keep her holding her head high as she walked past Emily’s picture on the way, full of smiles and dark hair the day she’d been instated in the bureau, her excitement tangible even through a piece of paper and a thin sheet of glass. 

There was one thing keeping her going, and it wasn’t Penelope’s cheerful good mornings she showered her in the minute she entered the building, it wasn’t Beth’s runs that would take everything out of her even though she felt stronger than she ever had, it wasn’t Rossi’s insistence on cooking for her once or twice a week because ‘he had more wine he could ever need alone and she could stir the pasta while he chopped the meat’, and it wasn’t even Spencer sticking to her side like damn velcro since she had been back. Although, they played a pretty big part in it. 

No, the one thing keeping her going was revenge. 

Morgan had let it slip accidentally, the morning she had come back into the headquarters to fill in some forms with Hotch and Strauss before Hotch was reassigned to Pakistan, when she had slinked into his office with an apology ready at her lips for the way she had behaved, to which he was going to say he had no idea what she was talking about because that was how things had to be, only to find file upon file upon caseload on Ian Doyle splayed all over his desk, and she quickly realised Derek was not one to let sleeping dogs lie either. 

And, reluctantly, he had let her help, because he hated the idea of them keeping secrets from her. Especially ones that involved them secretly tracking down the guy who killed her sister, who had threatened to abduct, torture and kill her if Emily hadn’t gone after him first. 

Because Bugsy was always going to be her little sister, no matter how grown and headstrong and stubborn as an ass she was. And Emily had had zero intention of letting Bugsy come even close to danger at the hands of Ian Doyle or any other motherfucker dumb enough to think they’d get away unscathed making threats to her sister. Which was why Emily had been the one to track him down first, no matter who she had to trample on, what lines she had to cross.

And now it was Bug’s turn to reciprocate the favour. 

The one thing that bounced around her head with every step she took across the BAU floor was how Ian Doyle would look when she dragged him to hell and back and everything in between, when she made him burn the way she had burnt. 

Hotch had been away on temporary duty for the month, bar the occasional phone call where he checked in on her directly or through Spencer, and it wasn’t until she walked into Morgan in a blunt exchange with his own cell that she realised he was perhaps closer to coming home than she’d thought.

The man nodded, and bid the mystery caller goodbye before he flicked a look up to where Bugsy had entered his office with a cup of to-go coffee and an expression of intrigue. 

“We got him,” Morgan said, and it was the three words she had been waiting to hear for two hundred and fifteen days. 

They had found Doyle. 

She was in the back of an SUV not even two hours later, strapped to her neck with tactical gear and two loaded pistols holstered at her hips. 

“You’re sure you’re alright to do this?” JJ asked from her place beside her, noting the way the girl’s leg was bouncing, her fingers twitching as the three of them crowded around the screen linked to the surveillance camera set up outside Doyle’s apartment, Spencer and David watching an identical feed in the next block over, outside the safe house his son, Declan, was supposed to be in. 

Only, when they’d arrived, the little blonde haired, blue eyed boy that was the only thing Doyle gave a damn about in the world was gone, two agents and his nanny lying dead on the floor. 

“Put it this way, JJ, I’m going in after that son of a bitch whether you guys cover me or not, and it would be real nice to have back up,” Bugsy said simply, like she was reciting the weather, not ready to rain hellfire on anyone who got in between her and wringing Doyle’s neck. 

The blonde woman exchanged a look with Derek, the two of them cautious about her behaviour, but thought better than to try stop her when she had just as much right as any of them for justice. 

Before any of them could say another word, a car sped around the corner of the cul-de-sac, veering and wavering between parked cars, narrowly missing theirs by an inch, and red-blue blaring lights came racing after it within seconds, the siren full blast and no doubt waking the neighbours. 

Or at least one neighbour in particular, as they spotted the curtains twitching in Doyle’s apartment, and they had their first sign of life in hours. 

“He’s in there, someone’s in there,” Bugsy pointed to where the fabric moved in the dead of the night, unholstering one of her weapons and bursting the back door to the SUV open. 

JJ clicked her radio on, speaking into her shoulder as Morgan was a hair width behind Bugsy, equally armed and ready, “We got movement on Doyle, we’re heading up to search his apartment,” 

“Be careful, keep an eye on the kid,” Rossi ordered, he and Spencer adjusting their positions in their SUV, waiting for forensics to show up and investigate the nanny’s house. Spencer licked his lips nervously, and he could only imagine what was going through Bugsy’s mind at that moment, wishing more than ever she could have just stayed with him and let Morgan and JJ catch Doyle. 

But she would never. She had nearly ripped Rossi’s head off for suggesting it even. 

–

She’d seen him move up to the roof, had taken the stairs in twos, and she felt like kissing Aaron the second she saw him for all that cardio paying off a treat. She heard Morgan panting behind her, urging her to wait up so she wasn’t going in alone, but she didn’t listen, not when she was this close to getting that rat in her grasp and squeezing the life out of him barehanded. 

She kicked down the door leading to the roof from the stairwell, her pistol drawn high and sharp and Morgan’s steps racing up behind her were the only sound for a moment. 

He was here somewhere, watching them, god only hoped they had caught him unaware before he could call in his own backup. 

Taking a careful step out onto the concrete, willing herself to take a deep breath and calm herself; she checked her nine o’clock, checked her three, before her boots crunched under her and she moved further out onto the roofing. Flicking a look around again, her eyes squinted against the moonlight that did little to no good, searching for even the smallest movements that would give him away. 

“I heard you wanted to see me, Doyle,” She said loudly, hoping he would fit the profile they’d put together and want to tie up his loose ends once he realised who she was, “Truth is, I’ve been wanting to see you too,”

She had barely a second to react as she felt something hard slam across the back of her head, and she realised he had hit her with a rogue, loose pipe, hard enough for her to stumble forward, dropping her pistol when his body soon followed to tackle her completely to the ground in the effort to grab for the gun himself. 

But she felt like body was alive with excitement, like the pain in her skull didn’t ache, didn’t matter, because she had him in her reach. 

It took her barely a second to bring her elbow into his stomach, winding him hard enough he weakened his grip on top of her, then another hit square across his jaw, another to his temple, one to his already crooked nose and she threw a downward thump into his groin for good measure. 

He hissed, cursing her something vile, and it was only then she saw the grey-blue eyes of the man who had killed her sister with no remorse, who had taken the person she loved unconditionally within a blink of an eye. 

“You recognise me?” She said, a manic smile on her face as she raised the other gun from its holster, kicking him hard in the knee she’d seen him limping on, a bullet wound shaped scar giving his weakness away in seconds.

She wasn’t the only enemy he’d made in that business of his, but she sure as hell would be his last one.  

He fell to the floor, his eyes wary as he looked up at the girl he had spent weeks collating photos of, the girl he’d had two of his best men tracking, snapping pictures of her going about her day to day life before he sent them to Emily. Because she would know what that meant no words needed. 

This was her sister. Her little sister she had fought tooth and nail for, that she had given her life for. Her sister, who had the same rock solid loyalty to her family as Lauren had. 

“Do you want to know where you went wrong, Doyle?” She asked, and her voice wasn’t calm like her body was, it was hiding the glee she was taking from his alarmed expression, like they both knew she was the last person he would have expected to be grabbing him in the night, “Your mistake, Doyle, was not killing me first,” 

She raised her finger to the trigger, feeling for a second the same thrill as when she popped that molly just to forget everything that was happening. Because she had tunnel vision, and pulling the plug on Ian Doyle’s pathetic existence was the solution. 

Until Morgan’s hand came over hers, and his voice was closer than she’d expected to her ear. She’d barely heard him creep up on her, she realised with a jolt. 

“Don’t do this, kid,” 

“He deserves it,” She spat, hating the sorrow in his voice when he pointed the gun away from Doyle who wiped his fingers beneath his nostrils and pulled back with a wince and a blob of blood over the back of his hand. 

“I know he does. But we need to find Declan, and we can’t do that without him,” Morgan’s voice was deep and bitter, knowing full well he had to be the one to take the reins as much as he would love to just let her have at him. 

Her nose scrunched in disgust when Doyle laughed at her annoyance, and she quickly holstered her weapon, pulling the cuffs out of her back pocket and helping Morgan yank him off the floor. 

“I got some friends that would love to meet you, honey,” Doyle said through a wheezing breath, despite Morgan’s rough hands shoving him forward towards the stairwell. 

She chuckled however, her face still bitter, her eyes something nasty and wild as she flanked his other side, “Don’t worry, I have some friends for you to play with too, Doyle.” She tightened her grip on his arm just to make it hurt, “I wonder how the Chernuses would feel about you and your men being so close to their turf. You ever fucked with the Russian Mob, Ian?”

His smile wiped clean off his face at that.

-

“How’s it going?” Hotch asked, and she barely had time to comment on the fact he looked rather dashing with a beard and a tan, or that he had lost ten pounds, before he was straight back to business, even after an eighteen hour flight. 

“He won’t talk. He said the only person who could have helped us find Gerace would have been Emily.” She replied, rubbing her hands over her eyes with a huff, “Just another dead end,” She threw the file onto the roundtable, which was slowly piling up with documents relating to anyone Ian Doyle had ever had relations with.

Hotch’s face tightened. He took a single moment to enjoy the calm that overcame the room, took a second to enjoy the fact she was looking normal and healthy compared to when he had all but barged into her apartment to force her on a run. 

Because he knew the normalcy they had found themselves in now was about to be flipped on its head, JJ confirming with a nod from the other side of the room that she was on her way. 

He turned to look where Morgan, Rossi and Reid had walked in, Reid stroking a gentle hand over Bugsy’s hair where she hunched over the table and flicked through some files for anything to keep her mind off of going into that interrogation room and ripping into Doyle. She flicked a small smile up at him as he passed her, leaning over her shoulder to take half her workload off her. 

She looked happier than she had in months, and he was about to take it all away again. Hotch swallowed the self loathing that threatened to choke him alive, and opened his mouth. 

“Everybody have a seat,” The team looked up at him in confusion, but followed orders, JJ moving around the table to stand beside him, the same reluctant look on her face when she saw Bugsy’s frown.

“Why?” Morgan asked, seeing as no one else was going to, “What’s going on? Everything alright?”

“Seven months ago, I made a decision that affected this team,” Hotch began, his eyes immediately flicking to where the youngest Prentiss faltered, “As you all know, Emily had lost a lot of blood after her fight with Doyle. But the doctors were able to stabilise her,” 

Bugsy’s ears started ringing just hearing her sister’s name coming from his lips, said so casually and blunt that it felt like he had punched her in the stomach and she thought she was maybe over estimating how well she had overcome the grief. 

And that hadn’t even been the worst part, she quickly realised. The doctors were able to stabilise her. 

“And she was airlifted from Boston to Bethesda under a covert exfiltration. Her identity was strictly need to know. She was reassigned to Paris where she was given several identities, none of which we had access to for her security,” Hotch said, avoiding the piercing eyes that were slowly melting between confusion to heartache to one she finally could land on, horror. 

No one breathed for a moment, no one said a thing as the words sunk in, and she felt her entire body wash over with a gut wrenching numbness as it dawned on her what he was saying. 

Emily never died on that table like JJ had said. She had never died at all. 

“What?” Her voice was tiny and childlike when it came out, and she felt like she was stuck in the world’s worst nightmare, like she could claw and scratch and rip at her skin just to wake herself up from this terrifying dream where Hotch had lied and Emily had left her and everyone who was supposed to care about her had kept her in the dark. 

“She’s alive?” Garcia asked, tears in her own green lined eyes, looking at Hotch with utter shock. 

“But we buried her,” Spencer found it in himself to murmur, because none of this made sense and if any of what Hotch was saying was true, then he knew things were about to become really ugly. 

“As I said I take full responsibility for the decision; if anyone has any issues, they should be directed towards me,” And it was only then he looked at Bugsy fully, properly, since he had opened his mouth. 

He could have swore he had never seen such complete and utter betrayal written across someone’s face, let alone directed towards him. Because he knew that’s what it was. He knew he had taken every scrap and shred of trust she had placed in him since that day she ran away from her own wedding and found herself stuck in that very same office, hugging him tightly with her sodden veil and even more soaked white dress, he had taken everything vulnerable she had ever given him and spat it right back at her. 

He felt like crying but before he could think too hard about it, he saw Emily walking down the hall and her own face was just as, if not more, devastated than his own and he knew he had to be the one to stay strong. 

Garcia’s head snapped to the doorway, the sight of it leading Spencer and Rossi to do the same, and Morgan’s face morphed into anguish when he took a look for himself. 

Because there, looking like a glowing beacon of everything they’d been missing in seven months, was Emily Prentiss, alive and well. 

She seemed lost for words, her eyes falling to her sister who seemed to force herself to look up at her from where she was staring in wide eyed terror at the table, as if she was struggling to comprehend any of this, or like the building was falling down around her and she was in complete fight, flight or freeze. 

But she did, she looked up at her after a second, her face unrecognisable to Emily for a moment, and it took all of three moments where she seemed relieved to see her, before it curled into a vitriolic anger Emily had never, never seen from her. 

She looked like she was ready to kill her with her bare hands herself. 

Penelope was first out of her seat, practically flying across the room to grab her close friend in a hug, a complete bubble of sobs and wails, her pigtails shaking with her rattling chest as Emily hugged her tight to her. 

“Oh, my god, it’s real-you’re real- like I can actually touch you and you’re safe and not in that god awful box-” Penelope was a catalyst for the rest of the team standing up to take their turn crying on the woman’s shoulder. 

That is, the rest of the team except Bugsy. 

She remained in her seat, her gaze falling back to the mess of files that all of a sudden felt a complete waste of time, felt irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Who cared who was Doyle’s financial advisor between the years of 2005 and 2007 when Emily was alive and they had known the whole time. 

And the more she thought, the more furious she got. And then the more furious she got, the stiller she became; an atomic bomb ready to detonate at the slightest prod. 

“I am so sorry, I really am,” Emily said as Spencer had wrapped his giant arms around her tentatively, smelling her perfume and feeling his heart ache with how warm and alive and healthy her body felt. “Not a day went by that I didn’t-”

But a sound cut her off, one none of them were expecting in the slightest. 

Bugsy was laughing. 

Not the sweet chirp she normally gave, or the hearty one that came from her gut that they hadn’t heard in months, but something manic. Something frenzied, beserk. Deranged. 

Hotch’s head snapped to her, Emily’s too, though she had already taken note of the fact her sister hadn’t so much as moved from her feet, and stupidly she had hoped it was the shock sinking in. 

But her eyes were cruel, her teeth more of a snarl than a smile and the laugh she gave was that of a person over the edge. 

The straw that broke the camel’s back, she believed it was called. 

“She never made it off the table,” Bugsy imitated woefully, her eyes snapping to JJ, who felt smaller than she ever had under the hatred in them, though the girl’s nasty smile hadn’t let up, “You are good, Jennifer. You really got me there, hey maybe if the agent thing doesn’t work out then acting is alway an option for you,”

“Bug-” Hotch started, only for her to stand up so harshly her chair nearly tipped back, but she didn’t seem to care as she rounded the table towards him in a bitter chuckle. 

“And you! I didn’t know you had it in you. But very good, Hotch, very well played out. For a second I thought you actually gave a fuck about me,” She fist bumped his shoulder, a little harsher than something innocent behind it, before something spiteful settled in her tone, “But then again, you are nothing if not professional, aren’t you? I guess a suicide on your team would look terrible on your report card,”

“I think you need to calm down and let’s talk about this for a second,” Hotch tried to jump in, his brows furrowed enough to make him look annoyed but anyone with two eyes could see the worry that brewed there, that chased her as she retreated to where her jacket was slung over the back of her seat. She laughed again viciously, shaking her head. Grabbing her coat, she headed for the door where Emily stood helplessly, not knowing what to say for the best, and she thought for a minute her little sister was going to address her. 

But she didn’t; didn’t even look her way as she approached, and it wasn’t until Hotch rounded the room after her with a fixed gaze she showed any sign of stopping. Not until he reached for her arm with a tight grip, a call of her name, did she even halt in her step. 

“Stop, let’s just talk,”

“Let go of me,” Bugsy snapped, and it was the first time she actually gave way to the anger she felt, the amusement coming from a place of distraught long gone. She sounded pissed.

“Listen to me, we had no choice here,” Hotch barked, because it was the only way he could communicate when he felt this lost. And that’s what he was; he was losing her. They all were. “And I would have thought you’d be able to stop being so spoiled for one god damn second to see we were protecting-”

Her palm whirled around faster than he could have ever anticipated, slapping clean and sharp against his cheek, hard enough the air was sucked out of the room and his words died in his throat. 

Penelope gasped. Spencer’s eyes widened. Emily took a heavy gulp. 

“Bugsy!” Emily said in horror, and it was then her little sister’s eyes actually set on hers, every bit as cruel and hateful she’d expected.

“I want nothing to do with you, do you hear me? I don’t want to talk to you, or see you, don’t even speak that name, I don’t want it from you anymore,” Bugsy pointed at her with crooked, bitten nails Emily knew all too well, “You left me. You left me.”

With those three choked words, the other’s could only watch hurricane Bugsy whirl and burn and crash her way out of the room.

–

She sat on the steps to the federal building, perfectly dressed agents filtering around her with the occasional tut in disgust. 

She couldn’t really blame them; her face was wet with tears, she was pretty sure there was snot running out of her nose hastily, and between her free hand, the other of which was pulling at her hair, was a cigarette that swirled its grey smoke around her head with a horribly addictive smell. 

She heard footsteps approaching her from the back, different from the rest, and felt someone stop beside her, sliding to their ass on the step.

“Spencer, if you’re going to tell me this is taking seven minutes off my life then please can it wait for another day-” Bugsy started with a tearful cadence, only to be cut off by a woman’s voice. 

“I was actually going to ask if you had a lighter,” Erin Strauss said, pulling her own menthol cigarette between her lips, and Bugsy dug around her pocket for the cheap ‘I <3 Virginia’ lighter she had snagged on New Years, clicking the flame out long enough for her boss’s boss to light the tip, “I heard you gave Aaron a shock,”

Bugsy stayed silent, taking a drag that burnt her lips and tasted awful, but it was the only thing she could turn to that would calm her even in the slightest, even if it was just the chemicals.

“Bit of an understatement,” She mused, exhaling softly with a frown, “Did you know?” 

“Are you going to slap me too if I said yes?” Erin asked, and Bugsy gave a small, wet chuckle, shaking her head, “Would it matter if I did?”

 “No, I guess not,” She replied, breathing in through her nose, “I want to feel sorry, but all I feel is just … empty. Why did JJ and Hotch know what happened to her but she didn’t think to tell her own sister?”

“Probably because you’re the one she loves the most,” Strauss picked over the hem of her navy blue midi dress that had been pressed neatly just that morning, and now here she was sitting on the steps to her building helping a girl in crisis chainsmoke, “It was how she ended up there in the first place, right? Because she wanted to protect you,” 

 “She left me torturing myself for months that her death was all my fault; believe me protection was not what I needed,” Bugsy said harshly, her final drag reaching the brown stub, and she scowled as she doubted it on the concrete floor below her, tucking her knees up to her face and resting her head on them. 

Erin sighed, patting her on the back gently, not wanting to cross any lines for such a fragile girl, but not wanting to leave her entirely alone either. 

“Our most basic instinct is not for survival but for family.” Strauss quoted, taking one more breath of her own cigarette before she squished it under her heel quickly. “Paul Pearsall,”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Bug asked quietly, tilting her head onto her cheek to look over at the woman.

“It means you can hate her as much as you can right now, but sooner or later, you’re going to need her, or she’s going to need you, and you’ll wish you never pushed each other away,” 

2. The one where you pretend to be a couple.

Her hair was shorter, Bugsy noted, where she saw the back of her sister’s head from her desk. It looked nice, not that she would tell her that. 

She wouldn’t tell her anything. 

It had been eight weeks, three of which Bugsy had spent taking a leave of absence and been forced to see the designated federal councillor for her behaviour towards Hotch. She had gone to the handful of sessions to keep him off her back, but had stayed quiet for most of them, except the one where she got the psychologist to tell her the dirt on her recent, messy break up so they’d have something to talk about at least.

She had only really been speaking to Spencer the weeks since she had returned to work, had handed the slip of paper that declared her fit to work to Hotch with a smug look on her face, daring him to extend her sick leave as punishment for the tantrum she’d thrown. 

She knew it was dragging, knew most of the team were at least trying to adjust to the shellshock of Emily being back from the dead, but then again, the rest of the team hadn’t been writing their own eulogy so the burden wouldn’t fall onto someone else if they ever found her unresponsive. 

In the time Emily had supposedly been dead, her mind had wandered someone cold and dark and alone. Worse than any of them had ever thought it had been, worse than they gave her credit for. 

Only for it to be fake. As though she was the star of her own Truman show, with a laugh track playing on loop in the back; her own friends, people she’d considered family, watching her kicking and screaming and fighting through every breath for some sort of relief from the pain, a pawn in their little sitcom of horrors. 

