#it's just that both of them are okay for fanfiction

[gogandmagog]

Guys! Yesterday I had a book-shaped piece of mail, and inside of it was my copy of Children and Childhoods in L.M. Montgomery: Continuing Conversations being returned, from another very dear user here! I bring this up only because some-months-ago I promised to copy out a particular article from this book, for yet another user here, who was interested! Interested because it’s on the the subject of a Fan Favourite thing... fan fiction. And better still because some of our (basically famous) mutuals here are mentioned by name! If you’ve ever wondered if the Montgomery scholarship is reading your fan fiction... the answer is yes, they are! They totally are. More than that, they also have some thoughts to share… as well as recommendations of their faves too! This article even covers the F/F and M/M fan fiction presented by fans in LMM’s universe, and I’m personally super excited to be able to begin reading these works, as soon as I can find them all. I’ve done my best to link what I could immediately find, but some of the mentioned stories were unavailable... potentially due to changes in usernames? (That said... if anyone knows of the works indicated here, that I haven’t provided a link for, please do share!)   This article, by the way, was written recently... in 2020! It’s very current, and it covers a few stories that were still being actively updated during the pandemic. The focus of this article is less so on canon (or really just the Anne/Gilbert pairing), though, and seems to prefer demonstrating the versatility of mixing relationships (Anne and Emily, for one!) and the wider more general universe-building aspects (the entanglements of future generations/Anne’s grandchildren) that fans have been expounding on for nothing less than decades. 

Okay, here we go! xx

Continuing Stories: L.M. Montgomery and Fanfiction in the Digital Era by Balaka Basu

Fanfiction – the recreational (re)writing of texts – is a literary genre of rapidly growing significance. Abigail Derecho in her brief history of fanfiction identifies it as “a genre that has a long history of appealing to women and minorities, minorities, individuals on the cultural margins who used archontic writing as a means to express not only their narrative creativity, but their criticisms of social and political inequities as well.”

Insightfully defined by Francesca Coppa and Mary Ellen Curtin as “speculative fiction about character,” fanfiction can be even more precisely understood as fantasies about the diegetic positioning of characters in the context of various settings, communities, relationships both textual and paratextual, and eventually all manner of cultural mythologies.

Kristina Busse and Karen Hellekson describe the production of fanfiction as “part collaboration and part response to not only the source text, but also the cultural context within and outside the fannish community in which it is produced.”

They point out that the shift in the method of dissemination of fanfiction from newsletters and zines to internet archives means that “ever-younger fans who previously would not have had access to the fannish culture except through their parents can now enter the fan space effortlessly; financial resources have become less of a concern because access to a computer is the only prerequisite; and national boundaries and time zones have ceased to limit fannish interaction.”

The nature of fanfiction allows participants to cross-generational and socio-economic boundaries in an ongoing exchange of responses to a source text with which they share a fascination, developing new texts that in turn elicit their own responses. While the creation of fanfiction is evidence of an affective, loving, communal relationship with the source text, this genre of writing is still dismissed in many quarters as overly emotional, purely erotic, and even perverse, a type of amateur and immature engagement with popular texts that produces writing necessarily divorced from literary significance. Produced in staggeringly vast quantities by subcultures with complex vocabularies and traditions that can intimidate the casual reader, fanfiction is perceived by many to be more of a cultural practice than a literary genre, variously denigrated for its pornographic potential and its lack of originality. However, close examination reveals that fan writers are able to create a critical dialogue with the originating author in acts of communal storytelling that incorporate allusions and reference points to which other dedicated fan readers and writers may respond.

In this chapter, after examining how L.M. Montgomery and her writer heroine Emily themselves engage in practices now associated with fanfiction, I survey four forms of fanfiction that remove Montgomery’s novels from her seemingly idyllic and timeless island settings, contextualizing her characters and plots within history and other genres: the sequel set during the Second World War, the modern AU (alternate universe), the gap-filler, and the slash fic, all of which allow the young readers who grow up with her novels to engage in dialogue with the stories they love, a type of literary conversation that Montgomery herself models within her texts. Emily’s reading, which is active rather than passive, resembles twenty-first-century fans’ ownership of the texts they love, provoking creative responses. For instance, after reading works by Lord Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Matthew Arnold, Emily writes, “Teddy lent me 3 books of poetry. One of them was Tennyson and I have learned The Bugle Song off by heart so I will always have it. One was Mrs. Browning. She is lovely. I would like to meet her. I suppose I will when I die but that may be a long time away. The other was just one poem called Sohrab and Rustum. After I went to bed I cried over it. Aunt Elizabeth said ‘what are you sniffling about?’ I wasn’t sniffling – I was weeping sore … I couldn’t go to sleep until I had thought out a different end for it – a happy one.”

The reactions Emily catalogues are those of the fan; they are viscerally felt in the body and attempt to dissolve the boundary between author and reader, producer and consumer. She inscribes Tennyson within her heart in order to possess the poem she loves; she creates a relationship between Barrett Browning and herself; and, most significantly, she interjects her own desired happy ending into Arnold’s tragic narrative, a corrective desire that is at the core of many works of fanfiction. Emily’s diaries and her story reflect Montgomery’s own experiences from childhood to adulthood as reader, writer, and reader-turned-writer discussed in the introduction to this volume. Depicting Emily as a voracious reader and a life-writer like herself, Montgomery places the child Emily’s voice in conversation with that of the narrator through Emily’s letters to her dead father in Emily of New Moon and through her diary entries in Emily Climbs and Emily’s Quest, creating a form of joint authorship that is referenced explicitly in “Salad Days,” the second chapter of Emily Climbs: “book is not going to be wholly, or even mainly, made up of extracts from Emily’s diary; but, by way of linking up matters unimportant enough for a chapter in themselves, and yet necessary for a proper understanding of her personality and environment, I am going to include some more of them. Besides, when one has material ready to hand, why not use it?”

The narrator’s willingness to use the “material” that is “ready to hand” reflects Montgomery’s and Emily’s practices, and also validates other writers’ use of the material Montgomery places at their disposal. As with many fans, Emily’s reading frequently makes itself felt within her writing.

Like Montgomery, Emily learns her trade through mimicry, from her first poem in blank verse inspired by James Thomson’s Seasons to her unwitting imitation of Kipling that is pointed out by her teacher, Mr Carpenter, in his review of her work. Like Sara Stanley of The Story Girl, whose compelling and fascinating stories are rarely if ever original, Emily is a fan of the oral traditions of her community, incorporating and building upon them in her own writing, transforming and recreating, for instance, the story of “The Woman Who Spanked the King” in Emily Climbs.

The retelling and versioning that Emily practises signal her immense admiration for the source texts she adapts, just as the creation of fanfiction does for Montgomery’s readership and fans. The possibilities inherent in versioning and adaptation are illustrated in Emily’s Quest. When Montgomery depicts Emily undertaking the reworking of someone else’s narrative, she is adapting an episode from her own experience while working for The Echo in Halifax, which she records in her journal. Montgomery, like Emily, was asked to create an ending for a serialized story, “A Royal Betrothal,” after compositors had misplaced the original text.

Like Emily, she claims that her “knowledge of royal love affairs [was] limited,” and that she was unaccustomed “to write with flippant levity of kings and queens.” Nevertheless, Montgomery manages to create a conclusion that passes muster, since “as yet nobody has guessed where the ‘seam’ comes in.” She is, however, curious about the original author’s reaction to her unauthorized adaptation, and while she never discovers this in real life, she does imagine it in her fiction when she introduces Mark Greaves, who is horrified by Emily’s new ending for the story but enchanted by its author. Neither Montgomery nor Emily engages in this sort of writing from a place of fandom; they have no previous attachment to “A Royal Betrothal,” and both are writing professionally. Nevertheless, the ability to solve the puzzle of the story and the weaving of their work into an already extant text are the very project of fanfiction: ludic narrative composition that recalls the way children play make-believe with the narratives they love, reworking and extending them. It is telling that Montgomery uses the metaphor of the “seam” to describe this particular craft. Jane Dawkins, writing about her fanfiction, which is inspired by Jane Austen, describes her fan novel Letters from Pemberley as “an old-fashioned patchwork quilt, where in place of the scraps of fabric reminding one of the favorite frocks or shirts whence they came, there is a line or a phrase or a sentence from one of [the original] books or letters stitched alongside the lesser scraps of my own manufacture.”

Montgomery’s final book, framed by the two world wars, is just such a patchwork sequel, albeit providing only brief glimpses of the characters that readers met as children and who have now grown older. When a version of the book was published in 1974 as The Road to Yesterday, these glimpses, lacking the interstitial materials, became even briefer, mirroring the more forced insertion of beloved characters that the two earlier collections, Chronicles of Avonlea and Further Chronicles of Avonlea, display. Only two of Anne’s grandchildren – Gilbert Ford and Walter Blythe – are obliquely referred to, in the story “A Commonplace Woman,” where an unpleasant young doctor reflects on both of them as potential rivals for the affection of a beautiful girl he himself hopes to pursue.

However, the full novel, The Blythes Are Quoted, published in 2009 and comprised of short stories about the people in Glen St Mary and over the harbour, is interspersed with poetry by both a young Walter and an adult Anne. The poems are cut with tiny slices of dialogue that suggest the continuing lives of fans’ favourite characters and how they might have developed. In “‘Dragged at Anne’s Chariot Wheels’: L.M. Montgomery and the Sequels to Anne of Green Gables,” Carole Gerson notes the mixture of feelings from pleasure to frustration that Montgomery records in her journals as she prepares to write her first sequel.

While Montgomery wrote the first installments of her various series out of inspiration, she was certainly aware of what her market desired from subsequent installments. She often regretted the necessity of marrying off her characters, but was aware that her fans demanded this conventional outcome for the characters they had come to love; these traditionally romantic endings, when not offered by Montgomery herself at the instigation of her publishers, are regularly deployed by contemporary fanfiction authors building on the source texts.

Indeed, long before the original structure of The Blythes Are Quoted was revealed to readers in Benjamin Lefebvre’s afterword, fanfiction writers were spinning off lengthy narratives that included a third generation of young Blythes, Fords, and Merediths dealing with the onslaught of the Second World War. While earlier installments in the Anne series – such as Anne of Green Gables and Anne’s House of Dreams – depict the deaths of Matthew, Anne and Gilbert’s first daughter (Joyce), and Captain Jim, Walter’s death in Rilla of Ingleside is somehow more striking. Unlike Matthew and Captain Jim, he has not yet had time to grow old; unlike Joyce, readers have had opportunities to get to know him as a child in Rainbow Valley and as he grows into young adulthood in Rilla of Ingleside. His death is unnatural and, therefore, all the more horrifying. These two aspects of Rilla of Ingleside – the evocation of history by a nostalgic fictional world that is still tied to real time and the use of high drama, tragedy, and romance – provide fanfiction authors with a model they can use to appeal to the emotions of those readers who are immersed in the next generation of Montgomery characters.

The Second World War, then, provides an entry point into the series for fanfiction authors, who can deploy real history coupled with beloved characters to create a tale that feels absolutely authentic. One example of this is a short story, “The Pen and the Sword,” written in 2007 by MarnaNightingale. Here, mimicking the style of Dorothy L. Sayers’s The Wimsey Papers (a series of Spectator articles published between 1939 and 1940, which interestingly also continue the story of First World War–era characters during the Second World War), MarnaNightingale employs epistolary excerpts and newspaper articles to tell the story of a family going through the horrors of war for a second time. Grounding her fragmented story – like The Blythes Are Quoted, a mixture of genres – in the accounts of novelist Mollie Panter-Downes (1939) and war correspondents Ernie Pyle (1940) and Ross Munro of the Canadian Press (1941), whose articles are attributed to Kenneth Ford, she offers a story that, like Rilla of Ingleside, is anchored to the historical moment, while also nostalgically focusing on the character development that comes from Gilbert Ford’s death, Rilla’s and Faith’s reactions to the war, and the lives of their children. Here war also serves as an opportunity for new experiences, particularly for women and children: Rilla takes a factory job as a machinist, liking it better than working in Carter Flagg’s store; one of Anne’s grandchildren, Susan, plans to be a doctor; and Faith, who worked as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse in the First World War, mentions how she can sympathize. As well, the daily tidbits that flavour the pages of Rilla of Ingleside are there: one article, attributed to Anne, includes the recipe for Susan Baker’s war bread, reminding readers of the problems of wartime rationing, even in the Americas. Real life events – like the Canadian forces trying (and failing) to make a beachhead at Dieppe – arouse the passions of the reader. Unlike Austen – who also famously wrote of three or four families in a country town, but kept the Napoleonic wars firmly in the shadows – Montgomery brings the passions and high drama of the world stage into the sleepy villages of Prince Edward Island, which inspire fanfiction spinoffs.

The long novel Cecilia of Red Apple Farm, by a fan author who posts under the pseudonym ruby gillis, also directly reworks passages and scenes from the whole range of Anne books, set in the late-nineteenth century, to The Blythes Are Quoted, set in the early years of the Second World War, to highlight the similarity between her new generation of characters and their ancestors. Cecilia is the daughter of Una Meredith and Shirley Blythe (characters often married off in fanfiction). Like MarnaNightingale, ruby gillis provides period flavouring in the styles of dresses and behaviour and in references to 1940s popular films and songs. Simultaneously, this setting offers new opportunities to her female character: Cecilia wants to be a doctor, and rather than staying in Canada, she joins up to be a nurse in England. She has a series of romances – one with Sid Gardiner (before he marries May Binnie), and one with her cousin Blythe Meredith, who is this generation’s poet – before finally ending up with Marshall Douglas (the son of Mary Vance). Just as Anne initially refuses Gilbert Blythe in favour of Roy Gardner’s resemblance to her ideal man in Anne of the Island, ruby gillis’s Cecilia is fooled by the allure of Sid and Blythe as Roy Gardner–like romantic heroes into believing that she does not truly love her fun, practical, “Gilbert-esque” friend. Published in 2004, Cecilia of Red Apple Farm further illustrates the opportunities presented by reusing and reworking a body of texts through its incorporation of Montgomery’s poem “I Wish You” as the work of Blythe Meredith. Montgomery includes this poem and attributes it to Anne in The Blythes Are Quoted, although ruby gillis could not have known this when writing. The repetition of names and circumstances might seem derivative, but for readers who have read and reread the original books so many times, the extension of the story world is prized, even if – perhaps even because of – its callbacks to the original text. Due to the tendency of fans to fixate on “the good bits” in a reread, these parts can be taken for the whole.

