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wrenreid · 1 year

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Hands-on Learning

synopsis: Spencer Reid’s best friend pays him a visit in DC. She meets his coworkers and they spend quality time together while she’s in town. But their friendly dynamic changes with he asks her a question she was not expecting. (season 2 glasses reid)

word count: 4k

content: 18+ MDNI, oral (f receive), penetration

Spencer has been begging me to come visit him again since the last time I was in D.C. six months ago. And I won't admit it to him, but I've been dying to see him again so much it physically pains me. Going six months without seeing your best friend is the worst feeling in the world, but I'd take the emotional turmoil any day because it's for him.

And I suppose he's worth sitting on this plane, lodged between a sleeping old woman and a man who has gotten up to pee ten times since take off. I must really love him because I'm only an hour into this five hour flight.

Spencer and I met when we were 18. I'd just started my freshman year at CalTech and was in an advanced class with a bunch of 22 year olds. My eye caught his immediately. He was the only person my age in the lecture hall.

I sat next to him and told him my name. I knew I had to make him my friend because he was the only other freshman in the class.

Or so I thought. I didn't know until a month into our friendship that he was indeed not a freshman, and he was taking the class for fun while he worked on his second PhD. A small part of me hated him that instant, but I had already fallen into the Spencer Reid charm. I couldn't get rid of him, no matter how hard I tried (which was not very hard at all.)

We became close pretty fast. Almost every moment we weren't in separate classes, we were together. I was pretty much his only friend and he was the first person I met in uni, and probably the only one to accept me a hundred percent as I was. Being so far from home was hard, and he made it worth it.

Usually we'd do homework or watch scary movies in his single dorm room, which I totally took advantage of. I'd spend the night with him instead of my over-sharing roommate who thought I needed to know every detail about her and her long relationship with her boyfriend Kyle, specifically the phone sex. TMI.

My other friends would joke about how we were in love, but the truth is, we weren't. Not in that way at least. He was my best friend, and I was his. We were there for every big moment in each other's lives.

Well, not every big moment. Spencer was not invited when I finally lost my virginity during spring break of freshman year. But he was there when the guy I'd hooked up with broke my heart. And he bought me ice cream and told me stupid facts until my lips broke into a smile.

I was there when he got his second and third PhDs far quicker than any graduate student should. And he was there when I graduated with my masters in psychology and cognitive science.

"You're a nerd too," Spencer said, his voice teasing as he bumped my shoulder. "You can admit it now that we're done with this place."

I told him to shut up, but a wide grin was plastered on my face. We'd made it through the highs and lows of college together.

However, that grin was soon replaced with tears. Spencer had gotten a job offer with the Behavioral Analysis Unit at the FBI headquarters in Quantico, Virginia. He was going to the academy, and I was starting my research job. He was going to the east coast, and I was staying in California.

"You're leaving me," I said through tears, knowing me guilt tripping him was wrong. But I needed him to stay.

"I'm leaving California, not you," he said, his eyebrows knit together with worry. I could tell it was eating up at him, but I couldn't stop hating the situation. Losing my best friend was the absolute last thing I wanted.

The day he left, I drove him to the Las Vegas airport after he said goodbye to his mom. I didn't help him get his bags, instead I stood there moping. As I watched my best friend walk away, I realized I needed to be happy for him. He was excited about this opportunity, and my bitchiness was ruining that for him.

It wasn't romantic movie-esk the way I ran after him. It was more of an anxiety filled scene where snot ran down my face as I chased him down. Honestly, I probably looked like a stalker.

"Spencer," I breathed out, looking up at him.

He smiled softly. "I knew you wouldn't let me leave without giving me a proper goodbye," he teased.

I shouldn't have taught him teasing and sarcasm. It's bitten me in the ass so many times.

I wrapped my arms around him, ignoring his comment. My face pressed against his chest as his arms held me close. My eyes were closed and I steadied my breathing. Even though he was going what seemed like a million miles away, he'd always be my best friend.

And that's stayed true even three years later. We've kicked this long distance shit in the ass. Of course, we don't talk as much as we'd like, but we still talk. And whenever he can, he visits me in LA after seeing his mom, or I take a visit to the nation's capital just to see my favorite FBI agent.

——

"Every time I see you, you look different," I say with a chuckle as Spencer helps me get my bags into his guest room.

"Is that a bad thing?" He questions, eyebrows furrowed.

"Take it as you will," I say, plopping down on his couch.

He joins me shortly after. He really does look different. He's gained some weight, changed his style up just a little, his hair is parted at the side almost neatly, and he's finally wearing glasses again. Except these ones are far different from the ones he wore in college. These ones are kind of hot, but I won't tell him that because I can't feed the genius's ego any more.

"So," I say, wiggling my eyebrows. "Tell me about your girlfriend."

"She's not my girlfriend," Spencer says, his cheeks already turning pink.

I roll my eyes. "Tomato, tomahto."

"Y/n," he warns.

"Fine, fine. Topic for another time. Don't forget, I'm here all week, Dr. Reid," I flash him a grin.

He sighs dramatically, rolling his eyes.

"You know you've missed me," I say, leaning my head on his shoulder.

He shakes his head, but a small smile creeps up onto his lips. He's missed me. But rather than admitting that he asks, "What would you like to do tonight?"

"Food. What's the best restaurant in the city?"

"The best or my favorite?" He asks. "Because they're different."

"Your favorite," I request, a soft smile on my face.

Spencer nods. "Alright. I'll let you nap off the plane drowsiness, then we'll have dinner."

The smile on my face grows wider. He knows me so well.

After my way-longer-than-I-intended nap, we get ready for dinner. I don't dress up fancy because Spencer has seen me at my worst, drunk, crying, and throwing up.

That was the one time I've ever seen him drink. I drug him to a party that we both ended up hating. We left early and instead bought our own liquor. He'd just turned 21, and I used that to my advantage.

Spencer and I ended up drunk in his dorm room. Surprisingly, he handled his alcohol much better than I did. I got wasted and threw up in his sink before making it to his toilet to repeat the action. He held my hair back as tears streamed down my face from the burning in my throat. Then, he threw up from the sight of me vomiting. It was not our finest moment.

"Ready to go?" Spencer asks, coming into the restroom where I'm touching up my makeup.

"Sure am, doc."

The dinner is amazing. He catches me up on all things BAU cases before asking me how my promotion has been, which is, in simple words, pretty damn great.

——

"Oh you're not Spencer," says a way too handsome black man as I open the apartment door.

"Nope. I'd like to think I'm prettier," I joke.

"Yes, you are," he flashes me a smile.

The footsteps behind me halt. "Don't even think about it, Morgan," Spencer says, a warning tone present in his voice.

The man in front of me holds his hands up in defense, the charming smile still on his face.

"This is Morgan? You did not describe him this hot," I turn to my best friend.

He glares at me. "You also don't even think about it."

I laugh softly and offer my hand out to Derek.

"Y/n. Nice to finally meet you."

His firm grip shakes my hand. "So you're the competition I have as Reid's best friend."

"In the flesh," I grin. "And it's no competition. I've got years on you."

"Ooh she's bold. I like her," he says.

I haven't had the opportunity to meet all of Spencer's coworkers because of both of our busy schedules and us making sure to spend every second together while I visit. I've met his boss one time and friend JJ. I liked them. I know enough about everyone from Spencer's stories to know that he's in good hands.

"Did you need something?" Spencer asks his friend.

"Oh right. Yeah I was just going to see if you wanted to come out with us, but I see you are occupied," Morgan says, looking to me.

"Go out where?" I ask, not letting Spencer respond.

"Bar. To drink and play games."

"That sounds fun! We'll be there," I say.

Spencer fake coughs behind me, and I turn to my best friend. He gives me a look.

"C'mon, Spence. It'll be fun. I want to get to know your team."

He can't say no to me. "Fine. But let's not stay out too long, okay? You know you can't handle your alcohol."

"Hey, I've grown up since college," I chuckle.

——

“Have you two ever...?" Spencer's gorgeous dark haired friend asks me as she takes a swig from her glass. She cuts her eyes to Spencer, then back to me.

He's currently at the bar with Morgan who's attempting to flirt with the pretty bartender.

"What? No! God no," I laugh, shaking my head.

"Hm," Emily hums. "I just thought I sensed something."

"Nope. He's my best friend. Why mess with that?" I smile softly.

"So you've thought about it?" She's nosy. I can't blame her, I am too.

"No," I answer.

That's the first lie I've told to Spencer's friends. Of course I've thought about it. I don't think anyone has been friends with an attractive person without thinking about what would happen if the relationship dynamic changed. My best friend's kind of hot. I know that. Before we were close, I debated on asking him out. But we're just friends. We're best friends. And nothing is going to change that.

I get to know Spencer's friends a little more, get slightly tipsy, and start a game of darts with Morgan.

After he beats me, not by much I'd like to add, we're just about to start a rematch, but a hand touches my back lightly. I turn around to face Spencer, and a soft smile creeps up onto my lips.

"What's up?" I ask.

"Can we head back? It's getting late," he asks, checking his watch.

I nod, brushing my hair behind my face. "Sure, but tell Morgan I totally could've beaten him in a rematch."

Spencer laughs softly. "She could've," he says to Derek behind me who rolls his dark brown eyes.

"Getting old, doc?" I ask Spencer as we walk to his car. He's 99% sober, so he drives us back to his apartment.

I sit in the passenger's seat, hands folded in my lap. My eyes are on him.

"Hm?"

"Why'd we leave so early?"

"10:30 is when the guys in the bar start getting drunker and handsy. I didn't want you to get dragged into some asshole's grasp while dancing," he explains.

"Oh," I nod. "I can handle myself, you know that right? Just because you're a big federal agent now doesn't mean I need you to protect me." My voice is thorough, but a small smile is on my lips anyway.

"Just returning the favor, Y/n," Spencer says. He knows I protected him all throughout our shared college days.

My cute going-out clothes have begun to get uncomfortable. I unclasp my bra, keeping my somewhat sexy shirt on and slip it off from underneath the blouse, letting it fall to Spencer's floorboard.

"Much better," I breathe out an exasperated sigh.

He's silent in his seat, eyes on the road. I see his hands grip the steering wheel a little harder.

"I missed you a lot," I say honestly. Usually I'm not one to say what I'm feeling or be mushy gushy, but the two shots of tequila have opened me up.

His eyes flick to me, his lips formed in a soft smile. His face is being lit up by the passing cars' headlights. I can see how sharp his cheekbones are, his jawline. "I thought you were heartless."

"I take back my previous statement."

"I missed you too," Spencer says.

"Of course you did, I'm a delight," I gloat.

The sound of his soft laughter fills the air. It pulls on the strings in my chest.

"How is it possible that I leave in three days already?"

"Shh," he shakes his head, eyes still on the road ahead of him. "Don't mention that right now." Spencer's hand pats my knee before squeezing it comfortingly.

——

"I have a question," Spencer says, coming into his room where I'm currently laying on his bed, reading a book I grabbed off one of his many shelves.

I look up from the page I'm on. He looks nervous, cheeks red, his hands fiddling with themselves.

"Hit me," I say.

He sits down at the edge of the bed. "I don't really know how to ask this... It's a weird question. I don't want to make you uncomfortable, and..."

"Spit it out, Spencer,” I eye him.

"Could you... would you tell me how to please someone. Specifically a woman. During sex."

A huffed laugh releases from me, and his cheeks burn redder. I think I'm blushing too. "What?"

"I'm sorry. That was weird. Forget I said-" he starts softly.

"Have you never...?"

Spencer shakes his head.

I didn't really think he had, but I didn't ever expect him to tell me when or if he lost his virginity anyway. He's reserved, even with me with some things.

"Wait," I sit up straighter. "Is this about your girlfriend?"

"Not my girlfriend," Spencer corrects me. "But yeah. We have a date the night you leave, and I think she's going to expect it. I mean, this is our fourth date."

"Well, if you don't want to have sex, don't have sex," I say sternly.

"It's not that I don't. It's just that I've never done it. I don't know what to do. I've read, and I'm good at anatomy. But what if I'm bad at the physicality of it all?" He presses his lips together, his teeth gnawing on the inside of his bottom lip.

"I don't really know how to explain it," I chuckle nervously. The blood is rushed to my cheeks, they're probably scarlet. "It just kind of happens."

"I shouldn't have asked," Spencer says.

"No, it's just that... like with anything, practice helps people get good sex," I tell him.

He looks up at me, his eyes asking what his lips won't. I feel my heart pounding against my chest, faster than usual.

"Do you want me to... show you?" I ask. He has always preferred hands-on learning.

"Would you?"

I nod slowly, hesitantly.

He moves toward me slowly, hesitantly.

"Kiss me," I tell him, hoping this won't get too weird.

Spencer and I have been best friends for years, we're extremely close, but this may bring us too close. This could ruin everything, but for some reason, I can't stop it.

He presses his lips to mine gently, his hand cupping my face. My eyes flutter closed. I reciprocate the kiss, and it's a lot easier than I imagined. Not that I've entirely imagined it.

My hands trail up his arms slowly. He's gained muscle. I guess that's a part of his FBI agent glow up. His tongue roams my mouth, and I'm pleasantly surprised by how good of a kisser he is.

He pulls away after a few minutes. He's breathing heavy. "Are you sure this is okay?"

I nod, then lean in to kiss him again but he leans back.

"Say it."

"It's okay, Spencer," I tell him. This time he lets me kiss him again.

I lay down, my back against his bed. He hovers above me, his hand on my waist now as he kisses me. He's good at this, and that thought comes to my mind again as his lips suck on my neck.

"Keep doing that," I whine softly.

He obliges and nibbles my skin gently. "Is this okay?" He whispers.

"Mhm," I noise.

I let him take the lead for now, do what he's comfortable with so far. His hand trails up a little further. I tell him he can touch me, and he does, though hesitantly at first. His fingertips graze against my breast before he finally gets comfortable enough to take hold of it through my shirt. He squeezes then pinches my nipple. He knows more than he lead on.

A soft moan releases from my mouth, my back arches just a little. His hand slips beneath my shirt, his warm touch on my belly. Spencer takes ahold of my shirt then lifts it up. I help him take it off me. I'm completely bare hips and above since I wasn't wearing a bra anyway. His eyes widen a little, and he smiles softly.

"Stop staring at me," I laugh a little.

"We're about to have sex and I can't look at you?"

I roll my eyes. "Let's just continue."

Spencer nods. "What do you want me to do?”

"Well, most women like to do other stuff before actually getting into the sex. Penetration alone doesn't do it for most of us," I tell him.

"You included?"

"Me included."

"What do you like?" He asks.

"What are you comfortable with? Do you have any ideas?"

Spencer thinks for a moment. "I want to learn how to-I want to give you... oral."

I burst into a laugh. "Spence, never say oral to a woman. Just say head."

"Head. Noted," he nods.

He's adorable when he's nervous and nerdy. Which is pretty much always.

"Kiss me first. Anywhere," I tell him.

He chooses the soft flesh of my stomach. I smile down at him. I reach down, pushing down my shorts, my underwear too. I'm growing needy.

Spencer slips them the rest of the way down and tosses them down to the ground. After slipping off his glasses, he kisses the inside of my thigh. God, I need him to do something right now.

His big hands push my thighs apart. Then he pauses. The clocks in his brain turn.

I feel like he's just about to call this whole thing off, but then I'm hit with a shock of pleasure. His tongue licks in between my folds.

“You’re really wet,” he says, more like an observation that a tease. Then he attacks my clit with his lips after taking a second to find it. Fuck. He definitely knows more about sex than I was led to believe.

Spencer's fingers leave marks on the inside of my thighs as he grips onto them. His lips suck on my clit, tongue flicking back and forth often too.

Soft moans spill from my lips. I'm trying to be quiet. I shouldn't be enjoying this as much as I am.

The sudden shock of Spencer's mouth removing from my clit makes me whine in protest, but his fingers sliding inside me make up for it.

I groan, my head leaning back into the pillows.

“Do you like this?”

I bite my lip, “Mhm. Curl your fingers.”

He does as he’s told.

When Spencer both fingers my cunt and sucks on my clit, I'm a moaning mess. "Holy fuck, Spencer," I whine. My legs are shaking within minutes, and even though he's still sloppy and new at this, my body loves it. My hands grip into his hair.

"Just like that, Spencer. So good."

A loud moan rings out from me as I finish. I couldn't even warn Spencer before my release pours from me.

My breaths are heavy and loud. Spencer pulls away, looking up at my eyes.

"Was that okay?" His breathing is heavy too.

"No," I say. "Spencer that was fucking amazing. You've seriously never done that before?"

He shakes his head.

"Wow."

"Told you, I'm good at anatomy," he smiles bashfully.

"Take your pants off," I command. "I want you inside of me."

I find a condom in my purse as he shrugs his clothes off. I sit up and find myself staring at his bulge with wide eyes. He's bigger than I expected. Not like huge to where it's unnatural, but big enough that I will probably need a minute to adjust once he's in me.

I tell him to lay down, and he does. He's a good boy. I like it.

I help him get the condom on, then swing a leg over his lap so that I'm straddling him. "Are you ready?" I ask him, my hand holding his face gently.

He takes a second, processing that he’s about to lose his virginity. Probably freaking out a lottle that it’s to me. “Yes ma'am," Spencer nods.

"Just a gentlemen," I grin.

I lower myself onto him, and once he's inside me, I do need a minute to adjust. Moans come from both of us, and I love the sounds we make together.

"Fuck," he groans, his voice raspy. He repeats my name over and over as I start to roll my hips.

"Oh my god." My eyes shut, and I bite my lip to keep me quiet.

"Don't do that," Spencer tells me. "I want to hear it."

I give him what he wants. I bounce up and down on him, his length hitting me in the right spot every time.

Both of our sounds fill the room. Spencer holds my hips down, stopping me.

"Wha-?"

"I want to do it," he says softly. "Please."

"Do what you want with me, doctor," I tell him, nodding.

He flips our positions, and he's on top of me. Spencer's lips crash into mine as he enters me again.

I bite his lip, causing both of us to moan into each other's mouths.

Spencer doesn't last much longer since it's his first time, but I don't even mind. He rubs my clit until I come again, and I feel I'm floating.

We lay on his bed, heavy breaths morphing together. "I think you're going to blow her mind, doctor Reid," I chuckle softly.

"Who's?"

"You're girlfriend that's not your girlfriend," I say, eyebrows furrowed.

"Oh, right. I don't think I'm going on that date. Okay, actually I canceled that date when you got here."

"What?" I chuckle, confused.

"There's no date,” he says, point blank.

"Did you just trick me into sleeping with you?" My eyebrows are still furrowed, but I'm smiling.

He presses his lips together. "Well, if you put it that way... I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to-"

"No, no. I admire the hustle, doc," I laugh softly, my fingertips circling on his bare chest.

Men and women can be purely platonic friends, no romantic feelings involved. But maybe Spencer and I aren’t that type of friends after all.

tags: @shakespear-picaso-lovechild @kylakins88 @jazzerbelle14 @cynbx @yazzyu @regulus-black-223048 @virginmusicloverr36 @sebs-oxygen @jolotta @booktvmoviefangirl @nevielei @pauline5525mgg @necromaniackat @r3idsp3ncer

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missjanjie · 14 days

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Need some advice from someone not invested in the situation,so don't mind the vent:

My mother is hell-bent on my returning to complete a degree programme that I was in when I was a teenager (17 or so). Here's the thing though. I was so unhappy doing this programme that I couldn't even go to class without getting anxious or wanting to throw up. Grades-wise, I was fine, I suppose(the pass mark for this particular degree was a B, so 60%). But I grew to hate the programme itself because my anxiety was through the roof.

So, my Registrar saw the state I was in and suggested that I take a break and do an unassociated(heh) Associate Degree till I got myself together mentally. As of currently, I'm the top student in that particular Associate Degree and having a great time(and my anxiety's practically non-existent).

Here's the issues though. My mother hates that I've "downgraded" myself by doing an Associate Degree and continues to insist that I was "tricked" into doing it by the Registrar(who was genuinely trying to help). So,to fix my supposed "mistake", I should immediately return to the original Bachelor's Degree I was doing and complete it (despite the visceral trauma it caused me) because "everyone else in your age group has Master's Degrees and PHDs and you have nothing to show" (I'm 22).

