"Six weeks into the term, I assigned my rhetoric and writing students a 20-page article. It was the same length I had assigned for five years and the same length I had read without complaint as an undergraduate a decade ago. Not one student finished it.
When I asked why, a student answered honestly: It was too long, and she kept losing track of what the paper was about. This was not a remedial class: These were students who had cleared the admissions process and written essays good enough to get them here. Yet a routine academic reading assignment had defeated them.
Every generation of professors has complained that their students cannot read. The lament is usually overblown, but data have caught up to anecdote, and what I am seeing in my classroom is no longer a hunch. There is a measurable, generational collapse in sustained reading and writing, and the academy is responding to it with improvisation and exhaustion rather than the structural overhaul it requires.
In February 2024, Adam Kotsko, who teaches in the Shimer Great Books School at North Central College, wrote in Slate that students who once handled 30 pages of reading per class meeting now seem “intimidated by anything over 10 pages and seem to walk away from readings of as little as 20 pages with no real understanding.” Crucially, he added that this is “not a matter of laziness on the part of the students” but of underlying skills they were never given a chance to build.
The Chronicle of Higher Education’s 2024 investigation found the same pattern across institutions as different as the Stevens Institute of Technology and Wellesley College, where the average SAT exceeds 1400. Nicholaus Gutierrez, an assistant professor at Wellesley, told The Chronicle that the baseline for what students consider a reasonable amount of work has dropped so noticeably that he has cut his readings accordingly; a 750-word essay now strikes many students as long. At Stevens, the science and technology studies associate professor Theresa MacPhail described following the mantra of “meet your students where they are” for so long that she has begun to feel “like a cruise director organizing games of shuffleboard.”
Worse, the national data tell the same story in colder language. On the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) writing assessment, which is the most recent comprehensive writing benchmark, only 24 percent of 12th graders reached the Proficient level, and just 3 percent reached Advanced; another 21 percent scored below Basic. The reading side of the ledger is worse, and getting worse fast: The 2024 NAEP results released in September 2025 show 12th-grade reading scores at the lowest level recorded since the assessment began in 1992. Thirty-two percent of 12th graders now score below NAEP Basic in reading, meaning that, in the assessment’s own language, they likely “cannot draw general conclusions based on concepts presented explicitly in a text.” And yet more than half of these same seniors reported being accepted to a four-year college. That last sentence is the whole problem in one line: We are admitting a cohort that cannot read at a college level and are pretending otherwise.
Why is this happening? One reason, of course, is smartphones.
I came into teaching as a skeptic of the anti-smartphone argument: I had a phone in my pocket throughout high school and college in the 2010s, and I read long books anyway. I now think I was wrong, because the neuroscience has caught up. In a 2017 paper, Adrian F. Ward and colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin’s McCombs School of Business showed that the mere presence of a participant’s smartphone — whether that be face down, powered off, untouched, or across the desk out of vision — measurably reduces available working memory and fluid intelligence on cognitive tests, with the largest effects on the most phone-dependent users. A 2022 study by Motoyasu Honma and colleagues at Japan’s Showa University used near-infrared spectroscopy to compare reading on a smartphone with reading the same passage on paper, and found that smartphone reading produced overactivity in the prefrontal cortex, suppressed sigh generation, and led to general lower comprehension scores; the authors argued that the sigh inhibition and prefrontal overload were causally linked to the comprehension decline.
So when a student tells me they “kept losing track” of a 20-page article, I have to acknowledge that they may be describing a measurable neurological condition. The neural pathways that support sustained attention are built by use, and they atrophy without it. Your body is a use-it-or-lose-it system, and the brain is no exception.
Another reason for the decline in student reading capability is increasing reliance on generative AI. In June 2025, Nataliya Kosmyna and colleagues at the MIT Media Lab released a preprint titled “Your Brain on ChatGPT.” They divided 54 participants into three groups writing SAT-style essays — one using ChatGPT, the second group using a search engine, the last group using nothing — and monitored brain activity with a 32-channel EEG. The ChatGPT group showed the lowest neural connectivity of the three, with up to 55 percent reduced connectivity compared with the brain-only group, and “consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels.” Eighty-three percent of LLM users could not quote a single line from essays they had written minutes earlier. When the LLM group was forced to write without AI in a follow-up session, their brain activity did not bounce back to baseline; the researchers coined the term “cognitive debt” for the lingering deficit.
This is the first neurophysiological evidence that early reliance on LLMs measurably alters the brain’s engagement with writing tasks, and it is consistent with what those of us in front of classrooms are watching happen in real time. When I assign analysis, I am not trying to extract a polished product; I am trying to put the student’s mind through resistance in order to make it stronger. Offloading the struggle to a chatbot does not “free students up for higher-order work.” It deprives them of building the strength to do any substantial cognitive work at all.
