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Please be respectful, I suport LGBT rights and support gaza and Lebanon, and basicaly the basic human rights of all, if you dissagree it would be best if you don't interact with my page (fuck off xoxo) ♡
based on a request by @spockstarss left on this fic xx
Summary: 5 Times You Felt It, and 1 Time He Said It.
Warnings: brief mention of injury, that's it :))
★・・・・・・★
★ I. The Reception ★
You'd learned, in your first month aboard the Enterprise, to keep your shields up around most of the crew out of simple courtesy. Humans broadcast so loudly, so constantly, that leaving yourself open to it was like standing in the middle of a crowded room where everyone was shouting at once. Betazoid empathic sense worked passively at range with most species, emotion more than coherent thought, growing sharper and more specific the closer you were and the longer eye contact held; true telepathy, full thought transfer, only really worked cleanly between two Betazoids, or through deliberate touch. You filtered the ambient noise down to a low hum most days, background noise you could live inside without drowning in it.
Spock was different. Vulcan mental discipline was, as far as you understood the literature on it, built from childhood specifically to withstand telepathic intrusion, a defense against a species whose own touch telepathy made them famously easy to read if left unguarded. Spock's shields were the tightest, most disciplined thing you'd ever encountered in a non-Betazoid mind, a wall built with decades of careful practice, and for the first several months you knew him, you read essentially nothing off him at all. It should have been a relief. Mostly, you found it oddly, persistently frustrating, the one mind on the ship you actually wanted a read on being the one mind entirely closed to you. You told yourself that frustration was purely professional curiosity. You were, even then, not entirely convincing yourself.
"You are staring, Lieutenant," he said once, early on, catching you at it during a quiet stretch on the bridge.
"Occupational hazard. I keep trying to get a read on you and coming up empty. It's driving me a little mad, if I'm honest."
"I am gratified to hear my shielding is functioning as intended."
"That's not the same as gratifying for me."
"No," he agreed, something almost like amusement flickering behind otherwise perfectly composed features. "I imagine it is not."
It happened during a diplomatic reception, of all places, the kind of overlong function where you spent most of your energy politely not eavesdropping on a room full of half drunk officials broadcasting their true opinions of each other in vivid, uncharitable detail. You'd caught Spock's eye across the room at one point, held it a beat longer than strictly necessary the way you tended to when you wanted a clearer read on someone, and for less than a second, so brief you nearly convinced yourself you'd imagined it, something had leaked through that formidable wall of his. Warm. Quiet. Entirely involuntary, gone again before you could properly examine it.
You stood there a moment, glass forgotten in your hand, replaying it. It hadn't been words. Betazoid reception rarely was at range, not with anyone you weren't fully bonded to, and true telepathic exchange required a good deal more than eye contact across a crowded room. It had simply been a flavor, an impression, gone as fast as it arrived, and you told yourself, firmly, that it was nothing. A trick of a long night and too much ambient noise from a crowded room. Vulcans did not leak. That was, as far as you understood it, close to a physical law.
He crossed the room to you not long after, two glasses of something pale and Vulcan appropriate in hand, and offered you one with the same careful neutrality he offered most things.
"You appear troubled," he observed.
"Do I?"
"Your expression suggests distraction. I did not intend to imply anything further by the observation."
"I'm fine, Spock. Just working the room the hard way tonight. There's a lot of noise in here." You accepted the glass, watching him carefully, wondering if you'd catch it again if you simply held his gaze a moment longer. You didn't. Whatever had slipped through earlier had already been folded neatly back behind the wall. "Is there a reason you crossed the room, or was this purely social?"
"I observed you standing alone. I considered it a reasonable courtesy to ensure you were not in need of assistance."
"That's very logical of you."
"I endeavor to be."
You went back to your drink after he'd excused himself to rejoin the Ambassador, telling yourself it had genuinely been nothing. You did not, however, stop glancing at him for the rest of the evening, and you noticed, annoyingly, that some small, hopeful part of you was already waiting to see if it would happen again.
★ II. The Data Pad ★
It happened again a week later, in the middle of a briefing, when he'd handed you a data pad and your fingers had brushed in the exchange. Touch was the thing you'd been taught to be careful with above all else, growing up on Betazed, more than eye contact, more than proximity, skin contact was the single fastest route into another mind, which was exactly why so many Betazoids wore gloves off world and why you'd trained yourself early to keep your own hands carefully, deliberately neutral around anyone who hadn't consented to being read. You hadn't expected the same principle to work quite so effectively in reverse, on a Vulcan, of all people, whose own species treated touch telepathy as something sacred and private enough to require formal bonding rituals before it was shared at all.
And yet there it was. Not words, nothing so clear as that, just a flicker of something warm and startled, quickly and thoroughly suppressed the instant it happened, like he'd felt it slip out himself and immediately clamped back down on it before you could get a proper read.
You kept your own face carefully neutral, scanning the readouts on the pad like nothing at all had just happened, while internally you were doing the mental equivalent of standing very still so as not to spook something skittish. That was not nothing, you thought. That was, in fact, extremely something, and you know it, and you are hoping desperately that I didn't notice.
"Is something the matter?" Spock asked, when your pause apparently stretched a beat too long.
"No. Just reviewing the numbers." You handed the pad back, deliberately casual, deliberately not making a single point of contact more than necessary this time. "They check out."
"Good." He said it plainly, already moving on, already rebuilding whatever small crack had briefly shown through.
"Mister Spock," you said, before you could stop yourself, curiosity outpacing caution, "may I ask you something. Purely out of professional interest."
"You may."
"Vulcans practice touch telepathy as well, don't they. I've read some of the literature. Is it difficult, keeping that shielded constantly, day to day, around a crew you're not bonded to?"
He considered the question with more care than it probably warranted, something careful crossing his features before he answered. "It requires continuous discipline. It is not, however, typically difficult, once the necessary training has been internalized."
"Typically."
"There are, on occasion, exceptions." He said it plainly, gave nothing else away, and returned his attention to the console in front of him before you could ask what he meant by that.
You let him. You told yourself, again, that it wasn't your business, that Vulcans were entitled to whatever they were or weren't feeling without a Betazoid parsing it out from stray fragments they hadn't meant to share.
You noticed, after that, that you'd started finding excuses to hand him things directly instead of setting them down nearby. You told yourself that was a coincidence too.
★ III. The Doorway ★
It happened in small, careful increments after that, spread out over the following weeks, until you couldn't really call any single instance of it a fluke anymore. You caught it when he lingered a beat too long in doorways instead of leaving a room you were in, some warm, wordless hesitation flickering through before he caught himself and continued on. You caught it in the careful, deliberate way he always found some reason to sit near you in the mess hall, a coincidence he never once tried to make less improbable by varying it.
"You have joined me for the evening meal seven times this week," he observed once, with the particular flat delivery that meant he'd genuinely counted, rather than simply estimated.
"You joined me. I was here first."
"An accurate correction." A pause, brief, almost imperceptible. "I do not object to the frequency, for the record. I state it merely as an observation."
"Duly noted, Mister Spock."
You started keeping a kind of private, embarrassing internal ledger after exchanges like that. You didn't call it anything so obvious as evidence, not even to yourself, but that was, functionally, exactly what it was.
He sat near me again today. Third time this week.
He lingered. Again.
Stop counting, you told yourself, more than once, and did not, in fact, stop counting.
You told yourself it didn't mean anything you were entitled to act on regardless. He hadn't offered any of it. You'd simply caught it, the way you'd occasionally catch a stray thought off anyone with strong enough feeling and weak enough control, and Spock, of all people on this ship, had never once given you actual permission to know what you now, undeniably, knew. Betazoid ethics on the matter were fairly unambiguous, even for involuntary reception: what you caught by accident was not yours to act on until it was freely, deliberately offered. You'd grown up hearing that principle repeated so often it had become close to instinct, and you held to it now with more discipline than you'd expected it to actually require.
★ IV. Sickbay ★
You caught it most clearly the day you'd been injured on an away mission, nothing serious in the end, but enough that he'd carried you back to the shuttle himself rather than waiting for a stretcher, jaw tight the entire way, and for one unguarded second while he checked you over in sickbay, something had come through so loud and clear you'd nearly gasped out loud. Fear, sharp and immediate. Then, underneath it, something steadier and warmer, something that had absolutely nothing to do with simple professional concern for an injured crewmate.
He caught himself instantly. Shields snapped back into place so fast it was almost violent, a wall slamming down with real force behind it, and he stepped back, expression perfectly composed once more, and asked, with total Vulcan neutrality, whether you required anything further.
"I'm fine, Spock," you said, and meant it in more ways than one, watching him carefully rebuild the wall you'd just glimpsed clean through.
"Doctor McCoy will complete his assessment shortly. I will remain until he does."
"You don't have to."
"I am aware I do not have to." He said it plainly, already settling into the chair beside your bed without further discussion, and did not, in fact, leave until McCoy had cleared you an hour later.
You lay there in the interim, turning it over. That hadn't just been fondness. That had been fear, real and immediate, the kind that didn't come from professional concern for any crewmate, and you understood, with sudden clarity, that whatever this was had gotten considerably further along than either of you had let on, even to yourselves. You thought, too, of something you'd read once in a xenopsychology text on Vulcan emotional suppression, that the harder a Vulcan worked to control a given feeling, the more forcefully it tended to surface when control finally slipped, however briefly. If that was true, whatever you'd just felt off him hadn't been a small thing at all. It had been something he'd been suppressing with considerable effort for quite some time.
"You are staring at me again," Spock said, without opening his eyes from where he sat, hands folded, apparently meditating in the chair beside you.
"Occupational hazard. Told you that already."
"So you did." The faintest suggestion of something almost like warmth colored the words, gone again before you could be entirely sure you hadn't imagined it. "Rest, Lieutenant. I will be here."
You didn't say anything further. You never did. It felt, somehow, like a private thing he hadn't chosen to give you, something you'd caught rather than been offered, and the least you could do in return was let him work out what to do with it on his own terms and his own time, however long that turned out to take.
★ V. The Question ★
It took a long time.
You watched him, over the following months, doing what you privately thought of as very Spock things with the knowledge he clearly hadn't fully admitted to himself yet. He read, extensively, you noticed, in the ship's database, several texts on Betazoid customs and telepathy that he had absolutely no operational reason to be reading, cross referenced against the Vulcan science library's own material on interspecies telepathic compatibility. He began, subtly, adjusting the way he shielded around you specifically, not opening up exactly, but softening the wall by careful degrees, like a man conducting a long, deliberate experiment on himself and not yet ready to report his findings.
You let him run the experiment, mostly because you didn't see any kinder alternative. You answered his careful, oddly personal questions about Betazoid telepathy with more patience than you'd have extended anyone else, because you understood, better than he probably realized, that he wasn't asking out of simple academic curiosity, and that whatever conclusion he was working toward, he needed to arrive at it in his own methodical way, on his own timeline, however maddening that timeline occasionally was to sit through.
"May I ask you something," he said, one evening in the science lab, months into this slow, unspoken thing neither of you had named, "regarding Betazoid telepathic reception."
"You can always ask." You kept your tone light, even as your pulse picked up slightly. You had a fairly strong suspicion where this was going.
"Is it possible," he said, with the particular careful precision of a man choosing every word with enormous deliberation, "for a telepath of your species to perceive emotion that the originating party has not consciously chosen to project? Involuntarily, as it were."
There it is, you thought, keeping your face carefully arranged into polite academic interest. Five months, and here it is.
"It's possible," you said, considering your answer carefully, aware of exactly how much weight this particular question was carrying, and how little he probably realized you already knew the answer from firsthand, months long experience. "Strong emotion sometimes slips past even careful shielding. It usually only happens with people who feel something intensely enough that full suppression becomes difficult to maintain consistently. It's more common with touch or close proximity, but I've read of cases where distance and eye contact alone were sufficient, given strong enough feeling on one side."
Something in his expression shifted, minute, controlled, but there. "I see."
"Is there a follow up question, or was that the extent of your curiosity."
"There is a follow up question." He paused, longer this time, hands folding behind his back in the posture you'd learned meant he was steadying himself. "Would such a telepath, having perceived something the other party had not intended to reveal, be ethically bound to disclose that perception, or would discretion be considered the more appropriate response."
"Discretion," you said, without hesitation. "Definitely discretion. What's caught by accident isn't yours to act on until it's freely offered. That's more or less the first rule any Betazoid learns."
"I see," he said again, quieter this time, and you understood, watching him, that he'd just learned something that mattered a great deal to him, though he gave you no further indication of exactly what.
"Was there a reason you were curious?"
"Purely academic," he said, and you let him have the lie, because you understood, watching the careful way he didn't quite meet your eyes afterward, that he was close now, closer than he'd ever been, and that pushing him wouldn't get you there any faster than simply, patiently, letting him arrive on his own.
You went back to your own work after that, heart going faster than the moment probably warranted, silently willing him to just say it already, and knowing, with something like fond exasperation, that he absolutely would not be rushed.
★ +1. The Observation Deck ★
It was another two weeks before he actually did.
You were on the observation deck, alone, watching the stretch of stars go by the way you often did after a long shift, when he found you there, hands clasped behind his back in the particular posture he adopted when he'd rehearsed something and was determined to see it through despite every instinct telling him to retreat.
You felt him before you turned around. Not words, still, not even now, just a wash of nerves so uncharacteristic of him that you nearly laughed out loud from the sheer novelty of it.
"Lieutenant," he said, formal in the way he only ever was when he was covering for nerves.
"Spock." You turned to face him properly, letting him see you'd noticed. "You can drop the rank. It's just us up here."
"Noted." A small, visible effort at recalibration. "I have been attempting to determine the most logical manner in which to address something for some time now. I find I have been unsuccessful. I am uncertain logic applies cleanly to this particular matter, which is itself a novel and somewhat unsettling realization."
You kept your own expression carefully neutral, giving him the space to get there on his own, even though every instinct in you wanted to close the distance and simply spare him the trouble.
"Take your time."
"I do not believe I have concealed my regard for you as thoroughly as I intended to," he said, plain, quiet, the words coming out with the particular care of someone who'd clearly practiced this and still found it difficult to actually deliver. "I suspect, in fact, that you have been aware of it for some time, given your species' particular sensitivities, and that you have shown me considerable patience in allowing me to arrive at this admission in my own manner rather than forcing the issue."
"I wasn't going to push you into anything you weren't ready for," you said, and thought, privately, of the sickbay bed, the doorways, the data pad, five separate moments you'd carried quietly for months rather than hand back to him before he was ready.
"I am aware. I find that fact, upon reflection, to be among the things I regard most highly about you." He held your gaze, steady despite the visible effort it was costing him. "I have developed feelings for you that exceed the parameters of simple friendship or professional respect. I recognize this admission is, by human standards, considerably overdue. I hope it is not, by your own standards, too late to be of any use."
You let yourself smile, finally, months of careful, patient waiting settling into something warm and entirely worth it.
"It's not too late, Spock. It was never going to be too late. I think some part of me has known that since the reception, months ago, when you looked at me across that room and forgot, just for a second, to keep the door shut."
Something flickered across his face, surprise quickly folding into quiet understanding. "You have known considerably longer than I gave you credit for, then."
"Five times, actually. If you're keeping count."
"I was not aware there was a count."
"There's always a count," you said, and he almost, almost laughed at that, something warm and unguarded slipping loose in his expression.
"Given the circumstances," he said, after a moment, "I find myself curious whether you would consider a more deliberate exchange. A meld, properly conducted and consented to, rather than the involuntary fragments you have apparently been collecting without complaint for the better part of half a year."
"Are you asking to show me on purpose what you've been leaking on accident?"
"That is, essentially, an accurate summary, yes."
"I'd like that," you said, and meant it more than the simple words let on.
"That is..." He paused, something almost like relief crossing his controlled features. "That is satisfactory."
"Just satisfactory?"
"Highly satisfactory," he amended, and the corner of his mouth curved, just slightly, into the smallest, most genuine almost smile you'd ever seen him allow himself, no careful shielding around it at all this time, letting you feel exactly how thoroughly, and how gladly, he meant it.
★・・・・・・★
a/n: hope this is everything you wished for and more, I wasn't really sure where to take this so I decided to try the 5 +1 format I keep seeing on here, if you hated lnk lmao
Do u ever write something and then are immediately like woah.... this is a bit too much
Like people do not want to be reading that, and for the sake of my own mental health I should not be writing this
Let this be a sighn that u dont have to write eveything that pops into ur brain or every request, and if u do want to write it, it's okay to tell instead of show eveything, u know.
Like u can mention sensitive topics without writing them, u dont owe it to anyone to write trauma on a page, you can say no xx
summary: you had been free for many moons, yet your mind still drifted to what could have been, or rather who you could have been with, but you can't allow yourself to think like that, you have too much unfinished business. but what happens if your unfinished business lead you straight back to him...
warnings: cannon is purely a suggestion at this point, cannon typical violent, slight use of suggestive language, gender roles and expectations, men unfortunately talk like men (booo), fem!reader, no use of Y/n, Robb stark is cool
★・・・・・・★
You dreamed of him again that night, which was becoming, if you were honest with yourself, something closer to a habit than an accident.
It was always some small, ordinary thing. His hand at the small of your back, guiding you through a doorway you didn't recognize. The particular way he'd said your name once, low and careful, as though it were something that might break if he said it wrong. Some nights it was his mouth you dreamed of, unhurried in a way the waking man had never once had the chance to be, or his hands finding places they had no business finding, patient and certain and nothing at all like the brief, practical violence of a sword fight. You always woke faster than you wanted to, and slower than you should have, the ghost of the dream still buzzing faintly beneath your skin long after your eyes had opened. This time the fire had long since burned to embers, and you lay there a while longer than you meant to, staring at a ceiling that belonged to some inn whose name you hadn't bothered to learn, and let yourself wonder, just for a moment, what might have been.
