#// Sorry for the disorganized asks but it felt fitting for this guy just being a little confused LOL. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

frxggie · 4 years

Note

Can you do a request where Tamaki, Todoroki, and Aizawa (for Aizawa the reader is a TA for class 1-A) getting hit by a quirk that clones them? The side effect of the clone is it reveals how the real version of themselves feels about the reader, the clone becomes super clingy and you’re just standing there like 😊. While the real version of the clone is dreading their existence and also lowkey jealous that their clone is getting all of your attention. And everyone is just smirking cuz they know why the clone is acting that way. I hope this made sense? Sorry if it didn’t but this has been on my mind all day.

yeah! sorry this took so long i’ve been really busy with school!

i decided to do a separate story for every character because i didn’t quiet know how to fit them all in one so yeah

i hope i did this right i’m sorry if i didn’t

for the aizawa one you both are teachers at UA

for the tamaki one you’re both year 3s at UA

for the todoroki one you’re both first years at UA

Your quirk is “Weapon” which is basically where you can make any weapon of your choice appear and your body itself is kind of a weapon meaning that when you’re hit it’s harder to hurt you/ when you hit someone else it hurts them more

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Aizawa

Goddammit!

There were villains at the USJ again. Fuck. You and the other teachers at UA rushed over to the USJ hoping there weren’t any students training there.

You threw the doors open to find the USJ empty other than villains, which was a relief, but now you had to fight a bunch of villains.

Great, just what we need at 9 AM on a Tuesday.

The villains charged at everyone and the pro heroes started to tear into the villains. They were obviously just a scraggly bunch of disorganized thugs because none of them stood a chance against the pro heroes.

“Y/N WATCH OUT!” Aizawa yelled from beside you, shoving you out of the way. You fell onto the ground and watched as some kind of beam hit Aizawa. He froze and ANOTHER AIZAWA came out of his side.

“What the fuck?!” you yelled.

The clone walked over to you and held out his hand.

“Sorry about that princess, need some help getting up?”

You face turned red. Princess?!?!

“W-What the FUCK are you?!” you said, looking at him, astonished.

“I’m Shota’s feelings. That guy’s quirk just made me into a clone.”

He definitely sounded like Aizawa. He looked like Aizawa. But he sure as hell wasn’t acting like Aizawa.

The clone still had an outstretched hand and was waiting for you to take it. You gave him a weird look and got up yourself. Clone Aizawa looked dejected for a moment before trying to talk to you again.

“I know you probably don’t trust me, which is fine; When hit, the quirk lasts for 24 hours and creates a clone of that person’s true feelings of the last person they talked to.”

“And you called me ‘princess’ because...?”

“I like you, duh!” he smiled at you.

Real Aizawa came running over.

“What in fuck’s name is this?” he said, annoyed.

You explained the quirk to him and watched his face slowly twist into one of discomfort.

“So.. he told you then...” he sighed.

The clone walked up and hugged you from behind. It caught you off guard so you grabbed him from behind and flipped him over you, landing him on his back.

“AH! STAY BACK- Oh, it’s just you- sorry.”

He got up, completely fine. “You can’t kill me, you know.” he smiled creepily.

You looked towards Aizawa, annoyed. He gave you a sheepish smile and then continued to fight villains.

You and Aizawa were a great team normally, you striking people down with your weapons and then him erasing their quirks and tying them up, but the stupid clone kept getting in the way. You formed a huge hammer, using up quite a bit of your energy, and went to hit a villain, when the clone came up behind you. He attempted to take the hammer from you.

“I can’t let you get hurt, princess! Let me.”

You looked at him angrily and hit him over the head with the hammer. He crumpled to the floor, but this distraction gave the villain you were fighting an opening. He struck you in the side with a sharp claw. You yelled out in agony and fell to the floor.

You felt groggy, and had no idea what was going on. You slowly opened your eyes and you were met with a pair of black eyes staring at you over your head.

“What the-”

“Princess! You’re awake!” the clone said.

You looked to see Aizawa sitting in a chair beside your hospital bed, looking worried and guilty.

“Shouta?” you said.

Both the clone and the real Aizawa looked up at you.

“The real Shouta.” you said pointedly.

“What?” he said, sounding slightly irritated.

“What’s wrong?”

He looked angry for a second, and then he cupped his face in his hands.

“I just put you in the fucking hospital because of my instinct to protect you and you wanna ask me what’s wrong?? All my feelings have been put on the line by that stupid villain and you wanna ask me what’s wrong. You probably hate me now because of this idiot-” he gestured to the clone, “and there’s no way to get rid of him.”

You looked the opposite way. What he didn’t know is that if you had gotten hit with that quirk, the same thing would be happening to him.

Should I tell him that though?

You sighed. “Shouta- if you had let me get hit with that quirk I would probably be in the same situation as you.”

He looked up at you, wide-eyed.

“Wait- are you saying-?”

“Yes. I like you too, Shouta. But I didn’t know what to say about it because I had no idea if you would be interested in me or not.

He looked down at the ground and smiled softly. Then, the clone walked over. You looked up at the clone, knowing what he was about to do. He leaned in to try and kiss you, but Aizawa shoved him back.

“No. I want to do this myself.” He smirked and you blushed down to your toes.

He leaned in and you two shared a kiss. It felt magical, and it was definitely something the both of you had wanted for a long time. And then you felt a pair of arms wrap around the two of you. You both broke the kiss to see the clone hugging you guys, smiling.

“Jesus Christ...” Aizawa said, looking away, embarrassed.

You laughed, knowing that this would be a looonnnggg 24 hours for him.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tamaki

You, Tamaki, Kirishima, and Fatgum were patrolling. You and Tamaki were two of the Big Three at UA.

“This is so manly! We haven’t seen any villains yet today! Must mean-”

Just as he was saying that, something caught out of the corner of your eye.

“Hey- Shh!” you said, as you waved them to follow you. You led them to the corner by a dark alley.

You peeked your head around to see two people exchanging something; Everyone else poked their head around.

“I can talk to them- it’ll be less intimidating if a not so well known hero talks to them. Stay close just in case though.”

You didn’t give them a chance to disagree before you ducked into the alley.

“Hey guys, hero here. I’m gonna need to see what’s being purchased here.”

“Get lost kid, this is dangerous business.” one of the villains said.

You scowled and formed a gun with your quirk. You held it up at them.

“Show me please.” you said, in a little more demanding tone this time.

The other villain looked scared. He panicked and shot some kind of beam at you. You looked like a deer in headlights- you closed your eyes and waited for the impact, until you felt something wrap around you. You slowly opened your eyes to see Tamaki hugging you. But Tamaki was also... in front of you?

“W-What the fuck?!” you said.

“I- I jumped in f-front of you to p-protect you from the b-beam he just shot... and then another m-me appeared and now he’s hugging you.” Tamaki said, in his usual nervous tone.

Fatgum and Kirishima rounded the corner and looked shocked.

Fatgum looked a little angry. “Hey, you two- Show me what’s being exchanged and explain what you just did.”

The villains looked like they were about to shit their pants upon seeing the pro hero.

“S-Shit...” said the first villain.

The second villain explained his quirk nervously, while they were getting arrested for drug sales.

The Tamaki clone was still hanging onto you. He hadn’t talked yet, but you can probably guess that the real Tamaki was beyond embarrassed.

The three of you were walking back to UA after your morning patrol. You guys were getting the rest of the day off because the quirk would ail you in fighting.

“I- I’m s-so sorry, Y/n...” Tamaki said. He looked like he was about to cry. His clone was crying. You smiled softly at him, knowing that this was hard on him.

“It’s okay, Tamaki. Want to hang out today? Would that make you feel better about this?”

He looked up from the ground.

“T-That would be nice...”

Kirishima waved goodbye to you two and went to join his other friends while the two of you walked over to his dorm.

You sat on his bed, the clone sitting beside you. Tamaki sat in a chair and nervously looked from you to the clone.

“Y-Y/n I’m s- sorry... I hope t-this doesn’t c-change anything b-between us you’re my b-best friend and-”

You cut him off by shaking the clone off of you and walking over to him. You wrapped him up in a hug and just held him there. He was shaking pretty bad and it took him a second to return the hug, but he did.

“Y-Y/n!” he said nervously.

“Tamaki, don’t worry about it. But I assume you have something to tell me?” you giggled and a small, sheepish smile formed on Tamaki’s face.

“Y/n I- I like you!” he blurted. He blushed and looked down at the floor.

“I like you too, Tamaki.” you said with a little laugh.

He looked up at you in surprise.

“R-Really?”

“Of course.” you leaned over and kissed him and the clone (who had followed you over to Tamaki) on the cheek. “You and your feelings.” you giggled.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Todoroki

You smiled as you formed a bat with your quirk. You began to knock people unconscious left and right. After you would knock them down or unconscious, your best friend, Todoroki would come behind you and freeze them for extra measure.

You and a couple others from class 1-A had been selected for a special training course against another school. Today’s training was a game similar to the fights at the sports festival. Once you were knocked unconscious or you were unable to move you were disqualified from the game. You were supposed to match up in teams of two or three. The more people that you and your team got out the more points you got. You and Todoroki made a pretty efficient team, and had gotten out a TON of people.

“Hey! Shouto- Look out!” you yelled. He turned around just in time to get hit in the face with a beam.

You watched as another Todoroki materialized beside him. You stood there, agape, confused.

“W-What the hell..?” he said.

Just then, a loud beeping noise started.

“That concludes today’s training. Please return to the main room where the people with the most points will be announced. The unconscious will be cleared by the onsite nurses. Please deactivate whatever quirks may be holding or effecting people.”

You and Todoroki looked at each other in shock. Just then, a boy walked over.

“Hey. I just wanted to let you guys know about my quirk- I’m sorry but I can’t deactivate it- it makes a clone of you that shows your true feelings towards the last person you talked to. It lasts for 24 hours. I mostly use it for distraction to give my partners enough time to strike. But the person talked on the intercom before my partners could. Um, anyways, good luck with him!”

The boy walked away without another word, leaving you shocked and Todoroki with a face of pure discomfort.

“Everything okay shou-” you were cut off by his clone running over to you, and to your surprise, he started absolutely fawning over you.

“Y/n! You did so great! You’re so pretty when you use your quirk! You are so amazing at fighting!”

“S-Shouto??” you said, looking at the real Shouto, who was burying his face in his hands.

“I-I’m going to melt my ice... I’ll meet you in the main room.” and with that, he ran off.

With the clone Todoroki still talking to you and making you blush, you walked to the main room. A few minutes later, the real Todoroki joined you, but looked embarrassed and didn’t talk.

Just as you were about to ask him what was going on, a man stepped up on stage.

“Hello students! We hope you enjoyed your game today! If you’ll direct your attention to this screen-” he gestured towards a large TV where the winners all popped up. “You’ll see the winners of today’s game- Y/n and Shouto Todoroki! Let’s give them a round of applause.”

You and Todoroki looked at each other excitedly, and went to hug, but the clone cut in between you two and threw his arms around you.

“It’s all because of you Y/n! Good job!!”

You blushed as you hugged him back and then pulled away. You saw the real Todoroki looking slightly dejected. You brushed it off and followed the rest of the students out to where the busses were to take all of you home.

Once back at UA, you and Todoroki were walking up the path to the dorms, while his clone droned on and on about how much fun he had and how amazing you were.

“Shouto.” you said.

Both of them looked at you.

“Real Shouto.”

“What is it, Y/n?” he asked.

“Wanna explain this guy’s behavior to me?” you smiled, knowing exactly what you were asking to him to admit.

“I- I, uh... Well, Y/n, I like you. I have for a long time. I guess there’s no getting around it now. I just didn’t want to get hurt or hurt you so I didn’t tell you... I- I hope this doesn’t change anything.” he said looked down at the ground.

“Shouto...” you said softly.

He looked up from the ground and met your eyes. You smiled and pulled him in for a kiss. After you pulled away, you smiled.

“I like you back, Shouto. We make a good team.”

Todoroki blushed as you rested your head on his shoulder.

“AW NO FAIR! I WANTED TO KISS Y/N! I’VE BEEN WORKING UP THE NERVE ALL NIGHT!”

Both of you looked other and the clone stomped his foot.

“Shut up!” you both yelled at the same time.

The clone pouted and sheepishly followed you two into the building. You weren’t lying. You two did make a pretty good team.

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hope i did this right :P

#bhna #mha #my hero academia #my hero imagine #todoroki fluff #tamaki fluff #aizawa fluff #quirk #fluff #todoroki #aizawa #tamaki #tamaki x y/n #aizawa x y/n #todoroki x y/n

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ruewrites · 4 years

Note

Asmo likes the use of the pact right? So far I’ve never seen solomon use it besides the time he summoned him once. I was thinking maybe you had enough ideas to write something about it 👀 maybe a 5+1 things (like “times Solomon used his pact with asmo”) or something if you’re up for it? I love your writing by the way I can’t wiat for chp 9!

5 Times Solomon Used His Pact With Asmo

AO3

Ship: Solomon/Asmo

Word Count: 2663

Warnings: None

A/N: Hi Anon! I hope you like this! I’m sorry it took me so long (this is also my first time doing a 5+1 fic), I wanted to getting it out sooner. I hope you liked WBT! Thank you so much for your request!

Asmo had always enjoyed the feeling that coursed through him due to their pact. Solomon’s magic sent a tingling sensation up his spine and a warmth all throughout his body, and Solomon’s power. Well… His power was more than addictive. His Solomon was one of the most, if not the most, powerful sorcerers humanity had ever seen. He wasn’t called the wise one for nothing, and knowing how revered Solomon was caused pride to swell within Asmo’s chest. Now every now and again they’d use their pact for less professional situations, but regardless Asmo loved it.

However, sometimes Asmo was a bit surprised when Solomon put their pact to work.

“Solomooon.”

Solomon’s head perked at the sound of Asmo’s whines. He couldn’t help the smile that spread across his face as his boyfriend’s disgruntled form trudged through the underbrush. A few tiny scratches bloomed on his porcelain skin, his hair was messed up, and twigs and mud clung to his clothing. Ah, perhaps he should have warned him, but Solomon’s excitement had gotten the better of him.

“This is awful. There’s so many bugs! Why couldn’t that little plant you need be in a garden? Or maybe a nice little field of flowers?” he huffed, “Why does it have to be here in this revolting mess?”

A chuckle escaped Solomon as he went over to help Asmo maneuver through the unkempt path. Well, it wasn’t much of a path really, more like underbrush that had been crushed by something else before them. Asmo still didn’t seem too happy, but at least he was wearing closed toed shoes. Powerful demon or not, Solomon didn’t want Asmo hurting himself.

“I think it’s rather enchanting,” Solomon said, looking around them, “It’s untouched and full of secrets just waiting to be unlocked, as well as the herb I’m looking for.”

“Well, you should replant it back home. Where it’s easier to get to when you find it!” Asmo let out a screech as he slipped down into a puddle of mud below him. He blinked a few times and looked down at himself. Then his surprise started to morph. A screech echoed through the forest, scaring a few birds from their perches. “I’m covered in mud. This is disgusting! Solomon why do you even need this stupid herb? I wanna go home!”

Something clicked in the deep recesses of Asmo’s mind snapping his head towards Solomon mid rant, and a shudder ran through his spine. Oh the tiny little tugs from their pact always felt nice, especially when he could feel Solomon’s power coursing through his veins.

Solomon was eye level with him now, “As soon as we find what I’m looking for, I promise you can have the nicest, warmest bath and soak for as long as you’d like.”

Asmo hesitated for a moment, “And bubbles?”

“All the bubbles your little heart could desire.”

“The nice kind.”

“If that’s what you’d like.”

“And hot tea from that cafe I like.”

Solomon nodded.

Finally, after a moment of thinking it over, Asmo smiled and stood up. “Alright then! Let’s go find that little plant! And when we do, you’d better take some home to pot.”

**********

“Solomon how do you live like this?” Asmo huffed, putting yet another book in a pile, “Everything is so disorganized!” Mountains of different books and scrolls surrounded them.They’d barely made a dent in their work and Asmo was trying his best to stay on task. Well, at least things looked better than when Solomon had initially summoned him, but even that wasn’t saying much.

“Well it was organized,” Solomon started, “Then I needed to do my research and look for specific information and well-” He gestured to the room around them. He hadn’t meant for everything to get this scattered, but he’d also needed multiple books open at once. Sure he could have just marked the pages he wanted and used one or two books at a time, but how productive was that. Plus it was a notification from Asmo on his DDD saying he wanted to do something that caused him to lose focus in the first place. So why not use their pact to ‘hang out’ a little? He’d indulge Asmo after they finished, but for now they had a task to finish.

He heard Asmo flop over with a soft thud, a groan leaving his lips. “Solomon this is going to take forever! Why do you have to have so many books? Where do you even manage to fit them all?”

“Sometimes the pursuit of knowledge requires sacrifice Asmo, and sometimes that sacrifice is space.” Solomon lifted his head to peer at Asmo behind the stack of books. He was lying on his back, book over his face, and silent.

Slowly, and being careful to maneuver around the stacks of books, Solomon made his way over to Asmo and sat down with him, picking up the book on his face. Asmo made eye contact with him and crossed his arms. Solomon smiled and looked at the spine before placing it in the correct pile. “You know, it’s going to be harder to organize when your face is buried in a book.”

“And you know there are better ways of using our pact.”

“Oh? So you would have helped me out of the goodness of your heart then?”

Asmo let out a huff before sitting back up and grabbing another book, grumbling something quietly under his breath. “I thought we’d go clubbing or something, not organizing books,” he frowned, looking rather unamused.

A low hum left Solomon as he nodded, eyes slowly drifting over towards his bookshelf. With a snap of his fingers, one of the piles flew into neat organized rows on the shelf. Organizing the books still required him to know which books were where, but he could put them on the shelves once they were already organized into nice neat piles. Without another word, he then plucked Asmo’s DDD from the floor much to the demon’s protest.

“Hey!”

“Shhh.”

Solomon tapped on the device for a few minutes before snapping a picture. “See? Look how wonderful you look with this backdrop,” he said, bending over to show Asmo, “So, even if you don’t think of this as fun, as least you still look lovely right?”

Asmo took his DDD and tilted his head from side to side. He furrowed his brow and bit his lip, “Well, I do look good. Can you take more?”

“Of course! When do I ever forget to reward you for a job well done?”

**********

Asmo looked nice. Incredibly nice. He was practically glowing in the dim lights of the club. But right now, Solomon needed complete focus. Well, maybe he didn’t, but he wanted to make sure he looked professional. They were sitting in a dingy, little, isolated corner. Asmo’s eyes kept slinking over to the bar, and tiny shudders would overtake him every now and again as Solomon’s power ran through him. It was so hard to behave in this atmosphere, the only thing keeping him in place was the pact. But Solomon would make it worth it, he always made it worth it.

“They’re here,” Solomon said under his breath, eyes shifting towards the doorway where two figured stepped through the doorway and looked in thor direction. He glanced back towards Asmo and nodded, “You know what to do.”

“Well! Looks like ya brought a pretty little companion with ya,” the first man chuckled, nodding towards Asmo. Asmo leaned forward on the table and batted his lashes slowly up at their guests.

“I promised we’d go out,” Solomon smiled, “Since I was coming here anyways, I figured I could kill two birds with one stone. Now. Do you have what I came here for?”

The first nodded to his partner with a smirk. Carefully, the other reached into his pocket and put a small box on the table. With nimble fingers, Solomon slowly opened the box. A soft blue light gently coated a small piece of their corner. The little stone inside was exactly what Solomon needed, it would make his latest spell extremely successful.

“Now, our money-”

“Oh Solomon!” Asmo squealed, cutting off the man on the other side of the table, “You didn’t tell me it would be so pretty! It’s gorgeous!” His head turned to the two men on the other side of the table. Everything was in motion now, and Solomon had to stop himself from smiling. Oh it was such a wonderful thing that not everyone in the human realm knew of Asmodeus, especially those who didn’t deal in magic.

Asmo’s eyes were sparkling as he leaned over the table. “Why don’t you just give it to us? I know it’ll be safe in my Solomon’s hands. I promise!”

The man let out a guffaw and shook his head. “Ah, now that’s cute. Listen, I don’t know why you guys want this weird ass rock, but I ain’t about to give away something this nice for-”

Solomon couldn’t help but smile as he watched the man’s eyes meet with Asmo’s. That was when he knew this was a done deal. As Asmo worked his silver tongue, Solomon slipped the gemstone into his pocket. One thing was for sure, Solomon wasn’t going to have to pay the full price for their little exchange.

**********

Asmo was radiating with power. Solomon swore he could see his eyes glowing. Not to mention Asmo seemed to really be getting a high off of Solomon’s power. Sure Solomon noticed the little shudder that ran through him or the occasional flutter of his wings whenever he used their pact, but this amount seemed to consume all of him. His hips swayed in a rather cocky manner as he circled the aggressor, wings flared, and sharp teeth glinting. Solomon swore that he and Asmo were in unison with each other, their breathing and heartbeats synced up.

Hands on his hips, Asmo turned his head to the side ever so slightly and cocked an eyebrow at Solomon. He was asking for permission. Not that he needed it, Asmo could very well start whenever he wanted. But this was a game. They were playing with the giant beasty in front of them, it’s claws bared and teeth gleaming. It’s fur was raised and bristled, eyes alive with bloodlust. Oh it was exciting.

Solomon lifted his hand ever so slightly, and Asmo moved. The beast tried to swat at the demon who quickly jumped out of the way.

When he landed he turned back to look at Solomon. “Oh darling, stop teasing,” he purred, “Let me have it.”

“Oh? You say I’m teasing?” Solomon chuckled, nearly avoiding the beast’s thrashing tail.

“You always tease me. You’re so mean to me you know-”

“Do I now? Well, perhaps if you ask me nicely-”

“Please Solomon?”

They locked eyes once more and Solomon saw a shudder of anticipation wrack Asmo’s body. Slowly, he brought his fingers together and snapped. Asmo’s wings immediately flared out, his aura completely took over the space they were in. Solomon found himself completely in awe of Asmo as he turned back towards the beast and leapt into combat.

As Solomon watched as Asmo slashed and thrashed, cutting and tearing his way through their opponent, he couldn’t help but look forward to the aftermath. When Asmo came down from the high, when his eyes were soft and completely blissed out and he wanted nothing more than to lay in the crop of Solomon’s arm with the laziest smile on his face. In the meantime, he would wait in the shadow just in case Asmo needed him. He doubted it, but he stayed all the same.

**********.

Solomon’s arms tightened around Asmo as soon as he felt him move. He knew it was morning. He could picture the bright sunlight seeping in through his window without opening his eyes. His face became buried in Asmo’s back as his demon whined and tried to squirm out of his arms.

“Solomon,” he yawned, “I have to get ready.”

Solomon’s silver hair tickled the back of Asmo’s neck as he shook his head. Cold fingers slipped beneath Asmo’s shirt where warm skin awaited him. He heard Asmo let out a tiny yelp at the contact as he tried to squirm out of his arms. Asmo kept him warm at night and was a rather nice initiative when it came to getting away from his research and slipping into bed at night. He didn’t want to let him go, he wanted to keep him in bed for another hour or two. He wanted to keep Asmo in his arms until the need for his morning caffeine fix inevitably called to him.

He’d never been a morning person and never understood how Asmo could get up so early.

“Solomon,” Asmo tried to sit up, only to be dragged back down to bed. A sigh escaped him and he struggled to prop himself up on his elbow and craned his neck to look at Solomon, “Darling, I’ve already stayed ten minuted past my alarm.”

“You’re not going anywhere today,” Solomon yawned, his voice barely audible due to his mumbling.

“Dear-”

“Stay.”

Asmo gasped as the familiar tingle of Solomon’s magic trickled through him. It was weaker than normal. Instead of the strong sensation that usually coursed through him, this one felt more like a whisper or a gentle caress. However, it was not any less addictive.

Slowly, he relaxed back down where slow kisses awaited him. As Solomon’s arms tightened around him, Asmo closed his eyes once more. “You owe me,” he murmured, although he wasn’t entirely sure he would hold Solomon to that. His human seemed so content, Asmo couldn’t help but wonder if he entirely meant to use their pact.

**********

It was a quiet day. Birds chirped outside, leaves shuddered in the wind, and the sun bathed the world in her soft glow. The smell of coffee bathed the living room as it drifted from the kitchen. Solomon sat himself next to Asmo, mug in hand. Then his eyes started to wonder. It was hard not to admire Asmo. He was wonderful, more than wonderful. Slowly, Solomon became lost in the silence, in the beauty of the moment. Of course Asmo looked stunning bathed in the soft glow of the Devildom’s moon, but there was a different type of beauty when it came to the earth’s sunlight.

Asmo shuddered and looked towards Solomon. A lazy smile stretched across his face. It was a wonderful feeling, Solomon’s magic.

“Yes?”

Solomon blinked, finally seeming to come out of his daze. “What?” he asked, his mind not fully caught up with him yet.

Asmo laughed. It was light and lilting and a wonderful thing to hear ringing throughout the house. “I can feel you dear. If you’re going to use our pact, I would appreciate you giving me the order instead of teetering on the edge,” he said. He winked at Solomon before going to get another cup of coffee.

Blushing ever so slightly, Solomon quickly got up to follow after him. Asmo was smirking by the time Solomon turned him around. He was pushed up against the counter ever so slightly, faces inches apart, the tug of Solomon’s magic becoming undeniable.

This was a request, one which Asmo was more than happy to oblige once their lips connected. “You can just kiss me you know instead of just standing there,” he chuckled once they parted, “I can feel your longing you know.”

“What can I say? It’s so easy to get lost in you,” Solomon murmured, leaning forward once more. When they connected, Solomon’s magic prickled across Asmo’s skin. Asmo ‘s hands tightened around Solomon’s neck, and he wasn’t entirely sure if he was getting drunk off of his magic or his lips. But in the end, it didn’t really matter which it was.

#asmodeus x solomon #obey me solomon #obey me asmodeus #solodeus #asmosolo #soloasmo #obey me #ruewrites #5+1 things #5+1 fic #5+1 #anon #request #anon request

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aswallowssong · 4 years

Text

Second Child, Restless Child

Chapter 9 - The Devil Whispered Lies

@valkyrie-5583

Read on AO3

If I told y'all I got engaged and that's why this chapter is literally a billion years late, would that make it better??

Jokes aside (not really a joke, I did get engaged, I just hid it in the notes a few weeks ago) spring break is one week away for this teacher, and my goal is to write a whole bunch so I can not have to post chapters like... 2 months apart.

Let me know what you think of this one!! Have a lovely day!!

Continuation of chapter 8 - Heaven Knows How Hard I Tried. The Keystone Killer has given Kit a lot to think about; including some things she wasn't quite counting on.

Kit wasn’t quite listening when they walked back into the precinct. Her conversation with JJ earlier in the day had helped. If JJ had met pushback, but now she was allowed to be a full part of the BAU team, she should stand up for herself. The director himself saw all of her reports, she could tell Ramos she disagreed with him. Especially if, for the time being, her work was good enough for the literal director of the whole FBI.

But her talk with Hotch outside of Harbin’s house hadn’t done her a lot of good. Her mind was still reeling from the events of the last hour, she still hadn’t slept since Friday night, and it was actively Sunday.

What brought her back to reality was Morgan’s voice, deep and steady at the front of their group. It caught her up to the present so quickly she almost stopped short, which would have sent Hotch right into her.

“Well, that's got to be a first. A killer actually leading us to another killer.”

“Come on,” Gideon said from further back, “we all know they make the best profilers. They admire each other's work.”

“Ya, but usually from afar,” Elle said as they spilled into the conference room.

Kit didn’t even let herself imagine sitting down. There was no way she would be able to stay awake when she had nothing of value to add. At this point, she was waiting to get back on the jet and back to her apartment. The image of Claudia was twisting in her mind, and she couldn’t help the desperate need she had to see Monty face to face.

Hotch didn’t let her stay in her head for very long. “At least we got Harbin off the street. All right, let's review. What do we know about the Keystone Killer?”

He’s killing women at an alarming rate.

“Well, we know that he's not dead or in jail,” Elle offered.

Gideon continued. “Enjoys taunting the game.”

“Ya,” Morgan agreed easily. “He's in complete control.”

Reid was quick to add on, statistics rattling from him easier than Kit was even keeping her eyes open. “He strangled seven women in the 1980's, stopped for eighteen years, and then began again suffocating them. Ten percent of all violent crimes are caused by strangulation, it only takes eleven pounds of pressure to fully incapacitate your victim and if you hang on for at least fifty seconds, they will never recover.”

“Yeah,” Kit said, stopping short once she’d realized the words had come from her mouth, not someone else’s. Everyone’s eyes were on her, and she took a moment before she voiced the fact her brain had produced for her, however reluctantly. “It’s one of the most lethal forms of violence. Victims can be unconscious in a matter of ten seconds.”

Hotch shook his head, confusion pushing from his before he said, “When you suffocate someone you actually have less control over their death. It's actually more passive because the killer doesn't feel the life leaving the body.”