But the thing is, why not get a Bachelor's Degree in a different subject area? I'm not opposed to higher education at all,but she's so fixated on the original Bachelor's Degree (in STEM) that I was doing that she can't let it go. She brings it up every chance she gets. I could be drinking a glass of water and she'll find a way to bring it up. Going so far as to say that it's what God wants me to do(I'm sure God wouldn't want me actively having panic attacks while doing what He supposedly wants me to do, but I digress).

So,yeah. What do I do? Where do I even go from here? If I make suggestions about an alternate path,she'll either ignore me, talk over me or segway into talking about my original Bachelor's Degree programme and how I should be graduating right now.

(Sorry for the long rant. Kinda don't have anyone to get my feelings out to IRL.)

unless you live in a weird mensa cult I don’t think people your age have masters/phd’s. people my age don’t have phd’s and only those in specific fields (usually teaching or social work) have masters and im 28.

also i have a little anecdote that while may not provide answers, can offer some perspective. when i was in college i took a feminist studies course and in that class was a 72 year old woman. i initially assumed she was just auditing the class (ie taking it for fun) but she explained to me that she was finishing her degree. i asked her what made her decide then and she told me “sure, i couldve gone back ten years ago or even twenty years ago. but that wasn’t where my journey was taking me.” point being, your journey is yours alone

there isn’t really anything you can do about your mom if you still live with her or are otherwise financially dependent on her except stay the course until you’re able to get out on your own or something like that. im assuming you’re not american based on some spelling, so i don’t really know the university system there so i could be off base

#gen asks #long post

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hollandbryant · 1 year

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( ELLIE BAMBER, CIS FEMALE, SHE/HER ) — Look who it is! If you take a look at our database, you’ll find that HOLLAND BRIGHT BRYANT is a 22 year old WAITRESS & MUSIC STORE CLERK that’s been in Chicago for 4 YEARS. According to the file, they’re a mutant on LEVEL TWO with the power of POWER MIMICRY. That must be why they’re QUIET and GUARDED. If you ask me, they remind me of cassette tapes, stacks of old video games, messy red hair, english accents & brightly colored clothing. They are affiliated with NO ONE.

character inspo — adam hayes (the bright sessions), alyce (malice), vivian greywick (wicked academia), grace foster (crave)

trigger warnings for child neglect, child abuse, gaslighting

@forwardintros

STATISTICS:

Label: tbd

Full Name: Holland May Bright Bryant

Nicknames: Holly

Birthplace: Surrey, UK

Parentage: Daniel and Morgan

Greek Zodiac: Gemini

Element: Air

Myers Briggs: tbd

Temperament: Melancholic

Seven Roles: tbd

Alignment: Chaotic Good

BIOGRAPHY:

Daniel Bright and Morgan Lee met in college where Daniel was studying to be a geneticist and Morgan was studying biology. The two only met because they both had a work ethic that was better than most of the other students at the college. They quickly found that they both liked to be in the labs at the same time and started hanging out outside of working on their own projects. Though they had few friends, it was no surprise to anyone that the two of them started dating and got married. Both of them landed jobs in their respective fields after graduating with PhDs. Not long after Cassidy was born and the family moved to a comfortable home in Surrey. Three years after Cassidy came their son, Henry. Holland was a bit of an accident, but none the less an excitement to the family. By the time Holland was born, both Daniel and Morgan knew about the existence of mutants, given their respective scientific fields and they were both terrified of anything different. So they sheltered their children.

While Holland’s childhood was particularly boring and not very interesting, she was mostly raised by her siblings. Until 2003 things in her life were relatively normal. Although the Brights did their best to shelter their children from the news, the two older children were able to pick up on what was going on around them. Holland, being too young to understand, had no idea what her parents were involved with, which was fine enough for her parents. Holland’s life mostly didn’t change, but she noticed her parents pulling away from society more and more. Their Surrey home traded for a house up north in the country. Then things started disappearing: phones, television, radio. The books she had access to, changed to older book, written before her time with no events from the present. She didn't know any better, though her siblings did. When she turned thirteen, her brother left home and her parents became unhinged, opening up their home to other like minded people, creating a community behind closed doors. A humans only society, though Holland didn't know this at the time.

Instead of going to school like a normal child, the Bright family previously homeschooled their children, then let their community teach them. The people in their community were well vetted individuals. Anything strange or unusual was reported on by other members and then the guilty party was forced to leave, or so Holland was told. If that was actually the case, she wasn't told otherwise. Since most media was banned from their house, so she learned to draw, learned to entertain herself with whatever her parents did allow in the house. Holland grew up hearing arguments between her older sister and her parents about how they were prisoners in their own home, yet they still had more freedoms to leave than Holland ever had. But it was the only thing she’d ever known, so how could she complain?

Holland always felt like a bit of an outsider among her family members, though she never knew why, nor would she get an explanation for years. Her life was a constant state of not feeling like she could trust or talk to anyone. She grew into a kid surrounded by money, surrounded by people, but isolated and lonely to a point that she was sure other people didn’t live like this. Years and years of asking her parents why they weren’t allowed to leave the house and go into town and why they had to learn from tutors rather than school like some people. She never got an answer.

By the time she was fifteen, her siblings had moved out by then, it was only Holland and her parents. Cassidy did come home often, as she ended up in school not too far away, but Holland never heard from her brother. Holland was told there were monsters in the world. People capable of harming her without touching her. Where she lived, the community her parents created was a safe haven from these monster, since some of them looked like regular humans while others were monstrous beings. Holland was told she was safe at home, safe behind closed doors and away from the general public. “We’re doing everything we can to protect you from them,” her mom said, misty eyed. And who was Holland to distrust anything her mom said? “We want to stop these monsters from hurting people,” her dad told her. Holland believed him. Her parents gave her more freedoms then, more books to read and information about the world around her, even if it was all a lie. Misinformation written by members of the community in order to show her what kinds of people there were in the world.

Holland believed them, until she was eighteen and found a locked door in the mansion and her parents' Doomsday plan. Their plan to rid the world of the monsters she'd been told about. They'd been working with the American government. They had helped to create a drug that neutralized their power. And soon they'd find a way to weaponize those with powers. Holland's blood turned to ice as she read more. Her parents had blood samples of everyone in the community, including her own blood. Clicking on her own file lead to a discovery that she had powers. Beneath her name: neutralized. But what did that mean? Horrified by this information, she stole a bunch of money from her parents, paid someone to forge documents with a new name, and moved out of the country. If she kept a low enough profile, her parents would never find her. After all, they’d never found Henry.

She settled in Chicago, a bigger city feeling safer as she could blend in with large amounts of people. That was four years ago. Since then, she has not done much progress on figuring out the mutant world, but he’s still trying to figure out who she is. She’s still very scared of mutants and being one herself. However, she’s trying to be better at it. Holland found out what her power was on accident, by running straight into a mutant. There was a fear response to it and she immediately ran away, scared out of her mind. Now Holland works as a waitress and at a music store, trying her best to stay blended in with her surroundings.

#🌍 about .#🌍 holland .#🌍 intro .

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bugaydoeshistory · 4 months

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"I don't wish you dead, I wish you well"

On Christmas Day, 2016. My brother and I got into an altercation with my father. There was misunderstanding over something small, what we were gonna cook for Christmas, and my dad quickly escalated his anger to the point that I no longer felt safe. He grabbed a knife from the kitchen and I locked myself in my brother's room. I was afraid. Moments before the police arrived, I thought of what I said to my brother moments prior to arriving home:

"Sometimes, I wish Dad was dead."

My brother swiftly responded to my blunt statement with:

"Don't ever wish someone dead. Wish them better."

I carry that with me as I navigate through moments of where I didn't feel safe. Moments where I felt exactly as 21 year old Abby did, bunkered in her brother's room. I carried that unsafe feeling throughout undergrad, I was sleeping on friend's couches in community college because I worried that my dad would attack me in my sleep. I transferred to UC Davis, mainly so I can get out of my house and I can wake up feeling safe. But the unsafe feeling followed me. It followed me in the form of every person I wanted to please, just like my Dad.

I saw it in you, Manang. I wanted you to like me, to be proud of me, to mentor me. I saw the potential of what I could be -- beautiful, confident, a PhD student, a Sailor Moon fan --in you. In a lot of ways I wanted to BE you. Now that I'm older, I realize how strange it must have been to interact with a younger version of myself. I recognize that I was insecure, unsure of myself, neurotic, and the list goes on.

I was also very vulnerable. I had no prior knowledge of how to navigate this world of academia, and you were my sole guide. I relied on your insight, your advice, and I held on to every word to help me through those two years of undergrad. The thesis became this point of contention between us, and I recognize my own display of helplessness as partly to blame for what transpired between us. I didn't have the confidence in myself to believe that I could do it, so I looked to you to get me through it.

Now, I am 28 years old and a lot has happened in my life to make me see the beauty and the power I hold. I had my heart broken many times now to realize what I could have done differently, and how to carry myself. I'm not the 22 year old, mousy, scared, insecure undergraduate student you met up with at Sharetea in October 2018. I'm not "flaky", insecure, non-communicative, or whatever else you framed me as after October 2021. You may not even believe me, but I know I also don't need your validation to know and live in my own truth of who I am.

Let me cut to the chase here -- I was extremely hurt by how you treated me in Seattle. You refused to acknowledge my existence, and when you did, you were unkind. You were yelling at me over the phone, asking me if I "even know how to break down a table", you accused me of stealing in front of Bellarmine Hall, you made me FEEL the tension between us, as if I had horribly wronged you. How this impacted my psyche, you will never understand. You will never know that I stopped eating for 3 days after I touched down at SFO, that I checked into Intensive Outpatient Therapy, that I took leave from my job because I truly didn't want to exist anymore. I think you accomplished what you set out to do when you knew I was coming to Seattle -- to make me feel like shit. To make me feel like I don't belong in History anymore. To give up. To make me realize how worthless I was. To make me feel bad for how our working relationship transpired in October 2021.

It took me YEARS to heal from this interaction, and I would be lying if I told you that I am fully healed now. However, I am at a place where I brought myself back to History as a discipline, against your disdain for my pursuit. It took me years to say this to myself in regards to you as a person: "I wish you well." No, actually, I wish you better. I wish that whatever transpired between you and I never happen to another soul. I am anxious as shit to be a graduate student, to be in your place, because I recognize the power I hold and the responsibility to treat undergrads with respect and care. I'm anxious of fucking it up, of having another person feel what I felt. I'm anxious that I would be perpetuating this intergenerational trauma in academia, especially in women of color. I don't want what happened to you, to happen to me, to happen to the next person and so on and so forth.

Manang, I wish you better. I hope that whatever shit happened to you in graduate school is something you are able to heal from. I wish that whatever happened in your family you are able to work through, that you are able to grow and develop as a healed individual. I pray that you are surrounded by love, because that's what I truly believe will get us all out of this perpetually fucked cycle. I don't hate you. I have no hatred in my heart at all for you. I just wish to coexist in our discipline. I hold you as a scholar, as a historian, as a researcher with respect. All I fucking wish with the deepest hope in my heart, that you would treat me the same.

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seventven · 3 years

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Bad Intentions

summary: dr barnes, y/n’s psychology professor and final year thesis supervisor is going through a rough patch in his marriage. following a heated argument at the end of class, dr barnes spots y/n at an on-campus bar. he makes a twisted revelation.

pairing: professor!bucky x reader

warnings: age gap [y/n is around 22 and dr barnes is 39]; he’s kind of a dick(?) and a little creepy(?); implications of stalking, he [violently but consensually] takes what he wants, public shenanigans, academic misconduct, cheating, swearing and drinking.

a/n: the whole story is based on the gif below. y’all i actually used my degree for this. p.s. requests are open and you can send them in here.

“Remember that the seminar next week is cancelled. Enjoy your time off but please don’t forget to do the reading!”

Dr Barnes was only halfway through his sentence when everyone was already getting up to leave. It was a Friday afternoon so it was no surprise that all the students were eager to depart. Almost one hundred psychology majors of varying academic years crammed in the bleak lecture hall and most of them could hardly focus on the topic of the class; no one wanted to be pondering over the validity of intelligence tests on a Friday.

Y/N soundlessly shut her laptop and reached for her bag beneath the desk. It was just past four o’clock and her stomach growled for something to eat. She had skipped lunch to go looking for Dr Barnes, needing to ask him a question about an upcoming assignment. To her dismay, she did not find him like she had hoped. In fact, she didn’t see him until he strolled into the lecture hall fifteen minutes late and grumbled something that resembled an apology to the class.

Dr Barnes was Y/N’s personality and intelligence professor; a big, bearded guy who did his psychology PhD when Y/N was still watching cartoons. Y/N had just started the last year of her undergrad, and after handing in a proposal for her final year thesis, she was assigned Dr Barnes as her supervisor. She wasn’t at all surprised, if truth be told. With the amount of professors going on maternity and paternity leave after their lockdown shenanigans, Dr Barnes was one of the few personality experts left at the university and took on more supervision cases and classes than he had any previous year.

Y/N knew he was busy and that harassing him with more emails about her little predicament wasn’t like to make his day easier. She had emailed him on Wednesday morning, and from her experience with Dr Barnes in previous years, she expected to receive a reply within 24 hours. This was always the case with him.

However, when Friday rolled around and no response had come through her inbox, Y/N knew she had to take matters into her own hands. The ethics application for her project was due on Monday and she simply couldn’t proceed without his advice on the matter. Psychology research ethics were a bitch, and she wasn’t exactly keen on making some stupid mistake and having the university slam her for carelessness.

Y/N took her time packing her things, waiting patiently until the majority of students had departed before finally pushing herself up to stand and slinging her tote bag over her shoulder.

Wanda, her roommate, remained in her seat, jotting something down in her notebook. “I’ll wait for you while you talk. We can go to the library after,” she proposed, and Y/N smiled at the idea, nodding her head eagerly.

Dr Barnes was still by his desk, eyes focused on the screen of his computer as he closed his lecture slides and finally shut off the projector. He looked up from what he was doing and eyed Y/N curiously as she approached him.

“Any questions about the lecture?” He asked, almost absentmindedly, diverting his eyes back to his computer. He proceeded to tap a few buttons, wait a short moment, then slowly close the laptop. He began to gather up the pages strewn across his desk.

“Not about the lecture, no.” Y/N smiled at him politely and walked a little closer, coming to a stop just before his desk. She noticed his beard had grown out a bit longer since she had last spoken to him, looking a little more rugged than usual. “I was wondering if you received my email?”

Dr Barnes lifted his gaze and considered her face for a long moment. Y/N shifted her weight from one leg to the other, feeling herself grow a little uncomfortable under his dark eyes. Dr Barnes seemed a little irritated.

“Have you bothered to read the module handbook before taking this class, Miss Y/L/N?” He tore his gaze away again, turning his attention to the papers in his hands and shoving them into a thick plastic folder. “No, of course you haven’t. No one ever does.”

Y/N remained quiet, her initial polite smile faltering at his sarcasm. She was used to Dr Barnes always acting cheerful and kind, always eager to help whenever he could. In previous years, he had even stayed behind after classes to help her friends out with assignments and often sent out recommendations for readings which he thought would simplify complicated concepts and ideas. Dr Barnes always went the extra mile. On this particular Friday, however, something just wasn’t right.

“Just for a second, let’s pretend that you did go to the incredibly difficult length of opening the document I had posted on the forum, labelled important, and read the excruciatingly long five hundred words it contained.”

He closed his folder and slid it into his brown messenger bag.

“You would then be aware that university policy clearly states lecturers have five working days to respond to any queries via email. To answer your question, yes, I have seen your email but I have not yet had the time to find the appropriate resources to direct you to. You can trust that you will receive your answer by Tuesday.”

He proceeded to shove his laptop into his bag, then checked the time on his watch. To Dr Barnes, the conversation was over.

“But the assignment is due by Monday afternoon,” Y/N reminded him, and the look he shot her in response made her regret she hadn’t just dropped it. To say he looked annoyed was an understatement.

“It’s not my problem you left it this late,” he answered coolly. “You shouldn’t be expecting special treatment from your lecturers. I’m taking twice the normal amount of classes, have about eighty assignments to mark this weekend, and on top of that, I’m in a really bad fucking mood, so don’t expect me to just drop everything for you.”

Behind her, Y/N could hear Wanda hurry to pick up her stuff, eager to remove herself from the room as swiftly as humanly possible. The angry exchange was the last thing Y/N had expected when she approached his desk, and she couldn’t blame Wanda for wanting to get away. The whole thing was just plain awkward, and if Y/N had been in Wanda’s shoes, she’d want to give them some privacy, too.

Wanda’s steps echoed off the walls of the lecture hall, and then the door was swinging shut behind her. It was just Y/N and Dr Barnes.

His eyes met her face again, one eyebrow raised expectantly, his expression almost scornful. He picked up his jacket from the back of his swivel chair and slid into it quietly, the silence discourteous in itself.

“Is that all?”

With her lips parted at his gruff and unfriendly attitude, Y/N lightly nodded her head and took a step back. She had never heard Dr Barnes curse so openly before, and she wasn’t keen on provoking him further. Her eyes remained trained on his clearly aggravated expression for a brief moment before she finally turned towards the exit.

“One more thing.” She hadn’t even made it two feet before his voice stopped her in her tracks. She turned her head towards him, and felt him analyse her face for a fleeting moment before continuing. “For your own sake, I would advise you to learn your place.”

Y/N’s brows only furrowed at his words, lips pursed into a thin line. She was so, so confused at his sudden coldness and strange attitude. What the hell had she done to provoke this? She studied his expression for a long moment and then, unable to read his thoughts, Y/N turned back towards the door and began walking briskly towards it.

“And don’t roll your eyes!” He called after her.

Had she rolled her eyes? She wasn’t sure.

Annoyed at his behaviour, Y/N only muttered, “see you on Monday, Dr Barnes”, and stalked out of the lecture hall without waiting for a response. She let the door slam shut behind her.

Wanda was waiting just outside, leaning on the wall with her bag slung over her shoulder and scrolling through something on her phone. At the sudden sound, she looked up and slid the phone into the pocket of her jeans.

“What was his problem?” She asked in bewilderment. “I’ve never seen him so pissed off.”

Y/N only sighed as they both turned towards the main exit. The corridors had grown deserted, and neither of them felt like going to the library after that, whatever that even was.

“I don’t know. He usually answers my emails the same day and is always like ‘come to me with any questions or problems, I’ll be happy to help’. What a load of shit.” Y/N snorted. “The whole time he spent being a dickhead, he could have spent answering the question from my email. I didn’t ask for papers or resources. I asked a simple yes or no question. That’s all.”

Her friend smiled sadly in her direction, then furrowed her brows when she remembered something. “Didn’t he - just a few days ago - tell you your paper was publication worthy and offer you a place as his research assistant?”

Y/N nodded, honestly unable to believe it now. He was so cheerful that day, radiating kindness and enthusiasm, praising her work until her cheeks grew red. Whatever happened to the Dr Barnes she was so fond of?

“Not only that. He also offered me a ride home the other day. I ran into him after leaving the library at like 11pm. What a weird guy.”

The brunette clapped her on the back, a small comforting gesture as they made their way through the large revolving doors and finally stepped outside.

“If I were you, I’d report him to the Dean. That shit was nothing short of unprofessional. I can’t believe he cussed you out like that.”

The afternoon September sun shone down on them as they took their usual shortcut through the parking lot, then turned left onto the main road towards their apartment. It was only a ten minute walk and Y/N was thankful for the fresh breath of air after what happened in the lecture hall.

Wanda suddenly had an idea. “It’s a Friday. We should go out and grab a drink or two. God knows you need it after that shit show.”

Y/N laughed at her statement but couldn’t bring herself to disagree. Now that she was no longer going to the library - too angered by Dr Barnes to even contemplate the work she had yet to do for him - Y/N was happy to have someone else make her evening plans for her. A few drinks with Wanda were always a good idea, and with the new semester recently starting, they had hardly had a chance to sit down and catch up.

Upon getting back to their shared apartment, Y/N spent some time alone in her room before she needed to start getting ready. She lay on her bed and stared at the ceiling with a cushion pressed to her chest, almost vibrating with rage at Dr Barnes’ attitude. She wanted to know what the hell she had done to provoke him like that.

