Hi! Hope you’re doing well! Congrats of the milestones!
Could I do the kiss me 💋 please
I’d like for it to be a criminal minds character, either gender is fine
Character traits I have are I’m quick-witted, impatient, stubborn, creative, blunt, resilient, caring, smart, anxious, confrontational if someone's being rude (to someone I care about), and people tend to perceive as aloof at first but with people I’m comfortable with I'm more lively and warm
I really enjoy fencing, reading (sci-fi & dystopian), watching shows (sci-fi & mystery), writing, listening to music. Also Ioften go down random rabbit holes so I have an absurd amount of knowledge about random shit
I’m neurodivergent (Dyslexia & AuDHD) and chronic pain and fatigue. Ironically I’m also an insomniac. I absolutely love the rain, forests, and when it snows at night
I hope I didn’t go overboard (sorry if I did 😅)
awee tysm i rly appreciate it!!! and ur all good u did not go too overboard at all bae dw
kiss me 💋
~ matchmaking game! pick a fandom, give me some character traits, hobbies, and other things about you and i’ll ship you with a character!! lmk ur preferred gender for ur ship
holy shit you are penelope garcia’s dream
u guys r absolutely geeking out tg. i feel like u would be a more calm side to her yk?? but her being more silly and crazy would balance u out. personally i’m allll abt balance in relationships.
but u confronting ppl who r rude?? omg if u did that for her she’d absolutely faint lol. she would be sooo loyal to u from that day on and believe my homegirl is LOYAL.
dating her is absolutely the randomness shit ever. like. gaming together, watching shows together, going shopping together, crafting together… i feel like the audhd would sit with her rly well. she’s the sweetest ever and would be soooo understanding and would absolutely take the time and care to learn more and help u. she’d develop all kinds of programs to help u for sure with certain stuff.
she’s so indulgent about random stuff. like. i could see a date with her being just hanging out and u guys going down rabbit holes together and her hacking into databases to find out more for u LMFAO. hacking is her love language shh.
and also all ur pain?? she’s doing so much fucking research and is putting stuff together to help u. like u could be going thru ur mental list of stuff to make u feel better and she starts rattling stuff off before u even think of it and ur like huh?? and she just tells u she looked it up and did research to help u. <3
okay and i could also see u with reid. like u guys r veeeery similar and i could see him having like a healing self-love arc dating u. but also again u guys r very similar and sometimes similar in dating can be tricky?? idk when i’ve dated ppl similar to me they’ve pissed me off 😭 but if u wanted a guy i would say probs reid for u!
Penelope Garcia x fem!reader.
Fandom: Criminal Minds.
(Y/N) and Penelope are tired from a long fortnight of work. They enjoy a lovely weekend together before the next long fortnight of work.
Requests: Closed.
Requested: No.
Warning(s): Lesbians ahead /jk. But seriously I think I used 'reassuring' too much in the beginning.
Word Count: 2,353
[Second Person Perspective]
When Penelope mentioned having a weekend off from work and relaxing, you couldn't help but laugh. A break from work? You doubted you'd have six hours to yourselves before you're both called back into the office for the next case. Before you agreed to spending the weekend together, you looked down at her and insisted you and Penelope have a suitcase packed for yourselves. If an important work case came up and you had to take the jet then you'd both be prepared. She tried to reassure you, but you stubbornly insisted on being prepared. So, she reluctantly agreed to your terms and hoped that you both wouldn't actually have to leave for work.
You both finally had a weekend to yourselves and could spend the days together, watching movies and eating popcorn and chips. Penelope definitely didn't want your weekend interrupted by work and she anxiously complained to Derek on Friday. She had her stuff packed and ready to sleep over at your house, but she was still nervous about the plans falling through. Derek, ever the gentleman, reassured her that nothing would go wrong.
"Babygirl, look at me." He placed a hand on her shoulder until she faced him, "You're going to have the best weekend ever with your girlfriend and I promise, it will not be interrupted."
"That is so sweet of you, Derek..." Penelope smiled and held his hand, looking very serious, "...But you can't promise that. I know you mean well, but Hotch wouldn't allow us to not come into work if there's a case - you know how important our work is."
"I know, I know, I just--" Derek sighed and rolled his shoulders back in an attempt to relieve the stress from the last case.
"I know you mean well and I do really appreciate it. But you have to admit, that we could be called back into work at any time." She huffed frustratedly.
"Well, in that case," Derek turned her to face you just as you came around the corner with a cup of coffee for your girl, "You two should make the most of your time together." He gently pushed her forwards and gave you both a big grin. Penelope turned back to face him as he walked away, then turned back to see you paitently offering her the coffee.
"Is everything okay, Penny?" You asked. She accepted the cup of coffee and nodded her head vigorously.
"Yeah, yeah. Everything's perfectly fine. There's no case yet." Penelope smiled. You noted her higher than usual pitch and how she ended the sentence with 'yet'.
"Penny, there shouldn't be work this weekend if you're as worried as I am." You let her know. She looked up to meet your gaze with surprise and you couldn't help but smile. "JJ just finished reassuring me that there shouldn't be any work this weekend. Not unless some really serious, or important case suddenly popped up out of the blue." You informed her. You were hardly able to contain your own excitement.
"So..." She gasped as the realisation hit her.
"So...it seems we have the whole weekend to ourselves." You confirmed. Penelope squealed in delight and pulled you into a tight embrace, pressing kisses to your forehead and nose.
"You have no idea how happy I am right now." She laughed excitedly. You both spent the rest of your break planning the movies you'd watch and the food you'd buy after work. You decided it'd probably be best to go to your place that night (after making sure Penelope had everything she needed from her place) and simply order takeout before crashing from exhaustion. She agreed on the condition: she could choose the takeout.
Once plans were made, you both finished your lunch break and returned to work. Every few minutes, you were checking the clock and wishing time would move faster. Eventually, the day had ended and you finished the grueling paperwork that sat on your desk. Penelope had finished sooner than you and waited impatiently at your side, sitting in Derek's chair after he clocked off. Once your paperwork was turned in, you both said goodbye and clocked off. Taking your cars to Penelope's place and helping her pack.
After packing, you both dropped into the supermarket to pick up some essentials such as chips, popcorn, soda, chocolate and a few quick microwave meals including lasangas and mac and cheese. Finally, you both got take-out from her favourite fast food place and drove home. You pretty much ate all the food in the car before you finally got out to put away the groceries, your left over food and then collaspe on the couch. Penelope chuckled and heated up some popcorn while also boiling the kettle for a hot drink to go with it.
"Should I pick a movie out for us to fall asleep to, love?" She smiled as you barely managed to lift your head and look at her. Nodding in response was the answer you gave her and she quickly chose a sappy rom-com that you'd both seen before and enjoyed. This way if you fell asleep, you wouldn't miss anything you hadn't seen before. Once popcorn and hot drinks were ready, you moved to sit up and accept the cup offered to you. It was a delicious cup of hot chocolate with marshmellows.
"This is amazing, thank-you." You hummed with delight. Penelope nodded her head in agreement.
"We needed a sweet treat after these last few cases. They were really rough." She sighed and placed the bowl of popcorn on the coffee table in front of you both. You didn't say much more, not wanting to relive those past experiences. Your line of work was rough, exhausting and often disheartening and a weekend of not thinking about it at all was desperately needed. You pressed play on the movie and pressed a kiss to the side of Penelope's head.
"Let's turn our brains off and enjoy this silly, cringy rom-com." You joked. She laughed with you.
"Ah, yes. I can't wait to see the bad acting and lack of facial expressions from the lead actor." She grinned.
"All he knows how to do is flick his hair, tilt his head and hope blinking slowly counts as flirting." You added.
