july is disability pride month. it is also summer in the northern hemisphere, and this summer we have seen record breaking hot temperatures across the globe. it might be apt to remember that disabled people are a population vulnerable to extreme weather, and significantly more at risk of death or health issues during a heatwave. "the global mortality rate of people with disabilities in natural disasters is up to four times higher than people without disabilities." (source). disability may increase the relative risk of a heatwave more than old age, socioeconomic status, and being outdoors (source). even in the places most affected by the rising heat, disabled people are barely included in action plans for public safety, if at all (source). global warming is a an issue that affects a wide range of people, but let's not forget it is also a disability rights issue
Summary: After arguing with his secret girlfriend for the first time, Spencer looks for advice from Derek Morgan, who has no idea the girl in question is you, his own sister.
Words: 6k.
Warnings & Tags: typical cm stuff. established & secret relationship. fluff. english isn't my first language (sorry for my mistakes, be kind please).
Note: My 2k party is back<33 go and check it out and enjoy this! I had so much fun writing it, so it’s a bit lazy in narrative, sorry</3 my mind is full of legal terms and uni stuff.
Spencer Reid had solved murders faster than this.
He had identified offenders from a single blurry photograph and a handful of contradictory witness statements that should, by all reasonable standards, have led nowhere. He had built psychological profiles from fragments of behavior that other people dismissed as noise, from inconsistencies in tone, timing, geography, and motive that only made sense once his mind had already begun stitching them together. He had memorized entire textbooks after a single read and spent years accumulating knowledge so dense it might as well have been its own language. His mind was engineered, always moving forward toward understanding. It was what made him valuable at the FBI. It was what made him one of the best profilers in the bureau.
And yet, somehow, after two full days, he still had absolutely no idea how to fix his argument with you.
The realization was becoming increasingly frustrating.
Because unlike a case, there was no evidence board to organize. No witness interviews to conduct. No behavioral indicators he could neatly categorize and analyze until a solution presented itself. There was only silence. Two days of it.
Forty-eight hours.
Two thousand eight hundred and eighty minutes.
One hundred and seventy-two thousand, eight hundred seconds.
Not that he had been counting.
Not intentionally, at least.
The numbers just…appeared, uninvited, the way facts tended to do in his head when something refused to resolve itself.
The argument itself kept replaying in his head whenever he had a free moment, his mind returning to it with the same relentless persistence it reserved for unsolved cases. It happened during paperwork. During meetings. While standing in line for coffee. While brushing his teeth before bed. The memory would surface without warning, unfolding with such perfect clarity that it sometimes felt less like recollection and more like reliving it in real time. Every sentence was preserved in his memory exactly as it had happened. Every pause. Every look. Every slight hesitation between words.
He could remember the exact way your eyebrows had pulled together when he said something wrong. Just that small movement between your eyes that he had learned to recognize over time, the one that always appeared when you were hurt but trying not to show it. He remembered the way your arms had crossed over your chest afterward. He remembered the slight tension in your shoulders. The way your gaze had briefly dropped toward the floor before returning to him.
And he remembered your voice.
That was the part that haunted him most.
Not because you had been angry.
Because you hadn’t.
Spencer almost wished you had yelled.
He wished you had raised your voice, accused him of being an idiot, thrown every frustration directly at his face so he would have something concrete to work with. Anger was understandable. Anger was measurable. Anger had direction. He could have apologized for anger. He could have identified the source and addressed it.
But disappointment? it was infinitely worse.
That was the truly maddening part.
Spencer Reid’s entire career was built around understanding people.
Patterns made sense to him. Motives made sense to him. Human behavior, despite its complexity, usually made sense to him.
Yet somehow the further he examined the argument, the less certain he became. Every conclusion led to three more possibilities. Every explanation seemed incomplete. Maybe it had been something he said. Maybe it had been something he hadn’t said. Maybe it wasn’t about that specific conversation at all. Maybe it was something that had been bothering you for weeks and had finally reached a breaking point.
His mind chased possibilities endlessly, constructing theories only to discard them moments later, each one dissolving under the weight of another, quieter truth he didn’t want to examine too closely.
Which was unfortunate.
Because he missed you.
A lot more than he had initially allowed himself to quantify.
The absence was no longer just a shift in routine or a simple change in the office dynamic. It was everywhere now: seeping into the margins of his attention, slipping between case files, hiding in the pauses between conversations that used to include you so naturally he had never thought to appreciate them.