Y/N considered everything that had happened each time she had seen him over the previous few days. She had visited him in his office on Monday to discuss some minor changes she wished to make to her thesis proposal; something about the wording of the questions she would ask her research participants. It was nothing that could have sparked any sort of unpleasant emotions; it was bland. Dr Barnes spent twenty minutes giving her some counsel, and at the end, he told her not to worry. He said she was on track to an amazing grade with the work she had already put in and that she should just relax for a little while.

“Speaking of great work,” he then added, reaching behind him and flicking through some papers on his desk until he pulled out the one he was looking for. He was sitting on the edge of the table, Y/N occupying the chair opposite his desk, only a few feet away.

He handed her the stapled pages. “Congratulations on scoring the highest grade I have ever given on this assignment. It was a great read, even publication worthy. Not something undergrad students get told often.”

Y/N raised her brows in surprise, honestly not expecting the high praise. She smiled and thanked him politely, tucking the pages into her bag.

“You know, I’m currently working on a few research papers and I’m looking for some help with things like literature reviews, gathering data and helping with analysis. It’s a paid opportunity and it always looks great on grad school applications, if it’s something you’d consider.”

Y/N almost jumped with excitement.

“Really? That would be amazing!” She was biting her lip, eyes sparkling with enthusiasm.

Dr Barnes expelled a satisfied little laugh, pleased with her response and eagerness. He held out his hand and offered a little shake to mark a deal well struck.

Y/N accepted it gladly, her own hand tiny in his own. It lasted a second, then it was done, and Dr Barnes was announcing he had to get going to his next class.

Y/N left his office just moments later.

She ran into him again the same evening, just as she was leaving the library some time right before midnight. He was leaving for home, having stayed behind to catch up on admin work, and he had a mug of coffee in his hand despite the late hour. They made small talk for a brief moment on the steps leading up to the main entrance of the building and he asked if she needed a ride home. Y/N declined, explaining that she only lived a ten minute walk away, five if she took the shortcut through the parking lot.

On Wednesday she had sent her email, and on Friday came the lecture. As far as she was concerned, Y/N had done absolutely nothing that could have provoked his bitterness and hostility. Defeated, she got up from her bed and headed for the shower, eager to wash away the anger she felt.

They left their apartment just after 8pm and walked the short distance to the best bar on campus. It was a stereotypically Irish establishment, Guinness flowing from taps, all sticky wooden furniture and rowdy middle aged men mingling with students on a typical Friday night.

Y/N bought the first round of drinks, both her and Wanda deciding to start the night off right with some shots. These were soon followed with glasses of rum and coke, then pints of Guinness with blackcurrant cordial. The alcohol quickly began to flow, and the conversation with it.

They sat at a tall round table near the back, soon having to scream at each other in order to be heard over the shouts directed at the rugby game playing on the large flat screen TV by the bar. It wasn’t long before Y/N began to forget all about her unpleasant experience earlier in the afternoon, every gulp of alcohol making her stress and anger melt away just a little bit more.

“You can’t text him,” Y/N warned, her face scrunching up in disgust. “You’ve broken up with him for a reason. Even the best sex isn’t worth it and both you and I know that it wasn’t even mediocre!”

Wanda only laughed and protested by shaking her head vigorously. She was drunk, closer to plastered. “No! It’s worth it, I swear. It won’t mean a thing!”

Y/N giggled at her argument and looked down suddenly when the screen of Wanda’s phone lit up on top of the table between them. Wanda hurried to cover the screen.

“You’ve already texted him, haven’t you?”

The brunette only smiled and shrugged her shoulders sheepishly.

“He’s meeting us here literally any minute and if all goes well, the sex I get tonight will be mediocre and I’ll have no hangover in the morning.”

“Easier said than done,” Y/N told her solemnly, and rolled her eyes at Wanda’s typical drunken antics. She had a string of lousy ex-boyfriends and a tendency to text them at random the second she felt the familiar buzz of alcohol. Fighting with her about it was just about pointless.

“Great, just who I want to see tonight!” Y/N sighed in defeat. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be right back. I need to use the bathroom.”

Wanda grinned from ear to ear, almost apologetically as Y/N slid from the wooden stool and pulled her skirt down to cover more skin. She turned in the general direction of the bathrooms and waited in line for just under a minute before finally stepping inside. She did her business, washed her hands and fixed her hair. By the time she existed the tiny bathroom, Wanda’s ex had already arrived and made himself comfortable in Y/N’s stool. Feeling her annoyance rising, Y/N decided to opt for the bar instead.

She approached it slowly and awaited her turn to order. The bar was a long, rounded plank of wood with a chandelier made of at least a hundred wine glasses hanging just over it. There was just the one bartender and he was laughing at something one of the customers had said. By the time he got around to taking her order, over five minutes had passed and when Y/N looked over her shoulder to her and Wanda’s table she found it empty. Her eyes quickly darted to the door and she watched in disbelief as Wanda practically dragged her toy for the night out of the bar and probably towards his car.

Just as the door slammed shut behind them, the bartender placed Y/N’s drink in front of her.

With no where to go and a whole pint before her, Y/N slid onto a nearby bar stool and exhaled sharply in what felt like a combination of annoyance but also amusement. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and realised she had a text from Wanda.

“Sorry for ditching but there was an emergency. Don’t wait up xx”.

Y/N knew exactly what kind of an emergency Wanda meant.

The bartender was just beginning to walk away when Y/N called after him. “Do you mind also giving me a shot of vodka?” She smiled at him sweetly and he expelled a little laugh.

“Tough night?” He questioned, kindness in his eyes.

“Tough everything,” Y/N answered, and tore her gaze away from the man in front of her when someone slid into the empty bar stool to her left. She studied him from the waist up; black jeans, a brown leather jacket, a dark beard and… no fucking way.

“Make that two shots and a pint of whatever beer you’ve got on tap.” Dr Barnes thanked the bartender and waited until the guy had walked away before he turned his gaze towards Y/N.

“What a splendid coincidence.” Y/N’s tone was all sarcasm, fuelled by her anger at him and inflamed by the alcohol in her system. Something about it made her inhibitions go out the freaking window, all politeness and respect forgotten, replaced by bitterness and hostility. She took a big gulp of her beer.

“If you must know, I noticed you when you came out of the bathroom and I thought I’d come over and apologise for earlier,” he stated calmly, clearly holding his alcohol better than she was. Y/N was certain she didn’t see him enter through the front door, which likely meant he had arrived before her and Wanda, sitting somewhere in one of the booths in the back. He’d been there a while.

Y/N turned her head and looked at him expectantly, one eyebrow raised. “That’s funny. Thought the advise was that I learn my place.”

“I shouldn’t have said that to you,” Dr Barnes answered apologetically, all calm and professional, his normal pleasant self. “I was in a bad mood and I took it out on you. Like I said, I’m sorry and I hope we can move past it.”

He awaited her response, watching as she tilted her head back and took three large gulps of her drink. She plainly did it to buy herself more time to compose a response. She wasn’t sure whether she should accept the apology so easily, and the buzz in her head wasn’t helping the situation.

So, instead of giving him the response he was looking for, she turned to him and asked, “why were you in a bad mood?”

Dr Barnes looked away at her question, lifting his head to regard the chandelier above their heads, all dusty wine glasses, twinkling with a warm orange glow. He didn’t say anything until the bartender placed their shots in front of them and grabbed a glass for the beer.

“I, uh…” Dr Barnes looked a little lost for words and Y/N’s watchful eyes on him weren’t exactly helping. “My wife and I aren’t in the best place right now.”

Y/N snorted at that. “Your wife pissed you off so you decided to take it out on a random student? Real professional, Dr Barnes.”

He didn’t respond, only brought his shot glass to his lips and tilted his head back. Dr Barnes was not quite as sober as she had initially thought. The guy was just better at covering up his cloudy thoughts and keeping his snarky comments to himself; something Y/N definitely tended to struggle with. So, when he chuckled at his own misfortune, Y/N shot him an expectant look.

“I… Well, I wouldn’t say random, but yeah, you’re right. Dick move.”

Y/N eyed him with suspicion and waited as the bartender set the beer down and Dr Barnes handed him some cash in exchange. He stalked off towards another customer.

“What do you mean?”

Dr Barnes turned in his stool to face her. With his elbow resting on the bar next to him, thick thighs spread apart and his usually bright eyes hazy with the effects of alcohol, Y/N almost gulped at the sight. There was something very different about him outside the lecture hall. The guy dripped with testosterone and Y/N cursed her drunken self for having these thoughts about him.

The corner of his lips curved up into an amused smile. He considered his words for a brief moment, then shook his head and sighed. “Let’s just say my wife isn’t your biggest fan.”

Y/N’s brows knitted together. “I’ve never even met your wife.”

“You haven’t,” Dr Barnes agreed, then paused to take a long drink of his beer. He licked off the foam that attached itself to the hair above his top lip. The entire time his dark gaze remained trained on her face, weighing his next words. “That doesn’t mean she hasn’t heard of you… or seen you, for that matter.”

Y/N regarded him in confusion, and he took a moment to scan her expression before elaborating further.

“She’s jealous of you,” he explained, and Y/N could only stare at him blankly. This wasn’t making any sense. “Which is why she stormed out of here the second she spotted you.”

“Why on earth would she be jealous? We’ve not done anything… y’know?”

He took another gulp. “You haven’t. What I’ve done is a different story. I’m not exactly great at covering my tracks.”

When Y/N didn’t respond, he continued. It appeared Dr Barnes had no filter tonight, his words escaping his mouth with not a second committed to acknowledge their possible consequences.

“You should consider making your social media accounts private with the sort of things you post. You never know who can find it.”

Was he… stalking her? Y/N’s mind wondered back to her most recent online activity. There was a picture of her childhood dog, a few photos from a trip she took with her family and… significantly more racy lingerie pictures, photos from messy outings with her friends, and late night Twitter musings about all things sex. To any outsider, the whole thing painted a very interesting picture of the kind of person she was.

Her cheeks flushed red.

“Needless to say, she wasn’t impressed when she unlocked my phone to see you in nothing but your little baby pink set.” He took a long drink of his beer, eyes fixated on her reddening cheeks. His eyes were dark, unreadable.

Y/N couldn’t tell if he was scorning or taunting her. Nor did she know what to say, or even what to think. Her lips parted at his honesty about recent events, and she shifted uncomfortably under his gaze. He was gauging her reaction to his bold words and the sinister implication of what he was really doing looking at her photos. His words brought forth a mix of images to Y/N’s mind that she feebly attempted to push away, something inside of her stirring at the thought. This was bad.

“I thought I had gotten away with it when I made up some lie about how your page was recommended to me by the algorithm, and how I went onto it out of curiosity. How I was shocked with what came up.” He laughed again, a disbelieving little chuckle at his own stupidity, it would seem.

He went on. “Everything was fine for a little while, apart from her suspicion, of course. But all hell broke loose when she woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of me grunting a name that wasn’t hers, my phone in one hand and my cock in the other.”

Y/N stared at him in disbelief, suddenly sobering up at his revelation. She couldn’t believe what was happening, what she was hearing. To her dismay, her body was quicker to respond to the information than her mind, her thighs clenching together at the thought of him him doing that while thinking about her.

“She connected the dots… Me mentioning your name in passing, hiring a new research assistant. She knew my intentions right away.”

Y/N cleared her throat. “Your intentions?”

Dr Barnes smiled, an ominous little smile which hid some deeper meaning. “Don’t act so surprised. I don’t just offer rides home to any student, or try to get alone with them whenever I can. You drive me fucking crazy but you’re so clueless about it. It almost makes the whole thing worse.”

Y/N knew it was the alcohol talking; that these words would never have been uttered had he been sober, but somehow, the detail did not change a thing. Drunk or sober, he said what he said, and Y/N knew that he was not lying about it. He had no reason to.

“Even right now,” he began again, regarding her body in a way which made goosebumps rise on her skin. She felt naked under his gaze, his dark eyes drinking in the sight of the valley between her breasts, then the curve of her hips, and smirking knowingly when his eyes fell upon her clenched thighs.

“Or maybe you’re not as clueless as you seem. Maybe you’re just toying with me to taunt me.”

“Taunt you?”

Dr Barnes laughed quietly and finished the last of his beer, setting the glass down on the bar a bit too roughly. Y/N regarded the wedding band on his finger, feeling a perverse combination of guilt and arousal.

He continued. “If you wanted to get fucked by your lecturer, you would have done something about it by now. But no, I think you just like to torture me. You give me just enough to make me think you want it… a smile here, a visit to my office there, a coffee waiting for me on my desk or your bedroom eyes whenever we make eye contact in the lecture hall. It’s fucking infuriating.”

It was Y/N’s turn to pick up her shot glass and down the contents. She didn’t even flinch at the burn in her throat.

“I’d be furious if I found out my wife had a sliver of the thoughts I have of you about some other guy. I’m pathetic and she knows it. She met me here today to tell me she’s done.”

Y/N tried to look sorry for him, she really did, but no matter how hard she tried to alter her facial expression, the one that appeared was not remorseful. His wife had done nothing wrong; she just picked up her dignity and self-respect, and did the right thing for her. Y/N knew that had she been in her shoes, she’d probably do the same.

Dr Barnes’ behaviour was distasteful, to say the least. It was shameless, shocking and vulgar. And whilst Y/N completely realised the severity of his choices and the revolting thing he had done to some poor woman - his freaking wife - the fact did nothing to cease the budding yearning for him at his revelations. The imagery was just too vivid.

He sighed in exasperation as he slid off his stool. “I’m gonna head off and hope one of my mates lets me crash on their couch. I’ll see you on Monday, Miss Y/L/N.”

He dusted off his jeans and made sure he had his phone and wallet before he stalked off in the direction of the door. Y/N remained where she was and motioned the bartender over.

“Another shot of vodka, please.”

With how quiet the bar had become, it took the bartender less than twenty seconds to set another shot glass in front of her. He smiled kindly at her again, almost empathetically and Y/N wondered if he knew; the guy just looked like he did.

She muttered a quick, “thank you”, tapped her bank card on the reader and threw her head back, downing her shot. Then, on a sudden whim that Y/N had no time to tame, she gathered herself up and followed Dr Barnes out through the exit, hoping to God that he was still nearby.

The old wooden floor creaked under her boots as she trudged towards the exit, and when she finally got outside, she instantly wrapped her arms around herself at the sudden chill.

It was almost midnight, the night dark and moonless. She stopped just outside the door to the bar and glanced around her. The street had a number of different bars and clubs, some of them bursting with people, most of them close to deserted. The street itself was relatively quiet, the old cobble road littered with parked cars, beer bottles and the smell of smoke.

To her left, two girls stood talking until a large navy car pulled up and they got inside, shutting the door behind them.

To her right, stood Dr Barnes, just beneath the flickering neon sign with the bar’s name, a cigarette dangling from the unsmiling corner of his mouth. His phone was pressed to his ear.

“Thanks, pal. I’ll be there within the hour,” he told the person on the line, took the cigarette out from between his lips and tapped off the ash. He was just hanging up when his eyes met Y/N’s.

No words were said. A long moment passed before either of them moved, their eyes regarding each others’ expressions, searching for clues about thoughts or feelings. It felt as though the air itself was holding its breath and when Dr Barnes reached up and took a long drag of his cigarette, something inside of Y/N simply snapped.

She watched as he dropped the butt of his smoke onto the cobblestones beneath his feet and put out the flame with the sole of his shoe. He was looking down and when his eyes lifted again - all dark and hazy with the effects of alcohol and craving - Y/N knew there was no turning back.

Incited by her own drunkenness and the wicked and depravity of the images his words had placed in her head, Y/N inhaled sharply before beginning her descent towards him.

Dr Barnes narrowed his eyes at the sudden determination in her step, but didn’t protest when her fingers hooked around the collar of his jacket and pulled him down firmly towards her. Lips met, the kiss all teeth and growls, and Y/N hissed when his fingers tangled in her hair and yanked her head back. He deepened the kiss with fervency, hands groping at each other’s bodies with urgent desperation.

“Don’t stop,” she whispered into the kiss, dizzy and out of breath.

Y/N dug her fingernails into his shoulders when he harshly pulled her against him. She was trapped between his frenzied arms and heaving chest, a big wall of muscle that made the unholy images in her head descend into perversion. There was something so erotic about the way he desperately craved to make her crumble in his arms, his grip strong and brutal, almost murderous. Y/N whined at the feeling, having never experienced something so raw before. Dr Barnes was not some random college guy, selfish and eager for an instantaneous release.

No. Dr Barnes was a man. Experienced and sensual, lustful and dripping with the purest form of eroticism, Dr Barnes was masculine and powerful, authoritative and forceful. It was a lethal combination which made Y/N’s breath catch in her throat and her hands itch for more of him.

He almost dragged her away from the entrance to the bar and towards the dark alley situated just next to it. Mouths never leaving each other, Dr Barnes was ruthless with the sheer force of his hold on her and she cried out when he drove her back against the stone wall of the building.

The shadows of the alley shielded them from the eyes of anyone leaving the bar or passing by, but the groans and grunts were a dead giveaway that the dark passageway was not unoccupied. Y/N should have paid more attention to how dangerous this was, how fucking awkward it would be if someone she knew caught her like this with her professor. But when he pinned her against the wall, wedged a muscular thigh between her own legs and harshly grabbed her face in his hand, all reservations and hesitancy melted away from her skin.

All that existed was him, his hands holding her in place and touching her everywhere. No inch of skin was spared in his frantic exploration, the short skirt she wore providing access to all the different places he had imagined squeezing and licking and burying his face in. Groping her ass roughly under her skirt, Dr Barnes did not waste any time before forcefully tilting her head to the side and placing his mouth on her neck. It was all tongue and teeth, his hand still holding her face in place and when he was satisfied that she wouldn’t move, his digits skimmed her collarbone and hooked around the low-cut top of her dress. The stretch of the fabric and the lack of bra allowed him to yank the material down from over her breasts, exposing her.

Y/N felt herself gasp, unsure if it was in response to the chilly night air hitting her already hardening nipples, or the feeling of him roughly grabbing the back of her thighs and hoisting her up, back scraping painfully against the wall. He held her there, pinned to the cold surface, and she felt her breathing accelerate when his lips moved hurriedly from her neck, to her collarbone and finally wrapped around a stiff nipple. His mouth was warm, wet and hungry and it made her insides clench with need. A moment later, when he let go of her slightly and she slid down the wall to land on his thigh, still wedged between her legs, she cried out at the pressure it placed on her clit.

“James.” His name fell from her lips along with a feeble exhalation, her eyes screwed shut at the intensity of the feeling. He released her nipple with a wet pop, the skin glistening with saliva, red from the assault. Her feet barely reaching the ground, Y/N did her best to raise her hips and then slam herself down onto his thigh again, grinding on it with determination until he noticed and pressed it harder to her crotch. He aided her in massaging her little bundle of nerves on the rough fabric by gripping her hips and guiding her movements until the friction made her skin raw.

“Too much,” she whimpered breathlessly, and Dr Barnes paused for just a second to gauge her expression. His lips were red, swollen, glistening from the kiss and just like her, he struggled for air. His eyes held a certain wildness to them, a determination and desperation that Y/N had never seen before. He reached down and maintained eye contact as he undid his belt, the button of his jeans and pulled the zipper down. Then, when Y/N realised what was coming, he pinned her to the wall harder than before, cupped the back of her left thigh and lifted it to his hip.

His other hand, frantic, pulled himself out of his jeans and boxers and expertly moved Y/N’s underwear aside under the fabric of her dress. Nails digging into his shoulders and a gasp was the only response he needed when he forcefully drove himself past her lips and entered her until he was fully sheathed inside her cunt. He groaned out at the feeling and his name fell in a breathless whisper from her lips again.

It was rough, shameless and fierce, his hips snapping to meet her own whilst a thin layer of perspiration built up on their skin. Y/N wanted to encourage him, she truly did, but amidst the wild thoughts that this was her professor - a man she was supposed to respect, be courteous towards and above all platonic - she found she didn’t know what to do or say. Her boldness ran out the second she grabbed him by the collar and kissed him, and since that moment, he had complete control.