"Oh my God...he's like a cat." Penelope gasped as seriously as possible. You considered this for a moment.
"He is!" You realised. "He flicks his hair the same way a cat rattles their tail, or slow blinks at you."
"Exactly! Do you think he took flirting classes from his pet cats?" She wondered aloud as she began diving into the popcorn.
"Not at all." You shook your head and leaned to rest against the back of the couch, "He would be better at flirting if he did." Your comment made her chortle and choke on a bit of popcorn. At some point during the movie, you both fell asleep from exhaustion after your hot chocolates were finished. You don't recall when that happened, but when you woke up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, you saw the movie had ended and you were resting your head on Penelope's chest. Turning off the t.v and all the lights, you made your way back to the couch and planned on not waking up until after midday.
But then early morning came and you awoke to the smell of pancakes and the sound of the kettle boiling. Sitting up from the couch you noticed Penelope in your kitchen. You made your way over to her and wrapped your arms around her waist, looking over her shoulder at the chocolate chip pancakes she was baking. "They're not ready just yet." She tutted, kissed your nose and shooed you away to wash up before breakfast. "We're going to watch movies and play video games, maybe go on a nice car drive. The point is," She grinned up at you with shining eyes, "Whatever we do today, we're going to make the most of our limited time together. Once we're back at work, we'll be overwhelmed by cases." You nodded in agreement. She was quite right.
So, you washed up and quickly showered and dressed for the day. When you came out of the bathroom, food was ready and a comedy movie had been picked. Penelope turned to you and nodded approvingly at your outfit. "Perfect! Now come, let's eat before it gets any later." She took your hand and led you to the couch. You both enjoyed the pancakes and drinks whilst watching the very cringy comedy movie. Once the movie was finished, it took some convincing, but you managed to sit Penelope down to rest and watch more movies. You really didn't feel like leaving the house, or thinking in general, before midday. With movies, you can just turn your brain off and let time pass as your body recovers from work.
Midday came quickly as you both became time blind whilst binge watching movies and snacking. Eventually, you let Penelope drag you off the couch to get food out in the city. It took the whole drive to decide on where to eat, but eventually you both settled on a favourite fast food place. Sitting in a park to eat, Penelope revealed a deck of cards she had kept in the car. As you ate, you played a couple rounds of Go Fish, Snap, Poker (using hot chips ((fries)) as 'money') and Blackjack. Soon, you grew weary of card games and rested on the grass. Good food, warm sun, beautiful and fresh air, and a gorgeous girlfriend right beside you. Life couldn't get much better. As the sunset, you both drove around the city and admired the stunning orange and pink sky. Watching together as clouds changed to purple, then to grey and slowly disappeared from sight as the sun lowered behind the horizon.
When night fell, you didn't know what to do next. Penelope suggested eating at a nice restaurant to start and then seeing where the night takes you both after that. Sitting across from each other, you both examined the menus. After a few minutes, a waitress came over and commented on how lovely it was to see two 'very good friends' enjoying a girl's day. You and Penelope made eye contact and it took everything in you to not laugh. It was a common misunderstanding. In public, you two were assumed to be 'very good friends', or 'very close', yet you were all that and more. Her very presence seemed to light up any room she walked into and you admired her constant, cheery demeanour.
"Actually, it's our date night." You politely corrected the waitress. Her eyes widened in embarrassment.
"Oh, I'm so sorry for assuming! We're glad to have you both dining with us tonight." She awkwardly smiled, "We're a very inclusive establishment."
"It's alright, there's no need for apologies. It's a common assumption." Penelope grinned and reached across the table for your hand. The waitress took a calming breath and tried again.
"Well, uhm, may I take your orders?" The waitress held up her notepad and pen. You both placed your orders for food and drink. She wrote the orders down with a nod and took your menus, leaving you both to make quiet conversation as you waited.
"She seems sweet." Penelope smiled.
"Poor girl seemed embarrassed." You chuckled, looking around the room and taking in the atmosphere. The restaurant was cozy with warm colours for the floor and table cloths, but a nice cool tone on the walls with plants in each corner and windows looking out at the city.
"I don't blame her, I've made assumptions like that before." Penelope cringed and shook her head, "You profilers make it look so easy."
"Sometimes we also get profiles wrong though, Penny." You admitted shyly, "Morgan and Reid like to pretend they don't, but the truth of the matter is: most profiles end up being stereotypical guesses." Penelope listened as you explained. "We end up getting quite a few profiles right because a profile based on generalisation fits at roughly three in five people. Well, that's my estimate, I bet Reid could give you a better and more accurate estimate."
"Wow, so you're professionally guessing based on over-generalisation and stereotypes? For shame, my dear." Penelope teased and did her best to hide her cheeky grin from your sight.
"My dear, Penny, I never guess." You teasingly lied as confidently and cooly as you could, spotting the waitress coming back with your drinks. Penelope saw right through your lie and simply laughed with you.
"Whatever you say, love." She grinned and began to fidget with her bracelets. Your drinks were placed in front of you both and the waitress left with a promise of food being served in less than ten minutes. Taking sips from your drinks, you briefly looked outside the windows to admire the city lights and the coming and going of the people on the street. Penelope sighed, bringing your attention back to the table. "I'm not looking forward to our date weekend ending." She admitted.
"I'm not either..." You sighed. "Look, whatever happens...let's try to do this more often despite work."
"We've tried this before...we're always called back in." Penelope pointed out.
"Hm, maybe we should turn our phones off, or pretend to be contagiously sick." You muttered, loud enough for your girlfriend to hear. She attempted to stifle her laughter at your audacity, but was still quite audible.
"(Y/N)! I can't believe you!" She tutted. "Our work is important...it helps people...it saves people."
"I know..." You placed your hand on top of her's once more, "...I just wish we could have more time together. Time spent like this, or simply watching movies on the couch."
"Maybe one day we will be able to do this more often." Penelope hummed, interlinking her fingers with yours. "But for now, we'll have to make do with our limited time together."
Pairing: Penelope Garcia x Disabled!Reader
Summary: A slow Sunday morning, a body that won't cooperate, and a woman who shows up anyway with pancakes shaped like hearts and a Pinterest board full of intentions.
Tags: disabled!reader, myasthenia gravis, bad flare day, muscle weakness, fatigue, hurt/comfort, penelope garcia being the sun in human form, breakfast in bed, being fed with love and zero fuss, she notices everything, soft domesticity, no use of y/n, sunday light and slow mornings, weighted blankets, lavender candles, pillow fort architecture, fairy lights that have been waiting, snickerdoodles as an act of devotion, she never flinches, known all the way down, love that doesn't make the hard things disappear but lives beside them anyway, the kindest woman alive, fluff, cozy fic, gentle care without performance, reader is tired and held, you are not a burden here
Word Count: 3.6k words
The light comes in soft and unhurried, the way Sunday light always does—like it's made of a different stuff entirely than the light on weekdays, slower and warmer and less interested in demanding anything from you. You're already awake when Penelope's footsteps start up the hallway. That familiar syncopated rhythm of someone trying to be quiet and failing magnificently, a shuffle-and-pause, shuffle-and-pause that you could pick out of any crowd. You feel the corner of your mouth lift before you've even decided to smile.
You've been lying still since about seven. Not asleep—just lying there, doing the quiet inventory that's become as automatic as breathing, taking stock of what the night has left behind. Your hands are heavy this morning. Your neck is holding a low-grade complaint it'll probably keep all day. The muscles around your eyes feel thick, like they're working against something invisible. None of it is shocking. None of it is even new. But still, somewhere between the inventory and the light on the ceiling, you'd been hoping. You always hope on Sundays.
The bedroom door swings open with the particular flair that is entirely, unmistakably her.
"Breakfast in bed for my favourite human!"
