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radiant-reid · 2 years

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The Public Eye

Summary: Spencer gets closer to a famous actress, discovering they're incredibly similar and she really likes him

reader is the famous actress that reid kisses in the pool instead of lila archer with s/8 spence, and the team teases him ofc but he thinks nothing of it, but later in an interview she says he’s the best kiss she’s ever had and penelope (bc who else would be up to date on pop culture hotch? LMAO) is ecstatic and shows it to him

A/n: I went for season 8 Spencer because he deserved some of the happiness the CM writers refused to give him,but this isn't a direct rewriting of the plot in 1x18 Also, there is a part two coming

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Fem!Reader

Content Warning: stalking | being held at gun point | discussion about the dark side of Hollywood (disordered eating, racism, sexism)

Word Count: 8.6k how ? idk and i'm sorry

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When the first few murders happened in LA, Y/n was slightly concerned. Of course, crime had never been uncommon in the city, but the people being viciously killed were her fellow celebrities, people she'd brushed shoulders with at the Oscars or Golden Globes. Usually, she only heard about burglaries in their neighborhoods.

The terror sunk in when the notes started coming in. The threatening content caused enough grave concern for her manager to be dragging her to the police station. She was worried for her safety, but there wasn't any way she would get a reputation of being noncommital.

When the police detective introduced her to the BAU of the FBI, she didn't understand what part of her situation warranted that level of seriousness.

The team immediately recognized it had to be the same person. Especially when the note came right after the latest victim was found. They didn't wait to go and talk to the actress and her slightly irritating manager, Stephen.

Spencer didn't know much about pop culture or celebrities. Obviously, he figured they had to be attractive and appeal to the golden ratio. His expectations were exceeded an impossible level when he met Y/n L/n. So beautiful, in fact, that Spencer was considering watching some of the movies and TV shows she was in. If it wasn't unprofessional.

"It's only letters." Y/n tried to plead with the six agents and the high-ranking members of the LAPD. She turned to look at her manager, eyes begging him to side with her. Being put in protective custody wasn't something she could afford to do. "Seriously, I've had crazy fans before. Remember the guy that broke into my place and cooked me dinner." She reminded him and the police detective who had handled the case back then.

Spencer frowned at the anecdote, amazed it was something she could casually deal with. He'd seen it in other stalker cases, but somehow it hadn't occurred to him that famous people weren't always adored.

"Situations like this almost always turn violent if you don't comply to these demands," Spencer informed her of a part of their profile, reading over the note. "Especially since this person has already killed."

Y/n turned to him, frowning as she looked around the room like she was asking if Spencer was serious. She was dumbfounded, both by what he was saying, and his lack of bedside manner.

Her manager looked at her sternly. "This is just as serious as I told you it was, Cariño."

It wasn't easy news to process, but her initial reaction was stubbornness, giving everyone the allusion she was just like any other pretentious celebrity. "I'm not just going to bail on my commitments because of some creep." She firmly stated.

Morgan was looking increasingly irritated, picking up a headshot to show her. "Do you know who this is?" He asked her.

There was no confusion on her features, just annoyance, but at the photo, not the situation. "Of course, she's doing this. In the last week, she's done two interviews where all she did was drag my name." She told them, most definitely still irritated about it. "Girls supporting girls has not caught on in Hollywood." She scoffed, meeting JJ and Blake's eyes in the hope they'd relate.

Spencer knew what Morgan was about to do, and he wanted to stop him from sliding the photo to her because he could see a flicker of another emotion in her eyes. "She turned up dead this morning." He informed her.

Her eyes widened when she looked at the photo, jaw falling open. The color was draining from her face when she looked at the brutal wounds. It was, for lack of a better term, a bloodbath. The unsub's most vicious kill.

Guilty, she looked between Hotch and the police chief. "I-I didn't. I swear-" She stammered out, assuming that's what they were insinuating.

Alex placed a hand on her shoulder. "We don't think that you did." She assured the younger girl, who finally looked like she could breathe again after hearing that.

"What am I meant to do?" Y/n asked, her eyes shifting to Hotch, who she could see was in authority.

"She needs to go to set today," Stephen informed Hotch like her life was worth less than his paycheck. She nodded anyway despite how scared she looked.

Hotch sighed, glancing at the police chief as he came up with a plan. He could see how persistent the two of them were. "Make sure they clear all the nonessential personal from the set, and Morgan and Reid will go with you." He instructed her manager before looking at the two younger male agents, who nodded. They caught the underlying meaning of studying her victimology. "Ms. L/n, we're going to have to comb through everything about your life. There will be officers around you all the time. It's likely you know who this person is."

Her face paled again, and she had an urge to be sick. "I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can be of any help. I meet so many people each day." They always profiled before having suspects anyway.

While Y/n was handing all her information over, Hotch rounded up the team to go over their job. Spencer and Morgan, obviously, were going with her, Rossi to the latest crime scene, JJ was dealing with the media circus, Blake to the ME, and Hotch was running point from the precinct.

"Did you really have to show her the gruesome photos?" Spencer asked Morgan on the short walk to the SUV while the paparazzi clamored around them. The sun was almost too hot and the atmosphere too muggy for Spencer to be in a suit.

Slightly, he frowned, eyeing Spencer with suspicion, like he was trying to find out what he was thinking. "You're sweet on her." He spoke after a moment, with a teasing tone.

He tried to stop his eyes from bulging. "N-no, I'm not." His attempt to sound firm was futile. "A serial killer is stalking her. I just... feel bad for her, that's all."

"Mmhmm," Morgan commented, completely skeptical. "All I'm saying is she's pretty."

It was an understatement, and Spencer wasn't about to ruin his career, but if it was in a different universe, he'd be jealous of the fact she'd be interested in Morgan. Trying not to think about the hypothetical, he got in the passenger seat.

Morgan drove, getting directions from Y/n. He tried to engage her in some form of conversation and drag her attention away from her phone. "So, you like LA?"

She half scoffed, half chuckled, still scrolling on her screen. "Does anyone?"

He shrugged at that. "I saw your last movie. It was good." He complimented, causing her to look up at him.

"Thank you," Y/n replied, the second time Spencer had seen her genuine, even enthusiastic. "It was the first all-star, A list cast movie I've ever done. I remember being nervous the entire week before the first day." Spencer was taking in everything she was saying, profiling but also admiring.

"Your performance was incredible." The smile she gave Morgan was, as well. Spencer wished he'd seen it if it meant he got to see her smile like that. "You won an Oscar, right?"

She grinned even wider at that. "Best supporting actress and the movie won best picture." She replied, not in a boasting tone Spencer had expected from a celebrity. "I really wasn't sure what to say when I got up on stage because I definitely didn't think I'd win." Y/n continued, blushing when she replied she'd been rambling like she was scared of showing them her true personality. "It's in my bedroom if you wanna come see it." She offered, flashing him a flirty wink.

Morgan's reaction was what Spencer expected. The smirk Morgan was trying to hide was an expression he made at bars. "Who's your favorite person you've worked with?" He asked her, diverting the conversation to keep his professionalism.

She had already turned off her phone, gaze fixed on Morgan through the mirror. "Emma Watson." She answered without hesitation. "And, she knew who I was, so that was like a 'wow, I made it' moment. Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds are also fun, but I've only seen them at parties. Just as funny as they are on Instagram and Twitter." She realized she was doing it again, truthfully expressing herself, and stopped, getting out of the car once Morgan had parked without another word.

Two FBI agents acting as an entourage was not how she expected to arrive at set, but she didn't let it deter her from acting naturally. Her public, bubbly persona was something she wore like a shield. They trailed after her while she greeted everyone. Sociable, Spencer acknowledged, talking to everyone from the people putting food out on the buffet table to the producers.

Y/n turned back to them, clearly in her element. "You guys can have anything you want to eat or drink." She offered, spinning away from them when someone called her name.

It was a guy Spencer didn't recognize. Probably a celebrity since he wasn't wearing a shirt, muscles rivaling Morgan's. Spencer knew it was illogical, but it made him insecure. His brain went back to studying her victimology like he was meant to be doing.

The guy, who Morgan identified as her co-star, wrapped his arms around Y/n and lifted her up as he hugged her. "Brought some bodyguards today, princess?" He asked, reaching out to shake Morgan's hand with Y/n tucked under his other arm.

Spencer noticed her stiffen, but it was slight enough no one else did. "Yeah, something like that." She replied, pleading with the agents to not reveal her secret. They didn't even have a chance to before Y/n was being called to hair and make-up.

"I'll check her trailer, and you go with her," Morgan instructed, already stepping away like he knew Spencer would protest.

"What? Can't I go to the trailer?" Spencer challenged, feeling increasingly uncomfortable about being left alone with at least a hundred people on the film set. Profiling her trailer would be much less challenging, providing him with fewer possibilities to look like an idiot. Morgan turned to shake his head, already walking off. "Please, man?"

Spencer didn't get an answer before Morgan was gone, and he followed the direction Y/n went. He found her sitting in a swivel chair with her name on the back, dressed in a white robe.

"Hi." She waved when he came in, nodding at the seat next to her in a silent invitation to sit down. "Riley, this is Spencer. Spencer, Riley." Y/n introduced them. Spencer hadn't realized she knew his first name, but it sounded nice coming from her.

She shut her eyes when Riley put what Spencer thought was a pen on her eyelid. Intently, he watched as she drew perfect straight lines. She could sense he was looking at her, confirming her theory when she opened her eyes.

"You can ask me anything you need to in front of her," Y/n assured him with a smile. She could feel the nerves coming off him, noticing he was out of his comfort zone.

Spencer nodded, all of the questions he'd thought of asking her slipping out of his head. "D-did you know the beauty industry is valued at $527.4 billion a year?" He immediately blushed, already feeling like an idiot.

It wasn't exactly the question she was expecting. She could sense Riley chuckling at him warmly, but Y/n wouldn't have hesitated to kick her out if it was malicious.

"I didn't, but this set probably contributes half of that," Y/n answered, unknowingly reassuring him. "You're some kind of a genius, aren't you?"

Spencer could not contain the blush on his cheeks, hoping they'd think it was the weather. "I, uh, have a Ph.D. W-well, three." Apparently, it wasn't the answer Y/n or Riley had expected, from the way their eyes widened.

"Beauty and brains," Riley remarked to the actress, but Spencer caught it. His blushing only intensified when Y/n shot him a wink.

He tried to focus on the investigation, asking her questions about what she did each day so he could feed the information back to Penelope, who was digging through her life. He struggled to differentiate between her public eye character traits and her authentic personality.

"Spence, can I do your hair?" She asked him while she was having her hair done. His eyebrows furrowed together as he watched her snap the hair straightener together in her hands.

"And ruin those beautiful curls?" Riley commented, effortlessly twirling strands of Y/n's hair into perfect ringlets. Hearing people talk about him like that made him blush while his ego grew slightly.

Y/n was still grinning hopefully at him. He couldn't turn that down. "Uh, yeah, o-okay." Spencer agreed.

He turned around while Y/n adjusted her position, letting her clamp strands of his hair between the hot irons. It didn't take her very long to have his hair all straightened, running the end of a comb through it, so he had a middle part.

"Hey, pass me your phone." She requested, holding her hand out for Spencer to place his phone in.

Without thinking, he gave it to her, unlocked. There were secrets on the phone, but he was willing to do just about anything she asked. Y/n took a photo of his hair from the back. Before turning the camera around to hold it in front of his face. Using it as a mirror to show him the front view of his hair, she grinned as she looked into the lens, snapping a picture. Spencer always objected when Penelope tried to get him in her selfies, but he was sure he wouldn't be deleting the one she just took.

Y/n's fingers were still in his hair, gentle as she adjusted it. Spencer knew he shouldn't, but he liked being around her. Even if he was really just a bodyguard trying to figure out as much as he could about her because she was being obsessively stalked.

"I think it looks great." She told him when he spun back around to face her.

"Okay, you're done," Riley informed her, fluffing out her curls at the end.