There is a final factor that is contributing to this decline in reading skills, and that is that the students arriving in my classroom today are the first cohort to have experienced Common Core-influenced reading instruction across the entirety of their K–12 schooling. Whatever the standards’ original intent, the on-the-ground implementation in many districts replaced sustained reading with the practice of pulling “evidence” from disconnected short passages, the same format used on the standardized tests that increasingly determine school funding. The education scholar Natalie Wexler, among others, has documented this pivot in detail: Students drilled on “finding the main idea” in two-paragraph excerpts never build the stamina or background knowledge that longform reading requires. The pandemic then added fuel to a fire that was already burning. NAEP scores for 13-year-olds dropped sharply in 2022 and have not recovered. A 2023 EdWeek survey found that 24 percent of secondary-school administrators described pandemic learning loss in English and language arts as “severe or very severe.”
In July 2025, the journalist Mary Harrington argued in The New York Times that “thinking is becoming a luxury good.” The ability to read deeply and reason at length is fragmenting along class lines as ultra-processed digital media replaces text in everyday life, much as ultra-processed food has replaced cooking. Her longer treatment of the subject in First Things makes the more provocative case that we are witnessing the end of print culture itself, and with it the end of the cognitive substrate on which modern liberal democracy was built.
I see this stratification in the classroom and on the page every week. My students from districts that protected sustained reading through small class sizes, strict phone policies, and faculty who refused to teach to the test all arrive with their attention relatively intact. My students from districts that surrendered to devices and standardized testing arrive cognitively winded. A democracy that requires a literate electorate is now training one fraction of that electorate out of literacy while marketing to the other a “deep work” lifestyle as a luxury good. The students who cannot read a 20-page article today are the voters who will not be able to read a bill, or the jurors who cannot follow a closing argument, tomorrow.
I do what I can in my own classroom to address the problems. I break 20-page articles into two halves and assign the first half with explicit analytical tasks. I require exploratory writing before formal drafts. I model (visibly, on the board) how to track an argument across pages or distinguish a source’s claim from my own analysis. I make structured peer review explicit, because the workshop format I used to take for granted now collapses into “this is good” and “maybe add more details” the moment I step back.
But I want to be plain about the limits of what an individual instructor can do, and all of these solutions have costs. Scaffolding a 20-page article into halves compromises the integrity of the argument I am asking students to engage, just as modeling note-taking in a credit-bearing rhetoric course is using a college slot to teach a middle-school skill. None of the syllabi I teach are designed to deliver this type of cognitive rehabilitation, and pretending otherwise has produced credential inflation. We cannot keep conferring degrees on students who cannot do what the degree is supposed to certify.
I’m afraid I don’t have answers. I do, however, have some questions that may point us in the right direction. If higher education is going to respond to the reading crisis as a structural problem rather than a private burden carried by composition instructors and adjuncts, it has to stop avoiding the following questions: If a majority of incoming students cannot read at a level the curriculum requires, are we admitting students we cannot serve, or offering a curriculum we cannot provide?
Why are first-year writing and reading-intensive general-education courses still the most adjunctified, lowest-paid, highest-load corner of the university, at the precise moment when their work has become the most important work the institution does? What is the responsible institutional response for AI usage: Is it a syllabus statement, or a sequencing principle that requires students to demonstrate the cognitive work themselves before AI assistance is permitted?
Why are most college classrooms still phone-permissive by default? K–12 districts from Florida to California are now banning phones bell to bell; higher education has somehow lagged behind the public schools. Universities benefit from a pipeline they did not build and refuse to repair. What would it mean for a university system to invest seriously in the reading instruction happening in the high schools that feed it, rather than treating remediation as something to be quietly outsourced to first-year composition instructors?
The thing I am no longer willing to do is pretend this is a temporary adjustment period, or that “students will adapt.” They will not adapt on their own. The conditions that produced this collapse are still in place: the phones, the algorithmic feeds, the test-prep excerpts, staffing models that load the reading-intensive work onto the most precarious faculty, and now the chatbots that finish students’ sentences before they’ve even begun to think of them. If we want literate citizens, we will have to rebuild the conditions for literacy deliberately, against the grain of every incentive currently pointed the other way. I know the academy has the will to do that. It also has the obligation."
— Tyler Jagt, 1 June 2026, "My Students Can’t Read"
The generational collapse in literacy is measurable, persistent, and likely to get worse.
watching any media with matthrew gray gubler in it after criminal minds is really funny because the central Bit surrounding spencer reid is that he's this frumpy little nerd with 0 chill and 0 game who might as well be virginal as the mother mary for all the social skills he has and then in everything else the director plops him in front of the screen like "this guy is hot as fuck, conveniently constantly naked, and every woman in a 50 mile radius desires him carnally"
I'm so tired that my mum just handed me a plaster cause she cut herself and I looked at it for a solid 20 seconds trying to figure out what it was and if it was edible
"it's just growing pains" -> "you're too young for that to hurt that bad" -> "you just need to get in better shape" -> "welcome to being old, everyone is in pain"
i learned that actor Danny Trejo has the most on-screen deaths of anyone in Hollywood history, with 65. Followed by Christopher Lee (60), Lance Henriksen (51), Vincent Price (41), Dennis Hopper (41), Boris Karloff (41), and John Hurt (39). (x)
Also there’s the question of density vs quantity. If you make a hundred movies and die in 50, and someone else makes 30 movies and dies in 30, the first one has died more, but the second one has died more often per movie.