Cases felt longer, too.
Not because the work itself had changed, crime scenes still demanded the same precision, profiles still required the same mental architecture, but because he kept finding himself reaching for moments that weren’t there anymore. Small things. The insignificant things that should have been irrelevant in the grand structure of his day, and yet had somehow become essential without his permission.
He would turn slightly in his chair after spotting a pattern in a victimology report, already forming the sentence in his mind, already anticipating the way your voice, always quicker than people expected from someone who wasn’t even in the Bureau, would respond. You, Morgan’s younger sister, the civilian presence who had somehow become an unspoken part of their orbit at the work, drifting in and out of the bullpen with coffee runs, questions, or just the kind of energy that made the fluorescent lighting feel less oppressive.
And then the moment would collapse.
Because you weren’t there.
He’d look up from a report after discovering a strange historical correlation, something useless to most people, but exactly the kind of detail he knew would make you laugh and tell him he “needed a hobby that wasn’t trivia disguised as trauma” and his hand would already be halfway toward his phone before he remembered there was no message thread actively unfolding between you two at that moment. Only silence where there had recently been a rhythm.
Even coffee tasted worse, which he knew was irrational because, chemically speaking, the coffee was identical. Same beans, same machine, same burnt undertone that lingered too long on the tongue. And yet it felt different sitting alone in the break room, like the absence of your commentary had somehow altered the physics of it. Like taste, somehow, had become contextual.
Spencer sat at his desk, shoulders slightly hunched, a thin folder open in front of him that he had reread three times without absorbing a single line. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead with a mechanical patience that made the silence feel even louder. Around him, the bullpen continued its usual rhythm, papers shuffled, phones rang, the distant cadence of someone's laughter breaking briefly through the procedural monotony.
And still, none of it reached him properly.
Then, agent Morgan dropped into the chair across from him with the kind of familiarity that didn’t require permission, leaning back like he had already decided this conversation was happening whether Spencer was ready for it or not.
“Pretty boy.”
Spencer blinked, as if the word had taken a moment to travel through whatever fog had settled behind his eyes.
“What?” he replied, though it came out slightly delayed, like he had to retrieve himself from somewhere else before answering.
“You’ve been reading the same page for ten minutes,” he repeated, slower this time.
Spencer’s grip tightened slightly on the file before he corrected, almost automatically, “I have not.”
Morgan didn’t even bother arguing. He simply lifted a hand and pointed across the desk with an almost lazy precision.
“The paper is upside down.”
There was a beat of silence where Spencer didn’t move at all, as though his brain had to reassemble the last thirty seconds into something coherent. Then, slowly, he looked down.
The page was, in fact, upside down.
“…oh,” he said, softly. Not quite embarrassed, not quite resigned, just caught in the inconvenient reality of being observed too closely by someone who knew him too well.
Morgan let out a short snort, shaking his head like he’d just confirmed a suspicion rather than discovered anything new.
“What’s going on with you?”
Spencer didn’t answer immediately.
Instead, he straightened the file, even though it didn’t need fixing, aligning the corners with unnecessary precision as if structure could substitute for composure. His eyes stayed on the desk, on the scattered papers that suddenly felt too loud in their stillness.
“I’m fine,” he said at last, a little too quickly, like the words had been waiting right at the surface and only needed the smallest excuse to spill out.
“Reid.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Reid.”
Spencer’s shoulders tensed almost imperceptibly at the repetition, the way Morgan’s voice had shifted from teasing to something sharper, more deliberate. There was no escape hatch in that tone. Only persistence.
He sighed, the sound quiet and tired in a way that didn’t belong to the report in front of him, and certainly not to the fluorescent-lit bullpen that usually kept everything neatly compartmentalized.
“What?”
Morgan leaned back again, studying him with a growing certainty that had nothing to do with profiling and everything to do with experience. The kind of certainty that came from knowing someone long enough to recognize when they were lying even before they opened their mouth.
“Girl?”
The single word hit the air like a thrown object.
Spencer froze.
Morgan’s grin widened, slow and unmistakably victorious.
“Oh my God,” he said, leaning forward now, elbows on his knees. “There is a girl.”
“No.”
It came out too fast.
Too practiced.
Morgan tilted his head. “That wasn’t a denial.”
“It was.”
“It was the worst denial I’ve ever heard in my life.”
