Viennavortex - Romance Is Boring (princess Version) - Tumblr Blog

No one in this world or any other is allowed to touch The Hair...... Except Sophie.

Looped

Summary: You are inadvertently trapped in a time loop without any memory of the last five years, including your relationship with Bucky. But Bucky would stay in the loop forever, explain everything again each day, if it meant getting to stay by your side.

Pairing: Bucky X Reader

Word Count: ~15.2k

Warnings: memory loss, brief mention of sex (not smut, no description), angst, Bucky being self-depreciating

A/N: This was a labor to write but so so fun. Please let me know what you think!

You’re sweet and sharp, like the ripe flesh of summer fruit.

It’s the first thought Bucky ever has about you. It makes him want to know you.

You laugh loud and crack jokes that make Sam guffaw and Steve blush.

You are all honey warmth and gentle smiles, sarcasm and dripping truths. You whisper truths to him like a siren, like the call of the sea, late at night, early in the morning.

When you meet, he thinks he’d like to spend the rest of his days at your side.

It doesn’t matter in what capacity, though eventually he comes to hope for something more. Hopes maybe you could come to love him.

But friend, lab assistant, overly watchful co-worker will do too. If he can remain in your life, it's good enough for him. Bucky hopes for a more that he doesn’t deserve, and slowly, over years, more grows until it blooms love.

It’s how he discovers the give of your skin against his teeth is like the bruise of a peach, soft and tart.

It’s how he discovers your love, all of your love, is like golden light. Like a shining beacon to follow home.

It’s how he discovers he doesn’t quite mind being cared about, not if it's you, not if he’s allowed to tip it back to you, like a torch passed back and forth by children in the dark.

Your love goes down easy, like ice cream melting at the back of his throat on a hot day. It's uncomplicated, not like every other relationship he has to form and reform, shadowed by past deeds, Natasha and Steve, Sam and Tony.

He offers up his soul to you, and you pluck it out of the palm of his hand and examine it, before slipping it onto your finger like a ring.

Bucky is entirely yours.

He loves you more than he should, more than he should be allowed to.

He’s desperate and co-dependent and utterly in love.

And you don’t seem to mind at all.

Bucky starts wondering about your future, about your future together, about a house and some pets. About finding a real ring to give you and not just the imagined, misshapen rock of his soul.

Of course, when things go too well, the harder the descent is into hell, the harder the fall from grace.

Normally, usually, when the team goes on a mission, you stay back at base, at the Compound where you are safe and secure and protected. You are not an Avenger, you are Avenger adjacent. An intel analyst.

Still. You are close enough to bleed and hurt, still close enough to fall into Bucky’s toxic orbit, close enough for his being to swallow yours entirely.

But Natasha was unavailable, out on another assignment, and the threat level for this mission was supposed to be relatively low.

So, you had offered yourself up. Shiny and new, like the brass of a new minted penny. Like you weren’t all the fortunes in the world shuffled into the deck of one person.

Like you weren’t Bucky’s whole world. Like the planet of his being, the core of him, wouldn’t fall out of the sky if the universe of you suddenly dropped out of existence.

“I’m trained,” had been your only refrain, a gentle reminder to him that you were not as breakable and fragile as Bucky sometimes liked to believe. He knows that you’re not, that you are anything but breakable and fragile.

But the world so liked to rip and tear and take.

It liked most of all to rip and tear and take from him.

Bucky has never been a keeper of good things. They’re always taken from him, right when his damnably loyal heart finished stitching itself inside a new home, right when he thought this time it will be different. The world smiled and rubbed its hands together. Jackpot. There was no greater prize, no greater tragedy, than one soaked in love and loyalty and crushable hearts.

You had touched his cheek with fingers so soft he’d wanted to take a bite of you. “I’m trained,” you had repeated. “And most integrated with the team already. It will be fine.”

Steve had nodded, making the change on the tablet in front of him. “Y/N is right. You shouldn’t encounter any hostiles. Intel gathering only.”

Bucky had shot Steve a look, but said nothing.

It was like no one realized. That if something, anything, happened to you, he would shatter into a million pieces, that he would follow you into the ether, that his heart couldn’t be torn apart again. He simply wouldn’t survive it. It had been stitched together too many times.

This was his last heart and unfortunately for him, he had already given it to you.

But the mission goes fine. It’s so, so fine.

Until it isn’t.

He’s shuffling through a stack of papers in an abandoned lab when you open a drawer on the other side of the room. Just a drawer, nothing to indicate what might be inside. You’re clearing the lab together, because his stipulation to not having a meltdown about your inclusion in the mission was that you should not be separated.

Before boarding the jet he’d been staring at you silently, brooding and moody and a little mad. You had had a fond look in your eyes when you smoothed your thumb against the worried crease between his brows. “It’s going to be fine, Bucky.” He had nodded through the bad feeling clawing at the back of his throat and you had smiled.

A nasty blue vapor blows into your face. You splutter and wipe a hand across your nose and eyes, shaking your head to clear it away.

Bucky says your name, leaps across the room.

But how can he fight smoke? This is not the kind of danger he expected.

His hand on your arm, ready to catch you if you suddenly fall.

But you only sneeze, an adorable little squeak. “What was that?” You ask, rubbing your nose.

He grips your chin in his hand and turns your head to peer into your eyes but they’re clear and open as they always are.

“Dunno,” he allows for a little relief to seep between his bones, shoulders loosening as he releases your chin. You seem completely fine. You seem to shake it off. “We need to find out though. We have enough intel. Let’s go.” He presses the hard drive you had secured earlier into your hands.

His voice is gruffer than usual, demanding. Bucky presses a hand to your hip and gives you a gentle but firm shove toward the door. “Now.”

But you just smile, turn and touch the inside of his wrist where a sliver of skin peaks out between glove and sleeve. “I’m fine. It was probably nothing. Maybe just a lot of dust.”

Dust, Bucky thinks, is not a poisonous, neon blue. But he lies to himself because it’s easier, he lies to you because he can see just a hint of worry shining in your eyes. “Probably, doll.” He snags a box of files from the desk as you trundle out the door and into the hall. He swabs the inside of the drawer, where a mist of blue rings the edge, and drops it into one of the discarded sample collection tubes.

He finds you in the hall and guides you out of the dank underground lab, and when you get back to the compound and report what happened, you’re whisked away from him, swept to the medical wing and quarantined, blood drawn and tested.

The files and hard drive and collection sample are handed over to the rest of the intel team, to Stark and Banner.

Your blood tests come back normal. You joke with the medical staff and laugh like you always do, like a honey bee buzzing in his ear on a hot summer day, as he paces around the room. You seem totally and completely fine.

The only thing they can do, it seems, is wait. Wait and see if something happens.

Testing the blue vapor will take a little more time, he’s told.

So, you’re prescribed a night in bed, with Bucky as a jailer to monitor you. No one, it's reasoned, would look after you better, would notice something sooner, should something happen.

Bucky tucks you close in your shared bed, after, of course, a shower and dinner. He makes tea and hands you a bucket sized bowl of popcorn. He turns on your favorite movie and tries not to think about the thread of fear that had settled in your eyes in the med wing.

He doesn’t like seeing you frightened, even a little bit. He doesn’t like not knowing how to comfort you, how to protect you. Bucky does not like feeling like his world is fragile, like everything might fall apart at the seams.

Maybe he’s being a tad dramatic.

But strange things follow him, follow all of the Avengers team, and his world has fallen apart enough times that he’s come to expect it.

You are by far Bucky’s best reality, the best iteration of his life.

You had smiled at Steve and Helen and Stark, but it had not reached your eyes. You were worried and trying not to show it. For his sake or theirs or your own, he’s not sure.

But when you looked at him the fear melted away, eased out of the tension in your face. Like looking at Bucky, knowing he was close was enough to bring you comfort, security.

So, he holds you tight as the credits roll, you’re breathing even and slow, already lost to the world of sleep. Bucky presses his nose to your neck and inhales slowly, lets the unfiltered, raw scent of your skin anchor him to the world, feels your heartbeat through his lips, counts the beats of your pulse.

Even in sleep you clutch him close, your fingers pressed against the knot of his spine, your leg tossed over his hip, nose dipped to the hollow of his collarbone.

He isn’t supposed to fall asleep, and he doesn’t mean to, honest, but he does. Bucky is warm and safe and so cocooned with love that he falls asleep in the glow of the TV screen and you.

You’re okay. The mission went fine, neither of you even had to draw a weapon. And now, you’re home and safe, and he’s home and safe.

It feels like any other night.

The blue vapor was nothing.

Something like vapor…

was harmless.

~

The next morning, it happens.

Fears he didn’t know he should harbor, realized.

The first time it happens, you’re both confused.

The first time the loop resets, Y/N stumbles out of bed, your movements jerky and uncoordinated.

Bucky’s first thought is nightmare. You’ve had a nightmare. About the mission, about whatever you had inhaled, about him.

His next thought is stupid. Bucky should not have allowed himself to fall asleep. He should have stayed vigilant for this very reason.

Nightmare.

The barely suppressed fear as you smiled after the blood tests came back normal, flash through his mind. You had been afraid, whether you admitted it or not.

Your hip smacks against the bedside table in a loud thump as you stumble, only stopping when you come face to face with the bedroom door.

The sheets are warm from the heat of you, soft with your detergent, fragrant with the smell of the vanilla and peach of your body wash, your lotion, like a well-loved little cake on a warm spring day, ingrained into the fabric. The scent of butter from the popcorn bowl left on the table overnight.

He sits up, mind groggy with a hard sleep, dreamless and deep. “Hey, y’okay? ‘S just a dream-,”

You whirl when you hear the shuffle and shush of the sheets, back pressed against the door.

The room is a faint blue from the TV, but slowly lightening as the sun peaks over the horizon outside, flooding the room with the first threads of pale golden light. You’re never up so early and Bucky’s usually up earlier.

But you’re already talking, nervously chattering, not listening to him. “-s’ sorry, dunno how I ended up in here.” A nervous chuckle, weak with confusion. “I don’t remember…don’t remember coming in here. I’ll head back to my room-,”

You start to turn but freeze, your hands fisted in the hem of your shirt, his shirt, that you’d stolen years ago. It’s your favorite of his.

“What the fuck?” you whisper under your breath, eyes flicking between him and the shirt, brows furrowed like you don’t recognize the material between your fingers.

“Your room?” Bucky asks, sliding his legs from the warmth of the duvet, bare feet hitting the floor. “Why would you go to your room?” You haven’t slept in your room in…years. It couldn’t properly be considered your room anymore. None of your things were there. Your room, this is your room. His and yours together.

You don’t answer, your hands traveling surreptitiously up your body, tugging something from the collar of your shirt.

His dog tags, which you hadn’t taken off since he looped them around your neck after a disastrous date that you still kissed him at the end of. Your smile had been blinding. So happy he couldn’t look at you. You had pressed a hand beneath his chin and tipped his head up, to kiss him, to bring your forehead to his and promise Bucky, I’ll never take them off.

A picnic. He had taken you on a picnic.

It had been summer and warm and your skin had been soft against his and he had believed you.

He trusts you like no one else.

You stare at them now as though you can’t make sense of the gleaming metal. You yank them over your head suddenly, the chain dangling between your fingers. You look as startled as he feels.

Something akin to panic is starting to rake over your features.

The hardwood is cold against his toes, a chill that slowly bleeds up, seeps between his ribs to fist over his heart.

Your fingers drift down again and touch the top of one of your bare thighs.

“Did we sleep together?”

You sound shocked, maybe angry. But it doesn’t seem to be directed at him. Like you’re mad at yourself.

Bucky starts to say your name but you continue, closing your fist over his name. “I can’t remember anything. Did I go out? I don’t normally drink that much I-,”

Can’t remember anything.

The words refuse to register in his mind.

Something is wrong.

“Y/N,” he interrupts. “No. Sweetheart, I think you had a-a dream or somethin’. Come back ta bed.”

But his words don’t seem to soothe you. Your back hits the door again and you look sick, confused.

“Bucky, I think,” you start slowly, setting his dog tags down on the dresser to your left, your hand shaking just a little bit. “I think you’re confused.”

“What?”

“Look, it's okay. I’m not mad. You-,”

“Catch me up here, Y/N. What are you saying? Just come back to bed, we can sort it out after we’ve gotten some more sleep.” He’s desperate suddenly, to have you back in bed. If he can just get you back in bed, curl around you, burrow himself into the fleshy realness of you, things will make sense again.

Because something is not making sense.

But his words just cause you to reach a hand behind you for the doorknob. “Look ‘m just gonna go grab Steve and we can sort this out now.” Before he can respond, you’ve wrenched the door open and darted through the apartment and out into the halls of the compound.

It takes him a minute to gather his bearings, to slip on a shirt and sweatpants, before following you.

He hears you before he sees you.

“-think he’s relapsed or something. He seems to think we’re together. I know he has memory issues but-,” You stop abruptly, he can hear you shifting from foot to foot nervously.

There’s a long pause before Steve says, incredulous, “Seems to think you’re together? What are you talking about?”

“I mean I’m wearing his shirt, Steve. He put his dog tags on me for god’s sake.” Bucky can’t breathe as he rounds the corner into the hallway of Steve’s room. He thinks he might throw up when he hears you continue, “Like he’s claimed me. I don’t blame him, I know he’s been through a lot but-,”

“If you’re fucking around this is a really cruel joke, Y/N,” Steve says, stern, almost pissed off.

“Joke?” You ask, your voice shrill and tipped with panic. “Why would I joke about this?”

Steve glances back at Bucky when he emerges into the hall and you whirl.

“Y/N,” Steve touches your shoulder gently and you relax just slightly, like you have an ally at your back. Bucky clenches his jaw, head still spinning.

Because you don’t seem to recognize him. At least not this him.

The him that’s wholly yours. The Bucky that shared a bed with you, that used your peach body wash, that loves you and is loved by you in spades, in return, beyond all reasonable comprehension.

Steve’s frowning at the two of you, at the way you hold yourself hard and straight, uncomfortable and tugging down Bucky’s shirt to hide yourself, to preserve some kind of modesty, like Bucky hasn’t already seen all of you. Steve is starting to realize something is wrong. His spine softens just slightly, tender suddenly, careful instead of indignant.

You weren't being cruel. You’re confused and upset.

And Bucky is realizing with a slow creeping dread that being forgotten is far worse than being remembered.

His guts knot in his belly, sick threatening to crawl up his throat with a sudden surety of realization.

You don’t fucking remember him.

“Y/N,” Steve continues, cupping your elbow with one hand. “You and Bucky have been together for years.”

Betrayal flashes through your eyes. “Are you guys fucking with me? This isn’t fucking funny you know.” But the pitch of your voice tells Bucky that you don’t think it’s a joke.

You jerk away from Steve, fear that he’s never seen in you twisting your features.

He realizes he's never seen you truly afraid.

“We aren’t-,”

“Where’s Natasha?” You ask, pressing your back to the wall opposite Steve’s door, like you can’t trust either of them and desperately need an ally.

Your chest is falling and sinking rapidly.

You saw horrors everyday combing through terabytes of intel, but this frightened you.

Because to you, one of your most trusted friends has suddenly turned on you, is lying to you, gaslighting you, has seemingly given you up to his psychotic best friend.

But Steve seems to realize somehow, waving Bucky back as he takes a few steps back himself. “She’s still out on assignment.”

Your eyes are dilated with a fear that makes Bucky’s stomach curdle. To have a fear like that from you turned on him, is too much.

You’ve never looked at him like that, like he’s a feral dog about to bite.

“That’s not true,” you reply, voice a shake, like the last leaf from a tree. “We had drinks in the kitchen. I was telling her about-,” you stop yourself, eyes cutting to Bucky for a moment. “I saw her today before I went to bed,” you swallow. “In my room,” you add, with an accusatory look between the two of them. Like they planned this. Like Bucky’s the enemy.

Bucky shakes his head and replies, stepping closer to you, “No. She’s been on a mission for weeks. It's why you were on the mission with me yesterday.”

You look back at Steve, disbelieving. “He’s not lying. Nat hasn’t been here for weeks.”

You look like you want to scream. Or fall to the floor. “Bucky isn’t cleared for missions, Steve. He just got here from Wakanda. You expect me to believe we went on a mission together yesterday?”

Wakanda? He hasn’t been to Wakanda in years.

Steve is watching you, you watch back. Waiting.

“What’s today’s date?”

Bucky glances at Steve as your brow furrows. “The vapor,” he realizes with sudden clarity. The vapor had done something to you. “Fuck.”

“What are you-,”

“Just humor us, Y/N.” When you only look at him with skepticism Steve rolls his eyes. “C’mon. Everything we’ve been through together over the years? You’ve been asked stranger questions.”

You swallow and glance between them, seeming to realize you aren’t in danger, that you never were.

Slowly you nod and then whisper a date years in the past.

