joel miller x f! reader. 31k words
cw: dubcon. free use. quid pro quo. violence. gore. heavy smut. 18+ mdni
a lone hunter ambushes you on your way to the nearest QZ. you'll do just about anything to survive. he doesn’t abide dead weight.
or [read on ao3]
Ringing in your ears notwithstanding, the road is quiet.
It’s not a pleasant sort of quiet, though. Not hushed breezes and evening birdsong; it’s a droning silence. Thick as tar and just as sticky.
The air is dense and it hums with it, it beads on your forehead and sinks heavy in your chest. Not a lick of wind stirs the dust on the pavement. The powerlines that drape overhead are dead still, devoid of any perching birds that might trick you into thinking life carries on in a backwater town as stagnant as this one.
Still, quiet is promising. You follow the stripes of black bitumen that stitch the cement as you wander down the crumbling road, ears perked up for the presence of any company — shuffling feet, objects knocked over, the forlorn moaning of an infected.
There’s nothing.
You’re not arrogant enough to be hopeful. It hasn’t been a week since your last remaining companion bit the dust, and she didn’t go nicely. Big juicy bite on her hand where the fucking walker took her entire thumb in its mouth. Worse, there was no quick way out. Neither of you had a gun. She wanted death with a shortcut, so one of you had to get their hands dirty — and it was you, in the end. You cut a deep knick in her carotid and she leaked to death in a few minutes. Didn’t look like a bad way to go, in your estimation.
You miss her, though. Maya was her name. There had been a group of you for a while, six people strong, following the Arkansas river — slowly picked off by varying injuries, diseases, suicides. It was just you and Maya for a good two weeks. Now it’s only you.
There’s something uniquely terrifying in being alone. In total, vacant, consummate solitude, meandering along with an existential terror that you might be the last person left on earth; paradoxically filled to the ears with dread that there might be someone watching you, listening, waiting for you to turn the corner.
Typically you’d prefer the beaten path to paved street, temperate woods to abandoned buildings — but desperate times call for desperate measures, and you’ve not got much in the way of a choice.
You have avoided any population centres for the last few days, following the river as closely as you can without venturing near any roads or buildings. Wasn’t worth the risk until it was, because now you have no food left. Don’t have any antiseptic, either. For all your tools and trinkets, you’ve got nothing much more than three bandaids and a few remaining sachets of berry cherry Kool-Aid.
You spot a pharmacy up the road. The sun-bleached sign sticks up like a flagpole from the sidewalk; Medi Quick Discount Pharmacy.
If you’re going to find infected anywhere, it’ll be a pharmacy. You know this, regrettably, from experience. People get bit and the first thing they do is run to a chemist, sweeping the shelves for anything that might help them, a pitifully futile last resort.
Peering in through the sludgy storefront window, though, you can’t see any movement. Can’t see much of anything, really, grime and dust plaster the window in a thick enough film that the interior is dark, especially in the orange lowlight of the evening sun. Looks like there aren’t any spores, though. Windows aren’t broken. Maybe you’re in luck.
You try the main door and it’s locked, even with a good shake. Next option is to smash the glass, but that’s noisy. Instead you wander around the store, crowbar tight in your fist, eyes scouring the mossy brick walls for any alternative entrance — and, look, there’s a staff entrance round the back. You twist the handle and the heavy door cracks open with a mournful whine.
The inside is dim, a haze seeps in through newspaper-covered windows, and the air is so thick with dust it’s foggy with it. You’re not hit with the savory odour of spores, but you strap on your mask just in case. Better safe than sorry, as the saying goes. Not to say what you’re doing is particularly safe.
You find yourself in a stockroom behind the dispensary, and predictably, the shelves have already been thoroughly plundered.
Since you were driven out of Kansas City, though, you’ve become something of a scavenging maven. Every shelf, every cabinet, every drawer, you finger through until you get blisters. You’ve found some treasures that way: a firesteel, sewing needles, bars of soap. Even a few little trinkets that serve no purpose other than making you smile, like the plushie frog bag charm you found in an old toy store, or the pair of Prada sunglasses you plucked from the glovebox of a rusting sportscar, or the bobby pins you use to keep your hair out of your face.
And with an unfathomable amount of luck — and a good half an hour combing through the pharmacy tooth and nail — you hit the jackpot.
Someone else’s stash tucked in a cupboard in the bathroom. Blanketed in dust, so you can safely say nobody is coming back for it. They had good taste, whoever they were — two bottles of codeine, three boxes of ciprofloxacin, ibuprofen blister trays, five droppers of betadine, a vial of gentamicin, an epipen, a box of Ural, surgical tape, gauze, and three sealed hypodermic needles.
You just about squeal in glee before you bite down on it, scooping every last bit into your backpack, bursting at the seams because holy shit holy shit holy shit — you just won the fucking lottery.
Little Rock is still several days away, but maybe you’ll survive the journey after all. And you’ve even got stuff to barter with. Gentamicin, you giggle to yourself, the shit’s liquid gold. You hope you can sell it sooner than use it.
Before then, though, you’ll need food.
Nothing of the sort could be found in the pharmacy, so you flip the latch on the main door and swing it open before stepping back out into the stree—
Bang.
There’s a split second between the blistering air that brushes against your face and the earsplitting crack that shockwaves out from a distance.
For a moment you think you’ve hallucinated. The clap of thunder is gone as it came. A spate of adrenaline floods your body so quickly that your vision falters for a heartbeat, and you flick your head around to see where it had come from, and — there, down the street, a silhouette of a man.
He’s pointing a rifle at you.
You move on instinct. It thunders in your temples and buzzes down to your fingertips; the fumes of pure epinephrine, driving you to bolt back inside. You double back and barrel through the pharmacy, hopping over the dispensary counter and bulldozing through the back door you left ajar.
You sprint in full strides, bounding through the car park and down a perpendicular street, feet landing so hard against the concrete you can feel the shock in your shins.
You take a left. Bolt down the block. And you don’t hear another gunshot, so you’re safe, maybe — but you think you hear footsteps, heavier than yours, and suddenly they’re closer, faster — and is that panting? You can’t look over your shoulder to check, because you’ll trip if you do, but that’s definitely panting, unmistakable now, the hounding breaths of a man in unrelenting pursuit.
Now you shriek. It tears itself out of your lungs as you run for your life, a protolithic reaction to a terror so violent it makes your bones ache and your heart ignite like a grenade with the pin pulled.
There’s nothing but running. Your mind and body become one unfaltering engine, entirely devoted to running, running, running, and leaping over the hoods of cars, and over short fences, and through gates that you slam shut behind you, and soon you find yourself shouldering into another store, a maze of shelves, perhaps you’ll lose him in here—
A weight slams into your back with the force of a train, and you collide with the vinyl-coated cement so hard it leaves you gulping for air.
There’s a crack down one glass eye of your mask, your teeth ache where they clacked together, and your crowbar shrieks along the floor as it skids out of reach. It takes a good second for your mind to catch up, but when it does, the scream that erupts from your chest so plangent it warbles in your own ears — because he, whoever he is, is clambering on top of you, grunting and growling and out of breath, wrestling as you wriggle underneath him.
“Christ, you’re fuckin’ noisy.” His voice comes out gnarled and tight, panted through a grinding jaw as he fights to keep you still.
Whatever prey-like instinct had compelled you to run melts away when the hunger to fight for your life kicks in. It’s scorching under your skin, voltaic along your nerves, magmatic in the fibres of your muscles — a rage so visceral you can feel it in your teeth, and all you want to do is maim.
You buck and kick, you reach behind you for something to claw at — you find skin, a head, and you dig your nails in like you might peel the leathery face away from the bone. You fling your elbows, throw your head back in the hopes of breaking his nose, and you growl and spit like an animal in the fray — a get the fuck off me! and a few fuck yous while you’re at it.
But he’s so heavy, and persistent, and his hands are somehow everywhere at once; forcing a shoulder into the floor with one and pinning a wrist with the other as you reach desperately towards the shelf beside you — there’s a screwdriver on the floor. Still strapped to its cardboard but the pointy end is pointy enough. Maybe you can reach it, with one hard buck, you can just about brush it with your fingertips—
You hear the click of something metallic, and then, right beside your face and held in a fist too big for it, is a revolver.
The boiling fight that had flooded you leaks out like piss and puddles around you on the floor. A wounded whimper huffs out from your throat, because the gun shifts out of sight, and you feel its cold metal mouth against your scalp.
“Yeah,” he drawls when you go quiet; breathless, satisfied. “Easy now.”
Your hands open flat on the vinyl beneath you, and you remain so still that it aches, but — though you try to keep it in, bite your tongue hard enough to bleed — you sob. It all floods out of you in heaving gulps, spluttering and whimpering and begging for your life.
The weight on your back shifts. “You gon’ make me kill you?”
“No — nonono, please,” you wail — Christ, it’s pathetic aloud — “please, plee-he-heeease don’t, don’t kill me — please, I don’t wanna die, I don’t wanna die—”
The steel weight against your skull moves away, though you don’t know where he puts it. “Settle down, ‘n I won’t.”
You do your best to hush yourself but your body stiffens on reflex, because heavy hands are already raking over your body; down your arms, waist, thighs, lingering over the swell of your ass to fish something out of your back pocket.
It’s a compromising position he has you in, and it turns your blood cold; face down on the floor, kept flat by the weight of him, a knee on the back of your thigh.
Surely, you pray, he’s only frisking you. He has more pressing priorities than getting his dick wet. Then he yanks the straps of your backpack down your shoulders, jerking back your arms to pull the whole thing off you, and you find yourself remorsefully wishing for your first fear to be true.
Instead you hear him unzip your bag and rummage through its innards, and your tears start up again, because now you understand the depth of the shit you’re in.
He’s a hunter.
And what do hunters do?
“God damn,” he murmurs to himself, slick with satisfaction — must have found your jackpot.
“Please don’t take it,” you plead, sobbing and sobbing and sobbing, because without your backpack your death is as certain as the one offered by the gun against your head. “Please — I’ll, I won’t make it without my stuff.”
“You all alone out here, huh?” He asks, nonplussed.
The question sends a needling shiver down your spine, and you don’t want to answer it, because there isn’t a right answer. Not as if he’d let you go if you lied about having friends somewhere nearby, but admitting to being by yourself feels like signing a death warrant. You wonder if he has friends of his own.
“No — I’m not,” you whimper.
He lets out a huff, not quite laughter. “Not much of a liar.”
You yelp when two big hands grip you by the shoulders and flip you ungracefully onto your back, and you finally get a good look at him as he settles a knee either side of your hips.
He’s broad. Heavy.
That’s the first thing you notice, and it frightens you, because only one kind of person can maintain bulk like that in a world like this one. His sun-leathered arms are thick with muscle and a healthy padding of fat, sleeves of his brick plaid shirt are tight around biceps. Hefty thighs secure you casually to the floor through weight alone.
In his forties, you guess. His eyes are life-worn and wrinkled in the corners, cheeks and forehead russet with old sunburn that may once have been pink but has aged into bronze. A dense-bearded lumberjack type, you think, there’s the odd silver curl in the black scruff on his jaw and flecked through the hair on his temples.
His expression is what unsettles you.
Manifest apathy.
His stare is phlegmatic, dim, hollowed out by years of means-justified survival, and you can read in them that you are far from the first person he has had in this position. Splayed out beneath him and begging for their life, while he indifferently considers their fate. What you can’t tell, though, is whether or not he is enjoying himself.
He grabs your gas mask by the filter and pulls it from your face, plucking a few hairs with it, and drops it to the linoleum with a clatter. There’s a near imperceptible shift in his expression as you meet his eye; a renewed weight in his glare, a tightening in his lips, the faintest furrow in his brow. Why do you feel exposed?
“Look at you,” he mumbles, and you’re not quite sure if he is talking to you or himself. He takes your jaw in a hand, rocking your head to the side as if to get a better look, and you groan in uneasy dispute. “Ain’t that somethin’.”
You don’t like his tone. All too familiar.
He huffs, releasing your chin like he had to force himself to. “You sure ain’t gon’ last long out here.”
After a heavy beat he sets to standing up, grunting as he does and taking your backpack with him — and where you had just been fighting to get away from him, you’re suddenly scrambling to get him to stay.
“What do you — wait,” you splutter, pushing yourself up from the floor, “wai-wai-wait – you can’t just take my stuff and leave me here—”
“Said I wasn’t gonna kill you,” he says frankly, adjusting the rifle slung over his shoulder and peering down at you indifferently. “Doesn’t mean I’m stickin’ around.”
You can’t let him take your supplies. You can’t. But you’re not stupid — there’s no chance you can fight him off to get them back, you’ve no weapons beyond your crowbar, and the worse you could do is break it over his head as he leaves; but his skull looks hard as concrete, and you’re sure that just for the inconvenience he’d put a bullet in yours.
You resort to sobbing. “But I’ll die without my stuff.”
“Not my problem,” he grunts.
Next you’re unabashedly supplicating, on your knees and all — and now, well, you haven’t much left but your last resort. “Please — what if — can you take me with you? Then you — that way you can keep my stuff, as long as I can come with you, please, I don’t wanna die out here, please—”
Something in him seems amused, but there’s no smile. “Don’t need no dead weight.”
“I won’t be dead weight,” you cry, you’re all slobbery with it, “I promise — I-I’ll pull my weight. I’ll be helpful — ‘n I won’t be slow I promise, I’ll keep up.”
He’s unswayed. “Doubt you’re good for much besides lookin’ pretty and eatin’ my food.”
“No, I promise, I’m good at, um — I’m good at finding things and, and climbing, and I’m good at stitching stuff, and I passed the FEDRA medic course, and—”
There’s a glint of something in his eye, and he sighs indignantly. Maybe he’s considering it, maybe, if you just push a little harder, he might—
“That mouth good for anythin’ besides makin’ noise?”
“I — I’m…” your voice trails off, because suddenly all the air is sucked from your lungs, and there’s none left to breathe.
Only as the question bounces around in your harried skull does the insinuation sink in, gooey and unpleasant as it is. You don’t need to ask like what, because it’s clear enough to make your belly churn.
What else can you do but indulge him?
It comes out as a whisper. “Yeah.”
He bounces a shoulder to adjust his rifle strap. “Gon’ show me what else it can do?”
He asks it straight-faced. Tired, almost. An indignant expression consequent upon a taxing day and a struggle he didn’t anticipate, sour that you made him chase you. Maybe he’s thinking you can make up for it, that you owe him, because twice he thought about shooting you and twice he decided against it. Probably thinks he’s being merciful. Offering the possibility that you’ll survive him if you — if only you’d — if you’d deign to…
Fuck — is that what he is asking of you? Are you really going to suck him off?
Bruise-kneed, sweaty all over, sticky on the vinyl floor? Seems he’s unbothered that you’re all grimy and slobbery, still panting from his pursuit. A pitiful lump of meat and bone with a convenient hole or two or three depending on how much he decides to ask of you — or take from you, maybe, if you attempt to refuse him.
That’s the coin you toss. Tails: you fight him and fail, and he does what he wants anyway — rapes you, kills you, in whichever order he feels like, as hunters are wont to do. Heads: well, that’s self-explanatory.
You’re pretending you have a choice. Truth is, you don’t hold your dignity above your own survival. That’s the only reason you’ve made it this far.
You sniff. “Will you—” Every word you utter singes your throat on its way out, “—will you let me keep my stuff if I do?”
His face shows no tells. It’s dead-eyed and wanting. There's no gleaning from his body language whether he intends to return your belongings, let alone whether he has any interest in keeping you alive but for the warm throat you might offer him.
“Might do,” he grumbles. “You gon’ make a fuss?”
The breath you let out is shallow and shaky. “No.”
He takes a heavy step towards you, then. “Alright.”
“I—” You choke on a swallow, your tongue suddenly uncooperative, “—right now?”
He lets out a long breath, ragged and frustrated, and you can tell by the thinning of his lips that he’s considering it. Maybe he can spare a few minutes, he’s thinking, as his olive-oil eyes rake over you like he’s assessing a show heifer; you’re already kneeling, after all, and he probably doesn’t have anywhere to be…
“No,” he grunts instead, jaw tight. “Get up.”
“I don’t — but—”
“Make me tell you twice ‘n I’ll leave you here.”
Your heart skips over and you don’t waste a second before scrambling up to your feet. You’re dizzy, and your head is throbbing, but you think — that’s what he meant, right? — is he letting you come with him?
He shoves your pack impatiently into your chest and you just barely catch it, releasing a puff of bewilderment through slack lips.
“Thanks,” you murmur warily, slipping your arms through the straps as you return your backpack to its rightful spot. It feels lighter. He probably pillaged everything inside it; but as long as you stick with him, at least, it’s all still within reach. Maybe you could find a way to snatch it back if he drops his guard.
He snorts. The ghost of a smirk is gone as it came. “Sure.”
His tone is mordant and you get the distinct sense that he knows you have nothing to be thankful for; but, in truth, the fact that you’re still breathing is enough to leave you feeling resentfully, shamefully, overwhelmingly grateful.
“Headed to Little Rock,” he says bluntly, wiping the sheen of sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.
Your eyes brighten a little. “Oh — that’s, that’s where I was heading, too.”
“Ain’t you lucky,” he sneers. “I wanna be in Coal Hill before dark.”
You nod vigorously. “I can keep up,” you insist, “I’m quick.”
“No shit,” he says, without a drop of amusement. You wonder if he’s still a little out of breath from the chase. “Alright then. Move. If you dawdle I ain’t waitin’ for you.”
“Okay,” you nod again, reaching for your crowbar out of habit, because it has been glued to your palm for a month straight and its absence makes your hand itch.
Before your fingertips graze it, though, there’s a fist around your bicep, tight enough to hurt. “Fuck you think you’re doin’?”
“Grabbing my — ow,” you bleat. “I’m not gonna do anything with it.”
“Think I’m stupid?”
“No, I just — you don’t want me to be dead weight, right? I need it, without it I’m—”
“Christ,” he sighs hoarsely, and you sense he’s already regretting his mercy — but, God, you hope he isn’t, because you don’t want to starve to death in this podunk fucking town with nothing but your thoughts to mock you as you die.
“Please, I won’t hit you with it or anything, I promise.”
He squints at you frustratedly as he considers it. You anticipate a no the longer he’s quiet, and you won’t push your luck by insisting any further — but eventually, with a rub of his temple, he grunts; “Fine. But you do anythin’ stupid with it ‘n I’ll put a bullet where it hurts.”
Your relief deflates you. You don’t like being unarmed. “I swear I won’t.”
There’s enough give in his grip for you to clutch at the red steel bar, and you snatch it before he tosses you by the arm in the direction of the exit.
“Move it,” he orders.
You nod and hurry towards the front entrance, nudging open the swinging door and returning to the street. The town is quiet again, but for the laden footsteps of the man that follows you out, and his ireful scoff when you turn and stare at him.
He’s tall. In the amber of the sunlight you might even mistake him for somebody kinder, but you don’t let the notion stick. No sense in pretending he’s anything more than what he is, in taking the risk of assuming he might be a half-decent man beneath that callused shell. He has made himself your only option by force and you’d best not forget it.
Still, you await direction, because you suspect any disobedience will piss him off. He says nothing but begins striding ahead down the road, and that’s instruction enough to follow.
You’re quiet for as long as you can bear to be; perhaps you don’t want him to forget that you’re there, a few strides behind, or maybe you missed conversation more than you thought you did. Solitude is maddening, in your experience. Turns you daft after a while.
“What’s your name?” You ask, cautiously but loud enough for him to hear, and his head turns just slightly over his shoulder. “Since I’m…” — there has to be a nicer way to put it — “Since we’re sticking together, or, you know. Whatever.”
“Speed up,” is all he says, more of a bark. “And keep your mouth shut.”
That leaves a pit in your stomach. You’re temporary.
The three-hour walk to Coal Hill is as uneventful as it might have been if you had made the trek along Route Sixty-Four by yourself, though it goes by a lot quicker.
He’s a quiet man. You’re not sure if it’s a survival tactic or a facet of his nature, but when he speaks it’s in single words, or sometimes two, if he’s telling you to shut up.
You haven’t been particularly talkative either. Every time you open your mouth it’s a gamble, a test of the waters — you want him to like you, as much as it humiliates you to admit, enough that he doesn’t immediately kill you for inconveniencing him. He walks with his revolver in his fist and his head on a swivel.
Inspecting him is all you can do in the silence, as you cling to his side or slightly behind, when your legs fail to keep up with his much longer ones.
He’s a hunter, alright. It’s written all over him so vividly it might as well be inked in his skin; kill or be killed. You get the sense there’s a lengthy trail of bodies behind him, enough that there might still be blood dried in the creases of his palms even after he rinses them. Forearms that have seen many throats, knuckles many noses, boots many ribs. You’re lucky you haven’t been at the end of them yet.
But — and this is something you noticed when he pursued you, though only now do you have the breathing room to consider it — he’s alone.
Hunters operate in packs, that you know. That’s what makes them so dangerous, so potently terrifying – where there’s one, there’s many, and by the time you spot one of them the rest have already ambushed you. These are the sorts of things you were told during your education in the Kansas City quarantine zone. You’d always been a touch circumspect of FEDRA’s rhetoric, but then you encountered a pack of them yourself, and the scaremongering suddenly seemed markedly understated.
You got away by the skin of your teeth the last time, and with not much left but a fuelless lighter and a bullet graze on your shoulder; but you had friends, then. Now you’ve got none.
Seems he doesn’t have any, either. And you’re not sure whether that’s much of a good thing.
By the time he finds a place to stop, the sun has set and the shadowy town is dark as pitch. If there’s a moon in the sky you can’t see it, and its lack of light does little to help you find your way as you walk quietly behind him, eyes flicking up from the rubble-covered road to the gas station you approach. There’s an empty pickup under the canopy with a door hanging from its hinges, and the smell of gluey gasoline hangs in a smog around the rusted old pumps.
“Are we stopping here?” You whisper, squinting at his silhouette as he leans his ear against the glass of the sliding door.
“Shut,” he hisses, before he hooks his fingertips into the door’s metal frame, and pulls it along its tracks; seems it doesn’t want to be opened, because it squeaks and moans for every inch it’s forced wider until it’s finally open enough for him to fit. He steps in before you, and you mousily follow along.
He flicks on a torch. Flecks of glowing dust drift through the cone of light, stirred up by feet the floor hasn’t seen in a decade, you guess. He combs the shelves with the torchlight, and they are bitterly empty. You imagine thirteen years ago, once the news of the outbreak hit this isolated hillbilly town, some lucky fucker got here first and swept every shelf clean, carting his spoils off in his truck to some field where nobody would reach him. You wonder if he made it far.
Thankfully, it doesn’t appear that anyone was left behind.
“Seems like there’s nobody here,” you breathe.
He grunts in agreement, shambling over to the counter before he slips his pack from his shoulders and dumps it on the surface, and the torch points up towards the ceiling. He lets out a beleaguered huff as he leans on his knuckles, head drooping from thick shoulders, and you’re certain that to speak would annoy him, but—
“Long day?” You ask, quietly but not quite a whisper.
To that he scoffs. You’re not sure if you amused him.
“Yeah,” he huffs, turning to face you as he leans himself against the counter. “Long day.”
“Me too,” you say, a touch sheepish; his rude arrival in your day made it a hell of a lot longer than it needed to be, and you’re sure he’d say the same thing about you. “Least we can get some rest now, right?”
Fraternising with him feels strange, like an embarrassing faux-pas, because despite efforts you haven’t quite forgotten the deal you had apparently struck. What are you doing here, someone might ask with their nose turned up, you should have cracked him over the head with your crowbar when you had the chance.
And to that, you’d say; you’re a survivor, just as much as he is. The methods may differ, sure — his is marauding and yours is consorting, two vastly antithetical means, but you’re sure that underneath the ethos is the same: the ends justify them.
You’re not a fighter, you think. You didn’t do much combat training while you were holed up in a FEDRA shithole and the brief taste of it you did get you were terrible at. You’re better at making friends. Or, allies, better fitting — people aren’t especially friendly in a world like this one.
This beast of a man is built for the slaughter, that much you can tell. Many will have tried to fight him, and that many will be dead. You don’t plan on being one of them.
“Uh-huh,” he drones, uninterested.
You foolishly think, for a moment, that’s the end of the short conversation. That next he’ll tell you to shut up again and to find a spot to lay out a bedroll, because you’ll be up bright and early to continue the journey south-east.
Seems your luck is still running short, because instead he crosses his arms, and with an impatient huff, grumbles;
“Time to get that mouth busy, girl.”
Well — Jesus — you definitely didn’t expect something so brazen nor immediate. Your guts turn to lead and just about plummet out of you once he says it.
“You want—” you hesitate, digging fingernails into your palms, “here?”
“Yeah. Here.”
A dispute bubbles up your throat like a nervous burp, and you almost let it out before you swallow it. You’ve made it too far to refuse him now, and frankly you’re scared of what he’d do if you even attempted to; he’d probably scold you for wasting his time and shoot you in the head. Maybe he’d rend open your jaw like a bloater and fuck you in the throat anyway. Most likely, though, and somehow worst of all — he’d take everything you have and leave you here to die.
It’s only fair, you tell yourself; he has held up his end of the deal so far, because you’re still breathing. He’s simply cashing the cheque you surrendered to him.
“You’ll… you’ll take me with you to Little Rock, right? If I…” God, why can’t you say it?
He lets loose a harried sigh. “Sure.”
Not altogether convincing. Even if he said so just to appease you, though, what recourse do you have? It’s a gamble, sure, but — nothing ventured, nothing gained, so the old adage goes.
“Okay,” you murmur, but the sound barely escapes you, as you slip your backpack from your shoulders and place it gingerly on the floor. You sweep a few loose hairs from your face as you draw in a slow breath, inching closer to him warily as if anxious he’ll bite.
Lowering yourself to your knees is enough to make you nauseous with chagrin.
Some part of you wishes he’d just fuck you instead, it’d be much less effort and far less humiliating — but it’s a mouth he wants, so it’s a mouth he’ll get. You wonder if he gets off on your embarrassment, if he enjoys the image of you debasing yourself for a chance at his mercy. You wonder if it’s been a long time since he’s had a girl blow him; stealing pussy from ambushed victims is easy, a pragmatist like him might say, since it doesn’t come with the risk of teeth. Or maybe, if you give him just a sliver of grace, he simply likes getting his dick sucked.
His eyes track you on your way down, black as beads in the dim torchlight bouncing off the ceiling, and his hands are already at the buckle of his belt.
Your heart races high in your chest, and your blood is molten, metallic on your tongue from where you bit it when he tackled you. Stomach’s all knotted and queasy with apprehension and it fizzes in your throat. If he has any sort of infection, you loathe to consider, you’ll most certainly contract it.
But when he pulls his fly down, and you awkwardly shimmy to sit on your knees so that you’re eye-level with it — the cock he pulls out of his boxers is, to your relief, nice. Looks clean, looked after, like he might have even bathed today. A small mercy, you suppose, but your mouth still goes cotton-dry at the thought of swallowing it.
All of it is surreal. Some kind of humidity-induced fever dream, feels like, all sweltering and thrumming — or maybe you just hit your head harder than you thought — because how the fuck have you ended up here? A few hours ago you were still dithering about setting foot on a paved street for fear of awakening a clicker, or setting off a shin-height nailbomb.
Now you’re on your knees and you’re looking at a cock.
One that was only half-hard when it was first presented to you, but you watch it thicken and climb before your eyes, head rubescent and shiny as it fills with blood. It’s a rake of a thing, just about doubling in size as it swells, protruding heavy from a bed of black curls; darker around the base but ruddy pink at the tip, the clear delineation of a circumcision two-thirds of the way up.
It’s strained. Angry and belligerent as it bobs with his heartbeat and waits for your tongue.
He’s not patient. Time slowed as he unsheathed himself but you know, rationally, only a few seconds have passed before his hand is at the crown of your head, fingers clawing through your hair to pull you in.
He draws a breath through his teeth when your timid hand curls around him, half-heartedly running up the rigid length of him and back down, because the less time his cock spends in your mouth the better.
You repeat mantras to yourself. Just a dick. You can do it. Just a dick, and you’ll get your stuff back, and you’ll survive. You’ll survive. You’ll survive.
When you brush the soft head with your lips, you falter.
“Watch those teeth,” he growls, before you’ve even opened your mouth; “f’you even think of bitin’ I’ll hurt you worse.”