Spencer dragged a hand down his face, pressing briefly at his eyes as if physical pressure might reset the conversation entirely. It didn’t. Of course it didn’t. Derek Morgan wasn’t the type to let something go once he had it between his teeth.
“It’s not—” Spencer started, then stopped, because even he didn’t know what direction that sentence was supposed to go in.
“You got a girlfriend?”
“No.”
Morgan’s eyebrows lifted so high they practically disappeared into his forehead. “Oh.”
A beat.
Then, softer, almost delighted: “Secret girlfriend?”
The silence that followed wasn’t loud, but it was definitive. It filled the space between them in a way no words could compete with, settling over Spencer like gravity finally deciding to stop being generous.
Morgan blinked once.
Then twice.
And then he leaned back so abruptly his chair creaked, one hand flying up to his chest like he needed to physically contain his reaction.
“Oh my God,” he said again, but this time it wasn’t teasing. It was disbelief wrapped around amusement. “Reid. No. No way.”
Spencer lowered his voice immediately, shoulders tightening as he glanced around the bullpen like the entire building had suddenly become invested in his personal collapse. “Please lower your voice.”
“You have a secret girlfriend?”
“Technically,” Spencer admitted, reluctantly, as if even the word came with conditions he hadn’t fully agreed to.
Morgan froze for half a second.
That was worse than any reaction so far.
“Since when?”
“Five months.”
The word landed.
Morgan made a sound somewhere between a cough and a laugh, choking slightly as he leaned forward again, eyes widening in genuine shock. “Five months?!”
Heads turned.
A few agents paused mid-step. Someone near the coffee station actually looked over their shoulder. Even the hum of the bullpen seemed to tilt toward them for a moment, like the entire room had decided this was more interesting than paperwork.
Spencer felt heat crawl up the back of his neck. He wished, with a kind of desperate clarity, that the floor would simply give up on him and solve the problem permanently.
Morgan, entirely unhelpful, looked delighted in the worst possible way.
“You’ve been dating someone for five months and nobody knows?” he asked, voice lower now but no less incredulous.
“It wasn’t intentional,” Spencer muttered.
Morgan gave him a look that said he did not believe in accidents of that magnitude.
“It absolutely was intentional.”
Spencer exhaled through his nose, a tired sound that carried the weight of someone who had stopped trying to win this particular argument.
“Can we not focus on that part?”
Morgan’s expression changed slightly at that, just enough to signal he’d caught something underneath the embarrassment. The teasing didn’t disappear, but it softened at the edges.
“Something happened,” he said instead.
Spencer hesitated.
It was subtle, but enough.
His eyes dropped to the desk. To the corner of the file he’d been straightening for no reason. To anything except his friend.
Morgan didn’t need more than that.
“You fought.”
“It was a disagreement,” Spencer corrected automatically, as if the phrasing might make it less real.
Morgan scoffed. “How long since you’ve talked?”
A pause.
Spencer hesitated just long enough to give himself away.
“…two days.”
Morgan let out a slow, low whistle, leaning back again like the situation had just upgraded itself from something interesting to an inevitable disaster.
“Damn,” he said simply.
Spencer rubbed a hand over his face, dragging it down like he could erase the entire conversation if he tried hard enough.
“I know,” he muttered.
“What happened?”
Spencer hesitated.
Normally, he would never have even come close to discussing his relationship with anyone at work. It wasn’t just a boundary, it was a principle. Something he kept carefully intact because once you started letting people in, even a little, they tended to see things you weren’t ready to explain. But Derek Morgan wasn’t just anyone at work. He was his friend. And worse, in this specific case, he was also your big brother, which meant there were layers of complication Spencer hadn’t fully accounted for when he started dating you in the first place.
So he spoke anyway.
Not your name. Never your name. Just fragments that still somehow felt too revealing.
He explained how he had missed a dinner he had promised would be just the two of you, no cases, no interruptions, no excuses waiting in the wings. He explained how it hadn’t been malicious, how time had slipped in the way it always did, like sand through fingers he didn’t realize were open until it was already gone. He explained how it wasn’t even the first time, and how that detail alone had changed the entire shape of the conversation when he finally walked through the door too late.
And then he admitted, less willingly, that when frustration came, when disappointment turned into something sharper, he had reacted instead of listening. That he had defended himself with logic, with context, with all the reasons that made sense in his head but apparently didn’t matter in the moment they were spoken. That somewhere between explaining and insisting, he had stopped hearing the part where it wasn’t about being right.