“He's changed almost everything that he does,” Elle said. She was lost, mild annoyance and confusions coming off her in waves. Elle had joined the team just as JJ did, and Kit wondered if she ever felt as completely baffled as she herself felt.

In that moment, it felt like the answer could be yes, and that was comforting.

Gideon took over then, speaking to them as a whole in a series of questions. “Why why why why? What? I mean, what's he getting out of this new M. O.? Where's his payoff? You got Carla Bromwell, she sustains a significant head injury. Blitz attacks suggest disorganization, no self-confidence. This is a guy who walks into seven victims' homes prior to this. There was no forced entry at any of the scenes. Where's the loss of confidence?”

There was a beat of silence, and she really hoped anyone had any idea. It was moments like these that made Kit feel the most out of her element. She had no idea why the Keystone Killer would want to kill anyone anyway, how could she know why he would change his methods?

“He would never change the way he kills by choice,” Ryan said, breaking the silence.

“What?”

Ryan spoke again, confident in a way the rest of the team lacked. “We've been operating under the assumption that he purposely changed his M. O.”

It was like something physically snapped into place. Kit looked around as everyone was suddenly much more engaged.

“You're saying he changed because he had to change?” Gideon asked.

“He knocked her unconscious. And it wasn't to scare.”

Elle seemed to be catching on, and Kit wished selfishly she wasn’t. “Because he couldn't control her physically while she was awake.”

Ryan nodded. “He could be incapacitated.”

Gideon latched back on. “At least partially.”

“Maybe an injury.”

“Or a stroke,” Hotch added, and Gideon started nodding. “Either way you're gonna have to have medical records. Agreed?”

It took her more than a few seconds to notice that no one had said anything else, and she looked over at Gideon, who was looking directly at her.

Why is he looking at me? He never looks at me? We have a spoken rule to not look at one another during cases so why is he looking right at me?

“Colghain?” he said, and she shook her head. He most certainly was looking at her for an answer, and everyone else had gone quiet so she could answer.

“Yeah.” She said, and she saw Ryan raise an eyebrow in annoyance before she stumbled over herself to continue her answer. “Yeah, yes, sorry. Yes. There would be injury reports, charts, notes, scripts. It’s a lot of records, depending on who your doctor is and what hospital you’re at.”

There was another pause before they were all nodding, taking in what she’d said and running with it.

Morgan was first to speak. “Okay, so what are we talking about? This had to have happened after the middle of 1988 in Philadelphia?”

Gideon nodded, first at Kit, and then to Morgan. “Somebody who fits the rest of the profile.”

“It's a lot of hospital records,” Reid said, also looking towards Kit, who nodded her affirmation. “There’s hoards of people going into ERs every day for exactly those sorts of things. It’ll be a huge pool.”

He smiled at her, and she found herself taken a bit aback, but returned his grin with a shy one of her own.

“Call our girl Friday,” Gideon said, directed to Morgan, and as the flurry of movement and new hope danced through the room, she found herself feeling much less tired than she did before.

She’d been helpful. Gideon had known she was an expert about something and asked for her agreement and input before simply inserting a thought.

Her feelings were incredibly jumbled as she stood there, waiting for directions. Gideon’s affirmation made her feel better than she thought it would, considering they didn’t usually talk if not to argue. JJ’s conversation still lingered in the back of her mind, and she wanted to talk to Ramos. If JJ could stand up to the coms department and get what she wanted, why couldn’t she stand up to Ramos?

But Claudia filled the leftover space in her consciousness, and she didn’t know if she could fight for more time with the BAU, or to try to be more fully integrated, or whatever it was that she actually wanted if the cases were going to stay with her.

To scare her. To make her feel like she needed to know that her sisters were alright, even though there was no way to do that while knees deep in a case.

What do you even want, Kody? What do you want?

She didn’t have an answer for herself.

-----

Kit stood in front of the mirror in the bathroom of the precinct and splashed another cupful of water onto her face, holding her cheeks in her hands a moment before looking up at her reflection.

You look exhausted.

Monty’s voice, as always, chided her. Sometimes she wished the voice of her overinvolved consciousness was her brother Al instead. Alaska couldn’t be bothered over things like that. His biggest qualm in life was the fact that his name was Alaska, and it had been quickly remedied by Ari telling him he could just go by Alex at school.

You’ve got bigger problems than that. You’re having a moment in a police precinct in Philly while the rest of your team waits on a comprehensive file to be faxed.

A feeling of dread shot through her chest at the realization that Monty didn’t even know she was gone. She’d been so tired and so incredibly thrown by Garcia’s text, and then Hotch’s insistence that she was on the jet that she hadn’t thought to walk down and tell Ari she was leaving. He’d been on the clinic floor; out of sight, out of mind. Then she was on the jet, and then at the crime scene.

She hadn’t even sent a text.

Hell, she hadn’t even really slept since then. Her time in the jet and her few minutes in the car were nowhere near what she needed, and with all the feelings and thoughts she had flying around her head, she was surprised she hadn’t crashed. She was definitely feeling “Big Feelings,” and she didn’t have time for it.

Ari and Monty always helped the big feelings. They had to be wondering where she was. Why hadn’t they called her? Or texted? They had to be worried. Girls didn’t just go missing in the middle of the day.

But they do. And worse, they’re murdered too. Right out of nowhere for no reason at all. People are sick, Kody. They kill for pleasure. They kidnap for pleasure. They’ll take anyone at any time.

She had her phone out and dialed in record time.

“Penelope’s hotline for all things truth. Speak and know.”

“Garcia.” She swiped at her eyes. When had she started crying? “I need a favor.”

“Oh, Kit, hey.” Her voice was as sunny as always. “I’ve got that file almost through, the medical was-”

“It’s not about the case.”

There was silence on the other line for a moment. “Oh?”

“If I gave you the first and last name, could you trace a cell phone?”

“A cell phone? As long as it’s registered to the same name, yeah, I can. Why?”

“Virginia.” She said. “Virginia Colghain.”

She didn’t know why she picked Ginny. Something inside her said that Seese, George, and Lina would be at home with their mam. Ginny lived in the city, and Kit couldn’t call her.

Ginny didn’t know she was in the field. Ginny didn’t even know she’d been paired with the BAU.

“Where should it be? Just so I know what I’m looking for.”

“Probably the US Attorney's office.”

“Which branch?”

“The one in the district. On fourth street.”

Garcia hummed as she typed, the clicking of her keystrokes halting as she said, “Wait. Wait, Colghain?”

Kit bit her lip. She was sort of hoping Garcia wouldn’t notice.

Which is stupid, because of course she’d notice.

“Yes.”

“Virginia Colghain?”

“Yes, Garcia, can you track it or not?” Kit glanced at herself in the mirror, letting her reflection ground her. She tugged at one braid, and then the other with her free hand before wiping at her eyes again.

The clicking started again before Garcia said, “Virginia Colghain’s phone is, in fact, inside the US Attorney’s office on fourth street.”

Kit breathed a sigh of relief. While it wasn’t proof that Ginny was okay, it certainly helped Kit’s nerves. “Thanks, Penelope. Sorry about that.”

“Sure, my sweet clover. But, why don’t you just call her and ask where she is? I’m going to assume that’s one of your many many siblings.”

Because I haven’t quite told her I’m working with the BAU now, or going in the field again, and I’m not ready to have that conversation with her just yet, considering no one knows but Ari and Monty.

“I don’t want to interrupt her at work, I just needed to know she was okay.”

Garcia was quiet again before saying, “You know, we’ll get him. My system has faxed almost all the papers now, and then you can go bring him in.”

Kit took a breath, glancing again at the reflection in the mirror. She almost didn’t recognize the face staring back at her. Had she always looked so sad?

“Thanks, Pen,” she said quietly. “I, um. I’ve gotta go.”

“Go fight crime, clover. But, hey,” Penelope’s voice took on a different quality. A serious one. “You and I should talk when you get back.”

She sighed, but nodded. “Okay… bye, Penelope.”

Kit hung up the phone.

Ginny was fine. She knew that it was a given, and she probably just looked like a crazy, paranoid moron, but she also knew deep down that Penelope didn’t care. Maybe she understood.

Before she could convince herself otherwise she hit the first position speed dial, pacing a bit in front of the sinks as it rang.

“Dia dhuit?” Came Monty’s groggy, listless voice over the line, and Kit nearly burst into tears at the combination of her sister’s voice, her real voice, and their mother tongue.

“Monty.”

“Yeah, it’s me. Where are you? Thought you were in the living room, but I only hear you on the phone.”

Kit wiped at a stray tear trailing down her cheek. There was no way she was keeping it together when she finally got home.

Monty’s accented Irish was thicker than it normally was. Her voice was lower too, telling of the fact that she quite possibly woke her twin up. She bit back a bit of guilt, her own voice launching into a language just for them.

“I’m sorry, I woke you, didn't I?”

“It’s alright, I’ll go back when we’re done. Where are you?”

“Are you feeling any better?” She was stalling. “When was the last time you took-”

“Dakota.” Kit stopped in her tracks. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Everything is fine.”

“But why are you crying?”

Damn it.

She tried to keep any tremor out of her voice, but she knew Monty would always be able to tell. “I’m not.”

“Why are you calling me, crying-”

Kit sighed, her pacing stopping dead in its tracks as she tried to keep herself together. “Everything is okay. I’m not hurt. I’m fine. Everyone is fine. I needed to hear your voice.”

The coughing across the line was grating, and then, “Kody, where are you? What are you talking about? What’s going on?”

“I…” Kit started, steadying herself with a hand on the counter. “We’re in Pennsylvania.”

“You’re what?”

“It’s fine, I had to leave overnight. We’re on a case.”

“You didn’t call,” Monty said, obviously upset. “You didn’t even send a text. Ari was at the bureau last night, too, why-” She cut herself off to cough, the line being muffled as Monty pulled away from the speaker.

Kit ran her hand down her face. This wasn’t the conversation she needed to be having. She should have called Ari. He tended to be a little more level headed when he was upset.

“Why wouldn’t you say anything?” Monty finally asked, voice much rougher than before. “What if something happened?”

“Nothing is going to happen,” Kit said, her voice more steady than she felt it should be. “I’m sorry, Mont. I’m so sorry. I know I should have told you.”

“Why…” Monty trailed for a moment before she said quietly, “Why did you call now?”

Claudia’s face flashed to the front of her mind, and then Monty’s; the reflection of her own staring back at her in the mirror.

“I needed to hear your voice. I had to know you were alright.”

Another moment of silence passed before Monty asked, “Something happened, didn’t it?”

Kit sighed, sniffling quietly before letting out another, deeper sigh. “I don’t know if I can do this, Mont.”

The door to the bathroom swung open, JJ standing on the other side.

“Hey, the whole file finally came through, we’re meeting in the- are you crying?”

Kit’s head whipped around to look at JJ square, and she hastily wiped under her eyes. “No, I, um. I’ll be right there.”

JJ tilted her head, but nodded and shut the door again. The air between the twins crackled quietly before Kit cleared her throat.

“I have to go. I… hopefully I’ll be home tonight. I’m sorry, Montana. I am.”

“Kody, wait-”

“I love you, Mont, I’m so sorry.”

“You can’t just say those things and then go put yourself in danger! You can’t do that to me! I-”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I-” The door to the bathroom was pounded on. “Lep! Let’s go!”

Derek.

“Dakota!”

“I’m sorry. I love you.”

Before Monty could say anything else, Kit snapped her phone shut.

------

Her leg bounced as she sat in the SUV in between Reid and Elle. She was twisting at the hem of her shirt, and some of the threads had ripped and stretched. It was keeping her from pulling on her hair though, so she didn’t care about that. Ginny could sew it for her when they got back to DC.

If Ginny’s still there. Anyone could grab her at any time. Anyone could-

“Are you okay?” Reid asked quietly, his eyes locked on her fingers as they tugged at the material.

She stilled her hands immediately, feeling the concern dripping from his tone.

“Yeah,” she said. “Just… tired.”

“You could probably sit out if you need to,” he said, not noticing the way her face had started to heat up. Everyone in the SUV was actively pretending they couldn’t hear their conversation, but Kit knew better.

“I don’t need to,” she said quickly. “I just want to get home, so the faster we cuff this creep, the better."

"Because of your sister?"

"What?"

How could he have possibly known what you were thinking about Ginny? Did you say something? Did-

"Your sister's sick, right?"

She stared at him for a moment before it clicked. He wasn't talking about Ginny. Of course he wasn't, the only one that knew about her minor meltdown was Garcia. Monty being sick was common knowledge.

"Oh," she said. "Yeah. And because he's, you know." She gestured vaguely. "Murdering women."

Elle laughed quietly next to her, nodding as she said, “Right, there’s that. We’ll get him. Right, Gideon?”

“Oh, we’ll get him,” Gideon said, sending more anticipatory energy into the world than usual. Kit didn’t have to think about the implications of that, though, as the SUV came to a halt outside a two story home.

They got out of the van quickly, all thoughts of Monty and going home gone as they strapped into Kevlar vests and double checked their weapons.

“I believe Walter Kern is in Sylvia Gooden's home now,” Gideon said, addressing the five of them and the SWAT captain. “Hotch confirmed he left the community center hours ago, and Kern's car's parked on the next block.”

“I want Walter Kern alive,” Ryan said quickly, and the SWAT captain nodded at his request. “I'll stand by for the word.”

“Reid, Greenaway, I'll call you when we've secured Kern. Morgan, Colghain, you’re with me and Ryan. Okay, let's move out.”

“Yeah,” Elle said, watching them as they walked away, Kit trailing just behind.

It didn’t feel right to her that she was going and Elle was staying back, but that was one of the reasons she was even on the team.

Or, working with them, at least. There’d been too many conversations surrounding that topic for her to understand her feelings about it.

They crept towards the house, pausing as the SWAT team pried the door open. Gideon led and Kit held the rear, covering and watching to make sure that nothing happened to them. Team or not, they were her responsibility.

They weren’t in the house for very long before they could hear Gooden crying for help on the second floor. Every movement they made was succinct, and within seconds they were in the room.

“Don't move! Don't move!” Gideon yelled, all weapons drawn at Kern as he tried to hold a plastic bag over Gooden’s face.

They scuffled for a moment, Morgan able to knock Kern’s gun out of the way before holding his arms behind his back. “Down on your knees! Down! Don't move!”

Kit held her gun steady, shifting into a position that allowed her to still have a sightline on Kern; at least until he was cuffed. Not that she believed he could get out of Morgan’s hold.

Gideon spoke quickly into the com, letting Reid and Elle know that Gooden was alive, and Kern was secure.

Morgan struggled a bit to keep Kern’s hands together, and Kit didn’t change her aim. “Cuff him, Morgan.”

“Gideon, I need your cuffs, man,” he said over his shoulder.

Gideon didn’t move right away, but Kit didn’t take her eyes off Kern. She couldn’t until she knew he didn’t have any chance of getting away.

“Why don't you do this? I'll take care of her.” Gideon had spoken to Ryan, who had clearly been soothing Gooden until that moment.

"That's enough. Now get up,” Morgan said, passing him off so Ryan could cuff him. “You got him?”

“Ya, I got him,” Ryan said, and Kit lowered her weapon as she heard the click of the cuffs secure around Kern’s wrists.

“Colghain,” Gideon said, “Some help, please.”

Kit turned quickly, realizing that Sylvia Gooden, who had just been nearly suffocated, was still crying and panicking with flex cuffs around her wrists.

She wasn’t done yet.

The two steps to the bed were swift, and Gideon stepped aside as she spoke to the traumatized woman. “Hi, my name is Kit. I’m a nurse, and I’m going to check and make sure you’re okay. Is it alright if I touch you?”

Gooden looked up at her for a moment before she nodded stiffly, taking a deep breath before dissolving into hysterics.

Kit grabbed her hands and squeezed gently, giving the older woman a small smile despite all the crazy going on around them.

“You’re going to be okay,” she said. “I promise. It’s all going to be okay.”

-----

Kit sat next to Reid on the jet, which was odd, because she normally tried to keep herself as far away from everyone as possible. She’d gotten a very strange read off of Hotch, though, who had secluded himself in the corner she usually would have taken, so she figured the conversation would keep her awake if anything else.

It didn’t stop her from propping a blue notebook open in her lap and tapping at it quietly with her pen. They were laughing at a story Ryan was telling about Gideon that made him seem almost human, and the laughter she shared was genuine. Gideon had stepped aside for her to take the lead with Gooden, which meant he was going to be true to his word when they were in the field. Stay out of each other’s way, and things will be fine.

She just hoped it would last.

“What goes in that notebook?”

She looked up at Reid’s voice, noticing that while she’d allowed herself to be in her own head for fifteen seconds, everyone had splintered into their own conversations. Elle had even walked away from them, and was now engaged in a quiet conversation with Hotch.

“Hm?”

He nodded down at the blue notebook in her lap. “What goes in there? I’ve only ever seen the red one, and that’s where you write all of our medical information, and things that happen to us medically during cases. Like when I was sick in New Jersey. But that didn’t happen this time, nothing did, and that notebook is blue, and it’s much more worn, and -” He stopped short, frowning. “I’m rambling.”

She shook her head quickly. “No, it’s alright. I don’t mind. I was waiting for you to be done before I answered your question.”

Reid’s eyes widened a bit, his jaw dropping for just a moment before he seemed to right himself. “Most people don’t wait until I’m done.”

“It’s a skill I picked up in college. It’s hard to help someone if you won’t listen to their entire story.”

“Huh,” he said. He seemed to think on that for a moment before he said, “So, what’s it for?”

She blinked up at him. “Oh.”

She hadn’t thought she’d actually have to answer. She was sort of hoping that he would talk himself in circles until he was on another topic completely. He’d done it a few times over the short time she’d known him.

“Oh?”

“Well, it’s sort of personal,” she settled on.

“Like a journal? A diary?”

If he noticed she was blushing, he didn’t let on. “A little bit, it’s like-” She stopped short as she saw JJ move from her seat towards the coffee machine, and her brain flipped a completely different switch. “Sorry, I need to talk to JJ,” she said, and before he could protest, she’d dropped the notebook on her seat and was across the short length of the plane.

“Hey, JJ,” she said, causing the blonde to turn around and smile.

“Hey, coffee?”

“No, actually I-” She hadn’t quite thought the rest out. “I um.”

She found her hands grabbing for the ends of her hair, but she stopped herself before she could start tugging. She was far too late on her meds, which were officially out of whack, considering the fact that she hadn’t slept in two days. She wasn’t even sure what day it was.

“Is today Sunday?” She said, which was not at all how she’d intended to start the conversation she wanted to have.

JJ laughed. “I have no idea. Maybe? When we left it was the middle of the night, so I would need to check my phone.”

“Right,” Kit said, easing a bit and giving a quiet laugh of her own. “I um. Well, I wanted to tell you that I thought about what you said.”

JJ tilted her head, eyebrows pulling together. “What I said?”

“What you said about pushing back.”

“Ah,” JJ said, eyes flashing with recognition. “And?”

“I… Claudia really threw me.”

Her head tilted before she said, “The woman they found under the bed?”

Kit shivered. “Yeah.” She didn’t regard the moment with fondness.

JJ didn’t seem to notice. She thought for a moment before shrugging. “I heard Morgan telling Gideon that you were incredible with her. That you didn’t leave when EMS got there because she didn’t want you to.”

Kit shook her head quickly, deflecting the praise. “I didn’t really do anything. She just… I don’t think she wanted all those men around her without another woman around.”

“And you were that woman for her.”

Kit stopped for a moment, watching JJ’s eyes soften. She was going to deflect again - insist that she’d done exactly what anyone else would have done, but something stopped her.

“I want to be here,” she heard herself saying. She hadn’t had time to process it herself, but it seemed she was going to do it outloud, in real time. “I want to be a part of this, but I’m scared. Because there will be more Claudias. And more Sylvias… And more Kerns.” She moved a hand to play with the seam at the hip of her slacks. “And we won’t always get there in time. I won’t always get there in time.”

The two women stood in silence for a moment before JJ reached out and took Kit’s right hand off her braid, squeezing it gently between her own fingers.

“But we’ll always try. And sometimes?” She shrugged. “We win.”

Kit took a deep breath, allowing that thought to fill her senses. Sylvia Gooden was alive. Claudia was alive. Kern lost.

“I think you should talk to Hotch when we get back. Not now. You look exhausted.”

They both laughed, Kit’s a little lackluster. “It’s that obvious?”

“You’ve got two black eyes.”

“Damn.” Kit shook her head, averting her eyes from JJ’s before saying, “Thank you. For listening and telling me what you knew and for making me feel like I deserve to be here.”

JJ nodded, saying simply, “You do.” She gestured to the coffee machine again. “You sure you don’t want some?”

Kit laughed, shaking her head again. “No, really, I shouldn’t. My body doesn’t know what time it is already, I think that would put me in dangerous territory.”

She stood on the Red Line platform, struggling to keep her eyes open. She pinched the skin between her thumb and forefinger, trying anything subtle to get her from point A to point B as quickly as possible. It was already dark, and she didn’t need to fall asleep on the train, or worse, while standing and waiting for the train.

That would really cap this weekend. Falling asleep on the train, missing your stop, getting abducted…

“Do you have a headache?”

“Ah!” She jumped, turning over her shoulder and swearing loudly. “Reid, what the hell?”

“Sorry!” He said, ducking just a bit, as if he was worried she was going to strike him. “That pressure point is effective in relieving headaches, grounding panic attacks, and quelling nausea. Are you sick?”

She groaned and rolled her eyes. “No, that’s not- I know exactly what this pressure point is used for Spencer, what the hell are you doing here? At my train stop? Again? I told you that I don’t-”

“I wanted to make sure you got home safely,” he said quickly, cutting her off before she could really get going. The anxious sincerity flooding off of him stopped her long enough for him to continue. “The odds of being accosted on the Red Line are significantly lower than the Blue, but you’re exhausted, and this case made you nervous, so I just wanted to be sure you…” He slowed, a dark flush rising in his cheeks. “Got home safe. Which I’m sure you can on your own, because your field scores dwarf mine. I, um…”

He had stuttered to a halt.

He’s embarrassed. And he wanted to help you.

She didn’t have time or energy to process the fact that he’d most definitely profiled her. The sentiment was sort of touching.

Sort of, as far as Spencer Reid was concerned.

“This… isn’t a Gideon thing?”

Reid chuckled quietly, shoving his hands into his pockets. “No. It’s, ah, a me thing. Gideon offered me a ride home, but I said no.”

She tilted her head at him, frowning as the train squealed into the station. “No shit?”

He laughed again, shaking his head and offering a small smile, his cheeks still flushed, but relief in his eyes. “No shit.”

“...Fine. But only because I’m really tired… You know, you could have said all this, or offered, in the bullpen, right? You didn’t have to follow me to the train like a stalker.”

The blush flooded his cheeks again, and he shrugged, unable to meet her eyes. “I didn’t want you to yell at me or something in front of everyone else.”

Her heart sank.

Look what you’ve done, Kody. You made him anxious to be alone with you because he thinks you’re some crazy person that’s going to fly off the handle.

Well, aren’t you?

“I wouldn’t do that, Spencer,” She said, starting towards the train door. “I appreciate the concern… thanks.”

He looked up, eyes flashing a combination of relief and hesitance. “Oh. Yeah. Ah, yeah, sure.”

They sat down inside the train, Kit immediately leaning her head against the window. She sighed, closing her eyes.

Maybe Reid isn’t so bad. Maybe he’ll stay quiet, or read the whole way and you can actually get a short-

“You know, there’s a staggering amount of germs on the window on a DC train. Approximately 45% of people…”

-----

Spencer stalked away from her door, his long legs making him look somewhat like a baby giraffe as he turned to descend the stairs. He gave a last, incredibly awkward wave.

“See you tomorrow, Dakota,” he said.

She fought back the instinct to groan. “Bye Reid, thanks.”

He grinned as his head slipped below her sight line and she let out a sigh, her entire body seeming to settle into exhaustion. It was late, and dark, and hopefully she would be able to slip into the apartment and deal with her siblings in the morning before she left for work. She’d talk to Monty then, and Ari at the clinic, and everything would be fine.

She’d need to call Ginny, but she could do that in the morning as well. She needed to sleep first. Sleep, and then deal with whatever came.

Her hand fumbled a bit with the key as she tried to fit it correctly into the door, eyes dry and tired and brain scrambled. The residual jittery, anxious feeling of both the case and messing the the time on her medication wasn’t helping her fine motor skills, and she’d nearly resigned to search through her backpack for the flashlight she kept when the doorknob was ripped away from her hand, the door flying open.

Something hard slammed into her body, arms wrapping around her in a vice grip and knocking the wind out of her.

Instead of words, there were hitching sobs from her attacker. Congested sounding, sad, and overly frustrated, matched with hot tears that were falling onto her shoulder. She took a breath, wrapping her arms around Monty and holding her as close as she could.

“Shh, it’s okay, dair, I’m okay,” she mumbled quietly, feeling her twin’s arms tighten around her.

“Don't… ever do that,” Monty managed, voice gravely and tearful. “Never, ever.”

“Oi, Mont, what-” Ari turned the corner, making eye contact with Kit over their sister’s shoulder. She watched physical tension release in his shoulders. “Ah. Okay. Mont, deirfiúr, come in and close the door. She’s okay. We’re fine.”

The mixing of languages wrapped around Kit, filling her like a breath she hadn’t taken in days. Monty let go, rubbing furiously at her streaming eyes as she walked back through the door, settling down on their couch and curling herself into a ball.

Ari pulled Kit through the door, looking at Monty and shaking his head. There was no need for the mix now, they could speak as they did among themselves. “Ah, no, get up. Come on. She’s tired, you’re sick. Bed. Now.”

Kit didn’t know how it happened, but they all ended up in Ari’s bed. Granted, it was the biggest. He didn’t share a room, and he was significantly taller than both she and Monty had ever hoped to be. They’d slept all together as children often, and when they were first living in the district on the floor at Ginny’s, they ended up in some sort of pile of limbs the nights they all worked the same shifts.

Now they rarely did. Six months before when they were back at home after Al needed to get his appendix out. A year before that when their Grandad had died. Before that? She wasn’t sure she remembered.

Monty’s head rested on her chest, quiet congested snoring coming from her in even breaths. Her face was flushed; from fever or crying, Kit wasn’t sure.

She’d been nearly pulled into Ari’s lap, and now her head rested on his stomach, rising and falling just slightly as he slept.

Regardless of how incredibly exhausted she was, she forced herself to stay awake and listen. To feel them breathing. To be sure they were there, and alive.

JJ’s words played in her head.

You do.

She deserved to be with the BAU. She deserved to be there.

Her senses focused back in on her cúpla, and the stress she’d caused them. The fear. The anxiety.

But do you really want to be?

-----

It's me again!

The plan right now is to make each season (year?) a different story, with a different song as the title and lyrics for the chapters. I'm a music person, this is the only way I operate.

If you've heard a song that made you feel feelings, hit me with it!

#Brenna writes things #or at least she tries #Second Child Restless Child #SCRC #Criminal Minds #Criminal Minds Fanfiction #fanfic #fanfiction #Gaelic/Irish #OC #female oc #it happened y'all I'm posting again #let's hope it sticks

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imagineaworlds · 4 years

Text

I Love You (Part Eleven) -- Aaron Hotchner

Written By: @desperately-bisexual

Request: None.

Warnings: Murder. Kidnapping. Literally everything Criminal Minds.

Pairing: Aaron Hotchner x Greenaway!Reader

Word Count: 11063

Timeline: Season 2 Episode 14. Right after part eight.

I guess I was somewhat relieved that Hotch and I let out some steam before going to the party, because his plans of what would come after had to come to a screeching halt when we were called into work for a case. Everyone was disappointed to be leaving so soon, but when the job called, we went. That was the deal. Always. So we all jumped in our cars and headed out to Quantico.

At the office, I went straight for the coffee pot and started to make a fresh brew. JJ, Garcia, and Morgan were all tipsy— if not drunk— and the best way to sober them up was coffee, food, and lots of water. So as I went to make the coffee, Morgan raided his secret stash of snacks, and Emily bought water bottles for everyone from the vending machine. By the time I got back to the boardroom with everyone’s drinks, Gideon was back from his night off and was sitting comfortably in his chair like he hadn’t left at all.

The team was all joking about Morgan’s dance moves, he was trying to deflect by pointing out yet again that Hotch and I were late to the party, and I deflected by asking where Gideon was. He told us that he had been at the Smithsonian with an old friend of his. I recalled Hotch mentioning something to me about Gideon going to D.C for the weekend, but I didn’t think he would just be lounging around in the Smithsonian all night. How the hell does one even go about doing that?

JJ stormed into the boardroom and brushed past me as I sat down next between Hotch and Morgan. She threw an image of a couple up on the TV for us and began to review the case for us. The Kyles had been killed in their Atlanta home shortly after the Super Bowl ended. They were at home, the TV turned on for the big game, until the Unsub broke into their home and killed them in their upstairs bedroom. The curious thing about this case, however, had to do with the police’s unusually fast response time. The Kyles were murdered during the game, and yet, the police got there before the halftime show even started. How?

