Summary: Spencer accidentally calls Reader by a different name... in front of the entire class. When he begins avoiding her, she confronts him.
A/N: I've warned you all before but I'll do it again - I HEAVILY moderate my comments. Disparaging comments will be deleted. I do not write perfect characters. If you are looking for characters who never make mistakes, then go read some Mary Sue story. There are thousands of them.
This chapter contains heavy topics, many of which are personal to me. Inappropriate comments or jokes that make me uncomfortable will be removed (this may come as a surprise to you, but Wattpad comments are not a stand-up comedy stage for the audience). Keep in mind I read every comment, and I am a person with human emotions. Thank you!
Content Warnings: Embarrassment, begging, kissing, apprehension, fingering, verbal altercation, sexual regret. NOTE, there is a completely optional scene at the end of the chapter. There will be separate CWs for it when it comes.
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I'd never been a morning person before; something about the early sun unsettled me. For a long time, I'd convinced myself that I was a creature meant to inhabit the shade. That foregone fate was one of the biggest reasons I was afraid of the dark. I didn't want to submit to the shadows quite yet. I'd come closer with each passing year.
But when I met my Persephone, everything changed. I turned leaves on white poplar trees to find vibrant green. I discovered that the dull, discolored bark was embedded with diamonds. Beauty was in everything, evergreen like cypress trees that embodied love with nowhere else to go.
The sunlight stubbornly burst through wooden slats covered with curtains, unwilling and unable to stop until it touched my fingertips reaching for it across the wood.
It reached me the same time she did, with a wide smile to disguise sleepy eyes.
"Good morning, Professor!"
I smiled, too, because how could I not?
"You seem chipper for a girl I know for a fact didn't get any sleep last night."
"It can still be a good morning, right?" she asked, marching over to the windows and flipping the slats to bring the sunshine in with her. She still cringed when the brightness hit her, but I accepted the warm embrace of the light.
"Was it not a good night?" I returned. The question caught her off-guard, but she had always been quick on her feet.
"It was," she sneakily simpered.
"Good," I said as I stood from my seat. The action seemed to set off something inside of her, because I could actually see the muscles in her arms and neck tense at the movement.
Her little hummingbird heartbeat was going absolutely wild in her throat, and her eyes were equally restless. She blinked quickly, then not at all. She just stared at me while I tried not to ogle her deer-in-the-headlights posture more than necessary.
Although rare, death by shock had been documented in rabbits. Especially young bunnies.
But it was too tempting not to tease her. I couldn't look at her wringing fingers and bitten lip and not want to torment her a little bit longer. To see how she would react when denied the thing she'd finally worked up the nerve to ask for.
So, I didn't hug her, despite her stepping directly into my path. I stepped beside her with my hand resting gently against her lower back. I urged her to follow me like there wasn't unfinished business behind the thick, wooden doors.
"Wait, Professor!" she huffed, digging her heels into the floor and turning to me with her best pleading look to date. She didn't stop there, either. My bunny took a firm step forward, blocking my exit completely and demanding my full attention as she tried to be bold.
"A-Aren't you forgetting something?"
"Am I?"
I'd meant the intonation to illustrate just how sarcastic I was being, but the poor thing seemed to take the challenge to heart. Her spirits fell at the same rate her hands raised to her chest and wound together. She freed two fingers and began patting them together as she murmured, "A promise, perhaps?"
"Was it a promise?" I asked, and she heard the affection in my voice that time.
Her eyes lit back up like the sunrise over dewy fields, and I finally understood why the songbird sings.
"It was," she chirped.
When I opened my arms to her, she had no hesitation. She practically leapt between them and threw her own around me before I could even set down the papers I was holding. I took my time enjoying the koala-esque grip of the girl, only setting down the papers on the desk because they'd gotten in her way.
I laughed as she hummed and nuzzled her face against my shirt. There was no other way that I knew to express the joy bubbling through my chest. I had no physical nor verbal language that could correctly capture that feeling.
It may be a crude and stereotypical comparison, to liken myself to a computer — but I felt the current between us like lightning. I felt myself become more alive the longer she held me, with hands clutching and releasing fabric like each attempt might bring me closer.