A threat both menaced through a tight jaw and breathy with a want so savage it sends a shiver prickling down your spine. You don’t doubt it, either. His pistol is — well, actually, you’re not sure where he’s put it — but you bet he’d find ways to use his hands to follow through, if he felt so inclined.
Instead those hands busy themselves with the hair at the back of your head, and the tip of his cock twitches against your lips, so you hold your breath and open your mouth.
Goosebumps prickle from your scalp to your ankles as the underside of his glans drags smoothly along your tongue, deeper into your mouth, until you’re halfway down. It’s salty. Briney and sticky with sweat. It takes up more space than you expected it to, sliding against the inside of your cheeks until your mouth starts to water, gooey saliva pooling under your tongue.
His breathing frays but his hands speak for him; fingers finding a grip on your hair and cradling the base of your skull, he drives your head back and then pulls it in, and it’s clear what he wants from you. No doubt your timidity is making his teeth grind together, too tentative to do it properly; so with a wet breath through your nose, you shut your eyes and swallow your pride.
It’s not your first time sucking a dick. Maybe if you pretend this one belongs to that cute medic from Kansas City, you could even force yourself to put the effort in. You balance yourself with a hand on his thigh, fingers hooking into the folds of his jeans, and the other hand busies itself around the base of him. You suck your cheeks in, and you run your tongue up and down the ridge underneath, paying special attention to the base of his head; and that pulls a hoarse groan from deep within his chest, one that resentfully makes your cheeks burn hot.
“Yeah,” he grunts approvingly. “‘Atta girl.”
It comes out harsh and breathless, almost proud, and — God, why did that make your stomach flip?
It’s only biological, you think. Something programmed by millennia of evolution and embedded in the very fibres of you; it’s not like you can control it, how your pussy beats like a heart, rataplan in the organs wound up between your hips.
Doesn’t make it any less embarrassing, though, no matter how much you try to rationalise it. Your mind is cleaved into contradictory thirds, by turn eager to satisfy him (for pragmatic reasons, of course), and resentful that you’ve lowered yourself to this point, and humiliated that you might even be — no, you’re not enjoying it, it’s something else. Something you don’t quite have the self-awareness to dissect and you’re not sure that you’d even want to try.
It helps a little, you loathe to admit. Makes your mouth wetter and your throat looser when he groans like that, all hoarse and jagged. You can swallow him a touch deeper with each bob of your head, and your hand moves with it, tightening around the base of him — and soon he’s all but growling, callused fingertips burrowing into the nape of your neck.
He only gets rougher as he climbs closer.
Warm saliva oozes out of the corners of your mouth and dribbles down your chin. He ruts into your mouth as if driven to, clutching your skull with each mammoth hand, touch-starved, and you try to slip breaths in during the short seconds before the thick head of his cock plugs the back of your throat.
It doesn’t surprise you that he’s not very talkative. It’s all grunting and ragged huffs through gritted teeth, and every now and again he lets you move your head of your own volition — if you’re charitable, really charitable, maybe he is actually trying to be gentle with you. Gentle as a man like him can be, at least, making an effort not to tear your scalp from your skull or choke you to death with his dick.
“That’s it,” he chuffs, voice low and raw, punctuated by a grunt, “easy.”
Your head swims, submarine throbbing in your ears, skull so full of blood and confusion and cock that you begin to lose track of up and down — easy? You think that means slow down, so you do, but that only encourages him to drive his cock deeper into your throat, and it hits a spot that induces a noisy gag and a wet splutter. You look up at him plaintively and meet his tight-jawed stare; now your eyes are watering, and your nose is running, and you just want him to hurry up and—
“Mph—fuck,” curses spill from his maw as he fists at your hair, pulling it tight enough to make you chirp but the sound gets stuck in your halfway up your neck.
You feel his dick jerk in your mouth to the tune of a ripsaw groan, and heat fills up the back of your throat; thank God, you think, he’s coming. Finally. You don’t taste much of it before you swallow, but then it keeps pumping; it’s brackish and bitter, tacky, coats the roof of your mouth as you coax the last of it out with your tongue. Not particularly pleasant. You shudder as it slides down to your stomach until you’re glutted with it.
His greedy hands are a little softer, now, easing their grip on your hair as you drink the rest of it down. No spitting, you tell yourself; you’re not about to half-ass it, not while your life still balances precariously on his desire to keep you around.
He slumps back against the counter with a sated huff, and winces when you move your tongue; maybe he’s the type who’d like it if you kept going, you wonder, but then he pulls your head back with your hair in a fist, and his still twitching cock slides from your mouth. A band of glossy saliva sticks to the wet tip until it snaps and lands on your chin.
The quiet that settles is leaden. Broken up only by his abrasive breathing and the noise of you smacking your lips.
He glowers down at you with a gravity that frightens you, and you feel it sinking in your stomach — panic, because just like that, you’ve ostensibly served your purpose. If that’s all he wanted from you, a throwaway hole to fuck and a mule he could plunder supplies from, then you have little use left.
Your typical hunter would have killed you by now. Really, your brains should be leaking out on the floor of that hardware store.
The thought has crossed his mind, you can tell. A glimmer of blood red in the back of his eyes like it had caught the reflection of the torchlight. It’d be easy, if he wanted to. He’s got your throat nice and exposed with his grip on your hair, pulling your head back until you’re facing the ceiling. Heavy stare rakes over you like he’s considering the best way to do it.
Instead, he lets go of you.
Maybe your luck hasn’t yet run out.
“Was,” you pause to swallow, “was that good?”
That seems to amuse him, he lets out a dry huff as he wipes down his cheeks with an open hand. He says nothing for a moment, only regards you circumspectly with tired eyes.
“Yeah,” he hums, tucking himself back into his boxers and zipping up his jeans. “Y’did good.”
There’s a buzzing in your chest when he says that; because that must mean you’re not as expendable as you had feared, and surely, surely that means he has decided not to be rid of you.
Still, the urge to ask nudges against the back of your teeth a few times before you finally let loose the question, and it comes out as a deflated murmur.
“Are you gonna kill me now?”
He isn’t as amused by that question. He rubs his brow with his thumb and shuts his eyes as if exasperated by your persistent eagerness to live.
“Get yourself some sleep,” he grumbles. “We’re rollin’ out at dawn.”
Your optimism isn’t yet entirely snuffed out. Seems you might survive until morning after all.
You lay out your bedroll beside his, on the dusty sticker-tile floor behind the serving counter.
If he’s irritated by your proximity he doesn’t say so; not in words, anyway. Perhaps it seems overly ingratiating, an unctuous effort to cozy up with your captor — but in truth, it’s practical. If he gets up and tries to leave without you, you’ll hear him.
Besides, if he wanted to kill you in your sleep, you think, he’d do that whether you were right next to him or on the other side of the gas station.
You do your best not to ruminate on the fleeting feeling that it’s nice to lie next to another human again. The sound of steady breathing, of rustling fabric as he rolls onto his side away from you; something about it mollifies you. A paradox of distrust and unease webbed with a deep-seated, primal relief that you’re not alone anymore. It’s nauseating to consider that your inborn desperation for company has you welcoming the presence of a man like this one. Has you willing to swallow his come and sleep beside him like he isn’t a threat to your life.
Maybe if you knew just something about him, you wouldn’t feel like a reprobate for it.
“Gonna tell me your name, now?” You whisper, lying on your back, head tilted to stare into the back of his head.
His shoulder rises and falls with a beleaguered breath, and at first you don’t expect an answer.
“Joel,” he murmurs. And just as you open your mouth to reply, he adds, fed up; “don’t go tellin’ me yours. I don’t wanna know.”
That makes your brows scrunch together. What, does he think it’ll be easier to be rid of you if he never learns your name? Maybe that’s the only way he’s ever done it, shooting innocent people before they get the chance to speak, so he can pretend their deaths mean nothing. In obscurity they’re all just game to be hunted, you guess. Empty vessels to steal from, wastes of the bodies they occupy.
You’re not about to let yourself stay nameless, not after what you’ve done for him.
You tell him your name anyway.
He says nothing.
Your sweat-addled dream is interrupted by the moaning of a wounded cat.
That’s what you think you heard, anyway, the echo of it bounces around between your ears as you break the surface of consciousness, and you’ve already forgotten what your dream was about. And as you lie awake, grasping at thoughts adrift to get your bearings back, you begin to wonder if you had dreamt the noise, too.
Then you hear it again.
Mournful, gurgling, the pained wail of something dying.
It came from inside the station. You’re certain. Next there’s the lazy, inconsistent shuffling of feet, the thump of something heavy knocking carelessly into a wall. The stink, too. You can pick it out from anything. That putrid, meaty miasma that oozes from their open, fungus-glutted wounds; yeast and liver meat and old piss.
Infected.
You’ve been lucky not to encounter any up close in the few days since Maya died, and even while you were with her your only hope was to run as fast as your legs could drive you, praying that the sound of your beating footsteps didn’t lure even more of them to your tail.
Alone, though, you’d have no idea what to do. In such close quarters, a quick-footed runner could intercept you easily if you dared try to bolt past it. Just moving could alert it to your presence there, and if it gets any closer to where you have tucked yourself behind the till, it’ll hear you breathing.
But, you remember, you’re not alone.
He lies on his back, a hand resting on his stomach, face twitching as he ignorantly dreams. He looks less jaded, less hateful in his sleep; permanently furrowed brows are softer, indignant lips loose and murmuring. In a way, he looks slightly worried. You’re sure myriad horrors infest his nightmares.
The thought crosses your mind, only briefly, a whisper of a thing — maybe, you could take his things and dash into the night. Leave him to die at the hands of the infected woman shuffling around between the aisles. You could take his handgun, it’s right there, you can see it tucked into his jeans. There’s a rifle propped up by his backpack, that’d be useful. Or valuable. He probably has food, too. Lots of it, by the looks of him.
By your estimate, though, your odds of surviving are ironically higher with him around. In this very moment, at least, while a runner hobbles around a few feet away from you.
You gingerly lift an arm, careful not to rustle your sleeping bag, and nudge him on the shoulder.
“Hey,” you breathe, so quietly you suspect it wasn’t even audible; and despite a jab to the arm, he doesn’t budge. “Joel.”
With that he awakens suddenly and with a sharp breath, eyes bursting open like you had slapped him awake — and before he can make a noise, you slap a firm hand over his mouth. Beard is oddly soft.
His eyes dart to you, and there’s a burgeoning fury burning up within them; but then the runner splutters out a well-timed cry, and his knitted brow smooths over in realisation. You carefully withdraw your silencing hand and glare at him supplicantly — please, you want to tell him, don’t let us die.
He sits up slowly and you back away, watching in silence as he rises to a crouch and peeks around the corner of the serving counter. Returning to you, he points at the floor, and you interpret it to mean stay put — you can read it in his stiffened expression, too — so you do. Your stare follows him as he makes his way to his feet, every movement controlled and balanced; until he takes a step toward the noise, and in panic you grab the jeans at his shin.
“What are you doing?” You mouth. Surely he’s not planning on approaching the thing unarmed — what kind of fucking lunatic tackles a runner?
He snatches your hand by the wrist and tugs it away. Hisses through teeth; “I’ll handle it.”
Well practiced in this, you suppose, as he releases your hand and you tuck it into your chest. You wonder if he’s the type to kill all the infected he encounters, instead of running from them as you do. His odds of survival against them are markedly higher, you bet. Proven, in fact, by the way he stalks towards the runner you can now see, shambling through the aisles aimlessly and jerking like a marionette played by a toddler. With his shoulders hunched, entire body at the ready — he lunges.
You’d sooner shoot yourself than attack an infected hand-to-hand, and yet he has sprung on it like a mountain lion; with your eyes peeking out from behind the counter, you watch him drag the thing down with a thick arm locked tightly around its throat. It splutters and spits and coughs out wet cries, gulping on nothing as he chokes the air out of it — after a moment the noises die down, and he finishes it off with a wrench of his arm and the bone-chilling crack of a snapped neck.
It flops to the floor once he lets go of it, limp as a sack of flour. A sharp breath escapes him before he pushes himself to stand with a hand on his knee. Just like that. What would have likely been a life-ending encounter for you had you been on your own, done and dusted.
“Sun’s risin,” he mutters, as he leans and looks out the glass door of the entrance. Still closed. “May as well hit the road.”
Still looks dark as night by your estimation, but after that display you’re not about to argue. You roll up your sleeping back and stuff it into your backpack, picking the grains of sleep from the corners of your eyes as you stand yourself up. You feel vividly awake by virtue of all that adrenaline pumping from your chest.
“How the fuck’d that thing get in here?” You ask exasperatedly, creeping over to get a closer look at it.
Recently infected, as far as you can tell; had functioning eyes, it seems, though blood-red and sunken. Black blood around its mouth and under its fingernails. Doesn’t fill you with confidence to think she likely would only have been bit in the last week or two.
“Probably wandered in through the back,” he says, unfazed.
You shiver at the thought that they might be intelligent enough to open once-closed doors. “Thanks for killing it.”
“Uh-huh,” is all he says.
You wait by the sliding door with your hands around your straps as he puts on his pack, slinging his rifle over his shoulder and returning his handgun to the back of his jeans. You take a mental note of that.
Opening the door is just as noisy as it was the first time, though now it frightens you tenfold, because you expect there’ll be more infected hidden just out of sight, docile until alerted to your presence; he seems unbothered, though, as he indifferently gestures for you to go through the gap.
Almost smug in his lack of concern, as he strides ahead through the forecourt and back to the unending road. You can’t help but let his confidence rub off on you; if he isn’t worried about some stray infected, maybe you needn’t be either. While you’re stuck with him, at least. Just so long as you don’t get yourself in harm’s way. You don’t expect that he’d rescue you.
“Where are you headin’?” You ask, scurrying to catch up to him. Right ahead of you lies the imminent sunrise, the faint yellow glow of it beneath the horizon, turning the black sky a vibrant shade of deep blue. You’re still heading east, as you have been for the last week or two.
“Reckon we’ll head back up to the I-40,” he says frankly, voice still rough with sleep. “Follow it down to Knoxville ‘n stop there for the night.”
We. You try not to cling to the relief. “How far is that?”
“‘Bout twenty miles.”
That pulls a moan from you. “That’s ages away.”
He scoffs as if to laugh. “Use ‘em quick legs of yours.”
It’s baking morning by the time you speak again.
Normally you’d feel compelled to fill the prickly silence, a pathological need to talk and talk and talk, pursuing at least some connection with anyone in your company. It’s a good practice, in your experience, ensuring that you’re likeable, if memorable. Tactic as much as a habit.
There’s an elephant in the room preventing you from going about normal conversation, though, great and ugly and stuck in your gullet. You don’t know whether to acknowledge it or tip-toe around it; whether you should behave any differently or attempt to act as normal about it all as you can, given the circumstances. It’s not often you suck off a man without knowing his name and under not-quite-stated duress.
You have questions, but you daren’t ask them; does he expect you to do it again? Will he want something more the next time, if he does? Or, were you lucky enough to get away with sucking his cock only once in exchange for permanent protection all the way to Little Rock?
You don’t particularly want to know the answer to any. Seems he won’t bring it up, so you won’t either.
The silence is wounding, though. It throbs within your skull like a headache, pounding and angry.
“Um,” you start with a clear of your throat, “have you got any water?”
As you think about it, you haven’t had a drink since late afternoon yesterday, because your bottle ran dry. You’d been boiling river water for weeks, and couldn’t help but fantasise about finding a jug of unopened spring water sitting in an old corner-store fridge, free of silt and sand. You were interrupted before you could find yourself anyway.
“Haven’t got any o’ your own?” He asks, disapproving.
“No,” you murmur. “I ran out.”
He’s quiet as he considers how generous he wants to be. “How thirsty are you.”
You get briefly stuck on how honest to be. The last thing you want is to be demanding or burdensome, because the everpresent threat of his abandonment looms ahead like a black cloud. The answer is very, though. You’re very thirsty, and the more you think about it, the chalkier your mouth feels.
“I’m — I haven’t had anything to drink since yesterday.”
“Jesus, girl,” he grumbles, pulling his pack around to his front and unzipping a pocket. “Ain’t got a clue how you made it this far.”
You scoff. “I would’ve got myself some if you hadn’t attacked me.”
He gives you a hard look as he pulls out a metal waterbottle, navy enamel chipped around the dents in it. “Count yourself lucky I didn’t put you down,” he sneers, unscrewing the lid. “C’mere.”
He slows to a stop and you follow suit, just about outstretching a hand to take the bottle you expect him to offer you; instead, though, he catches your jaw in a hand and you almost bite your tongue in the shock.
You’re in trouble. “I wasn’t—”
“Y’get three sips,” he says rigidly, “no more’n that.”
“Okay,” you eke, his thumb in your jugular, and he tips your head back as you open your mouth.
Your eyes fix to him as he begins to pour, and the lukewarm water pools in the back of your throat. He’s miserly with it, a paltry stream of water fills your mouth until you swallow; he continues pouring until your second gulp and with that his generosity runs dry, leaving you lapping at the air once the water stops coming.
He lets go of you, and you wipe your mouth with the back of your hand, watching mournfully as he takes a sip or two himself before screwing on the lid and putting the bottle away. It was scarcely enough to slake your dehydration, and if anything it leaves you thirstier — still, you’re grateful, and earnestly surprised he gave you any at all.
“Thanks,” you say, squinting in the glare of the hot morning sun as he continues ahead, and you follow. After a minute or two, the need to talk rears its head once again. “Why don’t we cut through the forest?”
As you’d expect, he’s irked that you even spoke. “What.”
“It’s so hot,” you lament. “At least we’d be in the shade. Plus I bet there’re more infected hanging around this fuckin’ town.”
“Takes too long,” he says, after a while. “Only one way to go if we follow the road.”
You sigh glumly. “I’m sweating buckets.”
“Better find some more water, then.”
“I could, if we were following the river.”
“I ain’t stoppin’ you,” he jeers, “you wanna wander off, be my guest.”
“That’s not fair,” you grumble.
“Ain’t it?
“You have my stuff, so I can’t go anywhere else.”
He clicks his tongue. “Guess you’re stuck, then.”
If he’s trying to rile you up, it’s working. Frustration simmers up in your chest and you feel it flare hot in the back of your neck.
“You make a habit of taking people’s shit so they’re stuck with you?”
“No. I usually kill ‘em.”
“Gonna kill me next, then?” You argue, though the regret is quick to swallow you.
He looks at you, and while you don’t meet his glare you can feel it weighing on you — and, like the last time you asked, he takes too long to reply. Busy dwelling on the thought, you bet, combing his eyes over you to look for an excuse.
“You gonna give me a reason to?”
You catch his eye, then, and his expression is severe. Crow’s feet crinkled in the sunlight and lips in a line. You could ask him what would count as a reason as far as he’s concerned; only attacking him? Refusing to another sexual favour? Simply saying the wrong thing?
Doesn’t matter. You don’t plan on doing any of those things. Not yet, anyway.
“No,” you murmur.
“Good,” he says. “I like you better breathin’.”
You blink at him. Nicest thing he’s said yet, but you don’t let it fool you. He likes you breathing because a dead girl can’t suck his cock.
“You killed a lotta people?” You ask, frank about it as you can be, though you’re not altogether sure why you asked it. Maybe he’ll show a lick of guilt, and the knot of worry in your stomach might loosen just a touch.
He huffs. Not a good sign. “Just keep walkin’.”
“I’ll take that as a yes,” you murmur.
“Take it however you want.”
The only respite from the heat of the midday sun is a northerly breeze, zephyrs that are cool and dry and evaporate the sweat that lacquers your skin.
The stretch of road you walk is mercifully lined with tall and bushy shagbark hickories that, if you walk as close as you can to the edge of the street, offer spotty shade from the sun that sits at its zenith in the middle of the sky.
The highway itself is largely empty. Overgrown shrubbery and kudzu vines spread over the scant cars and guardrails alike, and every now and again you think you see a rat scurry out from beneath the greenery. If Maya were with you she’d try to catch one for lunch. The thought makes your tummy rumble.
“Do you have anything to eat?” You ask, swallowing at the thought, and you wish you hadn’t seen that rat.
He turns to look at you as if he had forgotten you were there. Squints at you from the shade of his sun-bleached ballcap, orange canvas faded into beige with a Longhorns logo embroidered on the front of it. He’s down to a t-shirt now, having shirked his overshirt an hour ago, once the temperature reached its peak; a Rorschach of fabric darkened by sweat travels down the centre of his back, and you wonder if he’ll end up forsaking that one, too.
“Not much,” he says, after a moment, turning ahead to continue walking.
“What do you have? More biltong? Or…”
“Couple cans of beans.”
You’re hungry enough that wet, lukewarm kidney beans sound appetising. It takes you a second to gather the courage. “Can I have some?”
He shakes his head. “Saving ‘em. I’ll get us a rabbit or somethin’.”
That’s enough to brighten you with excitement; fresh meat, real meat, the thought alone makes you slaver at the mouth.
“Soon?” You ask hopefully, legs moving a little faster, and you catch up to him.
“Later.”
You groan. If later is an hour away you’re not sure you’ll last that long. “Surely you’re hungry too.”
“M’always hungry.”
You bet. “Then why can’t we stop for food now?”
“”Cus I said so.”
Your head tumbles back off your shoulders, though he’s not looking at you to see it. “How long, then?”
He grunts irately. “Will you stop fuckin’ whining?”
You scoff, briefly offended, almost having forgotten the pretense of your being stuck with him. It’s incongruously easy to forget that your life is provisional to him, a switch he can flick off should the impulse strike him; but you’re not versed in apathy. It doesn’t come naturally to you, reticence nor disinterest, because you’ve spent a lifetime cozying yourself up to people stronger, hardier than yourself.
Typically, in your experience, that necessitates congeniality. You’re finding it difficult to maintain the opposite, even in the interest of placating him.
Spite keeps you quiet for now, and perhaps that was his goal. You seal your tongue to the roof of your mouth and spare him the inconvenience of your voice for another twenty-odd minutes of walking, walking, and walking.
Only once you approach a bridge does he deviate from the highway, hopping over the guardrail and veering into the treeline with a dry, “C’mon.”
“Where are we going,” you ask mutedly.
“Findin’ a spot to stop.”
You let out a moan in relief. “Thank God.”
He snorts, and you follow him down an overgrown slope, elbowing your way through bristly shrubs towards the bank of a bubbling creak. A minor tributary of the Arkansas river, you suppose. The canopy of the summer trees is dense and bushy along the waterside, it’s well-shaded, the air far cooler than on the sun-baked highway.
He stops at a bend in the riverbank, where a flat promontory of smooth stones and gravel feed into the water. He kicks one of the rocks as if assessing it.
“How’re you at startin’ fires,” he asks, hands resting on his hips as he watches you come to a stop beside him.
“I’m good at it,” you affirm. “I’ve got — well, I mean, assuming you didn’t take it, I’ve got a firesteel.”
“Good, but it ain’t magic,” he tuts, painfully condescending. “Y’still need good kindling — dry kindling, then you’ll need some—”
“I know,” you bite, squinting at him indignantly.
“Alright then,” he sneers, as he slides his hunting rifle from where it was hung on its shoulder and holds it in both hands.
As you see it up close — slender wooden frame, long thin barrel, bolt-action — you can ascertain the thing is designed for small game. Not something for picking off people at a distance, as you had first assumed. You’re surprised he carries such a thing at all, a weapon that isn’t for human quarry. He must hunt a lot of rabbits.
“Go’on and light us a fire, then. I’ll catch somethin’ for lunch.”
“Okay,” you murmur spitefully — and, as he turns to walk along the river; “Make sure you step quietly, y’know, so the prey don’t hear you. Heavy guy like you, don’t wanna scare ‘em all off, do ya?”
You’re surprised when he chortles, and warns; “Watch it.”
He doesn’t make it ten strides down the river before your worry rears its head. Speaks to a deep-set fear of abandonment, bordering on phobia, so irrational that the possibility of even this man leaving you behind — one who attacked, threatened, extorted you — is enough to send you into panic.
You don’t want to be a nuisance, nor needy, nor risk reminding him that you’re ostensibly a leech; but the dread is crushing, and the plea tumbles from your mouth anyway.
“You’re coming back, right?”
He keeps walking. “Uh-huh.”
You busy yourself in the time he is gone, collecting dry grass and brittle twigs, and a few larger branches that you break into smaller pieces over your knee. You set up a proper fire, the very picture of one; a nice circle of round stones to contain it, a pyramid of twigs and a bundle of straw within it.
It’s a good forty minutes before he returns, not long after you hear the distant crack of a gunshot carried by the breeze; and by then, you’ve got a nice steady flame going, tending to it dutifully with a prod here and there.
You look up to see him approach, and from his fist hangs a limp rabbit. Huge thing, a swamp rabbit, grown fat on damp river sedges and overgrown grass without anything to bother it.
“You caught one,” you say, biting your tongue, because you don’t want to sound too giddy.
“Mh,” he placidly agrees, dropping his pack on the rocks, and leaning his rifle against it.
“Big one,” you remark through a smile.
“Yep.” He sits himself down opposite the fire with a tired grunt.
You quietly observe as he grabs his ball cap by the brim and returns it backwards, then pulls a buck knife from his pocket and unfolds it with his thumb. He’s casual, almost thoughtless about it; holds the dead rabbit in a hand, belly-up, and drags the tip of the blade down its stomach; puts the handle of the blade between his teeth as he slides his fingers into the incision, separating furry skin from meat, working it loose from both flanks; and with a few pulls, its hide comes off whole with the ease of a jacket, and the naked pink carcass beneath it is floppy and shiny.
His focused stare flicks up briefly and catches yours, and you’re suddenly conscious of how raptly you had been watching him work. You didn’t expect that a hunter — and the irony is not lost on you — would be so competent at it. A deft enough butcher that every movement looks as natural as habit.
And, well — you abhor that the thought even smears its way through your head — you can’t look away from his hands. From the tendons that shift beneath the skin as he beheads the thing as easily as slicing butter and tosses it into the river. Bronzed forearms that flex and stiffen as he cuts open its belly and pushes his fingers inside, fishing out its stringy innards in one vinous mass and dumping them onto the rocks beside him.
“How ‘bout you make yourself useful,” he mutters, when he glances up to see you still spectating.
“Okay,” you agree, it comes out more sheepish than you had intended. “What d’you want me to do?”
“Find me a nice green stick, ‘bout three feet long and yay thick—” he pinches his bloody fingers together to show you a gap of about half an inch, “—’n make sure they’re green.”
“Yes sir,” you snip, standing yourself up and dusting off your bottom as you head towards the underbrush.
It doesn’t take you long to find one. The summer shrubbery is lush and busy with new growth, and you pull a freshly sprouted branch from a riverside tree. You pluck off the little leaves on your way back, and present it to him a little too proudly.
“That’s good,” he drawls, taking it and placing it beside him. “Now how strong are those arms o’ yours?”
“Um,” you pause, looking down at them thoughtfully, “depends.”
“Reckon you could lift a big rock or two?”
“I can try.”
“Alright,” he nods. “Fetch a couple decent rocks, then. Somethin’ to prop the spit on.”
Now you understand what his goal is, and you nod enthusiastically. “Right. Okay.”
This task takes a while longer. Not only for a lack of suitable rocks — you hunt for craggy ones with flat edges that a stick could balance on, and not soft round ones — but also because you are not as strong as you had hoped.
You were proud of yourself when you managed to pick up the first rock you found, even carried it a few feet; but before he could turn around and see it your arms had given out and you dropped it on the riverbed, where it promptly cracked into smaller pieces.
Eventually, though, you find one large rock that you roll towards the fire with great effort, then two smaller rocks that stack up to a roughly equivalent height. He watches you while you arrange them on either side of the fire, carefully balancing the second stone on top of the other, then stand once you’re satisfied.
“There,” you pant, dusting off your hands, “how’s that?”
He looks up as he finishes whittling the end of the stick you gave him into a sharp point, and nods simply.
“Good,” is all he says, but that’s approval enough for you to sit back down with a huff.
You’re back to observing, then. Eyes that follow his movements as he picks up the flaccid rabbit carcass from where he left it on the dry stones, then lines the point of the stick up with its rear; he impales it piecemeal, holding its chest in a big hand and shoving the skewer up its middle, push, push; before eventually the sharp end pokes out through its butchered neck, and he slides it down cleanly, so that an even amount of stick juts out from either end.