You could have stayed. You could have married him that morning, worn the dress they'd made for you, said the words in front of the godswood the way you were meant to, and by now you might have been lady of Winterfell in truth rather than rumor, sitting at his side while he learned to be the lord his father was training him to become. You might have helped him the way he'd promised you could. You might have ridden out beside his mother, learned the names of every village between here and the Wall, made yourself useful in all the small, permitted ways a lady is allowed to be useful.
You let yourself feel the shape of that regret for exactly as long as it took to recognize it for what it was.
Then you thought, with the particular clarity that always arrived once you'd let a feeling finish saying its piece, that it was stupid. It was worse than stupid, it was small, a girl's idea of what a good life looked like, dressed up as though it were wisdom simply because it came wrapped in longing. Helped him, you thought. As if that would have been enough. As if riding out twice a year with his mother, learning names, settling disputes some steward had already half settled, would have amounted to anything close to what you did now, in a season, without asking anyone's permission first. You would have been confined by politics you had no patience for, tangled in alliances that mattered to men in halls and meant nothing at all to a woman bleeding out in a ditch because her husband decided her silence was owed to him. You would have spent your whole life doing good in inches. You had chosen, instead, to do it in miles.
And it had never only been for you. That was the part you suspected Robb, for all his good intentions, would never fully understand, however many times you tried to explain it to him. You had run because you could, because your father, for all his faults, had let you learn a blade in secret when he thought no one important was watching, because you had been given, by accident of birth and a strange indulgent kind of love, exactly the tools a woman needed to slip her cage clean. Most women were not so fortunate. Most women's cages were not gilded and pleasant and lined with silk, easy to romanticize from a garden bench. Most women's cages were stubborn, ordinary, unremarkable things, a husband's fist, a father's ledger, a village too small and too frightened to say a word against the man who owned it. You had used the one door your privilege had cut into your own cage to go and pry a few others open on your way past. That was the whole of it. That was the only justification you had ever needed, and the only one you intended to keep giving yourself on the nights the doubt came creeping back in.
You almost wished, some nights, that you had never met him at all.
It would have been so much simpler. You could have hated the idea of him cleanly, the way you'd hated the idea of the marriage itself before you'd ever sat across from him in that garden, some faceless lord with a Northern name who wanted nothing from you but an heir and a quiet wife. Instead you had his voice in your head at inconvenient hours, low and certain, telling you that you didn't have to be helpless. You had the particular color his eyes went right before he said something he meant entirely. You had, gods help you, far too much time alone on the road to think about his mouth, about the several unbearably long seconds in the dirt where he'd been close enough that you could have closed the distance yourself if you'd been a slightly less sensible woman, about what his hands might have felt like doing something considerably less practical than holding a sword. You dreamed things you had no business dreaming about a man you'd knocked flat on his back and left in a cloud of dust not a fortnight past, and you woke from them each time feeling faintly, thoroughly ridiculous.
It would be easier, you thought, if he'd simply been a disappointing man. You could have forgotten a disappointing man by now.
You sat up instead, because the sky outside the window had gone the particular grey that meant morning was no longer optional, and pushed the thought of him down into the same place you kept everything else that wasn't useful to you at present. There would be time for it later, perhaps, in some life that hadn't arrived yet and might never. For now there was a war moving through the riverlands like a slow bruise spreading beneath skin, and villages in its path that had no one else coming for them, and you had work to do.
You found the nearest tavern three days later, in a town small enough that no one thought twice about a hooded traveler taking a corner table and nursing a cup of watered ale far slower than any honest thirst required. You had gotten good at this particular kind of invisibility, the trick of sitting exactly still enough and exactly unremarkable enough that a room full of drinking men simply forgot you were there at all, more interesting to themselves than to a stranger in a corner. It served you well, most nights. Men said things in front of furniture they would never say in front of a woman they'd actually noticed.
The talk, tonight, was of Robb Stark.
Robb Stark's host had taken a keep two days east, someone was saying, clean, no siege, no long grinding wait at the walls, because the young wolf had a man on the inside and a plan already coming together well before his army had arrived to make use of it. Gates opened in the dead of night, the garrison disarmed without spilling more blood than absolutely necessary.
You had to fight down the urge to laugh into your cup. A man on the inside. A plan already laid. As if Robb had known a single thing about it beforehand, as if he'd done anything at all but wake to find the gates standing open and a garrison already disarmed, and decide, sensibly, to be grateful rather than to ask too many questions about his own good fortune. People always did prefer a story where the lord had planned his own victories. It was so much tidier than the truth, which was that he'd had no notion whatsoever, and had simply been lucky enough, this once, to have you on his side of a war you'd sworn not to take sides in.
You let yourself have exactly one small, satisfied thought before you put it away. You're welcome, my lord.
You had told yourself, more than once, that you would not take sides in this war. You had built your whole crusade on the principle of it, cruelty punished wherever you found it, no banner, no house, no lord's cause worth bending your knife toward simply because his sigil happened to be a wolf instead of a lion or a stag. But you knew the kind of man Robb Stark was, had known it since a garden years ago, and there was a difference, you told yourself, between choosing a side in a war and choosing the version of the world you'd rather wake up in once it ended. A kingdom under his rule was not nothing. It might, if the gods were feeling generous, mean you were no longer fighting this particular war against cruelty entirely alone.
It was the second conversation, drifting over from a table nearer the fire, that made your blood run cold.
"The lady," one of them was saying, leaning in like the words alone were worth good coin, "the one Stark had betrothed. They found her, out on the road, and lost her again just as quick. No one seems to know how. One moment she's meant to be delivered home proper, next she's gone into the trees like she was never caught at all."
"Free as a bird, then," another said, not without a note of admiration.
"Free." A third voice, sourer than the other two. "There's no such thing as free for a woman alone out there, whatever she's calling herself now. Not if she means to see another winter."
None of them, you noted with a private, tired sort of relief, seemed to have connected the vanished lady to the masked stranger half the realm sang songs about.
You thought, privately, that the sour one had more of the truth in him than he likely realized. Free was a word men used easily about a life they'd never once had to survive. You had earned every mile of whatever this was with a blade always in reach and your eyes half turned toward the trees, and you would go on earning it for as long as you meant to keep breathing. It was not, by any measure those men would recognize, freedom. It was only the closest thing to it you had ever been offered.
"She'll not last the winter alone," the first man said again, almost sympathetic now that his companions had soured the mood. "Pretty thing like that."
"I'd not say no to finding out for myself what a pretty thing like that feels like under a man, comely or not," the second said, and the words landed flat and ugly in your chest before you'd even finished hearing them.
The laughter that followed, low and easy and entirely unbothered, was somehow worse than the sentence itself.
"Wouldn't have to ask twice either," the third agreed, "out there alone with no one left to stop you."
You sat very still, both hands wrapped around a cup you had entirely stopped pretending to drink from, and felt something old and familiar curdle low in your stomach, the particular nausea of being spoken about as though you were a thing men might have found rather than a woman who had very deliberately not been found at all.
You left before the cup was empty, tossed a coin onto the table you didn't bother counting, and walked out into air cold enough to clear most of what you'd just heard from your head. Most of it. Not all of it.
It was only once you were well clear of the tavern, boots crunching frost on the road, that the more useful part of your mind finally caught up with the rest of you and asked the question that actually mattered. How had any of that reached a tavern this far south at all. Not the crude talk, men could invent that out of nothing more than a rumor and a full cup, but the rest of it. That you'd been found. That you'd vanished again after. Details that precise did not simply grow out of nothing.
It would only be a matter of time, if word had already traveled this far, before someone clever enough put the missing lady and the masked stranger together and realized they were looking at the same woman.
And then, cold and sudden as the night air itself, the anger arrived. Because there was only one place a story with that much detail could have started. You had told no one. You had been careful, deliberately, exhaustingly careful, for exactly this reason. Which meant it had come from Robb's own men, from the very company that had watched you unmasked on that road and, apparently, gone on to tell every tavern between there and here about it. You had not asked them to keep your secret out of vanity. You had asked because your life depended on it, and Robb, of all people, should have understood that well enough to make certain his men understood it too.
Why, you thought, walking faster now, your jaw set hard enough to ache. Why would he let that happen. Why would he not have thought to guard something that mattered so much, when he'd sworn, in that very same breath, that he understood exactly what a cage looked like for you.
You needed to speak with him. Properly, and soon, before this particular fire spread any further than it already had.
By the time you reached your horse, you had the beginning of a plan, small and sharp and entirely your own, and you kept the rest of it close to your chest the whole ride back toward wherever his camp had moved to next.
★・・・・・・★
Robb heard the men talking about it before he meant to, the way he seemed to hear most things he'd rather not, passing close enough to a cookfire on his way back from the horse lines that their voices carried further than they'd intended.
"Went through that garrison like they weren't even holding steel," one of them was saying, delighted with the memory of it. "Never seen anything like it. Three of ours down before the rest of them even drew a proper guard."
"I heard she took Aldric's blade clean out of his hand before he knew it was gone," another added, something like genuine admiration in his voice. "Man's been training since he could walk, and she disarmed him like he was a green boy holding his first stick."
"Best I've seen with a blade in a long while, man or woman," a third said, thoughtful rather than mocking. "My father always swore the North bred hard women, up past the Wall especially, but I never put much stock in it till now."
Robb slowed without quite meaning to, something in his chest loosening that he hadn't realized had been sitting there, tight, for longer than just tonight. This was the thing you'd wanted, wasn't it, the whole reason for any of it. To be seen for what you actually were rather than what your name or your face happened to suggest you might be. He nearly smiled, listening to them. Nearly let himself walk on and leave the men to their well-earned admiration.
Then the tone shifted, the way it so often did once enough ale had gone around a fire.
"Aye, and glad she's on our side, whatever she is." Laughter, easy and unbothered, the kind that turned his stomach before he'd even fully understood what had prompted it. "Wonder if the young wolf's finally learned his lesson about letting a woman like that get away. Might share more than a war with her yet, if he's got the sense the gods gave him. Wouldn't half mind seeing that wedding night myself, given how she handles a blade. Imagine what else she'd—"
Robb was standing at the edge of the firelight before he'd fully decided to move, whatever calm the first half of the conversation had lent him burned off entirely in the space of a single sentence.
"Enough." One word, low and cold enough that the fire itself seemed to shrink back from it. The laughter died instantly. "She's worth ten of any man here with a blade in her hand, myself included, and the next man who speaks of her like that in my hearing again will find out exactly how she disarmed Aldric so quickly. Are we understood?"
No one said anything further. He hadn't expected them to.
He walked the rest of the way back to his tent in a silence that felt considerably heavier than the one he'd interrupted, the sour turn the men's talk had taken sitting uncomfortably somewhere behind his ribs, that offhand mention of a wedding dredging up a memory he generally kept somewhere he didn't have to look at it too often.
He'd been sitting in Jon's chambers, that morning, cup untouched in his hand, when he'd finally found the words to say it aloud.
She's gone.
Two words, and Jon had gone very still over whatever he'd been sharpening, and Theon, for once in his life, hadn't immediately filled the silence with something clever.
"Gone," Theon had repeated eventually, carefully, the way a man repeats a word he suspects he's misheard. "Gone where?"
"I don't know. No one knows. She left in the night, on her own horse, and left a note saying not to look for her." Robb had turned his cup once between his hands, not drinking from it. "Her father's beside himself. My mother won't say much, though I think some part of her admires it more than she'll admit to."
"What did you do?" Theon had asked, entirely too delighted for the seriousness of the moment.
"I didn't do anything."
"You must have done something. Women don't simply vanish out of windows the night before their wedding because a man was pleasant to them in a garden." Theon had leaned forward, grinning now despite himself. "Come on, then. What did you say to her?"
So Robb had told them. All of it, or nearly, the garden and the roses and the argument about cages and usefulness, the way he'd told her he wanted an equal rather than an ornament, the way she'd left before he'd finished making his case.
Jon and Theon had exchanged a look that Robb had not entirely cared for.
"That's rather a lot, for a first meeting," Theon had said, delicately, as though handling something fragile.
"I meant every word of it."
"I don't doubt that you did. I'm simply saying most men manage to get through an entire betrothal without once telling the girl she's allowed to argue with them and correct their mistakes. You built the woman an escape route out of pure sincerity."
"You basically gave her permission to run," Jon had said, quieter, though not unkindly.
"Maybe I did." Robb hadn't been able to argue with that, not really, not when some part of him suspected Jon was right. "I don't want to force a girl into a marriage she doesn't want, Jon. If telling her that meant she felt she could leave, then perhaps that's simply what needed to happen."
"Noble," Theon had said, though the word carried a faint edge of disbelief. "Absolutely useless to the North's alliance with her father, but noble." He'd taken a pull of his wine, entirely too pleased with his own wit. "Shame, too. From what little anyone actually knows, she's meant to be extraordinarily beautiful. All that wasted potential, gone out a window in the dark. I do hope wherever she's run to, she at least—"
"Don't." Robb's voice had come out sharper than he'd intended, cutting Theon off mid-sentence. "Don't speak about my betrothed like that."
Theon had raised both eyebrows, hands lifted in mock surrender. "Like what? I hadn't even finished the sentence."
"I don't much care. She's not a jest for you to finish."
"She's also, forgive me, not really your betrothed anymore, is she." Theon hadn't been able to resist it, delivered with the particular relish of a man who knows he's poking somewhere tender. "She's run. Which rather ends the arrangement, wouldn't you say? Which means, unless I'm mistaken, her father owes you a replacement. Which sister are you taking?"
"I'm not taking a sister."
"I think you rather have to."
"I'm not."
Jon had set the knife down properly then, the teasing gone from his face. "It's not ideal, Robb, I know. But the alliance still matters, whatever's happened. Her father will offer, and it would go a long way toward smoothing over what's already an embarrassment for both houses if you accepted."
"I won't marry a woman who isn't her simply because it's convenient for an alliance."
"Robb—"
"I mean it, Jon. I won't wed someone who isn't here to argue me out of it."
A silence had followed that, longer than the ones before it, Jon's expression shifting into something careful, almost wary, while Theon simply stared, his wine forgotten halfway to his mouth.
"Don't," Jon had said slowly, "tell me you're in love with a woman you met exactly once."
Robb hadn't answered that. He hadn't needed to. His silence had done the job well enough on its own, and he still remembered, with the same uncomfortable clarity it always brought with it, the exact moment Theon's face had gone from disbelieving to something closer to pity, and the way Jon had simply looked at him for a long moment before saying, quietly, almost to himself, "Oh, gods. Robb."
"Robb," Theon had echoed, considerably less delicately. "Oh, gods, Robb. You are. You absolute fool."
He hadn't corrected either of them. There hadn't seemed to be much point.
He was still turning the memory over by the time he reached his tent, and it took him longer than it should have to notice the fire had burned low, and longer still to convince the rest of him that sleep was worth attempting at all tonight. He lay down anyway, eventually, because a war did not pause for a man's inconvenient heart, and told himself, as he had told himself more nights than he cared to count, that he would think of something else entirely by morning.
He knew better than to believe that, even as he told himself. His dreams had a way of circling back to you no matter what he filled his waking hours with, and more mornings than he cared to admit found him reaching for a space beside him that had never once actually been filled, only imagined, which somehow managed to be worse than if it had never existed to be missed at all. He let his eyes close anyway, because there was little else to be done about any of it tonight, and let whatever dream came take him where it would.
★・・・・・・★
The Stark camp was easier to slip into than it had any right to be, this deep into a war, though you supposed sentries grew careless in the hours before dawn when nothing has happened all night and nothing seems likely to. You had done harder things than steal past sleeping soldiers into a lord's own tent. You almost felt guilty about how simple it was.
He was asleep on his back, one arm thrown loose across the furs, entirely unaware anyone had come. You allowed yourself one unguarded moment simply looking at him before you did anything else, some traitorous part of you noting how much younger he looked like this, jaw unclenched, the constant weight of command finally set down for a few hours. Handsome in a way that had nothing to do with strategy or wolves or the crown everyone kept insisting he'd need eventually. You told yourself it was assessment. It was not entirely assessment.
You put the thought away where it belonged and crossed the tent without a sound, knelt beside him, and pressed the flat of your blade lightly beneath his jaw before you let your voice do the rest.
"You scream, you die, Robb Stark." Quiet, even, close enough to his ear that he'd feel the words more than hear them. "I'd really rather not give some poor boy more work to do, cleaning your sheets after."
He woke instantly, the way men who've spent a year at war learn to wake, every muscle going rigid at once, and for one full heartbeat you watched real fear move behind his eyes before recognition caught up and chased it out. His breath left him in something between a laugh and a groan.
"Gods." Low, careful not to move his throat any further into the blade than necessary. "You could simply knock."
"I could. I decided against it."
"You could have said as much before drawing a knife on me in my own tent."
"I could have. I decided against that too." You didn't move the blade yet. Some small, unkind part of you wanted to see how long it took him to fully relax now that he knew whose knife it was. Longer than you expected. His eyes stayed wary even once the rest of him had gone still, some old soldier's caution refusing to stand down simply because the face above him was a familiar one.
"You heard something," he said. Not a question.
"I heard several somethings. All of them ugly. Most of them true."
You told him then, plainly, without much softening, because there did not seem to be any use in it. What the men had said in the tavern. How much they had known, and how precisely they had known it. What that precision meant, if word had already traveled that far south, for how much longer you had before someone clever enough put the pieces together entirely.
He listened without interrupting, and when you finished, something tightened in his jaw that had nothing to do with the blade still resting against it.
"I'm sorry," he said. "Truly."
"Sorry doesn't undo it."