I rested my head against hers, breathing in the distinct smell of soap and perfume. I, too, pressed harder against her, hoping that she could imprint on me in more ways than one. I thought of how later that day, the breeze might blow me a kiss that smelled like her on my skin.
That was the moment I realized that, in all of her enthusiasm, I'd yet to even return the hug. My hands were more hesitant than hers, but they made their way around her, nonetheless. I treated her gently, because I'd meant it when I said that was what she deserved.
Gentle, but firm in my desire to be near to her. To share this space, this breath, this body in a way I'd rarely experienced with anyone else.
She sighed, the warmth tickling my skin through the fabric, and I similarly felt her eyelids flutter shut as she, too, found peace in the embrace.
I couldn't be sure how long we stayed like that, with hands and hearts full of one another, but I was the one to break the silence. As we barely started to sway under the weight of everything, I whispered the only thought I could think.
"How could I ever forget you?"
When she answered, there was a sadness in her voice that I hadn't expected.
"Professor?" she called.
"Hm?"
Without moving or allowing me any hint of what emotions were undoubtedly displayed in her eyes, she vaguely stated, "I missed you."
I knew what she'd meant, but the reminder brought pain where I wanted there to be only happiness. So, I cautiously clucked my tongue before answering, "Silly Bunny, I haven't gone anywhere."
That might've been a stretch of the truth for what she was referring to, but it'd certainly been true in the moment. If anything, I'd only held her closer. I was surprised that we were both still capable of breathing, but I credited that to our body's natural understanding of how to move as one. As her lungs emptied, mine filled, creating the illusion of the two-headed monster often referred to as lovers.
Her voice was small but powerful in its breathiness.
"You're softer than I expected," she dreamily explained as she drew patterns against my back. Before I could ask her to expand, she did it on her own.
"It's a good thing," she assured me.
I believed her. She could have said nothing else, and I would've written it off as a mere preference of a physique. But she seemed to sense that I hadn't understood her point still, and her frustration came out in the form of three truly baffling words.
"It feels... safe."
That, I knew, I would never understand. The goosebumps that tore over my skin were as much out of affection as they were fear. The inertia carried me away from her — my arms retreating quickly as I cleared my heart from its place in my throat.
My Bunny was calmer than I'd ever seen her, with a sleepy hint to all of her features and a dopey smile on her face. I stared for a moment longer, unafraid of the fact she would see me because I wanted to be sure that I would never, ever forget a single detail of her face in that moment.
Her hands rose and rested against her chest, holding herself like it might keep the ghost of me there longer.
She said nothing, but the clock continued to warn us of the world raging on outside.
"We should, um... we shouldn't keep them waiting," I announced, although I really didn't want to. I wanted to keep us both there, shielded behind closed doors and holding each other.
She didn't put up anything resembling a fight, and I tried to follow her example. We both picked up papers and started to make our way to the classroom like every other day.
But it wasn't like every other day. How was I meant to focus, knowing that she was behind me? Watching me with eyes filled with admiration and an understanding of what lie behind my defenses. Knowing about the rhythm of my heartbeat and the way my hands roamed. How could I care about teaching anyone anything, when I could be holding her instead?
I'd run on autopilot so many times, I thought that I could make it.
I was wrong.
With a tired but still smitten voice, I called to the girl in the back row as I finished scribbling mostly illegible writing on the board.
"Would you pass out those papers for me, Bunny?"
It wasn't even the sound of my own voice uttering that nickname that caught my attention. I'd adopted it into my regular vernacular so pervasively that I didn't even realize I'd made a mistake — not until I was met with a stunned silence behind my back. Not until I turned to make eye contact with that poor girl as her pencil fell from between her fingers.
"Y-Yes, sir, Professor!" she said a little too loudly, her voice careening and breaking with each added syllable. She nervously flittered over the room just like that, and I only found it possible to look away from her state of panic because of the knowing stares that had all fallen on me.
I stood front and center, watching sharp, judgmental eyes misjudge the girl who'd done nothing wrong. I felt them like needles in my skin, digging deeper with each scoff or giggle that seemed to never end.
Although I was able to turn back around and begin speaking again like nothing had happened, my mind never once switched off the mistake over the course of the hour. The sheer lack of luck that I must've been made with for everything to unravel like this. I'd known all along that it was dangerous to refer to her as something so blatantly affectionate, but I'd also foolishly thought that I was smarter than that.