Austen fanfiction demonstrates this aptly. Indeed, Helen Fielding’s second Bridget Jones novel, Bridget Jones and the Edge of Reason (1999), illustrates just such a reading of Pride and Prejudice: she shows Bridget, a fan, watching the scene from the 1995 mini-series in which Darcy, dripping in a wet see-through shirt, exits the lake, and then rewinding and rewatching the scene multiple times. How many times might a similar fan reread Walter’s letter from Courcelette? This repeated reviewing of selected portions can replace the amplitude of the original novel. With this delimited focus, narrative is no longer seen as a progression, but as a single moment of pleasure, sustained as long as possible. Reading the Second World War as a repetitive sequel to the First World War further highlights this possibility.

Even Montgomery seems to do so, as demonstrated in The Blythes Are Quoted, with its new generation of characters confusingly named after the old: Walter, Jem, Rilla, Di, Anne, and Gilbert. A variation on Marah Gubar’s kinship model, this kind of continuation highlights the blurred boundaries between child and adult characters who are literally related to one another and whose adventures mimic one another.

In a third example of fanfiction set during the Second World War, Weeping May Tarry, a long novel by ElouiseBates, Meggie, the heroine, is Shirley’s daughter (and also, surprisingly, Paul Irving’s granddaughter). In this story, which like Cecilia of Red Apple Farm is an installment of a longer series, Meggie is sent off to a conservatory of music to study singing, aptly combining the traditions of the nostalgic boarding-school novel with “Girl’s Own” wartime fiction. Following the tradition of Magic for Marigold, which explicitly suggests in its second chapter that the Murrays of Blair Water and the Lesleys of Cloud of Spruce exist in the same universe, @e-louise-bates (like many other fanfiction authors, including ruby gillis) suggests that all of Montgomery’s characters exist in a single universe: Meggie partners briefly with the grandson of Sara Stanley (The Story Girl and The Golden Road) and is close friends with Jane Stuart (Jane of Lantern Hill).

Going even further, @e-louise-bates introduces the grandchildren of the What Katy Did series as friends for Meggie and includes Betsy from Dorothy Canfield Fisher’s Understood Betsy as Bruce Meredith’s wife, creating a world where all the characters of early-twentieth-century girls’ fiction seem to have truly lived, where their descendants must cope with victory gardens and dances with soldiers at the Exhibition Grounds, and where kisses are much more commonplace than they once were.

These particular continuers of Montgomery are also desirous of membership in the community of her fans, seeing their literary endeavours as productive of approval from a fellow readership. Likewise, the novels are notable for their sociality – they seem to offer the reader not only a fantasy friendship with the characters themselves but also the very real society of fellow readers of the works. Thus, these fan authors attempt to diversify their stories so that they represent contemporary beliefs regarding multiculturalism; ruby gillis, for instance, introduces into the family by way of marriage a French girl who has had to flee the Nazis due to being Jewish, a situation Montgomery and her contemporaries might have had some difficulty accepting, considering early-twentieth-century attitudes toward interreligious marriage and Montgomery’s othering of the German-Jewish peddler who sells Anne green hair dye.

The Second World War thus offers writers of Montgomery fanfiction the loom on which to weave new, more diverse stories, even as The Blythes Are Quoted, which also traces the characters’ reactions to this new war, demonstrates how these readers-turned-writers followed Montgomery’s own trajectory, not knowing that they were doing so. On the subject of fanfiction, young-adult author Patricia C. Wrede writes: “The thing that fascinates me about fanfiction, though, is the way that it models the decision tree that writers go through (whether consciously or unconsciously) to get to their final product. For those of us who do this part mostly unconsciously, it can be interesting and instructing to see the multitude of alternate paths that a story could have taken, all laid out more-or-less neatly in different authors’ fanfics [… taking a slightly different fork in the road] resulting in the plot veering in a completely new direction. Friends become enemies; enemies become friends; goals and objectives and results shift and change.” Within these pieces of fanfiction, then, fan writers are able to follow these decision trees with subsequent generations of characters as well.

Another avenue of access occurs when fan authors transpose historical narratives into the contemporary moment. Perhaps the best-known example of this modern alternate universe [AU] conversion is the television program Sherlock, which takes Arthur Conan Doyle’s Victorian detective into the twenty-first century. While new cultural contexts appear, the essence of character is meant to be retained. Just as Sherlock uses text messages and blogs to substitute for telegraphs and handwritten journals, fans of Montgomery reimagine the relationships between her characters as if they were taking place online.

For instance, “Work in Progress” (2012) by verity postulates a friendship between Montgomery’s most famous heroines, Anne and Emily. In this piece of fanfiction, Emily circumvents Aunt Elizabeth’s injunction against fiction during her time at Shrewsbury High by becoming a blogger who is restricted to the “truth.” The story’s online summary, a part of which reads “Anne rolls her eyes. ‘Is your aunt really going to know if you cheat on your nonfiction with some hot prose on the side?’” shows how the story preserves the character qualities that Montgomery laid out, complete with references to the Murray pride and Anne’s orphanhood. Mr Carpenter’s admonitions are spelled out at the beginning of the story:

“Emily Byrd Starr has a sticky note on her desktop. It reads:

ITALICS

CAPITALS

!!!!!

“just”

“really”

CTRL+F!

It is almost like having Mr Carpenter in the room with her.”

Verity creates humour through the juxtaposition of contemporary social media and allusions to Montgomery’s source text. Another story by verity detailing Rilla’s romance with Ken Ford and her friendship with Una Meredith, “Rilla of Toronto,” takes place mainly through instant messages. In this story, Rilla reflects on her life from eighteen to twenty-five, tracing a continuum from her child self to her new adulthood, underscored by verity’s translation of Montgomery’s work into contemporary millennial language.

A third type of fanfiction narrative, the gap-filler, focuses on and expands the implications of the source texts. Moira Walley-Beckett’s Netflix/CBC series Anne with an “E,” as Laura Robinson shows in chapter 12 of this volume, is somewhat fanfictional in and of itself: as Robinson points out, the show fills gaps by bringing to the fore the darker currents that have always been beneath the seemingly untroubled waters of Anne of Green Gables, including Anne’s potential post-traumatic stress disorder from the disturbing life she led before coming to Green Gables. This kind of versioning and adaptation tacitly permits fan authors to feel that their versions are just as valid as those produced by professionals. Gap-fillers frequently expand on romantic pairings and in fandom are often referred to by portmanteaux of characters’ names that perpetuate some inside joke or work as puns. “Shirbert” – a moniker for Anne and Gilbert – is the latter, and demonstrates how fans posting on sites like Archive of Our Own (Ao3), Fanfiction.net, and Wattpad (this last generally populated by younger fans) develop their own language to identify their stories within the community for which they write.

One such story, “You caught me staring, but I caught you staring back,” by Anuka, clearly inspired more by the television series than the novels, begins with an author’s note that reads, “I decided to write some fluff for these two, because I need more Shirbert moments, and season 2 is so far away. I added gifs to make it more vivid.” Here, the romance between Anne and Gilbert as depicted by Montgomery and Walley-Beckett is not sufficient for the reader-turned-writer. Anuka wants the gaps in the narrative to be more fully explored than they are on either page or screen and to be made more “vivid” by the inclusion of images that help make the story come alive.

Similarly, “Rilla Blythe’s Wedding: A Not Entirely Comprehensive Account” by Scylla also fills a gap: Rilla and Ken’s wedding day, a scene that Montgomery leaves to the reader’s imagination at the end of Rilla of Ingleside. Modelled upon other accounts of weddings within Montgomery’s fiction, the story also suggests that accounts of Walter’s death have been gravely exaggerated, as he makes a stunning appearance at his sister’s wedding. In order to align her work with Montgomery’s novel, Scylla ensures that Little Dog Monday’s awareness of Walter’s death remains, but makes it only a technicality, writing, “His heart had stopped for a full ten seconds – long enough for his Captain to feel for his empty pulse and for Dog Monday to be jolted with the fullness of his death. Little dogs, after all, can only have tender dogs’ hearts. Grief to Dog Monday was an all-consuming thing, and when Walter’s heart began to beat once more, he was deaf to its spark of joy.” After meeting with his eldest sister, Joyce, in heaven – which is, as he had always hoped, Rainbow Valley, Walter is returned to life so that he may write of peace as well as war (as he did when he was a boy), marry Una, and repair the broken hearts of readers who did not want to lose him.

While heterosexual pairings are the most prevalent in Montgomery fandom, there is room for queer imaginings as well.

This very popular genre of fanfiction, known as “slash,” is generally defined as stories that centre on samesex romances between characters, particularly between men. Montgomery slash fiction usually stars Walter Blythe.

One slash story, “but i don’t know who you are” by @freyafrida, imagines a bisexual Walter. Told in an enduringly popular sub-genre of fanfiction often referred to as Five Things Plus One (which involves a series of thematically linked but not necessarily chronological scenes), the story is summarized by @freyafrida as “Five people Walter thought he wanted, and one person he didn’t notice until it was too late.”

This last person is original to Montgomery’s text: Una, whose apparently unreturned attraction to Walter is woven through Rilla of Ingleside. The other five potential partners are all alluded to as Walter’s close friends, beginning in childhood with Alice Parker from Anne of Ingleside and Pat Brewster from The Blythes Are Quoted and then carrying on through adolescence and young adulthood with Faith Meredith, Ken Ford, and finally Paul Irving from Anne of Avonlea. While his feelings for Faith and Ken are clearly unrequited, Alice, Pat, and Paul all express their own desire for Walter. The inclusion of the famous poet and Walter’s “model” uncle, Paul Irving, in particular, particular, illustrates how traits of sensitivity and aesthetic appreciation that challenge traditional ideas about masculinity are frequently interpreted as queer by fan readers and writers.

In another slash fiction, cero_ate’s “The Moving Finger Writes, and Having Writ Moves On,” Walter discovers his homosexuality while fighting in Europe:

He wrote half truths and lies once more, when he wrote his Rilla that he could not form poems of the depths of the war. For who could write his sister of the phallic love he had found? He had found his reason in a tow-headed American boy. He meant so much more to Walter than mere friendship could explain. He wanted to write, as sweethearts write, of the tempest of joy in the darkest night. But how would they understand? How would they even try to understand he sought not the Dark Lady of Shakespeare but the youth, fair and Wilde? When he was presented with Una’s faithful heart, he spurned it. When his tow-headed darling presented his own, Walter took it, greedy for him. His grecian style love, the boy who’s [sic] eyes danced, even in the darkest of days. He would do anything to keep him safe. But he could not present him to his family, for their scorn or pity. War had broken him, but made him as well.

While male/male pairings are generally the most popular stories in fandoms, Montgomery’s novels, peopled as they are by communities of girls and women, require that readers who want to queer the text must explore what is called femslash (that is, slash fiction featuring two female characters).

Such relationships have been explored within the academic setting. For instance, Laura Robinson remarks in “Bosom Friends: Lesbian Desire and the Anne Books,” that the relationship between Anne and Diana uses “the language that readers associate with adult romantic love rather than girlhood affections,” even as it is expressed through the heterosexual paradigm of marriage.

One fanfiction author, ArcticLava21, makes it clear that such fan written stories are not speculation but instead address key issues of representation. The author’s note to ArcticLava21’s short Anne/Diana story, “Nature,” reads, “Hello everybody! Hope your [sic] having a wonderful day. Before anyone yells at me for ‘sexualizing platonic friendships’ please note that this is for all those queer kids who grew up pretending. Pretending that he ended up with him instead of her, or desperately wanted representation. Are we good? <3 Enjoy yourselves lovely people.” The intended audience of the story, “queer kids who grew up,” again establishes the transgenerational kinship between Montgomery’s child and adult fans.

All fan fiction, shared on the Internet, exist in dialogue not just with Montgomery’s fiction but with the author herself, and between the fans who read the novels as children and adolescents and the adults that these readers become.

Whether fan writers extend the narrative or fill gaps, transpose chronology or to queer the text, these pieces of fanfiction allow fans not only to insert themselves into the narrative, but also simultaneously to revivify the original novels, published a century ago. In performing interventions to the text, Montgomery’s young fans grow up to reply to the discussions that she began long ago in the pages of her journals and stories, ensuring that all three – author, reader, and text – are continually reborn into a conversation that will never end.

#any typos here are all mine 😑 #apologies because i’m sure there’s so many… i’m just bleary-eyed from the screen time it took to type this guy up! #like #why didn’t i just get the kindle version #lucy maud montgomery #fan fiction #anne of green gables #emily of new moon #too many individually referenced characters to tag here really!

[libra-cant-just-dance]

Headcanons/Thoughts for Every Main Five Just Dance ship

Obviously I have my favorite but sometimes it’s fun to just think about other ships so I wanted to make a post about ALL of them. For some reason. PS don’t reblog/reply to this with “well actually that one ship sucks and I don’t like it”. As far as we know all of them are the same age and not related so there’s really no reason why any ship is wrong, let people like what they like.

Wanderlust x Jack: I don’t need to rant about them, you all already know. Go read my fanfiction

Wanderlust x Sara: He brings her into this magical world, she loves it and she loves him. It’s a bit cliche but cliches are cliches because they WORK. Also, we know Sara loves the Danceverses, but what if Wanderlust loves Earth? What if he’s got a Little Mermaid thing going on? Imagine Sara showing him around Earth and him being excited by the silliest little things

Wanderlust x Brezziana: They’re both the most energetic ones of the group. Imagine them teaming up on adventures and charging ahead together when the others get tired. Neither of them can always find a friend to keep up with them, but they always have each other

Wanderlust x Mihaly: They’re kind of like two different sides of the Flow? Wander is more energetic and Mihaly’s more chill, so I think they’d balance each other out well. Mihaly gets Wander to slow down every once in a while and appreciate things he’d otherwise miss. Wanderlust shows them how to be more spontaneous and free

Jack x Sara: Sara falls for the bad boy except he’s not actually bad. So much in the Danceverses is bright and crazy and overwhelming, so Jack being more down-to-earth is refreshing for her. Jack loves the way she treats him. Aside from the events of story mode, she doesn’t have the background on Night Swan and Eternyx that the others do, so she doesn’t know his reputation as well. He feels like she really sees him as his own person while everyone else will always remember his mother’s shadow

Jack x Mihaly: I think both of them being the more practical ones of the group could mesh well. We also know Mihaly used to idolize Night Swan in some way, so they both can relate to having wanted to live up to her legacy and now realizing she was wrong. Jack is also always expecting some sort of punishment or consequence if he does something wrong, but Mihaly is so chill about everything that they make him feel like everything’s okay

Jack x Brezziana: Brezziana will drag Jack out of the house to go do stuff when he’s stuck moping around. Theyre SO opposites attract. She’s also ready to stand up for him whenever necessary. Jack will just turn the other cheek to insults and pretend nothing bothers him, but Brezziana won’t let him bottle things up

Sara x Mihaly: Another case of chill vs energetic balancing each other out. I think Mihaly brings Sara to meet Master Panda and he really likes her. What if they try training together to see if Sara is gifted with the Flow like people from the Danceverses are? Again, I feel like Mihaly is also a grounding presence for her amongst the chaos of the Danceverses.