“One of the Unsubs called the police from inside of the home to warn them that the other was about to murder the victims,” JJ explained. “According to the dispatcher, the first Unsub sounded terrified and was begging for the police’s help, while the other Unsub was telling him that it had to be done and he needed to hang up the phone.” She pressed a button on the TV remote and it pulled up a crime scene photo. “The second Unsub, identified as Raphael, was the one to kill the two victims. When the police arrived, both Unsubs were gone, but they had left this on the bed,” she pressed a button again. The TV showed us a zoomed in image of a bible page that the Unsubs had left at the crime scene. Yes, only one paragraph was specifically highlighted.

“Revelations Chapter 6, Verse 8,” Hotch said. “And I looked in behold a pale horse, and his name that sat upon him was Death, and Hell followed with him.”

“So they’re religiously motivated. Unsubs with a mission don’t usually stop their work after just one or two victims. They go on a spree that leaves a trail of blood in their wake,” I explained, turning away from the TV to get Reid’s back up on my statement.

He nodded. “Yeah, if these guys are using the bible as an excuse to murder, then they’re not going to stop until they think that they’ve cleared the world of all sinners. But sin is relative and fluid… So, technically, everyone’s a sinner.”

“That means they’re going to be looking for another victim and they’re going to kill them soon,” Morgan added.

Hotch picked up his copy of the case file, tapped it on the desk, sighed, and said, “Wheels up in thirty.”

We all let out quiet sighs. This was the job, though, right? It didn’t matter if we were ever promised time off, because the cases always had to come first. The Kyles were brutally murdered in their home while we were out having fun in a bar, and we were upset that we had to fly to Georgia? Something felt off about that to me… But I couldn’t shake the disappointment of not getting one more night alone with Hotch or even the chance to say goodbye to Jack before we would leave. All we could make time for was grabbing our go bags, changing in the bathrooms, then hopefully being able to call Haley on the plane and ask if we could talk to Jack. That was it. But at least we had that when the Kyles didn’t.

On the plane, before taking off, when I was sitting with Morgan in the back, Hotch came over to tell me that he had Jack on the phone. I excused myself to Morgan before going with Hotch over towards the cockpit where we were most likely to have enough privacy— Even though Gideon, Emily, and Spencer were already busy with looking over the case to spend time eavesdropping on me and Hotch.

“Hi, daddy,” Jack said over the phone.

“Hey, bud. Did you watch the game with mom?” Hotch asked.

“Yeah. We lost.”

“We sure did,” Hotch chuckled quietly. Jack didn’t know much about football. He was too young to know how the game was played or why certain things would happen, but he liked it because his dad liked it. “Listen, bud, we’re calling to tell you that we won’t be able to pick you up from school tomorrow. We’ve got to go save the world again.”

“Y/N can’t come get me?”

Hotch looked to me to respond, and I took the opportunity. “I’m sorry, little man, we’re both going to be gone.”

“Hotch, Garcia just sent the police call over,” JJ told us, taking a seat with Morgan on the couch as everyone huddled up.

We nodded in her direction to let her know we understood and that we were wrapping up our call with Jack. I leaned into Hotch slightly. “We’ll come see you when we get back, though, alright, little man?” I asked, squeezing Hotch’s shoulder. “We love you so much.”

“I love you, too,” Jack said.

“Hotch—” Morgan called.

I shooed my hand at him to tell him to be quiet for just another minute. Hotch hovered his thumb over the hang up button and told Jack “goodnight” and “I love you” one more time before hanging up and burying his phone in his pocket. Hotch and I took seats separate from one another, yet still ensuring that we could see the computer screen. Garcia was waiting patiently for us to appear on her screen before playing the 911 call for us.

The operator answered the call first with the script that she had likely repeated over a million times for various reasons. After her opening script line ended, the first Unsub began speaking. He was calm, yet the fluctuations in his voice revealed a panic or a worry of some kind, but he didn’t rush his words like he was trying to get the cops to show up any sooner than the four minute arrival time they ended up making. He never mentioned Raphael until the end of the call when he finally admitted that Raphael was going to kill the Kyles. When the operator asked for clarification, the second Unsub’s voice could be heard controlling the first Unsub, telling him that he needed to hang up the phone. The first Unsub tried to refuse, but Raphael lowered his voice and used a more demanding tone that ended up working, and the call ended.

I asked Garcia to play the call again and Gideon asked what had caught my attention. When I told him that I was unsure and needed to hear it again to get a better understanding, he gave Garcia the go ahead. I tried to focus on the first Unsub. I knew that the rest of the team was going to be more concerned about Raphael, as he was certainly the disorganized one of the two, but there was something odd about the Unsub’s behavior in comparison to his voice in the call.

The first Unsub was calling the police, which meant that he wanted to help the Kyles somehow. He was arguing with Raphael, but he wasn’t running away, seeking out help from the neighbors, or even trying to physically stop Raphael. If the Unsub felt that he was in danger with Raphael, it would have made sense to call 911, sure, but why not run away? That was the odd part. His physical and verbal reactions to the situation were total contradictions of one another. Was he being forced to be there? Well, if that were the case, then Raphael wouldn’t have given him the chance to call 911. And it sounded like Raphael was standing right there when the first Unsub called the police, so why didn’t he stop it sooner? Did he want the cops to come? Did he want us to come?

The only way I could put together the pieces was to try and make some kind of connection with these guys. They were a typical dominant and submissive pair— or at least they should have been typical, but this was a moment that their dynamic slipped. Why? With me and Hotch, I liked to push back in order to rile him up, to force him into the dominant mindset where he would practically force me into being submissive. That was part of the appeal, part of the fun. If the Unsubs were dominant and submissive personalities, it could have been possible that the first Unsub was calling the police in order to rile up Raphael somehow. Perhaps it was a sexual aspect of the murders. But there was no sign of sexual assault against either victim. So, then… why… Why fight against the dominant and grow submissive when he gets stern if not to please themselves?

When the replay of the call ended, they all looked to me for answers, but I still didn’t have any. My role as the one who could find the smallest of details and make a point of them was failing me in that moment. These Unsubs had warped my definition of a classic dominant and submissive relationship for psychopaths. In past cases, they were almost always the same, but these Unsubs didn’t fit the bill. Something wasn’t right with them. I needed to see the bodies to know more about Raphael in order to know more about the submissive Unsub, too.

Hotch got the idea before I could say anything, like he could read my mind or something. As he was giving everyone their assignments, he told me and Emily that we should head down to the morgue to talk with the coroner, and so that I could get a look at the bodies myself. Hotch told JJ to get more images of the victims and help sort out the victimology, and that Reid, Morgan, and Gideon were going to head to the crime scene to evaluate how Raphael managed to kill two people in under four minutes. When Morgan asked what Hotch would be doing, he answered that he’d be heading down to the police station to sort through old, unsolved cases because this wouldn’t be the first rodeo for a team like this with a very specific M.O and the ability to do it in four minutes.

It all sounded like a viable plan, and we all agreed to our assignments. JJ and Hotch sat together the rest of the flight to review victimology, while Gideon, Morgan, and Reid stayed at the large table to review the crime scene, and Emily and I sat together to look at photos of the victims. I managed to steal the laptop at one point, though, and listened to the 911 call repeatedly with headphones on. There had to be something else I was missing in there. I could sense it. And I just knew that if I gave it a little more time and attention, I would finally be able to put the pieces together.

At the morgue, Emily and I introduced ourselves to the coroner who had just completed whole autopsies on both victims. Emily asked for his professional opinion on what he saw while we were still talking in the hallway outside, but I asked if I could go in and take a look at the bodies for myself. The coroner shrugged and told me to go right ahead, knowing that it was probably just a waste of my time when he could just tell us everything we needed to know. But I just… I needed to see them for myself.

The coroner’s assistant was still cleaning up in the autopsy room when I walked in. Both victims were still laying on separate slabs, but they were covered with new, clean white sheets. The assistant acknowledged my entrance briefly before turning back to his work. I approached the bodies, starting with Mr. Kyle, and pulled away the sheet that was covering his body. The most obvious thing about him was the laceration on his throat, which was likely the cause of death. Looking down, his right arm had a gash running from his wrist to elbow, and his left leg had a similar cut from his crotch to just above the knee. All major arteries. All tactical. All precise. All straight, not jagged like you would expect from an unhinged Unsub like we presumed Raphael to be. Still, there were no bruises or scratches, either, which would have suggested that the first Unsub could have possibly held the victim down while Raphael cut him up. But there was no sign of a struggle. So they did this quickly and efficiently.

I covered Mr. Kyle up again and walked over to Mrs. Kyle to examine her, too. Her neck had been slashed, aswell, and there were identical cuts on her arm and leg. A submissive personality wasn’t likely to be this imitative, even if they were to entirely obey their dominant— which the first Unsub proved that he had doubts about his own loyalty. He wouldn’t have hung up the phone to just go upstairs with Raphael and follow along in a how-to-murder tutorial of sorts. No, Raphael did both of these. But he wasn’t chaotic, enraged, or disorganized, which were all telltale signs of a dominant personality. These murders weren’t abusive in any way. They were meticulous, but they weren’t brutal.

Emily came in with the doctor so that he could show her what they had been discussing outside. They discussed everything I already noticed, but there was something critical that he had overlooked. The cut on the neck was the last thing that Raphael did to the victims. The cuts on the arm and leg were deep and wide— so much so that one would bleed out within minutes if they were left unattended for too long— but they also looked older than the cut on the neck. Raphael must have made the cuts on the arms and legs of the victims while the first Unsub called the police with the intent of having the victims bleed out; but when they were put on a time crunch, Raphael slit their throats and they ran.

“Isn’t that what slaughterhouses do?” Emily questioned.

The coroner nodded, “Precisely.”

“So we’re dealing with Unsubs who have worked in a slaughterhouse.”

“This is rural Georgia… Everyone down here has worked on a farm where they need to have this kind of experience. If you’re trying to narrow down the suspect list based on that career choice, you’ll find that the list won’t shrink down too far.”

Emily sighed and looked at me. There weren’t many answers I had about narrowing the suspect list down, but I had an idea or two about the Unsubs’ dynamic now. And I was sure that I had figured out what happened last night when the Kyles were murdered. All that I needed to confirm my suspicions was Morgan, Reid, and Gideon’s analysis of the crime scene.

At the field office in Atlanta, everyone was already back from their assignments when Emily and I arrived. Hotch and JJ were sitting at a desk with stacks of files almost as tall as them, while Gideon and Morgan were watching a video on a computer, and Reid was examining a separate computer that they had found at the crime scene. Morgan called me over when he saw me and asked Gideon to start the video over. He asked me to just watch the video and tell them what I saw right off the bat— to go with my gut. My thing was to catch things at a first glance, and they really needed me to come through with that.

The first Unsub, the submissive, was sitting in front of a camera, hiding behind a hood in the shadows. We couldn’t see his face, and we could hardly tell his body shape. There was no real way of knowing what this guy looked like, but I knew his voice from the 911 call, and there was no doubt that it was the first Unsub. He was talking about the punishments for sinning. The world was plagued by disgusting creatures who enjoyed sin and invited it into the mundane world in order to prey on the innocent. They were just cleaning the world of these sinners through murder. The Unsub never directly said it, but I got the impression that he saw the sinners— their victims— as demons from Hell.

When someone started speaking from behind the camera, he started quoting another bible passage— just like they had left at the crime scene. But it wasn’t the first Unsub, nor was it Raphael. It was a third Unsub. After reciting the bible, the third Unsub said that we would all pay seven times. Seven victims. The Kyles were the first two, which meant that there were still five more to come. The footage of the first Unsub sitting in the dark cut out and dissolved into the recorded footage of the murders.

“Woah, wait,” I reached between Morgan and Gideon to pause the video. “Where did you guys find this?”

“The video was on that computer,” Morgan pointed to Reid, who was dusting off the fan of a laptop. “We found the computer itself sitting on a sofa.”

“The computer recorded this, not a camera?”

They both shook their heads and I continued the video. They Kyles didn’t seem to notice the computer or that anything was out of place as they stumbled around their bedroom, desperately trying to rid each other of their clothes. So they didn’t notice that a strange computer was sitting on the sofa in their master bedroom, and they didn’t notice that it was recording anything— even though the computer was in clear view and they would have seen it if it weren’t there before. So the Unsubs didn’t bring it with them. They couldn’t have if they had only just got into the house to have time to make the call and murder the Kyles. It was their computer— that was why they didn’t care about it.

As Mr. Kyle stood to take off his shirt, Raphael came into the bedroom, pulled Mr. Kyle to the ground, and started carving. Mrs. Kyle got up from the bed and started running to the bathroom so as to lock herself in and save herself. And then the video ended.

“So?” Morgan asked me.

“The first Unsub was the one who was willing to be filmed,” I started.

“What about it?”

“Well, normally, the submissives like to hide and just obey. The dominants are the ones who are the face of everything because they have the bolder, stronger personalities. But they decided to put the first Unsub on screen.” That was just another odd piece about their dynamic to add to the pile. Great. “And now there’s a third Unsub, which changes everything we know about these guys. The third Unsub, though… It’s something about him and Raphael, something that I noticed about how they talk. In the 911 call, Raphael says ‘he’ and the first Unsub in this video says ‘he’ as, well—”

“It could be referring to God,” Gideon interrupted.

I shook my head insistently, “No, I don’t think so. The third Unsub in this video says ‘we’, not ‘he’. If they were referring to God, all three of them would have said ‘he’, but they didn’t. I think that they were referring to the third Unsub this whole time. Raphael is the dominant but—” A realization hit me. “I actually… I think I might have a profile for them…”

“All three? Already?” Morgan questioned in shock.

“Yeah.”

“You’re sure?” Gideon clarified.

He knew that it was possible for me to have already built part of a case, but not the entire one— especially when we didn’t have more victims yet to compare victimology, and I hadn’t seen the crime scene. But I didn’t need to. I knew how these guys were operating. I knew their dynamic, or hierarchy, if you will. I had it.

“Uh… Guys…” Reid whispered, standing up from the desk he was working at. He moved away from the computer. “I think I figured something out.”

“What? What is it?” Gideon asked.

“Something struck me as odd while watching the video earlier,” he started explaining. “The computer, it belongs to the Kyles. The Unsubs didn’t put it there to film the murders.” That much I knew, but I didn’t get where he was going with it. “They, uh,” he looked back at the computer nervously, “they’re still watching. They hacked the computer.”

“Can they hear us?” I asked with wide eyes. The whole investigation could be going down the drain. If they were listening, they would know that we were onto them.

He shook his head, “No, but they can see everything.”

We all slowly moved towards the computer to get a look as it started beeping. Reid sat back down to see what was going on. Hotch and JJ ran over when Morgan whistled to catch their attention. The screen of the computer turned black, like it had been turned off remotely, then flashed the words: THE ARMIES OF SATAN WILL NOT RISE. And then the computer shut down entirely. Spencer cursed under his breath as he started fidgeting with all of the components of the computer just to try to turn it back on, but to no avail.

Hotch then told Reid to get the computer to Garcia ASAP, but we all had questions about how the Unsubs even did this. So the first resort was to call Garcia for answers. She told us that anyone could control a computer remotely, but it was usually done when a company would help you with tech support. Emily asked the big question of how the Unsubs could still have access after dealing with a customer, if he really was in tech support. She told us that it was entirely possible that the Unsubs could have left a Trojan Horse of some kind that continued to give him access and control of the computer.

“If you have that profile ready, we have to give it now,” Gideon told me. “They could be watching more potential victims right now. They could strike at any time.”

I nodded an agreement and the whole team started moving to the boardroom where we could discuss the profile privately. The lead detective and the local sheriff were both off handling the crime scene clean up, so we decided that it would be best to discuss and build the profile immediately, then JJ would just hand out a written version of it to every nearby precinct.

I stood at the board where we had pinned up all of the crime scene photos and evidence like the bible passage that had been left in the bedroom. Gideon, JJ, Reid, Morgan, and Emily all sat around the table, but Hotch was sitting on a waist high bookshelf in the corner with his arms crossed over his chest. They wanted me to start with the first Unsub, then the second, and lastly the third. Sounded easy enough.

“The first Unsub, the one who called the police the night of the murders, he’s our submissive—”

“But there are more than two Unsubs. How can they be submissive and dominant?” Gideon interrogated.

I sighed. Giving the profile sounded easy enough, but actually being able to do it without being interrupted every five seconds was going to be the challenge. “I’ll explain, I promise. The first Unsub is the submissive when it comes to the three of them. He was unsure about what they were doing to the Kyles, but he was quick to listen to Raphael when he told him to put the phone down. He also didn’t kill the victims—”

“How do you know that?”

“When I examined both bodies myself, I determined that both victims had been murdered by the same Unsub. The attacks were precise and aimed to kill painfully, but they weren’t disorganized like you would expect from a dominant—”

“So the first Unsub did kill them?”

“No. I think the third Unsub did. The first Unsub was concerned with calling the police, he wouldn’t have the guts to murder the Kyles himself, but he was also listening to a higher authority, like Raphael. Raphael was downstairs with the first Unsub while he called the police, which meant that he didn’t go back upstairs and kill the Kyles because he was busy commanding the first Unsub. Raphael is the dominant. The reason the first Unsub felt safe enough to call the police is because Raphael isn’t the one he’s scared of. It’s the third Unsub, the abuser. The abuser is the one who has the thirst for blood, and Raphael gives him the opportunity to do so because he keeps the first Unsub out of the way.”

“But wouldn’t the submissive have still been scared of Raphael because he’s the dominant?”

“No. They challenge each other because the Unsub sees it as a game of cat and mouse almost, it gives them a rush of sorts. The abuser is the violent one that the submissive doesn’t want to cross, even if it is just a game. Calling the police was a game for the dominant and submissive, but it put the abuser on edge, which was why he cut the victims’ throats.”

“Normally the submissives don’t like to play around with the dominants. They want to listen and obey out of fear of punishment for misbehaving. Why would they want to play just to get a rush out of it? How could you even come to that assumption?”

I gulped and looked at Hotch quickly. I couldn’t say flat out: “personal experience” because that would raise more questions than we had time for. But not giving them an answer would just discredit my profiles. “I, um…” I cleared my throat and shifted my gaze away from Hotch when I saw him glaring at me to tell me not to say anything. “Based on their behaviors. That’s how I know. The submissive was likely told by the dominant to film that video, but the abuser is the one who wants to get the word of God out to the world, so he interrupted and took over the commentary. The dominant allowed the submissive to call the police, but only let it get to a certain extent before stopping him. The submissive is trying to impress the dominant, but the abuser keeps getting in the way.”

“So the first Unsub is the submissive. He’s the organized one, but also the most apprehensive about their mission. He makes sure that they use forensic countermeasures— such as gloves— to make sure that they’re never caught. The second Unsub, Raphael, is the dominant. He’s also organized, but in a way that plays with the submissive’s behavior. He’s organized for the sake of their dynamic, but disorganized when it comes to the crimes. If he’s trying to give the submissive opportunities to prove himself, then the second Unsub is the one who likely has the technological knowledge to find the victims. The third Unsub is the abuser. He’s the one who wants to get the message out. He doesn’t care how they get there or what else happens with the dominant and submissive, he just cares that they kill the members of Satan’s army.” Reid explained all of that while pouring himself a coffee and moving up to the board to look through the evidence again.

“We get their dynamic. Great. But it doesn’t tell us anything about finding them,” Morgan commented, picking up another copy of one of the crime scene photos.

“Back to the drawing boards, then, with the profiles we now have,” Hotch ordered us.

Gideon and Morgan left to go review something about the crime scene or the video the Unsubs posted to the internet. Emily went to go see if she could help with that or figure out any connection to a farm using the knowledge we gained from the autopsies. Hotch, Reid, JJ, and I all stayed in the boardroom. As Reid sat back down with JJ, Hotch stood from leaning against the short bookshelf and walked over to the board I was standing at. We both turned to face the board and go through everything we knew.

“You need to be more careful when you’re talking about those kinds of things,” Hotch whispered under his breath, but just loud enough for me to hear. “They don’t teach that kind of thinking in the academy, and Gideon knows it.”

“It’s not that big of a deal,” I whispered back, pulling the bible page off the board. Forensics had already looked at it, but they didn’t find any fingerprints. “It’s just another profile.”

“A profile that you based on your own life. Don’t think I forgot about how you liked to play last night.”

“I said I was sorry, didn’t I?”

He sucked in a quiet breath past his teeth. “You’ll have to tell me again after this case.”

I was facing him instead of the board now, “Cat and mouse. See?” I smirked. My profile hadn’t been wrong and Hotch’s worry had been misplaced.

My smirk faded as JJ came up to us with a case file. “I think I found something,” she said, handing the file over to Hotch. “Since we couldn’t find any connections with unsolved cases, I started looking at it another way with Reid. We found this report. Someone called the police to report that there was someone watching and trying to get into the Kyles’ house. The witness was walking his dog, and on his way back to his car, he saw a man in dark clothing trying to break into the home.”

“There was only one man?” Hotch questioned. JJ nodded. It was curious that there weren’t three, if it were the Unsubs originally casing the house or even trying to commit the murders earlier. “And the witness?”

“Tobias Hankle. He lives about an hour from here.”

“He didn’t see anything about the suspect?” I asked.

“Nothing but the black clothes.”

Hotch sighed and scratched his stubble. “I mean, it’s certainly a long shot, but we’re not making much progress here. Why don’t you and Reid go talk to Hankle at his home and see if he remembers anything else about that night.”

“Okay,” JJ said, taking the file back from Hotch. Her and Reid collected their things from the table and headed out of the precinct together.

Hotch turned back to me, “You need to find a way to behave yourself during cases.”

“I was proving a point,” I told him.

“And every time you do, all I think about is last night—” He stopped himself. “Just…” He looked around the room just to triple check that we were alone. “Behave.”

“Yes, Sir,” I smirked again and turned back to the board.

The door to the room opened, “Agent Hotchner.” It was the lead detective on the case. He must have just come back from the crime scene. “We got another call. There’s been another murder.”

“Shit…” Hotch groaned.

We drove out to the new crime scene with the rest of the team. When we got there, the sheriff met us outside to give us a run down of what his men found. The Unsubs had called again, but this time only Raphael spoke, not the first Unsub, which was the first unusual thing about this crime scene compared to the last one. The next was the police response time, which was eleven minutes compared to the four prior. The last thing the sheriff told us was that the man who was dead in the upstairs bedroom wasn’t the man who lived in that house. He told us that the Douglas couple lived there, and that Mr. Douglas was away at work, while Mrs. Douglas was supposed to be at home. The man found upstairs was the local handyman, and Mrs. Douglas was nowhere to be found.

“Is he nude?” I asked about the male victim. The sheriff raised a brow at me and slowly nodded, “They were having an affair.”

“Y/N, Emily, go check the body since you guys saw the last ones,” Hotch ordered.

We hurried past our team together and skipped steps on the staircase in order to get to the top floor. The forensics team was just clearing out of the bedroom as Emily and I headed in, putting on the rubber gloves they supplied for us. Just as I had suspected, the victim was naked when he was murdered by our Unsubs. He was laying face down on the ground, but there was blood pooling from his neck, arm, and crotch, just like the other victims.

Emily noticed the computer sitting on the desk and held me back before I could step in front of it. “Don’t look at the camera,” she told me, pointing to the computer. I nodded and we stepped into its field of view together.

We crouched down with our backs to the camera and started to examine the body. Same lacerations, same M.O., but no note. If they were supposed to be messengers from God, then why didn’t they leave anything from the bible this time? Were they scared of fingerprints? Were they in a rush? Why change up the M.O. just when their message was finally being heard?

I grabbed my phone and dialed Garcia. “Speak at once, mere mortal!” she announced in my ear.

“Hey, can you do me a favor? We’ve got another computer in this house with us, and we think it’s streaming right back to the Unsubs. Can you trace it?”

“If it’s connected to the internet, I sure can. I’ll call and let you know what I find.”

“Thanks, Garcia.”

“Now, be gone, mortal!” And she hung up.

I put my phone back in my pocket.

“There’s not much here that we don’t already know,” Emily said. “They didn’t change anything but the bible page. If they were having an affair, one would think that they would have at least ten different pages laying around about adultery.”

Morgan knocked on the door. “Hotch wants to talk outside with everyone.”

Emily and I pushed ourselves to our feet and carefully walked out of the room while making sure to not notice the computer. Garcia would call back in a few minutes with either good or bad news, and I was just praying that it was good news. We needed a new lead or these guys were going to keep getting away with murder.

When we got outside, Hotch asked us if there was anything of importance in the crime scene to take note of, and we both shook our heads. “Fine, so what do we know about these guys?”

“They called the cops, but this time Raphael did it. But why?” Morgan questioned.

“They saw that we were catching onto them because of the computer. We spooked them, so the dominant stepped in to protect the submissive this time around,” I answered.

But as I said it, I realized that it didn’t make much sense in the context of these guys. With me and Hotch, he got protective and defensive about nearly everything that had to do with me, but that was because there was a romantic aspect involved. Psychopaths and sociopaths don’t have the ability to love, and we had proven that the dominant and submissive’s game was to excite each other about the crime, not to protect each other.

I tried to take a step back to look at it from another angle. “Do we know what Raphael said on the phone?”

“‘Behold, I will cast her into a bed, and then that commit adultery’,” Hotch said. “Gideon says that they’re talking about Jezebel. The Unsubs knew that they were having an affair because of the computer again.”

Something was wrong about all of this still. Why did Raphael call, and why did he quote the bible when that was the third Unsub’s purpose? If the submissive wasn’t calling the police, and he wasn’t with the third Unsub out of fear of the violence, then where was he? And how did they take Mrs. Douglas all at the same time? None of the personalities were aligning, that was the problem. If they had, the timeline would have made sense, but it didn’t.

A thought struck me about what could have been happening, but I didn’t have Reid there to give me more information. He was still off with JJ at Tobias Hankle’s house, trying to collect any information about that night he witnessed someone trying to get into the Kyles’ house. But when it came to psychopathic submissives and dominants, they never switched roles. Not like this, at least, which was why something occurred to me, but I just couldn’t be sure without Reid. I didn’t have anyone there to back up or correct my theory. But I had to try, right?

“What if… What if we’re not even dealing with three Unsubs?”

They all looked at me. Hotch was the first to verbalize their confusion. “What do you mean?”

“I think that we’ve been looking at this all wrong. There aren’t three Unsubs. There’s only one.”

“How’s that possible?” Morgan questioned with a slight chuckle.

“Dissociative Personality Disorder— more commonly known as Multiple Personality Disorder.”

“You mean that there’s one Unsub who believes that he’s three different people?”

I nodded, “The submissive is the one that protects the host, but he got scared, so the dominant came forward this time to protect the submissive. The dominant is the mediator between the submissive and the abuser. He’s the one who tries to protect and entertain the submissive, while also encouraging the abuser’s behavior. The abuser, the third personality, he’s the true psychopath. He’s the one who wants to inflict the pain. Together, they make one man who is three personalities stuck inside of his mind that have been created for different purposes: protection, mediation, and violence.”

“They’re right,” Gideon said to all of us as he stormed out of the house with a bible page in hand. “I found this next to the telephone near the back door, which was unlocked.” He handed the paper to Hotch. “‘Power was given unto them over the fourth part of the Earth. To kill with sword, with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the Earth’,” he quoted from memory. “Raphael is one of the Archangels. Mrs. Douglas is Jezebel. You figure out the rest.”

“He thinks that he’s an Archangel sent by God to cleanse the Earth, that’s why he’s the mediator. He doesn’t want to see the innocent harmed, but he wants to see the sinners suffer. Mrs. Douglas is an adulterer, so he views her as Jezebel.”

“Yeah, well, if Mrs. Douglas is Jezebel, there’s an especially unpleasant death in her future,” Hotch commented.

“How do you mean?”

“Jezebel was eaten alive by dogs.”

My phone started ringing. I answered the call, “Garcia, please tell me you have some good news for me.”

“Unfortunately not, my pretty. There’s been another video uploaded to the internet.”

“You’re joking. Is it the handyman murder?”

“No. Worse. Did you guys have a missing woman you were looking for?”

“Yeah, Mrs. Douglas. Why?”

“Well, you won’t be looking for her anymore.”

“How come?”

“The Unsubs just released a new video of her… being eaten alive by a pack of dogs.”

I looked up at Hotch and Gideon, “We’re too late.”

“I’m sending the video to you guys now. Can you get to a computer?”

“Uh, yeah, sure.”

I started heading back inside and everyone followed me. I stayed on the phone with Garcia as we all marched back up into the bedroom where the computer was still sitting open. I didn’t care if this poor bastard saw my face. We knew that he couldn’t hear us, Spencer said so himself. I wanted this guy to see me. I wanted him to know that we were onto him.