What a fool I was, expecting my mind to ever work right when it came to her. I desperately wanted to rewind time to before the tragedy, to free her from the giggles and whispers that would follow. To free myself from the temptation to take her now that I'd already ruined her several times over.
But when she approached me as the students left, with a grimace and shaking hands, I couldn't handle it.
"Professor, I'm sorry about—"
"I can't talk right now," I said, forcing my eyes off the pitiful sight of my own transgressions and sweeping all of the piles of papers into my own arms. She saw me trying to shake her like the autumn winds had torn the last stubborn leaves from naked branches.
"Okay, but I think we need to talk about it," she said with broken words that I suspect matched the feeling in my chest.
I made another mistake, looking up at her and witnessing the consequences of my actions. The desperation and longing flashing behind glassy but effervescent eyes. I could practically hear her begging for me to let her try to help. She wanted so badly to cradle my head against her heart and show me how she might still be able to make it better somehow. That she might be able to save me somehow.
But that wasn't her job. I wasn't her responsibility.
"Not right now," I said.
And I ran. Like the coward I'd always been, I ran from her and hoped that she'd had the self-preservation and mercy to let me go for good.
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I had never been a particularly brave person when it came to myself. To many, the most notable accomplishment of mine wasn't even anything I'd done, but rather, my avoidance of doing something. The failure to hand over the one thing that they wanted most from me. Their fascination hadn't been with me, but instead about what about me they could claim and consume.
Spencer had once casually likened me to a flower, and I'd since wondered what kind. I had a feeling it would be one where the petals were plucked easily between naive fingers. My downfall, a spectacle before others, to the tune of 'he loves me, he loves me not.'
It wasn't easy for me to stand up for myself, even when I'd done nothing wrong. But as I stood outside of his office that day, it felt like I was doing something wrong. Not necessarily making a mistake, or anything close to regrettable, but too taboo for someone like me.
I knew it was silly to think of it all that way — I was usually the first one to point out that the very notion of virginity was a ruse intended to liken women to objects rather than conscious beings. The myth of purity, I knew, was exactly that: a false ideation to force compliance.
I knew that sex wasn't tied to morality, and that I could be both evil and a virgin just as easily as I could be a martyr and a harlot. So why was the idea that I might lose any part of it so unbelievably petrifying?
My legs felt like they were encased in lead, but when I glanced down, I saw the bare skin of my thighs peeking out between socks and skirt. I felt the heat filling every inch of me, and I knew that if I didn't act soon, I would surely burn and turn to ashes on his office doorstep.
All I had to do was tell him how I felt. He'd done it to me a number of times before that moment. Just the night before he'd demanded all of my attention an hour after he'd backed me against my car and implied that I was welcome in his bed.
Or, I had completely misinterpreted everything, and was about to initiate my own demise. Either way, it had to happen then. Thanksgiving break was only a week away, and I refused to go through the whole holiday worrying about what was waiting for me back at work.
That potential, dreadful reality brought my hand to the handle. My feet almost moved too fast for the speed with which I opened the door, and as a result I stumbled rather gracelessly into his office.
A poor start, which was only made worse by the greeting I'd received from the man behind the desk.
"I can't talk right now," Spencer replied, refusing to even look up. I suspect he'd been waiting for this.
I knew I had, but for another reason.
He kept his eyes on the desk and his hand shielded his eyes from detecting me, even just through his peripherals. He hid away from me like it would be enough to dissuade me.
He was wrong. He thought too little of me.
"Fine," I said in a voice that hardly sounded like my own, "Then... w-we don't have to talk."
"Listen, Bunny..."
But the thing was, if he wasn't going to listen to me, I certainly didn't want to hear what he had to say. I'd heard all of his excuses before. I wasn't an idiot; I knew what was holding him back. He'd worn the guilt and shame on his sleeve like a badge of honor.
Spencer Reid could pretend all he wanted, but I knew the truth of how it felt when he touched me — when he so much as looked at me. The way his voice changed to a melodic tune and his laughter became freer and more easily earned. I'd been on the receiving end of his desire, and I wore the bruises to prove it.
I was done waiting. I wanted my answer. An honest end to the question I'd been asking myself ever since the day I'd met him.