"No. It doesn't." He held your gaze steadily, not flinching from it, which you found, against your better judgment, that you respected. "But I can't control what men say once they've had a drink, or who happens to be standing close enough to overhear it. I can't control how loud they are, or how far a story travels once it's left my camp. I gave the order that what happened on that road stayed between the men who saw it. I can't make certain every man kept it."
You opened your mouth to argue and found, somewhat to your own irritation, that you didn't have much to argue with. Men talked. Men always talked, drink loosened tongues faster than any order could tighten them, and you had known that long before tonight, had built half your life around the assumption that secrets leaked eventually no matter how carefully you tried to hold them. He was right. It was infuriatingly, inconveniently right, and the small, logical part of your mind that rarely got a say once the rest of you was already moving asked, quite reasonably, why you had felt it necessary to ride half a night and climb into a war camp for a conversation you could have predicted the shape of from three towns away.
The truth, when you let yourself actually look at it, was considerably simpler than any of the reasons you'd given yourself on the ride here.
You had wanted to see him.
You lowered the blade at last, sitting back on your heels, and sheathed it with a great deal more care than the moment strictly required.
"Thank you," he said, rubbing absently at his throat as he pushed himself upright.
"Hardly seems something you should thank me for. Not killing you."
"Not for that." He studied you a moment in the dark, something warmer than gratitude moving behind it. "For what you did for us. For me."
"It was a logical move. Nothing more."
"I thought you didn't take sides in this war."
"I don't."
"Are you certain?"
"You were always going to seize that keep, Robb Stark, with or without me. I simply made certain there wasn't quite so much blood on the ground when you did."
"Hm." He said it slowly, considering, the corner of his mouth threatening something that wasn't quite a smile. "You don't believe that. Not really."
"I believe it perfectly well."
"I think," he said, "you don't even believe yourself."
"You presume a great deal for a man who woke to a knife at his throat not five minutes past."
"I presume very little. I simply pay attention." He pushed himself further upright against the furs, wincing slightly at whatever ache the sudden waking had cost him, and nodded toward the small space beside him. "Sit. If you're staying long enough to argue with me, you might as well be comfortable doing it."
"I should go soon. I shouldn't have come at all, strictly speaking."
"Sit anyway." Not quite an order. Not quite not one either. "Please."
You sat.
He watched you settle, and something in his face eased into an expression you hadn't seen on him before, not in the garden, not on that road with his men groaning in the dirt around you. Simple, unguarded pleasure, the kind men rarely let themselves wear so plainly.
"What," you asked, "are you doing?"
"Nothing." The smile didn't move. "I'm glad to see you. That's all."
"Well. I'm glad I didn't have to spill your blood across your sheets. Small mercies for both of us."
"High praise, from you."
"You'll take what you're given, my lord."
"I generally do." He studied you a moment longer, the firelight low and orange across half his face, and some of the wariness from earlier had finally, fully drained out of him, replaced by something that looked dangerously close to contentment. "Tell me something. Anything. It's been months since that road, and I find I know almost nothing about where you've actually been, only what the taverns choose to make up about it."
"The taverns are rarely accurate."
"I'd gathered that much myself, tonight."
You told him some of it, then. Not all of it, you weren't yet fool enough for all of it, but enough. A winter spent in a village so far north the snow never fully melted, where you'd stayed three months longer than you meant to because the old woman who'd taken you in reminded you, in some indefinable way, of a version of home you'd never actually had. A lord in the riverlands who'd nearly caught you properly, once, and the ridiculous, undignified manner of your escape, out a kitchen window, into a pig pen, smelling foul enough afterward that no man had come within ten feet of you for a full day. He laughed at that, properly laughed, the sound of it filling the small tent in a way that made you acutely aware of how close together you were sitting.
In turn, he told you about the war in the flat, tired way men speak of things they've grown almost too used to, the marches and the councils and the small, grinding decisions that added up to more weight than any single battle. But he told you other things too, smaller ones. That Grey Wind had taken to sleeping across the tent flap most nights, as though he'd appointed himself a second guard Robb hadn't asked for. That Jon wrote when he could, brief and dutiful letters from the Wall that said far less than Robb suspected he meant to say. That his mother's letters had grown shorter and more anxious as the war dragged on, though she never once said so outright.
"You miss them," you said. Not a question either, this time.
"Every day." He said it simply, without performance. "You'd understand that, I think. Better than most."
You did. You said nothing, because there was nothing to say that wouldn't have cost you more than you were ready to spend tonight, and let the silence sit instead, comfortable in a way silences rarely were with anyone else.
It was you who broke it, in the end, because you had never been especially good at leaving well enough alone once a question had lodged itself somewhere behind your ribs.
"Why did you never marry?"
He went still in a way that had nothing to do with the knife, which was long since sheathed and forgotten on the ground beside you. "You know why."
"I know what you told yourself, but I want to know actually why, the reasons that linger in the quiet, on the nights no one else was listening." You held his gaze, unwilling to let him retreat into something easier. "You're heir to Winterfell, Robb. An unmarried heir in the middle of a war is a problem someone will eventually insist on solving for you, whether you like the solution or not. So why let them keep insisting? Why not simply choose a good alliance, a powerful bond, and put what could have been between us properly to bed?"
"Because I made a promise." He said it plainly, the way he said most things that actually mattered to him, without any of the polish he gave the rest of the world. "Not the betrothal itself. That was my father's doing, and neither of us had much say in the shape of it. I mean what I told you in that garden. I told you I don't forget my promises, and I meant it, and marrying some other woman because the first one proved harder to hold onto than I expected felt like exactly the kind of forgetting I'd sworn I wouldn't do."
"That's a great deal of loyalty to spend on a woman who left you standing at an altar."
"You didn't leave me at an altar. You left before it could become one." Something almost like humor moved behind his eyes, though the rest of his face stayed serious. "There's a difference, and I've had a great deal of time to consider it."
"You've thought about this a great deal, apparently."
"More than I'd admit to anyone." The humor deepened, briefly, before settling back into something quieter. "I told myself, for a long while, that I was simply being stubborn. That it was pride, or duty, or some idea of honor I'd inherited from my father and never properly examined. It took longer than it should have to admit it was simpler than any of that."
"And what is it, simply?"
"You know what it is." He said it low, and did not look away from you when he said it, and something in the tent had gone very quiet and very warm all at once, the fire down to embers, the two of you close enough now that you weren't entirely certain which of you had closed the distance.
You should have laughed it off. You had a dozen ready deflections for exactly this kind of moment, sharp and easy and entirely reliable, and not one of them came when you reached for it. Instead you found yourself simply looking at him, at the particular way the low light caught along his jaw, at the small, unguarded hope he wasn't bothering to hide anymore, and thought, with a clarity that frightened you rather more than any knife fight ever had, that it would take almost nothing at all to close the last of the distance yourself.
His hand came up, slow, giving you every chance to pull away before it happened, and brushed a loose strand of hair back from your face with a gentleness that undid something in your chest far more thoroughly than any of his swordplay ever had. You did not pull away. You were fairly certain, in that moment, that you couldn't have if you'd tried.
Then, somewhere beyond the canvas walls, a horn sounded, distant and ordinary, some sentry marking the changing of the watch, and the spell broke as suddenly as it had gathered.
You sat back first. He let you.
Grey light had begun creeping in under the edge of the tent flap while neither of you had been paying attention to it, the particular pale color that meant dawn was no longer a comfortable distance away but an actual, immediate problem. You had stayed far longer than you'd meant to. You had done a great many things tonight you hadn't meant to.
"I need to go," you said, already reaching for your cloak. "Before the camp wakes properly."
"I know."
You paused at the tent flap, cloak half fastened, and found you couldn't quite make yourself simply leave without saying something first, though you weren't entirely certain what that something was meant to be.
"I'm sorry," you said.
"No."
"No?"
"No."
"You mean to say I shouldn't be?"
"You shouldn't be." He hadn't moved from where he sat, watching you with that same steady, unhurried certainty. "You have nothing to apologize for. Not for coming here with a knife, not for leaving before dawn, not for any of it."
"Good." A small, unwilling smile pulled at your mouth despite yourself. "Because I meant what I said earlier, about your men. I forgive you for it, if that's worth anything. I don't think you could have stopped it even if you'd tried harder than you did."
"Generous." He returned the smile, tired and real. "You have your duty, same as I have mine. Go, my betrothed. I'll see you next time." A pause, deliberate, the corner of his mouth tipping further. "I'm still waiting for my rematch, if you recall. You never did let me finish that fight properly."
You considered him a moment longer, cloak fastened now, one hand already on the tent flap, and let yourself have one last unguarded look before you put the mask back on, in every sense that mattered.
"It won't be a long time this time, my lord," you said. "I promise you that much."
Then you were gone into the grey dark before he could answer, moving the way you always did when you left him, like something that had never once belonged to walls or tents or the shape anyone else tried to press you into, though this time, for the first time, some small and traitorous part of you had genuinely not wanted to go.
★・・・・・・★
a/n: I'm enjoying writing this and if you're like 'el, when does this fit into cannon', I would tell you 'I'm not too sure, my writing is pure vibes based, if you wanted accuracy go watch he red wedding xoxo'. lol jk tho not really
imagine hate sex that isn't really hate sex, then you guys become FWB (maybe maybe not???) and your arguments are just like foreplay and then maybe he find out that your partner, who he always thought was awful to you, has crossed a line in someway that you end up physically or emotionally hurt (yeah cheating ik is bad but i feel it works plot wise -- kina like cheating but in a waitress kinda way) and then from that moment you see his tender side then the dynamic shifts and you guys don't fuck anymore you just care for each other and then its like an emotional slow burn, then you guys finally 'make love' then a love confession follows while in his arms... we can have a who did this to you moment or rather he knows who did this to you and will bring them hell???
and what if i was turning this into a full fic....
and what if I'm 10k in but about 1/3 of the way done
and what if its smut, but I've written it in a way so u can read it as if it is a fade to black if you would rather that instead?
and what if I'm writing this instead of my assignments???
summary: what a time to be alive, young and dumb on the edge of the world.
warnings: cannon typical violent, drinking, allusions to drink driving (don't do it), mentions of death, very loosely based on the song more vibes than anything
★・・・・・・★
I was high when I met you, life was somethin' to get through
Picture frame in your bedroom, of the one man that left you
And I felt the spiral of the earth when you finally called me yours
Ain't it strange how you saw me gettin' dressed in the hallway?
You could tell I was fallin', or escapin' from somethin'
You didn't say a single word, you didn't see me as a curse
The state of the summer blends us in with each other
We would pray for more thunder for a night under cover
We were huddlin' like mice, below an unforgivin' sky
You were half-feral with exhaustion when Sam found you, three days into a hunt that should have taken one, running on gas station coffee and the particular kind of stubbornness that gets hunters killed. He'd been sent ahead of Dean to scope out a supposed vengeful spirit haunting a stretch of county road outside of nowhere, Nebraska, and instead found you already halfway through salting and burning the bones yourself, hands shaking, eyes rimmed red from a lack of sleep you clearly weren't planning on admitting to.
"You been up all night?" he'd asked, careful, the way you'd learn he asked most things, like he already suspected the answer and didn't want to spook you into lying about it.
"I'm fine."
"Didn't ask if you were fine. Asked if you'd been up all night."
You hadn't answered that one directly, just handed him the shovel and told him to make himself useful if he was going to stand there. He'd let it go. That, more than anything, was what kept you letting him stick around after — the fact that he never once made you explain yourself, even when it would've been easy, even when you clearly needed someone to ask.
It was a few days into working the case together that he saw the photo. You'd been reapplying lipstick in the cracked mirror of a gas station bathroom, mirror propped against the sink, and he'd caught the edge of the picture taped to the back of it before you snapped the compact shut, a man's face, half faded, corners soft from years of handling.
He never asked about it. Not that day, not the next, not for a long while after. He just let it exist there between you, same as he let you exist, exhausted and unraveling, without once making you feel like a problem that needed solving.
The morning he caught you doing your hair in the motel hallway, propped against the ice machine with a pocket mirror because your own room's bathroom light had blown out, you'd been so tired you hadn't even heard his door open. You froze, half in your jeans, waiting for the question, the concern, the look people got when they realized how bad off you actually were.
He didn't say anything. Just leaned in his doorway, quiet, and looked at you the way you hadn't been looked at in longer than you wanted to admit, not like a curse, not like a problem, just like a person.
"You want coffee?" he asked eventually. "There's a diner two blocks down. Dean's not back till tonight."
You said yes before you'd really thought about it.
Too old for both of us to keep howlin' at the moon
To be cross-eyed drunk this young in the afternoon
Two souls in one truck, and no money left to lose
Teach me how to not stare at you
And I spent the whole night singin'
It hadn't started as anything. That was the part you kept telling yourself, even after it stopped being true. Dean had gotten tied up on a case three states over, something about a nest of vamps that needed more hands than his, and Sam had simply stayed behind to finish out your hunt instead of driving off to meet him. One case turned into two. Two turned into a loose, unspoken arrangement neither of you named out loud, Sam riding shotgun in your truck instead of the Impala's passenger seat, research spread across both your laps on slow afternoons, lore books cracked open more out of habit than urgency.
"You're gonna get us both killed reading that thing upside down," you told him once, nudging the spine of some water damaged demonology text right side up on his lap.
"I can read it upside down. It's a skill."
"It's a party trick. Not the same thing."
"Feels the same to me."
You'd fallen asleep more than once sitting up in the cab of that truck, shoulder to shoulder, some half finished bottle of whiskey between you, too tired and too sun drunk in the middle of the afternoon to do anything but let the hours slide by. Neither of you talked about how easily that had become the routine. Neither of you talked, either, about the fact that you'd started catching yourself staring at him during the quiet stretches, and failing, every single time, to stop.
"You're staring," he said once, not looking up from the map spread across the dash.
"I'm reading over your shoulder."
"You're staring at the side of my face, not the map."
"Multitasking."
He'd smiled at that, small and a little pleased despite himself, and you'd gone back to pretending you hadn't been caught.
"Oh, my, my, what a time to be alive"
Young and dumb on the edge of the world
Oh, good Lord, what it means to be alone
I knew well, I knew hell, and now I don't
Tell me, love, if the devil ever comes
To make good on the debts that I owe
Wish me well, tell the stories I would tell
Go ahead, make a few of your own
A few of your own
There were nights out there, parked on some empty stretch of road with the engine ticking as it cooled, that felt like the whole world had shrunk down to just the cab of that truck and the two of you inside it. You'd tell him, once, half joking, that you didn't figure you'd live long enough for any of this to matter much either way, and he hadn't laughed the way you expected him to.
"Don't talk like that."
"I'm just being realistic, Sam."
"You're being something. I don't know if realistic's the word for it." He'd looked at you a long moment in the dark, serious in a way that made you want to look away and didn't. "If it ever comes down to that — whatever's coming for either of us — I'd want somebody to tell it straight. Not clean it up. Just tell it true."
"That a request?"
"Consider it one."
You hadn't known what to do with that, so you'd just nodded, and let the silence settle back over the truck, comfortable in a way silence with him almost always was.
It was another night like that one, weeks later, that he finally told you about Jess. He didn't build up to it, just started talking, quiet and steady, like he'd been carrying the shape of it around so long he'd worn a groove for it to slide out of easily once he let it. He told you about the ceiling, about the fire, about the particular kind of guilt that never really left no matter how many miles or monsters he put between himself and that apartment.
You didn't offer him anything soft in return, no easy comfort, no rush to fill the silence after. You just listened, the way he'd always listened to you, and when he finished, you reached over and found his hand in the dark without really deciding to.
"Your turn," he said, after a while, nodding faintly toward the mirror still sitting in your bag, the photo you both knew was tucked behind it. "If you want."
You did, in the end, tell him. Not everything, not all at once, but enough. The man in the photo, what he'd meant, what he'd cost you to lose, the particular kind of hollow that gets carved out by loving somebody who leaves one way or another. Sam didn't flinch at any of it. Didn't try to fix it, or compare it, or make it smaller than it was.
"Thank you," he said simply, when you'd finished. "For telling me."
"Thank you for not making it weird."
"Wouldn't dream of it."
Once all the rain stopped, I was afraid you might wake up
And remember who I am, and remember what I've done
Didn't ask me to justify, you just sat up and rubbed your eyes
I grew up with a feelin' that what's good must be fleetin'
That if I'm happy, I'm dreamin', then I'm prepared for you leavin'
But I see that shitty beat-up car, oh baby, there you are
The storm caught you both out on a supply run, hard enough that you'd pulled the truck under an overpass and waited it out rather than risk the road, and somewhere in the waiting you'd both drifted off, your head eventually finding his shoulder without either of you deciding it should.
You woke up first, and lay there a long moment, dreading the second he'd open his eyes and actually see you, clear headed, remembering exactly who you were and everything you'd dragged behind you into this life. You'd spent enough of it convinced that anything good came with a bill attached eventually, that happiness was just the universe's way of setting up a worse fall later.
Sam stirred, blinked awake, and didn't pull back from you the way some small, tired part of you had braced for. He just rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, looked at you like nothing about you needed explaining, and said, low, rough with sleep, "Storm passed."
"Yeah."
"You want breakfast, or you wanna sit here a while longer."
"...A while longer."
He didn't argue. Just settled back against the seat, arm coming to rest along the back of it behind you, and let the quiet stretch out exactly as long as you needed it to.
Neither of you moved for a long while after that. You were aware of every place his arm brushed against you, aware of the steady rise and fall of his breathing beside yours, aware, in a way that felt dangerous to examine too closely, of how easy it would be to just tip your head onto his shoulder and let it mean something more than exhaustion this time.
You didn't do it. Neither did he, though you caught him glancing down at you once, something unreadable crossing his face before he looked back out at the rain still clinging to the windshield.
"We should probably talk about this," you said eventually, not entirely sure which this you meant, the almost, the staring, the months of pretending none of it was building into something.