I pulled up the video Garcia sent over and pressed play. It was the first Unsub on camera again— though, I supposed that if I were indeed correct, then it was our only Unsub on screen, but it was the submissive personality that was reading from the bible. He was reading a passage about Jezebel’s death, Mrs. Douglas chained up and gagged behind him. Just as he finished reciting it, the Unsub set the dogs upon her.

I went to turn off the video, but the sheriff, who had just entered the room to see what we were looking at, stopped me. We all watched as he stepped closer to the computer to get a better look.

He pointed to the dogs, “I know these dogs— I mean, I know the owner. Those dogs attacked someone a couple of months ago, and I would’ve impounded them, but the victim knew the owner and didn’t want to press charges.”

“Are you sure that those are the same dogs?” Gideon asked.

The sheriff nodded, “As God as my witness.”

“Who’s the owner?”

“Hankle. Tobias Hankle.”

“Wait,” Hotch stepped in, “Tobias Hankle?” The sheriff nodded again. “Shit,” he wiped his hands over his face. “JJ and Spencer drove out there to talk to him. He was the witness who called the cops to tell them that someone was trying to break into the Kyles’ house a few months ago. How far from here is Hankle’s home?”

“About an hour and forty-five minutes.”

“The sun will be down by then. Garcia,” Hotch called to her through my phone, “can you try to get ahold of Reid or JJ?”

“On it,” she hung up immediately to call them.

We all ran back to the cars. Morgan grabbed all of the bulletproof vests from the car before jumping in with us. Hotch immediately floored it with the sirens and lights on the second everyone was in our car. Morgan started passing out our vests, and we put them on as fast as we could, despite the hour and forty-five minute drive that we had ahead of us. I tried to call Garcia to see if she got ahold of either Reid or JJ, but the signal died just as we left the suburbs and started driving the forty-five minutes through middle of nowhere Georgia towards Atlanta, where we would then have another hour to drive out to Hankle’s house.

“Could you get through to them?” Hotch asked after he noticed that I put my phone away. I shook my head. “I shouldn’t have sent them out there. We should have made him come into the station for questioning.”

“You thought he was just a witness, Hotch. You can’t blame yourself.”

“I’m their supervisor. Their safety is my responsibility. I shouldn’t have sent them out there, he repeated as if it would change the situation we were in.

“Y/N’s right, Hotch,” Morgan said. “This isn’t on you.”

Hotch’s grip around the steering wheel tightened. He heard us and he knew that we were right, but he just couldn’t force himself to believe it until we would find Reid and JJ safe and alive.

It was an hour and forty-five minutes of driving to Hankle’s house. An hour and forty-five minutes of worrying about them. An hour and forty-five minutes of Hotch sitting in silence as he ran through every regret he had. And the worst part was, there was nothing I could do to ease his nerves or conscience.

When we arrived at Tobias Hankle’s home, everything suddenly started to make sense about him and the profiles we built. Emily and I had profiled the Unsub as someone who had experience slaughtering animals, and we weren’t far off. Hankle lived on a farm out in the middle of nowhere. There was a house up front, behind it a large barn, and just past that was a vast sea of tall crops that anyone could get lost in.

The black SUV we were riding in slid a bit on the loose dirt path beneath us. The sheriff spread his men out with different assignments, and Hotch did the same for us. Hotch sent me and Morgan to the barn, while Emily, Gideon, and Hotch were all going to check the large house. The sheriff handed one walkie to me and one to Hotch for emergencies.

“You stay with me. The entire time. Got it?” he clarified with me as we started running around the house and towards the barn. I nodded and turned on my flashlight.

We approached the two large doors of the barn and we pressed our backs against the outside walls, just beside the hinges. He held up three fingers and slowly started counting down. When his hand was in a fist, we both pushed our backs off of the walls, turned around, and kicked the doors in. We headed in with our guns and flashlights raised, but we stayed silent as we moved through the dark.

Morgan pointed his flashlight at the carcass of a dog and looked up at me to make sure that I saw it. I nodded. Three dogs killed Mrs. Douglas on the video. One down, two more to go. We continued on through the barn, and I found the next dog. Only one more left. We kept moving and I found the stable to the left where Mrs. Douglas was mauled and eaten alive. The last dog was in there. Each of them had been shot, they hadn’t started eating each other or any other cause of death imaginable for them. Shot.

“Did Hankle kill them after he was done with them?” I questioned while peeking into the stable to take a look at everything. There was no trace of Mrs. Douglas. No bones, no flesh, no limbs, just blood. Blood everywhere. On the wood of the stables, on the mattress that had been put in there, on the hay beneath the mattress. So much blood. But nothing else.

“FBI!” someone called from the stable behind us.

Morgan and I turned with our weapons raised, my finger on the trigger. When I saw JJ staring back at us with her own weapon raised, I lowered mine. She was looking around frantically, not realizing that it was me and Morgan who had found her. Morgan tried to lower his weapon, too, to show that it was just him and that she was going to be alright, but she was still in a panic and couldn’t put two and two together.

“JJ, it’s just us— Morgan and Greenaway,” Morgan said, taking careful steps closer to her.

She slowly lowered her gun, but she still looked at us with wide eyes. “Tobias Hankle is the Unsub.”

“Yeah, we know. Y/N, call an ambulance.”

I stepped away to talk into the comms in order to call for an ambulance. No one on the team responded, so I tried the walkies that the sheriff handed to me before we split off. I called for an ambulance again, and one of the dispatchers responded that they were already sending one, but it was still a few minutes away. I lifted my wrist again for the team comms to ask if anyone had eyes on Reid, but Emily responded to say that the house was cleared and empty.

“JJ,” I turned back to her, “where’s Reid?”

“I… Um…” She held her head in her palms like she was trying to remember where she last saw him. “We said that we were going to split up. He went around the back, but he never came in.”

Morgan was already on his toes and running out the back of the barn to go find Spencer. I tried yelling after him to tell him to wait up, but he was gone. He was the one who wanted to stay with me and make sure we didn’t split off, but the second he heard that something was wrong with Reid, he was only focused on finding him. Knowing that I couldn’t leave JJ to chase after him, I offered her my hand and we headed out of the barn and towards the cars to wait for the ambulance. Emily, Gideon, and Hotch were talking on the porch of the house with the sheriff about what they found in the house. I opened one of the car doors for JJ and let her sit down while I stood by.

“They just… They tore her apart,” JJ whispered. “There was nothing left of her…” She looked at me. “I had to kill them. The dogs. They were still hungry, even after all of that… And when Reid didn’t come in after hearing the gunshots, I knew that something was wrong, but I was too… I was too paralyzed to go looking for him…”

“This isn’t your fault, JJ. You didn’t know. No one did.”

“We shouldn’t have split up. I told him that we shouldn’t’ve, but he didn’t listen to me.”

The ambulance’s sirens and lights made an appearance for the first time down the road as they came speeding up to the house. I helped JJ back to her feet and led her over to the ambulance just after it parked. The EMTs jumped out of the vehicle and opened up the back so that JJ could sit down again while they checked on her. When she was in safe hands, I took a step away and looked back at the barn to see if Morgan was back with Reid yet, but there was no sign of either of them.

“Morgan!” I called out, running back over to the silent barn. When he didn’t respond from inside, I called over to Emily, and she ran down from the porch to meet me. “Morgan ran into the field to find Reid. They’re not back yet.” She knew what that meant as well as I did, so we started running. We headed around the barn and to the edge of the field. “Morgan! Reid!” No response. “Morgan!” Still nothing. I looked to Emily and we nodded to each other before running into the field together. “Morgan! Reid!” Nothing but the sounds of me and Emily pushing through the tall stalks of wheat. “Derek! Spencer!” Maybe calling them by their first names would catch their attention. Just maybe. “Derek!”

“I’m over here,” he said just to my left. He didn’t scream, but he didn’t whisper it either. He sounded like he had meant to scream, but he seemed defeated somehow. Emily and I changed directions to find him standing in the middle of the field on a small path, his head lowered. “He’s not here,” Morgan whispered, kicking at some of the rocks. “There’s drag marks and blood. But there’s no Reid.”

“Hankle took him?” Emily asked.

“That son of a bitch…”

I walked up to Morgan and put a gentle hand on his shoulder. He looked up at me, anger glossing over his eyes. “There’s nothing we can do about it tonight, Morgan,” I told him. “We won’t find him running in the dark like this. We’ll just get turned around ourselves.”

“They’re right,” Emily backed me up. “We need to regroup and profile Hankle if we’re going to find Spencer.”

Morgan nodded understandingly. Emily and I were right. Running around like headless chickens wasn’t going to do Spencer any good, even if Hankle hadn’t taken him and he was just lost. We would send out a search party in the morning, and I was sure that Hotch and the sheriff already closed down every road out of town. If Hankle took Reid, he wasn’t going to get far. But we all just needed to collect ourselves and catch our breaths. We had JJ, and she could help us profile and find Hankle. We were all set to catch him soon. Morgan just needed to hold onto faith.

The three of us headed back to the house. Gideon and Hotch were inside, and JJ was finishing up with the EMTs. No trip to the hospital for her, which was good. She spotted us arriving from the field and pushed past the medics to talk to us. She asked if we found Reid, even though he clearly wasn’t with us. When Morgan walked past her without a word and I couldn’t look at her, she guessed, but Emily finally told her the truth.

I didn’t say another word to JJ before walking past her, too, and heading into Tobias Hankle’s house to talk with the rest of the team about what they found. They were all standing in a computer room on the first floor on the left side of the building. There were more computers and monitors in that one room than I had ever seen in Penelope’s office— and that was saying something. Some were vintage computers from the 80’s, others were brand-spankin’ new. But what mattered was that Tobias Hankle did have all of the computers to watch his potential victims, and he had the technological knowledge to use them in order to hack people. With so many computers and not enough Garcias, she would have to come down to Georgia to help find Reid. This was going to be all hands on deck.

Hotch and Morgan caught me walking into the room before turning back to all of the computers. “I’ve already called Garcia. She’ll be flying down here first thing in the morning,” Hotch said to me, though not facing me. I called it, didn’t I? “Everyone should try to get some sleep. There’s nothing we can do until morning when we can look for Reid and get Garcia here.”

“No,” I insisted, “we need to search this house and figure out if there’s any clue as to where he took Reid.”

“Everyone’s exhausted and shaken up. We won’t be able to build a clear profile with whatever we find.”

“I don’t think that’s the right call—”

“But it’s my call,” he raised his voice, turning to me again.

I doubled down. Emotions were high— especially for him and JJ. They were both putting the blame on themselves, and it was stressing them out. JJ was dealing with it by going into panic mode, while Hotch was handling it with anger. He wasn’t going to listen, but I wasn’t going to just sit around or fall asleep, not while Reid was still out there with that psychopath. He needed our help, and we all knew the statistics of kidnapping victims making it past the first few hours. Reid’s life was on borrowed time, and we needed to find him one way or another. So I turned and stormed out of the computer room to start looking through the bedrooms upstairs.

Hotch was right about one thing, though. We all needed rest and to calm down, and even though my eyelids were growing heavy as my adrenaline began to subside, I wasn’t about to give in. I felt like I was going to topple over on the stairs or pass out in the first bedroom as I walked in, but I just tried to focus my vision on one thing and figure out what I could learn about Tobias Hankle and the other personalities he had fighting for dominance in his mind.

I turned on the bedroom light to help me see and to hopefully help me stay awake. I started with the desk, taking a seat at it to help rest my legs for a moment. He had papers stacked neatly everywhere, but they were all old school assignments from, like, fifth grade. The kind of assignments parents would put on the fridge when they were proud of their kid’s achievements. The kind of assignments that Hotch and I put on the fridge when Jack would bring home an A+. Tobias still had them sitting prominently in his room, however. Why? He was in his mid-thirties. Why hadn’t he gotten rid of them or at least stored them away yet?

I rubbed my eyes and opened one of the drawers. There were toys hiding in there. Little green soldier men and knucklebone— things that a kid would stuff in his drawers after his parents would yell at him to pick up his room. I knew because that was where Jack hid his toys when he was too lazy to put them away and I would have to find them and do it for him later so that he wouldn’t lose them. The only two toys Jack took everywhere with him, though, were the red dinosaur and the green Hot Wheels car. Tobias had similar behavior to Jack in that regard. There was only one stuffed animal on his bed, while the others were neatly placed on a shelf, and the toys in the drawers, and the school assignments on the desk. Tobias’s first personality, the submissive one, was a child. He still saw himself as the young, innocent boy that he was when he was in fifth grade or so.

“What are you doing in here?”

I nearly fell out of the chair at the shock of Hotch sneaking up behind me. After I yelped, I saw that it was just him leaning against the doorframe, his arms crossed and his face all broody like he was mad at me. He wasn’t wearing his vest anymore, like I was. He was back in his suit jacket and tie, yet he still looked somehow disheveled.

I caught my breath and calmed my racing heart while turning back to the desk. “I’m helping,” I told him, busying my hands with looking through the assignments on the desk.

“I told you that you need to rest.”

“Is Morgan resting? Is Gideon resting? Are you going to rest?”

“Morgan’s already making a pot of coffee…” Hotch admitted.

“Good. I’ll take one.”

“No, you won’t. You need to sleep.”

“I’m fine,” I insisted, smiling over at him to prove my point.

He rolled his eyes. “Your eyes are sunken and half open. You’ll fall asleep at that desk before you can find anything of use.”

“Oh, yeah?” I challenged. I grabbed the stack of papers and opened the drawer again to show him what I had found. “Tobias’s submissive personality is a kid. That’s why he called the cops but was so quick to listen to Raphael.”

Hotch came over and took the papers from me to get a proper look for himself. He flicked through each page, licking his fingers every time he wanted to flip to the next one. “So what does this tell us about where he took Reid?”

I shrugged my shoulders and shook my head slowly. It was good information for a profile, but it wasn’t going to tell us anything about where Tobias took Spencer. Tobias’s submissive personality wouldn’t have been the one to make that decision. He might have known a place, but he wouldn’t have recommended it. Wherever he took Reid had to have been somewhere either Raphael or the abuser personality knew about and knew that no one would be able to find. A stack of school papers, some toys in a drawer, neatly placed stuffed animals, and a perfectly clean room weren’t going to give us the answers we absolutely needed.

Hotch crouched beside me and gently put his hand on my arm. “JJ and Emily are taking the couches downstairs. You need to sleep at some point.”

“No, I don’t.” I couldn’t believe he was already back to this. Spencer was out there somewhere, waiting for us to find him. There wasn’t any time to sleep.

“Yes. You do. You’re not weak if you're just taking care of yourself.”

“I know that.”

“Do you? Because you’re not acting like it. You keep doing reckless things that impact your safety and health all in the name of this job, Y/N. You’re acting like you need to keep proving yourself. You don’t. You’re human if you need to sleep, take a break, cry, feel things— whatever. You’re just like the rest of us and no one’s going to look down on you for getting some rest when you’ve worn yourself out.”

“He needs me, Hotch.”

“He needs us. The best way we can help him is by being on top of our game. You can’t keep going like this. Just take the bed and sleep for a few hours.”

“I don’t want to sleep in this creep’s house.”

“Is that what this is about?”

I nodded. It was part of the reason. While I wanted to help Reid in any way I could as fast as I could, if Hotch was going to send me to bed, he had to know that it wouldn’t be in that house. I would have rather slept on the grass just out front. Anywhere but in that psychopath’s home. It was too unnerving to think about sleeping in one of the beds since all of the couches were taken. It was just too odd.

Hotch grabbed my hand, “Come with me.” He pulled me to my feet and started leading me down stairs and out of the house.

We passed the computer room where Morgan and Gideon were half asleep while trying to find what they could, and JJ and Emily were in the living room, laying down on the couches and talking to each other quietly as they began to wind down for the night. Hotch opened the front door and continued to guide me outside, past the porch, past the grass, and over to the black SUV we had brought.

Hotch let go of my hand so that he could pull the trunk open, then kneel inside so that he could push the backseats down flat to create more space in the trunk. He grabbed the vests that he, Emily, Gideon, and Morgan all peeled off themselves once they knew that there was no threat around the farm, and he threw them up to the front seat. I started pulling all of the velcro straps apart on my vest and pulled it off my body before handing it to Hotch, and he threw it up front with the others.

The trunk was officially cleaned out, but I didn’t understand what for until Hotch told me to climb in. I raised a brow and chuckled. He sat down in the trunk and patted an empty space beside him before telling me to climb in again. My eyes stayed on his as I gave in and crawled in beside him. I turned around to face the open back of the car and sat down, my legs stretched out in front of me. I sighed and let my eyes fall shut just to find a moment of peace and clarity.

It was so quiet and so relaxing. No one would have ever guessed that a place like it would have been home to a psychotic serial killer. But that was how it always went. It was always the person neighbors least expected who always turned out to be the most violent. Tobias was just a boy who didn’t get the help he needed, and so his mental stability spiraled and he became the violent murderer we discovered him to be. Living in seclusion on a farm like that, where the only thing you could hear for miles was the chirping of crickets, it would make anyone go insane after so long. But just spending a night there in the car, with Hotch at my side, it didn’t seem so bad. I couldn’t forget that Reid was out there all alone with Tobias, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was letting him down by giving into the idea of sleep, but I could at least find enough peace in the cool wind passing by the car that I started to grow more tired. We would help Reid in the morning, just as Hotch promised.

“Is this better?” Hotch asked me quietly. I nodded and laid down flat on my back with my eyes shut. I shivered as the wind passed by again. “Are you alright?” he asked, noticing right away. I turned onto my side, now facing Hotch, and pulled my knees up slightly to trap some warmth around my body. He caught on quickly, so he took off his jacket and laid it over me. I instantly felt at home in the strangest of ways, but I didn’t question it because it just felt so nice. “I love you,” he whispered, resting his palm on my thigh.

I put my hand over his, “I love you, too.”

#criminal minds #criminal minds imagine #criminal minds imagines #criminal minds fanfiction #criminal minds fanfic #aaron hotchner #aaron hotch x reader #aaron hotch hotchner #aaron hotchner imagine #aaron hotchner imagines

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waitimcomingtoo · 5 years

Note

Hi there! I am a huge fan of your writing. You’re so talented!! All of your stories are pure GEM!!! Anyway, I have a story idea: reader is tom’s childhood friend and she substituting Harry as Tom’s assistant during one of his filming. Only if you don’t mind :) Thaank you!!

Thank you so much!!

Old Friend

part two

Pairing: Tom Holland x Reader

Masterlist

more like this:I might be the writer if we were a movie

“Are you serious?” Tom whined Into the phone.

“I know.” Harry sighed. “I’m sorry. But if I don’t make up my exam today, my professor is gonna fail me. There’s no way I can make it to set today.”

“It’s not your fault.” Tom didn’t want to put the blame on his brother. “I just really need an assistant. I get disorganized and stressed when you’re not there.”

“I know. That’s why I’m sending in a substitute assistant for the day.” Hardy replied.

“A substitute?” Tom sighed. “Who? I don’t really feel like teaching a stranger my whole schedule.”

“I already got them up to date on what they need to do.” Harry assured his brother. “And they’re not a stranger. You’ll know her when you see her.”

As if on cue, Tom heard a knock on his trailer door.

“Tom?” You asked as you entered his trailer. Tom turned to the voice and his eyes widened at the sight of his childhood best friend. You were grown now, as was he. Your baby face had melted into a beautiful young woman. Your hair was lighter and your skin tanner, no doubt from the LA sun. He hadn’t seen you since you were 10, and you told him with tears running down your face that you were moving to America after growing up next to each other all your lives. Tom let the phone fall from his hand and felt his throat dry out.

“Y/n?” He asked hopefully. “Is that really you?”

“I think so.” You smiled. That was something that hadn’t changed. You still had the same angelic smile Tom remembered from his childhood, and it made him smile back.

“I haven’t seen you since we were kids. God, I barely recognize you when you’re not in a princess dress.” Tom laughed, still taking you in.

“And somehow, you still look like a prince. Nice hair.” You nodded towards his quaff and he blushed in embarrassment. It felt like you had fallen right back into how you used to be, and Tom was loving it.

“Trust me, it wasn’t my decision.” Tom defended his Prince Charming-esk hair.

“I like it no matter who’s decision it was.” You shrugged with an easy smile. “I see you still like to wear the same clothes.” You pointed at his Spider-Man suit with a cheeky smile. You and Tom had grown up in love with the 16 year old superhero, and him playing him was a dream come true.

“Yep.” Tom agreed, thinking back to late nights on the trampoline pretending to be Spider-Man. “This ones a little fancier but a lot harder to use the bathroom in.”

“If I remember correctly, you never had a problem using the bathroom in uncomfortable costumes before.” You raised your eyebrows and Tom groaned.

“I pee my pants during one school play and you never let me forget it.” He whined.

“Just trying to keep you humble, movie star.” You winked. “And I can’t get over it since it was during my only speaking line.”

“I was nervous.” He declared.

“You were a tree!” You protested.

“A nervous tree.” Tom defended. “And I can promise you, I have not peed during any scene since then.”

“I hope not, because as your assistant, I’d have to help you clean up.” You pointed out.

“How’d you end up as my assistant anyway?” Tom wondered, not that he was complaining.

“I moved to LA a month ago to follow my career and I ran into Harry yesterday at a cafe. He told me he was about to fail some class and I asked what I could do to help, and this is what I could do.” You replied. 14 years missing each other and you just so happened to run into Harry in a cafe.

“I’m gonna feel bad making you do things for me though.” Tom realized. He didn’t want to boss the only girl he ever loved around all day. Getting coffee was beneath you.

“Don’t.” You assured him. “Do you know how hard it is to find a job in LA? I will be your assistant for the rest of my life if you want.”

“Oh, okay.” Tom nodded, feeling a little disappointed that you were only in it for the job.

“Plus, I get to hang out with my childhood best friend on a million dollar movie set. Trust me, I’m living the dream.” You smiled and poked his arm. At the first contact with you in 14 years, Tom felt his body light up like a live wire. He pulled you into a hug and held you there as if his life depended on it.

“I have missed you.” He said, voice wavering with emotion.

“I guess I missed you too.” You shrugged in his arms.

“Ouch.” Tom laughed at your indifference.

“I’m only teasing.” You laughed back. “My friends from high school and college know everything about you. You were all I talked about.”

“I get it. You wanted some street-cred for knowing a celebrity.” Tom said with a cocky grin.

“I actually never told them you were famous.” You answered, still in his arms.

“Really? You didn’t tell them you and Spider-Man used to finger paint portraits of each other?” Tom looked down at you the best he could.

“I told them about those portraits, but not that it was with Spider-Man.” You replied.

“Why not?“ Tom wondered.

“Because it wasn’t.” You shrugged. “It was with you. I knew you before you were famous and that’s the Tom I remember. I told them about how you were secretly a great carpenter but pretended to be bad so your mom wouldn’t make you go to carpentry school and how you accidentally ran over a butterfly with your bike and cried for a month. Those are the things I remembered and loved about you. You being famous is the least interesting thing about you.”

Tom was speechless with your words. You loved him for him, and clung on to your memories the same way he did. He squeezed you tighter and sniffled a little.

“I really missed you, Y/n.” He repeated. It was all he could say.

“I missed you too.” You smiled softly as you hugged your childhood best friend. You and Tom stood in silence, quietly swaying as he rested his chin on top of your head. No words were spoken, but no words were needed. You let your body language speak the words you didn’t have a chance to all those years you were apart.

“Now go make me a coffee.” Tom said, breaking the silence. You slipped out of his hug and gave him a shocked face.

“I’m kidding! I’m kidding!” Tom pulled your back into his arms with a laugh, placing a gentle “welcome home” kiss on your forehead. “I drink tea.”

You spent the day at Toms beck and call. He was incredibly easy to work with and just as kind as you remembered. He always sent you away with a “please” and greeted you with a “thank you.” You brought him his tea, script, schedule, and anything else he asked for. He was filming all day, but spent every break and lunch with you, just catching up. He learned that you were single and trying to become a playwright. Tom told you you’d be amazing. He was just as you remembered; goofy, annoying, and just about the sweetest guy alive. The day ended before you knew it and soon it was time to leave.

“I’ll see you when I see you.” You said as you gathered your things from Toms trailer, feeling deflated. He was busy at work and your time together was ending.

“Right, I’ll see you.” Tom said before putting his hand over his pocket. “Oh, what’s that? My phone is ringing?”

“I don’t hear a-“ you tried to say.

“-oh, it’s definitely ringing.” Tom cut you off as he took out his phone and held it to his ear. “Hello? Oh Harry! It’s Harry.” Tom whispered to you. “What’s that? You can’t be my assistant tomorrow either? You’re failing another class? Gosh golly darn it. I don’t know where I’ll find an assistant on such short notice.” Tom sighed loudly and you bit back a smile as his ridiculous behavior. “What did you say? You think Y/n should stay for another day? That’s a great idea Harry. Gee, I wish I thought of that idea. I’ll ask her. Okay. Bye now.” Tom pretended to hang up the phone and looked at you.

“Harry’s not coming tomorrow either.” Tom sighed again.

“Really? I had no idea.” You played along.

“I guess you’ll just have to be my assistant again tomorrow.” Tom shrugged as if he didn’t orchestrate the entire plan.

“I guess I will.” You shrugged back. You and Tom shared shy smiles, feeling like kids again.

“So I’ll see you tomorrow?” You asked as you made your way out.

“Yes. Tomorrow.” Tom nodded and watched you leave.

“Damn it.” The director grumbled as he got off the phone the next day.

“What’s wrong?” You asked as you fixed Toms hair before his next scene where Spider-Man had to save a girl from a falling truck.

“The extra broke her leg over the weekend.” He answered. “She’s not coming.”

“Can’t you just use someone else?” Tom asked.

“We’d have to find a girl who can fit into her costume and act in under half an hour to stay on schedule. That’s not happening in such short notice.” The director sighed and checked his clipboard.

“Y/n could do it.” Tom spoke up.

“What?” You asked him.

“It’s perfect.” Tom continued. “You can act and you can fit into her costume. We used to do plays all the time when we were younger.”

“A year 3 play is a lot different from a Marvel film.” You reminded him.

“Not really. Anthony Mackie acts like a third grader anyway.” Tom answered. “You’ll be fine. All you have to do is scream.”

“Tom, I can’t.” You said out of the corner of your mouth.

“Please?” He begged. “If we don’t shoot this scene today the whole movie will be delayed.”

“I’ve never been on camera before. I can’t just jump into a Spider-Man movie.” You protested.

“I did! Actually, I flipped in.” He corrected himself. “That’s besides the point. The point is, you’re amazing, you’re talented, you’re here, and I need you.” Tom listed. “Please?”

You looked at Tom and sighed. “What do I have to do?”

“Yay! Thank you!” Tom kissed your forehead. “All that’s gonna happen is I’m gonna swing down and pick you up to stop you from being crushed by a falling truck. Then we just swing around New York before I set you down all safe and sound. That’s easy enough, right?”

“Swing me around?” You gasped. “How high?”

“40, maybe 50 feet.” Tom shrugged.

“50 feet?!” You shrieked.

“I said maybe!” He shot back.

“I’m not good with heights.” You whined.

“It’s okay. I’ll be holding onto you the entire time. You’ll be safe in my arms.” Tom assured you, and you almost believed him.

“I don’t know.” You bit your lip.

“Come on, Y/n. We were the biggest Spider-Man fans as kids. You always told me it was your dream to swing around in his arms. This is your chance.” Tom pleaded with you as you felt the eyes of the entire cast and crew staring at you.

“My chance to fall 50 feet and die.” You shot back.

“You won’t fall. I won’t let you.” Tom promised as he held his hands under his chin in a pleading position.

“Fine.” You blurted. “What do I have to say?”

“You don’t have any lines. You just need to scream. You don’t even need a script.” Tom smiled as you were rushed off to hair and makeup.

Next thing you knew, you were changed into your costume, harnessed and had wires attached to you, Tom as well.

“Ready?” Tom gave you an excited thumbs up.

“No.” You answered, but couldn’t help the smile that appeared. Tom shot a grin back at you before slipping on his mask. The first story nodded at you, and you nodded back.

“Action!” The director called.

You did as you were told. You started running away as the cameras followed, always looking back and screaming.

You tried to go left and a car exploded in your way.

You tried to go right and a telephone line fell, blocking your path as sparks flew. You had nowhere to go and no one to save you. Then, the truck came flying at you. You screamed and covered your face just before Spider-Man came swinging in and swept you off your feet. You kept your eyes shut as Tom gave your hip a reassuring squeeze. You didn’t watch as you felt the worse pulling you higher and higher. You just held on tightly to Toms neck and prayed for a safe landing.

“Give is a scream!” The director called from below. You did as you were told.

“It’s okay. I got you!” Tom said triumphantly as Peter. He saw the platform he had to land on and squeezed your hip twice to let you know it was ending. He stuck his landing and you felt your feet touching the floor again. You slowly took your face out of the crook of his neck and looked around, timid and afraid, before looking at Tom.

“See? I told you I got you.” Tom laughed sprightly and gave you a squeeze.

It was in the script.

All of it.