65/402 16% Danny Trejo
60/282 21% Christopher Lee
51/259 20% Lance Henriksen
41/211 19% Vincent Price
41/205 20% Dennis Hopper
41/204 20% Boris Karloff
39/209 19% John Hurt
33/117 28% Sean Bean
ADHD advice from non-ADHD people: start blocking out your day and put things in your google calendar
ADHD advice from ADHD people: any time you're waiting for your food to microwave YOU HAVE TO WASH DISHES WASH AS MANY AS YOU CAN THIS IS A RACE AGAINST TIME THIS IS THE ONLY TIME THIS COULD HAPPEN
Omg yes, when I brew my tea, I set a timer for 3 and a half minutes (trust) and that is my singular productive window of the day where I hang out my laundry and do dishes or tidy up
the worst part of summer is that people get sooo comfortable expressing their disgust at having to see other people’s bodies. they’re always complaining about wrinkly old men at the nude hot springs or fat women in bikinis at the beach. I hate that shit. if you’re not capable of being normal about bodies you personally don’t find attractive, just turn your head to look at something else! and if you’re not smart enough to do that, then at least do the rest of us the courtesy of suffering in silence, because we don’t wanna hear your weird comments. thanks.
As requested (albeit several months late) I have finally put together a video on my gauffering process!
Please take this video with a grain of salt– I am a complete beginner, and this method is far from traditional. It is simply what I was able to accomplish at my current skill level with the materials I had on hand.
For more in depth videos on sanding and edge painting, please check out @duran-binding and @copticcowgirl . They taught me everything I know!
There is so little instructional information about gauffering available online, particularly with budget materials. The amount of trial and error it took to establish a method that yielded fairly consistent results was frankly maddening, so I sincerely hope that this look into my process is useful to someone.
biopics need to go back to hating their subject like the social network. enough puff pieces. spend 2 hours making me hate that guy and have the subject be so mad at the existence of the movie that it only makes people want to see it more. activate pvp mode and don't waste my fucking time
“Why don’t you use ai” idk man beyond the obvious environmental and “this machine causes psychosis and encourages people to kill themselves” thing I think asking the equivalent of a solid D student who is also a pathological liar if they can answer my question/do the work for me seems pretty fucking stupid
summary: the most beautiful day of your lives is coming to a close, but your wedding night is about to begin. spencer shows his love to you by setting up the most beautiful room— and giving you the pleasure you deserve.
content warning: mdni 18+, oral (f receiving), fingering, unprotected piv, fluffy wedding night lovemaking (like sickeningly sweet), softdom! spencer reid, a little bit of nipple play, multiple orgasms, lots of pet names usage (angel, beautiful, baby, good girl), married couple, mentions of longer hair and white wedding dresses, creampie (i hate this word omg), sweet aftercare, no use of y/n
w/c: 5.4k words!
genre: smut, fluff
a/n: soooo welcome to my triumphant return. life kinda got crazy and i didn't want to force myself to write but now that it's summer...ideas have been coming to me. i pictured like season 7-9 spencer but you can imagine any season. this turned out way longer than i thought but i'm so proud of it! can you tell the olivia album inspired me? :)
Spencer's fingers were entangled with your own, his thumb brushing the back of your hand in soft little circles. His brown eyes were shining in adoration as you looked up to meet his gaze, the elevator hum a distant noise in the background— a soundtrack to the beginning of the most anticipated night of your life thus far. He had been looking at you this same way since you walked down the aisle hours ago, like you were something sent from the divine. Just thinking back to that moment, that white dress still flowing all around you, you felt a familiar lump rise in your throat. You were his, and he was yours.
“Baby,” he murmured, searching your eyes and reaching his free hand up to cup your cheek. “You okay? Your eyes went all misty for a moment.”
Damn it. Now you want to cry again, not tears of sadness, no– but in pure joyful emotion. You had married a man who noticed even the slightest change of your eyes or or an off breath.
“I’m more than okay,” you manage to whisper but it comes out more like a choked out wobbly breath. “I just– the way you're looking at me. The way you looked at me. I’ve never felt so much love.”
Spencer leans down to press his forehead against yours as the elevator steadily climbed to the hotel's top floor, the warmth of him flooding your system.