And so, unable to form any words, Y/N simply moaned at the feeling of him taking exactly what he wanted, furiously slamming himself into her with so much force her legs shook and the skin of her back screamed from the scratches the wall had given her. For him, it was encouragement enough, the little sounds spurring him on further until he was burying his face in her neck and grunting her name, just the way he had when his wife caught him with his cock in his hand.

Y/N only briefly managed to catch her breath before she saw Dr Barnes reaching up and pushing his index and middle fingers past his lips, wetting them generously before finally reaching between them and beginning to skilfully massage her clit. His touch was hard, applying just the right amount of pressure and massaging it in perfect little circles. The combination of being filled up so completely, his thick shaft stretching her in the most blissful of ways, and his fingers working so gracefully against her clit, soon resulted in her feeling the familiar heat in her lower abdomen.

He finished first, his cock pulsating and throbbing inside of her until he filled her up with his load, the feeling enough to push her over the edge and bite into his shoulder at the intensity of it all. Her walls clenched around him sweetly, and he continued to thrust all the way through his and her combined orgasms until both of them were spent.

He pulled out gently and Y/N slumped against the wall, her legs barely able to hold up her weight. She watched with clouded and blurred vision as he stepped back and pulled his trousers back up, quickly buttoning them and fixing his belt. Just like that, it was done. No feelings, no warmth, just the satisfaction of a quick, hard fuck.

Y/N was breathless, her clit still pulsating from her orgasm but the reality of it all quickly beginning to settle in.

“I, uh… I should probably get going,” she told him calmly, almost awkwardly, shifting her weight from one leg to the other when she felt his cum trickling out of her. Her fingers fumbled with the top of her dress, clumsily tucking her tits away.

He regarded her expression for a brief moment; the reddened cheeks, messy hair and the way she was biting her lip, all disheveled and shy, clueless with what to do next. How do you proceed with life after you’ve just gotten fucked by your professor behind an on-campus bar? The question hung heavily in the air until she noticed him take pity on her predicament and took a step closer.

She stayed unmoving as he hooked his fingers around the bottom of her skirt and fixed it so that everything was covered once again. Then, gently, he reached up and cupped her face in his hands, her back still pressed to the wall. She almost shivered, the adrenaline dropping, the stone feeling so much colder than it had been before.

“Don’t worry about this. Everything’s going to be alright,” he reassured her, and placed a long kiss to her forehead. “It can be our little secret.”

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juniorgman187 · 4 years

Text

Bratty (Spencer Reid Imagine)

Summary: Reid must supervise Camille, who makes Reid’s job anything but easy for him.

Category: Soft angst Couple: OCFem!Reader x Spencer Reid Word Count: 2.6k

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

“You’re being ridiculous.” Camille huffed.

“No - what I’m being is a good uncle.” Cruz retorted while handing Camille a jacket.

“It’s literally midnight!”

“Exactly. I’m not leaving you alone this late at night.”

“You’re seriously gonna make me go all the way to Quantico with you right now?”

“I won’t be able to leave work after I’m there. If you come with me, I can work and take care of you.” He explained.

“I’m an adult! I can take care of myself.”

Cruz completely dismisses this. “I already told JJ that you’re coming. She’s excited to see you again. You can meet the whole team, too.”

“If I go, will you please stop acting like I’m a child?”

“I can’t make any promises.” He shrugs.

Camille groans in mild frustration as she reluctantly readies herself to leave with her uncle for Quantico.

As soon as Camille enters the BAU, she’s showered with love from JJ.

“Hey, you! How are you holding up?”

“Well right now, I’m really wishing I didn’t give Uncle Matt a key to my apartment.” Camille quips.

“Yeah, maybe when he’s distracted I’ll grab his keys and remove yours.”

JJ’s joke makes Camille smile. JJ winks at Camille before turning away to talk to Matt.

“How’s Elena?” Elena is Camille’s mother and Matt’s sister.

“Reception’s shoddy where she is, but when I drove her to the airport, she couldn’t be more excited. She’s always wanted to travel to an underdeveloped country and teach English as a second language. That’s why it wasn’t even a question if I would take care of Camille while she was away.”

“Good for her. I guess it runs in your blood to want to help people, huh?”

“No,no she’s more selfless than me. I can tell you that. She’s so patient with her students. Probably developed that skill when she had Camille. I love her to death, but kid’s feisty. Just like her mom when she was her age.”

JJ grimaces in preparation for a hard question she feels obligated to ask. “You know, it’s none of my business, but what’s Camille - 21, 22?”

“21.”

“I know you told Elena you’d watch her, but helicopter parenting her like she’s a teenager isn’t the way.”

“Forgive me if I’m not comfortable leaving her alone with a serial killer on the loose.”

This statement alone is enough to shut JJ down. On a lighter note, the team greets Camille.

“Welcome. I’m SSA Aaron Hotchner.”

“Camille de la Vega. Nice to finally meet you.”

“You’ve met JJ. This is Agents Derek Morgan, Emily Prentiss, and David Rossi. She’s our technical analyst - Penelope Garcia. And this is Dr. Spencer Reid.”

Camille goes down the line shaking everyone’s hands, but then she reaches Reid.

“A doctor in the FBI?”

He corrects her instantaneously. “Not M.D. PHD. Three of them actually. Chemistry, mathematics, and engineering.”

“Good to know.” She nods.

Camille extends her hand to shake his and everyone notices that he obliges.

“Hey, Reid what’s with the handshake? I thought it was safer to kiss.” Morgan teases.

Camille shyly laughs.

“Yeah, why the exception, kid?”

“Don’t listen to them.” Reid timidly tells Camille, making her grin from ear to ear. She’s already taken a particular liking to him. And from the looks of it, he’s done just the same.

“Although I’d love to catch up with you, Camille, we have to start working immediately. Anderson will show you to your uncle’s office.” Hotch gestures towards Anderson who’s waiting in the doorway to lead Camille out of the round table room.

. . .

Notably, the clock reads 4:10 a.m. Camille is reading a book at her uncle’s desk, when there’s a knock at the door. It’s Spencer.

“Oh, hi. Did you need to grab something from his desk? I can move if you need me to.” She politely offers.

“No, no I actually came to bring you food. I thought you might be hungry.”

Camille thanks him and accepts the paper bag of food.

Reid notices she’s reading a book. “What are you reading?”

“Little Women.” Camille says, flashing the cover.

“Have you read it before?”

“Mhm. It’s one of my favorites. Have you?”

“My mom read it to me when I was younger.”

Camille sees an opportunity to mess with him and takes it. “Wasn’t it crazy how Laurie set the March house on fire and all of them died?”

Spencer furrows his brows in confusion.

“I, um, I don’t remember that part.”

Camille immediately registers Reid’s discomfort. “I was just messing with you.”

“Oh.” Spencer nods and forces a laugh. “I should, um, probably get back. Do you want anything before I go? Coffee, water, maybe?”

“I’m okay, thanks.”

“Alright, I’ll be back to check on you.” Reid scrunches his lips into a small smile before closing the door behind him.

As he makes his way back to the round table, he smiles so widely, that when Morgan passes him, he notices.

“Stop it right there, Pretty Boy.”

Reid stops in his tracks.

“Now turn around.”

Reid obeys.

“Why do you look like a kid in a candy shop right now? What did I miss?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

For someone that studies behavior, he’s not too good at lying. Morgan sees right through Reid.

“Come on, man. You can tell me.”

Penelope passes by.

“Tell him what? Whatcha hiding, Boy Wonder?”

“Nothing. I’m not hiding anything.”

Morgan and Garcia look at him with skepticism.

“Did you hear how his voice did that thing? His voice only gets that high when he’s lying.” Garcia notes.

Reid clears his throat to deliberately speak in a lower pitch. “No it doesn’t.”

Garcia squints her eyes at him. “What do you not want us to know?”

“Guys, seriously. It’s nothing.”

“Is this about Cruz’s niece?” Morgan asks, hitting the nail on the head.

“Ooh, I knew something was fishy when you shook her hand.”

“It was just a handshake, okay?”

“Well, excuse me, but I’m having a hard time believing you.” Morgan cleverly retorts.

“I don’t like her. If that’s what you’re implying.”

Morgan smirks. “Oh is that so? Then riddle me this Pretty Boy - where were you just now?”

Reid loosens his tie, feeling like it’s a noose.

“Oh did you see that? His body language is speaking for itself. And it’s saying A LOT.” Garcia giggles.

“Go get em, tiger.” Morgan leaves Reid to his devices with a pat on his shoulder.

“Shut up.”

. . .

No longer reading, Camille is scanning her uncle’s shelves - looking at the pictures and the books, and opening and closing different cabinets or drawers in his desk. A knock on the door startles her.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m just checking in. How are you?”

She frowns. “Incredibly bored. I finished my book like thirty minutes ago.”

Reid checks his watch.

“How long was I gone?”

A small laugh leaves her lips. “I was basically at the end when you left.”

Reid’s lips shift to one side of his face as he thinks of something to help Camille out. “Um, I - I have newspapers. With, with crosswords on them. I can bring them to you.”

Reid rushes out of the room and comes back awfully quickly with a stack of newspapers. Camille laughs delightfully at the sight of them.

“These are scans of ones I’ve already solved.”

“You’ve solved all of these? What are you? Some kind of genius?”

“I don’t believe that intelligence can be accurately quantified. But I do have an IQ of 187, an eidetic memory, and can read 20,000 words per minute.”

Camille is in awe.

“Uh, yes, I’m a genius.”

“So what I’m hearing is, if I get stuck on a word, I could just ask you and you’d remember what the right answer was?”

“Kind of takes the fun out of solving it yourself, don’t you think?”

“Not if it means I get to see you again.”

Reid laughs uncomfortably. “Uh, so how will I know if you need help?”

“I’ll text you.”

“You don’t have my - Oh got it.”

Camille makes a face and hands him her phone to take. He makes a contact for himself and hands her back the phone.

“Great. See you in an hour, Laurie.”

Reid’s caught off guard.

“If I’m Laurie, are you Jo or Amy?”

“Well that depends. Am I the best friend or the love interest?”

Reid raises his eyebrows in surprise.

“I resonate more with Amy - if that’s what you were asking. I’m young and driven - like her.”

“I always thought Amy to be sort of a brat.”

"She knows what she wants. So do I.”

“Oh yeah? And what do you want?” This is a newfound display of confidence coming from the Doctor. It catches her by surprise.

Camille doesn’t play into it, just to tease him. “What I want is for you and your team to catch this guy, so I can go home.”

“I should, uh, I should go back now. See you in an hour.”

“Looking forward to it.” She says sarcastically.

. . .

Reid is working on the geographical profile when he feels his phone buzz. Without even needing to see it, he knows it’s Camille.

UNKNOWN NUMBER: You’re late for your check in, Doctor.

Reid looks at his watch. He’s only three minutes late.

REID: Sorry, I’m busy. And you’re only supposed to text when you have a question. That wasn’t a question.

UNKNOWN NUMBER: Fine, here's a question - when are you gonna make your hourly check in?

REID: A question pertaining to the crossword.

UNKNOWN NUMBER: Los Angeles Times. 64 down. Clue is “Dr. Reid is late for his check in. When should he be expected?”

REID: The ‘Amy’ in you is showing.

UNKNOWN NUMBER: The brat part of her or the love interest part of her?

REID: Former.

UNKNOWN NUMBER: It’s fine. I can wait. Nowhere else I have to be anyway.

REID: I’ll be there when I’m done.

. . .

Reid is walking through the hall and entering Cruz’s office. Camille works diligently on the crossword.

“Not so fast. You have to stop by the main office and get a tardy slip.” She quips.

“Funny. How’s the crossword?”

“I’ve finished two of them since you’ve been gone.”

Reid glances at his watch. “That doesn’t make any sense. The average time to finish a puzzle is 21 minutes. I’ve been gone for 88.”

"I got distracted.”

“Really? By what?”

Camille fights a smirk. “A little birdie who stopped by.”

Reid shakes his head and exasperates. He needn’t know more to figure out what she meant by this.

"Which one - Garcia or Morgan?”

"Does it matter?”

"What’d they say?”

"Enough.”

"Enough to?”

Camille gets up from the chair and walks around to the front of the desk. This places her right in front of Reid. This is the closest they’ve been yet.

"Enough to let me know whether I’m the best friend or the love interest.”

Camille draws back and grabs her coat from off the chair. She puts it on.

"So who are you? Jo or Amy?”

"Don’t play coy. You know the answer. You are a genius after all.”

Camille grabs her purse off the desk and begins to leave the office.

“Where are you going? I thought you were supposed to leave?”

Camille exits the office and begins to walk into the hallway toward the elevator. The worried doctor follows close behind.

"I’m going for a walk to a cafe. No offense, but I’m not a huge fan of the coffee you’ve got here. Plus, I could use the fresh air.”

"You shouldn’t leave. Especially not alone.”

"Not you, too. Come on. You know I’m not a target. From what I saw in your little conference room, all the victims are blonde. And unless I bleach my hair between here and the time I reach the sidewalk, I think I’ll be okay.”

"Are you at least going to let your Uncle know where you’re going?”

She shoots him a deadpan stare. “What would be the fun in that?”

Camille presses the button near the elevator.

"Anderson can order coffee for you. He’ll bring it back here so you don’t have to leave.” Reid suggests.

"Mmm, no thanks. I’m a big girl.”

The elevator door opens.

“Are you sure about that? Because right now you’re acting like a -”

He hesitates. Camille steps into the elevator and turns on her heels so she can face him before the doors close.

She provokes him. "Say it.”

"You’re acting like a brat!”

"Oh I’m sorry - is my ‘Amy’ showing, Dr. Reid? Well, I am your love interest after all - Laurie.”

Camille winks and the doors close. Reid lets out a frustrated sigh and shakes his head and he begins to jog to the stairwell. With speed and caution he only exhibits when trying to apprehend an unsub, he flies down the stairs. His slender figure can’t support this kind of cardio, but nonetheless, he runs.

When he finds himself in the parking garage, just beside the elevator, he sees Camille several feet away, walking out of the structure completely. He runs as fast as his feet can take him. Eventually he reaches her before she’s on the main sidewalk.

"Camille, wait!”

He’s breathless and red. Camille walks back over to him with a devilish grin.

"Did you actually just run all the way here?”

"What gave me away?”

This earns a hearty laugh from Camille.

"I’m coming with you.” He breathlessly explains.

"Why didn’t you say so earlier? Would’ve saved you the marathon.”

"Yeah, yeah, be quiet.”

“Swallow your pride. Occasionally, it’s not fattening.”

“Frank Tyger. Touché.”

She’s even more impressed at his knowledge of the quote she recited. This makes her more keen to starting an actual dialogue with him instead of just provoking him.

“So why’d they leave you behind?” She asks.

“They didn’t leave me behind. I just choose not to go. I’m notorious for being prone to gunshot wounds, so I choose to stay where I know I’ll be safe. What about you? Why’d Cruz bring you to the office?”

"For the same reason you stayed back. He wants me somewhere I’ll be safe.”

"You’re a little old for a babysitter, don’t you think?”

“You would think, but Uncle Matt has this gift where every time he looks at me, he still sees his helpless 8 year old niece.”

“What happened when you were 8?”

Camille doesn’t even realize what she might’ve accidentally revealed. “Freudian slip. Nothing you need to worry about.”

"You sure?”

“All you need to know is that what happened to me motivated him to work in the field. Ever since then he’s been working to get to the top.”

"So how old are you anyway, little woman?”

"Oh, is that my nickname now? An outright juxtaposition of “big girl” and a reference to the book?”

"Mhm.”

"21.”

"Wow, you really are a little woman.”

"Better than being an old man.”

“Old man? I’m 32.”

"My point exactly.”

"You’re welcome by the way. For doing this.” He adds.

"Oh please, I didn’t ask you to walk me to the cafe.”

“But you wanted me to.”

"Oh wow, you know about reverse psychology. Congrats you’re with the other 98% of the population that does too. Don’t act like you’re doing me a favor. You wouldn’t have followed me if you didn’t want to come.”

"What I want is for you to be safe.”

"Like I said before, I don’t fit the victimology. He has a type and it’s not me. I’m fine going by myself.”

"You know something? You’re really stubborn. Anyone ever tell you that?”

“Aww, I’m so hurt. Boo hoo.” She sarcastically remarks.

“You think you can be just a little bit nicer to me? I am babysitting you after all.”

Camille halts.

“I’m gonna ignore the babysitting part, but yes, I can be nice, but right now, I’ve spent 6 hours cooped up in my uncle’s office bored out of my mind.”

"So what? You’re only toying with me because you’re bored and I’m your only entertainment?”

“Oh congrats! You finally figured it out, genius.”

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

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prophet-of-booba-lady · 3 years

Note

Hi again! I was hoping I could get a fandom life matchup for Legend of Korra!

I’m a trans (mtf) lesbian. 22. Grad student studying policy and public administration (specifically in higher education). Masters student right now, though I’ll be starting my PhD in the spring. My goal is to one day become a professor and teach a class on ethics in academia (regarding instruction of marginalized groups, teaching on stolen land, sexual misconduct in academia between students and the problems of professor-student relationships, and academic misconduct). I’d also like to teach a course on anarchism (as I’m an anarchist), but I’m not planning on studying political theory so that’s probably out of reach.

I really enjoy music, and play several instruments: violin, orchestral percussion, piano, guitar, bass guitar, harmonica, and drums (all except the first two being self taught). I also sing. My favorite genres of music are jazz, classical, and kpop (though I occasionally go through phases of really loving rock, punk, and folk). I have a natural gift for picking up songs by ear, and most instruments come naturally to me with a bit of time (except banjo. I cannot seem to master it, which is a shame because I love banjo music).

Others hobbies: I used to work at a coffee shop, and loved my time there, since I find making drinks for others calming (also enjoy bar tending for parties when my friends ask me to). I know a good bit about plants, having started out as a plant biology major. I play disc golf a lot in my free time. I also watch a lot of tv, mostly comedy/slice of life anime.

In terms of personality, I try to be very friendly toward new people, especially toward younger people, who I try to help out however I can (I always wanted to be an older sibling/cousin, but never got the chance). However, when I’m in a new situation/meeting new people, I’ve been told I can be a little intimidating (especially if it’s a more formal occasion like an organizational meeting) but it’s just because I care about things getting done right, and I also just have resting bitch face unless I’m really comfortable. Once I am comfortable, however, I’m super chill. I make a bunch of bad puns when I’m with friends, (especially after a few drinks). And, I am fiercely loyal, having gotten into more than a few scrapes in high school over people picking on my younger friends.

My biggest pet peeves are people not cleaning up after themselves/doing the bare minimum while cleaning, and forgetting important things consistently.

Id absolutely love it if you could include my musical talents into it. (And also maybe what type of bender I’d be: if you think i would be one).

Thanks again for all the work you out into this!!!

You're an earth bender idk what to tell you. You have earth bender vibes. You probably metal bend or lava bend as well.

S/O: Opal Beifong

Best Friend: Korra

Enemy: Kuvira (we don't appreciate dictators in this household)

You probably grew up in the inner walls of Ba Sing Se. You attend the university there and work to pay of school debts in none other than the Jasmine Dragon Tea House. You meet Korra through Bolin and Mako as you do help with activist work in the outer walls and know their family very well. You are brought into team avatar while Korra is searching for the new airbenders, it's how you meet Kuvira and Opal. At this time you probably do not appreciate Kuvira or opal do to your anarchism, but when you find out that Opal also doesn't appreciate the government and the only reason she likes the city she lives in is because her family runs it. She can and will combine her mom to make you a teacher for young adults. You aren't like a teacher teacher required five days if teaching, you have pop up lessons that anyone can attend and learn. You enjoy living in this city with opal but when she leaves you leave. Opal and your relationship really strengthen your relationship with team avatar. Korra and you were OP before but now you two have a Beifong Airbender to help?? You guys could be unstoppable if you wanted. The Beifong's love you and when Kuvira tries to become a dictator you help free the Beifong family. This really solidifies your relationship with opal. However by this time you and Korra obviously had some problems due to her disappearing but you get it. You understand, you just wish she could have told you before hand. You don't directly fight Kuvira ever, however whenever you meet face to face she and yours re far more hostile than her and anyone else. You just hate dictators and you make it known that you hate her. Even after she's defeated/saved by Korra. Yes Korra tries to convince you that they are almost exactly the same but you know that there is a difference between a mentally damaged hero and a mentally damaged Dictator.