The words, the swing, the moment. The extra who didn’t show up knew that. Tom knew that. The cast and crew knew that.

Not you though.

You’d never read the script. Not that scene anyway. So in the rush of the moment with your favorite superhero’s arms around you and your heart beating rapidly from the adrenaline, you lifted Toms mask above his nose and kissed him firmly without a second thought. The kiss softened and he cupped your face before you pulled away and shook your head to wake yourself up.

“Thanks Spider-Man.” You said bashfully and slowly took your arms from around his waist.

“Okay. You have a good day ma’am.” Tom pretended to tip an invisible hat at you and ran out of frame.

“Cut!” The director yelled.

“Sorry, I kinda went off script at the end there.” You quickly commented to both Tom and the director before it could get anymore awkward between you and Tom. He hadn’t removed his mask yet, and you were glad he hadn’t. You didn’t even know why you kissed him. You just did. Everything in you told you you had to.

“No problem. You were feeling the moment. All good actors do. You’ve felt the moment before, right Tom?” The director asked.

“I definitely felt something.” Tom said in a strange way.

“Y/n, Tom, great work. I think we got everything we need. You two can go home for the day. See you tomorrow.” He smiled and patted Tom on the back. Tom removed his mask and was just as red underneath. At first, no one spoke. Then he cleared his throat, then you. Finally, you had to speak.

“Sorry about that.” You offered.

“Don’t be.” Tom smiled tightly.

“It’s just, you know how long I’ve loved Spider-Man and when we were shooting that scene”, your heart started to pound again like it did when you were in the air, “it all felt so real. You in your suit looking like Peter Parker, I mean it was just magical.”

“I’m aware of how magical it was.” Tom smiled genuinely this time.

“No, but you’re used to it. Swinging around with the wind in my hair and your arms around me, I just got so emotional that I kissed you” you explained. “All I could do in that moment was kiss you. Uh, kiss Spider-Man I mean. I just really needed to kiss Spider-Man.”

“Right. Spider-Man.” Tom nodded, suddenly wondering if he wanted to be more than friends with his old friend.

Part two

Tag List 🏷

@maybemona @sunrise-shawn @meghan-8520xx @writing-for-hours-on-end @lavender-writer @captainmandeestudent17 @whatareyouhidingpeter @takenbyheartstrings @ultrunning @imyourliquor-youremypoison @theolwebshooter @autumnlyholland @andreasworlsboring101 @guksmyfav @waiting-to-be-myself @letsloveimagines @ho-ho-holland @peterparkoure @a-villain-vying-for-attention @m19friend @justcallmehitgirl @iamanerdot @averyfosterthoughts @celestial-skylines

#tom holland x y/n #tom holland x reader #tom holland x you #tom holland fanfiction #tom holland fluff #peter parker fanfiction #peter parker imagine #peter parker x reader #peter parker x y/n #peter parker x you #spider man: homecoming #spiderman x reader #iron man

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ghostmartyr · 4 years

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how a life can move from the darkness [10/?]

| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |

Summary: Two drug addicts (Eren and Historia) meet in group and decide to be roommates to make their living situation slightly less weird. From there we do the slow burn found family dance mixed in with the struggles and agonies of recovery. Heavy on friendship feels, especially EMA. Eventual yumikuri.

“How do you keep people from turning into new addictions?”

Eren never liked group.

Being soaked to the bone and listening to every single drip of water adding to the puddle under his chair while he tried to towel himself off without making a scene didn’t do anything to make the feeling go away. His sneakers were soggy masses of sponge glued to his socks. His jacket was in a useless, sodden heap under the cookie table.

Historia wasn’t doing much better. Worse, maybe, since she’d taken one of Petra’s towels with distracted obedience before bringing her real focus to powering her way through as much therapy as she could in as little time as possible. Her towel was slung over her shoulders like a limp ferret.

Petra had a collection by the door for rainy days. Just in case. No one else had taken one.

Eren should have grabbed more, but he was in his squeaky plastic chair, and habit said he wasn’t allowed to leave the squeaky plastic chair until he’d sat still in it long enough to wonder if the car crash had killed him and this was what he was stuck with for the rest of ever.

He didn’t like group.

He liked Petra, and her calm, steady tone when her pen clacked against her clipboard and she asked if anyone wanted to start them out. He liked the few seconds he wasn’t thinking about the water dripping down his neck and under his shirt. Then the work started, and he had to figure out words for wanting to break his body into pieces until he came back right.

All the jagged edges chafed and reminded. Petra wasn’t the one who would take that away.

But she made it easier to push the pieces back into place. And to figure out where that place even was.

So when Historia asked her question, watching Petra with the feverish concentration that said it was the first and only thing she ever should have asked when she found out she wanted better, and Petra’s eyes shot to Eren, he sat up straight and listened. His shoes squelched on the floor. His eyes were probably just as hungry.

“It is very easy to displace addictive tendencies,” Petra started. “I won’t count the number of you who take smoke breaks after this, but I think we can all agree that when something has consumed so much of our life, walking away and leaving that hole is almost impossible. Maybe we’ve kept from filling it up with the same poisons, but it’s there, and we’ve come to depend on it. We’ve rewired ourselves to want the pattern to keep going, even when it ruins everything.”

Hundreds of unanswered texts buzzed in Eren’s pocket. Dozens of dents pounded into his fists.

The fucking orange bottles.

He breathed through his nose. He answered his texts now. It was fine. If it wasn’t yet, he’d make it.

“A lot of the time, we don’t even notice. We’re so used to going through our life that way, and working so hard to keep away from our vices, that we completely miss that we’ve found a new one. Depressive episodes turn into somewhere that’s safe to stay as long as we aren’t on drugs.” Petra eyed Eren again. “Anger is a natural emotion, so there’s nothing strange about always feeling it. Finding a new place to put it becomes as much of a habit as anything else.”

Eren’s hands clamped compulsively on his towel. The threads caught in his fingernails the way dust on the baseball diamond got stuck under them after a long practice.

“Adding people into it makes a complicated thing even harder. Especially the people we’ve kept, who want us to be doing well. Someone like that turns into a beacon, not a person, so our relationships become strained.”

Historia interrupted and Eren was almost glad for it. She leaned forward in her chair while scattered raindrops fell from her head. “How do you stop that?” she asked.

Petra didn’t miss a beat. “Boundaries.”

Historia waited. The chair’s weight fell on its front legs. “What if it’s someone you don’t want boundaries with?”

Or someone who had a weird concept of what they were. Like a girl who showed up to make breakfast in someone else’s home, or a guy who had dinner regularly with his step-mother but not his brother.

The two people who understood the rules had never stepped out of the box Eren made for them, and it had made him crazy to need it.

“Then they’re even more important,” Petra said. She repositioned her clipboard on her lap, letting her pen roll to the edge and zoning in on Historia. “We all have people we want to be close to. Sometimes we want to share everything with them. We want them to be part of us so strongly that we lose track of who we are without them. Who we are stops mattering without them.”

She didn’t look at Eren again. All of her attention went to Historia, who had lost any color she had left in her skin. Eren didn’t think she’d blinked the whole conversation. He wasn’t sure he had, either.

“No one can make it through the world alone, but we’re still individuals. Who you are,” Petra said, turning to the whole circle, “matters beyond who you are connected to. Healthy relationships have everyone involved remembering that. For people who are just now rediscovering who they are, the obvious danger is losing yourself in the high of something new and wonderful.

“So you find your boundaries. Yours and theirs. Focus on where you begin and where you end, and learn where to find them. Then, you work together to discover how you fit.” Petra settled back, smiling her easy, gentle smile that promised help. “Addiction drives us to lose ourselves in whatever will take us. Moving forward is always about reclaiming, or gaining more of yourself. You want to build relationships that make that easier, not harder. If the relationship itself is hindering that, you know there’s a problem, and, well.”

Comfort. It shone straight out of her. That was what made Petra worth listening to even when she said the stupid thing that stupid people had been telling Eren even before he downed his first pill. She believed it. She believed deep down that all the broken people she talked to would be okay. “There is a saying about that being the first step to recovery.”

----

By the time Petra recruited Eren to dump the soaked towels back in the car, it was no longer raining, and he could hold his jacket near him without feeling like he was holding Benjamin.

They hadn’t gotten off the relationship kick. Daz had managed to adopt the cat that lived in his drug dealer’s alley. Samuel, who didn’t have a leg to be broken, was wondering about when the right time was to bring up why he wasn’t barhopping with his new coworkers.

Eren had only mentioned Zeke once. When that was too many, he forced through how he only had Mikasa and Armin at all because they’d been better than anyone had the right to expect. He’d earned the circle a reminder of how they didn’t get to choose how the world around perceived them. Historia’s whole body had flinched, but by that point the embarrassment and past guilt was more choking than any present guilt.

More to work on.

“Do either of you drive?” Petra asked, opening her trunk. “You didn’t have to walk here in the rain.”

“We don’t have a car,” Eren said.

She shoved several beds of blankets and a sandbag to the side to make room for the pile Eren and Historia had created after helping out with drying the floor they’d soaked. “Uber works, too.”

“It isn’t a long walk.”

Petra never made sudden stops. She flowed into her movements, even stillness. Annie and Mikasa moved the same way. Years of training in something. Petra smoothed out her shirt and considered him. “Can you drive?” she asked.

Wet tires rolled across the parking lot, smearing puddles and keeping the damp silence from sticking to anything.

“Yeah,” Eren said. “I can drive. I’m the one driving half of Zeke’s team to parties after games.”

“Even though you don’t own a car?”

“It’s Zeke’s car,” Eren said.

Petra took the towels from his stiff arms and tossed them easily into her car. She watched him throughout the movement, and Eren wanted to hate, the way he hated himself and Zeke and anyone who tried to give a damn about him, but the hook about patterns and anger was too fresh to pick at and he could hear his heart in his ears with the steady thump that didn’t belong to thrown tennis balls against a wall they belonged to a body hitting a mat or a windshield.

The cold didn’t feel so cold. The outside of his skin matched.

“He lets you drive,” Petra said, with Frieda’s gentleness.

Eren nodded.

Petra knew the thin details.

“He’s your brother on your father’s side, isn’t he?”

“Right.”

Petra knew more about everything else in Eren’s life, because she was too good and too responsible to zone out during group and forget who the people she was helping even were. She was the one who had Eren thinking to count how many times he brought up his brother. She didn’t barrel in without consideration. She asked, “Have you ever talked to him about what happened?”

Eren froze up. Working his jaw felt like bending steel. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Petra carefully patted the disorganized clump of towels into a corner and smiled back at him. “There’s nothing wrong with that.” She stood up straight and squeezed his shoulder. Eren, in a way he hadn’t felt for weeks, had trouble meeting her eyes.

“I’m sorry if I overstepped,” she said. “You just seem to be looking for something more from him, and…” She paused, and Eren was back in his chair for the first time. “No one likes being vulnerable, but having someone to share it with can be very rewarding. That’s all. You still get to pick if you want that or not.”

“I don’t,” Eren said. Like they were the only words available. He sounded like the small kid Zeke would actually try with for a painful second.

“That’s fine,” Petra said. In another place, if he were a different person, her step forward probably would have made for an okay hug. She kept smiling at him, and he couldn’t make the corners of his mouth do anything. “But being able to go somewhere without the weather getting in your way would be nice, wouldn’t it?”

Droplets of water were still spilling out of his bangs, and all of his shrugs dampened his chin. Out of everything she’d said, that was the easiest thing of the day to nod to.

----

Somewhere, Eren had stopped slamming doors. Not when Mikasa came to stay with them. Not when his dad asked him, speaking in the tolerant tone that said Eren was misbehaving and it was expected, to be kinder to his home. Maybe when the therapist told him he should find less destructive outlets and some words had slipped in through the drugs and screaming at her. Maybe when he shared a room with Reiner, who jumped at every unexpected noise.

Somewhere. Close to when he moved back with his mom and put one last step of trying in before giving up and whaling on the walls.

Somewhere, he’d put a lid on himself, and steaming mad, he could walk through a door and close it like what Armin called a civilized member of society.

He could leave a family dinner without exploding. He could tromp the cleats he’d never asked for back through his front door without giving anyone a reason to think there was something wrong.

Everyone in his apartment, being Ymir and Historia, was too asleep to look up and see the reasons written all over his face. They probably appreciated his self-control. Eren would have appreciated Historia being awake. Not at the cost of Ymir being awake. But the heat in his chest wanted to be screamed if it couldn’t be thrown out into pieces of the building, and he was starting to need someone to listen when the rage hit.

Other good habits. Always needing someone else. He couldn’t just fix himself and keep everyone out of it. Not that he ever could.

The bitterness was hard to keep, with Historia and Ymir on the couch, trying to fuse themselves permanently together in their sleep. An empty pizza box was strewn on the floor by their feet.

Eren slouched over to Benjamin’s tank and sunk to the floor. Unreasonably jealous and stupid. Dinner with them would have been a better kind of weird. A kind of weird that belonged.

Better than walking out into the deep night air and having his mom squish him into a hug that took away all the cold rage that had spent an hour and years building. “Eren,” she’d said, voice alive with good humor, “you do have to tell him at some point that you want things to change. Or of course they won’t.”

She’d let go, and taken all of the comfort with her. Leaving him with him.

“Eren?”

Eren’s head whipped to the couch. Drowsy blue eyes peered at him from over Ymir’s shirt.

“Yeah. Hey.”

Historia shifted, carefully tucking her head under Ymir’s chin without disrupting her snuffled snores. “How was dinner?” she asked blearily.

She should have stayed asleep. The frustration and Zeke had expanded into his throat and waited through every mouthful to pop, held off by his mom and the enforced calm of trying not to do this to everyone who put up with him ever week, still buzzing under his skin and making sitting still hurt, even with Benjamin’s soothing tank noises so close, and—

Zeke had nodded his customary goodbye, and Eren had nodded back, not saying anything.

The balloon of anger deflated. “The way it always is,” Eren said.

Historia watched him, far away from his problems in the safety of Ymir’s arms bruising her ribs.

“She can’t always be right!” Eren remembered shouting. Four, and five, and eight, and ten, and the injustice of his mom knowing more about the world than he did being flung into the ears of anyone who would listen.

Armin and Mikasa. Mostly.

His dad used to listen. He would listen, and his glasses would glint in the lamplight—the way Zeke’s still did—and he would say, too calmly to possibly understand, “You accuse Armin of that sin often enough.”

Their dad hadn’t known what to do with Zeke either. It was always his mom making things work. Never Zeke. Never his dad. Never Eren.

Watching Historia, whose forehead was starting to fold together with a concern Ymir usually kept her too calm to feel, the question slipped out without a thought.

“What’s having a sister like?”

Concern popped into confusion. “Probably like having a brother?”

The perplexed blankness on Historia’s face didn’t do much for the leftover bristles in Eren’s shoulders. He shrugged without following up with anything helpful. Wondering if he should have even bothered asking. Historia and Frieda were their own complicated. Normal siblings didn’t bring over ice cream to hide that they were watching their baby sister sleep because they were afraid of her dying.

“If you texted her more often, she’d probably back off on that. Or if you talked to her at all.”

He was used to Historia getting it. He was used to Historia being like him. Even if it wasn’t the same at all. He was used to watching his brother keep his hands off everything Eren did unless he had an explicit invitation, and Historia was used to letting her sister believe that her most extreme fussing was a secret. Loving Frieda enough to stay alive for her hadn’t made them closer. It was just one more thing Historia didn’t talk to her about.

Frieda showed up to fill the silence anyway.

“…Do you mean,” Historia asked, “what it’s supposed to be like?”

Eren nodded stiffly.

Historia was quiet so long Eren wondered if that was the end of it. Or if Ymir would wake up and throw her dysfunction into the mix.

She snored away, relaxed enough to make Eren feel like he was intruding in his own living room, and Historia spoke. Slowly. Not looking at him, and not seeing the floor her gaze had stopped at.

“It’s like they’re safe,” she said. His ears strained to catch the words. “They don’t know all of you, and you don’t know all of them, but they decide you belong, because they have a piece of you inside of them. No matter what happens, you’re part of them, so whoever you are is allowed.”

Historia refocused on him. Uncertain, but present. Awake and nudging herself back into the crook of Ymir’s neck, prompting a sleepy, muffled squeak that Ymir would hate Eren hearing. Historia kept going, and he kept listening.

“When she found out what I did…” Historia stopped. Her eyes shut. “Ymir said that it only made sense to cut out family who called themselves that without really being it.” Her eyes opened, and inexplicably, she smiled. “It was the worst thing anyone had ever said to me about him.”

“She was right,” Eren said flatly.

“Yeah.” Historia, nestled comfortably in Ymir’s death grip, added, like she was reading something off their grocery list, “I think that’s when I started falling in love with her.”

Historia was the only person he knew who made things like that sound real. Like Armin when he was tripping through tanbark with a new library book, talking about things neither of them had ever seen. Without the sparkle. Just a weird truth that was never going to be anything else.

Eren swallowed down the limp, rubbery balloon of bristling rage, and let the ground come back to him.

“My mom says I have to tell him I want things to be different for them to be,” he said. He didn’t point out that no one ever had to tell Zeke anything about scheduling games, or filling team rosters, or booking rooms in pizza parlors for parties he didn’t even like.

He’d done that in group, with water dripping down from his ears loudly enough to disguise the grate of the whining.

“You could invite him to lunch,” Historia said, void of inflection.

“Dinner’s weird enough.”

They fed the silence together for a bit. The same waiting cluelessness they’d shared before he cared she was a person. A little less quietly than everything else, Historia said, “I still can’t talk to Frieda.”

“She’d like hearing what you said before,” Eren said. “You could just say that once in a while.”

Historia pressed her head into Ymir’s chest. “I think every time we talk I remind her of everything that went wrong.” The frown lines in her forehead shaded in. “She wants me to forget even though she can’t. I can’t think of anything to say that would stop that.”

Eren fiddled with his shoelaces, scuffed with baseball dust. Frieda’s face—too much like Historia’s, too much like his mom’s, too much like Ymir’s—carried all those memories with her every time she walked through the door. The haze of hot chocolate brought it out even when she wouldn’t.

“Mom said,” Eren said, prodding the knot his cleats wouldn’t let go of, “the reason things were never okay with Dad and Zeke was because Dad couldn’t think of a way to fix things.” He ripped the knot free. “So he just went forward without trying. Zeke never got over it. There wasn’t ever a real reason for him to.”

A million and one scenes could play out from their childhoods, over and over, of Eren and Zeke, big brother and little brother, mother and step-mom ruffling their heads, and Dad wouldn’t ever fit right.

He was only the missing piece to the smaller version.

“They look alike,” he said suddenly. “I don’t look anything like him, but Zeke looks like my—our dad. A lot. More when he still had a beard. He started shaving after rehab.” Eren kicked off his cleats, rolling them towards the front door. “I don’t know why he never did that before. He hated it whenever someone said something about them looking alike. Any time someone brought Dad up around him, that was all they ever talked about. He hated it. He hated him.”

“…Did you?” Historia asked.

“No.” Not once. “I had a good dad.”

One Zeke had never wanted and wouldn’t ever know.

Eren could feel it. The thing, way beyond the broken leg and hate. The thing that said there weren’t enough pills in the bottle his mom picked up for him. The bottomless loss that people kept thinking Zeke could understand when he never would. Pain.

He dug his palms into his eyes and willed the tears away before they could force him into the kind of sobs that Ymir wouldn’t be able to sleep through. His hands felt like sandpaper over his cheeks.

The couch creaked, and through the spots and blur, Eren could see Historia switching her perch from Ymir to the edge. She kept one of Ymir’s hands, holding it to her neck like she was expecting a noose around her throat.

“Frieda had a good father too,” she said softly. “He’s not what made us family. She is. He’s just why we met.”

Eren’s fingers threaded through his hair. Like his mom had earlier, when she pulled at his ear and told him growing out his hair wouldn’t grow him out of making his life harder than it had to be. Or like Zeke did the first time he helped him put on a helmet. “When did Frieda decide on you?”

Historia toyed with Ymir’s hand, and hesitated just enough for Eren to catch the crack in her voice. “When she found out about me.”

Fresh tears sprouted, and Eren coughed in choked surprise. “Yeah,” he said, “that sounds like her.”

“Yeah.”

Maybe Eren should have headed to the kitchen and started the hot chocolate before sitting down under Benjamin. The impulse to get up and do that now instead of letting the suffocating emotion in any deeper ran as thick as the embarrassing thought that Frieda herself would have been even more of a comfort.

Ymir snorted, making both of them jump. Somehow that pulled Historia even deeper into her arms. Eren didn’t think either of them minded, even if Historia did squeak at the proximity change. Or maybe Ymir whispering her name after was what did it.

They were a million times worse than Hannah and Franz ever were. It should have been disgusting. Ymir being so happy was still weird. Then Historia being happy at all was a relief, and something in all of it evened out.

“So when are you gonna tell Ymir you’ve decided on her?” he asked her.

“When I establish my personal boundaries,” Historia mumbled into Ymir.

They hadn’t bothered leaving many lights on for their nap on the couch together, but that Ymir glow never needed much help. Eren could feel a smile on his face twitching to match the shine in hers.

“She’d probably say yes if you asked her out.”

“Mm.”

“Holding off this long starts to make you look scared.”

Ruffled, the parts of Historia not completely buried in Ymir leveled an unimpressed scowl at Eren that mostly said he was right. “I’m working on it,” she said frostily. “Like you’re working on talking to your brother.”

Eren clapped his mouth shut and returned the scowl through the superior glint in Historia’s eyes.

Somehow, it felt like one of his lighter ones.

----

“See? Right there?”

Movies used to be a weekly thing for them. New ones. In theaters. They’d sneak in their own candy, find the thing no one else was watching, and jump into the front row. They’d done it so many times the staff at five different theaters knew them by name.

“I… no?”

There were things about it Eren had forgotten.

“You—what?” Armin blinked several times, looking between his phone and Eren. He enlarged the blur. “What about now?”

He was vibrating, flush with indignation and exclamation points in his eyes.

He was an Armin Eren hadn’t seen in over a year, and Eren would have gotten thrown out of a hundred more movies to find him again.

That didn’t do anything to clear up what it was Armin thought was worth getting thrown out of this first one. Eren leaned in closer to the phone to humor him. The black on black blur, helped by Armin’s fingers one more time, leaned in back, turning into a clump of pixels.

“It’s… a backpack?”

“Yes!”

Eren sat back in their bench, basking in the warmth of Armin’s enthusiasm, and strangling the lingering guilt trying to creep up when it felt too much like home. “Is the backpack important?”

“No, it’s what’s in the backpack—look, there!”

The blur stayed a blur.

Armin stayed vibrating, bright as a star.

“I don’t see it,” Eren said.

Armin’s finger poked the center of the blur. “It’s a power cord,” he said.

Eren tilted his head to the side. A small sliver of shadow, just barely caught in the picture, was directly under Armin’s fingernail. Enough to maybe be something, and Armin, who’d noticed enough to pull out his phone and snap off a dozen pictures, said it was something. There wasn’t much room for argument.

“They were running around the house for an hour,” Armin said. “The room they barricaded themselves in had five outlets. The jump into the lake messed up most of their phones, but he didn’t swim. His just ran out of battery, but they didn’t edit out his power cord from his backpack! You can see it.”

Armin furiously unzoomed from the image, bringing back the full, grainy shot of the giant screen they’d been sitting six feet away from. “They didn’t even try to hide it. And it wasn’t on purpose! This is right after they dumped all their bags out on the table to see what they had, and the power cord wasn’t there. Look—” Armin flicked away from the photo and on to a video of the main character swinging his backpack on.

Eren, obediently, looked.

The black backpack swung by the light, the camera angle switched, switched back, and—

A power cord.

“That’s pretty bad,” Eren said, looking at the tiny set of pixels no one but Armin was going to notice before a home release.

“It’s ridiculous,” Armin said. He settled back in the bench, frowning furiously at the small video that had yanked them out of their seats.

Eren didn’t know how he’d forgotten this part. He remembered him, and Armin, and usually Mikasa, and the candy, and the sticky floors, and the way Armin’s eyes would light up when the previews started. He remembered excited plans to see whatever was on the posters in the hallways, and him and Mikasa standing back and letting Armin teach them everything there was to know about the thing they were about to watch.

He remembered it all being so normal he never even thought about remembering it.

Then Armin’s phone was going off in the front row, and he was buzzing more than it could, and a million hushed arguments with ushers played back in Eren’s head.

“Oh.”

Eren shook himself back, where Armin had stopped buzzing, and was looking at him. The voice inside that called that dangerous took a second for him to stamp out. Armin was great practice. Sometimes too great. “Oh?”

Armin, with the same uncertainty Eren could hear when he asked about seeing a movie, smiled, and pocketed his phone. “I don’t want you to feel strange about it,” he started, “but… you’re smiling again.”

In a move that made Eren glad Mikasa couldn’t make it, his hand went up to his mouth and checked. Instead of the deep etches the mirror usually caught, there were smooth, relaxed lines that perked up at the corners.

“Oh,” Eren repeated.

The bench dug into his jeans. Armin’s gentle, smiling hope was impossible to look at, and Eren’s ears were bleeding from the strain of that beam shining right on him.

“Sorry we didn’t get to see the end of the movie.”

“It’s fine.” Eren took a breath and told the truth. “I’d rather hang out with you anyway.”

Awkward. Unless Eren burned everything to the ground one more time, they’d have things fixed and perfect before he ever got used to it. Armin wasn’t awkward. Armin was what made all the fog in Eren’s head clear out.

Right now, they were both fog, and Armin’s arms wrapped around each other like snakes under his red face. “We—uh. Maybe it’s a bad time,” Armin said, “but since we’re talking about movies, I still have your DVD player.”

Oh.

Armin rushed through the next words. “You—I was borrowing it when—so it’s in my room. I know you and Historia don’t have a TV, so it’s probably not easy to watch things. I could bring it over, if you want? Or maybe, if you wanted, since there’s time now—”

“No.”

He could hear his heart beating louder than the word. Armin still shut up like he’d screamed it.

He wasn’t smiling anymore. It felt like a personal failure. Everything from his mouth down was made of boiling sludge that was more useless for explaining why, for saying sorry, for all the yelling he wouldn’t do, and Armin was sitting there doing nothing wrong.

Eren took a breath. Somehow.

“Some other time,” he said. Like a person.

“Sure,” Armin said. Like the bullet he dodged was inside him anyway.

Awkward had been better.

Eren didn’t want to be ‘like’ anything. He wanted to make it all the way back.

“What do you want to see next?”

Armin’s head jerked up from boring a hole in his knees. “Huh?”

“We didn’t get to finish the movie, and I don’t think they’ll let us back in,” Eren said, keeping his voice light and steady. “If this one’s a bust, what do you want to go see instead? We’ve still got an afternoon to kill.”

He didn’t have anyone to blame but himself for the cautious way Armin looked at him. Rabid animals bit. No one in their right mind wanted to stick their hand through the bars, and Armin was Armin. He had every kind of sense and several more besides.

Just not the one that kept him away from Eren. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

Armin popped off the bench. “If we hurry, downtown is screening Rear Window this week?”

It took a second. Eren’s footing felt as slow as his brain, fragments of speech catching up to him like scooped shells out of a tide pool. He could taste the salt before any kind of response skittered out of his mouth. “Again?” he asked, the tease hollow but close enough to count. So he counted it. “How many times have you seen that?”

The sun came out on Armin’s face, too open to hide the relief backing his smile. “It’s a classic, Eren.”

“It’s why Mom took our telescope away.” Easier. Less hollow.

More like how things were meant to be. In that moment, watching Armin’s eyes glitter and his pace pick up until he was practically skipping, it was like they’d never been anything else at all.

The goal wasn’t supposed to be to run back to exactly how things were. Eren wasn’t an idiot. He knew that wouldn’t happen. Even when Historia figured her stuff out and didn’t want him interrupting couch time anymore, things weren’t going to bounce back to him and Armin lying upside down on their cramped balcony while they argued over which movies got to stay on their list.

But running down the sidewalk at Armin’s heels, chasing down the rest of their afternoon, Eren felt like some limb he’d been missing had snapped back into place.