Morgan had forgiven her sister with little resistance. She’d always known that, to Morgan, trust was higher than anything in his books. Yet with some soft words and tears shed, Derek had cracked and accepted Emily back warmly like nothing had happened. Rossi and Penelope had just been happy to see her, happy to have her back and very much not dead, so convincing them she was innocent had been no big feat. The only other person who had put up nearly as much fight as her had been Spencer. He had told her about the spat he and JJ had gotten into for being an accomplice to their pain, but even he was beginning to warm back up to her sister, not that she could really blame him. 

Emily was putting in overtime trying to get back into her good books, while she couldn’t even stand to look at her without remembering how hard she’d cried when she realised Nico and Sergio would be in her apartment alone and confused if she had been sad enough to do something rash. 

“Good Morning,” Emily’s voice was nails in a chalkboard, two arms winding over her shoulder to plonk two take out coffees in front of her and Spencer, one with his name written in black ink on the lid and the other with a dozen hearts dotted over the cup, a little doodle of a lady bug and a bumble bee cuddling. What she supposed was meant to be the two of them. 

Spencer watched Bugsy fight the urge to roll her eyes, surprisingly somewhat progress for her since the first two weeks of Emily even being near her resulted in the two of them screaming at one another until they were separated. Emily was growing tired of being punished for trying to keep her sister safe, Bugsy was full of hatred for every lie they had told her. 

But he saw the way she immediately knocked the coffee into the trash without a second thought, ignoring the fact she would need to take out a very heavy and wet bin liner later, if only to drive the point home to her older sister. I don’t want your charity. 

Emily faltered for a second, her eyes snapping to him as if he could do or say anything to help her out, but he could only give her one of his awkward, straight smiles, because he had absolutely no intention of pushing Bugsy to heal any faster than she was doing like everyone else was, nor did he want Emily to feel like he didn’t care she was hurting too.

Emily gave a resigned nod, daring to pat her sister on the shoulder. “Better in the trash than thrown over my face, right?”

She moved away from the woman’s desk, shooting a disheartened look at Reid as she passed him and he murmured ‘thankyou’ for his own coffee, until the sound of JJ calling them into the round table room cut off whatever she was going to say back. 

Spencer thoughtlessly handed Bugsy his own latte, smothered with caramel and cream the way he liked it, and she took an appreciative sip without a word. 

He hadn’t brought up that night, hadn’t spoken about the way she’d pressed her lips to his for a split second the night Morgan had dragged her over to his apartment to sober up. And because she hadn’t brought it up either, he assumed she didn’t want to talk about it anymore than she wanted to talk about what had got her there in the first place. 

He had helped her brush her own teeth more than once in the early days of her grief, hell he had even had her lips against his, so when she handed him the coffee cup back, he didn’t think much of it when he continued drinking the hot caffeinated goodness. 

Bugsy was wired differently in his brain, everything about her was different than how he felt about everyone else. So if she didn’t want to talk about kissing him, if she wanted to forget it ever happened, then he would swallow his feelings and accept she didn’t ever want to do it again. If she wanted to keep the bond they had carefully crafted through days and months and weeks of being each other’s solace, then he wouldn’t fight it. Because he didn’t want to ruin it either. 

He just nudged her gently with his shoulder as they meandered up the stairs to the round table room, looking at her with the puppy dog eyes that usually followed her around when she was in one of her silent moods. 

“You okay?” He asked carefully, noting the way she tugged her files to her chest, smiling up at him nevertheless. Because she could never be mad at him, it was Spencer. 

“You don’t have to do that, you know?” She said, lowering her voice as Morgan trailed behind the two of them his own mug of fresh brewed coffee sloshing in his hand, “Pretend like you don’t forgive her for my sake. I want you to be friends again if that’s what you want,”

She’d noticed his sheepish glances when he met Emily’s gaze, unmoving from her side like he wanted to make it clear he was there for her above everything else. But she saw how he would smile and joke with her sister when he thought she was in the bathroom, or when they would return from a crime scene, working together again like a well oiled machine. 

They were still friends, even if she felt sick every time she saw her sister’s noir black bangs flick her way, even if her heart was aching and her chest heavier than she would have ever let on. 

“But you’re upset with her?” Spencer muttered back, with a frown on his face, “I’m upset you got so hurt by the whole thing. I’m essentially hurt by proxy,” 

She snickered, leaning into his side for a moment, pulling away when they reached Rossi’s office and began walking past the long window she saw everyone settling down behind, “I appreciate that, Spence, I do. But you were her friend first, and she’s my sister. It’s different for you guys. And it’s not like we’re dating, because then I’d be allowed to be upset if you were still friends with her,” She explained lightly, though she felt her chest pick up at the very fact she had let that silly little dating word slip past her lips. 

She had no idea where they were. He was the only thing keeping her together some days, the only one who understood her for all her silly, complex feelings and didn’t make her feel dumb or crazy for feeling the world so deeply. He was special to her in a way no guy had ever even come close. 

She just wished she hadn’t made such an idiot of herself that night with Morgan; wished she remembered anything of what was said or done, because things had felt electrified since then and she had no idea why. All she knew was she was falling harder for him every time he stood so close, or offered her his drink, or every time they had a movie night at his and fell asleep on his couch pressed together like they were meant to be that way forever. 

He sighed, still stuck on the situation, and shot her a frown, “I’ll never understand the rules,” Though he hoped she didn’t see how his cheeks tinged pink at the fact she’d brought up whatever it was between them too. 

Because he wasn’t entirely talking about her and Emily. Sometimes, he really didn’t understand the rules of telling your best friend you were in love with her. 

-

The press was calling him “The Circle of Eight killer,” no matter how much media liaison JJ had tried to do to stop them from giving him notoriety and possibly boosting an already inflated ego. But the team had already managed to profile that the killings were some sort of ritual the UnSub was using to turn his luck on a gambling addiction, or whatever suspicion he had mentally linked from the victims needing to die and being dealt a royal flush. 

“Eighty eight dollars, the UnSub’s getting generous,” She said grimly, her gloved fingers counting the wad of cash tossed over the victim’s body. Where they had usually found eight, single dollar bills and an eight card of any suit, his signature seemed to have changed on the most recent body and he had dumped a much larger sum of money, “There’s more remorse with this kill too; shot from behind so he didn’t have to see the victim when he did it,”

Bugsy slipped the cash into a clear baggie to send to forensics to see if they could pull prints, but then again bills usually gave a million possible UnSubs with how many people touched them. “There’s less rage here, an undoing,” Emily chimed in, her own gloved fingers checking the victim’s pockets for anything off. 

When they were in the field, Bug could hold her eye rolls and sharp tongue and resting bitch face for the sake of helping the victim’s families find closure. Because, despite how much she seethed in private about how Hotch, JJ and her own sister had conspired without her, she knew she could choke it down if it meant she could help someone, if it meant no one else had to grieve as deeply and gut wrenching as she had when Emily ‘died’. 

“There’s no sign of robbery either, wallet is still intact except his ID,” Spencer added, standing back from the body while Bugsy handed the evidence off to CSI and the chief on the case headed their way. 

“Is it even the same guy?” Agent Goslin asked, looking between Hotch and Emily for an explanation, Hotch shaking his head with a stoney look on his already tired face. 

“The ritual’s too similar to discount,” He said, Bugsy frowning and tugging her lip between her teeth in thought. 

“The change in MO makes sense if the UnSub is still refining his system, maybe killing the cashier at the gas station didn’t work so he’s back to the drawing board.” Emily speculated, her little sister nodding along with her in the first sign of agreement she’d seen all day. 

“Two eights instead of one could also be significant; I know in China the number eight symbolises prosperity, the more eights the better. As a matter of fact, in Chengdu, a telephone number consisting of all eights recently sold for over a quarter of a million dollars,” Spencer said, and Bugsy flashed a look up at him, her eyes thoughtful. 

“In ancient Egypt, the number seven represented completion in this life while the number eight represented success through ambition and determination in your reincarnated life,” She replied, peeling the gloves down her hands as they clung to her skin with tight clamminess, “And the eight pointed star is associated with the Babylonian goddess, Ishtar, or the light bringer,”

He nodded with her and he hated to admit that he loved that she managed to fill in the gaps in his own knowledge, like they were two puzzle pieces finding a way to fit together; like they were two halves cleaved from the same brain that hadn’t stopped growing in the entirety of her twenty seven years. 

That, and he’d always found her brain one of the most attractive things about her. One of the long list he could think of. 

“Why would he be doubling up on his luck out here, away from all the casinos?” Emily asked, because she was trying not to stand in awe of her sister’s fat brain that rivalled even their pretty boy. 

“There’s been another killing,” Agent Goslin stated, hanging up the phone with a tense frown on her face, “A guest in his room at the Sapphire Lady,” 

“Same ritual?” Hotch asked without a pause, because they were on body number five now and they were barely closer to understanding him than they were a few hours ago.

“No. His neck was broken. And he was robbed of $50,000.” Goslin replied, shaking her head, “Strange thing is? The killer left another $20,000 behind with the body,” 

“Money isn’t his motive here,” Bugsy input, crossing her arms while Hotch got on the phone to Garcia, “Atleast, not that guy’s money,”

“Garcia, is there a casino in the neighbourhood of Penrose and Morningside Avenue?” He asked, clicking the perky woman onto speakerphone. 

They heard a quick clatter of typing, “Uhhh, No casinos per se, but there’s a private gambling establishment right around the corner.” She replied helpfully, with another bout of her long, delicately painted nails against her keyboard. 

“Is it legal?”

“Yeah, but it’s ultra exclusive. They have a monthly high-stakes poker tournament,” She paused for a second, “Today being the day for the month, coincidentally enough,”

“Or no coincidence at all,” Emily said, as they began putting together exactly where this chain of events had come from.

“What’s the buy in?” Bugsy asked, though she already guessed the answer. 

“Yikies, $50,000,” And with that Bug and Reid exchanged a knowing look, her suspicion confirmed, “But, it’s a million dollar guarantee if you win,”

“What time does it start?” Hotch asked, Bugsy already rubbing the bridge of her nose with her fingertip, willing herself not to be right about what they were going to do. 

“Later this evening,” Pen replied and Hotch thanked her, hanging up the phone. A second of silence spread around the crime scene. 

“So, if anyone’s got fifty k lying around, now would be a great time to share with the group,” Busgy humoured herself with a straight face, realising the paperwork that would almost definitely be declined if Strauss had anything to say about it the would enable them to borrow fifty thousand from the government. 

Because if they missed their chance tonight, she had no clue when they would get another. 

–

“Any luck?” JJ asked, Emily sat to her right, Rossi across from her. Spencer and Bugsy sat on the end of the table, the girl breaking a KitKat in half to share with him, which he accepted happily. 

“No, they don’t want to allocate emergency funds for the buy-in, I’m still working on it,” Hotch said shortly, his phone blowing up with messages, no doubt needing a lot more details if they were really going to get the money they needed. 

“Well, I can’t imagine why not, we’re only asking for fifty thousand bucks of taxpayer money, so that FBI agents can play Texas Hold ‘em,” Rossi drawled, shaking his head with a cynical humour that was all they had to hold onto while they waited in limbo. 

“Hey, what about you?” Emily asked, something mischievous in her eyes as she watched David freeze in his seat, so like the old Emily that Bugsy felt her stomach turn.

“What about me what?” David said with a frown, pausing in his writing for a moment. 

“You could stake us the buy-in,” She suggested, and the other three members of the team turned their attention back to Rossi’s palling face. 

“You’re a best selling author,” Spencer chimed in, devouring the last of the chocolatey biscuit snack as she pulled another out of her bag. 

“No,” Rossi replied, slightly wide eyed at the suggestion of it, to which Emily jumped in. 

“Why not?” 

“One, it’s against regulations and I’d like to hold onto this job for a little while longer.” David said, his arms out in a defensive stance towards the four people who suddenly felt like his kids asking for the newest IPhone on the market for Christmas. 

“It’s a minor administrative violation,” Bugsy pointed out between bites, offering the second half again to her best friend who took it without delay. 

She could have given the whole thing to him to start with, and had the first one for herself, it would have ended the same, but she liked sharing with him. She liked being the one to split things with him when he cringed in horror at other people touching his food.

“And, two, I prefer to spend my money on actual things, like single malt scotch, a fine cigar, beautiful artwork,”

“Poker chips are things!” Emily tried to reason, but it only ended with David scoffing in her cheeky, hopeful face. 

“Maybe just think of it as a new experience, I mean at your age how often does that happen?” Spencer said innocently, licking the chocolate from the tips of his fingers, noticing how Bugsy tensed up and Rossi slowly turned in his seat to face the BAU’s youngest members. 

“At my what?” He asked in an aghast tone, Bug grabbing onto Spencer’s forearm with a gentle squeeze. 

“Reel it in, reel it in,” She whispered, and he looked at her with a lost expression, willing her to explain to him where he had gone wrong, because he knew she would, “What he meant to say was this may be our only chance to get this guy,”

David chewed his words for a second, as if he was trying not to bite at the kids who looked between one another hopefully, and he wondered if this was what being a father felt like; handing his credit card over to two twenty something year olds and watching his bank deposit plummet in seconds. 

“All right. Fine.” He sighed heavily like he’d seen the fifty thousand burned there and then, “I’m a decent poker player, but I can’t promise that I can stay in the game long enough to…”

“You know what? I bet you’re a great poker player,” Emily started kindly, her gaze drifting over to the hazel hues that watched between them curiously, “But what if we sent in Reid?”

“I am banned from casinos in Las Vegas, Laughlin and Pahrump because of my card counting ability,” Spencer said, and Bugsy rolled her eyes. 

“They can’t ban you for maths, that’s the stupidest thing I ever heard,” She said, nudging his side with her shoulder, “They hate to see an underdog win, it’s Rocky all over again,” 

“Tell me about it,” He murmured back, even though he had never watched any of the Rocky movies, he just liked humouring her. 

“Look I know I’m not a genius like the boy wonder here, but poker is not black jack. It’s about bluffing; reading human nature, head games.” Rossi pointed at Reid, who badgered over Bugsy’s shoulder for the cookies she had packed in her rucksack, “The kid does not have a poker face.”

“Which is why we’re going to send him with someone who does,” JJ chimed in, and it was then that the youngest members of the team looked up from where they had cracked open the packet of chocolate chip delights, near identical looks of innocence painted on their faces, like they really were kids caught with their hands in the cookie jar. 

Bugsy looked between JJ and Rossi, who had equal parts hopeful and worried looks on their faces, before she glanced over to Spencer to see if he had any explanation. He looked as lost as she did. 

“Huh?” She asked cluelessly, as Rossi buried his head in his hands. 

At this rate was going to have to remortgage his house for wedding number four, he thought sourly. 

–

“I swear to god if this dress rides up anymore, it will be me who’s charging fifty thousand per head,” Bugsy growled, her hands frantically tugging the dress down her legs more. She couldn’t deny it was a beautiful dress, bunched around certain areas that made the most of her body, but goodness was it shorter than she would have ever picked out for herself. She was the last person to be a prude when it came to showing off just how alluring she could look when she made an effort, but this was something else. 

It was a striking red, meant to match the ruby of her lipstick and the vermillion of the diamonds and hearts on the cards spread around the tables in the room, flushed in between little plastic chips worth thousands of dollars, handfuls of dice being tossed over the green velvet surfaces, deciding whether the players lost their cars or paid off their kids college fund. 

They queued up to be patted down, as if they were heading through airport security or into a packed nightclub. A handful of bouncers waved metal detectors over patron’s clothing, dipping hands into coat pockets, trousers, even some shoes were ordered off in the name of a fair game. She swore she had never seen so many sets of weighted dice confiscated off one man who swore blind as he was kicked out. 

“Only fifty? You could rinse them for a hundred at least,” Spencer replied, his arm entwined behind her back, if not to hold her up in the clunky heels one of the women on Goslin’s task force had loaned her along with the dress. She smirked at him, pressing herself closer to him when they both saw a dozen eyes shoot towards her as they entered the building, and he tightened his grip just the slightest with a calculating coolness. 

He wished his cheeks didn’t feel so hot feeling her body so close to his, wished she hadn’t made such an effort to look the part of the expensive call girl they knew the UnSub had a history with, not because he didn’t like it, but because she made everything a little more difficult when she looked like that. 

He was having a hard time trying to calm the way his manhood brushed against his pants whenever she showed some of that saccharine affection, even though he knew it wasn’t real. Or atleast, was an extreme version of the love she usually showed him. 

The bouncers called them up next, and he let her go first, because getting her through would be easy. He was the one with the panic alarm disguised as a shot of Halitosis in his pocket. 

Spencer would never admit that his eyes fell straight down to the curves of her butt that seemed to be spotlighted by that damn dress. 

Why did she have to look so irresistible? He supposed that was the point; he was the mysterious young gambler that was going to keep them in the game long enough to spot the UnSub, she was the attractive, woman of the night brought only to boost his ego and as his good luck charm. She certainly wasn’t the only one, she’d already seen a handful of other women, tall as models and so toned it looked as though they hit the gym every morning and didn’t leave until sundown, primped and primed for their player’s delight. 

They were ten times better looking than she was, but to Spencer, she was the only woman in the room who he was envisioning ripping that dress right off. 

She was making it very hard, no pun intended, for him to accept the idea of them as just friends. 

The bouncer patted her down, Bugsy flashing him a cheeky smile just a little too forced for it to be one of her real ones, when the woman patted around her waist and hips for any hidden pockets or stashed bills. 

“You wish this was you, huh, baby?” She teased him with a wicked look in her eyes, and he could only smirk back, hoping his blush didn’t give him away as quick as he reckoned it did. 

He felt his knees weaken, worrying he might just fall to the ground there and then and be forced to crawl towards her if he had any hope of getting into the casino alive, but even that sent a new wave of lewd thoughts through his head, and he was grateful when the other bouncer called him forward to inspection. 

The muscled guy waved a metal detector over his torso, moving down to his trouser legs where he wondered with cynical humour if the rod he now sported in his pants painfully would set off the alarm. It didn’t, and he begged his crotch to let up even the slightest if he had any hope of keeping his head on his shoulders during this game, but the detector sprung to life the minute it waved over the alarm in his pocket. 

He produced the medical looking device, one they’d already planned and checked for faults, showing the fake prescription clearly to the guard, “Halitosis,” 

The guy seemed to frown, took another look over the gangly guy who was with a woman way, way out of his league. A woman who waited for him after her own inspection, a very real diamond necklace that had been a sixteenth birthday present from Steph around her neck, courtesy of her dad’s bank account and ten years worth of emotional distance. Whether he took pity on Spencer because Bugsy looked like the kind of girl who could chew up a guy like him and spit him right back out, or he really didn’t care about his medical condition, he didn’t know, but he waved him through without another thought, and they both took a sigh of relief. 

“You want a drink?” He asked nonchalantly as possible, wrapping his arm around her waist again, and he tried to not let his flustered demeanour show when he found slits cut into the side of the fabric, and he felt the softness of her hips under his fingertips. 

“My treat, to get you started,” Bugsy replied, something unreadable in the teasing of her eyes, and she leaned up to his jaw to steal a quick kiss there like any other girl wanting to be paid the full sum of her night would have done. 

At least that’s what she told herself, pretending as if her brazen action hadn’t caused her heart rate to spike. 

She got him an iced tea, because she knew he wouldn’t want alcohol, and got herself a half shot Moscow Mule, sipping the lime rim appreciatively. 

“See anything yet?” She asked under her breath, one hand trailing over the back of his neck, playing with the curls that sat there with vixen sly eyes that scanned the room. 

He forced himself not to moan at the sensation, and he worried it was too obvious to the other patrons in the gambling room just how easily he melted beneath her fingertips. He felt like a dog drooling after a bone, like she was shaking a lead in his face and asking for walkies, and he was panting beneath her, tail wagging and dopey eyed. 

Not the look of suave, mysterious stranger they were initially going for when they were coming up with identities for their covers. But at least it sold the part of a man desperate to win the jackpot if it meant he could spend the night with the siren woman that clung to him with a giggly sip of her pink straw. 

“No one looking particularly suspicious,” He noted; everyone was almost too good at a poker face, though he supposed that it made sense seeing the value of the prize pool, “You are getting a lot of attention however,” 

And she was. In fact, he was quick to take her hand in his own free one when he saw a group of men dressed to the nines, solid gold rings along their knuckles, diamond encrusted Rolexs staring back at him from their wrists, their faces dead yet starved when they drank in every inch of her skin, their eyes falling to where her dress rode up high, as she had whined about the entire way there. 

She chuckled, and something about it sounded like her own, not the woman she’d had to become for the evening, and she kissed where his jaw clenched in annoyance, “Not from anyone that matters, boy wonder,” 

And he felt his heart rest for a moment, because as long as she was with him he knew he could shift that big brain of his into gear. He loved nothing more than the click he felt when he was with her, like their brains and bodies just seemed to bluetooth to one another and they weren’t Spencer and Bugsy they were just them. A since cell amoeba. 