“I love you,” he whispers firmly. “With everything I am, with every breath I take. I’m so happy you’re my wife. I know you know but I need to tell you it again and again. I can’t stop saying it. I’ll always look at you like this because you’re my love. Every chamber of my heart beats in unison for you.”
Just before you could fully burst into tears at the sweetest words you had ever heard and wash off all the makeup that you had spent hours applying this morning, the elevator beeped and opened revealing a long, elegantly styled hallway.
“Cmon, angel,” Spencer murmured softly, his breath caressing your ear. “I want to show you our honeymoon suite,” He tugs on your hand and you giggle at the way he practically drags you down the hallway like an overeager puppy, stumbling beside him.
When you make it to the door at the end of the hallways, Spencer suddenly stops to face you. You open your mouth to speak and then—
“Whoa,” you gasp as he picks you up, his lean but strong arms sliding under your back and your knees to form the classic bridal style hold. “Baby what are you doing?” you giggle into his shoulder, filled with elation. You’re pretty sure you know what he's doing, you just want him to say it.
Spencer smiles down at you and it feels like the warmth of ten thousand suns shining down on you, and healing every emotional wound that ever hurt you.
“I am carrying my very beautiful bride across the threshold of our honeymoon suite, and then I am going to spend the entire night worshipping her.”
You immediately turn that familiar pretty shade of pink that Spencer loves, still not used to hearing him talk like this—even after all this time together.
“You look impossibly pretty like this,” he smiles as his gaze traces the features on your face. “You don’t even know how much.”
Before you can respond with a doubtful quip disguised by humour, he maneuvers you in his arms so he can push the hotel room door open.
Your breath catches.
“Holy shit.”
His eyes fill with pride and you can feel his spine straightening. The room was absolutely gorgeous. The room was lit, not harshly bright, yet light enough so you could see everything. The large windows had the curtains pulled back to reveal the glistening lights of the city. In the center of the room was a king bed, draped with silk sheets and piled with fluffiest pillows you had ever seen. The sheets were covered with rose petals scattered about, and at the foot of the bed sat a basket filled with champagne and other things you couldn’t make out.
“I called a week ago and asked them to set all this up. Penelope helped me find your wedding pinterest board and I wanted to make tonight special, especially since you planned the wedding so beautifully,” he smiles at your wide eyed expression as he puts you down from the bridal carry and kneels down to remove each one of your beautiful but painful heels that had been pinching your toes for hours. “You do so so much, and I'm not the most creatively inclined but I wanted to do this for you. I know I’m about to show you how much I love you physically but I wanted to show you a different way too. I…I hope you like it.”
This. This is why you married him, you thought as he removed each heel— pressing a kiss to each knee through your dress. Not for his incredible profiling skills, not for his astonishingly high iq of 187, not for his tall stature, or his beautifully sculpted face, or his brown doe eyes or his pretty pink lips or his messy brown locks but this. How much he cared. How he remembered the details, like you offhandedly mentioning your pinterest board. How he didn’t mind sleeping with a nightlight on during storms because he knew you got scared. Every single note filled with a fun fact a day left in your lunch. How he would listen to you ramble on and on about your favorite shows that other boys might laugh and call too girly, but he made a detailed chart with you on whether Jess or Logan was Rory's soulmate in Gilmore Girls. You married him for him. For the way he loved you in a way you thought was only possible in fairytales.
“Spencer,” you breathe out shakily as his eyes lock onto yours, looking impossibly soft. “I don’t even know how to describe how I’m feeling right now. I love you. I love you so so so much. I can’t believe you asked Penelope for my pinterest board. I can’t believe you even remembered me mentioning it. You don’t know how much this means to me.”
“Of course I did…I love you,” he smiles gently as he tugs you closer, his hand wrapping round your waist. “I’m going to be doing things like this for you forever. It’s the least I could do. You are the most incredible girl in the entire universe,”. He smirks as he leans his forehead down to touch your own. “And that's saying a lot because the universe is actively expanding and actually the rate at which it’s expanding is accelerating which means—”
“Wait,”. He suddenly stops and takes a breath. “I’ll tell you about galactic redshift later because I’m getting too distracted by how you look in this dress,” His lips slightly turn up as his voice lowers. “And how much I want to see it on the floor.”
You can feel your face heat up for like the ten thousandth time today and you groan, pushing a strand of hair back behind your ear.
“You can’t keep saying these things,” you pout and he quickly leans down to press a quick peck to your lips. “I can’t help blushing. I think I have a chronic blushing problem.”
He laughs as he picks you and gently sets you amongst the flower petals on the silky bedspread, putting the basket on the floor before tossing his suit jacket aside.
“Chronic implies that it's long lasting which in this case I think is ideal,” he kisses your forehead in between words as he sits beside you on the bed. “You look too cute blushing— I don’t ever want it to go away.”