I imagine you and Bolin are close friends as well because he is just a good boy... A stupid good boy... The man need your guidance. You and Opal are the couple that Korra sees as the perfect couple" and is the reason she starts chasing her own happiness with Asami.

I hope you liked this!

- The Prophet

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emachinescat · 3 years

Text

The Casket of the Armadillos (by Edgar Allan Nope)

A Psych Fan-Fiction

by @emachinescat

@febuwhump day 9 - buried alive

Summary: When Shawn confronts a grad student turned murderer, he learns a very important lesson a very hard way: Don’t piss off English nerds - especially the homicidal ones.

Characters: Shawn, Gus, Juliet, Lassiter, Henry

Words: 5,924

TW: panic attacks, buried alive, claustrophobia

Note: If you liked this classic lit-inspired Psych fic, you can always check out this one I wrote, inspired by To Kill a Mockingbird: The Finch and the Mockingbird

Keep reading here, or on AO3!

If you enjoy, please consider liking, commenting, or re-blogging, and you can follow me for more content like this! :)

I forced the last stone into its position; I plastered it up. Against the new masonry I re-erected the old rampart of bones. For the half of a century no mortal has disturbed them. In pace requiescat!

- Edgar Allan Poe, “The Cask of Amontillado”

Her name was Olivia Hale, she was a twenty-three-year-old grad student at UCSB, and she was working on her doctorate in American lit. She was attractive in a cute librarian sort of way - short and petite, with long, curly auburn hair she kept in a bun and oversized glasses with thick lenses, and a smattering of freckles across her slightly upturned nose. She knew a little bit about everything when it came to literature as a whole, a rather impressive amount about American literature, and absolutely everything there was to know about the life and works of one Edgar Allan Poe.

She was also batshit crazy and currently pointing a .22 pistol directly at Shawn’s head.

“Don’t move,” she growled, disengaging the safety.

Shawn did a cursory glance around the empty classroom, looking for anything at all he could use to his advantage, to distract her or attack her with or - worst case scenario - to use as a shield. But Olivia had found him snooping around on the tiny fourth floor study room that she’d been given to use by the department chair as her thesis headquarters. She’d really made herself at home here, piling books and journals and what seemed like hundreds of loose sheets of paper on every available surface.

But he was stranded in the middle of the room, with nothing close enough to use as a weapon, and so Shawn used the most powerful tool he had, one that had saved his life and many others, wooed women all over the country, and ordered more chili cheese dogs than he could count.

He started talking.

“Look, Olivia, I get it,” he said soothingly. Slowly, in the most non-threatening manner possible, he lowered his hands. Olivia gripped the pistol tighter but didn’t shoot. “I know what happened. You didn’t mean to kill him.”

Her eyes were wide and fierce, her lips pursed into a thin line. “No,” she admitted. “It was an accident. But he was going to--”

“Yeees,” drawled Shawn, slowly raising his left hand and putting it to his temple, very well aware that he was probably pushing the limit with all of this movement after she had expressly ordered, at gunpoint, for him to stay still. “I see it. Dr. Graves was feeling guilty, wasn’t he? A fifty-five-year-old professor with a fancy PhD and tenure, and a devoted wife and three kids and two grandkids, to boot. The perfect life. But oooh, it wasn’t enough for him, was it?”

Shawn immediately answered his own question, something that he had become exceptionally good at over the years since he was usually the only one who could keep up with himself. “Of course not! What’s the perfect job and family when you’ve got a smokin’ hot, super smart student in her mid-twenties who thinks you’re the most impressive man on the planet?”

She sneered, and Shawn noticed with some trepidation that the hand holding the gun trembled just the tiniest bit. When she spoke, her voice warbled with rage. “My age and appearance had nothing to do with it - and even if it did, there was nothing wrong with our relationship! We were perfect for each other, intellectual equals. We were on each other’s levels - he was my soulmate! So don’t you dare belittle what we had like that!”

Ah. So he had hit a nerve. This could now go either one of two ways, in Shawn’s extensive experience in being held hostage: Either she would get fed up and send a bullet screaming through his body, Garth Longmore style, or she would let her emotions distract her, and cause her to make a stupid mistake. Obviously, Shawn hoped for the latter.

Now Shawn had to make a choice, because he could proceed in one of two ways: Either he could back off and try from another angle, or he could further antagonize her into (hopefully) making a mistake. Naturally, Shawn went with the latter.

“Sure, sure,” he agreed airily. “Older men and younger women do it all the time. But to say there was nothing wrong with your relationship? The man was married, and you were his student. I’m not the headmaster here -”

“Dean,” she corrected sharply, and this further proved that Shawn had pegged her correctly as a know-it-all literature wunderkind who had to be right one thousand percent of the time. “This isn’t Hogwarts.”

Shawn gave a tiny shrug. “To be honest, all big schools look like Hogwarts to me.”

“Because you have the mind of a child.” The words were accusatory and patronizing, but Shawn flashed a dazzling smile.

“Thank you,” he said. Before she could respond, he continued his earlier thoughts, “Even though you were the ‘perfect couple,’ you were furious with him for even suggesting that you stop seeing one another. The affair was too risky, and he missed his wife. He wanted to tell her the truth, fix things.”

“It would have ruined everything!” Olivia hissed, and the sound of her voice sent shivers down Shawn’s spine. There was an unhinged quality to it, something raw and dangerous that he hadn’t sensed before. He fought the sudden urge to backpedal as far away from her as possible. “We were perfect together! And if he told his wife and she let it slip, I would be kicked out! All my research, all my time and work here, everything would be gone! He had no right to make that decision for me, to take away my future!”

“Maybe,” said Shawn, and it was like he was watching from outside his body, because he knew that what he was about to say was a big mistake, but he was helpless to stop the words from tumbling from his lips, “you should have thought more about your future before you pursued your married Shakespeare teacher.”

Fury etched itself into every feature of her face, turning her from a beautiful librarian to a feral monster, but her voice was slow and measured as if it was taking every ounce of self-control she possessed not to shoot him where he stood. “He taught Southern. Gothic. Masterpieces.”

Shawn tried to backtrack, to undo whatever damage had been done by his unpredictably big mouth. “But,” he pressed. “Killing him was an accident. You didn’t mean to push him down four flights of stairs.”

She considered this. “No, I didn’t mean to kill him,” she reaffirmed, and then an odd calm smoothed out the angry crevices between her eyebrows - the peace, perhaps, of having come to an important decision that she knew was absolutely right. Shawn recognized the look because he’d seen it on others’ faces before (very rarely, if ever, had he seen it upon his own). “And I don’t think I will kill you, either.”

Whatever Shawn had been expecting, this wasn’t it. Everything about this woman screamed insane and vengeful. If Shawn lived, he would turn her into the police, and she would go to jail for a very long time. She was incredibly intelligent - surely she knew this!

And then she clarified, and the world started to make sense again - though Shawn would have honestly been perfectly content in this alternate reality where the bad guy suddenly has a miraculous change of heart. “Well,” she amended, “I won’t kill you directly. I’ve never shot anyone before - I only have this little guy here because I’m a young, pretty girl on a big college campus, and I have two night classes. Besides, your death shouldn’t be so easy.”

Shawn swallowed. “Olivia, you don’t have to do this. You haven’t intentionally killed anyone yet. If you turn yourself in now and cooperate, your sentence will be a lot shorter than if you kill me - directly or not. Because make no mistake, even if you kill me, you will still get caught. The SBPD has some damn good detectives, and they’ll bring you down even if I don’t.”

She didn’t respond to him directly. Instead, her expression was flat save for the dark gleam in her eyes, and she intoned words that in and of themselves had no meaning to Shawn, but that still managed to strike a chord of fear deep inside of his soul. “‘The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as best I could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge.’” Shawn was utterly unnerved by this point; it was like she had been taken over by something both sinister and incredibly well-spoken.

And indeed, in many ways she had, as Shawn soon found out, she was quoting the beginning of a story by Edgar Allan Poe.

Presently, however, Shawn had no context for her strange words or sudden shift of demeanor. His skin crawled and his heart pumped with more get-up-and-go than he’d ever been able to muster in his whole body before. “Uh, Olivia…”

“Move,” she ordered.

This time, though it was contrary to his nature, Shawn did what she said without arguing. This side of the student, with stolen words sliding evilly from her mouth, was a million times scarier than the enraged Olivia who had very nearly shot him between the eyes.

She marched him out of the room and down the three flights of stairs to the main lobby of the English building. It was dark outside, nearing midnight, and Shawn kicked himself for thinking he was clever for coming to investigate this late. He’d thought she’d be at home sleeping. He should have realized that as a grad student, sleeping was the one thing she wouldn’t have time for! And now he was in very deep trouble, alone, and no one knew where he was. He should have waited until morning, until the building wasn’t deserted, should have at least called Gus and told him what he was doing. But it was a college campus, and she was a tiny little literature nerd - it should have been safe!

As she forced him down one flight of stairs, then two, then three, and finally, into a stairwell off the beaten path that had to be unlocked with a key card - which she had - she continued to encant, her voice slowly losing its flatness and growing into something twisted and sing-songy with every word.

“‘You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that gave utterance to a threat. At length I would be avenged; this was a point, definitely, settled - but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved precluded the idea of risk.’”

“Olivia--”

It was as if she hadn’t heard him as she shoved him into the basement, and now her voice stilled from a chant to a slow, measured whisper.. “‘I must not only punish but punish with impunity.’”

Shawn wasn’t sure what impunity was, but it sure as hell didn’t sound good.

Their final destination ended up being a small, partially finished storage room near the back of the basement. Dusty boxes and rusted cabinets and archaic old computer monitors lined the walls and cluttered most of the walking space. Shawn was reminded grimly of a school supply graveyard.

Olivia stopped him when they came to a brick wall that had been busted through to fix some issue with the pipes - Shawn saw the water stains on the concrete floor near the break in the wall, and there was a brand new water pipe joined to an old, yellowed one at about eye-level in the small open space between the bricks and the drywall beyond. Shawn also noticed that the new bricks had been neatly piled up near a sealed bucket that almost certainly contained mortar, right outside of the hole. Someone was in the process of walling this section back up.

“Nice wall,” Shawn joked, relieved that Olivia had finally stopped her creepy recitation and desperately trying to lighten the mood and bring things back to some sort of normal - honestly, he’d take being threatened with the gun again to the horror movie stuff he’d just witnessed. “I bet all the other walls are jealous of it.”

It was a lame joke, but her eerie dramatics had him all kinds of messed up. He expected her to tell him to shut up, or to threaten to shoot him again, or to actually shoot him, but instead she asked him a question in that same cold, calm voice as before. “Have you ever read ‘The Cask of Amontillado,’ Shawn?”

Shawn blinked. “I make it a point not to read anything that’s not a magazine from the 80s or WikiHow articles on ‘How to Escape from Dangerous Forest Animals.’”

The corner of her lips lifted in a mockery of a satisfied smile. “Good. Then you’ll get to experience it for yourself, first hand. Just wait until you get to the ending! You’re going to love it.”

Somehow, Shawn doubted that very much.

Still holding the gun on him with one hand, she reached her free hand into the cross-body bag she wore and pulled out a pair of handcuffs. Shawn groaned.

“Come on! What college student just carries handcuffs in their school bag?” Then he remembered that this particular student had until recently been having a passionate affair with her teacher. “Wait - never mind. It makes perfect sense.”

She laughed, even though what he said wasn’t even remotely funny. The sound of it was strange and discordant - light and tinkly with a threatening undertone that made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. Then she gestured at the hole in the wall and ordered, “In.”

Shawn had known it was coming, but had tried to shove that knowledge into the corner of his mind - something that was quite difficult to do for someone with a photographic and eidetic memory - in an effort to convince himself that even she wasn’t that cruel. He tried to appeal to her one last time: “Olivia, it’s not too late to stop this. I mean, are you really going to do this to another human being - seriously, look at this place - it’s dusty and moldy and I’m almost certain there’s no room service! If you’re going to chain me to a pipe, why not do it in a five star hotel?” When she nudged him with the gun, eyes gleaming with something dark and triumphant, he reluctantly stepped into the small space and implored, “I’ll even settle for a seedy motel off a poorly lit backroad. I’m not too picky.”

She didn’t answer him as she stood on her tiptoes and handcuffed Shawn’s wrists around the pipe, cinching them so tight that the metal dug into his skin and he doubted that even his dad’s lessons on escaping handcuffs wouldn’t be much help here. Already he could feel his fingers going numb, and his shoulders and back had started to ache from the hunched position he was forced to take due to the height of the pipe and the awkward angle of his arms.

Well, Shawn thought glumly as she smiled at her handiwork and carefully backed out of the small space, maybe all wasn’t lost. Surely someone would come down here and find him. This place was dusty, but it couldn’t be abandoned - work still needed to be done down here, after all. And he could always yell for help once he was sure Olivia was gone. She was booksmart, but maybe she wasn’t criminally minded. He might be in for an uncomfortable night, but in the morning someone would find him and he could have his vision and the cute little psychopath would go to jail for a very long time.

He waited for her to leave, but instead, she used a crowbar to pry the lid off the bucket of mortar, and the pit in Shawn’s stomach became a whole-ass trench. He should have seen this coming - his heart pounded madly against his rib cage as if trying to free itself, with or without him. He couldn’t blame it. “Olivia, please,” he said, and this time, there was no joke, his voice imploring and terrified. “You don’t have -”

Again, she cut him off. “How would you like to hear a story before you die, Shawn?” she asked in a tone so casual that she could have been asking him if he wanted to grab a taco.

“How about you tell me a story and then I don’t die?” Shawn bargained weakly.

“Mmmm… If you stay alive, my whole life will be ruined,” Olivia reasoned. “And I have worked far too hard to allow that to happen. So. You just stand there - quietly - and I’ll tell you the story of Poe’s most beloved tale of revenge. I won’t tell you word for word, of course - we don’t have time for that - but for posterity, I do have it memorized.” She sounded grotesquely proud of that fact. “It’s my favorite of his stories, after all.”

And so, as she slowly began to brick up the hole in the wall, with Shawn trapped, helpless and in a dissociative state of panic, she told him the story of two men with really stupid names that Shawn somehow managed, despite his raging fear, to file away for later as possible nicknames for Gus.

“Our story starts in Italy, during the carnival, and our narrator is a man named Montresor, who has a grudge against his once-friend, now-foe, Fortunato…”

The story was an interesting one, even to Shawn, who preferred watching over reading and especially over listening any day. And as it turned out, Olivia was a really good storyteller. If he had been in any other position, Shawn might have actually enjoyed the suspenseful tale of revenge.

But as he stooped there and was forced to listen, all he could think about was about how terrified this Fortunato guy must have been, and then he started wondering how long it had been before the man hadn’t been able to hold his bladder or… other things… anymore, and then about what had happened when he was too tired and dizzy to stand up, if the manacles on his wrists had pulled so hard against his flesh that they cut into him, and if lack of water or oxygen killed him first, all the while he knew that he wasn’t asking these questions for the sake of the fictional character. He was asking them for himself. Olivia had made it exceedingly clear - for a literature scholar, she was surprisingly un-subtle about any underlying meanings or motives - that Fortunato’s story was now to be his story.

It wasn’t until she had begun discussing with rapture the brilliance of Poe’s use of the Italian carnival as the setting of a story about murder (because of its abandonment of social order, whatever that meant) and had built up all but the last two bricks, leaving a hole around Shawn’s eye level, that came to the most horrifying realization yet. He’d been so focused on his own thoughts and fears with Olivia’s words washing over him like an acid bath that he’d barely registered that the dim light in the hole had been darkening incrementally with each new brick placed. Now he came to the bone-chilling understanding that once she placed those last two bricks, he would be completely in the dark.

He was going to die, alone, terrified, and in utter darkness with fear as his only friend. He thought in that moment that he might die of a heart attack before he could even think about dehydrating or suffocating. Honestly, it sounded like an easier way to go.

“Well,” said Olivia finally. “I can’t say that it’s been a pleasure to meet you in any way, Shawn, but I suppose I should thank you. Ever since I found out about this unfinished wall down here, I’ve had this unscratchable itch to recreate the titular scene from my favorite Poe story. You gave me the means and justification to do it!”

Shawn was so overcome by the surging sea of fear and early-onset claustrophobia that he couldn’t even muster up the gumption to make a joke about the word titular. Instead, as Olivia knelt down next to her bag, rooting around for something, he jerked madly against the handcuffs, desperately searching for any give in the metal or the pipe he was handcuffed to (or even his wrists, at this point he wasn’t picky). But the pipe was new, and it was sturdy, and so was the fitting that connected it to the old one, which itself didn’t seem too keen on budging, either.

A sick grin teased at Olivia’s parted lips. “Oh, Fortunato tried that too. But then he stopped crying and struggling and chose to die with a shred of dignity. But I highly doubt dignity is something you’re capable of.”

And then, with the finality of fitting a lid to a coffin, she slapped a piece of fluorescent pink duct tape over his mouth and a fresh wave of panic ravaged Shawn’s everything. He didn’t remember this happening in her retelling of the story! Then again, the Fortunato guy had been sealed into catacombs deep underground. Shawn was in the basement of a heavily trafficked university building. Someone would actually hear him if he called for help, so she took his voice away from him too. He couldn’t even sing “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” to pass his time or distract him from the inevitable. As if it wasn’t bad enough that he would die in the dark, he would die in the quiet too - and silence was, as his incessant need for chatter plainly proved, Shawn’s worst enemy.

“Goodbye, Shawn,” Olivia said, and she added one brick, layered on the mortar, and then gave her captive one last satisfied glance before adding the last brick and leaving Shawn in total, impenetrable darkness. He would never forget that last, terrible look in her eyes before his world went black - she was no longer human; she had elevated herself to the level of the storytelling gods and she relished in the twisted power she held over the life of another human.

As her footsteps clipped away, her voice, obscenely gleeful, called out, “In pace requiescat!”

***

The next ten hours were the worst of Shawn’s life, and they consisted of five main elements all bundled together into a nightmare that would stalk him for the rest of his life.

Cold. It was the middle of January, and though it couldn’t have been less than forty-five degrees outside, the basement - especially behind the walls - was chilly, and with the musty smell and the dust and the pitch black, Shawn was reminded far too much of a grave and knew that he might as well be in one, because this was going to be his. It was the kind of cold that bit deeper than the skin and wormed its way into the very core and dug its icy fangs in and refused to let go - the chill of death, an open invitation from the dead to join them in their home beneath the ground. He shivered a lot, but he couldn’t be sure if it was the cold, or the panic. It was probably a little of both.

Dark. The darkness that surrounded him had an unreal nature that could easily trick the eyes into thinking that they were already closed. It was oppressive and thick, pressing in from all sides, inky black water dredged from the depths of the sea.

Shawn had never been a fan of the dark, but neither did he exactly fear it. That changed the second that the last brick was put into place and he found himself in a darkness so severe that were in not for the feeling of floor beneath his feet he could have been suspended in the depths of space so remote that not even stars could reach. The darkness swarmed his senses - it had a physical presence, and it didn’t lessen, never permitted Shawn’s eyes to adjust to it in the slightest. It just hung there, surrounded him, assaulted his mind with its infinite arsenal of nightmares.

After experiencing true darkness, Shawn would never sleep without a nightlight again (which unfortunately meant he couldn’t judge Gus anymore for using one, either).

Pain. At first it was just the pull of his shoulders, the ache in his back. Then, about five minutes after he’d been sealed up, he realized his wrists were screaming with agony - he must have torn them badly when he fought to get away, but the adrenaline staved off the pain until now. He vaguely wondered how deeply the cuffs had cut - it felt like the skin on his wrists had been flayed - but quickly remembered that it didn’t matter where he was going.

Then there were the hunger pangs, and they mingled with the cramps from holding his bladder longer than he ever had before, and at some point muscle spasms in his arms and chest and legs joined the choir of suffering. At one point, he shed a few tears, but they could have just as easily been from anxiety or exhaustion, which itself produced its own kind of pain - he longed to sleep, but his body refused to allow him even that comfort until the very end, right before he was rescued, as if he were being forced on pain of death to endure the pain of death right up until the very moment of his painful death.

