I LOVE YOUR WRITING IT'S SO ASDFJKFTICDHBDIGDGXSJOHCBCFG
so I wanted to request Sirius x reader where the reader is on veritaserum and has a banter/ tongue in cheek sorta relationship with Sirius. And then when she's on the truth serum she has to hold back witty comebacks because when she opens her mouth all she keeps saying is how disgustingly cute Sirius looks when he smiles, and how she just wants to snog his face off PLEASE IF YOU CAN 👉👈 🥺
REMINDER: YOU'RE AMAZING AND I'M HAPPY AND PROUD OF YOUR SERVICE TO THE FANFIC COMMUNITY
thank you ♡ —you can't hide the truth from sirius, and he doesn't want to try. 1.3k
cw spiked drink
"Why would someone put veritaserum in the pimms?" you ask James meekly.
"Shortcake, I'm really not sure. Don't get upset about it, alright? Remus is going to tear them all a new one." He squeezes you by the shoulders. "Don't worry, Jamie's here."
"You're very handsome, but I don't fancy you. Much."
James smiles. "Good to know, lovely. I don't fancy you much either. I'll assume you're saving yourself for our mutual dark-haired friend and I shan't be offended."
You slap a hand over your mouth and shake your head, but the truth comes out muffled into your palm anyways. "I really like him," you say, eyes wide with terror, "I don't want anyone else. Oh, James! You're such a dick!"
"Do you mean that, or are you just angry with me?" James asks, helping you out into the garden away from the party and your peers, who can't be trusted to leave you alone when you're set to tell them any secret they want.
"Both!"
"What's wrong?" Sirius asks.
Your neck almost snaps as you look up. James swears, trying to save it as your body instinctively answers. "Someone's spiked our girl," James says extremely loudly to mask your more honest confession, "I'm worried I'm going to tell you I like you," you say.
Sirius, sitting on a low garden wall with a packet of cigarettes in his hand, is puzzled. "What?"
"Someone's put veritaserum in her drink. Maybe in the pitcher. I've brought her outside so she doesn't accidentally tell everyone she's in love with me."
Sirius grins. "Don't be daft, Prongs, she's clearly team Black. Aren't you, sweetheart?"
"You're the prettiest of your trio," you say, sincerity like a blade at the back of your throat, aching, "I'm definitely on your team."
James squeezes your shoulder and helps you into a garden chair, the metal cool against your back. "I'll forgive you because I know you can't help it, and because I know you're dying of embarrassment," he murmurs.
"Thank you. I love you."
"I love you too, shortcake," James says easily, kicking out a chair for Sirius and flopping into his beside you. "Aren't feeling ill, are you?"
"Just terrified I'll say something too honest," you say, holding your breath between words.
Sirius sits in the chair that's been kicked out for him with a cigarette held between his lips, unlit. He lift a his hips to pull a lighter from his back pocket and you flush with heat at the motion, wondering if you're a pervert for looking, for thinking, but lately your flirty banter has your heart doing front flips, and every time you see him you're zoning in on his hands, his arms, the slip of skin at his navel when he stretches, the low sound he makes when something pops.
"Stop ogling me," he says without looking from his cigarette, the end glowing orange in the flame of his clipper.
"I don't mean to," you say.
James shifts uncomfortably. Everyone knows you like Sirius, maybe even Sirius, but he hasn't said a thing about it and you've stopped yourself (so far) from telling him. Any truth has been said under the guise of a joke.
Sirius takes a short drag and holds the cigarette out and away from you, smoke curling in the cold autumnal night. "Shall I go help defend your honour? I assume that's where Remus is. Being spiked isn't funny."
"I'd like it if you stayed here," you say.
James laughs. Sirius leans forward a touch. "Then I'll stay here. Do you need something to drink?"
"My mouth is really dry," you say.
Sirius sends a saccharine smile James' way. It's the look of an older brother used to getting his way, to which James sighs and grumbles, standing from his chair, "Don't ask her anything cruel," he says severely, kissing the top of your head quickly. "I'm serious."
"I won't. I quite like her, in case you forgot. I've no interest in torturing her."
You believe him. James departs with a pat, leaving you and Sirius alone at the garden table, still but for the little motion he does every now and then to fleck ash onto the floor.
"You sure you're okay?" Sirius asks.
"I feel fine. Warm, but that's probably because you're smiling at me."
He raises his eyebrows. "Maybe we should talk about something else. I really don't want to ask you anything too personal while you can't keep a secret. James gave me veritaserum once, when we were kids."
"He did?" you ask.
"Too much of it. I was sick, and I couldn't stop telling him how much I wished we were real brothers. Which he knows now, but at the time it was, you know, very sincere."
"You and James are real brothers," you say.
"I'm glad you can say that. It must be true," he says. "I'm lucky, even if he has tried to poison me."
"James is lucky too. We all are."
"Yeah?" he asks. He's about to continue, but your mouth does the choosing for you, and you cut him off.
"I love knowing you, Sirius, I feel lucky to be your friend, and I–" You bite your tongue hard enough for tears to catch in your eyes immediately.
Sirius' blasé fades, falls away slowly, like a moving cloud unveiling a slice of light, "Don't hurt yourself," he says, alarmed at your wincing. He drops his cigarette and smashes it with his heel, shuffling his chair closer to yours.
"I just don't want to tell you something," you say, shaking your head.
Sirius touches your hand. "Okay, I won't ask you any more questions. I'm sorry. Everyone's allowed their secrets, lovely, I didn't mean to make you answer me. I thought it would be easier to skirt around the issue."
But it's a big feeling, and it's in everything you do. You really, really like him. If you can't be honest about that, maybe you can be honest about something else..
There's no shame in finding a handsome man handsome. And maybe you can convince him that that's all it is. "I just want to kiss you stupid, Black," you say, "like, kiss you until I can't feel my mouth anymore. You look like you know how to really kiss someone."
Sirius laughs suddenly, startled. "I want to kiss you stupid, doll. You're a fucking dime piece," he says through laughter, "and that's the truth."
"You look really nice when you laugh," you further, wondering if this is the wrong thing to do.
"You look beautiful when you laugh," he says.
"Joking with you about stuff is the best part of my week."
"It's the best part of mine. I wish we saw each other more often," he says.
"Did you drink the pimms, too?" you ask.
"No. I'm stone cold sober, sweetheart." Sirius looks behind you and you follow his gaze to the patio doors, where James and Remus are arguing good-naturedly, a tall pint glass filled literally to the rim with water in James' hand.
"Has he left you alone?" Remus asks, quick down the short step to defend you. "I love you, Sirius, but I don't trust you to not ask her embarrassing questions."
"I'm starting to get offended. No, she hasn't told me anything embarrassing. Only that she wants to snog my lips off, but I knew that already." Sirius smiles at you dopily while his friends seize up. "And that's hardly embarrassing, because I want to do it to her first."
jadey, could I request some hurt/comfort with hangman (or Steve or Eddie if you’d prefer) where he asks reader out and they’re like “are you sure this isn’t a joke? or a prank? or a bad decision you’ll regret tomorrow?”? and he’s really sweet and kind about it? cause ngl with how shitty my dating life’s been so far, any man that approaches me with romantic intent is gonna have to do so with the same gentleness and tact as someone who rescues and rehabilitates neglected dogs.
“Look out,” Liv says, nodding toward the front of the arcade and then quickly turning away, “Harrington’s back.”
Why she says it like a chore you’ve no idea. You hurry to clip your mirror compact closed and shove it under the desk into a bucket of Chinese finger traps and pencil toppers. You look ridiculous in your polo with your Palace nametag taking up a solid two inches of your chest, but Steve Harrington used to wear a little sailor’s uniform with tiny teeny shorts, so perhaps he doesn’t hold it against you. You really hope he doesn’t.
Steve looks less smiley than usual —he isn’t surrounded by his usual troupe of friends, the younger kids Nancy Wheeler’s brother and the gaggle of dorks that keeps getting bigger. He pretends they piss him off, and sometimes they really do, but when Max needs to go stand outside for a minute he always goes with her, and when Dustin flinches at a seriously loud noise, he clasps the boy by the shoulder and tells him it’s alright. He clearly doesn’t mind that he’s inherited a brood of younger siblings.
But today he’s frowning, nearly, something steeled about him as he stops at the desk. You smile carefully and he smiles back, but it quickly fades as he opens his mouth, you assume to talk. For a second, nothing comes out.
“Hi,” he says finally.
“Hi, Steve.”
“How are you?”
“I’m good, yeah. Thank you.” You raise your eyebrows. “How are you?”
“Nervous.” He scratches the back of his neck, peeking quickly down at his hand and then wiping it roughly into his thigh. “Shit. Listen, I think you’re so pretty, and I practised this part in my head but it’s not– I got another look at you as I was coming in and I forgot what I was gonna say.”
You don’t mean to ask, but, “You think I’m pretty?”
“It’s dire,” he says seriously, hair flopping into his eyes and half-heartedly batted away. “You’re beautiful.”
He says it so simply, it doesn’t compute.
“Oh. Well, thank you,” you say softly.
“Shit.” Steve shoots a look at the door. You follow his gaze, wondering what the hell he’s looking at. Did he bring somebody with him? You’d thought he was alone, but maybe he’s not.
“Steve, are you okay?”
“That’s why. This is why I’m– I’m fucking up monumentally. I didn’t think I’d be nervous. Like, sure, I felt like I was gonna throw up all morning but I’m usually better at the asking part.” Steve straightens up. A light beige polo is neatly buttoned at his neck, and his hair looks nicer than usual, super shiny under the overhead. When he turns to you, the red light coming off of Dig-Dug paints him with a pink hue, emphasising the dash of blush filling the tops of his ears. “You wouldn’t want to hang out some time, would you? Or– shit. I don’t want to hang out. I do, but– Do you want to go on a date?”
“With you?”
He winces. “With me, yeah.”
You’re quiet for so long it makes you both uncomfortable. Slowly, Steve’s face starts to lose the squirmy nervousness he’d brought in with him, and a familiar softness fills his eyes, his brows pinching at their starts, lips pursed.
“You look upset,” he says.
In the tens of times you’ve seen Steve Harrington come in here, and the fewer times he’s come up to the desk to talk, you can’t confess to thinking he’d ever ask you that. You’d imagined it once, how he’d lean against the display of teddy bears and smile at you just so, like you already knew what he wanted.
“No,” you say, watching his expression for some sign that this is a trick. It doesn’t seem like it is. You can’t say you think he’d be that cruel, but you can’t not ask, either. “I’m wondering if this is a joke.”
“A joke? No.” Steve frowns. “Did someone do that before?”
“Just doesn’t make any sense.”
Steve is a nice guy. He’s asked you so many questions about yourself you can’t remember what he knows and what he doesn’t, but you aren’t eager to tell him why you think what you’re thinking now.
You shy away from him, letting your eyes fall to the pencil erasers.
“Hey,” he says softly, reaching across the desk without touching you, “hey, hey, it’s okay. I’m not kidding around, I’ve wanted to ask you out for ages, but I– guess I thought this would go better if I waited. You don’t have to say yes.”
“You really want to go on a date with me?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“You swear?”
“I swear. I mean, duh. Who wouldn’t want to go on a date with you? I sort of wake up thinking about you.”
Your eyes fly to his face. “What?”
“Not in like, a loser way. In a cool way.”
You still don’t really believe Steve wants to take you on a date until he’s knocking on your door, 7PM sharp, handing you a bouquet of twelve red roses and a hopeful smile. “Told you,” he says, grinning as you step down onto the path with him, something you recognise as nervousness in his smile, but elation, too, “Jesus, I knew you’d look pretty, but this is just something else. Who wouldn’t want to take you out?”
You begin to have intimate dreams about your roommate, Spencer. [9k]
c: pining roommates, dreams, tipsy non-confessions, spencer being a sweetheart. fem!reader. this fic was requested!
｡𖦹°‧⭑.
i. a dreamt bruise
“What are you doing?”
Your chest lists slightly forward as a body warms your back. Arms wrap around you, solid but gentle, arms you’ve been held by a thousand times.
You cover them with one of your own. “What does it look like I’m doing?” you feel yourself ask.
The room is golden, gaussian, better now he’s behind you.
“I don’t know, dove. That’s why I asked.” His voice is soft in your ear. His hair presses to the side of your face as he hugs you —you’ve never felt love like this. It’s palpable. It’s in his hands.
Nobody’s called you dove before, but he is, he has. It might feel strange if it weren’t for how softly he said it, affection in the very marrow of the word, warmth of it kissing your cheek as he holds you. He says ‘dove’, and it feels like he loves you. Feels like you’ve done something beautiful to earn it, but that’s the beauty of it: you didn’t do anything.
The room turns narrow, sunlight on the dining room table of your apartment. A table usually crowded thickly with books, or your work. A space has been cleared away and filled with pieces of a jigsaw.
“I thought you were going to do this with me,” you say, dragging a piece across the table with your fingertip.
“Maybe later.”
“You can’t stand there all night.”
Are you sure? you think he says, but things are hazy, and he’s turning you toward him suddenly, you’re standing, the puzzle forgotten. “How’s your bruise?”
“What?” you ask, almost sleeping as a big, kind hand drags up the front of your shirt, holding it to the underside of your breast.
“Does it still hurt?”
His thumb brushes over your contusion, skin on your side, your back. It’s tender. Any breath is lost, any sense of breathing at all. You’re not a girl so much as something being touched with care, warm joy and love and a contrasting ache wedged under your heart as he draws a circles into your skin.
He hums sympathetically, the weight of him ebbing as he leans away, letting your shirt fall back into place.
The dream stretches on for a lifetime, the two of you standing in your living room, dining table behind you, couch and TV opposite. Your life in one room, his life, his books, his furniture, but your home. You know it all well, just, in the light, you can’t see the stitching.
He takes your face into his hand. Nobody’s ever touched you like, turned your face up like they were moving through honey, staring at you with eyes that shade of brown. Brown, brown… so big. So melting.
Spencer holds your face gently.
His nose touches yours. He tips his forehead into yours, his breath skimming lips he’d just warmed as he says, “Don’t worry, alright? You’ll be okay. Just take it easy,” he says, the last of his pleading lost to your mouth.
You wake up with a caught breath.
Your eyes are glued together, eyelashes threaded, gummy. You turn into the pillow beside you, slightly deflated and cold where you’d turned away in the night.
The room is dark when you manage to pry your eyes open. You close them just as quickly, begging your body to sleep, to plunge back into the dream. Just five more minutes of golden colour, hugging your pillow, love in somebody’s hand, in Spencer’s hand… five more minutes…
Your eyes open again.
Spencer’s hand on your cheek, guiding you carefully upwards for a kiss.
You raise your hand, feeling along the swell of your bottom lip with your thumb and index finger. They tremble with the weakness of having just woken up. With having something torn away from you.
What was that? you think, the hook of sleep lodged in your throat as you struggle to sit up. Your face tips forwards heavily, but your back doesn’t hurt like it tends to in the early mornings before work. There’s no ache there —your body slept well. You use your hands as anchors and drag yourself foot first from the bed. Your sheets fall to the floor with a quiet shush.
It felt so real that for a moment you’re wondering where Spencer went.
He was touching you, he was caressing your waist. You rush to the door of your room, every night left ajar, pushing it open and beelining for the bathroom. You flick on the light and stop in front of the mirror, staring at yourself, wondering if you’re foolish enough to do this, before peeling your shirt from your stomach to analyse your bruise.