"Yeah," Sam agreed, quiet. "Probably should."
Neither of you did. Not that morning. You just sat there a while longer, close enough that the possibility of it hummed low and constant between you, and let the moment pass the way you'd let so many others pass before it, unspoken, unclaimed, and entirely, achingly present all the same.
Still too old for it, and you kept doing it anyway, cross-eyed and reckless in the middle of the afternoon, the two of you crammed together in that same truck with nothing left to lose between you, and you yelled it out the window once, loud enough that it didn't matter who heard.
"Oh, my, my, what a time to be alive"
Young and dumb on the edge of the world
Oh, good Lord, what it means to be alone
I knew well, I knew hell, and now I don't
Tell me, love, if the devil ever comes
To make good on the debts that I owe
Wish me well, tell the stories I would tell
Go ahead, make a few of your own
A few of your own, a few of your own
You yelled it out the window once, reckless and a little drunk on an afternoon that had no business being that warm, some half formed thing about being young and stupid and not caring anymore who heard it, and Sam had laughed, really laughed, leaning half out his own window like he'd catch whatever you'd just thrown out into the wind.
"You're insane," he said, delighted despite himself.
"You love me really."
The word landed heavier than you meant it to. Neither of you moved to take it back.
The truck rolled on down the empty road, windows still down, radio caught somewhere between static and an old country station neither of you bothered to fix, and for a while you just let the silence that followed sit there, comfortable and charged all at once. You could feel him glancing over at you every so often, like he was turning the word over in his own head the same way you were turning it over in yours, testing the weight of it, wondering if it had meant what it sounded like it meant.
"For the record," Sam said eventually, eyes back on the road, "I don't mind you saying it. In case that wasn't clear."
"I wasn't apologizing."
"I know. Wasn't asking you to." A small, private smile pulled at the corner of his mouth, the kind you were starting to notice he only ever wore around you. "Just didn't want you thinking I minded, is all."
"Noted."
"Good."
You spent the rest of that drive with your feet propped up on the dash, sun warm through the windshield, humming along to whatever half broken song came through the radio, and didn't say much else about it. You didn't need to. It sat there between you anyway, plain and unbothered, the same way most true things eventually did once you'd finally let them out into the open air.
The truck rattled along some empty stretch of two lane highway, windows down, heat pouring in off the blacktop, and for a while neither of you said anything else, letting the word sit there between you, too big to pick up and too obvious to pretend hadn't been said. You caught him glancing over at you more than once, something warm and a little startled in it, like he was turning the word over in his head trying to decide how much of it he was allowed to believe.
"You know," he said eventually, voice pitched carefully casual in that way you'd come to recognize as him not being casual at all, "for someone who claims she doesn't do feelings, you've got a real habit of yelling them out truck windows."
"That wasn't feelings. That was heatstroke."
"Ninety percent heatstroke, sure."
"Hundred percent."
"Ninety," he said again, grinning now, reaching over to turn the radio up like he needed something to do with his hands. "I'll allow the other ten percent stays classified."
"Generous of you."
"I try."
You didn't take the word back, in the end. You just let it ride along in the cab with you the rest of the afternoon, unclaimed and undiscussed, the two of you grinning at the road ahead like a couple of idiots who both knew exactly what had just happened and had decided, mutually, wordlessly, to let it happen a little longer before either of you had to do anything about it.
"Oh, my, my, what a time to be alive"
Young and dumb on the edge of the world
Oh, good Lord, what it means to be alone
I knew well I knew hell, and now I don't
Tell me, love, if the devil ever comes
To make good on the debts that I owe
Wish me well, tell the stories I would tell
Go ahead, make a few of your own
A few of your own, a few of your own
Sam never made you promises he couldn't keep. That was, you came to realize, exactly the point. He never once told you this would be easy, or safe, or anything close to normal. He just kept getting back into your truck, kept choosing the long way around instead of the Impala's front seat, kept choosing you, quietly, case after case, storm after storm, like that alone was vow enough for either of you to build something on.
What a time to be alive, the two of you young and a little dumb on the edge of everything, finding out what it actually meant not to be alone anymore after knowing so much of what it meant to be. Whatever debt was still coming for you, you only asked to be remembered right. And if the story ended early, you hoped it left something behind worth building from.
Oh, make a few of your own
Oh, make a few of your own
Oh, make a few of your own
Somewhere outside a town you'd stopped bothering to remember the name of, you asked him, finally, plainly, why he kept staying.
Sam considered it a while before he answered, the truck idling low beneath you both, the road empty in every direction.
"Guess I just like the company," he said.
"That's it?"
"That's not it. That's just as much as I know how to say right now." He glanced over at you, something steady and a little unguarded in it. "Go ahead and make of that what you want. I'm not going anywhere either way."
You didn't have an answer for that. You just reached over, laced your fingers through his on the seat between you, and let the truck carry you both further down whatever road came next.
★・・・・・・★
a/n: idk how i feel about this but imma post it anyways. i defo have written a lot better things, but this song was stuck in my head and yeah lol
no because I need to know what Mick's deal was. he had a little sister he was close to after they lost their parents young. he was a special forces soldier who can't stomach the smell of death. he doesn't sleep, and they made a point of showing Coop give him coffee. his religion is 'lapsed'. he was hyper-competitive to the point of nearly killing a man. his mannerisms were far too relaxed for him to be healthy
actually I'm back on this. he hates hospitals. he doesn't have any sympathy for the brother in 'Devotion'. he had interpol contacts. Coop asked him to 'stay in the present' and that meant something specific. Gina indirectly said he kept people at a distance. he diffused a bomb whilst humming. he's good with kids. it's him who identifies a victim as having ptsd. he's always the one carrying Coop's gun.
summary: Spencer doesn't like you. He had a reputation for not liking new agents on the team. Months in, he still hadn't warmed up. When Hotch wants you to go undercover as teacher and student, things finally reach a boiling point.
wc: 10k
warnings: MDNI, F!reader, PWbadPlot, PIV, WRAP IT!!, light dom!spencer, teasing, fingering, they fuck it out, open ending (part two?), no Y/N! not edited, writer is lazy!!
Being the new agent on the team was difficult. The BAU were a fully formed unit, they knew each other like the back of their hands. They moved through the field like a well oiled machine.
But you were finally settling in, the team had started to trust you to do things on your own. JJ finally let you talk to the family of a victim alone, Morgan let you tackle an unsub, Emily stopped checking over your paperwork and Hotch allowed you to lead an interrogation.
But you were still surprised when Hotch called you into his office the second you stepped foot in the bullpen.
"You asked for me?" You close the door softly behind you, mind racing of any possible mistake you could have made. Did you make a mistake on the last case? Did you file your paperwork wrong?
"Yes, please sit." He gestured to the chair opposite his desk and you slowly lowered yourself into it. "We have another case." His eyes dart down to his watch.
The nerves got the better of you and you blurted out. "Are you firing me?"
"What? No." He paused, "We need you to go undercover for the case, I was checking in with you. We can find another way to go about it."
You held your chin up. "What's the case?"
"Georgia college." He sighed and passed a file across the table, "Four students from the same philosophy class have been murdered. All of them found dead in their dorm, poisoned."
"Jesus, that's brutal." You sigh, "Can the local police not interview everyone in the class?"
"They have, no one has flagged any concern. So they believe the unsub can either blend in or is another student on campus." He explained, "So they asked us if we had an agent we could send in. Morgan calls you baby bird for a reason." He smiled, a rare Hotch smile.
"So, we're sending you in as a college student. And Reid as a professor."
You choked back a cough. "Reid?"
It wasn't like you didn't like Reid, but he did not like you. He had a reputation, smart, genius that doesn't like newcomers in his unit. He never let you get away with a slip of the tongue, constantly correcting your every word. It was infuriating.
"He's an experienced profiler and he has lecturing experience." Hotch said, "Plus he will have a view of the whole room."
"I don't need hand holding Hotch." You pursed your lips, flipping the file closed and pressing it onto your legs.
"I know you don't. It's for everyone's safety." He sighed and huffed with a tone that told you there was no point in arguing back.
Sinking into the chair, you cross one leg over the other. "Do I need to do the assignments?" You asked.
"We aren’t sure yet. Come on, Garcia is about to debrief the team." He held the door open for you and you ducked under his arm.
The round table chatter stopped as soon as you stepped into the room. All of them trying to look busy as they did whenever they were gossiping.
"Do I really look like I could still be in college?" You sigh and throw yourself into your chair in between Morgan and JJ.
"Yes." "Yes." "A little." "We call you baby bird for a reason."
"I hate you guys." You grump, and shove your elbow into Morgan's ribs. "I do not look twenty two. I'm almost thirty."
"Actually," You roll your eyes as you hear Reid's voice cut across the chuckling. "You're actually three years, seven months and eleven days away from thirty. So not almost. Also due to your slightly larger eyes and your affinity to wear pink makes people believe you are younger than you actually are." He rattled off, fiddling with his fingers.
You opened your mouth to spit something back when Penelope came into the room in a flurry. She had bags of shopping bundled into her grip, dumping them down the floor and swooping in with the remote in hand.
"Morning, my superhuman crime fighters. I'll get right into it! At Georgia college four students have recently been killed in their dorm rooms." She clicked on the button and four pictures popped up. "James Gripe, Lucy Brown, Issac Nike and Cara Smith. At first, they thought James Gripe had died from caffeine overconsumption and stress from finals. But then, Lucy, Issac and Cara were found in the concurrent weeks." She sighed sadly, looking at their faces in sympathy.
"Crossing both race and gender lines is rare." Rossi stated, scribbling down the names in his journal.
"The police already looked into the other students in the class right?" Emily asked and Hotch nodded.
"No one caused them any concern." He confirmed, "And as far as the students know they all have died of an overdose and stress related causes. The local ME is currently checking the bodies for signs of poison."
"The media is going to have a field day if this gets out." JJ sighed, running a hand through her hair.
"Alright. Wheels up in 30, the sooner we get started the better. We'll discuss the undercover operation on the jet." Hotch said, striding out of the round table and back into his office.
Everyone else filed out, Derek pulling Reid to the side and mumbling something about "Getting better at talking to women." and Pen yanked you to the side before you could step out.
"I got you some things!" She rummaged around in the bag and shoved some clothes into your arms.
You held up a dress against your body. "Why the hell did you buy me a club dress?"
"You're going to college! And you're like my little sister and I couldn't send you off without a hot dress" She said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Oh, and a shirt and a mini skirt." She held them up.
"Thanks Pen." You smile and pull her into a tight hug. "I'll send you a picture if i end up wearing it." She gripped back onto you tighter.
"Come back to me safe, Baby Bird." She whispered into your hair.
"I will." You nod and peck her on the cheek, shoving the clothes into your go bag and getting ready to hit the tarmac.
"Wait!" Pen shouts across the bullpen and runs toward you as fast as she could with her too high heels. "I forgot to give you these."
----
Hauling your go bag into the overhead cabin, you sit down opposite Hotch. He slides your new ID across the table and you put it straight into your wallet.
"Everyone in that class is a potential victim." Derek sighed, flipping over the papers in his file.
"What that's like forty more potential victims?" You scoff, shaking your head.
"Forty six. Well, forty seven including you." Reid cut in, not even looking up from the book his face was buried in.
"Close enough." You grit out, teeth clenched.
"Not exact." He spat back.
Rolling your eyes and turning away from him, shoving a middle finger his way and huffing towards Derek. He smiled towards you cheekily, "Did you get Penelope's gifts?"
"Yeah. A tiny shirt, a mini skirt and a barely there dress." Derek let out a low whistle. "Oh, and about five million condoms." You pull the box from your pocket where you'd shoved them in with your cheeks turning red, hoping that no one in the bullpen saw.
"You could go through half of Georgia with those."
Ripping off a strip and threw it, hitting him square in the chest. "And you can go through half the police department with those." You joke and nudge him with the tip of your shoe.
"That was one time man!" He exclaimed.
"Actually, there were the two in Colorado." Emily piped in.
"One in California, and another in Florida." JJ continued.
"Don't forget police chief Jones in Texas." You teased, counting on your fingers.
"And the nurse in Oregon." Rossi finished.
"And that was all in the last six months." Hotch put the nail in the coffin, never usually joining in on the team banter. But he was smirking over his file at Derek's mock glare.
"C'mon we've all gone home with someone once. Well apart from babybird and pretty boy over there." He defended, throwing his hands up.
You scoff, "Hey, I don't want to become a case. Look at half of our cases, they all go home with their killers." You shake your head and climb out of the seat and into the plane aisle.
"At least I'm not thirty year old virgin over there." You snort, pulling open the small blue curtain to the kitchenette with a loud screech.
"Thirty two." He corrects, having now moved on to another book. Flipping a page in between words, the whole page completed.
"I like how that's the part you correct." You purse your lips, snorting and closing the curtain behind you, the kettle beginning to bubble. You knew he was thirty two, you were there at the party Pen made him have at Rossi's. But sometimes, you liked to push. To see how far you could take it before he couldn't resist and correct you. Usually, it just took you rounding up or down to make his patience to tip over.
You sigh quietly as you sit down with a scalding cup of coffee, the bitter taste burning your tongue as you sip it down.
"Looking forward to doing assignments again?" Emily asks, clasping her hands together on the wooden table.
"Definitely not, I'm not that well versed in philosophy so I better get reading." You smile, trying to lighten her worry.
"I suspect Professor Reid will mark you highly." She laughed, her eyes darting over your shoulder to him.
You follow her gaze and quickly glance over, hoping he wouldn't notice. But he was already looking at you. Probably from hearing Emily mention his name. It takes you a second to pull away from his intense stare. Emily cleared her throat, yanking you back to reality.
"I think I'll be his least favourite student." You roll your eyes, still feeling his eyes glaring at the back of your head.
----
You never thought you’d be back at college. But now, you were walking through the hallways of Georgia college with a backpack filled to the brim on your back. Thick textbooks and laptop weighing you down, or was it the nerves of trying to blend in?
It was far too early in the morning for most of the students around you, all dragging their feet and murmured complaints due to the previous late night.
Slowing, in front of the lecture hall. Coming to a stop in front of a group of girls standing and chatting amongst themselves.
“Excuse me,” You start. “Is this Professor Wright’s philosophy?”
They quiet, and turn to you. “Yeah! but he’s on leave so another professor is standing in. Are you new?” The dark haired girl asked, a soft smile on her face.
“Yeah, I just transferred from Arizona. Something to do with the credit amounts for graduation.” You shrugged. “I’m - Ivy." The name stumbles out unnaturally, like it doesn't belong to you. Because it doesn't. The introduction feels foreign in your mouth and heat pooled in your cheeks.
“Marie. And this is Chloe and Sarah.” She points to the girls staring behind her, they both give a wave.
The door to the lecture hall swings open. And everyone starts to file in. The plan was to sit at the back, keeping your head down and being able to view the whole room.
“Come sit with us!” Marie smiled, waving you over to the front row.
Descending down the stairs of the lecture hall, long hair bouncing, you slide into the seat on the end of the aisle. Pulling out your laptop and loading it up.
“I wonder what the new professor will be like,” She whispered into your ear. “Professor Wright was great, but he was basically a dinosaur.” She giggled.
“Hopefully good. I really need this credit.” You sigh, opening your mouth to speak again when the door swings open.
“Sorry, I’m late. I couldn’t find the hall.” Reid came spluttering into the hall and throwing his shoulder bag on the desk and uncapping the whiteboard marker and scribbling his name now. “I’m Professor Gardener, and I’ll be here while Professor Wright is on sick leave. I assure you he is feeling OK and has started his recovery.”
But you knew Professor Wright wasn’t sick, he was sat in his cushy lakeside home. Getting paid time off to lounge around and read through his library.
It had allowed Professor Gardener or as you knew, Doctor Reid pacing around in his element. He had slid into the professor role like a second skin. Hotch had mentioned he had guest lectured before, but the confidence was surprising.
“I’ve been told you were about to start Kantian ethics. So into Kantian ethics 101!” His hands clap and his voice fades into the background as another voice whispered in your ear, pulling you away from the lecture.
“He’s so hot.” Marie said, your head darting toward her.
“What?” You whisper back, slightly alarmed, “Don’t you think he’s like a bit, I don’t know, nerdy?”
“But like a hot nerd.”
Reid’s rambling pulled your attention back to the front of the room. He wasn’t hot, he was all knitted cardigans and wool ties. Stupid facts about Doctor who and how the physics was dodgy. He talked with his hands, waving them around with every unnecessary word. Long fingers that could solve a rubix cube in seconds. His facial hair had started growing in, a shadow coating the bottom half of his face. And standing up there as he lectured, the way the words slipped from him with ease. Maybe, he was hot.
But he was Reid. And Reid was your annoying co worker. The only person on the team who still didn't believe in you as an agent. And there he was standing, as Professor Gardener. And he looked hot.
----
And apparently, half of campus also thought so. Walking into the lecture hall that had been half empty was almost full. The sight makes you trip over your feet and almost tumble down the stairs.
A hand grabbed your bicep and pulled you back and into a chest. You don't need to turn around to know who it was. You knew his cologne, the scent of books and coffee also a hint of mint. You steady yourself and spin around to look at him, he was closer than you thought he would be.
"Professor Gardener. Uh, thank you." You nod and start to head down the stairs where Marie had saved you a seat with her handbag.
"You're also new, Ivy right?" He said, falling in step next to you.
His casual small talk takes you back, you can never recall a time Reid had spoken to you casually. "Yeah, I had to transfer. Graduation credits, you know how it is." You shrugged, stopping at the row. "And thank you again."
Sitting down next to Marie, she immediately grips onto you. "What was that?" She almost gasped.
"I tripped, he caught me." You responded.
"It was straight out of a romcom! I think half of the people in here want to kill you." She giggled.