At least he didn’t have too much trouble breathing. There must have been a crack somewhere in the wall in front of or behind him, because fresh air was entering somehow. He did, several hours into his imprisonment, begin finding it difficult to pull in a full breath, and by the time he was rescued he was giddy with light-headedness, but he didn’t know if it was from the air quality or exhaustion or panic or from being forced to breathe only through his nose for hours, but he really didn’t care.

Quiet. Even worse than the cold and the dark and the pain was the quiet. The tape over his mouth prevented him from doing the one thing that could bring him comfort in even the most difficult of situations. Talking was what Shawn did - he utilized mindless prattle to distract bad guys, to make people underestimate him, to quell fear and panic in himself and those around him, to annoy and wheedle those whose opinions meant the most to him (and who he was most afraid to be real with), and most importantly, to distract himself from all the pain and baggage that his exceptional memory had filed away for him throughout the years. Talking nonsense meant that he wasn’t thinking about or acknowledging the parts of himself that arguably needed the most attention, those bits that were scared and unsure and hurt and vulnerable.

Shawn had always detested silence, and now it had invaded so intimately that even he could not drive it out.

And all of these culminated in a constant, agonizing state of absolute, unrelenting fear.

Panic attacks are horrific things that take your natural instincts in potentially dangerous situations and turn them against you in the cruelest of ways. They suck the air out of your lungs and make your heart pound so fast and so hard that you are convinced it’s going to give out in pure fatigue and never make it to that next beat. It makes your skin crawl like there are thousands of spiders nesting there, and your chest hurts and your breath is short and stunted and you know you are dying, that the next breath will be your last, but it isn’t, and the fear just continues and sometimes you curl into a ball or rock back and forth or scratch at your skin.

Panic attacks generally last anywhere from five to twenty minutes. Shawn was stuck in a state of raw, unfiltered panic for ten hours. When the EMTs at the scene took his heart rate, it was 160, had been the entire time he’d been buried in a collegiate tomb, knowing that he was going to die.

Put simply, Shawn Spencer spent ten hours in his own personal hell.

***

It was nearly three in the afternoon when Detectives Juliet O’Hara and Carlton Lassiter, with the help of a frantic Gus and a worried Henry that tried his damndest not to show how worried he was, made the final connections in the case and tracked down the woman who had slept with and then killed her lover like a hyper-intelligent, book-loving black widow. Juliet and Gus remained on the college campus to continue investigating while Lassiter and Henry went on to the station to question Olivia. She had refused to say where the missing psychic detective was, however, and only offered one bitter phrase, spoken in another language that sounded to the questioning party like a curse being placed on their heads:

“Nemo me impune lacessit.”

It was Gus who figured it out after Lassiter related the cryptic saying over the phone.

“I know that phrase!” he exclaimed to a swell of raised eyebrows. “It’s Latin! It means no one wounds me with impunity!”

“You speak Latin?” Juliet seemed impressed.

“Not much. But I recognize that particular saying, because it’s from a story that gave me nightmares my entire sophomore year of college.” He shuddered. “It’s from the second-most terrifying Poe story.” He didn’t elaborate on what the first-most terrifying one was, largely because he didn’t want to give the others fodder to use “The Tell-Tale Heart” against him like Shawn already did. Then the full implications of the words sunk in and he gasped, “We have to find Shawn, now.” The horror in his expression sent a chill down Juliet’s spine.

“Gus - what the hell are you talking about?” Henry was no longer trying to hide the panic in his voice.

“It’s from ‘The Cask of Amontillado,’ Gus clarified, his own panic making it difficult to express himself clearly.

“Guster, this is hardly the time for you to have a glass of wine,” Lassiter barked. “Now stop talking in riddles and just spit it out!”

But Juliet had now made the connection as well and answered for Gus. “Oh my gosh - isn’t that the one where the guy is sealed into a wall and left to die?”

The dread in Gus’s eyes said it all.

“He’s got to be somewhere on campus,” Henry reasoned, and his voice shook the tiniest bit. “Lassiter and I are on our way back to you now. In the meantime, check with the school and see if there are any places that are easily accessed and under construction.”

No one said it aloud, but the possibility that her words hadn’t been a hint at all and that Shawn was somewhere else entirely hung in the air amongst them. It was funny, Juliet thought - though it wasn’t funny at all - she urgently needed Gus’s theory to be right, because otherwise they would have no leads, but at the same time, she was terrified of the implications if it were true.

Her heart felt as sick as Montresor’s when he placed the last brick as she and Gus raced to the administration building and prayed they weren’t too late.

***

When they broke through the wall, the sight that greeted them was one that would never leave them - any of them. Even Lassiter, who made it his sacred duty to remain unfazed by anything his job threw at him was visibly disturbed.

A moment of silence, a beat where time stood still and everyone was afraid to move, and then -

“Shawn!” The four rescuers surged forward as one, but Henry got there first, his trembling fingers groping for a pulse - thank God, but it was racing, dangerously fast, and in the background he heard Lassiter radioing for an ambulance.

Shawn woke up as Henry gently peeled the hideous pink duct tape (an affront to all duct tape everywhere) off of his mouth. It wasn’t a gentle waking, a flutter of eyelashes or the murmuring of a name - it was violent and erratic, fueled by terror.

Henry had had to deal with panic attacks before - mostly Gus’s when he took the boys camping together, but once or twice when Shawn was really young and he’d had a bad dream. This one was the worst that he’d ever seen - Shawn woke with a muffled yell, panting through his nose, writhing, tears streaming down his face, eyes squeezed shut against the trauma he’d been subjected to, and he threw himself against the handcuffs so fiercely that Henry feared he’d break his wrists.

Soon his wrists were freed, though, and Henry, with the help of Lassiter, helped a weakened Shawn out of the wall and into the basement and lowered him to the floor. Henry sat with him and rubbed his back and spoke quietly to him, Juliet took his hand, and Gus reassured him while Lassiter ran up the stairs to check on the ETA of the ambulance.

Twenty minutes later, Shawn had been placed onto a stretcher and carried up the stairs and out into the sunlight - sensing the warm rays, he opened his eyes only to pinch them shut again as the brightness after so many hours in the dark nearly blinded him. He had been given something to calm him down, and he would be going to the hospital to be checked over and observed overnight, and a psychiatrist would be sent in to evaluate him in the morning, and everything was moving so fast that Shawn leaned over the side of the stretcher and deposited the remnants of the last thing he’d eaten, nearly twelve hours before.

“There’s one thing I still don’t get,” he gasped as he was eased back onto the stretcher. “Where do the armadillos come into her plan?”

The EMTs exchanged a concerned look at the stretcher, probably wondering if there had been some carbon monoxide poisoning after all. Gus, however, just rolled his eyes.

“Amontillado, Shawn. It’s a kind of wine.”

“The story is called ‘The Casket of the Armadillos,’” Shawn argued stubbornly, going so far as to cross his arms over his chest, pulling at the IV in his right hand.

Gus was going to argue, to insist that he’d actually read the story (and why the heck would someone fill a casket with armadillos?), but then Gus saw the plea in Shawn’s hazel eyes, that need for jokes and silliness, and understood that his best friend was clinging onto his last shreds of control.

“You know what - I forgot,” Gus corrected, shaking his head and giving himself a light smack on the forehead for good measure. “It is ‘The Casket of Armadillos.’” He glared out at Henry, at Lassiter and Juliet and the EMTs, defying them to challenge his claim. No one did, but they all shared a similar baffled expression.

Well, they could deal with their confusion, Gus thought protectively as he watched Shawn and Henry disappear into the ambulance. Shawn had been through a night of unspeakable horror, so if it was armadillos he wanted, then it was armadillos he was going to get.

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artigas · 4 years

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i’m so wiped out and i’m deliriously sleepy, but i am going to start teaching this week. today i got an email and a student called me professor. i uploaded course work up to blackboard and i realized i have 22 students and im going to be their teacher and i want so badly to do a good job. and i keep holding myself back from being excited. its just one job for now. one job being an adjunct. nevermind they offered me a second course already for this semester. (what if next semester comes and they dont hire me? what if i dont get accepted into a phd program again?)

for now ... i am going to be a professor for 22 students on tuesday. this has been my dream, my grand fucking dream for TEN YEARS, i literally decided i wanted to be a college professor when i was 16 and it took a fuck ton of work and courage and endurance and im here!!

and on top of that i’m in love? i’m deeply, deeply in love and i adore her with all my heart and i think about all her all the time!! and i know what it is to wake up with her! i know she’s one of those poor bastards who cant enjoy cilantro and she and i have a running joke about my toes and her mother follows me on instagram and my mother follows her. we play music when we cook together. she’s going to be there when i get my tattoo in two weeks. the last time she and i cuddled up on the couch i started laughing so hard i cried. and her message to me, a simple i love you, is still there on the dry erase board on my fridge, and everyone knows i’m bi now, everyone knows im hers and shes mine and its been much more joy than its been resistance and im coming out strong and even my therapist told me: seeing my clients flourish like this is why i do my job and that’s me- that’s me she was talking about.

i’m so anxious. and stressed. so nervous!! but before i can get too nervous, i realize: i’m nervous about the thing ive only been dreaming about for so long. wow wow wowowowowow. wow!!!!!

#estefania rambles

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snowdice · 4 years

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Gaps in His Files (Part 6) [Relabeled; Refiled Series]

Fandom: Sanders Sides

Relationships: Logan/Patton

Characters:

Main: Logan, Patton

Appear: Remy, Virgil (but only in the epilogue)

Summary:

Logan Berry has learned many things the last 10 years: a lot of math and physics, a bit of humility, and how to be a hero being just a few. Through his education, his experience teaching, and his exploits as the superhero Bluebird, he’s changed in a lot of small and large ways. He has recorded these changes in well-organized documents and files. He’s even had to create two new file designations: a red one for files about his moonlighting at Bluebird, and a light blue one dedicated to his boyfriend, Patton.

When Bluebird is targeted by a memory device and all of those 10 years of progress suddenly disappear, Patton Sanders and Logan’s extensive files are left as his only resource to get those memories back. But what is Patton supposed to do when there are clear gaps in his files? And what does he do when he is one of them?

This is set 25 years before Sometimes Labels Fail though it’s story is completely independent of it and it is not necessary to read that one first.

Notes: Superhero AU, memory loss, past child abuse, past child neglect, unhealthy ideas about ones place in relationships, emotional suppression, self-deprecating thoughts, medical procedures mentioned, very brief unhealthy views of sex

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

There are some *cough* illusions to sexy times in this one. Also Patton is um... not doing okay.

Patton said words that he’d usually scold Logan for using when, after the warning, Logan’s eyes fluttered closed and he toppled forward. Patton caught him around the waist. He sighed. “I really wish I had your powers right about now,” he groaned while eyeing the distance to the couch.

Patton was not a weak man, but Logan was not a light one. He managed to maneuver him onto the couch, though his feet dragged the entire way. Patton situated him with a pillow behind his head and then went into the kitchen to grab the quite extensive first aid kit Logan kept there.

A quick check up told Patton that there was nothing physically wrong with Logan baring a few scrapes from the fight. Which meant Patton’s usefulness was quickly dwindling.

He resisted kissing the man even just on the forehead because that would be bad and wrong when he didn’t know who Patton was to him. Instead, he contented himself with gently stroking his hair back into place and covering him with a blanket from the closet in the front hallway.

After that was done, he went to the kitchen. He braced himself against Logan’s refrigerator door and took a few deep breaths. He guessed it was an almost breakdown in Logan’s kitchen kind of day. When he was eventually able to wrestle control over himself, he calmly opened the refrigerator. There were leftovers from two nights before when Patton had tried his best to teach Logan how to cook chicken enchiladas. Logan had resisted the venture by attempting to distract him by any means necessary (mostly kissing and wandering hands). It had half worked, but they’d still ended up with something edible even if the kitchen had been a complete mess.

He could have just warmed them up, but he needed something to do that he could pretend was useful. He found some frozen cooked chicken and started thawing it in the microwave while he chopped up some vegetables from the refrigerator. He stir-fired the vegetables with some soy sauce and garlic and added the chicken to the pan at the end. With no idea how long it would take for Logan to wake, he dished out a portion for himself and placed the rest in the fridge.

Eating did nothing to fill the growing hole of numbness inside him, but at least he wasn’t hungry.

If this was his own apartment, he would have just left his bowl on the table and the pan in the sink, but it wasn’t his apartment, so he washed and dried them both and put them back where they belonged.

Then there was nothing else to do.

…

He went back to the living room. Logan seemed to be sleeping easy and showed no signs of waking up anytime soon. Patton sat down on the chair next to the couch.

He must have fallen asleep because the next thing he knew, Patton’s eyes were closed, and he could feel a presence hanging over him. “What?” he asked without opening his eyes.

“We are in a sexual relationship,” Logan’s voice informed him.

Patton blinked open his eyes to look at him. He was leaning a bit too far into Patton’s space than would normally be polite, boxing him in against the back of the chair. “How…?”

“You have a key to my apartment, are comfortable enough in my kitchen to not only cook but to put everything back into place perfectly, and I have a hickey on my inner thigh.”

Patton’s face went red immediately. “Oh my god.”

“It is not a difficult deduction,” Logan continued. “I do have to compliment you. It is quite a large mark, assuming of course, that was the intention.”

Patton hid his face in his hands. “Oh my god.”

“It’s interesting. I have never had any romantic inclinations that I can remember. Is it just sexual?”

“What? No!” Patton sputtered.

He hummed, eyes scanning Patton like he was trying to figure out how he worked or perhaps more like he was trying to figure out what aspects of Patton would serve to intrigue a future version of himself enough to give him the time of day.

Patton swallowed. “Could you, um, give me a little space now, you think?”

“Why?” he asked with a frown. “I’d imagine you’d be used to such closeness considering we have had sex.”

“Yes, and at the moment, you are mentally a high school student.” Patton reached up and pushed at his forehead with two fingers. He stared at Patton for a few moments without moving and then slowly stood back up. Patton pushed himself into a less reclined position. “How’re you feeling?” he asked.

“My head still aches though not nearly as bad as it did before and, other than the small injuries I observed you have tended too, my body feels fine.”

“That’s good,” Patton said. “Let’s get you something to eat, and then I’ll check you over a bit more thoroughly to make sure there isn’t something I missed.”

Logan agreed and Patton dished him out a serving of the stir fry he’d made earlier and popped it into the microwave. Patton checked the clock: 4:30 am. He’d slept for a while. “Want coffee?” Patton asked. He nodded. Good. Patton was pretty sure he himself was going to need it. He started the coffee machine and Logan continued to watch him intently as though he’d never seen anyone make coffee before (not true as Logan had confessed to sneaking coffee behind his parent’s backs at the age of 12.)

“Could you tell me what you know about my current self?” Logan asked when Patton set the two mugs of coffee down.

“Sure, but do you want to be more specific? I know quite a bit about you.”

“You said I am 28 and I can afford an apartment. Do I have a job?”

“Sort of,” Patton replied. “You’re in your last year of your math PhD program and they pay you to teach a couple of low-level classes.”

Logan nodded. It likely wasn’t a surprise to him as even at 18 he’d been planning to attend graduate school in either math or physics.

“What am I teaching?”

“Calculus at the moment. Two discussion sections a week. You’ve taught up to discussion sections for first year graduate level classes, but you went for an easier assignment in your last semester to work on your dissertation.”

“Yes, yes, that all seems to plan,” he mumbled more to himself than to Patton while tapping his formulating-a-question pattern on the tabletop with his fingers.

“I seem to have a superhero persona. You are at least aware of said persona. Do you know how or why that alias came into existence?”

“Bluebird,” Patton provided. Logan’s nose twitched, and Patton laughed a bit. “No. You didn’t pick it, but it grew on you. You created the persona when you were 22 and just starting your graduate program. You were taking a physics course and noticed some strange behavior from your least favorite professor. It turned out he’d snapped under the pressure when one of his TAs missed a final exam the semester before and started to build a dooms day device. You were originally more of a vigilante actually, but when he almost killed a bunch of people, you quickly ended up a hero to the city. You just kinda… didn’t stop.”

Logan considered this for a moment. “That does make sense,” he admitted and then looked back at Patton. “Give me a brief overview of my foes,” he demanded and then tacked on, “please.”

Patton allowed himself to be grilled about Bluebird all through Logan’s breakfast from his enemies and allies to the public’s perception of him to details about the ‘special car.’

“You know a lot about me,” Logan said finally. “You answered all of my questions easily.”

“Any question you can come up with has likely already been deemed important enough information for you to share with me at some point.”

Logan scrutinized him with narrowed eyes. “How do I organize my files for Bluebird’s ventures.”

“Red files, hidden in your office, organized by different file types, and then by date.”

“What type of fabric is Bluebird’s costume?”

“A 60/40 bamboo/cotton blend because of ease of cleaning, breathability, and texture reasons.”

Logan paused and thought long and hard. “What’s Bluebird’s favorite color?”

Patton rolled his eyes fondly. “That’s just a question about you silly.” Logan continued to peer at him. “HEX number 3673b9.”

Logan looked surprised. His eyes scanned Patton up and down. “How many people know I’m a superhero?”

“Oh, uh, just me,” Patton said quietly. “At least that’s what you told me. Well, I think Remy may have guessed. He was in the surgery when you accidently said my name in mask, and he knows you and I pretty well now so…”

“The surgery?”

“Oh,” Patton said. “Right. I’m a doctor. I never remember to tell you that…” Logan raised an eyebrow. “That’s how I figured out who you were,” he explained. “I hadn’t told you I was a doctor and when you were going under anesthesia after being hurt helping the city, you called me by name and asked why I was a doctor. It wasn’t a hard guess from there.”

Logan nodded, his eyes sparking with understanding like they did when he finally figured out a concept he’d been struggling with for days. “A doctor,” he commented idly. “A useful companion to have.” Patton felt himself flinch, but Logan didn’t seem to notice having looked away and down at his coffee. Dismissing Patton as simply useful.

Well at least he was honest.

Patton bit back his emotions carefully. Actually, perhaps this was a good thing: the memory loss. Well, not a good thing, but maybe an opportunity. Maybe without Logan having years of knowledge about Patton and preconceived ideas about how he had to interact with him, Patton could figure out what on Earth was wrong with him.

Want to read more? Click below!

AO3 Part 7

#sanders sides #logan sanders #patton sanders #logicality #tsss #superhero au #memory loss #past child abuse #past child neglect #emotional suppression #self deprecation #gaps in his files #labeled universe #relabeled; refiled #adriana writes

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rendezvous-ramblings · 3 years

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I graduated college (undergrad) last spring and started working at a job in an industry I hate. I want to leave because the work environment is stressing me out so much that I broke out into hives (which has never happened before) and I have mini panic attacks every weekend before the work week. I also have chest pain due to stress and I’m only 22!! I really want to leave but my parents are encouraging me to stay or find a similar job because of how well it pays. Because of the pandemic, there aren’t a lot of options right now. I’m honestly okay working at a Barnes and Nobles part time in order to get a bit of money while I figure things out but also, I want to purse my own business and I would have time to do so with a less stressful part time job like that. My parents want me to work in an office though because they think I shouldn’t work in stores since I have a degree. And then I think maybe I should stay only because I’m scared of making the wrong decision and regretting it even though I’m pretty sure this job is slowly killing me. Any words of advice? I know we’re pretty much the same age but I would love to hear your thoughts.

Hi,

First of all congrats on graduating because that’s an achievement you should be very proud of given how chaotic the last few weeks of our senior year of undergrad went! I’m sorry you’re experiencing these negative health symptoms from your work environment. When I was in the PhD program I didn’t have any extreme external symptoms that you have, but I was very self-aware that I was experiencing a mental low that I’ve never dealt with before. I knew in the long run I would end up burning myself out and it would be detrimental towards my mental health. I also realized from the few months that I was in the program that despite getting good grades and feedback in the A range that 1. I was not as passionately invested in a research idea as my peers were 2. I felt I was not getting the proper amount of guidance being the youngest student with only a BA degree even though I was actively reaching out to professors 3. I just realized that my actual career goals and what I wanted were no longer aligned with academia after experiencing it. It wasn’t worthwhile for me to invest 5+ years of my life to enter an oversaturated job market with the perspective financial instability as an adjunct lecturer. One of my recommenders/former professors actually told me I was brave to realize that this path just wasn’t for me so early on, accepted it, and moved on with another plan in motion. I once met someone who was stuck in a PhD program and ended up dropping out when she only needed to complete her dissertation/final year! Sometimes it is much harder to walk away from an opportunity that is hurting you more. There’s so many people who end up staying and ignore their own wellbeing.