It’s not there.
You turn and contort yourself to catch the light. Maybe it was further back? But no… there’s no bruise, nothing for Spencer to check. Your torso is a stretch of unharmed skin to run your hand down without pain.
Your head whirs.
From somewhere in the apartment, Spencer puts down a mug. You flush with heat at the realisation that he’s home, and panic flares when his footsteps move in your direction. Your bedrooms are on opposite sides of the apartment, and there are two bathrooms —the bath and toilet near your room, and the en-suite to his room— meaning Spencer’s coming to see you specifically.
“Hey, Y/N?” he says.
It’s been a few days since he was home, and you aren’t just roommates, Spencer’s your friend. He sounds happy that you’re awake, pausing at your bedroom door.
“I’m in the bathroom!” you say, your dry throat turning your voice to fractures.
“I just wanted you to know I’m home. Are you working?”
“It’s Saturday.”
He laughs. “Oh. I know, I forgot. Well, can I make you breakfast? I was gonna have oats and sliced bananas and stuff.”
“Okay.” You clear your throat. “I’ll be right there.”
“Sorry,” he says, like he’s just remembered where you are. “This is harassment. I’ll be in the kitchen.”
You wash your face and brush your teeth. You head back into your room to change from your pyjamas into loungewear that’s just as soft. The flavour of your dream follows you around, you’d like to call it sweetness, saccharinity, but it doesn’t fit the bill. The feeling you’d woken with wasn’t a sugar high but contentedness, like a warm evening meal. You’d felt utterly sated, your arms reaching out for a body that wasn’t there.
A heaviness takes your heart. Suffocating longing, you carry it to the kitchen with you to find Spencer’s already made you a cup of your tea. He’s warming oatmeal on the stove, blueberries and bananas on the countertop. You sit at the island. You should hug him. If you hadn’t dreamt of his hands on your waist what felt like mere moments ago, you would’ve.
“Did you go shopping?”
“I did, I went to Leaven last night. You were already sleeping at ten.” He peeks at you from over his shoulder. “Long day yesterday?”
“I get too tired by Friday,” you say, averting your gaze to stare down into your mug, steam twirling up to kiss your chin.
“No, I get it. Me too. Are you feeling any better today?”
You were sick when he left. “I’m fine.”
“Okay, good. I’m gonna put the blueberries in with the oatmeal, is that okay?”
“Sure.”
“Okay.” Spencer’s gaze lingers on you. He turns back to the counter.
He cuts two bananas. You realise he has strawberries, too, watching as he cuts them, wetness leaking from their punnets where he must’ve rinsed them in the sink. He slices out the stems and cuts the strawberries in clean halves like hearts.
“I missed you,” he says.
You can’t read his tone, but you aren’t cruel, even feeling shy as you are. “I missed you too. How was the case? Everyone made it home in one piece, right?”
“Everyone’s fine. Emily got into a car accident and it was pretty bad, but she’s okay now. Recovering from her concussion at home with Sergei.”
That’s good. You’ve met Spencer’s boss, Agent Hotchner (very scary), and Emily, JJ, and Penelope (who aren’t scary at all). You’re glad to hear they’re all okay, because they’re good people, and they risk a lot to keep others safe. You forget sometimes how much Spencer puts on the line whenever he leaves.
You poke at him for details of the case, though legally there are things he has to keep from you, and you don’t mind either way. Nothing personal can crop up while talking of murder, and for now you’d like the conversation to stay far away from you and your bed and your sudden dream.
You assume you’re safe, but then Spencer mentions the bruise one of the sergeants got from their weapon’s kickback and you’re flushing nervously all over again.
Spencer grabs two bowls from the cabinet, dark brown ceramics he got from Koreatown, the perfect size for each helping of oatmeal. The purple from the insides of the blueberries bleed into the oats as he pours.
He lays each bowl with a curve of banana slices, strawberries, and covers half with a drizzle of dark fudge sauce. “Salt?” he asks.
“Yes, please.”
Spencer grabs two spoons from the cutlery drawer. He grins when he finally turns, bowls held aloft, making his way to the stool beside you. He puts his own down first, then the cutlery, standing ever so slightly behind you as he lays your breakfast down in front of you. “What have you been doing while I was away?” he asks softly.
You can’t look at him. Can’t think.
What are you doing?
What does it look like I’m doing?
I don’t know, dove. That’s why I asked.
You lean away from his presence, desperate to have him follow, and ashamed. Spencer’s a friend, a good one, he’s kind and loving and handsome beyond description, but you’ve never thought of him like that. Each time your mind slips wondering what he might be like in love, you’ve let the thought go. But now...
You shrug, grabbing your spoon. “Not much, Spencer. This looks amazing, it’s really pretty. Thank you for cooking.”
“No problem. Are you sure you’re feeling better? You don’t look so good.”
You take a quick bite of oatmeal, the spoon scalding your tongue, “Ah,” you say, breathing harshly around it, “I’m fine. Woke up a little wrong, that’s all.”
Spencer sits in the seat next to you with a soft smile. “Good. I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to you.”
Oh, no, you think, reading way too much into how he says it. No, no, no.
—
ii facts
We should explore the city, Spencer declares after breakfast, before we forget what it’s like to be outside!
You were outside yesterday before you got home, and everything sucked as much as it usually did —it’s the weekend, and the point of it is to stay home resting and or lazing, but you wouldn’t usually say no to Spencer so you can’t now. He can’t ever know about your dream, so he can’t know how you’re feeling, so you have to be the friends you’ve always been.
Spencer analyses people for a reason, but you have practice. You’ve successfully hidden what it was that morning that made you feel cagey and tender. He knows something is wrong regardless. He attempts to fix it the best way he knows how: Spencer talks.
“Cheese production globally outshadows coffee, tea, tobacco, and chocolate, over twenty two million metric tons of it every year, with almost half of that made in Europe alone, which is only a half million metric ton more than what’s being eaten. The average American eats forty two pounds of cheese a year, but I don’t really like cheese that much? So I’m bringing the average down. Besides, every time I eat cheese I get strange dreams. There’s actually a chemical in cheese called tyramine which is linked to nightmares. Hey, you okay?”
“Cheese gives you weird dreams?”
“Why, have you been eating a lot of it lately?”
“No,” you say resolutely. “I hate cheese. I’ve never eaten cheese before.”
“That’s a lie.”
“Let’s get donuts.”
Spencer is easily swayed. You glance around the square for the McDonald’s and follow that to the street with the bakery, landmark to landmark, until the smell of sugar and oil is strong enough to follow. “Do you wanna know something about donuts?” he asks, crushing in behind you as you pass through the heavy wooden door of the bakery and join the line.
“Sure.”
“They were first called oily cakes.”
“I knew that,” you say, “you’ve told me that, Spencer. That’s the first fact anybody thinks of.”
“Okay, don’t be rude,” he says, giving you a playful poke in the ribs, right into the bruise that isn’t a bruise.
You look over your shoulder at him, catching his eye. You share a long look that’s daunted on your part and confused on his, brown eyelashes tangling in the corners the longer he looks at you. “What?” he asks, squinting.
”Nothing.”
“Okay,” he says, his voice lowering, quiet to match the hush of the bakery and its humming fridges, “don’t tell me. I’ll work it out eventually.”
“Dude!”
“What?” he asks with a laugh.
“Boundaries!” you laugh back. “Stop trying to figure me out.”
“But there’s something to figure out?”
He’s evil when he smiles like that. His pride is adorable, giving his sweet face an even fresher look. You’d pinch his cheeks if they weren’t already pinking in the October cold. His scarf hasn’t saved him, his coat buttoned tightly no match for the winds. Not to say it’s a bad day. The weather is fine if you keep your fingers in your pockets and your nose in the depths of your coat.
“What do we want?” you ask rather than answer.
They have white icing, chocolate with sprinkles, jelly middles, smiley faces. They have donut holes by the bag. “Hazelnut spread,” you say, pointing at the side of the case. “That looks good.”
He enters in conspiratorial whispers with you. “Apple cider doughnuts with cinnamon sugar,” he says, pointing at the row below. “What about a double chocolate chunk cookie? They look good. Hey, there’s cake in the fridge.”
You let him lean into your side. His hair kisses your cheek.
“Pick whatever you want, okay?” he asks, offering a smaller smile than before. “I’m buying.”
“You can’t, Spencer Reid, I want so many things.”
“It’s fine, I missed you, I dragged you out when you wanted to stay in bed.” He stares at you. “Let me,” he mouths.
You ignore the hot twist of your stomach and nod. Okay.
Spencer buys the baked goods you’d admitted to wanting and the three others you’d eyed, as well as a cookie and two fat slices of red velvet cake. He asks you to carry the box while he pays. The woman behind the counter gives you a knowing look and a flick of her head, as if to say, Lucky you. You can’t quite smile back, distracted by the insinuation. You haven’t thought of it before, but you and Spencer, naturally, look like a couple. You could easily be one. And the idea that she thinks so fills you with a shocking amount of smugness.
You and Spencer head home before dinner. On the walk back, he pulls the cookie apart and offers you half.
—
What if, when you fall asleep tonight, you dream of Spencer again?
You lay on your back with your hand on your chest, drawing circles. The cold of the evening is explained by the rain lashing your window, distant winds coming forceful now. A thunderstorm. You tap the middle of your chest in an attempt to be idle, rather than restless.
It isn’t a dream you’d like to have again, you decide. Spencer had been soft. You’d been familiar with each other.
What would it really feel like to have him touch you like that? Is Spencer confident, when he’s comfortable? Is he imposing?
My stomach, you think slowly, is never going to stop spinning.
“Y/N?” Spencer asks.
You can hear him all the way from the kitchen.
“Yeah?” you ask, raising your voice so it carries.
“Can I come and sit with you?”
It’s an odd request. You know Spencer’s like you, no social butterfly, quiet and content to spend time by oneself because being with others hasn’t always been an option. He isn’t timid, however, and his asking shouldn’t shock you, but it does. “Sure,” you say, shifting onto one side of the bed.
Spencer arrives at the ajar door and lets himself in. He carries two bottles of water and a heat pack, which he likes to use when the weather allows it. A creature comfort, you assume. Something soothing and constant, like the sound of a fan at night, or rain on a window.
“I can’t sleep,” he says, “which doesn’t make much sense.” Spencer sits on the empty side of the bed, his lips pulled into a grimace. “I like the rain.”
He’s more handsome when he’s smiling, but there’s a charm to him as he passes you a bottle of water and crosses his legs. The plaid slacks he’s wearing are rough with age, dark blues that seem black in the low lighting.
“Maybe it’s because of work,” you say.
“Maybe, but I’m pretty used to getting woken up.”
“Right. It’s not easy, though, the stuff you do. It would keep me up at night if I did your job.”
“I think sometimes doing my job is the only reason I can sleep.”
“It's hard. Sounds hard, Spence.” You relax into your pillow, turning to see him. Spencer’s eyes run along your hip for a millisecond, just long enough to remind you that he’s a boy, that he could see you in a different light.
“It’s okay,” he says.
“Was it hard, this time?” you ask.
“No,” he whispers. “I don’t know, it was bad when Emily got hurt, but she’s so stubborn. If Morgan didn’t strap her down she would’ve kept going like nothing happened.”
You and Spencer have lived together for so long that you remember a time before he even knew Emily. You answered his ad in the paper —you hadn’t realised people still put ads in the paper— looking for a roommate. His apartment was already furnished and he didn’t want to change much, but the second bedroom was spacious and the bathroom could be monopolised. As a girl, you’d been a little dubious reading about a single male looking for any gender, but his self-description was inviting. Twenty-two, just finished a doctorate, working for the FBI and expected to be away from the state at least once a month.
You’d met Spencer and felt even less intimidated. He was awkward and dorky but friendly, too, with his glasses he apparently didn’t want to wear, but would eventually give in (before choosing contacts), and his big red sweater fit for a grandpa. “I can make more room for you but I can’t get rid of the books,” he said, “so I don’t expect you to pay a neat half.”
How could you pass it up?
“I can’t believe I’ve never met them,” you say.
“Do you want to?”
He sounds so surprised. “They’re your friends. I’m your… friend.”
“You’re my best friend. I’ll arrange something, or try to. It’s hard to get us all in one room when that room isn’t the conference room,” he says.
“You look nice in a t-shirt,” you say, not thinking as the words come out.
Spencer leans in to whisper, “Thanks. You like this one?”
His t-shirt says, I may be NErDy, but only periodically. The NErDy is made up of elements from the periodic table. It’s a bad pun.
“I love it.”
He reaches for you. Tentative, he squeezes your elbow. “Is there something wrong? All day it’s like… I don’t know, did something happen when I was gone?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“But…”
“Please,” you say, as he catches the last bit of light from the hallway, every eyelash illuminated for the counting. “I don’t wanna talk about it, Spencer. But thank you.”
He, in a move that’s almost uncharacteristic, pushes your arm into the mattress and leans over you. “I wanna be the first one to know when you do wanna talk,” he says firmly, holding your gaze.
How’s your bruise?
You nod mechanically. Spencer recedes. “Okay, good,” he says, grinning.
“Good,” you echo, thinking of Spencer in the dream, his hand on your hip and climbing up your sore ribs. “Let’s watch TV.”
—
iii. scared of snow
“You’re being weird.”
“I’m not,” you refute.
“You are.”
Spencer frowns at you, a show full downturn of the lips. A dusting of snow lands in his hair and you both look up to catch it, a drift of it from the marquee as you pass. You don’t remember when it started snowing, but it feels like it’s been coming down for days. It’s in his eyelashes. Your sleeves are wet with it.
“The snow’s making you strange.”
You hold out your hand with fingers parted, feeling his laugh travelling down his arm and into yours as he takes it, intertwining your fingers tightly. He doesn’t feel cold.
“It’s making you strange,” you mumble.
You and Spencer walk down a cobbled road. Snow crunches under your shoes, turned to slush in the high traffic spots by vendors booths left curiously empty of shopkeepers, though their festive wares still line the insides, carved cuckoo birds and metal ornaments, glass balls made to be personalised for mantles. You can smell orange oil and chocolate fudge, crepe carts and churros and cinnamon, and then suddenly any hint of your olfactory sense is gone.
“It’s so quiet.”
“It’s the snow,” he says, pulling your arm against his chest as you walk and walk, your footsteps the only sound. “It acts as a sound absorber when it’s fluffy like this. The sound waves get caught.”
Caught. You think, or say, not sure if it makes it out of your mouth.
“Like you,” he says, stopping in the middle of the road.
“What?” you ask.
Snow lands in his eyelashes. “You’re caught,” he says.
You wake up thinking his hand is on your cheek. Like a nightmare, you start, still picturing his lips moving around the words. Caught, you think again, heart a hummingbird in your chest. Your mouth is dry. The heat is up —Spencer must be home again.
You suck in a deep breath and sit up, curling over yourself protectively.
You dream about Spencer more often than ever, and half the time they’re normal dreams, which is to say, they follow no rhyme or reason, with no discernible plot. Spencer loses all his teeth, or he takes you to the movies to see one of his long Swedish films, or he’s an afterthought, a bystander. The main plot of your dream doesn’t involve him at all.