Y/n looked at herself done up in the mirror for a moment. "Thank you. It looks amazing." She replied, flashing her friend an award-winning. Her phone buzzed on the dressing room table, and she picked it up to glance over the message. "No time to rest around here." She joked, getting up from her seat. Spencer followed, and they farewelled Riley before the tent.

Spencer insisted on walking her towards the wardrobe tent. Although the set was essential personnel only, it was still bustling with people. "If you, uh, n-need anything, I'll be... around." He assured her, awkwardly fiddling with his fingers.

"Thank you." Y/n sincerely replied, squeezing him on the arm before disappearing.

Spencer walked back across the set in search of Morgan. He found him stepping out of Y/n's trailer, his phone to his ear.

"Hey, baby girl, I'll call you back real quick," Morgan said as soon as his eyes locked on Spencer, or more specifically, his new hairdo. He walked to Spencer with a teasing smirk, shaking his head gently. "Pretty boy." He singsonged, clearly amused. "What happened to you?"

Spencer rolled his eyes, dodging Morgan's hand when it came to messy it. "She wanted to straighten it." He answered, trying to casually shrug it off. It only made Morgan chuckle. "It was for victimology!" He defended far too loudly, drawing the attention of some passersby.

"Garcia's collating information, so we'll have a file on her life when we get back," Morgan informed him, ignoring his reasoning. "So we're just sitting around here until she's done." His glance wasn't on Spencer. Instead, he was waving to three girls who were clearly talking about him as they walked past.

Figuring he'd make the most of her previous offer, Spencer went to the food tent. Thinking about the fact she had a stalker, he made sure he picked a bag of sealed chips. He and Morgan watched while they shot her scenes, one of which was Y/n kissing the guy she'd hugged when they first got there. Spencer could see how her hand slightly clenched like Y/n wasn't thrilled about the plot. Which was most likely why she insisted on retaking it twice with accompanying profuse apologies.

Once Y/n's scene was over, she made her way to Spencer and Morgan, talking to a few people along the way before pulling a seat over to sit next to them.

Casting a brief look around, she reached across to take some from the packet. "Thanks." She said, gently smiling at him. Spencer mirrored her smile, tipping the packet closer so she could have more if she wanted, while he purposefully ignored Morgan suspiciously eyeing the interaction.

Spencer was thankful he didn't have to give her an awkward reply when a young blonde came up to them. Someone Y/n closely knew, judging by how she jumped up to hug the girl.

"Ally!" She greeted her, turning back to Morgan and Spencer. "This is Spencer and Derek from the FBI. This is my PA." She informed them.

"Oh, about the stalker." Ally realized, eyeing Morgan up and down with a smirk. So she was close enough to Y/n to know what she was trying to keep secret. "Someone dropped these off at your trailer, maybe your on-screen, maybe off-screen romantic interest." She suggested with a smirk.

Faking enthusiasm, she took the teddy bear and box of fudge. Her excitement turned genuine when she read the label. "All the way from England! My favorite!" She cheered.

Morgan and Spencer shared a frantic look, springing up before she could do anything else. "Don't," Spencer said, shaking his head while Morgan took the box and bear out of her hands.

"Really?" Y/n exclaimed, looking irritated once again. Ally put a reassuring hand on her shoulder, trying to calm her down. Morgan was already on the phone with Hotch, getting the rest of the team there.

Only 15 minutes later, Y/n was in her trailer, with Morgan, Spencer, the police detective, Hotch, and Blake, desperately trying to calm herself down. Spencer noticed the odd looks they gave him at seeing his hair.

"We can's get a hold of Stephen at the moment, but Rossi's going to go see him once he's finished helping Garcia," Hotch filled them in. "And JJ's... busy." Understatement of the century.

Y/n brushed it off, knowing his schedule. "He's in a meeting, negotiating a New York Fashion Week contract for me." She told the group. "Can we read it now?" She questioned, looking at the letter still in Spencer's hand. It was in the fudge box, which was on the way to the lab for analysis.

Delicately opening the letter, Spencer read it. Then decided the extensive content was too violent to speak allowed. The silence tensioned the mood of the room as everyone's suspense grew.

"Blake." Spencer handed the letter, waiting for her reaction.

There were pictures, too. Of Y/n in the police precinct with the BAU. Even more troubling, photographs of Morgan and Spencer at set, labeling them as a threat.

She confirmed she was thinking the same thing with a direct nod, handing the letter over to Hotch. "The stalker's a woman." Even just from the number of adjectives.

Y/n clamped a hand over her mouth, the tears threatening to spill. It was all too real when she realized the stalker had been on set and potentially in her trailer. The thought made her sick to her stomach.

"Can I just read it? Please?" Y/n questioned, her emotions swaying between mad and sad.

"You don't want to do that." Spencer tenderly said, sitting down next to her on the couch. If he could have hugged her, he would. Hell, he would have done anything to make her smile.

With a frantic look, she turned to the agent she was closest to. "I can't put my life on hold until you catch whoever's doing this!" She vented, bouncing her knee up and down.

"Ms. L/n, I can assure you, we have our profile, and we will find this woman," Hotch assured her, restating the facts before dividing the team. "Reid, take her home. The rest of us will give the profile and run it against your acquaintances."

She opened her mouth to argue about the one scene she had left to shoot but stopped herself. After all, they were trying to protect her. It didn't mean she had to like it. "Okay, and thank you." She mumbled out.

The rest of them left the trailer, Hotch waiting back to slip Spencer a file on her. "Are you sure you don't want Morgan to do this?" Spencer asked, trying to keep his voice low while Y/n grabbed her things. "He'll actually be able to defend her."

"She needs someone she feels comfortable with who we know isn't involved, and from what I can see, that's you," Hotch told him, glancing at Y/n, who looked like fragile glass about to shatter.

Spencer frowned at the underlying message of the Unit Chief. "You think it's someone close to her?" He asked, worried about the effect it would have on her if one of the few people she seemed to be herself with was the stalker.

"We can't rule it out." Hotch reminded him.

"71% of stalking victims are stalked by someone they know and 27% by a stranger." Spencer justified his point before backpedaling. "But she's in the public eye, so I'm not sure the statistics can be interpreted the same way."

Hotch looked over Spencer's shoulder to see Y/n was almost ready. "They'll be officers outside. It's the safest place for her to be." He assured Spencer, leaving with the rest of the team when Y/n finished packing her things.

"So, you didn't want to be the one babysitting me?" She joked when they reached her car. A dark grey, two-door, convertible Ferrari with a red interior.

"I-it's not, uh, l-like that." He awkwardly defended himself, eliciting a giggle from Y/n, who clearly wasn't offended. "I can drive if you want." He suggested, hoping she'd turn him down.

Y/n softly stroked the door of the car. "Not my special Quicksilver." She joked, unlocking the car and getting in.

"You named your car?" Spencer asked, frowning slightly as he fumbled around to take his bag off and get in.

"Of course," Y/n replied like it was blatantly obvious. "Plus, it would be nice for me to do something myself." She said playfully, grinning at the other bag Spencer was holding. Hers. He was slightly apprehensive, not about her driving but because he knew how fast a car like that could potentially go.

She was a good driver, even in Los Angeles traffic. The 25-minute drive gave him enough time to read over her file Hotch had slipped him. But it was slightly uncomfortable with her being there.

"That's my entire life, isn't it?" Y/n asked, glancing over at him while she drove.

"Sorry. I just, uh, I have to." He cringed at the part of his job he hated, dealing with living victims.

Taking a left, she drove up a driveway Spencer wouldn't have known was there. "I just feel it should be thicker to summerize 27 years."

"The font size is small," Spencer explained, making her laugh even though it wasn't his intention. "I read really fast too."

"How fast?" She asked, unsure if he was serious.

Spencer wasn't sure he was ready to admit it, but she already knew how many PhDs he had. "20 000 words per minute."

She frowned to figure out if he was serious. "I don't know if I could read that many words in an hour."

"If you could, you'd be reading at 1.6x the lower end of the average 200 words per minute rate of an adult." Spencer rambled, about to say something else, when he stopped once the trees cleared. The house was impressive, but behind it, he could see the whole city in the distance. "Wow."

"Cool, right?" Y/n asked, parking the car near the garage. She wasn't deterred by the police cars there.

Stunned, Spencer nodded. The house was incredible as well. Luxurious, but not in an old-money rich type of way. It was minimalistic and modern. There were floor-to-ceiling windows along the entire bottom floor, and he could see the grand staircase in the entryway from outside.

He scrambled to get out of the car after her. "Your house is amazing." He complimented, following her to the front door.

"Thank you," Y/n replied, holding a key card up to the door panel like it was a hotel room. She opened the door and entered.

Inside, he could see all the way across the ground floor to the impressive view. The furniture didn't show much of a personality, all lavish and, Spencer was sure, expensive. He'd been in Rossi's mansion, but this was something else. The whole house was open-planned, with lots of squeaky clean glass. Technological too, by the complicated-looking control panels and automatic lights.

"You can put our stuff anywhere." She told him, watching the way he awkwardly stood there. Her statement contrasted the cleanliness of the mansion, where there was nothing was out of place.

Out of place himself, Spencer put his satchel and her bag on a chair at the kitchen island. It was like the rest of the house, with marble countertops and shiny floors.

Her attention was turned across the room when she heard paws against the floor. Spencer followed her gaze. "Buddy, hi!" She greeted the massive Saint Bernard, bending down to pat him. The dog nuzzled into her palm as she scratched around his head. She spun back to look at Spencer. "I promise I'm not a crazy dog-mom." She assured him.

"Dog mom?" Spencer questioned what he assumed to be a pop culture reference.

Upon speaking, the dog's attention was drawn to Spencer. He let out a low bark, suspicious of the new guest. "Hey, none of that," Y/n commanded. "This is a friend." Even though she was telling a dog that, Spencer smiled. "His name is Judge." She told Spencer. Suspiciously, Judge walked over to sniff the new guest, causing Spencer to step back. "Not a dog person?" She asked with a smile.

"Uh, I guess, but he's kind of big." Spencer froze as the dog sniffed him.

Y/n stoked his red-brown coat near his back while she spoke. "172 pounds." She informed him, grinning at her pet. Spencer reached down to pat his ears. "Someone abandoned him when he was just a little puppy. I've had him for 5 years now, and he has not stopped growing. He's kind of lazy, but Ally takes him out walking most mornings." She continued while they both petted the dog. Then her attention was elsewhere. "Do you want something to eat?" She offered. "I keep the good snacks by the pool."

Spencer followed her outside, looking around at the furniture before going past the big glass doors. The view of the city was even better out there. With trees lining the property, it almost felt like they were the only people in Bel Air.

There was an outdoor kitchen on the left side, with two bathrooms and a pool shed. Like a puppy, Spencer followed Y/n and Judge along side the pool's edge towards the kitchen.

She opened the mini-fridge to reveal drinks, jello, and ice cream in the freezer and a drawer to reveal chips, pretzels, cookies, and candy. "Gummy bears?" She suggested, giving him a packet.

"Can I have jello?" Spencer requested, causing her to grin at the fact he was relaxing a little. Before she could hand it to him, his phone started ringing. He checked the screen to see it was Hotch. "Sorry, I've got to take this." He apologized, stepping away so she couldn't hear the conversation. "Yeah, Hotch." He answered.

"Reid, her manager, Stephen, he's dead." Hotch filled him in. "Don't tell her yet."

Spencer frowned, spinning back to the happy-ish actress. "You want me to lie?" He returned.

"No, just don't tell her." Technically, a lie by omission. "The unsub is picking targets closer to her. Morgan, JJ, and Blake are on their way over to you. Make sure she's safe and don't do anything reckless." Spencer realized that was probably why he was sent there instead of Morgan.

"Hotch, this place has seven bedrooms and twelve bathrooms, and it's over 13000 square feet. She could easily already be here." Spencer whispered quietly, looking up at the second floor and realizing how easy it would be to be there without her knowing.

Although Spencer couldn't hear it, Hotch was concerned about the same thing. "Be prepared to talk her down then."

"Alright, bye." Spencer farewelled once Y/n walked over, plastering a smile back on his face.