"He was just being polite." You glaze over the interaction and start to pull out your laptop and textbook.
"People are already calling him Gorgeous Gardener." She continued, and your breath stuttered. This case was going to be a lot more difficult than you thought.
You knew you were staring, ogling even. You were supposed to be looking at him, it was normal to keep your eyes on the professor. But the nickname was true. He was gorgeous. It had wormed it's way into your head, you couldn't escape the thought. Like a bad smell, the thought of Reid being attractive had spent it's time racing around your brain.
He looked like Reid, the same slightly grown out hair do. He moved like Reid, waving his hands around and fiddling with his fingers as he spoke. He dressed like Reid, a dark blue sweater vest and brown blazer. And he even smelled like Reid, the memory of his scent as he pulled you into him. Nevertheless, he wasn't making you feel like Reid.
But a sharp elbow jutted into your ribs.
"Ivy." He was standing at the front of the lecture hall with an expectant raised eyebrow.
"Sorry, what was the question?"
"Could you give us a quick summary of Kantian ethics?" His face hadn't changed.
"Uh, yeah." You tried not to stumble over your words and sent him a glare. "Developed by Immanuel Kant, deciding whether actions are right or wrong depending on duty and moral rules, not the consequences."
"Thank you. Pay attention next time." He span around on his conversed feet and back to the whiteboard. The same condescending tone he used on every case when he felt the need to correct your every word.
At the end of the day. He was still Reid.
The rose coloured glasses that Professor Gardener had grown over your eyes wilted away in an instant. Rose had deepened to red and you were glaring at him the way you had a million times before.
"Kantian ethics teaches that we should always act according to moral duties and universal rules. This creates a fair and consistent moral system." He explained, pacing between his desk and the whiteboard. "Does anyone have an argument against?"
His eyes darted around the room, nodding towards a girl in the middle of the room.
"Uh, I'm just auditing this class." She said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. She flashed a smile at him.
"Oh. Is anyone else auditing this class?" He asked, and a sea of hands raised and your lip curled up in slight disgust. "Hmm, ok."
Your hand shot up into the air. He nodded towards you a sign for you to speak, not before looking desperately for someone else to answer. "But life is more complicated than simple rules. What if it causes harm to follow a rule?"
He looked surprised at your rebuttal. "Kant would argue that the moral rules should be followed regardless of consequences. Otherwise, people would make exceptions when it suited them."
"But take the famous example. Lying to a killer to save someone’s life. Telling the truth would lead to the death of an innocent person."
"Morality becomes subjective if we start making exemptions." He clicked his tongue.
"We can still have moral principles while recognising that consequences matter. A rule that leads to preventable harm does not seem truly moral." He tried to shoot an argument back.
"Morality should also help people and reduce suffering. If a moral theory ignores the real effects of actions, it can produce unfair outcomes." You hide the look of satisfaction on your face.
"That is the most common critique of Kantian ethics." He nodded, turning to the whiteboard and uncapped the pen with a pop. "As it's a Friday, I give you an essay."
Everyone in the room groaned, arms hanging heavy by your sides as your eyes follow his letters. "Is Kantian Ethics correct? You can argue for or against. I expect them to be on my desk by next Friday. Have a good weekend." Just as everyone was about to run out of there at the speed of light. "My office hours are the same as Professor Wright's, so see the paper on the door."
----
The weekend for you didn't mean going out partying and scrambling to plan your essay. Instead, you were sat in the back of a local police precinct. The taste of cardboard and burnt coffee peeked through the burning in your mouth.
You were sat with your head held up by your chin. The door opened and the rest of the team filed in.
"How was class?" JJ asked a joking lilt in her voice, sliding an actual, smooth cup of coffee across the desk.
"Professor Gardener treating you well?" Emily snorted.
Glaring at her but thanking her for the coffee. "I have an essay due next Friday." You fix your glare on Reid, "Oh, and there's about twenty more people auditing the class."
"Nineteen." He corrected.
"And that's nineteen more potential victims." Morgan sighed, "Has anyone in the class come up? Nothing has come up on our end."
"For me, no not yet. Everyone seems like a regular student so far. But I've been keeping my eye out." You explain, notepad and textbook open with the arguments you had chosen highlighted.
"Well if you had spent your time actually looking, rather than gossiping with the girls at the front. You would have seen something." Reid snarked, turning his body away from you and started to address the rest of the team. "There's a guy at the back of the class.-"
You take a deep breath before speaking, "I know that you spent all of your school years sat in the class with no friends. But I didn't, and I'm not going to sulk in the back of the class." You were shoving things back into your bag. "Fuck off, Reid." Your backpack smacked into him as you stormed out of the precinct, the door slammed loudly behind you.
Raging as your feet slammed along the pavement, hands balled into fists, held tightly at your sides. "Ivy, Ivy!" It takes a few seconds for the name to register before you turn around with a smile on your face. "Are you ok? Why were you at the station?" Marie asked, worry painted on her face.
"I just had to change my address to get my mail." Rolling your eyes, you lean all of your weight onto your back foot. "The college said they had handled it, what a way to spend your weekend huh?"
"Oh my God! You should come out with me, Chloe and Sarah!" She grabbed the tops of your arms, shaking you back and forth.
"Um." You pretend to pause in thought. "Not this weekend, we have that essay due in. But next weekend, count me in!"
Marie's face lit up with a large smile. "I'm so excited!" She linked arms with you, leading you away from the station. "There's this bar, they have themed cocktails every single week. They’re a tad expensive but soo strong so it's worth the money!"
She reminded you of Pen in a way, the happy go lucky attitude. The way she took you in like a stray, forcing you to go out for drinks. She brought a slither of normal in your facade, and well there was no stopping Reid from being, well Reid.
----
You had gotten the call that morning. They had found another body. It was a guy, Harry Jones. He sat in the middle of the class, he never spoke. He just sat with his friends and took notes whenever was necessary.
Penelope had managed to work out every victims average grades. They had all been in the top half of the class.
You were slumped in your chair, not listening to a thing Reid was saying. Your ears were tuned into the rows behind you, listening in for any mention of Harry's name. You could tell he was profiling too, eyes constantly scanning the rows, talking on autopilot.
No one was talking about anything of note. Marie, Chloe and Sarah were talking about what they were going to wear to the bar later. The people a few rows behind were talking about what grade they thought they were going to get. Not a mention of Harry. No one realised he was gone.
You could tell Reid was profiling too, eyes constantly scanning the rows, talking on autopilot. Professor Gardener was long gone, you were looking at Reid. But it seemed he was coming up empty too.
"Right." He clapped, casually strolling over to the desk. Resting his hand atop the essays he had collected at the start of class and patted them gently. "Have a good weekend, no homework this week. See you on Wednesday!"
Marie linked arms with you once again, asking you what you were going to wear that night.
"Ivy!" His voice called as you got to the door.
"Hmm? Yes, Professor Gardener." You responded, leaning on the doorway.
"Could you come by my office later? I scanned your essay and there’s a couple points I think we could discuss in depth." He held up the paper, and Marie excuses herself. Lingering right outside.
"Sure, I'll swing by later." You run your finger across the paper on the door. "7pm?"
He nodded. "Sounds good."
Marie pretty much dragged you from the lecture hall. "You should so wear that dress you sent me a picture of." She giggled.
"I cannot wear that to my meeting with Professor Gardener." You deadpanned, hitting her lightly on the arm.
"I meant the bar. Your mind went there." She smiled, "But you should do that too, ugh I want him to go in depth with me." Groaning, she leant her head on your shoulder.
"Marie!" You exclaimed, jaw hanging open in shock. "You need to get laid girl, you should totally look for someone tonight."
"I was already planning on it." She smirked. "You better wear that dress."
----
You did wear the dress. The sparkly red fabric glittering as you snapped a picture for Penelope. It stopped at the top of your thighs, constantly pulling it down as your heels clicked on the pavement. It was too short, and had too much cleavage in your opinion, but it wasn't your opinion. It was Ivy's.
The halls were desolate and slightly chilly as you made your way to Reid's office. Well, Professor Wright's office. The golden plaque shined in the dim lighting. Checking over your shoulder, before you knocked on the door. You could hear shuffling behind the door before it swung open.
"Come in." He said, head sticking out of the door and looking down the hall.
"I wasn't followed." You rolled your eyes, your hand hitting his chest and kicking the door closed. Reaching behind you, clicking the lock shut you look around the office and step further in. "What do you want Reid?"
Standing across from him, hands resting on the back of the armchair opposite his desk. He looked up from the papers on his desk.
"What are you wearing?" It tumbled out of his mouth and his eyebrows scrunched together.
You matched his look of confusion. "A dress?" It wasn't like he hadn't seen you in a mini dress before. You always wore one when you went out with the team. Maybe not one this short or low cut, but a minidress nonetheless.
"Does Hotch know you're going out?" He asked, brows still furrowed.
"Yes, Professor Gardener." You snarked, rolling your eyes and crossing your arms across your chest.
He sucked in a breath, "I wanted to talk to you about your essay."
"Are you serious?" You scoffed, stalking around to the other side of the desk.
You leant across the desk, plucking out a red pen from the pot. Uncapping it and writing on your own paper. A. "There we go, now we don't have to talk about it."
"That's not-"
"Precise, correct, fair?" You laughed, straightening your back and you went to grab your handbag off of the table where you had dumped it.
But he snatched it out of your grasp, unzipping it and digging through it.
"What the fuck Reid?"
He held up the condoms that you had shoved into your bag. "Are you going to sleep with a college student?" His voice was coated with disdain.
"I don't think that's your business is it, Professor?" You lean forward, trying to snatch them out of his grip.
"As your Professor, no. But as your superior agent, it is." He moved backwards, stopping your waving grip. The smirk you had become acquainted with.
"I'm not going to fuck a college student. But I might just, if it pisses you off so much." You pouted in his face, heavy breaths making your chest rise and fall in his face. "I know you're a virgin Reid but Jesus."
That caught him off guard, giving you the opportunity to snatch them back and slide them back into your handbag. "Maybe we won't even use these."
"I'm not a virgin." He gritted through his teeth, glaring at your bare back.
You can't help but laugh out loud at that, "I'll believe it when I see it." Your hair shakes with your head, striding towards the door.
The smell of him hits you before you feel him. Your hand stilled as it reached for the doorknob, the same scent that hit you when he stopped you from falling down the stairs. His grip on your bicep was familiar, the tips of his fingers digging in as his other hand brushed your hair to one side.
"You are insufferable." He whispered, warm breath hitting the shell of your ear.
It was like you had forgotten how to breathe. He was inching closer to you, the warmth of his chest radiating against your back. "Reid." You sighed.
"Professor." He corrected, spinning you around and pushing you against the door roughly. "If anyone gets to cum inside of you tonight, It's going to be me."
Your head thumped backwards, eyebrows pulling together as his eyes met yours. It was like you had lost all sense, you hated Reid. But the mention of him cumming inside you had any rational abandoned.
"Does that sound good?" He hummed.
"Yes, Professor Reid." You sighed.
"Fuck." He growled before pressing his lips into yours. Your hands came forward to grip onto the lapels on his blazer, pulling him closer. His lips were softer than you expected, contrasted with his teeth coming out to yank on your bottom lip.
Your bag dropped to the floor with a thud. As his hands, the hands you had spent countless lectures staring at, started to wander. Long fingers travelled down your back, pulling up goosebumps in their wake. Then, his hands scooped you up, legs wrapping around his hips as he pressed you into the door.
His hardness pushed into you, making you gasp out and slide your hands into his hair and giving it a light tug. He takes the opportunity to slide his tongue into your mouth, walking you across the room and sliding the papers and pens off the desk. They hit the floor with a clatter as he lowered you down.
Both of you panted as he separated, a line of spit connecting you between your lips. Neither of you said anything for a beat, just staring at each other with blown pupils.
A second later, he cupped your jaw and pulled your back straight, kissing you again.
Now it was your turn for your hands to wander, slotting your hands under his blazer and pushing it off and it hit the floor gently. Then, your hands came to fiddle with the buckle on his belt. It clinked loudly as you whipped it out of the belt loops. The button popped open not long after.
He made work of your dress, pulling it up and letting it pool around your hips. Not even taking your panties off, just sliding them to the side as the pads of his fingers come into contact with your clit.
"Jesus!" You gasped out, pulling him closer with your ankle. Painted nails sliding down the front of his brown corduroy slacks and cupping his dick.
His eyes rake down you, dress pulled up, panties to the side. Eyes hooded, chest heaving desperately as you throw your head back.
"You look, divine." He whispered into your ear, the intimacy of it took you by surprise. His finger still worked against your clit, leaving you writhing and gasping under his gaze.
You shoved his slacks down, his white boxer shorts followed not long after. His compliment sent a fire through your veins and a desperation to have him inside you take over.
His fingers pulled off of you, your whining halted. "Hurry up and fuck me!" You groaned, wrapping your legs around his hips. Your heel dug into his backside and it fell to the floor.
He took his dick in his hand, looking down at you. The tip hit against your clit and he slid it up and down through your wetness. "Ah, ah, ah." He teased, refusing to push in, just leaving you with the delicious pressure of almost. "Say please."
"Oh, fuck off." You sigh, trying anything to get closer. Just anything to get him inside you.
He pulled his dick away, and it was like your brain had melted any rationality away. "Please, Reid." You pleaded, knuckles turning white at how hard you were gripping the edge of his desk. "Professor, please." You looked up at him through your lashes.
Then, he finally gave you what you wanted. He pressed his forehead to yours just as he sank into you. He was bigger than you thought he'd be. Not that you'd thought about it. The head brushed past your g spot as he bottomed out.
You couldn't help the almost scream that came from you. "Spencer!"
You had never called him Spencer, most of the time you didn't even address him. But any worry left your mind after hearing his groan as he pulled most of the way out, before slamming into you again.
His lips attached to your neck and your toes curled inside your heels. "No marks." You panted out.
Nodding into the crook of your neck, he slid his hands under you. He lifted you slightly, the new angle letting him pound deeper inside you. This lead to a string of moans to explode from your chest and his hand clamped over your mouth to keep you quiet.
He wasn't doing a good job of keeping quiet himself. Panting and groaning into your neck, teeth scratching your earlobe. Your hands screwed into the front of his shirt, whining helplessly at the brutal pace he was fucking you with.
"S-spencer." You both fall backwards, your back flat on the cool wooden desk and him hunched over you never faltering.
"You're much more bearable like this." He smirked down at you, reviling in the state he had you in. A fucked out pink flush painted across your cheeks, tits bouncing with every thrust that coaxed a wet noise from your pussy every time he slapped against it.
You tried to form a rebuttal, but what came out was babbling that vaugly sounded like hsi name. Desperately, pulling him closer with your nails scratching down his back.
"Awh, poor baby." He teased, "Can't you speak?"
The mocking had your head reeling and your walls clenching around him. The teasing, his body pressing you into the desk, the unrelenting pace and the smell of him was all just too much. It had the coil inside you ready to snap.
Your eyes meet his again and you slam your mouth to his. Tongue peeking into your mouth as your thighs started to tremble. You had your toes curled so hard that your heels slid off your feet and falling to the floor. Spencer's hand snaked down and hit your clit again, moving the wetness around with his fingers.
It had lightening bolts shooting through your spine and the coil in your belly to snap. Nails digging into his shoulder blades and a too loud cry of his name. "Spencer!" It almost echoed around the room as he fucked you through your orgasm, leaving you tightening and fluttering around his cock.
Then, he was cumming himself, with a similar groan of your name and a few more deep thrusts that sent your eyes rolling. His release was warm inside of you, he paused for a second. Letting it pool inside of you and leaving you both breathing into each others mouth's. His dick slid out of you, pussy clenching around emptiness. Gently, he moved your underwear back with a tenderness you wouldn't have expected.
Suddenly, the feeling of his cum pooling in your panties, had you hurtling back to reality. It was like a cool bucket of water had been thrown over you.
It was Reid. You and Reid had sex. Not even sex, fucked. He was technically your professor. And you had his cum dripping out of you.
You yanked your dress down, refusing to look him in the eye.
"That can't happen again." He called over his shoulder as you grabbed your bag. Piling the lip gloss that had spilled all over the floor when it had fallen from your fingers.
"I know." You commented, clicking the lock open and the door.
"Be careful, and you can call me if you need me to come and get you." He gave you that tight lipped smile he did when he felt awkward.
"Will do." You mirrored his face, your hair falling in front of your face and closing the door with a soft click.
Your dress was missing sparkles from all over and you had six missed calls from Marie, and you took off into the city.
----
The bar was exactly as Marie had described. It was slightly tacky with bright coloured lights with ocean themed drinks. Everyone was walking around with blue drinks with fish shaped ice cubes, sharks sticking from the top.
"Ivy!" Marie called, waving you over from the booth they had grabbed in the corner.
"Hey." You smiled and sidled into the booth next to Sarah.
"What did Professor Gardener want?" Sarah asked, close to your ear, cutting through the thumping pop music.
"Apparently, I did really well on my essay. There was just a couple mistakes he wanted me to clear up for next time." You smiled, casting a look towards the bar. "I'm going to go and get a drink! I'll be back."
The drink was overly sweet, Penelope would have loved it. The grenadine turned the blue drink a light purple.
"So tell us what mark you got, you can't leave us hanging girl." Marie grasped onto your arm. "Also what happened with Professor Gardenerrr?" She teased lightly and Chloe smacked her on the arm.
"I got a 97." You feigned a blush, hiding you face behind your hair.
Marie and Chloe gasped, excitedly shaking you back and forth. Some of your drink sloshing over the rim and making the bar table more sticky than it already was.
"You're going to get the credits that you need toats, oh my god we need to throw you a graduation party." She praised, her face lit up in the same way you had seen it so many times.