She's holding a tray like she's presenting a coronation gift—arms straight, chin lifted, expression solemn with performed ceremony—and her hair is piled up in a bun that lists slightly to the left, and her pyjamas are the ones printed with tiny cartoon sloths in various states of peaceful inaction, wrinkled from sleep and absolutely perfect. The pancakes on the tray are shaped like hearts and stars. Of course they are. There's whipped cream already on them, a small mountain of it, listing the same direction as her bun, threatening to topple and entirely unconcerned about this. The sunlight catches the edge of the tray and throws a warm rhombus across the duvet, and for a moment the whole scene is so golden and so improbably sweet that it sits in your chest like a held breath, like something you want to press between the pages of a book to keep.
"Penny," you say, and your voice comes out rougher than you meant it to.
She sets the tray on the nightstand with the focused care of someone who has definitely spilled things before—lowering it slowly, steadying it, waiting a beat to make sure it's settled—then turns to face you with a grin wide enough to be its own light source.
And then she actually looks at you.
Not the quick surface-level glance of someone checking that you're awake. She looks at you the way she always looks at you when she's paying attention, which is the way a person looks at something they know very well and are choosing to see anyway. The grin doesn't disappear—it softens, which is different, which is worse and better all at once, because it means she sees you. She always sees you, and this morning what she's seeing is the particular kind of stillness that your body wears on the days when the myasthenia has arrived early, before you've had the chance to get ahead of it.
It has its own logic, its own timetable, and it's entirely indifferent to the fact that it's Sunday. The signals between your brain and your muscles are misfiring somewhere in the gap, jamming up the line, so that what should be simple—sitting up, reaching out, holding something—instead arrives with this dull, dragging resistance, like every movement is being performed through wet concrete. Your muscles aren't painful, exactly. They're just not cooperating. The space between intention and action has grown several inches wider overnight.
You haven't reached for the fork yet.
You're not going to reach for it yet, because reaching will cost something, and you're adding up your costs this morning with the quiet precision of someone who's been doing this long enough to know exactly what the sums look like and what happens if you spend too much before noon.
Penelope sits beside you on the bed. The mattress dips under her weight, familiar and grounding, and she reaches up and brushes your hair back from your face with a hand that is warm and entirely unhurried.
"Hey, lovebug." Her voice has gone soft. "How bad is it?"
"Medium," you tell her, which is honest. Not the worst—not the crash-day kind of bad, the kind where you lie still and everything is negotiated down to almost nothing, where even speaking feels like it's drawing from a reserve that isn't there. But not fine, either. Medium is where the world is still accessible to you but costs more than the ticket price. Medium is wading through something thick and slow that nobody else can see.
"Okay," she says, and nods once, the decisive nod of someone filing a memo and moving immediately to action items. "Okay. Medium I can work with. Medium means magic hands are on duty. Medium means I'm in charge of all fork-related activities and any activity that involves lifting anything heavier than a remote control."
"Penny, you don't have to—"
"Nope." She says it gently, not a command so much as a door closing quietly in the face of the argument before it can get its foot in. "No protests. No 'I'm fine.' I know you're okay, lovebug—I can see you're okay. I also know that okay and 'doesn't need help' are two completely different postcodes."
You look at her. She looks back. Her eyes are very steady, which is not something people always clock about Penelope Garcia—they notice the colour, the warmth, the way she deploys them expressively like punctuation in a sentence—but underneath all of that there's a steadiness that has never once flinched at anything you've brought to it.
"Okay," you say.
She picks up the fork with the gravity of someone accepting a baton.
She makes a whole production of the first bite—selecting the best heart-shaped pancake with visible deliberation, tilting her head to consider it, adding an extra peak of whipped cream to the top with the care of someone applying a finishing touch to a sculpture—and then she presents it toward you with a small ceremonial flourish.
You laugh. The laugh is easy and loose and costs you almost nothing, which is its own small miracle.
"Open up," she says, in the voice she uses for feeding ducks at the park. "I slaved over these. Well—I stood over them. The stove did most of the slaving. There are some very abstract shapes in the bin downstairs that didn't make the cut."
"How abstract?"
"One of them looked like a map of a country that doesn't exist. Another one was... I'm going to say avant-garde. Spiritually, it was a star."
You're still laughing as she feeds you the first bite, and it's good—of course it's good—too sweet, more vanilla than flour, exactly the way you like them, the whipped cream dissolving cool against your tongue before the warmth of the pancake catches up.
"These are really good," you tell her, and mean it.
"I know." She cuts the next piece. "I've been perfecting this recipe for two years. I'm basically a professional at this point. You should see my Yelp reviews."
"You don't have Yelp reviews."
"Internally I do. Five stars. Zero complaints."
She feeds you bites between the two of you talking, slow and meandering the way Sunday mornings are supposed to go—she tells you about something Derek said on Friday that still has her mildly outraged on your behalf, her fork gestures growing more emphatic as the story escalates. She tells you about the film she watched without you on Thursday night, which she'd thought would be fine and turned out to be devastatingly sad, and how she'd had to text you at midnight just to say I miss you, come home soon even though you were asleep in the next room. She tells you her current theory about the coffee machine, which involves a trapped spirit and a grudge that predates the building.
"I'm just saying," she says, loading another piece of pancake, "it sounds different on Tuesdays. I've documented it."
"You've documented it."
"Voice memos. Six of them. I'm building a case."
"Against the coffee machine."
"Against whatever is inside the coffee machine." She points the fork at you, briefly, for emphasis. "There's a distinction."
The morning stretches out unhurried around you, warm and slow as the light pooling on the duvet. You're aware of your body—you're always aware of your body, it's the background music that never quite stops—but there's something about being taken care of properly, without fuss or performance, that lets you hold that awareness at a distance rather than right behind your sternum where it usually lives. The heaviness in your hands is still there. Your eyelids are doing the thing where they feel faintly reluctant to hold themselves up, that slight drag at the outer corners that's different from ordinary tiredness and that you've stopped trying to explain to people who don't already understand it. But you're here, in the golden light, and she's talking about a haunted coffee machine with absolute sincerity, and the pancakes taste like vanilla and care.
When you finish eating, she sets the tray aside and doesn't immediately reach for her phone or her laptop. She just sits with you. Pulls her legs up onto the bed and leans against the headboard and turns the TV on low—something comfortable, a show you've both seen enough times that it doesn't require attention—and asks if you want the weighted blanket or just the duvet.
"Duvet," you say. "But maybe both later."
"Both later, noted." She tucks the duvet up around you with the thoroughness of someone who has thought seriously about this, smoothing it along your sides, getting the cold spots at the edges, folding it back a little at the top so it's not sitting on your face. She makes small pleased sounds under her breath while she does it, entirely unaware of them.
"You're very good at this," you tell her.
"I've been training since the day we met," she says seriously. "You just didn't know you were being taken care of that whole time."
You think about saying something and decide just to let the warmth of it sit.
An hour passes, maybe more. The show murmurs on. Penelope gets her laptop at some point and tucks it open in her lap, working in the loose, unhurried way she only allows herself on Sundays, occasionally reading something out loud to you—a news headline, a sentence from an article she finds funny, a Wikipedia rabbit hole she's tumbled into. You answer when you want to and drift when you don't and she never seems to notice the difference, or she notices and simply doesn't mind.
Your eyelids start going heavy in the way that has nothing to do with tiredness you can push through. This is the other kind—the kind where your body has made a decision and is simply informing you of it, pulling resources inward, calling time on the morning without consulting you. The muscles holding your eyes open have been working all morning and they're done working, finished, and no amount of blinking is going to negotiate with them. You try anyway. Once, twice. The third time you don't try.