Do you want me like I want you?
I repeated it in my mind like he'd be able to hear. He couldn't, but I caught his attention, nonetheless. The sound of rustling fabric and heavy breathing brought his eyes to me for the first time since it'd happened.
His eyes grew wide, and I swore I saw his pupils reflexively shrink from the brightness just before they doubled in size at the sight of my shirt already half-unbuttoned.
"What are you doing?" he asked, his voice lacking fear and carrying a different anxiety in its place.
I didn't stop moving closer, and my fingers continued to fumble with the buttons until I felt the cool embrace of chilly air against my stomach. But while I continued to approach him, Spencer seemed paralyzed in place. The only things that had moved were his eyes and his mouth, both of which tried and failed to focus on one thing at a time.
My hands fell away from the opened shirt and dropped to his hand gripping the armrest closest to me. I tried to pick it up, but he remained steadfast. So, I just held onto him there. I wasn't able to withstand the scrutiny of his stare well enough to speak, so I turned my face away before I did.
"Touch me."
I held my breath, and I heard him do much the same. It explained why when he answered, he did so in such a quiet, strained voice, I'd barely heard it.
"What?"
"I know you want to do it, a-and... I want you to do it," I stammered, clutching tighter to his hand like that might make him move, "So touch me. Please."
It was less an order and more of a beg. A sad, desperate attempt to remedy the tension between us. Even if he'd said no, I just needed to hear an honest answer from his mouth. I needed to know if it really was all in my head, or if there was a chance that he might let me love him like I'd wanted to.
As if to prove my point, Spencer let out a long, somber sigh before he murmured, "Bunny..."
The name would normally bring me happiness, but in that moment, it only served to upset me. It was a constant reminder of the problem that seemed to have no solution other than blind hope and begging.
"Don't you see, Professor? That right there — that's not normal!" I cried before biting my tongue, trying to stop actual tears from falling as I tried to appeal to him. "You keep telling me that you can't, but you've never once said that you didn't want to, and it's not fair that y-you get to make all those decisions without me!"
"I don't know what to tell you—" he started, but I cut him off by finally, successfully lifting his hand from the chair. His fingers flexed but did nothing to stop me. Not even as I brought it to my skin.
"Don't tell me anything just..."
Spencer watched as I moved his palm over the soft skin of my stomach. I guided him over areas I'd seen him try to memorize, and I reveled in the warmth provided.
"Please," I pleaded, "I need you to touch me."
His reaction was delayed, his control over his muscles only returning when his fingertips grazed over the fabric of my bra. That damned garment was all it took to bring him back to reality, and Spencer's hands immediately tried to cover his face again.
"Это пиздец (This is fucked up)," he groaned in a language I couldn't place. I could tell from the sheer force behind the words that they weren't portraying kind feelings, but the frustration told me they weren't all bad, either.
While he rubbed his temples, his eyes made their way back to me. They caressed each inch of skin on display just as he'd wished his hands could do a thousand times before.
"Professor, please. I'm begging you," I said. The request would have been meaningless if not paired with action, so I did that, too. With shaky legs and an even more precarious tilt to my tone, I climbed onto his lap with absolutely no resistance from the man.
"I-I... I want you, Professor," I whispered, "Please, believe me."
Unable or unwilling to focus with my body on display for him, Spencer both threw his head back and clenched his eyes shut with his hands over them as he practically sobbed, "этот заяц будет моим концом (This rabbit will be the end of me)."
Whatever the words had meant, his hands made their own statement. They flowed from his face and fell to his lap where I rested. He couldn't avoid touching me then, so he did, cautiously caressing my thighs with hands that shook just as badly as mine.
It felt familiar but exhilarating in an entirely new way. Beneath me, I also felt his erection straining in his pants. I could feel it twitch against me at the same time he opened his eyes and saw me, panting and wanting just as he'd left me.
He tried to look away again, but I caught his face in my hands. I led him back to me and inched closer, trying to close the gap as much as I could without losing sight of those vast universes within the taupe ripples.
"Do you want me like I want you?" I asked, hoping I might finally get my answer. In a way, I did.
"ты не знаешь, что ты просишь от меня (You don't know what you're asking of me)," was the garbled noise I'd heard.