He smiled at her, and she preened under his attention, so genuinely her that he felt the vignette that had clouded his vision shift into focus, and he knew he could find their UnSub if she was there with him. 

He sat at the nearest table to them that was about to deal in, and within twenty minutes he was racking up a nice, fat pile of poker chips next to his iced tea.

Bugsy knew he was a smart man, knew he was good at magic tricks, but if he had turned to her then and there and pulled a rabbit out her ear hole she wouldn’t have questioned him otherwise. Watching him play was something else. 

It was entirely sordid, the whole hour of his first game was spent trying to keep her focus on any patrons sat at their table and the rest that seemed to be twitching, whilst also trying not to look awed at just how amazing his brain was when he won damn near every time. 

But she did manage to rip her eyes off him when she could, not enough to seem suspicious, just enough to scan the area for someone who could be their UnSub, her eyes quickly jumping to the guy on the table across from them with a large magic 8-ball tattoo across his bicep, unsurprisingly already looking her head to toe as he waited for his hand to be dealt out. He winked at her, a smarmy, cocky grin on his face, almost too confident in his ability to be someone to turn to suspicions and rituals in order to win. 

A serious contender, but nothing that screamed their UnSub. 

She looked around a little more, ignoring the handful of men who tried to grab her attention, who thought they were somewhat validated or interesting for having her look at them for a split second. They were just part of the wallpaper compared to Spencer anyway. 

It wasn��t until she spotted a guy in a baseball cap a few paces away from them fiddling with yet another magic 8-ball, though this time a key chain, giving it a gentle touch every time he picked up his hand as if it really had the power to change the values once they’d been dealt. 

From the quick glance she got of his face, he seemed to be running on an hour’s sleep tops. His eyes were rimmed redder than her lipstick, and his hair was damp with sweat and grease against his temple. 

Unstable if there ever was a man for the word.

She quickly looked back to Spencer’s cards, her hands weaving over his shoulders to rub his muscles gently, the signal that she’d seen something important masked as an affectionate gesture. 

The House called the end of the round, Spencer being awarded a heaped pile of tens, hundreds even a small few thousands thrown in there, to which he collected onto his tray they had handed him at the door. 

Bugsy leaned down with a girlish squeal, giving him another big, cherry lipped kiss to his cheek, to which he felt himself blush under immediately. Quickly dodging to whisper into his ear, it looked to the other patrons as if she was simply promising him an even bigger reward later for his winnings in exchange, “Nine O’Clock at table two, guy in the green jacket has an eight ball keyring he ritually plays with before drawing,” 

Spencer nodded, standing from the table with his winnings, using Bugsy’s as an excuse to angle himself to where she was talking about. He pulled her to him effortlessly, his long arms wrapping over her bare back, his neck craning over her shoulder to serveill the table she had indicated, and she quickly hugged him back with that fake giggle of hers, her body pressing to his desperately like the other ladies of the night he had seen with men three times their age. 

He clocked who she was talking about almost immediately, running a hand down her spine and squeezing her waist gently to let her know he’d seen him. 

They moved in tandem, just like they always had. 

A hostess came over to them, all big smiles and a tight fitted black dress, a log book in her arms of where everyone was sitting in the next round to keep a fair game. Bugsy took a look at him, wiping away the smudged lipstick on his cheek with a loving swipe of her thumb, nodding at him for a small bout of reassurance. 

“I’m going to go get another drink, honey,” She said loud enough for the hostess to hear, as she flashed him a flirty smile, “Don’t forget to wait for your lucky charm,” 

He bristled, a smile twitching at his lips at that, “I wouldn’t dare,” 

Because her message was clear. Don’t do anything stupid while I’m updating the team. 

She swanned through the crowd as if she owned the place, but then again a packed scene had never been an issue for her. She felt through her concealed inseam of the tiny cardigan she draped over her shoulders, until she felt the long bullet shaped object stuffed into a tampon wrapper that Penelope had geniously planted there to look like a feminine product. 

Her own alarm, the one meant to let the team know they had sights on the guy and to be ready. It was Spencer’s that would give them the signal to enter. 

She was fiddling with the damn thing when she felt it, a sharp crack across her ass as she was walking towards the bar, heard the laughter in the second she froze up. 

Turning on her heel with a tight expression, the anger burnt hot in her eyes when she saw the guy with the tattoo who had been trying to get her attention not even a half hour ago, watched him sidling up to her with a conceited smile. 

“So, has that twiglet over there paid for you in advance or are you going home with the highest bidder?” He said, his head flicking to Spencer who now sat at table two, counting his chips out onto the table and paying himself in. 

She smiled at the assailant widely, and it would have been pretty had it not been for the crazy look in her eye that twitched when he made a move to step towards her more. 

“I’m spoken for in advance,” She said lightly, eyes trailing down his outfit like she was trying to commit it to memory, over his defining markers like the slit in his brow and his tattoos that looped over his hands, “But I’m sure I’ll be seeing you real soon, sweetheart,” 

And she flashed him a toothy smile again, yet something was wolfish about it this time, like she was ready to lunge for him there and then. 

The guy wasn’t their UnSub but he had made it to the very top of her hit list in a split second decision. 

She waltzed away, securing herself another Moscow Mule she had no intention of drinking, and headed back to where Spencer was being allotted his hand of cards.  Their round started, Bugsy keeping a close eye on the UnSub who sat directly to Spencer’s right, and she found a little solace in the fact he couldn't have brought in any weapons since they had all been patted down at the door. 

It didn’t shake the feeling of edge the guy with the tattoo had put her into when she watched their guy flick a look over Spencer’s shoulder to look her head to toe, glancing back at Spence who was already glaring at him. 

“Is she part of the winnings?” The other guy to his right chimed in, sliding a stack of hundred dollar chips into the centre, two of the players already bust as they watched the others play on for the house. 

She saw her partner tense in his spine when he heard the man’s drawling voice, and she knew he was struggling to keep a lid on the facade they were putting on for the evening. 

Snickering, she ran a gentle hand through his hair, down the nape of his neck with a sickeningly sweet simper, “Sorry, boys. Only person who’s taking me home tonight is the pretty boy,”

One of the guys who had already busted out scoffed, grumbling under his breath, “Lucky fucker,”

And Spencer knew it too. He felt almost rejuvenated just feeling her near, a damn near cocky smile on his face when he pushed his chips into the centre of the table, barely flicking a glance at his hand when he realised he had almost certainly secured a winning run. 

Maybe she was his lucky charm, he thought cynically. Maybe he couldn’t blame the guy to his right for carrying a silly little trinket around with him in the name of luck if he was no better. 

“I’m calling,” The guy on the far right declared, shuffling two piles of his chips into the middle with the total pooling. 

“I’ll raise,” The UnSub cut in, grabbing some of his black thousand dollar tokens and clinking them one by one next to his opponents, “Eight thousand,”

What a surprise, eight thousand, Bug mused, squeezing onto Spencer’s shoulder again as he was quick to match the bidding and then some with his own checks. 

“$8,000, that’s fifty six months’ wage for the average person in Bangladesh,” Spencer said, doubling the bet with a flick of those long fingers of his. It was heinous how much his brain managed to warm her insides, Bugsy thought, hoping she kept her poker face intact, “Kind of makes you think, doesn’t it?”

The two remaining players, UnSub included, looked at him like he’d grown a second head, and Bugsy fought off the urge to laugh in their face, because for a minute he was so Spencer like all she wanted to do was quip something back equally as smart. 

“Look, it’s eight thou’ to you, are you in or are you out?” The first man snapped, perhaps seethin with jealousy that the pretty woman wanted nothing to do with him or perhaps just pissed that the fresh faced teenager of a man was serving their asses up cold. 

“I am in,” He moved some more chips towards them, his eyes falling back to the guy they suspected was their UnSub with a challenge in his eyes, “And I raise,”

“Three raise,” The dealer declared, and the first guy huffed in defeat. 

“That’s too rich for my blood,” He growled, crossing his arms and flipping his dead cards over. 

“Sir, are you in?” The dealer asked the UnSub, and for a minute his eyes snapped to Bugsy’s where she was keeping a calm look on her face despite the fact her insides were stumbling with nerves. But she never doubted Spencer’s maths, she would stake her life on it in fact. 

“I’ll call,” The UnSub replied, flicking his cards over with another small token of a hundred, an okay run of cards but not an entire failure. 

Spencer met it with a couple hundreds of his own, revealing his four and his eight that met the five, six, and seven he already put down. A winning flush. “Straight.” 

Her smile was genuine, dazzling, when the pile of chips were pushed over to him, and she would have laughed with glee had the UnSub’s face not dropped into something devastated, borderline demented, when he saw his ritual had meant nothing. That he had lost despite killing his own friend and four more people as a sacrifice. 

He was unravelling fast, and it was then Bugsy knew they had only moments to confirm he was their guy obsessed with his suspicions and that damn lucky number eight. 

“I guess you won’t be needing this anymore, will you honey?” Bugsy reached over for the charm with a cheeky grin as the other patrons grumbled at their losses, only for the guy’s hand to come slamming down on top of hers with a brutal grip, hard enough she knew it was going to bruise by morning. 

“Don’t,” He hissed at her, and it seemed to click with confirmation in Spencer and Bugsy’s mind there was no doubt this was their guy.

Spencer stood up to defend the woman, only for both of them to be grabbed by security second’s later. 

“You’re going to let a man put his hands on a woman like that- would you relax I can walk,” Spencer snapped, watching the other security guard manhandle Bugsy just as roughly, pinning her arms behind her back, though she complied with a victorious grin, “Real tough there pal, grabbing on a woman half your size,” 

“Relax honey, I got a taser in my pocket if they really want to behave like bad boys,” The bouncers looked at her in alarm, and it was the distraction Spencer needed to reach into his jacket and trigger the signal. She gave the three of them a shit eating grin, and Spencer thought he might just love her even more, “Don’t shit your pants, I’m kidding. I charge extra for the rough stuff,”

Spencer was still laughing when Hotch and Emily barged past them after the UnSub, who was by now leaving out the back door. 

–

“Spencer, really, we can go back to the hotel and forget about it,” After revealing their cover with the bouncers, courtesy of one David Rossi and his famous face clearing their names, and the UnSub caught and well on the way to the nearest jail cell for questioning, Bugsy was more than tired and ready to strip out of the impossibly tight dress. 

“I want to see this guy brought to justice, think of him as another UnSub,” Spencer said, his arms crossed over his chest as they sat on the bonnet of a squad car out the front of the building, the tournament slowly trickling to an end with its patrons leaving for the night. 

She rolled her eyes, his jacket over her arms the only thing keeping her warm against the evening air. It would have been so much easier if they had been allowed back in, but FBI agents or not, the guards had clear rules against breaching the peace in such a high stakes game. A bad rep for having the feds show up on their busiest day of the year was not welcomed, just as much as they weren’t. 

“Except he’s not murdered anyone,” She replied, eyes darting between the guests leaving with their earnings spilling out of their pockets, “He’s just some dumb asshole who can’t keep his hands to himself and- it’s him,”

The guy with the tattoos, Mike Folio as would later be printed on the police report, had barely a second to grieve his losses of the night before Spencer had him cuffed against the squad car, yelling and spitting about his rights as an American citizen. 

It wasn’t until he saw the gorgeous woman donned in the candy red dress looking down at him with amusement that he felt the colour drain from his face. 

“Hi sweetheart,” She smiled viciously, “I told you I’d see you again. Spence, read him the Mirandas,” 

3. The one with the bank explosion

The tweed trousers irritated her thighs, the head band fluffed her hair away from her face in a way she kept trying to fix, and the brown pumps squeaked every time she walked, but her smile was dazzling nevertheless. 

“Okay, the TV movie is at Hall H at nine, can we go to that?” Penelope asked, reading from the pamphlet as Bugsy and Spencer all but ran to keep up with her. 

“Absolutely!” Spencer chimed in, “Do you think we can make it to the Captains of Enterprise at eleven?”

“Obvs,” Penny replied, fixing the bow tie necklace her and Bugsy had made not even the week before. She looked over at the younger woman, who had a matching K-9 pendant, because apparently FBI salaries did not take into account life sized robot dogs, “Thanks for coming with me,” 

“Ofcourse, I’ve been knitting this scarf for weeks,” Spencer replied, his eyes falling down to where Bugsy donned a Sarah Jane Smith cosplay. 

“Who are you going as?” She’d asked, the minute he’d asked her to go, because there were few things he did these days without her. 

“The Fourth Doctor,” Spencer replied, because he had explained in length to her about the concept of regenerating and had even flicked on some of the newer series for her to watch with him, “Tom Baker’s Doctor, he’s a fan favourite,” 

He showed her a picture of the time lord stood outside the TARDIS, a younger girl stood opposite him in a pink suit, large white peter pan collar hanging wide over her chest. 

“Who’s that?” She asked, pointing the girl with the cute bangs and pleated skirts. 

“That’s Sarah-Jane, or Sarah-Jane Smith. She’s one of the longest starring companions since she was the Third Doctor’s companion first and also was in the spin off show for her dog, K-9,” He explained, warming inside when Bugsy listened with raptured interest. 

“So like, is she his girlfriend or-”

“No, no! The Doctor is often speculated to be asexual when it comes to relations with humans. Sarah Jane was one of his closest friends however, and in the Tenth Doctor’s third season he even comes back to rescue her from a wedding set up by one of his enemies,” He said, and her smile pulled out widely when an idea popped into her head. 

“Well, can I be her? For your convention?” She asked, somewhat shyly, still a little unsure how the show worked in the fine details, “You know, since you saved me from my wedding?” 

He paused, because she’d never really spoken about that day she’d jumped into his arms in the elevator, holding him to her like he was the only thing that made sense. Bugsy was like that alot; giving him everything he ever dreamed in the moment and then acting like it was never a big deal the next. 

“S-sure! Yeah, that would be really nice.” He said, and she immediately started searching up what she should wear for it, “I didn’t really save you though, you know, you saved yourself,”

She snickered, nudging him with her shoulder, “You all saved me, I don’t know what I would have done if Em-” She stopped herself, swallowing thickly, and he saw the glow leave her eyes. 

If Emily hadn’t been there. 

Things were still awkward between them. There were no more catfights, thank goodness, though there also wasn’t any doting between the sisters anymore. It was like a clean break had slit between them. Emily had given up trying to warm to her, given up trying to get her to come around, and had instead taken the high road of waiting for Bugsy to make the first move. 

But Bugsy was nothing if not stubborn. So Emily would be waiting a while longer. 

“Hey, listen, next time I promise I’ll be the first one to object and then you can say I saved you,” Spencer joked, because he knew the subject of Emily stung her, because he knew she needed to stop thinking about it or she’d unravel into self hatred. 

She chuckled aghast, “Next time? I was kind of hoping to keep the next one, Spence, whoever the unlucky guy is,”

He shook his head, a fake look of disapprovement, “Sorry, rules are rules. You wanted to be Sarah-Jane, I have to crash your wedding with the TARDIS I’m afraid,” 

She laughed, resting her head on his shoulder as they flicked through the TV some more together. 

“Well, I mean if those are the rules,” She simpered, snuggling under his chin, “Does this mean I get a sick robo-dog too?”

She looked every bit the part he would have ever expected her to look. Down to the maroon tie, and the white dress shirt, and the matching tweed blazer and pants that made her look embarrassingly hot. 

He was about to tell her just how great she looked because she still seemed unsure, being a casual fan of the show not nearly as religious as some of the surrounding guests were, when Penelope cut them off in a near gutted voice. 

“Oh my god,”

“Penelope?” 

Bugsy and Spencer looked up to see Penelope’s ex beau, Kevin, dressed in a nearly identical outfit to her (though in Bug’s opinion he didn’t have the same pzazz as she did with the glitter and the sparkliness,) a red headed woman beside him donned in a police woman uniform. 

“Kevin, hi, you came,” The blonde woman replied, her face mortified as she took in just how pretty the other woman was, “And you brought a friend, CSU technician Sharp, how are you?”

Hannah Sharp, from two floors below them in the BAU, grinned tightly, as if she could sense just how disastrous the situation had suddenly become, “I’m fine, uh, you?”

Bugsy gripped onto Spence’s arm tightly, hating the turn this was taking, every second of it. 

“I am also fine,” Pen replied, though she looked as though she was ready to float outside of her body any minute now. “Okay, well, see ya,”

“You’re not gonna go in?” Kevin asked, his eyes crestfallen when he saw Penelope also grab onto the boy genius’ arm, and he cursed Spencer Reid for getting so many attractive women. 

“Actually, we just went in and it’s super lame,” Bugsy interrupted, flashing a disjointed smile at the two of them, turning to usher her best friend away before he could call her out in her lie. “So we’re leaving,”

“Oh, okay,” Kevin replied, his date all but forgotten as the three of them made a sharp exit, a wince on the youngest Prentiss’ face when they got far enough that the girl could cringe in peace, “Well, great costumes,” 

“Yeah, you too,” Penelope called back, her heels practically leaving tire marks with how fast she had sped away from her ex that was opening fresh wounds as they spoke. At work they were separated by a whole floor, so it wasn’t quite so scathing to see each other around or even hear of one another, but to be brought out in front of what she could only assume was his new woman was horrifying.

Bugsy was at her side immediately, grabbing onto her hand with a squeezing grip. 

“Well, that was awkward,” Spencer noted aloud, and Bugsy lightly slapped his arm for him to shut up, her eyes wide with worry. 

He looked at her in alarm, but her face told him everything he needed to know. Girl rules. 

He hated girl rules. He never understood them. 

“Oh my god, we used to come every year, I can’t believe he brought someone else,” Penelope sighed to the younger girl, who watched her with furrowed brows. 

“Well you brought someone else,” Spencer pointed out, only to have his arm whipped at again in a chiding motion, and he watched Bugsy stroke Pen’s back with a bite in her tone. 

“Girl rules, Spencer, girl rules,” He tutted at her, rolling her eyes as if they were a married couple and she was nagging him to wash the dishes. 

Sometimes it felt easy like that with them. Like she really was just his best friend and not the only girl who held any sort of romantic connection to his heart. 

“Yeah, someone I couldn’t possibly be attracted to,” Penelope stated, “Besides, he always thought the two of you were a thing anyway, oh god what if he thinks I’m your guys third-”

“Woah, woah, what?” Bugsy asked with wide eyes, “He thought me and Spencer were, like, dating?” 

Penelope nodded, and Bugsy couldn’t even look at him without stumbling over her words. 

“Well he knows we’re- like I mean we’re not even each other’s seconds so how could you be our third you know?” She said with a forced laugh, because she could feel her face going hot. 

Spencer watched her tongue tie herself into oblivion, thinking of any and every excuse as to why she didn’t want dating associated to the two of them. Because how could she ever feel the same way? He was just him and she was, well, her. So incredibly, beautifully her. 

It wasn’t until she bumped into an older gentleman waiting for his valet she even shut herself up. 

“And I mean Kevin shouldn’t have just assumed- oh sorry,” She whirled around to apologise the man she presumed was a fan of the early seasons of the show, perhaps even around when they first aired, though the thought died in her throat when he turned around, “Oh, Rossi?” 

David Rossi looked suave as ever in his age, a blazer thrown casually over his shoulder, a neat shirt and dress pants ensemble at his hips as he looked between the three of them, their costumes staring back at him entirely too colourful for a Saturday morning. 

He sighed, hard. 

“Why doesn’t this surprise me?” He asked with a tired voice, as Bugsy bounced back over to Spencer’s side with an incredulous look on her face. 

“Are you here for the convention?” Spencer asked, excitement bubbling in his tone as Bug grabbed his forearm gently, already sensing Rossi hadn’t had nearly enough coffee to put up with them today. 

“Who schedules a cigar aficionado event back to back with this?” Rossi asked, his eyes clamping on the pendant around her neck, “What is that, a robot dog?” 

“K-9,” The three of them replied, and it was as if it tipped him over the edge, his hair growing whiter by the second. 

“Kevin brought another woman, I’m plotting revenge. Do you want to help?” Penelope asked, her face still warm from running into the guy who was almost her fiance. 

“Know where we can get any horse heads?” Bugsy asked, her expression lost in though as Penelope gasped, “What? I’m thinking go big or go home. Also, horse head in the bed means they can't have sex-”

“I’m taking that as my cue to leave,” Rossi cut in, just as his valet arrived, “Now you know I love all three of you, but this is Saturday, and it is my day off, so I’m going to love you from afar,”

He ruffled Bugsy’s hair fondly as he took his leave, throwing his blazer over the passenger seat and bidding them a wave goodbye. 

They watched him go, wondering where it left them for a moment before Bugsy spoke up again, “So are we saying a definitive no to the horse head idea, because I’m sure I know a guy in college-”

“No, Bugsy,” Penelope hissed, her face scrunched in disgust, and Spencer swore she turned green, “Definitive no,” 

–

They had been half way through breakfast when Spencer got an emergency call from Hotch for a team of serial killers robbing a bank downtown, hostages and guns on scene. 