By the end of it, neither of them had apologized. Not properly. Not in a way that closed anything. Just a silence that stretched and hardened until it became its own kind of wall.
Derek listened the entire time without interrupting, which, in hindsight, should have been Spencer’s first warning.
When he finally finished, Morgan leaned back in his chair, exhaled through his nose, and looked at him with the kind of expression usually reserved for malfunctioning equipment or particularly disappointing case files.
“You were an idiot.”
Spencer blinked once. “What?”
“You were an idiot.”
“I don’t think that’s objectively—”
“You forgot dinner.”
“There was a case, and my mind was…occupied,” Spencer corrected quickly, almost reflexively, as if precision could soften the accusation.
Morgan pointed at him like that settled it. “Exactly. You don’t forget things. You remember license plates from twenty years ago, but you forgot a dinner you promised her?”
Spencer opened his mouth, then stopped. Closed it. Then tried again anyway, because not responding felt worse.
“I know,” he admitted quietly.
“And then instead of apologizing,” Morgan continued, “you gave her a lecture about why you forgot.”
“…yes.”
Morgan nodded once, like the case was already solved. “Yeah. Idiot.”
Spencer sank a little deeper into his chair, as if he could physically distance himself from the conclusion. “I wasn’t trying to upset her,” he said, quieter now. “Logically, if I explained the circumstances, she would understand why I missed it.”
Morgan let out a short laugh, shaking his head. “Kid, women don’t always want logic.”
“That’s statistically impossible,” Spencer said automatically, because it was safer than sitting with the rest of it.
Morgan didn’t even acknowledge that.
He just leaned forward slightly, elbows resting on his knees, the humor in his expression thinning into something steadier, less teasing now, more grounded, like he was done playing with the situation and had decided to actually look at it.
“Sometimes they just want you to admit you hurt their feelings.”
Spencer considered that for a moment longer than most people would have. His mind, as usual, tried to systematize it, translate it into something measurable, something predictable. But it didn’t settle into a neat equation. It hovered instead, annoyingly unresolved.
“You know what she’s waiting for right now?” Morgan continued, like he was narrating something painfully obvious. “An apology. And flowers. Be classic about it.”
Spencer blinked. “…that’s it?”
“That’s it.”
The simplicity of it almost offended him on principle.
“But what if she’s still angry?” he asked, because of course he had to account for every possible variable. “Anger doesn’t resolve instantly just because an apology is issued. There’s usually a cooling period, sometimes followed by—”
“Reid.” Morgan cut in flatly.
Spencer tried again, more quietly. “What if she doesn’t forgive me?”
Morgan let out a short laugh, shaking his head like the question itself was exhausting.
“Trust me,” he said. “If she’s put up with you for five months, she’s not leaving that easily.”
That earned the smallest shift in Spencer’s expression. Not quite relief, but something close enough to soften the edges. A reluctant smile pulled at his mouth before he could stop it.
Morgan noticed immediately, of course.
And then, like he couldn’t help himself, he added casually, almost offhand, too casual to be innocent:
“What’s her name anyway?”
The shift was immediate and almost physical.
Spencer went still in a way that wasn’t simply silence, it was interruption at the level of thought. Like whatever careful, fragile structure he had been maintaining inside his head had just been tapped in the wrong place and was now threatening to collapse in on itself. His eyes lifted too quickly, then dropped just as fast, betraying him before he could even attempt to form something resembling composure.
“…What?” he said, but it came out too sharp, too reflexive, as if the question itself had accused him of something.
Morgan tilted his head, watching him with the slow, patient attention of someone who had just found something interesting and had no intention of letting it go. “Her name,” he repeated, softer now, almost conversational. “The mystery girlfriend you’ve been circling around for the last half hour.”
Spencer’s brain did something deeply unhelpful, like attempt to exit his skull.
“I—” he started.
Then stopped.
Then tried again, weaker this time. “I didn’t say she was— I mean, I didn’t specify—”
Morgan’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Reid.”
That single word cut straight through whatever remaining momentum Spencer had been clinging to.
He stopped.
The silence that followed felt too loud for a room that had only seconds ago contained casual conversation. Spencer’s gaze dropped, then flicked away again, as if eye contact had become structurally unsafe. He adjusted his grip on his bag strap with unnecessary force, like he could physically organize his thoughts if he held onto something hard enough.