But the other half of the time is ruining your life. You dream of Spencer holding your hand like you had been, or touching your shoulder. Never again do you dream of that tender bruise, but Spencer lifts your shirt in other scenarios. He pulls your pyjamas off, his hand inching between your legs but never touching, or he helps you out of your bra. And every time you think, why is this happening to me? Perhaps a sex dream could be explained away by want and Spencer’s proximity, but all these constant intimacies weigh heavy in your head.
You head to the shower and picture Spencer helping you out of your bra, and all of you goes hot, so you turn the water to lukewarm and stand until you’re cold to the point of misery. You clamber out and shiver into a towel, then your robe.
Spencer’s humming in the kitchen.
You honestly wish that the dreams made you like him less, that the sound of him might send you running back into your room, but you poke your head out of the bathroom and wait until he enters the living room. He sees you waiting, his face splitting into a smile. “Hey, good morning, did you sleep better?”
You can’t explain the discombobulation of your dreams. Spencer had become convinced you have insomnia. You may have let him assume.
“Slept fine,” you croak.
“Okay, well get dressed and I’ll make you some coffee.”
“‘Kay.” Your stomach pangs with nerves seeing him, reminded of tonight’s big event. “Are we still, uh, on, for tonight?”
“Nervous?” he asks.
You feel like you're about to be a fish in a pool of sharks. “Of course not.”
“Yeah, still on, even JJ.”
Awesome. Spencer turns around to make you your cup of coffee and you go to your room, dressing quickly, two pairs of socks. You tone your face and moisturise, fanning yourself slowly. You don’t hurry to the living room, but you aren’t slow, and it’s not Spencer, you tell yourself. Not Spencer. You’re just craving the warmth of a cup of coffee.
You spend the morning together on the couch. Spencer reads and occasionally chats to you about whatever tome it is that specific half an hour. You make sandwiches at lunch time, he showers in the early evening. You get dressed and primped while he’s gone, and at 6PM, Spencer knocks your bedroom door to ask if you’re ready to go.
“Could I fake an illness?” you joke nervously.
Spencer’s hand falls on your handle. The door is ajar as usual, but he doesn’t tread any further inside.
“Come in,” you say.
Spencer takes a single step inside before stopping. He looks you up and down without the hunger you crave from him, a more clement, familiar appreciation to him as he says, “You look pretty.” He traces your arm, leaving the skin tingly in his wake. “Really pretty.”
“Thank you. I didn’t want to overdress.”
“It’s perfect, don’t worry. And no, you couldn’t fake an illness. They all know when I’m lying, especially Hotch. And Emily, actually.”
You squeeze your hands together tightly at your stomach. “I don’t know why I’m sooo nervous.” You lick your lips. “I feel like I can’t stop fidgeting.”
“They’re used to it, I promise. They know that they’re gonna make you nervous, but they’ve sworn to be on their best behaviour, and besides, you’re not the only plus one. JJ’s bringing Will, and Morgan’s bringing his sister, I’ve only met her once. The focus won’t be all on you.” He lowers his voice. “After two drinks they forget they’re supposed to be scary.”
“What if I say something extremely stupid to your boss and get you in trouble?”
“What are you going to get me in trouble for?”
“I don’t know. What if I accidentally tell him that that sick day you took a few weeks ago was to help me make brownies?”
“Everyone lies about sick days.” He deliberates. “Maybe not Hotch. But I’m pretty sure he knew I was lying, and it’s explainable. I felt… irate.”
You raise your eyebrows. “What?”
“Staying home with you made me feel better. Which made me a better worker the next day, it’s fine.” His phone rings from somewhere in the apartment. “That’ll be JJ. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Yeah?” He grins. “Okay. You’re wearing a coat, right? It’s cold. The forecast says snow. It’s thirty degrees out.”
You layer a coat onto your jacket and a scarf to make him happy. You and Spencer get a taxi, black leather gritless under your hands, though you squeeze the seat like it’s gonna stop the car the whole time. Spencer doesn’t talk much, but he looks at you unapologetically, and he smiles, and the quiet is as severe as it was in your dream that morning. If this were a dream he’d be leaning over to cradle your ear. He’d ask in whispers if you were alright, and he’d let his hand rest kindly on your knee.
“What?” you whisper.
His lips part like he might answer. The car comes to a crunching stop outside the bar, and whatever it was he was going to say is kept for later. “I’ll tell you after,” he says.
He pays for the taxi before you can work it out and you say thank you to the driver. The sidewalk is clean, broad, and glowing with the last bit of light. The sun sets behind you. The bar beckons in front.
Your fear is daunting.
You have years of practice fooling Spencer. You know that he knows your tells, so you’ve changed them, and Spencer cares about you enough to ignore obvious truths if he thinks you might not want to share. His colleagues, FBI agents trained to detect deception, are going to take one good look at you and know you’re lying about… this.
You’re plagued by dreams of Spencer, but nothing can touch the real thing.
You feel the space between you like it’s aflame. Spencer checks you’re with him and opens the door.
The bar is busy even for a Saturday. You aren’t expecting the volume, the boisterousness of the patrons already slumped together over tables and waiting at the bar to get their drinks. It’s smaller than you’d pictured too, but its size is made up for with a patio at the back, smokers haunting the door, wary of the cold.
You know what his friends look like already, yet seeing them in person is odd. Hotch is taller than you’d thought, Emily more startlingly pretty. JJ’s frowning, and her partner Will looks like he’s about to fall asleep despite a lazy grin.
Hotch notices you first. He taps Emily on the elbow, who pauses in a thought to follow his gaze. Her face breaks into a smile, and if you weren’t in love with Spencer Reid, you might take a tumble for his pale coworker.
“Hello,” Spencer says, ushering you to the table with an arm behind your back.
“Hi,” you say.
“He-llo,” Emily says, leaning into the table, a strand of her hair dangerously close to a short glass of juice. “I can’t believe we’re finally seeing you in person. I’m Emily.”
“Y/N,” you say.
“Aaron,” Hotch adds. (Aaron! He’s far more intimidating casually than as a boss, it seems.)
“Derek was just here,” JJ says in way of greeting, while Will drawls from over her shoulder, “I’m Will, it’s nice to meet you.”
Spencer pulls out a chair for you and promptly sits in the one beside Emily. “Sorry we’re late. I forgot my wallet and we had to go back up to the apartment and the cab I called got so angry about it that he left.”
You slide between the table and your chair, looking to Spencer for guidance, but he’s distracted taking his coat off and you have to look at Aaron instead.
His smile is immediately knowing. Read for filth in seconds. “We don't bite.”
“Not so early in the evening,” Emily says.
You take a shuddering breath, thankful they can’t hear it over the sounds of the bar.
—
“I’m caught!” you exclaim.
Spencer hugs you under the arms. “I know,” he says gently.
“Caught!”
He holds back a laugh as your arms react, practically flung behind his head in a hug that threatens to cut off the oxygen supply to his brain. “I think you’ve caught me, instead,” he says.
You laugh in his ear. There’s gin on your breath and the sweeter smell of orange juice. It’s not bad, but weird to know it’s from your mouth. Or not weird. It gives Spencer a feeling like seeing the soft curve of your hip when you’re lying on your side. Like watching you bite your bottom lip when you’re distracted by the TV and worrying to yourself, which you do more often than not lately. They’re private things that Spencer shouldn’t know about.
“I’m not trying to,” you say, and Spencer can smell the shot of vodka you did too, which is less pleasant. “Not trying to catch you. Not… I’m sorry.”
“What for?”
“It’s hard to explain.”
Over your shoulder, Spencer spots Hotch’s entertained gaze. All the team has done since you sat down together was pick on Spencer and his obviousness. Boyfriend? they’d asked you. Looking? Sights set on someone? All while JJ nudged him under the table.
Things are falling apart now. JJ’d departed to hold Emily’s hair back, and Will with her. Hotch caught the eye of a woman across the way, and they sit chatting amicably at the bar with more peanuts than drinks. Derek, when he did appear, stayed for an hour with Desiree, recounting to you his most embarrassing stories of which Spencer had taken care to shield you from, and laughed at his subsequent blush.
He never wanted you to know about his run in with anthrax, and he especially didn’t want you to know he’d been stripped nude afterwards and hosed off like a muddy dog.
You’d turned to him with wide, worried eyes. “You were poisoned?” you’d asked.
It’s stuff like that that makes this difficult.
“I don’t know if you know this,” he says now, rubbing your back, “but I’m good with difficult concepts.”
“I did not mean to be like this.”
“You didn’t eat much.” Spencer helps you stand on your own two feet. “They kitchen’s still open. I can get you food, how about a burger? Or we can go find you something.“
“What kind of burger?” you ask, poorly concealing your excitement.
Spencer gets you back to the table. “I’ll be right back.”
“Wait, don’t go.”
“I’m gonna get food. Do you want fries?”
“Spencer, what if I throw up?”
Spencer shrugs. “I can rub your back?”
“I don’t want to throw up.”
“Then drink that,” he says, sliding his glass of coke toward you. “Alcohol irritates the lining of your stomach and increases the production of stomach acid. If you drink,” —he flinches as you knock the cup back— “slowly you can dilute your stomach contents without upsetting it. Slowly,” he says, squeezing your hand, “I’ll order food.”
“No, wait.” You drop the glass and grab him. “Please don’t go. I don’t want to throw up by myself.”
“You won’t throw up.”
“Please,” you say, holding his wrist in both hands, your eyes shiny. “Spencer, don’t go.”
“I won’t.” He doesn’t know how true it is and then suddenly he’s sat down. He won’t go. He wouldn’t leave your side ever again if that’s what you asked of him.
He puts your chairs together, entertaining your tipsy thoughts with light conversation and the occasional slight of hand. You have an aura about you, like Spencer’s doing more than close-up magic, hanging on his every word. Your nervousness had you gasping like a fish, not so subtly downing one drink, then another, but now that you’re feeling the effects of them (and a few extras), the tightness you’d held in your fingers is gone. You’re leaning against the back of the chair with all the ease of you on the couch at home, but the easy fondness you’d usually wear while he speaks is replaced by a bright and shining awe. A sweetness like he’s remarkable. The soft line of your lips and your widened eyes.
You’re not the sort of drunk that leaves you listless and ready for bed. This is giggly and fun, and so long as you don’t push it you’ll be alright. It wasn’t enough alcohol to leave you inebriated all night, anyhow. In a few hours the giddiness will wear away, leaving you with a headache and a deep longing for your missed dinner.
“I’m glad you didn’t let me fake food poisoning,” you say.
“Is that what you were thinking? That’s a terrible excuse. You need something with sudden onset symptoms, like an asthma attack, or pneumonia. An acute illness.”
You take his hand. “I love that you know that stuff.”
Feeling as in love with you as ever, and sorry for you drunken state —he could’ve stopped you, he just didn’t think— he folds your hands together, both of his, rubbing the hills of your knuckles with his thumb. Your hands look right together.
That’s what Spencer likes to think, anyway.
You slow like you’re tired, hand lax in his grips. Your mouth opens but nothing follows, no sigh or gripe or conversation.
“You okay?” he asks softly.
“I think I’m having one of those dreams again.”
“You’re awake,” he says.
“I don’t know about that. They’re all like this.”
He hums, smoothing his thumb down the back of your hand. “If this were a dream, you wouldn't have control over what you’re doing. Why don’t you do something you wouldn’t do in a dream?”
“Like what?” you ask.
“There’s a ton of stuff you can’t do in dreams. People find they have a poor memory, but I can’t ask you to recall anything. You might not remember regardless. How about temperature?” he suggests. “Most people can’t feel warm or cold in their dreams. Do you want to feel something cold?”
You watch him for a few seconds, your eyebrows pulled together unhappily. “Your hands are warm,” you say.
“Right.” He suspects they’ll feel warmer in just a few seconds when the hot flush in his face manages to work its way down. “I’m warm. So are you.”
“Sometimes I feel like you’re warm in the dream, though. You make me feel warm.”
“It’s remembered, maybe.”
You don’t look any happier. “Sometimes I wish I could stop having them, but…” You duck your head. “Sorry, Spencer.”
“What are you sorry for?”
Your head ducks lower. With a start to his chest, your shoulders shake, like you're inhaling the first half of a sob.
“Hey, hey,” he says, reaching for your cheek, ducking his own head to see you, “what’s wrong? It’s okay, you don’t have anything to be sorry for!” he whispers emphatically. “You have nothing to be sorry for, why would you think that?”
“I keep having these dreams, all the time, and– and I– I’ll mess everything up. Everything we have, I’m going to–” You hiccup, eyes turned glassy, imploring him to forgive you for something you haven’t done. “I don’t feel good.”
“You haven’t done anything wrong,” he says, his hand sliding back to your ear, down to your neck, “you’re just drunk. You’re confused.”
“But the dreams–”
“What dreams?” he asks gently.
You blow out a daunted breath. “Where you love me.”
“I do love you.”
“But more than this. You love me more than this,” you say, shaking your head. “I really don’t feel okay… Do you think we could go home?”
You’re so sorry and frowny that Spencer would attempt, in all his unfitness, to climb Mount Everest for you should you ask. “Yeah, we can go home,” he says, rubbing your arm up and down and up again, a line of affection from shoulder to wrist. “I’ll take you home. It’s okay, Y/N. You don’t have to be upset, I shouldn’t have asked.”
He’s not sure what he asked, really, but the answer upset you. His heart’s racing like he just sprinted the length of the bar and you’re close to tears, this strange weepy sullenness about you as you say, “It’s okay. Let’s just go.”
—
It’s cold to be sitting out by yourself, though the snow stayed its hand another night while the temperature fell again. Your coat poses a weak defence against the chill, nipping at your nose, burning the insides of every breath, and your feet are stiff like ice in your shoes. Yet, the idea of returning to the apartment is a leaden stone in your stomach.
Spencer could barely look at you that morning. You hadn’t given him much of a chance, slipping out of the apartment with little more than a call to say you’d be back later. Your groceries freeze in a paper bag by your feet.
You’re not too embarrassed about getting tipsy. It was drinks with Spencer and his friends, not dinner. Emily had been twice as drunk, and Derek had encouraged you to drink with a round on him. You’re mortified, however, by what you’d said. Your memory is clear enough to know you’d told Spencer about your dreams.
He’d been confused at the time, but he’s a smart boy. He’ll figure it out.
“This headache,” you mumble, tipping your head into your hand morosely. You rub your brow, fingers against the ache, the cold getting worse.
Why did it take a dream for you to realise you had feelings for Spencer? And why did you have to realise at all? If you’d never had that dream, never had that phantom bruise, his hands careful and caring and touching up to the band of your bra, you wouldn’t know now what it is to want him. The dream gave you a bruise, and Spencer presses against it real or otherwise every time he looks at you. You were wrong thinking that it never happened; it’s still there, a purple lash against your ribs.
Every time he makes you breakfast, or he texts you from a different state, or he sits down on the couch just to talk to you. Every time he says something smart, or he tilts his head back as he laughs, or he draws a smiley face on the mirror by the door–
“About those dreams?”
You rub your eyes hard. Of course he’d come to find you. “Please don’t.”
“Please,” he says. You see him through your fingers. His thick scarf is unravelled at his neck, his hair ragged around his face like he’s been raking it repeatedly behind his ears.
You straighten.
“I don’t get it,” he says, “you’ve been dreaming about me? Why is that such a big deal?”
“It’s embarrassing.”
“I dream about you all the time,” he says. “We’re in each other's lives, we live together, it makes sense that your hippocampus would use me. You have a lot of memories with me.” Spencer crosses his arms in front of you. “It’s freezing.”