Just as you went to agree, head already nodding.
"Ivy, that guy over there is so looking at you." Sarah cut across, pointing a finger across the bar.
Your eyes followed her finger to find a very smiley Derek Morgan. You smile back at him with a small wave.
"Well go talk to him! He's so hot!" Chloe exclaimed, "Plus you deserve it after such a good essay."
Your eyes darted between them and him, pretending to give a moment of deliberation. Before standing up and glancing over your shoulder. "If he's weird, I'm coming back."
Winding your way through the crowded bar, smoothly directing yourself between sweaty bodies until you got to the booth. You slid up next to Morgan, your side pressing up against his.
"This dress is a gift from Penelope I assume." He whispered into your ear and he wrapped his arm around your shoulders.
"How could you tell?" You said back, looking back to the table of girls looking towards you expectantly. Sticking your thumb up towards them, you turn towards Derek fully.
"Have you been dancing with someone else babybird?" He asked, still leaned in close.
"No, why?" You scrunched your eyebrows.
"You smell like another man."
It felt like your stomach dropped to your feet, and you hoped and prayed that he wouldn't recognise the scent. Suddenly, it was like you could feel the cum that was wetting your panties through. The shame burned bright on your cheeks.
"Yikes, I need to get rid of my perfume." Joking, you elbowed him, "Go for a smoke?" You pulled the packet out of your purse and waved it in his face.
As the two of you stepped out of the bar you sent Marie a message. 'Going home with hot stuff, see you wednesday. ;)'
The cool air hit and was very, very welcome. Bricks pressed into your back and you let out a long, deep sigh. Lighting up the cigarette and holding it towards Derek.
"I don't smoke." He smiled, watching you puff out smoke.
"One of the girls I was with, Sarah. Get Pen to look into her, she was acting weird about my meeting with Reid." You throw a look over your shoulder and see Marie and the girls looking at you expectantly. "I think we're being watched." You murmured, leaning close to Derek's ear.
His muscles flexed under your trailing grip. "Want to get out of here?"
"Yeah." You nod, throwing a sheepish glance over your shoulder and a small wave to the girls who definitely weren't looking through the window.
Turning the corner there was a familiar squad car waiting for you.
----
Again, you spent your weekend hunched over a conference table. Files piled up around your head. The team had gone all in on Sarah, and the deeper you dug, the more she looked like your unsub.
"Her grades have been steadily dropping for the last few semesters." Emily commented, putting another file in the completed bin.
"Ah-Ha!" Penelope exclaimed, her face popping up on the monitor. "Recently, Sarah's adoptive Mom died. It didn't come up in the original searches because she wasn't offically adopted. The papers never went through."
"So we've got our stressor." Hotch nodded, his arms crossed tensely in the corner of the room. "Reid, have you noticed anything during class?"
As he started talking, you realised you hadn't looked over once. It was like he wasn't even there. "She seemed pretty normal until I read through the essay she handed in. Her critique of the ethics I set was neither for or against. But was more arguing that murder isn't entirely immoral." He explained, taking a sip from his coffee before continuing.
"Her argument was that neither lying or committing the murder is immoral. As both have their own moral explanations." He continued.
"Like lying to the murderer, or killing in self defence." You said without thought, his brown eyes meeting yours. Gaze dropped to your swirling cup of coffee, there was no escape from reminders of him.
"Wow babybird, they'll make a philosopher of you yet." Emily smiled, JJ giggled. "But what's the plan to get her to act again."
Rossi started to plan, "Release the grades publicly, put a select few people at the top of the list. We put an agent on everyone on the top of the list."
"She already thinks babybird has done well. So we stick her in a college dorm and wait. Also." He paused, looking between you and Reid. "If we were to drum up some rumours." He clicked his tongue, holding back a smirk.
Penelope squealed through the screen, "Are you telling me the garden is going to grow some ivy?" Her bottom lip pulled in between her teeth.
"What?" Reid asked, confused.
"Only if the two of you are comfortable." Hotch said at the same time and you sank deeper into the chair. Face burning as bright as a christmas light.
"Oh God." You groaned, head in your hands. Peeking through your fingers at Reid's face paling after JJ had kindly explained it into his ear. Finally, you made real eye contact for the first time all morning.
"We'll do it." He confirmed with a nod, and you a slightly less sure one.
"Oh my God!" Penelope cried, "It's like a cringe romcom. You should wear that mini skirt!"
"Garcia." Hotch warned, "Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"Yes."
Your eyes still locked together, you had to remind you it was for a case. All of it was for a case. No matter how fast your heart was beating. None of it was real.
----
The mini skirt was worn. Pleats brushing the tops of your thighs, falling right at the curve of your ass. The shirt you were wearing had one too many buttons undone.
Class hadn't started, it was just you and Reid in your meticulously planned play. Standing at his desk with your open, empty notebook. The bend of your back too salacious for just a teacher and student. His warmth radiated on your back as his arm reached around you, finger running down the blank page. You swore you could feel him starting to grow against your ass. Goosebumps pulled up on your skin, it wasn't real. It was a waiting game and you were begging for someone to catch you.
And someone did. Marie, Chloe and Sarah came bustling in. They paused in the doorway as the two of you jumped apart in fake shock.
"Um, thank you." You stuttered shyly, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear. Eyes planted firmly at your shoes, toes tapping on the floor and making your way to your front row seat.
Marie scrambled to your side, dragging you down into the seat as everyone else made their way in. "What the hell was that?"
"I don't know what you mean." Your voice ticked up, eyes raking him up and down.
"Mhm." She hummed, eyebrow raised.
You weren't listening to anything he was saying. Shamelessly, eye fucking him as he explained things to the class. Lip bitten in between your teeth and tongue wetting your lips. Out of the corner of your eye, the three of them couldn't help but glance over.
He was just as intense back, every wave of his hands sending you back to having your brain fucked out on his desk. The lines were blurring between Ivy and Gardener and you and Reid. And you weren't sure if you minded.
Then, your pen rolled off the wooden desk, clattering to the ground and silencing his rambling. Halting teaching, striding towards your desk. When he crouched, your legs uncrossed. Revealing the damp spot that was ever present on your panties.
It sent him stuttering, "Y-your pen... Ivy."
"Thank you, Professor." The pen made home in between your lips, looking up at him through your lashes. Ivy had disappeared, it felt like it was just you and Reid in the room. Everyone else melted away.
He spent the rest of the lecture, glancing over to you every few seconds. Wiping sweaty palms down the front of his pants. "Alright!" He concluded, "I think that's enough for today. Oh! But before you go. Your essays, I'll hand them out."
He travelled back to front. Telling polite good jobs, or this needs improvements. Until, he got to the front row. Chloe and Marie got a good job, a kind nod, that left them smiling at their marks.
But then came Sarah, he slid the paper across the desk upside down with a tight smile on his face. And then you, a huge smile on his face, hand reaching out to your shoulder. It wasn't real.
"See me after class." His thumb brushed a strand of hair from your shoulder, before turning to the rest of the class. "Alright! See you next week!"
Hanging around, you waved goodbye to Marie and Chloe. Sarah had disappeared quickly, throwing a look you couldn't quite read over her shoulder before turning the corner.
The door slammed close, but the tight air didn't diffuse. You drifted to the other side, leaning on your desk. You could hear him breathing, hands gripping the desk, back hunched over. The lines had blurred, it wasn't Ivy's underwear that were soaked through. It was yours.
"Reid-" You started, his name coming out more like an awkward squeak.
"Spencer." He cut you off, voice gruff and he finally straightened up. His brown leather shoes, clicked on the tiled floor. A slow, echoing rhythm that made you look up from your swinging feet.
"Look, I'm sorry." You sighed, looking everywhere but his face. "I took it too far." Mouth claggy, hands sweaty.
"Hmm," He hummed, hand darting out and gripped your jaw, forcing you to look up at him. "Are you sorry? The state of your panties says otherwise."
His fingers lingered at the crook of your knee. Softly, dragging up your thigh but stopping right before they could hit exactly where you wanted.
You whined, a high pitched, pathetic noise. "Spencer."
The look in his eyes lit you on fire. Tilting your head up, short breaths puffing from your lips. "Please."
His lips pressed against yours, tilting your neck up to meet his mouth. You groaned into his mouth, the noise silenced by his tongue dipping into your mouth. One hand brushed over your underwear, pressing into your clit lightly, the other gripped into your waist. Bringing you to the edge of the desk, keeping you exactly where he wanted you. At his mercy.
It was torture, the feather light touches giving you only a second of relief. He was smirking, the slight stubble that had grown in scratching at your chin.
At your wits end, you bite into his bottom lip. Teeth sinking into the skin and pulling back lightly. The two of you breathing in the others mouth, minty remnants coat your tongue.
"I swear to God Reid." You panted, hips bucking upwards into his fingers, "You are driving me crazy."
"I'm driving you crazy?" He scoffed, "You came in, wearing that tiny skirt. Basically bent over in front of me, then flashed me your wet panties, all while I was teaching." His tongue darted out, licking a long stripe up the column of your throat.
"Hotch's orders." You gasp, hand digging into his ragged curls and tugged him backwards.
He laughed, a mocking ring. "Oh I'm sure, I bet he told you to spread your legs for me. I wonder what he would say if I reported back? Huh babybird?"
The nickname out of his mouth had your head reeling, a complete opposite to the usual softness that came from Derek or Emily.
"I wonder what he would say, if I told him one of his best agents crumbled at the sight of me in a mini dress?" You shot back, hand cupping his now fully hard dick.
Finally, he pulled your panties down your legs. And slid them into his back pocket, his fingers slipping inside of you.
"Fuck Spencer!" You cried out, now fumbling at his belt. Clammy hands struggling with the buckle, arms falling weak as Spencer's fingers started to thrust in and out of you. A punishing pace, eyes rolling into the back of your head.
Every press of his fingers had a loud squelch bouncing around the lecture hall. Twitching his fingers upwards, brushing your g spot and laughing at your body falling limp. You used him as a support beam, slumped over in pleasure. He pressed a soft kiss to the top of your hair.
"Feel good baby?" He asked, voice turning soft.
"Mhm." You hummed, his fingers turning your brain to mush. "Close." You sighed into his chest.
"Good girl." He smiled, soft kisses peppered along the crook of your neck and collarbone.
The kind praise coming from Spencer of all people, had you hurling over the edge. Toes curling and hands desperately digging into his shoulder blades. Your thighs shook, clamping around his wrist tightly.
"Fucking hell." You sighed, breath warm on his ear as you pulled him into a soft kiss. It left your heart racing, almost exploding out of your chest.
You were holding on to him like a lifeline, he was holding onto you in a similar vein. His belt buckle clinked, pants pooling at his knees, before sliding into your warmth.
Still sensitive from a moment ago, your lips dug into your lip as he began to gently thrust. It was tender, a gentle rocking in and out. Soft strokes pulling through your hair. Smooth hands trailing up your spine.
It was almost too much. Too different. He wasn't being condescending, there was no mocking. Just sweet cooing in your ear that made you clench around him. Incoherent babbling of his name fell from your lips.
Then, he whispered your name. A gentle, soft noise that had you cumming around him. Stars bloomed behind your eye as you came, a whimpering moan falling from your lips.
He followed not long after you, pressing his forehead to yours. Chanting your name over and over, he released inside of you. A curl fell, sticking to him. He looked charming, you thought. Leaning down, he kissed you again, slow and languid.
It all felt too real.
"Um." You started, looking up at him. Pink cheeks and a shy smile, "Thank you."
"And thank you." He said, as he moved a fallen strand of hair away from your eyes.
"Can I have my panties back?" You bit your lip.
For a second, you just stared at him. Playing with your fingers, you started to giggle, and so did he. The laughter was infectious, everything was light. It was foreign, you weren't going at each others throats. There was no snarky comments, no corrections.
"Sure." He was smiling, not the smile he did when he was being polite. But the one when Penelope let him ramble about doctor who, or when JJ surprised him with a chocolate covered sprinkled doughnut.
He handed them to you, cool to the touch where they were still damp. There was a pool where his cum had dripped out of you. The desk under you, covered in him.
Shimmying them up your legs, more of him dripped out of you. You grimaced and he smirked.
"Shut up." You grumped, pouting slightly.
Suddenly, there was a rush of people outside of the hall. Another class period had ended. Had you really been in there that long?
"Right."
"Right." He echoed.
"I better head off, time to lure a murderer to my fake apartment." You joked, he didn't laugh. "Kidding."
Turning, you packed your bag and jogged up the stairs, hoping that he couldn't see the huge wet spot on your underwear. You'd never hear the end of it.
"Be careful." He called when you reached the last step with his hands in his pockets rocking back on his heels.
"I will."
----
Sometimes, you wished unsubs were less predictable. You had spotted Sarah two blocks away, she lurked around corners, hid behind signs and she thought the hat she had on was hiding her face.
As soon as you'd seen her, you messaged Hotch. By the time you reached the apartment block you'd seen three squad cars. The front entrance was propped open so she could follow you right on in.
And she did. Apartment 6B was on the third floor. When you got to the second the front entrance slammed closed. She was not far behind you now.
Anyone with eyes could tell no one lived in apartment 6B, it was bland as anything. The walls were stark white, all the furniture was drab grey. There was nothing personal at all. No photos on the walls, no trinkets sprawled on every surface.
You had left the door unlocked behind you, and dumped your bag on the boring, rough couch. Walking to the kitchen, you slid open the door by the sink. Your gun sat inside, exactly where Derek had left it. Him and JJ were in your 'bedroom', waiting for the signal.
A few seconds later, there was a knock on the door.
"Coming!" You called, sliding your gun into the waistband of your skirt and made your way to the door. "Sarah!" You gasped, then tilted your head, taking a pause. "How... do you know where I live?" You asked, furrowing your brows.
"You bitch!" She growled, immediately jumping at you. A knife that she had hidden behind her back at the ready. Now, that was an escalation.
Your hand gripped her forearm, trying to wrangle the knife from her grasp. The two of you crashed into the wall, the tip of the knife scratched against your shoulder. Dark blood stained your shirt.
"Sarah put the knife down." You pleaded, the air puffing out of your lungs as you fell to the floor. The coffee table's legs crashing under your back.
"You're a no good slut." Sarah lifted the knife, ready to strike down upon you. Derek and JJ came running out of the bedroom, guns drawn and shouting.
"FBI! Put the knife down!" Derek barked, moving in on her.
The crazed look in her eyes told you she wasn't going to relent. Scrambling back, you swept her legs out from under her. Her ribs crashed into your legs and the knife fell from her grip. It sliced your calf, the blood running down and turning your white sock red.
They moved in, yanking her off of your legs and pulling her arms behind her. Cuffs clinked as he read her, her rights. JJ rushed to your side, kneeling beside you.
"Are you ok?" She flustered, hand grasping onto your uninjured shoulder.
"I'm fine." You nodded, smoothing down your skirt. You hissed when her finger prodded at your leg. "Ow!"
She laughed lightly, "Cmon, there's an ambulance outside." She helped you up, supporting you as you hobbled down the staircase and out onto the street.
You get forced into the back of an ambulance, Hotch stood guard at the door. The paramedics started to pepper you with questions.
"Did you hit your head?" She shined a torch in your eyes, checking for signs of a concussion.
"No," You shake your head. "Just the slashes." You confirmed and slid your shirt off of your shoulder.
"Alright, you'll need a couple stitches in each one. We can do it here." She explained, starting to stitch you up. "You'll need to take it easy for a couple of weeks." She said, with a pointed glance towards Hotch.
You sat in the back of the ambulance, legs swinging as they processed Sarah.
"Hey." Spencer said, sitting down next to you. "I heard you got quite roughed up."
"I'm ok." You smiled, head resting on the side of the ambulance.
"Uh, I got you something." He coughed, rummaging around in his pocket and pulled out a red lollipop. "The sugar will be good for keeping your energy up after losing blood. It tricks your brain into thinking you're fine. Endorphins and stuff."
"It tricks your brain into thinking you're fine. Endorphins and stuff." You said at the same time, holding back a laugh at his face. "You said the same to Em when she got grazed two months ago."
"Do you memorise everything I say?" He smirked.
"Well if I didn't how could I be precise? Professor Reid." You batted your eyelashes at him.
"Don't." He warned with a finger waved in your face, clambering up from the back of the ambulance when he saw Emily walking your way. He gave a wave before heading over to the rest of the team.
Unwrapping the treat with a loud crinkle, you called out. "Spencer!"
He turned and raised his brows.
"Thank you!" Popping it into your mouth, as Emily sat down next to you.
"Since when do you call him Spencer?" She asked, eyes darting between you.
"Recent development." You shrugged, trying not to stare.
"We told you, you just needed to fuck it out." She smiled, bumping your good shoulder with hers. "Was it the dress? Cuz I'd so do you in that."
"Shut up." You grumbled, cheeks heating up. Going even more red as you locked eyes with Spencer.
"Babybird and pretty boy sittin in a tree." She whispered in your ear, then doubled over laughing after you jabbed your elbow into her ribs.
----
a/n: this is so ass, there is genuinely no literayness to this. lowk was just horny and rabidly typed this out. whoops! ! join my taglist here!!!!
Spencer Reid who realises that you really, really like it when he rambles
warnings: SMUT - MDNI, p in v, oral m!receiving, no mention of protection, reader loves her hot nerd boyfriend
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Spencer notices everything.
It’s simply the way his mind works. He’s spent the better part of the last decade training himself to pick up on the little things and it’s made him very good at what he does.
But when it comes to women, there are still plenty of things that he doesn’t pick up on.
Especially when it’s late in the evening and he’s over at your place, the two of you watching some medical drama with far too many inaccuracies for him to ignore.
He’s on what feels like his twentieth “That’s actually…” of the episode but you couldn’t tell anyone what he had been saying, even if they held a gun to your head.