“I should go,” he said quickly, already moving before the sentence had fully finished forming, chair scraping faintly behind him as he stood a fraction too fast.
Morgan leaned back in his seat, utterly at ease now, watching the whole thing unfold like it was entertainment he hadn’t expected to enjoy this much.
Spencer didn’t look at him. Didn’t dare.
He just grabbed his bag, too tight, too precise, like if he handled it correctly he could still salvage what was left of his dignity.
Behind him, Morgan called after him, voice edged with amusement that had fully settled in now, no longer restrained by sympathy or hesitation.
“Kid.”
Spencer froze, hand on the strap.
Morgan’s grin widened. “You’re worse at hiding things than you are at talking to women.”
Well, that wasn’t what his little sister could say.
***
Spencer Reid found you at your work just after midday, when the world inside your building was caught in that peculiar rhythm of motion without urgency. He stood outside for a moment longer than necessary, as if the threshold itself required preparation. The flowers in his hands were simple, chosen with intent rather than extravagance, but even that simplicity had been carefully overthought, the stems adjusted and readjusted until they were aligned in a way that made sense only to him. He shifted his grip once, then again, thumb brushing against the wrapping as though precision could somehow translate into reassurance.
When he finally stepped inside, the change was immediate. The hum of the place wrapped around him, warmer, more alive, and suddenly he was hyperaware of everything: his own footsteps, the faint rustle of paper in his hand, the way his presence seemed to interrupt a rhythm he hadn’t been part of a second ago. He saw you before you saw him.
That alone made his pulse jump.
You were mid-task, completely absorbed in whatever demanded your attention at that moment, posture angled slightly forward in a way that suggested focus so deep it made the rest of the room irrelevant. There was a pen in your hand, and your hair had fallen slightly out of place, soft strands escaping whatever attempt you had made earlier to control them. Your expression was set in concentration, the kind that made you look, for a fleeting second, unreachable. Not distant in an emotional sense, but sealed inside your own momentum, like the world would have to wait until you decided otherwise.
It hit him again then, that disorienting realization that never fully settled no matter how many times he experienced it: you were not an equation he could balance, not a pattern he could predict, not a hypothesis that yielded itself neatly to observation. You were real in a way his mind struggled to compress into something manageable. Not something to analyze. Not something to solve. Just you...existing in front of him with an immediacy that made everything else feel slightly out of focus.
He cleared his throat softly.
It was small, almost tentative, but it still felt too loud in his own ears.
Your eyes lifted.
There was a pause before you registered him fully.
It wasn’t immediate. First came confusion, like your mind briefly refusing to assign meaning to what you were seeing. Then recognition flickered through, softening that confusion just enough to make it real. And then something sharper settled in behind your gaze, like you were weighing the space between him showing up and him leaving again, and deciding which outcome you were prepared to tolerate.
Spencer swallowed.
“I—hi,” he started, and then immediately looked like he regretted choosing that particular arrangement of syllables. His shoulders shifted minutely, tension tightening and releasing in uneven pulses. “I brought…flowers.”
He lifted them slightly, like he was presenting something far more fragile than it already was. The bouquet tilted just a fraction in his grip, stems aligned with an almost anxious precision, as though even their angle might influence how this moment unfolded.
You blinked at them.
Then at him.
Then back at the flowers, as if your brain was taking a second longer than usual to reconcile intention with reality.
“…Okay,” you said slowly, the word drawn out with cautious neutrality, like you were waiting for the rest of the sentence to arrive and complete whatever meaning this was supposed to have.
Spencer nodded too quickly. “Yes. Right. They’re not— I mean, they’re not symbolic of anything negative.” He paused, corrected himself mid-thought, then continued with increasing urgency, “They’re actually meant to be apologetic.”
That made your brows lift slightly.
His grip on the flowers tightened a fraction before he forced it to relax.
“I missed our dinner,” he said suddenly, words spilling forward now that the threshold had been crossed. “And I know that wasn’t the first time, and I know I said it wouldn’t happen again, and I did try to come back but the case ran longer than expected and I should have called earlier, or at least sent a message, and I understand why you were upset because it’s not really about the dinner itself, it’s about—”
“Spencer.”
The interruption was quiet, but it landed cleanly.