Bucky’s mind whirls, trying to remember what-

It was before, of course. Because here is the universe taking its just reward, ripping the stitches out of his heart. He closes his eyes as the room seems to tilt and roll, and tries not to let the sudden yawning hopelessness pull him under.

It was before you started dating, before you were even friends.

The date you name, is maybe a few weeks after he first arrived in upstate New York.

Your reaction in the bedroom suddenly made sense. To you, you had just woken up with a complete and utter stranger. A mentally unstable, sometimes inadvertently violent, one at that.

Did we sleep together? The anger in your voice for yourself, the possibility you’d taken advantage of him when he was mentally unstable. Like you’d ruined something.

You don’t remember him. But it’s worse. You don’t even know him.

“C’mon,” Steve beckons you with a jerk of his head. “Let’s get you to medical. Stark and Banner should have a look at you.” And you follow easily, stepping into Steve’s orbit.

Because of course you would. You were friends with Steve long before Bucky had showed up, long before Steve had even known he was still alive.

You don’t glance back at him once, though he follows closely.

Forgotten.

Was this what it felt like to be the one who remembered?

He tries smiling at you in the lab, once your blood has been siphoned away again.

Steve explains the year to you, the mission and that you were compromised, that you seem to have lost your memory. Or that you've been set back in the past. You accept it, when Stark and Banner confirm, Helen Cho too when she steps into the lab, iced coffee in hand. Bucky listens on, quiet and watchful of you. Steve explains the vapor in more detail, what had happened to you in the lab.

“And you were in Bucky’s room because you and Buck have been together for a couple years now.”

The look on your face is worse than shock, it's like ice water in his veins.

Not revulsion, no, you had never been cruel, had never turned your nose up at anyone. It’s disbelief, like you can’t imagine it. Not even a little.

And while he had known, he really had, that you hadn’t felt an immediate attraction to him all those years ago. You look as though you can’t even perceive the possibility.

You send him a crooked smile, apology on your lips. “I don’t remember. I’m sorry.”

And how many times has he said that over the years?

The universe certainly did have a way with creating personal hells just for him.

“‘S okay, honey. We’ll get this sorted out.”

He doesn’t really believe it.

But you smile at him.

Like you always do.

~

You follow Bucky down the hallway back to your room.

It’s late now, nearing midnight.

A whole day spent in medical, in the lab. Now, he’s escorting you back to the apartment, so you can grab some of your things.

Clearly, you would be going back to your old room. You would sleep there.

Because Bucky is suddenly a strange man to you.

He doesn’t say anything to you, not wanting to frighten you further, even if it had been inadvertent. Not wanting to force you to interact with someone you barely know.

You surprise him though, like you always manage to do, by jogging to catch up with him. He slows his pace, so that you can walk together.

The scent of you washes over him, antiseptic from being in the lab all day, from being jabbed and having your blood drawn so many times. But underneath that, you still smell like you. Like peach body wash, the coppery tang of your blood, the fresh scent of unperfumed skin.

They’d drawn your blood so many times, you had started to become woozy. You hadn’t eaten anything since the popcorn the night before and they had taken so many vials from you.

You had been surprised at his outburst, when he snarled at lab assistant that you needed to eat couldn’t these fucking people see that?

You’d nodded at him, a tiny smile tugging at your lips, almost proud in your thanks.

“So me and you, huh?” You say now. He nods and tries not to mourn, tries not to let the pressure at the back of his eyes seize him.

He can’t look at you.

Already you feel lost to him.

They aren’t sure if your memories are gone or only hidden, if they could be retrieved or if the effects of the vapor could be reversed.

Hopefully analyzing the sample would yield something, reveal something helpful.

Something itches at the inside of his skin. The urge to bruise his knuckles against someone’s teeth, to bleed. So he can feel something else. A different kind of pain..

What would happen if your memory never returned? Would you fall in love with him again? Should you? Should he let you?

Steve slated the intel you collected yesterday as highest priority, maybe the information gathered would tell them something about what the defunct lab had been experimenting on, what it was that you had inhaled. If there’s hope, if there’s a way to reverse it, if it would go away on its own.

“Bucky?” You ask.

You.

You’re still here.

And hadn’t he been willing all those years ago to settle for any place in your life?

You were still here.

“Yeah. Sorry, sweetheart, I’m distracted.”

“Can’t imagine how hard this is for you if I…if we’re…”

You don’t seem to know what to call it. “Together?”

“Yeah. Together. I mean, last I know you just got here. You just got here from Wakanda and-,” you pause and seem embarrassed. “I’m sorry for how I reacted earlier.”

He shrugs.

Like it hadn’t hurt to see you rip off his dog tags like they burned you. Like the fear in your eyes hadn’t sliced through his ribs right into the meat of his heart.

But what else should you have been expected to think?

“It’s not your fault,” he says, gentle as he always is with you.

Bucky tells himself it doesn’t matter if you remember, he does.

He remembers all of you. He’ll show you himself again. You would know him again.

“Still,” you say.

He jumps when you press two fingers to the inside of his wrist.

It’s a comforting gesture between you and apparently one that had not been taken with your memory.

“Still,” your fingers curl against his skin, warm. “I’m sorry. I’m sure it was jarring.” You swallow. Bucky doesn’t dare look at you.

You fill every corner of his being. He’s constantly only aware of you, the slide of your skin against his, the scent of your hair when the smell of your shampoo fades, the scar along the curve of your elbow from a childhood injury.

“For what it’s worth,” you say, “you seem so much better than I remember you.” You duck your head embarrassed again. “Healthier. Not so weighed down. Like you sleep.”

He hadn’t realized you’d been watching him all day too.

“All thanks to you.”

“Seriously?” You lift a disbelieving eyebrow.

“And rigorous state mandated therapy and mental de-programming.” He says drolly.

You laugh and Bucky lets a smile curl the corner of his mouth. He glances at you and finds you already watching him.

“Oh you’re funny huh?”

“Not usually.”

You hum, “don’t think I would fall for someone without a sense of humor.”

“Yeah I’m sure it’s my sunshine personality that won you over,” he deadpans.

You laugh again, loud.

Bucky opens the front door, lets you pass before him. He watches your eyes rove over a space that should be familiar to you.

“Can I-?” You point to a kitchen cabinet, indicating you want to snoop around.

He almost laughs again.

“‘S all yours anyways, honey. You need somethin’ specific let me know and I’ll find it for you.”

“You’re very chill about all this.” You say shuffling through the mugs in the cabinet. Examining a hand painted one he had brought you back from Budapest back when you were still just friends.

Your eyes are wide as you turn it in your hands. He thinks he hears you murmur pretty under your breath before reshelving it.

He’s glad you still think so.

“I’d do just about anything for you. Including whatever this is. We’ll figure it out.” He’s not so sure, but he can’t say that. For him and for you.

“Oh,” you say, turning and pressing another mug to your chest. “This not casual then?” You joke, but something is fractured in your eyes and he remembers the disbelief on your face in the lab. Like you can’t imagine loving him. “This thing between us is pretty serious, huh?”

The mug has a peach on it. You bought it in a tourist trap shop in Georgia when a layover had stranded you in Savannah overnight.

His throat is tight. “I’d say so. You’re, uh, takin’ this in stride yourself.”

You shrug and look a bit sheepish, setting the cup back down on its shelf carefully before pulling open the fridge and glancing inside. “Well, to me…it's like nothing has changed. I don’t remember anything so there’s nothing to lose.”

Your head is still stuck in the fridge so you don’t see the way his breath hitches with pain, with loss. You don’t see the devastation rip across his face. Don’t mourn, he tells himself harshly. Y/N is still here.

But he means nothing to you. Like a total restart, a do over.

Was this the universe giving you a chance to make a different decision?

How many times had Bucky begged for a redo in his own life? Another chance to do things differently?

Only for you to be given one, in the worst way possible.

You turn, shutting the fridge and Bucky schools his face into a neutral expression. “I can look around? Maybe something here will jog my memories?” You point to the door that leads to the bedroom.

He thinks it’s a little more complicated than needing to jog memories but doesn’t say so.

“Like I said, it’s all yours.”

You start toward the bedroom but stop when he doesn’t follow.

“C’mon? Might need your help or something.”

Bucky follows, stepping into the bedroom, where the sheets are still rumpled and the TV still glows an iridescent blue.

You deftly click it off before flicking on the lamp. “Which side of the bed is mine?”

“Closest to the wall.”

“Ah, makes sense. Farthest from the door.” You smile at him and when you turn to your bedside table, Bucky slides his dog tags off the dresser beside the door and stuffs them into the pocket of his sweatpants. He doesn’t want to look at them, doesn’t want to think about the horror that had passed over your face when you realized what they were.

You didn’t know, he tells himself. The you that knows who he is, would never have had that reaction.

It still hurts, burns and sears. His chest is full of holes.

You rummage through the nightstand.

A bottle of painkillers, your glasses, a book, the long coil of your phone charger, a couple of foil wrapped condoms. Your fingers pause over the condoms before you slide them back into the drawer and pluck out the book instead.

You sit at the edge of the bed and flick through the pages quickly. The book is creased, sticky tabs lining the pages, notes in the margins. “I started reading again.” Your fingers pause, surprise coating your voice, “And annotating. I haven’t done that since high school.” Twisting to look over your shoulder at him, you hold up the book. “You must be a good influence on me, Barnes.”

Bucky shakes his head, “Dunno about that.” He sits at the edge of his side of the bed, watching you flip the book in your hands. “You - that was-,” he pauses, not sure why it's so hard to say. Maybe explaining your relationship to a person who can’t remember you is just painful. He licks his lips, finds his throat dry, and for the first time in years, he finds himself on the verge of a panic attack.

But he pushes on, pushes the hot, tight feeling in his chest down. After you left he would have to go to the gym, break his knuckles against a sandbag. He feels itchy, misplaced and unmoored, adrift. “- it was something that brought us together. When we were friends, becoming friends. We started reading together.”

He can’t decipher the look that crosses your face. Surprise, joy, despair in a quick succession. He blinks and it’s gone. Something like disbelief again. He doesn’t know what it means.

“Do we still read together?”

Instead of answering, he turns to his own nightstand and pulls out another book. This one too is beaten up, tabbed and written in, his script and yours tangling together.

His fingers brush against yours when he hands the book over. He fidgets, swallowing against the panic in his throat.

While you stare at the book, flicking gently through it with a reverence he doesn’t dare read into, he stands and shuffles through the closet to find your overnight bag.

“Bucky?” You call, his name on your lips like a balm. His shoulders droop, tension that had been puncturing wicked holes in his chest melting away.

“Yeah, doll?” He sits the bag on the bed.

“D’we read together a lot?”

“Almost every night.”

You nod and set the book aside before making your way to the bathroom.

Bucky has no way of deciphering what just happened, what it means to you, as the you from five years ago.

He hears the shower door open, hears you shuffling bottles around. He plucks some of your favorite pajamas (that aren’t just his shirts) and stuffs them into your bag, before trekking after you.

You’re holding two of the body washes, eyes flicking back and forth between them. He leans against the doorway and watches you, the tilt of your head, the curve of your mouth.

“I feel like I shouldn’t leave you,” you say suddenly, looking up from the bottles, holding them to your chest like it’s his heart. “I-I, y’know, don’t know you, but I think - my body does? I feel like I shouldn’t leave you.” You purse your lips, jaw tight, “I feel anxious.” You shake the bottles at him, “I also feel bad for taking your things.”

“‘S your stuff, Y/N,” he says automatically, deciding that’s the easiest part of your statement to focus on.

You don’t want to leave him.

Bucky shouldn’t find happiness in that, not now.

You peer at him from beneath your lashes before shuffling closer, seeming to sense he won’t tell you to stay, not after that morning and the fear in your eyes. “I changed my preferences I guess. Never used to buy fruit scented stuff.”

Bucky blinks and looks down at the plastic bottles in your hands. Peach and plum. He only ever remembers you having used - but that’s not true. When he first met you - when you started waiting for him in the mornings, making him take walks with you, when you started reading together on the couch, his thigh pressed to yours, you had smelled like tea, like cinnamon and vanilla.

“Musta changed -,”

You’ve drifted closer to him, you’re so close, he could dip his head forward and touch his forehead to yours.

It's painful.

That feeling comes back, and he recognizes it this time, the feeling he used to get all the time, like he needed to bleed, like he was losing something that he wouldn’t ever be able to replace.

You touch his wrist.

“Bucky?”

“You changed for me. I never wanted to change you.”

And god, he’s always associated you with fruit. You were peach trees and sunshine and eternal summer.

“‘s just body wash.”

But it's not. It never is.

You’re too close. Far too close.

You’re familiar to him but he’s not familiar to you. Bucky wants to kiss you but instead he looks away. “Maybe it's just body wash but, you liked something else before-,”

Maybe I’ve taken something from you, he wants to say. Maybe I’ve taken more than just this.

“Y’know, maybe I don’t have my memories of the last couple of years. But I do know myself. I’ve never done a thing I didn’t want to. Besides, if someone doesn’t change over a five year period, something is probably wrong.”

He ducks his head, “Guess that’s true, doll, I just -,” Bucky meets your eyes, wide and clear, waiting, “this is just really hard for me.”

“Think you’re doing okay.”

“Yeah?” He laughs without humor, “Not how it feels. It’s hard not to be -,”

“Familiar?” You supply.

“Yeah,” his shoulders drop.

“Then be familiar,” you smile. “I’m familiar to you. It’s okay.”

You're so close, he can see flecks of light in your eyes. “I have this weight in my chest telling me not to leave, telling me to be honest with you.” You say, “It's telling me to be familiar too.”

He closes his eyes. You’re doing it again. It’s like falling in love all over again. It’s like the first time he admitted himself, his feelings, to you all over again. The truths, honesties you whispered like a siren. Your call is as potent to him as any drug.

You’re heat in his cheeks, wind in his hair, honey bees in spring.

“I should trust my gut, right? Natasha would have castrated anyone that mistreated me, right?”

“Right,” he says tightly.

“Do you want me to go?” You start to take a step back, “Am I making it worse?”

Bucky reacts on instinct, hand flashing out to grab yours and keep you from pulling away.

He hasn’t touched you all day, your skin is warm and soft as it ever is under his. Like the give of satin beneath his touch. “No. No, you aren’t making it worse.”

Worse, worse is when you aren’t around.

And because you seem to be encouraging it, he tugs you closer and lets his forehead fall against yours.

You touch his cheek, sliding your thumb along the arch of the bone, the pink that rises to the surface of his skin. You exhale softly, shakily, your breath cool against his skin. He wonders what it's like for you, to have feelings in your gut that your brain can’t make sense of, doesn’t have memories to connect to.

Probably a lot like when Steve talks about their childhood to him.

“I want to tell you,” You say suddenly, pulling back a little to meet his eyes, “that you’re so different from the you I know. You’re…seems kinda silly to say maybe but, I’m proud of you. For me, y’know, a huge step was that yesterday you let me drag you out on a walk around the compound with me for fifteen minutes.”

He doesn’t say anything, can’t find his voice.

“How did we get together?”

That’s easy.

“We became friends,” Bucky says, tucking one of your hands inside his. “We were friends for a long time.”

“Did I ask you or did you ask me?”

“I asked you. Took you to Coney Island, bought you ice cream and won you a stuffed bear.”

“That’s so cute,” you giggle.

He’s glad you think so. “It was until I kissed you.”

You stop laughing. “What’s that supposed to mean?” You ask, indignant and offended for another version of yourself. “Am I a bad kisser?”

Bucky snorts, “No, nothing like that. Just, I guess I didn’t make it quite as clear as I thought that we were on a date.”

“Oh.”

“Mm.”

“So I was surprised? Good or bad surprised?”

“Good I would wager since you let me keep kissing you after you punched me.”

You gasp, “I didn’t.”

“You did,” He tries to hold in a laugh, “On my left arm so you nearly broke your knuckles. And we had to find someone to give you ice while I explained myself.”

What he doesn’t tell you is that there were fireworks that night. That you lied together on the beach that night in the still cooling sand and kissed him until the world went gray and foggy and peaceful.

You’re smiling at him, “Bucky can I stay here with you tonight? I have questions.”

His chest seems to cave in with the pain that ripples outward, like a stone into a pond. “‘Course. Like I said, it's all yours anyways.”

“What is?”

“Everything.”

~

The second time the loop resets, it's better for you.

It's worse for Bucky, because he finds out its a fucking loop.

He stays up all night with you, talking, sharing his best memories from the last five years with you.

You’re enamored with him. Bucky thinks you tell him things that he would have never known otherwise.

“I always had this fantasy as a nerdy little girl. Of, like, reading with someone, someone I really loved. Sounds so stupid, right? But, it’s true. I had this image of listening to someone read, or reading to someone.” You look over to the pile of books you had pulled off the shelves in the living room, all tabbed and worn and scribbled with your writing and his. “Guess I got it.”

Maybe he had made you change your body wash scents but he’d also made a wish he didn’t know you had come true.

Bucky hadn’t known, you’d never told him.