There’s just something so effortlessly sexy in the way that he can correct the logistics of an on-screen surgery without even a stutter. Or how he’ll tut to himself whenever they recite a made up illness to up the stakes.
A big brain has always been your weakness. And your pupils are blown wide as you stare — not at the tv, but at him.
And Spencer doesn’t even notice. Not when you trail your fingertips over his thigh or even when you absentmindedly press a kiss to his shoulder.
He might glance over at you, but he gives you no more than a second’s notice, before he’s turning back to the screen as he huffs, “And the craziest thing is that they have researchers for this kind of thing but…”
It isn’t until you’ve managed to creep into his lap that Spencer looks at you fully, cupping your cheek, “You seem… are you okay? Am I talking too much?”
His eyes flick down to where you’re pressed against him, then back up to your face.
You shake your head, fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt, “Mm-mm. Keep talking.”
Something about the way you say it makes him swallow. Hard. So he does keep talking. And he doesn’t get more than a few sentences out before you’re kissing him, grinding down against his slacks.
His words are coming out stuttered now because this was not the evening he thought he’d be having when you suggested a cosy night in.
He tilts his head back against the couch, muttering a quiet, “Oh my God.” under his breath.
But the second he’s stopped rambling, you stop grinding and he’s whimpering and you just smile sweetly at him until something in his brain clicks.
The talking.
And suddenly he’s racking his brain for every other time you’ve reacted like this and kicking himself for not noticing sooner when you’d drooled over his cock the night he’d helped you finish up your dissertation or how fast you’d pulled him into a supply closet when you’d come back from sick leave to find out Spencer had finished up all your reporting for you.
And for once, boy genius, Spencer Reid feels like the stupidest man alive and now he just won’t shut up.
Not when you’re kneeled on the floor between his legs, eyes locked onto him as you wrap your lips around the head of his leaking cock. Nor when you’re on top of him, tits bouncing and sweat gathering along your skin as you ride him with more fervour than he’s ever seen. He’s reeling off every little fact he can think of to get you off on his brain.
One thing is clear, Spencer Reid is not going to be shutting up anytime soon.
Sam Winchester who definitely needs to get his vision rechecked. The way that he squints when he opens a book and occasionally has his finger running under certain small lines of text, trying to read after he took out his contacts in the dim lights of a motel room that was … less than sanitary. Sure, maybe his vision was a little blurry, but he would rather deal with what seemed like vaseline over his eyes than the teasing from the forever nine year old boy that was his older brother (being called four eyes still hurts at 22!). Dean only mentions it once, a passing comment about missing when he used to ask him how many fingers he could see when he took off his glasses. Sam refuses to comment.
Sam still carries his glasses in the small leather case tucked into the side pocket of his duffle bag, checking on them discreetly every time he tosses his luggage into the trunk of the Impala to make sure they haven’t cracked. Just in case. He used to wear them all the time at Stanford, reaching for them off the neck of his shirt or leaving them on the top of his head, nestled in his hair. He wouldn't admit it to Dean, usually in an effort to dodge the guilt that slowly ate him alive whenever he mentioned Stanford, but he missed the times when he wouldn't have to worry about a demon snatching them off his collar— or, you know, his 26 year old brother who doesn't know how to let a joke die.
a/n — hi to the like 3 people who like supernatural x reader gulp ..
Imagine falling asleep on Spock’s shoulder only to wake up to Jim and Bones teasing him to no end about it. Like you open your eyes and look up at him to apologize and he just has random shit stacked on him in various places. Jim wanted to see how much he would put up with for the sake of letting you sleep (hint: a lot). Bones would just be standing there with his arms crossed and a shit eating grin on his face because he’s so using this against Spock later. And poor, sweet Spock just looks at you and goes “Did you sleep well?”
Ex!husband harvey coming into your house like he owns the place (he always does this) and catches you kissing the guy you are currently dating, I wonder how he would react
You heard the front door open, no knock, no text, just the familiar scrape of Harvey's key turning like your still married.
Because that's the thing with Harvey.
Divorced or not...he's always going to walk into your life like it's still his.
He just stands in the doorway, hands buried casually in his pockets, a slow, dangerous smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.
"Well," he says, his voice smooth, low, and completely taking over the room. "Isn't this a cozy little tableau."
"Harvey." You stood up from the couch, smoothing down your dress. "You can't just..."
Your boyfriend stood too, extending his hand with the kind of earnest politeness that made you want to push him back down. "You must be..."
"Harvey Specter." Harvey looked at his outstretched hand like it was a subpoena. He didn't shake it.
Your date's hand dropped. Harvey Specter? The Harvey Specter? From Pearson Specter Litt?"
"The one and only." Harvey's smile was all teeth, no warmth. "I see my reputation precedes me."
"I've read about you. The Amir Jackson case, the merger with Darby International." He was practically starstruck, and you wanted to die. "You're a legend."
"I am." Harvey unbuttoned his suit jacket, making himself comfortable in what used to be his living room. "And you're the guy who's been kissing my wife.
"Harvey." Your voice was a warning. "Why are you here?"
"I came by to drop off the last of your files, but if I’d known you were busy auditioning my replacement, I would’ve sent a paralegal."
He set a crisp Manila folder down with a soft thud. He looks back at the guy.
"A word of advice, pal? You might want to fix your collar. And maybe upgrade the tie. She has high standards or at least, she used to."
Harvey turns back to you, leaning in just close enough for only you to hear, his voice dropping an octave.
"Next time you try to move on... make it hard for me to laugh.
Based on this song by Rachel Zegler from A ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
summary: You and Jon had been childhood friends, outcasted children who had formed a special bond, after years of hardships you had long since buried any feeling you had for him. That is until, one night round a warm campfire, you sing a new song that seems to have more of your feelings exposed than you originally intended.
Warnings: cannon is just a suggestion, nothing really(?), cold weather and exhaustion(?), I really can't think of any.
★・・・・・・★
The cold had a way of getting into everything. Into the seams of cloaks, into the joints of fingers, into the quiet places behind a person's ribs where they kept the things they didn't say out loud. You had learned that the first winter you spent beyond the Wall, and every night since had only proven it truer, over and over, until you'd half stopped noticing the ache of it and started simply building your whole life around outlasting it instead.
Tonight the company had stopped early, driven off the road by a wind that cut sideways and a sky the color of a bruise. Men who'd marched since first light dropped where they stood the moment the order came, packs sliding off aching shoulders, faces raw and wind-chapped, too tired even to grumble properly. For a while there was only the sound of snow ticking against leather and canvas, and the low, exhausted murmur of people who had nothing left in them but the bare bones of speech.
You built your fire the way you always did, patient, coaxing flame up out of nothing the same careful way you'd once coaxed a smile out of a room full of strangers who owed you nothing at all. By the time it caught properly and started throwing real heat, half the camp had drifted toward the light of it without seeming to decide to, the way moths find a candle, the way tired people always found you.
"Finally," Tormund announced, dropping down across from you with the enormous, deliberate groan of a big man determined to make his aching knees everybody's business. "Thought you were going to make us march to the Wall in silence like a bunch of miserable septons. Another night of that and I'd have started composing my own songs, and trust me, little bird, you don't want that."
"I truly, deeply don't," you agreed, tuning a string.
"I have a lovely singing voice."
"You sing like a dying goat being pulled backward through a hedge."
Sam near choked laughing into his hands, and the wildling woman beside him, a sharp-eyed archer named Dara with a scar through one eyebrow and absolutely no patience for foolishness, snorted without quite allowing herself to smile. "She's not wrong," Dara said. "I've heard dying goats in worse straits than you, Giantsbane, and they carried a tune better."
"Everyone's a critic," Tormund said, wounded, though he looked delighted by the abuse, the way he always did, like insults from people he liked were a kind of currency he collected on purpose. "Play something, then, bard, since you're too fine an ear for the rest of us. Something with some fight in it. None of your sad songs tonight. We've had sad enough this week to last three winters."
"Careful what you wish for," you said, and grinned, feeling the small familiar spark that always caught somewhere under your ribs right before a room turned toward you and forgot, for a little while, to be afraid. "I have exactly the thing, and you're all going to regret asking for it by the second verse."
Jon settled at the edge of the firelight as you tuned, the way he always did, close enough to be part of the circle and yet somehow never quite fully in the warm of it, like a man who'd spent so many years standing watch he'd forgotten there was any other way to sit. Ghost draped himself over Jon's boots like an enormous fallen snowbank that had decided, on reflection, to be useful. You caught Jon's eye across the flames for half a breath, no more. He didn't smile. He rarely did anymore, not properly, not with his whole face the way you remembered him doing as a boy. But something in his expression eased all the same, softened at the edges, the way it always did when he looked at you and thought, apparently, that you weren't watching closely enough to notice. You looked away before you could think too hard about that, the way you always did, and pretended your hands hadn't gone the slightest bit unsteady on the strings.
You struck the first chord hard and let it ring out over the whole camp, and grinned at the little jump it startled out of the nearest Watch boy, who nearly upended his own bowl of stew.
"Oh, the wind can howl till the mountains shake, And the frost can bite till the rivers break, But there's fire enough and there's mead enough And a song enough to keep us warm tonight!
We've marched through mud, we've marched through snow, We've buried kin where the black winds blow, But we're not dead yet, no, we're not dead yet, So drink up, lads, let the embers glow!
For the wolf still howls and the raven flies, And the old gods watch with a thousand eyes, But we'll laugh and drink and we'll live to see Another dawn beyond the trees!
So raise your cup to the ones who fell, And raise it twice to the living as well, For the North remembers, the North remembers, And the North, by god, is not dead yet!"
By the second verse half the fire had the chorus, bawling it out of tune and with absolutely no shame whatsoever. Tormund sang loud enough to frighten wildlife three ridges over. Sam sang like a man convinced someone might scold him for it and did it anyway, red-faced and grinning. Even Dara, who never sang anything, mouthed the words under her breath, tapping the beat against her knee with two fingers like she was allowing herself only that much enjoyment and not a scrap more. You played it through twice more because nobody wanted it to end, and by the last round there was actual dancing of a sort, two Watch boys hauling each other around by the wrists and very nearly pitching headlong into the fire to howls of delighted laughter, and somebody's flask going round hand to hand, and for a little while the whole miserable, freezing, grieving camp forgot it was miserable and freezing and grieving at all, and was simply, gloriously, alive.
Even Jon, at the edge of it all, had the faintest ghost of a smile pulling at his mouth by the end, watching Tormund attempt something that might generously be called a jig. You caught it and treasured it the way you treasured all the rare ones, tucking it away somewhere private to take out and look at later.
It wound down eventually into laughter and someone clapping you far too hard on the back, and you let the noise settle, still idly plucking, warm all through despite the cold at your spine, and requests started drifting in the way they always did once people had had a taste and wanted more.
"Play the one about the fox and the miller's daughter," Dara said, trying and failing to sound like she wasn't asking for her favorite.
"Play the drinking one again," said Tormund, unhelpfully, since you had in fact just played it three times.
"Play 'The Last Harvest,'" Sam said, quieter, and you gave him a small nod, because you knew exactly why he liked that one, the ache tucked inside it, and you didn't make him say the reason out loud in front of everyone.
You played through three more, easy and half-requested, the fire crackling low and gold, the wind losing some of its teeth as the night wore on and bodies packed closer together for warmth. It was good. It was the kind of good you tried, deliberately, on purpose, to build every single night out here, because you'd learned a long time ago, the hard way, that people who could still laugh together were people who hadn't given up yet, and that was worth more than almost anything else you knew how to give them.
It was in the lull after "The Last Harvest," when the fire had burned down to something softer and the talk had gentled into murmurs and the laughter had gone quiet and companionable, that Jon spoke.
"Play something new."
You looked up. Everyone did, a little, because Jon Snow didn't often ask for things at a fire, and never, in all the time you'd known him out here, for songs.
"A new one?" you repeated, and your voice came out strange even to your own ears, thinner than you meant it.
"Yeah." He was watching you steadily across the flames, firelight catching gold and orange in the dark of his eyes, giving nothing away and somehow, at the same time, giving everything away at once. "You always have one you're not playing. I can tell."
"I don't—" You laughed, and it came out thin, unconvincing even to yourself. "I don't know what you mean."
"Oh, come on," Tormund said immediately, delighted, sensing blood in the water the way he always did with an instinct you were fairly sure bordered on supernatural. "She's got that look. That's her new-song look. I've seen it before."
"Please," Sam added, and then half the fire was saying it, please, go on, new one, come on, and you sat there with your fingers still resting on the strings feeling suddenly and thoroughly cornered by your own delighted, exhausted, entirely too perceptive audience.
You looked at Jon once more, hoping, foolishly, that he might take it back. He hadn't moved. He was just watching you, patient, like he had all the time left in the world, like he wasn't the entire reason your chest had gone so tight you could barely draw breath around it.
"Fine," you said, at last, and the fire cheered like you'd announced a tourney victory. "Fine. But I'll warn you now, I don't quite know what it's about yet. I've been building it for months and I still haven't worked out the whole of it. I suppose the winter just makes you wonder about things. Or something like that."
Nobody laughed at that, which was somehow worse than if they had.
You let your fingers find the shape of it, slower than the drinking song, softer, something that asked to be leaned into rather than shouted along with. Your heart was going too fast for how still you were sitting. You didn't look at Jon again. You didn't trust yourself to, not with what you were about to hand the entire fire without meaning to.
"Everyone's born as clean as a whistle As fresh as a daisy And not a bit crazy Staying that way's a hard row for hoeing As rough as a briar Like walking through fire
This world, it's dark This world, it's scary I've taken some hits, so No wonder I'm wary
It's why I Need you You're as pure as the driven snow"
The words called up the memory before you'd even finished singing them, the way the truest songs always did, dragging you somewhere else entirely while your fingers kept moving on their own, muscle memory carrying the tune while the rest of you went somewhere far away and much younger.
You were nine years old, soaked through and shivering under an overturned cart, hiding from a summer storm that had turned the yard at Winterfell into a river in the space of a quarter hour. You'd come with your father on some errand to Winterfell, and he'd told you to stay put by the cart and wait for him, his voice already turned away before he'd finished saying it. You had. You'd waited, the way you always did, the way you'd learned early was the only thing that kept him from being disappointed in you. But the storm had rolled in, and the hours had gone by, one after another, and somewhere in the waiting you'd understood, slowly and then all at once, that he wasn't coming back for you. Not tonight, maybe not at all. He had never wanted much to do with you since your mother died, not really, not since it became clear you weren't going to be the son he'd wanted in her place. You carried her with you anyway, the little you remembered of her, a hum of a song, the smell of a particular soap, tucked away somewhere you didn't let anyone see. You'd crawled under the cart telling yourself it was only for the warmth, only to get out of the rain, and not because some small stubborn part of you was afraid that if you didn't find warmth here, you might never find it again, from anyone, ever. You didn't know it yet, huddled there dripping under a stranger's borrowed cloak, but you were right to be afraid of it. Your father never did come back for you. Not that night, not the next morning, not ever again. Whatever errand had brought him to Winterfell, he'd apparently decided somewhere in the storm that it was easier to simply not have a daughter to carry home, and you never learned what became of him, or whether he even thought of you again once he'd gone.
Then someone had ducked in beside you, graceless and dripping, a boy about your own age with dark curls plastered flat to his forehead and a face that already, even that young, looked like it had learned to expect disappointment before it arrived.
"You're going to freeze," he'd said, matter-of-fact, like it was the most obvious thing in the world, and before you could even answer he'd unclasped his own cloak, too big for him, clearly borrowed or handed down from someone bigger, and swung half of it around your shoulders so the two of you were huddled together underneath it, shoulder to shoulder, sharing the small stolen warmth of it.
"Who are you?" you'd managed, through chattering teeth.
"Jon," he'd said. Just that. Not Snow, not bastard, not any of the things you'd learn later that people called him like it was a title instead of a wound they'd carved into him on purpose. Just Jon. "Who're you?"
You'd told him your name, and he'd nodded seriously, like he was filing it away somewhere important and permanent. Rain had been dripping steadily off the end of his nose, his dark curls plastered flat and dripping too, and something about the sight of him, so solemn and so thoroughly soaked, had startled a laugh out of you despite the cold. "You look like a wet crow," you'd told him, and he'd blinked at you, affronted, before something like a smile had tugged at his mouth for the first time since he'd ducked in beside you.
"A wet crow," he'd repeated, like he was turning the insult over to see if he liked it. "Suppose that's fair."
And then, unexpectedly, he'd laughed too, a short surprised huff of it, like the sound had caught him off guard as much as it had you, and you'd both dissolved into it together right there under the cart, two soaked, shivering children laughing at nothing and everything, the storm still hammering down around you and neither of you minding it half as much anymore.
Then the two of you had settled back into silence for a while, sharing a cloak that smelled of woodsmoke and horses, watching the rain come down in gray sheets past the edge of the cart.
"You didn't have to do that," you'd said eventually, once your teeth had stopped chattering quite so badly. "Share it. I'm nobody."
He'd looked at you like that was a strange thing to say, brow furrowing, entirely without guile. "Didn't like watching you shiver," he'd said simply. "Doesn't matter who you are."
You had decided, right then, in the absolute and uncomplicated way that children decide things, that you would remember him for the rest of your life. You hadn't known yet, sitting there soaked and shaking under a stranger's borrowed cloak, exactly how right you'd turn out to be.
The memory receded like a tide going out, slow and reluctant, and you found yourself back at the fire, voice steadier than your chest had any right to be, moving into the next verse before anyone could notice you'd been somewhere else entirely.