"Good." She's already moving—reaching for the weighted blanket folded at the foot of the bed, layering it over the duvet, tucking it down around your legs. She gets up to turn the TV down to barely a murmur, and then she uncaps the lavender candle on the dresser. She doesn't light it right away; she finds the lighter in the drawer, takes her time, cups her hand around the flame until the wick catches. A small bright point in the amber afternoon.
You realise she's been waiting to light that candle. She'd been saving it for this part of the day.
The smell reaches you slowly, soft and herbal and warm, unfurling through the room like something that was always there and is only now making itself known. The lavender and the weighted blanket and the low murmur of the TV press together into something that feels almost architectural—a structure built specifically around you, a room inside the room, the walls made of warmth.
She settles beside you on top of the blankets, back against the headboard, laptop open again in her lap. And then, without looking down, she starts tracing patterns on your arm. Slow, light, unhurried—looping figures-of-eight and idle spirals and lines that go nowhere in particular, the way you might hum a song without realising you're doing it.
"I'll be right here when you wake up," she says.
A pause. The candle flickers.
"Always."
It's softer the second time. More to herself than to you, the word landing like something private, like she's reminding herself as much as telling you.
You close your eyes.
The lavender is the last thing you're fully conscious of. Then the warmth of her beside you, solid and real and unhurried. Then the soft, rhythmic click of her keyboard, distant and regular as rain on a window. Then the pattern on your arm, getting slower, or maybe you're just getting slower, sinking down through the layers until the room and the candle and the low voice of the television are all very far away, and the only thing that's close is the fact of her being there.
You sleep.
When you wake up, the candle has burned lower—half an inch, maybe more—and the light through the curtains has shifted. The morning gold is gone, replaced by the mellow amber of mid-afternoon, heavier and more horizontal, the kind of light that leans. Penelope is exactly where she said she'd be, sitting beside you with her phone in both hands, scrolling through something with the focused expression she gets when she's in the middle of a plan.
You watch her without moving. You do this sometimes—hoard a few seconds of her before she knows you're back, the way you might save the last bite of something good. The candlelight finds the edges of her hair and gilds them. Her socks are mismatched. There's a small frown on her face that isn't a sad frown, just the frown of someone solving a problem they've invented for themselves.
"There she is," she says, without looking up, because she always knows. Then she looks up, and the frown becomes a smile, quick and warm as a lamp switching on. "How do you feel?"
You take a moment to actually check. Your hands are still heavy but less so—the sleep has done some work, loosened something, given a little back the way it sometimes does. Your eyelids feel more cooperative. The thick resistance that had been sitting across your shoulders all morning has quieted, not gone but no longer shouting.
"Better," you say. And it's true.
"Yeah?" Her face does the thing where relief moves through it and she doesn't quite let herself show it fully, because she knows you don't like being worried about.
"Yeah. Not a hundred percent. But better."
"Better is everything," she says, firmly, as though she's saying it for the record. Then she tips her phone toward you. "Okay. So. I've been planning."
The screen shows a Pinterest board—new, by the look of it—titled Sunday Rituals Vol. 2 in her handwriting, photographed and pinned as a header. Below it: cookie recipes with circled notes in the margins of the screenshots, architectural diagrams of pillow forts that she's clearly found and saved with genuine intention, a post about stringing fairy lights inside blanket structures.
"Walk me through this," you say.
She sits up straighter, the phone held between you like a presentation deck.
"Okay. So. Phase one: cookies. I'm thinking snickerdoodles because they're forgiving and they smell incredible and I want the whole flat to smell like cinnamon. Phase two: fort construction. I've identified the optimal load-bearing cushions—the big square ones from the sofa are structural, the throw pillows are decorative load, and the duvet from the spare room is going to serve as the primary roof panel."
"You've really thought about this."
"I have a Pinterest board and a methodology. Phase three," she continues, "is fairy lights, which I ordered on impulse three weeks ago and have been looking for an excuse to deploy. They've been in the hall cupboard. Waiting."
"And phase four?"
She looks at you. "Phase four is we get inside the fort and watch something terrible and eat all the cookies."
You look at her—at the wild optimistic mess of her hair and the sloth pyjamas and the earnest, delighted focus on her face, at the way she's holding the phone toward you like evidence in a court case she's absolutely going to win—and the feeling that moves through you is warm and complicated and doesn't have a single clean name. Gratitude is in there. Love is in there, so much of it that it doesn't fit anywhere in particular and just fills the room. Something else too, something quieter: the particular relief of being known all the way down. Not understood in the abstract, not accommodated out of obligation—known. The part of you that lives inside the ongoing negotiation with your own body, inside the arithmetic of what a day costs and what it leaves behind, the part you'd spent years thinking was too tangled to explain—she knows that part. She's never needed it explained.
You reach for her. Your arm moves more easily than it did this morning.
She comes without hesitating, tilting sideways until she's leaning against you, her head finding the space just below your chin as if it's a place that was designed for exactly this purpose, which, you've decided, it was. You settle your cheek against her hair. She makes a small contented sound and tucks her phone away.
"Tell me more about the load-bearing cushions," you say.
She lights up in a way that is entirely genuine and completely disproportionate to the subject matter, which is one of about forty thousand things you love about her.
Outside, the Sunday light is doing what it does best in the late afternoon—going slow and sideways across the room, finding the dust motes and turning them briefly golden, catching the edge of the curtain and making it glow at the hem. The lavender candle is still burning, its flame steady, its small bright point reflected faintly in the window glass. Penelope is talking about blanket ratios and cookie logistics and the structural integrity of the fort she's going to build, her voice bright and warm and full of the kind of joy that isn't performing anything for anyone—it just is, constant and particular and entirely her own.
Your body is tired. It'll be tired tomorrow too, and probably the day after, and next Sunday when you take the inventory again before the light changes. That's the shape of your life—not a tragedy, not something to fix, just a fact you've learned to hold without letting it hold everything else. There will be good days and medium days and crash days, and the arithmetic will keep being what it is.
But the room smells like lavender and the candle is still burning and she's warm against your side, and there are cookies that are going to happen and a pillow fort with genuine structural research behind it and fairy lights that have been waiting in a hall cupboard for three weeks for exactly this occasion. And you think—not for the first time, never for the last—that Penelope Garcia doesn't make the hard things disappear. She's never once pretended they aren't there. What she does instead is make it so the hard things exist in the same world as heart-shaped pancakes and coffee machine conspiracy theories and a Pinterest board titled Sunday Rituals Vol. 2 and always, said soft in the morning like a promise that doesn't need to be stated because it already simply is.
"The fairy lights are solar powered," she's saying, very seriously. "Which is technically irrelevant since we're indoors. But I respect the commitment."
"Very eco-conscious fort," you say.
"Exactly. Sustainable architecture." She tilts her head up to look at you. Her eyes are warm and a little smug and full of something steadier than either. "You feel okay? Honestly?"
"Honestly," you say. "Yeah."
She holds your gaze for a moment, checking, then nods once, satisfied, the way she does when she's filed something important and can move on.
"Good." She resettles against your shoulder, comfortable and unhurried, like someone who has nowhere else to be and knows it. "Because phase one starts in twenty minutes and I need you at full cookie-adjacent capacity."
You close your eyes and rest your chin against her hair and feel the room around you—warm and amber and smelling of lavender, slow with Sunday light—and you let yourself just be inside it. No arithmetic. No inventory. Just this.
Pairing: Penelope Garcia x Disabled!Reader
Summary: Friday night with Penelope means takeout and dancing, even when dancing means six careful inches and her hands never letting go.