“I’ll be home in a bit.”
“I’m not gonna go back without you,” he says, like that’s a given.
You move across the bench to make room for him. Spencer sits.
You settle. The occasional bus trundles past, a limited rota for an early Sunday morning. Spencer shoves his hands into his pockets. His lips are already turning blue.
“I know you know what I mean,” you say.
Spencer presses his knees together. “Even romantic dreams where I’m… where we’re together, it’s all easily explained away by brain science. You can’t control what you dream, and I’m not going to hold you to it.”
Silence, silence. You tip your head back to see a horrible grey cloud closing in on you both, the sun a white and gauzy memory behind it. Spencer’s right about control, but he doesn’t get that you like them. It’s not fair to him that you’ve somehow rallied a second life when you’re sleeping, where he’s your mind’s puppet, hugging and holding you, pressing his cheek to the side of your face. Saying things you wish he’d tell you now.
“Well, I like you.”
“What?” you ask, coughing.
“Not to make things awkward or anything, but I like you. Romantically.” Spencer’s voice takes a sharp veer into high-pitched freneticism. “Does that help at all?”
“What?”
“It’s far more embarrassing that I like you on purpose than your accidental dreams, right?” He thumbs at the inside of his wrist. “You don’t have to say anything, or think anything, and I’m not going to change, but I have feelings for you.”
You feel like you’re standing at the top of a very tall building. “Oh?”
“I kind of thought you knew.”
“How could I know that?” you ask, cringing as a cold gust of air bites at your face.
Spencer takes his scarf off and pushes it into your hands. “I don’t know. I guess we know less about each other than we thought.”
The way he says it.
Spencer wraps his scarf around you when it’s clear you aren’t going to do it yourself, and he touches your cheek briefly, a brush of his fingers like he thinks he’s doing something he shouldn’t be allowed to.
“I dream about you all the time,” he says quietly.
A bus passes by and shines headlights at your feet. The wind blows, your ears roar, and just above you, in a cold front to mark the season, snow begins to fall.
You look up simultaneously. A snowflake gets caught in Spencer’s eyelashes.
Just one.
“This is so weird,” you mumble.
Spencer wipes at his eye. “Could you tell me why?”
“I had a dream just like this.”
He laughs warmly. “Of course you did. Forget all reason, then. You’re prophetic.”
“I don’t think I could’ve predicted this.”
“Why? It’s only snow. Virginia gets an inch of snow most Decembers.”
You laugh. In a dream, this is where you and Spencer would kiss or hold hands, or rest your cheek on the other’s shoulder, but neither of you are brave enough. And, as the snow turns to a sleet below freezing, you can’t ignore the cold.
—
iv. the end
The longest anyone has ever slept in recorded human history is eleven days. Two hundred and sixty four hours, or nearly sixteen thousand minutes, just shy of one million seconds of sleep.
The first pillow was invented in Mesopotamia more than nine thousand years ago, in a time where the amount of pillows a person had directly correlated their personal riches. The history of pillows is tumultuous and eclectic. Headrests made of wood, stone, or jade. Curved neck holders worn soft with use.
And, of all Spencer’s gifted facts, you find yourself circling back to the same one as you wait for him to wake: most dreams are no longer than twenty minutes. However, it’s important to note that the longest dream ever officially observed was in 1994, when a man managed to be in REM for just over three hours. You’ve had dreams that felt like they lasted for hours, but likely took place for just twenty minutes. If you could dream for three hours a night, you could live an entire life of longing in a pocket of time.
Thankfully, you have no need to hide from reality anymore. Spencer sleeps beside you and you don’t want to sleep, you just want him to wake up.
“Good morning,” you whisper, drawing your fingertip across his cheek to encourage the hair that’s fallen there back in line.
He doesn’t stir. It’s alright, you hadn’t meant to wake him.
“I love you,” you whisper, shuffling across the sheets to feel the heat and weight of his body against your own. He doesn’t move for a while, snoring gently, his breath kissing the top of your head as you burrow into the slip of space under his chin. Then, as if he were awake, he wraps his arm around you and drags you in further. His face angles down and his nose finds your forehead, and a hum of what you’d personally say is content kisses your brow.
You tuck your hand behind his back and rub a circle.
Spencer didn’t last long after the initial realisation of requited feelings. In a day he’d asked if you wanted to be his girlfriend (vaguely apologetic, still worried about scaring you, though you’d already come clean about wanting him as you’d warmed your cold hands by the stove). A week later he kissed you on a date outside of the cosiest Indian restaurant in Washington, D.C, and things have been nothing but smooth sailing from there.
Now, when he’s feeling romantic, he brings home butter chicken and turns your face up for kissing, fork in hand. Every night before bed, he tells you to have good dreams, a self-satisfaction in his eyes that you dearly love.
You knew he was a dork and you liked him because of it, but the sheer increase in him is amazing. Yesterday he sent you Close to You by Carpenters over text claiming they wrote it about you. When he got home, he tried to make you dance with him in the living room. After two or three kisses, you’d let him pull you to your feet.
Spencer has turned loving one another into an everyday spectacularity, and not some mystical dream you ached for.
He squeezes the skin of your shoulder as he wakes. Heavy in the hands of sleep, Spencer rubs the tip of his nose to yours, nudging your face up, and waiting there with your lips a few millimetres apart as he finds his bearings. You don’t open your eyes. There’s no need.
“Time?” he mumbles.
“I don’t,” —you clear your hoarse voice, his hand flattening protectively behind you— “know, um. Maybe seven. The sun was rising…”
“You could have woken me up,” he says, and kisses you slowly. It’s almost gluttonous, how he does it. Not chaste at all. His hair falls into your face and tickles your cheeks, his nose smushes your own with his easy depth.
You hold his face and kiss him twice, following a line under his chin, where you pause, smelling yesterday's cologne on his skin. “I was hoping I’d fall asleep again,” you confess.
“Oh, no, don’t do that.” He scoops you against him and turns onto his back as you laugh. “Angel. Let’s stay up now. Let’s just… stay here.”
If you stay here he’s going to waylay you with a smattering of his voracious kisses, and he’s going to turn you on your back and kiss your neck. He’ll touch that place on your ribs where you’d once dreamt a bruise. It’s a secret you couldn’t keep. He likes to kiss you there when he remembers, but most of the time his hands run along it without mention. A slow caressing.
You push your face against his shoulder and sigh as his arms close in around you. With a little effort, you get your arms around him in turn, and you hug him for as long as you can stand the pins and needles in your fingers.
“You smell so good,” you mumble.
He pats your back absentmindedly.
Today, you’re going to make Spencer oatmeal with banana and chocolate. You’re going to shower, maybe together if the small space can handle it, laughing at the soap in his eyebrows and the way he squeals when you touch his hips. You’re going to drape yourself across his lap as he reads, and he’ll lean down to kiss the tip of your nose or some other strange part of you unused to affection. The top of your ear, the palm of your hand, maybe the crook of your elbow. He’ll ramble through dinner or creep up behind you to sniff your shoulder, and it’ll all be choices you’ve made. Nothing left to want or wanting, but being in love while wide awake.
“Are you tired?” you ask him.
He takes a deep breath of your hair. “No,” he says, drawing a light line up your side, “I’m okay. There are worse faces to wake up to.”
You try not to fluster noticeably. He’s always been a good roommate. You’re still getting used to the boyfriend part, the intimacy of being complimented, but Spencer seems to have slipped into the part easily.
“Sorry, that was mean. There’s nothing I’d rather wake up to.”
“Thanks,” you mumble.
You’re tired, suddenly. The minutes pass in heavy blinks —you don’t want to sleep now that he’s awake, but being here with him is warming you from the inside out. You doze and wake and Spencer doesn’t say a word. His breaths come evenly against your cheek.
Eventually, he clears his throat, asksing, “Did you dream at all?” His voice is hewn. He rubs your chest, right over your heart.
”I’m not so sure that this isn’t one,” you say, your heartbeat a crawl under his touch.
“That’s corny.”
“Mm, the Spencer in my dreams is usually kinder.”
“Does he ever get to hold you like this?” he asks, letting his hand fall from your chest to wrap it back around you again.
You take a sleepy breath in. “No,” you say slowly, “he doesn’t.”
｡𖦹°‧⭑.
thank youuuu for reading!! please like comment or reblog if you enjoyed!! thank you❤️
this fic was requested! I usually link to the request I was sent at the top, but I lost the post for this one, but this is what the request said:
“hi angel! i have a request for roommate!spencer where r has a very romantic dream about him and starts avoiding him because she's really embarrassed but spencer is so confused as to why his roommate suddenly can't even look him in the eye. maybe one of them realizes their feelings aren't entirely platonic in the end? love you!!!”
If you are still writing for bombshell x Spencer could you write something from early seasons when he had feelings for JJ 👉🏻👈🏻
Hotch told you once that he was tempted to put an automatic lock on the office doors, so that he can lock them when he sees you coming during your working hours.
He has yet to follow through. You slip in through the doors and take a deep breath. It smells like coffee, printer paper, all the same stuff as your own office, but your office doesn’t have Aaron Hotchner, Derek Morgan, or Spencer Reid.
“Neither does this one, apparently,” you mumble to yourself, casting your gaze around the room to no avail. The boys aren’t here.
Emily’s sitting at her desk. She’s new, you’re jealous of her job, but she’s gorgeous. You won’t mind sitting at Spencer’s desk until they get back. “Hello,” you drawl, setting down in Spencer’s chair comfortably.
Emily’s mildly startled. “Hey?”
Spencer’s desk is an explosion. You debate cleaning up for him. What if you put something in the wrong place? It’ll be more annoying than helpful. “How are things?” you ask, pushing Spencer’s chair back, and kicking a leg over your knee, high heel bobbing.
“What?”
You smile at her. Flirting, just a little, but your concern is real. “How are things going, Prentiss? With you?”
“They’re good. Yeah. I just moved into my new place.”
Bless her for not knowing what to do with you. She doesn’t have practice like the rest. “A new place? Where to?”
She relaxes while you talk. Her apartment overlooking Kingman, her cat’s annoyance at the new smells and the long case time away. “Spencer says that cats aren’t capable of holding grudges, but Sergei can.”
“He’s cute, isn’t he? He knows a fun fact for everything.”
Emily sits up. You can see the excitement of a secret in her dark eyes. “He’s adorable. His little crush on JJ is so sweet, I’ve tried to give him some advice but he’s totally stuck on her.” You falter. And Emily, profiler in training, she catches it. Her lips part, startled. “You’re not–”
“I had no idea Spencer had a little crush,” you breathe, sitting up with a smile. “For how long? What about JJ, is she interested in him?” You hug your hands together. “You know, I think they’d make a cute couple.”
“Well, I heard they went to a football game together, but I don’t know when. Before I got here, at least.”
What? “That’s fun.”
“I don’t think it’s serious.”
You tip your head back and the heavens have opened, Derek Morgan’s making his way toward you with a grin and a hand reaching for you. “Sweetheart, where have you been?” he asks. “It’s been weeks, I was starting to miss you.”
You texted him a few days ago about a property nearby for rent, and you had coffee the day after to hear his advice on the area, so he’s just making stuff up. “Hi, Derek.”
You get up and let him hug you. You deserve it. You’re beautiful and fun and smart, and you deserve a handsome man rubbing your arm and telling you he missed you. “How much?” you ask warmly.
“Like a hole in the head.”
Hotch is behind him. And there, the surprise item of the afternoon, Spencer Cheating Reid.
“Hi, Hotch,” you say.
“I heard something about you I’d rather not repeat,” he says.
“Hotch, the details were wildly exaggerated, and I was less at fault than you might think.”
“I thought it was entirely your fault.” He shakes his head. “You’re shooting yourself in the foot, doing things like that.”
“Why, what did you do?” Spencer asks.
You falter again. Everyone sees your insecurity: Hotch’s brow furrows deeper than it had been, Morgan pauses, and Spencer, to your panic, holds your eye as the emotion passes. “It’s not worth talking about,” you say, shrugging.
“Try not to do it again,” Hotch says. “Morgan, with me.”
“Uh, Hotch?” Emily speaks up.
“You too, Prentiss.”
He leads a procession up to his office. Morgan throws you a look like he wants to talk to you, but you’ve plastered unaffectedness over the wound again. Why does the idea of JJ and Spencer going on a date upset you? He’s a sweet guy, she’s a nice girl. Is it because you didn’t know?
“You really haven’t been here in weeks,” Spencer says.
“Missed me?”
He holds the strap of his bag. “Yeah, I did.”
What use does he have missing you? “I heard something interesting about you, Spencer.”
“You did?”
He looks shy, pale, and worried. You forget sometimes how he’s not just your favourite dork, he’s a friend. And he doesn’t seem to have very many of them.
Oh, you think, jealousy, you heartless monster.
“The rumour mill says you aren’t sleeping enough,” you say gently.
“I sleep fine.”
You put one kitten heel in front of the other and stay, squinting at him with a teasing suspicion. “That’s not what my informants have been telling me. You look tired, honey. You aren’t sleeping, or Hotch won’t let you?”
“Both.”
He does that playful smiley thing that makes you wanna scrunch his hair in your hands, like he knows he’s made a good joke.
“Your case in Cincinnati sounded tough.”
“Wait,” he says.
“What?”
“Are you okay?”
“Usually. Why?”
“Are you okay right now?”
“I’m fine.” You purse your lips. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Just– you– I don’t know, you didn’t seem like yourself. I didn’t mean to upset you, asking about that stuff. It’s none of my business, sorry.”
“How are you feeling about physical touch today?” you ask.
He seems to regard you with distrust, for a few seconds, like he’s worried you’re messing with him. “I’m okay with it,” he says eventually.
You step into his space and touch his cheek gently, fingertip tapping into a beauty mark you often remember only when he’s in your reach. “You didn’t say anything wrong. I’m sorry I made you think that.” You drop your hand. “Just having a weird day.”
“Me too.”
Spencer puts his bag under his desk and mentions a video he found on profiling you might like by one of the old Unit Chief’s, SSA David Rossi. You steal Derek’s chair and sit knee to knee with him to watch it, Spencer’s cheeks turning dark with blush in the screen’s reflection.
Saying "voting doesn't matter" might reach your younger peers online but it certainly hasn't reached Clangus Hargbarg who was part of the kkk in 1951 and still sends in his ballot. He hasn't missed a one.
Mothers day lil fic with eddie x reader from june baby? 👉🏻👈🏻
mom!reader, 1.5k
“Big stretch!”
You hold your arms above your head, stretching as tall as you can go. Your t-shirt rises and exposes the soft stretch of your tummy, stretch marks decorating your skin and lightened in the sun as you lean to your left side.
“Okay, now we count. One, two…”
“Three,” Junie says. “Five, six, seven.”
“You forgot four, babe. Let’s try again, okay?” You stretch to your right side. “One, two, three…”
“Five, six, four–”
You giggle. Junie, who wasn’t doing a very good job at copying your yoga poses to begin with, hears you laughing and drops her short arms to her sides. “Tummy!” she says, jumping forward to push her hand into your stomach.
“I’m telling Eddie you did that. So nasty.” You drop your arms.
“Tummy,” she says again, poking at your belly button.
You catch her hands in yours and level her with a feigned glare. “What are you trying to say about my tummy?”
She beams. It’s lovely to have a little baby that looks like you. Her joy is yours, her smile made up of your lips and teeth. She’s a mirror, and you could never not think she was gorgeous —it makes you gorgeous too.