"Sit," Y/n instructed, handing him the jello before sitting on the edge of the pool with her feet in the warm water. Spencer sat next to her, crossing his legs. "Did something happen?" She asked.

He gulped, well versed in hiding his lies. "No, I'm sorry." She drew her lips together, taking a handful of gummy bears. "Before, when Morgan asked if you liked Los Angeles, you didn't really answer."

"Are you looking for an answer now?" Y/n asked, waiting for a nod from him. "I like that." Her head turned to look at the sky glowing pink as the sunset.

"You're good at deflecting, too," Spencer observed, carefully eyeing her.

Instead of being mad, she smiled. "Thanks." She replied although she knew that wasn't the reply she wanted. "Do you ever feel like you're meant to adore your job? Just because everyone wants it." Her voice was quieter when she was being truthful.

Spencer knew how to reply to that. "Every second Wednesday of the month, they bring people in the academy or college students into the FBI to show them around. And they walk around our floor with dreams of being part of the team or the Bureau." He described, thinking back to last week. He realized he needed to open up if he wanted her to do the same thing. "I just lie when they ask me if this is the job I want to do."

"I've wanted to do this since I was 6," Y/n admitted.

"When you got played Dorothy in your elementary school's production of The Wizard of Oz?" Spencer cut her off to ask.

She turned to him with raised eyebrows. "You really know everything about me, don't you?"

"It was on the front page of your hometown's newspaper," Spencer informed her, thinking back to the contents of the manilla folder.

"My mom was so proud," Y/n said, smiling at the memory. The moment she decided, on stage with the spotlight on her. "I was so thrilled, just to be in the paper. Not the second time, though." She shook her head.

Spencer knew what she was talking about, 15-year-old Y/n on stage with jealous high school seniors while she had the lead. "You moved just after that." He recalled.

"Jet-set right into stardom." She dryly added. "I love this job, and I know I'm so fortunate." She prefaced while Spencer ate his jello, handing off her every word. It was nice, for once, to have someone to talk honestly to. "I was only 16 when I moved here, which is every 16-year-olds dream. And my mom was with me for a while, but this wasn't her home."

That wasn't exactly in her file. "You were here alone?"

"Sort of. I mean, you're never alone in LA." She answered, trying not to make it seem sad. "I loved it, and I still do, but I was kind of... groomed for this."

This was very clearly her. Not filtered for the public eye. "I know." He informed her, having noted the behavior. She frowned, not knowing how that was possible. "You flirted with Morgan when you spoke personally." He explained, Y/n cringing as he said it. "I know what it's like. I was 12 when I finished high school, and I left Las Vegas to come here and go to Cal Tech. I was 22 when I joined the BAU, and that's all I've done."

"What did you want to be as a kid?" She asked, trying to keep the conversation light.

"A magician," Spencer replied, beaming.

It was adorable. Without a doubt, Spencer had the prettiest smile Y/n had ever seen, and she couldn't help verbalizing it. "There's a lucky girl somewhere in DC." When his eyes snapped onto hers, she realized she might have said the wrong thing. "Or guy."

Spencer chuckled, shaking her head when he realized what she was saying. "No, there's not."

"There should be. You're a good listener." She absentmindedly commented, causing him to blush bright red nonetheless.

"It's more about listening to what's not being said," Spencer spoke. "The nonverbal communication. Like how there's something else you don't like about Hollywood."

How he could know, she wasn't sure. When she nodded to the food in front of them, it clicked in Spencer's brain; how she looked around at set before eating his food and the hidden fridge. "You've always got to look perfect." She mumbled. "I eat what I want, but Stephen is always pushing clean eating, even when I was 16, so it's easier if he doesn't know." Spencer hid his detectable reaction, and while it was sad he was dead, it didn't make him a good person.

"Why does he call you Cariño?" Spencer asked one of the things he still couldn't figure out while consciously using the incorrect verb.

She smiled slightly, showing their good bond. "It means-"

"Darling. It's Spanish." Spencer cut her off before she could continue. He worried she would take it the wrong way, but she laughed softly at him.

Y/n went on to explain it. "His real name's Esteban, but it's much harder to make it in LA with a name like that." Another thing that made her bitter towards the city. "So, what do you actually know about me? Or were we just hanging out today?"

Profiling people while they were there wasn't something Spencer liked, but he was confident in what he knew about her. Just because of their similarities. "I think that most people would assume you're extrinsically motivated, but they would be wrong. You've always been driven, which I know from how dedicated you were this morning about going to the set. I'd say you were a perfectionist" Y/n chuckled at her own stubbornness, but she could tell he knew what he was talking about. "People see it as self-importance because you're a celebrity, but you're extremely careful about your public image because you've never really felt like you belong." It made her slightly uncomfortable, feeling stripped from her carefully constructed qualities. "Private, too. No one knows just how much you donate to charity, and even your dog is a rescue. Your team manages most of your social media, and you try not to look at articles about yourself." Those were less of her dark secrets and more of her morals, something she wasn't ashamed he knew. "You don't trust too many people, although you appear warm towards everyone, again, because you're desperate for them to like you." There was the same uncomfortable feeling in her stomach, and she bit her lip as she tried not to cry. Spencer didn't notice enough to stop himself from continuing. "But I think you're lonely. When you're finished with award ceremonies, parties, or on set, you come back here, and you just feel empty." Spencer understood. He knew from the nights out with the team and trailing home to an empty apartment while everyone else had families. Y/n's heart was pounding, and her eyes were stinging as she bit back tears. "Of course, you don't need anyone because you've learned to be alone, but you overcompensate with a big house and a need to please. The praise is addicting to you. Once you started getting it, you needed more each time to feel good about yourself like a drug addiction."

When the tears streamed down her cheeks, Spencer wished he'd stopped the psychoanalysis before it got too personal. He felt guilt-ridden about it, unsure of what he would do if someone profiled him so thoroughly.

There was so much honestly Y/n didn't know what to do, trying not to sob out loud. He didn't say anything she hadn't thought before but hearing it aloud hurt.

By the time he realized what he'd done, she was already wiping up the tears. "S-sorry, I shouldn't have-"

"No." Y/n placed a hand on his arm, smiling gently. "It's okay." He didn't look like he believed her. "Seriously, Spencer. I asked what you knew, and I'm impressed. You're good at your job."

Spencer was still worried about what he'd done, even more so when Y/n got up. "Where are you going?"

"Just to get changed." She replied, with a genuine smile, assuring him nothing was wrong. He waited when she left, looking at the darkening sky as the stars appeared while he thought. What he had said was just what he wished he could say to himself in a mirror.

He didn't even notice she'd walked out of the house until there was a splash in the pool. "Y/n, what are you doing?" He asked when she popped her head up.

She floated on the surface, cheekily grinning at him. "Swimming, duh." The heating made the pool perfectly warm, and it made her feel like there everything was normal.

"We need to go inside," Spencer told her. "It's getting dark, and the unsub could be out here." Halfway through his talking, she put her head under the water. "Y/n? Seriously, come on." He begged, looking around at the dark hillside. "Get out, please."

"Why? This is fun." She replied, running a hand over her wet hair. "Come in."

Spencer quickly shook his head. "No." He firmly replied. "I'm meant to be protecting you."

"So, you've got to be close to me, and I'm in here." Y/n reasoned with flawed logic.

"Please, just get out." Spencer requested. He liked seeing her smile, but he didn't want to put her in danger.

There was a smirk on her face before she conceded. "Okay, give me a hand." Spencer reached down to grab her wet hand and pull her out of the pool. She took it, letting him pull her up a little before tugging hard and pulling him in.

When he came to the surface, he was spluttering, attempting to push his hair out of his eyes. "Y/n! I could have drowned." Spencer complained, his voice rising as he swam to the side of the pool.

"I would have saved you," Y/n assured him, floating around with a proud smile.

"Well, I'm wet now, and so is my gun." He grumbled, taking it out and putting it on the edge as he neared the steps.

"No, don't go." She begged, reaching out for his arm. He looked cute soaking wet with his hair pushed back and his shirt tight around his body. "Live a little."

Spencer stopped, turning to look at her wide grin. His frown quickly broke into a grin as he shook his head at her actions. "I'm drenched now, so thanks."

"You're welcome." She softly replied, swimming closer to him. His lips were too captivating for her to think before she acted. Holding his forearm, she pushed her lips onto his, kissing him roughly.

It was far too perfect a kiss for Y/n to care. He started to kiss her back when he tore himself away from her. "This is unprofessional." He insisted, trying to get some space between him and the half-naked actress.

"No one's watching." She guaranteed, pulling him back. One more light kiss convinced him.

Against his better judgment, Spencer cupped her cheek, long fingers reaching around to the back of her neck. His fingers were cold on Y/n's skin, holding her face firmly and spreading out. It was so genuine. The most real kiss she'd maybe ever had. She let him lead it, moving her face to follow his as the kiss deepened. Each time one of them moved away, the other dove back in, addicted to the feeling.

JJ clearing her throat promptly stopped them, and they both pulled away as quickly and as guiltily as possible. Caught red-handed. They scrambled to get out of the pool, Y/n grabbing the towel she'd brought and wrapping it around her wet figure.

Morgan walked past with some guy in handcuffs, dragging him while he was read his rights. He flashed Spencer a smirk, but he knew there was more teasing to come.

"Not our unsub, but he was going to try to sell these," Blake explained, carrying a camera and showing them the photos of their make-out session. If they could blush and cringe more, they would have. JJ was trying and failing at stifling a giggle.

"Are you going to..?" Y/n asked quickly before realizing what she was implying. It wasn't something she wanted Spencer to think when she had enjoyed kissing him. All she wanted was to have one private kiss. "No, I didn't mean it like that." She blurted out.

Blake shook her head. "We won't." It made Y/n breathe out an instant sigh of relief. There was more teasing to do, but the team still had a case to solve. "We think your manager was trying to get him to not sell nude pictures of you before he was killed."

Her heart stopped at hearing that. "Stephen is..?" She couldn't even form the four-letter word that had changed her life. A glance at Spencer proved he was hiding something. "You knew!" She exclaimed, anger taking over her. "We just... and you knew."

"I'm sorry." Spencer quickly rushed out, feeling terrible for what he'd just done. Knowing he'd made her cry twice was a horrible feeling.

With the tears rushing down her cheek, she shook her head. "I'm going to change." She decided, walking away from the agents before she could further embarrass herself.

Spencer looked like he wanted to go after her, big doe eyes growing tearful. "I just fell in." He tried to defend his actions to JJ after Blake went after Morgan.

"It's all here," JJ smirked, clicking through the photos so he could relive it.

"I s-shouldn't have," Spencer said, his brain catching up to what he'd just done.

JJ pulled her lips inward, raising her eyebrows like she was challenging his idea. "How well does she know Allison Cartwright?" She asked, keeping the focus on the investigation.

Spencer's mouth parted in shock, replaying meeting Y/n's friend. "Allison as in Ally who walks Judge and could get into Y/n's house whenever she liked?" He asked, urgency in his voice as he rushed to pick up his gun from the ground.

JJ unholstered her gun, calling Blake quickly with the urgent news. "We think she's in the house." She informed her, waiting for a reply before hanging up. "They're going to lock down the perimeter." She told Spencer. "You go to her room." Their usual don't-split-up rule didn't apply when the house was so big, and Y/n was in immediate danger.

Spencer ran towards the door Y/n went in, dripping wet with his gun at his side. He heard a loud cry coming from one of the rooms, and he quietly pushed the door open.

It must have been her bedroom. With the same view from the big windows as the living room had. It was minimally decorated as well. Stepping into the bedroom, Spencer held his gun up as he scanned the room for danger.

"Spencer!" Y/n cried, coming into view. Ally was holding a gun to her temple and using her as a body shield. She looked as terrified as she sounded, tears on her cheeks as her wide eyes searched Spencer's for a way out.

"Put the gun down, Ally," Spencer commanded, fixing his gaze on her. "You don't want to hurt Y/n. Not when you love her, and you've done so much to help her career."

Ally's fingers hovered over the trigger, definitely showing some sign of hesitance. "I have!" She agreed with his statement. "I love her more than anyone else does. More than you do." Haphazardly, she waved the gun at Spencer, seeing him as a threat.