[next]

#drug au #fic #mine #long post

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gayregis · 4 years

Note

if you've read season of storms is it any good? i read a sample and was kind of bored but i don't want to spend money on it if it's going to be like,,,,,,,,,lady of the lake

reading this i was like “wait lady of the lake was good though,” then i paused to actually think about it as a cohesive narrative for a bit, and went “actually wait never mind :/...” it was good thematically, and there were a lot of great scenes, but like as a whole book... if you could only read that book on its own... it would be very long and confusing. i just think lotl’s good because i do the uncivilized thing of skipping around to the parts i like and then i don’t read the parts i dislike

but luckily i have already ranted about season of storms before, and i’ll post that rant here now. for context, i actually read season of storms from cover to cover... yeah.

overall, it's a disorganized and aimless plot. it's set inbetween tlw and sod, so there's no quest to find ciri, because geralt hasnt met ciri yet, he's still our free bachelor geralt. which means hes still quite directionless and when it comes to his personal life it's mostly preoccupied with romance. but more importantly it means the plot is incredibly aimless and NOT PERSONAL to geralt, like all the stories in TLW and SOD and all the saga books revolve around events and people super meaningful to him. what happens in the plot is a whole JUMBLE of things that feel like sidequests from the witcher games, not a story from the witcher books. nothing really means anything for geralt's character development, and it suffers from being so long because there's like a lot of different settings and characters and everything just seems completely thrown together, mashed up, and not coordinated.

i will admit that baptism of fire & tower of the swallow followed a style of “random encounters” in which geralt and the company traverse on and just interact with whatever they happen to find, but it felt like they were accruing knowledge (and also. members of the company) as they travelled on. in season of storms, it feels like geralt starts over and the entire book resets itself every time there is a new scene. none of the plotlines fit together, so it is just a super confusing and exhausting reading experience, unlike in bof & tos, where you can follow the action quite easily and it’s very pleasant to read because it’s all one continuous storyline.

in addition, all of these mashed up stories are pointless, because they dont END with the reader learning anything about the universe the characters live in or their relationships with each other. we might learn that sorcerers are power-hungry, but we already knew that. we might learn that people are violent and corrupt, but we already knew that. we might learn that geralt loves yennefer, but we already knew that. in the short stories, you learn so much about the world and geralts relationships (for example: we learn so much about the situations surrounding the elves in edge of the world, so it’s worth reading because otherwise you will not understand anything when the scoia’tael show up in blood of elves and later in the saga). and in the saga, this continues and more worldbuilding/relationship building occurs (geralt and ciri’s relationship grows from a question of price and then becomes crazy right around baptism of fire when they’re super linked by destiny). it really doesnt in season of storms. you don’t learn anything meaningful about the world or the characters like in the other witcher books.

another large flaw is that in the stories and saga, sapkowski was really good at creating likeable, enigmatic characters no matter how few pages he had to create them. they were deep and almost lifelike and also usually told a larger message. the NPCs- sorry, "characters" in season of storms are SUPER flat and uninteresting.

coral is h*rny for geralt and jealous of yennefer, like every sorceress ever to exist, pratt is a dick and corrupt, degerlund is corrupt and evil, mosaik is timid, the werewolf guy is JUST THERE, the auguara isn’t super interesting despite being cool, nimue feels flatter as a character than usual, even dandelion- okay actually jk i liked dandelion he was the sunny part of this book AS ALWAYS ... ofc he felt one-dimensional but he usually does so you know, EVEN GERALT feels a little one-dimensional and not his typical introspective self

one of the worst things sapkowski did was [SPOILERS] make the major villain character of the book gay and feminine... like its mentioned SO many times that "ohhhh this is a man that looks like a woman WOW HOW EVIL!" and he literally does the worst things like rip ppl to shreds and want to kill geralt painfully by torture with syringes, also he uses his sexuality to ?? seduce an older sorcerer to be his favorite so he can keep his job as a sorcerer??

and OK vilgefortz and bonhart arent complex villains. but theyre despicable and it feels a little deeper bc vilgefortz has that backstory and hunger for power, and bonhart is just terrifying and the embodiment of wretched evil, this guy from season of storms is just annoying and anime villainy like “OOHOHOH watch how i kill you now >:)” also theres a lot of crass humor like fart jokes and villains that are described as really super ugly like omg wow never saw that one coming!!! it just feels super bland and basic and almost like the antithesis of The Witcher as short stories and a saga, super out of place with the rest of the series. [END SPOILERS]

in my opinion, the BIGGEST FLAW with season of storms is that since the plot is so all over the place, and since the characters are so flimsy, the entire book feels meaningless. it feels like it would appease games or netflix fans who just want to read about geralt going on some crazy adventures, and it does serve that purpose, but it is NOT a “book belonging to the witcher series.” it has no depth where there should be... i do not feel like sapkowski is trying to tell me something as a reader about human nature, or the nature of parent-child relationships, or society, or violence and war...

it just feels like geralt is doing all of this shit just because sapkowski had some remaining ideas and wanted to get all of them out into the world all in the same book, like sewing a vest out of fabric scraps. it was not refined like the witcher saga, because none of them were really meant to fit together anyways, and because they weren’t meant to fit together, there is a distinct lack of message and substance to it.

TLDR: no cohesive narrative and a confusing plot, no deeper underlying message or arguments about humanity or society or nature being made by the author, cheap new side & background characters, no ciri and no yennefer so geralt is quite directionless and stupid

other remarks that are just my personal preferences and comments:

geralt & dandelion:

geralt mostly works alone in this book... which is... not my favorite. this is why i got bored with tw3 after i read the witcher books, because i can’t stand geralt being alone, the world feels so... lonely! although he meets up with dandelion and has an affair with coral in season of storms, most of the book is him waffling about with side and background characters that i couldn’t care less about because sapkowski put no effort into developing them to be enigmatic or at least lifelike and likable (unlike some really minor characters in the witcher saga that, although they were so minor, were incredibly likable: for example, applegatt and toruviel i quite like).

of course, i also have a preference for when geralt hangs out with dandelion, because it usually creates more of a lighter tone for the scenes and a more humorous nature overall, plus geralt changes his personality to be not in such a bad mood and we get to see him being kind and friendly. so it annoys me that although dandelion has some scenes with geralt, they never really have deep conversations like they do in a little sacrifice, or witty remarks & banter like in the edge of the world... i feel like dandelion was quite in-character for the whole book, which is good, but also, he’s dandelion so he’s pretty easy to get in character. he’s just easy-going, arrogant, preoccupied with earthly delights, cowardly, and friendly to geralt. but it annoyed me that their scenes together were both not very deep, and that they didn’t get as much interaction as i think they deserved. usually in a witcher book or story in which geralt and dandelion have met, they stay by each other’s side for like, the whole book or story, lmao...

that being said, they do have some fun moments in this book and dandelion has some funny lines which i quite enjoy. like. they are eating at an inn, and the innkeeper asks them “how are you finding the pork?” and dandelion replies, “we’re finding it among the kasha. from time to time. not as often as we’d like to.” and somehow i just find that line so fucking funny... i think it’s just because it’s really relatable

sorcery:

coral is SOOOOO one-dimensional, she really is just like the same character as fringilla vigo or some other sorceress that’s jealous of yennefer for getting to bang geralt, and this lack of characterization is super transparent. people laugh about how many affairs geralt has had, but they never discuss how all of them have been super uneasy and unfulfilling.

already said that i hate degerlund as a character and all of the sorcerers being morally wack is predictable if you’ve read like, anything from the saga about the sorcerer/esses. also geralt talking with sorcerers is like, interesting if the sorcerer in question is vilgefortz, but everyone else is just super boring

other:

i didn’t really like ferrant de lettenhove until the very end of the book (which i won’t spoil) but because of this end, i wished that he got more backstory/development

NIMUE I LOVE YOU and it was nice that nimue got some more backstory in this.

i do enjoy the end of the book. not to say “my favorite part is when it ended,” but it’s true, because the ending in kerack is interesting and full of drama, the moments in the inn are alright if a little void of substance, the ending with geralt and dandelion on horseback is beautiful, and the epilogue with nimue is wistful and beautiful as well.

sheer pettiness:

oh my GOD why are the CHAPTERS so SHORT? it’s like, 20 chapters plus a bunch of interludes and an epilogue, and the book is only 357 pages long. it feels like as soon as i was getting into a scene, it switched to another chapter. i mean, idk whether i prefer this, or the haphhazard long as fuck chapters from baptism of fire where i’m not quite sure when a chapter begins or ends because i memorized the scenes and not when a chapter occurs.

i dislike how coral is on the cover of it, even though it’s fitting, because if there was a work about... oh idk... the hansa... then angouleme could have been on the cover... and then i could have had geralt + yennefer + ciri + dandelion + the hansa on the covers... like wow that would be cool...

this book would have functioned much better as a series of short stories... i think sapkowski has talent for the short story medium, but novel-length books are more desirable by publishers, but this is literally just a guess, i don’t have anything to back this up

my recommendation: don’t buy it if you are just looking to read the witcher books as in, get a feel for the book canon world and characters. it’s pretty unnecessary for that. do buy it if you are a completionist like me / the witcher is something you’ve been into for years and you’re about to buy all the books as a set and it would feel weird to not have all eight books on your shelf and it’s only like $5 more to buy the set of 8 as compared to the set of 7. don’t read it and expect perfection, it’s basically like “drabbles” but canon from the author. there are like 2 or 3 nice gerlion moments if you care about that.

#ask #season of storms #dandeliyn

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juminsmysticmc · 5 years

Text

RFA with a Mc who suffers from chronic stress

Anonymous said: I heard the requests are open? If so, can I request the RFA with MC who discovers with the RFA’s help that she suffers from chronic stress? And thanks! And if not, sorry for requesting out of the request time!

Yep babe! You’re right! Requests are open! You were right in time! Although my layout got a bit messy and so I couldn’t post much....thank you for your request! Reading about this made me realize that I perhaps should visit a doctor since I‘m very much the same.

I would like to say that my source is the internet and that I‘m not a doctor so everyone, if you think that something is wrong please tell me in a nice way. Mean criticism won’t be accepted! I hope everyone liked it!

Jumin

Neither of you knew that you actually suffered from chronic stress.

None of you could even explain when it began.

You got skin irritation, you were always nervous.

You felt helpless and scared.

Jumin tried to help you, to stop you from overworking yourself.

He also thought that the loss of sexual desire was caused because of your tiredness.

Something was indeed off and he only noticed when you laid in your bed, crying in the dark.

You were way too scared to get up, to do anything, to continue your work or even look at your husband.

That’s when he called a doctor.

You wanted to tell him to not worry, to just go to work but it was way too overwhelming.

In the evening Jumin sat by your side and stroked your arm.

The doctor prescribed you antidepressant for your depression and informed you that speaking to friends and family and identifying triggers would help you a lot for sure.

And Jumin as your husband tried his best to make sure that you were less stressed.

,,For you I will call the word’s best therapist.’’

Zen

Your work as Zen‘s manager wasn’t always easy.

It was stressful.

You had to do his schedule, make sure that no fan overstepped their boundaries or even had to take all the hate they felt towards you.

There were so much more tasks.

And all them let you have sleepless nights.

But you already knew that you had chronic stress.

Just giving up your position as manager.....this was something you didn’t want to do.

But thoughts like that stressed you out too and so the vicious circle was never ending.

Although this time your chronic stress was a bit different.

You had a change in your appetite and most of the time you ended up eating nothing.

The headaches began to get worse and worse.

Your immune system was really weak.

And so one day you indeed happened to collapse.

Zen was so shocked when it happened, his screams filled the room but you couldn’t hear him.

A few hours later however you could hear every word just perfectly.

He was angry.

,,I don’t understand you! Why didn’t you tell me!“ he whined as soon as he saw that you were awake.

,,Uh...Zenny...? What happened...?“ you asked him kind of shocked.

,,Your doctor told me that you suffer from chronic stress....if I would have known I would have tried better....I‘m so sorry...“ he whispered and kissed your front while stroking your arm.

Since that day he made sure to at least support you with all his strengths instead of leaving too much into your care.

Both of you decided to exercise regularly and improve your sleep quality.

Yoosung

,,Aish!“ you cursed once again and tossed away your stuff.

You began to cry, your self esteem was always low but this was way beyond low.

You knew about your chronic stress but you still tried to suppress everything you felt.

But it was hard.

You felt the effects of your devastating insomnia after all.

And your diabetes didn’t make anything better.

But still, you tried to go by the thinking that your body‘s reaction was totally normal.

Everyone felt stressed in their life.

But you just didn’t want to accept that your body was different.

,,Your job puts you just too much pressure on you...“ Yoosung one day mumbled.

He still didn’t know that you suffered from chronic stress.

Being the new head of the RFA and a Highschool teacher wasn’t easy but you had to be honest.

This relationship wasn’t a healthy one either.

,,Come on, just tell me that Rika did a better work than I did.“ you laughed.

,,Mc...I stopped long time ago. You should stop with it too.“ Yoosung said.

This was something that stressed you too.

You always tried your best or at least to be better than Rika.

,,I’ve noticed that something is wrong. As your husband I would like to support you....“

And so you decided to tell him.

He was quite shocked that you had chronic stress.

These were the times where he wished that he would have studied human medicine.

But he still knew some solutions like visiting a therapist who could help to change a few things in your life.

Jaehee

Being in charge of a coffee shop wasn’t easy.

Making people happy with Jaehee‘s knowledge and your yummy cakes was your hobby but your health wasn’t really thankful.

You had to be honest, you had financial problems and your job was a hard one.

You already tried to take as much work as you could from Jaehee but as some point it got almost impossible for you to handle that.

By now you were unable to concentrate and your thoughts were always disorganized.

You thought you were just being whiny but when you went to visit your doctor because of your digestive problems, the doctor found out that you weren’t just stressed but suffered from chronic stress.

As soon as you were home you googled the most fitting therapy but....

,,So much money....“ you mumbled.

Your only mistake was to not close the tab.

At the same evening Jaehee found out.

She was devastated and this ended up in a big discussion.

,,I thought we were a couple!“ she yelled at you.

,,We are!“ you responded and looked away in annoyance.

,,So, why didn’t you tell me?! That’s what a couple does! They support each other! But the only one supporting me is you! And because you take every problem alone on your shoulders your health suffers!

For god‘s sake! Mc! I know how this feels like!“ Jaehee hissed.

,,You’re going to do the therapy. We will find a way so just don’t worry about the money!“ she simply decided and looked for a good therapist.

No way she would make her partner suffer just as much as she suffered.

Saeyoung

Your fiancé always knew that your fatigue wasn’t normal.

He also knew that your illnesses had a reason.

He knew how stressed you were but he never knew that this could mean that you had chronic stress.

Of course people felt stressed, he felt too.

Whenever Saeran had a relapse he was about to follow his brother.

Ever since the RFA found out what V and Rika did back then the atmosphere also changed and this was stressing everyone.

Now he imagined how you felt.

Saeyoung tried his best, he spoke with everyone and made them understand.

,,Of course we will all support you guys, Lu-Saeyoung.“ Jaehee said over the phone.

Saeyoung still had to smile whenever his friends called him with his old name.

,,It’s okay, Jaehee. But, let’s not talk about it. I’m thinking of asking Yoosung to support her with the RFA’s work. At first I wanted to ask you but I didn’t want to overwork you…’’ Saeyung confessed which made her chuckle.

,,Thank you so much for thinking about me but I’m really willing to support you whenever you guys need me.’’ Jaehee offered.

And so once again the RFA tried their best to support you, making you prevent a therapy.

MASTERLIST 1 MASTERLIST 2 MASTERLIST 3

16.09.’19// 18:11 MEST

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@foreversunshine-love @giulia2372 @sailormoonrocks666

@widya345 @remiliadacalde @r-f-a-journalists

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snowqueen-68 · 5 years

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I survived Christmas...

Yay! @billyhargrovens had me watch The Witcher and I will forever be grateful - ‘cause where have you been all my life Geralt of Rivia?! :) Anyway, here’s a bit more of MY story. Thanks for reading!

...His sentences were brief and clipped, matter of fact, delivered in the manner of someone used to ripping band-aids off wounds quickly and efficiently. Lily blinked rapidly. “Um …?” she could feel his words attempting to penetrate into her brain and not making it. “Please say that again,” she said, drawing in a deep breath. Bryan did the same and speaking more softly said, “Your parents have found you.” He paused for a brief moment, cleared his throat and then continued, “I don’t know what Emmett intends to do. I think we’re gonna have to move you again. I know it’s not optimal but at least its safer…For everyone.” This time Lily heard his words, but still couldn’t process them immediately or completely and she swayed on her feet as momentary dizziness made her head spin. She gripped the edge of the sink, hard, with both hands, so hard she could feel the chill of the porcelain sinking into the pads of her fingertips and she stared at herself in the bathroom mirror, green eyes wide and horrified her, her face pale and without color. Emmett and Evelyn had found her? Really? Could this be true? “Lily? Lily?” Bryan repeated her name, sounding concerned, “are you there? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.” He paused, “Well, not intentionally anyway.” Lily shook her head forgetting that he couldn’t see her, forgetting about the receiver, still tucked against her shoulder. It fell, and she scrambled for it, bringing it back to her ear. “Did you say they’d found me? How? And how do you know?” She shuddered. Sweet Mother of God, nobody could put the fear of all the Heavens and Hell into her like her own father. Or mother for that matter. “Well, the truth is,” Bryan said, sounding more than a little wary, as if reluctant to tell her, “late last night my guy on the inside escaped Emmett’s compound. Your father did quite a number on him, so we think that’s how he found out. Long story short, they know where you are. I guess you’ve been their primary target for…well since you left. Anyway, like I said, we have to move you.” Lily reached over and tapped off the running water before moving away from the mirror and out of the bathroom. Thoughts raced through her mind, disorganized, without direction, as she tried to make sense of this unexpected news. “Ok wait…wait…wait. Let’s back up,” she said, crossing the broad hallway and pulling the phone with her into her bedroom. “First, what do you mean ‘guy on the inside’? You told me that you were just going to watch Emmett from a distance. I told you what he was like, I told you everything I knew. And you sent someone in any way? You are the little guy, Bryan. Unless you’ve grown drastically in the last three years. What were you thinking?” Bryan let out a frustrated sigh. “Well, I saw an opportunity to insert someone so I took it. If I could capture Emmett Allen and put him away it would…” He stopped, and Lily shook her head as she plopped herself on her bed placing the cradle of the phone at her feet and straightening up to stare out her window. “It would what Bryan? Be great for your company? For you?” “No. Well, yeah but for the town, too, Lily, you know that. Emmett’s been doing a number on this place for decades and he needs to be stopped.” Lily pushed a strand of long, dark hair behind one ear and rolled her eyes. “So, you thought you’d take it upon yourself and your security company to take care of the biggest bully in town? Not a great idea.” Bryan said nothing though Lily heard him sigh and she felt a momentary stab of guilt. She knew that Bryan and his team had been after her father for years, ever since Bryan’s stint in security at Allen Warehouses. Lily was pretty sure he’d seen lots of things out there that he’d wished he hadn’t, but what he had seen had given him the drive to start his own company and to start collecting evidence on Lily’s father, his corruption and crimes. Up until today, Lily had assumed that the biggest thing Bryan’s company had ever accomplished was to spirit her away three years ago right out from under Emmett’s very nose. No mean feat that. Afterward, Bryan had promised to lay low for a while and Lily thought he’d understood just exactly how dangerous Emmett Allen really was. “Is your guy ok? I told you that Emmett could smell a rat from a mile away… no offense to you or your people of course. He’s still alive you said?” Bryan chuckled, regaining his sense of humor. “No offense taken. And yes, he is still alive. But for your information, Miss Allen…. sorry, Miss Ashford, that guy of mine lasted in your father’s organization for…well, since you’ve been gone. He’s good. He knows what guys like Emmett Allen are like, he knows how their organizations function. Or he did until yesterday. Fortunately, we got to him in time before they killed him. Sadly, several of your father’s men did not make it.” Lily sucked a breath in through her teeth. “Well that’ll put you on Emmett’s hunt-down-and-kill list,” she said dryly, “if you weren’t there already. Doesn’t like being made to look foolish or stupid, my father. Which kinda sounds like what happened.” Bryan exhaled wearily like maybe he hadn’t slept in several days. “Lily that’s why we have to move you. We’re pretty sure your father didn’t get much information from our man. He still doesn’t know for certain who he was or who he worked for. But he did get enough to discover that he’d been in there since you left. It did not take long for your father to connect your disappearance with our arrival in his org. It’s a good bet that he’s now convinced that you had a hand in the whole thing and that you have given away state secrets. As you love to point out to me, Emmett is not dumb.” “No,” Lily agreed, “no he’s not.” She gnawed at a corner of her lower lip as she thought about Emmett piecing together that his own daughter had betrayed him because Lily knew that was how he’d take it – as a betrayal. Which, technically it was since she’d turned family and company secrets over to a firm whose primary goal it was to put Emmett Allen behind bars forever. Add to that the fact that she had just up and disappeared one day and, well, she was sure that it was all more than Emmett and Evelyn could deal with. Having a daughter choose to leave the family circle in such an underhanded way most likely had not played well in the Allen’s social circle, and Emmett would surely define sneaking away in the dead of night with no previous warnings as underhanded. Lily rolled her eyes again, she didn’t have to work too hard to imagine her parents’ individual and collective rages, she’d been a witness to those many times during her childhood. And beyond. The thought made her chest ache and she pressed at her sternum with her free hand, ignoring the panicked spinning in her head. “I am not going to let them get to me, I’m not,” she muttered and forced herself to take several slow deep breaths. I am not going to let Emmett and Evelyn scare me or make me fold to their demands, I am not going to let them make me move again. She kept these thoughts running through her head as she considered the last three years of her life. Finally safe here in this relatively unknown German city – unknown to Emmett anyway, at least until today – safe with the American Army, safe in her job. Her assumed name was close enough to her old one that she’d barely noticed the change. She’d made friends, built herself a life and now…now it was all over? No way. If truth be told, it hadn’t occurred to her that Emmett might still be looking for her. Oh sure, she’d expected that he would at first, at least right after she’d escaped his clutches. As she had noted to Bryan, her father did not like being made to look foolish and that’s exactly what she had done. But after three years?! Really? It made no sense! For the love of all that was holy, she was 29, an adult and should have been able to live her own life any way she saw fit, without fear. Clearly, she’d been mistaken. Rage burned in her belly, warming her extremities and coloring her cheeks, and Lily shot up from her seat on the bed, unable to sit still. She paced back and forth in front of her closet and the window, not really seeing through the lace curtains that hung there, or past the beam of afternoon sunlight filtering through the pattern. “I’m not leaving, Bryan,” she said softly, anger clogging her throat, preventing her from speaking any louder. “I won’t.” “What?! Lily are you even listening to what I am saying?” he asked, sounding truly exasperated now. “I am not sure you understand the gravity of the situation. It would be foolish of us both not to consider that your father sent someone out to bring you back the moment he discovered your location, so- “ “No!” she cut him off. “No, I am not moving. When I left my parents’ compound that night I swore to myself that I would not allow Emmett to push me around, frighten me, and I am not giving into him or whatever scare tactics he might decide to use. I am just not. I will take my chances. Look, Emmett might be capable of many things, but he won’t hurt his own daughter. Maybe he will even just leave me alone. Why shouldn’t he after all these years?” “For God’s sake are you hearing yourself?! That’s ridiculous. Don’t ever make assumptions about a man like your father. You’ve told me that yourself, a thousand times! He is more than capable of killing, clearly, and I don’t think it will matter one whit to him that you are his daughter.” His words turned Lily’s blood to ice, and she swallowed hard. She knew Bryan was not wrong, she’d grown up with Emmett, and he was nothing if not cold and ruthless. But still, the idea of leaving Bamberg, her job, this house…well it was untenable, not to be considered. The very thought of it almost made her feel physically sick. “Bryan, I like my life here! I have friends, a house, I love my job! You guys GOT me this job! And now you want me to leave it?” “Of course I do not want you to leave that job, Lily. I don’t want any of this to be happening. But this is for your own safety, never mind that my firm has spent a lot of money getting you where you are and keeping you safe. You are an asset, Lily, an important part of this investigation. You are moving and that’s that. We have no more time to argue about this.” Lily’s eyes widened in surprise at Bryan’s words. He’d never spoken like that to her before. She narrowed her eyes, excess emotion beginning to make her head throb painfully. “No, I am not moving, Bryan,” she finally said making sure her own tone sounded just as definitive as his had, “And here’s why…” She paused to take a breath, the connection of the long-distance call crackling in her ear. “I gave you evidence against Emmett, Bryan. Lots of it, though clearly you don’t or didn’t feel it was enough. Since, ya know, you put a guy in there anyway, despite everything I told you about my father, despite everything you saw when you worked at his warehouse. And now because of your guy, Emmett knows where I am, so thanks for that. In my book that makes us quits and I get to do what I want no matter how much you spent on me, no matter what kind of ‘asset’ you consider me to be. Frankly, I don’t feel I owe you, and so now I am telling you, not asking but telling you. I am not moving again. Let Emmett come and get me if that is what he wants to do. I don’t really care. I’d like to think he’s got better things to do.” These were bold words that made her knees quake, but she held her ground. Like she said, surely after all this time Emmett and Evelyn had moved on, forgotten her. So what if they had found out where she was, it wasn’t like her departure or her telling tales to Bryan’s little security company had had any effect on them anyway. They had no reason to be concerned with her at all. In Lily’s mind she was as quits with them as she was with Bryan. “Honestly, I think maybe you are totally overreacting about all of this, and well maybe being a little selfish.” Bryan groaned. “Jesus, Lily, this is ridiculous.” He was close to shouting at her now and she held the receiver away from her ear, “You are acting like a stubborn, spoiled child. Emmett is completely capable of doing exactly what you think he cannot. Have you forgotten what he’s like…like in the last five seconds?” “Of course not! How could I? I-” “Hang on,” Bryan cut her off, his tone sharp and annoyed. She could hear his voice, muffled now, speaking to someone else, probably in his office. Bryan didn’t seem to have any other place. Lily waited, pacing then stopping to tap her foot impatiently on the carpet, and then pacing again, the hand holding the phone cradle swinging vigorously at her side. The movement whipped its long black cord back and forth until it managed, without her really noticing, to snake itself around her feet, tangling her up. She swore and, sitting down hard, bent to untangle the cord, once again tucking the receiver between ear and shoulder. As she worked to free her feet from the cord she marshaled more reasons why she wasn’t going to move. After a few moments, Bryan returned. “OK, I’m back,” he said, not explaining what he’d been doing, “and I talked to the people I had working on this case and they all agree. Emmett’s going to come after you and he’ll be there sooner than you think. We are out of options-” “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Lily cut him off, still sitting on her floor. “What are you talking about? We are not out of options, I don’t care what your ‘folks on the case’ say. There are always options. Though in this case moving is not one of them. I am staying here. You can guard me here, that is an option, but I am not moving. I am sure you have time to get guys here. There’s no way Emmett is going to move that quickly, I’m like 5,000 miles away.” Bryan said nothing, and Lily climbed to her feet again just as a sudden sweep of black, like a flourished cape flashed by her bedroom window, then swirled out of view. “What the…???” She stepped closer to the glass, pressing her nose against it so she could see through the curtains and around the edge of her window. She gasped and ducked so fast that she sat hard on her rear again, awkwardly rolling and scooting herself into the corner between the window and her closet, her heart pounding hard. Oh my god, oh my god. She could barely breathe. Calm down Lily, calm down. On the phone, Bryan was speaking again, and Lily had to work hard to hear him. “Lily, I get that you are pissed about having to move again and I’m sorry,” he sounded like he was talking through clenched teeth and a tense jaw. “You may think that Emmett is willing to let you go, but you have to trust me when I say he’s not. So, as I tried to say before, I’m sending someone over to your house right now to get you. Please be ready to go.” “It’s too late,” Lily said, surprised at how steady her voice sounded when her gut was twisting with a nauseating combination of chagrin and fear. Bryan had been right, she had let her emotions get away from her and now she owed Bryan an apology that she literally had no time for. “What are you talking about?” he demanded warily. “What do you mean it’s too late? Lily, what did you do?” “Nothing! I just mean it’s too late,” she said again. “Lucien is here, he’s outside my flat. I just saw him.” Bryan sucked in a breath and swore. “Did he see you? What’s he doing?” Lily shook her head, rolling it side to side against the wall. “No, I don’t think so. I was sitting on the floor and there are lace curtains over my window and now I’m huddled in a corner out of sight. He can’t see me, and I have no idea what he’s doing. I think he was heading for my front door, though I doubt he’s gonna knock.” “Is your door locked?” Lily’s eyes widened and she frantically tried to remember if she had locked both doors when she got home. She was supposed to but sometimes she forgot. “I think so...wait, hang on a minute…let me listen.” “Lily, wait…don’t expose yourself, stay hidden, stay put…” His warnings sounded frantic. Lily ignored him and pressed the receiver against her stomach muffling the sound of his voice in the material of her bulky sweatshirt and strained to listen. Silence reigned, nobody rattled a door or knocked, though Lily thought she could hear several masculine voices outside. Which meant Lucien had company. Frogs and Coffee! She put the receiver back to her ear. “He’s not trying to get in, but I think he brought friends. I am gonna see, at least if I can see where he is I might be able to figure out what he’s going to do.” “Lily be careful! Don’t do anything rash, help is on the way!” “I won’t, I will be,” She promised, and then placing the cradle of the phone behind her back on the floor listened again for any sounds that might give her a clue as to where Lucien was. They were still out in the back but the masculine voices were fading, moving, as far as she could tell, away from her front door and around the other side of her house. She doubted that meant that Lucien was giving up and leaving. She wasn’t that lucky, Lucien wasn’t that easily deterred. Lily considered her next move. The idea of leaving her room made her feel vulnerable and exposed but better to know what Lucien might be up to than to be surprised and all that much more defenseless. She pressed her back against the wall and slowly pushed herself upwards, leaning over just long enough to get a glimpse out of the window, letting out an explosive breath when she saw nothing lurking beyond the lace curtains. The coast was clear. Feeling a bit safer, she moved out of her corner, nervously looking back over her shoulder with almost every step as she made for her bedroom door. If Lucien and his buddies still lingered anywhere on the path outside the house’s entryway door, she would be much safer in the hallway. They could decide to backtrack and peer in at any moment and see her and that would be disastrous. Moving quickly, Lily tucked around the corner of her bedroom door into the hallway, leaning back against the wall and catching her breath. She’d been holding it in like she was afraid that Lucien might hear her if she allowed herself the luxury of oxygen. Light from the windows of the two bedrooms across the hallway illuminated the broad space but she wasn’t too worried. Those windows were high up off the ground, so unless Lucien could scale the side of the house or had a ladder, she didn’t think they posed any danger. What was dangerous was lingering too long where she stood. If she looked left she could see directly down the hall and through the set of glass doors that sat behind her dining room table. And the curtains at those windows were sheer and see-through. With her dark hair and brilliantly red sweatshirt, she stood out like a bright red flower in a bed of white blooms, not good. Briefly Lily considered peeling herself out of her sweatshirt but the t-shirt she wore beneath was also red. “Who knew clothes were going to be dangerous today,” she muttered, following her own instinct to make herself as small as possible and crouching down to the floor again. If someone passed by that dining room door they’d still see her, Lily knew, but this position made her feel a bit better nonetheless. She skittered diagonally across the hallway as quickly as she could on all fours, the tile floor hard against her knees, coming to a stop at the edge of the wall on the opposite side. From here the bulky shape of her sofa, which sat directly in front of her in her living room, partially hid her from view and that was a good thing. Lily allowed herself to pause again for just a brief second before peeking around the corner of the hallway into the large square main room of her flat. The room itself, brightly lit despite the fading afternoon, was empty except for furniture. Through the bank of floor-to-ceiling windows that took up almost the entire front wall of her flat, Lily saw four men gathered in a tight circle, talking and loitering on her front patio, a big octagonal-shaped slab of concrete that looked out over her street and the village beyond. Over the summer a small table and four chairs had occupied that space, but now Lucien and three other men stood there deep in conversation, no doubt discussing exactly how they were going to kill her...