You giggle until his lips brush yours and every other thought melts from your mind. He kisses you so gently at first, like you’re porcelain on the verge of shattering. One of his hands reaches up to cup your face, while the other one settles on your waist—contentedly drawing little circles into the fabric of your wedding dress with his thumb. You sigh against his mouth as every nerve ending in your body seems to spark to life all at once.
At your sigh, his breath hitches and his tongue slowly slips into your mouth at the given opportunity. The hand that was against your cheek slides to cup the back of your head as he gently lowers you to lay back against the pillows. Your hair splays out, and he raises up from your lips to stare down at you adoringly.
“My beautiful wife,” he breathes out as his eyes trace your every feature. He lowers his lips to barely brush against yours once more. “My gorgeous, gorgeous girl.”
Before tears of emotion could fall from your eyes, he's kissing you again, and you can feel how much of himself he’s putting into it. He’s kissing you like your lips are what will save him from an incurable disease. Your wedding dress is twisted and flowing around the both of you, and his hands slide under you to fiddle with the delicate buttons on the back.
He raises his head once again and smiles at you, and everything that is outside of the little bubble the two of you created disappears.
“Can I take this dress off baby?” he murmurs, pressing a soft kiss to your forehead.
“Yes please.”
“Your wish is my command,” he winks and you giggle, amazed at the way he can turn everything from serious and deeply intimate to funny, and yet still make the silliest of things romantic. “Sit up a little for me, angel.”
You obey him and his soft voice without question. His long fingers begin to attempt to unhook each button. Keyword… attempt.
He huffs with a slight pout as his nimble fingers fail to get a grasp on even the first button.
“I have an IQ of 187 and yet these buttons seem to require one even higher. Why are they so tiny? I mean they're beautiful… but Vera Wang certainly doesn't design with efficiency in mind.”
“You should send them a letter.”
“Haha… very funny,” he pouts again as he finally manages to unhook the first one. “I have half a mind to.”
Suddenly his face brightens and his eyes get that twinkling look again.
“I have an idea,” he grins as he leans down towards the buttons. “Kisses for good luck.”
You smile and start to giggle again until you feel the press of his lips to each button through your dress. The butterflies come to life in your stomach again and begin to fly in dizzyingly fast circles.
“There we go,” he murmurs as his lips brush each button and somehow…they unbutton as he tries his hand at it once more. “Told you. Kisses are good luck. Scientifically proven now.”
“You don’t believe in luck,” you whisper as his fingers unhook the last of the buttons.
“I do when it comes to you,” he breathes out as he gently pulls the sleeves of your dress down your arms, and lays you down to pull it off the rest of your body.
Damn, you’re blushing again. And you don’t think it will ever go away as long as Spencer is alive to make you feel this way.
Once the dress is all the way off, you hear Spencer's breath catch, and you look up at him shyly through your eyelashes. You were in wedding lingerie, that this morning your bridesmaids giggled and complimented as they helped you dress. The lingerie was white and lacy, delicate edges against your skin.
“You,” he leans down to kiss you between each word. “Are..” Kiss. “So…” Kiss.” Pretty…” Another kiss.
“Do you like it?” you murmur, stealing another kiss as he lifts his head once more. “I wanted to look pretty and special for tonight.”
“Like it?” he blinks like he doesn’t understand what you’re saying. “Angel…like is too insignificant a word for how I feel about you in this. Like… is used for saying you like a drink or dessert. Like…is a widely disproportionate word for how I feel about you. I feel like love is even too small to describe it.”
He exhales and leans down to kiss the lace of the bralettes edge, murmuring sweet things that you could barely make out.
“Hey,” you murmur as you reach for the buttons on his white dress shirt. “I can’t be the only one half naked.”
He grins as he raises his head, and now it's your turn to fumble with buttons.
“Here,” he whispers, as his larger hands cover your shaky ones and begin to help undo the buttons on his shirt. Once he reaches the end, he shrugs off the shirt and tosses it on the floor, not caring where it lands.
You let out a soft breath as he lets you gaze upon his chest. He was so handsome, so pretty. He wasn’t built with bulging muscles or a wide chest. Instead, he was built especially for you. He was lean yet defined, strong without being crushing.
You didn’t have any words so you said the only thing that really mattered.
“I love you, Spencer Reid.”
He leans down, and right before his lips meet your own you catch the mist that begins to cloud his eyes.
“I love you,” he murmurs as he kisses your lips and then begins trailing his own lips down your neck.
“I love you,” he repeats again as his lips latch onto that special spot on your neck, the one he's studied thoroughly and knows it’ll make you squirm. Your hips slightly arch to meet his as he sucks and gently bites at the skin, marking you as his own. You can feel the length of him, a not so subtle hardness pressing against you.
You let out a whiny whimper and you can feel his smile spread across his lips as he keeps kissing his way down to your lace covered breasts.
He kisses all around the lace edge and then reaches both hands up to cup them, marveling in how they fit within his palms.