You only fall asleep on the couch once the sun starts to peak over the horizon.

Bucky tucks a favorite blanket of yours around your shoulders, kisses your temple, and even though things with you are going well, he still feels out of control, like his life is flashes he can’t control.

So, even though he’s exhausted and hasn’t slept, he changes into gym clothes, stops by the lab for a progress update (nothing on the sample yet), and heads to the gym.

The first solid punch he lands against a punching bag is so satisfying he almost groans. His mind empties, the only thing he needs to focus on is the swaying bag in front of him.

Bucky doesn’t have to think about you. About you fascinated by him, trying to relearn him, even though you know everything about him already. He doesn’t have to think about you inching closer to him on the couch.

He doesn’t have to think about how he misses you so bad, the you that knows him, and it’s only been a day.

It all becomes worse, though, when Steve rushes into the gym. “Y/N reset.”

“What? What the fuck does that mean?”

“I mean…Y/N came into the lab and had no idea what was going on.” He explains that he had asked you the date again, and that you had answered with the same date you gave yesterday. When questioned, you did not remember the previous day at all. “No memory of anything that happened yesterday.”

And that’s how they discover that you weren’t just reset five years into the past, you’re on some kind of self setting loop.

“So, Y/N is stuck? Will it reset every day-? I-,”

“We don’t know. I guess we have to wait until tomorrow and see if it happens again. I explained everything again. Probably best if you come to the lab, explain yourself.”

Bucky nods, looks down at his bloody knuckles, his hand is swollen from the abuse and shakes.

Again.

He would have to explain to you again.

And what if you looked at him the way you did yesterday?

Not revulsion, but disbelief.

He imagines the disbelief as disappointment.

It can’t possibly be anything else.

“Want me to wrap your hand before we go up?” Steve asks, nodding to the blood running rivulets down his arm, concern crossing his face before he peers into Bucky’s eyes. “Did you sleep?”

“Y/N had questions, I-,” He swallows. “I can wrap it. I’ll be there in a couple minutes.”

~

They don’t make you stay in medical all day.

Stark and Banner have samples of your blood and samples of the vapor. Steve considers going back to the abandoned lab, to poke around again.

But no one wants anyone else set five years back into a seemingly unending time loop.

You don’t seem to despair about your situation.

“Stranger things have happened,” you say, smiling like you always do. You wrinkle your nose at Steve, “Could make friends with an ice man from the ‘40s after all.”

Bucky is exhausted but he still hoards you like a dragon with treasured gold, insists on explaining to you again.

You look surprised this time, when you're told of the relationship you have with him. He thinks maybe this time, you have a curious tilt to your head.

But it's there again, that disbelief.

He almost wants you to say it. Whisper, “How did that fucking happen? Where did I go wrong?”

In the apartment, you look through the same cabinets you did yesterday. You touch the hand painted mug from Budapest, the Georgia peach mug. You smile at the all pink cookware.

This time, maybe because it's so early in the day, you run your fingers along the bookshelf checking the titles, examine the stack you don’t remember leaving on the coffee table the night before, you unfold the blankets from their basket at the end of the couch and examine them, you flick through Bucky’s record collection next to the player.

Today, you find your phone tangled in the sheets of the bed.

You flick through the pictures, smiling at some of them.

“Wow,” you say. “We’re really in love, huh?”

You pause over a picture, your breath hitching in your lungs. Bucky can’t see the screen, so he doesn’t know what makes you click the phone dark and set it aside.

You discover again that you read together almost every night.

Bucky makes sure to tell you more this time, now that he knows it's so important to you. How did he not know before? “Usually you read out loud,” he says. “You curl up real tight next to me, with your head on my shoulder, sometimes you sit between my legs, and you read.”

“And the tabs?”

“If I have a comment you make me take a note,” he says, watching your eyes as he pulls out the stack of post-it notes, sticky tabs, and colored pens. “You always make me do it in my own handwriting so we know who thought what.”

And this time, the look that crosses your face is like he hung the moon and stars. You look away from him, nodding to yourself, just a little bit shy.

“You’re a dreamboat, huh?” You tease.

“Oh, yeah, sweetheart, a real ray of sunshine.”

“You seem like it,” you rag on him. “‘S a little weird to wake up with-,” You glance at him out of the corner of your eye.

“What?” He flops back on the bed horizontally, closing his eyes.

You’re on the other side of the bed looking through your nightstand again.

God he’s tired. It’s been a long time since he’s been awake for such a long period. There’s you to thank for that he supposes. He always sleeps when he has you next to him.

You touch a curl of his hair and he jumps. Bucky curses himself when your hand darts away.

“Dunno. Guess with a person,” You say. “You seem to care about me a lot. I’ve never had a relationship like this one before. That seems so serious and real.”

He doesn’t flinch when you touch his hair this time, fingers threading through the short strands. “When did you cut your hair?”

“Years ago,” he says, opening his eyes to look at you. “You never told me that. That you never had-,”

“Feels silly to be scared to tell you things. Maybe before I was scared, didn’t know what would happen, or if something would scare you away. Maybe I was afraid of saying too much. Besides, I won’t remember it anyways right? I get a redo tomorrow.”

“We don’t know that. Maybe tomorrow you’ll remember.”

“I’m sure. A one time loop reset.” You pause in threading your hands through his hair, “Feels so weird. To feel connected and have nothing inside to connect it to.” You had said something like that yesterday, but he doesn’t tell you so. “Was it like this for you? In the beginning?”

You lean over him, your face upside down. “Hard to tell,” he reaches up and touches your temple. “But I think so.”

Maybe if you can tell him things, he can tell you something too. He knows what it is to be afraid to be too much. He hadn’t realized it was possible for you to feel the same.

“Y’know,” he murmurs, “you think this is weird. To me it's…like-,” Bucky hasn’t been good with words in a long time. For you, he’ll try. “-like-like-its devastating.” Your hands flatten along either side of his head, thumbs against his stubbled cheeks. He doesn’t look away. “You’re my whole world.”

You smile, “Do you normally tell me that?”

“No. Like you said. Afraid to be too much.”

“Do I know how much you love me?”

You seem to have a clarity of the feelings between you, that the other you doesn’t.

“God, I hope so.”

“Start telling me. It won’t chase me away.”

You flop down beside him, legs hanging off the opposite side of the bed, and Bucky turns his head to keep you in his field of vision, still upside down to him. You stare up and Bucky stares at the curve of your jaw. He inches closer to you. “I can tell you with all honesty, you are not too much. You’re…strangely perfect.”

He chuckles, “Expecting more of-,”

“A murderous maniac? Nah. Yesterday,” you lift one arm and draw shapes in the air against the canvas of the ceiling, “we went on a walk together. It was the first conversation I ever had with you. You were so quiet and withdrawn. Lonely, like the world swallowed you up. It was nice.” You drop your hand and turn to look back at him, “I thought you were very pretty. I have - had I suppose - a tiny little crush on you. I’m glad it all worked out.”

“Crush huh?”

“Don’t go getting a big head, Barnes,” you smile. “Told Nat about it and everything. She made fun of me so bad.”

The drinks you mentioned having in the kitchen with Nat. You’d been telling her, maybe gushing to her, about a walk with him.

He remembers thinking you’d never look his way again, that he was too broken to remember how to have a conversation. Still, he’d managed to catch you in the common area again the next day and ask you what you were reading. You’d smiled and patted the space next to you, I’ll show you.

It was the first time he’d been late to therapy. You made him late.

Bucky had only wanted to be your friend then, hadn’t had much capacity for anything else.

The love he felt for you had come on slowly as he recovered, like ocean stilt between his bones.

It feels odd but good, something like pride swelling in his chest, that you had talked about him, had a crush on him.

“S’okay. I’ve never stopped having a crush on you,” he answers.

You try to hide your smile and fail miserably and lean forward instead to press your forehead to his.

Bucky closes his eyes and swallows.

He can do this.

~

“The effects of the vapor should wear off on its own eventually,” Bruce says to the team, gathered around a conference table weighted with stacks of documents and cups of coffee.

“Should?” Bucky asks, incredulous.

It’s already been two weeks, and guesses are no longer good enough for him.

“Yeah. To the best we can tell. Obviously we’ll keep looking for an antidote in the meantime. It looks like it was developed for-,” Bruce stops, his eyes cutting to Bucky. “To be blunt it looks like it was meant to be a redo on the Winter Soldier program.”

“That lab wasn't connected to Hydra,” Steve says.

“Apparently they were. Or at least contracted by someone Hydra adjacent.”

“How long will it take to wear off?” Nat asks. She’d arrived back in the compound that morning, and as a result Y/N had spent most of the day with her, much to Bucky’s displeasure. “Without an antidote?”

“They were obviously going for durability, so maybe a couple months. If they were planning on icing Barnes again then one dose would be enough for years depending on how long they left him out for hits.”

Bucky digs metal digits into the flesh of his right hand until he breaks through skin, to the meat of his palm. Blood drips onto his jeans.

You shouldn’t encounter any hostiles. Intel gathering only.

He supposes there were no hostiles that day because he was supposed to have become one.

Before he can stop himself he’s out of his chair and putting space between him and that room, between him and what could have happened that day had he breathed in the vapor and not you.

Putting space between him and the notion that you might not remember for months.

Months.

For months you could be stuck in a loop of endless time, losing a real span of your life to waiting.

Would he have to explain to you every morning?

What if Banner’s wrong? What if it doesn’t wear off? What if you never come back? What if they stop the loop and you still don’t remember anything?

Y/N is still here, he corrects himself viciously.

You are here.

He’s so busy scowling and stomping that he doesn't notice the red trail he leaves behind him.

Bucky wants to rip the world to pieces, but he can only settle for his own mangled body.

He stalks to the gym, changes at the facilities there, before beating the shit out of a sandbag with a raw hand. The old wound splits open immediately, blood flecks the canvas fabric. Bucky doesn’t really give it a chance to heal these days.

When the punching bag swings off the hook, he growls and turns toward the treadmill instead.

Hours pass, the sun fades from the sky.

Despite the tales about him, he is human, and eventually he collapses.

He lies panting on the floor of the gym, his hand stained red, when he hears your voice. “You normally go psycho like that?”

God.

He hadn’t really gotten to talk to you today because of Natasha and this will be your only impression of him. Bucky swallows dryly. “No.”

“Good because it looks like it hurts.”

“Worried about me, sweetheart?” Bucky snaps. He means to be playful but his voice comes out like a punch, like a wounded animal snarling at the wind. He hears his words thump down around your ankles.

For a long moment, you don’t answer.

Then he hears your feet shuffle away.

“God-fucking-damnit,” he mutters.

He won’t even be able to apologize to you, if he doesn’t see you again today. And how could he apologize to you tomorrow when you won’t remember today?

Bucky groans and sits up, ready to track you down, just to apologize for his outburst. He won’t have anything bad between you, whether you remember it or not.

But before he can stand, you burst back into the room, dropping down beside him on the mat. You hold out a hand.

He stares, “What?”

“Hand,” you point. “Now.”

Gently, he sets his right hand in both of yours. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

For a moment you don’t speak, carefully lowering his hand to your lap so you can rip open a couple of alcohol pads. He grits his teeth while you clean the wound in the center of his hand, his bruised, bloody knuckles.

“You left a trail of blood in the hallway.”

“Oh.”

You snort, “Oh? Is that all you have to say? I may be confused and not remember you, but I don’t like seeing you bleed out all over Tony’s expensive floors.”

He sighs, “I’m sorry, Y/N.”

“You should be,” You say hotly. “According to Nat we’re like some kind of freaky soulmates so please try not to bleed to death while my memories take a vacation.”

Now he laughs, glancing at you and finding your eyes already on him. “Seriously, Bucky, promise me you’ll let this heal. Even if I can’t remember.”

The words stick in his throat, a fist around his neck. “Why do you care? You always care. Every day you…you don’t know me but you care anyway. I-,”

You shrug, and look down at his hand in your lap. Slowly, you start to wrap gauze around his palm and knuckles. “My body knows you, I think, even if I don’t. It's like reaching for something you’re so sure is real but it turns out to be a mirage.” It's the third time you’ve said some iteration of that. “We took a walk yesterday,” and you repeat the story he’s heard several times now. But he doesn’t interrupt you.

Your fingers circle his wrist when you finish bandaging his hand. “I don’t remember feeling this…affinity for you yesterday. But I do now. Suppose that’s the five years of memories stored up in my DNA but, I dunno I-I just don’t want you to hurt.”

He turns his hand to squeeze your fingers. “I promise, honey. I’ll let it heal.”

“Even if I don’t remember?”

“Even if you don’t remember.”

It’s quiet for a moment and Bucky isn’t expecting you to hug him. He’s damp with sweat and you’re supposed to be upset with him. “I just want to say I’m sorry.”

He buries his nose in your neck, circles his arms around your waist and tugs you close because god it seems like it's been forever since he’s gotten to properly hold you. It's only been two weeks but it feels like decades.

You go jellylike, molding yourself against him.

“God for what?”

“You’d think the universe has made you suffer enough, Barnes, but you seem to be her favorite victim. I’m sorry I don’t remember and that you have to. Can’t imagine what it's like to explain everything everyday.” You exhale against him, breath hot against his skin, “Have you tried not talking to me?”

He jerks back so you’re forced to look into his eyes. “Now why would I do something like that?”

You shrug, “You could get a day off. You’re stressed, I mean, you just had a fistfight with a punching bag and lost.”

Bucky scoffs but pinches your chin between his thumb and forefinger, “That punching bag is the one lying on the floor.”

“Yeah,” you snark back, sarcastic, “but you’re the one bleeding.”

“You fixed me up pretty nice though, huh?” He says, curling metal fingers around your wrist so you don’t move away, holding out his flesh hand to examine your bandaging job.

For a moment you don’t respond, absently patting the back of his metal hand. “Seriously, Bucky, one day where I don’t know, so you can get some rest, won’t kill me.”

But he’d rather die than be away from you, than have you forget him entirely, even for one day. And Bucky’s sort of afraid, afraid that if he lets you forget for even one day, you’ll never get your memories back.

That if he lets you forget for one day, you’ll remember everything else and forget him entirely, muscle memory and all.

“Darlin’,” he says gently, cupping your face against his palm because you let him, may even lean into it a little, “no matter how much it hurts, being away from you, not seeing you, is worse. I would stay in this loop forever, if it meant I got to stay with you.”

“You really mean that too, don’t you? Like, it's not just empty words. You really would.”

“I promise.”

Bucky has never been one to break promises.

~

Bucky keeps his promise and lets his hand heal.

He tries not to be destructive, and finds it just a bit challenging.

Since you aren’t sleeping with him at the moment, he goes out and practices vigilantism when he probably shouldn’t.

Steve and Sam frown at him, but don’t stop him, don’t comment when he comes back to the compound bruised. He feels better and he can keep his promise to you even if you don’t remember it.

He sleeps for short bursts in the wee hours of the morning, before he goes to find you and explain everything again.

Most days, you’re shocked but take it in stride.

Some days, you take some convincing.

But that’s okay. It gives him more time to spend with you, to reveal moments of your relationship to you, like peeling back the skin of an orange to show you something ripe with potential. He tells you things about those moments, the feelings he had had, that he never would have mentioned otherwise, that he would have been too afraid to admit to.

He dreams about you, in the few hours he gets.

Bucky dreams of the first time you made love, of the way summer sunshine had played against your skin and the sheets, dabbled and fleeting, swaying with the trees outside.

You had smelled of honey, your skin so soft he wanted to bite into the warmth of it.

God, you had smelled like sunshine.

Sunshine shouldn’t have a smell, but against your skin, it had. Warm, like shea butter and coconut.

He really hadn’t thought he could love you more, thought that his capacity for love had already overflowed, but that morning proved him wrong. It proved that the sun was a burning force, that you were the sun, and that he wouldn’t mind being consumed whole, burned alive.

Bucky always breaks from the dream in a sweat, heart pounding, because it feels like it's an omen, like he should relive it because he’ll never get back to that moment.

This morning, he slips out of the dream and into reality like he always does. The sun is just peaking over the horizon, you’ll be up soon.

The timing is perfect, after weeks of practice. You open your front door, spot him waiting, new as the morning dawn, looking so different to you with short hair, a bruise across his cheek, and no peaceful sleep. “Mornin’, Y’N, I need to talk to you about something,” he says, like he does every day, like he would for the rest of his life if he had to.

~

You’re looking through the pictures on your phone again and this time Bucky can see the screen, though you don’t know that.

He can see the picture that gave you pause in a couple of your other resets.

To him, it's an ordinary picture. The two of you tangled together in bed, a selfie you’d snapped when he wasn’t paying attention to what you were doing.

Bucky is staring at you in the photo, a serious look on his face.

He can’t remember what he had been thinking about in that moment.

And he has to wonder what you’re thinking about it now, why it's captured your attention consistently throughout your resets.

He has to wonder if you’re disappointed. You admit to your crush on him, almost every reset, and it means everything and so little simultaneously.