#original work fantasy romance

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juunshua · 5 years

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well, opinions are opinions and we can't make people like what we like. i also want to pick your brain about hit! i personally felt that the song was just a bit too generic sounding and disorganized for my taste, but others have been absolutely raving about it because of its style. any thoughts? (good or bad, maybe both!)

i’ll answer both asks here! and i agree opinions are opinions to each their own^^ my opinions about hit under the cut! apologies for how late this is and for how long it got to be;;

honestly the song that i was expecting is not the song that we got ahhhahaa i too felt a sense of disorganization i think my first impression of the song was that it felt kind of unfocused…the main melodic topline part of the song like the actual vocal parts of the song (not the instrumentals) i just felt like wasnt able to mesh properly with the compositional part underneath…which i felt was the main contributor to this disjointed feeling that was felt perhaps? i dont know i just feel like if u ignore the vocals and focus on the instrumental, it flows a lot better. that falsetto in the prechorus both times…i am not a big fan of the choice of register for that part….prechorus in general is probably my least favorite part of the songalso not sure how necessary the ‘woahs’ were in the chorus. i loved the other miscellaneous vocal noises like whoever was doing that “ooh ooh ooh” and then woozis little thing that he does here but the woahs…those woahs…im kind of curious how the chorus sounds without it and what the reasoning behind putting in those woahs in were because it just felt like too much at times for me the chorus is already so many layered sounds and then we get the woahs on top of that…like is it supposed to serve as a counter melody to one of the main melodic figures thats in the bridge with the chants + in the chorus in the synths (which i love that they did!!! taking the melodic line in the synth and convert it into a melodic vocal line thats a lot of fun^^) to me the woahs sound more interesting if i treat it as a countermelody but it also just might have been a way to make the chorus sound less repetitive since we get the chorus twice, but the second time is just a dance break (but then again there are other compositional differences too like that alskdj idk what the name of the synth is but its like what id classify as almost a laser gun sound? laksdj pewpewpewww sound start up high once the dance break starts again indicating change) and also getting out of the bridge the ‘let me drop the music’ line that woozi says is followed by wonderful musical silence which i adore but alksdjlk those woahs start earlier and the break that you think youre gonna get you dont and the musical silence becomes more an instrumental pause which might have been the point but still laskjd im curious as to how this chorus thing would have worked without woahsthis is probably just a very very very very!!! personal opinion and experience but the bridge kind of scares me a bit alskj like the parts before the chanting that says ‘breathe’ over and over again maybe its the nasality combined with whatever vocal effect theyre using + how slow the buildup is rising but laksdj thats just me i guess haha i do agree we need a bit of a chill section for the bridge to i guess rebuild tension and things like that but again execution of the vocal line akdjlakjd but! loved the chants that followed for the reason i stated above^^its such a fun way to build hype and also that parallelism in the synth and what theyre saying vocally. though part of me does wonder how this chant would have sounded as a buildup in the verses but im not mad about it not being there because the buildup in the verse is shorter and you get to the point more quickly instead of dragging it out which is probably more needed for verses like i can see the reasoningi love the dance break section of the chorus so much though! definitely my favorite bit of the song ! esp in the first chorus when they do the brrrrr i wonder why they didnt keep that in for the last chorus haha. the dance break really fits the intensity of the composition at that part and im honestly really looking forward to seeing the full choreo to see how much it’ll take and expand on from the musical composition (no svt song is complete without choreo ever ahaha)im still on the fence i guess about how i feel about this song because there are things that are definitely my taste! like the dance break part of the chorus, and then there are things that im kinda super iffy about like the prechorus hahah and for me personally it really does sound unfocused at times and honestly i also got an overwhelming sensation of overstimulation?? which could be the point it is like dance/club music but alkdj idk at times i feel like i was listening to /too/ much but maybe its just because its the type of music im not used to listening to^^thank you guys for asking though and im super sorry this got long! would love to hear your thoughts on it though for sure^^

#replies #long post #(like REALLY long post lskj rip)#anon

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silvertip-studio · 6 years

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hi can u do a fic where theres a cute irish boy that works in a flower store and theres a rly hot muscular guy that works at a tattoo parlor with his sister next-door and they fall in love over mutual bonding over a certain flower (i like bell flowers)

Ok, this is actually Stryker bc she’s been bugging the hell out of me to finally post some of my OCs. So, here’s a random one-shot that I had written of two of my characters!!! Enjoy :)

Flowers made Ruairi happy. They were Mother Nature’s gift to the world, and were able to bring joy and life in even the darkest of places. Not only that, but there were millions of different variations of them, just like there were millions of different variations of people. It was the perfect system. His shop was brightly lit with large glass windows, and different flowers were scattered across the store. While it would appear disorganized to an outsider, he knew where every plant was and had clearly signed it so that shoppers could find what they were looking for.

Right next door to Ruairi’s shop was a very different store. It was a tattoo parlor. It had clean lines, and was perfectly organized. There was a station where two large, leather bound books of tattoo designs were clearly labeled, the walls had tattoo designs hung in cleanly cut, black frames, and there were tattoo chairs in the back or private rooms along the back wall. It was pristine, and Ruairi couldn’t help but say that he admired the organization every time he walked by to get to his car.

Of course, he had never gone in. No, he had no reason to go into a tattoo parlor, even if he admired the owners organization and the general aesthetic of the store. In fact, he had no idea who even owned the parlor, only that there was a super cute, or could he classify him as hot, tattoo artist that worked there everyday.

Ruairi was daydreaming about the brown haired, broad, muscular, blue eyed tattoo artist when his doorbell jingled, signaling the entrance of a customer. When he looked up he smiled brightly at the panicked looking man before him. He was in a pair of skinny jeans and a black t-shirt, his black hair was messy and unbrushed, and his green eyes were wide with fear.

“Hi, how can I help you today?” Ruairi grinned, glad that he never had to worry about getting flowers for a significant other since he owned the store, and since he didn’t have a boyfriend. However, he did sympathize with all of the poor souls who had come to his store in panic over the years.

“Uh, yeah, it’s my girlfriend’s birthday and her present isn’t coming for another two days, so I need something to give her!”

“Ok, does she like flowers? A specific type of flower, maybe?”

“No, not really. When we first started dating I got her flowers and she gave them to her mother.” The man sighed, running a hand through his already messy hair.

“So, then why do you think getting her flowers is a good idea?”

“I don’t know. I’m desperate.” he ran a hand down his face. “She’s going to get home from work in a few hours, and I have nothing.”

“Lemme see what I can do.” Ruairi offered, then began wandering through the packed aisles of flowers. He scanned them, hoping to hear the customer that was trailing him make a noise of triumph when he saw one that his girlfriend might like. When he had walked the majority of his store with only one bouquet even slightly catching the customer’s eye, he turned to the man with a sigh. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what I have for someone who doesn’t like flowers.”

“Fuck.” his hands found residence in his hair and pulled. Ruairi watched helplessly as the man all but sank to his knees.

“Does she like tattoos? ‘Cause, there’s a parlor right next door.”

“I mean, yeah, but that’s her brother’s…and she works there. I can’t exactly go get a gift card for her when she already gets the family and employee discount.” he sighed.

“Have you asked her brother what kind of flowers she likes?”

“No, but I’m gonna now.” he turned and left the store without another word. Ruairi shook his head and laughed. It was always crazy watching what people did out of desperation. He was returning to his little counter when he heard his doorbell jingle again. When he turned, the breath was nearly knocked out of him. Beside the black haired man was the tattoo artist that Ruairi had been fawning over for the past year.

“Fuck,” he breathed, “I-I mean hi.” Ruairi raised his hand in a half wave and felt a hot blush rise on his pale, freckled cheeks.

“Hey,” the artist smiled, glancing over at his friend hesitantly before continuing, “I’m Ryan.”

“Oh, I’m Ruairi.” he stepped forward and extended his hand to Ryan, praying that his hands weren’t sweaty. Ryan’s grip was strong, and Ruairi could see the veins of his muscular hands. It was then that Ruairi realized that the tattoo artist wasn’t wearing a sweater, or sweatshirt, or flannel which he usual wore in and out of the shop. No, he was in nothing but a tank top. A tank top that showed off the thickly corded muscles of his arms, back, and shoulders, as well as the tattoos that decorated his upper arms and shoulders. God, how had Ruairi not seen his upper body before?

“Um, yeah, so I’m Matt, by the way.”

Ruairi quickly pulled his hand back from Ryan’s, looking over to Matt who, damn him, was smirking at the two flushed men. “Yeah, so, Ryan, you’re Matt’s girlfriend’s brother, so you should know her favorite type of flower, right?” The red-headed florist scratched at the back of his neck.

“Oh, well, she’s never really been a flower person. No matter what my mother tried, Erin never quite got flower fever, or whatever. No, she always hung out with my dad and I.” Ryan chuckled, his eyes glazing over a bit as he thought back to his childhood alongside his sister.

Ruairi hated to interrupt his reminiscing, but he figured he couldn’t stay away from his shop too long, so he pushed on, “Well, do you wanna walk around with me, and maybe see if I have anything that could possibly fit the bill?”

Ryan nodded, and the two began wandering the store, Matt trailing behind them. Occasionally, Ryan would point out a bouquet with a smile, but most of the time it was about a tattoo he had done and not about Erin. Despite these anecdotes being useless, Ruairi smiled at the brown haired man. It was interesting to learn about how their, oh so different, professions overlapped.

Ruairi was about to lose hope in their mission, when something seemed to catch Ryan’s eye. When he looked at the bouquet that Ryan was reaching for, he was pleased to see that the man had chosen his favorite flowers. So, he took the bellflowers from him, ignoring the way his heart fluttered when his fingers brushed Ryan’s. He quickly rung up and wrapped the flowers, handing them off to Matt with a smile. Then, he turned to Ryan, “So, why bellflowers?”

“Oh, my dad used to always buy them for our mom, and so they were always around the house. I’m hoping they’ll remind her of Dad the same way they remind me of him.” Ryan shrugged, looking at the purple flowers with a fond expression.

“Here, why don’t I throw in an extra bouquet for you? On the house.” Ruairi wasn’t sure where the idea had come from, but it felt like the right thing to say. He definitely knew it was the right thing to say when Ryan’s face lit up with a smile and color flooded his freckled cheeks.

“I couldn’t.” he waved the offer away.

“I insist.” Ruairi was already running off to get the bellflowers, returning through the crowded store to find Matt whispering in Ryan’s ear and laughing. He had to hold back his chuckle when Ryan slapped the taller man on the arm and hissed something back, which only made Matt laugh harder. “Here you go.” Ruairi quickly wrapped the flowers and held them out towards Ryan.

“Ok, but you’ve got a free tattoo whenever you want.”

“One bouquet of flowers is hardly worth the same as a tattoo!” Ruairi protested.

“Well, I guess you’ll just have to keep giving me flowers.” Ryan smiled, then dismissed himself. After all, he couldn’t leave his shop unattended for longer than he already had.

After that, it became typical to find Ryan stopping in at Ruairi’s flower shop to pick up a bouquet of bellflowers and talk for far too long. Each bouquet was proudly displayed on the front desk of his parlor for all to see, not that Ruairi knew since he never visited the tattoo parlor. At least he never visited until one day he barged in with a grand idea.

“I’m gonna take you up on that tattoo!”

Ryan’s head popped up from where he had been studying a drawing a client had sent him. He looked at Ruairi, stunned for a second, before a grin spread across his face. “Finally. What do you want to get?”

“Ok, first lemme explain, ‘cause you’re gonna think it’s weird.” Ruairi said. “They’ve been my favorite flowers for years, and it’s just coincidental that it—“

“What flower is it, Ruairi?”

“Bellflowers.” Ruairi said, flushing red, “They’ve been my favorite flowers since I was little because my favorite color was purple and I thought they looked like bells. I mean of course they look like bells, they’re bell-flowers.” the red-head spoke so fast that Ryan had to strain to keep up, only managing it because of his years listening to Erin speak impossibly fast. Although, the lingering Irish accent put a strain on even Ryan’s skilled ears.

“Hey, dude, it’s totally fine. First of all, I’m not going to judge you for liking flowers, for fucks sake you own a flower shop. Second of all, I noticed when I chose them for Erin that first day that you got really excited about them. So, I kinda already figured they were you favorite.” Ryan soothed, chuckling slightly at the dramatics of the Irish man.

“Oh, ok cool.”

“Also, we can be tattoo buddies!” Ryan laughed, leaving Ruairi to stare at him in confusion. Of course, Ryan picked up on this confusion and explained, “Look, I have a bellflower tattoo too.” He turned his head and moved some of his messy hair out of the way to reveal a small bellflower tattoo right behind his right ear.

Ruairi blushed, staring at the tattoo with a slack jaw. How had he never noticed the tattoo during any of Ryan’s many visits to the flower shop? “I don’t know. Isn’t that weird?”

“Nah, people have matching tattoos by accident all the time. So, what’s the difference?” Ryan waved him off, already standing from the desk and walking over to the leather-bound tattoo design books. “C’mon, I have a few bellflower designs in here from when I got this. Plus my sister, Erin, has one too, so there are a lot of different versions in here from our brainstorming sessions. Trust me, she just couldn’t quite ‘vibe’ with one.”

As he said this, a girl appeared from the back room. Her shoulder length brown hair was braided back, and she was wearing a barely buttoned red flannel and ripped skinny jeans, and her ears were decorated with glinting piercings. “Are you slandering me?”

“What!? Of course not.”

“I totally believe you.” she threw the towel she was holding at his head. Ryan caught it and glowered at her. Watching the sibling’s squabble reminded Ruairi of his sister, and he couldn’t help but chuckle at the fond memories.

“What?” Ryan turned back to him.

“Nothing, you two just remind me of my sister and me.”

“Ah, so you know my struggle as well!” Ryan laughed, throwing the towel back at his sister.

“Struggle my ass!” Erin tossed the towel onto the desk, before joining them at the design books, “Since my loser big bro isn’t going to introduce me, I’m Erin,” she stuck her hand out for him to shake, and he couldn’t help but notice the vast array of rings decorating her fingers. He shook it, noting that she also had a firm grip.

“Ruairi.”

“Ah, flower shop dude, nice.”

“You know me?”

“Of course I know the guy who saved my boyfriend’s dumb ass.” Erin laughed, “Plus Ryan hasn’t—” she was cut off when Ryan jumped up and covered her mouth with his hand. The rest of her words were muffled into his hands. Ruairi looked between the siblings in confusion, positive that he was missing some key part of the conversation. When Ryan removed his hand from Erin’s mouth he hoped to be enlightened, but he was almost cast further into the darkness. “Fuck, ok. So, sensitive.” she poked her brother in the ribs with a teasing smile.

“What?” Ruairi finally asked.

“Oh, nothing, just that I of course know the guy who keeps giving my brother his favorite flowers!” Erin waved her hand at the bellflowers on the desk. Up until that point Ruairi hadn’t noticed the familiar flowers, and when he turned to see them proudly displayed, he gaped. He had never expected Ryan to actually put the flowers anywhere in his store, let alone front and center.

Ryan smacked his sister in the arm, but then turned to Ruairi with a smile. “I mean I told you they’re my favorite flower, and they give the shop a bit of color, so, yeah.” he said, turning away from the florist and scratching the back of his neck. When he turned back he said, “Anyway, let’s get back to your tattoo.”

“Ooh, he’s getting a tattoo?”

“Yeah, Erin, that’s why he’s here. What else would he be doing?”

“Well, he could’ve been visiting his—"

“Don’t you have a client to talk through tattoo care?” Ryan cut her off as he flushed red. Erin shrugged, but retreated back to the private room nonetheless. Both men stared after Erin, too scared to look back at each other considering the implications of Erin’s comments.

Finally, Ryan broke the silence. “So, bellflower designs. Of course, I’ve got my favorite design behind my ear, but my second favorite, is this one.” he flipped open one of the heavy books to a page that was covered in various pictures of bellflowers. For a second, he scanned the page, then pointed to one of them. It was two bellflowers with their stems overlapping and twisting together to form a heart. “I mean, we can change what the stems do if you want, but yeah.”

“No, no, I love it.”

“Ok, cool.” Ryan noted the design’s number in a notebook, “When do you want to get it done?”

“Oh, um, when are you free?”

“I could do it tomorrow evening, after closing, that way you don’t have to close early.”

“You-You’d do that for me?”

“Yeah of course,” Ryan hesitated, “you’re my friend.”

Ruairi didn’t quite know why, but his spirits drooped a little. However, when Ryan smiled at him, he felt them lift again.

“One, final, but really important question.”

“Shoot.”

“Where do you want it?” Ryan laughed when Ruairi’s mouth fell open. The florist hadn’t thought about that. So, he made a split second decision, and tried his best to pass it off as having been planned.

“On the inside of my forearm, I’m not totally sure which one though,” Ruairi extended his arms and turned them over so that he was baring the area to Ryan. He watched as Ryan shifted into artist mode, studying each arm and then thinking.

“I think I’d go with left arm.”

“Sounds good to me.”

Once they had discussed some of the details of Ruairi getting his first tattoo, Ruairi returned to his flower shop. However, he found it ridiculously hard to focus on caring for both his plants and his customers, instead daydreaming about the man who was going to give him his first tattoo tomorrow.

**********

Ruairi closed down the flower shop in a hurry. He’d spent the whole day in excited anticipation of the evening. When he walked into the tattoo parlor, he was grinning so hard that his cheeks were aching. However, the tattoo artist was nowhere in sight. “Ryan?” It took a few seconds, but Ryan suddenly emerged from a back room that Ruairi had never realized was there.

“Ah! My favorite client!” Ryan smiled brightly at the Irishman, and waved him over to one of the chairs in the back of the shop. It was already set up for Ryan to give him the tattoo. Ruairi seated himself in the chair and discarded his sweater so that he was in nothing but his t-shirt, arm resting on the armrest. Ryan cleaned off the inside of his forearm with disinfectant. “You ready?”

“Hell yeah.”

“Good to hear.” Ryan brought the needle to Ruairi’s skin and started the long, painful process. Immediately, Ruairi had to grit his teeth against the searing pain lacing through his arm. When he glanced up at Ryan’s face he was immediately comforted. His tongue was sticking through his teeth and his eyebrows were furrowed in concentration. Ruairi couldn’t help but find it endearing. “We can talk if that makes it easier. A lot of people like to talk.”

“Ok, yeah.” Ruairi agreed. However, what he didn’t expect was for them to end up playing twenty questions. He didn’t expect to learn that Ryan’s first kiss was a boy named Alex in freshman year of high school, nor did he expect to tell Ryan that his first kiss was with a boy named Derek in his sophomore year of high school.

When Ryan finished the tattoo, Ruairi still had one question that he was dying to ask. So, once Ryan walked him through taking care of the fresh tattoo, he asked. “Can I see your tattoos?” As soon as the words were out of his mouth he wished he could take them back.

“Yeah, sure.” Ryan said with a smile, and Ruairi was immediately comforted. “Can I ask why?”

“Oh,” Ruairi blanched, “I don’t know, I was just curious. Just, I don’t know, I’ve never really seen them all and I’m…I don’t know.”

“Whoa, hey, don’t worry, I totally get it. When I got my first tattoo I was super curious about other people’s tattoos too.” Ryan gave him a reassuring smile then pulled his t-shirt over his head. Now, Ruairi could see so much more of Ryan than he had been able to see when he wore the tank top, and Ruairi knew he’d made a mistake in asking. Especially as he stared at the wolf head on Ryan’s left shoulder, then the mountain range on his back, and then the three patterned bands circling his right bicep.

“Wow.”

“You like?” Ryan looked over his shoulder at Ruairi, who was still staring at his tattoos. He smiled, proud to see the awestruck look on Ruairi’s face. When Ruairi saw Ryan smiling at him he nodded, bottom lip caught between his teeth. “Do you want to see some of my other ones?”

“You have more?”

“Hell yeah.” Ryan laughed, turning to face Ruairi and lifting up his left arm to reveal four hearts forming a four leaf clover on his ribs. Then, he lowered his arm and turned it over to reveal a tree that appeared to grow from the inside of his wrist up his forearm. Ruairi couldn’t hold back any longer and reached out his hand, lightly touching the tree. His fingers traced up the trunk and then the branches of the tree. He realized what he was doing and was about to pull his hand away when he felt Ryan’s fingers wrap around his wrist.

“I-I’m sorry, I got distracted and—“

“No, no, it’s perfectly ok, Ruairi,” Ryan whispered, keeping Ruairi’s fingers pressed to his tattoo. Ruairi instinctually stepped closer, head still bent down to look at where his fingers were tracing the tattoo. Suddenly, Ryan’s hand was no longer holding his wrist, but tilting his head up to look at him. Then, Ryan’s lips were pressed to his and Ryan’s hand was in his hair, pulling Ruairi down into the kiss. Ryan pulled away from him, eyes still closed and breaths coming in pants. “Fuck, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.“

“No, Ryan, I’m—it’s…fuck it,” Ruairi surged forward, one hand on Ryan’s cheek as he bent back down to kiss the tattoo artist. His other hand moved up Ryan’s arm to his bare back, pulling him flush against his chest and deepening the kiss. With the reassurance that Ruairi shared his feelings, Ryan pushed Ruairi against the wall of the parlor. Ryan’s hands shifted from Ruairi’s hair to his shoulders, holding him against the wall as his mouth shifted to Ruairi’s jaw, then neck. “Mm, Ryan, fuck,” his hand had moved into Ryan’s hair and he tugged on the strands when Ryan nipped at the sensitive skin of his pulse point, “Not here.”

Ryan finally pulled away from Ruairi just enough to speak, “What?” he asked, resting his head against Ruairi’s collarbone and nuzzling his nose against the base of Ruairi’s throat.

“Come over to my place. We can have dinner, and continue this more comfortably.” Ruairi breathed, pressing a gentle kiss to Ryan’s cheek and trailing his hand down to rest loosely against the side of Ryan’s neck. After a few seconds, Ryan nodded.

“Yeah, that sounds good.” Ryan pulled away, then went up on his tiptoes to place a quick, chaste kiss on Ruairi’s lips. Then, he grabbed Ruairi’s hand and dragged him out of the tattoo parlor to Ruairi’s waiting car.

*************

“Somebody got laid!” Erin sung leaning over the front desk of the parlor as Ryan walked in, fifteen minutes late.

“What are you talking about?” Ryan scowled at her.

“Oh, c’mon, you guys weren’t even subtle.” Erin came around to the front of the desk, standing in her brother’s path, “The shirt you forgot in the heat of the moment,” she held up the shirt he had abandoned the night before, “And, oh, what’s this?” she pushed the hood of what she guessed was Ruairi’s sweatshirt off of his head, “Hickeys! You and Ruairi sure had a fun night.”

“Shut the fuck up, Erin.”

“Seriously? Ryan, if you’re going to have a make-out session in the shop at least have the decency to own up to it, or delete the security footage!” she cackled, dancing away from his attempt to smack her.

“Shut up, it’s none of your business.” Ryan grumbled. At that moment Ruairi walked into the parlor, a fresh bouquet of bellflowers in his hand. Erin hid a smirk behind her hand as Ruairi came up behind Ryan, pressing a kiss to his cheek.

“I got you fresh flowers, love.”

Ryan blushed, shooting a glare at Erin before turning to face his new boyfriend. “Thanks, babe.” he took the flowers and swapped them out for the old ones that had still been in the vase. When he turned back around, he found that Erin had approached Ruairi.

“So,” Erin started, and Ryan dreaded whatever she was about to ask, “can I see the tattoo?” Ryan sighed with relief and Erin was already looking excitedly at the part of Ruairi’s arm that was covered in a bandage.

“Oh, yeah. Ryan did an amazing job!” Ruairi grinned, peeling away the bandage to expose the fresh looking tattoo to Erin. She smiled, taking in every aspect of the tattoo, from the intricate petals all the way to the heart that the stems formed.

“I love it! And look, we’re tattoo buddies!” She pulled off her purple flannel to show him the ring of bellflowers that circled her bicep. Ruairi noted that, like her brother, she was cut. Erin also had tattoos decorating her arms and shoulders, and he saw the edge of a tattoo peeking out from the back of her racerback. “Ryan, you’re the odd one out!”

“What? But he has a bellflower tattoo too.” Ruairi protested.

“Yeah, but not one on his arm like us!”

“Wow, if it means so much to you, Erin, I can get one on my arm.” Ryan sighed, leaning back against the front desk. “Where would you like me to get it?”

“Ooh, you’re letting me do this!” Erin was shocked, but she quickly transitioned into smiling with glee at her brother, “Sit down! I’m doing this now.”

“Erin, what about actual clients?”

“We don’t have any appointments for a couple of hours!” she argued, “Don’t worry, Ryan, it’s gonna be great!” Erin tugged on his arm, attempting to drag him back to one of the chairs. He resisted, raising his eyebrows at her.

“I think I’ll leave you two to it.” Ruairi began to back away towards the exit, “I have to actually open up my own shop.” he smiled and gave them a half wave.

“Wait!” Ryan broke away from Erin and raced after Ruairi, grabbing his hand and pulling him into his chest. He pressed a quick kiss to Ruairi’s lips, then mumbled against them, “Have lunch with me?”

“Of course.” Ruairi smiled, gave Ryan one last kiss, then left the parlor.

“I ship it.” Erin cooed as soon as the door shut behind Ruairi.

“Fuck off.”

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thadelightfulone · 6 years

Text

The Firm - Chapter 2

Prologue Chapter 1

Summary: Erik has been hired to find an embezzler.

Pairing: Erik x Black!OC

Genre: Suspense

Words: 1.8K+

--- Present Moment ---

Erik notices all the papers flying around him as he lifts himself up off the ground. He has no idea what just happened; he just recalls walking towards the elevators and being hit with such force it knocked him off his feet. He begins to pick up the papers close to him, and as he hands them to the owner, he looks down to see big brown apologetic eyes glancing at him.

He smiles at her while she just snatches the papers out of his hand and pushes her glasses back up on her face. As they continue to pick up the papers, he can hear soft sounds. LaNyah is silently chastising herself. “How could you be so stupid? Why were you running anyway? You’re still late.” Looking over at the handsome gentleman she just trampled, “Ugh, this day cannot get any worse.”

LaNyah gathers all her stuff including the now disorganized folder and runs to the elevators. She is still muttering to herself as she wills the elevator to come quickly. Erik slowly makes his way over and waits behind her. When the elevator car arrives, they both step in, and he asks her, “What floor are you going to?” She does not respond and just pushes the button for the 31st floor. He pushes the 35 and moves to the back of the elevator.