Now your mouth is watering, and you’re slightly uneasy, a feeling in your belly that you can’t pin. Must be hunger, you think, it’s making your mind fog up and your stomach all twisty.
He’s up and stomping on the fire until it dies to embers, spreading the coals out evenly to, you surmise, distribute the heat for a slower, more even cook.
“Oh, wait—” you chirp, suddenly standing and heading for your pack, “I’ve got salt.”
He looks at you blankly. “Huh?”
“I’ve got a salt grinder,” you repeat, burrowing through a zipped pocket to find it is one of the few things he hadn’t stolen from you. A glass grinder full of rock salt that you plucked from a convenience store a couple of weeks ago.
He snorts. “‘Course you do.”
“It’ll make it taste good,” you deride, a little patronising, as you walk over to where he stands with the skewered rabbit between his hands.
“Don’t matter how it tastes.”
You half-heartedly roll your eyes, but he doesn’t stop you when you grind a dusting of salt over the sticky pink carcass — even flips it so that you can salt the underside, too. It might have made you snicker if your hunger wasn’t souring your mood.
“There,” you say, satisfied.
“Happy?”
“Mhm.”
He chuffs, almost a snicker, as he goes to lay the skewer over the coals, balancing the stick on the rocks you had propped up for him.
“How long will it take?” You ask.
He sits himself down with a long, harried sigh. “‘Bout an hour.”
The groan you let out is petulant, and your stomach punctuates it with a deep rumble. You reconsider your frustration, though, when you realise that means a nice long rest, and you can finally give your legs a deserved break. You don’t know how much more walking you’ll need to do today, but you can safely assume it’ll be more than you’d like.
In the hour it takes for the rabbit to cook, he flips the spit every now and again, and you fill up and boil a few pots full of river water to replenish your empty bottles. You find yourself feeling restless after sitting for too long. Doesn’t help that the small hard stones of the riverbed are not all too comfortable to sit on.
He’s snoozing, by the looks of it, lounging against the trunk of a tree with his cap pulled down over his face — so you go for a listless wander up the riverbank. It’s blackberry season, and you’ve become a practiced picker. For a time it was the only food you survived on, after Maya bit the dust, because you weren’t nearly as good at trapping animals as she was.
The overgrown banks along the river are abounding in thorny bushes, spiky leaves turned vibrant green by the late summer, and their vines are laden with glossy black bundles. You pick yourself handfuls and eat them by the bunch, even taking a few of the sour red ones just to add to the mass, smacking your lips as you go. You’re sure your lips and teeth turn purple with the quantity that you scarf down, and you eat so many that it makes you burp.
Once you’ve had your fill, you decide to fill your hands with a pile of juicy black ones, and return them to Joel.
If it were any other companion, you think, you’d have done the same. He caught the rabbit, besides — if he’s going to feed you, you should feed him. Really, though, you feel compelled to ensure he continues to deem you useful. Not something only good for looking pretty and eating his food.
You nudge him with your boot where he leans against the tree, and he takes a sharp breath as he wakes up from his kip. He adjusts his cap on his head as he looks up at you.
“What?”
You hold out your handsful. “Found some blackberries,” you say. “Want some?”
“Mh,” he grunts, sitting upright, and opens a hand to receive them; you pour them into his palm, and the berries that had fit in two of yours fit in one of his. “Sweet ‘o you.”
Seems that’s his way of thanking you, so you return with a placid smile. “You’re welcome.”
Your hands are sticky with plum-purple juice, and you suck your fingers clean, briefly considering going back for more; instead you rinse your palms in the running water, and wipe them dry on your pants.
It’s another ten minutes before Joel deems the rabbit ready, and by then you’re practically frothing at the bit for it. Its once rosy flesh has turned brown and crispy, the outermost layer bubbles and drips fat down into the embers below. You can smell it, fried meat and grease, the sagey, smokey smell of cooked game, and your tummy is obnoxiously loud as you go to sit next to Joel by the firepit.
He lets it cool for a minute or two, holding the spit upright in the air and waving away the greedy flies that dare try to take your meal from you.
You bite your tongue, tempering your expectations, because you’re sure he’ll have his fill and then give you what meat remains on the bones when he’s done.
He cuts a V into the flank, skewering a chunk of stringy white meat on the tip of his blade, briefly assessing to ensure it’s not raw inside; and then, confounding you, he holds it out for you to take.
“Oh,” is all you can respond with at first, because the amalgam of surprise and joy keeps your tongue tied. “Thank you.”
You probably should have taken the hunk of meat with your fingers, but instead you lean forward, and eat it straight off the blade like a dog. Make the mistake of meeting his eye as you do it, and the dark look in his eyes is fleeting but familiar; the delight that fills you when your teeth sink in, though, is enough to flush away any shame that reared its head.
“Fuck,” you purr, through a mouthful, sitting back and chewing it thoroughly. It’s salty, smokey, the meat imbued with the gamey, peppery taste of a rabbit that lived on onion grass and berry thicket. “Mmm. That’s so good.”
He chortles as he breaks a whole leg off the thing, bone snapping where it dislodges from the hip; it’s dripping, and steaming, and you watch keenly as he takes a wolfish bite out of the shank. Though he conceals it well, you can tell he’s enjoying the seasoning you added. He shuts his eyes as he chews it.
It doesn’t take long for the two of you to strip the animal clean to its skeleton. He offers you a leg and another few hearty chunks, but the rest he keeps for himself. The meal ends with you sucking clean the bones, even the ones he discarded, nibbing off the last dregs of meat uncaring that they had been in his mouth already.
He’s amused by it. “Must’ve been damn hungry.”
You nod, pulling the last bone from your mouth with a pop and promptly licking your lips to savour the last of its taste.
You’re sure the slurping sounds you’ve been making aren’t doing yourself any favours, especially not when you glance up at him while your wet tongue runs along your bottom lip. He’s rubbing his cheeks as though contemplating. Ruminating.
Your tummy feels tight and you look away. Wipe your mouth with the heel of your palm, and clear your throat. Apprehension heavy as a stone sits low in your gut.
“Alright,” he huffs, standing up with a grunt, grabbing his rifle on his way up. “Let’s get movin.”
Your shoulders loosen, and you nod. “Okay.”
By the time you make it to evening your body is a husk. Skin brine-wet and beaten by a full day of sweltering late-summer sun, legs soft as jelly and just as wobbly.
Post-sunset brings a mild sense of relief, at least. The air is still humid as a greenhouse and too thick to breathe, but at least the sun has dipped below the horizon, and the residual heat is tepid opposed to scorching. Twilight-woken cicadas roar loud enough to make your ears ring, busy music of songbirds sweet enough that you can pretend the wild outside the zones is kind enough to let you live.
You’ve been trying to keep up with him for a good six hours since lunch, following the unending highway so long that you can see the cement when you blink, and you’ve got blisters on the soles of your feet. You passed a threshold somewhere close to fifteen minutes ago, a mechanical limit on your ability to persist; you can feel your vision closing in, buzzing and psychedelic in your periphery, and suddenly the road beneath you looks a little closer.
“Can we stop soon,” you breathe, as you stumble along, legs locking a few strides behind him. “Please.”
It takes him a moment to even acknowledge you, lumbering ahead uninterested in your moaning. With a sigh, though, he eventually relents. “Yep. Reckon we can find a spot for the night up ahead.”
“Okay,” you pant. “Okay, good. My legs are, so, sore.”
“I ain’t about to carry you if they stop workin’.”
You snort vindictively. “Wasn’t counting on it.”
His insistence on following the I-40 has meant that you’ve bypassed most urban centres, which you’re silently thankful for. The further he keeps you from risk the better, because you know he’ll exert no effort to rescue you should the worst come to pass.
Still, your limbs ache for somewhere to lie down, and the open road isn’t a particularly wise place to lay out your bedroll.
“There’s not going to be anywhere to sleep on the highway,” you say, “Should we turn off?”
“We’ll see.”
“But there might be an empty house, or something,” you plead. “We could sleep in actual beds.”
He rubs the back of his head with a stiff hand, and you know you’re testing his patience, so you decide to let the matter lie for a little longer. You stumble along behind him for another ten minutes, with your head hanging from your shoulders, watching as the mossy road passes underfoot.
But, your legs are weak. So weak. Bones hollowed out by exhaustion. You think you might have fifty steps left before you inevitably collapse.
“I can’t keep walking,” you lament, “I think i’ll die.”
“Settle down,” he replies, and you can barely lift your head enough to look at him. “Here.”
“What,” you say dimly.
He stops at an RV, parked on the edge of the road. Something out of the nineties, you think, long and angular and painted with stripes, colours you can’t discern in the bluish dark of the evening. It’s rusted, on a slant by virtue of two flat tires, and one of the windows on the side is smashed in. A torn, mouldy curtain floats out through the spikes of glass left in the frame.
“C’mon,” he orders, as he tears open the side door, and it opens with a loud crack. “We’ll hole up here.”
“Okay,” you breathe, as he gestures for you to step in before him.
Inside it’s murky with dust, and the dry air smells like mould and burnt paper. It’s dark, too, save for the low blue light of the evening suffusing in through the lace curtains.
There’s a small dining booth with a peeling vinyl bench seat wrapping around it, a decrepit kitchenette, and at the end of the narrow space, past some cupboards, a double bed with a striped blanket crumpled up on the mattress. Seems like as good a spot as any. No back doors for an infected to stumble through. Joel steps in behind you and shuts the door.
You sluggishly go for the cupboards, driven purely by habit as you swing them open and burrow through the shelves — though you find, literally, nothing. The entire RV has been completely gutted, evidently, not even empty cans or rubbish left behind.
You stop by the table. There’s a small piece of paper sitting on it, torn out from a ringbound notebook, weighed down by a teal-oxidised quarter.
You drop your pack on the floor and lean on the edge of the table as you pick up the note.
Lisa,
I’ll be gone when you read this.
I don’t have a good reason to give you, I’m sorry.
Please don’t miss me.
— Jacob
What a prick. The fact that the note was left on the table tells you Lisa never returned to see it, and you hope she died thinking the man wrote it hadn’t abandoned her and taken everything with him. You also hope Jacob, whoever he was, met a deservedly painful end.
Joel’s in front of you when you look up from the letter, and your heart suddenly quickens; his arms are crossed over his chest, and he’s looking down his nose at you. Eyes leaden and wrinkled in the corners, and in the near-dark they almost look black.
“How’re them legs,” he asks. You assume the worst of the question; if you’re unable to walk he’ll put you down like a lame horse.
“They’re fine,” you murmur. “Numb, mostly.”
He lets out a humourless puff of air, offering no sympathy. Then he nods at the paper in your hand. “What’chu got.”
“Just a note,” you answer, and you crumple it. “Doesn’t matter.”
You take a slow breath. You don’t like the way he’s looking at you, you can feel it; you’re not sure if it's resentment, or something worse, because he doesn’t speak. You fish for words to give him instead.
“How much longer ‘til we get to Little Rock, d’you think?”
He scratches his chin, runs his fingers through the coarse hair of his beard as he thinks about it. “Couple days.”
“Damn,” you say, deflated. And after a moment, ask; “you got someone waiting for you there?”
“S’none o’ your business.”
You half-roll your eyes, because despite efforts to the contrary he answered your question. “Who is it?”
“Fuckin’ nosy, aren’t you,” he grumbles.
“No, I’m just — I’m making conversation.”
He exhales irately. “I don’t want conversation.”
“What do you want, then.”
You regret the words as soon as they spill from your tongue, because there’s a shift in his expression, and his arms unfold. Hands hook on his hips as he sucks down an irascible breath.
“What d’you think.”
He says it so bluntly that it almost doesn’t register as something uttered in hunger, especially considering he hasn’t even put a hand on you yet; instead he’s patient, waiting for you to come to the realisation on your own, because he likely expects you to acquiesce without the need to force it.
“Um,” is all you can muster, because your heart is tripping over itself, and you don’t know what to say. “I thought…”
“Thought what.”
You grimace as you search for euphemisms for what you want to say, because you can’t quite muster the bravery to tell him you thought — hoped, rather — that you’d only have to suck his cock once. That you might have proven your worth beyond the succor your body can offer him. You suppose, as you think about it, that a handful of berries alone was never going to be enough to satisfy a man who was initially going to kill you.
Refusing is, most likely, a fruitless endeavour, and it’s one you don’t want to risk taking. Not when he’s looking at you like that, and the tension in the air is thick enough to cut with a knife.
“I um—” Christ, it’s hard to speak, “—I don’t want to, to use my, um, my mouth again.”
That amuses him. “No?”
You shake your head.
“That’s alright,” he concedes. “Turn ‘round, then.”
sorry lovies, this puppy is too long to have in one part on tumblr. read the rest on ao3 <3
pairing: steve harrington x reader
summary: it’s the age-old fall from grace: high school royalty faceplants into reality, and the burger king crown starts hanging heavy. (sailor hat, in his case.) heir to the hawkins high hierarchy, ruler of keggers and hallways alike, steve harrington used to be untouchable. now? he's shaking under your hands, bleeding from battles no trophy could ever commemorate. you've stitched together plenty of broken people before—but never one that left a scar in you, too.
warnings: 18+ mdni, piv sex, oral (m!receiving), touch/praise-starved!steve, hurt/comfort, blood, injury, mutual friends/enemies-ish to lovers, hair washing, massaging, praise kink, body worship, sexual tension, forced proximity of sorts, reader isn’t fond of steve at first, mostly S4 canon but fix-it, angst, domestic fluff, found family, happy ending
a/n: another steve harrington character study dressed as a fic, what the hell else is new? | playlist ♬.ᐟ
They don’t take him to the hospital. They bring him to you.
Which is, objectively, stupid.
But apparently, hospitals ask questions. And you—part-time party medic, occasional dispenser of prescription-only painkillers (for legitimate anxiety and migraines, thank you very much)—you don’t.
You’re halfway through a rerun of M.A.S.H., sucking the soul out of a cherry popsicle. You’re braless. The house is quiet. Peaceful, if a little tragic. Exactly the way Fridays are meant to be.
Until the knocking starts.
Correction: pounding.
Panicked, frenzied, FBI-doesn’t-need-a-warrant kind of pounding.
You groan and peel yourself off the couch, popsicle stick still dangling from your lips. You are not emotionally equipped to accept salvation or Thin Mints right now.
But when you open the door, it’s not a solicitor.
It’s Robin.
Robin Buckley, looking like she just got shot out of a chimney. Her cheek’s streaked with soot and something red that is very much not Kool-Aid.
You blink. Yank the popsicle out of your mouth with a wet plop.
“Don’t freak out,” she blurts, before you even ask.
Which is Robin Buckley-speak for: Start freaking out immediately. Shit is on fire, metaphorically or otherwise.
The last time she said that, you ended up faking an asthma attack so you could ditch pep band and hit up Denny’s for the $1.99 Grand Slam. The time before that, you drove through three counties to rescue her cousin’s “emotional support ferret” from a petting zoo in Muncie.
This time? She’s brought a car with her.
A sleek maroon BMW, purring at the curb, passenger door flung wide open.
Inside: Limbs. Denim. Blood.
A boy.
Slumped sideways in the front seat, head tilted back at an angle that screams whiplash or maybe already dead.
You squint.
“Who the fuck is that?”
…
Steve Harrington.
Steve Harrington is bleeding out in your driveway.
You don’t know him. Not really.
Knew of him, sure. Back in high school, he was all Farrah Fawcett volume and varsity swagger. Heir to the Hawkins High hierarchy, ruling keggers and hallways alike. He had rich parents and a bimmer he didn’t pay for. Threw parties like they were some kind of divine rite.
But then? Senior year hit him like a metaphorical truck. Or maybe a literal one. Hard to say.
Because somewhere between the scorched-earth gossip of graduation and the literal scorched-earth of the mall burning down, Steve Harrington dropped off the map.
Poof. King Steve: dethroned.
Burned out, like the very mall he used to work in.
You missed that whole implosion. Spent that summer in Chicago drowning in vending machine coffee and disaster drills, chasing your EMT cert while trying not to puke during ride-alongs.
You came home to find that Hawkins had gained a mall, lost a mall, and started blaming everything weird on “gas leaks” again.
And Robin Buckley had Steve.
Her little sidekick from the ice cream wars. Who, allegedly, once confronted a creeper in the food court for harassing her. Ruined his pretty face doing it, too. Walked around with a purple shiner for weeks after that summer ended.
He now stocks tapes with her at Family Video, where helping customers ranks somewhere between abusing the label maker and arguing over who gets to abuse the label maker.
You ran into him once, alone, in the cereal aisle of Melvald’s.
Dark rings under his eyes. Hair still doing that gravity-defying thing.
He smiled. You didn’t smile back.
You didn’t care.
It’s the age-old fall from grace: high school royalty faceplants into reality, and the Burger King crown starts hanging heavy. (Well, sailor hat, in his case.)
But now, he’s here.
Dying on your lawn.
Ruining your Friday.
…
Up close, he looks worse.
Biblically bad.
Like, plague-of-locusts, hail-from-the-heavens, Lamb-of-God-who? kind of bad.
His jeans are shredded, shirt gone entirely. Bright red ligature marks around his throat like someone tried to strangle him with a piano wire. There’s ash in his hair, and something black smeared across his jaw that you’re really, really hoping is just dirt.
His eyes flutter.
Then, absurdly, he smiles.
“H-hey. Heard you know first aid?”
You stare at him for a beat. Then toss your popsicle stick into the grass.
“Yeah. Try not to bleed out on my porch, Harrington.”
He snorts. Gives you a weak thumbs-up.
Then promptly goes limp.
…
“It’s called compensated shock,” you grunt, dragging six-feet-too-much of unconscious prom royalty into your living room. “He looked okay ‘cause his body was pumping him full of adrenaline. Now it’s wearing off.”
Robin’s on the other end, doing her best to help, which mostly means not helping.
“Oh my god, yeah,” she babbles, smacking his sneakers into the doorframe. “—shit. He got all woozy at Skull Rock earlier.”
You pause mid-haul. “Skull Rock? Like, the makeout spot?”
Robin makes a face. “Yeah, but not for us, gross. That’d be like making out with my brother. Anyway, Steve invented Skull Rock! Took Heather C. there in tenth grade. Remember her? The girl with, like, thirty scrunchies and that creepy obsession with Mr. Connor’s—”
“Robin.”
“Right! Sorry! Panic talking!”
Steve groans from where you’ve deposited him on the couch, more pained by Robin’s volume than the probable internal bleeding.
You ignore him. “Why were you actually at Skull Rock?”
“Uhh walking? You know... trees. Friendship.”
You level her with a look.
She claps her hands. “Anyway! You can fix him, right? You’re, like, certified!”
You glance down at Steve.
His lips are blue at the corners, breath hitching in those tight, silent gulps that mean pain and refusal to show it.
“Yeah,” you say quietly. “Maybe.”
…
You do fix him.
Because you’re a sucker. Because you trained for this. Because your hands know what to do even when your brain is screaming.
And maybe, just maybe, because Steve Harrington keeps making these soft, miserable, apologetic noises every time he flinches.
Like he’s sorry.
Sorry for bleeding. For being in pain. For existing.
You hate that.
You also kind of hate how he looks like this—hot, in that tragic, beaten, dog-left-out-in-the-rain kind of way that hits your brain like a chemical imbalance.
You strip off his vest first (Dio patch on the back, which, huh, maybe he has changed) and find a makeshift bandage beneath it, half-dried and crusted with old blood. You peel it off. It comes away with a wet schlorp like opening a bottle of dollar store wine.
And something inside you goes still.
These are... bite marks.
Not scrapes. Not scratches.
Bites.
His flesh looks shredded, like a rottweiler got bored of chew toys and decided to sample teenage boy instead.
Except: you’ve treated dog bites. This is not a dog bite.
“Jesus christ,” you whisper.
You look up at the boy collapsed on your couch: sweaty, shirtless, and—oh, now he’s got a belt in his mouth.
Robin jams it there. “For the pain,” she says, helpful as ever.
Steve groans around the leather, eyes fluttering. Looks like he wants to die.
You’re still staring at the worst bite, wondering if it’s actually moving, when you ask, voice low:
“Someone want to tell me what the fuck did this?”
Robin freezes. Eyes the belt like she’d rather choke on it herself than answer.
“Uh… bats?” She offers weakly.
You blink. “Bats.”
“Like. Big ones? Really big?”
You stare at her. Then at Steve.
You don’t believe her.
But also… you kind of do.
Because whatever this thing was, it didn’t just attack.
It fed.
…
“Okay, but like—” Robin’s pacing like she’s trying to wear a hole in your rug. “He was fine earlier. Like, maybe not fine fine, but, you know, Steve-fine. And then we got out of the Up—uh—the woods, and I was driving him back and he just…”
She makes a dramatic fainting motion. Nearly brains herself on the coffee table.
“So, it could be rabies? Or tetanus? Or maybe one of those parasite things that lay eggs in your stomach? Or—”
“Robin?” you cut in, sharp as the pair of shears in your hand. “There’s towels and vodka in the kitchen. Go.”
“Right. On it.”
She skitters away like a gremlin set on fire, the thud of cabinet doors punctuating her panic.
You turn back to Steve.
His pulse is thin, fluttering weakly under your fingertips, but it’s there.
“Harrington. You with me?”
His hand twitches once, thumb up.
…
He doesn’t scream.
You wish he would.
Because you know this hurts. You know that when you pour antiseptic into wounds this deep, it’s supposed to rip sound out of a person. A yell. A curse. A sob. Something.
But Steve just… takes it.
His jaw’s locked tight enough to bend steel—no belt, miracle he doesn’t shatter a molar—and his throat works once, twice, swallowing back whatever wants out. His whole body trembles, shoulders twitching, knuckles bone-white, yet his voice stays sealed inside him like it’s chained there.
You kind of hate him for it.
Because you know this type.
Boys who bleed quiet. The beautiful, tragic kind who carry pain like it’s a penance.
You’ve seen them before, at crash sites, in the backs of ambulances.
It’s not bravery. It’s habit.
A mask.
And Steve Harrington? He’s been wearing his so long, it’s practically fused to the bone.
Still, Robin squeezes his hand like she’s coaching him through labor. Eyes locked on the ceiling, because she’s still pretending she’s never seen boobs or blood or the inside of a human person.
You press gauze to the worst of the bites, just under his ribs, angry and wet and oozing something thick. You have to lean your weight into it.
Steve jolts—full-body, every muscle locking under your palms. His hand lashes out, fast and blind, gripping the leg of your jeans until his knuckles go pale.
Then, just as quickly, he lets go. Eyes squeezed shut. Shame radiating off him like heat.
“Shit. S-sorry.”
You don’t answer.
You can’t.
…
It takes two hours.
Three full rolls of gauze. One regrettable vodka break, just to keep your hands from shaking.
It's not pretty. Not even close. But it's enough to keep him breathing, which, all things considered, feels like a decent win for a Friday night.
Now, he’s bandaged. Shirtless under your ex’s old hoodie, the one with the weird bleach stain and the hole in the sleeve, but Steve fills it out like it was made for him.
Of course he does.
In the kitchen, Robin’s hunched over your tiny sink, scrubbing dried blood and whatever else is staining her forearms that awful color.
As soon as she’s done, you grab her by the sleeve and tug her into the hallway.
“Talk.”
Robin sighs, long and loud. Tries to stall by running a hand through her hair, only to grimace when it sticks up with dried sweat.
“…Demobats.” She mutters.
“I’m sorry?”
“Demobats,” she repeats, like that’s a word people just know. “From this place called the… Upside Down.”
You wait. There’s no punchline.
“…You’re serious.”
She nods.
And then it all spills out.
Demobats. Some guy named Vecna. Russians. Underground government labs. Scoops Ahoy, for christ’s sake.
You lose the thread somewhere around “telepathic hive mind overlord.”
But you don’t interrupt. Because Robin may be a lot of things—loud, chaotic, deathly allergic to social cues—but she’s not a liar.
And there’s a half-dead boy on your couch with holes the size of teacups to prove it.
“So,” you say slowly, “that job at the mall…”
“Yeah. Secret Russian lab.”
“And you were tortured?”
“I mean, mostly Steve?” She winces. “But, uh. Yeah.”
“Jesus christ, Robin.”
“I know,” she groans, dragging both hands down her face. “I know it sounds crazy. I didn’t want to drag you into this, okay? But I thought—he looked bad. Worse than before. And I couldn’t exactly walk into the ER and say ‘Hi, my best friend got eaten by mutant bats from another dimension, please ignore the blood trail.’”
She huffs, blowing hair from her eyes, and squints at you. “You don’t believe me.”
You snort. “No. I do. And I think you should’ve called me sooner.”
“Well, I thought he was fine. He was fine. Until we got in the car and he started slurring his words and, like… blinking wrong. Then I panicked.”
You glance back toward the living room. At the boy who didn’t scream. Curled on your couch, twitching in his sleep like he’s stuck in a loop he can’t wake from.
Robin follows your gaze, voice softening. “Look, I know he’s not exactly your favorite person, but… thank you. Really.”
You roll your eyes. “He was bleeding out, Robs.”
She gives you a look. The kind that says she knows you better than you want her to.
You scowl.
“Go. Shower. You smell like a burnt tire.” A beat. “…You want something to eat?”
Robin doesn’t answer. Just throws her arms around you in the tightest, sweatiest, most Robin hug imaginable. All elbows and bones and bloodstained sleeves.
You stiffen. Then sigh.
“Love you,” she mumbles into your shoulder.
You hold her tight for a second. Then let go.
“You owe me, Buckley. Big time.”
…
Robin crashes in your bed, dead to the world in ten seconds flat.
You stay on the couch next to Steve.
Not close. Just close enough. So if he does something stupid like stop breathing, you’ll notice.
You keep a cool cloth on his forehead. Check his pulse every half hour. Whisper a soft “motherfucker” every time he twitches, because if he wakes up and asks if you were worried, you want to be able to say no with a straight face.
You stay up.
Because someone has to.
…
It’s almost 3 a.m. when he stirs.
Your head snaps up, heart launching into your throat like a flare. Your hand goes automatically to the bucket, the cloth, the mental checklist of emergency procedures you’ve memorized so well they’re practically sewn into your DNA.
But then his lips part.
Just a cracked breath through the dryness, small and quiet and impossibly fragile.
“Don’t… don’t let ‘em go back.”
It’s barely a whisper. It slams into you like a freight train.
You don’t know who ‘they’ are, but you know exactly what he means.
You’ve seen this kind of thing before, too. In the shaking hands of people who left something behind where no one could follow. This is what happens when the body survives, but the rest doesn’t.
And goddammit.
Goddammit, you didn’t want this.
Didn’t want some pretty, broken boy bleeding all over your couch. Didn’t want this guilt. This terrifying protectiveness. The quiet, suffocating weight of whatever this is clamping around your ribs like a trap you walked into willingly.
Didn’t want Steve fucking Harrington, of all people, to break your heart without saying a single word.
But he looks so young like this. Pale cheeks, sweat-damp hair sticking to his forehead. He’s curled in on himself like he’s bracing for another hit, one hand fisted in your throw pillow.
Without thinking, you lean forward.
Brush his hair back. Cool his skin with your fingers.
“Steve,” you whisper.
No answer. Just a tiny, broken noise. Almost a whimper, almost nothing.
Your throat tightens.
You reach down, and carefully, gently, pry his fingers free from the cushion. Thread yours through the empty spaces.
His grip grows impossibly tight, fingertips paling where they press between your knuckles.
“You’re okay. You’re safe.”
And slowly—like thawing ice, like a held breath finally let go—he stops shaking.
You stay like that, hand in his, until the sun starts bleeding through the curtains.
…
Robin once told you that you get off on fixing people.
She meant hearts. You meant bones.
You’re starting to think maybe she was right.
…
You wake to yelling.
Not normal yelling—whisper-yelling. The kind of frantic, hushed bickering that’s somehow louder than regular voices.
“…can’t just walk out, Steve!”
“It’s not that bad, just—give me a second—”
There’s the unmistakable rustle of struggling. A pained grunt. The telltale shuffle of someone stumbling sideways, seconds away from faceplanting.
“Oh my god, what is wrong with you?!”
“I’m fine,” Steve grits out, in the exact tone people use right before they pass out on you.
“And where exactly are you gonna go, huh? Enlighten me.”