"Everyone wants to be like a hero The cake with the cream, or the doer not dreamer Doing's hard work, but it takes some to change things Like goat's milk to butter Like ice blocks to water
This world goes blind When children are dying I turn into dust, but You never stop trying
It's why I Love you You're as pure as the driven snow"
This time the memory came sharper, closer, because it hurt more, and some part of you had known it would the moment you started building this song at all.
You were older. Older enough that the boy from under the cart had grown, slowly and then all at once, into someone taller and quieter and more solemn, a young man with dark curls and a serious mouth that you noticed, somewhere along the way, you'd started thinking of as handsome rather than simply familiar. You'd stayed friends in the years between, in the scattered, patchwork way distance and circumstance allowed, catching each other at Winterfell now and again, trading letters when you could manage it, and every single time you found each other again it was like no time at all had passed, like the two of you simply picked the conversation back up from wherever you'd left it.
You watched him grow into that solemnness the way you watched a bruise deepen, slow and inevitable. The taller and more capable he became, the heavier the word bastard seemed to sit on him, other boys' cruelty sharpening as they got old enough to know exactly where to aim it, and you watched him learn to carry it without flinching, jaw set, shoulders squared, becoming better at pretending it didn't land than at actually not feeling it land. You hated it for him. You never told him that, not directly, but you made sure, every time you saw him, that at least one person in his life looked at him like he was simply Jon, the boy who'd once given a stranger his cloak, and not like he was a mistake somebody was still quietly apologizing for.
There had been no kin waiting to take you in after that storm, no distant family willing to be bothered with a girl nobody had claimed. You'd lived on the streets around Winterfell for a stretch of years after, doing what any abandoned child does to survive, which was mostly going hungry and learning which alleys were safest to sleep in. Jon found you again not long into it, recognized you before you recognized him, and after that he came looking for you whenever he could get away, small bundles of bread and cheese lifted quietly from the kitchens and passed to you like it was nothing, like it wasn't the reason you hadn't starved that winter. He never made you feel like charity. He just kept coming back.
It was a woman running errands for a certain kind of house who found you eventually, young as you still were, and decided a girl who could clean and fetch and stay quiet was worth taking in, at least for now, at least until you were old enough that you'd be worth something else to her instead. You understood, even at that age, exactly what was being weighed and waited for. You scrubbed floors and hauled water and kept your head down and told yourself you had time yet, that you'd think of something before your time ran out.
It was the singing that saved you, in the end. You'd taken to humming while you scrubbed, your mother's half-remembered tune mostly, the only thing of hers you still had, and humming had turned to singing under your breath, and singing under your breath had turned, one evening, to singing loud enough that a woman passing in the street outside had stopped to listen through the open window. She came back the next day and the day after that, and on the third day she made an offer to the house that the woman running it, weighing coin against a girl not yet grown into her worth, decided to take. You left with nothing but the clothes on your back and a voice that, for the first time in your life, felt like it belonged entirely to you and to no one else. From there you'd built yourself into a bard proper, town to town, tavern to tavern, learning which songs eased a hard week and which ones started fights and which ones made grown men weep quietly into their cups. You carried your mother's half-remembered hum into half of them without anyone ever knowing it, and somewhere in all that traveling you'd stopped being the frightened, unwanted girl under the cart and become someone who could walk into any room in the North and leave it a little lighter than she'd found it.
You didn't see Jon often in those years, not as often as either of you would have liked, your road and his rarely running the same direction for long. But when they did cross, when you found yourself back at Winterfell or he'd ridden out to wherever your travels had taken you, something in both of you seemed to loosen all at once, shoulders dropping, the careful masks you both wore for the rest of the world sliding away without either of you needing to ask the other to take them off. You were, in those stolen handfuls of hours, exactly what you'd been under that cart. Just Jon and just you, two children who'd found an unlikely kind of peace in each other and never quite stopped needing it.
And then the last of those visits had turned into a morning. Gray, bitter, the kind of cold that gets into your bones and simply stays there. You'd stood at the gate and watched him in the black cloak of the Night's Watch, the same boy who'd once given a stranger half of everything he had without being asked, now giving the whole of himself to something larger and colder and further away than either of you could properly imagine.
"You didn't have to choose this," you'd said, hating how small your voice sounded, hating how it cracked on the last word despite every effort to keep it steady.
"I did, though." He hadn't looked away from you, not once, even as the others called for him to mount up, even as the yard filled with the noise and bustle of departure around the two of you. "It's who I am. Who I've got to be, I think. Who I've always been meant to be, maybe."
"I know." And you had known, even through the raw ache of it, even hating it. "I'd think less of you if you hadn't chosen it."
He'd reached out, briefly, and squeezed your hand, the only thing either of you allowed yourselves in front of the watching yard full of eyes. "I'll think of you," he'd said, low, just for you, just between the two of you and no one else. "Every day. I swear it to you."
"Don't make promises you can't keep, Jon Snow."
"I don't," he'd said, quiet and certain. "That's rather the trouble with me."
Then he'd mounted, and ridden north through the gate and out of sight, and you'd stood there until you couldn't see the black cloak among the trees anymore, and told yourself, unconvincingly, that it didn't feel like something essential had been torn clean out of your chest and carried north along with him.
Your fingers found the bridge without you quite deciding to move them there, voice dropping softer still, throat tight around the notes.
"Cold and clean Swirling over my skin You cloak me You soak right in Down to my heart"
Years, then. A different fire, a different life entirely, and word that had reached you like a rumor you didn't dare let yourself believe, that a bastard boy who'd gone north had come back changed, harder, carrying grief you couldn't yet name and a title he'd never once wanted. You'd traveled for weeks on nothing but that thin rumor and the stubborn, foolish, entirely undignified hope that he'd still know you after everything.
You'd found him in a cold yard, snow falling steady and silent around you both, and for one long, suspended moment neither of you had moved, two people who'd changed into near-strangers standing on either side of a gap neither of you quite knew how to close anymore.
"It's you," he'd said finally, like he didn't quite believe it, like you might dissolve into the snow if he blinked.
"It's me," you'd said, and your voice had cracked despite every effort not to let it.
He'd crossed the distance himself, because your feet wouldn't do it, and pulled you into an embrace that had knocked the breath clean out of you, snow catching in both your hair, and you remembered thinking, absurdly, helplessly, that he still smelled a little like woodsmoke, even after everything that had happened to him, even after everything that had happened to you both.
"I didn't think I'd see you again," he'd murmured into your hair, his voice rougher than you remembered it.
"You should know better than to underestimate me by now," you'd managed, and felt him laugh, just once, low and surprised, against you, like he'd genuinely forgotten he still knew how.
You blinked back into the firelight, throat aching, eyes stinging in a way that had nothing to do with the wind, and let the final verse carry you the rest of the way home.
"Everyone thinks they know all about me They slap me with labels and spit out their fables You came along and you knew it was lying You saw the ideal me And yes, that's the real me
This world, it's cruel With troubles aplenty You asked for a reason I've got three and twenty
For why I Trust you You're as pure as the driven snow
It's why I Trust you You're as pure as the driven snow"
The last memory came unbidden, the one you'd tried hardest of all not to let in, and failed completely, the way you'd known you would from the first note of this whole foolish song.
Last night. The two of you on watch together at the edge of camp, shoulders nearly touching, everyone else asleep or too far off to notice or care. You'd been talking about nothing in particular, the easy way you always did when it was just the two of you, some half-serious argument about whether wolves or ravens made better company on a cold night.
"Ravens, obviously," you'd said. "They talk back. Wolves just stare at you like you owe them money."
"Ghost doesn't stare like that."
"Ghost stares like that at everyone, Jon. He just likes you enough to forgive you for it."
He'd huffed something that was almost a laugh, low in his chest, and you'd felt it more than heard it, sitting as close as you were. "And what do I owe you, then? Since you're keeping count of who owes what."
"Haven't decided yet." You'd bumped your shoulder against his, deliberate, testing. "I'll let you know when I think of something worth collecting."
"I'd pay it," he'd said, quieter than the joke called for, and something in his voice had changed the shape of the whole conversation without either of you naming it.
You hadn't had an answer for that. Not one you trusted yourself to say out loud, anyway. And then the talking had simply stopped, the way it sometimes did between you, and neither of you had rushed to fill the silence that followed, both of you sitting in it instead, letting it stretch, letting it mean something neither of you were brave enough to put into words.
"You've got snow in your hair," he'd said, quiet, and reached up before he seemed to fully decide to, brushing it away with careful, deliberate fingers that lingered a moment longer than the task required, trailing along your temple like he'd forgotten what he'd reached up to do in the first place.
"So do you," you'd said, breath catching, and hadn't moved his hand away.
He hadn't moved it either. If anything his hand had gone still against your skin, like he was suddenly afraid that moving at all might break whatever this was.
You remembered his eyes dropping, not for a second this time but longer, unhurried, to your mouth, and yours doing the exact same helpless thing to his, and the space between you collapsing without either of you appearing to consciously close it, both of you leaning in, not gently, not carefully, but like something starved finally being let loose, breath gone ragged, his hand sliding from your temple into your hair like he meant to close that last fraction of an inch and not let either of you pull back from it, like whatever this was had stopped being about caution the moment his fingers found the snow in your hair, and you'd let yourself lean into it just as hungrily, just as unwilling to be the one who stopped it.
Then a log had shifted and cracked in the fire behind you, sharp and sudden in the quiet, and you'd both startled back at once like you'd been caught at something shameful, hearts hammering, breath still unsteady, the moment shattering as fast and completely as it had built. Neither of you had spoken of it since. You weren't sure either of you knew how to begin.
You brought the last chord home slow, let it ring out and fade into the crackle of the fire and the hush of falling snow, your own heart pounding loud enough you were half sure the whole camp could hear it, and for a long moment nobody said anything at all.
"Good song," Sam said finally, quiet, and cleared his throat like the words had cost him something to get out.
"Aye," Dara agreed, not looking at you, looking instead at the fire, or at nothing, or at something she wasn't inclined to name.
"I'm not too sure why I wrote it," you said, too fast, reaching for something to do with your hands that wasn't gripping the neck of the lute too tightly. "Just came to me. The way they do, sometimes."
Tormund, who had been quiet through the whole thing, which was itself remarkable enough to remark on, looked at you with an expression that was almost gentle, for him, almost soft around a face built for shouting. "You can kid yourself, kid," he said. "But not us. Not for a second."
Nobody pushed it further than that. That was its own kind of mercy, the North had, knowing when to let a thing sit quiet and full instead of picking it apart in front of everyone with their hands still cold and their hearts still raw from the fire. People started stirring at last, stretching stiff legs, groaning their way upright, breaking off toward bedrolls and half-finished tents, the ordinary business of a cold night reasserting itself around the strange, charged little silence you'd left hanging behind you like smoke that hadn't quite cleared.
"I should help with the tents," you said to no one in particular, already moving to set the lute carefully aside, glad of the excuse to have somewhere else to look.
"Wait." Jon's voice, low, just for you, cutting clean through the noise of the breaking camp.
You turned. He was already standing, and before you'd fully registered it, his hand had closed gently around your wrist, not pulling, just holding, like he needed the point of contact to say the rest of whatever he was working up to.
"Can I speak with you? Alone."
"Jon, I really should help—"
"Please."
Just the one word, quiet and a little rough at the edges, and something in the way he said it undid whatever argument you'd been in the middle of building. "Okay," you said, quieter still, your pulse loud in your own ears, and let him lead you a little apart from the fire, out to where the dark and the steadily falling snow made a kind of privacy even a crowded camp couldn't interrupt.
He didn't let go of your wrist right away. Neither of you seemed to notice, or neither of you wanted to.
"That song," he said.
"What about it."
"Don't." He almost smiled, which on Jon Snow was its own kind of small miracle, rare enough that you nearly forgot to breathe watching it happen. "You said you didn't know what it was about. I think we both know that's not entirely true."
You looked at the snow instead of at him, because it was easier than looking at his face right now, easier than watching whatever was about to happen there. "Maybe I know nothing."
"If one of us knows nothing," he said, "it's me. Do you remember the cart?"
"The storm, at Winterfell," he went on. "You were half-frozen and I gave you my cloak and you told me I looked like a wet crow."
A laugh startled out of you before you could stop it, sudden and real and warm despite the cold, cutting straight through the nerves knotted in your chest. "You did. You looked exactly like a wet crow. It's still true, honestly."
"There," he said, softly, and something shifted in his voice, something that made your breath catch.
"What?"
"That laugh." He was looking at you like he was memorizing something he was terrified of forgetting. "That's when I first fell in love with you. Under that cart. Nine years old, soaked clean through, and you laughed at me like I was the funniest thing you'd ever seen in your whole short life, and I decided right then, before I even knew what the feeling was called, that I'd do anything to hear it again. I've been trying, one way or another, ever since."
"Jon—" Your voice came out barely more than breath.
"I don't want to pretend I know exactly what you sang about tonight," he went on, quiet and steady, like he'd been holding these words a long time and needed to get them out now, all at once, before he lost the nerve entirely. "I know you well enough to know you've got a flair for the dramatic, so if you'd rather sing a thing than say it plainly, that's alright by me, I'll take it however you're willing to give it. But I needed to say the rest of it plainly myself, just this once, out loud, where you couldn't mistake it for anything else. Especially after last night. I haven't been able to think of much else since that log broke us apart. Truth is I'd been dreaming of that for longer than I should admit to, dreaming of your mouth, of what it might be like to finally kiss you the way we very nearly did, and last night was the closest either of us had ever come to it, close enough I could still feel the ghost of it hours after. And when the fire startled us apart, when the moment broke and neither of us said a word about it, I lay awake half the night after with a kind of dread I can't rightly explain, that I might never get that close again, that I might spend the rest of whatever life I've got left only ever chasing the memory of it instead of actually holding you properly, knowing every part of you the way I've only ever let myself picture in the dark. I want that. I want to show you every part of me in return, all of it, even the parts I don't much like. It isn't much to offer, I know that. It's just me. But whatever's left of me is yours, if you'll have it, and I don't know what the future holds, only that I want to hold you in it, however much of it we get. I don't know what's coming for either of us. I don't know if we survive what's still ahead. But I love you. I have for a long time, longer than I think either of us have let ourselves admit. And I couldn't let another night pass without you hearing me say it."
The snow kept falling, soft and silver in the narrow dark between you, and for a moment the whole world seemed to have gone still just to listen.
"I love you too," you said, and it came out steadier than you'd expected, like the truest things always do once you finally let yourself say them. "I have since long before I even understood what it meant, Jon. I've been half in love with a boy who gave a stranger his cloak in a storm since I was nine years old, and every single version of you I've met since has only made it worse."
He made a sound at that, something caught between a laugh and something rawer and more overwhelmed, and then his free hand came up to your jaw, gentle, careful, like you were something he still couldn't quite believe he was allowed to touch, and he kissed you.
It was soft, at first. Careful, almost hesitant, like he was giving you every chance to pull away if you wanted to. Yesterday had been rough, all of it had, the whole long grinding weight of this endless war pressing down on both of you every single day, and some distant, sensible part of you knew this was reckless, knew you probably shouldn't, not now, not with everything still so uncertain and so much still ahead of you both, but neither of you could stop, not this time, not after everything it had taken just to get here. His hand slid from your jaw into your hair and yours fisted in the front of his cloak, pulling him closer, and the kiss deepened, slow and searching and achingly thorough, like you'd both been waiting for this exact moment for far longer than either of you had ever dared say aloud, like you needed to taste every part of him you'd never let yourself imagine tasting, every unspoken year of longing folded into it, every goodbye and every reunion and every near-miss under every fire you'd ever shared.
When you finally broke apart, breathless, hearts hammering, the falling snow settling white and quiet in his dark hair and catching on your lashes, neither of you pulled fully away. He rested his forehead against yours, eyes closed, breathing unsteady, one hand still tangled gently in your hair like he wasn't ready to let go of the contact just yet, and you let your own eyes fall shut too, foreheads pressed together in the hush and the cold and the falling snow, and for the first time in longer than you could remember, with the whole uncertain world still waiting somewhere beyond this small circle of warmth, everything felt, for just this one stolen moment, entirely and completely still.
"FINALLY!"
Tormund's voice carried clean across the whole camp, entirely too pleased with itself, and you and Jon sprang apart so fast you nearly toppled into the snow. He was standing not thirty feet off with an armful of firewood he'd very clearly abandoned the moment he'd spotted you both, grinning like a man who'd just won a wager he'd never actually placed. Sam's head popped up from behind a half-pitched tent a moment later, and even Dara, who never so much as smiled, was smirking openly at the pair of you across the dark.
"Go away, Tormund," Jon said, without any real heat in it, though the tips of his ears had gone unmistakably red.
"Go away, he says!" Tormund bellowed, delighted, to absolutely no one in particular. "Fourteen years of pining and I get told to go away!"
"We were not pining for fourteen years," you said, mortified and laughing despite yourself.
"Aye you were, little bird, the whole camp's known it for months, you're just the last two to work it out." Tormund was already turning back toward the fire, still chuckling to himself, already no doubt preparing to tell the story to anyone who'd stand still long enough to hear it. Sam was grinning too hard to properly hide it, and even Dara offered you the smallest approving nod before going back to her tent stakes like she hadn't been watching at all.
Jon groaned, mortified in his own quiet way, and dropped his forehead briefly against your shoulder as if that might make the teasing stop. It didn't. But you found, standing there in the snow with his arms coming back around you and the whole ridiculous, exhausted, delighted camp laughing softly in the background, that you didn't much mind.
You'd take this, you thought. Whatever came next, whatever the war still had waiting for you both, you'd take exactly this.
★・・・・・・★
A/n: i actually can't listen to this song without thinking about him, like this idea for a one shot has been plaguing my brain for forever, so I'm glad i finally wrote it!! I hope you guys like it, I feel like Jon and a bard would work so well together idkk bro idkkkkk (lowkey giving the soldier, poet, king song )