As the elevator ascends, LaNyah focuses on the climbing numbers above her head while rocking back and forth on her heels. She is trying her hardest not to look back at the man who is standing behind her. The one who she knocked over in her rush to get to the office on time. Her thoughts are all over the place and yet crowded due to their proximity to one another. She nervously starts tapping on the folder in her hands as she mentally ticks off what she needs to do as soon as she gets to her desk.

Erik takes in her appearance from top to bottom. He knows her eyes are a deep brown behind her colorful rimmed glasses. Her hair was in a bun that was not doing much to control her unruly curls. She is wearing a deep blue blouse and a black pencil skirt. He tries not to laugh as he notices the Nike slides that grace her stockinged feet with her heels in the bag she carries. However, he cannot help the harsh guffaw that comes out when he sees the ugly run down her pantyhose. Someone is not having a good day, and it’s not even 9.

“Need to reorganize this folder and all the files inside. Email the spreadsheets. Run and print out the weekly reports.” She does not realize that she was going over her list aloud. Erik is behind her smirking and was about to say something to her when they hear the ding indicating that they are on the 31st floor. She is startled out of her musings before collecting herself. She holds the door long enough to glance back and issue a rushed apology, “Sorry for running you over.”

“It’s okay,” he starts as the door closes. The laughter that he had been holding released as the elevator continues to the top floor. How did someone that skittish get a job here? He figured Green would give him the lay of the land, so it will not take him too long to find out what departments are on the 31st floor. The elevator stops and dings letting him know he has arrived at the top of the building. He steps off and smiles at the layout.

Green has the whole floor to himself. Erik just stepped into his open reception area. He can see the man through the glass doors that separate him from the front on the right. A small conference room space is connected to his office on the left. It can also be accessed through another set of doors near a coffee bar to the right of the reception area. He likes this layout; it is similar to what he has in his building. What’s the saying, ‘Great minds, think alike?’ He smooths out his jacket as he moves further into the office space. He walks over to the receptionist’s desk and introduces himself. “Hello, I’m Erik Stevens. I have a meeting with Alexander Green.”

LaNyah reaches her office in the back corner of the Accounting side of the floor. She drops everything and slumps into her seat. She reaches over to pick up her heels to change into and throws the slides back into her bag. She turns on the computer while looking at the clock above her; it is 10 minutes after 9. She shakes her head as her email loads on the screen.

She looks at the cluttered mess that is all the files in her folder. She dumps everything out and starts rearranging everything so that it is in order for when she meets with Green this morning. Thinking about Green, she recalls that the mystery guy on the elevator pressed the floor for his office. She starts wondering what business he can have with the company CEO.

Opening her email, she hopes that she has a meeting notice so she can prepare herself. She has only met Mr. Green during her interview and hiring processes. She has never dealt with him outside of that since Matt is her immediate supervisor. There is no meeting notice, email or anything. Groaning she goes back to fixing the documents in the folder. She runs her clammy hands across her skirt and remembers that she needs to throw out her ruined pantyhose.

20 minutes later, LaNyah decides to grab some tea from the breakroom. Her focus keeps shifting to the stranger she ran into, and that is very unsettling to her. She knows he is taller than she is and that the suit he was wearing fit him nicely. He had broad shoulders and short dreads, but she does not recall much else. While sipping on her tea, she thinks about his scent that she caught in the elevator. She is so wrapped up in the moment that she nearly misses, Matt, calling her name.

The receptionist looks up at Erik and nods. “Of course Mr. Stevens, Mr. Green is expecting you.” She stands up and points towards the coffee bar. “Can I get you anything before your meeting?”

“Yes. Just coffee, black, thank you.” She nods and then waves him over to Green’s office.

“I will be right in with your coffee, Mr. Stevens.” He walks over to the doors and knocks. He hears Green reply from behind the door with a shit-eating grin on his face.

“Come on in, Stevens.” He stands up from behind his desk and walks around to greet Erik. “It has been too long, man.”

“Too long? Green, you know we were never supposed to cross paths again.” He laughs as he pulls him in for a brotherly hug, big slaps on the back and all.

“Yeah, well shit happens, and you are the best man for this job Stevens. Besides, you aren’t the only one keeping tabs on everybody.” Green points to the couch for them to sit.

“I see that.” Green’s receptionist comes in with two cups of coffee and sets them down in front of them.

“Thank you, Stacey, that will be all for now.” She turns to leave and returns to her desk.

“Alright, Green. Spill it. I want to hear this from you and not the report that I memorized.” Erik picks up his coffee and inhales the deep aroma of the blend.

“Every quarter, I randomly pull reports from our different accounts to see that everything is on the up and up. Well this time, I noticed that our scholarship fund has been very inconsistent over the course of the last 3 months.” Erik nods.

“The person I will be working with, is she the only one who has access to these reports?”

“No, her whole team does, but she is the budget analyst, so the weekly reconcile is a part of her job.” Green runs his hands across his face, “I am getting ready to go overseas to handle some new business for the next few weeks and just do not have the time to do an internal audit, but this needs to be resolved immediately. I need you to get to the bottom of this whole thing.”

“Wait, are you calling me in as a consultant or as a fucking babysitter? This shit can always wait until you return, you know how this team and this individual work.” Green slowly shakes his head. Getting louder, “Green, what are you not telling me?” Erik asks. Green gets up, moves to his desk, and hits a button on his phone.

“Stacey, please call Miss Cole and patch her through.”

“Yes sir, just a moment.”

“LaNyah!” Matt calls out to her again. Waving a hand in her face, “Hello, earth to LaNyah.” She shakes herself out of her reflections.

“Yes Matt, how can I help you?” She sets her tea down on the counter.

“Mr. Green is calling for you, pick up line 3.” He walks out of the breakroom as LaNyah walks over to the nearby phone.

“This is LaNyah. How can I help you, Mr. Green?” She twirls the cord around her finger as she waits for his response.

“Good Morning Miss Cole. I would like you to gather up the files I inquired about last week. I need you to come upstairs immediately.”

“Yes sir, I am on the way.” She hangs up the phone and runs over to her desk, tea forgotten. She picks up the folder, a few pens and walks to the elevator. As the elevator goes up, Nyah could sense that familiar feeling rising in her throat. It was that uneasiness that crept into her whenever she felt nervous. Nyah breathes in and out slowly trying to calm down. "It's going to be okay," she says to herself in a rushed tone. She breathes in and out again. "You will be okay. No worries." She says to herself. Just as she begins to breathe in and out again, the elevator stops, and the bell goes off. Nyah has arrived on the 35th floor. She needs this job, and she loves what she does. She breathes in and out once more. “You got this,” she says as she steps out of the elevator and sees Stacey.

“Hi Miss Cole, you can go right in. Mr. Green is expecting you.” She points to his office and not the conference room where Nyah thought they would be meeting. She walks over, and before she can knock on the door, Green greets her.

“Miss Cole, thank you for coming up so quickly.” He ushers her in and points to the chair in front of his desk. “Please have a seat.” She realizes that there is someone else in the office sitting on the couch. As she looks over, Green starts talking again. “LaNyah Cole, please meet Erik Stevens.” Her pleasant smile disappears as she makes eye contact with him. He was the good-looking man that she ran over in the lobby. So, this day could get worse.

A/N: As always, I have to thank my lovely beta, @thehonorablekingerik for all her support and guidance. I have a taglist, so please let me know if you want to be on it.

Taglist: @nemesispawn @killmongersaidheyauntie @shesfromwakanda @muse-of-mbaku @panthergoddessbast @youreadthatright @princessstevens @amethyst1993 @stark-red19 @kreolemami

Chapter 3

#erik killmonger #erik killmonger x oc #black panther fanfiction #the firm #thadelightfulone

104 notes · View notes

tanyawrites · 6 years

Text

Kidnapped

**I know this isn’t another update to The Virus, but just something to keep things running smoothly. I was somewhat amused at myself, but it could have just been because it was late at night. We’ll see what happens. Hopefully, I can post a new update for The Virus soon.

**I used a word prompt I found on Pinterest, “I’ve been kidnapped three times now. And frankly, it’s getting kind of old” I don’t have the link, but when i can remember my Pinterest info, I can link it to you guys.

Alright, so being a princess kind of sucked. From the etiquette lessons, to the dress fittings, to the piano playing, it was boring and ridiculously tedious. All I wanted to do was sit in my bedroom or the library or in the garden and read my books. But being a princess, I had certain obligations that had to be met. For example, tonight, my family was hosting a ball in honor of a few of the neighboring princesses and princes coming of age. I was supposed to be there because it was my kingdom and I had to represent and practice being in charge. I had already done the “coming of age” ball. I had to stamp down my introverted side and bring out the fake smiles and fake laughs. Or so I’d hoped. As I thought about it, that stuff wasn’t even the worst part about being a princess.

Being kidnapped was the worst part.

As a princess, it wasn’t easy to keep everyone happy. In fact, it was rare that every single person was satisfied with what the royals do with the kingdom. And there’s always that one person who takes his or her anger too far. I sighed as I leaned against the wall from the cold hard floor. I wish I could say this was the first time, but by this point, I was getting used to it. It’s a wonder that I wasn’t locked in my room for safety nowadays, but my family always found the best in people. Who knew what he was trying to change? Usually they end up with a purse full of payment and a vow of silence on the matter instead, which tends to change their ways. This time, I didn’t think just money was going to work.

The door opened a few moments later, letting in the soft lights of the torches from the hallway. The man in question was standing in silhouette with his arms crossed, watching me.

“Can I go now?” I asked, annoyed at him and the situation. “I’ve been kidnapped three times now. And frankly, it’s getting kind of old.”

“You can go, when I get what’s owed to me.” He said, matter-of-factly. “See, your family has power. And that power will help me to achieve what’s rightfully mine. And with Princess Lucille in my possession, I have all the power I need.”

I rolled my eyes. “’And your family is going to get me what I want. I’ll get the ransom. Mwahahah!’” I mocked. “I’ve heard it all before. Just hurry it up. It’s cold in this room.”

He glared at me through the darkness, though he did produce a small blanket from outside the door. He threw it at me and I covered myself with it. “You laugh, but with you here, I will get what I want, what I deserve.”

I yawned. “And what would that be, oh great and powerful one?” I wasn’t sure how far I could push my luck, but I was willing to test the boundaries.

I saw him stiffen before he answered. “My place of glory and honor, back in the king’s royal army.”

My eyes widened. “That’s all? Really?” Most people wanted lower taxes, or new farm land, or higher wages. No one kidnapped me because they’d wanted to be a guard or a knight. Usually they just went to the king himself and asked him.

“Well, I could have gotten you that!” I said, exasperated. “Let me go and I’ll have a talk with my father!” I tugged at the ropes that bound my hands to a grate on the wall.

He chuckled and shook his head. “That won’t do anything. Aren’t you going to ask why I was taken out?”

“Uh… Why were you taken out?”

He seemed to stiffen even more. “I was wrongfully accused of treason. I’d caught one of the men spouting about his plan to usurp the throne from your parents. Before I could call them out in front of the king, someone else had done it first, but used my name instead of the real traitors’. But there wasn’t enough proof to really try me. So instead, I was thrown out, my title taken away, half my land sold to the man who ‘turned me in.’” He started pacing. “I had everything taken from me. All because one of your men is a traitor to the crown. That’s really why I kidnapped you. I thought you could help me find the real traitors.”

I was shocked. Who would want to hurt us? For real, I mean, of course people found kidnapping me a useful tool for their gain, but no one was really going to hurt me, per say. Who was this man that was supposedly ready to take the throne right out from under our noses? Was he going to try and kill us to do it? I felt myself go cold at the thought of someone murdering us for the sake of political gain. I shook my head. Why was I believing this man to begin with? He could be lying, he could be trying to get close to my family to knock them right off the throne and claim the title of royalty for their own. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

He shrugged. “You don’t. You’d have to trust me. But remember, trusting me is the only way that you’re going to get out of here. So, if you decide you can’t trust me, then I hope you aren’t afraid of the dark.”

I thought for a moment. This man very well could be telling me the truth about the whole thing. But then again, on the other hand, he could be the real traitor looking for a way back in. I remember a few years ago hearing of the incident, but my father refused to tell me in greater detail what was happening, as he didn’t want to scare anyone. Then, after this man had been thrown out, we hadn’t heard anything again about being hurt or killed. Until now, that is. I could trust this man and get out of here and go home. However, if he’s lying, I could be bringing unsuspected danger to my family and if something bad were to happen, then I’d be at fault and I’d never get over it.

After a moment or two more, I finally had made my decision. “Ok. Fine. On one condition: If you in anyway, even jokingly, say something about being ‘large and in charge’ of the kingdom, I will end you. I might be just a princess, but I do have ways of getting what I want.”

He nodded, then took out a knife. He bent down and cut the rope on my hands. “Deal.”

I rubbed my wrists where the rope cut into them and shot another glare at the man. “You know, I could have just talked to you.”

He rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. “Yeah, sorry about that. I’ve always been a little dramatic and I figured once you heard my story, you’d turn me in. I needed the ultimatum.”

I nodded my head in understanding. He had a point. I wouldn’t have helped him, had he told me the story first. I needed motivation. But now that I was free, I didn’t feel the need to go running and alerting the town about this turn of events. I felt like I needed to trust this man, that I should help him. “Ok, so what do we do first? Go to my father?”

The man shook his head. “No, not without proof. We need to find the men who were, and probably still are, planning on a hostile takeover. Otherwise, I’ll look like a loon and probably be thrown in prison, while your credibility will be destroyed, and I don’t want either of those things to happen. So, once we find the men responsible, we can work out a way to get your father to believe us.”

“How do we find the men? Do you know who they were?” I asked as we walked out the door. “And another thing: Do you have a name?”

“Vince. And yes. Have some names.”

That name sounded familiar. I felt like I should know that name. Have we met before? If we did, maybe he didn’t want me to remember. If he did, he’d have mentioned it before. Maybe I’d let it go this time, but I was going to figure out if and when we’ve met in the past “Ok, lets head back home and see if I can find a list of names from the army in my father’s archives.”

“Lead the way.”

****

We made it back into the palace a couple of hours later. I, unfortunately, had to sneak Vince into the palace, as he was still under the watchful eye of the guards. Even though there was no proof of treason, no one was going to let him just waltz back into the palace willy-nilly. As we walked up to the archive room, I began to think back, trying to remember this man standing next to me. I was afraid to ask. There had to be a reason that I didn’t remember, and it didn’t seem that he was about to divulge that information willingly.

Little snippets seem to be coming back to me. A cave. Laughing voices. The sounds of coins falling out of a bag. But that wasn’t much to go on. That could have been a dream for all I knew. Somehow, though, I knew those snippets rang true. But what did they have to do with Vince? I shook my head to clear it. We were just arriving at the archive room and I had to have my mind on that and not on some useless memories.

I pulled the key from around my neck and opened the door. I’d taken it from my mother’s nightstand, while she was on her daily walk through the arboretum. After making sure the coast was clear, I waved Vince into the room, locking the door behind me. I hadn’t been in this room in a long time, not since I was young and would play hide and seek with the maid and her children. After being caught in here by my parents, I was forbidden from ever entering again under the fear of messing up the already disorganized room.

For a room that was only used for records, there were certainly a lot of pictures around the walls. Mostly pictures of me and my parents around the room, but also some of another teenager with us, someone I didn’t quite recognize until the man in question stepped next to it. All of the memories came screaming back. The first kidnapping when I was just a little girl, the scuffle, Vince getting hurt, I remembered it all.

I walked over to Vince and stood next to him as he trifled through some papers. “Vince, before we start looking, can I see your arm? Your left arm.” He looked confused then seemed to understand. On his left arm was a very noticeable scar from what had to have been an arrow.

He glanced between me and the scar, before speaking. “Look, I know what you’re thinking and what must be strange for you, but can we talk about this after we find the names? I’ll answer questions, but we need to make sure your family is safe first.” He continued to trifle through papers, looking for the right papers. I grabbed papers off of another table, trying to find the list of foot soldiers and guards that my parents keep.

“Eureka!” I yelled, finding the list from the last ten years. Vince came over and read over the list of names quickly.

“Aha! Those three. Right there.” He pointed to the three names, one after the other, a couple of high ranking officials. “Yes! Those sorry traitors won’t know what hit them!”

**Other than the prompt, this story is mine and mine alone, my own imagination

#writeblr #creative writing #fiction writing #fantasy #tanya writes #I don't know how to tag this #this is my own fiction work

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amonoff · 7 years

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Ah, memories

My first contribution to Ninjago and first writing in awhile, so...it’s stale, I’ll admit. I’ll probably work on other things to practice.

Slightly different events with the movie!Garmadon family just before Koko left.

“And that’s when the super wimpy, super pathetic, skeleton general appeared atop the mountain! He said some mumbo jumbo about beating us…the pathetic worm, am I right, Luh-Lloyd?” Garmadon cooed, rubbing the hand puppet version of himself on Lloyd’s face. Lloyd squealed with joy, right arm raising up to try and grab it. Garmadon grinned making little baby noises as he booped his son’s nose with the puppet.

“Absolutely! Anyway, back to my story,” Garmadon raised the puppet of himself and the skeleton general high for him to see. “Now see here, Luh-Lloyd the first important thing about being evil is breaking the rules. Like y’know how heroes actually let their enemy finish their speech? Well, obviously bad guys don’t do that!”

He threw his puppet self over to the general, smacking it around and using fingers in the arm sleeves to punch the general. Lloyd giggled, cheering at his father. “I fought and kicked him halfway in! Even stole his sword to beat him with it, and then I punched him with my four arms! You should’ve been born then, Luh-Lloyd. It looked cool-”

Garmadon made to show himself strangle the general when he heard the soft creak of the door behind him. He turned and of course there was the most beautiful, bravest, most accomplished woman in all of Ninjago; his wife. Just looking at her as she took off her helmet made him feel weak. He got up from the floor, taking Lloyd into his arms and brought him to his mother. Lloyd immediately let out a small, excited cry for her. It made Misako smiled. She walked over with open arms to take her son while Garmadon kissed her.

“Welcome home, Koko. I trust everything went smoothly on your side with dealing with the rebels?”

“Of course, Garmy. They were just a few small, disorganized groups. No big threats.”

“Excellent. Now everything will be set!” Garmadon walked over to the room window, looking through the glass and out to the glowing city, sitting just beyond the coast of his volcano. His smile was the brightest it had been in awhile. He didn’t notice the sudden falter of his wife’s gaze at him, or how her arms shook as she carried their child, who had gone quiet.

She walked over beside the freakishly tall man. “Garmy, I’ve been meaning to ask, what’s all this for, exactly? The towns we’ve captured are hardly rich with money or resources. I don’t see them becoming very big in the future.”

“Hmm? Ah, well…” Garmadon thought for a tentative moment, actually hesitating for a moment before he felt Misako brush her hand over his face. He looked down to see her and Lloyd.

“C’mon, Garmy. You can’t have me running your army around without knowing why any longer.” Then she bobbed Lloyd up and down a little to get a cute cry from him.

Looking at the two...any doubt cleared. They were already so close anyway.

“Oh, alright. I wanted it to be surprise, but I don’t know what might happen. You should know.” He takes Lloyd from his wife using his bottom two arms, and the opens the windows for a full, unobstructed view on Ninjago with his upper arms. He brings Lloyd up to better see the brimming city. “Koko, I’m going to conquer Ninjago City!”

“W-What?” Misako asks, a lot quieter now. Garmadon looks at her with concern sees her wide eyes and hanging lips. Yes, of course she would be surprised and concerned. He immediately goes over to her and lays his hand on her shoulder to assure her. “I know it sounds crazy, Koko. But I’ve thought my plan through!”

“That’s what many before you said too, Garmy.” Misako sighed, lifting her hand as she softly held husband’s hand. “Though there’re only five elemental ninjas guarding the city, they’re all powerful. Masters of combat, and the elements of fire, water, earth, lightning, and ice. And your brother Wu is among them.”

At that, Garmadon frowned, mostly in annoyance at the mention of his annoying little brother. He let go of his wife and crossed his arms behind him as he turned back to the city, staring with a narrowed eyes now. “I know. That is why I’ve placed spies in the city. To watch the Ninjas’ activities and Wu. They recently told that my brother will set off on a trip soon in five days. When he is gone, that is when I plan to strike.”

“So you’ll fight the Ninjas in the assault?”

Garmadon shakes his head. “No. I plan on sending my army as a diversion. I will set off in secret alone on a small air vehicle to top of the Ninjago Tower and set my flag on top. Once it’s planted, I will be Ninjago’s official conqueror.”

Misako looked at him in shock. It was understandable since such a tactic wasn’t very glorious or epic one. Garmadon hated it, but it had the best chance of granting him victory. No one would expect it, especially the Ninjas. He was sure Misako understood this too when he saw her nod quietly “Garmy, why do you want to conquer Ninjago? Aren’t the other cities we’ve already conquered enough?”

“Ninjago isn’t for us, Koko.” Garmadon explained, then turning down to little Lloyd, who still had his eyes on what probably was strange bright light of different colors, very much unlike torches that lit up Garmadon’s castle. “I want to conquer it for Luh-Lloyd.”

“Lloyd?”

“Yes. Luh-Lloyd is weak, puny…bald. And can’t even walk. Just hiding my face makes him cry.” Garmadon sighed. He shook his head to get those thoughts out and back on his point. “But someday, eventually, he’ll learn how to walk and talk. Hopefully when he finally grows his hair. And when that time comes, I want to pass to him an empire.”

“And the towns and cities we’ve already conquered aren’t enough?”

“No, that’s not it, Koko. They’re okay, but like you said, none of them will be very big in the future. Ninjago, though, is vibrant, brimming with life, and filled with strong warriors, just like our son. That place has a far more prosperous future compared to that. It’s the only fitting place for our son to rule.”

“But...he’s still only just a baby, Garmy. Don’t you think this is too fast?”

“Nonsense! I had to start learning Spinjitsu since the day I was born! And besides, Luh-Lloyd is already making great strides to becoming a great ruler! Look!” He brought Lloyd up closer to his face and cleared his throat, as loud as he could manage to get his attention. Of course, Lloyd turned up, making small sound.

“WAHAHAHA!” he bellowed. It was a generic evil laugh, he had to admit, but then he heard his son giggle excitedly and then-

“Wahahaha!” he squeaked, mimicking his laugh albeit maybe laughing too quickly. Still, an evil laugh was an evil laugh!

“See, Koko! Maybe it’s not maniacal yet but in a few years, it will be dripping with pure evil! He will be the most vicious, dangerous, and feared evil ruler of Ninjago.” He explained gleefully, and he laughed a little at the thought. His son growing up to become just like him and his mother.

But as he looked to his wife for a smile or at least some sign that she was reassured of Lloyd’s capability, she only looked...lost. He lips still hung a little and her eyes remained only Lloyd. There was depth to it he hadn’t seen before. Usually there was a fire in his wife’s eyes. It burned bright when she was happy, and exploded when infuriated. In them now, he saw nothing.

“Koko?” He asked, and suddenly she jolted in surprise.

“S-Sorry. I guess I was lost in thought.” she apologized. She never apologized.

“Misako, are you feeling alright? You’ve been strangely these past few days as well.” Garmadon inquired, remembering how less energetic she had been of late, or how she took less glory at the face of felled foes amidst combat. He had always chalked it up to post-pregnancy, but now he worried it was something else. All the same, Misako smiled at him and placed her hand on his shoulders.

“I’m fine, Garmy. I guess…” she stared at Lloyd again, who looked at his mother confused, wondering why she looked so sad. She wrapped her arms around him and carried him off Garmadon’s hands. “I guess I’m just worried about Lloyd. If he can really do it, y’know?”

At that, Garmadon smiled widely. “Of course he can, Koko! He is our child, after all! He will grow up a strong, proud, accomplished warrior like you. And take my handsomeness and leadership!” He gave his wife another kiss to the cheek, earning from her a small laugh.

“I suppose you’re right.” she said to him, smiling a little now. “Anyway, it’s getting late. It’s Lloyd’s sleeping time.”

“Wait, already?!” Garmadon turned behind him and indeed, the time was now close to nine. “Aw man! Can’t he stay up a bit longer? I was telling him about our battle with the skeleton general!”

“No, Garmy. He needs his sleep.” Misako chuckled, leaving to get Lloyd’s formula. Garmadon groaned, but he conceded to his boy getting stronger.

“Well, that only gives me more time to prepare all the stuff for a grander tale. I’m gonna go to our room and prepare it all. Oh, and work! Yes, work!”

Garmadon hastily collected the puppets, with exception to two, of course. The puppets of himself and Koko. Those he placed in Lloyd’s crib.

“I’ll see you later, Koko.” He bidded.  “Bye, Garmy.” she said. Just before he could leave, he heard her continue. “And I love you.”

It sounded different. Heavier, if he could put it. He turned to his wife to see her beginning to bottle feed Lloyd, still smiling. He pushed the thought away. “I love you too, Koko.”

Garmadon stared at the photos spread on the wall, all hung in an orderly fashion. Despite all the dust, they were in a clean state almost untouched from the centuries that passed. He supposed they must’ve been handled with care before...the owners passed.

Lloyd stood by his side, no longer an infant but now a grown young man of sixteen years. He stayed quiet as he listened to his father’s story. Garmadon imagined how hard it must be to believe every word. That there was a time where the three lived together, and were blissfully happy.

“That was the last time I saw your mother.” Garmadon finally continued after his brief pause, sighing a little as he focused on the photo with him, Misako, and baby Lloyd. “It wasn’t until midnight that I grew worried. She never stayed up late. I went to your room to see if she was still there, but there was only a note in your crib. She left and took you with her to Ninjago. She wanted you to have a normal life.”

Garmadon paused again, getting lost once more in his memories. The day he met Misako, every battle together, the day Lloyd was born, the day they named him. “...I could’ve changed.” he whispered quietly, as if it was to himself.

“What…?” Lloyd asked.

“I could’ve changed, Luh-Lloyd. Become a better man for Koko. But I didn’t, and lost you both.”

Silence filled the room. Garmadon’s story was finished and now...it was actually getting kind of awkward. He looked around for the other ninjas to say something but he realised that it was only him and Lloyd in the room.

“Uh, Dad?” Lloyd asked, turning to his dad. “Did...mom take anything with her when she left? I mean, aside from me. Like, a toy or something?”

“Hm, I don’t really know.” Garmadon admitted, stroking his helmet as he tried to recall. “I became so focused with conquering Ninjago after that that I never went back to your room for months. By then, it was cleaned up.”

  “Oh. Um, coz... I think-”

“I THINK I FOUND IT!!” Jay suddenly screamed from wherever he was, causing the to jump a little in surprise.

“W-Where, Jay?!” Lloyd yelled.

“In the hall, over here!” Jay yelled back, a little excited. “C’mon!”

“All right, we’re coming!” Kai said, suddenly coming out of the kitchen to follow where he thought he heard Jay. Nya, Cole, and Zane began to run in to go to wherever Jay was too. Seeing this, Lloyd and his father followed, deciding to put the conversation off till later.

It was a memory from a long time back, so most of what he could recall was hazy. He hadn’t remembered what happened that day, but he remembered being upset and crying about it in his room. He had his head stuffed under a pillow so no one would see when he heard someone call him.

“Luh-Lloyd~? Hey, are you okay, Luh-Lloyd~?” It was a low but whimsical voice. Lloyd couldn’t help but poke his head out to see who it was.

It was his mom, with the black samurai puppet on her hand.

“Hey there, Luh-Lloyd! Tell me what’s wrong!” the samurai asked, still with the goofy voice. Lloyd wiped away the tears, not wanting his mom to see them.

“N-Nothing’s wrong!”

“Aw, are you sure?” the samurai tilted sideways. “Well, then I suppose you don’t want ice cream?”

Lloyd perked up. “No, I want ice cream!!”

His mom laughed, then bringing up a full-bowl, chocolate-flavored with fruits, for him. Lloyd grabbed it and quickly got a spoonful. Just like that, he was already smiling.

“See? Feeling better already?”

“Yeah!” Lloyd answered. His mother laughed, and he took another bite when she carried him off the bed. She brushed his hair aside to give him a kiss on his forehead. She was smiling at him.

“I love you, Honey.”

Lloyd beamed back at her. “Love you too, Mom!”

And suddenly, she brought the black samurai up again, who piped, “Aw, not me~?” He drooped to look sad. Lloyd couldn’t help laughing.

“You too.” Lloyd patted to puppet’s head.

After that, his mother brought him to the living room where they watched some shows together before he did his homework. Then he had dinner, did more homework, and watched TV again.

If Lloyd had to be honest, that day was basically his normal everyday life, even up till now. Heck, the only difference was that he actually had friends this time, and the puppet...he outgrew it years ago.

He had it for as long as he knew his mom, so never thought about where it might’ve come from.

If he was right, it should still be in his closet, tucked away with the other toys he had forgotten. Maybe...he should show it to dad once they got back?

...yeah. Why not?

#ninjago #ninjago movie #tlnm #the lego ninjago movie #lego ninjago movie #lego ninjago #lloyd garmadon #misako garmadon #lord garmadon

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