"Ally, please don't," Y/n begged, unknowingly worsening the situation. With his eyes, Spencer was assuring her it would be okay. She trusted him, but her best friend could still kill her.

"No!" Ally frantically exclaimed. "You kissed him!" Quickly, she was devolving.

With his eyes, Spencer was instructing Y/n to play into the fantasy. It took her a deep breath before she did. "Ally, it didn't mean anything. They're destroying the camera because I don't want to be reminded of it."

Spencer was trying to dissociate from what she was saying. He knew it was too good to be true. She was nothing less than perfect, and he was a lanky, rambling FBI agent. Behind Y/n, Spencer could see Blake, gun raised as she stepped quietly until the barrel hit the back of Allison's head.

"Let her go and drop the gun." She commanded, and, thankfully, Ally did.

Y/n squealed when she was released, running out of her grip while Spencer moved forward to make the arrest. JJ was there too, comforting her with a hug while she cried about the longest day of her life.

Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion around her as police officers came and went, and people made sure she was alright. JJ sat with her until the team had to leave, offering her comforting words of advice as everything sunk in. In one day, she'd lost her best friend and her manager.

The one person she didn't see was Spencer. When she found out he was leaving, she ran out after him.

"Spencer!" He was standing near the SUV with Morgan and Rossi, both of which were teasing him. Y/n figured someone must have brought him a change of clothes because he was in a new dress shirt and pants.

When he heard her voice, he spun around to face her, Morgan and Rossi giving them some privacy. "Are you okay?" He asked, scanning her face analytically.

"I will be," Y/n answered, smiling slightly. "Because of you." Spencer opened his mouth to tell her it was a team effort, but she stopped him. "Thank you."

Spencer nodded, not sure if he should hug her, shake her hand, or kiss her, which he was desperate to do. "You're welcome." He settled for. "I'm sorry for-"

She cut him off. "Don't be." She handed him the card she was holding, unsure about giving it to him. "If you want to call."

Smiling, Spencer took it, brushing his fingers against hers. He memorized it in case he lost it. "I will. Stay safe, Y/n."

"I will." She farewelled, waving at him before she felt Judge against her feet. "Say goodbye." She ordered the dog. He sat down, holding up his left paw and moving it side to side.

It made Spencer laugh, patting his head. "Keep her safe, Judge." He instructed, looking up at Y/n, who was still smiling.

When he got in the car, it was far too quiet. "What did she give you?" Morgan asked suspiciously.

"Her number," Spencer mumbled, reading over the numbers for the 20th time. He wanted to call, of course, but, then again, she was a beautiful, world-famous actress. How would he ever maintain a relationship with her? Plus, he knew what transference was and how the pool kiss was only because she was confused.

"Spencer Reid, my office, now," Garcia commanded, walking into the bullpen before turning around and expecting him to follow. Spencer did, assuming he wasn't in trouble. Morgan's birthday was soon, so it was probably to plan a party. "When were you in LA?" She asked, secretively shutting the door.

"Um, last week," Spencer replied, unsure where she was going with the line of questioning.

"Which date, genius?" She asked, bringing up a webpage and going to Twitter.

Spencer frowned as he tried to figure out her aim. "Wednesday, February the 18th. You know you're not allowed on Twitter at... work." His voice dropped off at the end of the sentence when he saw the video.

Y/n L/n, the one and only. Being asked some questions on a talk show, but his focus was on how beautiful she looked. Even after everything she went through just a week ago, impressively resilient.

The sound of her voice filled the Batcave when Penelope played the interview.

"So, you've had a lot of on-screen kisses, but everyone's dying to know what the best kiss of your life was." The interviewer prompted, accompanied by a cheer from the audience.

Video Y/n blushed, giving him a confident answer. "Before last week, I'm not sure I would have been able to tell you." She started, charismatic and holding Spencer's attention. "But now I can certainly say it was last Wednesday night."

That was why he was there. A grin took over his face, wanting to pinch himself to make sure it was real. Next to him, Penelope was still in shock, eyes flicking between Spencer and the screen to confirm what she already knew.

"And who was this mystery lover?" The interviewer asked, realizing he would get good publicity over the interview.

She held a soft smile with traces of disappointment. "He never called, so I can't tell you. If I thought he might see this, I'd tell him to hurry up, but I doubt he will be watching."

Penelope decided the video didn't need to go on any longer. She turned it off and spun in her chair to point at him. "You! You kissed the Y/n L/n, and I never knew! And she's talking about it! Everyone is talking about it! And you never called!" She exclaimed, not breathing in between each fact. "Why didn't you call?"

"Transference," Spencer answered. He'd looked at the number hundreds of times, sitting on his bedside table, but he couldn't bring himself to do it.

"Which would have gone away!" She reminded him. "She very clearly liked you. Call her." She demanded, waiting for Spencer to take his phone out and call right then.

"Morgan has photos of the kiss, did he not show you?" Spencer asked, smirking smugly.

Penelope was up and out of her seat quicker than ever. "Derek Morgan!!" She yelled once she left the room. Spencer knew whatever treatment Morgan was about to get wouldn't make up for the week worth of teasing.

With the paused video on the screen and a smile on his face, Spencer was confident about what he was about to do. He dialed in the number he'd be able to recite in his sleep. "Hi, Y/n, it's Spencer." He said once she answered.

"I know." She giggled. "You're the only person who knows the phone number."

That made him smile, determined not to let his brain psych him out. Even though Y/n had a complicated life, and Spencer seemed to make things difficult, their relationship didn't have to be hard.

"Can I take you out on a date?"

Part 2 here

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iconicbuck · 3 years

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We got fed with tons of Buddie crumbs for the 1st 2 episodes but I realized I'm more invested on the show itself than Buddie. The Blackout episodes are fun so far and yet so confusing.

They promoted and hyped the hell out of escaped animals only to have Alpacas acting like Velociraptors. Hen feeding the Alpaca with Corn chips was funny as hell but I was like is that all? No chaos? No more injured people? Okay.

Athena and her Captain was focused more on Hudson. But does The LAPD doing something to resolve the Ransomware that has been causing a lot of damage to LA? I just thought the hackers are more important to catch than the Athena-Hudson storyline that should've been done last season.

Eddie. I'm disappointed on how they're handling his relationship with Ana. Since the show tried to invest something about them, I thought Eddie could've learn something from his relationship with Shannon and Ana could be a great tool for his better character development, but it turns out he did the opposite and so persistent and stubborn about it. Leading a woman on is never a good look on anyone. I'm disappointed. What's worse, Buck witnessed a few of it. Buck, who is learning to better himself for himself and for others, who loves the people he loves, who gave his full self in every relationships, who just wants to be someone that somebody needs witnessed his bestfriend's treatment on Ana - who was once Buck was from his past relationship (Abby?) Buck too was disappointed on his bestfriend's behavior towards her girlfriend. I'm glad he called him out for it.

Eddie has a beautiful, smart, a career oriented woman and caring girlfriend. Almost perfect for him and his son tbh. But there's an underlying problem here, but does he really want? It seems to me he still don't know what he truly wants. I'm disappointed how he was kind of blaming Ana for his Panic attacks and also disappointed how the show handled it. It could've been better if what triggered it was the shooting incident and Helicopter crash in Afghanistan. Idk what the writers are trying to get to Eddie's character but it's not a good look on him. I was expecting more. I ship Buddie but not this way. And I don't think Buck will trust Eddie and that "feelings" in case Eddie just stupidly confess his love for him cause he saw how Eddie treated her seemingly perfect girlfriend. How could Buck trust that when Buck himself is flawed and has some issues he's been working hard to be better for years? He can't trust it.

If Eddie and Ana will break up (or if Ana is gonna give Eddie a little bit time to think) next episode, I guess he needs to work it out harder. He needs a lot of thinking too. Most of all, he needs to ask his precious son what his son truly needs so he could just drop his stupid assumptions about Chris wanting a mother figure, if that's the case. Also, Buck should see the progress in Eddie there. Not that Eddie needs to show it to him or to report to him every progress, but Buck should know (on his terms) so that he can fully trust Eddie with EVERYTHING. And by everything means in case Buck has feelings for Eddie, Buck's confident enough that the two of them won't change if the feelings aren't reciprocated.

So Michael just threw a party in the midst of The Blackout and heatwave? Okay.

Athena deserves a better and meatier storylines.

Maddie shouldn't be left alone. I guess it was intentional for the writers to out her character smoothly. Chim should've asked Mrs. Lee to check on Maddie and their daughter once in a while. Chimney's devastation (as per the rumored synopsis for 5x04) is a sure to watch.

Just wondering why Bobby pulled a Buck and not let Buck do the stunt and get The Heart in the Helicopter. There's an upcoming plot there for sure and it just prove my speculation when Bobby tasked him to be The Animal control. Bobby's giving him easy tasks and suspiciously splitting him with Eddie. 🤔

Ravi and Ana. Yeah there's a spark there. And I realized Ravi is so cute. I love his eyes. 😘

And FINALLY, Buck and Christopher bear hug. My favorite part. I love how Christopher was always leaning his head on Buck's shoulders everytime they hug since 3x02.

#buddie #eddie needs a good character development though #buck is a true friend and i want someone to love me like Buck

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watchyourbluesturngolden · 3 years

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my annotations for chappy 11 of ysijwa

this is just for drea and leyla to read so if you're not drea or leyla pls keep scrolling :)

ok this is pretty chaotic and like i said earlier i treated this ike a wattpad comment section so... have fun ig :)

SHERLOCK AND WATSON CINEMATIC UNIVERSE SHUT UPPPPP I LOVE YOU SM DREA

NOT MISS SNAP CRACKLE POP

jealous y/n you say???

now i know why you ignored all my tiktok asks lmao

HELPLESS OH MY GOD

truly madly deeply intended :)

damn he's kind of a narcissist yk? like "I have to be serious my entire family depends on it" shut up mr darcy you're not special

devout in his religion hmmmmmm hopefully we see some more religious trauma content bc me too vampy

awww he wants kids but now he cant have them bc hes... dead :(

AWWW his sister taught him to knit :( if he doesn't knit bloodbag a sweater i swear to god

stuffy moron is correct

"IT'S A FUCKING WONDER HE EVER GOT LAID" OIJRIOJWEIOJIEWOJFIOEJOF

"THE ATROCITY THAT IS BEING ACQUAINTED WITH NIALL AND HIS HORRIBLE AFFINITY FOR CHEAP FLANEL" ORJFOIJFEIOWJ YOURE SUCH A POET

he's so dumb she was with him bc he's hot that much should be obvious to him🙄

FOOLISHLY HOPELESSLY UNMEASURABLY IN LOVE HWAT THE FUCK DREA IM SAD

i love that he remembers the spinal cord dislocation and the dead leaves . like yea im dead rn but the leaves in my hair are really what's bothering me the most

what the fuck is a maw

ok i looked it up i get it now

"attachment is for gullible idiots" yup and youre one of them vampy 😌

"the warmest skin his icy fingers had ever had the good fortune to touch" im so soft rn

oh so now she has "a wholesome beauty about her nature" ? i thought she was just cute enough 🤨

HE THINKS HER SMILE COULD RESTART HIS HEART THATS SO CUTE IM OUHOIJFOEWIJFIOEWJ

"the responsibility of keeping her safe, satisfied, and happy" how 🥺 🥺🥺

"as long as he breathes" i thought he didn't breathe lmao BUT I GET THE SENTIMENT

"always when it comes to her" IM SCREAMING RN THIS IS SO SOFT I CANT

ill never forgive him for being so dense either his brain is basically a rock

HE WANTED TO COMMUNICATE THAT HE BELONGED TO HER IM GONNA HAVE A STROKE

couldnt be me i dont want to be percieved

HE ADDED A FUCKING BUTTERFLY AFTER THE DISCO BALLS IM OIWFJIOEWJFIOEJIOEWNOJIWJ(*H(WUIOFJIOEWJFIOWHVIFUEH)U)($UT

HEY a hamilton obsession is not childish😤

'the only person who was allowed to touch him there was y/n' he's like a little kid who's possessive omggggggg

oh this reminds me i rlly hope everything in that chest was new and had never been used on anyone else owijfowiejfioewj

oh please my irish king can control himself let y/n meet the other vamps🙄

"if they knew all along why did it take so long" yk im wondering the same thing dummy