“Guess we’re done stretching?” you ask.
She lifts her hands to your sides, a gesture to be grabbed. You lean down to collect her and drag her up for a hug, holding her low at the back to encourage face to face time. “What, you’re not talking to me?” you ask warmly.
She touches your neck.
“I know,” you say. You’re pretty sure you get it.
Outside, tires roll across grass and road alike. You listen for the whine of Eddie’s van as it parks, grinning all over again when it comes. He’s not supposed to see you today, it’s Sunday, he has too much stuff to do.
If he’s outside, it means he swapped his shifts again or called out, which means he’s gonna give you one of his speeches about being sickly sweet in love with you. You can pretend you don’t like them as much as you want, but there’s no better feeling than being loved like you’re something special.
You open the door before he can, and he needs it, anyhow. To your confusion, he’s carrying a cellophane wrapped bouquet made up of a hundred different colours and a white box in the other, arms full and naked, no jacket to hide from the early summer sun. Your eyes widen as he gets to the steps. He looks like he made an effort to see you (and it doesn’t matter that he doesn’t always, you love him as he is, but you can’t help asking yourself why).
“What’s going on?” you ask.
Eddie smiles. “What do you mean?”
“What’s the stuff for?” There’s a bag hanging from his elbow.
“This stuff?” he asks, cresting the last step.
“Hi,” Junie says.
“Hi, babe.”
“Hi.” She reaches for the flowers. “Pretty.”
“You think so? I got them for your mommy but I’m sure she’ll share them with you.”
You’re nonplussed as he moves in to kiss your cheek and skirt around you. “Come on. This stuff’s heavy,” he says, the cellophane crunching against his chest as he squeezes past you into your home.
“Eddie, what is that stuff?”
“You don’t know what day it is today?”
You think about it for a second at least. “No?”
It’s not your birthday, not Junie’s. You and Eddie can’t have made it to your first anniversary already, but perhaps six months? You try to do the maths in your head. Eddie puts the white box on your kitchen table, the bag on Junie’s high chair, and the flowers by the sink.
“You really don’t know, do you?” he asks, some sympathy in play.
“Eddie, we did stretches!” Junie says from your arms.
You offer her to him. He wraps her up and makes it look easy, baby on his hip. Quick kiss pressed to her cheek. “Yeah? Mom’s got you doing yoga again?”
You’re drawn to the box like a magnet.
“What is it?” you ask.
“It’s for you, babe,” he says easily, smiling as Junie tucks a curl behind his ear. “It’s all for you. You can open it.”
“You sure?”
“Of course I am. Open it up.”
You take the box’s lid off, lips parting in surprise. Happy Mother’s Day has been written in white writing against a baby pink cake. It’s simple, without frills, but it’s sweet and it looks soft to the touch.
“Is it today?” you ask.
“Yeah, babe. I can’t believe you didn’t know.” Eddie shifts Junie forward to stop her from tangling his hair. “That’s a lie, I totally can. Quick, come here.”
You slot into his side, expecting the kiss, but not the second one against the apple of your cheek. “Happy Mother’s Day. I would’ve been here sooner, but I had to make sure my mom knew I was thinking about her first.” He taps your noses together before pulling away. “You’re the best mom ever, so. Me and June got you some presents. No biggie.”
“Junie got me this?”
“Who do you think wrote on the cake?”
Eddie pretends to eat Junie’s hand, to her delight. You feel the cardboard of your box between your fingers, no attempt made to hide the achingly huge smile that’s taking shape. “And the bags for me too?” you ask.
Eddie can hear it in your voice. “The bag’s for you too, of course. You're the mother.” He snarfs against Junie’s wrist. “Um-num-num.”
You drag the bag from Junie’s blue and orange high chair across the table to peek inside. It’s a flat, paper bag from a clothing store, so the contents surprise you for being much more than clothes. Your smile gets worse with each item unveiled from its tissue paper depths: a humble box of fancy chocolates, a bag of your favourite chips, a small black box and a pair of pyjamas wrapped together with a ribbon.
You hesitate with the box, hand atop it, head tilting toward your shoulder. Eddie doesn’t notice your hesitation, or at least he’s pretending not to, pretending to nibble Junie’s sleeve where she’s laughing it up in his arms.
“What’s in the box?”
He looks up quickly. Not pretending. “Oh, that’s– If you don’t like it, I can take it back. It’s nothing crazy.”
“You’re proposing.” The box is shaped for a bracelet or necklace rather than a ring.
He nods severely. “Will you do me the honour?”
You laugh softly and line your thumb to the box’s seam. It opens on a tense hinge, clicking into place.
It’s a bracelet made up of silver beads. There’s a small flat-circle charm between the beads, that, upon closer inspection, harbours two hearts, one bigger than the other.
“It’s nothing fancy, okay? So if it breaks you won’t feel bad. It’s real silver though, you don’t have to take it off much if you don’t want to. I don’t know. I think it’s, like, a reminder of her when you’re not together.” Junie whines, encouraging Eddie to press another peck to her cheek as he hugs her tighter, and takes a step closer to you. “If you don’t like it, it’s really fine.”
You slip the bracelet onto your wrist. It goes without saying you’ve never had much jewellery.
Taking his face into your hands is easy. Holding him tenderly is second nature. “Thank you,” you say, eye to eye, willing it to sink in deeply. “I love you.”
“Yeah, I love you, too. And Junie loves you more than anybody. You deserve to know that.”
“I do,” you say, glad when he puckers up for a kiss. You kiss his pouting lips misaligned to nobody’s worry, adding another for thankfulness, and a third just because. He’s smirking before you’ve so much as pulled away.
“And thank you!” you add saccharinely, stroking Junie’s cheek, though the idea that she had anything to do with your gifts is funny. “I wouldn’t get to be a mommy if it wasn’t for you. I love you.”
“Love you,” Junie says distractedly, more interested by the stud earring in Eddie’s lobe.
He gives you both a soft, soft look, startlingly yards away from his previous smirking. “You’re the best girls in the world.”
“You're the best boyfriend.” You curve an arm around him to steal him and press your face into his arm. “I love you,” you say, smushed. “Thank you so much for everything. I love you.”
“I love you, too,” he says.
“I really love you.”
“Yeah,” he says, his nose touching your head as he cranes his head down to you. “It’s okay, sweetheart, I love you too. You deserve it, alright?”
Junie pats your head. “Love love love you. Kiss?”
She almost blinds you trying to kiss you in the eye as you turn your face toward her, but it’s nice.
Hi I love you coworker! James series feel free to ignore if you don’t like this idea but what if Remus convinced reader to go to a karaoke bar with them and she gets a little tipsy and signs her heart out and James is just heart eyes over it
thanks for requesting <3 fem!reader
“What is that?” James asks, genuinely scornful as he points at you where you’re leaning on the bar. “Is that another margarita? Jesus Christ.”
“You should be enjoying this.” Sirius smiles around the lip of his beer.
“Why would I enjoy this?”
“She’s coming out of her shell, isn’t she? You’re always calling her a priss.”
“She is a priss, but binge drinking isn’t the same as extroversion.”
Sirius taps their beers together. “And what are you doing tonight, James?”
James scowls as you collect your new drink. You’ve had four or five by now and they’ve more than started to affect you, your giggling endless, your hand wrapped around the crook of Remus’ arm for balance.
“Remus! It’s your turn, hun, get up here!” your general manager calls from the stage, a mic in her hand.
“Me!” you shout suddenly, to James’ shock and Sirius’ bright laughter. “Remus, please let me have your turn, please! I know exactly what song I want to sing.”
Remus, who’d convinced you to come through a lot of pleading and a promise that you won’t have to sing at all if you weren’t ready, looks at you like you’ve grown horns. “Are you sure?”
“Yes? Can I please?”
You take his arm into your hand and you look at him with widened eyes, thumb rubbing a line that James zeroes in on, doesn’t mean to, can’t believe he’s noticed at all. He’s irked you’d even look at Remus that way.
Because you’re annoying. Yes. Very annoying.
You drink a good half of your Margarita and ask Remus to hold it for you before you take the steps onto the stage and chat with your general manager about what song you want to sing. You put your hands on the mic stand and prepare yourself with eyebrows pinched together, determined, even though you look a little shaky at the same time. Sirius nudges James from behind, the two of them joining Remus in the small crowd of your coworkers as the music starts.
There are two screens for lyrics. A huge one for you, a smaller for everyone else beside you. You clutch the mic and stare resolutely at the bigger one as the melody becomes recognisable. James watches in what he thought would be smugness, but instead lays somewhere between awe and mild horror as you begin to sing.
The song is Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl) by Big Head Todd & The Monsters. James loves this song, he sings it every time he has to drive Remus to cornwall. He knows every word back to front and he likes how you seem to like it too, even if you’re butchering it, and the drunken slur to your words is ridiculous. You know the chorus well enough and sing it with a beaming smile. James maybe doesn’t like you, but it’s hard not to smile when someone else is happy like that.
“Don’t make fun of her, James! Please don’t, she’s trying her best,” Remus says at his smiling. “And she won’t come again.”
“I’m not,” he says, not bothering to look away from you.
Your eyes scan faces and get caught on his. He can feel the moment you realise he’s watching too, see your slight falter, and then, magically, your excitement. “James! It’s Brandy! You love this song!”
Sirius snickers at his expression. “Mate,” he says quietly, “I thought you didn’t like her?”
“I don’t.”
You stumble a little where you’re standing and James has to stand extremely still so as to prevent his hands from reaching out for you. “James, I didn’t take your favourite song, okay? You have to sing Don’t Stop Believin’! Oh, shit–” You don’t realise your cue to sing the chorus until it’s halfway through, but when you do find the right words, you’re extremely passionate.
“She sounds like Melly coughing up a hairball,” James says, wrinkling his nose.
An emotion far from disgust settles hot at the base of his neck.
hey love!!!! i hope you are doing well 🫶🫶🫶 if you feel so inclined could we get another coworker frenemies james?? i loveeeee him ☹️
thank u for requesting 💌 fem, 1k
James can’t fucking stand you, but in a fun way. You feel worse about him, he’s sure. He’s sitting in his car waiting for you to get out of yours, pretending to look for something rather than have to share the elevator up to the office with you.
He hasn’t figured out a good comeback yet for what you’d said about his rugby pictures yesterday as you left, and he hates when you win, because you smile all smug and he finds it adorable. You don’t deserve a smile like that, you’re insipid, and annoying, and you take a full day to reply to his emails.
He digs his hand into the door handle and pushes it out. The winter cold hits him hard and immediate, makes him wish he wore his thick coat with the hood even if Remus says it makes him look like he works in the deep arctic.
There’s less slow on the ground than there has been for the last few days, snowdrift melting in the day and turning to ice at night when the temperature drops. There’s no sun out yet to warm him. He shoves his hands into his pocket and begins a careful trek from the parking lot to the stairs leading up to the office.
You’re taking steps slow as his further in. He’d hoped you’d be gone. He’s stupid for not looking, now you both have to do an awkward shuffle where the other can see, what if he trips? You aren’t looking his way, but he’s sure it would draw your attention. If he trips in front of you he might quit, he—
You’re about two steps away from the flat entrance to the office building when you slip.
In honesty, it's not as bad a fall as it could’ve been, your foot slips on the step and your knee hits the stone, then the other, your hand tight on the handrail but unable to save you. Your gasp is horrible, tight and too quiet, considering the surprise.
James pauses.
He could pretend he didn’t see. But if you turn at any point and see him, you’ll know he’s witnessed it, and that’ll be ten times as awkward as if he were to just keep on walking.
He can’t walk past you. He never could. You don’t get along, but James isn’t the type of guy who can leave someone kneeling on the wet ground.
Foregoing caution, James hurries across the last stretch of slushied ground to grab you. He feels cruel at first, his hand under your armpits and yanking you up, but the ice is dead slippery and you can’t find purchase, letting out another strange gasp as he rights you.
You turn your face to identify your saviour.
“Oh,” you say, breathing funny, “of course.”
“Are you okay?”
“What?” you ask.
“Are you okay?” he frowns at your frown, though they’re of two different calibres. You look angry. James is concerned.
“What do you think, James?”
You yank out of his arms and turn away from him.
He shouldn’t have grabbed you without asking. He probably hurt you a little with the force of it, but he’d thought picking you up would be best. Less humiliating, perhaps.
You sniffle.
“Are you alright?” he asks. He wishes he could say he spoke gently, but your annoyance churns his own, and he’s starting to sound mad too.
“I’m fine.”
“Listen, sit down. You have a long coat, just sit for a second.”
Your shoulders tighten, but you sweep your coat under your thighs and struggle to sit down on one of the icy steps. He can imagine the cold of it under your bum and your palms as you begin to fold in on yourself, and it’s only then he notices the blood on your knees. “Oh,” he says. (And later, years in the future, he might admit to sounding heartbroken). “Your knees.”
You pull at your skin. “Awesome. That’s really cool.”
You sound upset. James finds he can’t ignore that, either. He feels like a dick standing over you and so he crouches, and that feels worse, but he stays like that, facing across from you, hand begging to touch your poor scratched knees. Your eyes widen ever so slightly in response, their waterlines heavy with tears, shimmery and waiting to fall.
“The last time I fell up here I thought I broke my arm.”
A tear breaks free from your lashes, streaking heavy and slow down your cheek. “What?”
“I smashed my arm coming down. It hurt for days, and I had a bruise in a line.” He raises his arm to draw a line across his sleeve. “Right here.”
“I thought you were better coordinated than that.”
“That’s not what you said yesterday about my photos,” he reminds you.
You laugh under your breath. A second tear tips down the other cheek.
“It’s easily done. The ice is pretty bad.”
“Don’t patronise me,” you say. Your voice is missing its usual disdain. You just sound sad.
“I’m not patronising you! You just take everything I say the wrong way.”
“Then don’t say it the wrong way.”
“Maybe we should go inside and find the first aid kit. How does it feel?”
“I slipped,” you say hotly. “I’m fine.”
Then why are you crying? Floods of tears on your cheeks, your hot breath a cloud that kisses your nose. If it were Remus sitting here in tears, James would already be hugging him. If it were Sirius, he’d have patted him on the back by now. It is so, so odd to see you crying. So weird. It makes his chest twist.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine! Just go upstairs and tell everybody already.”
“Tell them what?”
“I don’t know. That I’m a baby.”
He tilts his head, can’t help it, leaning in mildly too close. “You’re a baby?” he asks, fondness leaking into his tone. “Because you fell? Everybody falls.”
“‘Cos I’m crying,” you mumble.
“I’m not going to tell anyone. Then you’ll tell everybody I cried when I nearly broke my arm, it’s a lose-lose situation.”
He’s stupid for talking to you like this. Like you’re friends, and like you can stand to be near him. You don’t look disgusted as his finger brushes your leg, just below your sore cut, and you’re not mad anymore. The ferocity drains from your face and leaves behind a sniffly, embarrassed frown.
“Won’t tell anyone,” he says quietly.
“Thank you.”