Tags: disabled!reader, muscular dystrophy, chronic fatigue, muscle weakness, evening fatigue, hurt/comfort, penelope garcia being sunshine incarnate, soft domestic fluff, dancing but make it gentle, six inches of movement and it's everything, no use of y/n, reader's body having opinions, penelope doesn't flinch not even once, love that adjusts without being asked, touch as reassurance, she notices before you have to say it, cozy friday nights, takeout and 80s ballads, the smallest things are the whole thing, fluff, intimacy without it being sexual, she makes the slowness feel like the point, load-bearing girlfriend energy, blankets and leftover spring rolls, this is what safe feels like
Word Count: 3.2k words
It starts, as most Friday nights do, with Penelope Garcia standing in your kitchen doorway in her favourite pink cardigan, holding up two paper bags of Thai takeout like an offering to whatever domestic god oversees the sacred ritual of date night in. She's got glitter on her cheekbones, and her eyes are already doing that thing where they're too bright for the room, like she's carrying a small sun somewhere behind her ribcage and it's been leaking out since she walked through the door.
"I come bearing gifts," she announces, stepping inside and kicking the door shut behind her with one heel, "and absolutely zero intention of doing anything productive this evening."
"Thank god," you say. "I was worried you'd make us do something healthy."
"Healthy." She says it like it's a foreign word she's sounding out for the first time. "On a Friday. Absolutely not. I have spring rolls and I have a playlist and I have opinions about both, in that order."
You love her. You love her entirely too much, and it's not even a problem.
She spreads everything out on the coffee table with the focused attention of a general arranging troops—lids off, chopsticks freed from their paper sleeves, the little tubs of sauce arranged by size for reasons that are entirely her own—muttering quietly about which container has the better satay and making a unilateral decision about who gets the good spring rolls. That'd be you. It's always you; she's never once let you argue about it, just slides the container to your side with the air of someone who's already closed the case.
You settle back into the corner of the couch while she works, feeling the familiar shift that comes with evenings. Mornings are usually better—muscles still relatively willing, the day ahead of you like a door propped open—but by this hour your body has put in its notice. There's a heaviness in your legs that lives below the knee and doesn't fully go away, the kind that isn't painful so much as insistent, like someone's placed a weight there and forgotten to remove it. Your hands are a little less steady than they were at noon. Your thighs ache dully when you shift. It's just Friday. It's just evening. It's just how it goes.
Penelope notices—she always notices—but she doesn't make it a thing. She just angles the coffee table a few inches closer to you without breaking her sentence, and drops an extra cushion behind your lower back like it's a completely unremarkable thing to do, and keeps talking about the satay sauce.
She's brilliant at that. The not making it a thing.
Dinner is the best kind of mess: loud and scattered and full of bad jokes, the two of you talking over each other about nothing in particular, Penelope launching into a full dramatic reading of an email she received from a colleague who appears to be allergic to full stops. She does different voices for each sentence. At some point you're laughing so hard the chopsticks become essentially theoretical as tools and you have to put them down, your chest bright and aching with it, like something's cracked open to let the light spill through.
"The audacity," she says, shaking her head solemnly.
"The absolute gall."
"He signed off with regards. Not even kind regards. Just—regards. Like he was issuing a formal statement to a nation."
"A declaration of hostility," you agree.
She points a spring roll at you. "Exactly. I'm taking it to the UN."
You're still grinning when she finishes eating—flushed and satisfied with herself in the way she gets after a good meal, her cardigan sliding off one shoulder—and she sets down her container, wipes her hands on a napkin, and gets up to fiddle with her phone with the air of someone who's had a plan this whole time and has simply been waiting to deploy it.
The opening bars of something deeply, joyfully cheesy drift out of the little Bluetooth speaker on the shelf. You recognise it immediately—some dreamy 80s ballad she's played before, all synthesiser shimmer and an achingly earnest vocalist telling someone they're everything he needs—and she turns around with her hand extended and her eyes already sparkling with that particular brand of mischief that means she's made up her mind and all that remains is you catching up.
"Dance with me," she says.
You look at her hand. You look at your legs. You feel the familiar weight in your thighs, the way your muscles sit heavy and a little unreliable this time of night, neither fully cooperative nor fully mutinous, just—present. Like they always are. A quiet footnote at the bottom of every page.
"Pen." Your voice comes out gentle, not reluctant, just honest. "I don't know. My legs are pretty done for tonight—they've been—it's been a long day for them."
"That's okay," she says, like it isn't even a hurdle.
"I might not be able to keep my balance that well right now."
"I've got you." She wiggles her fingers. "Both hands. All of my attention. The complete Penelope stabilisation service, at your disposal, absolutely free of charge."
You look at her. She's not performing patience. There's no held breath, no careful neutrality, no quietly braced expression—just that warm, steady certainty, like she's already seen the version of this night where it goes beautifully and she's simply here waiting for you to arrive in it with her.
"We'll go slow," she adds. "Just follow my lead."
You take her hand.
She draws you up carefully, slowly, one hand firm in yours and the other coming to brace lightly at your elbow while you find your footing. There's a moment where the room shifts slightly—that brief unsteadiness that comes with standing, the way your body sometimes takes a beat to decide it's on board with vertical—and she holds steady through it without commentary, just waits, her grip unhurried, an anchor and not a tether. Then her hand moves to your waist, warm and solid, and the room settles.
"There you are," she says quietly.
The music swells, unabashedly syrupy, and she begins to sway, just barely, barely enough to be called movement. Her feet shift in small increments. Yours mirror hers—careful, deliberate, one slow step and then another, your weight transferring with the cautious attention you've learned to give it. It's less dancing than it is existing together in motion, the smallest possible version of the thing, but her hands don't waver and her eyes don't leave yours.
"See?" she says. "Magnificent."
"We've barely moved six inches."
"Magnificence," she says, with great dignity, "is not measured in inches. It's a vibe. An energy. A whole entire aura."
"An aura," you repeat.
"Exactly. Ours is incredible. I can feel it radiating."
She starts to hum along a moment later—soft, slightly off-key in the most endearing way imaginable, her voice weaving underneath the melody like a second thread running through the same piece of fabric. The glitter on her cheeks catches the lamp light and scatters it. Your steps are small, slower than slow, but she's with you in every single one, not pulling forward or holding back, adjusting when you adjust, waiting when you wait, present in the specific way that feels less like patience and more like genuine preference—like she'd rather be here, at this speed, than anywhere else at any other.
"How are your legs feeling?" she asks, not anxiously, just checking in the easy way she checks in on everything—practical and warm, tucked inside an ordinary question.
"Okay. A bit shaky. I've got you though, so."
"You've absolutely got me." She tightens her hand on your waist by a fraction, just enough to feel more solid. "I'm very sturdy. People don't always think it, because of the aesthetic—" she gestures vaguely at herself, the cardigan, the glitter, the earrings shaped like tiny stars "—but I am genuinely load-bearing. It's my hidden talent."
You laugh, and the laugh moves through your chest and into hers where you're close enough you almost share it.
You stop cataloguing your legs after that. You stop tracking the familiar inventory—the tightness low in your calves, the slight tremor that comes and goes in your left knee, the way fatigue in your muscles doesn't feel like ordinary tiredness but something denser, more interior, like your body is slowly turning the volume down on itself from the inside—and you just let it be background noise. Not gone. It's never fully gone. But it's not the headline either.
The headline is her. The lamp light and the music and the ridiculous earnestness of the song and the fact that she came here tonight with Thai food and an 80s playlist just because she wanted to dance with you in your living room on a Friday, because this is what she considers a perfect evening, because you are part of what she considers a perfect evening.
"You know this song is about a man who sees a woman across a crowded room and immediately decides they're soulmates," you say.
"Iconic behaviour," says Penelope, without missing a sway.
"He's only spoken to her once."
"Love is efficient. Some people just know."