“Just—I’ll go back and change, and then we’ll—”
“Nope. Absolutely not. You can’t even see straight, Harrington.”
“Yes, I can.”
“Really? Okay. How many fingers?”
“Why do you always do that?”
“Because it works!”
You groan loudly, dragging an arm over your face.
“Do I need to put you two in a time-out? Because I swear to god, I will.”
Instant silence.
When you peel your arm back, Steve’s frozen mid‑escape, one shoe on, looking like a kid caught stealing from the cookie jar. He glances your way, sheepish.
“Hey,” he says, like he didn’t just almost eat your tile. “You’re up.”
“Unfortunately.”
Robin flaps a dramatic hand at him. “Please, please talk some sense into this idiot before I duct tape him to the wall.”
You sit up, and immediately regret every decision you’ve ever made. Your spine crackles like bubble wrap. Your skull is pounding. The entire living room looks like a crime scene: blood-crusted towels, empty gauze packets, that one lonely vodka bottle rolling under the coffee table like a sad tumbleweed.
You squint at Steve. “Sit down.”
“I’m good.”
“You’re not.”
“I just need to—”
“Now, Harrington.”
You don’t raise your voice. You don’t have to. It’s the tone you’ve used on half-conscious college boys insisting they can “totally drive, man.”
Steve blinks. Then sighs, slowly lowering himself onto a kitchen chair.
Robin hovers like a human seatbelt, and he bats her away with a feeble flap of his wrist. Still, he grips the edge of the counter like it’s the only thing keeping him vertical.
You scrub a hand over your face. “Coffee? Or are we all just committing to bad decisions today?”
…
The coffee is yesterday’s.
Bitter, burnt, practically an oil slick in a mug.
You pour three cups anyway.
Steve drinks it black, which tracks. You clock the way his hands tremble as he brings it to his lips and file it away without comment.
Robin’s already rattling off the story again, filling in details she left out the night before. You get more names now. Places. Dates. Vines that slither like snakes. The gate under Lover’s Lake. You get the part where Steve dove in, headfirst, no hesitation.
Well, you already got that part last night, but Robin’s repeating it, and you’re starting to think maybe it’s not for you this time.
Steve just listens, quiet. Winces at certain beats—jaw tic here, hard blink there—but doesn’t interrupt.
You lean against the counter, sip your bitter sludge, and ask, casual as you can:
“So, you just jumped in. No plan? No backup?”
He shrugs, eyes on his mug. “Didn’t really have time to think about it.”
“Clearly.”
He looks up at you then. Runs a hand through his still-matted hair, blood-sticky at the roots, and releases a quiet breath.
“Thank you. For last night.”
You raise a brow. “Didn’t really have a choice, Harrington. It was either that or explain to the cops why there’s a dead body on my couch.”
He huffs a weak laugh.
“By the way,” you add, sipping again, “do your parents know about all this monster-hunting extracurricular bullshit?”
Robin makes a sound like a choked squirrel.
“Oh fuck! My parents! Shitshitshit.”
She’s already halfway out of her chair, tripping over her shoes while she scrambles for her jacket.
“Can you—?” she gasps, eyes wide.
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll cover.”
“Thankyouthankyouthankyou!” She barrels over, grabbing your face and planting a comically loud kiss on your forehead. Then she turns and grabs Steve in the same breath.
Gives his face a little shake.
“If I come back and find out you even thought about sneaking out, I will tell everyone you still sleep with a nightlight. Got it?”
You snort into your mug. Steve glares at her. “Robin—"
“Got it?”
He scrubs a hand through his hair, rolling his eyes. “Whatever.”
She releases him, then points at you. “You’re in charge. Don’t let him do anything heroic.”
“Oh no,” you deadpan. “However shall I bear the weight of such responsibility?”
Robin snorts, slaps your shoulder, then bolts, keys jingling like cowbells as she shoots out the door.
“Wait—” Steve squints after her. “Are you—Robin! You can’t just take my car! You’re not even—”
Slam!
“—licensed.”
You both sit in the silence she leaves behind. Steve stares out the window, listening to the screech of his precious bimmer as it peels down the street.
Then he turns back, eyes flicking to the trauma floor that used to be your living room.
He clears his throat. “Sorry about your, uh… couch. And the carpet.”
You follow his gaze. The stains are bad, probably permanent. It stings a little, looking at them.
It hurts worse looking at him.
Steve Harrington, bruised and bandaged and slouched in your chair like he’s trying to disappear into the seams. His stupidly wide, puppy-dog eyes look like they’re about to apologizing for breathing your air.
You blink.
Then slowly, slowly, lean forward across the island.
“Harrington.”
“Yeah?”
“Stop apologizing for almost dying. It’s weird.”
He opens his mouth. Closes it. Lands on a sheepish smile instead.
You hate how it softens his face, how it creases the corners of his eyes.
“And for the record,” you mutter, lips concealed behind the rim of your cup, “you’re not the worst thing to stain that couch, so. You’re fine.”
He blinks, brow furrowing. “What’s… that supposed to mean?”
You shrug. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
It takes him a second to process it. Then he snorts quietly, eyes flicking to the side.
You take another sip, watching the pink rise in his cheeks as the sun filters in through the window.
And if you’re smiling too—well, he doesn’t have to know.
…
You try to make pancakes.
Try being the operative word.
There’s flour in your hair, batter on the counter. Somewhere, the smoke alarm is just giggling with anticipation.
Steve’s still in his spot behind the island, watching you glare down a lumpy pile of batter.
It’s distracting.
It’s fucking annoying, is what it is.
Pancakes aren’t hard. Whisking is not rocket science. And yet, it feels impossible with him sitting there, doing that thing with his eyes. All soft and brown and bruised, like you saved his life and now he doesn’t know how to deal with it.
“How’s it going?” he asks, voice pitched deliberately neutral.
You don’t turn around. “Fine.”
A beat.
“You sure?”
You slam the next pancake into the pan. It looks like something you'd peel off a sidewalk after a hot summer day. You stare at it, furious.
Behind you, there’s the scrape of a chair.
“I said I’m fine,” you warn.
He ignores that.
Limps over to you instead, his gaze finding you like a physical thing. Warm. Curious. You catch him in your periphery as he stops beside you, close enough that the heat from the stove mixes with the heat of his skin. Suddenly, the kitchen feels about fifteen degrees hotter.
“Here,” he murmurs.
Before you can object, his fingers wrap around yours, gentle and coaxing as he eases the spatula from your grip.
Then: flip.
One smooth flick of his wrist. The pancake lands perfect. All golden and fluffy.
You blink at it, betrayed.
“I was handling it.”
“Sure,” he says, lips twitching. “Looked like it.”
He flips another. Doesn’t even look this time.
You narrow your eyes. “Okay. How are you doing that?”
He shrugs, adjusting the burner dial like he’s lived here his whole life. “Cook for myself a lot.”
You pause. There’s something in the way he says it—off-hand, casual, but quiet enough to leave an echo.
You file that away, too.
“Of course you’re good at pancakes,” you mutter. “Probably make soufflés and like, caviar waffles or some shit.”
“Caviar waffles? That’s a thing?”
“I don’t know. You tell me, rich boy.”
He just snorts quietly at that, eyeing you sideways. “Well, my French toast is pretty solid. Could show you next time, if you want.”
You glance over, arching a brow. “Wow. Is that line always so subtle?”
He meets your gaze, smirk tugging at his split lip.
“I don’t know. You tell me.”
And fuck, it lands.
It lands hard, right in the soft space under your ribs. That warm, twisting feeling that makes your breath hitch and your stomach go stupid.
You turn away before your face can betray you, yanking open a drawer for a fork.
And then, as if the universe decided to throw you a bone, the kitchen landline starts to shriek like it’s being murdered.
You lunge for it like a lifeline.
It’s probably Mrs. Buckley, confirming her daughter crashed at your place, again.
“Hello? …You WHAT?”
Robin groans on the other end. “Yeah. Possibly until college.”
“Robin, you can’t—” You lower your voice, turning away from Steve and cupping the receiver like he’s not standing two feet away. “—you can’t be fucking grounded right now.”
“I know! But my mom saw the blood on my jeans and I totally panicked. I told her it was ketchup. Ketchup, dude. Now she’s got Toby posted outside my room. He’s just sitting there with his Legos, but he will scream if I so much as leave to go to the bathroom. So... yeah. It’s gonna be a while before I can sneak out. Are you… are you okay to stay with him for a bit? He’s trying to pretend he’s fine, but he’s definitely not.”
You glance back.
Steve’s standing at the stove, peering at his stomach while waiting for the next pancake to bubble. His hand drifts down and starts poking at one of the bandages under his hoodie. Slow and gentle, like it won’t count as touching if he’s polite about it.
You stretch the phone cord and smack his hand away.
He startles. Blinks at you like, Seriously?
You raise your brows like, Try me.
You sigh into the receiver: “Yeah. I got him.”
“Ugh, you’re the best. Just don’t let him—ohh, crap, I gotta g—"
Click.
Steve doesn’t turn when you pad back into the kitchen.
“She grounded?”
“Yep. Possibly until retirement.” You pause. “You don’t need to call your folks?”
He hesitates, just for a second. Then shakes his head. “They’re out of town.”
Then, with a one-handed spin of the spatula, he flips the pancake onto a plate.
You glance at the growing stack. They look obscene. You’d punch someone for a bite.
In your head, you run through the math.
Ten days. Minimum.
Ten days before the stitches can come out. Before he can walk out of here without ripping something open. Longer if he keeps poking at his bandages like that.
God help you. It’s gonna be a long week.
…
Breakfast is awkward.
No other word for it.
Steve eats like he’s on a timer. You eat like you’re trying not to notice.
Trying not to notice the way he keeps sneaking glances at you. Little flicks of his eyes over his plate, always quick, always subtle, never quite fast enough.
Trying not to notice the way he winces. Quiet flashes of pain, there and gone, just long enough for that crease to cut across his brow before he smooths it away.
When both your plates are emptied, he clears his throat.
“Hey, do you… you mind if I use your bathroom?” He gestures vaguely to his face. “Just need to clean up a bit.”
His hair is still matted. There’s soot smeared along his jaw, a faint line of red where the blood’s dried and half-wiped away.
You nod, mid-sip. “Sure. First door on the left. Just don’t get the bandages wet.”
“Got it,” he nods, starts to rise—then stops halfway, jaw flexing tight.
“Actually, uh…” His hand slides to the back of his neck. His eyes shut briefly. “Can you give me a hand with this? I can’t really…”
He doesn’t finish the sentence. Doesn’t need to.
The white-knuckle grip on the hem of his hoodie tells you enough.
You blink, setting your mug down, and push your chair back without a word.
He doesn’t meet your eyes as you reach for the bottom of the hoodie.
The fabric peels up inch by inch, sticking to where the gauze bled through, catching where raw skin clings to cotton. He winces, raising his arms awkwardly, the stitches along his sides clearly pulling. So you move gently, painstakingly slow.
Your knuckles graze his stomach, and—
Jesus.
He’s warm. Muscle corded tight under skin that flushes easily, even with all the bruises blooming across his ribs like bad watercolors.
You get the hoodie off.
His chest is bare.
And now you’re standing close. Way, way too close.
His breath brushes your cheek when he exhales. You glance up, just on pure instinct, and find his eyes already on you.
You both freeze.
There’s a beat where everything narrows. Where sound drops out.
Your hands hover midair, still clutching the fabric, close enough to feel the heat radiating off his skin.
Close enough to trace the moles scattered across his chest.
You don’t.
You look away so fast it nearly gives you whiplash.
“Towels are under the sink," you mumble. "I’ll get you some new clothes.”
Then you take a quick step back. Like distance will save you from whatever the hell that was.
Steve blinks. Once. Twice. Then nods, eyes flicking away. “Thanks.”
He disappears down the hall, barefoot and bruised.
You stand in the silence with his hoodie clenched in your fists, your pulse trying to beat its way out of your throat.
…
There’s an old joke your friends like to make.
That you’re a sadist.
That you chose the EMT life because you enjoy it. The blood, the pain. The broken bones and the chaos. Things normal people flinch away from.
But in truth, they’ve got it backwards.
You’re not a sadist.
No. What you are is a fucking masochist.
Because there’s no other explanation for why you keep doing this to yourself. Why you let yourself get this close to people you shouldn’t. Why you torture yourself, again and again, with things you know better than to want.
Why you’re standing outside your bathroom door right now, ears tilted, listening to someone who shouldn’t mean anything to you rinse the blood off his skin.
You told yourself you were just finishing the dishes. That the stovetop needed wiping down. That there were chores to do, reasons to move around.
But your feet kept wandering. Back to the hallway. Back to him.
Back to this spot in the hallway, where you can feel the warmth bleeding under the door. Where you can hear the faucet running in short, irregular bursts—on, off, on again.
You picture him hunched over the basin. One hand braced against the counter, the other shaking under the strain of movement. Jaw clenched. Shoulders bowed.
Something twists low in your stomach.
You roll your eyes at yourself—because god, you’re pathetic—and raise a fist.
A light knock.
“You good?”
A pause, then:
“Uh, yeah. Just… hang on.”
There’s a clatter, a quiet shit. Then the door creaks open.
And Steve—
Well.
He’s wet.
And shirtless. And pink.
Flushed from the steam, maybe from embarrassment. Because his hair—The Hair—is half-lathered and sticking up in foamy tufts, like a soggy cat caught mid-bath. A single drop of water slides slow down the hollow of his throat.
Your gaze follows it.
The sweatpants you gave him ride low. Damp at the waistband, pulled snug across his hips in a way you’re absolutely not thinking about.
He gestures toward the sink, sheepish.
“I, uh… can’t really bend right now. Tried to rinse it out, but—” He winces, fingers grazing his sides. “The stitches are kind of a hard no.”
Your eyes drop, unbidden, to the bruises blooming purple-black across his ribs. The way his chest lifts a little faster when you step closer.
You should walk away. Turn around. Go wipe down the goddamn stove like you told yourself you would.
Instead, you say:
“Sit.”
He blinks. “…What?”
“On the floor. Back against the tub.”
There’s a pause. His brows draw together like he’s trying to figure out the punchline.
You don’t blink.
He exhales sharply, jaw flexing. “No, it’s okay, I can—”
“Steve.”
It lands heavy. The weight of it surprises even you.
His first name, in your voice.
You’ve only said it once before, when he was unconscious, twitching under bloodstained gauze, fists clenched against a nightmare you couldn’t reach.
But now, he hears it. And something inside him goes quiet.
He studies you for a second longer, then sighs, shoulders dropping.
Wordlessly, he lowers himself to the tile.
One hand braced on the edge of the tub, the other on the floor, every movement stiff. His back hits the porcelain with a soft thud.
You kneel beside him and roll up your sleeves.
“Lean your head back.”
He shifts, uneasy. “Seriously, you don’t have to—”
“I know.” You pick up the cup beside the sink and check the tap, waiting for the water to warm. “Just tilt."
There’s a long pause.
Then he does.
His head tips back against the curve of the tub. With his throat exposed, the worst of the bruising shines a mottled red-black beneath his jaw. His lashes flutter, lips parting just slightly.
The first pass runs slow and gentle down his scalp. He flinches.
“Too hot?”
He blinks, breath shallow. “No. S’fine.”
So you pour again. And again. Slow rivulets trickling through his hair, carrying blood and soap and grime down the drain. His hair start to fall naturally again, dark strands slicking to his forehead.
It’s just the water at first. Rinsing out grit, loosening stiff knots and matted roots.
Then you lather the shampoo between your palms, and sink your fingers into his hair.
And that’s when it happens.
The shift.
Steve Harrington—king of easy charm, Mr. Everything’s Fine—goes completely still.
Not in a relaxed way. Not in a sleepy way.
No, he goes rigid.
His breath falters. His jaw locks. You can see the muscles in his neck ripple with tension.
And when you sweep a thumb absently behind his ear, chasing a line of foam, he jolts.
A full-body shiver, running shoulder to spine.
You clear your throat, voice catching before you force it steady. “Been a while, huh? Since someone did this for you?”
His response is delayed, a low rasp. “Uh huh. Long time.”
Then, after a beat:
“Used to be my mom’s thing. When I was a kid.”
Your hands still in his hair. He goes stiff the second he says it—jaw clenched, lips pressed tight, hands curling in his lap.
You blink, then resume drawing slow circles over his crown.
“That must’ve been nice,” you say quietly.
He doesn’t answer. Just breathes through his nose and keeps still.
So you keep going.
Rinse. Lather. Repeat.
And with each pass of your hands, his breathing changes.
His head rests heavier against the porcelain. His lips part around soft, even breaths. His eyes flutter shut.
Then, he leans.
Barely enough to notice. But you feel it, the subtle tilt of his head toward your hands.
Like a plant bending toward light.
You wonder, not for the first time, how long it’s been since someone touched him like this. How long he’s gone without care, without softness.
And maybe that’s why this hurts so much.
Because you’d had him pegged, hadn’t you?
The hair. The charm. Pretty boy, ladies’ man, heartbreaker.
King Steve.
But this? This isn’t him.
This is the After.
The aftermath of Russians and monsters and lakes with no bottoms. The man who throws himself between danger and kids that aren’t his, time and time again. Like he’s got something to prove. Or maybe something to atone for.
The one who apologized for bleeding on your floor.
This is someone who’s forgotten how to be held.
And right now, he’s under your hands. Throat bared. Hair dripping. Leaning into your touch like he’s starved for it.
And that slow, sinking weight in your stomach settles for good. That gut-churn of realization that you barely know anything about the man who nearly bled out on your couch last night.
You try to swallow the feeling down. Try to keep your focus on softer things: dripping water, steam-soaked light, the silky-smooth slip of his hair between your fingers.
But every time your hands leave him, even for a second, you feel it. The tension in his frame. The hesitation in his breath. Like he’s bracing for it to end.
And each time you return—thumb grazing his temple, palm cradling the back of his neck—he breathes in. Relief, sharp and silent, tucked between the ribs.
You reach for the conditioner next, fingers trembling a little as you work it through. When you tip his head back, he goes easy. Pliant. Trusting.
And then a quiet thought hits you.
A hunch, really.
You let your fingers drift lower. Past the crown. Down to the nape of his neck. The hair there is softer, damp strands clinging to skin gone tight with tension and bruising.
You trace gently around the worst of it. Avoid the dark, angry lines where something had closed around his throat.
Strangled. That’s what Robin said.
You press into the muscle just beneath it, right where the pain likes to live.
Steve shudders. His head lifts from the tub with a breath, caught on something sharp.
But you don’t let up.
You continue pressing in slow, deep circles, growing firmer.
There’s a sound, then. Sharp. Brief. A strangled thing, torn between a groan and a gasp.
He tries to stifle it a second later, clearing his throat.
“Too hard?” you ask quietly.
His voice comes cracked. “N-no. Just—it’s fine. You don’t have to…”
The rest trails off when you move to his shoulders next, thumb kneading into the dense muscle. You’re not a massage therapist, but you know anatomy. You know where pain settles when it’s been left too long. How it tucks itself into the tender parts: the base of the neck, the hollow beneath the collarbone.
And god, he’s full of it. All the signs. All the tells.
He lets out another shaky breath, lips sealed around a sound he doesn’t let out.
And there, just for a moment, you let yourself look.
At the bruises. The thin cuts just beginning to scab. The water gliding over his collarbone, beading into the curve of his chest.
That thick, molten part of your brain—the masochist, the idiot, the one who says yes when she should absolutely say no—flares hot.
It wants to lean in.
Wants to touch your mouth to his skin, right there, at the slope of his throat.
Just to see if he tastes like lavender and heat. Just to see if he lets you.
To kiss him slow enough to wash the ache from his mouth. Replace every sharp thing he’s swallowed with something soft.
God, you’re losing it.
You drag your thumb again along the base of his neck. His lashes flutter.
Then, from the corner of your eye, you see it—his hands shifting in his lap.
Cross. Adjust.
You glance down without thinking.
And oh.
Oh.
The sweatpants don’t hide much. Not like this. Not with how he’s sitting, loose-limbed and open, the fabric soaked and clinging in ways it wasn’t meant to. They’re pulled taut across the breadth of his thighs, darkened in patches where the water’s seeped through.
And beneath that?
Yeah.
Your breath stutters. Heat rockets up your neck.
You yank your gaze away, fumbling for the faucet and filling another cup. Your hand trembles as you lift it, rinsing out the conditioner.
His hair sticks to his forehead. Without thinking, you smooth it back.
His eyes flutter open.
And the look he gives you…
It’s quiet. Devastating. Tucked somewhere tender and deep, pressed hard against bone.
Softer than longing. Sharper than want.
It's something that aches.
You don’t know what to do with it.
So you just keep your hands in his hair.
And you rinse.
…
You rinse long after the conditioner’s gone.
After his breath has evened out and the water’s cooled to a gentle trickle, steam curling around your ankles like fog.
The bathroom smells like lavender and heat and skin that isn’t yours.
When you reach for the towel and bring it up to his head, he leans.
Blot, pat, smooth. The towel’s too soft, your hands too careful. You graze the shell of his ear, the edge of his jaw, feeling the quick flutter of his pulse beneath your thumb.
His eyes are still on you.
“Thanks,” he says, quiet.
You nod, not trusting your voice.
The steam’s thinning now, but the air still clings.
Too warm. Too full of something unsaid.
His breath brushes your cheek.
You’re too close.
It’s too much.
You could kiss him.
God help you, you could.
Just one lean forward. That’s all it would take. His mouth is right there—slightly parted, pink and swollen in the middle where he’s been biting down.
And the look on his face isn’t just gratitude. Not just relief.
That’s want.
And worse? It’s yours too. It’s in the pit of your stomach, burning upward. It’s in your hands, your chest, your throat, curling behind your teeth like smoke with nowhere to go.
You pull back abruptly. The towel slips from your hands and lands in his lap with a soft thud.
“Okay,” you say, voice tight. “You’re good.”
Steve blinks, like you just dragged him up from underwater.
His throat bobs. “Cool. Yeah. Thanks.”
You stand too fast. Your knees pop. You don’t look at him when you speak next. “You should lie down for a bit. Keep pressure off the stitches.”
He nods, a little too slow.
You grab the towel again and press it against his chest. Not hard, but firm enough to make a point. Whatever it is.
Then you turn.
And you walk out.
You don’t need to look back to know he’s still watching you go.
...
It starts the way summer storms do.
Not with thunder. Not with rain.
With pressure.
The kind that presses close to the skin, wrapping around like a second layer. That hair-raising, skin-prickling tingle. Right as the birds go quiet and the trees hold still and the sky forgets how to move.
Stillness so absolute your skin buzzes with it.
The moment before it tips.
It’s here now. In this room.
In the narrow inches of couch cushion between you. In the weight of the blanket tangled over your legs. In the single, unspoken brush of his thigh against yours.
The TV plays to no one. A dull flicker of static and synth beats, some late-afternoon rerun neither of you are really watching. The glow of it pulses dim blue across his skin, the shadows deepening where his jaw tightens every time you move.
The room smells like clean skin and new sweat. Yours. His. Both.
His voice breaks the quiet.
“Hey, how long ‘til the stitches come out again?”
“Ten days.”
“Hm. I like this show.”
“Knight Rider?”
“Yeah. It’s cool.”
“No. It’s dumb.”
“What? C’mon, the car talks.”
“Exactly.” A beat. “How do the stitches feel?”
“Uh, good. Yeah. They’re fine.”
“You hungry?”
“No, you?”
“No.”
And it builds, again. That low, rolling kind of stillness.
Storm pressure.
It crawls up your spine. Pools hot behind your ears. You fidget with the hem of the blanket, rolling your shoulder back into the cushion like you can shake it loose.
You can’t.
The blanket’s too warm.
He’s too close.
And he’s watching you. You don’t have to look to know.
“…You’re doing it again.”
“Hm?”
You turn your head. Meet his gaze full-on. “Looking at me like that.”
His lips part. “Like what?”
Your eyes drop to his mouth.
His pinky brushes yours.
And just like that, the storm breaks.
…
Steve leans in first.
The same way he had in the bathroom, instinctive and unthinking. Like something inside him keeps tipping forward and you’re the only place left to fall.
Only this time, you don’t let him do it alone.
You meet him halfway.
His nose nudges yours. His breath fans hot across your cheek.
And then your lips meet.
A question and an answer, exchanged wordlessly.
There’s no clean edge between want and need, no way to separate gentle from hungry. One second, it’s the cautious warmth of shared breath, the next—
It’s the pull of his hands. The low, wrecked sound he makes in his throat when your fingers slide up his neck, threading into the damp hair at his nape.
Heat. Ozone. The bright-white zing of electricity rocketing down your spine.
You move forward without thinking. He shifts to catch you, hands spanning your hips, guiding you into his lap. You straddle him, careful to avoid the bruises across his stomach.
His breath is hot. His lips are plush, a little chapped from the way he’s been chewing on them all night.
Wordlessly, you reach for the hem of your shirt, tugging it over your head and letting it fall behind you. Cool air rushes over your skin.
Steve goes still. “God, you’re…” He breathes, throat working around the rest of the words when you take his hand and guide it upwards. Across your stomach, up your ribs. His thumb grazes over your nipple, soft and reverent, and your breath hitches.
You tug him back into a kiss, hips starting to drag across his lap. The hard press of him burns heat through the cotton of your sleep shorts.
“Good?” you breathe against his mouth.
“Yeah,” he rasps. “Fuck. Yeah. You?”
You nod, catching your breath.
But he doesn’t stop looking at you
And there’s something about the way his gaze lingers—soft, searching—like he’s waiting for more than just an answer to a question. Something he doesn’t know how to say out loud.
But you know.
You just… know.
The same way you knew when your hands were in his hair earlier. That quiet ache. That silent pull in him, desperate and soft.
So you give him what he doesn’t know how to ask for.
Your hand slides up to his chest, pressing over his heart. It’s pounding. So is yours.
“You feel so good, Steve,” you whisper, close enough for him to taste the words off your lips. “You’re so good. So fucking good.”
He shudders, pulling you in tighter, groaning with his lips buried against your neck like he needs to hide the sound somewhere safe.
Still, you don’t stop.
You reach for his hand and slide it lower, under the waistband of your shorts. His fingers slip through your slick heat and go still.
“Jesus,” he breathes.
You kiss his temple, then his cheek. Frame his jaw with both hands and lift his gaze to yours.
“Feel that?” you murmur. “That’s for you. All for you.”
He lets out a strangled sound, nearly pained, and surges up to kiss you again. His fingers start to stroke through your heat, finding the rhythm, learning you. When his thumb grazes your clit and starts to circle, you gasp, hips jerking into his touch.
“Shit, baby…” he breathes.
And that word—
It’s soft. Unconscious. Slipped out before he knew it was there.
You don’t think he even realizes he said it. His eyes are blown wide, focused only on you: the way your hips grind, the way you cling to him when his fingers push deeper.
Still, there’s that tremble in his voice.
Like that word came from somewhere deeper than he meant to reach. Like it cracked off the part of him that’s always waiting to be turned away but still dares to offer softness first.
You roll your hips again, chasing friction, but your focus has shifted now. You’re watching him instead—flushed and open beneath you, mouth parted, eyes locked to your face like you’re something he’s trying to memorize.
And it guts you. The honesty of it.
How easy it is to see now.
That this is someone who aches for closeness. Reaches for it before he even realizes he’s doing it. Who says baby like it’s the only word he knows for want.
Your chest grows tight. The heat in your stomach twists into something unbearably tender.
You roll your hips one last time, savoring the drag of him against you, then shift off his lap. His hand slips from your shorts, reluctant, trailing warmth up your stomach.
His eyes follow you as you slide to the floor. Your knees sinking into the carpet, fingers hooking in the waistband of his pants. He lifts his hips and—
You blink. Your mouth goes dry.
Because he’s—
Wow. Okay.
Noted.
It’s not just the size—though, yeah, that’s definitely part of it. It’s the weight of him. The flushed color, the dusky warmth. Velvety skin stretched tight over thick veins. The way he sits heavy against his thigh, curved just slightly, leaking at the tip and twitching under your gaze.
You swallow hard.
“What?” He stirs, uncertain. “Is something…?”
You look up at him, eyes wide.
“Jesus, Steve…” you breathe. “Just. Holy shit.”
His brows pinch together, concern flickering across his face—until he sees your expression.
And there it is.
That grin. That stupid, boyish, shit-eating grin.