Sara x Brezziana: They go on mall dates a lot! Cute dates where they pick out outfits for each other and try them on. They’re very giggly. They post very cutesy Instagram posts about each other all the time. Connected at the hip when the gang goes out places.

Mihaly x Brezziana: This one’s popular. Again it’s energetic vs chill. Mihaly will often open their home to fourteen texts from Brezziana about something crazy she just did and Mihaly just shakes their head and smiles.

#pls don’t let this turn into ship bashing #if you have nothing nice to say don’t say anything at all #sometimes I think about writing a Jack x Sara fic #I’m definitely a Wanderrose stan but I think it could also be good #endless possibilities here and they’re all good #also no I refuse to call them the just dancers #just dance #just dance 2023 #just dance 2024

[egginfroggin]

I like to think that Sabi pesters Gaeric. She's a child up in the Icelands -- it's kind of isolated, even if she does have a massive bird for company, and Gaeric is probably the closest person for company, unless she wants to go to the Pearl Settlement directly.

By "pesters," I mean she drops out of the sky and throws snowballs at him. Or drops snow on him from above. It's all in good fun, and he'll chase her when she's on the ground, picking her up and carefully tossing her into the air or just carrying her around slung over his shoulder.

Sometimes she'll push a bit too much and he'll scold her, but for the most part, he has a pretty good amount of patience and lets her carry out her shenanigans. She's a kid. She needs to interact with other people, and to burn off energy somehow.

I dunno, I just think that they're neat and deserve to have a good, wholesome relationship. Gaeric is out here accidentally adopting this weird little kid who claims to be able to see the future, and Sabi is just like, "Ooh, yes, he will make an excellent playmate," and, "He is a good target for me to practice my snowball throwing."

She wasn't scared of him at first, even though he is a rather intimidating figure, because she had a vision of them playing together. No fear, just immediate attachment. Grabs his tunic and runs off with it, maybe. Shadows him in the Pearl Settlement and waits to see how long it takes for him to notice.

He teaches her foraging and techniques for tracking, as well as how to survive in case she gets separated from Braviary. She is small! She needs to know these things, living in such a dangerous place! Braviary is very dependable, and loves his tiny Warden, but he may not always be able to get to her!

TLDR: I think that Sabi and Gaeric have a relationship that's part friends, part big brother and little sister, and part weird uncle and niece thing. They like each other (platonically), and Gaeric will play with her when she comes around to pester him, because the Icelands are isolated and she is a child who needs company.

#warden sabi #warden gaeric #pokemon #pokemon legends arceus #egginfroggintalkin #pokemon fanfiction #she trusts him he trusts her yada yada yada #look I just like found family okay #and there is not enough content with either of these two #so I need to talk about both of them at once #two birds with one stone #yeah

[seagull-scribbles]

Based on a Casey and Raph fic called “come and leave your mark’’ by @several-sleepless-nights

#tmnt #Casey jones 2012 #raphael hamato #raph 2012 #several-sleepless-nights #come and leave your mark #at first i was like i havent seen the vampire arc idk if i will like this fic but I shall read it anyway #and then i was mesorised and engrossed and checked it every night till chapter 2 came out #it is so so so good do check it out #and i mean i ship them but even if you dont I think its still enjoyable its not a lovey dovey fic #i just really loved it thank you so much for writing it #im still not happpy and comfortable with drawing humans #but i hope this looks okay #idk i wanted it to look softer and more vulnerable like your words but it looks quite harsh and volatile #but then again Casey and Raph are both softies who act harsh and volatile so maybe thats good? id #idk #idk guys #fanfiction #fanfic art #as with my last 2012 raph and casey thing im going to throw this at you and run away #been sittingnin my folder for days its time to share

[spookythesillyfella]

happy [late] birthday to the clevery guy !!!! <33

~ after being taken out by Tracey for some fun in the city for his big day , once returned home , the birthday boy himself gets some lovely stickers made just for him by Sketch , who had to get over her disdain of the color green for the day , just for her friend's sake . of course , Tony couldn't just not give his dear pal anything , instead baking the computer his cake for the special day , alongside other smaller gifts ;3

also extra digitaltime thing thing for the occasion teehee 💌

#hnsgh yeah okay #digitaltime brainrot is killing meee #it sucks when theres barely any content of your blorbos being romantic and stupid and fluffy #anywhosies #this isn't about digitaltime #this is about colin and his little guy little birthday #i struggled with both of these pieces for a little bit but . in the end . im actually very proud of how they turned out !! #especially the second one teehee #it would mean a lot to me if you peeps you reblog this !!! #no pressure ofc !! #dhmis #dhmis art #dhmis au #high voltage au #dhmis colin #colin the computer #dhmis hv colin #dhmis tony #tony the talking clock #dhmis hv tony #dhmis ship #dhmis digital time #digitaltime #im going insane over them someone please send help #or make digitaltime art and fanfictions preferably #i am TIRED of doing all the heavy lifting alone #im sorry was that guy bothering you ? you don't have to make digitaltime content if you don't want to . don't listen to him hes just insane #oh yeah those on colin's neck ARE kiss marks from tony okay im done i love you drink water byeee !!!!! <33

[snixx]

mike wheeler in the fic I'm reading has exactly as much tact as I did in high school. what can I say sometimes you really do have to learn the hard way that you do not immediately ask your best friend who is also your soon-to-be ex's sibling "nothing's going to change between us no matter how much your sister and i hypothetically hate each other in the future right?" when you're LITERALLY still in the middle of your very messy breakup and they're furious at you secondhand because of #siblingsolidarity. not to mention he handled the break up itself like an ass like go off thank you author i love it truly the representation for us completely oblivious emotionally challenged idiots we're starved of otherwise NO ONE EVER GETS HOW STUPID WE CAN TRULY BE

#girlblogging.pdf #byler #mike wheeler i know what you are #willel #as someone who has a lot of mutual friends with my sister AND as someone friends with a lot of siblings #i obviously love all my friends to death and they love me but #if you have a choice. for future reference trust me do not befriend two siblings pick one if you must #it's an emotional shitshow for everyone involved #you have to give each of them exactly equal amounts of affection and love and everything all the time that's just the rule #you're an ass otherwise #also we will always pick each other over you even if you did nothing wrong #just know what you're in for when you befriend siblings okay it's not easy #you know my childhood ex best friend i keep posting about? we broke up over a fight she had with my sister #also my best friends are siblings and fighting with both of them because it was a both or neither situation in school was The Worst #i have like a zillion more stories just trust me okay #i love my sibling friends to pieces and the mutual friends i have with my sister and i wouldnt trade them for the world #but im sure as hell not befriending siblings simultaneously in the future #my sister and i are literally the tightest now too because our social circles barely overlap #anyway. that was another episode of me projecting way too hard onto byler fanfiction hope you enjoyed #vagueposting the shit out of tumblr dot com

[eldritch-shitposting]

Day two and I’m still on target! I mean, two out of thirty isn’t that bad, right?

Let’s keep this drive going:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/47581300/chapters/119995603

#yugioh #PuzzleJune2023 #puzzleshipping #fanfiction #anxious road trip boys #okay only yugi is anxious #atem is just done with everything and it's only chapter two #but yugi is anxious enough for both of them

[walkawaytall]

Me: it is utterly absurd that the necklace Leia wears during the Yavin medal ceremony has lore behind it when we all know the only reason Leia has a necklace in that scene is because Carrie Fisher looked pretty in the necklace. We don’t have to have lore for everything!

Also me: *writes a 1000-plus-word flashback scene giving the dress worn in the same ceremony sentimental value and purpose*

#it’s not really about the dress #it’s actually more about Leia and Breha’s relationship okay? #the dress is a mere conduit #and like really it’s all an attempt to explain why the dress and necklace were just chilling on a militia base in the first place #since I imagine stormtroopers didn’t allow Leia to gather her personal belongings before stunning her and taking her captive #and actually if the dumb necklace didn’t already have lore attached to it I never would have assigned lore to the dress #but the necklace is canonically an Organa family heirloom #riddle me that #so I just felt like explaining them both was the right thing to do #but it’s really more about Leia and Breha #leia organa #breha organa #star wars fanfiction #fanfiction writer #my fic

[lizzieraindrops]

“I lost track of time.” Ikora held her in silence. A faint shudder shook Eris’ form. When she spoke again, her voice hovered low like a creature gone to ground. “It is so deathly quiet, in the cavern with that Pyramid. After a time, it has a way of making one forget having ever been anything but alone.”

Anger lit up like a flare within Ikora. She knotted her fingers into the fabric of Eris’ cloak. If only this insidious enemy were one she could keep out physically, she would destroy it herself with nothing but her hands full of surging Light.

But it was not. Taking a deep breath, she set her anger aside, exhale by exhale. Eris breathed with her, tension thawing with every sigh.

Then Eris did something incredibly rare.

Also on AO3

Eris abruptly returns from Luna desperately seeking the comfort of a trusted touch. Ikora gives her a back massage, and also might end up on the receiving end of the affection and affirmation she needs.

A coda to Confusion lines, but works as a standalone. Context: Eris is very touch-starved but also often touch-repulsed. Ikora is very emotionally repressed. The two of them have been together awhile now and have been working through their challenges together.

Relationships: Eris Morn/Ikora Rey Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Additional Tags: Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, soooooooooo much respect for boundaries, Non-Sexual Intimacy, non-sexual nudity, No Smut, it's just soft. just so much soft, also. chubby eris rights., Asexual Relationship

Ikora was never alone, not truly. She was always in the City, these days, surrounded by life and life and life. Millions of humans coalesced below the shelter of the Traveler. Thousands of Guardians coursed through the halls and plazas of the Tower like gleaming whitewater, brushing past her mind like countless bright candles of Light. Every day she greeted familiar faces by name, and kept the ones she could no longer speak to their owners under her tongue.

This was a far cry from the long, silent wanders of her youth. Only intermittent firefights punctuated the emptiness of the endless ruins she ranged on Earth and beyond. But even then she was not alone. Despite all their years of mutual silence, Ophiuchus had never left her side.

And yet.

A strange kind of silence still surrounded her sometimes, even amid the clamor of the Bazaar. Somehow, it fell on her ears more deafening than either those sounds of life or their absence when in solitude. It was not a lack of sound, but rather its seeming lack of import. The raucous torrent of existence faded into a waterfall of white noise, and it was as if she never returned to truly call this place home.

Was this home?

It must be.

Through endless comings and goings, Ikora has remained here. The dusk of the Dark Age fell and the dawn of the City broke over these very mountains. Thousands of Guardians have risen and fallen. So many of the reasons she came here and stayed here have either moved on or stopped moving altogether. Osiris. Andal. Cayde. Her tenure as one of the keepers of this lighthouse had outlasted them all, despite the silence hollowing her out and the chronic restless ache for the freedom of her youth. When her thoughts fell into such morose tracks, she was selfishly glad of the Titan intransigence that had kept Zavala’s reliability and Shaxx’s good humor here close within her reach.

Eris, though, was a unique case. She had left the City and Ikora behind more than once. But she came back, if not home. Ikora had long since learned that the City could never truly be home for Hunters.

Yet she kept coming back. Often she returned from abroad as skittish and halting as she was in the beginning, fresh out of the Pit and alert to every sound, flinching from every movement. But Ikora could wait for her. The time and space between them might warp and wind, but she would always wait for her.

On a crisp autumn day when Ikora had buried herself in personal research at home, Eris returned from the Moon once again. Maybe a month had passed since Ikora last saw her. This time, her hands twitched and the spears of her pauldrons carved wounds in the air of Ikora’s apartment when she entered. Ikora prepared to give her a wide berth until she was ready. But she strode directly to the chair at the counter where Ikora studied. Ikora barely had time to set her book aside and stand before Eris reached for her. The momentum nearly made them both stumble back along the vector of her trajectory.

“Eris, what’s wrong?”

In place of a reply, arms tightened about Ikora’s ribcage. With uneven breaths, Eris buried her face in Ikora’s shoulder, sinking into every point where they touched.

Gently but firmly, Ikora folded her arms around the sudden shape pressed against her. “This is not your usual reaction to Luna,” she said in a tone far milder than the taut timbre of her racing mind. While at times Eris certainly cultivated such intense closeness as this, when distressed she typically defaulted to the reprieve of distance.

Not this time. Ikora stroked a hand down her back in a soothing motion, staying near her spine and away from her shoulders.

Finally, incrementally, Eris relaxed. “I lost track of time.” Ikora held her silence. A faint shudder shook Eris’ form. When she spoke again, her voice hovered low like a creature gone to ground. “It is so deathly quiet, in the cavern with that Pyramid. After a time, it has a way of making one forget having ever been anything but alone.”

Anger lit up like a flare within Ikora. She knotted her fingers into the fabric of Eris’ cloak. If only this insidious enemy were one she could keep out physically, she would destroy it herself with nothing but her hands full of surging Light.

But it was not. Taking a deep breath, she set her anger aside, exhale by exhale. Eris breathed with her, tension thawing with every sigh.

Then Eris did something incredibly rare. Her grip loosened and she turned within Ikora’s arms. Sharp points of coarse chitin turned aside, her sensitive shoulders pressed into Ikora’s chest. Ikora could hardly breathe for the resulting emotion that flooded her.

For all that she held most of the world at arm’s length, Eris clung. She clutched Ikora’s hands and tugged her arms as tightly around herself as possible. Ikora held her tightly, maintaining maximum contact.