"every day was a battle to earn her love and affection" wtffff how could she hurt him like that he is just a baby

i think he needs therapy tbh

yes he does deserve to be treated with respect and dignity😤

"supporting and tolerating them despite your differences" exactly unless they're a republican

IM SORRY THAT WAS MEAN OIWFJOIWJFEIOw i said what i said tho

they did everything backwards but it's what baby needed🥺

im literally gonna 🔪 bradley how dare he hurt my favorite ribeye like that

PROPER BOYFRIEND-GIRLFRIEND BONDING PLSSSSS im sure he makes sure to say stuff like "as your boyfriend' or 'since youre my girlfriend' all the time now

"everything that has to do with harry has always and will always make her feel safe and secure" ...who's gonna tell her👀

HE BECOMES CLINGY IVE BEEN WAITIN FOR THIS ONE TURN IT UP

awwww my love language is also quality times bestiesssssss

(this is more serious you might want to change the words to nose kisses or something because esk*mo is a slur)

HE wants to be wrapped in HER arms and get forehead kissies like a little baby🥺🥺

i can tell you wrote this chappy bc leyla would never write about ice cream

IF CHRIST CAN GET A DATE MARKER SO CAN HARRY OIFJOEIWJFIOEWJFWI PLSSSSSSSSSS I LOVE HIM

ALWAYS FOR HER WEJFIOJWEIOFJEWIOFJOIEWJFOIEWJF HES SO IN LOOOOOVE

HE DID IT AND IM SO PROUD OF HIM🥺

omg i have a thot imagine if she got a heart murmur or something and obvi he knows bc he can hear it so now he has to find a way to make her get it checked out out without being suspicious 😭

HE ROCKS HER TO CALM HER DOWN WHEN SHES HAVING NIGHTMARES IJFEOWIJFOIWEFJ

“nearly blinds himself for eternity” what a drama queen i love him

maybe learn how to turn your brightness down grandpa

“can women sense emotional distress” why is this so funny oiewfjwieojfioewj

DEHUMANIZING OWEIJOIAJAKLFSDJLKSDJFKLD

not a psychotic episode 😭😭

crippling mommy issues woejfkljdklsjsdf me too king

awwwww he made her a full buffet i would cry

matchy socks im gonna sob

king is a chef 😌

y/n’s head @ harry’s clavicle rn: 💥

“his plush chest” drea its ok you can say titties

“absolutely flawless”? are you sure shes not just cute enough 🤨

he got her oat milk 🥺the sign of true love

hes such a shithead i love him

SPELLING HIS NAM E ON HER TUMMY IM HAVING ANOTHER STROKE

“I DIDNT WANT TO LEAVE YOU ALL ALONE” HES SO WOIFJSJFSDKJKLSDJF

HE DIDNT HAVE TO DO NIALL LIKE THAT 😭😭

RAPUNZEL HAIR OSIDJSKJKLSJF

she traces a tiny heart on him wtfffffffffff im sad

this… is hot

“theres no room on the counter” owifjlksjfslkfjklsj

HE WOULD WALK THROUGH FIRE FOR HER maybe then he’d be a little less cold

im sorry that was wrong of me lisjfskldjfwoiejewiojrei

OH MY GOD OWEIJFKLJSKLFJL SHES SO BOLD “can’t i?” OSIJFKSLJLKJF

oh boy hes gonna kill her

I WONDERED WHEN THE YOURE HOT WHEN YOURE MEAN THING WAS GOING TO COME UP

literally shut the fuck up mr english major

do it bestie kick him in the balls

SPARE BOOBIES MAAM I CNAT BELIEVE YOU aCTUALLY WROTE THAT OWIFEJWIJEKLJFOIEWHOEWIFEHFLKEWJFKLEWJKLJFL

IM WHITE IM ALLERGIC TO SPICE WEJFLKJFKLEJFLKJSKLJKFSJD

“character development at its finest” what a self aware king

y/n stop being mean to him baby just wants to feel close ☹️

“I’m anemic” ok king whatever u say

“ME AND MY CHRONIC ILLNESS IM SENSITIVE” IJFKLSDJFKLJSDKLJ

ahhhhhhh it’s yoga time

“just ask your cervix” jlksdjflksdjflkdsjflk

“if only you knew” ☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️

yeah y/n isnt like those other girls 🤪 shes different 🤪

yes bestie objectify him

THERE IT IS MY FAVORITE LINE IN THIS ENTRIE BOOK

PERHAPS MY FAVORITE LINE IN ANY BOOK EVER

“He hasn't been this stiff since rigor mortis”

i think about this on a daily basis i truly do

grey shorts? what a slut

“call the lapd im pressing charges” me after walking up the stairs

OH SO THIS IS WHERE THE GREYS ANATOMY CHARACTERS FROM THE SPOILERS WITHOUT CONTEXT COME IN

him using his shirt as a towel im BARKING

“I wasnt jealous” yea ok 😃

AGAIN HIM DRAWING HIS INITIALS ON HER SKIN THATS SO WOIJFSKLDJFLSJ

yeah harold she just wanted a little kiss 😤

yeah 😃 its bc he ran track 😃

no bc thats so fucking cute that she pretended she had never seen the show before bc he was excited to introduce her to it 🥺

I would do the same tbh i feel like it would be fun to wash dishes with harry idk why

“that skank” oisjksldfjklsjfklsdjflkd

YOUR THICK SKULL COULD DAMAGE THE MARBLE LSKFJKLDSJKFLSDJFKLSJFKLSJKLSJLDKFJLSKDJF I WOULD CRY

he gets her a cup of water 🥺

ok but like wouldn't she want to wash her hair after it got all sweaty at yoga

awwwww she got his toothbrush ready for him why am i so soft rn

memory foam mattresses sound nice but actually they kind of suck bc you sink down and feel trapped in them 😃

HE WATCHED THE TIKTOK SHE SENT HIM IM HAVING A THIRD STROKE

niall is probably on the dumbest side of tiktok idek what side but it’s probably annoying and he thinks it’s hilarious

noooo baby youre not a monster🥺 someone give him a hug rn

well actually you are kind of a monster but its ok we still love u bestie

I too run on caffeine and pizza pockets 😌

TONSIL HOCKEY WHAT THE FUCK OIEJFLSDKJFKLSDJFLSJLKFJSDKLFJ

chatsnap hes such an old man 😭

true lmao if you dont have social media i immediately dont trust you

not the i just washed my hands tiktok 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

HE FEELS STRANGELY PERCIEVED RN KJFLSJFLKSDJ IDK WHY THIS IS SO FUNNY TO ME BUT IM LIKE LEGIT LAUGHING

DO IT BESTIE BITE HIM CHOMP CHOMP

“my eyes are stinging” hes such a baby 😭

“MY SIGH”TS ALL FUZZY” SJFKDSLJFLKDSJFLKDSJFLK

“are you all right” “I dont know :(’ i cant handle this my face hurts from smiling lksjflkjafklj

he has a kitchenaid stand mixer omg thats so sexy

ok but has anyone ever gotten salmonella from raw cookie dough bc i think thats just a myth

fuck u for that one vampy

wow he could never deal with my chronically ill ass

WAIT IS IT WAP

NOPE ITS BETTER LSDFJSDKLFJDS

I agree body is absolutely an instrumental masterpiece

I KNEW HE KNOWS SOME TIKTOK DANCES I KNEW IT

“I know youre kinda into that (getting smacked in the face)” SHUT UPPPPPPP SKJFSKDLJFDS

NOT HIM TWERKING SLKFJSDKLFJDSKLFJDSKL

YES YN GET THAT VIDEO AND BLACKMAIL HIM

“I think i popped something” ok old man 😭

why is the word wench so funny lkfjslkfjdslkfjsdlkfj

dont hand it over i want to see him snap

OH SHIT HE JUST JUMPED THE TABLE LSDFJSDKLFJLKDNMNXCMNJKHOIUIOEUR

oooooooooooo

OH MY GOD AGAIN SHE REALLY IS BOLD SLKDFJDSKLFJLSKDJFLKJFS

not guerrilla warfare 😭😭😭😭

do it bestie give him a concussion he deserves it

“no piece of art could ever compare to her” 🥺🥺

“remember that time you told me making out was childish” “no” i hate him 😭

THERE IT IS AGAIN “sex isnt the only way he can feel close to someone anymore” SHUT THE FUCK UP IM SOBBING

this reminds me of the dehydrated intercourse with demonrry

“don’t care, relationships are about sharing’ hes so sdjfksldjfklsjf

DO IT BESTIE KICK HIS KNEECAPS IN

suing disney for false advertisement 😭

THIS SCENE IS KILLING ME LKJFKLSJFLDSJ “just pucker your lips over it” “You have actual brain damage, dont you?” DREA I LOVE YOU KSDJFLDSKJFLKSDJ

how do those bubbles taste babe

ok drea wtf i was so happy and now this??????

“everything’s wrong” NO SHUT UP SHUT UP ITS HAPPY HOURS

not the boob privileges 😭

WAIT THIS IS FROM THE BSE MV ISNT IT “dance is just so hot rn” “depressing shades are just so hot rn”

NOT HIM GETTING ALL STUTTERY WHEN HE ASKS HER IF SHE WANTS A DRAWER 🥺

NO ONE HAS EVER BEEN THIS GENTLE WITH HIM BEFORE WTFFFFFFFF IM CRYING

“youre so fucking cute, my baby” me when i see literally any picture of him

JELLO HAS a STRONGER BACKBONE THAN THIS KSFJSDKLFJDSKLFJ

“betrayed. objectified. taken advantage of. used. “ i hate him sm 😭😭

OH MY GOD IS SHE GONNA SHAVE HIS FACE THATS SO CUTE IM

SHE ISsSSSSS IM SQUEALING

stop him worrying she’ll think it's weird and wont want to do it 🥺

“bold of you to assume id ever be convicted” PLS DREA LAKFJDKSLFJ

“the more you talk, the more appealing manslaughter sounds” I CHOKED DLSKFJDSKLFJDKSJFDSKLJ

HIM WHISTLING TO GET HER ATTENTION WHY IS THAT SO CUTE

Im sorry but its really funny to me how you wrote the sentence “wrong metal, he thinks ironically” … get it ? like IRONically lkfjdslkfj im sorry i’ll show myself out

“this boy?” what a fucking cutie i want to kick him

I forgot what a bop helpless is thanks for reminding me im gonna go listen to the entire soundtrack again-

theyre so fucking cute i hate them

so yea bascally this is the best thing ive ever read and i love you so much and my face hurts from smiling :)))

#annotations #ysijwa

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volturialice · 4 years

Text

Spork Haven chapter 23: salt fucking peter

welcome to spork haven, where I spork the EL James fic you’ve never heard of

previous chapter | next chapter | contents

previously on Spork Haven:

actor!Edward got an outlandish fucking award and became Best Actor!Edward! hotel maid murder witness cello prodigy orphaned ““cajun”” heiress!Bella was his date to the awards show! Ed looked into Emmett’s dark burning eyes and had a Moment! Bella felt dizzy and then went missing! will the Volturi mafia succeed in murdering her? let’s hope so stick around and find out!

warning: this chapter is incredibly long. please check the tags for content warnings—there are a lot! it’s eventful, though, so we’ll give it a pass. but settle in and make yourself comfortable. maybe go get a drink or something. I know I needed a drink after I read this garbage.

chapter 23 opens with Edward attempting to process the fact that Bella has disappeared. he does this in what I have to admit is a pretty seamless fusion of el james’s and stephenie meyer’s trademark styles (negative space here preserved for authenticity):

wow. eat your heart out, New Moon.

once we’ve experienced that bit of totally original typesetting magic, Edward leaps into action!

just kidding. he’s “totally fucking immobilized.” paralyzed with fear, he “stifles a sob” and toys with whether to “wail, scream, and tear his hair out with impotence”

luckily, he’s very good at giving himself pep talks:

this bracing self-administered kick in the pants unfreezes him, allowing him to summon the mental faculties to go get Emmett.