"He's also compared her eyes to the stars, her smile to the sun, and her laugh to—I think it's church bells?"
She tips her head back slightly, considering. "Honestly, church bells are underrated as romantic imagery. Very resonant. Very eternal."
"Pen."
"What?"
"You're defending a man who fell in love with someone he's never had a conversation with."
"I'm defending the feeling," she clarifies. "The feeling is real. The metaphors are a little ambitious, sure, but the feeling—" she looks at you, something shifting in her expression that isn't quite the joke anymore, something softer underneath it "—the feeling checks out."
You don't have a response to that. You just look at her and feel it, the weight of what she means, warm and certain as her hand at your waist.
"You're a natural," she announces, recovering the grin like she just picked it back up off the floor. "Fred Astaire's got nothing on you."
"Fred Astaire," you say flatly, "could actually move."
"Fred Astaire did not have my playlist, my partner, or frankly my general charisma, so I think we come out ahead overall."
"Your humility is really something."
"Thank you," she says serenely. "I've worked very hard on it."
You're smiling so wide it almost feels unfamiliar, the kind of smile that arrives without asking and just stays. It sits on your face like afternoon light on a windowsill, warm and completely at ease.
But your legs know what they know, and they begin to say it—the familiar deep tightening that starts at your ankles and climbs, the heaviness that stops being background and becomes the foreground, the quiet insistence of enough now, that's enough. Your grip on her hand shifts slightly without you meaning it to, just a small tightening, a fraction of a signal, and she feels it immediately. Her hands don't clench or rush; she doesn't make a sound or change her expression. She just begins to turn the sway by degrees, steering so gently you almost don't register it as steering at all, until the couch is simply there behind your knees like it was always going to be.
"Intermission!" she announces, delighted with herself, like it's the interval at a theatre in the West End and she's been looking forward to this part all along.
You sit, and your body does what it always does—exhales, releases, lets go of the effort it's been quietly making. The relief is real and physical, a loosening in your thighs like a fist slowly opening, the deep ache softening now that your weight isn't being negotiated with every step. Penelope is already in motion, pulling the soft grey blanket off the back of the couch and draping it over your lap, tucking the edges in at the sides with neat efficiency, then dropping down beside you close enough that your shoulders press together.
She's still swaying, even now. Of course she is.
"Intermission means snacks," you say. "I feel like intermission should mean snacks."
"I have leftover spring rolls," she offers.
"That's the same food."
"It's repurposed food. It's been elevated by context." She reaches over to the coffee table, retrieves her half-finished tub of noodles, and holds it up. "See? Now it's interval food. Completely different experience."
"Your commitment to a bit is extraordinary."
"Thank you. It's a gift, truly."
She tucks her legs underneath her and settles in, the music shifting behind her into something a little slower—all piano now, a melody that feels like the last light at the edge of dusk, unhurried and a little melancholy in the best possible way. The lamp throws everything amber. Outside, somewhere, a car passes. In here, the world has gone small and warm and exactly the right size.
Her thumb starts tracing slow circles over your knuckles, and you watch it the way you'd watch something lovely—the chipped purple nail polish on two fingers, the rings catching the light the same way her cheekbones do, the small careful motion that has no purpose except to say I'm here, I'm here, I'm here.
"You make everything feel like magic," you tell her. It comes out simple and direct, without preamble, the way the truest things do when you stop dressing them up. "I mean it. Every single bit of tonight. The food and the stupid email and the dancing—even when my body's being difficult, you make it feel like none of that's the problem. Like it's just part of the night. Like it belongs."
She goes quiet for a moment—not uncomfortably, just receiving it, the way she receives things that matter, fully and without deflecting. Her thumb stills on your hand. Then she turns her head to look at you, and her whole face does something complicated and true, something that lives underneath all the warmth and the jokes and the glitter, something that's known you a long time and chosen you on purpose and isn't ever going to make that into a speech.
She grins. The full Penelope Garcia grin, big and irrepressible, the kind that could light up a room and routinely does. She leans in and presses a kiss to your cheek, so soft and quick it barely grazes the surface—a butterfly, a parenthesis, the smallest possible punctuation mark that somehow says everything.
"That's because you're magic, darling," she says.
That's it. That's the whole thing, for her. It lives in her voice like she's believed it since the beginning and hasn't found a single reason to revise her position.
You lean into her and she wraps an arm around you, easy as anything, her head dropping to rest against yours. The blanket is warm across your legs. Her cardigan is soft against your arm and she smells like something floral and faintly like the satay sauce that she definitely got on her sleeve at some point during dinner and is absolutely pretending she didn't.
The music plays on.
She's still swaying, very faintly, just a gentle rock at the shoulder—a body that can't quite stop even when it's at rest, music living in her the way it does, always looking for somewhere to go. You can feel it through every point where you're touching, this small rhythmic pulse moving into you without effort, like a current passing through still water, like something that doesn't need to ask permission.
"Do you want me to put another one on?" she asks, after a while.
"No," you say. "This is good."
"It really is," she agrees.
You think about what it means that your idea of a perfect evening has become this: the ordinary beauty of it, the leftover containers on the table, the lamp in amber, six inches of careful movement in a living room. You think about how this morning your body felt manageable and this evening it didn't and Penelope arrived with Thai food and danced six slow inches with you and somehow that's the whole story—somehow that's enough, somehow it's more than enough, it's the actual thing. She makes the slowness feel like the point, not a workaround, not the consolation prize, but the point itself, the place where the good stuff lives.
"Best dance partner ever," she murmurs, and her voice is low and unhurried now, kept for rooms like this one. "I mean it. I've had other dance partners and none of them were you, so."
"You've had other dance partners?"
"My prom. He stepped on my foot three times and then apologised to the floor. Zero stars. Do not recommend."
"So I'm better than floor-apology guy."
"You are immeasurably better than floor-apology guy." She squeezes your hand. "It's not even a competition. You're in a completely different category." A pause. "We should make this a weekly thing."
You laugh, quiet enough not to disturb the room. "Yeah?"
"Non-negotiable," she says. "Standing appointment. Fridays, eight o'clock, your living room, my playlist. I'm thinking rotating themes—decades. 80s, 90s, early 2000s. The 2000s week will be something special."
"Terrifying, you mean."
"Special," she insists. "Lovingly curated. I'll make a whole event of it." Another pause, softer this time. "We can go as slow as you need, every single week. That's not a caveat, that's just the plan. That is the plan."
You close your eyes. The music moves around you both, soft and continuous, filling the quiet places in the room without crowding them. Her shoulder is solid under your cheek. Your legs ache the way they ache, dully and without urgency, and you let that be true without making it mean anything beyond itself—just the body, just the evening, just the ordinary texture of a life that is also, somehow, this.
You know she'll keep the promise. You know because she keeps all the small ones—every I'll be there, every we'll figure it out, every just follow my lead—and she's never once reached for a word like despite or even though when she talks about what you do together. She just says we. Easy as breathing. Like there was never any other word that fit.
The music plays on, soft and a little cheesy, earnest in the way only 80s ballads can be earnest—completely, without armour.
Her thumb starts moving again. Slow circles. Steady.
Outside, the city does what cities do. In here, the room is amber and quiet and exactly the right size for the two of you and everything you carry between you, all of it held easily, all of it at home.
thinking about not being away from her for even a second
even if she's watching her show. especially when.
*get it? no.. okay. ill seek myself out🚶♀️
penelope who.. was rather surprised by your clingyness(?) when you first got into a relationship. I mean sure, she's had partners similar like this, but they never require this type of closeness—not that she's complaining or anything.
She had came home from work an hour ago and when you saw her come through the door, you just couldn't keep your hands to yourself. She would barely move an inch away from you, and you would practically whine.