James didn’t fall up the stairs the last time it snowed. He didn’t hurt his arm or cry, he’s too remarkably coordinated for that. He lied, and he’ll lie to Remus when he asks why it took you both as long as it did to get upstairs. You slipped and he helped you. There were no heart-hurting tears. It’s a secret he doesn’t mind keeping for you.
whenever youre free!! can you please write a spencer x reader where we meet spencer during an early season where he’s still cute and awkward maybe we date too but something happens and we don’t see him for a long time only to meet him again when he’s older and hotter (post prison) and there’s still crazy tension after all those years. in love with your writing btw!!! ❤️🔥❤️🔥❤️🔥
tysm for requesting! hope this is ok :D ♡ 1.2k
cw vaguely suggestive theme
Looking at Spencer, you could almost think you were fresh out of college again, unsure of yourself and in need of a friend.
He'd been much more than a friend. It's why you're here.
The cake might have been a bad idea. You hold it between two hands, the subtle smell of chocolate rising from the box's ill-fitting lid. Your breath catches, words coming out wonky, "Hey. Spencer?"
He looks up from his book, startled at being found, you think. "Y/N?"
He looks the same.
Obviously, he's older. He has facial hair and his curls are styled rather than having been left to their own devices, but you feel as hopelessly enamoured with him as you had years ago, because he still smiles like a puppy dog.
You're twice as surprised as he is when he stands from his coffee table to hug you. The cake box wobbles in your hands as he squeezes you, swaying you from side to side, his laugh warm in your ear.
"What are you doing back here?" he asks, diving backward to see your face. "I didn't think I'd ever see you again."
"I still had JJ's number, you know, from when I wanted that address, and she texted me to say you'd been released, and I," —your voice curls tighter, are you talking too much?— "know you might not want to hear from me, but I was worried about you. You were my best friend."
His smile flickers. You press the cake into his hands.
"That's for you," you say.
Spencer's wavering smile turns to the box. He sets it down on the table beside his coffee cup and tented book, removing the lid carefully. You remember suddenly how nice his hands are, and the tracing of his fingertips down your bare shoulders. Goosebumps erupt along the ghost of his touch.
"Well done on not being a criminal," he reads, snorting. "Funny. Little too soon."
You feel like your stomach's fallen out, but he drops the act with another laugh.
"Oh, you're still a jerk," you say. "I'm glad something hasn't changed."
"You think I've changed?" he asks.
"You didn't get any taller, if that's what you're asking."
Spencer's smile turns fond. It's the sweet, sticky smile he'd always give you before he'd tell you he loved you, or that you were the best best friend ever. Or that last night, when you followed him hand in hand down the long hallway to his bedroom.
"I wasn't that much of a jerk, was I?" he asks.
"No, you weren't." You hold your hands behind your back. "Could I join you? Just for a bit?"
"You brought me a cake. I can't say no, can I? Of course you can sit down. I'll get you a coffee, okay?"
He touches his hand to your arm as he passes. You sit down in the seat across from him, sick with what-if and should-have. What if I could've stayed? Maybe I should have done more. But when Spencer ignored the letters you sent him while he was incarcerated, you figured you'd done more than he wanted. The cake was a last ditch effort, spurred on by JJ's text that read, I think he'd be really happy to see you.
Spencer puts a china cup down in front of you. You take a sip, muscle memory, and grin at him shyly as he slides into the seat across from you. "You remembered."
"I remember everything."
"Right. Your photographic memory."
"Eidetic, and sure, but I wouldn't forget about you." He reads your shyness for what it is, worry you've overstepped. He's too perceptive to trick. "I think I tried, but… I have so many bad memories, I wanted the good ones to keep."
You can't imagine the things he experienced in prison. JJ couldn't tell you much. You knew from how you had to address his letters alone that he was sent to a general correctional facility in Mexico, rather than the protective custody he'd needed. He doesn't look terrible considering, but you've barely seen him since you had to leave. He's aged well. The only worry is his dark under eyes.
"We had a good time," you say gently. "I knew you'd need that. That's why I sent you all those letters, you know? I wasn't trying to come back into your life, I know I don't deserve it after I left, but I couldn't stop thinking about you by yourself."
You stare at his book.
"How many letters did you send?" he asks.
"I don't really remember."
"I didn't get one." He grimaces. "I didn't get any from my mom, either. Think it was a coincidence?"
Spencer's time in was kind of sick. He stabbed himself, made friends with criminals, played a lot of chess, and learned how to make tacos in a doritos bag. It was also arguably the loneliest and most degrading time of his life.
One coffee becomes two, two becomes a third to go. You feel a hundred emotions but there's one that stands out the most as you drift around Pentagon City with him —wanting. You want him to be your best friend again, to rub your back and hold you when you're tired, to take you grocery shopping in his beat up P130. You want him to kiss you like he had, like he was searching for something, but he's changed so much that you don't know if your Spencer is still in there, under everything, or if he'd even want to.
"You live in the same apartment?" you ask.
"Can you imagine how much it would cost me to move that many books? Paying the rent turns out cheaper," he says, the two of you walking in the grey street. "What about you? You didn't come all the way here to see me."
"I actually did." You rub up the length of your upper arm, sheepish. "I did, Spencer."
For a while, all you can hear is the plastic rustling of the bag held in his hand.
"Thank you for writing to me. I didn't get to read them, but it makes a difference."
You lift your head to meet his eyes. He holds your gaze, a charge behind his dark brown eyes. You used to think his irises and his pupils were one and the same, but you can see now that there are flecks of light in his irises. His hedging of thick lashes kiss in the corners as he slowly, slowly smiles.
You glare at him. "Don't."
"Don't what?"
"You know what. You're doing that thing. Pretending you're not trying to make me nervous."
"I'm not doing that. Flustered, but not nervous." Is he smirking?
"Flustered," you repeat, your smile stupidly big now, cheeks aching. "Yeah, right, Reid."
His pinky brushes yours. You don't have any proof that he's doing it purposefully, but he is.
"Do you want to get something to eat? You can tell me what you were writing in your letters. I'd really, really like to know." His voice is threaded with a familiar timidity for the first time since you reunited.
There you are, you think happily. "Sure. You buy me a sticky bun from our old place and I'll tell you all my written secrets."
hey pookie bear❤️❤️ i was wondering if u could do james x reader but enemies to lovers/one bed troupe, i can’t find enemies to lovers with james very often and my mind is craving it. thank you ily❤️❤️
hey!! ily tysm for requesting!!! —you and co-worker!james share a hotel room for the night. fem!reader, 1.5k
James Potter is the most insufferable, arrogant, suffocating boy you've ever met in your entire life, so when you hear you'll be sharing a room with him tonight, you shut down. Total icy silence. If he wants conversation, he can ring one of his irritating mates.
It feels borderline illegal to have your workplace make you share a room considering, but you're adults, and the trip was supposedly all inclusive. Not even the most luxurious per diem could make this worth it, though.
James lays in the middle of the bed, arms behind his head, skin awash by lamplight and hair a dark halo against the crisp white linens. He grins at you and you despise how handsome he is. Handsome, and such a fucking prick of a man.
"Won't you join me?" he teases.
You've kept your vow to ignore him until that point. "Please don't lie on my side of the bed."
He moves over, looking startlingly apologetic. You'd believe he was repentant, but he asks, "What's the point? You'll be in my arms sooner or later."
You nibble the inside of your lip. He agitates you, he irks you, but you know James is a good guy. His irritating mates are the same. When you joined the office, he made sure they all remembered to celebrate your birthday though it'd only been a few weeks. When you fell up the icy steps on the way in one morning, James didn't take the piss. He helped you up into the doorway and frowned at your bloody knees and ripped tights like they physically pained him.
"Do you want to shower first?" you ask.
"I shower in the mornings. Thank you. But I can strip down now if you'd like."
"James, please," you say, rubbing your eyes. You'd usually have something much more biting to say, but you're tired. At the last second, you summon the energy. "No one wants to see that."
He glares at you like he's remembered he doesn't like you.
"Cruel."
He leans over the edge of the bed and pulls a book out of his suitcase where it lays in arm's reach.
"I didn't know you could read," you add.
"Points off for awfulness. Put your jammies on, shortcake, I wanna see what you packed."
He's being a creep to annoy you. It's working. You grab your pyjamas and a change of underwear and leave his presence to the small bathroom for a quick shower. You take your time to dry off. It's too big a wish to have him be sleeping when you emerge, and sure enough, he's wide awake but changed into his own pyjamas, plaid bottoms and a white t-shirt.
"Now I know you're obsessed with me," he says, raising his eyebrows over the pages of his book.
You cross your arms self consciously over your near identical pyjamas, the bathroom door closing behind you.
James waits for you to put your dirty clothes in your suitcase before piping up again. "You look adorable."
"Fuck off, please."
He snorts and kicks the sheets down the length of the bed. Stretching with a groan that makes your stomach hurt, he puts his novel tented down on the nightstand. His glasses are next. He looks different without them but no less handsome. If anything, the eagle shape of his nose is more pronounced without them, as is the little pink scar on his cheek, stark against his brown skin.
"You're an awful roommate," he says decisively, "you use all the hot water, you leave the windows open, as now you're ogling me. I feel rather objectified."
You avert your eyes guiltily. "You might want to take your temperature. You likely have a fever, considering how delusional you're acting."
"Ooh, burn."
Face hot with spite, you push back the sheets on your side of the bed and turn off your lamp. After a second, James turns off his.
"You're not brushing your teeth?" you ask. Your voice lacks a specific bite, fatigue kicking in.
"Did while you were in the bathroom."
"What'd you do with the toothpaste spit?"
"Swallowed it."
You laugh. It sounds much too friendly, and you hate it. "You're disgusting," you mutter.
You slide down flat on your back and pull the sheets over your legs and stomach, more than aware of his nearness and the heat of his body already waiting for you under the thin quilt. He smells nice, this close. Like deodorant, mint, but something else that snags your attention.
You hate him so much sometimes —he steals your pens constantly from your desk, he never offers you a cup of coffee even when he's making them for everyone else, and he's lazy. He doesn't do his third of the finances on time. He nudges his desk into yours to make your small figurines fall over and calls it 'earthquake training'. They're fucking plastic. James Potter drives you up the goddamn wall, and being close to someone like this couldn't be more awkward. You're stiff as a board.
"I was only kidding earlier," James says. He's quiet, but so is the room. He might as well yell. "I wouldn't lay a finger on you if you didn't want me to."
"You gave me a snakebite three days ago."
"I thought you had a bug on you," he says furiously, having had this argument already. "That's not the point. If you want me to sleep on the floor, I'll do that. I have no intention of making you uncomfortable."
"You've already failed, then."
He sighs. "I can go sleep on the floor in Sirius and Remus' room."
"They wouldn't have you in the bed?" you joke lightly. They have a close friendship. It's nice, even though you might pretend they're a throuple whenever single girls visit the office to ruin his chances.
"Oh, they probably would."
"It's fine. Don't… don't bother. It's not a big deal for me if it isn't for you. I know you wouldn't try anything."
"Yeah?"
"Of course. You're a bitch, but I don't believe you're that kind."
James laughs loudly, his chuckles shaking the mattress. You swear you can feel his eyes on your face, though the room is bathed in darkness and the strings of scarce red light blinking from the alarm clock.
"Good. I'm not that kind of bitch," he agrees.
"Well. Goodnight."
"Yeah, goodnight, shortcake."
You roll your eyes at his nickname. Whether your short or tall isn't his concern, James calls you shortcake because he's very tall, and he holds that against you often like a schoolyard tease, papers held out of reach, your figurines hidden in alcoves or on top of cabinets.
You turn onto your favoured side and try not to care that you're facing him. James falls asleep first, his breath slowing until a snore emerges, his weight dipping the cheap mattress. Combined with your own, you start to slide toward one another.
Fucks sake, you think, edging back.
Space reestablished between you, you close your eyes and try not to think about what he looks like when he sleeps. As you nod off, you feel the soft skin of a hand curling around your forearm. A quarter circle rubbed into your pulse.
—
James wakes first, and he is Oh so thankful. He isn't a pervert, he swears, he has no idea why he's curled around you like this. Hugging your arm to his chest like a teddy, his face curved downward, his nose pressed to your forehead, he wakes and he panics hard.
You aren't touching him back. Sunlight filters in through shitty translucent blinds and kisses your unassuming face, your lashes lightened, your lips pointed down in sleep. He worries something's upsetting you while you doze. He bites his tongue.
It's none of his business. None of his business why you're having a restless morning.
James twists and lets your arm fall naturally back onto the sheets, squinting in the sun at the alarm clock. It's barely five AM. You needn't wake for another two hours but you will, if you keep frowning.
James holds his breath. Carefully, he settles back onto his side facing you and cups your face. It feels too intimate, too much. He pulls his hand away after half of a second, opting to take your hand again instead.
He's seen you cry before. Bloody hands and knees, humiliated and cold, you'd sniffled on the steps leading into the office and asked him not to tell anyone. Remus and Sirius know everything there is to know about James. His genuine but waning dislike for you, his budding crush. And yet, after pretty much a lifetime telling them every secret he'd ever come into contact with, James didn't tell them about that. He gave you the packet of tissues from his pocket, and he told you a lie about falling in the exact same place a year before you started working with them.
The expression you gave him then is the same you wear now as he rubs the palm of your hand with his index fingers. You're comforted. Your unseen unhappiness abates.
James falls asleep like that, drawing shapes into your hand.
—
i love him i want him to be my office frenemy. ty for reading!! pls reblog if u enjoyed it means so much to me!
do you have anything more from office frenemies with james? i just read it and i loved it so much
yes! love u ty
—you and James don’t get along until you kind of, sort of do. fem!reader, 1.5k
James listens to the most obnoxious playlist in the mornings. There’s about a fifteen minute window between when he arrives and when the workday officially starts, which coincides exactly with your window. He often gets the same elevator ride, walks a pace beside you, and decides whether he’s going to let the ‘lady’ go first through the door depending on the day.
That morning, he’d opened the door widely, grinned at you with music blaring loud enough to make a normal person deaf from his earphones, and let you pass. Then he pretended to stick his foot out to trip you up, pulling it back at the last second.
Jerk, you think, angry even now as he tucks himself into his desk, his earphones still ridiculously loud. He actually, genuinely, is going to get hearing damage. You’re not being bitter. Human ears aren’t meant for that.
You click onto the workplace Outlook and open a tab on your desktop. How loudly can you listen to music? you google. A few articles appear straight away that fit your purpose —you drag them each into an empty email. Then, smiling to yourself, you find an article on the negative effects of workplace noise pollution and how this sort of selfishness can affect your coworkers’ mental health and add that at the very top.
please find attached a few articles I felt might be important for you to read.
Worst,
Your unhappy adjacent desk.
You know he’s received it when he laughs loudly, turning down his music with a few quick clicks on his phone.
An email comes through to your inbox shortly after.
Hi bestie,
I’m so so sorry for the noise. Please find attached a few articles I, in turn, felt you might enjoy.
Best,
James Potter :)
He’s attached an irksome variation of articles. Why music can help you get ready for the day. Ten ways workplace friendships are important. Can you really find your soulmate at work?
You open your personal messaging system. You tend not to use it with James, but this morning he’s winding you up.
I could report you to HR for that last one, you send.
He replies quickly. You try very hard not to look up at him from over your desktop. I didn’t mean me.
You’ll be deaf by thirty.
Jealous you don’t have such great taste in music?
Jealous of everyone in the annex.
Want a cup of coffee?
You meet his gaze finally over the computer, find him already looking at you. You shake your head scornfully. In what world would you ever want him to make you a coffee? He’s never actually offered to make you one before, to be fair, but he’s awful to you so what are you supposed to think? He’ll probably poison it.