She had barely had time to whip the tweed blazer off her shoulders, keeping the shirt and pants on as Derek threw her a kevlar vest. 

“It’s definitely them,” Will said in his soft Southern drawl, JJ embracing him tightly to her with a worried expression. It had been him and his partner first on the scene, though unfortunately things had not ended well for her when they had ran into the three UnSubs slipping out the back of the bank and had engaged in a shoot out; Will’s partner getting a bullet to the head almost immediately, and Will narrowly escaping unscathed, but not before he managed to gun down one of the UnSubs in the stomach. 

So there they were, the UnSubs back inside the bank for safety since they were now surrounded by the city police, the FBI, the SWAT team and a handful of ambulances and medics on standby. 

“I only saw the King and the Jack but I figured the Queen’s inside too,” He added, JJ peeling herself from his side as they headed towards the building. 

“The media's calling them the face cards,” Hotch informed his team, all eight of them decked in their thickest vests and weapons loaded in full, “Seven bank robberies in seven months. They’ve killed one person at each robbery,” 

“MO?” Rossi asked, now dressed out of his smart, Saturday wear and something more akin to his usual business attire.

“Single gun shot wound, each of the victims has bled out,” Hotch replied, and it wasn’t until they turned the corner towards the bank did Bugsy realise just how packed the street was with law enforcement. 

Three or four choppers circled overhead with snipers and back up SWAT teams at the ready. 

“Serial killers with a thirty day cooling off period, and we’re only just hearing about this now?” Emily asked in an incredulous tone, her voice raised to accommodate the shouting between other chiefs and their units. 

“Headquarters characterised them as robbers first, killers second,” Hotch said, his hands on his hips as they all assessed the situation from afar. Naturally a few new anchors had pulled up to the scene as well and were setting up their equipment despite the officers trying to corral them away. 

“Oh yeah? How did that turn out for them?” Bugsy grumbled behind her thick, dark sunglasses, biting her lip from saying worse. 

“I disagreed with the original assessment, I was overruled,” Her chief shot back, because things had been just as cold between them since that day as they had with Emily. 

JJ was slowly reaching out the olive branch in her direction, and if it wasn’t for Henry being so darn cute every time he begged ‘Buggy’ to come play with him, she reckoned JJ would have taken even longer to forgive as well. 

“Why are we here now?” Rossi chimed in, eyes locked on Aaron’s frown, that seemed to harden every step they took closer to the bank.

“Because crisis negotiation is overseas.”

“What do we know about them?” JJ jumped in straight away with the problem solving, because even if they were out in the field and not in their pretty little round table room anymore, the UnSubs were still just pictures on a white board needing that red string to connect them all together. 

“They’re organised, they're efficient,” Hotch fired off, mentally running through whether he had loaded the pistol he kept around his calf for emergencies, “Each strike lasts about two minutes,”

Derek’s face scrunched in confusion, “They gotta be scouting out the banks in advance, why haven’t we been able to ID them off of surveillance footage?” 

“They hacked the security feed and turn off the cameras both during the initial canvas and during the robbery, until the masks come back on and then were allowed to watch” Hotch replied, and the eight of them slipped into the base of operation for the day; a wide trailer converted to house the high tech computers Penelope needed to keep an eye on the cameras with those magic skills of hers. 

Bugsy’s eyes landed on the black and white feed of inside the bank, her heart lurching in her throat when she saw well over forty men, women and children lined on their knees execution style, facing the doors to the bank to act as a shield if the snipers did happen to get a shot through the windows. 

The woman took the lead, a mask over her face with a doll-like expression on it, the other men soaked in blood as one fought to hold the injured one up for dear life. 

“Why haven’t they cut the feed now that they’ve been cornered,” Derek said with a shake of his head, his lips pulled into a grimace, “Letting us see inside gives us a tactical advantage, they have to know that,”

“Unless they want the audience,” Bugsy suggested, watching the jack slowly growing weaker and weaker as they discussed tactics, “Although the only one who really strikes me as the attention seeker is her, he seems more prioritised with the other male,”

“The masks add to their narcissism,” Spencer input with a nod, “Their personas are the royalty of poker,”

“JJ, you, Bugsy, Reid and Prentiss, look at past robberies, that’s going to be our victimology,” Hotch ordered, and they did as ordered with little delay, heading to the office they had set up in the opposite trailer. 

This was going to be a long day. 

–

“I can help,” Bugsy offered herself before the team even had a chance to protest. 

It hadn’t even been an hour into them pulling research from InterPol as to who their UnSubs were before they had made their next dramatic move; they had shot a hostage. 

Which meant they needed medics in there fast, fast enough to save the hostage and the jack if it kept the king from unravelling into a massacre. 

“What do you mean you can help?” Emily said with a scathing tone, “Bug, you can’t just throw yourself in harm’s way if you have no clue what you’re-”

“I did three years of a medicine degree alongside my biochemistry before I got bored of doing both and gave up on it,” Bugsy snapped at her sister, brows contorting into a harsher frown than she’d had in months. She preferred it when they weren’t speaking at all. 

“Because you were bored?” Derek asked, his face incredulous at the gall of the twenty year old they’d plucked from college and sent into the midst of the Russian Mob five years ago, “Did you not have anything better to do like partying or making out with guys- a whole medical degree on the side is your idea of downtime?” 

She shrugged, looking back at Emily with a glare who seemed to bristle at the information. 

“Can I speak to you outside please?” Emily said in the coolest tone she could muster, though even that sounded like a bite. 

Something shifted in the air of the tiny, makeshift office and the other inhabitants tensed up at the sight of the Prentiss women gritting their teeth almost identically, staring daggers at one another for a moment before they stood from their seats and waltzed out of the side of the trailer to where there wasn’t the bustle of squad cars or media to be seen. 

JJ looked to Morgan, who looked to Spencer, who seemed to have paled for a moment, and the three of them were out of their own seats to linger at the doorway in case things really did get ugly between the sisters.  

“Do you honestly think that throwing yourself into the line of danger today is a good idea or are you trying to hurt me to get back at me?” Emily seethed the minute they had stepped foot on the ground, and the scoff that left her little sister’s throat was something nasty. 

“Oh, please, don’t make yourself sound so important.” Bugsy snapped, whirling around on her heel to glare at her sister, “I’m not doing any of this to get back at you, I’m trying to save those hostages in there-” 

“So I just happened to have never heard about this medical side quest you set yourself on until now because, what, it just never came up?” Emily laughed, laughed, in her sister’s face, and Bugsy saw red even more, “I thought you were a better liar than that,”

“Maybe if you’d bothered to even speak to me before you needed something from me that day with the Russians then you would have known anything about me that wasn’t being your dumb little sister you can just walk all over like you’re my mom or something,” Bugsy’s voice was getting louder, and Emily’s smirk wiped right off at the sound of that, because she knew she could have been ten times a better sister had she not wanted to get as far away from her mother as fast as possible. “Same with Hotch, he never wanted much to do with me until his wife died and then who did he come to needing help grieving, none a single one of you, and who gets bitten in the ass and punished when I find out I spent seven months grieving like some idiot to that uptight prick who lied to me-”

“Do not speak about him like that,” Emily was shouting now too because Bugsy was truly holding nothing back on her. 

“Why? Are you going to pick him over me, Em?” The younger woman snarked, her eyes hateful and narrowed, “Wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest given your track record-”

Emily shoved her, like, truly shoved her back and it robbed the words out of the girl’s throat. Yet it made JJ gasp where they were watching from the crack in the doorway, wanting to break them apart but knowing they needed to fix it for themselves. 

The three of them hissed when Bugsy’s hand swiped against Emily’s cheek in a territory neither of them had ever wandered into. Emily was always too old to argue with her sister, too big to fight the way most siblings did with slaps and hair pulls and scratches, but Bugsy was a grown woman now; they both were. 

Emily swatted the same back to her own cheekbone, after a second of shock washing over her face, and it was like they were two cats fighting in a back alleyway over a scrap of chicken. 

Bugsy shoved at her around the tits, because she knew it would ache, Emily pulled at her braid with a yank that made Bugsy’s eyes water, the two of them banging against the wall of the trailer, their heads clunking together. 

“Fucking punishing me after months like some insolent child-”

“I would never have left you thinking you were to blame for my death- I would never fucking do this to you-”

This was childish, entirely childish, playground offences and girlish curses in between. The worst part was they knew they could do much worse, they knew they could truly hurt one another if they wanted to. They were both trained to kill, and yet Emily had Bugsy grabbed in a headlock like they were two infants fighting over a sandpit. 

Because they didn’t want to properly hurt one another in any way that would last. Never. 

“Get the fuck off me or I’m punching you in the crotch,” Bugsy barked, trying to wriggle her way out of her sister’s freakishly strong arms with a frown, “EMILY- I SAID-”

“I was trying to protect you- just get your head out of your ass for two seconds and listen to me- I was trying to protect all of you-” But by the time Emily had somewhat gotten her to stop squirming, the girl had grabbed her by the calf where she had been forced to bend at a forty five degree angle, holding her one leg up off the floor while she sweeped at the second one to knock her off balance. 

She had been known to shoot an assailant in the foot from twenty feet away to stop them from getting away, and yet she was resorting to simply pushing her sister over as a way to get one up on her. 

She felt like she was ready to finger paint and take a nap time next; like they were about to be sat in the headmaster’s office and have their wrists slapped with a ruler for not keeping their hands to themselves. 

But it worked, and in seconds the Prentiss girls were on the floor, puffing out of breath, Bugsy’s lip bleeding where Emily’s ring had caught it on the corner, Emily’s cheek red and raised from where her sister had a surprisingly strong right hook. They took a minute to breath, Bugsy glaring at the awfully clear blue sky, much too happy and cheery for the travesty that had been her entire day. And it was only then did she hear the other three members of their team exit the trailer, JJ going to help Emily up while Morgan's face appeared in the middle of the powdered clouds, something sad and sympathetic in his eyes and it was then that he held out his hand to get her up. 

She didn’t want to, had every intention of laying there and staring at the broad daylight until she managed to float far away from there and from where her chest hurt with betrayal and her lip bled with lies. 

He yanked her off the floor, offered her a cold can of coke for where she felt her lip swelling already, and she resigned to sit on the stairs to the trailer with her head in her hands until her temple stopped pounding or at least until she felt herself calm down in the slightest. 

Emily shuffled to sit down next to her, her breathing still uneven but she could tell because she felt a tentative hand on her thigh rubbing gently, in the motherly way Emily had always watched her.

Because Bugsy had always been her baby, whether she wanted to admit it or not. 

“Bugsy?” The younger woman huffed in indignance, pouting as she stared at her lap, because she felt the tears welling up already, “I’m so sorry I left you, you know I never, ever wanted to, you know that right?” 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Her voice cracked as she finally looked over at her sister’s solemn face, “You told JJ and Hotch but you couldn’t even tell me? Did you just not want to come back for me?”

Emily’s brows pulled up into a sorrowful frown, and she felt her eyes start to burn too. 

“No, that was never a part of it, I swear, there wasn’t a day when I didn’t want to come home to you,” She replied, taking a deep breath in through her nose as not to start bawling her eyes out there and then, “I had to tell Hotch and JJ as a matter of precaution, not because I wanted to tell them and not you. Bug, I missed you every day, I missed Niko and Sergio and those dumb documentaries you made us watch,”  

Bugsy smiled despite herself, wiping a finger under her nose to stop the tears that had already started rolling there, “Well, I don’t know about Niko but Sergio missed you a whole lot,” She sniffled, rolling the Coke over to a cooler side to sooth her lip some more, “But I think he feels like you kind of abandoned him, and like you maybe don’t love him as much because he can be kind of annoying and, like, he’s real torn up about me telling him you died only to find your you’re not, like you can’t just do that to Sergio, Em, he doesn’t deserve that,” 

Bugsy’s lip was quivering by the time she’d finished, but Emily chuckled wetly, wrapping an arm over her shoulder and pressing their pounding heads together. 

“Are we maybe not talking about Sergio anymore, Bug? Are we talking about you-”

“No, we’re definitely talking about Sergio,” She cut in, wiping under her eyes with her sleeve, looking back up where Emily’s face was glistening with tears though it seemed like she had somewhat calmed under her sister’s gaze that wasn’t so full of vitriol hatred anymore. 

Emily nodded, a humoured smile on her lips, “Right, okay, my bad. Definitely Sergio,” She held up her hand, stroking down Bug’s cheek for her where her tears had started pooling, “Well, I want Sergio to know that even if he is annoying sometimes, that there’s nothing that could ever take me away from him again, cause even though I’m not his mom, he’s still always going to be my kid, you know?” 

Bugsy’s face crumpled in pain for a minute, sniffling and meeting Emily’s eyes, dark brown hues watching her sadly, imploring her to know how much her heart called out for her. 

“Really? You promise?” Bugsy whined, and Emily nodded with a sad smile, stroking the back of her braid that looked a little ratted and wispy from where it had been yanked at. She took a shaky breath, looking down to her shoes where they scraped against the steps, “Well, I’m sure he’ll love to hear that, I’ll tell him when we’re home-”

Emily laughed, kissing her sister’s forehead, and pulling her into a side hug. 

“Alright, tough guys. Let’s get back to working on the profile, Sergio can wait for a minute,” Morgan said, though his face fought off the smile that crept on his lips seeing two of his favourite girls finally at peace with one another. 

Bugsy looked five years younger within seconds, and they clicked back into place, hopping up off the steps to get right to work, cursing herself for wasting so much time on silly things like hating her sister, because forgiving her felt cathartic in a way she didn’t understand she needed.

Maybe they had a chance after all.

–

Bugsy swore she would never have an optimistic thought a day in her life again. 

Because just as they had thought perhaps things could look up; just as they had sent in a different agent medically trained enough to save the jack, their UnSub, that they’d identified as Oliver, had bled out before he could have done anything to save him. Without a second thought, the king, Chris, had shot the agent, and demanded he wanted Will next as retribution for his brother’s death. 

They had of course turned down the offer in a heartbeat but the moment everyone turned their backs, Will, ten times the cop Bugsy could ever hope to be, had walked into the bank with his arms raised in surrender despite JJ screaming for him to stop from where Morgan and Hotch held her back from following him in.

Bugsy and Penelope watched from the CCTV in blood curdling horror when Chris put two bullets in him before he could even declare he was unarmed. 

“Did you see where he was shot?” JJ asked, her tone empty, her eyes bloodshot where she had broken down into a fit of wails as soon as the gunshots had sounded through the street. 

Bugsy opened her mouth to speak, losing all hope as soon as the bluebell gaze fell to her for an explanation. 

“Is he alive or dead, Bug?” JJ snipped, but she knew she didn’t mean it, knew she was just worried out her mind and grasping at straws. 

“I don’t know, I’m sorry,” Bugsy replied, Emily’s hand at the small of her back in a comforting gesture because she sounded scared. She wished Spencer was with her, he always knew how to make people feel better, but he and Kevin had gone back to their office uptown to use Penelope’s personal lair for better coverage on the BAU’s resources. 

“He was wearing a vest,” Emily jumped in, because Bug was tense and upset enough as it was, “He might be okay,”

“Might be?” JJ said humourlessly, her face hollow with sadness, “Alright we need to get inside,”

“JJ, it’s too risky,” Morgan tried as the woman stood up, a new found determination, because she refused to accept her partner, the father of her child, was dead until she saw him in a body bag for herself, “We don’t have eyes in there anymore,”

Jennifer’s eyes welled up again, and she turned to their unit chief; he was the only one who could understand just how desperate she felt right now if there was even the smallest chance he could still be alive. “Aaron.” 

Hotch took a breath, nodding to her with complete empathy, “Let’s go in,”

Bugsy leapt for the medical kit they’d kept in the cupboard, because if she could stop the bleeding as soon as possible he might have a chance. She was taken back to when she had gotten to Emily that night with Doyle, when she had nothing but the clothes on her back and a loaded gun to treat her sister with, when she had felt completely helpless. 

She refused to feel like that again, not now she’d been lucky enough to get Emily back. She refused to let JJ and tiny Henry go through what she did. 

Will wouldn’t die if she had anything to do with it. 

-

“Seeing what’s going on outside doesn’t help us inside,” Spencer said, standing behind where Kevin sat in Pen’s office, his hazel eyes falling to the surveillance footage of the bank live streaming from one of the choppers, where the familiar woman he worried for more than he could ever tell her moved behind a SWAT unit towards the front doors, a large med kit strapped to her back, a pistol at her side. 

He looked down at the blueprints of the bank because if he watched her get even ten feet away the bank he thought he might just throw up, even if there were four armed men shielding her.

“Kevin, can you possibly pull up each of the surveillance feeds prior to Will being shot?” He asked, quickly diverting his attention away from where they were at an impasse waiting for something to happen, Emily’s SWAT team moving slowly towards hers. 

“Sure, what are we looking for?” The other man asked, his fingers sprawling over Penelope’s keyboard as he did as requested, playing the older footage on the opposite screen, though even he was getting cold feet watching their team getting ready to breach the perimeter. 

“The female UnSub disappeared once before, if she wasn’t looking for an escape, what was she doing?” 

Spencer paused, because he couldn’t help when his eyes flicked back to the footage of Bugsy shuffling closer to the entrance behind one SWAT agent, and the doors burst open, the entire street pausing for a second to see what the movement was. 

The hostages. The civillians caught in the crossfire at the bank slowly trickled out of the doorway, their arms raised in peace, some crying in relief though there was no sign of Will anywhere. 

This was bad. Though he felt utmost care that the hostages had been released safely, he knew that the UnSubs keeping Will meant one of two things. One, that Will was already dead and useless to them, or two, keeping him bleeding out as a bargaining chip was their final play. Meaning they had no intention of releasing him, otherwise they would be left with nothing. 

If he wasn’t already dead, he would be any minute now. 

Spencer’s chest crashed in devastation for his friend and his godson, though it soon took a turn of terror when it seemed the same thought ran through Bugsy’s mind and she began stepping forward towards where the hostages were shuffling out in floods of tears. 

He saw Morgan and Emily yelling at her to stop, two of the SWAT team trying to follow her because they had no idea what had come over the twenty something year old rookie with a death wish. Spencer tried to ignore the way his chest clawed in horror, his eyes snapping back onto the surveillance of the female UnSub disappearing into the back rooms of the bank, completely ignoring the vault and the very clearly marked exit, meaning she had no intention of using either.

So what was she doing?” 

Spencer felt his head rattling with a horrid thought, hoping his intuition was wrong when he held the blueprints up to the screen, his skin turning to gooseflesh when he realised just exactly where she had been dipping out to with that backpack of hers. 

“Gas mains,” His voice was numb with fear, his body diving for their comm link to Garcia, where she sat in the trailer with Strauss and Rossi, watching the surveillance just as he was, “Garcia, get them out of there now,”

But no sooner had he said anything, Bugsy’s figure disappeared into the building, the SWAT team confirming that the entrance was clear, JJ and Morgan moving after her with their own agents protecting them. 

But she was already inside, his head screamed at him. Even when he heard David’s frantic voice through the radio they had linked to their kevlars, “ABORT, ABORT!” 

Even when he heard Hotch swear hastily, calling to his team to hold back, trying to yell loud enough JJ and her team could hear his orders to take cover. 

Spencer couldn’t truly take any of it in as he watched the large glass windows wobble for a second, a shock wave of what he knew was about to come.

The lines went dead, and he thought for a second his heart stopped. Because he hadn’t figured it out fast enough, hadn’t warned them before she had chance to throw herself head first into danger the way he should have known she would. 

Because Spencer watched the footage with a terror he had never known, not even in his eight years on the team, not even in his own situations as a hostage, not even when he was at his lowest and he thought the dilaudid was going to finish him off, alone and high in his apartment’s little bathroom, a burnt out drug addict who had so much going for him. 

Spencer had never felt the sheer, spine-chilling dread that he did when he watched, useless and heart broken, as the bank went up in a colossal explosion, a plume of flames bursting out of every window, shattering glass and cracking the brickwork, hard enough he watched part of the building start to crumble inwards. 

And Bugsy went down with it. 

Taglist:

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#spencer reid imagine #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid fanfic #dr spencer reid #matthew grey gubler x reader #criminal minds x reader #criminal minds fic #Emily Prentiss x Sister!reader

[screampied]

i’ve never sent a request i hope this makes sense 😭

reader doesnt feel very pretty so suguru fucks reader in front of a mirror + lots of praise

i love love love your work🫶🏽🫶🏽🫶🏽🫶🏽

❤︎ ໋𓈒 geto showing you how pretty you are.

warnings. fem! reader, mirror sēx, reverse cowgirl, praise, body worship, overstim, talking you through it, mdni. tysm <3

“. . . ah ah, something’s wrong, isn’t it?” geto hums softly, two soft hands attached to your waist. his touch was always so gentle—you lean back, feeling him bury inside of you before you pause your pace. he brings a kiss towards the crevice of your neck before speaking in a hushed tone. “my baby’s upset.”