So now you both laid there on the couch, her laying on her back with her eyes trained onto the episode of house wives (sue me if thats not the name) as you laid in between her legs, face nuzzled into her stomach and arms wrapped around her waist whilst a popcorn bowl rest on your back and she eats a handful at a time.
Strange but it was the only solution that actually fitted you both?
penelope who.. is now used to your clingyness and everytime she gets out of bed in to go to the kitchen to make breakfast, she waits 'till she hears your footsteps coming down the hall before starting to make it.
penelope who.. will show you the newest trinkets, or clothing items she has acquired with you clinging to her in any way you could
"I was out shopping with the team, and look what I got..!" She beamed, smiling widely and showing you the newest item that she could add to her collection whilst you hummed, nodding whilst staring up at her with chin resting on her stomach and your arms around her colorfully decorated waist as she stood between your spread legs. (sorry guys, I just have a issue with plushy stomachs, idk I just love them)
penelope who.. practically has to tap out when you start to overheat her from being attached to her for tooooo long, or atleast ask you to uncover you both, though feels guilty for even asking after seeing your reaction.
"Hey, lemons-cakes.." (I dont know, it just seems like her)
"Hm?" You hum, nuzzling further into her like you were trying to crawl into her skin, which didn't seem very enjoyable to her at the moment as she could feel herself sweating on her favorite robe.
"Can you get up for a second? im getting hot, and you know how I feel about sweating, especially in my good robe.." She murmured, looking down at you and she could've sworn she literally just watched you stop breathing like a opossum acting dead.
It took a few moments for you to moments for you to respond like you were buffering before you eventually spoke up again.
"Oh.. okay.." You whispered, sliding off of her slowly with a pout as you laid back into your spot, which was cold and rarely laid upon. You covered yourself with the comforter and laid there in silence.
Even as Penelope begin to drift to sleep, she could practically fill your eyes on her, probably staring at her with the biggest doe eyes know the man kind and the thought made her a bit guilty so after a few moments, she finally sighed and lifted up her sleep mask to look at you briefly.
"Okay, get back over here." To which you happily did.
Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite fics that you’ve written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Let's spread the self-love 🫶
This is so sweet!
The Diagnosis - Poly!Wolfstar - You've fainted in GPs' offices and supermarkets, kept symptom logs like homework, and been told to drink water, reduce stress, and wait. But when your body finally gives out in public one too many times, Remus and Sirius decide it's time to stop asking politely—and start demanding answers.
The Real Front Lines - Aaron Hotchner - He brings you coffee, notices your bad days, walks you to your car. You weren’t expecting this kind of attention—especially not from him.
The Hollow That Grief Built - Derek Morgan - You expected the pain. You didn't expect the grief.
Home in the Static - Penelope Garcia - You miss Penelope, and she misses you. So she calls. mdni
When the Spiral Lies - Poly!Buddie - A forgotten snack and a gentle tease send you spiralling—but Buck and Eddie know how to find you in the dark.
thinking about cuddles with pen' after a hard day at work...
penelope garcia x gn!reader (around 700 words) pure fluff, cuddles, crying, no serious talks, mentions of bau work, sleeping on the couch, inspired vaguely by s2e3
you are laying in the l-couch reading when you hear the keys turn in the door, signaling penelope is home. tossing the book on the table, you prop yourself up, resting your back at the headset. penelope beelines for you on the roomy couch, leaving her bag and phone on silent by the door.
“hey.” you say with a low grumble as she walks over to where you're seated. without word penelope kneels on the couch and sits sideways on your lap. her legs curl to your legs and you pull her body closer to yours with outspread arms. she buries her head into the crook of her neck and nuzzles her nose against your skin. “hey.” you mumble again, straight in her ear now, your hands circling her back. “everything okay?” she shakes her head no, without moving away from you. “wanna talk about it?” penelope shakes her head again and her hands tremble slightly from their spot behind your neck.
“my head hurts.” she mutters after a while and her hands go for her earrings. “can you take them off?” she asks in the softest voice and who are you to deny her? you cover her fingers with yours and pull in to give them a kiss. then you push back against the couch a little further and sit penelope straighter, your fingers working to take off her earrings first. you lay the pair next to your book by the table. then her chunky brown necklace, her shiny bracelets covering her wrists, finally the two rings. you try to get penelope to get up and change but she is insistent on staying her ground in your arms. “i just wanna sleep first… for a little while.” she looks right into your eyes. her eyes too tired to convey any emotion other than weariness. whether she is enraged or sad, you’re unsure. “please?”
“okay.” you whisper, pulling her head to rest against your chest. “okay. but promise me you’ll let me wake you up and take a shower. we need to get some food in you before you head off for next morning.” penelope nods, her eyes closing. “can i take down your hair?” you ask with your fingers threading through her scalp. “please.” pen almost whimpers.
you smile to yourself as you start to take off her double pigtails. pulling softly at her ties you free her blondes. penelope only sighs softly once you throw away her hair ties next to the accessories. your short nails rake her scalp and you start to slowly massage her head. her messy waves tangle around your fingers, you smooth it out with your palms and penelope exhales shakily. “they made me watch some stuff.” she says after a while of your fingers working. her voice sounds wet. you want to swallow up her whole misery right into your chest. “for work, you know. and…” you hear penelope let out a sob and your heart shatters.
“shhhh…” you pull her in tighter, her nails digging into your arms and back as she keeps whimpering softly. “it’s okay. i’m here.” you mutter, kissing her hair and inhaling her scent in. “it was so bad.” she says. “so, so bad… i can’t get them out of my head.”
“i know. i know baby.” you try to calm her down, utterly helpless because there is no solution for it. that’s her job, what she has to do. and there’s nothing she can do about it when it comes with the horrors. the gruesome. “i’m here.” you keep stroking her hair and giving kisses on particular spots. penelope keeps crying for a while, her hands squeezing your sides, then up to your back, your shoulders, holding on. “thank you.” she whispers after a while. her voice is barely back to it’s usual tone. “for what?”
“for having me, letting me be simple. honest.” she says without looking into your eyes, they’re fixed on a spot on the floor as her head lays motionless on you. “penelope… you don’t have to-”
“give me a kiss.” she interrupts your words, knowing well what you mean. but she just wants to say it, put it out there.
she puts a hand on the back of your neck and pulls your lips down on hers. you hum as she kisses you, letting her scent blind your senses. when she pulls back you can see the spark return to her brown irises. penelope chuckles so lightly as she wipes a smudge from her lipstick at the side of your mouth. the fatigue exposes itself when she lets out a long sigh.
“now i really need some sleep.” she mumbles, returning to her comfortable position next to you, looping her arms around and keeping you close. “okay babygirl.” you kiss her temple and speak slowly. “sleep. you’re safe. i’m with you.” you can see the smile form on penelope’s lips as she drifts off to sleep. you doze off after a while yourself, deep in sleep with thoughts about penelope and her warm body near you.
Pairing: Penelope Garcia x Disabled!Reader
Summary: You miss Penelope, and she misses you. So she calls.
Tags: disabled!reader, depictions of chronic pain, phone sex, soft dom!penelope, reader wants her so bad it hurts, gentle dirty talk, late night comfort, post-orgasm tenderness, hurt/comfort, reader in pain but still needy, penelope is everything, no use of y/n, MDNI.
Word Count: 1.7k words
The phone rests on your pillow, speaker on, screen casting a faint glow against your cheek. The soft hum of the line is like a second heartbeat, syncing with your own, grounding you in the late-night silence that wraps around the room like a heavy blanket. The shadows in the corners flicker as your bedside candle burns low, and the faint scent of lavender oil still lingers in the air from where you dabbed it on your wrists, hoping it might help tonight.