He stands to leave. Remus, the other accountant to complete your trio, arrives while he’s gone with his boyfriend Sirius in tow. They’re also James’ best friends, unfortunately. It makes for some awkwardness.
“Where is he?” Remus asks you, in the midst of a quick goodbye kiss before Sirius makes his way to his desk further down the office.
You nibble your lip and give a dispassionate shrug. You hate talking about James. You hate his stupid mess of hair, his reading glasses, his lips when he smiles crookedly and worse when he’s glaring at you. You hate the way he sighs as he clicks his neck, the quick lap he does every other hour complaining of tired legs, the genuine tenderness he shows you whenever you’re sick. You hate James. You don't like to think about him too much lest you get caught, a fish in a net.
Or a fish with a painful hook in its lip.
“Ah, you’re here,” James says, two cups of coffee in his hand.
You’re only a little heartbroken when he puts one on his desk and one on Remus’. Didn’t want one anyways.
Remus grins as James comes up behind him for a rough hug and hair ruffle. “How was last night?”
“I wish you’d come. Sirius spent all night trying to out drink Marl, you know he can’t, so I spent all night holding his hair out of his face. I wasn’t gonna talk to him this morning, but he was being very pathetic.”
James laughs. You pretend you aren’t listening to them, pretend you don’t feel left out even if they have no reason to be your friend, clicking at random things on your screen and scrolling through spreadsheets long finished and filed. “You know I couldn’t come, Moony,” —no point starting on their awful nicknames— “what if she needed me?”
You still. She?
“James, there’s not much you can do,” Remus says gently. He’s a quiet, soft sort of man, but they’re all so loud about loving one another. “You have to let her… you know.”
You feel them both looking at you, your gaze steadfast on your screen.
“Try not to think about it,” Remus says.
“I’ve been distracting myself,” James agrees.
Oh, you think. Oh. I’m such a dick.
“You could go home?” Remus says, putting his face in his hand. “I could cover you.”
“It’s too much work.”
“I know, but, you know, I’ll do half, and you’ll only have half to catch up on when you come back.”
You’re not sure who she is, and you very much still don’t like James Potter, but you're not heartless. He sounds awfully upset, fragility to his voice and a foreign balling of his fist by his hip. “Um,” you say, clearing your throat weakly, “well, with me and Remus, we could cover for you.”
James’ face is unreadable, looking down at you. “You’d cover for me?” he asks.
“Your work isn’t exactly hard, James.”
“But you’d do it?”
“How long will you be off for?”
James frowns. “Like, two days?” he says quietly.
“That’s fine. We can do that,” you say, checking with Remus from around James hip. “Yeah?”
“Of course,” Remus says quickly.
James looks at you long and hard. “You’re not kidding?”
“No, James. Not kidding. You’d do the same for me, right?”
James leans down to hug you before you can stop him. His arms wrap around your shoulders, a perfectly amicable touch made up of sleeper muscle and the attractive smell of almond oil, nearly sweet, slightly woody. He laughs against your cheek as he pulls away, turning back to Remus for a similar hug. “Thank you. I’ll go tell Danny right now.” He beams at you. His relief is thick as honey, palpable in his warm tone. “Thank you.”
You can’t look at him very long.
The memory of his fingers linger, the weight of his arm behind your head. He excuses himself to go talk to your boss, and you and Remus sit in a semi-awkward silence, of which you’re wholly responsible.
“His cat is dying,” Remus says eventually.
You wince. “Oh, no, really?” you ask.
“He’s had her since we were kids. It’s really nice of you to do this.”
“I really do think he’d do it for me,” you interrupt. “I’m not, you know, cruel, because we don’t get on.”
“I know. James knows that too.”
You want to get defensive. Why does it matter if James knows? But Remus is too nice to argue with, and secretly, strangely, you’d wanted James to know you aren’t mean. You wouldn’t have sent him that email this morning if you’d known, and maybe this is apology enough for that.
Still, it doesn’t feel right when James returns, gathering his suit jacket from the back of his chair. “Thank you guys, so much. I will bring you the most amazing desserts of all time as a thank you. I won’t even put your mug on the top shelf the next time I wash it,” James promises you.
You bat aside the rage of knowing he’s the culprit and instead get out of your seat before he can leave. “Uh, James?” you ask.
He raises his eyebrows. “Yeah?”
You look at the floor by his shoes. “About earlier…”
James stands subtly between you and the bulk of the office. “You okay?”
“I just– I’m sorry for complaining about your earphones. I wasn’t trying to be insensitive.”
“You weren’t insensitive,” he says, “I was being obnoxious. Don’t worry about it, okay?”
“I–” You hate yourself for all your stammering. “Hope whatever is wrong, that you’re okay. I’ll cover for you for the week if you need me to.”
“Please stop feeling sorry for me. It looks weird on you. I much prefer you when you’re frowning, you get these super deep wrinkles in your forehead that I just love.”
You turn away without looking up. “I’m gonna input all your sales information wrong.”
“And I’m gonna bring you the best donut you’ve ever tasted to say thanks, sweetheart.”
jade baby I was wondering if you could do a hurt/comfort with Steve, but the reader comforting steve while he deals with his hearing loss after all the times he got beat up and stuff? Maybe he’s frustrated and she makes him feel better:’)
ty for requesting <3 fem, 1k
Steve’s eardrum was weakened after multiple traumas to the side of his head, but it’s the strangulation of vines in the Creel house that finally gives him permanent hearing loss in his left ear. Matter of time, the doctor said.
He pretends it doesn’t bother him. He doesn’t wear the hearing aid he’s fitted for, he doesn’t go for his follow up appointments. Steve acts like he got better just like everybody else did (sort of). He doesn’t care about taking his shirt off at the pool, ‘cos you all have scars from your time in the upside down, but he doesn’t talk about his ear.
“Woah, that kid can make a wave,” he says, squinting against the sunshine, his legs still wet from swimming.
In the pool, Dustin and his friends play an aggressive game of Marco Polo. Max sits on the side with her feet in the water shouting Polo’s that only serve to confuse him, Lucas beside her laughing and trying to curve his own shouting with his hand. Dustin throws his arm out at them and soaks their swim shorts in retribution.
“He’d be winning if they stopped messing with him,” you say, sitting on the lounger next to him and passing him one of the drinks from your bag. It’s still cold. “When’s Robin getting here?”
“Uh, she’s with Nance.”
“Oh, gotcha. When is she coming?” you ask, a little louder.
He must have missed a couple of words and assumed you asked where she was. He frowns, turning the can of original coke you’ve given him over in his hand.
“Steve?”
He looks up, turning himself to you more squarely. “Yeah?”
“Do you know when Robin’s gonna be here?”
He presses a finger to his ear. “You just asked me that, huh?”
“It’s okay. I’m just wondering.”
“Uh.” He ruffles his hair, face angled down to the floor. “I don’t know. Half an hour?”
Steve isn’t easy, he’s not promiscuous (anymore) (and who cares if he is?) but he loves flirty attention, and he’s a friend in need. Also, you have a huge awful crush on him even if you won’t admit to it.
You put your hand on his knee. “Half an hour for you to kiss me stupid, then.”
He lifts his head. “You wish.” He smiles at you all smug as he covers your hand with his. “Half an hour? I could rock your world.”
You both laugh and move your hands back to your sides. Your skin feels warm where he’d held it, you can’t help smiling, but it’s obvious it hasn’t really taken his mind off of the problem. Your ruse ran out of steam too quickly.
Steve looks down at his chest. “I’m sorry. It must be annoying, repeating what you’re saying all the time.”
“It’s not.”
“Come on, I know it’s the worst.”
“Steve, it doesn’t bother me. You need me to repeat what I said, or you need me to talk louder sometimes, so I’ll do it. It doesn’t matter.”
“It does,” he says, “I should just wear the– the hearing aid,” —his voice goes low with embarrassment— “and stop inconveniencing everybody.”
“You’re not an inconvenience, Steve.” You tilt your head gently toward your shoulder, palm up on the chair between you. “Steve, I think everybody would agree with me when I say that we don’t mind. It’s up to you. If Max doesn’t wanna use her cane, you don’t care, do you? You just let her use your arm. It’s the same thing. Or, it feels like the same thing for us when you don’t use your hearing aid.”
He winces.
You really don’t like the look of it, unsure if you’ve said the wrong thing. “Well, I could learn sign,” you say.
“What?”
“Sign language? We could learn how to sign, and then you don’t have to wear the hearing aid, n’ you don’t have to worry I’m repeating myself.”
“You’d do that?”
“Yeah,” you say, smiling in bemusement. “Of course I would. And it would help anyways in places like this.” You gesture to the tens of kids shouting and splashing in the pool. “There’s so much noise. I can barely hear myself sometimes. And imagine the shit we could talk at the movies–”
“Thank you,” Steve says, surprising you with his arms suddenly reaching out. He kisses your cheek as he pulls you in, and he rubs your back gently, his face pressed to your hair. You hug him back and his arms tighten around you.
“You’re welcome,” you say. You haven’t even done anything.
“Seriously,” he says, giving your back a good scrunch with his hand.
It’s worth it for the scrunch alone, but you really mean it. Of course you’d learn to sign for him, you’ll do anything he needs you to do if it’ll make him more comfortable with coping with this new change. You smile into his naked shoulder, the smell of sunscreen under your nose, his hair tickling your ear.
“Oh, god, are you guys serious?” Robin asks. “When’s the wedding?”
“Should’ve started with the joke,” Steve says, putting his chin atop your head rather than pulling away. You turn just enough to see Robin from the corner of your eye.
She raises her eyebrows. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing, just swapping out best friends for the better model.”
“I resent that, Steve, but I choose to forgive you because I’m in a good mood and Nancy made sandwiches.”
“My mom made them,” Nancy says from behind Robin's shoulder, looking down at the brown paper bag she’s carrying.
They turn away from you to call the kids in for lunch. “What did she…” Steve says.
“Her mom made sandwiches. I’ll get you a PB and J before Mike claims them all,” you promise.
He smiles a line, nodding at you appreciatively. When you turn away, he brings a hand to his ear, and he doesn’t hate himself for something he can’t help.
Hopper requests? Say less…😂 How about something wholesome with El? Like Hopper was worried about El warming up to reader but he ends up having nothing to worry about?
I love your writing by the way!
thank you for your request! fem!reader, 1k
Hopper loves El like any father loves their daughter, any parent their child, which is to say, he loves her and he knows her flaws. She’s a great kid but she has her problems, just as he does.
She’s angry sometimes, and she can’t cope with things she doesn’t like, and honestly, she’s allowed to be mad at the world (or at least he thinks so), but again, he loves her. He has to teach her that she can’t always get what she wants, even when she deserves it.
He’s a little tough on her. He’s been a bad dad to her, sometimes, he knows that. He doesn’t deserve her, but he’ll keep trying.
He doesn’t deserve you, either, but he has you.
He’s not expecting you in his home, though. He’s barely mentioned you to El —he didn’t know how she’d react. It hasn’t been that long since her last outburst.
“What does that mean?” she asks.
Your shoes are by the door, he’d know your beaten up sneakers anywhere, and El’s talking to someone with their head turned away from the door. It’s dark, the only light from the TV and the weak orange kitchen lamp, but he can tell it’s you.
“What does what mean?” you ask.
He panics and relaxes, a paradox of behaviour as he closes the door softly behind him. His head races with thoughts of what El might do without a pep talk before meeting you even as his hands itch to be on you. He hasn’t seen you for a few days, which is a few too many in his book.
“Respect.”
“You and Hop must’ve talked about respect before.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, some people think respect is earned, and some people think you should have it anyways. I think it’s both, you know? It’s kindness and… politeness. You respect your dad by keeping your room clean, and saying thank you for dinner, and he respects you by saying thank you for keeping your room clean, and making you dinner. Though he should pretty much always be making you dinner. Does that make sense?”
He can’t not be soothed by you. The way you’re talking to her melts his heart.
“No,” El says succinctly.
Hopper holds in a laugh.
“Um… okay. So, I respect your dad–”
“Hop?”
“Yeah, baby,” you say gently. “Sorry. I respect Hop because he’s a good man. So I try to be good to him. He respects me for some reason,” —you notice him and give him a flirty, sweet, slightly nervous smile— “so he opens doors for me and tucks my chair in at the dinner table.”
“He puts my coat on the hook for me.”
You nod happily. “Right! That’s respect. And love, too.”
“You’re here?” Hopper asks.
El turns to him with a timid smile to match yours. “I let her in. She did the knock.”
“I didn’t realise it was secret,” you explain. “You do it sometimes, on the side of the car door. I couldn’t get you at the station, I thought you were home–”
“It’s okay.” He leans down to drop a kiss against your crown. “S’fine,” he says into your skin. “I can see you’re all introduced.” The secret knock isn’t even really in practice anymore.
“She’s your girlfriend?” El asks him.
Hopper doesn’t answer. Girlfriend feels odd sometimes when you’re older, because you’re a lot more than what the word might imply, but he likes the idea of it, too. “I wanted to introduce you on Friday. You know, the special dinner I mentioned?”
“Right. Why I need to clean my room,” El says, frowning.
“Exactly.” Hopper pats her back where she’s sat across from you.
“Now I don’t need to anymore?”
“No, you do,” Hopper says.
El frowns deeper. “Because I respect you.”
“Maybe one day.”
El’s only recently re-entered society. She’s stressing Hopper out, what with it being summer soon and her growing curiosity for the world, and he’s worried she won’t get along with people because she’s behind in terms of experience, but mostly he’s sick of arguing with her about leaving the bath water in and how much sugar she’s allowed each day.
He’d hoped to explain things to you in better detail. El’s a special case. She needs more patience than most kids (and maybe she doesn’t always get it). He didn’t doubt you’d be good to her, and it’s still a shock when you reach across the table to hold her hand and she doesn’t yank hers away.
“I can help, if you want. It gets overwhelming sometimes,” you say.
“How come you don’t help?” El asks Hopper.
“Because you don’t need help putting your clothes in the laundry, kid, you just don’t like doing it.”
“What Hop doesn’t understand is that we’re girls and we have better stuff to do,” you say, stroking the back of her hand with your thumb.
You have dinner together, and you watch a movie. Hopper can’t believe how well it goes, or how much El seems to like you. She sits between you and Hopper on the couch in demonstration of her lack of tact and he can tell you don’t care. He doesn’t care either. In a way, it’s nice to spoil El with affection she’s not used to having. Joyce is always, always kind to El when they see one another, but that’s not often. He hadn’t realised how badly El wanted some motherly attention, or how quick you are to give it.
He should’ve guessed. You’re nice to him, and he’s an idiot.
“I wish it was longer,” El whispers. Hopper looks over her head at you.
“Why?” you ask, pulling her hair in a circle around your finger. “It looks so pretty like this.” You ruffle her hair and tuck it behind her ear.
El shivers at the touch. “You think I'm pretty?”
“Doesn’t Hop tell you you’re beautiful?”
“No,” El says.
Hopper winces. You just smile and wrap an arm around her shoulders. She’s small enough for you to squeeze. “He doesn’t tell me much either, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t think it,” you whisper. “How could he not, huh? You’re beautiful.”
“You’re both real pretty,” he says with a sigh, spitting it out now to get it over with. “Notice how nobody tells me I’m pretty and I don’t complain?”
“You’re handsome,” you say, grabbing the top of his shoulder, and rubbing it kindly. You lift your chin for a kiss and he gives it without thinking.
