“But to the BatFam? That is just Some Guy. A random dude - if you will.”
“Don’t worry about it, I’m missing my spleen.”
“Oh cool, yeah, missing organs suck. I’m missing a kidney and part of my liver. Oh! And my gallbladder but that was more of a necessary evil, it was like, poisoning me or something.” Danny was so focused on applying pressure to his wound (and maybe being a bit too light headed) that he didn’t notice how silent his friend had gotten. Like-wise the comms had gone equally quiet as Gotham’s vigilante family realized that they knew very little about this kid.
It was concerning how quickly they all started to see him as a friend considering it was them as vigilantes he interacted with the most. Tim was the only one who saw him frequently when out of the suit because he was a regular at Danny’s day job. (He worked as a barista in the coffee shop Tim favored.) The others saw him occasionally but more often than not it was just in passing. Steph, Duke, and Dick had to stop themselves from approaching him on the street.
It was odd, one day he had just moved to Gotham, seeming to appear out of nowhere, and then the next he was a constant presence in their lives. Usually armed and ready with a concerning or odd quip, it had started with him being another victim of the city’s petty criminals and had snowballed from there.
Now it wasn’t like the bats saw Danny everyday, but it was expected that he would cross paths with at least three of them before the end of the week. They ran into him more often than any other Gothamite, including the criminals and rouges they fought.
At first the constant meetings by “coincidence” was suspicious. If he wasn’t the one being saved from a mugging, kidnapping, or city wide villain assault, then he was near by and trying to help.
(“Trying to help” usually meant drawing attention to himself so the original victim could escape. Once it had meant Danny armed with a baseball bat against four grown men. Bruce and Dick have tried to talk to him about putting himself in harms way but the kid is surprisingly elusive when he wants to be. Yet, even when avoiding Batman and his eldest, Danny could be found on the patrol route of another family member.)
But honestly? The guy seemed just as exhausted as they were of seeing each other. By the twelfth time in a month, Danny had accused them of stalking him.
The background check Bruce and Tim had run came back clean and he never seemed to be involved in the various criminal activities. He was just there, a weirdly unlucky bystander. So as far as Dick and the others could see, Danny was a completely normal dude. He just said strange things and wasn’t intimidated by them, he actually made it a point to be unhelpful sometimes. When trying to learn his name he gave them the run around for two months. (“I know about stranger danger. I don’t care how often you say you’re the ‘good guys.’ I’m not falling for it.”)
On one memorable occasion Danny had disappeared for a week and a half. When they started to assume the worse, he popped back up behind the counter at work. Tim had relaxed significantly when he entered the shop to Danny organizing pastries in the display case. Once he’d placed his order, the young CEO asked Danny if he’d been on vacation. To which Danny had just sighed and told Tim “I wish, but no I was called to court to handle some affairs I couldn’t get out of.” (After a check to see if Danny had gotten charged with something and coming back empty, Tim had concluded that it was an odd way to say he had had jury duty.)
Thinking about it now, outside a stray comment or two, Danny didn’t talk about himself or his life. They knew he didn’t have a good relationship with his parents, “they were much more goal oriented than that joke of a kidnapper, but I think drugs do that to a person.” (It was still unclear if he meant his parents were kidnappers themselves or on drugs.) They knew he had an older sister who would “kill me again if she finds out I was in another bank robbery.” They also knew he was, possibly, depressed after last week’s comment of “is it considered murder if you’re already dead but, like, still alive?” (Damian had saved him from a drug ring but after another “baby ninja” comment the young Robin had threatened to give Danny back to his would-be murderers.)
Dick knew Danny was a weird guy who never wanted to elaborate on the things he said. (Jason was still confused on what he meant by “rotted milk soul.”) That didn’t mean the comments themselves didn’t say a lot about him. And tonight’s comment, accompanied by the prominent and jagged autopsy scars, said more than Danny was probably willing to share.
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I’m obsessed with the sister!hotch and Reid fics. I can’t stop imagining that scene where Rossi goes to Garcia’s house and she’s fresh from the shower with Kevin. But instead is Hotch at readers house and Spencer is there.
—you and Spencer are in the midst of a long weekend together when your brother shows up unannounced. fem, 1.3k
“You’re really handsome.”
Spencer laughs as you drag your hands back over his ears and through his sopping wet hair. The shower water is blissfully warm and soaking your front as it rains down on his head. You shield his eyes but otherwise have your fun. His hair is softer than anything you’ve ever felt.
He holds your hands flat to his head. “You’re handsomer.”
“Am I supposed to take that in a good way or a bad way?” you ask.
“A good way!” he says, forgetting your hands in favour of guiding you under the water. “Handsome has nearly always been used for men more than women, but it didn’t fall out of fashion for girls until the fifties.” He tilts your head upward and to one side as his own begins to fall the other way. “You’re beautiful.” His voice is warm on your lips, “you’re so–”
His kiss is ridiculous; he kisses like he’s starving. You didn’t realise men could actually kiss like this until you met him. It’s not just in the movies, it’s right now, his hand at the back of your neck, unbothered by your laughing or your hand slipping down his wet t-shirt.
“This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done,” you say.
“We were covered in mud.”
“We should’ve just got naked.”
“We’re taking things slow,” he says, laughing, “it’s fun. But what are we gonna do about our wet clothes?”