The look on your face from that first time haunts him.

Disbelief.

He still doesn’t know what it means.

Probably, that you were disappointed. That a little crush could shape your whole life, bend it like a wire hanger to the shape of him.

Bucky clears his throat and you immediately lower the phone, a panicked look on your face.

He only smiles and treks around the couch with a cup of your favorite tea.

You take it from him and ask, “How long has it been? How many resets?”

“It's been six weeks. So forty-two resets in total.”

The look that crosses your face is one of grief. Bucky clenches his jaw and looks away, surely you would blame him for the lost time, the forty-two days you don’t remember. For not protecting you better, for letting you go on the mission in the first place.

But you set your mug on the table (he made sure to give you the Budapest one) and turn to him, one leg lifting to tuck in the space between you so you can lean close. “I’m so sorry, Bucky.”

“Sorry?”

“I think I would have lost it already, if I had to do what you’re doing.”

Bucky stares at you, his jaw aching from how hard he’s clenching it, like his mouth is suddenly razor wired shut.

You reach out and touch the inside of his wrist. “Are you doing okay? That’s a lot of days to do this.” With your other hand you gesture to the blooming bruise on his cheek. “Steve told me you’ve been sleeping little and fighting in the evenings after I go to sleep and forget again.”

“You shouldn’t worry about me,” he finds his voice. “You’re the one that-,”

“Barnes, listen to me,” you say sternly, and it reminds him of when you first started hanging around him, not balancing on your toes and treating him like already shattered glass, like he might cut you if you weren’t careful. He’s still sharp and pointed to you, you don’t know that his edges have been rounded out over the years, though you can probably guess. “I don’t remember anything. This is all new to me. Every day I guess it is. You could be lying to me and this could really be day one million.”

You squeeze his wrist. “But everyday, you have to do the same thing. And you have to remember the day before and I can’t think of anything more heartbreaking.”

Bucky sets down his own cup on the coffee table and takes your hand.

He wonders, if after you take the antidote or the vapor wears off on its own, you’ll remember all your past resets. Maybe you’ll forget everything and think it's that first night again. Maybe you’ll get stuck in the past and remember nothing.

Either way, he knows tomorrow you won’t remember, and so it makes it easier for him to say things he’d otherwise hide from you.

He tells you something that he’s said in none of your other resets. “I miss you. You’re here. I didn’t lose you. I keep telling myself I could have lost you, forever. It could be…worse. It could be so much worse. But I still miss you anyways.”

Your fingers are tight on his. “But you did, in a way. We’re…really close, like, so close. In love kinda close. We live together and we’re best friends. You did lose me. I’m still here but everything else is gone and maybe that’s worse.”

The spaces between your words are silent as caverns, as tombs beneath the earth.

Because you’re right, of course.

You usually are.

“So, I’m sorry. Have you thought about taking a day off-,”

“No,” he interrupts. “No. You-you’ve suggested that before. I won’t do it.”

“God, Bucky, why?” You peer into him, leaning ever closer, consuming his field of vision.

He takes a breath, “Sweetheart, it's painful, I won’t say it's not. It's been so fucking hard without you. But everyday I also get to - I get to tell you everything that made us, I get to tell you how we fell in love. I - and maybe it’s disappointing to you - but that’s been-,” Bucky doesn’t know what to call it and so he stops.

Bucky can’t very well say it's been good, because that isn’t quite right. But watching you puzzle through your life together has been fascinating, has made him love you even more, appreciate what he doesn’t deserve.

“Disappointing?” You frown. “Have I ever told you in any of my resets that I have a crush on you?”

Bucky licks his lips, carefully doesn’t move when you press your forehead to his, your eyes still open and peering into his. “Yeah, doll, you tell me every time.”

A teasing smile lifts the corner of your mouth. “Good. Then you know this is like a dream come true. To find out your super hot crush eventually likes you too and you - well you get a very perfect life.”

He snorts, “Wouldn’t say it's perfect -,”

“Ah, maybe life isn’t but this is. You.”

“Honey-,”

“Seriously, Bucky.” You pull away but it just forces him to really look into the heart of you, into the center of your conviction about this. Something tells him its the memories stored up in your DNA, the remembrance of something with no name, and he knows you really believe what you say. “I don’t know if you know this, but most people wouldn’t do what you’re doing. Forty-two days? That’s extraordinary.”

In almost every reset, you touch his wrist, the curve of his cheek, a lock of his hair.

But he hasn’t held you, hugged you close since the reset where you made him promise to let his hand heal. Almost four weeks ago.

He hasn’t kissed you since you fell asleep that first fateful night.

You wrap your arms around him, sliding easily against him like he wasn't a veritable stranger to you. It feels so good, to have your weight against him, that it's everything he can do not to break down.

“So why would I find anything disappointing?” He feels the curve of your mouth against his shoulder, the contours of your shape against his.

He presses his nose to your hair and inhales.

Peach.

Though he had made sure to find your vanilla and cinnamon stuff and put it in the bathroom in your room.

Still you had been choosing peach, though there was no way for you to know that you had changed scents.

“Dunno,” he says and then because he’s already spilling his guts he explains your reaction that first morning. The look that flashed over your face, the look that continues to flash over your face when you look at the books and the photos. “You just looked like you couldn’t believe it. About me and you.”

“Well, Bucky, I mean, c’mon, I probably thought you kidnapped me or something. Why wouldn’t I have that reaction?”

“You didn’t see your face.”

You laugh and rub your hand slowly up and down his back. “I was probably scared. But not for the reasons your mind is telling you. I promise. I know myself. And I can tell you now that I feel disbelief because apparently I get the chance to love you. That’s so strange to me. It’s not disbelief that it happened but that I got the fucking chance.”

Bucky squeezes you tighter when he feels you start to pull away. “You took my dog tags off.”

Your voice is so soft when you answer, “You gave me your dog tags?” When he doesn’t say anything you whisper, “I’m sorry I took ‘em off. But it doesn’t change anything. I get the chance to love you.” You repeat.

He doesn’t answer, throat tight.

This time you’re insistent when you pull away. “Bucky,” you touch his cheek. “I promise. No part of me, any me, is disappointed. Or upset. About this, about us. Okay?” He nods against your hand but finds it hard to believe anyways. “Do I change much each reset?”

“No,” he says. “You’re just you every time.”

“So I’ve probably wanted to kiss that sad little smile every single reset.”

You’re poorly hiding a smile, and Bucky doesn’t think as he cups your cheek and brings you in for a kiss.

The taste of you is like coming home, like the world ending.

And only slightly like the cinnamon muffin you had for breakfast.

You both sink to the side against the couch cushions, shoulders loosening, lips still connected. Bucky tries not to feel like he’s consuming you, tries not to let too much longing slip into the kiss.

But you hook your legs over his lap and cup your hand against the side of his neck and it becomes very hard to think, especially when your thumb digs into the hinge of his jaw.

Bucky presses his cheek against yours when you pull away, and listens to your panting breaths, his nose nudging against the curve of your ear.

“Wow. What a first kiss.”

He chuckles just a little, pressing a quick kiss to your cheek.

“The other you had to wait three years.” This time he doesn’t mention the punch, the ice pack.

You gape at him, “Three years? Why’d it take so long?”

“I think,” he says, pressing his flesh thumb to the center of your chin. “We would have rather stayed friends than risk-,”

You’re nodding before he finishes speaking and kissing him again quickly after that.

“Why do you use the peach scent?”

“I thought you liked it better? You lean in when I use it and-,”

He kisses you a third time, because you shouldn’t remember something like that.

Maybe things will turn out okay after all.

~

Your memories fracture back into each of your resets after that, though you don’t seem to realize that they’re things you shouldn’t remember. Confusion has started to reign in you, when you can’t sequence events in your mind.

The day that Stark and Banner finish a solution that could possibly work as an antidote, you exit your room as you do every morning but with a confused look on your face.

It's day sixty-three.

Bucky is waiting for you like always, with hair still wet from the shower and a bruise over one eye, but healed hands.

Before Bucky can launch into his well practiced speech, you press a closed fist to your chest like you’re gripping something there. “Did you take your dog tags back? I can’t find them, I-I didn’t mean to lose them.”

You don’t give him a chance to answer, instead pressing your hand to your forehead, looking terribly confused. “I…but why would you have given them to-,”

“You want to wear them?” He asks.

“Of course,” you answer, indignant. “You gave them to me. I promised to never take them off.” Your voice fades again, “When did that happen? I feel-,”

“Hey,” Bucky strides forward and takes your hand, curling his fingers around your wrist. “It's okay. I have them right here. Got some things I need to explain to you.”

He pulls them out of his pocket, not having had it in him to start wearing them himself again. They didn’t belong to him anymore, they belonged to you. Bucky was just waiting to give them back to you.

You bow your head and Bucky slips them around your neck.

You take a deep breath and smile at him, like a weight has been lifted from your shoulders.

“What did you need to tell me, Buck?”

~

“We don’t know if it’ll work and there’s not really a way to test it,” Banner says later that day. “It’s up to you whether you decide to take it now, since your memories seem to be coming back. You could just wait it out.”

“But I could wake up tomorrow and know everything again? Remember everyone?”

“That’s the hope.”

Bucky grits his teeth and says nothing from his place across the table from you. “How many days has it been?” You ask.

“Sixty-three today.”

You swallow, and look like you might cry.

But before Bucky can reach out to you, Natasha has an arm around your shoulders, you blink and the tears are gone. “I’m sorry,” you say and meet his gaze before quickly glancing away. He’s not sure what you’re sorry for. “I want to take it.”

“Maybe you should think about it-,” Bucky starts but you scoff and the room goes silent.

“So I can forget again? So you can live another sixty-three days like this? And now I’m…I don’t like feeling confused. I don’t like not knowing what happened or when, or what’s real.”

He wants to scream. Instead he clenches his jaw and leans forward, staring you down across the table. “And what if it makes you forget everything? What if you’re reset one last time and start over five years in the past? And that’s it? You never get anything back? At least this way we know you’re getting your memories back.”

“You wouldn’t explain everything to me one last time?”

Bucky closes his eyes, presses the heels of his hands against the sockets until stars appear in his vision. Of course he’d explain it to you one last time, he’d explain it everyday for the rest of his life if he had to. All he settles for instead is repeating, “At least this way you can get all your memories back.”

“I’m not putting you through this anymore. Not when I don’t have to.You think I can’t see how much it hurts you?”

“Can you at least think about it for today?”

“Fine.”

With that the rest of the team departs the conference room as quickly as possible, sensing a coming storm. Bucky and Y/N stay seated until everyone is gone, staring each other down from across the table.

His dog tags glint at him from around your neck when you reach up to fist your hand around the name plates.

“Why do you want to keep being tortured?” When he doesn’t answer, just keeps staring at you, you lean back in your chair and cross your arms. “Don’t be stubborn about this Bucky.”

“I would rather go through this while you get your memories back, than risk you losing them altogether,” he says. “I want you to remember those moments. I know better than anyone that having someone tell you about something that happened doesn’t hold a candle to actually experiencing it. Especially when it's something you did.”

You take a breath, “Buck, listen, I can tell you’ve been running yourself ragged.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it does!”

“Why aren’t you more concerned? Do you want to forget? Do you want to forget about me?” He stands, paces back and forth, before forcibly stopping himself and dragging his hands through his hair instead. He doesn't look at you, can’t.

So he stands there, clenching his jaw and staring at the wall like an idiot. You wait, not saying anything for a moment, until his shoulders relax.

“I don’t want to forget. I know how important memories are to you in particular, but seeing you hurting hurts me. Especially now that the reset memories are surfacing.”

Bucky still doesn’t turn to you, listening to the clank of the metal plates around your neck slide together and apart.

“I just don’t want to…I can tell you again. I always will if I have to. I just - I just don’t want to lose everything. I don’t want you to lose me.”

And that truth settles in his bones.

So, Bucky repeats it. “I don’t want you to lose me.” He turns and looks at you, meets your steady gaze. “I don’t want you to lose whatever feeling you had the first time I kissed you. Or the first time we made love. Or the exact thought you had when we - it doesn’t matter. I know only what I thought. I can’t tell you the whole story. I’m afraid we’ll never be the same. I don’t want to lose you, but god, honey, even if it makes me selfish, I don’t want you to lose me.”

You nod when he finishes, your lips trembling just a little.

When you answer, it's with a little gasp in your voice, “And maybe it makes me selfish, but I just can’t watch you do this. I can’t stand to keep forgetting you.”

Bucky knows better than most the fear of forgetting.

“I’m with you either way.”

You keep your eyes on his, entirely focused on him, “It will be fine, Bucky.”

But hadn’t you said that the last time?

And oh, the world did love to rip and tear and take.

~

You swallow the antidote all in one go, with your nose pinched and an uncomfortable look on your face.

You wince when it's all down and then smile at Bucky and tell him again how it's going to be fine.

He hands you a glass of water, which you down, and then just like before he’s tasked with watching you.

Bucky wouldn’t have let anyone else, wouldn’t have left the med wing were it necessary for you to remain there. So you walk together, this time to your rooms, just like the last time.

While you take a shower, he makes tea for you both.

It will be a long night for him, but hopefully you’ll sleep. Hopefully, you will sleep and tomorrow you will remember him.

If you come out of the loop but with memories missing and gone, he doesn’t know what he’ll do.

Explain to you again, he supposes, and work from there.

Listen to your many stories for the hundredth time like it's the first.

Show you everything you don’t remember.

Or maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe he should start again, maybe that was the point.

But he thinks of you never knowing about the way he’d kissed you on the sand at Coney Island, about how there had been fireworks, the roaring sound of the ocean in his ears, how he would have gladly drowned in you.

He needs you to remember.

The mug in his hand, a plain white one, fractures as he grips it. “Fuck,” he murmurs, tea dripping down his arm and onto the tiled kitchen floor.

You appear then, in a cloud of peach and mango, fresh and dewy from the shower. “Will you stay with me tonight?”

“‘Course, honey,” he says, setting the cracked mug into the sink, sliding the unbroken cup toward you. “I’m not going anywhere.”

He crouches with a paper towel to wipe the spilled tea off the floor and when he straightens you’re there, incredibly close, eyes peering into his.

“I mean with me. Lay with me.”

“No. I’ll stay on the couch.”

“Bucky,” you say. “I want you to.”

But you don’t know how you looked at him the last time you’d woken up in a bed with him. Confusion that had bloomed into fear. “No. It's best if-,”

“Please? I’m, y’know, kinda scared. If you don’t - I’ll just stay in the living room then, you can’t stop me.” You lift your chin, defiant, before you continue, “I have a weird little memory, of the first time you ever stayed over.”

You look confused saying it, time and events smashed together and reconfigured in your mind. You touch the dog tags around your neck and continue, “You didn’t want to stay with me then either. But I remember it's the safest I’ve ever felt.”

“Fine,” he concedes, pressing a guiding hand to your back. “It's just because you have a crush on me.”

You wrinkle your nose and mumble, “Pretty sure it’s a little more than that.”

In your room, he lowers the lights, tugs back your duvet, and lets you settle first.

It's quiet for a long time after that, as you settle down, sipping your mug of tea which you pointedly share with him, scrolling mindlessly on your phone.

Bucky thinks you believe yourself sneaky, inching closer to him until you’re pressed against his side, your head coming down against his shoulder.

He wraps his arm around you, tugs you closer.

You bring up the photo, the one of the two of you in bed together. You hold your phone so both of you can see it. “What were you thinking about?”

“Honestly? Don’t remember. Probably something self depreciating.”

“Like what?”

“How I don’t deserve you.”

You set your phone aside and close your eyes. He imagines you’re listening to the sound of his heart, counting the beats. “Maybe I was thinking about how much I love you.”

“Do you?”

“Is there any doubt?”

“No,” you murmur, voice slurred as you slip into sleep. “It's very clear when you love someone, Barnes. Even when you think it isn’t. You wear your heart on your sleeve.”

Bucky doubts that very much, but doesn’t say so.

Maybe you just know him.

Maybe in the morning, things will be fixed, or maybe they’ll be at square one again.

And then, like a new fighter in a ring, a new fear rises up.

What if you remember everything?

Every single moment of your life together and all of your resets?

The things he’d told you, the fleshy inner parts of himself he’d revealed. Hopefully, it wouldn’t be too much, too many feelings, too much rawness to encapsulate.

Bucky tightens his arm around you, pulling you infinitely closer, and begs the universe to let him have this good thing.

~

He doesn’t mean to fall asleep, but he does.

Just like last time.

Running on little more than a couple hours rest for months on end, and without you, hasn’t exactly lent itself to his exhaustion.

With your weight against his chest, the duvet tucked around both of you, and the sound of your soft breath in his ears, sleep had been unavoidable.

He wakes to your hand against his chest, fingers tightening in his shirt. Bucky snaps awake, but doesn’t move, carefully let’s you come back to yourself. Your eyes peak open slowly, blinks that take so long he thinks you’ll fall back asleep.