You're sprawled across your bed, limbs splayed, muscles stiff and burning from the weight of the day. Every inch of your body is heavy with pain—the kind that lingers in the bones and behind your eyes, that claws at your joints and drags you down with invisible chains, that makes your skin feel too tight and the air too thick. The sheets cling to your skin where sweat has started to gather, even though the room isn't warm. Pain hums low in your spine, constant, familiar. Exhausting.
But none of that matters now. Because Penelope is in your ear, her voice low, sinful, velvet wrapped in gold, and somehow it overrides the worst of the ache. With just a few words, she's untangling the knots that reality ties you in, replacing them with silken strands of longing.
She breathes your name like a spell, slow and reverent, and your whole body aches in a different way. Deeper. Needier. Your thighs press together instinctively, a flush blooming across your chest and neck.
"God, baby," she murmurs, and you can hear the smile on her lips, playful and sultry all at once, like she's drawing her words with the tip of her tongue. "You have no idea what you do to me. I've been thinking about you all day. Couldn't even focus in the keynote lecture. I had to excuse myself to the bathroom and just… breathe."
A quiet, breathless laugh escapes you. "I think I might have a clue. You've been teasing me for twenty minutes. That's not very professional, Miss Garcia."
"I call it anticipation."
"You call it torture."
"Oh, hush," she purrs, and the octave drop in her voice sends a shiver along your spine. You feel goosebumps race across your arms. "You're the one who said you missed my hands. My mouth. My everything. So I figured… why not give you something to tide you over?"
You inhale sharply, the corners of your lips twitching into a grin. "I did say that. I do miss you. It's only been three days and I'm already losing my mind. I miss the way you smell. The way you look at me when you're about to do something really filthy. The way your eyes get all soft when I fall apart for you."
"I know, sweetheart. I miss you too. I miss your voice in the morning and your hands on my hips at night. I miss your taste. I miss your little sounds when I kiss your neck just right." Her tone shifts, darkens, melts into something so sweet it's almost obscene. "Take your shirt off."
Your stomach flips. "Yeah?"
"Yeah," she whispers. "I want to hear you while you touch yourself. I want to picture every tiny shiver. I want to feel it through the phone."
Heat coils in your belly, slow and molten. The pain doesn't disappear, not really—it rarely does—but it recedes just enough to make space for this new ache, sharp and tender in your chest, between your thighs. You slip your shirt over your head, wincing slightly as your shoulder twinges in protest. But then her voice is there again, a balm, a command, a caress.
"That's my good girl," she says, soft and syrupy. "Now… take off your panties. Slowly. I want to imagine every movement. Pretend I'm kneeling at the foot of the bed, watching, licking my lips. Watching your hips roll like they do when I have my tongue on you."
Your fingers tremble as you hook them beneath the band and draw the fabric down your legs, inch by inch, careful not to jostle your joints too harshly. You hiss as your hips protest, your body not built for grace tonight—but you get them off. You always do. For her, you always will.
"They're off," you whisper.
"Mmm, I bet you look divine," she breathes, her voice wrapping around your senses like smoke. "Bare and aching and ready for me. Are you touching yourself yet, darling?"
"Not yet."
She groans. "You're killing me. But god, I love the way you take your time."
You smile, biting your bottom lip. "You like it when I'm obedient."
"Too fucking much," she moans. "Now, start with your thighs. Just your thighs. Stroke them slow, just like I would if I were there. Let me hear how it feels. I want to imagine your skin under my hands, so soft, so warm. I want to imagine your muscles twitching when I get close to the good spots."
Your palm skims along your skin, and even through the dull pulse of pain, sensation blooms. You shudder. Your breath catches, and Penelope hears it. Of course she does.
"That's it," she says, a little breathless herself now. "You're so sensitive, aren't you? I'd kiss every inch of you, if I were there. I'd start just above your knee and work my way up, take my time. I'd tease and taste until you begged. Until you cried. Until you forgot the word 'hurt.'"
"I can't think straight now."
"Good."
A pause. You can hear her shifting on her end of the line, the faint rustle of her hotel sheets, the creak of the bedframe. "Circle your fingers just above your clit. Gently, baby. I want you squirming for me. I want you so turned on you forget everything else."
You do as she says, breath stuttering as pleasure sparks beneath your skin, sharp and soft all at once. Your free hand fists the sheets, grasping for something to anchor you. You draw small circles, light at first, teasing yourself just as she would if she were here—eyes locked on yours, lips parted, voice steady but thick with heat.
"You sound so pretty," Penelope murmurs. "So desperate for me. I wish I could see you. Fuck, I wish I could taste you. I'd hold your thighs open and make a mess of you. I wouldn't let up. I'd make you scream."
You press your thighs together instinctively, gasping as the ache intensifies.
"I want your mouth," you admit, voice shaking. "I want your hands. I want to feel your breath on me."
Penelope moans, drawn out and shaky. "You're making me wet just thinking about it. God, if I were there… I'd have you spread out for me. I'd kiss you until you forgot your own name. You wouldn't need to touch yourself—I'd do it all. I'd make it easy. You deserve easy. You deserve worship."
A tear slides from the corner of your eye—not from sadness, but from how badly you want her. You chase the friction she's coaxed out of you, pressing down harder, circling faster. Pain and pleasure war within you, but you've learned to ride both. Especially when she's on the other end, talking you through every breath.
"Say my name," she whispers, voice thick.
"Penelope…"
"Again."
"Penelope, please…"
"That's it, just like that," she groans. "Let go for me, baby. Come for me. Let me hear it. Don't hold back."
It crashes over you like a tide, sudden and consuming. You cry out her name, trembling as wave after wave of heat floods through you, pleasure tangled with pain until the lines blur completely. The ache in your body sharpens with the intensity of it, but her voice is right there, grounding you, coaxing you through it. You breathe her in like oxygen, her name a mantra on your lips.
"Breathe, baby. That's it. Fuck, you're perfect. I wish I could hold you. I wish I could kiss your face and stroke your hair and run a bath for you. I'd lift you in, wash every part of you with my hands and mouth."
You lie there, boneless, breathless, flushed to the roots of your hair. Sweat beads on your skin, chest heaving as you try to recover. The pain creeps back in slowly, and you whimper at the shift, curling slightly in on yourself.
"I can't move," you whisper.
Her tone changes immediately, softening, concern tucked between desire. "Is it too much? Talk to me."
You shake your head, even though she can't see. "No. Just… sore. It was worth it. I feel wrung out. Good. Loved."
She hums, low and loving. "You always push through so much. You're so strong, baby. I wish I were there to help you stretch, help you breathe, hold you while you rest. I'd tuck you in and rub your back until you fell asleep. You've done enough tonight. More than enough."
"I want that too."
"You'll have it. As soon as I'm home, I'm yours. Every aching inch of you—I'll take care of it all."
A small, wobbly smile touches your lips. "You already do."
She chuckles, a low, sated sound. "Good. That means I did my job."
"Job? You didn't even touch me."
"Oh, but I did," she purrs. "Didn't I?"
You grin, eyes fluttering closed. "Maybe a little."
Penelope sighs, the sound thick with longing. "When I get back, I want you to do it all over again. But next time… I'll be watching. I'll be touching. I'll be tasting. And you'll come twice as hard. Maybe three times. You'll beg me to stop, and I won't."
"Promise?"
"Cross my heart and hope to make you scream."
You laugh, soft and breathless. "I love you, Pen."
"I love you more. Now rest, my gorgeous girl. I'll call you in the morning."
You hum, content, letting her voice be the last thing you hear before sleep pulls you under. The pain is still there, always will be—but so is the warmth. The comfort. The love.
And in the morning, you'll ache. But tonight, wrapped in the echo of her voice and the ghost of her touch, you are nothing but warm.