To not feel alone, Eris came to her. Long-lost Eris, who had so often worn solitude like a shield whether she wanted it or not. Ikora only wished she could give her anything and everything she needed. But all she could offer was her care and herself. If Eris sought her out this way, perhaps that could be enough. She held the woman to her until her own encircling arms shook with emotion, and even then she did not have to let go yet.

It wasn’t that they orbited each other, not quite. They each had their own calling to which they answered. But despite the very different paths they followed, they still sought to undo the same ills, to protect the same life. They circled the same star in the end, and they always came back around to each other.

Every time Eris chose to return, a little more of that forgotten old ache deep in Ikora’s chest dissolved. Or perhaps it did the opposite of dissolve, since it was a scar made of absences: something different filled that sore, atrophied space, and it hurt, but it was real.

Eris in her arms was real. She had chosen to be here. She wanted Ikora here, so close. And oh, how Ikora wanted to show her, too, just how deeply she was wanted, held precious, loved. Most of the time, that looked like giving her the space she needed and the affection she silently (though very clearly) requested. Yet in her desperation for closeness right then, perhaps what Eris needed exceeded that which she knew how to ask.

“Eris?” The pauldron in her face slightly muffled her voice. “This is just an idea, but… how would you feel about a back massage?”

Eris clearly took the time to try and assess this completely unprecedented and unexpected question. Still, her only reply was a blank “What?”

Ikora squeezed her lightly around the middle. She was soft, there, underneath her metal-studded leathers. Eris ran a thumb over her hands in response. “Would you like for me to massage your back?” Ikora rephrased. “You seem in need of contact right now, and I think it could help. If you wanted.”

Considering silence stretched. “Perhaps it would.” Eris said. “Very well.”

“Alright.” Ikora tucked her face against the side of Eris’ hood and breathed in deeply. Eris smelled cold and chalky like the lunar dust that clung to her armor, traced with an edge of sharp bitterness from the smoky ichor that trailed down her cheeks. Beneath those lay something faint but familiar, deep like broken earth and whisper-sweet like dry grass.

“Alright,” Ikora said again. She uncurled from Eris, only to squeeze her upper arms in her hands once more before letting go. “Go take off your armor. I’ll be right there.”

Eris retreated to Ikora’s room to change. Ikora made tea in the kitchen to give her time.  Buckles clicked faintly in the other room, accompanied by the hush of cloth and leather on the edge of hearing. When the rustle had died down, Ikora followed.

Looking much less encumbered in just her under-armor linens, Eris finished folding her cloak around her other gear and set the neat little bundle on the dresser. She came to take one of the softly steaming cups Ikora offered. After a brief sip, though, she set it down and instead looped her arms around Ikora’s neck.

Hiding her face in Ikora’s shoulder, she simply hung there and held on. She seemed so much smaller without her armor. Her presence was usually so large that Ikora often forgot that the Hunter was shorter than she.

Gingerly setting her teacup down, too, Ikora held her gently. One hand rested at her waist. The other cupped the back of her head and brushed fingertips over the cloth knot there that held the gauze in place over Eris’ eyes. Ikora went still, content to indefinitely remain as they were for as long as she needed.

It was quiet. The City’s muffled afternoon murmur through the sunny window harmonized into white noise with the minute scrapings of the building’s heat system. It was old, as buildings went in the City - which was to say, far fresher still than all the ruins beyond the walls that outnumbered them manifold.

When Eris finally loosened her hold, Ikora patted her arm gently. Diffuse green light spilled from her downcast eyes. She pulled her arms back in close to her chest, vaguely uncertain. For someone whose resolute confidence Ikora admired, sometimes Eris still made herself small enough to fit into the faintest shadow, the slightest stone crevice. The fact that Eris let Ikora see her like this both hurt and heartened.

“Lay down?” Ikora suggested in the quietest voice.

Eris hummed in assent. She sat on the edge of the duvet, looking a bit perplexed. Ikora went around to the other side to do the same and laid back as if they were going to sleep. Eris copied her motions. They merely lay there silent for a few breaths.

“You can go ahead and roll over when you’re ready.” She ran the backs of her fingers along Eris’ arm. Then she rose again and pulled her legs beneath herself. The deep violet hem of her house robes fanned out across the soft bedding around her loosely folded limbs.

Rolling over onto her stomach with her hands flat on the bed, Eris gave the impression of a creature about to spring. But then the taut readiness drained out of her until her body sank into the bulk of featherdown.

With a firm yet gentle touch, Ikora began working her way up and down along Eris’ spine. Initially Eris fidgeted with restless hands at her sides and shuffled her shoulders. But gradually, the tense tone of her back muscles softened into something Ikora rarely saw in her: something adjacent to ease.

True comfort was something she only settled into once Ikora discovered her preference for long, steady even strokes and heavy pressure.

The sheer improbability of knowing such a thing slipped between Ikora’s ribs and hung there as if suspended by a string. Had anyone else known this? Had that tactile reminder of constant presence always soothed Eris? Or was it a response as new as all her scars? With the way she began to melt under Ikora’s hands, she clearly, desperately needed the comfort of another person’s touch.

The Hellmouth enacted endless violences upon her, physical and beyond. Eris had worked so hard to become once again able to stand such closenesses. She once - and still - sometimes struggled even to let Ikora near her, let alone anyone else. To now be able to safely lavish love upon her in this way: it was a new kind of benign devastation just as affecting as any of the many calamities Ikora has witnessed. Yet its pain was the richest bittersweet ache.

Ikora was thinking too much. She set such thoughts aside in yet another of the many bowls that she pushed to the back of her mind. She focused on the bare bones of rhythm and motion and breath, like this was a meditation. Everything else could come and go.

Soon enough, to Ikora’s mild consternation, Eris was stretching languidly below the continuous touch as if they did this every day. All her eyes had drifted closed to a low, shuttered glow. As she let her limbs down again to rest fully against the flat surface, she raised her arms and folded her hands into a rest for her head.

Ikora’s hands swept in long arcs across her back, squeezed along her upper arms, and worried at the strung-tight muscles of her neck until they began to loosen. Repeatedly, Ikora smoothed out the crinkles in the worn-soft linen that her own motions had created like ripples on water.

Eris cleared her throat softly as if to speak, but the words took their time working their way out of her. Ikora continued the work of her hands. In the mildest, most unconcerned voice, Eris asked: “Would it be easier without the fabric in the way?”

That halted Ikora. “Well… yes,” she said, lost somewhere between an answer and a question. “But you should be comfortable. Don’t trouble yourself about it.”

“I do not.” Eris shrugged her hands off and rose to kneeling. Ikora sat back, hardly knowing what to think, and held her breath.

The thing was, to be not only permitted so near Eris, but to have her touch requested - that was already the highest honor and the deepest expression of trust Ikora could imagine.

So when Eris freed herself from her undershirt and bundled it into a makeshift cushion under her chest as she laid back down, expectant — Ikora could not speak at all past the lump that formed in her throat.

Very slowly, she laid both palms on the bare skin in the center of Eris’ back and breathed out in perfect time with Eris’ slight inhale. She pressed firmly.

The smallest possible sound escaped Eris, hardly even a whimper. But she melted into the touch rather than recoiling. When Ikora resumed motion, the soft friction of skin on skin translated the pressure she exerted deep into the muscle with far more efficiency.

She had known that Eris was laced with innumerable scars: the many relics of Lightless survival. But Ikora had never seen the raised ropes of the great twin slashes that ran all the way across her left scapula, over the top of her shoulder and out of sight. The marks looked as if a Thrall had seized her from behind and then lost its grip, the blades of its fingers scoring chaos down her back.

With slow deliberation, Ikora dug her thumbs into the parallel bands of muscle on either side of Eris’ spine. She followed their length down to the small of her back. Anchored there, she laid her fingers around Eris’ waist and let them press lightly into that gentle yielding place just above her hips.

There was something of a softness to Eris now: a degree of give between skin and bone that was once drawn tight with lack. Her form had grudgingly begun to fill out again in her long recovery, something gentler pooling in between all her sharpened edges. It suited her far more naturally than the gaunt frame that had emerged from the Hellmouth.

Her bearing these days had transformed as dramatically as her face. Yet her shape finally remembered something of the Hunter who had once slain dragons by Ikora’s side: stocky and steady and implacable even as she bent and danced with the storm like a sapling. Her tenacity had only grown deeper roots in her long exile.

Lying there prone, Eris neither hid her body nor displayed it; she simply existed, unapologetic and without affect or restraint. Ikora caressed her with something like pride, something like wonder, gentle in the bend of her wrist.

She ran a single finger along the inner edge of Eris’ shoulderblade. With the way Eris had arranged her arms above her head, the flat of it spread across her back like a partly extended wing. Eris’ breath hitched just a little. But all the air went out of her again in a sigh that trailed off into a tiny, contented sound. A little firmer, Ikora stroked along the length of that line again. Her fingertips slid slowly over the stripes of scars. Then, she pressed the same motions into the layer of muscle exposed just below the blade. Within a few repetitions, Eris had gone completely limp in a way she had never seen.

Something shifted within Ikora. Nascent tremors in her fingerbones impelled her to lift her hands away, keeping the strange involuntary response to herself.

It made no sense. Every day she held steady under the responsibility for millions of lives bearing down upon her shoulders. Yet that differed in all entirety from the fact of this single tender, tormented body lying at ease beneath the touch of her volatile hands. Before the stark absence of that fear that so often racked Eris’ form with terrible memory, somehow Ikora felt like the one who was lying there with all of her defenses stripped away.

A minute sound of faint dissatisfaction inquired into the space Ikora had left between them. Ikora didn’t know how to answer. From where her arms were folded over her head, Eris drew one elbow back to tuck against her own side. Her upraised palm half uncurled in askance.

Light, but Eris’ trust put her to shame. Despite her reluctance, she threaded her fingers between Eris’ with neat precision. She steadied her hands as much as she could. Whether the more than adequate results were due to her efforts or to Eris’ effect on her was unclear. In addition, something prevented her from fronting a veneer of composure as she normally would, further complicating the issue with another factor.

Eris clasped the offered hand fully within her own, absorbing the faint tremor like an echo in the forest subsumed by the trees. Then she gently tugged at it to get Ikora to lie down beside her. Bemused, Ikora obliged.

Eris rolled onto her side so that they face each other. The crumple of her undershirt half hid her, like a snowdrift, like a low-lying branch in a dark wood. But evidently she cultivated no such mystery in this moment, for she drew Ikora’s hand directly to her exposed heart where her pulse beat slow and steady in the core of her. Her hand rested cool within Ikora’s own, while her chest rose and fell warm against the back of it.

The single teardrop creeping across Ikora’s cheek escaped her notice until Eris smoothed two fingers across that damp trajectory.

“What is it?” In her relaxation, the resonant timbre of Eris’ voice vibrated deep in her chest. Fingertips lightly touched Ikora’s face with reverence.

“I’m sorry.”

“Do not be. Tell me.”

Ikora sighed. With her free hand, she tugged at the hem of her robe where it had twisted beneath her. “I worry.”

“About what?”

“Everything. The City. The war.” Her eyes flicked to Eris’ for a moment. “You.” She looked away. “It could all fall apart at any time.”

“Yes.”

“… Aren’t you afraid?”

“Of course.”

Ikora took a shaky breath. “What are we doing, Eris?”

“We are loving each other.” That bald honesty scraped raw against the insides of Ikora’s ribs. Her heart fluttered like a wounded bird within its wounded home. She loved Eris so much it frightened her. She could not reconcile the tenderness of what they had become with the terror of what the world still was.

“I can’t keep you safe.”

“No,” Eris agreed. “But I trust you to care for me,” she said without intonation, as if it were a simple, unremarkable fact. Ikora couldn’t deal with that right now, on top of whatever this was. Faint concern narrowed Eris’ eyes as she said: “I wish you would let me do the same for you more often.”

An automatic response sprang to Ikora’s lips. “You have already borne so much. You still do.”

“Do I?” Eris asked in soft challenge. “Do I look burdened now, Ikora?” She let her head droop against the bed, every slope of her shape slack with ease.

“You know what I mean.” A thumb brushed over Ikora’s eyelashes, making them flutter.

“I do. Yet you do not follow my meaning.”

“What, then?”

Eris sighed. Though her eyes had no clearly discernible pupil, it was clear that their gaze drifted behind the gauze while she searched for the precise words she wanted to say. “It is difficult in its simplicity,” she said at length. Absently, she traced the curve of Ikora’s shoulder. Her lips pursed in thought. “Why did you draw back, just then?” She went still as if something had just occurred to her. Her hand withdrew. She laid it palm-down flat in the small space between them. “Have I overstepped?”

“No, no.” Ikora placed a hand over hers. “I just… I look at you and I want to see you like this more. Not necessarily like this, physically. But you just look so...”

Eris caught the trailing end of her sentence as gently as she caught her hand once more between both of her own. “What is it I look?”

Ikora curled her other hand before her own lips. It obscured the shape of her mouth as she said: “Safe.”

The low, considering sound Eris made in her throat was practically a purr. “Safe for myself, or for you?”

A beat. “Both.”

“Hmm,” she said with evident pleasure. Though she was not proud of it, Ikora envied her ability to possess her own joy without reserve despite all, all of it. Perhaps, in Eris’ endless fight against the despair she had been so long steeped in, she had been healing in ways Ikora had never even known how to attempt. Ikora had only just begun the long, torturous homecoming to her own heart. Eris had been walking that tattered, winding path path for years, and she continued along it still. To see her now, radiant with casual confidence: it was enough to pierce Ikora’s heart.

Rising a little from the soft spread where they both lay, Eris propped herself up on one arm. With more flourish than was really necessary, she loosened the bandage that concealed her eyes and unraveled the cloth from her head. She cast it carelessly aside.

Then, holding herself aloft with precise control, Eris leaned very close over her. Ikora became aware of her own heartbeat. The stark contrasts of her face formed a fierce visage. She captured and held Ikora’s gaze with the unfiltered viridian blaze of her three incandescent eyes, open strangely wide. Tears of jet-black smoke seeped from them like blood. Rippling scars distorted half the surface of her sunless skin.

“Do you feel safe, Ikora Rey?” she asked in the gentlest memory of a growl.

It was then that Ikora understood the paradox that let Eris withstand this terrifying vulnerability.