“Oh,” he says, trying to play it off. “Yeah?”
You narrow your eyes, desperately trying to hide your smile. “Don’t get cocky.”
He raises a brow.
You realize your mistake immediately. Your cheeks flare hot.
He laughs, breathless. Looks down at you all soft and pleased and fond. It makes you want to bite him until he forgets how to smirk entirely. Kiss him stupid and never let him go.
“Shut up,” you mutter.
“Didn’t say anything,” he says, still smiling.
You roll your eyes and yank his pants the rest of the way down.
He quiets instantly.
Because your hands are on him now.
You stroke his thighs first, warming up the sensitive skin there. Pressing soft kisses along the inside, inching higher and higher until he’s twitching under your mouth.
“You’re so pretty like this,” you whisper. “You don’t even know, do you?”
He makes a strangled sound, part laugh, part disbelieving groan. His hands flex where they rest against his thighs.
You reach up and guide one to your hair, eyes still on his.
“You can touch me,” you murmur.
His fingers curl, tentative. “You sure?”
You nod. “I want you to. Want you to feel this.”
Then, without looking away, you lower your mouth to him.
Slow. Wet. Base to tip, dragging your tongue along the underside. He jerks, whole body going taut.
“Jesus,” he hisses. “Okay. Okay.”
You take your time. Because no one ever has, it seems. Not like this.
Your fingers wrap around the base, tongue gliding along the ridge, licking the salt beading at the tip. Every twitch, every shudder, every wrecked baby whispered from above becomes something you file away silently, cataloguing the way he unravels.
And Steve unravels beautifully.
You glance up through your lashes, watching the way his stomach trembles, how his throat works. All the control he’s trying so hard to hold on to.
Then finally, you wrap your lips around him.
Just the head at first, sucking slow and sweet. You circle your tongue around the crown and let out a soft hum.
“Fuck,” he whispers. “Baby, your mouth—shit—”
His voice keeps catching like he doesn’t quite believe it. You get the sense he hasn’t been cherished in this way, either. Adored. Worshipped.
So you double down.
You ease off for a breath, kissing the flushed tip, thumb gliding over the sensitive skin there. Then you sink deeper, lips sliding lower, jaw loosening, tongue tracing the underside as you stretch around the thickest part of him.
You keep going until he’s pressed up against your palate, brushing the back of your throat. You breathe into it. Let the weight of him sit there, hot and thick and yours.
“Shit, shit—” he pants. “I’m not—not gonna last if you keep—"
You pull off with a soft pop, lips slick and swollen. A line of spit follows you from the flushed head of his cock.
“It’s okay,” you smile, breath warm against his skin. “Don’t have to. Just want you to feel good.”
He stares down at you, cheeks flushed, eyes glassy.
Then, suddenly, breathless and earnest:
“Wait, can I—can I get you off first?”
You pause, stunned.
You blink up at him, hand still wrapped around the base of his cock. “You don’t have to—”
“I want to,” he says, quick and pleading. He cups your jaw, stroking your cheek. “Please. Let me?”
You hold his gaze a moment longer, drowning in that quiet, unspoken vulnerability he carries, one you’re learning to name without words.
Then, finally, you nod.
“Okay.”
You crawl back into his lap, shorts discarded somewhere behind you, it doesn’t matter where.
What matters is the way his hands settle on you again, calloused palms sliding around your hips, drawing you closer. You feel the thick heat of him pressed between your thighs, sticky and flushed and aching.
You roll your hips teasingly, gliding against him before reaching down to line him up. The head of his cock nudges, presses, catches. Then slowly, inch by inch, you sink down.
The stretch is immediate. Hot and all-consuming. You clutch at his shoulders, mouth falling open as you let your weight sink deeper, not pausing until he’s fully seated.
Your thighs tremble where you straddle him.
Steve groans low, one arm tight around your waist, the other gripping your hip.
“Shit, are you—?”
“I’m okay,” you breathe, laughing softly into his skin. “Just… gimme a sec. You’re kind of a lot, Harrington.”
He kisses you, rubbing circles into your back while you adjust. The burn softens. The fullness remains.
And when you start to move—lifting your hips, rolling them back down—you feel him everywhere.
“God,” you pant, “you feel so good.”
You kiss his jaw, his throat, burying whispers between breaths.
“Can feel you so deep—fuck—”
The rhythm builds slowly. Wide circles, deep grinds, savoring the way his cock hits just right.
And the more you give him—You feel so good, Fucking me so well, Low how you feel inside me—he melts a little more beneath you.
“Shit, right there—” you gasp, hips stuttering when his hand slides between your bodies, pressing into your clit.
“Come for me,” he whispers, voice rough. “Please. Want to feel you.”
His fingers circle faster.
And your body breaks.
You cry out, nails digging into his shoulders, every muscle clenched and trembling as the orgasm crashes through you. You collapse against his chest, shaking, gasping his name, everything hot and white and so much.
He holds you through it, breathing hard against your temple.
“That’s it,” he pants. “That’s it, baby, I’ve got you—fuck—”
You’re still trembling in his lap when you feel him thrust up into you once, twice. He pulls out with a sudden gasp, groaning your name, spilling hot and thick across your stomach, shuddering with the force of it.
You kiss him through the haze of your own come-down, legs still trembling, fingers tangled in the sweat-damp hair at his nape.
“Just like that,” you whisper. “You’re perfect like this, Steve. So good.”
His breath stutters against your cheek. His body, still pulsing with aftershocks, presses into yours like he can’t stand the space between.
And even after the world goes still, after the stuttered breaths give way to silence and the hum of the TV creeps back in, you keep touching him. Stroking his hair, brushing sweat from his brow, pressing soft, open-mouthed kisses anywhere your mouth can reach.
And in the hush that follows, you murmur things you’ve never said aloud. Not to anyone.
Things too raw for daylight.
Things meant only for him.
…
You never ask him to stay.
Not when he wakes beside you the next morning, bare-chested, sleep-warm, hair sticking up in a dozen directions. Not when he wanders into your kitchen wearing nothing but rumpled boxers, whisking eggs for French toast like it’s an inside joke you’ve shared forever.
Not when you start leaving the sugar bowl out because that’s how he takes his coffee: one teaspoon, no milk. Not when you slip a second toothbrush into the cup by the sink, bristles leaning together like they’ve been kissing too.
He never asks. You never offer.
…
You learn the little things first.
That he hums when he cooks, usually something dumb from the radio, sometimes dumber jingles from the worst commercials. That he wipes down your counters when he thinks you’re not looking. That he folds your laundry better than you do, big hands careful with worn-out cotton and delicate lace. It gets to you, the way he touches your things like they matter.
And sometimes, you catch him staring again.
Only now, you don’t look away.
You’ll be across the room, pretending to read, eyes dragging over the same sentence for the fifth time because you can feel his gaze on you. He’ll be leaning in the doorway with his arms crossed, wearing that stupid smug expression he pulls when he knows exactly what he’s doing.
“Seriously, Harrington,” you mutter, eyes on the page. “Take a picture.”
He doesn’t blink. “I’m good. Like this view better."
You roll your eyes and throw a sock at his face. He catches it one-handed, smug.
Then he moves.
Three steps. That’s all it takes.
Three steps until your back’s against the mattress, his weight pressing you down, mouth dragging hot across your collarbone. His hands sneak under your shirt, warm palms sliding up your ribs. His lips chase yours like it’s a promise he’s been dying to keep.
“You’re annoying,” you whisper, breath hitching as he nips at your neck.
He grins into your skin. “Yeah? You gonna kick me out, then?”
You don’t.
You kind of never do.
…
The days bleed together after that.
A quick stop at his house to grab spare clothes turns into a silent pause in front of his dresser. His fingers hover over a framed photo: faces you don’t know, smiles frozen mid-laugh.
He doesn’t explain. You don’t ask. You just wait by the door until he turns and threads his fingers through yours.
He doesn’t let go the whole ride back.
A grocery run on day three turns into a dumb argument in the pasta aisle. You’re ranting about canned tomatoes; he’s trailing behind you like a sulking toddler, forearms slung across the cart handle, sneaking cookies into the basket when you’re not looking.
You scowl at checkout. He grins.
“You’re gonna thank me later,” he says.
You do.
First with a mouthful of chocolate and a grudging laugh.
Then again, ten minutes later, when your 'thank-you's come in the shape of his name and a fistful of his hair between your thighs.
…
Eventually, the domestic stops feeling borrowed.
It starts to feel owned.
You vacuum, he sweeps. You cook, he washes up. He steals bites of dinner while it’s still sizzling and you smack him with a spatula, pretending to be mad.
He says, “Ow,” even when it doesn’t hurt. You say, “Asshole,” even when it’s not true.
On the fourth night, you both sit cross-legged on the living room floor, scrubbing blood out of the couch cushions with baking soda and half-assed prayers.
He’s watching you. Again.
You glance up. "What?"
He shrugs, smiling a little. “Nothing.”
“Steve.”
“I just…” He hesitates. Looks down. “I like this.”
You raise a brow. “Cleaning your blood out of my furniture?”
He shuffles forward, bringing his cushion closer to yours.
“Yeah,” he says.
But it’s not what he means.
You both know that.
…
The sex changes, too.
In the mornings, it’s quiet. Slow. All languid stretches and sleep-warm skin, coaxing sighs from your lips as the sun peeks through the blinds.
But at night? He’s something else entirely.
He fucks you like he needs it to survive. Like you’re his last breath. Gripping your thighs, your hips—holding you open, holding you still, driving into you like he’s trying to memorize the shape of you forever.
And as the bruises fade, so does his hesitation.
He knows you now.
Knows what makes you beg, what makes you break. Where to bite, where to suck, where to press until your voice is raw and your nails leave crescent moons down his spine.
One night, he pins your wrists above your head, breath ragged.
“Say it,” he murmurs, grinding deep. “Tell me who makes you feel like this.”
You break on his name.
He swallows the sound with his mouth and doesn’t stop until your thighs are shaking.
And afterward, he stays.
Inside you. Around you.
He never pulls away first.
…
Not all nights are easy.
Some nights, you wake alone.
You find him in the kitchen, framed by the glow of the open fridge. The light catches the tired slope of his shoulders, the untouched glass of water going warm in his hand.
You don’t ask. Just step in behind him, press your cheek between his shoulder blades, and wrap your arms tight around his waist.
He breathes out. Sets the glass down. Closes the fridge.
When he turns, he doesn’t speak. Just lets you hold him.
Lets you guide him back to bed.
…
Your mornings are different now.
You wake in shirts that smell like him. Brush your teeth while he showers, fog curling across the mirror. He laughs at something stupid from behind the curtain, and you laugh back, still half-asleep.
It all happens so slowly you almost miss it.
The toothbrush that isn’t yours. The second pillow with its permanent dent. The pair of shoes you stop tripping over by the door because you’ve learned to walk around them.
He’s etched himself into your life in the smallest of ways. Fit through the cracks with warm hands and boyish grins and quiet looks in the daylight.
Like maybe he was meant to be here all along.
…
Somewhere between day seven and eight, you stop keeping count.
Because every morning, you tell yourself he’ll probably leave soon.
And every night, he gives you another reason to believe he won’t.
…
Like tonight.
You’re wrapped around each other, skin still damp with heat, covers shoved somewhere near the foot of the bed. His hand rests on your back, fingers splayed. Yours curls against his chest, cheek pressed to the slow, steady rhythm behind his ribs.
It would be so easy to stay here.
To let the quiet stretch. To pretend the heaviness in your chest is just exhaustion, not the weight you've been carrying since the night you dragged his bleeding body across your living room. Since you sat awake beside him, watching every shallow breath, waiting for the next one to come.
But the question’s been sitting on your chest for days now. And with the weight of him beside you, it presses too hard to ignore.
“Why’d you do it?”
He doesn’t answer right away, and you wonder if he’s already fallen asleep. But then his chest rises under your cheek—a careful, deliberate breath.
“…Do what?”
“The lake,” you murmur. “You jumped in first. Why?”
He’s quiet for a beat too long. You glance up to find the tight underside of his jaw, his eyes fixed on the ceiling.
“I don’t know,” he sighs, dragging a hand through his hair. “Someone had to go. And I was the best swimmer, so. Didn’t really have to think about it.”
And you believe him. It’s the part that hurts the most.
That he didn’t have to think. That throwing himself in came as naturally as breathing.
Because somewhere along the way, Steve Harrington decided that his pain was worth less than everyone else's.
You shift closer, hooking your chin on his shoulder. His thumb draws slow, thoughtful circles against your spine.
“Steve,” you say quietly. “You know it’s not about being a hero, right? You don’t have to keep throwing yourself in front of everything just to prove yourself.”
His hand stills.
“I’m not.”
“Not what?”
“A hero. I’m not.” He lets out a bitter huff, eyes looking at something past the ceiling. “I was… just kind of a selfish asshole for a long time. Didn’t care about much. Or anyone. And even after I tried to fix it, it just—it never felt like enough. Still doesn’t.”
You watch him, the weight of his words like pressing down on a bruise.
“So what, you jump into lakes now to make up for it?”
He almost smiles. “Kinda. Yeah.”
Then, quieter:
“I don’t know, it’s like, if I’m not the one stepping up, then… what’s the point, you know? What the hell am I even good for?”
Your heart aches. Because god, how long has he carried that? How many times has he thrown himself in just to keep from drowning?
You see it then, the fracture that runs through him. Spiderwebbed across everything he is, everything he was. A wound so old it’s fused to him. Clotted over, never cleaned.
The weight he carries isn’t something he puts on; it’s something that grew with him.
Years of being told he wasn’t enough. Not smart enough. Not serious enough. Just the boy with the car, the smile, the house too big for how small it made him feel.
That kind of doubt doesn’t heal. It burrows deep.
Sinks its teeth in. Festers.
Until guilt turns into remorse,
Remorse turns into habit,
And habit drags on as penance.
So he made himself useful.
Built his worth out of protection. Of stepping up, stepping in, taking the hit before anyone else could.
Diving first. Bleeding first.
Hurt first. Hurt worst. Hurt instead.
That’s where his value lives. Not in being loved, but in being needed.
You lift yourself up until you're eye to eye, cupping his face, thumbs brushing the tops of his cheeks.
“You’re for you, Steve.”
He blinks, brows knitting.
“You don’t have to earn it. Being loved. Being cared for. That’s not something you have to prove.”
His eyes search yours, like he’s trying to make sense of the words.
Then, slowly, his shoulders ease. He cups the back of your neck, drawing you in. His exhale against your lips sounds like a weight being untethered.
You stay like that for a while, breathing together, fingers laced at his chest.
Eventually, he sleeps.
You don’t.
You stay awake, tracing the lines of his face in the dark. The peace that sleep gives him. The stillness that never lasts.
You watch as his brow smooths. As his lips part. As his lashes flutter once, then settle into stillness.
You stay up.
Because someone has to.
…
You get used to the quiet.
Used to Steve padding around the house in socks, humming half a tune under his breath.
To the way he opens every cupboard before finding the cereal that’s been in the same spot for days.
To the way he claims half your couch, half your bed, half your toothpaste.
You get used to someone else’s heartbeat in your space.
So when the knocking starts—three sharp raps that rattle the wood—it takes you both by surprise.
Steve’s already halfway to the door when you follow, tugging your sweatshirt over your head.
You’ve barely turned the knob before the door bursts open.
“Guess who’s officially un-grounded and here to collect her idiot boy? Oh, and look—I brought backup!”
Robin barrels in first, followed by two figures: a curly-haired kid drowning in a bright yellow baseball cap, and behind him, a taller shape in black denim and leather. Eddie Munson, wearing that same smug grin you remember vaguely from high school.
You’ve heard about them, of course—Steve’s strange little apocalypse crew—but hearing about it is one thing, seeing it is another.
“He’s alive!” Robin crows, flinging her arms around Steve.
“Took you long enough,” he mutters into her shoulder.
“Uh, excuse me. Your fault,” she shoots back, jabbing a finger in his chest. “Grounded, remember?” Then she turns to you, eyes sharp with curiosity. “So? How much trouble was he?”
You glance over at Steve. He’s already looking back, mouth tugging at the corner like he’s daring you to say something first. There’s a kaleidoscope of memory that flashes between you in the space of a blink.
You look back at Robin and shrug, casual as ever. “Not much. He folds my laundry now.”
Robin gasps. Eddie lets out a low whistle.
“Well, shit,” he drawls. “Steve Harrington, domesticated. Didn’t think I’d live to see the day.”
Steve rolls his eyes. “You guys are hilarious.”
But his ears are pink by the time you close the door.
…
After a round of burnt grilled cheeses, the kitchen’s a mess of crumbs and chatter.
Robin perches on a stool, slurping tomato soup straight from the pot. Eddie’s straddling a chair backwards, drumming on the counter. Dustin paces, orchestrating what sounds like a full-scale military operation using a butter knife and a salt shaker.
“—I’m saying if we shift the rendezvous point closer to the treeline, we can cut our response time in half. Minimum.”
Steve leans against the fridge, nodding like he’s catching every third word.
You’re at the sink, rinsing dishes, the voices behind you fading into a comfortable hum—until Dustin steps in beside you, tone low and careful.
“So… he’s okay to come back now, right?
You glance over your shoulder.
Steve’s got his shirt hiked up for Robin and Eddie to see, scars catching the kitchen light—pale and raised, still tender from where you pulled out the last stitch two days ago. Robin wrinkles her nose, groaning about how she's lost her appetite.
You turn back to Dustin. “I mean, no fever, no infection. Doesn’t seem to be actively dying. So yeah, I’d say he’s good.”
Dustin beams. “Awesome.”
You hesitate. Then, before you can stop yourself:
“Actually… I was thinking I could come with you guys this time.”
The room goes still.
Robin lowers her spoon. Eddie looks up. Even the sink seems to hush.
Steve’s voice breaks the quiet.
“No.”
You turn, incredulous. “Excuse me?”
“No way,” he says, pushing off the fridge, crossing the kitchen with that particular brand of determined worry you’ve come to recognize. “You’re not going.”
You blink at him like, Seriously?
He raises his brows like, Try me.
You sigh, turning off the water. “I wouldn’t be going in. Just close enough to help. You know, in case someone ends up bleeding to death again?” You shoot him a pointed look.
He ignores it, jaw working like he’s gearing up to argue again. But Dustin cuts in.
“Wait, that’s actually kind of genius,” he mutters thoughtfully. “You could be our medic. Like—Eddie, dude, she could be like our cleric!”
You frown. “Our what now?”
“D&D thing,” Eddie smirks. “Healing spells. Keeps the rest of us idiots alive.”
You laugh softly. “Sure. Okay. Cleric.”
But Steve isn’t laughing.
“Wait, just—hang on,” he steps forward, catching your wrist. “Can I talk to you for a second?”
…
The hallway is narrow and dim, lit only by the slant of light spilling in from the kitchen.
You lean against the wall, arms crossed, watching him pace three slow steps before stopping, running both hands through his hair.
He doesn’t look at you. Doesn’t speak.
You wait.
Finally, quietly: “You can’t come with us.”
You narrow your eyes. “You’re not the boss of me.”
“I mean it.” His voice is low. Firm. But it’s not angry. Not that sharp, flinty tone you remember from high school, when he used to wield confidence like armor. No, this is something else.
Fear.
You tilt your head, voice softening. “Steve…”
He exhales through his nose, more of a tremor than a breath. “You heard what it’s like down there. You saw what happened last time.”
“I did. That’s why I’ve decided to go.”
His eyes snap to yours, incredulous. “And you didn’t think to talk to me about it before?”
“Why? So you could freak out and tell me no?”
“I’m not—” He cuts himself off, jaw flexing. “I just can’t ask you to risk that. It’s not fair.”
“You’re not asking,” you say quietly. “I’m offering.”
For a moment, neither of you moves. He stares at you like he’s searching for something—some argument, some loophole that’ll make you stay here while he walks back into hell. Like if he keep fighting back, maybe he won’t have to admit what this really is.
But when he speaks, his voice isn’t tense anymore. It just trembles.
“I can’t—I can’t lose you in there. You get that? I can’t. I just…” His eyes flicker away, toward the shadowed doorway behind you. He swallows hard.
“...I just got you.”
The quiet stretches. You gaze at him, heart heavy.
His shoulders are tense when you reach for his hand. His fingers twitch in yours, like he’s ready to pull away—but he doesn’t. He never does.
“Steve,” you start gently. “I know you’re scared. I am too. But I can’t just sit here and wait while you...” you take a breath, squeezing his hand. “If there’s a chance I can help, I’m taking it.”
He looks down at your joined hands, your fingers laced tight. His thumb drags slow, absent circles against your skin—once, twice, like he’s trying to memorize the feel of it. The fight drains out of him with a sigh that sounds too big for his chest.
He steps forward wordlessly, and pulls you into his arms. His chin drops to the top of your head. You press your cheek to his chest, feeling the wild rhythm of his heart start to slow.
“Fine,” he murmurs. “But you’re staying up here. Radio only. And you’re not going anywhere near the gate, you hear me?”
You smile into his shirt. “Deal.”
…
It’s almost 3 p.m. when he stirs.
The sunlight’s lazy this time of day, all thick and golden, caught in the slow spin of dust motes above the coffee table. The air smells like coffee and the lavender candle you lit this morning. You’re curled sideways on the couch, a book open but long forgotten on your chest.
“Jesus,” comes a voice beside you, rough with sleep. “How long was I out?”
You smile, already watching. “Couple hours.”
He squints at the light. “You let me nap that long?”
“You needed it.”
Steve rolls up from where he was buried in the couch, a soft pillow line stamped across his cheek. His hair’s flattened on one side and sticking up in the back. You reach out and comb your fingers through the mess. It fluffs up worse for it, but he sighs and leans into your hand anyway.
He trades the throw pillow for your stomach, draping a heavy arm across your waist. You rest your palm on his shoulder, thumb tracing the ridge of his collarbone.
The house hums around you: the low buzz of the fridge, the steady tick of the clock, the soft creak of settling wood. It’s a silence that no longer feels hollow.
You let it breathe.
It’s been three weeks.
Three weeks since you stood on the other side of a collapsing gate, heart in your throat, waiting for their silhouettes to break through the mist.
Three weeks since the air finally stilled, the ground stopped shaking, and the last portal sealed itself shut behind Eddie, behind Robin, behind all of them.
Three weeks since you checked every pulse, cleaned every wound, counted every head, and realized, miraculously, that no one was missing.
That everyone made it out. Alive. Together.
Three weeks since Steve stumbled out of the wreckage and into your arms and didn’t let go.
The bruises have faded since then. The stitches dissolved. The nightmares are fewer now, further between.
And Steve hasn’t left. Not once.
You're not sure when it stopped being temporary. When duffel bags became dresser drawers, when his shaving cream started living on your bathroom counter, next to the ceramic dish that holds your rings. When the dent in your couch, the dip in your pillow, stopped feeling like borrowed space and started feeling like home.
He still has his edges, the instinct to fix, to shield, to throw himself in front of the next disaster before it happens. But you’ve learned how to slow him down. To be the hand that pulls him back before he burns himself out.
And he’s learning to let you.
You’re halfway lost in that thought when he pokes your side.
“Hey,” he murmurs. “You okay?”
You hum. “Just thinking.”
“Uh oh,” he teases, voice still scratchy with sleep.
You smile, ruffling his hair. He groans and nips playfully at your stomach. When your laughter settles, you say it, quietly:
“I was just… thinking about what you said.”
He stills, blinking up at you. “Yeah? What’d I say now?”
“At the gate.”
That’s all you have to say. You both remember.
The roar, the smoke, the sting of blood and dirt. The ground giving out beneath you when he finally made it out—only to tell you he had to go back. One last time. To help the others out. To step into the jaws of a place that wanted to claim him for good.
I know! I know! Just—I need to tell you something. No, I know, just listen—
You remember the chaos closing in, the sky fractured by fire and screaming metal, and his hands—steady, impossibly steady—as he caught your face. His voice cracking on the words:
I love you. I need you to know that, okay? I love you.
You stare at the book laying on your chest, swallowing hard. “I never said it back.”
Steve looks at you for a long moment.
Then, softly: “Yeah, you did.”
“When?”
He smiles, tracing a quiet pattern along your waist.
“Not out loud. But you did.”
You think back.
To the tremor in your hands as you let his fingers slip away. The hitch in your breath when the walkie crackled with his voice. To how tightly you held on when he staggered out with the others, bruised and shaking and breathing, and realized you could finally breathe too.
Every heartbeat since has felt like a promise.
Maybe words would’ve failed then. Maybe he heard it in all the ways you refused to let go.
Your fingers find his jaw.
“Still,” you whisper. “I want to say it now.”
He tilts his head, waiting.
And you do.
Softly, firmly, the words falling easy like they’d been waiting inside you all along.
And when he says it back, you feel it in your chest long before you hear it.
…
The house is still too small. The front door still sticks when it rains. The couch still carries the faint stain from that first night.
But it’s home.
More than it ever was. More than it ever could’ve been without him.
The proof is everywhere: his Ray-Bans next to your keys, a battered boombox on your plant windowsill, the Polaroid Robin took where he’s smiling at you instead of the camera.
Some nights still weigh heavy on him. When even rest won’t stay kind.
But on those nights, he finds you. He always will.
And somewhere between the grocery runs and movie marathons, between loud songs in the kitchen and quiet kisses before bed, it stopped feeling like borrowed time.
It’s just time, now.
Yours.
Together.
…
Robin once told you that you get off on fixing people.
She meant hearts. You meant bones.
Maybe she was right.
But maybe that’s not such a bad thing.
You've named it something else now, anyway.
…
epilogue
You stretch, set the book aside, and head for the kitchen.
You’ve got prep to do for night.
Steve moves in behind you, hair still rumpled, sleeves pushed to his elbows. He leans his hip against the counter, flipping through the Player’s Handbook Dustin left last week, brow furrowed like he’s cramming for a test.
“I swear,” he mutters, squinting, “you need a math degree to play this game.”
You laugh, laying a neat row of apple slices beside a bowl of pretzel sticks and M&Ms—fuel for the chaos to come. “You’ll live.”
“Not if Eddie's dragon eats me.”
“Well, maybe you should listen to your cleric tonight, then.”
He grins, stealing a slice from the tray, then slides closer until he’s flush against you. His hips trap you against the counter, chest warm against your back. He leans into the crook of your neck, lips grazing your ear.
“You know it's kinda hot when you boss me around, right?”
Before you can roll your eyes, he catches you by the hips and spins you around, grin breaking wide and easy. You love how it softens his face, how it creases the corners of his eyes.
Soon, the party will be here—arms full of sodas, dice clattering in boxes, voices overlapping in familiar chaos. The house will fill with laughter, with the easy rhythm of shared lives.
But for now, it’s just him.
Rumpled hair. Soft smile. Apple-sweet kisses and the honey-gold hush of afternoon light.
And the sun keeps pouring in.
in which the loss of your mother causes a rift between you and your father, and with a little meddling from Morgan and Rossi, Spencer dedicates himself to keeping your head above water
margotober masterlist
who? spencer reid x hotchner!reader
category: flangst, hurt/comfort
content warnings: haley's death, funerals, reader is a tiny bit jealous of jack, med student!reader, grief!
word count: 4.52k
a/n: im so annoyed at my laptop because my freaking backspace key is STUCK do you understand how annoying that is i'm gonna have to do surgery on her because she needs to get me at least through the end of the semester
There was a singular part of him, so small that he couldn’t firmly grasp it, that wasn’t sure you were even here. He’d seen the rest of your family, the ones he’d always known and the ones he never would’ve met if not for these circumstances, but you were nowhere to be found.
Spencer looked for you at the funeral, assuming you’d be up front with your dad and Jack, but you were nowhere to be found. He thought he’d seen you once everyone cleared, waiting for your dad and brother to leave their roses on your mother’s casket, but it hadn’t looked like you. Unless you changed your hair since he last saw you, dyeing it a different shade during your time in witness protection.
He saw you now, though. The home that hosted your mother’s wake had a pond in the backyard, a bench overlooking the water. You were perched on top, not seated, but walking on the seat, holding your arms out for balance. Spencer watched you pace back and forth a few times before making his way down the stairs, slowly using his cane to help him get to the concrete patio, digging it into the grass for stability.