Thankfully, my parents did support my decision because they saw how I was emotionally and mentally drained/not myself. At first I was unsure if I should get a job as a substitute teacher for a year before reapplying in Fall of 2021 to a teaching program that I rejected in the Spring of 2020. I was actually in the process of doing so until I reached out to another high school teacher of mine. She gave me advice and talked me through all my options and in the end I decided to reapply for Spring of 2021. I left the PhD program as soon as I was able to without any financial penalties because I had to stay for at least 3/4s of the semester. I found a retail job during the hiatus period after leaving the program. It’s not the most glamorous job but it’s in my neighborhood and I don’t have to commute/be exposed to people outside of my area. I’m using that to fund my degree and pay my own personal bills for the time being. I’ll consider an internship or higher paying position once things become more settled after the vaccine rollout.

My advice would be to try to reason with your parents and explain to them the adverse health symptoms you’re having (if you haven’t already). If you’re dependent on them (to whatever extent) discuss your plan and options moving forward. You could try applying to some of the retail jobs that you want and other corporate jobs that might be a better fit for your personality/interests. I am sure there’s different team dynamics and work cultures out there. It sounds like you might just be stuck in an environment that is toxic or incompatible with you. My best friend’s sister recently got out of a toxic work environment and she was unsure if she wanted to continue in that industry. However, she applied somewhere else in the same industry and it was a much better fit for her mental health/team wise! You might want to consider talking to a mentor, professor, or close friend that is unbias and has your best interests at heart. That way you can get a professional opinion in your field + a personal one.

If you cannot leave your current position right away then I would suggest seeking therapy if that is an option for you. The best scenario is to have your exit plan aligned by the time you leave the door, but I understand how that’s not always an option for every circumstance. If you must leave before you have your next plan in place then just give yourself the time and proper environment to recover before making your next moves. Don’t see this as a failure but just a minor setback. There’s people who invest YEARS of their life in an occupation, relationship, etc. that does not serve them well. So at least you discovered this early and you can now readjust your life goals and plans. I’m slowly learning too that there’s no set “timeline” for our lives. You might have a plan but sometimes your plan doesn’t always play out exactly the way you imagined it. There might be uncontrollable circumstances that make things harder or enjoyable pitstops (you didn’t schedule) where you’re still moving closer to your goals only at a slower pace than you imagined.

Make sure you list out the pros and cons for each of your options and discuss it with people who are supportive of you. If you want to maintain a good relationship with your parents and appease them in a way where it’s still a healthy relationship, you can just tell them that this is only temporary until you gather yourself together. We’re still dealing with the instability of the pandemic and taking a slower paced job could help you take a break from the corporate stress you experienced. You will just have to keep emphasizing that you’re still actively working and planning towards something. It’s not as if you’re just sitting around at home and stuck in limbo. As long as you have your set personal goals in mind I’m sure you won’t be stuck in the wormhole of a minimum wage job. I can see how maybe your parents are worried that you might get caught up in the routine or become too comfortable with it. Regardless, you know yourself better and what you need for your mental health and physical well being. Just make sure you’re reaching out for help (this is coming from someone who bottles up all her emotions and never wants to ask for help!). I talked to my old professor, my high school teacher, friends, family, and everyone I could get my hands on when I was struggling. From talking to people you realize you’re not alone in this uncertainty and realization that you’re in a situation that you don’t want to be in.

Good luck! I hope this all helped! Feel free to dm me if you feel like I missed something or you just want to vent. 💛

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whiskynottea · 5 years

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An Interruption in the 1st Law of Thermodynamics.

Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter 15, Chapter 16, Chapter 17, Chapter 18, Chapter 19, Chapter 20, Chapter 21, Chapter 22, Chapter 23, Chapter 24, Chapter 25, Chapter 26, Chapter 27, Chapter 28, Chapter 29, Chapter 30, Chapter 31, Chapter 32, Chapter 33, Chapter 34, Chapter 35, Chapter 36, Chapter 37, Chapter 38, Chapter 39, Chapter 40, Chapter 41, Chapter 42, Chapter 43, Chapter 44, Chapter 45, Chapter 46, Chapter 47, Chapter 48, Chapter 49, Chapter 50, Chapter 51 Chapter 52, Chapter 53, Chapter 54, Chapter 55, Chapter 56, Chapter 57, Chapter 58, Chapter 59

AO3

(long) A/N: This story was born as a result of my procrastination. I wrote the first chapter instead of working on the paper for my PhD, an evening I was alone in the lab. I couldn’t resist, because I could see Jamie right there in front of me, teasing Claire in the class. Now, a year and a half later, I have finished writing my paper and my PhD thesis, got my PhD and I prepare for the next stage of my life. I guess what I want to say is… It has been a journey.

I posted the first chapter as a one-shot and your feedback made me go on. Back then I knew the beginning and the end of this story and thought it would be about 20 chapters long. Well, these two kids had other plans. They had so much to do in between, to live together, that the story kept becoming longer and longer. And I loved it. I loved writing them. I really, really did.

When I was a few chapters in, I posted something about English not being my native language (as if that wasn’t obvious -- I had just started writing in English). The amazing @theministerskat saw that post and sent me a dm offering to beta Thermo. She was the first person I talked to on Tumblr and has stayed with me since then, correcting approximately 124,472,539 wrong prepositions in the process. Kat, I hope you haven’t regretted that dm. I can’t thank you enough. Love you.

So, here we are. The last chapter! Thank you all for the love you have shown to this story. Thank you for your reblogs, comments and likes. Thank you for your messages. Thank you for being a part of this journey! You’re amazing.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Chapter 60. An Interruption in the 1st Law of Thermodynamics

Oxmas.

A little Christmas bubble in Oxford before the end of the term, created for the students to celebrate the holiday together. Even if it had to be a month early.

Music, colourful Christmas markets, trees going up on the streets -- even at the centre of the old Bodleian court. I could never have imagined the Bodleian court looking more beautiful, but apparently, everything looks better with a Christmas tree.

My legs were hurting from the midnight ice-skating Malva, Mary, and Maisri had dragged me to. The three M’s of my Catastrophe, as I called them. But it was fun. A lot of fun. So much fun that I had forgotten myself for a while and laughed with all my heart.

Then I’d remembered that I would never tell him how great midnight ice-skating with friends was.

Him. Sometimes it was difficult even to think of his name, let alone say it.

But life was going on and I was still at Oxford, with friends and our magical Christmas campus. Thinking about how terrible the holiday would be back at home, I decided that I owed it to myself to have a little bit of fun here.

I didn’t want to think about the end of the term. I was supposed to go to the US and then to Lallybroch with Jamie. Lamb wouldn't be in Edinburgh, because when I announced my initial plans he’d decided that he wouldn’t fly back. He was at a critical point in his research, he’d said.

Back then, it was fine. Lamb was happy and he’d eased my guilt for leaving him alone in a single phone call.

It was the reason I still hadn't told Lamb about Jamie. I didn’t want him to come back because his little niece couldn’t handle a break-up. And now, once the term was over, I would spend a month in Edinburgh alone, most probably studying for the next term. The ideal Christmas break. Just awesome.

“You’re still in your pyjamas?” Malva’s eyebrows shot up the moment she entered my dorm room.

“Yes?” I asked confused, as I watched her walking towards me, shaking her head.

“Today is the event at Bodleian’s Old Schools Quad, remember? The one with the projections of maps on the buildings? You said you wanted to go!”

I had said that, but then I forgot about it. It would be amazing, seeing the maps from the Bodleian Library collection projected onto the library’s historic buildings. I shot Malva an apologetic glance and got out of bed. “Give me ten minutes?” I implored, and headed towards my closet.

“We’ll wait for you outside,” she said, before I heard the door click shut.

I wore my favourite pair of jeans and a soft, warm sweater. Boots. A woollen scarf and a beanie, that meant I didn’t have to put any effort into taming my unruly curls. In less than ten minutes, I joined Malva and Mary who were giggling at something next to the front door.

“What?” I asked, walking towards the entrance.

“Well, our little shy daisy here has something to tell you, Claire.”

My eyes shot from Malva’s teasing smile to Mary’s blushing cheeks. “Oh my God! What?”

“It’s nothing!” Mary exclaimed, much louder than normal. Startling herself with her raised voice, her next words came out in a whisper. “It’s nothing, nothing. I’ve only met him once.”

“Him? Who?” I inquired with a grin on my face.

“Alex,” Malva replied instead of Mary, batting her eyelashes and faking a swoon.

“Who is Alex, Mary?”

“This guy,” Mary murmured. “I dropped my scarf last night and he picked it up and gave it back to me. He was so kind, and he smiled…”

“And?” I pushed her, but Mary had hardly heard me, lost in her reverie.

“We were walking in the same direction,” she continued, her voice dreamy. “And we talked, and I don’t know how, but I didn’t stutter at all. He had the most beautiful eyes, and he’s a fresher too.”

“Which college?” Malva asked, chewing her lip. “We should pay him a visit!”

“Nnn-o, no, no.” Mary faltered. “And I don’t know that, anyway. An older guy materialized next to us all of a sudden and told him they had to go. Alex looked at me and said --”

“Till next time,” Malva spoke, imitating a man’s low voice.

“Yes, but not like that, you know,” Mary corrected, smiling and blushing even more. “But he doesn’t have my number and I-- I don’t know how…”

“Come on.” I linked her elbow with mine. “He might be there tonight.”

I was sure Mary hadn’t seen a single projection all night, her eyes scanning the crowd for him, for Alex. It was sweet and honest, and it made my heart hurt. So I focused my attention on the lights dancing on the hundred year old walls. The old and the new, in perfect conjunction. With my eyes on the Old School Quad buildings, I didn’t notice another him until he was standing right next to me.

“That interested in maps, are you?” Robert’s French accent stood out from the British ones around us. I hadn’t seen him since that night at the bar, three days before. We had agreed to go out for drinks again, the way people always do when they say goodbye because they feel like they have to. He had my number and I had his from when we were back in Zambia, but, as expected, neither of us had called.

“It’s enchanting, isn’t it?” I asked in a light voice as I moved my eyes over another projection.

He made a low, affirmative sound, but when I turned my head towards him, he was already looking at me again. “So, how do you find your first Oxmas?”

Robert shrugged. “It’s weird, isn’t it? The term hasn’t finished and I still have to work on an essay for the 26th, but everyone is so cheery. And you know, the trees, the lights…”

“They create a totally different atmosphere,” I finished his thought. “It will be weird when it’s over, going back to the pre-Christmas mood.”

“Definitely,” he agreed. “But I like it.”

“Well, celebrating Christmas twice can’t be bad.”

His eyes changed for a moment, and his mouth became a hard line. Before I had the chance to say something, he smiled.

“Christmas is not my favourite time of the year,” he explained softly.

I was ready to ask how that could be, but I stopped myself in time. His mother. Maybe Christmas brought back memories of family traditions, and his mother was an inextricable part of this time for him. As Ellen had been for Jamie. I wondered whether not having so many memories from my parents was beneficial from time to time. But then, I would give my soul for a few more moments with them.

I took a step towards Robert and squeezed his arm in solidarity. Neither of us spoke, but we didn’t need to.

At some point, Malva disappeared and a bit later I felt someone pinching my arm.

“Ouch!” I turned to look at Mary. “What?” She was blushing again, and when I looked next to her, I saw a skinny guy with brown hair and the sweetest smile who was blushing too.

“I didn’t find him, but he found me,” Mary whispered to me, her eyes shining with happiness. “Do you mind if we leave?”

I bit my lip to stop the smile from growing wider on my face. “No, of course not. Good luck!” I watched them until they disappeared into the crowd.

I spent the rest of the night standing next to Robert, admiring the projections, enjoying the comfortable silence between us, and letting the colours of light sneak into my heart.

“So, what’s the plan now?” he asked once the event was over. He looked around, searching for something. Or someone. “It seems that my friends ditched me,” he observed a moment later.

I snorted. “Yeah, mine too. Not big fans of maps, it seems.”

“Booze sounds better,” he commented.

“Does it?” I wondered.

“Oui. Join me for a pint?” Robert winked at me, then looked nonchalantly at the people leaving the library.

“You know that once I take the beanie off, a jungle of curls will be waiting underneath it?” I half-joked, half-prepared him for what he would see.

Robert laughed, then looked at my beanie as if I was hiding a little monster underneath it.

“You’re right,” he grimaced after a long moment of examination. “We better just walk around.”

His grimace became sincere when he felt my blow to his arm. “You’re an arse,” I added, for good measure.

“I think I’ve heard that one before,” he laughed, rubbing his arm. “That hurt,” he grumbled. “You’re paying for the drinks.”

“Fine! But no hair jokes for the rest of the night!”

“Deal!” he said, tugging on a curl, stretching it out and watching it spring back.

We went to a crowded pub, sat at the only available table in a corner, but Robert didn’t let me pay for the drinks. We talked about life in Oxford, the medical school and his courses on economics, and I tried hard to keep Jamie out of my mind, not to break down just because Robert had some common classes with him. Robert talked about his father’s business in France, and listened to my stories from my travels with Lamb. When we left, he announced that he would walk me back to my dorm, because it was late and he was a gentleman. Ignoring my snort at his description of himself, we started walking towards the dorms of Lady Margaret’s Hall.

It was much quieter now that the events were over, but students were still walking around, laughing, flirting, and giggling. The night was beautiful, and a few stars hung in the clear sky. I took a deep breath and tried to empty my head from all thoughts of my heartbreak. I had fun tonight, and I was allowed to. I was entitled to it.

When we arrived at my dorm, I turned to say goodnight only to find Robert’s face a few inches away from mine. My heart stopped when I felt his hot breath and smelled the peppermint in it, from drops he’d bought from a stall at the Christmas market. I held my breath in turn, knowing that it smelled exactly the same. I had eaten half his peppermint drops on our way back to my dorm.

I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. Before I had time to think, Robert tilted his head closer to me, and the next moment he brushed his lips against mine. It was gentle. A start. An invitation for more.

And I freaked out.

I took a hurried step back, raising a hand to my lips and looking at him through wide eyes.

Robert frowned at me, then took a step back, too. “You’re single, aren’t you?” he implored, perplexed.

“How?” I asked, not wanting to affirm his notion.

“How did I know?”

I nodded.

“You haven’t mentioned him once tonight or the other night at the bar, you’re not constantly on your phone texting him and you didn’t send him a picture from the event. Even though you loved it. It wasn’t so hard to figure out,” he concluded and shrugged, his gaze falling on my lips again.

“I guess I’m quite easy to read,” I murmured and heard him chuckle.

“I like that.”

I nodded again, not knowing what to say. The truth. I had to tell him the truth. I was never good at lies, anyway.

“Robert,” I started and his green eyes locked with mine. He was one of those people who didn’t even have to try to look good. Robert was the definition of a handsome man. But that didn’t matter at all. I took a deep breath and continued. “You’re not wrong. Jamie and I, we…” I swallowed, cursing myself for stumbling. “We broke up. But I’m not ready, and I don’t want to move on before I am. It wouldn’t be fair, to either of us.”

Robert nodded and raised his chin, in defeat or acceptance I wasn’t sure, but kept his eyes low on the ground. “I understand.”

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled, wanting him to look at me again. “I’m still in love with him.”

At that comment, Robert looked at me and gave me a wistful smile. He took a step towards me again and placed a warm, gentle hand on my cheek. His thumb caressed my cheekbone as he murmured something in French, so low that I wasn’t able to catch it. “You’re a good one, Claire,” he said, at last.

“I don’t know about that,” I disagreed.

“I do,” he insisted, then took a step back and turned to leave. I stayed rooted in place. He had only taken two steps away before he turned back again, grinned at me, and said, “See you around, Miss Bennet.”

As I walked up to my room, I wondered whether he was a good one. If I had made a huge mistake by stopping him, by not kissing him back. He was beautiful, smart and witty, even if he was a little bit more cocky and authoritative than I would like.

And yet, kissing him now didn’t feel right.

Robert had a wonderful French accent, and all I wanted to hear was Jamie’s heavy Scottish one.

I fell onto my bed, hating Jamie for ruining my Oxmas, my chances for a future, my life. Hating myself for loving him so much.

Mary came back from her date after midnight. Alex had kissed her and her exhilaration permeated the thick layer of unhappiness that surrounded me. I was happy for her. I was glad she had found someone who was so like her, who could understand her, and care for her. Who didn’t mind if she was shy or stuttered, and saw the lovely person she was.

By the time Mary fell asleep, I couldn’t find it in me to be upset anymore. But I couldn’t force myself to be happy either. I slipped into my semi-depressed state with ease, and when I realized sleep wasn’t a choice anymore, I put on my thickest winter coat and headed out to the gardens.

I don’t know how long I sat by the river, crying, while trying to stop my stupid heart from suffocating me. At last, I lay down on the cold grass, closed my eyes and wondered what kind of an idiot I would be if I ended up with pneumonia. Maybe that would be enough of a shock to delete Jamie from my mind.

Maybe.

I woke up with the dawn overtaking the night sky and a hand holding mine. My heart began beating faster and faster, and I closed my eyes again, trying to figure out what to do. This wasn’t a woman’s hand. It wasn’t Mary’s, or Malva’s. It was a big, warm, male hand that seemed strangely familiar. But who was I to be sure about the familiarity of hands? I resolved to leap to my feet, take a look at the person lying beside me, and if I didn’t know him, run back to my dorm as fast as I could.

But then he spoke. And his voice was a balm that soothed reality away.

“If I lay here, if I just lay here, will you lie with me and just forget the world?”

My heart stopped and I felt my eyes grow abnormally wide as I opened them again. I tried to breathe, but I couldn’t. I tried to react, to turn and look at him, but I was afraid that he was just a dream and the moment I turned he would dissolve into thin air. He had spoken to me in my dreams before. He had never been there when I had woken up.

“But you’ve never touched me,” I croaked with effort.

“What?” His whisper was barely audible. Tentative.

“You’ve never touched me in my dreams before.”

A chuckle. “Yeah, bummer.” His voice quivered and a shiver ran down my spine. “I couldn’t touch you in my dreams either, Sassenach, and I decided to do something about it.”

My whole body tensed.

The gall of him.

I sat up so quickly the world tilted on its axis for a few seconds. When I found my bearings again, I slowly turned to look at him.

God, he was beautiful. Those red curls, the bright blue eyes, the wide mouth. I suddenly realized why I couldn’t kiss Robert. His soft brown locks, his shining green eyes, his full lips -- they were all wrong. Perfect, but wrong.

A small smile curled Jamie’s lips and I realized he was drinking me in too.

And then it hit me. The hurt, the desperation, the anger.

“What are you doing here.” It wasn’t a question. It was an interrogation. I set my jaw, resolute to be rigid, determined not to cry.

“I had to see you,” he said in a low voice and moved to take my hand. I snatched it away from him.

“Why? Are you trying to establish a new tradition? Do we have to see each other once a month now that we’re not together?”

“Twenty-six days,” he countered.

“What?” I asked incredulously.

“It’s been twenty-six days since that night.”

That night. I knew exactly how many days it had been. A part of me had died over the course of each one of those days. I kept my hard gaze on Jamie for a long moment, then stood up. “Well, you saw me. Now, goodbye, Jamie.”

“Claire!” he yelled, alarmed, as he sprang up and rushed to me. “Wait.” He towered over me and grabbed my arm, afraid I would leave if he didn’t have a proper hold on me. I didn’t know if he was wrong about that. I wanted to get away, far away from him. Even looking at him hurt. “Please, Sassenach.”

“What do you want?” Ice infused my tone.

“I need to talk to you.”

I didn’t want to listen to him, and yet, I wished for him to tell me everything. I wanted to know his heart, his thoughts. I needed answers, so many answers, but just looking at him and knowing he had decided he didn’t want to be mine was stealing my breath. He was here, but he wasn’t my Jamie anymore.