It was the choice to act as freely as if she would not be harmed, despite contradiction by every devastation she had survived. Made in hope within this tiny, temporary pocket of safety they had carved out of the broken world — her mere choice transformed reality itself to reflect a new truth of her choosing. In acknowledging the power that had been held over her yet refusing to yield to it in that moment, she wrested its potency to her own counterpurposes. What she did was not a denial, but rather a purest defiance.

Perhaps Ikora, too, could lean into her own fear. Perhaps she could face that deepest hurt she never tended to, the ache of everyone she had lost to time and choice and death alike, and embrace all of it. She could choose to bare her heart anyway as if maybe it wouldn’t break. Just a little, just here, just for a moment.

“Yes,” Ikora breathed in answer.

“Now you see,” Eris whispered. Her eyes softened and dimmed slightly as they ranged Ikora’s face. When Eris’ gaze was this soft, it was somehow far more powerful than her most baleful luminous glare. “You take such care of me,” she murmured. “Do you know that I can take care of you, as well?”

“Yes.”

“Will you let me?”

Ikora considered. Automatic self-reliance had become such habit for so many Lightbearers. Indeed, that was a strength Ikora highly respected in others, Eris foremost among them. Yet Eris wielded it as a tool, rather than holding to it as a principle in itself. Its applications were numerous and crucial, to be certain. But time and again, Ikora had found herself wondering whether, perhaps, they were not universal.

The concept slipped her grasp when she wasn’t actively thinking about it. Its shape was so different than the one worn into her mind like an ancient wheel track through cobblestones. Maybe that was why she kept forgetting that she could have this: a breath’s respite, deliberate weakness circumscribed by the tender strength of her lover’s arms.

Even though the way they were with each other was sexless by both their preferences, Ikora didn’t know how else to think of Eris but as a lover. What else would describe the particular timbre and depth of passion between them, or the way Eris even now asked her to let herself be cared for?

The smallest sigh left Ikora’s lungs. Her whole chest went terribly soft around her tentative heart.

“I am learning,” she finally said.

“Then I am patient.”

Ironically, she was right. For a woman ever in impatient perpetual motion, Eris had a sophisticated understanding of stillness, of persistence. If she found it worth her time to stand still - lie still - here with Ikora, then Ikora could at least try to meet her halfway in their mirrored attempts to grow beyond their pasts. Ikora only hoped to prove worth the effort.

“Stop thinking.” Eris cupped Ikora’s cheek and placed a single kiss on her lips. Then she settled next to her again and nestled close. She was warm. Her head tucked just under Ikora’s chin. Consciously, Ikora relaxed into her touch.

But it still took a few moments to begin bringing her mind back to stillness. Something would not settle out of the swirl, a stick caught against the river’s push. So she plucked it out and offered it up.

“I don’t want this to be unequal. I don’t want you to be doing all the work on us.”

“That is not what is happening,” Eris said against her collarbone, unmoved.

Ikora shivered. “How do you know? I can’t promise that I will get any better at this any time soon. I am trying, Eris - Light, but you make me want to try, but… “

“Ikora.” Hands at her temples guided her gaze like she was a skittish horse. Green filled her field of vision. “We fail constantly. Yet sometimes we do not. Trying is what matters.”

That haunting, elegant voice dropped into a softer register when Eris continued. “Yet even were it not: for you I would learn such patience. You have already waited on me for so long.”

Once again, that devastating sincerity tilted the balance of Ikora’s world into vertigo. Fortunately, her lover already held her steady, and her mind suddenly flowed forth as sharp and clear as a mountain spring. “This is not a barter, Eris.”

“I didn’t say that it was.”

“You framed it as such. We can support each other in different ways and remain equals.”

With an aggrieved tilting of her head, Eris actually rolled her eyes. She sighed dramatically. Arms slipped around Ikora. Hands pressed into her back punctuated her words. “Yes, Ikora, I am aware. That is what I am saying. Now, would you please do for me whatever you were doing to my shoulders before we began this discussion.”

Ikora laughed under her breath. It scarcely made a sound, but it moved Eris pressed against her chest. In response, Eris squeezed her a little tighter before easing her grip.

Ikora’s hands smoothed their way down Eris’ still-bare shoulders and once again began mapping out the richly detailed landscape of her back. With Eris in her arms like this, her every motion pulled the two of them closer rather than pushing away. Every touch of her hands resonated and rippled through the lines of Eris’ body melting against her. They stayed that way until more true words found themselves on Ikora’s lips.

“I missed you,” she whispered into Eris’ ear.

“I know,” came the muffled reply. From the way Eris clutched at her in a mirror of her own hold, it was clearly a mutual feeling.

On impulse, because she was unlikely to have the chance again soon, if ever - Ikora bent her head to drop a small kiss on top of Eris’ shoulder, right where that long double scar crested it.

Eris shivered and sighed. She stayed where she was for a moment longer. Then she moved and took Ikora’s face in her hands.

“Thank you,” she said simply. She kissed her once, twice. Ikora would never tire of that. “That is enough, now.”

“Of course.” Though a mild disappointment passed through her, the intensity of this closeness was getting to Ikora, too. She took a long slow breath and released Eris to gaze at her contentedly.

Eris sat up but stayed near. Ikora enjoyed the relaxed shape of her without shame: the thickness of her waist, the slack curve of her breast, the precision in the way her arms moved as she pulled her undershirt out from beneath herself and slipped back into it. Her fingers went to the place where Ikora had kissed her shoulder and pressed it like a memento. A faint, unconscious smile brightened her lips. Affection ached in Ikora’s chest.

To Ikora’s surprise, Eris laid back down alongside her. She pulled at her arm insistently.

“Roll over,” Eris said softly.

Ikora yielded to the pull. Eris knew her own limits, and clearly this was not beyond them right now. As they were already close, rolling a half-turn toward her put Ikora’s back against her chest. Eris’ knees tucked into the back of Ikora’s. Arms circled about her tightly in the way she couldn’t help but lean into: the way that would not let her forget that she was not alone. Yet for a moment, she found herself still holding her breath, holding back.

“My turn to look after you now,” Eris crooned in her ear.

The air went out of Ikora in a short, rueful laugh. She pushed aside her reflexive resistance and gave herself up as cared for. “You devious thing.”

A huff of air from Eris’ nostrils made the fabric of Ikora’s robe flutter against her back. “Haven’t you heard? I’m terribly deceitful and corrupt.”

“Yes, yes. Very terrifying, dear.”

Ikora yelped as Eris nipped her ear in retaliation.

“Hey!”

“You dare mock the Hidden Blade? The Bane of the Swarm?” Eris’ tone remained completely serious in a way it never had when uttering those disdained titles. But Ikora could hear the teeth of a grin. A blunt nose tickled her just below the ear and raised chills across her skin. Ikora squirmed, but those stout arms held her tight.

“Eris, I swear to the Traveler -“

“That silent god will not help you here, Ikora Rey -“

Ikora wrestled herself free, only to pounce on Eris and be caught up again without hesitation. Eris’ rare, genuine laugh fell on her ears in a low ripple of captivating harmony.

“You’re ridiculous,” Ikora said fondly.

Eris’ face shone as brilliantly and tenderly as the dawn.

The rest of what they said did not need words.

#destiny 2 #destiny the game #destiny fanfiction #ikora rey #eris morn #eris morn/ikora rey #erikora #ikoris #look. ikora is very good at Everything Except her own emotions. emotional self-awareness is her dump stat. #i just care about them okay #i know they're both really intense people with a lot of angst and shit going on but sometimes u just want them to have the briefest chance #to be soft #lizzie taking up space #destinewt #long post

[yourlocalxbox]

Totality - Undertronic

Seth and Sine spend time admiring the eclipse. Written in one hour, 832 words.

“Do you know how beautiful your art is?”

Seth stared at the sky with clasped hands. A gentle breeze blew past - Zephyros’ sigh, he supposed. He couldn’t help but wonder who held that God Soul now. Seth had always wanted to meet the wind god; perhaps the two could make a good pair.

What a silly thought.

Golden hair fell into his eyes, yet he never moved. Never took his gaze off of his work. Not a second could be missed. He heard laughter behind him.

“What are you doing?” Sine reached from behind and brushed Seth’s hair out of his face. He couldn’t help but notice how his touch lingered longer than it had to. He couldn’t help but notice how he didn’t mind. “You can hardly see through all of that.”

“Like you would know,” Seth quipped. The skeleton behind him snorted.

“Hey, I can make some guesses.”

Sine crept into the corner of Seth’s vision. He pulled off his hood and craned his neck to match Seth. One hand rested in the pocket of his cloak; the other nearly startled Seth out of his trance when it grazed his fingers.

“I could get us something. Tea. Whiskey. Coffee, extra-strong. On the house. Off the rocks. I could go on.”

Seth grinned. “No, thank you. This is enough.”

“But you don’t have anything?”

Seth held his tongue. This was more than enough.

“Won’t it be too dark?”

Seth paused. The thought did cross his mind, but he was not one to be afraid of the dark. A bit of daytime nightfall wouldn’t bother him - he didn’t know what it would take to make him fear the dark, but this was not it. “Not with you around.” He made a vague gesture to the skeleton’s ears. Their calming light was sufficient to keep the growing shadows at bay. Sine gently scratched at one of Seth’s clasped hands, and he let it fall open. The two looked upwards to Seth’s work of art.

The eclipse neared its totality.

“Do you think,” Sine started, “Do you think…”

Seth cocked his head to the side.

“Nevermind.”

The remaining sunlight faded around them.

“No no, what were you saying? Please.”

The shadows cut deeper.

“It’s silly. It’s just a silly thought.”

Sine’s light danced across his face.

“You know those are my favourite.”

“Do you think we could stay like this forever?”

And the world fell yet darker.

“I don’t want this to end. It’s beautiful. Look at it,” Sine mused.

“There’s nothing to look at.”

“Exactly. You did this. You did this, Seth. Look at what you can do.”

Sine’s grip tightened around his hand. He felt dizzy from how his heart beat so unusually. They both knew it was a silly thought. The planets would pass, life would go on. Every couple decades or so, Seth would sit down and repeat the process, as this soul had done for hundreds of thousands of years. This was nothing special. This was just as the last ten thousand had been. It was the same one, the same sun that had people worshipped long before these souls reached their hosts. This couldn’t last forever. Their tails curled around each other. Maybe not forever.

“...I can make you a compromise.”

Seth couldn’t make it last forever. Not even a minute. The others would notice; planets were not something to be trifled with. The Death Well flashed in his mind. Yes, that was a fate he would prefer to avoid.

But a moment wouldn’t hurt.

He squeezed Sine’s hand back, flesh caressing bone. “I think…”

Sine smiled. “You sure about that one?”

“You- Come on, I lost my train of thought.”

“It’s alright,” said Sine. Seth tore his eyes away from his art to meet his. “I think that I think so too.”

The light began to fade back in around them. Seth quickly turned to hide the flush of his face. If anything, it only made Sine look at him more. “You’re kinda cute when you think you’re being slick, y’know.”

Seth exhaled sharply and turned away. “Come on. These always tire me out,” he lied. As much as he hoped Sine wouldn’t catch on, he knew it was a losing battle.

“Aah, so Mister Destruction needs a nap?”

“Shut-” His words were cut short by his own stammering. Sine cackled behind him. He sighed and made his way back inside.

“C’mon, you know you love me.” 

They both stopped mid-step. The daytime betrayed both of their expressions. They simply stared at each other in silence.

“I…” The words caught in Seth’s throat. He knew what he wanted to say. He knew what he needed to say.

I think…

No.

I know…

He put his hand back into Sine’s. His gaze softened. Perhaps not everything had to be said.

It didn’t matter how dark it had gotten; Seth could still see one thing clearly. His work could never compare to the art that had stood beside him.

#undertronic #undertronic fic #fanfiction #Disclaimer: Do NOT stare at solar eclipses lol. One is the god of eclipses so I figure he'd have some sort of immunity #(I didn't want to completely logic this entire fic because if I did it simply would not have been written) #And I don't think the other has retinas. So. Unless you are a god or a skeleton. Use proper eclipse glasses or otherwise safe methods. #solar eclipse #Edit: More disclaimers because I feel like it! #I. I don't know how to write these characters very well. Most of the sources I can find for manner of speech and behaviour are quite old #And extrapolating from newer comments or implications is a touch difficult #Or in other words. This could be wildly out of character and I would have no idea. #AND while I'm already yapping here. I genuinely just picked up this ship from sifting through old archives and found there was an interest #I have no idea what their dynamic would be. I think the only source I have is a comment in a Discord about them both being ancient beings #And therefore could make good crackship material. Take that with a grain of salt. #This was also spurred on by one (1) comment in the Discord that threw me into a writing frenzy in which I stood up and suffered every- #Minecraft status effect all at once. It was worth it #I also almost posted this to my dragon blog lol. Yes this is PEAK dragon content right here. #Okay I'm done rambling. Thank you. Obligatory Reblogs > Likes because this hellsite is a hellsite #Not my best fic but not my worst fic. I am relatively content with this existing

[secretswansong]

why the fuck is it so fun to describe whenever my OC fights an urge to at least physically assault the person they're talking to

#okay so yeah this is my gowr oc #fanfiction #writing #whenever people just say things or give off vibes she doesn't agree with #she's resisting both the instinct to run away and the instinct to fight them #never happens with kratos tho. she's too terrified of him

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

how to ask / motivate your favorite fanfic writers to post new works / update a new chapter WITHOUT rushing them or sounding entitled and rude;

don’t comment “when” or “will there be a next chapter” or “will you continue this?” quite frankly, these type of comments can sound like you’re demanding from your favorite writer, even if it may not be your intention.

if you’d love a sequel or are wondering when or if the fic will be updated, try something like “I love this so much!” *bonus if you explain why you love the fic or what you love about it* and then add something along the line of “if there’s a part 2 of this, I would be so excited / would absolutely love to read it!”

the trick is to avoid a blunt question like “will there be a part 2?” or “it’s been so long. when will you update?” etc.

honestly, DON’T ever comment something like “it’s been ___ months, ___ years” or “I don’t think the author will continue this lol” that’s one of the most effective ways to make sure your favorite author doesn’t come back to your favorite fic, and it’s just so… dishearteningly rude.

it doesn’t matter if it’s been months or years since the author’s last update, demanding and rushing them will most likely NOT give you the result you want.

reminder that fanfic authors are humans with lives and jobs outside of writing fanfiction, especially when fanfic is something they do in their free time out of love and passion, and you — the reader — get to read their works for free.

rushing and demanding will only make it sound like ‘a task that needs to get done’ for your favorite author, and it sucks out the joy of writing out of love and passion. it can be so discouraging for the authors.

fanfic authors don’t owe you anything.

even if they completely abandon the fic, it still doesn’t give you the right to be rude to them or to ask why they stopped writing or to coerce them into giving you what you want.