Emmett clears the ladies’ room and calls for backup. He and Edward search the restroom and are joined by a rando Local security guard as they discover—gasp!—a secret second exit to the bathroom (shoutout to the phoenix airport womens’ room, amirite?) leading into a service tunnel.

the Local security guard informs them that the tunnel leads to an alley, but the alley’s only exit is onto Hollywood Boulevard. you know, the street currently clogged with limos, paparazzi, cameras, and fans. idk about y’all but I’m starting to think this kidnap attempt may have been just a tad poorly conceived. why kidnap her at all? they had ample time to kill her, dump her body in the service tunnel, and make their escape unencumbered.

as Ed, Emmett, and Local race down the service tunnel, Emmett radios for Jasper to go around and cut the Bad Guys off in the alley. Edward is the slowest of the bunch

so he quickly falls behind the other two.

he’s trying to catch up when—wait! what’s that on the ground? something...sparkly?

that’s right: he pauses in chasing after Bella and her kidnapper in order to notice “six thousand dollars’ worth of earring” lying on the ground.

then he stops and picks it up.

now, I know what you’re thinking, guys—is he seriously stopping to pick up a lost earring when Bella’s life is in danger?—but keep in mind, these earrings were twelve thousand dollars. also, Edward loves earrings! they make him horny! what else is he supposed to suck on at Bella’s funeral?

I mean, yeah, if your worst fear was that Bella might lose an earring.

what indeed, Edward. what indeed.

imagine for a second that you’re Emmett in this fic. you’re a law enforcement professional racing to protect your charge’s life, bellowing into your walkie for backup, preparing to apprehend an armed and dangerous suspect in an area full of innocent civilians...when suddenly, from somewhere far behind you in the dingy gloom of the service tunnel, you hear the sniveling, British-accented voice of the bitchass manchild celebrity who’s tagging along:

“I’vE fOuNd hEr eArRiNg!”

jesus.

still ahead of Eddie boy, Emmett and Local burst out into the alley, guns drawn. Edward hears gunfire and is terrified for Bella as he finally catches up and arrives at the scene.

this is about where erika’s writing gets...incredibly confusing. and not in a POV, “we’re in the character’s head experiencing the chaos with him in real time” way. more like in a “several dozen drunk blind amputees playing Twister” way. this is my cute way of saying “it’s bad” and “I had to read it four times before it began to make sense.”

in the alley, all is chaos. a gun has just gone off

I’m sorry. salt...peter? saltpeter? did someone shoot off a Ye Olde Civil War Musket? I know fuckall about firearms and even I know they phased that shit out in the fucking 1880s.

and while we’re here, fun trivia fact about saltpeter: in Olden Times, people would ingest saltpeter in order to nuke their sex drives. silly Olden Times! if it’s a bonerkiller you’re after, all you have to do is read this fic!

ok, back to the alley. security are cordoning it off, keeping the “fucking jackal” paparazzi at bay (already?)

the LAPD are arriving (already??)

but perhaps most interestingly,

real quick before we get into whose body it is, why we’re sexually objectifying it, and what it’s oozing, I just wanna draw your attention to the construction of that sentence. the artistry, if you will. below, I have replaced some of the nouns so that we may all appreciate the sheer poetry of the syntax:

“there’s a fucking meatball lying prone on the floor, all covered with cheese, a dark cloud oozing under the meatball.”

sitting a few feet away from the Skirt & Heels Body™ is Jasper, cradling the unconscious Bella. you could be forgiven for thinking that first body (you know, the oozing one) was Bella’s, because that’s what the narration wants you to think. the effect is somehow both enhanced and ruined by the fact that Bella’s actual body is mentioned in the next sentence. erika really tried to have her suspense cake and eat it too, with the result that by the time I finished reading this paragraph, I had absolutely no idea how many bodies there were or who they belonged to, which ones had on a skirt and heels, which ones were oozing, and where.

another excerpt I should probably share is the paragraph where we describe Edward reacting to this tragic pietà.

here’s our text, raw and unedited:

I can’t even begin to list all the ways this paragraph makes me uncomfortable, so I won’t attempt to.

anyway. remember how in the last chapter, there was an incredibly gay bit where Edward looked into Emmett’s dark, burning eyes? fasten your seatbelts because we’re about to blow that bit out of the water.

ｌｕｍｉｎｏｕｓｈａｚｅｌｅｙｅｓ

filled with

𝓈𝑜𝓂𝑒 𝑒𝓂𝑜𝓉𝒾𝑜𝓃 𝐼 𝒹𝑜𝓃'𝓉 𝓌𝒶𝓃𝓉 𝓉𝑜 𝓃𝒶𝓂𝑒

the next sentence tries to take us back into heterosexual territory with

are we meant to understand that Jasper’s luminous hazel eyes are saying “don’t you just wish it was you getting to cradle Bella’s unconscious, injured body?” yes, that is exactly what we’re meant to understand. this attitude continues as Bella is loaded into an ambulance. at first, Jasper tries to stop Edward from coming, then the paramedic says they can both come but only if they sit on opposite sides of the ambulance like kindergarteners in Time Out.

l o n g i n g l y

the paramedics also checked the other body (you know, the oozing skirt and heels body) and Edward made a startling observation:

though oozing, the mystery person is still alive, and a second ambulance hauls off

and here I was thinking all this story needed to make it complete was some veiled transphobia! what a fun new direction for erika.

once at the hospital, Ed is banished to the waiting room with Emmett, Jasper, and Taylor. the doctors won’t let him see Bella, even when he tells them he’s her fiancé.

hmm. is it just me or is there a movie about this exact scenario?

yep, there are at least two movies about this exact scenario.

after the “fiancé” thing, Edward picks up on some bad vibes from Jasper

interesting. can you feel MY animosity hit you like a brick fucking wall? I guess it’s more of a brick fucking skyscraper at this point.

things we learn at the hospital:

Bella was roofied! so if you voted “poisoned” in the poll, I’m gonna give you this one. congrats on your victory.

Bella is fine now

Jasper shot the mysterious kidnapper in the chest.

that’s right, Jasper is the cause of all the oozing. well done, Jasper. good luminous hazel eye.

finally, Bella wakes up and asks to see Edward. He goes back to see her

and

she

dumps his ass.

not for any Sane People reasons, of course. having decided she’s “too dangerous to be around,” she breaks up with him in a scene straight out of New Moon, complete with “eyes full of tortured pain” and dialogue like

“You are too precious to me. Please. Go.”

Edward spends the whole scene in panicked denial, to the point where he’s practically gaslighting Bella, telling her she’s just been through a traumatic ordeal and she can’t possibly mean what she’s saying.

then he interrupts her mid-breakup

to fucking propose.

🤣🤣🤣 READ THE ROOM, BUDDY. Bella is resolute for the first time in her doormat life, turns down the proposal, and firmly breaks things off with Edward. he returns her earring (you remember, the six thousand dollar earring we paused in the middle of the climactic chase scene to pick up), “inhales her fragrant hair for the last time,” and leaves.

and with that, the chapter is FINALLY over.

possibility.mp3

best “fucks”

“level fucking head”

“a fucking microsecond”

“fucking sirens”

“loud fucking noises”

“enough fucking damage”

“a soothing fucking balm”

“fucking Hale”

“fucking purgatory” (the hospital waiting room)

“pale as fuck” (bella)

“fucking lifeless” (bella)

“non-believing fucking arse” (edward)

“like a fucking idiot” (edward)

best “shits”

next chapter: fucking blinds and curtains

#spork haven #twilight fanfiction #twilight revival #anti e.l. james #long post //#transphobia //#drugs //#guns //#injury //#blood //

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addictedtostorytelling · 4 years

Note

Hi there ! Did you write anything about Grissom behavior in general and what could be the reason for it (his upbringing in a quiet house with only his mother, or autistic spectrum,etc) idk, I’m so fascinated by grissom’s personality and his character’s complexity, so I was just wondering if you had any insight on that particular subject. If you did already write something about it, I did not found it and I’d love a link to go read whatever you have to say about it. Thanks, have a good one !

hey, @clarissemcc!

i do have a post about grissom’s general character development and behavior (including discussion of how his relationship with his mother and his childhood and adolescent experiences affect his personality) here.

i also have a “grissom biography” post with further discussion of his formative years here.

if you’re up for yet more discussion, i’ve placed it under the “keep reading.”

____________

contributing factors to grissom’s behavior

drawing sure conclusions about how exactly “grissom came to be grissom” is difficult, just because our knowledge of his childhood and upbringing is so incredibly limited.

for instance, we know next to nothing about his social life as a child—whether he had no friends or else a few close ones, similar to when he is an adult; whether he was ever actively bullied or was just mostly ignored by his peers; if he had social access to other hearing children who were, like him, the children of deaf parents; to what degree his high intelligence and possibly accelerated education track affected his interactions with peers (e.g., if after skipping a grade or two, he found himself the youngest kid in his classes at school); etc.

it’s also hard to pin down how other environmental factors of his childhood and adolescence may have affected him.

for example, who were his neighbors and did he have relationships (positive or negative) with any of them? did he have any important childhood rituals, like riding his bike to the a&p to buy soda pop after school? did he ever play little league baseball? what was the composition of his extended family like?

(we know, per what he says in episode 02x05 “scuba doobie-doo,” that he had an uncle herb who was a plumber who taught him the basics of how to hook up a filtration system. we can also infer, based on what he says in episode 06x23 “bang-bang,” that his maternal grandmother had likely passed away by the time he was in the second grade. but was his extended family small or large? how much contact did he have with his relatives—and especially his father’s family after his father died? did whatever extended family he had live close to him and his mother? did he have any peer-aged cousins? if so, were they ever playmates?, etc.)

in truth, there are about a million and one potentially important details about young grissom’s life that we simply don’t have access to.

(was he generally healthy as a kid or was he a sickly child? did he grow up living in the same house for most or all of his childhood or did he and his mother ever move? what was his schooling like? beyond the death of his father, what were some of the “turning points” of his formative years?)

that said, there are at least a few things we learn about his upbringing from canon* over the years.

* his early cbs character biographies, many of which have long since been taken down from the web, offered much more in the way of early life details, revealing, for example, that he graduated from high school early and had an unofficial “internship” with the lapd when he was a teen. however, because the canonicity of those old biographies is questionable (and because, at this point, accessing them is difficult), i’ve elected, for the sake of this discussion, to stick mostly to what we know from the show itself.

so let’s start with what little we do know about his younger years:

he was an only child;

he grew up in marina del rey, california (see episode 08x15 “the theory of everything”);

his mother, betty, was deaf from otosclerosis, which she developed as a child (see episode 01x20 “sounds of silence”);

he learned asl from his mother;

his father was a botany teacher (see episode 06x10 “still life”);

his father died suddenly when he was nine;

he was raised catholic (see episodes 02x06 “alter boys,” 05x03 “harvest,” and 07x05 “double-cross”);

his mother was always “the boss” in their home (episode 02x20 “cats in the cradle”);

he was possibly an early reader (see episode 05x24 “grave danger,” pt. i);

as a young boy, he was a fan of roy rogers and trigger the horse;

he also loved to swim (see episode 01x20 “sounds of silence”);

he also was interested in bugs from a young age;

in second grade, he proposed to his classmate nicole daly, who liked bugs like he did, using his grandmother’s wedding ring, though his mother soon made him get the ring back (see episode 06x23 “bang-bang”);

from a young age, he was interested in science and performed animal dissections in his free time (see episodes 04x09 “grissom versus the volcano” and 08x15 “the theory of everything”);

in junior high school, he once voted against himself in the science club presidential election and then lost said election by one vote (see episode 05x10 “no humans involved”);

and in high school, he was a “ghost” (see episode 02x04 “bully for you”).

then, to add on what we’ve seen of him as an adult:

grissom is possessed of a genius-level intellect. he is detail-oriented, with great powers of observation, a nearly eidetic memory, and excellent deductive reasoning skills. he is articulate, well-read, and cerebral, a man of both letters and science, as quick to quote shakespeare as he is to cite darwin.