Although I didn't understand a word of it, I saw the longing in hazel irises that had locked onto my own. I saw the intention to stay forever in his eyes, and I wanted nothing more than for him to see the same thing. To let himself believe what he saw without question.
When my fingertips brushed over his cheeks, Spencer's eyes fluttered shut for just a few seconds before they found me again. Each second that passed, I felt closer to the man in front of me in both a physical and metaphorical sense. His pulse so fast and so hard that I could feel it against my wrist, and I found the urge to kiss his neck until it calmed almost irresistible.
But somehow, I managed. I maintained a single inch of distance between our lips as I leaned my forehead against his and allowed my own eyes to close for the first time since we'd started. As much as I wanted him to see the confidence with which I spoke, I was too afraid that I would find a retort in his eyes.
"You can speak in tongues all you want..." I whispered, shaky but sure, "but I know you, Professor."
I wanted so badly to kiss him, but I didn't. I demanded he do it himself, to take that step or end it all right here. If he truly didn't want me, I wanted to give him an opportunity to prove as much to me.
Spencer made his decision. With soft, hesitant lips against mine, he answered my initial question in the affirmative.
I want you like you want me.
The kiss was so gentle that I could barely feel it. I hardly reacted at all at first, waiting to see if I'd simply misjudged or imagined the feeling. But, just as quickly as I'd started to doubt myself, Spencer's hands became ruthless once more.
Short nails dug into my skin and caused a high-pitched yelp to echo off our walls. From that point on, it seemed that causing chaos to the tune of my voice was all he'd wanted to do. He left angry welts in wake of his hands until one eventually tangled in my hair. His mouth was equally ravenous, biting down on my lip when it didn't open fast enough for him.
"You want me to touch you, Bunny?" he asked, smirking against my mouth stuck open in a broken cry. He knew I couldn't answer him yet, so he took the time to lift me off his lap and slam me onto his desk before he asked again, "Answer me, is that what you want?"
There wasn't a single shred of doubt in my answer that I nearly screamed, "Yes! Yes, please, Professor!"
The noise was only kept away from nosy neighbors by the scratchiness caused by the extensive overuse of my lungs. An overexertion that would only grow exponentially worse when I heard Spencer laugh; bitter, broken, and low.
"Touch you, or fuck you?"
On instinct, my hand shot down to grab his wrist as it slid under my skirt with ease. Spencer halted his actions, but his words grew louder and more insistent in my ear.
"Because that's what I want to do to you, Bunny. I want to hold you down and fuck you until you break. I want to defile you beyond recognition."
When his fingers twitched against my thigh, I pulled them closer to my throbbing heat. I gasped when he pressed hard against the flimsy fabric, but the sound wasn't enough. He needed me to repeat it, louder and more enthusiastically. So, he grabbed hold of my hair once again with his free hand and forced my head back to achieve his desired result.
Then, when I was at his mercy with my hips rocking against his hand and tears stinging at lust-filled eyes, he growled, "I want to fucking ruin you."
I tried to respond— I really, really did. But the only sound that came out was an unintelligible whimper as his finger continued to stroke harshly against underwear that was quickly growing damp from his attention.
Out of breath and patience, Spencer continued quieter, "Is that what you want from me, Bunny?"
I couldn't trust my mouth to make any words, so I tried to guide him in other ways. My hands slid over the tense, twitching muscles in his arm still fixed between my thighs. Without a word, I pushed him closer, rewarding him with a quiet squeak or moan when his fingers toyed with the side of the fabric and came closer to doing what I'd wanted them to.
It still wasn't enough for him. The vague excitement in his eyes was buried beneath a persistent guilt, but I could still see it. I could taste the true power that he'd tried so hard to keep locked away. I wasn't sure what else I could do besides returning to my literal, desperate begging, but thankfully, I didn't have to guess.
"Tell me what you want," he pleaded, "I want a reason to give it to you so fucking badly."
Drunk and delirious from his touch, I slurred my response as clearly as my lips would allow, "You, please, God. I want you."
Our eyes were locked, and our breaths were practically synchronized in their chaotic patterns. Spencer stopped, taking the time to analyze each atom of my expression with more scrutiny than I'd thought possible. And although I should've been terrified, I wasn't. I wore my lust like a crown of thorns, daring him to doubt how badly I craved him.