“i’m not,” you inhale a sharp breath, and he doesn’t exactly buy it. although, he doesn’t interrupt your saddened words—he allows for you to finish, giving you nothing but his uninvited attention. it’s a long pause before you sigh. “suguru. can i—can i ask you something? be honest.”

he nips another kiss near your neck, moving a hand towards the inner corners of your physique. “why, of course. i’m listening, sweetheart.”

the words that slowly drag out your throat felt so hard to get out. a lump builds up against your esophagus before you swallow, muttering a soft, “do you . . do you think i’m pretty?”

a smile goes against his lips. “honestly, i think you’re more than pretty,” and you let off a moan once you feel his touch skim down your spine. “every chance i stare at your body, my breath gets stolen,” and then he turns your face to stare right into the mirror. “i want you to see what i see, a gorgeous girl on my lap. stunning, is she not?”

albeit, the moment your eyes reach the mirror, you see nothing but the exact opposite of your reflection.

“. . no,” you mumble, leaning against his bare chest. you hear the faint breaths of geto as he’s still stuffing you full with his shaft. your skin against his felt warm, sweltering hot. for whatever reason, your throat started to become dry like the sahara as you resume to speak. “are you just saying that, sugu?”

“oh, i’d never lie to my pretty girl,” and your heart swoons a bit. his words, so tender—easily warming its way into your heart. as you stare into the mirror with him, he leans in to press gentle kisses all against your skin. the hairs beneath your neck stand up and you inhale another sharp breath. “i love you, and if i have to smother you with millions of compliments for you to see the gorgeous girl that i see, then so be it.”

“s—suguru,” you choke out, leaning into his touch. you were so sensitive, and he feels you start to gradually move again. you were so trapped up into your intrusive thoughts that you forgot how you were just about to release. he was right, you knew that. but something within you was telling you that it simply wasn’t the case. “promise?”

he sneaks a final kiss against the shell of your ear. “my love,” he whispers, a hand softly wrapping around your neck. it’s gentle, the tip of his middle finger strums down your throat before he feels the vibrations collide against his single digit. “you are perfect. even if you think otherwise, you’re perfect for me, i promise,” he murmurs, and you could almost cry. words that you always needed to hear, your heart eases a bit before your knees buckle. “i wish i could make you see how pretty you are for me,” and his free arm slides down between your thighs, feeling against your slick entrance. you whimper, slumping way back against his chest. “and i thought it was your eyes that i get lost in,” he simpers once you meet his gaze in the mirror. “the most precious body i’ve laid my eyes upon, just look at you for a second.”

your hips start to make haste again, and he’s quite thick inside you—you gnaw on your lip, staring at geto from the mirror and he smiles.

“. . . from your curves to your skin to every inch of your body,” he rants, a hand slowly making its way to touch and feel against every part of your skin. such soft pads of his fingertips roam everywhere and you can feel yourself staring to drift into a euphoric state. it was approaching, your inescapable orgasm that left such a warm pool to stir into your abdomen. “mwah,” he kisses near the outline of your jaw. “if i could fall in love with you for the first time again, i would.”

“don’t s-say things like that,” you tremble, feeling him gradually split the inside of your cunt open with his cockhead. it felt so good, like it always does—you were quite tense, your shoulders were at least. but with each kiss that geto gives your body it eases you, sending you into a sweet lewd trance. “s-suguru.”

he chuckles. “but baby,” and he’s teasing now, hearing that familiar kittenish tone residing underneath his low voice. “it’s true. i love you, not just for your body—i love your voice, your scent, your touch, the way you play with my hair,” and he pauses, a mere rough groan escaping his lips. he was right up against your ear before he sighs softly. “i love the way you look every time i praise you, especially. the way your pupils dilate and your lips curve into a subtle smile, it’s so adorable.”

“ . . . ”

“aw, too much?” he snickers.

you lie back, rotating your hips a bit as you grind against him in reverse—slow but steady, your hands grip against his thighs before you whine. so close, your release was at the tip of your tongue. you could almost taste it, the taste of your sweetly bitter climax steadily approaching itself.

“i- i love you too,” you mumble with quivering lips, breathy pants shortly following your dialogue. “t-thank you, sugu.”

“don’t thank me,” he whispers, bringing both hands towards your waist for about the nth time now. he runs his fingers up before its at your hips, guiding your movements before he grunts himself. “stare at yourself with me. i want you to see what a pretty girl looks like when she’s about to cum.”

you almost moan from his words alone, you felt so hot — not just from his touch, but the way he spoke to you too. if it was anything suguru geto was good at, it was praising you to your heart’s content.

the more you rode him, staring at your reflection through the mirror with him propped up right behind you—you started to see what he was seeing. perhaps his words were getting through to you, a soft satisfied noise departs from your lips and he pulls you closer. “easy, that’s it. stare at me in the mirror the whole time,” and he kisses your neck again—leaving a trail of his invisible smooches. “i got you, i got you,” and your whines grow a bit more louder. he’s hitting you deep, your head slightly spins before the grip on his thigh tightens. “just make a mess on me ‘n i’ll clean it all up. i’ll do anything for you, sweetheart. even if it’s a little messy, heh.”

a tiny smile tugs against your lips at his comment before you feel the sudden ache underneath your thighs. him talking you through it all in that sly soothing voice, you felt as if you were on cloud nine—the tenderness of geto’s words had your heart feening for more, for more of his love and affection.

“she’s so breathtaking,” he gently cups your chin, staring you right in the eyes—you glance at geto, beads of sweat racing down both sides of his forehead. he was pretty too, his hair was pinned up but a few strands poked out and merely shielded his eyes. every time he looked at you, it was like he was falling more and more in love. a thumb of his plays against your lip before he hums, “my woman. my gorgeous woman.”

the moment you reach your climax, it comes at full speed—you moan loudly, feeling your pussy transmit into a full crazed spasm. your thighs quaver and tremor, and you briefly bite down on your tongue. “. . . s-suguruu,” you whimper out, such sweet candied moans ripping out your throat. he intertwined his fingers with yours his as you rode it out. your hips, sliding back and forth against him still before eventually it comes to a halt. your eyelids became heavy as you lie back, a few strands of geto’s hair tickling against your skin. “f-fuckkk.”

“shhh. breathe for me, baby,” he soft mutters, watching as your twitching body slowly calms itself down after a while. everything felt hot. with your mouth was open, spit-glossed lips parted, you listen. breath after breath gets slower, focusing on your patterns before he kisses the top of your forehead. “good girl, the best girl.”

after a while— it goes silent, you sit there— still siting on his lap with his cock all inside of you before you exhale lowly. “how do we feel now? better?”

you puff out a soft sigh. “a- a little.”

“hey, that’s progress, sweetheart,” he gently coos against your ear. geto smiles once he notices you’re still holding onto his hand. your fingers lock against his before he gives you a little head pat. “sleepy?”

“no.”

it’s a long silence and he tilts his head with an eyebrow raise through the mirror and you pout.

“okay, just a little sleepy,” and you turn around, making him pull out before facing him directly. geto gazes into your eyes before a sheepish grin forms on his face once you kiss the corner of his mouth. “i know i already said it but i love you, sugu.”

“i love you,” he replies, leaning to kiss the top of your forehead for the umpteenth time. “so much more. now let’s get the pretty girl some rest. i’ll even sing you a song to help those eyes close..”

#★vegasbaby. #geto x reader #geto smut #geto suguru x reader #geto suguru x you #geto x you #suguru geto x reader #geto suguru smut #getou suguru x reader #jjk smut #jjk x you #jjk x reader #jjk x reader smut #jjk drabbles #jujutsu kaisen smut #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jujutsu kaisen x you #jujustsu kaisen x reader #anime smut #female reader

[mclqren]

ME AND MY BROKEN HEART ★ CL16 ( & MV33 )

PAIRING ✦ charles leclerc x fem!ex girlfriend!reader ; max verstappen x fem!reader

SUMMARY ✦ when charles leaves you heartbroken, you end up letting a certain red bull driver help mend your broken heart [ SMAU ]

WARNINGS ✦ cursing

REQUESTED ✦ here!

NOTES ✦ reader is a model for dior. for the timeline of this, reader & charles broke up in august 2023 and he got with another woman (choosing to leave her unnamed because there will be NO alex slander) in september 2023. as per request, the fc i've used is hannah harrell, but feel free to picture whoever you want! my requests are closed at the moment.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

liked by yourbsf, anyataylorjoy, and 691,221 others

yourusername had to learn that the hard way 👎

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user1 THE LAST SLIDE WHAT.

user2 NO WAY ARE HER AND CHARLES BROKEN UP NOOO

user3 MY FAV COUPLE 💔

user4 the way im so upset rn is not healthy.

user5 real like THEY WERE PARENTS

user6 okay but y/n is still glowing??

user7 righttt!! enough about the guy who drives in circles all day, lets talk about HER 😍

user8 he fumbled.

user9 realll!

yourbsf making that cake was wayyy too much fun 😋

yourusername breaking it apart was even better 😉

anyataylorjoy 😍😍

yourusername who needs a man when i have you 🩷

liked by yourbsf, maxverstappen1, and 651,212 others

tagged yourbsf

yourusername greek air to cure the breakup blues 🇬🇷💙

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user14 OKAYYY MISS Y/N YOU ARE SERVING AS PER!!

user15 she's living her best life and im HERE FOR IT

user16 her and her bsf are actually everything to me

user17 so trueee i need a friendship like theirs!!

user18 NOO I WAS JUST IN GREECE I CANT BELIEVE I MISSED YOU

user19 NO I WAS AS WELL I WAS SO UPSET WHEN I SAW THIS

user20 bet charles is missing you rn!!

user21 who cares abt charles? she's literally getting over him rn, he's so yesterday's news 😴

user22 what part did you go to?? im planning on going over the holidays in october, and i desperately need some recs!! 🫶

yourusername crete!! it was so so beautiful, can confirm 🩷

user23 one driver out of her likes, another (max verstappen) in her likes

user24 okay but they'd be such a good couple??

yourbsf GIRLS TRIP WAS THE BESTTT

yourusername NEXT ONE PENDING FOR SUREEE

mariloublg_ absolutely gorgeous gorgeous girlies 😍😍

yourusername MARILOU MY ANGEL 🩷

user25 i came here from the instagram gossip website and can i just say in that interview you SERVED

user26 REALLL

user27 wait what are you guys on about?? im so lost HELP

user26 go on @/f1wagnews and you'll see!

liked by user28, user29, and 871,291 others

f1wagnews NEW: Y/N L/N breaks her silence on the circulating paparazzi pictures of Charles Leclerc & his apparent new girlfriend. When asked by the media what she thought, she said: "Charles being in a new relationship not even a month later is naturally a shock, seeing as I assumed he would treat me and the times we shared over the past three years with the same dignity and respect that I am treating him. I don't know, I guess these sort of memories aren't as priceless to him as they are to me. Still, I hope he's happy in his new relationship."

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user28 OKAYY MISS Y/N IS BACKK!!

user29 THIS is what i was waiting for.

user30 she is actually handling this really maturely to be fair to her!!

user31 realll!! i wish i would've been like this with my ex

user32 okay so a lot of the comments are saying she handled this w grace or whatever but is it just me who disagrees? like she's literally being rude to him and his new girlfriend, and you're all hyping her up?? like huh??

user33 honestly this comment makes no sense to me; she didn't say anything rude about charles in this, she simply said that she was shocked to see him in a relationship when they were together for three years, and honestly she's valid for that! i don't think many girls would enjoy seeing their ex boyfriend and his new girlfriend all over the media, and so y/n is honestly handling this so well.

yourusername

( caption one: crazy huh 😉 | caption two: compensation acquired ✅ + tags )

liked by mariloublg_, maxverstappen1, and 667,891 others

tagged mariloublg_

yourusername america with my girl 🩷 (& her boyfriend...)

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user37 THE CAPTION LMAOO

user38 Y/N REMAINS HILARIOUS

user39 ASTON MARTIN SWITCH UP HELLOOO??

user40 I KNOWW marilou and her are so cute though i loveee

user41 it's so weird to see her in green after having seen her in red for the past three years

user42 i knowww but she looks like she's happy now and that's all that matters tbh!!

lance_stroll thanks so much for the shoutout y/n, appreciate you too i guess

yourusername listen stroll if you hurt her i'll be at ur doorstep.

lance_stroll im actually sort of scared of you at times y/n.

yourusername good! 😊😊

maxverstappen1 so you liked seeing me win then?

yourusername you've been winning since like the prehistoric ages mate i think ive gotten used to it by now 🙄 (yes)

user43 so like is it just me or is this flirty...

mariloublg_ MY GIRL FOREVERRR 🫶

yourusername 🩷🩷

liked by yourbsf, maxverstappen1, and 702,192 others

tagged maxverstappen

yourusername second slide is me when i finally manage to get my shit together

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user44 OKAY BUT ARE MAX AND Y/N DATING ORRR

user45 MAYBEEE!! honestly they'd be so cute i just KNOW he'd treat her right

user46 y/n you are my everything.

user47 the flowersss?? did miss y/n get herself another man?

user48 has to be max.

maxverstappen1 the second slide was uncalled for. ☹️

yourusername I COULDNT STOP LAUGHING IM SO SORRY IT WAS HILARIOUS 😭

maxverstappen1 the flowers 👀👀

yourusername yeah!! wonder who got me those 😍

anyataylorjoy you have a man now? ☹️

yourusername nooo ur the only one i need baby i swear 🩷

liked by mariloublg_, user49, and 921,933 others

f1wagnews NEW: Y/N L/N is a WAG again...but for a different driver on the grid! In a recent interview during the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Max Verstappen confirmed to the press that he and Y/N had entered a relationship a couple of weeks prior, after pictures circulated of the two in his car in Monaco: "Well obviously she came to the COTA grand prix and I had already known her before and we were good friends, so we fell right back where we left off, and here we are now! [...] Yeah things are going great, she's truly one of the best people I've ever met."

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user49 Y/NSTAPPEN LETS GOOOO

user50 MY GIRL IS A WAG AGAINNN I LOVE

user51 is it just me who misses charles and y/n ☹️

user52 yeah. 😊

mariloublg_ ❤️❤️

user53 MARILOUUUU?? WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE!!

user54 ONE OF Y/N'S BEST FRIENDS AND FELLOW WAG COMMENTING OH ITS SERIOUS.

user55 they are seriously adorableee 🫶🫶

yourusername

( caption one: third time's the charm? 😬 | caption two: wtf is this man thinking about now. )

liked by charles_leclerc, maxverstappen1, and 934,219 others

tagged maxverstappen1

yourusername MR WORLD CHAMPPP!! so so proud of you maxie, my winner always 🩷

view all comments

user59 Y/N AWWWW

user60 i have a feeling this one's working out idk

user61 oh absolutely

user62 so happy to see you happy again y/n!! 🫶🫶

user63 lost some race driver and came back with a world champion 🏆🏆

user64 ADORABLEEE

mariloublg_ MY CUTIES

yourusername OUR BIGGEST FAN

mariloublg_ well as your fairy godmother it IS an obligation to be ur biggest fan ever 🧚‍♀️🧚‍♀️

maxverstappen1 love you ❤️

yourusername my champ 🏆

charles_leclerc so happy for both of you ❤️

yourusername thank you so much charles, hope ur doing well w ur gf 🩷

user65 charles and y/n are talking again, i can officially sleep in peace.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

#f1 #f1 x reader #f1 smau #requests #formula one x reader #f1 imagine #formula 1 #f1 imagines #f1 x you #charles lecrelc #charles leclerc x female reader #charles leclerc x y/n #charles leclerc x reader #charles leclerc x you #max verstappen #max verstappen x y/n #max verstappen x you #max verstappen x reader #f1 x female reader #formula one #formula one x y/n #mclqren

[bountydroid]

Jealousy

Request: Can I please request a Cooper x Fem reader comfort angst romance where the sweet reader is infatuated with Cooper (she has a thing for older men)The sweet reader is always doing unnecessary favors for him, like secretly giving him discounts on rad away and supplies, taking care of dog meat, and getting him information on bounties. Until he brings along Lucy, misunderstanding the whole situation, the reader’s heart breaks thinking the worst and slowly stops trying and acting cold and distant, making Cooper notice that the only tolerable person he has ever known in this god forsaken world is ignoring him. (Feel free to add or change anything just pls feed into my delusions😭 I just want some hardcore romance with our cowboy) Also can u pls add that the reader also has a cute southern accent?

Cooper Howard/The Ghoul x f!reader

Description: As a wandering trader, you've made a lot of strange friends. Among them, Ghouls, but there is one in particular that is your favorite.

Notes: I hope I did this justice for you anon!

The Wasteland was brutal, and even you knew it was a bad idea to trek it alone, but you had a job to do. However, as you found yourself in front of your old friend Roger's home you felt like the Wastelands weren't all that bad.

"My name.. is Roger." You heard him repeating between snarls.

You stopped in your tracks outside the door. "He's turning," You thought to yourself as you rummaged through your pack looking for any vials of Radaway. You were all out. Sighing, you put your hand on your holster before slowly making your way inside to check on your friend.

"Rog?" You ask as you round the corner to find him sitting in the dirt.

"Oh hey," he said relieved. "My savior. Do you have any Radaway?"

"I don't have any, Rog." You replied sadly.

"Oh." He whispered. "You should probably get out of here then. It's not safe for little girls like you to be in the Wastelands alone." He said sadly, leaving out the bit you both knew, you weren't safe with HIM alone. 

Before you could respond, you heard quiet footsteps down the corridor. "Who else is here?" You thought to yourself as your hand went back to your holster. Peaking your head around the corner you find none other than Cooper Howard and... a vaultie? You did very little to hide the confusion on your face as you looked between the two.

"Hey, you." You said to Cooper. "What are you doing here?"

"Could ask you the same thing, sweetheart." He responds, pushing the vaultie through the doorway and making his way to Roger.

"Hey Rog," Cooper greets him.

"Hey. Hey." Rogers laughs, relieved to see his friend. "Fancy seeing you here. You out for that bounty, too, huh?"

"Yep," Cooper responds as he knelt in front of his friend.

You all stand there in silence for a bit, listening to Roger snarl and whip his head around. 

"Oh, shit," Roger says between wails.

"How you feeling?" Cooper asks quietly, already knowing the answer.

"Oh.. you know," Roger replied. "It's hard out here. Dang smoothies can be so unkind. I see you got a smoothie of your own." He says as he looks over at the vaultie.

You also turn to look at the vaultie, a look of displeasure on your face. "A smoothie of your own." Repeating over and over in your head. You wanted to be his smoothie. You and Cooper never really started a relationship, but you thought you were heading in that direction. You gave him a generous discount on Radaway since you developed a little crush on him, and he would always spend more time than necessary with you whenever you crossed paths. He was always fussing after you and was always telling you how you were too reckless. In his eyes, everything was too dangerous for you. He knew how you felt about him, and you THOUGHT you knew how he felt about you, but this vaultie threw a wrench in everything. "Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he doesn't like me." You thought to yourself while eyeing her up. You were so lost in thought that you could barely hear Roger snarling next to you. 

"You're turning," Cooper says reluctantly, his voice pulling you from your thoughts.

"Yeah maybe, maybe." Roger says on the verge of tears, "Maybe. Hey, you don't happen to have any vials, do you? Y/n is all out."

Cooper's eyes met yours as you nodded your head sadly.

"Just one little puff and I'll be back on my feet. You know I'm good for it." Roger pleaded.

"I'm sorry Roger I am all out," Cooper says, looking back toward his friend.

"That's okay. That's okay." Roger mumbles. "Though, um, you and y/n and your smooth-faced friend, you um... you might want to clear out before things get ugly."

You flinch as you hear Roger snarl again, each time he was getting louder and louder. You look down at your feet with tears in your eyes.

"I did okay. 28 years since I first started showing," Roger said looking between you and Cooper, before snarling again. "Oh, hell! Not as long as you though." He pointed proudly at Cooper, "You've outlasted us all. How long since you first started Wastelanding?"

"A long time," Cooper responds while shaking his head.

"That's a lot of vials," Roger said quietly.

"Well I've always been good at making money, Roger." Cooper exhales as he stands up. "Say, you remember how good food used to taste?"

"Yeah, BlamCo Mac and Cheese!" Roger says excitedly.

"Ice Cream and Apple Pie." Cooper countered.

Roger laughed, a real laugh. He was happy. "Apple Pie is not nearly as sweet as young Y/n's southern accent though." He says smiling up at you. "You know, my mom used to -"

Before you knew what happened, Roger's brains were all over the wall. You looked up at Cooper with tears in your eyes. You knew it had to be done. You knew it was mercy, but it still hurt. 

"Why did you do that?" The vaultie asked. "He was sick."

"He wasn't gonna get better." You responded dryly.

"You usually don't go all the way out here sweetheart, not on your own. What are you up to?" Cooper asks you as he picks up Roger's body and places it in a position where he easily access what he needs.