I can never say this enough; fanfic authors write in their free time, FOR FREE, out of love and passion. and you get to read their works FOR FREE because they’re kind enough to share their love for their comfort characters with you.

they don’t owe you anything.

it’s okay if you’re wondering when or if they’ll post something new, but it’s not okay to rush or demand from them.

comments are mostly what motivate authors into writing faster, so if you want your favorite authors to post more, comment about what you love about their works, express your gratitude to them for giving you these amazing fics for free, but don’t be an entitled reader by rushing or directly asking when they’ll update.

let’s keep fandom space safe and comforting for both writers and readers.

#writing #writer #ao3 #archive of our own #blorbo #comfort character #fandom #fandoms #writers on ao3 #writers on tumblr #fanfic #fanfiction #writeblr #whump #whumpblr #how to ao3 #whump community #fanfic writing #fanfic writers #fanfic writer #angst #whump blog #writing community

[sundrop-writes]

Careful - Chapter One

(Dad)Spencer Reid x (Mom)Fem!Reader

Chapter One: Over Yet

We can go farther, beyond the end.

Summary:

You and Spencer broke up more than four years ago. Since then, he has tried his best to forget about you. He has pushed all of his feelings down - locked them away into a little box that he never touches.

That is, until he sees your name on a list of potential victims being stalked and killed by a man who kills single mothers. (And he quickly realizes that your son could be his.)

Dad!Spencer Reid x Mom!Fem!Reader. Exes to Lovers. Angst.

Word Count: 5,900

Criminal Minds Masterlist | AO3 Link | Series Masterlist

Please keep in mind - I am not doing a taglist for this series, so please do not ask to be tagged in future parts. I do not do taglists. If you want to be notified when future parts of this fic are posted, you can follow this blog and turn on notifications here - I don't make personal posts on this blog, it is just pure posts of my fanfiction. Or you can subcribe on AO3 to get email notifications when this series is posted. You can also view the posting schedule on the series materlist and check @tenpintsof-sundrop for any information about possible changes to that schedule.

Detailed warnings and author's notes below the cut.

Warnings: general warnings for a Criminal Minds episode - mentions of murder/killing, somewhat graphic descriptions of killing, somewhat graphic descriptions of dead bodies, the underlying misogyny that comes with a man killing women, mentions of children being orphaned due to their mothers being killed (though there is no mentions of other living family members taking care of those children - you can imaging that they still have nice families to take care of them if you want, I didn’t fill in that detail), mentions of children being in proximity of a serial killer; exes to lovers - the reader and Spencer broke up and the reason why will be revealed later; mentions of pregnancy/mentions of the reader having a child; mentions of sex that resulted in a child/pregnancy (there is no detailed sex scenes/detailed smut in this chapter, but there will be in other chapters); mentions of JJ x Will; the reader’s looks are described as vaguely as possible; passing mention of incest (in the context of a historical figure); all statements that Spencer makes toward the end of this chapter were heavily researched and are factual; I think that’s about it?

A/N: The reader and Spencer originally dated around Season 1/Season 2 - I state at some point during the fic that they dated for 3 years before breaking up, so they started dating when he was very early Season 1 baby Spence (or even before Season 1) and they broke up around Season 2. So technically this fic takes place around Season 6 - but because I didn't want to distract from the plot, I didn't mention any of the stuff going on with Emily or any of those major canon plot points, and I am using pictures of later versions of Spencer just because that's who I was picturing in my head while writing this. But that's how the math works out. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the fic!! This chapter is more of an introduction before we really get into the meat of things, but I still hope that you guys like it.

...

The team had been in Portland for three days.

No leads, a confusing, inconsistent profile - huge pieces missing that would likely give them the real answers. 

A patient killer with an extended timeline who likely wouldn’t kill again for months - leaving them chasing their tails, looking for answers. 

“Okay, so, let’s take a step back.” Hotch sighed. “What do we know so far?” 

He leaned against a nearby table, looking at everyone with the hope of reassessing the case from a different angle. The hope of talking it out to get some answers. 

Another woman’s body had been found just before they arrived, and that would mean that the UnSub would be out hunting again soon. This was both good and bad. 

Good, because the UnSub clearly had to spend a lot of time stalking his victims - he knew a lot of details of their lives, and he had spent a lot of time developing an intimate fantasy of being a part of their family in his mind. So he wouldn’t be killing again the next day. No woman was in immediate danger. It gave the team more time to find viable suspects. 

Bad because they had no physical evidence, no good leads. And thus far, the profile was leading them nowhere. It felt incomplete. 

They could find no real connections between the victims - their gyms, their banks, their childcare, their grocery stores. Somehow, the victims didn’t seem to have any crossover in their lives. There was no real way to say how the UnSub had met them. And someone like this - he would have interacted with them at least once in order to become obsessed and stalk them to this degree. 

“Five women dead within the last three years.” Prentiss announced, starting to round up the facts that the team knew for certain. “All of them mothers, all with children under the age of five. All within the same ten square mile radius of Oregon, around Portland’s suburban neighborhoods.” 

She slumped back into her chair with a tired huff, and then continued. 

“The UnSub breaks into their homes through a backdoor or a back window, and somehow goes undetected in such an upscale neighborhood.” She sighed. “He kills the mothers, but he leaves their children alive. And then he calls 9-1-1 to report the death as a case of child neglect.” 

“So he was likely neglected by his own mother in his childhood.” Morgan easily theorized. 

“All of the victims upper-middle class, single mothers to one child with good jobs. All of them are of the same physical type.” Rossi added on. “They’re the same race, they have the hair color, they’re the same body type - all in their late twenties to early thirties. So the UnSub definitely has a type. He’s most definitely recreating a fantasy of some kind - perhaps taking out revenge on his own mother, but protecting himself. Which is why he never hurts the children.” 

“Yeah, but the children are different.” Morgan replied. “Sometimes boys, sometimes girls. Some of them are biracial - he doesn’t look for a specific type in the father. He doesn’t necessarily need to see himself in the children.” 

Then, as another thought occurred to him, Morgan continued on: 

“Plus, the children’s ages vary from barely a year old all the way up to five - if he was looking to seek revenge on his mother, looking to protect a younger version of himself, then he would have locked in on a critical event that he needs to protect himself from. The age of the children would be more consistent, at least, because he would be looking to protect himself as he hits the age that he was most traumatized by a specific event.” 

“That’s good.” Hotch nodded. “Then we know that it’s more about the mothers. He hates women at his core. Protecting the children is just a byproduct of his obsession over these women.” 

“But we still have no clue how these women could be connected or how they met the UnSub.” Morgan replied, jaw stiff with frustration. 

“Focus on what we do know.” Hotch reminded him. 

“All of the women were killed via stabbing. They all had over a dozen stab wounds to their stomachs and genital areas.” Rossi replied. “So, he is an aggressive sexual sadist.” 

“But if he hates women so much, why spend so much time in the house?” Morgan argued gently. “Every single one of these scenes has evidence that the UnSub spent hours - possibly up to a day in the house before he killed them. He cooked dinner, set the table, and made the women eat it before he killed them. Including a second place setting for a child. Some of the kids even said that ‘the scary man’ tucked them into bed and read them a story.” 

He held up one of the crime scene photos that depicted the scene of the family’s place settings - a haunting scene of plates not cleaned up from dinner, with a flower vase sitting in the middle of the table with a few white flowers wilting inside of it. 

“He’s right - why bother to show them the kindness of a last meal if he shows so much aggression toward them during the killing?” Prentiss added on. 

“It’s a routine.” Hotch said, the thought suddenly occurring to him. “It’s likely that he chooses single mothers because he gets to play the role of the father. With the real father figure absent from the picture, it makes it easier for him to impose himself into that role. At least for a temporary amount of time.” 

“It is strange.” Reid added on, clearly swimming in thought. “It’s almost like he’s courting them? Sending them gifts, showing what a good father he could be. Each of the women were sent white carnations sometime in the days before they were killed, and after the killing, he lays the flowers around their head in a halo-like fashion. It is said that carnations represent motherhood, and the white shade could depict an angelic innocence that he’s projecting onto these women.” 

“So he views these women as angelic figures, yet he kills them so brutally?” Prentiss scoffed. “It just doesn’t add up.” 

“Maybe he views the killing itself as a type of purification.” Reid theorized. “It’s not uncommon for killers to emotionally fetishize dead bodies and consider them more ‘pure’ than their living counterparts.” 

Prentiss visibly cringed at this. 

“Wait.” JJ said, looking at one of the crime scene photos with a sharp line pulling her brows together. 

Everyone looked to her, waiting for her to finish this thought. 

“I don’t think that the mothers were the only ones sent gifts.” 

She held up the photo, showing a picture of a colorful child’s play mat in the living room. Everyone stared at the photo in confusion, and JJ sighed and began to explain. 

“Look at this toy truck in the middle.” She said, pointing at something that almost blended into the background of the photo. The true focus was a large handprint - one that belonged to the killer, but he had worn gloves. “It’s wooden, it’s hand-carved, it’s old fashioned. All the other toys are plastic, brightly coloured. Remember what the UnSub said in the second 9-1-1 call?” 

“‘She pretends to have her son’s best interests at heart, but she was going to let him get cancer from sucking on those cheap plastic toys.’” Reid said, repeating it word-for-word, using his impeccable memory. 

“Exactly.” JJ confirmed with a nod. “Clearly the UnSub believes that he would be a good father because he can gift his child something hand-made instead of something mass produced.” 

“Alright, get the crime scene techs back over there to pick up the truck, maybe he wasn’t wearing gloves when he made it and there is some slim chance he left a print on it.” Hotch said, and JJ left to call the crime scene unit. 

This left the team sitting in silence for a few more moments until Reid spoke up again. 

“What about preschools?” He said, suddenly coming out of a wave of thought to announce this to the room. 

“What?” Prentiss prompted, wondering what on earth he was talking about. 

“Preschools.” Spencer confirmed, looking across the table at her. 

“We checked already, none of the victims’ children went to the same preschool.” Morgan reminded him. “Two of the kids didn’t even go to preschool.” 

“Yeah, but preschools typically have large waitlists.” Spencer argued. 

Naturally, all eyes in the room fell on him, waiting for him to explain. 

“In the first 9-1-1 call, the UnSub said that the victim ‘shipped her son off to be cared for by strangers half the time’.” He explained, once again perfectly reciting this from memory. “What if the UnSub resents preschools and the schooling system for taking these children away from their mothers, so he’s choosing his victims off of a preschool waitlist? What if that’s where his obsession stems from because that’s where his rage stems from?” 

Reid jumped up, pointing to the map he had been using to make a geographical profile. 

“All of the victims live within the same school district.” He added on. “So they would be applying to the same group of preschools.” 

“I’ll call Garcia.” Morgan announced. 

A few minutes later, Morgan connected Garcia’s call to the comm on the center of the conference table they were working from. 

“Hey, pumpkin pies.” She greeted them sweetly, as usual. “So it turns out, the preschool that Tommy Laird, and Emily Ashton, the third and the fourth victim had in common, does have a waitlist. But none of the other victims’ names were on it.” 

“Come on, babygirl. I know you’re holding out on me.” Morgan said, giving a small smirk. 

“Oh, my Adonis, if I don’t have your trembling anticipation, I have nothing.” Garcia giggled. “The school’s waitlist, and their applications, are handled by a firm called Gordon & Stanheight. And it turns out, they handle the applications and waitlisting for five other preschools in the area.” 

“Which gives the UnSub a perfect way to pick his victims.” Morgan sighed. “The first interaction that gets him hooked might not even be in person-” 

“Unless he’s picking them out of the line-up on paper and then waiting to meet them in person?” Prentiss replied. “With this type of guy, the smallest smile, a nod in his direction - that could be consent in his mind to play father to a household that’s missing one.” 

“You said they handle forms for five different schools? That just widened the victim pool.” Rossi groaned. 

“And the suspect pool.” Garcia added on. “The firm has thirty male employees. And I did a bit more digging - the preschool applications have ten ‘optional’ questions on the bottom that are definitely not marked as such. Questions directed at the parent filling out the form, rather than vital information about the child. Things such as: ‘what’s your favorite food?’, ‘when is your birthday?’, ‘what’s your favorite color?’, ‘do you plan on having more children?’ - typical survey schlock,” 

“That would explain why the UnSub served Lisa Laird a birthday cake.” Reid sighed. “He knew it was her birthday two days before he killed her.”

“I have a feeling I’m not gonna like where this is going.” Emily sighed. 

“Oh, sugar. You probably won’t.” Penelope easily agreed. “The ‘optional’ part of the forms is sold off to other companies as survey data. And those forms are seen and handled by over a thousand male employees of Gordon & Stanheight’s larger ‘data processing’ sector.” 

“Well the UnSub has to be local to Portland. So narrow down the suspect list based on his last known address and go from there.” Hotch said. “Also, it would be someone who has a criminal record. Someone committing this level of violence wouldn’t be a first time offender.” 

“Gotcha.” Penelope said. “Penny G, out.” 

… 

The team ended up raiding Gordon & Stanheight’s Portland based office. 

After some pointless conversation, some threats of lawsuits, and some even larger threats of being detained for impeding an FBI investigation, the team was able to get their hands on the preschool applications. Over two-dozen boxes worth, that they would have to sort through. 

So this left JJ, Reid, Hotch, Rossi, Morgan, and Prentiss knee deep in paper, looking for anyone who fit the UnSub’s victimology - praying that they would be able to pick out the next victim and get to her before the UnSub did. 

“We’re never gonna get through these fast enough, are we?” Prentiss sighed, continuing to sift through the papers. 

“We just have to go as fast as we can, and hope the UnSub sticks to his schedule.” Morgan replied. “He has to spend time stalking them, learning their routine. Even if he has chosen his victim by now, he won’t break into the house until he’s fully confident that he won’t be disrupted.” 