“Oh, ew,” El says, ducking away from you both in disgust.
“It was a peck!” Hopper says.
“Gross.”
“Go make yourself some ice cream, kid.”
She hums happily and jumps up off of the couch. You laugh as he pulls you into the space she’s left behind, sighing as he hugs you tightly to his chest. “I think she likes me,” you say.
Would you write a fic with either Eddie or spencer about reader being ghosted by someone they genuinely thought was into them (not speaking from personal recent experience or anything😅🥲) but they’re in love with reader and comforts them?
“I thought we had a nice connection,” you mumble dejectedly.
Eddie wrinkles his nose. “A connection? With him? He was five foot three.”
“Eddie, that’s not nice. I don’t care how tall he was.” Your voice disappears into the cushion you’ve decided to lay face down on, your back a shuddering slope he wants to reach out and touch. “I don’t care about that. Much. What’s important was that he–” You lift your flushed head, eyes rimmed with teary wetness. “He was so nice to me, and he didn’t pressure me into anything, and he brought me flowers without me having to ask. He was nice.”
“Your standards are so, so low,” Eddie says.
You grumble and force your face back into the pillow. Eddie should be nicer. He wants you to feel better, and he hates seeing you upset, but if you’re sure that guy was your soulmate Eddie’s selfish enough to wish he’d stay gone. “Hey,” he says, finally putting his hand on your back, though the touch is for you rather than him. He loves you as your friend just as much as he wants to be more than that, and he doesn’t have any intent now but to get you smiling as he bends down to talk near your ear. “It’s okay. You didn’t need that guy, just like you don’t need any guy. You have me. I love you to pieces.”
“I know, Eddie,” you say softly. “Just sometimes I want more, you know? I love you too, but I want a partner, I want a lot of things… I really liked him.”
Eddie can picture the heartbreak quite clearly. “You want the picket fence, right?”
“What?”
You again raise your head. Eddie meets your eyes with a hesitant smile. “You want the white picket fence. The little two story house with a wrap around porch, or a backyard big enough for the kids to play in, the kids to play in it.” He licks his lips. “Or not. You don’t have to have kids, right? Anything would be enough if it was just you and…”
You frown unhappily, and Eddie thinks shit, I’m making it worse, but you say, “I always thought you’d wanna live in an RV, travelling the country. You want a picket fence?”
Eddie shrugs self consciously. “Sure. I also want a games room and a five thousand dollar loan.”
You look at him long and hard. “You've always said that stuff is dumb.”
“It is dumb. Seeing you all torn up over some jagoff who probably can’t tell his hand from his dick is stupid.” You laugh and turn your head to lay back down again, cheek pressed to soft velvet. “That’s stupid, babe. Let’s give up on stupid things and– and stop crying over boys who don’t deserve you.” He can’t stop himself, says it too hotly, “He didn’t deserve you.”
You're hard to read, still as a statue with your hands pressed under your heart, but at least you aren’t crying anymore. You nod against the pillow. “Okay,” you say hoarsely.
He flushes white hot. “Okay. Good… That was exhausting.”
You roll your eyes at his complaining and he pats himself on the back, sure he’s gotten away with it again. He completely misses the strange looks you give him from the corner of your eye, too focused on giving you the world's best, totally not too friendliest back rub.
Hi idk if u have already written this if u have pls igonore but what about the first time bombshell reader calls Spencer beautiful?
fem, 1k
“Gideon has a new prodigy.”
Your head rises of its own accord. “Yeah?”
“He's younger than you. Twenty three, I think Hotch said. Fresh out of college, two degrees and working on a third? Or maybe he was getting his doctorate? I couldn't keep up.” Morgan shakes his head in disapproval. “Overeducated and under-experienced. He failed his physicals. The ones he took, anyways.”
“Ooh, ouch. A baby on the team before me,” you joke with a smile. “Genius baby, but a baby.”
Morgan smiles when you smile, he's too nice not to, but he picks up soon enough, crossing his arms where he's stood and wrinkling what was once a finely steamed suit jacket. “I don't know what Gideon's thinking.”
“Does anyone ever know what he's thinking? What's Hotch say about it all?”
Morgan reads what you're typing from over your shoulder and corrects a mistake. One day you won't need his help, but for now you take as much of it as you can get. You're not too proud to acknowledge when you mess up, you're a realist. Super sensible (in mind if not action).
“Hotch lets Gideon do what he wants, mostly. What can you do when he's one of the originals?” Morgan leans heavily onto his desk by the forearms and shrugs. You’re similar in this regard; complain, move on. You're similar in other ways, too. That's why you get along.
“Well, I want to meet this guy,” you say. “We'll be teammates just as soon as Strauss stops hating me. I'm one strategic boxed bouquet from a full pardon.” He laughs and touches your arm like he believes you. “Is he around?”
“Here they are now.”
You spin in Morgan's desk chair slowly. Jason Gideon is stalking through the office with his head in the contents of a manilla envelope, while a new face follows behind him talking a mile a minute.
“Obviously,” you hear Gideon interrupt as they get close enough. “Agent Morgan can explain that to you. Don't overthink it, Spencer, just try to get through it.”
He doesn't acknowledge you nor Morgan as he leaves Spencer and hurries up the steps leading to his and Hotch's offices. You aren't expecting much else from him. What little Gideon knows about you he doesn't like. If you ever get over the Strauss hurdle, it's him you'd have to convince next. You don't watch him cross the landing, your gaze focused on the man making his timid way toward you. Your lips part briefly, and then quirk into an overjoyed smile.
“Oh, you're beautiful,” you say without thinking.
He frowns at you.
“Reid,” Morgan interrupts, “This is Y/N L/N. She works in the sex crimes division. As you can imagine, we get a lot of crossover.” You stand, holding out your hand. “Y/N, this is Spencer Reid.”
“I don't shake. Sorry.”
You press your hand to your chest. “Oh, that's okay. I shouldn't assume…” Your voice melds into a silkiness that has his shapely brows furrowing further, “It's nice to meet you, Spencer Reid. You're really pretty, do you know that?”
Spencer peeks at Morgan quickly, who laughs good-naturedly. “She's serious, Reid. She's not making fun of you.”
“You'd know,” Spencer says. It isn't malicious, but it isn't exactly friendly, either.
You twist to frown at Morgan deeply. “Morgan, you're not being nice to him?”
“I'm being plenty nice, sweetheart, but this is how it works. I gotta haze him a little.”
“No, you don't.” You tip your cheek toward your shoulder to look at Spencer through your lashes. “He pretends to be worse than he is, I promise. But don't let him neg you, okay? You're smarter than he is–”
“Hey.”
“–and he's used to being the office pretty boy. It's jealousy, nothing else,” you finish. Spencer really is gorgeous now you're close enough to see his eyes. A brown like caramelised sugar tented by dark, dark eyelashes. When he smiles, the very slightest hint of teeth shows, and it makes him even prettier. You endeavour to make him smile again. “Sorry if I'm coming off a little strong. It's not my intention.”
“She's just nervous. You have everything she wants,” Morgan says.
You sigh forlornly. “Oh, doesn't he?” Spencer's confused pout is even cuter than his smile. “Getting into the BAU is about as easy as walking on water.”
“For a human,” Spencer says. “Easier if you're smaller. Like a water strider.”
There's a silence. Morgan is aghast, you think. You're in love.
“Yeah?” you ask, stars in your eyes as his own spark to life.
“Because water strider's can transfer their weight, but also due to their hydrofuge hairpiles. Their microhairs.” He catches himself, measuring your expression carefully. “Did you really wanna know?”
“Do you wanna get a cup of coffee and tell me about it?” you ask.
His lips part as yours had when you first saw him.
He's prevented from answering as Hotch's office door opens and the man himself walks out near the railing. “Good, you’re here. I have something to talk to you about.”
You grin at him. “I'd love to chat, Agent Hotchner, but I'm getting to know your new protégé.”
“I see.” He waits.
You would ignore him —Hotch has a soft spot for you (or rather, he likes you enough to put up with you, which is more than can be said about other members of his division) and he'd shrug off your dismissal— but you're really keen to hear what he has to say. Perhaps Strauss has changed her mind about your proposed trail basis with the team.
“I'm so sorry,” you say to Spencer, immediately re-dazzled by his pretty, lovely face. “It was really nice to meet you, Spencer Reid. Maybe next time you can tell me more about it.”
You give Morgan a quick thank you for the help with your paperwork and trust him to log out of your emails. In your rush up the stairs, you hear a wisp of conversation.
a hotch x bombshell!reader, where it's cold and reader's adamant that the only solution is to hug and cling onto hotch like a leech lol? <3
With Gideon nowhere to be seen, Morgan face down in his phone, and Spencer and Elle off doing who knows what, you and Hotch are alone in your venture for lunch. It's exactly how you like it.
You shrug into your coats and escape the precinct. A short walk lands you in the middle of a crowded town centre, farmers market stalls shielded from the rain by their thatched roofs, families zipping in and out of stores to hide from the rain. You pull the expandable umbrella from your bag.
“Do you want to hold it?” you ask.
Hotch rolls his eyes.
“What? If I hold it, I'll stab your eyes out. It would be a shame, Hotch, they're a beautiful shape.”
Hotch takes the umbrella gently, his fingers brushing yours. They're warm where yours are cold, a little bigger with calluses on the skin beneath his first and second finger. You'd love to squeeze your fingers between his, steal his warmth, tether him to you for a while before work starts again and everything's tense.
The wind whips hard. Hotch doesn't seem affected, holding the umbrella over your heads like the wind is breezing straight through him.
You shiver. “How far is the place?”
“You cold?”
“Like, ten minutes? Fifteen?”
Hotch laughs to himself. “Five. Button your coat.”
“My outfit,” you grumble, buttoning your coat reluctantly.
Hotch walks closer to you after that, the arm that's holding the umbrella behind your shoulder a slip of warmth. He's very, very warm, and he keeps the umbrella over your head diligently. An idea begins to take shape.
“Hotch, would you say you're a gentleman?”
“That… depends on what you're about to ask me.”
You look up into his face. He's certainly handsome, and he always holds the door for you, always brings you a coffee even though you tease him about being in love with you. His frown is curiously missing as he slows his pace, the two of you walking a meander through the street. “What level of unprofessionalism is acceptable between us?”
“Again…”
To his credit, he smiles at you. Doesn't waver as you slip your hand through his arm. “Is this okay? Please?” you ask.
“It's okay,” he says steadily.
“So you're obsessed with me. Got it.”
He doesn't laugh, but you'd like to think he wants to, he's too maddeningly serious is all. You check his face a few times to make sure it truly is okay, leaning into his side once you're certain.
“Not far,” he assures you. “Next time, we'll drive.”
“I have never been so cold in my life.”
“No? What about Alaska?”
“No, because Morgan is a better man than you are. He kept me stocked in hot chocolate and he bought me that hoodie with the moose on the front.”
Hotch transfers the umbrella from one hand into the other to wrap an arm around your shoulders. You squash a cheesy smile down and replace it with a smirk in case he looks at you, ever-pleased as he pulls you in as tightly as he can without tripping over you. “I offered to get you a sweater,” he murmurs, sounding about as irritated as he can be with you, which isn't a lot, “I offered you my coat. You wouldn't say yes.”
“A real gentleman wouldn't have to ask.”
He sighs and rubs your upper arm. “Of course.”
You cling to him for the rest of the walk, and for some time in the sandwich shop too. He doesn't try to remove you nor tell you off, doesn't argue his case. He doesn't so much as mention how he ordered your lunch exactly as you like it —with all your alterations and add-ons— though you know you didn't ask him to.
A gentleman after all. The urge to loop your hands together on the walk back is extreme, but you deny yourself the pleasure once again.
that spencer x bombshell one you just posted has me giggling and kicking my feet I think I’m in love with YOU 🫵
Now I’m thinking of spencer x bombshell where the team starts to not view reid as unwillingly tortured by her flirting. Like maybe Morgan makes a comment to reid about something he does and is like “don’t torture the poor girl” and he’s like oh shit I’M the one torturing too now?
im in love with YOU !! for you, ty for requesting ♡ fem
“Difficult,” you say, resting your head on the table.
“I know.” Spencer wiggles his pen back and forth between two fingers, thinking hard. This case is proving to be indecipherable. None of the details want to add up, and no clear profile geographical or otherwise appears.
“Useless.”
“Who, me or you?”
“Us.” You sigh morosely. “Mostly me.”
You're not being serious. Spencer huffs a soft laugh and continues to turn the details over in his head. You open your notebook and scratch down a couple of sentences with a pen, a visual thinker. Your mind map turns to a second iteration and then a third. You can't connect the dots because they're too far apart from each other; Spencer can't do it either. Not alone.
He scoots his chair as close to yours as possible, your knees touching, his elbow in your side. “Can I look?” he asks.
“Of course you can. Sorry about my handwriting.”
He shakes his head. Your handwriting is perhaps the only thing about you he wouldn't say was one hundred percent perfect. You can't control it like other things. It is perfect, in a way, because it's yours, but you've been writing quickly and he struggles to make out the occasional letter.
He leans in toward the page. “What's this word?” he asks.
You lean in to see it. “Coruscated.”
“The swimming pool?” he asks, lifting his face to yours. You're closer now, and beautiful like this. He can see the powder under your eyes, the lines in your irises, the slight fading of your lipstick at the corners of your mouth. There's an eyelash on your cheek. He lifts a hand to wipe it away. “What's so important about that?”
“It reminded me of something…” You pause as he touches your face. “Something…” Your voice lilts up in question, half-shudder.
“Eyelash,” he explains, blowing it off of his finger.
“Right,” you say, eyes oddly wide and soft at once, your eyebrows lifted at the starts.
“You okay?”
“Is she okay? Reid, you're torturing the poor girl. Give her some air,” Morgan says with a chuckle.
Spencer leans backwards in surprise, no idea what Morgan could possibly mean. Your eyes relax as you regain some personal space, your hands coming together loosely in your lap. You laugh weakly.
Spencer looks you up and down. He's torturing you? That doesn't make sense. For as long as you've known one another, the team has joked that your flirty ways and feminine wiles are too much for Spencer to handle. You once gave him an apology he didn't want, worried you actually were hurting him by being your playful self, and he'd set that straight immediately. You don't torture him. It's a lot of feelings to be doted on so much by you, and painful isn't one of them. Overwhelming, sometimes, and exciting, sure.
He never realised he had the power to overwhelm you. Not until that moment. You offer a funny smile far from your usual smirk and try to steamroll Morgan's claim. “Guess I should've made a wish.”
“What would you wish for?” Spencer asks quietly.
You still. Morgan shakes his head in disapproval, but he laughs again and stands up. “I think they'd call that a taste of your own medicine, sweetheart,” he says to you.
You meet Spencer's eye. “I think they would,” you say bashfully.
For three blissful seconds, Spencer enjoys the reality of having made you flustered. You, gorgeous, confident you, left flushed and a little daunted by his casual actions and simple (maybe slightly flirtatious) questioning. But then he remembers how much he likes you and pushes it away.
“Sorry,” he says, plastering a smile over uncertain lips, “I didn't mean to do that.”
“No, it's okay.”
He turns to your notes, but gives you a look from the side. “I hope you wished for someone to solve the case. We're never getting anywhere like this.”
“Are you saying you can't?” You rest your chin in your hand. “And here I thought you were more than a pretty face.”