But then you peer up at him through lashes thick with still dispelling sleep.

For a long moment you just look at him and he looks back, Bucky waiting for the look of disappointment or despair, confusion or horror. Your hand slides up his chest, cups behind his neck. You tug and bring his forehead to yours.

“Bucky,” you murmur. “James fucking Barnes.”

“Do you-?”

“I remember everything. Every second.”

Fear pierces his lungs, along with elation.

He pushes you back, back into the pillows and sheets, to hover over you and anchor his hands on either side of you, before he leans down to kiss you breathless and hard. You taste sweet and sharp. “Fuck, I missed you.” Bucky says against your mouth. “God, baby, I missed you so fucking bad.”

A tear escapes and you knock it away.

You hook a foot behind his knee. “You have been holding back on me. How dare you not wax poetic to me about love, our love? How dare you keep your thoughts hidden from me. You feel so much and you never say anything.” You pinch his side, cup his cheek in your hand, run your fingers inside his shirt and up his spine, counting the vertebrae. “How dare you wonder if I could love you back when you would tourture yourself for sixty-three days?”

“Had to get you back. Would have done it forever,” he presses kisses down your neck, over the edge of your jaw. Your skin is soft and you smell like the detergent you use on your sheets, like cotton and new life.

He wants to bite into you but settles for kissing you again, sliding his tongue along yours, tasting you.

Maybe he’s trying to distract you.

From memories of him trying to describe -

“Bucky?” You fist your hands in his shirt and push him away just far enough that you can properly see his face. “I fucking love you. Okay? I’ve loved you back the whole time. I had a crush on you before you even knew what a crush was. I punched you the first time you kissed me because I was so scared to be…I was just the first person you got close to. I was so afraid to crash and burn but you…you looked at me like, y’know, like I was about to kick you for kissing me. But I was afraid you were only kissing me because I was there and I decided it didn’t matter because you said you cared about me, that it was supposed to be a first date. And I thought, it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t last, at least I will have gotten to be in your orbit.”

He tries to interrupt you, but you just keep chattering, “And I remember that picnic when you put your dog tags around my neck and I promised to never take them off.” You curl one hand around his tags, the other curving back to hook around his wrist pressed into the mattress beside your shoulder. “That day was a disaster. You were so pissed off because the wine bottle cracked and the sandwiches got wet and you forgot the blanket and the bees wouldn’t leave us alone. But all I remember from that day is thinking you looked like my future, you looked like a son of the moon. I wanted to devour you, I was so hungry for you, the love you showed even if you didn’t tell me. I would have gladly eaten those soggy sandwiches if it meant I could keep being that fucking happy.”

Bucky can only look at you.

You squeeze his wrist and Bucky turns his hand so he can squeeze his fingers through yours, hoping to never let go again.

“So how dare you, how dare you be afraid I would never find my way back to you? How dare you be afraid to escape the loop so I could come back to you, fully?”

“You really think you would have fallen in love with me again?”

You look like you’re going to cry but you smile so big your cheeks look like they might split, “Honey, I have news for you. I fell in love with you over and over, sixty-three different times. Every reset I fell in love with you again. I have fallen in love with you sixty-four different times.”

god i love dumb blonde boys. yes i am talking about nikolai, again.

I cannot express how much I have riding on Greta Gerwig’s Barbie (2023) like y’all don’t understand I want it to be phenomenal I want it to be groundbreaking I want it to break box office records I want it to make film bros angry beyond comprehension I want it to overwrite my brain chemistry I want to see camp and trash and elegance and sublimity I want Ryan Gosling to win an Oscar I want Greta Gerwig to haunt my dreams like the ghost of Barbie Past, Present, and Future

“He didn’t realize how much he missed you until he noticed how long he spent convincing himself that he didn’t, despite how all he ever thought about—other than Gotham, of course—was the way your eyes crinkled at the corners when you smiled.”

bruce wayne snippet

“If Bruce Wayne doesn’t stop melting in your hands, he’ll collapse, and there would be no one left to save Gotham from itself. And there is nothing he loves more than this city, though you come begrudgingly close to it.”

They’re a 10 but they’re fictional and dead

“The intensity of the immediate eye contact is unparalleled. Although Gotham City is covered in a blanket of murky blues and blacks, you always seem to know where his mask and eyeshadow end, where his irises gleam underneath the pale light of the moon.”

bruce wayne snippet

“If Bruce Wayne doesn’t stop melting in your hands, he’ll collapse, and there would be no one left to save Gotham from itself. And there is nothing he loves more than this city, though you come begrudgingly close to it.”

“Bruce shudders at the term of endearment. He hopes that you haven’t noticed, but he knows that you probably did, and all he can think to do is to manually swallow the saliva in his throat before he forgets to breathe.”

bruce wayne snippet

“If Bruce Wayne doesn’t stop melting in your hands, he’ll collapse, and there would be no one left to save Gotham from itself. And there is nothing he loves more than this city, though you come begrudgingly close to it.”

bruce wayne snippet

“If Bruce Wayne doesn’t stop melting in your hands, he’ll collapse, and there would be no one left to save Gotham from itself. And there is nothing he loves more than this city, though you come begrudgingly close to it.”

❛  leave me alone.  ❜ w/ bats?

;   PROMISED HAVEN — THE BATMAN / READER

summary: you move into selena kyle's old apartment. bruce has taken to watching you.

pairing: batman x f!reader, set five months after the events of the batman (2022)

rating: t+ for canon typical violence

a/n: wow, me writing the beginning what will probably be a series of drabbles? amazing, iconic, unique, awesome, etc, etc. anyways, have a little morsel >:)

next   >

Gotham City will eat you alive.

Limb from limb, ashes to ashes.

It will pick your bones with a gnashing bite, true to the force of its reality — and while you lay there, gasping and writhing and lost, the grit will wear you down, seep into the cracks.

You think, on the third month, you can shake it... That indomitable itch to run from the slightest shadow that breathes too deep. In the dark, things come alive in Gotham.

You move into a second floor apartment in Old Gotham come winter. It's a little place that has neighbors who stare through peepholes and whisper the names of girls who are dead or missing or both. There are cats who howl at your fire escape like the heralds of a new dawn. There is a pervasive feeling of being watched.

Tonight is no different.

You agreed to take the late shift.

Keep reading

that's my wife

summary: you and spencer have always had a relationship that some refer to as 'work spouses'. it's not until the addition of a new, handsome employee, that spencer has to challenge what that really means to him.

a/n: you might be confused why the characters don't match up to the show's timeline... that is because i do not respect canon. this is my fantasy world and i make up the situations, and that means i get all my fav characters in one fic even if they never even met in the show.

category: fluff! so much fluff. friends to lovers. pining. and jealous spencer

warnings: none i can think of!

word count: 6.6k

“Time!” Spencer filled in the last empty space of his crossword puzzle and with the brightest of smiles, shot his head up from the newspaper in excitement. He was pretty sure he beat his record, until you half-winced and placed a hand on his shoulder.

“I’m so sorry, my love,” you rubbed your thumb along the tense muscle between his neck and shoulder. You knew he’d been so looking forward to beating his already fast time. “Three seconds too long.”

He sighed and dejectedly tossed his pen back onto his desk. He blames it on the fact that he ran out of ink halfway through writing the word jeremiad, and wasted fifteen seconds in searching for a new one.

Reading his mind, you added, “You know, I keep telling you to just use a pencil so you don’t have those bothersome ink issues.”

You already knew what he was going to say. At the same time, you both chorused:

“That’s not the way to do it.”

“That’s not the way to do it. I know.” Shaking your head, you hopped off the top of his desk, removing the stopwatch dangling from around your neck on a lanyard and placing it neatly inside his cup of highlighters. “Don’t worry. We’ll get it tomorrow.”

He smiled and agreed. He might not have beat his record, but at least this morning wasn’t a total waste. He still got to hang out with you.

You picked up your almost finished cup of coffee and took a slow sip, savoring the last remaining bits. Spencer always made the best coffee in the world. You’ve asked him for his secret and he refused to tell you, mostly because he didn’t mind making it for you. In fact, for that exact reason, he didn’t want to tell you. Because then you wouldn’t need him to do it.

“Mm. I’ll bring the paper, you make the coffee,” you joked, bumping the side of his arm. Of course he was going to do that; it was your routine since forever. Each morning started the same.

You and Spencer would always arrive at the office twenty minutes early. Even though Spencer had subscriptions to every newspaper around town, you still brought one in, and while he was in the kitchenette making his top secret coffee, you waited for him at his desk. With your specially-made coffee in hand, you’d time Spencer while he worked, just to keep him honest about how fast he could really solve the puzzles.

It started because you didn’t believe him when he said he finished the Sunday puzzle – objectively, the hardest of the week – in roughly seven minutes. It seemed outlandish to you, but you’d only met him a few days prior and hadn’t yet learned not to question that kind of thing. So, the next morning you strolled up with the Times and challenged him to complete it. If he couldn’t do it in seven and a half, he was to buy you a cup of coffee. And if he did, you’d buy him one.

That day, he broke his record. He did it in six minutes and forty-two seconds. Still, he offered to pay for that cup of coffee.

And a routine was somehow born from that. Since then, he’s shaved his time down to five minutes and thirty seven seconds. You learned that his homemade coffee is better than anything, and stopped letting him buy your coffee in lieu of making them himself. There were days he finished the puzzle before you even finished your coffee. And days where the puzzle was forgotten entirely in favor of conversation.

There were also days where you’d compete to see who would finish first; Spencer and the crossword, or you and the coffee. Until you’d burned your esophagus one too many times trying to get ahead, and for your own good Spencer had to implement a rule against competitions.

Mostly, though, that extra twenty minutes before work was never enough. Making the coffee only took three, and doing the puzzle never took more than nine, and somehow the excess of eight minutes was always too short. Even with no coffee and no crossword, you’d stay at his desk until it was absolutely imperative to start working, or until Hotch came in and gave you one of his disapproving looks.

That morning, you had to leave Spencer’s side because Hotch called everyone in for an early morning meeting. One that you were already three minutes late to.

“So nice of you to finally join us,” Emily crooned as the two of you finally walked in, the last to arrive.

You playfully rolled your eyes at her, “Should be used to it by now.” It happened often enough that Emily’s quips were getting repetitive.

Hotch closed his eyes and sighed. “Your tardiness isn’t something to be proud of, agents.”

“Sorry,” Spencer whispered and walked around to the other side of the table, going for the usual spot in one of the two empty chairs that sat side-by-side.

Only to find a stranger already in it.

“Oh.” He took a step back, only now noticing the man sitting in his unassigned assigned seat. He blinked awkwardly at him, slightly embarrassed and confused. “Hi?”

“Did we miss something important, Hotch?” you laughed.

“Yes, actually,” he huffed, not finding humor in the fact that you routinely missed the beginnings of his meetings. “This is agent Luke Alvez, he’ll be joining us indefinitely.”

Spencer gave the new agent a shy wave, which was only half-acknowledged because you interrupted by placing a hand on Luke’s forearm and a very welcoming, “Hi, Luke, welcome to the team.” You flashed him one of your signature bright smiles, equally returned by Luke himself, and tucked a loose strand of hair behind your ear. The two of you held eye contact for a prolonged second before returning to the room.

_

Spencer noticed it, but he didn’t mention it. At least not right away.

The introductions were cut short, Hotch gave the brief on the case, and the team packed into the jet. Spencer made it on last, and when he boarded he found out the repercussions of taking too long to decide which book to bring for the trip.

Luke had once again taken Spencer’s seat. No, it wasn’t labelled as his, but it was next to you, and that made it Spencer’s seat. He awkwardly shuffled past you and Luke, talking on your chairs side-by-side, and went all the way to the back of the plane.

He hadn’t sat on the tiny couch in a while, even though it was his favorite spot on the plane. Mostly because you preferred the seats and hardly ever agreed to utilize the couch unless Spencer had all but forced you into following him back there by refusing to sit in the normal seats. You had to, because he was the keeper of whatever book the two of you were reading together, and how could you make it through the trip without your in-flight entertainment?

He guessed he should enjoy being on that couch, but it didn’t quite feel as nice as he remembered it. He kept looking over to where you were sitting, his carefully chosen copy of Pride and Prejudice abandoned in his lap.

Luke sure seemed to pique your interest. You had one earbud in, and Luke had the other, while he showed you different songs on his iPod. He was talking excitedly about music, and Spencer could tell you were listening to every word of it, because of course you were. Spencer figured out early on that you were the rare type to actually listen to people when they talk, even if the things they’re passionate about aren’t of your particular interest.

Spencer waited a while, but thirty minutes later, you were still listening to Luke, who had now moved on to talking about his dog, Roxy. He wasn’t going to start your favorite novel without you, so he put it back in his satchel and kicked up both feet on the couch. He figured he might as well take a nap if he had nothing else to do with his time.

_

An hour later, he was woken up by a sudden weight on his lower legs.

“Hm?” he opened one eye, unfolding his hands from behind his head and propping himself up on them, still in a fog.

“Hey, sleepyhead.” Whenever he sat up like that, his tummy got a soft pooch to it, and you gave him a good poke there. His tum flinched reactively at the tickling.

When he realized it was just you, he laid back down on the seat, closing his eyes again.

“Wake up!” You poked him again, and again, until he had to open both eyes and slap your invasive hand away. To which you doubled down with both hands, index fingers leading the charge against his tummy in rapid succession, and he couldn’t get rid of them fast enough anymore. “Wake up! I’m bored.”

Spencer groaned loudly, stopping your assault by grabbing both your hands and finally sitting up. He moved his feet back down to the floor, gently tossing you off his legs in the process. No worries; that just made room for you to take a proper seat next to him instead.

“What book did you pick out for us?” you asked, cozying up to his side. Spencer smiled and reached down to his satchel, knowing you were going to love his choice. “Oh! My favorite!” you cheered, lightly clapping your hands together.

He grinned to himself, watching you look at his worn-in copy with so much excitement in your eyes. “I know.”

Stealing a portion of Spencer’s blanket and adjusting it so it laid over both of your laps, you rested your head on his shoulder and waited for him to begin.

“What are you waiting for?” You scrunched your brows when a full minute passed and he hadn’t started reading.

“Oh – I… I thought you were sitting over there,” he tilted his head to the side, where you previously had been enjoying Luke’s company.

“Yeah, but I missed you.”

Spencer’s imperceptible pout twitched into a smile at your admission. But he still wanted to pull your leg for abandoning him for Luke.

Even if, in reality, you had actually gotten there first and saved the other seat for Spencer, only to feel too rude to tell the new guy he couldn’t sit there when he boarded two minutes later, saw an empty chair, and sat down.

“Ohhh, Agent Alvez wasn’t holding your attention?” He said in a teasing tone, placing his hand on your forearm just as you did to Luke earlier, tucking a strand of hair behind his ears, and batting his eyelashes dramatically.

“I don’t bat my eyelashes like that.”

“Right, you just do everything short of that,” he laughed. You socked him in the bicep, not even feeling an ounce of guilt when he cried out and grabbed his arm in pain.

“Shut up and read, Reid.” He shook his head at your poor attempt at a play on words. An overused and unoriginal one, and yet he knew you still found yourself clever for it. You knew it was lame, but he still giggled, even if it was a tiny one that he stifled under a tight lip because he didn’t want to give you the satisfaction. You placed your head back on his shoulder as he cracked open the book and started on the first page.

–

With a big yawn, Spencer stood up from his desk and stretched his arms out, wiggling his toes and extending his fingers to re-energize his tired body, in need of a mid-afternoon pick up. It was a habit you got him into a while back. You noticed his ridiculous caffeine intake and suggested that he try alternative methods to upping his energy. Like a good stretch or walk around the room to get his blood flow going after hours of hunching over files.

So, he got into the habit of standing up to stretch, taking a quick lap around the room, and walking right into the kitchenette to make himself a cup of coffee as soon as that was done.

In return, you got into a bad habit of overconsuming caffeine, because each time he got up to make himself a coffee, he brought you one too.

While he waited for the coffee to drip into the pot, he passively tapped his fingers on the countertop and hummed a tune. He didn’t know the name of the song but it was something you played for him on your iPod, listening with one earbud each, on the way home from work the previous night.

He poured two cups of coffee; one for himself, and the other for you.

“Special delivery,” he sang softly, cautiously approaching your desk with over-filled mugs of hot liquid in each hand. He had an eye on the cups and another on the path ahead, terrified he was about to spill scalding coffee over both his hands.

“Oh, shit,” you said under your breath, sitting upright as you saw him coming. “I wish you’d asked, I already have one.” You regretfully held up a mug, still mostly full with coffee.

Spencer paused right in his tracks. He never had to ask if you wanted coffee. He just always brought it out, and you always took it without question. You also never bothered to make it yourself, because it was an unspoken agreement that Spencer would inevitably make it for the both of you.

So where did that cup come from?