You whine again as he gently squeezes and begins to knead them, the sensation shooting down between your legs.
“These are so pretty,” he mutters in a low voice as he stares at them. “So perfect for me, look at how they fit in my hands.”
“Oh…god,” you let out in a breathy little moan, the feeling and the sight of him playing with your breasts causing the damp patch on your panties to grow even damper.
“Mm-mm,” he tuts gently. “I don’t think a deity is making you feel like this right now baby.” He grins as you let out another soft little whimper. “Who’s making you feel this way right now? Cmon…you can say it.”
“Spencer!” you cry out as he rolls his hips against yours while he continues playing with your breasts, the friction causing a delicious pleasure to flood your senses.
“Thats it angel,” he whispers against your lips with each slow roll of his hips. “Good job… I knew you could do it.”
The praise he lavishes you with goes straight to your core, while he simultaneously reaches around to unhook the lacy bra, this time his fingers not fumbling at all. As it falls off he stares once again for a moment, before lowering his head to attach his lips around one peak while his hand paid attention to the other breast so it wasn’t neglected. He gently sucks and laves his tongue over it causing an exorbitant amount of high pitched noises to leave your lips.
He detaches for a moment to gaze up into your eyes.
“Is this good, angel? Do you want me to keep going or do you want something else?”
“It's so good,” you manage to choke out as he rolls your nipple between his fingers. “But can…can you use your mouth and fingers on me?”
Of course, your cheeks pinken again and he grins.
“Where do you want them baby?”
“You know where.”
“Uh-uh” he shakes his head, trying to hide the slight smirk that begins to form across his face. “I need you to say it. Do you think you can do that, huh? Tell me where you want my fingers and mouth. I need to know exactly.”
“I want them…down there,” you manage to squeak out.
He sighs as he shakes his head again.
“You’re going to have to be a lot more specific, beautiful girl,” he crawls down the length of your body. “‘Down there…,’” he leans down, his breath ghosting above your knee, “could be anywhere.”
He presses a kiss to your kneecap and then the side of it as you pout.
“Did you mean down here?”
“No…”
He grins and brushes a kiss to your inner thigh.
“Then did you mean right here?”
“Spencer!” you whine again, looking down at him petulantly.
“Tell me where, angel. Use your words,” he whispers looking up at you with soft eyes this time. “You can say it, it’s just me. I’m your husband. Don’t be embarrassed.”
You inhale softly, swayed by the love in his tone and the truth of his statement.
“Can you use your fingers and your mouth…” your eyes duck down as your voice gets incrementally lower with every word that escapes your lips, “on my…on my pussy?”
Your voice comes out in the softest shyest whisper on the last word, but he still smiles gently.
“Of course baby,” murmurs and inches up a little bit to play with the little lace bow at the top of the edge of your panties. “Good girl, I’m so so proud of you for saying it.”
He presses a kiss to the bow, his lips skimming the lace and his fingers brushing over the wet patch that was increasingly becoming wetter.
“You’re already so wet for me,” he says in a low tone, with a hint of pride. He begins to slowly inch the panties down your thighs and legs, like he was unveiling the most precious treasure in the world. “Look at you…” he breathes out, “so pretty and perfect. My wife. Made just for me.”
You let out a breathy little gasp as his long fingers part your folds. He lowers his head so that his warm breath ghosts against your clit, and you whimper as you helplessly squirm. As you looked down upon his head between your legs— his hair fell in front of his forehead making him look even more handsome in the low lighting.
He swipes his thumb against your aching clit, making you cry out as he relieves some of the tension. Your hips jump and he laughs softly and then...
“Oh—” you gasp as his head finally lowers and he flicks his tongue against your clit, his hands gently holding your hips down in place. “Spencer I— ah!”
He continued licking at your clit, and then gently sucked at it, raising a high pitched sob from your throat. You could feel him alternate between flicking his tongue and suckling, the combination leaving you squirming and whimpering under his touch.
Just when you thought it couldn’t get any more pleasurable, he gently slipped a finger inside of you, moving it very slowly at first, and then finding a comfortable pace after he felt your walls adjust around him.
“Spencer it feels—” your words were cut off by the moan that you couldn’t help.
“Yeah baby, I know…it feels so good, I know,” he murmurs as he looks up then leans back down to suckle at your clit again. “You don’t have to say it, just let me keep taking care of you.”
He continues to pump his fingers in you, adding a second one— then a third when he feels you’re ready. You could hear the obscene sound of your wetness as he licks and moves his fingers in and out, curling them until he hits that spot inside you. That spot that he knows will send you to the highest of heavens.
“Spence…mm..” you whimper. “M’close.”
He doubles down his efforts, but what sends hurtling over the edge of your orgasm was his whispered ‘I love you’ against your clit.
You shake and tremble through the waves of pleasure as he continues between your legs, licking and sucking as you ride out your orgasm.