He never once stopped looking at me, even when his finger finally slipped past the last remaining barrier and slid through slick folds. The pleasure derived from the mere anticipation of his touch in such an intimate place shot through me like lightning. I cried out to him, but my hands were sliding over loose papers on his desk.
Spencer, sensing that I'd needed something to ground me, wrapped his other arm around my waist and pulled me against him on the edge. The jolt of movement muddled the sensations between my legs so well that I barely noticed the sting when his finger finally pressed between tight, resistant muscles.
"Relax, sweetheart," he instructed between light kisses against my forehead.
"I can't," I keened, my back arching to move away from the intrusion. But my hips rolled forward, causing my whole body to squirm in his embrace that became more confident by the second.
"I know you can, little Bunny" he cooed in a way that almost felt like mockery. But I couldn't deny my body's response to the encouragement. After each wave of tension in my legs followed a brief pause, a fluttering that would eventually allow space for a second eager finger.
Spencer chuckled again, pressing a sloppy kiss against the side of my lips like anything closer would break his concentration. I knew he could see his title on my tongue, but the clever bastard curled his fingers inside of me just as I went to call to him.
He smiled, watching each of my naive, overly excited responses like I was his favorite subject of study. He would pause, releasing hold of my body to brush away strands of hair that got in the way of his admiration. His lips would break to litter my cheeks with kisses.
The harder I started to shake, the faster his fingers would thrust inside of me. With each motion, he would pause, gently stroking against a spot that made my whole body shiver. When my nails dug into his shoulders to try to hold on to my sanity, he winced from the pain but rewarded me with a low, rolling groan.
"Look at that," he praised, "you're doing so well for me."
Every cell in my body was on high alert. My muscles were tensed around his hand tightly enough that I didn't understand how he'd maintained his pace. But then he forced his leg between my knees and forced them open without so much as slowing down.
"I-I..." I started, but my throat closed, refusing to open for anything other than broken cries of pleasure.
Spencer cradled my face and ran his thumb over my bruised bottom lip as he assured me with both his eyes and words, "Shhh. Don't worry; I've got you."
"Professor, I...!" I tried again, finally able to break free of lust's grip on my soul to sob, "Oh, god, please. Don't stop."
That brilliant man heard the way I called for him by title only, and I watched as the idea sparked to life inside of him. His fingers grew even more insistent, and his hand on my jaw pulled me forward at the same time.
"Don't be shy now," he ordered.
I knew exactly what he'd wanted, but I wasn't able to give it to him when his palm began to apply a crushing rolling pressure against the sensitive nub at my center. It was just as soon replaced with his thumb, which was only more practiced in the motion.
"Say it, Bunny," he dared, "Say my name."
My eyes were barely able to stay open as the tightening in my stomach became unbearable. My jaw dropped and my lungs lost their fight to fill enough to stop the room from spinning.
"Spencer."
A tenderness immediately tore through oceans of hazel, but he never once stopped. He just stared, unbroken and filled with adoration as the first wave crashed over me before I said it again.
"Spencer!"
When I tried a third time, riding out the death of some notion of innocence as long as I could, he stopped me. His mouth covered mine without any of the violence and all of the love I knew him capable of. He waited until my muscles had settled into fine tremors before he stopped.
"Хорошая зайка (Good Bunny)," he breathily called as he wiped evidence of what he'd done against my thigh, "Good girl."
The room was quiet except for the sounds of our hearts and lungs trying to return to normal. My vision, however, remained hazy. The lights haloed around him and I wondered if he would ever see what I saw when I looked at him. The unadulterated good that he'd kept sequestered from the rest of us.
It was so rare to see it, and I didn't want to let it go. I was terrified that I would spoil the moment, but I didn't know what else to do. I'd never wanted anything as badly as I wanted to please him and hear more of his praise.
There was an undoubtedly stunned look about him, but it was overall good. Eerily calm in a way I wanted to remedy. But in hindsight, perhaps wanting to fix anything about him was my first fatal mistake.
The second was reaching out to him when I knew my hands were too shaky to be useful. As I tried to unbutton his pants, the only thing I did was signal to him just how untrained I was at our activities of choice.