Despite his injured knee, his walk was quiet, watching the nighttime air as it flowed around you, the skirt of your black dress rustling in the wind. It had been you, watching your brother and father from a distance at the funeral. He recognized the dress now, the high neck, how it fell right above your knees. Your black heels dangled from your fingertips, probably having taken them off to help your balance on the bench. You spun on your heel, your skirt twirling hypnotically around you while you did, but you stumbled slightly when your eyes finally found him.
He probably shouldn’t be staring at you like this. At your mother’s funeral, he shouldn’t be admiring the way you looked in the moonlight, the cool blue of it illuminating your features so you looked ethereal from your place on the bench. He certainly shouldn’t admit to himself that it felt good to see you again, to hear his name from your lips, “Reid.”
The cool nighttime covered the bloodshot appearance of your eyes, but as you faced him, you sniffled, giving yourself away. He wondered if you came out here to cry in peace, and now he was disturbing you. For a moment, he considered leaving you be, but before long, he decided he didn’t want you to be alone right now. “It’s good to see you,” he told you, leaning his cane against the bench and walking in front of it, holding out a hand to help you down.
“Despite the circumstances, right?” You grumbled like it was something people had been telling you a lot today. Discussions about how it’s been too long and that they’re sorry it had to be like this.
Instead of agreeing, Spencer shook his head. “No, including the circumstances,” he corrected you, gripping your hand tightly when you dropped unceremoniously from your perch, once again leaving him with the height advantage. “I’m glad I got to see you, especially today,” he said, “I haven’t, until now.”
You nodded, sitting on the bench so you could pull your heels back on. “I’ve been hanging back with my grandpa. He’s pretty uh… pissed off at my dad right now, so I made a deal with Aunt Jess,” you explained. “I’ve got grandpa, she’s got dad and Jack,” you told him the details of your arrangement.
Spencer took a seat next to you, turning and resting an elbow on the back of the bench so he could get a better look at you. Who has you? He’d wanted to ask, wondering if you’d acknowledge your own grief or if you were too preoccupied with helping everyone else that you forgot to help yourself. You’d always been that way—a bit too magnanimous—it was why you’d make a great doctor someday. “It was a beautiful service,” he offered, searching his brain for normal things to tell someone who had just lost their mother.
Humming, you leaned back and looked at the stars, swallowing thickly while you waited for words to come back to you. “Right, and then we all just have to move on,” you said bitterly. “Continue on with our lives like business as usual,” the idea seemed like a foreign concept to you. He supposed it was, living in a world that your mom was no longer a part of.
He waited in silence for a moment, “And what about you?” He asked tentatively, “Are you gonna go back to school?” Part of him was nervous to hear your answer, wondering if you’d given up on your dream in the last several months. It was late autumn, and you’d needed to leave early in the semester, but there might be time for you to register for the spring.
“Probably not,” you answered a little too easily for his liking. “Med schools aren’t usually very forgiving when it comes to abrupt leaves of absence,” you tried to explain your decision, but it seemed to him like you were trying to weasel your way out with administrative excuses.
Spencer raised his eyebrows inquisitively, “I think you might have what they’d consider an extenuating circumstance.” In his experience, most people who hear the term WITSEC squirm in their seats before complying.
You were quiet in response, crossing your arms in front of your abdomen. He wondered if you were cold but knew you wouldn’t complain.
“Come on,” he nudged you gently. “We’ll get you a letter from your marshal, maybe one from Morgan,” he suggested, surely hearing from a U.S. marshal and the acting BAU unit chief would hold some weight, even in a medical school administrator’s office.
You looked over at him, eyes nearly glowing in the moonlight, “At the very least, they’ll feel so bad for me that they have to let me come back.”
Spencer nodded, “Exactly.”
Really, he wasn’t entirely sure if you were really considering it or just humoring him, but he’d remember. He’d call you on Monday and ask if you were going to call the office, maybe see if you needed help composing an email, but for a moment, his concern washed away because there was a smile on your face. Your shoulders shook slightly as you tried to choke down soft laughter.
Then your smile was gone as quickly as it appeared, you looked back at the house, remembering where you were—remembering why you were there. “I think Dave’s looking for you,” you said, your voice returning to the solemnity it’d had when he first approached.
Looking over his shoulder, Spencer saw Rossi looking over at the pond. Sure enough, Rossi nodded his head backwards, signaling to him that he needed to come back into the house. “Do you wanna come back with me?” Spencer offered to you, “Have you eaten anything?”
Without even thinking about it, you shook your head, “No thanks, I’m just gonna sit out here for a little while longer.”
He knew better than to try to convince you otherwise, so he got up, gathering his cane and making his way back to where the BAU was starting to gather. Once he was within earshot, Rossi asked if that had been you out there. “Yeah, she was alone, so I thought I’d check in,” Spencer said, sighing once he reached the top of the stairs.
Rossi looked shocked, “She talked to you?” His tone was incredulous in a way that Spencer found a tad dramatic.
Shrugging, Spencer looked back at you, heels once again in your hand, pacing along the seat of the bench. “She always talks to me,” he said as if that were an explanation enough. The two of you weren’t best friends, but you called occasionally. You always stopped by his desk when you were visiting Quantico.
But Dave still looked shocked, shaking his head in disbelief, “Hotch said she hasn’t talked since…” His voice trailed off, his profiler’s mind beginning to draw the same connection as Spencer’s. “Well, it’s good that she talked to you,” he concluded.
Given the notion that you weren’t on speaking terms with your father, Spencer wanted to return to you, wanted to hear your voice again before you went back to your dad’s apartment and went quiet again, but there was a case. He had to go, had to leave you behind.
Your name wasn’t mentioned again until the jet was in the air. As soon as Derek had finished telling the team that even though their thoughts were with Hotch, they still needed to focus on the case, Rossi pulled Spencer aside, crossing in front of JJ and bringing him back to the galley. “I want you to ignore everything Morgan just said to you,” Dave instructed him easily.
Derek slipped past the curtain that separated the galley from the rest of the jet, crossing his arms in front of his chest, ever authoritative.
“What are you talking about?” Spencer asked, tapping the hand that held his cane against his thigh nervously, wondering if he had somehow done something wrong. “You don’t want me to work this case?”
The acting unit chief shook his head, “No, kid. We have a different job for you.” Leaning casually against the counter, Derek looked between Dave and him, “Rossi told me you talked with Hotch’s daughter before we left. He also told me that’s the first time she’s really talked to someone since Haley’s death.”
Spencer nodded apprehensively, resting most of his weight on his good leg, “Yeah, we just talked about school, really. I asked if she was planning on going back.” He was still confused, but wanted to help you, no matter what it took. “What do I need to do?”
“Text her when we land, tell her the case is an open and shut, and we were only called in because the locals were looking bad,” Rossi ordered him. His tone was serious, as if this were life or death. “Tell her she can call you whenever she needs someone to talk to, even if she doesn’t think it’s a big deal or she doesn’t think it’s important, tell her to call you.”
Doubtful that this plan was going to work, Spencer opened his mouth to question it, but Derek spoke before he could. “Listen, she won’t talk to anyone else. Hotch said she hadn’t spoken a word to him, and she only talks to Jack when he isn’t around,” Derek explained. “You’ll always be with someone, working the case like you normally would, but if your phone rings, she has to take priority.”
Quickly, it clicked in his head, the fact that these two were running around trying to connect the two of you together. It was something he’d wanted to ask at the wake, when you were talking about being with your grandfather. Everyone else had different priorities. Your dad was invested in Jack, your aunt was invested in your dad, and the rest of the BAU had up and left the moment they got called away. Someone needed to prioritize you, and for better or for worse, you’d decided to let Spencer in. He nodded in agreement, “Yeah, I’ve got her.”
Rossi glared at Spencer, looking at him as if I’ve got her wasn’t sufficient enough for the old man. “You’d better,” Dave spoke it like a threat, and if there was ever a moment Spencer would forget he’s known you for your entire life, it certainly wouldn’t be now.
He followed through on his promise, sending you a text once the plane landed. There was plenty of time to type it out while Rossi fought with the GPS.
Spencer Reid: Hey, just wanted to reach out. We landed in Nashville, and the case seems to be an open and shut. If you wanted to text or call, I’ll be around to answer. For anything.
His phone beeped when he pressed send, rereading the message repeatedly to look for typographical errors before JJ nudged him with her elbow. “What are you looking at?”
Flipping the phone screen side down, he leaned back in his seat, “Nothing, just checking for messages.”
She didn’t believe him, but she also didn’t push for more information, humming while she turned back to her phone. He didn’t concern himself with his phone again until he was in the precinct, and it went off. As previously discussed, he peeled away from the group, checking his phone to see a text from you.
You: open and shut case but they called u in?
Beside himself, he smiled at your texting lingo, typing a quick message back.
Spencer Reid: The lead detective is worried about press optics; they’re trying to save face.
You didn’t respond to him immediately, but he hoped that it was a good thing. He hoped it just meant you didn’t need someone to lean on at this exact moment, not that you wouldn’t reach out when you did need him.
He returned to the team, Rossi giving him an appraising look, “All good?”
Spencer’s head bobbed in confirmation, “She’s alright.” You’d texted him back at least, and he’d take his wins even in small doses.
In fact, you were so alright that he didn’t hear from you again until he was in his hotel room for the night. Everyone was tired and a little irritable, so Morgan had everyone go to get some rest and get back to the case in the morning.
He’d just gotten out of the shower when his phone started to ring, the chime he’d specially assigned to you ringing through the thin walls of the hotel when he scrambled to answer it. “Hey,” he greeted you immediately, making sure he didn’t miss your call—lest he incur the fury of David Rossi. You didn’t respond, so he checked his phone to make sure he hadn’t declined it on accident. “Hello?” He tried again, this time more unsure.
“Hi,” you greeted softly, sniffling into the phone a bit. “I’m sorry to call so late, it’s just… You said I could call, and I was thinking, so I was wondering if you were around, and I figured I’d just… call.”
Spencer nodded in understanding, even though you couldn’t see him. “It’s okay, you can always call me,” he repeated his offer that he’d texted you. Your rambling had caught him off guard, so endearing that it brought a smile to his face. “How are you doing?” His question was gentle, not wanting to put any pressure on you to talk about things you weren’t ready to speak aloud.
You hummed, “I’m tired,” you whispered through the phone. “I drove up to my apartment today,” you told him. “Everything’s covered in a layer of dust,” he could imagine you talking right now, crinkling your nose in disgust. “So, I’ve been cleaning. My bedding is still in the wash.”
“You drove back to Baltimore?” He asked, surprised that you’d leave so soon, wondering if something had driven you away or if you were just ready for something different.
Your end of the call was quiet; this time, he wondered if the call had dropped. You took a moment before responding, “Yeah. Jack wanted to watch home videos before bed, and it turns out it was too much for me.”
He paused for a moment, not entirely sure how to respond. “Were they hard to watch?”
“It wasn’t so much about seeing her as it was about the fact that it was a reminder that I don’t have any to remember her by,” you replied, misery creeping into your tone. “They were just so young when I was born. My dad was in school, and my mom was all I had all day; they didn’t really make any home videos.” You took a deep, shuddering breath, “I’m sorry. I’ve never talked to anyone about this before.”
Spencer sat down on the ledge of the hotel bed. “You can talk to me about anything.”
There was that familiar silence, but this time he just waited for you to speak again, knowing you needed time. “Will you tell me about him?”
“About whom?” Spencer asked, setting the hotel alarm clock while keeping the phone secure to his ear.
“George Foyet,” you whispered, the name sending goosebumps along his skin. “It’s just, I know my mom’s marshal told her everything about him for safety reasons, but mine didn’t tell me anything about him because he thought he was protecting me.” You rambled again, “I know it’s probably like… something you’re not supposed to talk about, but this is someone who wouldn’t have hesitated to kill me or my brother.” All of your words were painful reminders. He knew, of course, he knew, but he couldn’t. “He tried to kill my dad, and he… he killed my mom.”
You were fully crying now, full heaving sobs that made Spencer’s chest ache. It hurt even more to answer you, “I can’t.” He bowed his head in shame, “I will, eventually, but I can’t—not now.” Not while you were alone in your apartment that he’d never seen, “I’ll come see you when we get back.” This was a promise, even if he never said the word specifically: “It’s a long story, honey, and it’s not something you should be by yourself for.”
The pet name had slipped from his tongue easily, maybe too easily, but he hoped you hadn’t heard it. Maybe one of your sobs had covered it up, maybe you’d never have to mention it again. “Okay,” you mumbled sadly, shuffling where he assumed you were now lying on your couch.
“I’m sorry,” he told you, lying back on the hotel pillows, the papery pillowcases rustling through the receiver.
You hummed on the other end of the call, but through your tears, it sounded more like a whimper. “’s okay, Spence,” you mumbled his nickname sleepily, and he had to pretend he didn’t love hearing it from you. After a beat of silence, you murmured again, “Can you do me a favor?”
He looked up at the ceiling, nothing but the bedside lamp illuminating the hotel room, “Name it.”
“Don’t hang up,” you told him, fear creeping into your voice.
It’s been a long time since you slept in your apartment alone, and if you just wanted someone to sit on the phone with you, then he’d be more than happy to. “I’m not going anywhere,” he assured you, resting back on the bed. He listened to you, hearing the moment your breathing evened out, and you had fallen asleep. Once you were out, he felt alright doing the same, turning out the lamp and finally closing his eyes.
The rest of his time in Nashville, the two of you repeated the same routine, texting through the day and calling at night. His heart broke for you every night, listening to you cry yourself to sleep, sometimes because you missed your mother, sometimes because you were having conflicting feelings about your father.
When he got back to his apartment in the district, the first thing he did was call you. You’d finally gone to the administration at your school and put in an appeal, members of the team were writing letters to be presented, and last night Spencer helped you pick an outfit to wear to the committee hearing. Really, he’d hummed and nodded while you chose an outfit, pretending he knew exactly what you were talking about while you went through your closet.
“Hey,” You greeted him, something clearly bothering you even as you tried to front with a sunny demeanor. “How was the flight back?”
He hummed, setting his bag down on the kitchen table so he could unpack it. “It wasn’t so bad,” he said. The flight was on the quicker side. “How are you doing?”
It was always the first question he asked you, just a courteous check-in for your phone calls, but it always seemed to catch you off guard, like it was the first time you’d really thought about it that day. “I talked to my dad,” you told him. “He asked if I’d come down to see him and Jack for dinner tomorrow,” you continued.
“Are you gonna go?” He asked, leaning against the table and giving you his full attention.
You sighed, “I don’t know.” He heard a rustling on the other end of the call, a grocery bag maybe, “I haven’t seen Jack since the funeral, so I should probably go.”
Spencer nodded, thinking about what to say, “But then you’d have to see your dad.” It was something he’d gotten over easily, referring to him as your dad instead of Hotch. To him, they were entirely different people. Who he was as a father was entirely different than who he was as a boss.
“Right,” you confirmed. “I’m just… Can I ask you something?”
Freezing, Spencer hesitated for a moment before answering, “What is it?” He was nervous, knowing your last question had been if he’d tell you about the man who murdered your mother.
“If…” you paused, “If he’d done anything differently…?” Your voice trailed off again, unable to get the question out.
Solemnly, Spencer shook his head, “It wouldn’t have saved her.”
You seemed to struggle with this answer, looking for him to say something different, something to confirm your suspicions about your mother’s death, “What about the deal?”
He sat in one of his kitchen chairs, “Well… I don’t want to assume anything.”
“I’m asking you to,” you prodded, desperate for an answer.
Swallowing thickly, Spencer answered your question, “I think it still would’ve driven a wedge between your parents. I’m not sure Foyet had the control to make that deal twice, and the fact that your dad didn’t gave your mom a little more time.”
You were silent, absorbing the reply before speaking again, “Time with Jack.” Your response was painful, but true. You’d been placed somewhere else with your marshal, away from your family, away from everyone and everything you knew. The last day you’d seen your mother was in the hospital after your dad had been attacked. “I didn’t get anything else,” you said mournfully.
“I’m sorry,” Spencer whispered, tracing the woodgrain of the table with his fingertips.
You sniffled, “It’s okay. It’s just… I’m just gonna go to bed, Spence,” you said, pushing him away when he wanted nothing more than to help you.
“Honey,” he tried to say, but his phone beeped, and you’d already hung up the phone.
He set the phone down, making sure his ringer was all the way up in case you decided to call him back. Sitting on his couch, he stared at the phone, still and silent, while he practically willed it to ring. To chirp with a text message from you. He’d take anything at this point.
Spencer worried you weren’t going to bed; it was only seven, and you’d been going to sleep later and later these days. He worried you were lying in your bed, grief-stricken and alone, skipping dinner and falling asleep hungry because you couldn’t feel anything except for your loss.
Eventually, it became too much for him, grabbing his rarely used car keys from the hook and leaving his apartment behind. He knew your address from years of hearing it tossed around the office, and he drove to Baltimore, not even sure you’d open the door for him.
You lived in a nice apartment complex, and he was able to sneak in behind someone, thanking them when they held the door open for him. He made his way up to the fourth floor, finding your door and knocking on it apprehensively.
There was a groan on the other side of the door, like you’d rather do anything other than get up and open the door for a stranger. You must not have peeked through the door to see who it was, because when you opened the door to display Spencer, your jaw dropped. “What, uh, what are you doing here?”
“I wanted to see you,” he admitted. “I wanted to make sure you were alright,” he added, sighing in relief when you let him in.
You were still looking at him in awe, “Thank you.” Your eyes filled with tears, like the sight of a friendly face was more than welcome to you. Surprising him, you walked to him, putting your arms around him and resting your face on his chest. “Thank you,” you repeated tearfully.
Spencer reciprocated the hug, pulling you tightly against his chest while you cried. He ushered you over to your couch, getting you to sit down, but neither of you wanted to let go, and you practically fell on top of him. His chest burned with a mix of happiness and sympathy. He was so glad to finally be with you, after so long of just talking on the phone, but, god, you were in so much pain. “It’s okay,” he consoled you, “I’ve got you.”
Nodding into his shirt, you lifted your head and looked at him. He was absentmindedly dragging his cold fingertips over your hairline. “Spence?” You asked him after a while, interrupting the gentle peace that had filled your apartment.
“Yeah?” He responded, looking down at you, meeting your curious eyes. He was prepared for you to ask something about your mother again, seeking details about her death.
The corner of your mouth quirked up in amusement before you asked, “Have you always had a crush on me?”
His breathing hitched as your question took him by surprise. “I’m not– I don’t– what?” He stammered, his ministrations faltering at your temple.
You smiled now, an impish grin, while you nodded, “Yeah… yeah, you do.”
Admittedly, he did find himself very fond of you, but even so, he wanted to wait to talk to you about it. There were other things on your mind, other people you needed to worry about. “Okay,” he acquiesced, “Who wouldn’t?”
“You’re sweet,” you murmured, going back to rest your head on his chest. It was natural, like this wasn’t the first time you’d found yourselves together like this. “We can talk about it, you know,” you whispered, slightly less sure of yourself. “Because it’s… I do too, and you’ve been so good to me, but I’m just… I can’t right now.”
He nodded in understanding, “That’s okay.” His voice was a low rumble, gentle in a way that was now reserved for you, “Take your time. I’m not going anywhere.”
“I’m scared,” you whispered. “Of falling in love with you,” you admitted. “I’m scared of starting something with you and having it turn out like my parents,” you told him.
Spencer shushed you gently, pressing a small, tentative kiss to the crown of your head before you melted into him. “We’ll talk about it,” he assured you. “Just let yourself rest for now, okay? There’s plenty of time.”
Post-prison!Spencer remembers you perfectly from your BAU internship over a decade ago. The timid way you carried yourself, the way he wanted to be noticed by you and never was. It stung. Now you’re different; once reserved, now freer and more open. He tries to play it off like it doesn’t matter, but his distance hides the truth: he’s grown colder, convinced that who he is, exactly as he is, isn’t worth knowing now.
(fem!reader, FBI-adjacent!reader, p in v, car sex, naughty daydreams, yearning, slow burn, dominant!Spencer, I wrote too much)
Spencer didn’t like the archive room. It smelled too much like dry rot and old toner, and it reminded him too much of solitary and forgotten things.
Unfortunately, and a bit ridiculously, Penelope had flagged a metadata discrepancy, something about a sealed file from ‘97 that had been partially digitized and corrupted mid-upload. She’d said, “You’ve got the longest arms, and I already bribed Morgan to do something else. Don’t make me go down my list. Go grab the hard copy from Records while I ping the contractor.”
Off he went without fuss. His very useful, very important long arms swayed the whole way there.
The fluorescent lights sputtered awake, flickering through a few dying pulses. Spencer blinked at the sudden glare before his vision settled. The room looked the same as always; uncomfortably narrow with dusty surfaces, but something had already disrupted the order.
A single file waited on the counter near the back by the microfilm readers, the tab aligned just so, like whoever left it had been particular, but in a hurry. One of the pages had slipped slightly out of its clip.
The way it was just barely off bugged him, but he didn’t reach for it.
He just went to the third filing cabinet, the one with the peeling label. The drawer groaned when he pulled it open. Folders leaned sideways in a tilt, tabbed in dates and brittle colors. His fingers stopped just short of the one he’d come for.
Maybe he should straighten that page.
His molars met with a faint clack, tension creeping down his neck as he moved toward the counter, like a tic he didn’t want to have.
He reached for the page, meaning only to slide it back into place, but before his fingers even made contact, he saw it.
A slant in the margin. A loop on a capital F, too slim, and the cross of a t that cut high through the stem. You used to write like that. Upside-down in the corners of briefing packets, reading them from across the table like it didn’t matter that the text was backwards. Spencer used to tilt his head trying to catch the words, and you’d smile softly and never stop writing.
You were there…in Quantico, at the BAU?
He hadn’t seen you, and that couldn’t have been right. He would’ve noticed, of course he would’ve. He noticed everything.
The handwriting, fine. It was distinctive, but not entirely unique. The looped F could’ve been anyone’s, and plenty of people cross their t’s high. Even writing in the margins upside-down, that wasn’t unheard of. Odd, sure, but not impossible. Around 2% of the population exhibited nonstandard spatial habits.
It didn’t mean anything, it didn’t have to be you. Even if he wanted it to be.
…Unless Penelope had meant something by what she said earlier and just last week. An offhand comment about the new contractor handling the sealed juvenile cleanup. Spencer hadn’t asked her to clarify. He’d just nodded. It hadn’t mattered then.
That didn’t mean anything either. He was spiraling, and for no good reason.
Penelope talked constantly. Half of what she said was nonsense or nicknames, the other half borderline illegal, so he’d long ago learned not to take every word to heart. ‘Contractor,’ ‘juvenile cleanup,’it could’ve meant anything. Anyone.
He doubted she even remembered you. Too much time had passed, and you hadn’t opened up to just anyone. Only with people who gave you the time to. Penelope had started to, back then. He remembered she had made you laugh once and it was a real, belly laugh, the kind that made your whole posture change and face light up.
Spencer had wanted to be the one to do that.
He’d almost managed it, until you vanished like most interns eventually did.
He was being ridiculous. Making ghosts out of ink and paper. It wasn’t your handwriting. It couldn’t be. Even if it was, so what?
He wasn’t that fawning boy anymore.
The one who tried to look busy when you walked in, but kept glancing up anyway. Who spoke too quickly when you addressed him, then spent the rest of the day thinking about it. The one who lingered by the coffee machine longer than necessary, just in case you passed by.
He stopped trying to be seen after realizing no one really looked. Not unless he was bleeding or brilliant.
Now, he kept his distance. Made eye contact when necessary, stayed quiet when it wasn’t. No more reaching. No more hoping someone might reach back.
He plucked Penelope’s file from the cabinet like it didn’t matter, like he hadn’t just wasted ten minutes thinking about the past. His grip left a bend in the tab.
No hesitation and absolutely no second glance at the page you might’ve touched. Just right out the door, like it hadn’t rattled something tender in his chest. That stupid mushy place that never hardened right.
He walked out faster than he needed to; his footsteps sounded too loud in the near silent hallway. He adjusted his pace and straightened his shoulders.
Then stopped.
You were coming down the hall, not even ten paces ahead, backlit by the fluorescents, and the sight hit him hard enough to hurt. He rubbed the heel of his palm on his chest as he blinked rapidly. Walking toward him, not actually to him, of course, with something tucked under your arm and your gaze low, reading as you moved. With that exact same walk, the same tilt in your step.
His pulse spiked so suddenly it made him dizzy. What were the odds? No, he thought, don’t calculate them. Don’t give the moment logic.
You looked up just before passing him, probably sensing the shape of something wrong in your path.
For a moment your face didn’t know him, and that stung more than it should have. Then your eyes moved, flicked across his cheeks, his hair, his mouth, and recognition lit across your features like dawn.
“Spencer?” You said it like you didn’t mean to say it out loud just yet, like it slipped out before you could think better of it.
He blinked, mouth parting, and then hoarsely managed, “Hi.”
You didn’t smile, something in his voice must’ve caught you off guard. He didn’t blame you. It sounded different even to him these days.
“Hi,” You said back evenly, and there was something unreadable in it. “It’s been a long time.”
“It has,” He said, and didn’t say how long.
What would be the point? You’d either counted too, or you hadn’t thought of him at all.
You nodded slowly as if you were going to leave it at that. Let the weight of his words settle and drift past, because Spencer wasn’t exactly making conversation easy and he knew it.
Then you paused and frowned slightly as you canted your head.
“Can I ask how you’ve been?” You said carefully, almost reluctant.
He looked at you, then away, something closing off behind his eyes.
“I’ve had better decades.”
His eyes found the framed print across the hall, something abstract with harsh lines and grayscale geometry. Nothing worth looking at, which made it perfect. He focused on the soulless details, not on your pouting mouth or the faint crease near your eye he didn’t remember.
You nodded again, picking up on a signal he hadn’t meant to send. He wasn’t trying to push you away. It just came out that way. If you said it was good to see him, he might actually flinch. He didn’t want a lie, even a kind one. Even if he was the one making himself hard to read.
You moved like you were about to leave with a goodbye on your lips, and he should’ve let you, but the words slipped past his walls anyways, “How have you been?”
You blinked like you hadn’t expected him to care or ask, or maybe you just hadn’t prepared for what you’d say.
“I…I’ve been--” You paused, eyes flicking to his face again. “Good. Busy as a beaver, but that’s good too, I guess.”
Still with the idioms. He remembered the morning you told Morgan not to cry over “spoiled milk,” and he’d corrected you with a laugh. You’d said it right the next day. Spencer had smiled at his desk like a lunatic. You probably forgot, but he certainly didn’t.
The memory warmed something he didn’t want warmed. His mouth twitched, then tightened, and he focused on his breath, on the file label still clutched in his hand, on not feeling it.
The tension in his hand must’ve snagged your attention, your eyes tracked the worn tab between his fingers.
“Wait, is that one of the botched sealed cases? Penelope just told me about a few that hadn’t finished uploading.” You exhaled, like you’d been on that trail too long. “I’ve been trying to match the physicals.”
He shrugged, handing it over without ceremony, but his traitorous fingers didn’t let go right away. They skimmed yours, and it lit his nerves like a flare and instant heat rocketed down his spine.
He didn’t look at you when he let go. Just flatly said, “Penelope didn’t say it was…you.” When your eyebrow raised, he signed as he added, “She should’ve.”
“And why’s that?”
There was no bite in your words, but no tentativeness either. Just unfiltered and simple curiosity, and it disarmed him so thoroughly he couldn’t look anywhere else. His eyes dropped to your mouth and stuck there. He didn’t want to stare, but he just…couldn’t stop. Just waiting to see what else might come out.
The moment you wet your lips, he croaked out, “It would’ve made this easier.”
“Easier how?” You mused.
“Forget it. Doesn’t matter.” He dismissed, just as someone rounded the far corner.
A junior agent with a takeaway cup and a distracted look, clearly trying to slip past without getting involved. You shifted half a step to make room, and so did Spencer, instinctively. His shoulder brushed yours as he moved in front of you. The agent barely glanced up as he passed, gone in seconds, but Spencer didn’t step back.
He just stared…at you, finally.
Your face, that devastatingly sweet face. He used to steal glances, convinced you never noticed. Once, in a dream, you'd let him trace every feature with his fingertips, like a precaution against some future where his sight might fail him.
His hand moved purposefully from your cheekbone first, then chin, then the softness beneath your mouth. You didn’t stop him, just looked at him like you already knew and you’d been waiting.