“You got the most of the mud on you,” you say. Spencer had performed a valiant rescue in that when you fell, he was straight down into the grass after you in an attempt to save your jeans. It didn’t work, obviously, but the thought was there, and he’s such a good kisser in the shower that you don’t mind the loss. “I’m gonna get out and get changed, you can have a real shower, okay? I’ll get you a towel and your pyjamas and stuff.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, it’s fine. I think all the mud from my top half is gone.”
Spencer takes your face into his hand. His thumb rubs a line along your jaw. “Now it’s gone.”
You beam. Who knew Dr. Spencer Reid was such a tender guy? You could sort of guess from looking at him that he’d touch you like that, but it’s a contrast, too, to be kissed as though you’re some irresistible siren and to have your face held like fragile glass.
You step out of the shower still sodden, clothes heavy, and close the frosted door between you and Spencer to strip down. Separated but still shy, you hurry out of your clothes and into a towel, wrapping yourself tightly to head into your bedroom.
You put on blissfully dry underwear and blot your face. Next is loose pyjama pants and a big t-shirt: you’ve never worried about being sexy for Spencer and you’re not about to start. Your first date was a walk in the park, your second date at the bowling alley. He’s not concerned with that stuff. It’s why his frankness about wanting to take things slow isn’t scary, because when he holds your face and tells you you’re pretty, you believe it.
“Y/N?”
You flinch so hard your neck cracks. “Ow,” you whine.
“What’s wrong?”
You walk forward before Aaron can let himself into your bedroom. Sure enough, your older brother is in your apartment (as he’s allowed, given that he furnished the entire place and paid the security deposit, and, also, awfully, is a very nice big brother). He’s smiling, carrying two pizza boxes and a carton atop it that smells like French fries. “What have you done now?” he asks fondly.
“I hurt my neck, you scared me.”
“If you answered your phone, you’d know I was here.”
“I was in the shower!”
“I can see that. You’re getting slovenly, it’s almost midday.”
You’re so genuinely happy to see him that you forget for a moment your predicament. “It’s the weekend, I can do what I want.” You’re gonna have to let him down, which won’t be easy. “I’m not feeling the best, actually.”
Aaron lets the pizza boxes rest against his stomach. “How come?”
“I don’t know, I just feel tired. Maybe we can do something tomorrow.”
“Honey,” Aaron says, with all the cadence of someone who’s used to rubbing your back when you’re sick, “what’s wrong? Let’s go sit down, I can make you something less greasy.”
“I think you should just go home, actually. I might be contagious.”
He looks less concerned and more gutted. “What? I don’t care if you’re contagious. When has that stuff ever bothered me?” Aaron takes another step toward you, his gaze flitting past you toward your bathroom. “What’s really going on?”
The age gap between you and Aaron is expansive. Your being adopted is another gap, and neither have ever bothered him. The moment you showed up in his life he gave you everything he could manage, which has manifested in long phone calls, in hugs, in homemade soup and delivery when he couldn’t be there. Asking him not to look after you is like telling him you don’t want him to, and it isn’t true.
He means a lot more to you than whatever awkwardness your confession will inspire.
“Aaron,” you say, crossing your arms over your chest. “Spencer’s in the shower.”
He squeezes his pizza boxes. “Sorry?”
“We went to the park and I fell by the lake. He’s in the shower.”
“But you were just in the shower,” Aaron says.
“Well, we weren’t in there at the same time,” you drag.
Your lie is obvious to him, not just as a profiler but as your brother. His brow pinches and his nose wrinkles, not disgusted with you or anything so cruelly stupid, but dissatisfied, at least. “Did you have to tell me that?” he asks, pained.
“I didn’t tell you that, you profiled that, and it’s sort of not what you think anyways! We didn’t do anything–”
“Honey.”
“I’m really sorry, but it’s not what you think.”
“Listen to me.” The shower turns off and Aaron’s cheek twitches. “You are a grown up. You can do what you like with who you like. It’s my fault for coming here unannounced, I keep thinking of you as younger than you are.” Says the adult. Then, the more friendly part of being a sibling emerges, “Could you send him home?” he whispers. “I got your favourite.”
You laugh at his proposition. “That’s kinda rude, isn’t it? Can’t he stay? He’s cool.”
“I’m having trouble coalescing the two of you as more than acquaintances in my mind,” he says, as though he has much more to say about it, even if he’s smiling.
Spencer chooses that moment to walk from the en-suite bathroom and out of your room, a t-shirt stuck to his chest with damp, his own pyjama pants baggy at the ankles.
“Hey, are you okay?” Spencer grabs your hand impulsively, twining his fingers in yours. Then he sees Aaron and does a double take. “Hotch?”
You give Aaron a sorry smile. “Does that make it easier?”
“I’ll wait in the kitchen.”
You and Spencer watch Aaron retreat. His hand stays in yours, but he squeezes you too tightly. “Wait for what?” Spencer whispers fervently.
You lean up on tiptoes to kiss his eyebrow. “You’re about to get the shovel talk, I think.”
“Oh. Great.” He drops his forehead against your shoulder, wet hair dripping a path down your shirt. “This is really bad.”
“He brought pizza.”
“I don’t think that’s going to help me.”
You crane your head and kiss-kiss-kiss the top of his ear. “You’re really pretty when your hair is wet.”
Spencer murmurs to you reluctantly. “You’re really pretty all the time.”
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