“And the stalking helps build up the fantasy.” Reid added on. “He romanticizes them from afar, sends them gifts. It adds to his delusions of grandeur and forbidden love. The idea that he’s swooping in to become the perfect father figure for these ‘broken’ families.” 

“So we’re hanging all our hopes on the idea that this psychopath needs time to ‘fall in love’ with his next victim before he kills her?” Prentiss groaned. 

“Sadly, yes.” Rossi confirmed. 

“It helps that most of these applications are from two-parent households.” JJ pointed out. “We can throw out anything with a second applicant on the form, because he’s only targeting single mothers.” 

The rest of the conversation easily became quiet in Spencer’s ears when he saw it. 

It should have been just another page among the sea of paper in his hands, but when he saw those words on the page - that name - it was like a punch to the gut. It pushed all the air out of him in seconds, it made him dizzy, made him struggle to breathe. Like a reel flashing through his mind, it brought back a flood of memories he thought he had locked away forever. 

It was you. 

What the hell were you doing applying for preschools? 

Spencer rushed to tear this paper away from the others in order to read it more carefully. 

Surely enough, the application was filled out in your handwriting. Something that had barely changed over the years. And it was all right there, laid out in front of his eyes, clear as day - 

You had a son. 

A son named Sebastian, who was three years old. Spencer checked the date on the form, eagerly looking for a birth date for your son. His birthday had just recently passed, actually, so he was four years old now. 

And his birth date was… fuck. 

He had been born eight and a half months, almost nine months exactly after the two of you had broken up. Your son had been born eight and a half months after the day you had left and Spencer had never seen you again. 

One thousand, seven hundred and two days. 

Four years, eight months, and two days. 

It wasn’t difficult math. 

Your son was the perfect age to be Spencer’s child. Was this Spencer’s child? 

His hands began to shake at the very thought of it.  

Is that why you had disappeared from his life with such haste? Because you knew that you were pregnant and you didn’t want Spencer to be a part of your child’s life? 

Had you been keeping this from him intentionally? 

He hadn’t thought about you in four long years, he had tried so hard not to. He had spent so long forcing himself not to miss you, and now he was struck with the realization that he might have a child out there with the woman he considered to be his regrettable lost love. A child he didn’t know - a child who he had missed four whole years with. 

What the fuck was going on? 

There were no pictures included with the application, and suddenly, Spencer found himself dying to see the boy. He wanted to know if there was any physical resemblance to himself, or if he was jumping to conclusions. 

Maybe you had cheated on him. Maybe that was why you had left town and never contacted him again. Maybe the kid wasn’t his at all, maybe- 

“Reid.” JJ called out gently, getting his attention. 

Spencer suddenly realized that he was hyperventilating, staring down at the application with your name on it in his hand, wrinkling the paper as he squeezed it more frantically. 

“Did you find something?” 

… 

All in all, the team found four different women who fit the victim pattern in the files - you being one of them. 

So the team split up, ready to knock on each of the womens’ doors, preparing to warn them that if they received any gifts or saw any suspicious men lingering around them in the next few days, they should call. They had to hope that the UnSub wouldn’t move on from this victim pool if he saw the FBI around. But he was overly confident, he had contacted police before. 

It could definitely work. 

When Hotch found out that Spencer had known you, he said that Spencer should be the one to knock on your door. That you might find it comforting to hear that you and your child could possibly be in danger if it were coming from ‘an old friend’. Spencer stuttered over himself and didn’t have the words to explain that you weren’t just a good friend to him, but a romantic flame. He didn’t want to embarrass himself in front of the team by telling everyone that the break-up had been messy, and sudden, and Spencer still wasn’t even completely sure what had caused it. He didn’t want to rip open his old wounds in front of everyone. 

So he simply shut his mouth and got in the car with JJ, and they made their way toward your house. 

…

“So…” JJ’s voice broke through the undulating silence of the car ride - filled by nothing but the sound of the car’s motor running and gears grinding inside Spencer’s mind as he tried to figure all of this out. “I do have to ask the obvious question,” 

“What is that?” Spencer probed, slightly glad to be relieved of his own thoughts. 

He wasn’t so glad when JJ pried those thoughts out of his mind and spilled them to the open air. 

“Is the kid yours?” She wondered aloud. “I mean - when did you and Y/N break up?” 

JJ had known you as Spencer’s girlfriend. 

Come to think of it, she was probably the only person on the current field team who had some kind of a relationship with you back when you and Spencer dated. 

Initially, it had been by accident. JJ had driven him home one night after a particularly long and sleepless case, and you had been coming to his apartment to drop off some books he had asked for (shortly after he had given you a key). When JJ saw you, her natural curiosity got the better of her - even more so when you stuck out your hand and introduced yourself as ‘Spencer’s girlfriend’ without hesitation. 

The two of you got to talking, and JJ invited you to ‘girls night’. You met Elle and Penelope shortly after. You had become pretty good friends with the three of them before the break-up. 

But Spencer had always felt secretive…. well, protective of you. He didn’t want Morgan teasing him about you, or him wanting to have ‘guy talk’ about things that occurred in the bedroom. Not when it might mean talking about intimate moments with you. Spencer had only introduced you to Gideon over coffee about three weeks before the break-up, and that felt like a lifetime ago. 

Back then, having you, Elle, and Gideon leave his life all in a matter of a few months felt like hell on earth. It felt like being grabbed by his ankles and shaken for all he was worth. He really wasn’t sure that he was ready to see you again. 

It had been four years. 

JJ was someone he could lean on right now. 

“Four years ago.” He told her, completely honest. 

“And how old is the kid?” JJ asked. 

“Four - four years old.” Spencer stuttered out, realizing that now as he was speaking about this very real possibility, he might be breathing more life into it. 

“Oh my god.” JJ sighed. “Well… could it-? I mean…? Did the two of you?” 

It took Spencer a moment to clue into what JJ was talking about. He gave her a sideways glance and she took her eyes off the road for a moment, raising her brows and giving him a pointed look. 

“Please tell me you know what does and what doesn’t make a baby,” JJ groaned. 

“Oh!” Spencer huffed, a small wave of embarrassment flooding him. “Yes! God, yes. I know.” 

There was a moment of awkward silence, and then Spencer felt the need to clarify his answer. 

“We - I mean. We…” He trailed off for a moment, clearing his throat. “We didn’t always use… protection. We were together for three years, at the time, it was on the table.” 

“Kids were on the table for you back then?” JJ asked, clearly shocked by this. “I could not imagine little twenty-four year old Spence with a baby.” 

“Well… it’s something I’ve always wanted.” He mumbled quietly in reply. 

It was true. At the time, Spencer easily imagined himself getting married to you, having multiple kids with you. These days, seeing JJ with Henry and Will brought him the occasional underlying pang of jealousy - but since breaking up with you, there hadn’t been anyone else in Spencer’s life that he could have imagined having kids with. He thought that he was going to be alone and childless for the rest of his life. That the dream was long dead for him. 

“Hey - then, maybe this is a blessing in disguise?” JJ posed. “If we hadn’t been looking through those forms because of this UnSub, you never would have found Y/N again. You wouldn’t even know this baby exists.” 

There was another thing that JJ was dying to ask - something she held back because she felt like it was a touch too personal. (Even if ‘too personal’ was basically how the BAU team lived - knee deep in each other’s business, all the time). 

She wanted to know why you had a baby, a baby that Spencer had very likely fathered, and you hadn’t contacted him about it. Spencer seemed entirely clueless about the child’s existence before now, and JJ knew that because of what his own father had been like, he wouldn’t just blow off a kid that was his if he knew that one was out there in the world. 

So why hadn’t you told Spencer about the baby? 

“What if the kid isn’t yours?” JJ wondered aloud. 

Maybe that would unburden him. She knew that either way, Spencer would fight to protect you from the UnSub. But if the kid wasn’t his - he would walk away again, and he wouldn’t have to be hung up on the heartbreak of dealing with his ex just to parent a child together. 

“Honestly… I think I’ll be more heartbroken if I find out that he’s not even mine.” Spencer told her, his voice quiet and already lulling with that disappointment. 

That was not something JJ had considered. She frowned as she saw the sadness paint across Spencer’s face. 

“One thing at a time, alright?” 

…

When they pulled into your driveway, Spencer’s mind immediately began churning. 

It was a nice house. It was a beautiful, quiet neighborhood. The front yard was clean and trimmed and there was a silver SUV in the driveway with a ‘baby on board’ sticker in the rear window. There was a rocking chair on the porch, but he didn’t see many children’s toys out front on the lawn. He guessed that was a good thing. Letting children play in the front where they could run into the street and potentially get hit by a car was too dangerous. He was glad to already see signs that you were a good mother. 

Spencer felt like he was opening up a book halfway, desperately wanting to be filled in on the previous chapters while having missed so much. Still wanting to read ahead and see more. 

He had already missed so much of your son’s life. He had missed you. That was something forming the biggest knot in his gut. He had truly missed you. The times he had allowed himself to think of you over these past few years - he had missed you so dearly. 

And now the two of you likely had a child together. 

Craning his neck to get a better look, desperately trying to take in more information, Spencer’s eyes were wide and hungry as JJ put the car in park by the curb in front of your house. As Spencer reached for the passenger side door handle, JJ’s phone rang. 

“I have to take this.” She sighed. “You go ahead.” 

She gave Spencer a distinct look that said ‘I know you need a minute alone with Y/N’, and he nodded, stepping out of the vehicle while she greeted whoever was on the other line. He smoothed down his tie - for once in his whole life, he was actually worried about how he looked. Only because he knew that he was going to see you. Perhaps he had only ever felt like this before going on his first date with you. 

He had such a strange lashing of emotions going through him as he approached the door. Fear, anxiety, anticipation. Longing. 

He truly had tried so hard to lock away his feelings for you when you had left. He had tried to move on. He had considered, briefly, in passing, dating other women. There had been times when someone else caught his eye, and he considered asking her out on a date. Morgan had offered to ‘set him up’. Penelope had offered too, telling him that he deserved to ‘get back out there’. 

Whenever she asked about you, his heart freshly cracked open. 

At one point, she had advised him to write a long, Shakespearian letter, pouring out his heart to you in an effort to get you back - one which she would mail. (Because of course, she could get your new address in a heartbeat.) But he didn’t want to experience the heartbreak all over again if you ignored him. He didn’t want to sit, waiting by the mailbox every single day like a lost dog, waiting for you to write him back in return. 

You had disappeared from his life for a reason. Just like everyone else had. For a long time, Spencer convinced himself that he was simply meant to end up alone. 

Perhaps if he had known about your son - a child that could very well be his - then he might have felt differently about getting Penelope to contact you. 

But now he was standing at your front door, his fist shaking as he raised his hand to knock. 

He let out a sharp breath and steadied himself, giving three swift, firm knocks against the door and then trying to wait patiently. His heart thumped inside of his throat, and it felt like forever. 

“Sorry!” Your voice called out from behind the door, muffled. “Sorry, I almost didn’t hear you. I was-” 

You cut off your own words as you opened the door - the moment you caught Spencer’s eye and recognized it was him, pure shock fell across your features, and you froze on the spot. 

You were just as stunning as ever. You had barely aged at all - your hair was different than the last time he had seen you, of course. And you were dressed casually - wearing a simple hooded sweatshirt with a drawstring and a pair of jeans with some fuzzy slipper boots on. But pale blue looked so good on you.

So much like the pale blue dress you had worn on your first date with him. 

You were breath-taking. 

“Y/N.” He greeted you, his throat dry already. 

You didn’t say anything, simply continuing to stare him down with wide-eyed shock. 

Seeing you again, Spencer couldn’t help but to think back to that first date. 

The first night that he knew he was in love with you. 

… 

He had taken you to see the Virginia Symphony Orchestra. 

It was Spencer’s idea of a good time - and it ended up being one of the most beautiful, most romantic, most unique first dates that you had ever been on. 

It was difficult not to fall for him with the beautiful music in the air and his glossy eyes, so sickeningly thick with affection, staring you down all night. 

Afterwards, the two of you stopped to get ice cream at a small shop that was a short walk down from the orchestra. And now you were both enjoying your ice cream as you walked along in the cool night air - enjoying the peace and quiet and the gentle breeze in the darkness. 

It was a perfect night. 

Spencer could think of no better way to spend it than with you. The yellow bulbs of the street lights practically cast a glow onto your skin, the mulberry lipstick now worn off your lips as you brought the pink spoon to your mouth and licked up your sweet treat. 

His stomach was churning with nerves. Joyous nerves. 

And as per usual, when he was nervous - he rambled. 

“You know, Bach actually married his cousin.” He said, spouting off the first thing that came to mind. 

You told him that Bach was one of your favorite composers - it’s why he had thought to bring you to the orchestra on a date in the first place. 

“I did not know that.” You giggled. “So what? Was it like a ‘third cousin twice removed’ type situation?” 

Spencer found himself grinning at the fact that you actually engaged him in the conversation, rather than staring at him with an odd look for bringing up such a strange topic. 

“Not quite.” He replied. “They had the same surname before marriage.” 

“Oh, ew.” You chuckled again, giving a shudder at the thought of this. 

Spencer knew it was an odd topic to discuss on a date, and if he rambled on too much, it might freak you out - but he couldn’t stop himself. His mouth ran away with him, and he continued. 

“He married Maria Barbara Bach, and they had seven children together.” He told you. “His sons, Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel became composers and musicians much like their father, which was actually carrying on a legacy started by Bach’s father himself - who was a seventh generation musician. He was the one who taught Bach the organ from a very young age.” 

“Why don’t people play the organ anymore?” You wondered aloud. “Except in churches, I guess. The organ rocks.” 

Spencer’s brain began rocketing off at the fact that you had asked him a question. A question he could answer. 

“The organ has actually long been associated with divinity.” He replied. “The instrument rose in popularity alongside Catholicism throughout the eighteenth century, and in a sense, that was part of what made Bach a sort of ‘rockstar’ of his time. The religious references in his work, and his mastery of the organ - all of it made him incredibly popular at the time because it caused him to be favored by the church and by royal figures associated with the church.” 

Spencer gleamed a large smile, heavily enjoying that he could share these facts with you. He thought for certain that any moment, you would change the subject or imply that he should stop talking. But instead, you engaged the conversation more. 

“Religious references?” You questioned, wondering what he meant by this. 