“I didn’t realize you had some already.” He furrowed his brows, not sure what to do with the extra mug now. He even poured yours in the favorite mug that the two of you often fought over because he was in an extra nice mood. It was a pale blue and had tiny brown dachshunds all over, donning yellow raincoats, and sneakers just like Spencer’s.

“Sorry, angelface,” you pouted back. He looked so disappointed as he turned away, no doubt to go right back to the kitchen and toss your beverage down the sink, and you quickly called out, “Wait, no! Leave it, I’ll drink it.”

Screw it, you’ll take the jitters and a night of bad sleep if it meant Spencer wouldn’t feel so bad. He was instantly happier, smiling at you as he walked back to place the mug at your desk, slyly shoving the other cup aside so that his took the priority placement.

“By the way, you know you can just ask me when you want coffee, right? You don’t have to wait until I want one, or make it yourself.”

“I know,” you smiled. “Luke made extra, so he brought me one.”

Spencer’s lip tightened just a little, brows a centimeter higher on his forehead now. “Oh? Luke did, hm…” he mumbled, perhaps a bit snarkily, as he picked up the mug Luke made. “That was nice of him, but I guess you don’t need this now, anyways, it’s probably cold now and this new one’s much fresher.”

You chuckled softly and didn’t bother correcting him on the fact that Luke’s mug was very much still warm, and that you were still enjoying it. “Sure, Spence. Whatever you say.”

_

The coffee incident rolled right off Spencer’s back by the next morning.

Even he could recognize that his reaction may have been a bit childish. After all, it was only Luke’s second week with the unit, and he was just trying to make some new friends. Spencer figured that there really was no better person to know, nor easier one to befriend, than you, so he couldn’t blame Luke for trying.

That clarity lasted until he walked into the bullpen and found a new reason to be annoyed.

As usual, you were waiting for him at his desk, perched atop the wood with the morning paper rolled up in your hand. But not as usual, you already had a mug of coffee placed next to you. He had the sneaking suspicion that this one was also made by none other than Luke Alvez.

“Good morning,” you chirped, giving Spencer a quick peck on the cheek as he walked around the desk and took a seat in his office chair.

He grumbled it back, taking the newspaper from your hands and unraveling it on his desk, ironing out the rolled edges with a little more irritation than he’d normally have. As he searched for his favorite pen, he noticed you were already halfway through your drink.

No doubt that was going to cut down the amount of time that you could use the excuse that you were ‘still fueling up’ to justify loitering at Spencer’s desk instead of working. He tried not to roll his eyes at that fact and got to work on his puzzle without much chit chat. The morning routine was already off, anyway.

“No coffee this morning?”

“You have it, already,” he pointed out.

“I meant for you. You’re not gonna have some?” That was incredibly abnormal for Spencer. You couldn’t recall even one morning where you didn’t see him down some form of caffeine.

Spencer shrugged his shoulders. He didn’t really feel a burning desire to make coffee when it was only going to be for himself. “Eh. Maybe later.”

“Okay,” you frowned. Quickly erasing it for a smile, you picked up the stopwatch and slung it around your neck. “Ready to start?”

You gave him a little countdown and he went off reading the clues. He was uncharacteristically slow at it, this time around. By ten past the hour, he was only three-quarters done with the puzzle. You could practically hear the way Hotch was going to yell at you if he saw you still not working by this point.

The lines between Spencer’s brows were prominent as he concentrated far too hard on the clues he couldn’t solve. Pressing your thumb right over the deep crease, you reminded him to un-scrunch and relax his face.

“It’s okay if you can’t solve it, sweet boy.”

Spencer sighed, putting down his pen in defeat and leaning back in his chair. ”I don’t know why I’m off my game today.”

“It’s alright, we all have those days.” You ruffled the top of his hair before hopping off his desk, collecting your long-empty mug and returning his stopwatch.

“Wait, where are you going?” Those worry lines you just chased off came right back to his face. “I can still finish it!”

“I know, Spence. I don’t doubt you,” you reassured, but it felt like you were already halfway to your desk anyway. Which was all the way across the bullpen, way too far from Spencer’s cubicle. “But I really have to start work before we get in trouble again.”

He curled his lips to the side. You were right, it was twenty past the hour, and there was no viable excuse for you to stay any longer. Damn that empty cup, and damn him for being too slow.

Spencer gave the crossword one last, cursory glance. The remaining words were cruelly obvious to him now. He didn’t find a point in writing them in and completing it now, so he opened up the bottom drawer of his desk and tossed the paper inside. The metal filing drawer reverberated with a loud clang as he kicked it shut with his foot.

“Hey, ouch!” From the next cubicle over, Derek was leaning back in his chair to make sure Spencer could see him covering his ears with both hands. “Pretty boy, what’s with the loud angry noises at nine in the morning?”

Spencer didn’t dignify him with a response, grumbling and inspecting the stack of manila folders on his desk instead. Derek got up from his seat, walked over to Spencer and slung one muscular arm over his shoulders when he realized.

“Ohhh, I think I get it,” he teased.

“Get what, Morgan?”

“You’re mad because you’re lonely without your little work wife,” he chuckled, jostling Spencer’s shoulders playfully. Maybe, he thought, if he shook Spencer hard enough, it would knock his brain into place.

“My what?” Spencer had never heard of that term before. Solely based on context clues, he understood Derek was implying some sort of intimate relationship between himself and you.

“Your work wife,” Derek repeated. “You know – a woman, with whom you work, and are closer to than most people. Whom you happen to love, in your case.”

Spencer rolled his eyes and shrugged Derek off his shoulders. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it?” Derek put up both hands defensively, slowly backing away from the hothead in front of him.

It was one of those things that didn't need to be said in order to be true. Everyone just knew it and accepted it as a fact; Spencer was in love with you, and more than likely, you were in love with him. Work spouses was just a cute nickname for what was really going on.

He had just turned his shoulder back towards his own desk when Spencer called out.

“How are we different from you and Penelope!?” Spencer barked. Derek turned back on his heel, smirking at Spencer. “Aren’t you two ‘work spouses’?”

“We are, Reid,” he smiled, thinking about the picture he had on his desk as evidence. It was of him and Penelope, walking Derek’s dog in the park. The picture next to it was of the two of them, plus Derek’s new girlfriend Savannah who had recently earned the Garcia-Stamp-of-Approval, out to brunch together. “And I love her, too. But the difference is that you are in love with your work wife.”

Derek snickered as he left for good, leaving Spencer to ruminate on that thought for a while.

As many pictures of Penelope as Derek had on his desk, Spencer had a few more than that. And far more brow-raising ones, like one of you baking cookies at Spencer’s house. With flour on your nose and chocolate chip cookie batter on your hands, slowly feeding it to Spencer right off your fingers.

_

Speaking of feeding Spencer, every day he brought a neat ham and cheese sandwich to work in his sack lunch. He cut the crusts off himself and split the sandwich down the middle with a diagonal cut. While you were originally a rectangle-cut person, he was adamant that triangle-cuts were the best shape of sandwich, and eventually you came to agree.

You always brought a salad with all your favorite things that could pass as nutritious. Wild greens, arugula, shredded carrots, goat cheese, and roasted beets. You even made the vinaigrette yourself, and packed it into its own tiny to-go tupperware so it could be mixed into the salad fresh at lunchtime.

And every lunch break, Spencer gave you one half of his sandwich, and you shared with him half of your salad.

What you’d both come to realize is that lunch is so much better with both. It’s the perfect ratio of leafy greens to delicious bread and cheese, and lunch no longer felt complete with just one and not the other.

And then.

And then of course, Luke Alvez decided to take you out for lunch, as if he had no respect at all for the sanctity of homemade, sack lunches. Or any sort of respect for Spencer, given that he’d now ruined the man’s meal by taking away his rights to a salad.

Sometimes Spencer hated how nice you were. Most of the time, he loved it, except for when it conflicted with his own personal interests. Of course you accepted Luke’s offer, and so he was eating his whole sandwich all by himself.

The entire balance was off – had it always been so hard to eat whole sandwiches without getting exhausted by them? Two halves was too much. Too much bread, too much ham, and too much cheese all for one person. There was a significant lack of leaves, carrots, beets, and you.

If he had to be honest, that last item was the real thing lunch was lacking.

He didn’t miss the salad at all. In fact, he actually absolutely hated that salad.

He hated beets and how they always overtook the entire flavor of the whole god forsaken thing. It should’ve been a welcome reprieve to go one day out of hundreds to not eat them. For some reason, he never asked you to take them out. He pretended to love them, to love the salad that tasted like wet Earth, and forced himself to eat all of it every day.

Because if he said he loved it, he figured, then you would share with him half of your salad. So that he could give you half of his sandwich.

That was the routine. It was simple, but it was sacred.

Everything you had together seemed to be sacred until the introduction of one Luke Alvez. Spencer tried to like him, really – Luke was incredibly kind, even to Spencer, from day one. But the fact was that Luke now held all of your attention, and that was beginning to be inexcusable. He messed with a man’s lunch, and that was over the line.

Spencer wasn’t even lying to himself about it anymore. He was seething as he stared at your desk – the only empty one in the bullpen, besides Luke’s – and chewed away at his boring ham and disgusting cheese sandwich.

_

It was impossible to tell what the final straw was going to be, but Spencer knew he was running out of them.

He was eavesdropping on you and Luke in the kitchenette across the bullpen. Laughing together, as if no one could hear you. As if no one would very specifically tune in to the sound of your voice and deliberately refrain from making any noises, not even sounds of breathing, in order to hear what you were saying. You two were just rubbing it in his face, now.

“Come on,” Derek nudged Spencer’s shoulder, earning an annoyed gruff when his concentration on your voices broke. “You really gonna let him move in on your wife like that?”

Spencer clenched his teeth. He knew Derek was just egging him on, but he still didn’t like what he was hearing.

It was ridiculous, and he knew that, to expect that you were never going to be interested in other men. Not that Spencer assumed that you were interested in him, but still...

He just felt like there was an unspoken understanding between you two. That you both had all the companionship you needed in each other, even if it wasn’t romantic. He had to find out the hard way that you didn’t feel the same, if you really were interested in Luke after all. The real kicker of it all was that he had everything Luke had to offer – same job, same intelligence, not the same muscles but he compensated for it with the history he had with you. He thought that would’ve at least given him a competitive advantage.

Spencer watched as you leaned in to Luke, putting your hand on his upper arm and smiling. Right before Derek interrupted, he heard Luke offering to drive you home. By the look of this, you’d accepted it, as if you completely forgot that you promised Spencer you’d take the metro home with him after work.

Derek was still watching it go down, brows raised at Spencer. His question still stood.

“No, I’m not.” Spencer’s nostrils flared out as he slammed his mug down on his desk, liquid sloshing around inside and threatening to spill over. He stormed right into the kitchenette, immediately drawing attention as he stomped up.

“Hey, buddy!” He tried to make his yelling voice sound big and tough, but it came off squeaky and unintimidating. You could tell what he was going for, though. “That’s my wife!” With that statement, you were less sure what that was.

“I – excuse me?” Luke crossed his brows in confusion. You mirrored his expression.

Spencer shifted on his two feet, finger still pointed at Luke in an accusatory manner. He was less confident in his rage than he was before he got there; suddenly aware that his outburst was lacking in context. He knew now that he probably looked insane. It still didn’t stop him from doubling down on his tantrum.

“You heard me.” Spencer crossed his arms over his chest. Standing straighter, he came to the happy realization he was about an inch taller than Luke. Before he could make himself into even more of a fool, you waved your hand to Luke as an apology for this inexplicable outburst.

“Spencer, can I talk to you?” It was rhetorical. You wrapped a hand tight around his upper arm, tugging him down an empty hallway and away from the invasive eyes watching the scene he just caused.

You had no idea what got into him then, but the feeling bubbling in your stomach was unignorable. You’ve never seen him act like such a child, no, a downright brat, in public like that. Much less with you on the receiving end of it. It was quite frankly embarrassing, on top of how confusing it was that he was going around calling you his wife?

At the end of the hall, you had him cornered alone. Just the two of you under the dim fluorescents. He evaded all eye contact when you tried to look him in the eyes, knowing you’d find the truth too quickly if he gave you the chance.

“Are you alright?” you asked, squeezing his arm much softer now. You were planning on chewing him out for what he just did. Really, you were going to lay into him for causing a scene like that, which no doubt was sparking up some rumors behind your back.

But somehow, that anger dissipated the moment you got him alone. Make no mistake, you were not excusing his rude behavior. But that little part of you that was always concerned about Spencer – because with him, there was always more going on under the surface – was impossible to shut up.

“No,” he admitted. “No, I’m not. I haven’t seen you in days.” Your whole face softened. It was so hard to hold it against him when he was so sweet.

“Spencer, you see me every day,” you reasoned. He bowed his head and scoffed, placing his hand at the dip of your waist and pushing you away from him. It was going to suffocate him to be so close to you if you weren’t going to understand where he was coming from. But even a few inches further apart, his hand was still on your waist.

“Not really. It’s not the same. You barely have time for our puzzles. You’re always next to Luke on the jet now. You started skipping our lunches, and now, you’re ditching me for a ride home with him.”

His words made you flinch. You noticed it yourself that you started spending a lot of time with Luke, but had no idea all those little things you’d been doing had added up to affect Spencer in such a way. Of all people, you should’ve noticed him being upset.

“It’s fine, I want you to do whatever you want to. But I miss you,” he added.

The part he didn’t want to say is that he needed to know if you missed him back. He didn’t want to call that into question, even if he really wanted to hear it.

Cupping his cheek in your palm, you leaned in and put a small peck on the tip of his nose.

“I miss you too, angel.” You rubbed your thumb across his cheekbone, watching his face light up.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Tell you what,” you smiled, tucking his unruly waves behind his ear, “let's take the long way home tonight.”

Spencer grinned from ear to ear. His hand slipped from your waist down to the free hand at your side, squeezing your palms together tightly as you led the way out. You planned to walk all the way home with him to make up for all those minutes lost.

“You know, I’m glad you said you want me to hang out with Luke if I want to,” you smiled, holding Spencer’s hand as you walked down the street.

“Oh, yeah…” He avoided looking at you. He didn’t think that one through when he said it.

“I’m probably going to hang out with him a lot for a bit.”

Spencer focused hard on looking ahead, the road seeming blurrier now. Shit, he really didn’t think it through.

“That’s great. You should do that,” he lied through his teeth. Only you would’ve picked up on that edge in his voice.

“Yeah,” you smiled, noting his thinly veiled annoyance. You wanted to believe for a moment that it was because he was jealous. Because if he was, you could take that crumb and turn it into a feast - a silent declaration of his love that you secretly hoped he had for you. “Because he’s been asking for tons of advice on how to get closer to Penelope.”

Spencer’s ears perked up. “Penelope?”

“Mm-hmm. Seems he’s been smitten with her ever since he saw her,” you smiled harder. So long as you didn’t know any better, he reacted that way because he loved you the way you wanted him to. “Only issue is, she’s a tough one to crack. So coaching him on Penelope 101 has been taking a lot longer than I thought.”

–

It seemed to pay off. Those weeks of neglecting Spencer and inadvertently hurting your best friend produced at least one positive thing.

Luke learned everything he needed to know about Penelope. He won her over, slowly but surely, thanks to your insider information. Still, he needed a bit of a wingman, so the first time he tried to hang out with Penelope outside of work, he disguised it as a group thing.

He invited you, Penelope’s best friend, to a weekend lunch with him and Penelope. You of course brought along Spencer, and tried your best to ignore the fact it felt like a double date. It wasn’t. Luke was on a date with Penelope, which she didn’t know about, and you and Spencer were just there to play along. That’s it.

On another plus side, Spencer seemed to like Luke a whole lot more now.

Luke and Penelope were fictitiously bickering over the lunch options - Luke argued that a blueberry scone was perfectly appropriate to order, and Penelope maintained it was strictly a breakfast item. She settled on an order of soup, to split with Luke for half of his sandwich. Luke might’ve learned that trick from an observation around the office, which you were oblivious to.

Moments before the food arrived, you tapped Spencer’s thigh, asking him to scoot out of the booth so you could go to the bathroom.

“You always do this,” he said exasperatedly. “Every time the food gets here, you have to go.” Being the polite man he is, Spencer always had to wait until you got back to start eating his meal. The number of times he’d had cold food was just too much, now.

“Just start without me, then,” you shrugged. It was a bodily response you couldn’t help. Spencer rolled his eyes, a smile betraying it, and turned back to the table as you walked off to the nearest restroom.

Even though he hated waiting, hated the fact that he’d end up eating cold food, he waited for you to come back. With his hands folded in his lap, patiently sitting in front of his tempting plate of french toast that was rapidly getting colder by the second.

Penelope made a happy noise around a spoonful of her soup, then noticed Spencer hadn’t touched his plate yet.

“Spencer, do you want to try a bite of this? It’s delicious,” she offered, shoving her bowl to him. She knew he wouldn’t touch his own food, but hers was free territory.