He stopped instantly, like a switch had been flipped somewhere inside him. His mouth closed, the rest of the explanation collapsing unfinished behind his teeth. He looked at you properly then, as if realizing for the first time in the last thirty seconds that he hadn’t actually been speaking to resolve anything, you were supposed to be part of the conversation, not just the endpoint of it.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, simpler this time. “I shouldn’t have missed it. And I shouldn’t have made you feel like it didn’t matter.”
Spencer’s gaze stayed on you, careful now in a different way. Less defensive. More exposed.
Then, almost reluctantly, like the admission had to physically push its way out of him, he added, “And I…asked Morgan for advice, you should know it.”
There was a pause.
A very specific kind of pause, the kind that didn’t belong to silence so much as to realization. Like your brain had to double-check it had processed the sentence correctly before allowing any reaction to form.
Your expression changed first. Not immediately disbelief, but a slow recalibration, like the information had to be tested against reality before it was accepted. Then your brows lifted slightly. Then your mouth twitched, just barely, the smallest betrayal of something trying very hard not to become laughter too soon.
“Wait,” you said slowly. “You asked my brother for advice.”
Spencer nodded once, cautious now. “Yes.”
You laughed.
It started as something small, an exhale of disbelief that slipped out before you could catch it, but it didn’t stay small. It built quickly, breaking through whatever tension had been sitting between you a second ago. You pressed a hand briefly to your mouth, like you were trying to contain it, but it didn’t help. If anything, it made it worse. Your shoulders shook slightly as you looked at him, as if trying to reconcile the very serious man standing in front of you with the information he had just offered up so sincerely.
“You asked Derek,” you repeated between breaths, still laughing. “About us?”
Spencer looked mildly pained now, the way he always did when he realized a decision had aged badly in real time. “In retrospect,” he said carefully, “I recognize that may not have been optimal decision-making.”
That made you laugh harder.
“Oh my— Spencer,” you said, still smiling, still shaking your head like your body couldn’t decide whether to recover or continue. “That is the worst possible person you could’ve gone to.”
“I’m aware,” he said quietly. “He told me I was an idiot.”
That only made you laugh more, and something in his chest loosened at the sound, like a tension he hadn’t realized he’d been holding finally shifted, fraction by fraction, into something less suffocating.
When your laughter finally faded, you looked at him again.
Still hurt, maybe. Still not entirely okay.
But softer now.
“And?” you asked.
Spencer hesitated, then held the flowers out a little more properly this time, like he was committing to the moment instead of escaping it.
“And,” he finished carefully, still holding the flowers out a little too formally, “he was…unfortunately correct about several things.”
You tilted your head, considering him for a second, then scoffed lightly as if the idea itself offended you.
“Derek is never correct.”
That made Spencer pause.
You stepped closer, and before he could recalibrate whatever internal system was trying to predict the next outcome, you leaned in and pressed a quick kiss to his cheek.
“You should just talk to me,” you said quietly, already pulling back slightly but keeping close enough that he could still feel you there. “We are adults.”
Spencer blinked once.
“I thought you were mad,” he admitted, voice thinner now, confused in that very specific way he got when reality didn’t match the model he had built in his head.
You exhaled through your nose, half amused, half exasperated, and lifted a hand to his face, fingertips brushing lightly along his cheek as if anchoring him back into something real.
“I was,” you said honestly. “Very much.”
That made his shoulders tense slightly, instinctively bracing.
“But I understand your work,” you continued, softer now, “and the shitty hours. I get it, Spencer. I really do.”
His eyes searched yours, still wary, still trying to calculate where the sharp edge was supposed to come in.
Instead, there was none.
Just you.
You thumbed gently along his cheekbone, steadying him in a way no explanation ever had.
“I believe in communication,” you added, like it was the simplest thing in the world.
Something in Spencer finally gave up resisting.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, but this time it didn’t sound like part of a defense. It sounded like the end of one.
You studied him for a second, still close enough that your hand remained on his cheek, thumb resting lightly as if you’d decided that was simply where it belonged now.
“Good,” you said simply.
Spencer blinked. “Good?”
“Yes,” you nodded once, like it was obvious. “Apology accepted.”
That seemed to short-circuit him for a second.
“Just like that?” he asked, cautiously, as if he was checking whether there was a second stage to this he hadn’t been briefed on.
You gave him a look. “Spencer. I already kissed your face. What more do you want from me.”
His ears went slightly pink at that, which only made you smile more.
“I—” he started, then stopped, recalculating. “That’s…fair.”