You don't respond. Between the jealousy brewing in your stomach at the vaultie next to you and the sadness about Roger, you couldn't find the words you wanted to say. 

"Stop. Stop Stop." The vaultie pleaded, "Please, I know it's hard out here but you don't, you don't have, you don't have to resort to... to..."

Before he could respond you quickly made your way out of the building for some fresh air. You could hear their voices inside, but you decided to drown them out by humming to yourself. You didn't need to see him take apart Roger, and you definitely couldn't stand the sound of her voice any longer. You knew you should get walking, you were low on supplies and they would be leaving the building soon. You didn't want to face them again, but it felt like there were bricks in your boots. As exhaustion hit you, you sat down in the sand and closed your eyes, losing track of time.

"Hey," You hear Cooper say as he puts his hand on your shoulder. "You good, sweetheart?"

'Fine." You mumbled out. "You and your smoothie should get going." The venom in your voice was loud and clear, but you didn't care.

"That's what got ya panties in a bunch?" Cooper laughed. 

You glared up at him in response. "Don't laugh at me, Cooper."

"I am taking her to SuperDuperMart. Not keepin’ her as a pet.” Cooper smiles as he offers you his hand. 

"Oh," You responded quietly, feeling stupid.

"What is SuperDuperMart?" You heard the vaultie ask, but the two of you completely ignored her.

"No one could ever replace you, sweetheart," Cooper says as he cups your face. 

You couldn't help the smile that graced your face at his words, and the blush that creeped up your neck.

He smiled when he noticed the way your eyes flickered towards his lips. 

"When I get my hands on some Radaway, I'll show you just how much you mean to me." You whispered.

"Lookin' forward to it." He whispered back.

The two of you were so caught up in each other that you didn't even notice the look of pure disgust on the vaultie's face as she watched your interaction. Some people may never understand why you like Cooper so much, but honestly? You couldn't give a damn.

Tag list: @sitkafay

#the ghoul fallout #fallout tv series #fallout #the ghoul x reader #cooper howard x reader #cooper howard

[ozzgin]

Hello! I just wanted to say I really like your writing style!!

I was wonder have you done a hybrid yan whose darling has a phobia of the animal they are a hybrid of?

Eg wolf with a darling scared of dogs, Naga with a darling scared of snake, ect.

I can definitely expand a little on that! I'll keep it very generic, so you can go for any kind of hybrid you'd like. :)

Yandere! Hybrid x Phobic! Reader

Featuring a hybrid of your choice and a Reader who's terrified of him, but not for the reasons one might expect.

Content: gender neutral reader, hybrid yandere, stalking, monster romance (mild NSFW)

He's been in love from the moment he saw you. So entranced, in fact, that he didn't even notice he'd stalked you all the way to your home. And much too eager to see you again to not return there the next day, and the day after and so on, until today.

Today, however, was meant to be special. He'd planned to confess his feelings and pray for the best. What's the worst that could happen, he thought. If you were to reject him, he'd just return to his habit of watching from afar.

Though he didn't expect you to scream and run away in a panic. You nearly toppled over the ground in your frantic escape, white as a sheet, mumbling apologies that slowly faded into the distance. He could only stare. He didn't get the chance to introduce himself.

That was...not his best moment. That night he turned and twisted, plagued by a shame he'd never known before. Was he truly so irredeemably monstrous? He'd never interacted much with humans before, so he never quite considered his own appearance. Could he really go back to admiring you secretly? Was there no way to convince you? His heart throbbed melancholically.

In the morning, to his great shock, you were already waiting for him in the same spot, just as pale, knees bent and ready to sprint at any given second. You managed to blurt out your explanation: the phobia. He suddenly remembered one instance where you stumbled upon an animal and had a reaction similar to what he experienced. So, you were indeed afraid of him, but not in the way he initially assumed. His eyes lit up with newfound hope: you were giving him a chance, after all.

The first months were rather clumsy. A lot of fidgeting, a lot of sneaky glances, and to his great dismay, a lot of distance. To think you were finally his, and he couldn't even hold you properly.

One must appreciate the small victories. You were no longer a stranger he'd follow from the shadows. He no longer had to imagine what you'd smell like, or what your laugh sounded like, or how your hands would feel in his. You have to take what's given to you, he'd tell himself once he was alone again, desperately touching himself to those scarce memories.

Despite his almost manic neediness, he always greeted you with a reassuring smile. Always asked before touching you. Always apologized if he got ahead of himself. He'd never allow his love to outweigh your comfort.

You jolt slightly.

"Sorry, was I too rough?" he freezes, observing your small, naked body underneath his.

"No, just muscle memory, sorry."

You purse your lips, embarrassed about your sudden anxious reaction in the middle of an intimate moment. Will you ever get over your fear?

"Hey now, is this the kind of face to have while I'm fucking you?" the hybrid jokes with a grin. "Small steps, remember?"

He'd wait forever if it was for you.

#yandere #yandere x reader #yandere x you #yandere x darling #yandere hybrid #yandere monster #yandere monster x reader #yandere headcanons #yandere scenarios #yandere imagines #hybrid x reader #monster x reader #monster x human #monster boyfriend #monster romance

[noctqrnxl]

my thoughts on the watcher update:

i am happy with this apology.

i will not let my guard down

i GENUINELY hope they learn to manage their finances better in the future

if they read through the comments then i hope they saw the thousands of people talking about how ryan and shane's banter >>> high quality content

i hope they get a little less out of touch??? and understand their audience??? and do some research before taking such a big decision????

i definitely hope that they find a balance between the high-quality content they want to create, doing so within understandable budget restraints, and the content WE want (which is mostly banter/talking. i used to hate anything horror-related but i loved bfu supernatural because SHANE AND RYAN MADE IT LESS SCARY!! I HAVE MADE POSTS ABOUT THIS BEFORE AS WELL!!)

contrary to what most people were saying, i actually liked steven the most at some point. when i'd watch too many spirits episodes it was steven's chaos (and eventually him and ricky's banter) that i looked forward to. i liked dish granted as well! yes i love shane and ryan, honestly who doesn't atp, but i always had a soft spot for steven. (i haven't seen a single worth it ep btw. the most i've seen of steven has been on watcher.) that's why the backlash against him specifically has been... tough to see. i acknowledge what people are saying and i also agree with it, but still. ykwim.

they look WRECKED. either they are very good actors all of a sudden or this was a more terrible weekend for them than i thought. (not to mention the bullying and harassment a lot of fans have done.)

as a lot of people have been pointing out, isn't WatcherTV basically Patreon??? i haven't signed up for either because, well, i'm an international fan 🙊 but still, it feels weird to have both??? idk (edit: they've closed up patreon for now)

i still think WatcherTV is a bad idea but hey, at least we will see the content on yt as well, right?

i hope one day we'll all joke about this. (i don't mean to say i want us to feel good about it, because i don't think we ever will. but still...)

#watcher #steven lim #ryan bergara #shane madej

[wheresarizona]

but now I’m your daisy

summary: It’s a random Thursday in the middle of spring, and Joel has a surprise for you—a surprise that’s an hour away from Jackson on horseback, that he insists on blindfolding you for.

pairing: Joel Miller/gn!reader (reader has smaller hands than Joel)

rating: T (No y/n, AGE GAP (unspecified, reader is an adult), Grumpy Joel Miller, a lil Possessive Joel Miller, FLUFF, it’s so fluffy, established relationship, kissing, purposely annoying Joel until he snaps at you, Joel being secretly romantic, MARRIAGE PROPOSAL (it’s so cute), cussing, did I mention fluff? Joel being so in love, Joel being the best dad to Ellie)

word count: 2.5k+

a/n: This can be read as a standalone or in the same universe as ‘but I would die for you in secret.’ An anon requested a ‘fluffy cute fic with an age gap (No smut)’ for Joel, and this extremely cute idea came to me that I wrote in one night. Shoutout to @littlemisspascal who loved the snippets I sent her, and thank you to the love of my life, @juletheghoul for betaing!

Thank you for reading! Comments and reblogs feed me. I’d love to know what you thought!

but I would die for you in secret - Masterlist

“Are we there yet?” you ask for the thirteenth time in the span of an hour.

It’s the perfect spring day with the temperature outside not too hot and not too cold, the air feeling a little crisp when it fills your nose. The sun’s warmth is hitting your back, and you’re sure that if you could see the sky, it’d be a beautiful, clear, cerulean blue—you can’t see, though, not with the bandana over your eyes as you sit astride a horse, Joel on his own next to you holding his reins and yours to lead you.

His sigh is long and loud, and you can picture perfectly without having to look at his annoyed expression.

“No,” he growls. “The same damn answer as the last dozen or so times you asked.”

“Hey, don’t get mad at me—you haven’t spent an hour literally in the dark with no idea where the hell you’re going.”

“And I’ve told you it’s a surprise,” he rumbles.

“Well, are we close to this surprise?”

He sighs again, and you just know he’s got the fingers of his free hand pressed to his brow. “I swear, you’re just as bad as Ellie—neither of you seems to understand what a fuckin’ surprise is.” He takes a deep breath and slowly lets it out. “Now,” he says calmly, “I don’t know why you’re purposely pushin’ my buttons—”

“You ate the last of the ice cream last night,” you interrupt. “The ice cream I worked hard to make that I was excited to eat as a late-night snack.”

“You gotta be fuckin’ kiddin’ me—how many times do I have to apologize? I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were savin’ it, and had I known, I wouldn’t have eaten it. Will you please forgive me?”

“Did I annoy you enough that the thought crossed your mind to take us back home?”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t because you love me so much you’ll put up with my shit?”

“Yes.”

“Then I forgive you. Can I ask a question that has nothing to do with the distance we are from the surprise?”

He lets out a relieved breath, and his tone softens. “Of course, honey.”

Without fail, every time he calls you a sweet endearment, you melt a little, feeling so soft you might turn into a puddle.

You’re smiling. “What made you choose today to surprise me? It’s kinda random that it’s a Thursday, and you didn’t wait for the weekend when we’re usually off.” You taught at the school, and Joel did whatever he was assigned each day; lately, it’s been a lot of patrolling.

“Do you know what today’s date is?”

The question makes you think because you do know the date, and it’s not your, his, or Ellie’s birthday; it’s not a holiday that you’re aware of, either, and frankly, you’re not quite sure what the significance is.

“I do, but what’s so special about it?”

“What were you doin’ last year around this time?”

“Um, what was I doing? Wait, it’s around when I moved to Jackson.”

“That’s right, and who’d you meet a little after you arrived?”

“A lot of people.”

“Jesus Christ,” he breathes in exasperation. “Baby, when did you meet me?”

“Like two, three days after I moved into the house across the street from you.”

“And what happened when we met?”

The memory makes you smirk. “I seduced you—my sexy, way older, single dad neighbor.”

“That’s true—I was gone on you from the moment you batted those pretty eyes at me, and who were you romantically involved with from that day forward?”

Your eyebrows furrow. “You.”

“Was there anyone else?” It’s a harmless question he knows the answer to and is honestly humorous even to be asked.

You snort. “Why would I have wanted to be with anyone else when I had you? No, of course not, and you were very clear that I was yours and only yours, even if nobody else knew for quite some time.”

Your relationship with him was a secret for many months because he didn’t want Ellie to know—he was worried she wouldn’t take it well, but she ended up being completely fine with it and had figured out the two of you were a thing, pretty much from the beginning.

“So, it’s a year from the day you became mine,” he says, “why would I be takin’ you somewhere special?”

The realization slams into so hard you gasp.

“Are we celebrating the anniversary of when we first met?!”

It’s clear in his voice he’s smiling. “We are—I know we did things ass-backward, and I wish I could’ve courted you properly from the beginnin’, but I consider that first time we met as the start of our unconventional relationship.”

Warmth is spreading through your body at how sweet this is.

“Oh my god, Joel—if I could, I’d kiss you right now!”

“Well, you’re in luck, my love, ‘cause we’re finally here.” Your horse comes to a stop, the animal snorting as its front hooves shuffle in place. “You can look.”

You lower the bandana, and your eyes widen at what’s in front of you: it’s a meadow of colorful wildflowers—the lush green grass overshadowed by the yellows, pinks, purples, whites, and blues blooming thickly everywhere, tall pine trees lining the edges, and snow-capped mountains towering high off in the distance.

You’ve never seen anything so beautiful, and it takes your breath away.

There’s movement out of the corner of your eye of Joel getting off his horse, and you’re too focused on taking in all of the scenery, seeing butterflies fluttering around and birds gliding through the air.

“Well?” he asks, and you jolt at his voice coming from the opposite side of where he was initially. “Sorry for spookin’ ya, baby.” He rubs a hand along your jean-covered thigh, and your head tilts down his way. Joel’s eyes look hopeful, and a small smile is on his lips—he’s wearing a red flannel and has a rifle on his back, the light breeze causing some of his gray strands of hair to dance atop his head. “What do you think?” he asks.

Your answer is to get off the horse, Joel’s hands immediately grabbing onto your waist to steady you as you swing your leg over the back of the animal, one foot landing on the ground, then the other—you spin around, throwing your arms around his neck, and crush your lips to his, swallowing his surprised sound. He’s automatically hugging you to him, and you never feel safer than when he holds you, knowing without a doubt he won’t let anything happen to you and will protect you with everything he has; you’d do the same for him and Ellie, the two most important people in your life.

When you break apart, your breaths come out a little heavier, and with the way he’s gazing into your eyes, you can clearly see his love for you shining through.

His hand caresses your cheek. “A good surprise?” he asks.

Your mouth is grinning as you nod. “The best surprise and worth an hour in the dark.” You hold his face as you lean in, placing loud, smacking kisses over his stubbled cheeks, along his jaw, on his chin, and lips. Joel chuckles at your enthusiasm, and you end with a peck to the tip of his nose.

“There’s more,” he says.

Your eyes go big. “What do you mean there’s more?”

“Let me tie up the horses, and I’ll show you.”

He moves away to do as he said, using ropes to tie around each of their two front legs to hobble them and keep them in place, allowing them to graze.

Joel isn’t kidding about there being more: he removes a blanket roll from his saddle that he spreads out on a patch of grass, and from his backpack, he takes out containers with strawberries, apples, cheese, some smoked meat and to drink, a bottle of apple juice made in Jackson.

He sits on the blanket, his long legs out in front of him, the food on one side of him, his rifle, and your shotgun that’d been holstered in a scabbard attached to your saddle within reach on the ground. He makes you giggle as he pulls you down into his lap, sitting sideways across it, his arms wrapping around your middle, while your hands go into the hair at the back of his head, his eyes locked on yours.

Something hard is poking you in the ass. “Is that a flashlight in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?” you ask with a wag of your eyebrows.

Joel huffs out an amused breath as he gets his hand under you and pulls his sheathed hunting knife off of his belt, tossing it next to the rifle and shotgun.

“Better?” he asks with a raised eyebrow.

“Yes.” You kiss his cheek. “Much better—thank you.” You stare at his handsome face and brush his messy bangs off his forehead—Joel grabs your hand, keeping his gaze on yours as he kisses the skin on the inside of your wrist, leaving behind tingles where his lips touch.

“If Ellie knew how secretly romantic you are,” you say, “she’d give you even more shit than she already does.”

His eyes roll, and he holds your smaller hand in his bigger one, pressing it to his heart.

“Wanna know a secret?” he asks.

“Always.”

“She avoids teasin’ me about our relationship and how I am with you—I mean, if she sees us kiss, she’ll pretend to get sick, but that’s just how teenagers are.” He shrugs. “She slips up every once in a while, and that’s expected; I think her tryin’ her best not to shit on my happiness is her sweet way of bein’ supportive.” He’s smiling fondly. “She’s the one who suggested a picnic.”

Your face matches his. “You discussed your secret anniversary plans with her?”

“Yes.” He nods. “'cause Tommy’s idea of celebratin’ was stayin’ in bed all day naked, and it made me wonder for the millionth time why the fuck Maria married his ass.”

You laugh. “And that’s pretty much a regular Saturday for us when Ellie stays at Cat’s—” Her girlfriend’s. “—for the weekend.”

He’s got an arm around your back and lets go of your hand, reaching to pluck a dandelion from the grass at the edge of the blanket.

“Exactly,” he says, “needed to do somethin’ special, and I found this place a few weeks ago while on patrol and knew you’d love it.” His eyes squint a little as his attention turns to what’s in front of him.

“I do, I love it so much.” You look around at the flowers, trees, and mountains. “It’s so beautiful!”

“Yeah, it is.” You face him again, finding his gaze already on you.

He does this often, where when you seek him out—be it at the crowded bar on a Friday night, the busy mess hall at breakfast before work, while you’re cuddled on the couch watching a movie—he’s already looking at you before your eyes land on his. It’s like you’re the only thing that exists, and you find it both lovely and insane that he loves you that much.

The other person who steals his attention is Ellie—she’s his whole world, and that’s how it should be; she’s his kid, and if Joel’s one thing, he’s a fantastic father who loves his children more than anything.

“You’ve ruined me for anyone else, Joel Miller,” you tell him, clutching his shirt with your left hand. “I love you, I love your daughter, I love the life we have, and I’m sorry, but you’re stuck with me for the rest of your life—you’re mine, and I’ll fight anyone or anything that tries to take you from me.”

“Yeah?” He takes your hand from his shirt and presses your palms together between you, making your own look so tiny with how much longer and thicker his fingers are. “Well,” he starts, your eyes closing when he leans in to nudge his nose against yours, “you’ve sure ruined me for anyone else, too, and you’re it for me—I love you, I love that you really do care about my kid, and how you make our lives better,” he rasps softly. “No one else can have you ‘cause you belong to me as I belong to you, so I see this only goin’ one way.”

“And where’s that?” you whisper.

His hand leaves yours for a moment.

“With you marryin’ me,” he says and slips something onto your ring finger—your eyes fly open seeing he’s tied the dandelion stem to make a loop your finger can fit through, the vibrant yellow flower a pretty substitute for a real diamond ring that are hard to find these days; this is Joel doing something how it was done when he was younger because, to him, it’s the right way, even though nowadays engagements are simply a verbal agreement rarely accompanied by jewelry. Or this is Joel just being romantically old-fashioned; you love it when he’s romantically old-fashioned.

Your cheeks are hurting from smiling so big, and tears are brimming in your eyes.

“If you’ll have me, of course,” he adds, and you look at him. “I know I’ve been alive a long fuckin’ time and that you can do better than someone as old as me, but I promise I’ll give you my everythin’ and the best life I can because you’re the one I wanna spend whatever time I have left breathin’ with.” The truth is evident in his chocolate-colored gaze, seeing the glimmer of hope in the dark pools. “As long as it’s somethin’ you’d want. It’s fine if you prefer we keep doin’ things as we have been without you takin’ my last name—I’m lucky enough that you like me.”

“Ask me,” you say.

His eyebrows pull together. “Ask you what…?”

“To marry you—in all the sweet things you said, you didn’t ask the question.”

His cheeks pink up, and he scratches the back of his neck. “That’s fuckin’ embarrassin’. Not much of a proposal if you don’t ask the question—sorry—let me try this again.” He clears his throat and takes your hand, being careful of the dandelion ring, his eyes seeming to get bigger. “Will you marry me?”

“Yes,” you answer immediately, and he rewards you with a smile big enough for his very seldom-seen dimple to make an appearance.

Then his large palms are cradling your face, and he’s kissing you like he’s just come home after being away for a while, and can’t believe he’s finally feeling your lips against his once more—he’s savoring every second and being so thorough it makes you go dizzy, your skin heating beneath your clothes.

This is one of those unforgettable kisses that will make you swoon each time it comes to mind in the years to come.

And this man asked you to marry him.

Settling down in Jackson was the best decision you’ve ever made.

but I would die for you in secret - Masterlist

Thank you for reading! If you’d like to be tagged in my fics, please fill out the form in my bio, on my masterlist, or just let me know! 

#Pedro pascal #joel miller #joel miller/reader #Joel miller/you #joel miller x reader #wheresarizona writes

[luveline]

Hi Jade!!! I love, love, love your writing. I was wondering if you could write something for Tsam Peter x reader where reader has a concussion and Peter is just generally super sweet about taking care of them? I have a concussion right now and I feel like he would be so sweet about it. If not feel free to ignore this, love you!!! <3

i love u!! fem!reader, 1k

You’re shivering again. Peter looks up from his book suspiciously, squinting at the curve of your where you’re laying on his couch. He should let you rest —you’re allowed to sleep with a concussion, despite what some might think— but he doesn’t like the shivering. It’s weird. 

“I'm coming, baby,” he says, standing up from the armchair to situate himself by your hips. 

Peter pulls the blankets more firmly to your chin. “Are you cold, bub?” he asks. It might appear that he’s talking to you while you’re still sleeping, but the smile you give when he talks proves otherwise. 

“No,” you force out in a mumble. 

“Are you sure?” 