When you finally lay panting, he presses one last quick kiss to your clit, the sensitivity making your hips slightly buck again and a soft whimper to leave your mouth. He makes his way back up to look into your eyes.
“Hey,” he breathes out. “Are you okay?”. His eyes search your own. “You did so well, looked so beautiful.”
“I’m good,” you whisper shakily, looking into his adoring gaze. “I…wow.”
He smiles gently and begins covering your forehead and cheeks in soft pecks.
“Do you want a hug?” he says softly, looking back up into your eyes.
“Yes please,” you whisper, wanting so desperately to be in his arms before he enters you again.
He lights up, and pulls you into a hug, his lips brushing the top of your head.
“I love you so much,” he hums out, rubbing your lower back.
“I love you too,” you whisper back into his bare chest.
He holds you tight for another minute, whispering soft ‘I love yous’ ever so often.
“I’m ready,” you whisper against his chest and he knows exactly what you mean.
He kisses your forehead and sits up, beginning to slide his boxers off. You watch in soft adoration as they fall to the floor, and his pretty cock comes into view. You’ve never thought a cock could be thought of as pretty, but Spencer has proven you wrong time and time again.
You reach out to wrap your hand around it, but he gently catches your wrist in his own hand and holds it away.
You begin to speak but he gently shakes his head, hair falling into his eyes.
“I want to make love to you now,” he breathes out as he eases you back onto the bed. “I want to be inside you and if you…touch me now…I might not last.”
When you're laying flat against the pillows again, his hands come up to hold onto yours beside your head. His eyes lock onto yours and you can feel all the love he has for you in his gaze. The emotion builds and builds in the silence until a lump forms in your throat and suddenly your eyes are stinging.
“Hey…hey,” he exhales, pressing his nose to yours, as you feel a drop of water make its way down your cheek. “Don’t cry, angel. I love you so so much. I’m right here. We’re married now,”. He swallows and now you can see that he’s on the verge of tears too. “You’re…You’re my wife now.”
He quickly swipes at his eyes before reaching back down to interlock your fingers again. He kisses each salty tear away with the aching tenderness that makes your heart squeeze.
“I love you so much,” you breathe out as he reaches down to position the tip of himself against your entrance.
“Love you back…my perfect girl…my wife,” he murmurs, kissing your forehead gently, then sweetly pecking your nose. “Ready, baby?”
You nod, unable to speak, because if you do you might start crying again.
He gives you the most gentle, the most impossibly sweet smile before he begins to sink into you. You squeeze his hands tight as he presses deeper slowly, taking his time to savor the first moment you are connected as husband and wife.
You gasp as he goes as deep as he can go, his cock kissing the most inner parts of you. His forehead pressed against yours, and his eyes were closed. This was it. You felt every emotion spiral through you, both of your souls swirling and dancing around each other, connecting in the most intimate of ways.
“God…” he breathes out, his voice trembling. “I love you with everything I am. You feel so good around me. You’re a perfect fit, like always. I don’t–...I can’t—,” he chokes out, taking another breath before continuing, “Every part of me belongs to every part of you.”
A tear rolls down your cheek, one that you both don’t bother brushing away.
“I’m your girl forever,” you say shakily. “I want to be like this always. I never… I never want to be without you, Spencer,” You reach up to wrap your arms around his neck, drawing him closer, his chest, pressing against your own. “You’re my other half.”
He swallows back the lump in his own throat, his Adam's apple bobbing, before he smiles softly and kisses your forehead.
“Us forever,” he whispers into your ear, then draws back to lock eyes with you, as he begins to thrust slowly. “It’s you and me.”
You gasped as his cock brushed against the most innermost part of you again and again. Every part of you was connected to every part of him. Each slow stroke sent sensations throughout your whole body— echoing into your bones. You clutched at his shoulders, fingers digging into his bare skin as he made love to you.
“That’s it, angel,” he whispers into your ear. “You’re doing so well. There you go,”. He looked at you with the kind of reverence one would show a religious landmark. You were the temple that he worshiped at.
His thrusts remained slow but deep as he looked into your eyes— hitting that spot deep within you that made your whole body tense and clench around you.
“Is that it?” he murmurs, reaching down to rub slow circles on your clit in tandem with his purposeful strokes. He smirks as you let out a high-pitched ‘ah’—hoisting your legs around his waist to pull him in deeper. “Yeah… that’s it.”
"You don’t have to be so smug about it,” you manage to choke out between high pitched gasps. “I-oh,” your voice dissolves into the prettiest moan Spencer has ever heard.
Spencer's breath hitched—any confident remark he was about to fire off gone as he felt your walls clench tightly around him again. He gazes at you like you were a miracle that he was somehow lucky enough to stumble into because, to him, you were.
Spencer?” you whimper into his shoulder, as he adjusts your hips so he can hit that glorious spot each time.