You finally took the flowers from his hands before he could overthink them into oblivion, your fingers brushing his in the exchange. He visibly tracked the movement like it mattered more than it should have.
“They’re pretty,” you added, glancing at them.
“I chose them based on color theory and—” he began automatically.
“I love that.”
That cut him off mid-explanation, and for a second he looked like he was about to defend himself out of habit. Then he saw your expression and the defense just didn’t arrive.
Instead, he exhaled a small breath that might have been a laugh if he was braver.
“I also panicked slightly,” he admitted.
You nodded seriously. “That I believe.”
A pause settled between you again, but this time it wasn’t heavy. It was comfortable in a way neither of you had quite figured out how to name yet.
Spencer glanced at you, then at the flowers, then back at you like he was still trying to confirm this wasn’t some alternate reality where he had successfully handled emotional confrontation without catastrophe.
You, on the other hand, looked entirely too pleased with yourself.
“You know,” you said, tilting your head slightly, “for someone who overthinks everything, you’re kind of cute when you’re trying not to implode.”
That made him freeze.
“…That is not a clinically recognized category of attractiveness,” he said automatically.
You smiled wider. “Didn’t say it was.”
He opened his mouth, closed it again, then seemed to settle on the only safe response available.
“I don’t know what to do with compliments,” he admitted.
“That’s okay,” you said, stepping a little closer again, like it was the most natural thing in the world. “I can help you.”
His gaze flickered to yours, softer now, less defensive and more present.
“That seems inefficient,” he murmured, but there was no real protest in it.
You lightly bumped your shoulder against his.
“I think you’ll survive.”
A beat.
Then, quieter, almost shy despite everything, he asked, “So…we’re okay?”
You didn’t answer immediately.
Instead, you reached up and gently fixed the collar of his shirt like it had been bothering you all day, smoothing it into place with casual care.
“Yeah,” you said finally. “We’re okay.”
***
When you got home, the apartment was quiet in that familiar, lived-in way: TV murmuring low in the background, something forgettable playing to an audience that wasn’t really watching. The kind of sound that filled space without demanding anything from it. Your brother was on the couch, stretched out like he belonged to it more than the furniture itself, one arm draped over the backrest, the other holding the remote in a loose grip that suggested he’d already stopped caring what was on.
He looked up the moment the door clicked shut.
At first it was automatic, half a greeting forming on his tongue, some casual comment ready to be thrown your way without much thought. But it never made it out. It stalled, visibly, the second his eyes actually focused.
The flowers came first.
Bright, unmistakable, slightly ridiculous in the way only something intentionally chosen could be. Then your expression, too alive, too soft around the edges, like you were still carrying whatever moment had just happened outside the apartment and hadn’t fully put it down yet. And then the smile. That was the real problem. Not just a smile, but one that kept threatening to turn into laughter every time you breathed, like it had gotten stuck halfway between contained and completely out of control.
Derek slowly sat up a little straighter.
Not alarmed exactly. More like recalibrating. Like his brain had just received new data that didn’t match any of the existing categories he had available.
“…Flowers, uh?” he said at last, drawing the words out carefully. He leaned back just slightly, like increasing physical distance might help him understand what he was looking at. “Should I be worried?”
You didn’t even hesitate.
The answer came too fast, too clean.
“Nope.”
A beat of silence followed that, heavy in its simplicity.
Derek stared at you for another second, then the flowers again, then your face, like he was checking for inconsistencies in a story he already didn’t trust. Slowly, very slowly, one corner of his mouth twitched.
“…Mm,” he hummed, leaning back into the couch with the long-suffering patience of a man who had clearly just missed a very important piece of information.
You didn’t stop.
You walked right past him like the conversation had already been filed away, resolved, and archived somewhere in your mind under done, the flowers cradled casually in your arms as you disappeared down the hallway. The door to your room was already half open before Derek could even find the next thought.
The apartment fell quiet again.
Not peaceful. Not normal.
Just…paused.
Derek stayed still for about three seconds, which, for him, was practically an eternity. Then he slowly turned his head toward the hallway like it might physically supply him with missing context if he stared at it hard enough. His brows pulled together, faintly at first, then deeper, like the situation was refusing to align itself into anything logical.
The smile on your face replayed in his head.
Then the flowers.
Then the timing.
Then the very specific, very suspicious absence of any emotional damage whatsoever.
Derek sat forward a fraction.
“…No way,” he muttered, almost to himself.