Your lips parted. He slid his thumb inside, your tongue pressed lightly to the pad of his finger.
He swallowed hard, but the damage was done. His abdomen tightened, a reflex he couldn’t outthink, and he loosed a ragged breath. Shame rushed in behind the thought like floodwater. His jaw clenched as he stepped back.
You traded your weight from the left foot to the right, clearing your throat.
“I used to be easier to talk to, huh?”
Spencer forced his eyes up, only to catch your first smile at him, and, of course, it was lopsided and a little sad. It looked the same and yet completely different. It had grown up without him.
“No,” He said honestly. “I think I got harder to talk to.”
He didn’t think he could’ve smiled anyway, but if he had, it would’ve been sadder than yours.
His, he understood. Yours, he didn’t.
You both hadn’t talked much back then. Well, not often and not deeply. A few scattered conversations over lunch breaks or case files, mostly you asking questions and him rambling through the answers until he’d catch himself and apologize.
Once, you’d asked him if he thought criminals were ever actually remorseful, and he’d talked for eleven straight minutes while you ate pretzels out of a vending machine bag. When he stopped to breathe, you’d just said, “Thank you for taking the time to explain all that for me. I mean it,” like he hadn’t just dominated the whole conversation and overloaded you. He’d gone home warm for days.
So it just made sense you both wouldn’t really talk now, after all this time.
For all his degrees, he’d never quite figured you out the first time, so he doubted he'd do any better this time around.
“I don’t know,” You clasped your hands behind your back, then offered, “I’m still talking to you, aren’t I?”
The fact that it wasn’t flirty made Spencer's mouth dry out.
Flirting, he could’ve ducked or dodged or disbelieved...but sincerity had no handles. Nowhere to hold it and no way to deflect, so it just landed, and it landed violently.
“You are,” He almost left it there. “You’re…different. Not in a bad way.”
Spencer immediately wished he could rewind. He should’ve known better than to try sincerity with a mouth like his. ‘Different’ wasn’t the wrong word. Just empty without the rest of what he meant and hadn’t managed to say.
“You seem different too,” You said, voice mild and sure. “And not in a bad way.”
You shifted slightly, and the fabric of your skirt moved with you, brushing up just enough to expose the cap of one knee.
Spencer saw it and wished he hadn’t.
Years ago, you used to rub your palms there when you were nervous. He remembered it vividly: the way your hands would sweep over the smooth arc of your knees during briefings. Back then, it made him want to comfort you or perhaps just catch your eye and offer a smile, if he was brave enough that day.
Now, he wanted to watch that same hand lift the hem of your skirt slowly. He wanted to see the fabric pushed higher, inch by inch, and not stop until you were open under his stare.
Don’t go there, he thought. Don’t think about your thighs. Don’t think about his hands on them, or worse, his head between them, your fingers in his hair. Don’t think about the way you might whine if he--
He wiped a hand down his face roughly, like he could scrub the thought out.
“Well, that’s generous of you to say.”
He knew what arousal did to the brain: the flood of dopamine, the narrowed focus, the reckless firing of neurons, but science couldn’t explain why it was you. Spencer himself couldn’t explain it. You hadn’t looked at him like that before, you hadn’t really looked at him at all. Somehow it was all different now. He wanted more than a simple glance, meek smile, or the chance at a seat beside you in the briefing room.
He wanted to be wanted by you, by the once-timid girl now with a stronger voice and a straighter spine. The craving made his chest feel tight.
He tore through his chances without sympathy, which implied, foolishly, that there had been any.
You offered a small, closed-lipped smile and stepped aside. “I left a file in the archive room,” You said, gesturing toward the space he’d left only minutes ago.“I should go get it. It…it was nice seeing you again, Spencer.” The moment his brows drew together, you quickly added, “I mean it.”
He didn’t flinch like he thought he would've, but it was hard to imagine you meant it. With how distant he’d been, he wouldn’t have believed himself either.
It felt like you couldn’t wait to get away from him. He couldn’t blame you, but a new crack formed along his heart.
“Yeah, you too. Take care,” He muttered, but hoped you heard more in it than he meant to give away.
As you stepped past, your hand lifted, just lightly, to his wrist. A parting gesture to show you meant what you said.
His pulse jumped, but he kept his eyes forward.
He didn’t watch you go, but he heard the sound of your steps down the hall, as if you hadn’t stopped to break his ribs in the middle of it.
He adjusted the collar of his shirt as he stepped inside, fingers grazing the fabric like it might still be wrong. It was the third one he’d tried…wait, no, the fourth, and he’d ended up back at the first. A pale blue button-down, too nice for a place with sticky menus, but it was the one he didn’t hate the most.
The bar was dimly lit, only softened by amber sconces and laughter. Some kind of music blew through the space, a low-volume mix of late-90s indie rock, if he wasn’t mistaken. It was loud enough to make people lean in to be heard.
Someone jostled past with a drink and a lit cigarette, and Spencer’s body pulled in on itself just slightly.
He could’ve stayed home, should’ve stayed home, but you were there. He didn’t know what he expected from it, if anything, just that he wanted to be near you.
He spotted Penelope first, her hair was unmistakable even in a crowd, and JJ beside her, mid-laugh. They hadn't seen him yet.
You hadn’t noticed him yet.
And for a second, it felt like nothing had changed. As if time had folded in on itself and left him right where he started: unseen.
Then your whole face lit up with a kind of smile he didn’t remember you ever wearing.
It lit some damp, dark chamber in him. It wasn’t just how you looked, but how it felt, like being caught in a warm patch of sun.
Yet, it wasn’t for him.
Whatever Penelope had said, it made JJ laugh behind her hand and shake her head.
He wasn’t sure if he was ready to go over yet, but standing there like a lost coat rack felt worse. It made him feel obvious, like people could tell he didn’t know where to stand or who to be, or that he didn’t belong.
So he moved, cautious and crooked, shoulders too square and jaw too loose.
You were still smiling when he reached the edge of the table, hands tucked into his pockets, eyes drifting across the lineup of half-finished drinks. JJ had something golden with a salt rim, Penelope’s was pink and fizzy with too many garnishes, and yours was just water, a wedge of lemon sliding down the side. For some reason, that made his chest ease a little.
Penelope beamed as she said, “There he is! We were starting to worry you bailed.”
We, he thought. You? Did you worry he wasn’t going to show up?
“What do you want to drink?” Penelope asked, already flagging the server. “They have mocktails, and like, this really weird cucumber soda thing I think you’d secretly love. Or water, obviously. Or--”
He barely heard her after that because there was only one empty seat...right next to you. Statistically, it wasn’t that improbable. Emotionally, it felt like a cosmic dare.
He sat before he could think better of it.
“Sorry I’m late,” He muttered. “Water’s fine.”
The server came over with a polite nod, pen already poised.
“One water for the gentleman,” Penelope said brightly, like she was ordering champagne on his behalf.
Spencer gave the faintest incline of his head, a thanks he couldn’t quite get into words. His hands stayed on his thighs, resisting the urge to tug at his shirt hem, or to glance at you.
That was when he realized JJ was watching him.
He felt the weight of it like a pin between his shoulder blades. He pressed his tongue to the back of his teeth before he turned, meeting her eyes at last.
Her expression didn’t switch, not much, but her eyebrows raised the faintest degree. The smallest acknowledgement. She knew, and he knew she knew. He just wouldn’t say it, not even to himself.
He swallowed, unease crowded behind his sternum, and forced his gaze back down to the condensation already slipping down the side of his glass that had just been dropped off.
Penelope swirled the straw in her drink like it might jog her memory as she tried to push past the tension he knew was his fault. “Oh! You were saying something about how you ended up in records, right? Before Mr. Tall-and-Troubled walked in.” She said, eyes landing back on you.
“Actually, you didn’t really let her explain before you jumped in asking about hotties.” JJ's voice was mellow, faintly amused.
Penelope said with a wave, not looking the least bit sorry, “Okay, fine, I got curious, geez. But I was going to circle back.”
Spencer took a drink, though it didn’t help the heat crawling up his neck. He didn’t want to picture your job, your building, the people who saw you every day. He didn’t want to think about the way they might look at you, or worse, what they might imagine: your voice caught in your throat, your back arching if someone’s mouth touched the skin just above your waistband.
He had no right to that thought either, but it was his regardless, and it made him feel sick to think someone else might be chasing the same one.
His gaze lifted before he could stop it, scanning the bar in pieces. No men were looking, not at you and not at JJ or Penelope, but he kept checking anyway.
“In my defense,” You said graciously, glancing between them, “It’s hard to compete with that level of curiosity.” You adjusted the straw in your drink, then added, “I think I was saying that I did some state records work? Nothing glamorous. Then my mentor moved over to a DOJ preservation project and brought me in. Mostly forensic crosswalks, retention anomalies, that kind of thing.”
Penelope perked up almost instantly.
“Wait, so do you ever find, like, weird gaps? Stuff that got buried?” Her eyes widened. “Tell me someone’s hidden a whole second identity somewhere. I live for that.”
Spencer spoke before you could, “That kind of thing doesn’t really happen in federal records. Not in sealed holdings, at least. Everything’s cross-indexed.”
He turned slightly, spotting your small nod, then your eyes. There was a twinkle there, like you were in on something with him.
“But,” You added, voice easy and light, “I did flag a series of legacy files once that turned out to be tied to a contractor with two aliases. Nothing criminal, just sloppy merging, but I still think it’s sorta weird.”
Penelope gasped. “See? I knew you found buried treasure.”
JJ tilted her head, “I don’t know how you keep your focus with all that data. I’d go cross-eyed in a week.”
You gave a small scoff, shaking your head. “Says the profiler. You can track the inside of someone’s mind with nothing but a few interviews and case notes. That takes more focus than I’ll ever have.”
JJ reached over and gave your hand a squeeze, smiling in a way that was open and sincere. You returned it without hesitation, your mouth curving gently as your fingers curled back around hers.
A faint warmth sparked under his ribs, tangled with an ache he didn’t want to name, tightening before he could press it down.
Penelope lifted her glass, eyes darting around the table. “Okay, but where’s my compliment? ‘Cause I feel like my computer sorcery is going wickedly unappreciated here.”
Your smile went straight to Penelope, “Honestly, I don’t know anyone who makes the impossible look easier.”
A small part of him braced for you to turn next, to let that sweetness land on him. The thought itself made him flush with shame, and when it didn’t come, he swallowed hard, pretending he hadn’t expected it.
He turned toward the noise of the bar. Everywhere he looked, people leaned close, brushed lips, shared something private in the middle of the crowd. A cruel reminder of what belonged so easily to others, and never to him.
Out of the corner of Spencer’s vision, he saw Penelope’s eyes narrow playfully.
“You’ve hardly said two words since you sat down. Talk to us, long arms.”
He shifted in his seat, not quite looking at anyone. “I like listening to you guys talk.”
“Aw, see? He does love us. I knew it.” Penelope leaned toward JJ, grinning like she’d won something.
JJ gave a quiet laugh, tilting her head just slightly. “Of course he does.”
That was all it took for the two of them to slip into an easy back-and-forth, laced with years of shorthand. Spencer picked up pieces here and there until he noticed your attention settle on him instead.
He wondered if his collar looked wrong again, if his hair was sticking up at the back, if he was sitting too stiff, since he couldn’t relax into the chair at all.
You didn’t look away. “I picked up The Left Hand of Darkness a while back. It reminded me of you, probably because I remember you with Dune once.”
His head tipped in your direction after a beat, slower than it should’ve been. You, meanwhile, had already turned fully toward him, shoulders angled his way, showing that you were ready to listen to only him.
Running from you, at least inside himself, was getting harder to manage, less convincing every time he tried.
“What’d you think of it?”
You leaned into your palm, chewing at your lip, deciding how to put it.
He stared longer than he should’ve at your mouth, tongue dragging over his own lips before he even realized. He imagined lemon still fresh on your tongue from the wedge in your water, cut through with the wax-sweet of cherry, maybe strawberry, from the tint on your lips. The thought burned through him before he could shove it away.
He wanted to taste it for himself, he wanted to kiss you so, so badly.
As you spoke, he didn’t tear his eyes away from your mouth, “I thought it was going to be more…I don’t know, sci-fi? Spaceships, laser guns, but it was just these two people trying to understand each other.” You gave a sheepish smile. “I didn’t expect it to feel so slow. Or so sad.”
“Le Guin wasn’t interested in technology as much as she was in people.” He paused. “A lot of people miss that the science is just a container and not the point.”
You nodded earnestly, tapping your nails lightly against your jaw like you were thinking something through.
“Yeah,” You said, “I thought it was leading somewhere else. Like there was going to be some big reveal or twist or…something.” You laughed under your breath. “When it ended, I just sat there thinking, ‘Great, so I read the whole thing wrong.’”
The corner of his mouth pulled up just a bit, and he didn’t fight it that time.
“Have you ever read The Dispossessed?” He asked as he rearranged himself in his seat, pulling his legs from under the table so he could face more toward you.
To be casual and comfortable, he told himself. Just so he wasn’t half-twisted anymore. In the process, his knee knocked into yours, and the contact drew his attention away from what he was about to say next. He looked down for a second, cleared his throat as heat rushed up his neck.
“Sorry,” He muttered. “It’s still Le Guin, but a, uh - different tone. You might like it more.”
You opened your mouth like you were about to say something, and maybe you were, but before you could, the song changed and Penelope rejoiced across the table.
“Oh, my god! This song,” She said, waving toward the speakers like she couldn’t believe it had taken this long to hear something decent. “Spencer, this is the one that used to be on that awful diner jukebox in New Mexico, remember? The one with the green tile and the chairs that stuck to everything?”
One Headlight by The Wallflowers. He blinked and for a second, he could smell the place; the burnt coffee, fryer oil, the lemon cleaner they used on the booths.
She leaned across JJ, eyes bright. “You made us stop there three times in one week. All for that sad little peach pie.”
He blinked again, pulled back into the sound of her voice before he could register the loss of yours.
“It was good,” He said, then his gaze flicked to you, then back down to the damp napkin on the table. “The crust was actually laminated. You don’t see that in diners.”
Whatever you were about to say, it was gone.
“I remember you asking if they made it from scratch.” JJ said, half-smiling. “And didn’t the waitress say something sarcastic like, ‘We churn our own butter too’?”
The music just barely hid your laugh, and something in him eased at the sound of it. Enough to make him recline back in his chair. His arm shifted with him, draping along the back of yours without much thought.
A moment later, you leaned into the backrest. He saw the change but missed everything beneath it; how your hands clasped tightly in your lap and the breath you didn’t quite let out all at once.
Penelope gripped the edge of the table with a theatrical sigh. “Okay, well now I want pie, or fries, or something. I’m starving.” She looked around the table. “Is it weird to order food this late? I need something fried and shameful. Anyone else?”
JJ nodded without hesitation. “Fries. Always fries.”
You reached for your water for a sip, then set it down again. “Oh, no. Nothing for me.” Then, with an easy motion, you stood. “I’m actually gonna run to the bathroom. I’ll be back in a jiffy.”
Spencer didn’t even move, his arm stayed where it was; resting behind an empty chair.
He could still feel the slight warmth in the wood under his hand. His fingers moved without meaning to, drifting over the grain like he didn’t want to lose what little was left.
Penelope and JJ were debating between fries and nachos. He heard the word "sriracha" and the clatter of a menu being folded, but none of it landed.
Nothing was wrong, he told himself that over and over again. You’d said you’d be right back, but something about the way you’d left, so quickly after the ease between you two.
It burst a seam in whatever calm he'd managed to hold together.
His brain kept replaying it, like there was a cue he’d missed and couldn’t quite rewind to find. Or maybe there wasn’t anything to find, and that was the problem. He didn’t know what had happened, if anything.
Penelope asked the passing server if they had truffle oil, just to “put it out into the universe,” she said, and JJ laughed. Spencer sat there, trying to school his face into something neutral, something not inward and broken.
That familiar, ridiculous feeling of trying so hard not to mess something up and somehow doing so anyway.
“Spence,” JJ said, cutting clean through the commotion.
Her stare didn’t waver, not even when a stool scraped across the floor behind her and a drink tray wobbled past at her back. The look wasn’t particularly harsh, but it didn’t leave him anywhere to hide either.
He shifted, and met her eyes almost reluctantly.
“You gonna tell me what that was?” JJ nodded toward the empty seat. “Because it wasn’t nothing, so don’t try to say otherwise.”
His arm recoiled before he could think about it, as if the chair had gone hot under his skin.
“It was nothing,” He said quickly, fast enough to make it obvious it wasn’t.
“Then why do you look like someone drop-kicked your favorite first edition?” Penelope asked, almost cooed with a sympathetic frown. “I mean that lovingly.”
He didn’t respond, he only shook his head rashly and exhaled quietly through his nose.
Spencer let his eyes drift across the room; past the tables, past the bar, past every patron. He didn’t mean to look toward the hallway where you’d gone, but his fixation went there anyway.
It felt like he was trying to summon you with nothing but focus. To draw you back to him. He wasn’t even sure if he wanted you to save him from the conversation, or if he just wanted to see your face again.
Not until JJ tapped her knuckles against the table, grabbing his attention once more.
“You like her.” JJ said it like a fact he couldn’t deny. “Does she know that?”
He truly didn’t want to say anything. Mostly because he didn’t know what he’d say, or if saying it would make it worse, or make things somehow real.
But would that be so bad? Making it real? It wasn’t like he hadn’t already made a fool of himself tonight, one way or another. It wasn’t a crime to like someone, or to want something. Even if he didn’t know what, exactly, he wanted.
He couldn’t even tack on “if anything” anymore. He did want something.
“No,” He said finally, and it came out quieter than he meant it to, under all the noise.
He hoped, almost desperately, they didn’t hear him.
Unfortunately, they did hear, and JJ didn’t smile, but she nodded, understanding more than he wanted her to.
“You don’t have to say anything you’re not ready to. Not to us, at least. Just don’t pretend there’s nothing you want to say to her.” JJ said.
The thought of saying something, anything, to you made his heart falter. What would he even say? That he remembered how kind you’d been, even back then. That your voice still sounded the same, a little deeper now, more certain, but still warm. That you’d always given people time to talk, even when they didn’t deserve it. He surely didn’t.
That your full laugh had split him in two. That it hurt a little, in the best way, of course.
That you looked different, but not really. Your hair had changed. Your mouth hadn’t. Your lips still pressed together the same way when you were thinking. You even had smile lines now, and they were small but permanent, like you’d finally felt free enough to smile more often.
And your body--
He pressed his palm into his thigh, felt the muscle displace under the pressure.
He thought about your body more than he wanted to admit. The shape of it, the weight of it, the imagined heat of your skin beneath his unruly hands. The ridiculous, aching need to kiss along the curve of your hip, your stomach, the soft skin just behind your ear. Every inch he wanted to touch, out of reverence, out of some dumb, dizzy hope to be allowed that close to someone who made him feel so alive…so completely.
It embarrassed him, the sheer detail of his own memory. How vividly he “remembered” things he hadn’t even experienced. Places he hadn’t touched, but still longed to anyway. He had to be insane. Had to be, without a doubt.
“Well, when you do figure it out,” Penelope said, leaning in a little. “Can you make it at least a little swoony? Some girls like to swoon. I think she might. She seems like the type.”
He didn’t even know how to talk to you, let alone how to make you swoon.
“I don’t know,” JJ said, her laugh mellower now. “She doesn’t seem like the swooning type. Maybe when we first knew her, but not now.”
“What? Yes she is,” Penelope replied immediately, mock-offended. “You’re telling me she wouldn’t melt if he did something heartfelt? Please.”
They kept going, blurring into the background. He couldn’t focus on their back and forth while he was having his own internal debate, rewinding every moment he’d had with you over the last few hours, even that brief exchange by the archive room. Trying to pin it all against the version of you he used to know. The quiet intern with too many notebooks and the long silences.
Would you want something swoony? Would that feel too forced? Too obvious? Did you even want anything at all?
He hadn’t a clue what you expected from him. Worse, he wasn’t sure what part of him you were even seeing. He’d been trying to offer the least shattered version of himself, hoping that would be enough, but fearing it only made him seem lifeless.
The questions kept relentlessly circling, tripping over each other and making even more of a mess. He couldn’t sit with them any longer.
Before he could talk himself out of it, he pushed back from the table and stood.
“I’ll be right back.”
He wove through the crowd, dodging half-full beers and the aimless stumbles of men who’d been drinking since before the sun went down. The hallway near the bathrooms was narrow and dim, tiled in that way-too-clean fake marble.
He stood stupidly in line for the men’s room, pretending he was waiting his turn as he eyed the door across the way. A minute later, an older woman stepped out, purse clutched tight.
Not you.
His eyes lingered on the door even after it shut. You weren't there, which meant - what? That you’d slipped past him, the entire group? He watched you walk in this direction. He turned slightly, scanning the narrow hallway. There was a service door at the end, half-shadowed and unlabeled. Would you sneak out without saying goodbye? That didn’t track. Or did something bad happen?
His eyes lingered on the exit, more shadow than shape the longer he looked. Something bad, something bad, something bad. The thought rooted before he could pull it up.
He tried to reason with it, to flatten the rising noise in his head, but the cases started flashing through anyway; reports of women disappearing between the bar and the parking lot, assaults in back hallways, just out of view. He’d read them, had studied them, and interviewed families after the fact.
He tried to tell himself it was nothing. That you were fine, that he was being irrational, but that’s what the wrong people always said after the fact, and Spencer wasn’t built for after the fact.
He hated how easily he could picture it. Hated that he couldn’t tell if the panic rising in him was rational, or just his own selfish fear.
His feet moved before his thoughts could catch up. A push through the emergency bar on the service door, the hollow metal clattered behind him, and suddenly the night was impossibly louder than inside, too wide and obscure.
He scanned the alley: random bricks, overflowing garbage bins, grease-stained cardboard. Absolutely nothing important, nothing he cared about.
Maybe behind the dumpster at the other end? He walked over, eyes adjusting to the flickering light. Just fleeting shadows and roaches. No shoes, no figure, no you.
Then his head turned toward the employee cars, all lined like teeth in the back lot, and his chest tightened. He checked between the bumpers, looking for a shape too still, a coat crumpled, just anything.
Then he rounded the corner of the building, heart already pitching sideways, toward the front lot…
…and stopped.
You, finally. Thankfully.
There were a few people loitering near their cars, laughing way too loudly, the glow of cigarettes painting little arcs in the dark. Spencer eyed them wearily as he approached you.
You were off to the side, leaned against the brick wall of the building like you’d been there a while. Arms crossed, head bowed slightly, eyes fixed on a pebble.
An invisible pressure released in his chest, enough to let him breathe, but it was immediately replaced by something else. Something heavier and murky, because if nothing bad had happened…then why were you out there, alone?
He shoved his hands in his front pockets as he stepped off the lot, onto the narrow concrete stretch by the wall.
The scuff of his shoes nabbed your attention.
You looked up, and gasped, hand flying to your chest like your heart had leapt all the way up to your throat.
Then, seeing it was him, your shoulders dropped.
It shouldn’t have meant anything to him, but it did. He’d been so sure you wouldn’t want him to be the one who found you out here.
“I just needed some air and some quiet. I was about to come back in - I was, I just--” You trailed off, gave a helpless sort of gesture, then smiled; small, sheepish, and a little guilty.
“I thought you left.” The words came out flat, a bit too honest. He shook his head, frustrated with himself. “Sorry. That’s not fair. I just...didn’t know where you were.”
His voice caught on the last word, and he looked away, embarrassed and ashamed.
You blinked so quickly a lash landed on your cheek as you said, “I wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye. I just needed a minute. That’s all.” You looked down, then back up at him, more serious now. “I’m sorry I worried you guys - you, I’m sorry if I worried you.”
He gnawed at the inside of his cheek as he stood across from you. Both of you watched the other wholly, like a single glance held too long could give something vital away. Breath shallow, eyes way too full.
He wanted to say something. Anything. A confession, a question, just enough to close the distance, even if the answers stung.
But it wasn’t him who spoke first.
“Spencer,” You said gently, “Have I done something to make you uncomfortable? You’re kind of all over the place with me, and I just - I don’t want to make you feel weird.”
He closed his eyes for a second. It touched the nerve he’d been avoiding: the fear that he was hurting you without meaning to, and the worst part, he couldn’t say for sure that he wasn’t. And how maddening it was, because he liked you, he wanted you close, but wanting someone and knowing how to handle that want were two entirely different things.
Right then, he only knew one thing for certain: he wanted you, and he couldn’t deny it anymore.
Entirely. Terribly. Sincerely. He craved you.
“No, never,” He said, his voice suddenly hoarse. “I haven’t been handling things that great lately.”
For a very long time actually, he thought, but you threw another wrench in the works.
He could tell you were trying to make sense of his pitiful explanation by how your brows pinched briefly, but couldn’t, so you only gave a defeated nod. It made him feel even farther from you than before, that he’d just created another unspoken mess neither of you knew how to unspool.
With the smallest, kindest smile, enough to soften the space between you, you whispered, “I hope things get better, or just easier.”
Spencer lowered his eyes, the movement almost ceremonial, as if to bow before your words rather than risk breaking them with his own. His head bent toward you with mute appreciation.
The spell cracked when the lot roared alive again. A group of men burst out. All sweat and swagger, laughing over some indecipherable joke no one would remember in the morning.
“Not much difference between inside and out the bar, huh?” You said wistfully as you pushed off from the wall. “I guess we should head back in.”
He didn’t move, not an inch, as you lingered there in the low light, waiting for him. He felt it, the expectation that he’d fall in step, that he’d make the choice simple. He just couldn’t, not yet, at least. He wanted to move with you, every instinct pulling him forward, but his body refused.
Because stepping back inside meant breaking that precious bubble, that fragile pocket where it was only the two of you.
He only wanted more of this, more of you to himself, though he knew it was selfish with Penelope and JJ waiting inside.
“We don’t have to go back in yet. We could sit in my car for a few minutes, if you want.”
You went silent, eyes on the pavement, your hands moving like they didn’t know where to go; fussing at your cuticles, then twisting the fabric of your dress, then behind your back in a restless clasp. It wasn’t a no, but it wasn’t an easy yes either.
Spencer stood there, still not moving, suddenly afraid that his offer had cornered you somehow, that it put pressure where there wasn’t meant to be any.
Maybe he should take it back, he thought. Say he hadn’t meant anything by it.
Before he could, you took one step to him and said, “Yeah, okay. Just for a bit.”
You said it so simply he almost didn’t process it. His thoughts kept running, kept planning how to backtrack, how to unmake the stilted moment, but now there was nowhere to put them. The words were already out there. You’d stepped past him and off the curb.
So he did too.
Both of you fell into step without speaking. Not perfectly, not all at once, he took a few strides too slow at first, then picked up half a beat, just as you adjusted to match him.
He scanned the lot along the way, reading everything around him. The parked cars with fogged windows, taillights that were still warm, snippets of sloshed conversations carried on the breeze. One man leaned against his hood, talking to someone out of sight. Another man, standing near his car, looked up as you passed and didn’t look away fast enough.
Spencer’s hand rose, light against your lower back as he guided you.
His car waited a few paces from the far end of the lot, tucked in a patch of dimness where the last streetlight had long since burned out. The sedan was older but clean, silver dulled slightly by time.
Spencer pulled his keys from his pocket, and unlocked the car with a chirp. He stepped forward, not saying anything, and opened the passenger door like it was instinct.
You murmured a quiet “thank you” as you ducked inside, and though he didn’t speak, he lingered there for a second before making his way around to the driver’s side.
The door shut with a muted thud that made the car tremble just slightly, and then the silence spread between you, so sudden and almost ironically overwhelming. There was no longer any music, no voices and no street noise leaking in. Just the hush of the cabin and the faint sound of your breathing that he could tell you were failing to steady.
He was too, especially as you moved, smoothing the bottom of your dress as you scooted back against the seat. The burnt umber linen flowed over your legs.
Spencer kept his eyes forward. Well, he really tried to.
But he could see the way it settled mid-thigh. Shorter than anything he’d ever seen you wear. The hem inched higher when you folded one knee over the other, baring the plush slope of your upper leg, and Spencer’s breath hitched before he could stop it.
He hadn’t meant to look, and definitely hadn’t meant to keep looking.