“Oh, no thanks,” his nose crinkled when he inspected the contents of the soup. “I don’t like beets.”

Penelope shrugged and took the bowl back, thinking nothing of it.

“You don’t like beets?”

Spencer whipped his head around. You’d returned from the bathroom just in time to catch what he’d said. He felt like a deer caught in the headlights as you stood there gobsmacked. “Spencer, I’ve been feeding you beets for two years…”

He swallowed the air in his already dry throat. You slid into the booth beside him, cornering him against the wall with the saddest look on your face. Completely betrayed by his confession. “I don’t understand, you don’t like them?”

Penelope and Luke must’ve looked between your face and Spencer, because they’d slipped out of the booth unnoticed.

“Well, no. It’s not that I don’t like them,” he laughed nervously. Your eyes only looked more disappointed. “Okay, I don’t like them. Are you mad?”

Confused, yes. But definitely not mad. “Why would I be mad at you?” you laughed lightly.

“Because I lied to you?”

“Yeah, about beets,” you nudged his side, “Not about something serious.”

Spencer laughed softly, holding his side as if it hurt when you bumped him. In reality, he was just pretending he could still feel your pressure against him.

“The only thing I don’t get is why you didn’t just tell me you hate beets. I would've taken them out.”

Now that was a thought Spencer didn’t have before. He shrugged his shoulders. “I guess I was afraid that if I said I didn’t like your salad, you’d stop wanting to share lunches with me. And to be honest, that’s my favorite part of the day.”

Time stopped.

“You ate a food you hate… for two years… so that you could keep hanging out with me?”

If he was any less nervous, he might've been able to figure out how you felt about that based on your tone or body language. But he was useless in that regard, squirming in his seat.

“I-uh-well,” he stuttered, whipping his head between looking up at you and down at the table as his upper lip beaded with sweat.

You had to take the plunge.

“You make bad coffee,” you gasped. You couldn’t hold it in any longer. He was so confused.

He wasn’t trying to be mean when he said he didn’t like your salad – it was just the beets!. Were you trying to get back at him? “I didn’t mean to make it sound personal, I just really hate beets –”

“No. No, it’s not personal,” you laughed awkwardly, shifting in your seat because your nerves creeped up steadily. “Your coffee isn’t as good as I pretend it is. I only say it’s great so that you’ll bring me coffee every day.”

You paused to creep your hand down to his, shaking a little as you tried to hold it. Your fingers stopped short of his, needing him to be the one to bridge that gap. “It’s fine coffee. Just fine. I think I convinced myself I love it because I really love…”

You looked at him instead. Hopefully he knew the end of that sentence without you having to say so. Of course he knew. Because how could he be your work husband and not know you like the back of his palm. His pinky inched toward yours, resting gently on top of it in the quietest declaration of love.

It didn’t need to be said in order to be true. You loved Spencer Reid; and if his willingness to eat his most hated food for two years was any indication, he loved you back.

Your faces drifted together, both feeling infectious smiles pushing their way across your cheeks as you neared each other. Finally meeting in the middle in a kiss that made you regret not doing it sooner.

-

-

ok, hope you thought this was cute! i know it's such a *small* confession at the end, but i really wanted it to be ! driving home that point of, 'it doesnt need to be said in order to be true' lol.

thanks for being on my taglist <3 (tagging part two in a reblog). if your name is crossed out, tumblr won't let me tag you :(

if you wanna join, link is at the top here

@woodstock-14 @crypticcorvidinacottage @allthecolorsneverseen @xoxospencerreid @this-is-doctor-and-its-calm @doctorspenceryeet @gothicwidowsworld @nyx2021 @tbslhrry @marvelwhor3 @kuolonsyoja @mercy-burning @spencerreid-187 @reidspurple @spencersrose @toast-on-t0ast @bloodyxheaven @coldlilheart @reid-me-a-story @drayshadow @mlqcool @averyhotchner @rigatonireid @gspenc @kidd3ath @rainsong01@itwouldburnthroughtheatmosphere @cherriesrae @emilyprentisswif3 @nani-2305 @holding-onto-my-youth @j-cat @ellesgreenaway @meganskane @destiny-tsukino @mugi-chwan95 @insomniacbeth @just_arandomwriter @pissbit @neverlandwaitingforme @idonotexiste @reidsbookclub @sewagegirl @thisisntrealipromise @ilovehotmums @outlawedmando @wifeyprentiss @xoxo-jnh-xoxo @parahmur @mediocre-writer @citylights31 @garvezs @spencerreidat3am @bitsofthebluestsky @nomajdetective @beepbooptoop @mggsprettygirl @meggie-m00n

my attempt at a mystery fic has turned into fucking romance i cannot why does this always happen to me 😭

the fuckin “what mouth?” scene in MoM was definitely the most terrifying thing that’s ever happened in the mcu

thank you!! this was so cute

34 + ss!wilbur? <3

of course! thank you for the request, and for being a lovely mutual :D

‘prompt 34’ w/ starstruck!wilbur

━━ ✧︰34: a secret they’re dying to tell you

event post | series masterlist

Dearest Diary,

It’s hard to watch Y/N fall in love with Technoblade. It’s amazing to see them both happy— Hell, it’s been crazy to see how much he’s changed.

But a selfish part of me still can’t believe somebody as perfect as them, ended up with him.

Maybe I’m being biased— Heaven knows. But I’m pretty sure I had a little crush first, and that feels extremely unfair to me.

I mean, if I’m being honest everyone has has a crush on Y/N at some point. Hell I wouldn’t be surprised if students are crushing on them too.

And I know it’s incredibly selfishly unfair of me, but I’d love to tell them that. Tell Y/N just how wonderful they are, and how they had a special place in my heart when I first met them.

I don’t think I ever will though— I mean, what kind of bastard would I be to confess this to a taken person? They’re practically Techno’s partner at this point.

All will be right eventually, I’m sure of it. I hope that I’m shown my future soon, though.

Feels weird to see them move on. We’ve never been romantically involved unfortunately, but still— It’s ‘moving on’, I guess.

Until next time,

Wilbur.

tbf i only read skyward and its sequel so i’m making my judgments on his writing on them, but i think it’s fine bc they’re relatively new books of his.

it felt as if he wrote the book like the mc was a boy and then switched it to a girl later on due to her oddly stereotypical male traits. don’t get me wrong, i’m all for a confident mc who breaks gender stereotypes, but the characterization of the mc, or the way he wrote her personality, rubbed me the wrong way. she was kind of like a mix of exaggerated naivety and familiar male arrogance. in other words, i felt like sanderson was pushing a stereotypical guy’s personality onto spensa to make her “different” rather than her own personality with no attachments to such stereotypical male behavior.

however, i’ll admit that there was a good redemption arc and the character development of spensa toward the end of the first book was so good. also, overall, there was decent worldbuilding and plot though.

upon further reflection, i’m pretty sure that sanderson turned me off of dystopian/fantasy; i haven’t read a dystopian book since last reading skyward and starsight in 2020. when he published cytonic, i just couldn’t care less because of how turned off i was from his characterization of spensa.

for insight, my fav dystopian book (and really, it’s in my top 3 books ever) is the scythe series by neal shishterman. goddamn is that trip the best. they’re pretty difficult to get through in the first half but everything picks up toward the second half. the scythe series is so worth reading, i promise you.

all that said, i still have respect for sanderson writing like 5 books in 2 years (or so i’ve heard) and having thousands of people donate millions bc they love his work so much.

unpopular opinion: i dislike brandon sanderson’s writing

unpopular opinion: i dislike brandon sanderson’s writing

masterlist

wilbur soot

ozymandias

perennial pages

perennial pages | w.s.

Pairing: college student au!Wilbur Soot x bookstore employee/college student!reader; no Y/N, gender-neutral (no pronouns mentioned)

Synopsis: You’re working at a bookstore when your favorite British man bursts in with two plane tickets to travel the world. 

Warnings: one (1) passing ref. to prev. fic Ozymandias, some cursing, cameo from Tina except she’s an old woman, one (1) dirty joke from Wilbur but what did you expect, failed British slang from an American author

Word Count: 2.2k

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Prev. on the semi-related Wilbur Soot series: Ozymandias

Masterlist

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You’re working alone today, but you don’t mind. You have classical music to accompany you, playing from the cheap speakers around a meter above and to your left. 

When you move to lean back against the wooden stool you’re sitting on, multiple synthetic leaves fall onto your face. You scowl, splitting the part that got into your mouth. 

“Plastic does not taste good,” you mutter under your breath. 

You shake your head to force the leaves off. The ceiling and most of the surrounding walls of this shop are adorned with the fake vines that Tina purchased at a yard sale with you around a month ago.

Tina founded the dual bookstore and plant shop Perennial Pages at a rather rough stage in her life. She had married young and been a trophy wife till 37, then divorced her wretched old money husband after discovering his mass tax fraud; it was a way out of the marriage. She clung onto his illicit economic activities as a subtle form of blackmail, threatening that she would expose him for it if he didn’t sign the divorce papers. He was a cheating bastard anyway.

Following the split, Tina used the cash from the split to make her childhood dream a reality in Brighton, England. 

Tina is a shorter, stout woman nearing her sixties with a personality that others might call downright appalling for someone born at such a conservative time. But you love the straightforward yet free approach that Tina takes on life. 

As your boss, Tina is nothing short of delightful. Well, except when she isn’t there. Then, you have no one to talk to but stone-faced customers who wish to release some stress by feeding their book addictions. All you’ve been doing today is watering plants, shelving and organizing books, and making a point to ignore the unhappy teenagers who come to Perennial Pages to escape from other people. 

Tina never fails to take at least one day off every month. The philosophy was to make as many memories as possible before she runs out of time. The thought brings you back to memories from the month before. 

A few weeks ago, Tina had announced that she’d continue to pay you for your normal hours if you accompanied her to a spontaneous four-day getaway to New York City, even though there was no one else to manage Perennial Pages in the meantime. Well, you didn’t argue with the prospect of a fully-paid vacation with someone who acts more like an older sister than an employer to you. 

The two of you had spent your first afternoon in New York shopping around Manhattan, browsing through vintage clothing—and the vines that attacked you—at various thrift shops across the borough. 

As you shopped, you discussed deeply philosophical topics, just because you could. It was during that trip that you had an epiphany; you prefer deep conversations over small talk. The gritty ones that expose personal trauma and bare core beliefs are much more fulfilling and fascinating to listen to than superficial complaints about professors who cannot teach well.

Mulling over it, you realize that it’s probably because you find conflicting opinions to be intriguing. It’s interesting how and why a person comes to form their beliefs regarding controversies. People, after all, are merely mosaics of the different ideas they come across. Learning which ideas created the mold that a certain person emerged from is a fascinating way to sincerely get to know someone and empathize with the experiences that shape their central ideals. 

The chimes tied in fuchsia yarn to the topmost hinge of the front door ring, jolting you out of such reminiscing. 

“Welcome to Perennial Pages, let me know if you want a specific book or plant and if you have any other questions,” you state with as little facial movement as possible, not bothering to look up to identify the figure stepping inside. Your shift began not that long ago, but without Tina there to entertain you with other arguably deep conversations, you’re too tired to give anything but a blank expression to customers today. 

Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule (it’s more of a common occurrence than a rule, really); some people are far too captivating to demand anything lesser than your utmost attention. 

“Hello, darling.”

Case in point. 

Your head snaps up to meet the gaze of the familiar voice. The height of the man before you is quite towering, even more so since you’re sitting down on the rather stout maroon stool behind the cash register. 

But you know better than to be intimidated. 

He’s dressed particularly well today. He dons a plain red beanie covering that mess of curls and what has to be a receding hairline—you’ve previously attempted to whisk it off of him, but he refuses to give a forehead reveal—but the beanie is slipping slowly away from his hair and closer toward the carpet made of fake moss.

“Well, well, well, isn’t it Mister Soot? My most loyal customer.”

“For Christ’s sake, call me Wil,” he says as he rolls his eyes. But he’s smiling all the while. 

He shakes his head and the outside fringes of his hair sway as he does so. The beanie slips a centimeter more down his right ear. When he meets your mock unapproving gaze, a chuckle escapes his mouth even though he’s bitten the inside of his cheek to prevent such an action. When you hop off the stool and fully stand up, the grin on his face widens even more than you thought possible. 

That smile never fails to not catch your eye. He’s always grinning whenever you’re around, so much that you’d think his cheeks would hurt. But you’re not complaining, as you’d be a hypocrite to comment about his smiley tendencies without addressing your own. 

If Tina were here, she’d elbow you and say, “The rascal makes you happy, that’s why you get all smiley.” 

Then Tina would return to humming an obscure Elvis song and walk away into the storage room. It would be just as if she hadn’t left you all alone in your thoughts with heat rising to your cheeks as you think about him. 

He’s made a beeline for the historical bookshelf today, near the peonies and sunflowers. 

“You should fix that,” you say, nodding toward the beanie that is half-falling off of his face. 

There’s quite the pause and it’s as if you can see the gears in Wil’s head shifting. Then, his grin has turned into a smirk.

“Fix what? I don’t know what you mean.” 

“You think you’re so sly, don’t you? I can tell you’re faking confusion,” you respond, lips curling upward despite your attempt to remain impassive. 

Granted, it wasn’t a very good try at concealing your happiness, but, then again, it’s always hard to hide your emotions around Wilbur Soot. He can read you like an open book, even if you’d like to think of yourself as one of those locked childrens’ princess diaries with voice-activated codes in them. 

“Cheeky bastard,” you mutter. 

But even as you’re complaining, you’re walking to the left of the counter and using your hip to push open the small door beside the counter. 

Honestly, curse the man’s charms. 

You make a come-hither motion with your hand, but the 6’6” man refuses to bend his knees or lean forward so you can properly adjust the beanie. 

“C’mere,” you insist, stopping right beside the nonfiction aisle, which is about a yard away from the plaque titled “HISTORY” in bold.

He crosses his arms and fervently shakes his head like a dog shaking water off of its fur after a bath. You have to bite back a laugh at his played-up mannerisms.

“No.” He frowns, then lights up with another eager smile. “If you call me Wil, though, I’ll consider your offer.”

“You’re a real drama queen, you know that, Soot?” 

You speak with as much force as you can muster, channeling stoicism, but your face betrays you. And your body too, which moves forward to meet him until you’re less than a meter apart. 

“Why won’t you just call me Wil?” He flashes the eyes of a sad puppy. 

“Whatever. Bend down so I can fix your stupid beanie for you.”

The man immediately begins to cough. It’s a shoddy attempt at covering his initial reaction.

All you do is roll your eyes and shake your head in disdain.

“What, it was funny! ‘Bend down,’ you know what else you can do when you bend down?” 

You’re pursing your lips, glancing around the room to see if anyone has heard. Of course, no one is in the room. Why would anyone be browsing for books or plants on a Tuesday morning at 9 o’clock in the morning? Well, anyone other than Wilbur Soot, that is. And he doesn’t even count, because you know that he’s only here for you. 

“Well, you’re the only one laughing,” comes your monotonous reply.

“Won’t you say ‘Wil’ and not ‘Well’ for me, love?”

All of a sudden, heat rises up your body, spreading like a wildfire underneath your skin. Unfamiliar to such a reaction, you clear your throat to break the odd silence between his question and your lack of a response. 

“What is with you and your odd infatuation with me calling you by your name? I think calling you Soot is–”

When Wil walks toward you, you immediately stop speaking. Your head tilts in confusion, eyebrows furrowed. It’s no secret that the man has an ego; he never submits to your will like this. 

You wait for him to respond, but he doesn’t, so you say, “Go on, then. Tell me, why have you dragged yourself all the way out to the middle of Brighton? I assume it isn’t just to have me fix your beanie up.”

You fail to mention that you still haven’t shifted the position of his beanie yet. Partly because you’re afraid of how you’d feel if you touched him that closely, and partly because you think you already know how you’d feel. 

A smile stretches across his face for what must be the twentieth time since he’s walked in; actually, you don’t think that he’s truly stopped smiling, except for his fake frowns to coerce you into walking closer to him.

He doesn’t answer you verbally. Instead, he reaches into the right pocket of his trenchcoat and pulls out two slim sheets of paper. Curious, you step forward until you’re less than a meter apart. 

“Florence? You booked two tickets for Italy?”

Bewildered, you take a step back. Wil walks forward to keep the previous distance, and maybe even closer because now you’re just a few centimeters away from his face. He’s sheepish now, biting on his bottom lip in anticipation. 

“Haven’t we been talking about traveling the world in the Blade’s class? I don’t want to leave you. Will you come with me?”

“Wil, of course I will.”

Before he can make a comment about the pun in that sentence, you embrace him in a hug. On reflex, he rests his chin on top of your head. Although his trenchcoat is cold from the weather outside, his breath is warm. Fearing that he’ll be able to see the rather embarrassing happiness plastered on your face that you can’t seem to pat down to a cool neutral position, you shove your face into his chest. 