I took a step to leave and heard him gasp, as if I had shot him. I froze in place, balling my hands into fists.

I was fighting with myself, struggling to find what I wanted, and how much more pain I could handle. I closed my eyes, trying to set my feelings in order before they could choke me.

I felt like I was four again, standing in the aisle with the chocolate bars at the grocery store and trying to choose one. It was one of the few memories I had with my dad, shopping together. I will never forget how I had stared and stared at the chocolates, licking my lips as if I were imagining their taste on my tongue, trying to decide which one I should put in our cart. And then, surprising myself, I had suddenly started crying. Soon my silent tears turned into wailing, bringing my dad’s attention back to me.

“What's wrong, Claire?” he had asked, eyebrows scrunched in a frown.

But I couldn't answer his question. I hadn’t known what was wrong. I only knew that I wanted to do what he had asked and choose only one chocolate, but I also wanted to buy all of them. And I felt tired, too tired to decide. I only wanted my mum, because mum would know which chocolate was the best. So I kept crying, and crying, until my breath came in gasps, and my dad's face was blurry in front of me.

He had held my shoulders and pulled me into a hug, then, his big hand drawing circles on my back to soothe me.

“In here,” he had said afterwards, tapping lightly on my chest, “Snuggle our feelings. And they are so many, sweetheart, that sometimes they don't talk to each other and try to get out of our chest all at once. And we start crying, because we are confused and we don't know how to feel. I want you to take a deep breath, stop crying, and tell me what's wrong.”

And with my father squatting in front of me, his hands tucking errand curls behind my ears, I had told him that I didn't know what I wanted.

I felt the same now, only that I was not four anymore, and I couldn’t throw a fit. Jamie was here, standing in front of me, looking me through pleading eyes, and he was all the chocolates. And yet, I couldn't have him. I couldn't trust him, not anymore, but I didn't want to leave either. I couldn't.

So I inhaled. Exhaled. In and out, again and again, following my dad’s advice. My coat was soaked from lying on the grass for so many hours, and my hands felt like ice cubes. And I decided to listen to him.

“Let’s go find a bench. My arse is freezing.”

I started walking and heard him falling in step behind me, undoing the zipper of his insulated jacket. “Here,” he offered, catching up with me in two wide strides.

“I’m fine, thank you,” I dismissed him, keeping my chin high.

“Please, Sassenach.”

“Don’t call me that!” I hissed, breathing hard. He had decided that I was not his Sassenach before he made that video call. I was plain Claire to him now, and he had better deal with it.

“Please, Claire,” he repeated, rectifying his slip.

I took his jacket begrudgingly and wore it. It was dry and warm, and it smelled like him.

Dammit.

Two minutes later we were sitting on a bench, watching the sky changing from a deep blue to a lighter one. It was beautiful. This would be one of my favourite moments with him if his surprise had happened a month ago. Now, however, I could feel the bitter taste of these twenty-six days in my throat every time I swallowed.

“I’ll hear you.”

“Can I hold yer hands, please?”

“No.” My voice was colder than my hands as I shoved them into his jacket pockets.

Jamie took a deep breath and ran a hand through his hair. It was such a simple gesture and so him, that I felt my heart clench inside my chest. “I miss ye, Claire,” he whispered. “Every moment, every day.”

I resolved not to talk until he was done, and to keep any tears at bay. I would not cry. I would not.

“I miss ye when I wake up and I don’t find yer text on my phone. I miss ye when the guys do something funny and I can’t text you to laugh with you about it. I miss ye when I finish training and I can’t call ye to see how ye’re doing. I miss ye when I go back to the dorm and canna talk to ye about my day. I wake up every day, knowing that no matter what happens I willna be happy, Claire... I canna think of myself without ye.”

Fuck my resolution. I had to speak.

“You didn’t seem to have any problem with that, twenty-six days ago,” I deadpanned.

“I was a fool.” Jamie’s voice trembled. “I thought… I thought breaking up would be hard, but we’d get over it and then everything would be easier for both of us. I could see ye struggling here, and I couldna even hug you when ye needed me, when ye were tired from long hours in the library. Ye couldna come to my races or be there to calm me down when I was stressed. Another guy in the team broke up with his girlfriend who lived in another State and he got over it, eventually. And we arena in different States, Claire. We live on different continents,” he explained as if that detail had eluded me. “I felt torn all the time, between ye and my life in the US. I ken that I was the one who changed our plans, I was the one who went to Michigan--”

“I never said anything about our plans. I never complained, and I supported your decision from the very first moment. I was the one who told you to go. That is not why we broke up. We broke up because you stopped believing in us. Because you wanted somebody who would be closer to you.”

“No!” he protested, his gaze bore into mine with insistence and flame. “No, not somebody. Not anybody. I wanted ye to be close to me, and I thought that if we were in a long-distance relationship for years the pain of not seeing each other would become too much, until we couldna take it anymore. Or what we had would become less. I thought that we would gradually fall apart, and I didna want that. I thought that we didna have any other option, Sassenach. Every time that ye missed one of my calls, or I missed yers, I became more sure of it. Then I thought…” he trailed off.

“What? What else did you think, Jamie?” I prompted, impatient. He was a mess but I didn’t feel merciful in that moment to go soft on him. Not after everything I had been through.

“I thought if we were destined to be together, maybe we would find each other again once ended up in the same country. But now I know, Claire. I dinna want to find ye again after how ever many years, and realize that ye don’t want to be mine anymore. That there is a big part of yer life that I know nothing about. I dinna want to miss yer first day in the OR, or yer graduation. I dinna want to miss yer smiles after yer tutorials, even if I can only see them through a screen. I dinna ken what I was thinking when I believed I could do it without you, but I can’t. I can’t and I don’t want to be without you.”

I huffed, partly because I didn’t want to let his words have an impact on me. “Twenty-six days. Took you long enough.”

“I tried, at first. I tried to go on, to tuck you into a corner of my heart and keep living. But I couldn’t, Sassenach, because all of my heart was yers. I could have come to find you after those first few days. And maybe I should have, but I didna, because I wanted to be sure. But no matter how hard I tried, living without ye didna become easier. It became harder. I kent how I was with ye, and now I ken how it is to live without ye. It sucks, Claire. I’m miserable without ye. All I could think of this past month--”

“Twenty-six days,” I interrupted him.

He smiled, shaking his head. “I love ye. A Dhia, I love ye so much it hurts. Twenty-six days. All I could think of was ye, Sassenach. How I wanted to share everything with ye. How I needed to ken where ye are, what ye’re doing, and how ye feel. I missed ye with every breath I took. And now I ken that I canna go on without ye.”

I’d resolved not to cry, but treacherous tears were rolling down my cheeks without asking for my permission.

“And how do I know that you won’t change your mind again? How can I trust you again, Jamie?” My question found its target in his heart, and I saw his sharp intake of breath from the impact. “You broke my heart,” I whispered, as an explanation. “You broke me.”

He looked down for a moment, but quickly locked his eyes on mine again. “I fucked up. I know I did. Forgive, mo nighean donn. Forgive me, please.” He paused for a moment, and extended his hand between us, palm facing up. He didn’t remove it when I didn’t move to take it, and he continued. “All I’m asking for is another chance. One chance, Sassenach. If ye’re not ready, if ye need time, I can wait. I will wait for as long as it takes.”

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t think time would change how I felt. I loved him, I knew I did. But he had given up on us, yielding to his fears. He didn’t believe we would make it through all the years of our separation. He had chosen a life without me and broke me in the process.

Well, and he regretted it. It was clear that he did. I could see it as much in the pain in his eyes as I could hear it in his voice when he spoke.

I watched Jamie’s chest rising and falling with every breath he took while he waited for me to say something. His hair was a mess from all the times he had run his hand through it. I wanted to fix it, and then run my fingers over his cheekbones, over the curve of his lips. And yet, I was frozen in my place. Not even to take his hand that lay on the bench between us.

“How can we ever be the same again?” I asked, unsure. I started caving in, and I didn’t know how to feel about it.

“I dinna want us to be the same. D’ye remember the first time I talked to ye?” he asked with a timid smile. “In Mrs. Fitz’s class, ye were keeping notes on the first law of thermodynamics.”

I didn’t know where he was going with that, but I stayed silent and let him go on.

“The conservation of energy. Nothing is lost, Sassenach; only changed. And I don’t care if we change, as long as we change together. This… Me without ye… It was an interruption in the first law of thermodynamics. Because I was lost. And that’s against the laws of physics.”

I laughed. This was ridiculous. Jamie blushed, and then laughed with me.

“I ken what I want now, Claire. I want ye. I want us. And I will fight for us, if ye let me, because what we had -- what we have -- it’s true. It’s truer than anything I will ever get. It’s more than I could ever ask for.”

I kept my eyes on the river, the grass, the sky. I felt my heart beating faster in response to his words, as if each time he spoke he glued another of its broken parts back in place.

“All I’m asking for, is a chance,” Jamie implored. “A chance to prove myself to ye, mo ghraidh.”

“A chance,” I murmured, trying to sort the tangle of emotions in my chest.

He came closer, now brave enough to take my hands out of my pockets and wrap them in his. “I know ye and ye know me. Ye’re the only person in the world that really knows me. Ye’re my heart and my soul Claire, and I canna leave without them, can I?” Without taking his eyes from me, he leaned into me and kissed me gently on the lips.

And damn him, it felt right. But I didn’t kiss him back. I had more to say.

“You didn’t talk to me.” I kept my voice calm. “You had all these thoughts in your head, and you left me here in the dark, thinking that everything was alright on your end. And when you made up your mind, you just called me to announce the verdict of a trial I didn’t participate in.”

Jamie opened his mouth to reply, but closed it again. I guess there was nothing he could say that wouldn’t be a lie. He had decided for both of us.

“This…” I started again. “This is not how things work, how relationships work. If you have second thoughts, I need to know. If you need something I’m not giving you, I need to know. If you believe that we’re fucking falling apart,” I finally barked, unable to keep the anger from my voice, “I. Need. To. Know.”

Jamie nodded, but I was far from finished. “What we’re trying to do is bloody hard. We need to talk, and talking includes the unpleasant discussions too. I’m not going to try again without knowing that you’ll do that.”

“I give ye my word, Claire. We will make this work. I will do anything I can to make sure it does.”

“Will you talk to me? Always?” There was no ice or blaze in my voice now. Just a question. A sincere question that demanded an honest answer.

“Always,” Jamie vowed and leaned into me. “I will not give up on us, ever again,” he whispered on my lips, and I drank the words in.

I had trusted him with my heart before and he broke it. But he was right when he said that I knew him. And I knew he’d torn his own heart apart in the process too. I could still see the pain in the way his sweater hung a little too wide on him, in the black bags underneath his blue eyes. I looked into his eyes, those eyes I knew better than my own, and saw the truth in them.

“One chance, Jamie Fraser. You won’t get another.”

“I willna need another. Ye’re mine and I’m yers, and I will never let you go again.”

“Promise?” I asked, as if that would seal the deal. As if his promise would secure my happiness.

“Promise,” Jamie nodded emphatically, his eyes overflowing with tears that split when he closed them and kissed me again.

And this time, I kissed him back. It was long, and soft, and encompassing. It was an offering of his soul, and I took it, keeping it safe inside my chest. A treasure and a hostage.

“Plus,” Jamie said once we stopped to catch our breath. “I offer you a chance to torture me forever for making the worst mistake of my life.”

I laughed, cupped his cheeks and kissed him again.

I closed my eyes. Life was nothing but chances and choices. Decisions. Paths waiting for us to take them. A huge aisle with chocolate bars.

I looked towards the path in front of me and I saw Jamie and me together -- arguing, fighting, kissing, laughing. I saw a man who wasn’t flawless, but was mine. I saw a future that wasn’t perfect, but was real.

I saw happy moments and sad ones. I saw difficulties and dreams coming true. I saw us facing life with our hands clasped tightly together.

When I opened my eyes again, I saw a risk, but a risk worth taking.

“Challenge accepted, Jamie Fraser.”

And just like that, the next chapter of our lives began.

#thermodynamics #the first law of thermodynamics #jamie x claire #high school AU #college AU #outlander fanfic #outlander fanfiction #last chapter!#I can't believe it!

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mountphoenixrp · 3 years

Photo

We have a new citizen in Mount Phoenix:

Melody Park, who is known by no other name, a 34 year old daughter of Horus. She is a professor and freelance private investigator.

DEFINING FEATURES: Melody looks slim and unassuming but, underneath her poised and perfect exterior she is incredibly strong with defined muscles. She has miscellaneous scars littered along her body from her work in the FBI. The most prominent being a clean but long scar along the length of her abdomen from her sternum to just before her hips from a surgery she received when she was 25. Her only tattoo is on her left collarbone, written in perfect calligraphy is one word; Fighter. When using her powers her left eye becomes a dark grey and her right eye a deep amber gold color.

PERSONALITY: Melody spent the entirety of her twenties as an FBI Agent and university student. With an IQ of 186, the ability to read up to 25,000 words per minute, and savant tendencies, she was a perfect recruit. This left her cold, distant, calculated, and bureaucratic on the outside. However, the one thing the grueling work as a government agent never took from her was her caring and loving nature. Her moral compass is strong and she fights for what she believes in, even if that means she puts herself in danger. Melody is very passionate and kind to those closest to her, once she gets close with others she opens up very quickly and shows her goofy and silly side. That is once she knows she can trust you. She has always exuded leadership qualities and people tended to look up to her a lot growing up so, she’s grown comfortable with being a sister/maternal figure for others. Her younger brother’s especially follow her every word and cling to every single one of her actions. This has lead her to quickly offer familial support and a place in her family to those who lack the love of a sister, aunt, or mother.

HISTORY: Park Minyoung, also known as Melody Park, was born in Buffalo, New York to Park Hejin or Virginia Park. A young girl in law school, doing her best with what life handed her. In this case it was a child - the child of a god no less. Virginia went on to finish law school with the help of her parents watching Melody whenever they could and her friends babysitting her while her mother was in class. Her mother passed the bar one month after Melody’s fifth birthday. Virginia was a good lawyer and an amazing mother, never failing at the perfect work/life balance. She worked hard as a single mother to give Melody the best life they could have. Virginia was apprehensive at first about allowing Horus time with Melody, always protective of her darling daughter. She was heartbroken in her own way but, she still knew it would good for them both for Horus to be in her life somehow.

Melody was I incredibly smart and well liked as a child, being labeled a prodigy at age six due to her advanced intelligence. Despite being pushed into an advanced level and being years younger than her peers constantly, they still gravitated towards her and followed her. She always ended up having an army of older kids that were very protective of her. After Horus taught her how to use her powers, it was a struggle not to use them all the time. What kid doesn’t dream of soaring through the sky, flying with birds and feeling the wind in their hair? Add on top of that he constant need of approval from the older kids she was always surrounded with, it was hard for her not to show off to gain some points with those who didn’t automatically like her. She mastered the art of flying pretty quickly, nothing felt better to her than the rush of wind through her hair and cold air on her skin.

Life was pretty easy for Melody growing up outside of school and the expectations of her teachers. Her mother didn’t date so, it was just the two of them in their cozy home in Buffalo. Melody ran track, was captain of the swim team, and even tried her hand at soccer. If she hand’t been so young in high school, she’d have been the one all the other kids wanted to be. She wasn’t popular by any means, especially in high school. Teachers used to use her as “motivation” for the other kids, constantly comparing 16 and 17 year olds to a 12 year old can have it’s negative effects on her social circle. She compensated for their quiet disdain of her by being the kindest, sweetest, and nicest person at school. She gained even more favor from teachers and less from peers as she made a point to volunteer whenever she could. The work she did was usually for younger, under privileged kids that had much harder lives than her. Being stuck as the youngest in every group thanks to her advanced schooling lead her wanting younger siblings more than anything, so she worked as a big sister when she could.

After graduating high school at 13 years old, she was quickly offered scholarships all over the country, to every prestigious school and Ivy League university. Melody eventually settled on Columbia as it was closest to home and she could live with her aunt while she attended. It was around this time after she left for university that her mother met and fell in love with a man named Jordan Masters. He worked as a defense attorney who also worked in Buffalo, he was known for representing those wrongly convicted and kids being tried as adults. Melody was unsure of him at first, quickly becoming protective of her mother as this was the first time she’d dated anyone since she was born. It didn’t take long though, for Melody to warm up to the man, they became fast friends. Jordan never tried to replace Horus but, he did his best to support Melody and support her and love her as his own.

This friendship between herself and her stepfather helped her discover what she wanted to do at university. Her first year she’d just been working on core classes and flying through the basic program. She knew there was no way she was putting herself through he struggle of law school like her mother so, she settled on Criminology and Psychology. Choosing to work towards a career in catching the right perpetrators and keeping innocent people out of prison. With her advanced intelligence she graduated with a PHD in both fields by the age of 22 almost 23 years old. What she didn’t know is that for her last two years before graduating, she was being watching by some of the top government agencies in the United States.

When Melody was 17, her mother gave birth to twin boys! Suddenly her one wish came true, she had younger brothers and she couldn’t have been more excited. Those little boys are her world and she loves them more than anything.

At the time of her graduation, Melody had been thinking of applying to the FBI academy and she didn’t have to think about it very long before a recruiter was at her door offering her a place in the training program. Her mother and step father were worried about Melody going into a potentially dangerous field of work but, Melody knew she was perfectly capable. She was told she was one of the youngest recruits in years but, she didn’t let it go to her head. That had been her title among peers since she started school, always the youngest to do this and the youngest to do that. Melody could not lie, the academy was hard but, it toughened her up and she learned that it was easy for people to underestimate her due to her appearance and intelligence. She didn’t look threatening or intimidating but, she could take down someone triple her size in less than 20 seconds.

She flew through her training and was instated as a probationary agent after only two years at the academy. Melody was recognized as a star recruit and was quickly placed where her quick thinking and easily underestimated appearance could be used to her advantage.

From the age of 25 to 34 years old, Melody worked for a team that specialized in undercover and international cases. She was worried about it at first but she was surprisingly good at it. Annoyingly good at it actually. In fact, she was almost too good at being under deep cover for long periods of time. Her team was investigating two large, private security firms that worked with the secret service, suspected of disorderly conduct as well as drug and human trafficking. Melody worked undercover at one of the firms for almost a year investigating them from the inside but, this is when things got messy.

Love is already complicated enough if you don’t add on top of it the threat of national security. It was cliché and she knew it, an undercover agent falling in love with someone they were charged with investigating. There was just something about her that made her forget everything she was taught and every order she was ever given. She fell head over heels for her and she also fell for Melody. Sadly, love can make you blind and foolish… Melody falling for her suspect was against every regulation in the book and it was made worse by the fact that it was discovered she was the one running the entire operation she was meant to be investigating and bringing to justice.

When her lover discovered she was a federal agent, she was out for vengeance and blood. Seeing Melody’s cover and emotional connection to her as the ultimate betrayal of their love. She ordered Melody to be killed but, the agency pulled her from the investigation before the murder attempt could be carried out. If her team members hadn’t rescued her when they hey did, she may have had to expose her divine powers to the organization as well, using her wings to escape. Thankfully, it didn’t come to that however, Melody is now in hiding from the woman she loves… Loved.

The agency wanted to put her in witness protection, to keep her and her family safe. She made sure her mother’s family was safe before she reached out to Horus for help, she didn’t want to be moved all over the US to hide from her mistakes. Horus told her of a place only demigods and gods could go to, an island off the coast of Korea. Her life of crime fighting had ground to a halt all because she fell for the wrong woman. Melody left her family in the protection of her team and the agency she was loyal to for almost a decade, knowing they couldn’t be touched as no one outside of her team knew her family.

Thus begins the new story of Melody Park, running for her life to a city where she will hopefully be untouched by her past mistakes.

PANTHEON: Egyptian CHILD OF: Horus POWERS: Natural leaders; air manipulation, falcon wing manifestation and flight (only for short periods of time, flight drains their energy quickly). STRENGTHS: Brave, Driven, Humble, Intelligent, Poised WEAKNESSES: Stubborn, Cynical, Over-Critical, Stoic, Perfectionist

#kpop rp #krp #kdrama #park minyoung #mp; welcome

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