It takes you some time to think about it. Your body’s been thrown for a loop since you hurt yourself, but you’re healing nicely, and your mental stamina is yards better than it had been. Peter asked you yesterday if you wanted a kiss and you couldn’t answer him for a full minute, and when you did it was an uncoordinated lift of your chin. You’re still in there, still his girl, just mildly incapacitated for the time being. 

“I might be,” you decide. 

Peter grabs a throw from under the coffee table and shakes it out over your arms and shoulders. “There. Need a drink?” 

“Do you?” you ask. 

“What?” 

“You’re asking me lots of questions,” you say, slowly, quietly, but not without character. “I thought I’d ask one back.” 

“I don’t need anything.” He tilts his head to align your faces, leaning in, not quite close enough to kiss you. 

“You look very serious right now, Spider-Man.” 

He glares for show. “So serious.” 

“Sorry I can’t really make you a drink.” 

Peter wipes the glare. “I’m sorry you got hurt. I don’t care that you can’t be my serf right now. When you’re better I’m gonna work you twice as hard, that’s all.” 

You raise a tired hand to his jaw. You’re extra careful to offset your wonky hand, stroking a clumsy but tender line from his ear to his chin. “Can you help me up?” 

Peter doesn’t question you. You’ve been recovering for a few days (he hasn’t realised before your injury that some people can take months to get better after a head injury, even without blood clots or fractures) and he’s not felt the urge to baby you beyond waiting on your every whim and want. If you’d like to sit up, that’s okay. The only thing he’d insist on is getting enough sleep at night, and thats something you’ll do happily. 

“Can I give you a hug?” he asks, his eyebrows pinching up at their starts. “I hate seeing you shiver, it makes me sad.” 

“Makes you sad?”

He squeezes your elbow where the blankets have fallen down. “Is that surprising?” 

You want to trade jokes with him but you can’t summon a retort, and your smile quickly fades. It can’t be nice, feeling a shade of yourself. Peter’s heart aches for you twice. 

“C’mere, pretty girl,” he says, slipping his arms under yours, encouraging you to wrap your own behind his head or let them rest behind his shoulders. He loves hugging you like this, almost lifting you, spider strength begging to be used as you sigh and settle into place against him. You feel a little like a shell of yourself, not quite quick with touches, fingertips twitching against his shoulder blade as he nuzzles his face against yours unabashed. “There you are. Where’d you go, huh? I was about to send out the search party.” 

“I’m right here.” 

“Yeah you are. Lucky me, right? Luckiest guy in the world.” 

You sigh happily beside his ear, your face pitching slowly downward until it’s pressing against the curve of his neck, your arms slipping down his front as you run out of energy. He doesn’t mind, bundling you up with no intention of letting you go. 

“How do you feel?” he asks. 

“Still fuzzy, like… it’s like we’re talking to each other through a screen door.” 

“Do you need something? Or want something? I’ll get you anything.” 

“I’m fine.” 

He lets out a sorry sigh. He wishes you’d want something, god knows he’d love to put a smile on your face. If you were feeling better you might ask him to go and get you something for dinner from across the city, or beg him to find you a bunch of flowers (which he’s always willing to buy). But sick, you ask for nothing. You just lay on the couch and wait to get better. Peter doesn’t think it’s super fair. 

“I’m sorry you’re not better yet,” he murmurs, his lips drifting down to your temple, which he kisses weakly, the barest brush of his lips. “Wish I could take it from you.” 

“I’ll be okay soon.” 

“I know you will, but I still wish I could take it. It’s shitty.” 

You think about this for a while. “It’s not shitty,” you work out finally, hand curling against his waist in a tired display of affection. “I have the… best boyfriend ever looking after me.” 

“I’ll be here until you’re better, you know that.” 

“I know.” 

Peter ushers you back and lifts your blankets, slotting himself next to you with a careful arm held behind your back. You show some surprising excitement at the offering of a cuddle and work under his arm, shuffling down the couch to leave you both laying on the same cushion, blankets uneven but warm over your chests. “You should probably go back to sleep,” he says. 

“Nap with me?” you ask, endearingly hopeful. 

He turns his face, intending on drawing lines into your cheek with the tip of his nose until you either fall asleep or can’t take it anymore. “Sure, baby. I bet you’re exhausted, huh? Let’s sleep.” 

He falls asleep before you, breathing snores into your cheek. You have enough wits about you to laugh, and then you fall asleep, too. 

#tasm peter parker #tasm peter x reader #tasm peter parker imagine #tasm peter parker x you #tasm peter parker x reader #tasm x reader #peter parker x reader #tasm!spiderman x reader #tasm!peter x reader #tasm!peter imagine #tasm!peter parker #tasm!peter parker x reader #tasm! peter parker x reader #spiderman x reader #peter parker oneshot #peter parker blurb #peter parker imagine #peter parker x you #peter parker x y/n #spiderman x you #spiderman fanfiction

[alexias-putellas]

are you sure? // barça femení x teen!reader

barça femení x teen!reader

this request came in not long after that game and i still have a lot of feelings about it. here is me working through them.

warning: mentions of a panic attack but that’s all

-

are you sure?

you were so sure when alexia asked. when jona asked. when ingrid asked. when lucy asked. when marta asked. when mapi asked. even when sweet vicky asked.

you might’ve only been seventeen like her but you were so sure that you wanted to take the last penalty. it wasn’t your first and your track record for pentalties was impressive. so yeah, you were absolutely sure that you wanted to take the last one.

you grabbed the ball from cata and placed it on the floor, walking backwards a few steps to get a good run up. the whistle blew and you only took a few seconds before kicking it as hard as you could and really it felt like everything was happening in slow motion.

the reaction from hannah hampton, the roar of the chelsea fans as she swatted the ball away like it was a measly fly, the noise of the chelsea players as they ran over to their goalkeeper to celebrate making it into a champions league final.

you hadn’t moved, frozen to the spot as what just happened swirled and registered in your head. tears burned in your eyes but you blinked them away. arms wrapped around you and you could faintly hear the murmurs of vicky and esmee but you didn’t know what they were saying. you didn’t look at them. you couldn’t bring yourself to look at the more senior members of the team.

it was alexia and mapi’s first champions league since returning properly from injury and deep down you knew that it was probably the last champions league for some of the others and you’d gone and thrown it away.

time seemed to move very slowly and you must’ve been running on autopilot because the next time you blinked, you were curled up in a seat on an unusually quiet bus. you were acutely aware of ingrid sitting next to you and the fact that mapi was somewhere close by. but you didn’t remember coming off the pitch or getting changed or even getting on the bus.

when the bus came to a stop outside the hotel, you were quick to grab your bag and shoot off it, hanging back a little bit to wait for jana who was supposed to be your roommate for the night.

but your arm was tapped and you turned to see mapi, a small smile on her face. “you are with us tonight, nena.”

you nodded, feeling a little bit relieved. you loved jana but you knew that she’d probably make you talk about what happened whereas mapi and ingrid would give you space to process it.

so you trailed behind the couple as the three of you made your way through the hotel. you immediately sat on the bed that looked untouched, automatically assuming that the two were already sharing the other bed.

ingrid didn’t have the heart to tell you that as per the rules, they hadn’t been sharing a bed but she was certain that bending the rules for you wouldn’t be an issue.

you didn’t get any sleep that night, tossing and turning before ultimately staring at the ceiling. the penalty played over and over in your head like a movie. a never ending movie.

after a few more minutes of growing irritability, you sat up and threw the covers off you. quietly, you creeped over to the window and leaned your forehead against the cool glass, staring into the lightening sky.

the light of your phone reflected but you didn’t move to look at it. why would you? it wasn’t going to be anything good. a tear dropped onto your arm before you even noticed you were crying. you harshly wiped at your eyes. you had no right to cry or be upset. the others did but not you.

it was your fault after all.

your mind wandered. what would’ve happened if someone else had taken the last penalty? what if you’d taken an earlier penalty? what if you didn’t take one at all? should you have taken one at all?

suddenly you weren’t so sure.

ᡣ𐭩

you sobbed softly into bagheera’s fur, the thought of going into training making you sick to your stomach.

as soon as you’d stepped foot back in barcelona, you’d retreated into your room at mapi and ingrid’s place and never came out. you didn’t answer your phone, you didn’t post anything on your social media’s. you didn’t do anything. the only people you’d interacted with being the couple who had opened their home to you but even that was rare.

if you had a choice, you’d have chosen to slowly integrate yourself back with the girls. but you didn’t have a choice. you had to go back to training, being thrown straight into the deep end with people who probably hated you and in your eyes, they had every right to do so.

you could hear mapi and ingrid moving around and chattering quietly and when footsteps got a little too close, you held your breath, swallowing your sob. there was a soft knock at the door then.

“nena?” mapi’s soft voice sounded through the door and you sat up slightly. she wasn’t going to come in, you knew that. “we are leaving in five minutes.”

those simple words had you burying your face further into the cat’s soft fur. you took deep breaths, willing yourself not to cry again. with a sense of hesitation, you let bagheera go and slipped off your bed. once you were sure the spaniard had left, you snuck into the bathroom.

your reflection made you wince. you weren’t going to be able to cover up those bags. and the splotchiness on your face didn’t seem to budge when you splashed yourself with water.

with a heaved sigh, you grabbed your stuff from your room and granted bagheera his freedom, following behind him as he darted straight to mapi.

truthfully neither mapi or ingrid thought you’d actually attend training so they’d already pre-warned jona and alexia of your potential absence.

but then you walked into the living room, training bag on your shoulder and a tired look on your face.

“ready elskling?” ingrid asked softly and you nodded.

the short drive to the training centre left you filled with more dread. and when mapi pulled up, you muttered something about needing to use the bathroom before running faster than you ever had.

your bag fell to the floor as soon as you’d reached your destination. your hands gripped the edge of a sink as you willed yourself to breathe. but nothing seemed to work.

you sunk to your knees, head pressed against the cool ceramic as your breathing worsened.

tears spilled down your cheeks, a feeling of dread growing worse with each passing second, and you wanted—needed to calm down. ingrid or mapi would soon raise the alarm that you still weren’t there and someone would come looking for you.

the thought of being late and potentially making the others late made you feel even worse. and you somehow sobbed between your staggered breaths.

the reasons to hate you kept piling up and you wondered how long it would be until you did something truly unforgivable. well you supposed you already had.

the door opened and again, time seemed to slow down for you. you were extremely aware of the arms wrapped around you, the hand rubbing your back soothingly, and the voice quietly encouraging you to breathe.

and then you were all on the floor, sitting in silence. a terrible, deafening silence. alexia, ingrid, and frido had never seen you look so small and childlike, a harsh reminder for them that that’s exactly what you were. a child. who appeared to have the weight of the world on your shoulders.

“it is okay, nena,” alexia said softly. your jaw clenched a little but you said nothing. “you are young. we all made mistakes when we were young.”

you held back the urge to laugh in her face. whilst that may have been true, you seriously doubted that any of them had single-handedly threw away a chamipions league semi-final.

“we win as a team and we lose as a team,” frido added on. “we are a family.”

“and without you we wouldn’t have even made it to penalties. you got us there elskling.”

you nodded but made no move to speak or even look at them, having kept your eyes trained on your linked hands.

it quickly became very obvious that you were still not in the mood for social interactions but the three held a little hope in their hearts as you scampered behind them to get ready for training.

the session wasn’t too bad. you did what you were supposed to do with minimum fuss and you kept to yourself. maybe giving vicky and esmee a small smile every now and then.

to them, it was progress. to you, it was nothing. merely a gesture of goodwill to show them that they were in your good books. you still didn’t speak though and ingrid’s words circled your mind. she was right, you were the reason barcelona had even made it to penalties but you were also the reason barcelona lost out and you knew which one was being spoken about all the time.

when you returned home with mapi and ingrid, you went straight to your room, placing yourself into the bay window and staring down at the busy street below. soft knocks sounded and the door opened, bagheera’s quiet meow drawing your attention. you glanced over your shoulder to see mapi stood there, two cups of coffee in her hands.

she motioned to the space next to you and you barely nodded, eyes on the soft cat as he jumped onto your lap. the spaniard carefully placed the cup into your hand. you brought it up to your lips, sipping it slowly. “good?”

“yes, thank you.” you whispered.

it silent again, something you’d actually grown quite fond of. mapi’s presence was comforting in a way but you knew she was still mad at you so when she spoke up again, you told her what she wanted to hear.

“you are okay nena, right?” she asked but the concern in her eyes wasn’t noticed by you and you nodded, desperate for her to leave so you could cry in peace. “estas segura?”

“i’m sure.”

#woso imagine #woso fanfics #woso x reader #woso #barça femeni #barcelona femeni #alexia putellas #ona batlle #keira walsh #lucy bronze #mapi leon #ingrid engen #esmee brugts #jana fernandez

[nervoussagittarius]

furniture shopping + night out

matt sturniolo x influencer!reader

summary: your day in the life vlog ft. your boyfriend matt, request

warnings: fluff, maybe language

“good morning vlog” you said taking a sip of your coffee. the sun was just starting to come through your apartment windows as people filled the streets below. “i have a very exciting day planned today so i thought i’d intro the video now and we can chat for a minute.”

you began to get all of the ingredients out to make breakfast for you and matt while you talked to the vlog about your night. your videos tended to feel like a facetime call between you and your fans. everyone loved how personal and friendly they felt. “matt spent the night here yesterday, and i figured i’d be a good girlfriend and make us breakfast. i convinced matt to go to ikea with me this morning because i’ve been in this apartment for about a month now, and i still have no living room furniture. so we’re going to try to fix that.”

as you continued making breakfast matt finally woke up and decided to join you in the kitchen. “okay guys, be honest do these pancakes look good? i hope so. but i’m going to go wake matt up-” matt appeared from around the corner at this statement. “oh nevermind. hi baby! good morning.” matt, not being fully awake yet, gave you a small groan and fell into your arms for a hug. you returned it, holding him for what felt like hours. neither of you complained though. you and matt could be surgically attached and it still wouldn’t be close enough for the two of you.

you turned your head to the side looking at your counter. “me and my friends talked about last night and what we have planned for this morning while i made us breakfast.” “your friends?” matt questioned since he was the only one in your house. “yeah my friends in the vlog” you said with a ‘duh’ tone, earning yourself a poke in the side from matt.

you picked up your camera again about an hour later while you were in the car. focusing the lens on matt, you began to ask him questions. “how do you feel now that i might actually have a couch after a month?” you asked with a laugh. matt’s smile brightened as he took his eyes off the road for a second to look between you and your camera. “i’m happy that we’ll finally have some place to sit other then your kitchen table. i’m excited to go shopping if you’re excited.” he reached over to pat your knee.

“matt’s not the biggest fan of shopping if you couldn’t tell. or if you’ve seen his house you’d know how unfurnished it is.” you said setting the camera on the dash to look at both of you. “listen, i just don’t see the point in worrying about how my house looks when i can be doing fun stuff with my life.” matt said with a chuckle. he grabbed your hand so you knew he was fully just joking to mess with you. “i think furniture shopping is fun. we’ll see you guys again hopefully when i have a couch.”

you were back in the car when you found yourself filming again. you head rested on matt’s ands your intertwined arms as you sat in the parking lot. “bad news guys. we couldn’t find a couch.” you removed yourself from matt as he started backing out of the parking spot. his hand now rested on the back of your neck as he played with your hair. “so sad. i still have to sit on the floor.” matt remarked. you gave him a discouraged laugh catching his attention. he looked over at you while at the red light. “don’t worry sweetheart we’ll figure it out.” he leaned over quickly to kiss you cheek. “thanks matt. we’ll see you guys later.” you said giving your vlog a small smile.

a few hours had past as you and matt spent some quality time together at your apartment. it wasn’t often that you guys got alone time so you cherished it when you did. no meetings, no sibling, and no cameras. but that came to an end when you realized you had a vlog to finish.

matt was the one to pick up your camera this time. you were in your bathroom getting ready for the prada event you were going to tonight. matt thought this would be the perfect time to try and scare you. he quietly walked through your house, making his way to you. unfortunately for him you caught him in this act. his reflection showed up in the corner of your mirror. “what are you doing?” “no i’ve been caught. i was trying to scare you.” he said with a laugh. “next time, baby” he set your camera on your bathroom counter and came around to hug you from behind. “you look really pretty, sweetheart. do you want to tell them where we’re going?” he asked as he gently layed his chin in your shoulder. he didn’t want to mess up what you were doing.

matt’s comment had made you blush, but you’ll quickly pulled yourself back together. “thanks baby. um- matt did a photoshoot with prada recently, and he looked incredible. so they invited us to an event they’re throwing tonight.” “if we make it there.” matt threw out winking at the camera. you looked at him in the mirror quickly as you threw your arm back to jokingly hit him in the shoulder. “matthew!” you exclaimed. “what? im just saying their might be traffic.” he shrugged acting nonchalantly as you rolled your eyes.

“anyway guys i think we’re going to call it a night. i’ll let you know tomorrow how the event went. i love you and i’ll see you soon.” you smiled picking up the camera as matt starts to walk out of the bathroom. “wait, matt! do you have any last words for our friends?” he turned to you with a slight smirk. he quickly screamed in the camera before running off. “i’m so sorry head phone users.” and you ended the video

an: i’m sorry this is so short but i wanted to make this different from chris’s so i hope you enjoy. i also slightly based this off of the vibe of jules leblancs blogs because i love them 🤍

#nick sturniolo #matt sturniolo x reader #chris sturniolo #chris sturniolo x reader #chris sturniolo smut #matt sturniolo fluff #matt sturniolo smut #sturniolo fanfic #matt sturniolo imagine #matt x reader #matt sturniolo

[jockbroski34]

The Bro Cap

Biology was my favorite class this semester.  Not only did I find science to be interesting, but I also shared the class with one of the hottest guys in the school: Aaron Moore.  He was the star of the school’s baseball team as a pitcher and he was the talk of the school.  Girls were always swooning over him for how tall and handsome and athletic he was.  He was good at every sport; football, basketball, and so on, but in school, he played baseball.  He was a major source of envy for a lot of guys.  A lot of guys wished they could be him.  I, however, wanted to be with him.  Fortunately, I sit behind him in class, so I get the best view of him, despite being from behind.  At least it meant he wouldn’t see me watching him.

I often found myself getting distracted by him.  Even if I couldn’t see his face, I could see his broad shoulders, which were built like mountains, as well as his arms which were shaped like mounds of muscle.  His tall stature sometimes made it hard to look at the board, not that it was the main place my eyes were looking at in the first place.  His favorite baseball hat, adorned with our school team’s logo on it, was worn backwards like most of the jocks at the school.  He didn’t come off like the rest of them though.  His relaxed vibe made him easy to talk to and he could be quite funny compared to the rest of the meathead jocks.  He got along with everyone really well, making him very well-liked.  Although he was far from the smartest guy in the class, I could tell that he tried.  It was no wonder why he was so popular.

Today, I was daydreaming when I was disrupted by our teacher, Mr. Martin.  I felt him stare directly at me, almost as if he knew I wasn’t paying attention.  It was like he could read my every thought, and honestly, if that were true, that’d be extremely humiliating.  The last thing I needed was for my crush on Aaron to be exposed to the rest of the class.  Knowing how embarrassing he could be, I wouldn’t put it past him.  He asked me a question, and I thankfully already knew the answer, as I awakened from my daydream.

“Correct!  I wasn’t sure if you were paying attention or not,” he chuckled.  “You always look like you’re off in your own little world.  But you still manage to do well.  You gotta tell the rest of your class your secret.”  Looks like someone has caught on to my tendencies.  Mr. Martin was a middle-aged guy, probably in his 30s.  He looked good for his age, and was a pretty relaxed and carefree teacher.

The class went by as usual, and eventually we were dismissed.  All of the other students dispersed, but I needed to ask our professor a question about the homework.  He helped clarify things for me thankfully.  I was about to leave, but then he pointed out something on the ground.

“Hey Aiden, doesn’t Aaron sit in front of you?  That’s his hat, right?”  he asked.

“Yeah, I always see him wear it.”  It was unusual for him to have left it here by accident.

“Do you know if you can bring it to him today?  If not, I can keep it here until next class.”

“I’ll hold onto it until I see him next.  I have a feeling I’ll run into him later.”  I don’t know why I said that.  We don’t have any other classes together and we certainly aren’t close enough to be friends, even if I wished we were.  I’m also not on the baseball team.  Either way, my professor smiled for helping him out.

Regardless, I grabbed Aaron’s hat, but instead of chasing after him, I realized I really needed to go to the bathroom.  He was probably long gone anyways.  After I went, I noticed that I was still holding onto his hat.  I went to observe it and I noticed that it smelled a little like him, with a mix of sweat from wearing it all day and whatever shampoo he used.  I knew I shouldn’t, but I felt a sudden urge to put Aaron’s hat on.  Despite the fact that I would feel really embarrassed if someone saw me wearing it, I knew I would likely never get this opportunity again.  I was completely alone, so it’s not like there’s anything wrong with it.  It wasn’t just any hat, it was Aaron’s.  It’s not like he had lice or anything.  What’s the worst that could happen?