A pause stretched out, thin and sharp.
His gaze flicked toward the hallway again, then back, like he was assembling a puzzle he absolutely did not want to finish. Slowly, the realization stopped being theoretical. It settled. It clicked into place with the quiet horror of inevitability.
His eyes widened slightly.
Then he leaned back into the couch again, staring up at the ceiling like it had betrayed him personally and without warning.
this is prime proof that this ENTIRE WEBSITE is autistic because nowhere else would a no tags post that's just an informative list about slang get this much traction.
You really start to understand that the “angry black woman” and “mean lesbian” stereotype only exists to shame us for the fact we get reasonably upset about people wanting to horrifically abuse us indiscriminately. Let’s get meaner !
So recently I went to the circus (my last time being there was like 20+ years ago), and one of the most notable things was that our circus has performers dressed up as popular superheroes.
Through out the show, I saw Spider-Man, the Hulk, the Power Rangers, Batman, Superman and Iron doing incredible trapeze and acrobatic acts.
Which makes sense, kids today are into superheroes, and the circus gotta do what they can to keep up with the time and draw in kids.
The kids loved it, of course, and it warmed my heart to see the hardworking performers being cheered on and idolised by their young audience just like they were actual superheroes.
Which they are! Circus performers, with their eyecatching colourful skintight costumes and death-defying feats of acrobatics, strength and dexterity, are truely the closest we've got to actual real life superheroes.
It is a nice bit of full-circle. Superheroes' looks and costumes were inspired by circus strongmen and acrobats, and now, superheroes has come back to inspire the circus.
Which make me think, this can work as an updated origin for Dick Grayson's Robin. Think about it:
The Flying Graysons dressed up as superhero-themed costumes for their acts.
To Dick, his parents were superheroes, and he was their sidekick.
He had his love for superheroes baked in him since the start.
you wanna see some badass shit from the early 20th century?? The Lumière brothers created the first full color photograph… in fucking 1903! So these dudes dyed potatoes (in red, blue, and green), mashed them down into just pure fuckin’ starch, and used these dyed potato starches as filters to block out/let in certain wavelengths of light. They coated one side of a glass plate with the starches and sensitized the other side with a mixture of gelatin and light sensitive materials (silver nitrate) and loaded these plates in their cameras.. This is a really simple explanation of the process and I may have missed some things
A few of my favorite autochrome photos:
but lets not forget sergei prokudin-gorskiy, who developed a similar process in 1902, published in 1903 and then toured russia to take hundreds of color photographs:
AND the guy developed color slide processing as well. as a person fairly familiar with modern b/w processing at home, but never EVER stepping into color (negatives or slides) territory, i’d say, BAMF to the highest degree.
Here are a few more Prokudin-Gorskiy / Gorskii shots, and a reminder once again that these aren’t recently colourised BW images but original colour photos taken about 120 years ago. Many colourised pics don’t look this good. Some modern colour pics don’t look this good (as I know all too well. “Delete image Y/N? Y!”)
This is Leo Tolstoy, author of “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina”.
Alim Khan, Emir of Bukhara…
…and his Minister of the Interior.
A Type B-15 steam locomotive…
Another of those peasant girls with guest-gifts of berries…
The Church of St John the Baptist at Staraya Ladoga…
…and a Sergei Prokudin-Gorskiy self-portrait.
Unlike some current selfies ;-> he’s not dominating the image, so here’s a closer shot.
Main Pairing: Ardeth Bay/Original Female Character
Summary: As an orphan, Sadie has struggled to survive Egypt her whole life, but she always survives, nonetheless. Her skills are tested when Rick comes knocking on their door after escaping the noose in prison. He's got a job for them, and when have those jobs ever gone wrong?
The desert awaits them, along with something else shrouded with mystery. Rick recognizes the men in dark robes and facial tattoos from his previous journey to Hamunaptra, but for Sadie, her experience goes far deeper than that, and not even the undead can make her forget it.
Tag: # mummified memories series
(Posted on AO3)
Full series (WIP)
desert flowers are the most adaptable (Complete)
isn't it strange (Chapters 5/6)
Other fun stuff for the series:
"Laughing with the enemy" edit
Alex O'Connell "My Family" edit
Incorrect quotes
Ai generated images of OC
Disclaimer: I do not own the Mummy's plot, lore, and/or characters. All rights go to their respective creators. I only own my original character, Sadie.