he is also a great wit with a wry sense of humor and will frequently make puns related to the crimes he solves. he boasts a broad familiarity with pop culture, art, music, history, and literature and peppers his speech with quotes and references. as shown through the “grissom-vision” clips on the show—in which he sees, in his mind’s eye, how various scenarios from his investigations may play out in real time—he has a powerful imagination. from what we can infer, his inner life seems to be a rich one; he thinks a lot and does so deeply, even sometimes removing himself from the action in order to give himself the time, space, and silence necessary to formulate his thoughts.

externally, he has certain habits which are socially awkward, to be sure. for example, he will, without warning, immediately exit whatever conversation he’s having, oftentimes even in the middle of a sentence, should a new train of investigative thought come to him as he is working a case. he is also sometimes oblivious to other people’s emotional reactions and so may behave insensitively toward his coworkers at times when they are upset or feeling vulnerable.

however, to say that he is altogether gauche would be incorrect, as he is typically very polite and has a practiced set of social manners.

see, for example, the graceful way in which he responds whenever he’s caught staring at something: “pardon me. i was just admiring your [fill in whatever object he was staring at here].”

by and large, he is far more comfortable with reason than he is with emotion; however, that is not to say either that he is without emotion himself or that he is incapable of understanding the emotions of others on the whole.

grissom often himself feels very deeply—it’s just that he also (particularly early on in his character development) often represses and downplays his emotions to himself because the enormity of feeling scares him. he doesn’t like being emotionally vulnerable or having his behavior influenced by something as illogical and potentially untrustworthy as emotion. to admit that he needs other people and that other people can impact the choices that he makes in his life is a daunting prospect to him because to do so opens him to the potential for loss. he is especially sensitive to the possibility of rejection, as perhaps his oldest and deepest fear is that he is somehow unlovable.

in terms of how he relates to others, though reading other people’s emotions is not his first impulse, he is ultimately capable of understanding their emotions and of realizing how his behavior impacts how other people feel, albeit he may require prompting to arrive at this realization (see, for example, episode 02x15 “burden of proof”).

though grissom does not typically seek out opportunities to socialize (particularly past s1), he does have relationships, friendly, romantic, and familial. while admitting that he needs people can be scary for him, the truth is that at the end of the day he does yearn for human connections, and, when he has them, he generally fares better than he does when is on his own.

he is a loyal friend, willing to stick his neck out for “his guys,” even when doing so is politically imprudent. he is also a strong leader, not because he doles out orders but because he holds his subordinates to high standards while also trusting them to perform to those standards. as a teacher, he likewise sets a high bar for his students, but then he scaffolds their learning so that they can reach that high bar, providing them with numerous opportunities to hone their skills while they are on the job. time and time again, he is shown to be willing to throw caution to the wind and put himself on the line in order to keep his team intact and at times save them from their own self-destructive behaviors, even though doing so is something that frightens him.

for as much as he has a big brain, he also has a big heart, and though it may sometimes take him a while to give in to his feelings, he always in the end does so, choosing love over fear.

linking factors to behaviors

so how does grissom get to be the man that we’ve described above?

most people, including fictional ones, tend to be a hodgepodge of inborn traits and developed tendencies.

my sense is that at least some of grissom’s “grissomness” is innate. his introversion, his high intelligence, his eidetic memory, and the way his brain is oriented toward logical thinking—that’s all “prepackaged.” it’s stuff that he came with.

that’s not to say that his life’s course and education haven’t shaped these traits in him, of course. just that the raw materials were already in place.

as for his developed tendencies, a lot of those probably stem from how he was raised.

we don’t know enough about grissom’s relationship with his father before his father died to say how it affected him, though we can perhaps conjecture that, given that grissom’s father was a botany teacher, he may have at least in part inspired both grissom’s love of science and his passion for teaching. we can also perhaps infer that the experience of his father’s death—and especially of not having his father’s death adequately explained to him after it happened (see episode 06x10 “still life”)—may have been one of grissom’s underlying motivations for going into forensics as an adult, as while his father’s death was not criminal in nature, it was a mystery that young grissom wanted solved.

as for grissom’s relationship with his mother, we have more information to go on, though, admittedly, still a lot of question marks on the whole.

since we don’t know whether grissom’s father was himself either deaf or hearing*, we can only conjecture how his death altered the day-to-day goings-on in the grissom household.

* that grissom specifically identifies his mother as the one who taught him to sign perhaps suggests that his father was hearing. however, given that many deaf and hard of hearing persons born in the early twentieth century were denied the opportunity to learn how to sign by oralist parents and teachers, it is nevertheless possible that grissom’s father was deaf or hard of hearing but had not learned to sign as a young person and therefore still used spoken english (and lip reading) as his primary means of communication, even as an adult. alternatively, he may have also used spoken english as his primary language if he were hard of hearing but not moderately or profoundly deaf.

if grissom’s father had been hearing or hard of hearing but still able to communicate using spoken english, then he likely served as betty’s primary translator and liaison to the hearing community while he was alive.

if he were deaf or hard of hearing but communicated only in asl, then grissom probably served as the family translator and liaison to the hearing world, starting from a very young age.

in either case, grissom’s father’s death meant that grissom would have to by necessity become the main link between his mother and the hearing community, if he hadn’t been acting in that capacity already.

to what degree betty may have gotten help in caring for grissom after his father died—including from their extended family, such as the uncle grissom mentions in episode 02x05 “scuba doobie-doo,” as well as babysitters, nannies, and/or family friends—we don’t know.

to what degree she may have received community assistance (such as access to an interpreter through the county services), we also don’t know.

the family socioeconomic situation is likewise a uncertain.

what we can say—or at least conjecture—is this:

as i talk about in this post, in the 1960s and 1970s when grissom was growing up, a woman being the head of her own household and a breadwinner was still, for the most part, a relatively rare thing.

that betty ran her own business (at least according to some of grissom’s old cbs character biographies, which state that she owned an art gallery) and was independent was, for the times, remarkable, but that she did so as a deaf woman presumably living in a predominantly hearing community* was even more impressive, as she likely had to reckon with a lack of accommodations in her local area—remember: the ada didn’t pass until 1990—and even possibly fight discrimination.

* the greater los angeles area is home to a thriving deaf community, particularly around the san fernando valley area, where there is a larger concentration of deaf people living than anywhere else in the us and possibly in the world. what was formerly san fernando state college and is now california state university, northridge has, since the 1960s, graduated more deaf students than any other institution of higher learning in the nation. that the grissom family may have had connections to this extensive deaf community is very possible and even perhaps likely. (could grissom’s father perhaps have taught at san fernando state? is this maybe where he met grissom’s mother?) that said, given that we’re told that grissom grew up in marina del rey, california, then he and betty lived about twenty miles south of, or an hour’s drive from, this area, which means that they more than likely had mostly hearing neighbors.

per grissom’s own descriptions and based on what we see of the woman herself in episode 11x13 “the two mrs. grissoms,” betty is a formidable person, intelligent, outspoken, and decisive, commanding in any situation. while in her later years, she is affectionate toward her son (and, eventually, toward her daughter-in-law), she can also be very intimidating, and she doesn’t allow anyone to push her or hers around; one would imagine that she also possessed these personality traits as a young widow in the 60s and 70s.

having only grissom’s scant reports and the few interactions we see between them in s11 to go on, my sense is that grissom grows up looking up to betty and also trusting very much in her capacity to protect him and overall capability. while he undoubtedly misses his father, i don’t think he feels at all disadvantaged by not having a “male presence” in his home, as betty meets his material and emotional needs. he probably doesn’t find her as off-putting as persons who don’t know her do; however, he is likely nevertheless submissive to her. (like he says in episode 02x20 “cats in the cradle,” she is always “the boss.”)

nevertheless, like many hearing children of deaf parents (or codas), grissom’s relationship with his mother is probably somewhat more of a partnership than the relationships his classmates have with their hearing parents are, insofar as he and betty have to work together in order to navigate in a world that oftentimes is not accommodating of betty’s deafness.

after his father dies, grissom likely must help betty with activities like communicating via the telephone—and particularly as tty technology did not become widely available west of the mississippi until the 1970s—interacting with hearing people who cannot sign (including store clerks, delivery persons, repair technicians, emergency services workers, the police, etc.), and even attending to strange noises in the house.

that grissom, even as young as age nine, must practice certain adult skills and shoulder household responsibilities that had perhaps previously belonged to his father probably also influences him to develop a strong sense of autonomy and independence.

some studies have found that deafness in the primary caregivers spurs thedevelopment of initiative, independent action, and self-reliance in the male children in the family (see here).

while at least some of his independence and aloofness probably comes from his inborn traits, being an only child with a deaf, working mother probably also encourages him to learn how to play on his own and take care of his own basic needs, which are skills he carries with him into adulthood.

he likely spends a lot of time on his own, collecting bugs, conducting science experiments, memorizing baseball stats, and keeping himself entertained with imaginative play. while we can’t say so for certain, if his father had been a professor at a college or university—which is likely, considering that most american primary and secondary schools don’t offer botany as a course subject—then it is at least possible that he left behind a large library of science books, which young grissom undoubtedly voraciously reads.

grissom’s manners were in all likelihood something betty taught him, as she seems like a stickler for decorum (see episode 11x13 “the two mrs. grissoms”). she is probably also the one who instilled in him his sense of loyalty and of looking out for his and his own.

as stated above, we don’t know much about young grissom’s social situation. as an adult, he claims that in high school he was a “ghost,” which seems to mean that he was somewhat invisible and not really on anyone’s social radar. however, it’s unclear whether this means he was altogether friendless or that he had a few close friends, though he was otherwise beyond the “social bubble” of most of his classmates.

(as an adult, grissom maintains a few close friendships but doesn’t often socialize, even with his friends. he seems to be able to fill whatever social needs he has just by being with sara, once they’re together.)

did young grissom perhaps have one or two close friends growing up—a neighbor or a classmate who joined him in searching out bugs down by the river or who went with him to baseball games at dodger stadium? did his mother’s friends in the deaf community perhaps have kids his age (whether those kids were codas like grissom or themselves deaf)?

if grissom did have friendships as a child, were they same- or mixed-gender? were his friends peer-aged with him or perhaps a bit older? (many children who are advanced for their aged play with children who are a few years older than they are because, cognitively, they’re on the same level.) how did these friendships play out? for example, did he have one best friend throughout his whole childhood or did he have friends who came into and out of his life due to moves, falling outs, changing school district boundaries, etc.?

that grissom may not have had many or any friends is a real possibility, as there were many things about him that marked him as “different” from other kids, including his family situation, biculturalism, high intelligence, eccentric interests, etc.

like many codas, young grissom probably experienced at least some ostracism from his peers who were the hearing children of hearing parents due to his “having one foot in the hearing world and one foot in the deaf one.” his inborn traits may have also exacerbated the situation (as highly intelligent children and introverted children are often socially rejected by their peers, as well).

grissom may well have grown up feeling like an outsider, which may explain why, as an adult, he is so empathetic toward marginalized demographics and social pariahs—a trait that persons of interest in the cases he works often both recognize and appreciate in him (see, for example, melanie grace in episode 03x04 “a little murder” and mimosa in episode 05x08 “ch-ch-changes”).

on a more positive note, being raised as a hearing child of a deaf parent in a bilingual and bicultural home probably contributes to grissom’s openness to divergent cultures, traditions, and lifestyles when he is older, as he grows up knowing that there isn’t necessarily one “right way” to live.

grissom’s habit of quietude and introspection is probably in part due to his naturally introverted character. however, it may also derive from him growing up in a signing home where talking loudly and blurting things out doesn’t necessarily help one to get his way.

being the only child of a single mother may also be a major factor in the way that grissom interacts with women as an adult man, when he is, in general, not only a magnanimous supporter of women and their advancement in the workplace, but also, personally, very comfortable around women.

that most of his closest friends and confidantes—including sara, catherine, and heather—are female is most likely not coincidental.