"Spencer..." I said with a nervous gulp, "I-I want to help you, too."
I just wanted a chance to try. I needed to feel him and see him come undone as he'd been able to with me. I wanted to hold him and bear witness to his unmuted pleasure at my hands. I was greedy and naive. I was stupid and selfish.
I made a mistake.
"Stop."
The word, firm and unforgiving, felt like a punch to my gut. Spencer tore his whole body away from me in such a purely instinctive manner that he'd actually crashed into the chair behind him. He'd managed to stay standing, but only barely.
"But I want to—"
I climbed off the desk as fast as I could, misjudging how pliant my legs had become and almost falling the same way he had. He caught me, but then continued his retreat around the desk. Anywhere to get away from me as he begged, "Please, stop. Don't do this."
"What did I do?" I asked, although I shouldn't have. Not when I wasn't prepared for the answer that was blatantly obvious based on everything about him in that moment.
"This was a mistake." Spencer bristled, his hands running through his hair only to be violently thrown to the side with no apparent thought. His meltdown only grew more furious, with fists pressing against his eyes and his voice fighting itself. "We shouldn't— I-I can't be this person for you."
What was I meant to say?
This was a mistake.
What was I meant to do?
This was a mistake.
"I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have let this happen," he said, like it would do anything to heal the wound he'd just inflicted.
"You didn't make me do anything, Spenc—!" I tried to assure him, I tried to reason with him. But then he spoke again, and any hope I had crumbled like the most fragile dried jasmine.
"Stop calling me that!" he yelled, turning to me with a snarl that carried nothing but disgust. I couldn't hide my anger, then.
"It's your name. You asked me to!"
The reverberated sound of our anger hit him, and for the briefest moment I saw the regret before it faded back to frustration and denial. It had barely taken him five minutes to forget everything we'd shared and replace it with the vilest self-hatred. He learned nothing from my sacrifice and chose only to taint the innocence he'd so readily devoured with spite.
"I'm so sorry, Bunn—" He stopped. "(y/n). Please, just leave."
When I made no such movement, he tried again.
"Please."
"Are you firing me?"
I saw the word 'yes' on his tongue, and it felt like the most horrific, nauseating pain. I watched him fumble back and forth over the line like he always did. I felt it as he only just barely saved the porcelain encasing my heart before it fell away and shattered.
He couldn't look at me anymore.
"No," he corrected his course, but it hardly helped. "No, I'm not mad at you. This isn't your fault. You're not fired I just... I need to be alone."
I need to not be, I thought, but I knew he wouldn't understand.
I need you to want me to stay.
"I'm so sorry," he choked on tears that began falling like the downpour from the first time he'd tried to warn me of the impending storm, "I am so unbelievably fucking sorry."
Maybe it was childish, to continue to fight him, but I wanted him to hurt. I wanted him to at the very least acknowledge what he'd done — what he was choosing to do — to the one person who wanted to love him more than anything.
"Please, at least look at me before you kick me out!" I shouted.
Slowly, and regrettably, Spencer lifted his eyes to meet mine. He saw the life-altering wrath, fury, and scorn. He saw confirmation of every horrible thing he'd ever felt about himself in my eyes, but he didn't look away. He didn't even flinch.
"Please, don't look at me like that," he sobbed in the most unconvincing manner, "I don't want to hurt you."
Each step away from him I took felt like another lost petal.
He loves me.
"You're a little late for that, Professor."
He loves me not.
—————(OPTIONAL SCENE)—————
(Content Warning: panic attack, meltdown, violence, unintentional self-harm (breaking glass), blood, canon-consistent trauma (Tobias, Prison), implied CSA and childhood abuse, implied medical neglect, EXTREME self-hatred, heavy religious symbolism, might be triggering for suicidal tendencies)
—————(OPTIONAL SCENE)—————
If there had ever been a hell, it was hearing the door slam behind her. It was the silence that caused an immediate bombardment of every regrettable encounter I've managed to amass in a pitiful existence spanning only forty years.
I paced, back and forth, the memories of what had just happened flooding back in high-definition. I could still hear her, feel her as she fell apart on my fingers. The sweet, sticky nectar of an eviscerated honeysuckle stuck on my skin.