He smells like coffee and sandalwood, like home and something more. 

When your hand reaches to grasp his hair, with his arms still wrapped around your lower back, you’re met with the soft fabric of his beanie. Finally, you adjust it so that it’s not exposing his hairline anymore. 

A laugh escapes your mouth as you tug the beanie down over his ears, the tips of which are bright red. He looks ridiculous like this, but you wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Huh, a hug right after we got on first name basis? Seems like you’re moving too fast,” he jokes.

“Sod off,” you say as your cheeks heat. “You’re the bloody one who bought plane tickets without asking me first. What if I said no?”

“You wouldn’t have,” he says, and he states it like it’s a fact.

Lacking a rebuttal, you shove your face in the crook of his neck. And the two of you stay there, content because you’re in one another’s arms.  

When your supposedly absent boss Tina walks into Perennial Pages an hour later with a half-eaten bagel and a cup of chai tea from the bakery next door, your mouth hangs open in shock.

“I thought you were visiting your sister in Carlisle?” 

Tina looks at your hands, which are entwined with Wilbur’s. Her initial reaction is a soft smile, one that hints at knowing that this would happen before you did. When she looks back up at his face, she confirms your suspicions. 

“Congratulations. I told you she’d say ‘yes’ anyway.”

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Masterlist

“What if I slept a little more and forgot about all this nonsense.”

— Franz Kafka

i think about this a lot

. ˚₊ 🪀 ꒱ im going through wilbur brainrot so… have this! inspired by his ‘E’ challenge video w tommy :)

‧₊◜ # ‘minecraft challenges w cc!wilbur’ hc’s !

━━━ . ˚₊ ꒱ by DREAMWVRLD

you and wilbur have done some of his 100 player challenges before, but none solely between just the two of you.

so as expected: this challenge is quite chaotic.

Keep reading

ppl who don't get cats will try to argue that cats don't love you meanwhile cats will cry and cry and cry and cry like the world is ending until you hold them like a baby and give them a kissy on their perfect lil forehead

“I’m a really good lawyer.”

ozymandias | w.s.

Pairing: college student au!Wilbur Soot x reader; no Y/N, gender-neutral (no pronouns mentioned)

Synopsis: In class, your eyes spot a handsome stranger. Distracted, you try to pay attention attention to Professor Technoblade and his teaching assistant Nihachu, but you can’t seem to focus on anything but that student.

Warnings: some cursing, cameos from Technoblade and Niki, oc friend called Jamie, failed attempted British slang terms from an American author

Word Count: 3.0k

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Masterlist

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Professor Technoblade begins the second lecture of the year for European Literature with an unwavering smile. His eyes wander across the room. Internally, he begins a psychoanalysis of his students. It’s only natural, really, since the young professor also teaches Intro to Psychology. At least that’s what he tells himself. 

“Damn,” he mutters under his breath. Technoblade turns to his teaching assistant Nihachu, who goes by Niki, and says, “I was wrong. Remember my hypothesis about half of the students leaving by the second lesson? Only around a quarter of the original class left.”

Niki, who stands closer to the students sitting in the rows of the small auditorium, makes sure to keep her voice low as she replies, “You have too little faith. Besides, around half a dozen students are already watching you, waiting for class to start.”

When she scans through the students in the center of the seating area, she adds, “Look at the people in the middle row. They’re all staring at that one student with the beige tote bag.”

Technoblade stares at how the student in question waves their arms in the air to exaggerate whatever they are discussing. It's quite an animated gesture, but it gives him a little more information about their personality. Since not many college students take European Literature at the level he teaches, the classes are often small. And so, Technoblade finds himself making meaningful academic connections with his students every term; he’ll get to know his students’ individual behaviors long before exam season.

“They’re having quite the heated conversation,” the professor says, all the while observing how a student clad in a beanie has been staring non-stop at the one making overt hand gestures.

Suddenly, Niki corrects her previous hypothesis. Squinting her eyes at the students before them, she says, “You know what? I take back when I said that it's everyone in the middle row, because I think that the only person listening to the one making hand gestures is the other student sitting right next to them. You know, the one with the pink headband.”

“You’re right about that, but I think you’ve missed something,” Technoblade says, thinking back to his previous observations of the boy staring at the expressive student with the tote bag. “Look at that guy sitting in the row directly beneath them.”

“The beanie-clad student?”

Technoblade nods. “I wonder if the one making hand gestures knows that the one in the beanie is listening.”

It's a rhetorical question, so Niki doesn’t answer him. Instead, the teaching assistant glances at the large analog clock that hangs on the wall just to the left of the blackboard. It’s fifteen past two o’clock in the afternoon. Technoblade’s gaze follows Niki’s.

Niki asks, “Well then, should we start now or wait in the hopes that more people will walk through those doors?” 

She points to the doors, located a yard or two away from their spot of conversation by Technoblade’s desk.

“Thanks for keeping me in check,” Technoblade says with a laugh. “The school would put me under if they discovered that I people-watch more than I teach these college students,” he pauses, then renders the next phrase sarcastic as he inflates his voice, “the profound literature of Europe.” 

And so, before you can finish your harsh opinions regarding the five-page essay your Greek Mythology professor assigned the day before, Niki clears her throat. It’s a rather loud action, too, and so it has an immediate impact of piercing the noise of the room. 

You whisper to your friend from high school, Jamie, that you’ll fill her in later as Technoblade stands up from his desk. As the professor walks over to the large blackboard at the front of the room, you shove your phone into your beige tote bag and glance down at the professor and teaching assistant standing a few meters away from you.

“Good afternoon.”

You and the students before him echo the introduction in a monotone manner. 

He continues, “Last class was for introductions and the syllabus. From now on, we’ll delve into actual content. Today, it’ll be ‘Ozymandias,’ a poem which I’m sure you all are quite familiar with.”

The students in the rows above him groan. Your ears pick up on how a particularly deep voice is amongst the voices, but you decide to shove those thoughts away. Instead, you try to focus on analyzing the personality of Technoblade to see how you should behave in his class.

Unsurprised at the reaction, the professor says with a shrug, “Well, your responses sure aren’t unique, I hear this every year. I guess you know of the poem from high school?”

Most of the people in the room nod. Just as you attempt to nod as well, your attention is suddenly caught by a student sitting in the row below you, a mere three seats away. The angle that you’re sitting at is perfect to take in their side profile and attire.

They’re wearing a burgundy beanie and a pair of thin-framed, round glasses sits on their nose. And what a pretty nose it is, sloped at a straight angle that disappears under their mask. Oh, and their hair, wavy with a fringe that half-falls out of the front of the beanie, so long that it nearly covers their eyes. Their clothing matches an aesthetic that your brain can only label as academia, one that screams of all kinds of brown trench coats and beige button-ups. 

You close your eyes to avoid getting caught staring in the rare chance that they look up in your direction. You inhale rather sharply, muttering under your breath, “Christ, they’re fit.”

Before you can get infatuated, you rip your gaze away from whoever they are and drop your right elbow onto your lap, leaning over to press your cheek against your right hand so that your hand effectively blocks your view of the pretty stranger. Of course, you can still see them if you turn your head a few centimeters to the right, but you choose to ignore that by focusing on the lecture for once.

Technoblade is in the middle of a sentence when you redirect your attention to him, but you can gather that he’s recited the poem from how it is plastered over the wall that the projector to the left of his desk faces. 

“Now, from the nods I’ve received earlier, I can gather that most of you already know about what ‘Ozymandias’ means in terms of the words in the poem. But it’s probably to a very superficial extent, but that’s fine since that’s going to change after today. You see, ‘Ozymandias’ is a poem that describes the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II. Why, then, are the poems dubbed ‘Ozymandias’ and not ‘Ramesses II?’ Well, the name Ozymandias is Greek for Ramesses II, that’s why.”

Niki walks over to the computer that Technoblade is using to project “Ozymandias” and scrolls up. She highlights the name “Percy Bysshe Shelley” and then the year 1818, both facts displayed under the title. 

Once Niki’s finished, Technoblade adds, “In order to dissect a poem’s meaning, you cannot solely look at the words. Context, specifically historical context, is what you should all be focusing on. European Literature is a class involving studies of written works throughout history, and those works have been written by authors who drew upon the history known to them at the time of their writing and emulated opinions regarding those events in their writing, which we examine today.”

In your overflowing binder which you still haven’t cleaned out since last semester, you flip to a random page and write “Ozymandias” on the header. You draw a bullet point with the words “historical context” and nothing else.

You look at your paper with the slightest of smiles, amused by your lack of care. You send a silent thanks to your guidance counselor, whether it was an intentional move or not, for creating a schedule with many courses that reflect the timetable of your college friend, Jamie, who sits in the chair to your left. 

When Jamie looks up, you say, “Look at my half-assed attempt at notes.”

She shrugs and says, “It’s better than no notes.”

“Touché,” you say, staring at her lack of material. “Well, at least we’re here at all. I mean, if I’m paying nearly 30 grand for a college education, I might as well not skip.”

You and Jamie are startled out of your short side conversation when the horrendous sound of chalk scratching against the blackboard begins to ring throughout the classroom. Technoblade, whose handwriting is notably just as bad as the sound of the chalk, has written: Diodorus Siculus. 

With the name written down, the professor continues his lecture. He says, “I’ve written the spelling of Diodorus Siculus out for future reference. Who was he? A historian. An ancient Greek one who reported in his Bibliotheca historica that at the base of a statue of Ramesses II, there was an inscription. The engraved words stated: ‘King of Kings Ozymandias am I. If any want to know how great I am and where I lie, let him outdo me in my work.’”

Niki taps on the professor’s shoulder and begins to whisper something in his ear. You take the interruption in Technoblade’s lecture as a reminder to continue taking notes. 

As you jot down a few bullet points about Diodorus Siculus from Technoblade, your eyes can’t help but wander. It’s as if they have a mind of their own, honestly. But on second thought, you think that even if you did have firm control of your eyes, you would choose to ogle at the cute stranger anyway. 

Your center of attention, the pretty student, shifts out of the corner of your eye. Subsequently, your hand momentarily stops writing to stare at a particularly interesting piece of their wavy brown hair. It juts out of the beanie and obscures their vision. Although they move to shove the hair out of their eyes and back into the beanie, it falls back down again until they give up and let their hair win the battle. 

“Good grief,” you sigh. The sound is accompanied by a much stronger swear as you mull over your actions for a few more seconds. 

Jamie furrows her brows and tilts her head.

In response to her visible confusion, you say, “I’ve spent a good two minutes just staring at that hair.” 

You nod toward the student who has caught your affection attention. Jamie squints, then lets out a sigh as she shakes her head. 

Following the slightest of an exasperated smile, Jamie says, “Okay?”

“You have nothing else to add?”

“No.” 

“Really?”

“Mate, it’s good hair, but they look like every other white boy.”

You can’t deny it.

From Jamie’s tone of voice, you could tell that she is aware of your fascination with the handsome student. Unlike you, your crush seems to be paying proper attention to Technoblade. You follow their gaze back to Technoblade’s collared dress shirt and freshly pressed navy trousers. Although you’re not opposed to his professional attire, you can’t help but decide that the beanie-clad student below you is dressed far better. Unfortunately, Technoblade does not wait for you to finish your silent comparison of his clothing to the pretty stranger. 

The professor continues his speech, saying, “Shelley, the aforementioned author of ‘Ozymandias,’ was inspired by Siculus. Oh, and before I forget, I mentioned before that there were two Ozymandias poems. It’s true, since Shelley and his friend Horace Smith indulged in a writing competition together where they both described Ozymandias. Anyway, side note aside, Shelley was trying to convey a particular theme through his words. What was it, then?”

Technoblade pauses in his verbal explanations and picks up the chalk again, much to his students’ collective exaggerated despair. You copy what he’s written on the blackboard onto your notes without a verbal complaint this time, writing, “theme: all power is temporary, regardless of a ruler’s extensive ego or control.”

The professor drops the chalk down and returns to his initial spot by his laptop. He scrolls down to the bottom half of the poem and reads some lines aloud. “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains.” 

Technoblade gazes into the crowd of students before him, and asks, “Can someone take a shot at explaining the juxtaposition here?”

When no one offers to do so after 11 excruciatingly long seconds, you pity the professor and raise your hand. Technoblade’s sour expression turns grateful and he nods for you to state your opinion.

You say, “Well, Shelley paints Ramesses II out to be prideful. After all, Ramesses calls himself a ‘king of kings’ in the inscription described on the pedestal of the visage, and yet, the previous theme is reflected in that there is ‘nothing beside’ the visage to ‘despair’ as Ramesses claimed. So, the juxtaposition is that Ramesses brags about being great, yet his legacy gave way to nothing that has withstood the test of time. Additionally, the statue is described to be ‘half sunk’ and ‘shattered,’ and therefore ruined and forgotten, which is another set of contrasting qualities.”

Silence stretches across the classroom, and then slow applause comes from Niki. 

“Great interpretation,” Technoblade says, with nothing else to add.

“For lack of a better word, I think he got startled at my talented analysis,” you whisper to Jamie. 

“Talented, my foot,” she responds, and the two of you attempt to hold back your laughter with poorly-disguised coughs.

Suddenly, the deep voice from earlier says, “If I may add?”

Your brows furrow, as you have no idea who just spoke.

Technoblade replies, “Of course.”

“While the poem focuses on Ramesses II or Ozymandias, there lies a greater implication that it is all rulers who will undergo the same fate, including political authorities and monarchies. Like King George III, for example, who had a reputation for tyrannical behavior. I mean, it was around the end of George’s reign that this poem was written.”

The speaker trails off, glancing at Technoblade for approval to continue.

“Holy shit, the pretty stranger is the deep voice from earlier!” You swear under your breath, tracing the voice back to the beanie-clad student that you’ve been attempting to avoid looking at. You’ve been failing, of course, and this newfound discovery of their objectively nice voice stirs your impression of them further. 

When Technoblade nods for them to continue, they say, “At the time, George really could have been considered the most powerful man alive, with the 13 colonies spread across North America and other smatterings of colonies across the western hemisphere. Of course, his name was smeared by the ultimate success of the American Revolution by Americans who did not ‘despair’ in the face of his ‘works,’ thus rendering George’s legacy as nothing but a sign of failure.”

As if right on cue, smoke detectors begin to ring just as the pretty stranger’s response ends. There is nothing you wish more to do than get to know the well-dressed student who you’ve been obsessing over throughout the lesson. 

“Damn, must be that culinary class again.” Technoblade bites his tongue to avoid saying any stronger swears. “And with that, I’m taking that as a sign that our lesson is over. Nothing’s due for next class. Office hours are open today at 4, but don’t come unless you bring me a cup of earl grey. No sugar or milk or cream, just black. If the building burns down, there will be no office hours. Au revoir.”

With that, students around you stand up, lugging their bags over their shoulders for lunch. The attractive student is among them, and as you realize how tall they are, you fall even more for them. 

“Blimey,” you say, unable to hold yourself back as you turn toward Jamie. If you could inconspicuously fan yourself right now, you would. “The super low voice is the handsome stranger? And the handsome stranger is smart as hell? Intelligence has never looked this,” you pause, then settle for the word “delicious.”

“You’re so fuckin’ weird, you know that?” Jamie says with her back turned to you. She’s sorting the items in the chair to the left of her, where her jacket and other objects lay. After shrugging her jacket onto her shoulders, she grabs her backpack and faces you as she stands up.

“Oh, but you love me, Jamie. You’re my person, my best friend. Your only friend, really.” You do not pause to let her refute your claims and instead shove your notebook and laptop into your shoulder-destroying tote bag. “Besides, I’m hungry. Food is on my mind. Lunch in the city?”

“Lunch in the city,” she affirms with a nod, then with the slightest of smirks.

Your brows furrow at her expression, wondering why Jamie has such a dastardly smile plastered over her face. 

Suddenly, someone taps your shoulder, and you turn around. Your eyes meet chocolate brown ones. 

“Wilbur Soot, he/him.”

Your eyes widen at the pretty beanie-clad student, shocked by his forward behavior. Internally, you question why the cute stranger before you would want to talk to you. It would have taken you several classes in order for you to muster the courage to ask when an assignment was due. 

Spluttering due to your juvenile crush, all you can say after sharing your name and pronouns, is, “I thought you left.”

With a grin, he says, “Couldn’t leave you without your deep-voiced, intelligent, handsome stranger now, could I?”

When he steps forward, you can see his light brown eyes glitter, highlighted by the weak glow from the dull lights in the classroom. A gorgeous smattering of freckles lies across his cheeks like the stars in the night sky. His cheeks are reddening by the second and his lips are turning up at the corners. If a smile could melt you, it would be this one. 

Wilbur Soot is even prettier up close. 

“I know, love,” he says, with a cheeky smirk that causes your heart to spasm. “Go on a date with me?”

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Next on the semi-related Wilbur Soot series: Perennial Pages

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