while some men in leadership positions are uncomfortable taking direction from women coworkers, be they either superiors or subordinates, grissom is possessed of no such hangups and, in fact, seems very willing to take the advice and heed the expertise of the women around him, such as when he solicits the professional opinions of teri miller in s1 and s3 and when he heeds catherine’s personal counsel to him to reach out to sara in episode 02x15 “burden of proof.”

finding the link between his very capable single mother and his respect for women in authority is easy enough to do.

one could probably make an argument that both catherine and heather, who are outspoken and independent single mothers themselves, in some ways even remind grissom of betty.

as for where his deep-seated fear that he is unlovable comes from, that’s harder to say.

as stated, we don’t know enough about his relationship with his father to field guesses about how it may have affected his development.

while it’s possible that he develops a fear of losing the people he loves due to having lost his father at such a young age, it’s also possible that those feelings have a different pathology, unrelated to his father’s death.

though we have more a view of his relationship with betty, without knowing particulars, we also can’t say exactly how their dynamic may have influenced his sense of personhood and self-esteem.

in episode 11x13 “the two mrs. grissoms,” their dynamic seems affectionate and loving. but were things always that way between them or did they ever go through a rough patch?

codas who serve as interpreters for their parents and who fill “parentified” roles within the household sometimes feel that their relationships with their parents are somewhat contingent upon their usefulness—or, in other words, like their parents’ love is conditional upon their willingness and ability to serve as translators, helpmates, and liaisons with the hearing world.

whether or not grissom ever grew to feel this way about betty is unknown.

if so, then that may explain some of his doubts about his own lovability—and especially if he were to also feel as if he had (in one way or another) failed betty in his role as her help and that their relationship had suffered for it.

did him leaving home to go off to college cause friction between him and his mother? did she feel as if he were abandoning her? if so, did she express these feelings, or did he perhaps intuit them, even if she tried to keep them to herself? did he experience a sense of shame as he became increasingly integrated into the hearing community (and distant from the deaf one)?

it is interesting to note that in episode 01x20 “sounds of silence,” dr. gilbert observes that grissom’s asl is rusty. does his decreased fluency in the language suggest that he is perhaps not in regular contact with his mother at that point in his life? if not, then is their lack of contact due to estrangement or rather just a byproduct of grissom being so busy with his career that he has little time to interact with his family?

i’ve always been suspicious that back in s1, the writers of the show had it in their heads that grissom’s mother was already deceased and that they only later changed their minds (circa episode 03x02 “the accused is entitled,” when grissom reports to phillip gerard that his mother says “hello”).

if grissom and betty were for a time estranged (or at least not really talking to each other), their being so might possibly have had something to do with his breakup with julia holden.

we don’t know exactly when grissom and julia dated, but we do know that betty loved julia like a daughter and had hoped that he might marry her.

when grissom and julia’s relationship ended, it is not outside of the realm of possibility that betty took the news hard. perhaps she felt that grissom rejecting his deaf girlfriend went hand-in-hand with him rejecting his deaf heritage. maybe she feared what would happen if grissom settled down with a hearing girl instead.

of course, grissom’s fear that he is unlovable might have little to do with his parents. supposing that his relationship with his mother were actually very solid, then maybe the source of his doubts was more social.

if he were constantly rejected by his peers for being “different” when he was a child, then perhaps that’s why as an adult he fears that even those closest to him won’t be able to accept him once they know him in full. perhaps he has learned, through sad experience, that there always comes a point when he becomes “too much”—too weird, too socially inept, too emotionally obtuse—to handle. maybe he has had friends drop him before. maybe they’ve even said hurtful things.

the same possibility exists regarding his young adulthood and his romantic relationships; in episode 09x08 “young man with a horn,” he speaks of how his obsessive devotion to science eventually destroyed his relationship with his college girlfriend. his relationship with julia holden may have undergone a similar disintegration (assuming that she and the college girlfriend weren’t already one and the same).

i personally interpret grissom as being demisexual. might he, like many persons on the asexual spectrum, have grown up feeling like there were something wrong with him or like he was broken? might that feeling have been amplified by his experiences with dating and romance? did the sadness he felt having sex with girls he liked and felt fond of but didn’t love negatively impact his relationships with them (see episode 07x21 “ending happy”)? did his divergent sexual attitudes and behaviors create friction between him and his past girlfriends? did his relationships end because he couldn’t make himself be something he wasn’t? if so, might these breakups—and the things that his exes said to and about him during the falling out and aftermath—have contributed to his sense that he was unlovable and destined to be alone forever?

even if one doesn’t share my view on grissom’s sexual orientation, one can still imagine how grissom just being grissom might have made it difficult for him to form lasting bonds. as we see during his short-lived courtships with charlotte meridian and teri miller early on in the show, grissom’s tunnel vision regarding his studies and work plus his obliviousness to certain social cues doesn’t necessarily make him the easiest person in the world to date. though grissom has many good qualities to recommend him—he’s funny, kind, smart, and handsome—he also has the kinds of flaws that for many women are “deal-breakers.” (he can be myopic, occasionally hypocritical, bad with time management, jealous, sometimes passive-aggressive, etc.) especially early on in his character development, when he’s still in the habit of repressing his own feelings, he can be a lot™ to handle.

sara is really the first and only woman in his life who accepts him as he is and is willing to wait for him to figure things out.

we don’t know how many women grissom dated before sara, but it’s not a stretch to think that his bad track record in the dating department up to the point when he got together with her may have contributed to his sense that he is unlovable.

in any case, whatever its origins, this deep-seated feeling that he is inadequate and unacceptable is what leads him to develop the “shell around [his] heart” that he mentions to heather in the series finale.

basically, he fears rejection so much that he doesn’t want to let anyone get close enough to truly reject him. subconsciously, he thinks that it will hurt less when the people around him inevitably leave him if his relationships with them remain mostly superficial. he can bear to lose the esteem of strangers but not loved ones, so he builds walls around himself to keep anyone in his immediate circle from becoming beloved of him.

of course, the problem is that at his heart, grissom is a social creature, and he does crave connections, so he is only semi-successful in remaining aloof from everyone; almost in spite of himself, he does develop friendships, and he even eventually falls in love. a lot of grissom’s development during the early seasons of the show has to do with him coming to terms with his attachments and learning to accept his ties to others, even when doing so scares him.

grissom and the autism spectrum

now.

as for the matter of grissom potentially being on the autism spectrum, obviously, the show only flirts with the possibility. in episode 02x07 “caged,” grissom describes a person of interest in the case he and nick are investigating as “a high-functioning autistic man with superior right-brain ability;” nick then quips that the man sounds a lot like grissom. grissom says nothing in response.

nowhere on the show is grissom ever confirmed to have an autism diagnosis.

nevertheless, he could still be autistic, even if he’s never been diagnosed.

grissom was born in 1956 and grew up primarily during the 60s and 70s, when autism was viewed as a relatively rare childhood disorder.

in fact, in the dsm-i, which provided the diagnostic criteria in use during grissom’s early childhood, autism was understood as a prepubescent “schizophrenic” reaction. while there were a few recognized “autistic savants,” many doctors believed that autism was co-morbid with intellectual disability; the children they diagnosed were most often those who displayed very visible behaviors and were extremely withdrawn.

consequently, during grissom’s childhood, autism diagnoses were few and far between—with reported prevalence estimates in the range of 2 to 4 cases per 10,000 children in the us and europe.

less than .05% of children born in california in 1956 were ever diagnosed with autism, so that grissom might have “slipped through the cracks” in his childhood is a strong possibility, and particularly considering that he does not match the diagnostic criteria for autism as the doctors of his day understood it.

remember: autism awareness is a fairly recent thing. temple grandin, nine years grissom’s senior, is currently one of the most famous autistic people in the world, and she displayed what are now understood to be “classic autism behaviors” from her earliest childhood; however, she wasn’t diagnosed until she was in her forties, just because autism wasn’t even really on the radar of the medical community at large until the late 90s.

even in 1995, my younger brother’s pediatrician was unfamiliar with autism. when my parents were given that diagnosis for my brother by a neurologist, the pediatrician had to look it up in the dsm iv in order to get an idea of what the diagnosis meant.

of course, we don’t know enough about grissom’s early childhood to know which “autistic behaviors,” if any, he presented with as a child. for instance, was he nonverbal beyond infancy? did he noticeably stim? was he sensitive to audio or visual or tactile sensations? was he socially withdrawn? were any of his behaviors something that would have prompted betty to seek a medical opinion about him, or could everything he did be “explained away” by him being shy and/or a coda and/or by having experienced the death of a parent at young age?

presuming that his behavior then was similar to how it is as an adult, then my guess is that his childhood doctors might not have recognized him as being on the spectrum at all, even if he were so, just because, back then, autism was mainly recognized in cases of extremity. unless he had very “severe impediments” that affected his ability to perform basic life skills and/or attend school, they would have just written him off as a loner with bizarre hobbies.

particularly given that his mother was deaf and that he had grown up using asl, his doctors might even have considered that any social or communicative issues he had were the result of him being a coda, as opposed to him being neurodivergent.

still.

that leaves the question, “is grissom on the spectrum, and, if so, how has being autistic influenced his behavior?”

honestly, since the show never confirms that grissom is autistic, we’re left with a matter of headcanon.

personally, i think that if one is inclined to read grissom as autistic, there is certainly ample evidence in the show that he could be—for example, his liking of order and patterns (see episode 02x07 “caged”), his talent for logical-thinking and problem-solving, his aversion to change, his eidetic memory, his generally low interest in social activities, his communication issues and particularly his problems with verbalizing emotions, his obsessive personality, his intense focus, etc., etc. (even the way that he fidgets with his hands when he’s nervous could be a stim.)

that said, i think it’s also very possible to read grissom as being neurotypical, as his behaviors could just as easily be attributed to his high intelligence, coda status, and personal idiosyncrasies as they could be to any kind of neurodivergence.

grissom himself offers us no real clues, as he doesn’t respond to nick comparing him to an autistic man either one way or another. he could have a secret diagnosis that he chooses not to make public (whether he were one of the rare children diagnosed with autism in the 50s, 60s, or 70s or else, like temple grandin, received a diagnosis later on in life); he could suspect that he is on the spectrum or be self-diagnosed but not have pursued any kind of official diagnosis, for whatever reason; he also may be autistic but completely unaware that he is so; alternatively, he may not be on the spectrum at all. in any case, he doesn’t look down on persons who are autistic and seems to get along well with aaron pratt, the autistic man in question.

that all said, i can’t recall having read any thoughts on the matter from autistic viewers of csi—or at least not viewers who have publicly identified themselves as being on the spectrum—so i don’t know what the consensus would be among members of the autistic community or whether or not they’d be eager to claim grissom as representation.

my autistic brother is nonverbal and doesn’t watch csi, so i can’t ask him his thoughts, unfortunately.

if there are any autistic csi fans out there reading this post—which has gotten exorbitantly long—i’d be eager to hear their takes.

conclusion

all said and done, there are still a lot of blanks for us when it comes to determining grissom’s exact character composition.

at this point, we can only fill in those blanks with fanfiction.

we may never actually know exactly why grissom does “x thing,” because the impetus for that behavior may trace back to “y experience” that he had when he was ten or twelve or nineteen that we, as viewers, have never had the opportunity to hear about.

we still don’t know, for example, why he rides roller coasters every nine years and thirty-four days (see episode 01x22 “evaluation day”).

possibly because his father died when he was nine years and thirty-four days old, but that’s just a guess.

that said, for as little as we can assert with certainty about grissom’s character composition and his biographical details, i am fascinated by what a complex and well-constructed character he is. what little we do know about him matches up so well with what we see from him on screen. for as much as he is an eccentric and in some ways “larger than life” character, he also feels supremely real—like the way he is makes sense, just based off of the few things we’ve been told about his upbringing and life experiences.

anyhow.

i’ve rambled long enough now, so suffice it to say thank you for your question, and feel welcome to send another any time!

#csi #csi cbs #gil grissom #**#my meta #meta: csi #meta: grissom #asks: csi #answered #clarissemcc #let's talk shop #csiverse

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