My hand felt foreign, felt wrong, felt tainted. Tainted with goodness. I felt like I was burning, already half decayed and spitting plumes of smoke in place of carbon dioxide.
Stumbling out of my office, the fluorescent lights of the hallway strongly contrasted the pitch black color behind the windows. I felt like I'd already fallen to the lowest depths, and the empty expanse of tile and brick felt like a labyrinth with no end.
I moved by pure muscle memory, my hands stuck craned and shaking until I found myself in front of the bathroom sink. Refusing to look in the mirror yet, I forced the faucet to the highest possible temperature and watched as steam began to rise from the porcelain.
I drowned my hands in soap like it would help me rid myself of the memory of her voice crying my name. I scrubbed mercilessly at skin until it broke out in purple dots among red welts. Tears dripped from my eyes into the mess of bubbles, blood, and regret.
There was no escaping the bastardization of every good memory through the bad. Her voice calling my name just as quickly turned to her quiet sobs and the slammed door. That sound was so familiar, each one shut set off a chain reaction until I was alone in my bedroom and unable to escape.
No one was coming to save me. I'd thought my dad might, but his hands had never intended to do anything close to healing. My mother, too, though she tried, would willfully misinterpret any bruise on my skin.
Well, it's your own fault, Spencer.
You knew you couldn't climb that high.
Where were you trying to get to, anyway?
Heaven, I thought from the depths of Hell.
I'd wanted to walk among angels dressed in white and have them recognize me as something worth saving.
I'd mistaken the doctors for them once. I'd convinced my mother to take me, with the help of the one woman at school who spoke to me kindly. The one that never met my eyes and never made me hug her. I thought of her when we walked, because at least her ramblings made more sense than my mother's when she was like that.
It's not her fault, either.
You're doing it again.
Stop blaming everyone else for the fact that you're broken.
The guilt was so overwhelming that I'd changed my mind before we even got to the door of the hospital. Suddenly, every conviction I'd had was obliterated by the desire to save my mother like she couldn't do for me. I recalled the lies I'd concocted to convince the doctor that the bruises on my skin and the fractures in young bones were the result of normal boyhood ruckus.
I was ready to tell him, to explain it all away.
But he never asked. All he'd said was, 'He seems perfectly fine.'
That was the day that I realized that my instincts were right.
Broken boys like you are meant to suffer.
I never went back; I never sought the angels again.
Bunny found me, anyway, though. She marched into my life like she'd had every right to be there. Like it wasn't blasphemous for me to even breath the same air as her, to even exist on this earth with her. She'd let me love her and kiss her and take my fill of her innocence.
For the first time since the sin, I forced myself to look in the mirror that wasn't made of her eyes, for they were incapable of showing the truth. Her vision of me was warped with a misunderstanding of godliness. A conflation of piety and malignity.
The man who stared back at me was nothing worth seeing. He was the same one that had ruined everything whenever given the chance. The one who stole precious vials from the corpse of an innocent man he'd just killed. He'd played God to remove the spirit of Raphael, but in the process, he had become him.
The same man who'd allowed himself to pretend to be healed from the wicked poison long enough to find himself behind bars of steel and self-hatred. To contaminate the only anesthetic offered to other evil men in an attempt to play god again. He had become them.
I stared at my reflection until I couldn't any longer. The raw, bloody hand that had been scratched until it broke did the same to the silver-backed contraption hanging from the wall. The high-pitched shattering sounded like chimes from a lullaby that my teacher had once sang to me when she found out I couldn't sleep in my own bed anymore.
It sounded like Bunny's laughter that quickly morphed into her screaming, begging me to see her.
But all I saw was blood and broken glass.
All I saw was a mess that I needed to clean up. It was my own fault, anyway.
Pulling jagged little pieces from my fingers, I calmly wiped away the iron with care not to aggravate the already existing wounds. I wrapped my knuckles with toilet paper in silence, replaying each dressing I'd ever received on the field with something akin to fondness for the memories.
I turned off the faucet and found a closet that looked nothing at all like the first place I'd held her. I grabbed a broom and a dustpan from the room and left the door cracked for my return. Broken glass was swept and thrown away, and the area of the wall where the mirror had hung cast an inverse shadow from years of being hidden away.
As I turned off the light to leave, I thought to myself that it almost looked better that way.