But it didn’t even matter when he forced his view out the windshield, he couldn’t unsee that image. Couldn’t unfeel the pull of it, the foolhardy thought of sliding down into the narrow space at your feet, pressing himself between your legs until you had no choice but to touch him finally, to tell him everything he’d never been brave enough to ask before.
He wanted to know what you’d thought of him all those years ago, when you were mousy and reserved, tucking yourself behind casefiles and ill-fitting clothes, and he was the one fumbling over coffee lids, speaking too fast, trying too hard. Back when his hair was too long, his ties too wide, and his eagerness came out sideways until it embarrassed even him.
He wanted to hear you say what you’d meant back by the archive room: You seem different too, and not in a bad way.
He wanted to know what you saw in him now, after everything.
The thought knotted all ugly in his chest, tight enough he had to clear his throat, and his legs shifted, knees spreading as he tugged at the fabric of his trousers. Such a clumsy attempt at looking casual when every nerve in him was anything but.
Maybe you saw the jitter in his hand, or maybe he’d already fractured the peace so badly you let it go when you said, “I like your shirt. Light blue is one of my favorite colors.”
He didn’t turn toward you. He kept his vision pinned to the dark glass of the window, his fingers tugging at the cuffs, working the button loose and fastening it again, needing the distraction.
“I remember that,” He murmured after a beat. “That light blue was your favorite.”
“You did?”
“Yeah,” He said, I remember the cornflower blue mug you kept at your desk. In some of the socks you wore, just peeking out above your shoes. Just little flashes of it everywhere.
“I remember your collars used to be slightly crooked sometimes,” You said, voice loaded with fondness. “I always wanted to fix them, but I couldn’t muster up the courage to even tell you.” With your pause, he slowly turned his head toward you again, and there it was, a wry smile tugging endearingly at your mouth. “It’s doing it again, it’s crinkled on the left.”
It had been fine when he left the house, he remembered checking. Twice. Then again, he’d fussed with his reflection the whole drive over. From his collar, to his hair, his cuffs, back to his hair. As if it really mattered, like any of it might make a difference.
Instinctively, he reached up to smooth it, fingertips grazing the edge, but then he stopped, his hand stalling mid-air as you spoke…
“Would it be okay if I…?” You asked, already starting to lift your hand, but slow enough that he could stop you. “You know, just…eleven years late.”
At first, he just looked at you, and you looked right back.
It was as if time itself had circled in on that moment, tightening the loop until it touched down in the middle of the car, until it found the first glance you’d ever shared, long ago across a cluttered bullpen, and layered it over this one.
Neither of you dared move yet, not even a breath too loud, only the look, and the thousand things it carried: over a decade of almosts, of silent moments, of what ifs folded neatly into what now.
He didn’t trust his voice not to splinter, so he only angled his head toward you. Not a full turn, but enough to expose the fold on the left, enough to say yes without saying anything at all.
You leaned in with such care that it made his stomach twist as your fingers found the ruffle and pressed the fabric back into shape. He could feel your breath, humid and uneven and gentle, stroking the cords of his neck, and he couldn’t help it, the way his pulse surged hard behind his ribs.
If he turned now, just a little, his lips would find your cheek. If you looked up, if you tilted your chin, he could kiss you.
He thought he’d know what your lips felt like after all this time wondering.
“Done,” You murmured, but didn’t move away as your hand slowed against his collar until it rested completely.
Please please please don’t pull away, he thought, the words between plea and panic. Every blink of your lashes felt like a warning, like the flutter of something waking up and realizing where it was, what it had done. Like the twitch of a fawn’s ear right before the brush moved.
He wanted, no - needed - to keep you close, even if he was the monster in the overwood.
Before he could second-guess himself; gently, his fingers closed around yours as he guided them to his cheek, and held them there with a light press. The warmth was immediate, sinking in so deep and too fast. He hadn’t meant to want it so much, especially hadn’t meant to show it so impulsively, but it was there and utterly undeniable. It embarrassed him how little resistance he’d managed.
“Tell me what you’re thinking.” He said above a whisper.
“I don’t even think I can put it into words.” You said, and your thumb swept gently along his jaw as if that might explain it better.
It didn’t.
“Try,” He held your hand tighter.
“I…what about you?” You asked instead, voice almost inaudible. “What are you thinking, Spencer?”
His head dipped, fingers slackening around yours, just shy of letting go.
His voice barely surfaced, “I was thinking about kissing you,” He said. “I’ve been thinking about it for a long time.”
Long enough that saying it out loud would’ve made him sound like a man who’d built some ridiculous fantasy, all starry-eyed and grasping at things that never really belonged to him.
He’d never really been inside your world. He wasn’t then and wasn’t now. Just a background figure, a name in passing, maybe a fleeting glance here and there, and yet, he wanted you with a force that didn’t quite make sense.
How do you say that out loud? How do you admit that you’ve spent years aching over someone you barely got to know, someone who left, lived a life without you, and then reappeared like a ghost you never stopped seeing?
It was outrageous, gravely unfair, and somehow all-consuming at the same time.
“And I’ve wanted you to kiss me for a long time.”
His mind scrambled to calculate what your “long time” meant. Years? Months? Since tonight? But his body didn’t wait for an answer.
He leaned in too fast, too desperate, and his lips caught the corner of your mouth instead. You gasped, before your hands rose to either side of his face and kept him level and steady, right where you wanted him.
Right where he wanted to be.
The second kiss found your mouth perfectly, guided into place, and it was nothing and somehow everything like he’d imagined. It was slower, so much sadder, and infinitely sweeter.
He hadn’t expected your lips to be that soft. Well, maybe he had. He certainly imagined them as tender and unreal and devastating, but the truth was worse, because now he actually knew. Now he knew how they felt, how you tasted - raspberry, not strawberry or cherry. How you kissed him like you wouldn’t ever have another chance to.
He’d never, ever be able to forget it.
Because all that wanting terrified him, with how sharp it was and how full. Perhaps the night would end and you’d forget it all, or that your mouth had been some trick of the light and your fingers on his collar had never really happened.
He deepened the kiss with a cautious, devotional press of his tongue, like he thought maybe if he kissed you thoroughly enough, the years wouldn’t matter. That maybe your soul would meet him halfway.
A guttural, helpless sound slipped from him the moment your tongue met his.
His hand rose to cradle the back of your head. He needed you to stay exactly where you were, no floating away.
The whimper that left you pulled him under, then your fingers curled into the longer strands at the back of his head and gave a slight tug.
Your lips barely parted from his. The space between you wasn’t even a breath wide. Foreheads pressed together and noses bumped as you panted, visibly wrecked, like the air couldn’t find your lungs fast enough.
He should’ve been satisfied. That one kiss should’ve been enough to last him another decade, but it wouldn’t.
“Please,” He sighed, lips grazing yours. “That wasn’t enough, just one more.”
You gave him a simple peck, lips barely touched his for more than a few seconds. A kiss too brief, too petal-soft, too careful. It unjustly tormented him with how small it was compared to everything he felt.
He leaned in before he could help it - not that he would’ve - seizing your mouth again with more intensity, spates upon spates of crushing desire.
He couldn’t see the smile so much as feel it; a gentle tilt of your mouth into his, like you’d just unlocked some long-buried myth of Spencer Reid. That you finally saw it: how badly he wanted you, how ruinously close he was to falling apart.
‘One more’ would never be enough.
You fisted the fabric at his chest, drawing him closer until the console pressed hard against his ribs and you couldn’t pull anymore. He bent anyway, content to let the plastic edge dig into him. As if it was proof you wanted him close enough for it to hurt.
His free hand closed around your wrist where it gripped his shirt, thumb resting over your pulse, as his mouth changed. Wetter, sloppier, with no real shape to it anymore. Just breath and tongue and the throaty sound it pulled out of him as he dragged you closer too.
You hit the console with a jolt, belly first, and it only made him grab harder after hearing you whine.
“Spencer, Spen--” You stammered between his incessant kisses.
You squirmed, trying to ease the angle, hip twisting against the console as you murmured something under your breath. Probably ow, or maybe hold on because he was being way too bold and ambitious, borderline unforgiving.
He didn’t let you go. Not an inch or a millimeter if that comfort wasn’t closer, and it wasn’t.
“No, come here,” He rasped, voice frayed.
He pulled you straight into his lap, your knees bracketing his, arms draped loosely around his neck. Your dress gathered high at your thighs, the hem bunched where his palms curved underneath, holding the backs of your legs.
Like he needed to feel every inch of your weight to believe you were real, not just in one of his daydreams, where nothing had mass and he could never quite quantify a single thing. Where he could never get the shape of your body absolutely right, never accurately remember how your voice sounded, never once imagine the exact way you’d taste.
He buried his face in the crook of your neck, needing one more proof point; scent.
Something floral and sugary, likely jasmine and pear, the kind of perfume that clung to sweaters and pillowcases. Underneath it, the real you bled through; warm skin, faint shampoo, a trace of salt. Something he’d never be able to replicate in his memory.
Your head turned slightly, shoulder shifting beneath his cheek. He felt the swivel before you spoke.
“Spencer,” You crooned, eyes flicking toward the glass on each side. “Someone could see us.”
He didn’t pull back, didn’t lift his face. Just let his fingers press into the plush curve of your thighs.
“Next time,” He murmured, “We’ll be somewhere no one can see.” His voice cracked as he added, “And I’ll take my time then.”
The second the words left him, his whole body tensed. Wanting was one thing, but wanting again, the suggestion of after, that was too much. That was greedy. That was a boy’s hope, and he didn’t get to be that anymore.
You pressed both hands to his chest, trying to lean back far enough to see him. Your spine hit the steering wheel with a dull thunk, but you didn’t flinch or reposition yourself again, but his hands loosened instinctively, senselessly.
He tried not to look right at you as he turned his face toward your shoulder, toward the heat he already missed, but you found his chin and lifted. He didn’t even resist, he just blinked up at you with shallow breaths and repentant eyes.
“You want a next time?” You asked, like it hurt to say.
He didn’t understand why your voice broke like that, why asking him that question sounded like a wound ripped open.
Unless you didn’t believe he meant it. Unless you thought he’d take what he wanted and vanish. That the whole thing had been a fluke, some lapse in his otherwise sound judgment. Maybe you thought he only wanted you right there, not after, not anywhere else.
He searched for a better reason, anything other than that, and found nothing but guilt.
He saw it, clear as day. How every moment up until now had written a different story, one where he was closed off, unreadable, at arms-length. Always just out of reach.
In the hallway, at the bar, and on the sidewalk outside.
He hadn’t offered you comfort when you reached for it. Hadn’t met you emotionally, even when you’d tried to crack him open. He’d watched you smile so freely now and hadn’t even smiled back, watched you hesitate and hadn’t soothed it. And now he’d kissed you like he couldn’t function without it, and expected you to believe that meant something.
That was so very cruel, and he hadn’t meant to be cruel.
The burn behind his eyes hit hard, but he didn’t blink it away. He wouldn’t let himself look away either. He held your stare.
“I want a lot of things when it comes to you.”
You shook your head, eyes suddenly fixed on the line of buttons at his chest as your fingers toyed with one.
“You want a lot of things when it comes to me…” You said slowly, testing the shape of the words, then your lips twisted before you added, “Show me one of them then?”
It was mercy you weren’t pulling away, that you weren’t done with him.
He should’ve said something better and way sooner. He should’ve done a lot of things.
Should’ve asked you questions in the hallway, real and sincere ones, instead of pretending he wasn’t desperate to know what had changed. Should’ve joined in at the bar instead of sitting off to the side like a shadow, listening without adding a single thing.
Yet, you were still there, asking him to show you what he hadn’t been brave enough to say, and that time, he wouldn’t fail you.
“Anything for you. Anything,”
He smoothed his hand along the side of your face first, taking in the warmth of your skin again, the curve of your cheekbone, the texture of the tiny hairs near your ear. Down your neck, where he paused, his thumb brushing once over your pulse. To your shoulder, then your arm. Where goosebumps lingered from the very first second he’d touched you. He smoothed them down, wanting to calm the reaction the same way he wished he could calm the ache in your eyes. With nothing but care.
His other hand drifted lower, skimming the back of your thigh again with his fingertips, then the front, noticing the jump of your muscles there. The skin there was softer, thinner somehow, like the sun hadn’t touched that part of you in months. A few loose threads clung there too, static-welded. He brushed them off gently, careful not to press too hard, worried even that could leave a mark.
He needed to remember every detail, and he would. If his memory ever gave out, he’d relearn you with his hands. Again and again, until he got it right.
Your legs shifted wider without thought, a reflex you didn’t seem to notice or correct, like your body had decided for you. So, he followed wordlessly, his touch traveling inward, across the delicate skin of your inner thigh, then just beneath the hem of your dress.
He wanted to go higher, but he held himself where he was, letting the want stretch deliriously long between his fingertips and the place he hadn’t yet touched.
His hands ached with the want of more, but he gave it to his mouth instead as he leaned in a little too quickly, lips finding the side of your throat to place a tender open-mouthed kiss. Then another, lower, and then one just beneath your jaw, longer and hungrier.
He needed to leave a trace somewhere you couldn’t brush off.
He kissed the other side of your throat, then nipped at the skin just beneath your ear, a flick of tongue and the faintest pressure from his teeth.
“I want to show you another one,” He drawled, each word slower than the last. “Of the things I want.” He kissed your jaw once more. “Let me make you feel it.”
The turn of your head nudged his jaw, a pivot that pulled him away before he meant to stop, and he felt your gaze flick outward again.
“Tell me if you want to stop,” He said quietly. “Just say it and I will. I promise.”
He’d have done anything you asked him to right then. Anything. Said it, proved it, dropped it.
He didn’t care that you both were in a parking lot, didn’t care about the hour or the press of the world beyond the windows. All of it faded, unimportant and colorless, so long as no one took this from him, so long as you stayed.
But he cared if you cared.
Silk-light fingers trailed down his arm to his wrist until they reached his hand still resting at your thigh. You guided him higher and higher, like you knew exactly what he wanted but wanted it more.
“I don’t care about anything else right now.” You murmured, needy and sure. “I just want you.”
The sound of it, the certainty and urgency, punched square through him. His breath caught, his hips jerked up before he could stop them. A low groan tore from him as your gaze dropped, landing on the thick press of him straining through his pants.
His hand didn’t need to be led anymore; his thumb traced along the center of your underwear, where the fabric clung to you with heat and dampness. Even through it, he felt the plush seam of you underneath…so soaked, so sensitive, and parted just enough that the pad of his thumb skimmed every curve and dip of your core.
That told him everything - how much you wanted this and wanted him, and it shattered the last of his restraint.
He gripped your thighs tight, dragging you forward in his lap, mouth snatching yours in a kiss that was all tongue and shameless longing. He rutted up into you tentatively at first, then his breath hitched as he swore he could feel the slick drag of your panties through his pants. He thrust up again, harder that time, needing more and more.
Your hands clutched at his shoulders, nails digging through the blue linen as you rocked against him, gasping into his mouth like you couldn’t get close enough either.
Want, when it came from you, wasn’t just arousing; it was unbearable because he wanted to devour it, to coax every tremble out of you and feel it in his own bones, to lose himself in what you’d let him give you.
He brought both hands to your face, cupping it fully, palms warm against your cheeks with your hair trapped flat beneath them.
The kiss stopped so he could whisper a confession, “I don’t want to want you like this,” Forehead to forehead. “So much it scares me, so much I don’t think I’ll know how to stop.”
“How do you want me?” Your voice was mild and curious as you cupped his face like he was cupping yours. “We don’t have to stop.” You pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth, one under his eye, his temple, then to the crease between his brows. “I don’t want to.”
The corner of his mouth twitched and he worried he might break. Then, reverently and deeply, he kissed you so he wouldn’t. It felt like you’d just offered him something he’d spent his whole life pretending not to need.
“I want you here,” He admitted, nudging your nose with his. “And after this…I-I’ll never stop wondering how I ever got this lucky. I’ll give you everything I have, if you’ll let me.”
Your hips slowly rolled down over his, forcing a broken sound from deep in his throat.
Spencer’s hands slipped from your face to your waist, only to grip hard, holding you in place. His erection pressed firm against your center, the contact nearly too much.
His voice broke close to your ear, “If you do that again, I’ll take you right here like I said I wanted to. I don’t care who sees.”
You didn’t answer with words. Instead, you leaned in and snatched his bottom lip between your teeth, a sweet little bite that made him groan, before grinding down on him the best you could under his hold.
Once again, his mouth was on yours, capturing you in a kiss so bruising, so desperate, it made your head tip back. One hand flew to the back of your head, fingers threading into your hair, pressing you deeper into it like he needed to feel your mouth from the inside out.
Something inside him gave out, his sanity or his control. Maybe both.
His other hand bunched the skirt of your dress up high on your hips, fisting and wrinkling the material in a rush to get to you. When his fingers found the edge of your panties, he didn’t hesitate; he tugged them aside with a rough breath, then dragged his fingers through your arousal, smearing it across your folds.
With a whimper, you pressed yourself into his touch. Hips bucked without thought, chasing his hand, trying to shift him, guide him, anything to make his thumb land exactly where you needed it.
Then he felt your hands fumbling for his belt, clumsy and frantic, fingers trembling as they worked open the buckle, then the zipper, like you couldn’t get to him fast enough. He felt it too, that same desperation, that it wasn’t fast enough. So he helped with the rest, shoving the waistband of his boxers down just far enough to free himself, thick and flushed and aching only for you.
You looked down, breath catching at the sight of him, then glanced back up with a look he couldn’t place. He tilted his head, trying to name it: passion, maybe awe, or something that was too sentimental to name…until your thumb swept over the head of his cock, gathering the slick there and spreading it, just like he did for you moments ago.
Every thought faded into oblivion.
Your hand was soft. Too soft for what he’d done to you. He knew it, he’d gripped, ground, groaned into you like a man possessed. While you touched him like he deserved care, when he really didn’t. For one disorienting second, he felt bad. Then you rolled your hips, slick and needy, and it knocked every ounce of softness right out of him.
He helped you find him, helped you angle just right, and then froze, because the moment your body started to take him, he stopped breathing. You were so warm, so tight around him already, and he knew…he just knew there’d never be anything - anyone - else after that.
Your eyes stayed locked on his the whole way down. He held them as long as he could until it became too much and he tipped his head back, jaw clenched, fighting not to come already.
“Talk to me,” He begged, casting shame to the wayside. “Tell me what this means to you, tell me I’m not just some fuck to forget.”
He’d already said it twice, that he wanted a future, wanted to try for one. Either time, you hadn’t answered, and now, with your body wrapped around him and his heart wide open, he needed something, anything.
Because you were unforgettable, and he didn’t think he could survive not being the same to you.
Your voice wobbled, meek against his cheek. “What if the real me isn’t what you’re hoping for?”
A beat passed, somehow too short and too long, before your body sank down fully onto his cock, burying him to the hilt.
Spencer’s head jerked up, eyes fixed on yours as he rolled up into you, letting his body meet every inch of where yours had taken him. Where he felt the flutter of your muscles, inside and out.
“I know this,” He said, hips shifting deeper. “I know how you feel around me. How I feel with you. Let me learn the rest.”
“Spencer--”
He heard the worry in your voice, the tremor beneath his name.
“Then let me find out,” He said, voice cracking. “Whatever’s real, whatever’s you, I want it. Even if I don’t know you yet, I...I want to.”
You reached for the buttons of his shirt, undoing the top few to press a kiss to his chest, right over his heart.
“No, you’re not someone I’ll forget,” You promised, peppering kisses over his collarbone. “You never were.”
He just kissed you, his tongue worshiping yours; wet, rhythmic, and endless, with everything he couldn’t say. A hand slid down from your waist, trailing over your stomach until his fingers found the place just above where your bodies met. He circled his fingertips over your clit, gentle and completely attuned.
Then he moved inside you again fully, each thrust deliberate and deep.
The windows fogged, breath and body heat curling into the glass, just as tightly as you curled and clenched around him.
He was losing himself, fast. Every sound you made, he tasted. Every shift of your hips to meet his, pushed him closer to the edge. He tried to slow down, tried to savor it, to make it last, but each time he did, you whimpered in protest, and his resolve crumbled.
He couldn’t deny you. Not in that moment and not ever. If you wanted more, he’d give you everything and then some.
Your mouth parted from his, but didn’t go far, lips still brushing disjointedly. The kiss wasn’t a kiss anymore, just a blur of open mouths and needy sounds as your pleasure started to build.
Spencer’s eyes fluttered open, dazed. He couldn’t help it, he had to see you, and what he found unraveled him even further: your eyes shut tight and brow creased like you were being pulled apart in the best possible way.
He felt like the luckiest man alive to be the one undoing you, and to have you undoing him.
His own climax crept up his spine like a fuse catching flame, spreading outward through his body until he could feel it in his fingertips, in the trembling of the hand still lovingly between your legs.
But he refused to let go before you, not when you were that close. Definitely not when your body thrummed around him like you were already half there.
He leaned in, mouth dragging down your jaw to your throat. His kisses turned hungrier as he searched, desperate to find that spot that would tip you over.
Spencer found it in no time; the bend where your neck met your shoulder. He knew, without a doubt, that was the place. That was where your pulse thudded too hard, too fast, where your hips shook just so. He began to nip and soothe, to tongue that spot with dreamy loops.
“Right here?” He whispered into it, his voice hoarse. “You’ll come for me if I stay right here?”
You only turned your head, offering more of your throat in silence, but silence wasn’t enough.
“Don’t do that,” He encouraged as he blew air over your sweet spot. “Don’t go quiet on me, I need to hear it.”
“Yes, please. Please,”
Spencer let out a ragged groan at the sound of your voice, at that breathless please.
He pressed a kiss to your throat again, open-mouthed and shaking, before bringing his tongue back to that spot with renewed devotion. Slow, precise circles, just like before. Exactly how you needed it.
You clung to him, quivering as your hips stuttered against his, every breath snagged on his name as he worked you closer and closer.
“Spencer, Spencer, Spencer--”
He didn’t stop, he didn’t dare. He felt it, that tension building inside you, tightening around him in waves. His hand remained between your legs - as if it had anywhere else better to be - tempting you, syncing with the movement of his tongue as your body began to quake.
Then you broke.
Your walls fluttered tight around him, spasming with your release, and the sound you made…it was high and wrecked and sensual. Something he’d never forget, something he’d seek again and again, as many times as you’d let him. He could live off the sound of it.
You slumped forward into him, boneless, your face tucked into his neck as if your body couldn’t hold itself up any longer. He fretted that it really couldn’t.
So, Spencer caught you instantly; arms winding tight around your back, one hand sliding up to cradle the back of your head. His hips slowed and softened, the rhythm gentling into something more tender. Less urgency and more devotion.
“It’s okay, I’ve got you,” He said as his lips brushed your hairline, then your temple.
He didn’t stop moving inside you, not completely. He just rocked with you now, more comfort than craving, trying to soothe you from the inside out.
He couldn’t remember the last time he felt that full. Like he was right where he was meant to be, with someone who trusted him enough to fall into him, not away, and let him stay, like he’d always wanted to.
And somehow, that was what finished him; the weight of you folded into him, your heartbeat ticking in front of his own. The sound of his name still echoing in his ears, and the unbearable gift of knowing you let him have this, have you.
It rippled through him before he could brace for it. That hot, sharp, and all-consuming pleasure that had him coming with a gasp, still buried deep and holding you tight enough to shake.
Neither of you moved.
There was only the rise and fall of heavy breath, tangled together in the thick, quiet air between you. His chest rose beneath yours, yours stuttered above his.
Everything else fell away: the fogged windows, the cooled sweat, the ache in his thighs. All of it dulled beneath the warm press of your body.
He didn’t want to let go, but the moment the haze cleared, guilt settled in. There was absolutely no guilt for touching you, for wanting you and needing you like that, but for where it happened. For how fast and how exposed he let you be.
That wasn’t how he wanted your first time to be, not crushed between his body and the steering wheel as the seatbelt buckle dug into your kneecap.
You deserved a bed, a real one. Sheets pulled back, time unspooling slowly, every inch of your body seen and praised the way you deserved.
“You should’ve had more than this,” He said remorsefully against the crown of your head. “I don’t regret you, not for a second, but I hate that this is the memory I gave you.”
You straightened with soft insistence, and cupped his face in both hands. Your thumbs brushed the stubble at his jaw.
“You could say the same about yourself,” You said thoughtfully. “You deserved more than this too, Spencer. You deserved time and comfort and adoration.” His throat worked around something thick, unspeakable. “But I wanted you. So badly I couldn’t stop, and nothing you say will make me regret that or wish I had more.” Your thumbs pressed firmer, urging him to believe you.“This wasn’t a mistake. It was us, and I’ll remember that, not the car.”
Spencer’s eyes darted away, lashes low. Your words had touched something he wasn’t ready to face head on just yet. You’d answered his deepest fear so plainly, so willingly, that it frightened him with how easily you saw through him and how unflinchingly you chose him anyway.
So he busied himself with what his hands could do.
Without a word, he reached down and carefully pulled your panties over your center with respectful hands, then gently smoothed your dress back over your thighs. He tugged the hem into place, as if reassembling you meant keeping you safe.
Then he reached for the seatbelt buckle that had pressed into your knee, shoving it aside, and caressing his knuckles over the mark it left.
He still didn’t meet your gaze.
As he reached to tuck himself back into his underwear and trousers with his free hand, his movements slowed by the weight of everything unsaid and you gently nudged his hand aside.
“I got it,” You mumbled.
Spencer froze, letting you take over.
You handled him with the same care he’d given you as you guided the fabric back into place, then zipped up his fly. Next, your fingers found his belt, buckling it with ease, and when you saw the rumpled edges of his shirt, you didn’t hesitate to smooth it down and tucked it back into his pants. One hand pressed lightly to his stomach as you made sure everything was neat again.
Then you reached for the buttons you’d undone earlier. One. Two. Three.
You fastened each one with calm fingers, as if sealing something in, or keeping something precious from slipping away. He didn’t know.
Only once you were done did you look up at him again, eyes kind and open.
His mouth opened like he wanted to say something heavier, something big and permanent, but what came out instead was:
“Did you drive yourself tonight?”
It sounded awkward even to him, but the need beneath it was plain. After everything, he wanted to be useful in some way, somehow.
You shook your head no, pressing your lips together to keep a smile at bay.
“Would you let me drive you home?” His shoulders relaxed, but his voice was still tentative.
He wanted to make sure you were okay, to stay near you for as long as he was allowed.
“If Penelope will let you,” You said, a glint of humor in your eyes. “She might not forgive you for ditching her and JJ.” Then you swiftly added, “Well, us. I ditched too.”
Spencer let out a soft, almost breathless laugh. “She’ll survive.”
“Will she?” You teased. “I’m not so sure.”
Your playfulness hung in the air, and it melted any remnants of his armor. The way you looked at him, like that moment was the beginning of forever. A glimpse of the woman he already yearned to understand fully, even if it took the rest of his life.
His heart swelled, his affections poured over.
Before he could talk himself out of it, Spencer leaned in and kissed you. So gently and so slowly, and with so much gratitude and wonder that it felt like he was trying to thank you without saying a word.
His hand held your jaw, thumb brushing beneath your ear, and when he pulled back, his forehead rested against yours.
“Thank you,” He murmured, barely audible.
It didn't feel like enough, not nearly, but it was all he had without collapsing in on himself again.
You smiled so full and bright, so wide it reached your eyes and crinkled the corners. You looked happy. Truly and deeply happy.
And Spencer…he smiled back. Slow at first, like his face had forgotten how, then it grew into a small, crooked thing, but it was real.
“You know,” You said, still close enough that your noses almost brushed, “We should probably head back in…before they come looking for us. If they haven’t already and seen the windows.” You nodded toward the fogged glass and grinned.
His smile twitched wider, sheepish and a little bashful, the tips of his ears pinking.
You reached for his hand and lifted it to your lips, placing a kiss to the back of it.
It floored him, how romantic you were without even trying. It turned his spine to smoke. If that was how you expressed want, that openly and sweetly, then God help him, he’d spend all of eternity trying to deserve it and return it twice over.
“Come on,” You whispered against his skin, then released him and opened the car door with a click.
Cool night air spilled in, breaking the heat between you, but Spencer still felt warm all over. Warmer, maybe. Warmer in a way that wouldn’t fade.
He exhaled, then followed, determined to reach the bar door before you, if only to reclaim a scrap of chivalry after having sex in a car and the humbling kiss to the back of his hand.
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