“Yeah, baby?”
“Harder…please.”
Spencer's breath stutters at your whine, and you can hear the soft inhale he takes in your ear before he nods, adjusting his weight above you and starts to firmly thrust into you. The sound of the headboard rattling against the wall above you was almost erotic in its own way— knowing that Spencer was putting that much effort into bringing your pleasure that a whole king sized bed could shake.
“You’re so good,” he breathes out as you clutch and cling to him, sensing you nearing the edge. “You’re my wife…my perfect girl.”
He keeps circling your clit, building you up through a steady rhythm instead of quickly trying to get you to your peak. As your body started to tense and tighten, he pressed kisses all over your cheeks and face, light brushes that were so light they felt like a feather caressing your face.
“Baby, I’m close,” you whimper as your hips lift, chasing the friction of his hand as he thrusted.
“I know,” he breathed out, kissing your collarbone. “You’re doing so well. Let me take care of you, I’m gonna get you there.”
As he murmured sweet nothings in your ear, the waves of pleasure grew and grew until they reached their crest— and you shattered around him with a broken moan.
“Spencer!” you cried as your body trembled and he held you so close it almost hurt but you didn’t care.
“Let go baby,” He whispered as he continued with slow strokes as you rode out your orgasm. “I’m right here. I’ve got you. We have this forever.”
You pant softly as you come down, him still thrusting gently trying not to overstimulate you as he reaches his own peak.
“Fuck— baby,” he gasped out as you felt him tense then spill into you. “I love you.”
As you both catch your breath together, you look up into his eyes, a post orgasmic haze hovering around the both of you. Your hand lifts, trembling a bit, and you push the soft curls back from where they were hanging over his forehead into his eyes so you could have a clearer view.
“You okay?” he whispers, studying every inch of your face to make sure there was no lingering soreness. “I went a little harder towards the end there. Was that okay?”
You smile because this was Spencer. Soft and sweet and yours. Always checking in and returning his gentle self after taking control and giving you the most pleasurable sensations you’ve ever felt in your life.
“Spencer,” you breathe out, pulling his head closer to yours to steal a kiss in between words. “That was amazing. Best wedding night ever.”
He presses another peck to your lips, then raises his head to look into your eyes with a silly smile forming on his lips.
“Best wedding night ever?” he laughs, poking the tip of your nose. “This was your only wedding night ever.”
You giggle as you reach up to poke his nose back.
“Yeah, but in my imagination if I had ever had any other wedding nights, this would be the best.”
He caught your wrist before you could poke his nose again, and a slow smirk spread over his face before kissing your forehead over and over again.
“I guess we just have to get married over and over to each other so we can have more wedding nights and do a comparison of all of them,” he smiles as you begin to giggle again, warmth from the sounds of your laugh spreading throughout your chest. “That way I can run a statistical analysis.”
“Only you would suggest analyzing our wedding night for science,” you smile as he continues pressing kisses to your cheeks and forehead.
He smiles as he leaves one more peck on your nose, before rolling off you and standing up.
“Where are you going?” you pout, the warmth that had been present only seconds ago now gone cold.
He smiles as he reaches down to stroke your hair.
“I am going to get something to clean you up,” he whispers, “and then…we’re going to order so much room service.”
You perked up immediately.
“Room service? Can we get whatever we want?”
He laughs as he comes back with a warm washcloth, sitting beside you on the bed again.
“Whatever we want, angel,” he says softly as he leans down to gently clean you between your thighs. His touch was so soft, wiping away whatever remained and soothing any lingering soreness.
After he finished and quickly disposed of the washcloth, he lay back beside you and you immediately found yourself back in his arms— like you were two opposite ends of a magnet.
“I love you,” he murmured against your forehead. “My lovely, perfect wife.”
You looked up from your cocoon in his arms, and met his eyes, overflowing with adoration.
“I love you too,” you whisper back, eyes fluttering as you tried to force yourself to keep them open— not wanting this night to end quicker than it had to.
“Hey,” Spencer breathed against your forehead, brushing a strand of hair out of your eyes, “you can go to sleep…I’ll be here. I’ll always be here. We have tomorrow like this, then our honeymoon… then forever.”
Your stomach flipped again at the mention of forever, as his breath warmed your ear. You were plastered to him, like you were an extension of his body.
“Don’t let go,” is the only thing you come up with to whisper back, because if you tried to say more you might start crying from emotion like earlier.
He immediately shakes his head, like even the notion was absurd.
“Never ever” he whispered back with one final sleepy kiss to your forehead.
You fall asleep mid mumble of ‘I love you’, and he just smiled against your forehead, squeezing even tighter.
You didn’t have to finish the sentence. He already knew. You had forever to say it again, anyways.
****
hiiii! i hope you guys enjoyed, this took me like a wholeee day to write! if you liked it pretty please like and reblog! it would mean so so much to me!
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