And so I put it on, wearing it backwards like he would.  Strangely, for a few seconds, I felt as though time had completely stopped.  The leaky sink faucet paused its rhythmic dripping.  The stomping of feet in the hallway deafened.  My watch skipped a tick.  But as time seemed to return to its natural course, I was able to see how I looked.  I had to admit, I looked really good in it.  I wouldn’t call myself an unattractive guy, but Aaron was way out of my league.  Despite that, a smirk appeared on my face.  A wave of confidence washed over me, almost like a little bit of Aaron had rubbed off on me.  Suddenly, I didn’t really feel like taking it off anymore.  I wasn’t too worried about what would happen if Aaron or one of his friends saw me wearing it.

After admiring myself in the mirror for a few minutes, I realized that I was late to my next class, algebra.  I had no idea I had spent so much time checking myself out.  I must’ve lost track of time.  As I walked to my seat, I felt like all eyes were on me for some reason.  I never used to make much of an impression on most people.  I was quiet and had only a couple friends.  Normally, I would’ve felt a little anxious with so many people staring at me, but I didn’t really give a shit now.

“Late as always, aren’t we Aiden?”  the teacher remarked.  Very funny.  I always showed up on time.  I sat down in my seat, but it didn’t feel right.  My body squeezed tight into the desk.  I felt like I was sitting in a chair meant for a middle schooler.  Weird.  Something weird is going on, but I can’t figure out what it is.

The class was just as weird because I felt like my classmates were a little more talkative.  I couldn’t focus during class due to being distracted by someone whispering.  I still felt a couple of their eyes on me.  I looked over and made brief eye contact with one of the girls on the far side of the room.  She immediately looked away and giggled towards one of her friends.  Her cheeks turned a deep crimson, the color of passion.  She was cute, but definitely out of my league.  I wasn’t straight either way, so I didn’t care if she was into me.

Normally, I was good at math, even if I didn’t like it, but I felt myself struggling to answer questions today.  Something must be wrong.  The room felt hotter than usual, and I felt myself sweat a little and my body started to ache.  I noticed that I smelled a little like Aaron’s cologne.  I’ve recognized his scent from sitting behind him, but for that smell to linger and for me to smell like him is really weird.

Class was dismissed, and this was usually when I went to lunch.  I received a text from one of my friends, Bryan, from half an hour earlier.

Bryan: Hey, me and the guys are getting food.  Wanna come with?

Normally, we always got lunch at the same time.  But for some reason, I didn’t really want to?  That’s weird for me.  I felt my fingers move on my own as they typed out a message.

Me: nah bro i dont feel like it mayb sum other time dude

I didn’t text like that normally.  Nor did I turn down my friends. Is it the…Before I could finish my thought, I was interrupted by the booming sound of two guys further down the hall, with one of them calling my name.  They were two jocks.  I recognized that they were both friends with Aaron because they hung out together a lot.  What did they want?  I didn’t really get along well with either of them or the rest of their kind.  Hopefully they didn’t think I was a pervert for wearing Aaron’s hat and beat me up.

“Sup bro, we were just about to get some food before hitting the gym.  Wanna come with?”  the other jock asked me.  Judging from his tone, he seemed surprisingly friendly with me.

Were they serious?  Did these jocks actually think I was one of them?  I would never get an opportunity to hang out with them again, so I agreed.  Part of me felt guilty for ditching my nerdy friends to hang out with the jocks, but I knew they were cool guys.  My perspective on these two big jocks changed as I walked with them.  For some reason, I felt a strong sense of camaraderie with them, almost like I’ve known them for a long time.  I’m not sure why I was so intimidated by them before.  They were really chill.

I saw another one of my friends as I walked with my new friends.  I waved to him, but he barely seemed to notice me.  Was he mad at me for skipping lunch with them or did he seriously not recognize me since I was hanging out with the jocks?  It almost felt like he didn’t know me at all.

I pulled out my phone to see what was up with him, until I realized that Bryan had finally responded to me.

Bryan: My bad.  Thought you were someone else.  He must’ve given me the wrong number.

Was this some kind of prank?  He obviously knew my number.  Of course he knows who I am.  Whatever, I don’t care what a nerd like him thinks.  I put my phone away and resumed chatting with my jock friends.  You know, my real friends.  I noticed as I walked with them that they didn’t look as big and menacing as they seemed.  Either that or maybe I hit my growth spurt recently.

We went and got food, with the jocks making sure I got enough protein.  I swear I almost never eat this much.  The jocks must eat a lot to stay in shape, I thought to myself.  But did they seriously want me to go to the gym with them?  I had class soon.  But these guys were cool and I didn’t want to disappoint my bros.  I figured I could miss a day and go lift with them.  As long as it doesn’t turn into a habit.

I realized as we stepped into the gym that I had never worked out before nor had I stepped into an actual gym.  I was worried about coming across as weak and humiliating myself in front of them. I changed into some clothes that I'm not really sure when I bought, a tank top and gym shorts.  To my surprise, I simply followed the motions of my bros and I was able to work out with them just fine.  I noticed that I was able to keep up with their workouts, and I surprised myself with how much I could lift.  It shouldn’t have been possible to lift as much as they did but maybe they were just going easy on me because they knew I was a beginner.  By the time we finished, I was just in time for my last class.  But just before I parted ways with my new friends, one of them said something that caught me off guard.

“Later, Moore.”

Must’ve been a slip of the tongue.  There was no way in hell they mistook me for Aaron.  At least it gave me a mental reminder to give Aaron his hat back next time I see him.  Although…his hat is so nice that I’m a little tempted to keep it for myself.  He could always just get another one, right?  I just don’t want him to see me wearing it though, so I’ll only do it when he’s not around.

In class, everyone was still staring at me as if I went to school in my underwear.  Maybe there was something weird about me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.  I did smell a little bit since I came from my workout, but I don’t think it was that.  I shrugged it off.  They can stare all they want for all I care.  I felt incredibly sore after my workout, and my arms looked unnaturally swollen.  If I had to be honest, I almost felt as big as the two jocks I worked out with.  But in such a short amount of time?  With no prior lifting experience?  That was impossible.

I found myself completely zoned out and indifferent to class today.  All I wanted to do was leave and uh…What was it that I had going on later?  I pondered that thought throughout the entire class period.  Eventually, we were dismissed and I was free to leave.  I was walking towards the dorms until I ran into, guess who?  Aaron Moore.

“Hey bro, you still coming to practice?”  he asked.

“Practice?”

“Yeah, baseball practice, you big dummy!  You know, you’re always so forgetful, dude.  Good thing I always was the smarter one, bro.”

“Yeah, you’re right, bro.  My bad.”  I’m not sure which statement I was agreeing with.  But as I looked at him, I realized something.  He was wearing his hat!  But then how was I wearing his hat if he was wearing it?  “I thought you lost your hat.  How are you wearing it?”

“I was wearing my hat all day, dude.  One day you decided to copy me and wear your hat to school like I do.  But honestly, I think you rock it better than I do, so keep it up.  You’ll impress the ladies.”  But I was gay.  And I’ve only had this hat for a day.  If it wasn’t his, then how was it actually mine?  I was overwhelmed and full of questions after everything that had happened today, from my growth spurt, to me hanging out with the jocks, to my old friends barely knowing who I am, but I didn’t seem to have the brain power at the moment to seek the answers to them.

As we walked, I kept chatting with Aaron as if it was natural, as if we always knew each other.  Something felt off, but I couldn’t figure it out.  Was it because we were going to practice?  I’ve never played baseball in my life.  Nah, that can’t be right.  I feel like I’ve swung a bat before…  We went into the locker room to change.  I looked in the mirror and paused for a second.

My reflection wasn’t there.  Someone else’s was.  Someone much stronger and much taller than me.  That wasn’t me.  It was Aaron Moore.

No, except it wasn’t an exact match.  There was enough different about the guy in front of me to know that it wasn’t Aaron.  This figure was a little stronger than him, and still stood probably a little over 6 feet tall.  I walked closer.  “Aaron” walked closer.  I moved my hand to feel my face.  So did “Aaron”.  A dull, confused look appeared on his face.  Had I really become him?  But Aaron was over on the other end of the room changing.  Then who am I?  Was I like this since I put the hat on earlier?  I reached into my wallet and pulled out my ID.

Aiden Moore...That’s not my last name.  That’s…Aaron’s?  Normally I wouldn’t have minded taking his last name, but we definitely WEREN’T married.  As far as I knew, Aaron was as straight as an arrow.

Date of Birth: 08/17/2003…If I recall, that’s Aaron’s birthday.  I knew my birthday, and it was in January.  Don’t tell me…Are we…?

I compared the face in the ID to the one in the mirror.  It wasn’t an illusion, and it wasn’t a dream.  It was like I was his twin!  Aaron was an only child though and I only had sisters.  At this point, I was so confused and overwhelmed.  Panic was the only emotion I could feel as I felt like I was going through an identity crisis.  I realized that this all started when I wore his hat.  I reached to grab it off of my head…until I felt a hand touch my shoulder.  My bro…I mean Aaron.

“Admiring yourself in the mirror, bro?  Yeah, you’re a pretty handsome dude just like me.  I think it runs in the blood, you know.  You like that, right?”  He placed his other hand on my head, pushing the hat tighter on my head.  I nodded.  I proceeded to flex, as I became self-absorbed with my own reflection.  I always thought rather highly of myself, especially about my body.  At this point, I couldn’t comprehend the paradox of me somehow being his own non-existent twin brother.

“You know, not every guy is lucky enough to have a cool brother like I do, let alone a twin.  The two of us can play ball together, work out together, and even get all the chicks we want together.  This is all you ever wanted, right?”  He wasn’t necessarily wrong, but I wanted to be “with” Aaron, not be him.  Whoever granted me this wish got it all wrong.  But as I listened to him, I started to realize that maybe it wasn’t my wish to begin with.

“Yeah bro.  This shit’s the life, dude.”  I noticed Aaron’s face light up as I said that.  The way I talked sounded like it came out of the mouth of some dudebro.  I noticed his irresistible smirk that was always on his face when he was in a good mood.  As I kept admiring myself in the mirror, I felt my mind slow…down...like it was on autopilot…

“That’s right…Just let it happen…  I know it’s been a while, so it’s okay if you don’t remember, but you know that one trophy we won a couple years back?  During senior year?”

“Fuck yeah, bro.  I remember.”  But I’ve never played baseball before…But…I have right?  I know I have.

“You know you were the reason we won, right?  One lucky hit in the bottom of the ninth, and you practically won us the game.  I’ve never been more proud of you bro.”  Aaron patted me on the back.  I remembered that game fondly, even though I should have no recollection of it.  That year, our baseball team was the best in the state.  And I…led our team to a championship?  As much as I tried to deny it in my head, the memories felt real.  But why was he reminding me of this now?

“You didn’t do half bad yourself, bro.”

As Aaron and I kept chatting, the memories of being his twin brother kept flowing into my brain, as memories of my former life faded away.  Turns out that I was the brother he never had.  We were a pair.  We complemented each other perfectly.  I was actually the twin brother of the most popular guy in the school.  I remember I thought he was hot…wait, what the fuck, bro?  That’s gay as shit.  And weird.  This was my own twin we were talking about.  Although I guess if I was a handsome stud, then he’d have to be too.  After all, no girl can resist either one of us.

“So the hat is working…”  Aaron whispered under his breath.

“What hat?”

“Nothing, bro!  I was just saying how good your hat looks on you.  Come on, let’s go.”  I followed him, as my transformation was now complete.

From this day on, I was Aiden Moore, Aaron Moore’s twin brother.  Except that’s who I was technically born as and that's who everyone already knew me as.  Although we had a lot in common, I definitely felt more like a stereotypical jock.  I was loud, cocky, and masculine, almost to the point of brutishness, compared to my brother who was a lot more laid-back and charismatic.  Not that it was a bad thing, although most nerds and weaker men would disagree.  But what me and Aaron did have in common was playing sports, working out, fucking chicks, and being the most popular guys in the school.  I know I wanted to be closer to Aaron, but I never expected this.  But at the same time, it felt good, almost pleasurable at times.  I realized that in my new state, I could hardly last a day without an orgasm, whether it was in my grip or in some bitch’s pussy.

Two days later, I had biology again.  I remembered I kinda struggled with this class.  I sat behind my bro as usual.  I was grateful for him since he always helped me with the homework.�� I noticed him talking to the professor in private when we got to class.  When I asked him, he wouldn’t say.  It wasn’t like him to keep secrets from me.  We practically knew everything about each other after all.  After class, I was called to stay after by Mr. Martin.

“Aiden Moore…Your brother told me to check up on you.  Is everything alright?  Did you need any guidance on the homework, too?”

“Never felt better, bro.  I think I was just up too late partying the other day.  And nah, I eventually figured it out, dude.”  I conveniently hid the fact that I copied the answers off of some nerd.

“Good, good.”  Mr. Martin smiled.  “I won’t leave you too long.  I know you two have your hands full with practice today.  Hmmm…Still wearing that hat, I see.  It suits you well, Aiden.”  I saw him write something down in a notebook as I left.  Mr. Martin was always cool.  I felt like he understood me and my brother better than most teachers here.  I couldn’t help but feel grateful for him, but for what?  I quickly discarded that thought because it wasn’t important to me.

What was important to me was hitting the gym with my bros.  I ditched class again, I don’t even remember what the class was anyways.  Probably nothing important.  As long as I pass and get to stay on the team, I couldn’t care less about how badly I do in school.  I’m basically only here because I got some fancy scholarship.

At the gym, I always pushed myself to lift the heaviest weights.  All of my bros were impressed with how much I could lift.  Must run in the blood.  After school, I went to practice with Aaron.  We shared a room at the dorms, and on the weekends, we always went to the biggest parties our school had to offer.  We always bragged to each other about what girls we slept with that night, almost like it was a competition.  Man, this was the life.  I never felt like I understood Aaron on a personal level until recently, but man, we were the luckiest pair of brothers in the school.

#jock #jock bro #jock tf #jock transformation #jockification #male hypnosis #male tf #male transformation #mental change #muscle tf #dumbing down #dumb jock #dumber #reality change #reality shifting #alternate reality #nerd to jock #muscle transformation #muscle #reprogramming #himbo tf #himbo #himbofication #frat bro #frat boy #backwards cap #fuckboi #fuck boy #gay to straight #college jock

[pit-and-the-pen]

Unrequited Love

A/N: I had to get to the airport to return a rental car like 5 hours early so I’m so sorry for the pure amount that I’ve been posting today but as a socially awkward girly, if I’m on my own phone then for sure no one is going to talk to me.

Anywho here is some angsty angst about day court!reader and Azriel. I’m thinking of making this like a mini series but idk who reader would end up with. (Let me know if you have any suggestions!)

Forgive any typos I wrote this on my phone.

Warnings: none

WC-1.4K

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My blood was boiling beneath my skin. Azriel has been complaining for the better part of an hour about Rhys gag order regarding Elain. I was trying not to roll my eyes as I had reached my wits end with his lamenting.

“I just don’t understand why he needs to meddle in this. I get she’s Feyre's sister but he doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” he runs a hand through his hair and leans back in his chair. “I just can’t help but think that sometimes the cauldron gets it wrong.”

His words were spoken so plainly. Anger wanes for a second as I swear I could feel my heart break inside my chest. The words seemed to echo in my head Maybe the cauldron gets it wrong. I almost would have rather had him carve out my heart with truth teller.

“What do you think?” He asks me and I sit reeling over his words. I can’t think of anything to say to him. The comforting words I would normally have for him can’t get past the anger starting to cloud my vision. So I simply shrug, avoiding the question. Desperately trying to change the subject.

“So this new book I’m reading…”

“Oh c’mon.” He interrupts me. “I know you have something to say. And I trust your advice more than anyone else. There isn’t anyone else I would rather talk to about this.” His eyes softened as he looked towards me. Instead of melting under his gaze like I normally do, red bites at the edge of my vision.

“I think you should leave her the hel alone.” My tone is not gentle. He freezes.

“What?”

“She has a mate already. And regardless of if you think the cauldron got it right. Lucien is the one mated to Elain,” I tried to keep my voice neutral. “And Lucien is a wonderful male who has been through a lot of shit. He deserves someone as sweet as Elain, if she ever comes around. You should stop meddling.”

His mouth opens, when no words come out, he closes it again. You see the muscles in his jaw tick as he clenches his teeth.

“What has gotten into you? When did you become Lucien’s spokesperson?” He spits at me. His face starts to get closer to mine as he leans over the table, slowly starting to rise to his feet.

The sane part of me is telling me to stand down. That one of the most powerful warriors in all of Prythian was starting to get angry at me. My mate was starting to get mad at me. But I would not cave under his intimidation.

“I became his spokesperson when you showed no respect for him. Or for Elain.” I noticed I was starting to get to my feet. “What about what she wants? She doesn’t owe you anything more than she owes Lucien. Rhys told you to stay away from a girl you feel entitled to and now you want to mope like a petulant teenager. Grow up Azriel.” He flinches before something stoney sets in his eyes.

“At least I’ve actually told her how I felt. What about you?” My stomach drops into my knees. “Sitting and pining over the same person for a century.”

“You knew?” My voice was nothing more than a whisper. This was not happening. I should have left when I had the chance.

“It’s not like you tried to hide it. I thought at some point you would get the hint that it wasn’t going to happen but yet there you always were trailing behind me like a sad little puppy.”

My hands on the table started to glow faintly. My anger was finally breaking through the surface.

“You asshole. You stupid Illyrian bastard.” The smirk that graced his face fell instantly. “After everything that I’ve done for you, you want to use my feelings for you as some fucking weapon against me.”

Even I was surprised at the venom in my words but I was on a roll. “I sat by for five hundred years. I sat by as you pined over Mor, someone I consider my sister. I felt that bond go unreturned.” He completely froze at my words. Words I have never spoken out loud to anyone.

“Wait-“

“No. You get to hear this shadowslinger.” I pressed my finger to his chest and he stepped back like I had hit him. A small part of me wishes I had. But this. This right here is why Rhys kept me around. I didn’t need to throw a punch to put someone on their knees.

“I followed you around like a lost puppy and you loved it. Every second of it. I was stupid enough at some point to believe that it was because you felt it too. And I couldn’t get away from those feelings,could get away from you. Every time I tried I would damn near drive myself crazy and then you would smile or say some funny joke and I was right back to where I started.” I willed the slight shake in my voice to disappear. “You just wanted to feel important because the one you truly loved wouldn’t have even entertained the thought. Took other males into her bed, but not you right? So why not go for the next available thing. Me. Who cares if I got hurt? Who cares that I still fucking loved you through all of it? Not you clearly. You played me like a fucking fiddle and I played my part well.”

When I finally looked back up at his face I saw nothing but a shell of the male that stood in front of me. Even his shadows had retreated from his side. Looking down I realized they were sitting at my feet. I pushed down the glimmer of something I didn’t have time to think about at the sight.

“Please. Just stop.” He pleaded.

“Why? Because it hurts to hear? Fuck you. “And you think that didn’t hurt me too?” I watched him pale. “You didn’t think it killed me to feel that empty weight in my chest every time I looked at you. Everyday that I waited and wished that you would feel that stupid bond I’ve had to live with for the last two centuries.”

He gasped at my words cutting me off

“You never told me about that. I just thought it was… I don’t know… I thought it was a crush like how I felt with Mor”

A muscle in my jaw ticked. “I shouldn’t have had to! The whole point is that you feel it too. Bonds aren’t supposed to be one sided but for some gods unknown reason, you didn’t,” I felt the anger really starting to boil over.

“Every time I heard you rambling on and on about how perfect Mor was, about the females you took into your bed. I sat by all of it, for what? Three sisters for three brothers?!” I was screaming now, my hands shaking by my side

“What happens when she’s all fixed up too Azriel? When she feels this same thing I feel when she looks at Lucien. Onto the next one for me to hear about I guess . Always on the sidelines. Always the sweet face to come back to at the end of the day but never the one you want to be with.” I took a deep breath for the words about to come out of my mouth, steeling my nerves.

“I’m done. With this. With you. Fuck this entire gods damned city. I will not sit by and play second to whoever you deem worthy enough for the rest of my life.”

He held up his hand like he was going to reach up for me but the light that was glowing off my skin was warning enough.

“Where will you go?” Was all he had the nerve to say.

I let out a cold, twisted laugh. “Anywhere but here. Hel I could finally go home. Helion has

been asking me to come back for years now. All I know it will be somewhere where you can’t come and ruin another half a century of my life. Because that’s what you did. I wasted all this time on someone I knew wouldn’t love me. But I can agree with you on something, Azriel.” I paused long enough to see the hope in his eyes as he whispered “what?”

“That sometimes the cauldron does get it wrong.”

I walked out of that room with my head held high

#acomaf #acosf #acotar fanfiction #azriel acotar #acotar #acowar #azriel angst #azriels kinda dick in this one #I promise I love him but this popped into my head #azriel x reader #azriel x you #no happy ending #a court of thorns and roses #i make no apologies #well maybe a little