“Yes!” Spencer grinned, suddenly very excited by the explanation behind this. “Even in his secular music, Bach would often incorporate the acronym ‘INJ’, a Latin abbreviation that means ‘In Nomine Jesu’, or ‘in the name of Jesus’. It was something he put on all of his manuscripts.” 

You grinned back. You found it fascinating that being around Spencer for such short periods of time caused you to learn so many things. It easily made you want to be around him more. 

“Interesting.” You replied. 

“And his talent on the organ was seen as something that made him ‘divine’ at the time. Divine enough to be worthy of performing for royalty.” Spencer added on. “In 1708, Bach got a position as the court organist in Weimer for Duke Wilhelm. And later when he requested early release from this position, desiring to go work for Prince Leopold of Koethen, the Duke actually had him arrested and put in jail for several weeks in 1716.” 

Spencer laughed at this mental image - the composer being put in jail. 

“Ooh, harsh.” You sighed. “But I guess Dukes have too much power.” 

Spencer let out another bright laugh at this. 

“And see, the interesting thing is, Bach later became the conductor of the court orchestra, in which Prince Leopold played.” 

“So he got his wish,” You replied with a smile. 

“And see-” 

Spencer set off on another rant again, and you couldn’t help yourself. You put your spoon into the cup of ice cream and then you used your now free hand to reach out and grab Spencer by his tie - you pulled him toward you before he could get anymore words out, and he let out a shocked, choked-off sound when you pressed your mouth into his. 

He sighed gently against your lips, and unconsciously dropped his own melting chocolate cone on the ground by his feet as his limp hands drifted toward your waist. He was dizzy, and now every single fact he had ever known about any composer had vanished from his head. In that moment, standing under a random street lamp on a random sidewalk somewhere - all he knew was the soft, pillowy feeling of your lips and the cool night breeze against his skin. 

It was perfect. You were perfect. 

You found his intelligence and the enthusiasm with which he spoke to be so utterly irresistible. You had been on so many dates with men before where they had acted like talking about their interests was a chore. Where they had made it seem like the whole thing was simply a routine, waiting for the end of the night so they could get into your pants. And for them, that’s what it probably was. 

But Spencer was nothing like that. 

He spoke about everything with such intense passion - and you couldn’t resist the urge to try and suck that very passion off his lips. 

When you were forced to pull back slightly, your lungs crying out for oxygen, Spencer let out a gentle moan and began puffing out sweet little pants across your chin as he tried to catch his breath. You kept a hold of his tie, wanting to keep him close, and he stayed there, gently pressing his forehead against yours. 

“That was… wow.” He sighed. 

“I didn’t think I would ever find you at a loss for words, Doctor Reid.” You replied with a giggle. 

“Well, I - you - wow.” 

It was all he could muster, causing you both to break down into laughter. 

Back then - everything had been perfect. 

He had no clue where it all went so wrong.

...

Continue reading: Chapter Two - Liar

#sundrop writes #spencer reid #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x y/n #spencer reid x you #dad!spencer reid #spencer reid imagine #spencer reid smut #spencer reid fanfiction #criminal minds #criminal minds fanfiction #criminal minds x you #criminal minds x reader #criminal minds fic

[lizzobetumblin]

Melissa hated her feelings. 

She buried them in a chest in the 5th grade (along with her ability to express them). Other peoples' feelings on the other hand was her forte. She could process, decipher and regurgitate other peoples emotions effortlessly. This gift could’ve taken her through college, all the way to a degree in psychology. Distinguished Dr. Jefferson with a PhD and a cozy office and impressive roster of high-profile, weallthy clients was a shiny idea. Fate would have a different hand for Melissa her talents were exhausted on mediating family fights, friend group drama, and charming her way out of confronting her own feelings. 

“Feelings.” Even saying it out loud to herself seemed silly. Something reserved for ‘cry babies’ and water signs. Typical Sunday nights started tame, reading or writing fan-fiction and drinking cranapple juice. And then like clock work her father would yell her name, 

‘MELISSA!!!’ Emotionless, she’d get up dust off her Winnie the Pooh shorts and make her way downstairs. On the long walk down the hall to the stairs leading to the living room brawl, she’d go through her check list: 

1.) Don’t cry.   

 2.) Stay neutral; Deescalate

3.)Don’t take anything personal. This isn’t about you

She padded down the carpeted stairs in her old soft socks to see her mother tightlipped and tear streaked thinking, 

‘she broke rule number 1’. Her father, Michael was proud and angry, his big belly filled with self righteousness. She knew he would be unyielding in his resolve and at this point her only option was to deescalate.

 ‘Rule number 2’. Then her sister the water sign and calamity for the evening sat on the floor nearly fetal, face red and raw with emotion. 

‘Its not your fault’ Melissa wanted to say ‘You just didn’t follow the rules… you’re loved.’ But she couldn’t say that because she’d be breaking rule number 3. It wasn’t about how Melissa felt. Even though she felt like screaming,

“VANESSA, YOU DIDN’T DO ANYTHING WRONG. DAD—YOU JUST HAVE PENT UP ANGER BECAUSE YOU GREW UP IN THE HOOD OF DETROIT AS A BLACK MAN IN THE 60s AND 70s. YOU NEED A HEALTHY OUTLET LIKE.. I DONT KNOW… THERAPY?!?!?! THIS IS A WASTE OF ALL OF OUR TIME. I LITERALLY JUST WROTE THE BEST SAILOR SATURN x CHIBI USA FANFICTION EVER AND THIS IS KILLING MY VIBE!”

Instead, she decide to hear every one out. She decided to help. To calm her dragon of a father down. To be a translator for her emotional sister. To not take it personal. To stay neutral. To not cry. 

9 years later, at her fathers funeral she still never broke the rules. She played her flute and spoke at his memorial. She was present for her mother because it wasn’t about her. When other peoples' emotions bubbled up she stayed neutral. She sat through both services and she did not cry. It wasn’t until she excused herself to make a phone call outside did she collapse onto the stairs of the funeral home and weep alone in the cold Detroit snow. 

It’s okay to break the rules sometimes, she reminded herself. As long as no one else sees it.

Traumas began to compact on Melissa, as they do. Humans tend to collect traumas like pebbles on a long hike. We toss them into our backpacks and keep moving forward. Some hikers would falter, but Melissa was built for this. She’d carried the stones of her family’s traumas uphill for years. She was strong. 

When men began to befriend and reject her, saying ‘you’re too good for me’ but not too good to make them feel good. She carried that. 

When childhood friends began to cut off the strings of her heart, saying ‘We can’t be friends anymore’. She carried that.

When her family separated like dandelion seeds, it seemed like they’d never be together again. Melissa slept on so many couches, floors and car seats sometimes she didn’t know if she’d see them again. 

She carried that. 

Dying was never an option though sometimes she didn’t mind the thought of it. Peace and warmth were two things she’d desperately yearned and hadn’t felt fully since the womb. Then one night in the pitch black of the hot, sweaty, roach-infested studio in southeast Houston she slept in she wondered:

‘Why can’t I break the rules?’ She’d seen everyone else in her life break them like popsicle sticks. And she didn’t just want to break the rules, she wanted to break them boldly and loudly and annoyingly and honestly and sloppily like every one else gets to do. It was in that moment, tucked in a thin jacket inside of an 8-foot high instrument cubby in the inky darkness—it hit her. 

‘Is my suffering for a high purpose? Or is my suffering trying to kill me?’ 

She cried. 

She escalated. 

She took it personal. 

But it wasn’t enough. She wanted to scream in a microphone in a sea of shadowy faces. She drank whiskey and wove her pain into rock music. 

‘Music is my boyfriend’ she declared. The only man that kept his baggage to hisself. And it healed her. It gave her voice reason and purpose. 

The pebble-laden hike became lighter with time. The incline eventually evened out to flat, beautiful landscapes where the breeze finally met her back. She knew it wasn’t gonna be easy or sunshine but even the rain cleansed her and it was beautiful too. 

Somewhere in the rain she decided rules were meant to be built and broken. Like trust and love and friendships and families. Because every thing deserves the opportunity to change and grow. 

So... She broke rule number 1 on stage while singing a beautiful song. Dr. Jefferson (PhD) screamed for her to stop but she didn’t listen and the tears flowed like rivers of emotion down her cheeks. 

Rule number 2 was broken when she grew older and saw the injustices of the world. Marching with hundreds in protest she realized not everything needs to be pacified. 

And one day when she finally fell in love, she broke rule number 3. No matter how much training she’d done she couldn't help but take every thing her lover said and did personal. But it was ok. Because in all her resistance she realized breaking rules was her power. 

Melissa began to fall for her feelings. Her feelings gave life purpose. They weren’t always logical, as feelings seldom are. They were sloppy and embarrassing and rude and so fucking uncomfortable. But they were hers. And they were real. And when she sat alone sipping wine, staring at the moon…They were the only ones still by her side. Ready to break the rules for her because they loved her. 

And she finally loved them back. 

[ddejavvu]

'oh, you LOVE me!' - send me a request for a baby blurb! give me a character, and a plotline, and i'll write you a little fanfiction :)

The team visiting Spencer for one reason or another on their day off & reader opens the door (maybe even wearing one of Spence's shirts) and that's how they all find out Spencer is in a relationship?

The doorbell rings, and even if Spencer weren't hobbling around on crutches with a rolled ankle, you'd have bolted to answer the door. You've got new shoes coming, a treat from your boyfriend himself, and they're set to arrive today before 9PM. It's 6, and you're eager to finally put them on.

However, it's not the mailman at the door, not unless the US Postal Service has gotten a huge budget increase. The man that stands at the door is dressed in a fine suit, something you're sure cost more than double what your shoes had, and he seems mildly surprised to see you behind the door.

There's a posse of people behind him, and you wonder if this is some sort of special delivery system. But no one seems to have your package, and you tilt your head at an angle, "Can I help you?"

His eyes narrow infinitesimally, curiously, "Yes, we're here to see Dr. Spencer Reid," The man speaks up, his voice deep and smooth, "Did we have the wrong address?"

"No- No! Hotch," Spencer shouts from his place on the couch, and you hear the clatter of crutches, "Hotch, wait!"

"Spencer," You gush, ditching the door to make sure he doesn't tip himself over in his sudden pursuit of his callers, "Spence, go slow, you'll trip."

"I'm fine," He pants, moving as fast as he can to the door, his cheeks unusually rosy, "Uh, what- what do you guys need?"

Upon sighting him, the rest of the people behind the door exchange glances with each other, like they hadn't quite believed just his voice. You're hovering awkwardly behind Spencer now, looking up at your houseguests curiously, and waiting for them to speak.

"We brought you cookies," A blonde woman behind the man in the suit pipes up, hands decked out in jewelry as she brandishes a ziploc bag of treats, "And- and Morgan has medical tape he thinks you should use on your ankle, and JJ made a casserole, and we just wanted to make sure you were okay."

"I was going to offer to hire you a live-in nurse," An older man pipes up from the back, a suit jacket draped over his shoulders, glancing back at you with a small smirk, "But I'm not sure that's necessary."

"Thank you for the stuff." Spencer reaches out for the bag, keeping his crutch stabilized beneath his shoulder, "Y/N, can you- the casserole, um-"

"I got it," You jump forward to help, taking a dish from another blonde woman standing beside the first. The bottom is warmed, and she smiles kindly at you as she passes it off, nodding at your thnaks.

"Here's the tape," A man pipes up, muscles straining the t-shirt he's wearing as he sets a roll of medtape over the foil on the casserole. He grins at you, and the expression shifts more into a teasing one when he speaks to Spencer, "Sorry for interrupting."

"Oh, you weren't interrupting," You shake your head, "Are you- you're Spencer's coworkers, right?"

At their round of nods, you readjust your grip on the casserole, "Would you want to come eat with us? We could-"

"Our apartment is messy," Spencer cuts you off, hand already on the door to shut it on their shit-eating grins, "Thanks for the food, sorry you can't stay. See you tomorrow."

He shuts the door without offering them another word, and you gasp, "Spencer! That's rude, open the door!"

"They are relentless," Spencer locks it, heading towards you and backing you against the kitchen counter where you set the casserole, "If you let them in, they'll tease us both until our ears bleed, angel. They're not offended, and you can meet them some other time," He promises, kissing your forehead where you stand frowning at him, "When we're at someone else's house, and my ankle is healed so that we can run to the car and leave early when they lay into us."

#spencer reid #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid imagine #spencer reid scenario #spencer reid oneshot #spencer reid one-shot #spencer reid one shot #spencer reid headcanons #spencer reid headcanon #spencer reid hc #spencer reid hcs #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid fanfic #spencer reid fic #spencer reid blurb #spencer reid drabble #spencer reid dialogue #spencer reid fluff #spencer reid x reader fanfiction

[urmomsstuntdouble]

grrrr

(me thoughts r in the tags)

#struggling w the moral questions around writing fanfiction #usually when im writing original stuff its cause i have an idea in my head thats so clear and so cool and i just need it to be out #both so other people can see it and so that i can just get to soak it up and everything #also i want to talk to ppl about my ideas because theyre sick as fuck most of the time #but with fanfic the desire and drives behind the creativity are quite different #like it starts the same with me having an idea and needing to get it out #but usually its because someone (or many someones) have the wrong idea about my favorite little fictional guys #and the only way to see my ideas is to create them #because looking at other peoples ideas when i dont like them gets boring and bad fast #and good lord. are there some terrible takes and god awful characterisations going on in the mcyt fandom #Nobody Understands Him Like I Do etc #and i know theres tons of fanfic about mcyt and mcrp stuff which is fine i guess idk i feel like its very morally grey #and a highly case by case basis for whether something is morally okay to do yk #idk i have. a lot of thoughts and worries and stuff about fan content in this specific situation #i feel the urge to create but i worry about the morality of it #and yeah i know theres like boundaries lists out there and such and thats cool that people try to take that sort o thing into account #when writing about rp characters #like better than just taking the rp character and running with it yk #but i feel. i feel like its something that's hard to do in this case because of how close to reality these rp characters are #everyone knows that every character you create has a little bit of yourself in it #and it can be hard sometimes to tell when some minecraft guys are becoming their minecraft ocs #like where do you end and where does the character start #its a very blurry area to me and it depends on the individual creator #i will probably not create anything other than some like character designs or whatever #i feel like visual art is fine yk unless its like weird or something but ya. idk these are my thoughts #pov i am using tumblr as a board to bounce ideas off of #ceros posting #mcyt