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[deanbrainrotwritings]

—  HOLD ME LIKE A GRUDGE

SUMMARY : dean is a demon. it’s Christmas Eve and it’s exhausting to keep fighting him, but he’s accidentally knocked out by the reader. so, she took him back to her parents’ place to clean him up... but her whole family is already home.

PAIRING : demon!dean winchester x fem!reader

CHARACTERS : cenric (OMC), guren (OMC), koro (OMC), kandora (OFC), meliora (OFC)

WARNINGS/TAGS : explicit(18+), angst, implied cheating, fluff, fun family time, toxic relationship, rough sex, intoxicated sex, p in v, unprotected sex

WORD COUNT : 4.8k

A/N : fall out boy song title. @spnkinkevents : #12daysofspnkinkmas2023 — hot tub sex and drunk sex. let's pretend demon!Dean lasted for a long while. wtf is that name? it’s from the video game Destiny, probably (they have badass names, especially the villains/sometimes they’re ridiculous, lmao). XXxx

Y/n and Sam split up in their search for Dean. 

Both were in search of him… and Crowley. But mostly Dean. 

Dean didn’t behave much like any other demon. She didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. He settled for over drinking, dancing, singing bad karaoke, sleeping with random women—which stung, killing people in self-defence. The list goes on, but he’s more bored than evil.

She knew Dean, even now, as a demon. This was Dean when he was bored. Not Dean being evil. That just wasn’t Dean. 

She didn’t know it, but he was keeping tabs on her, too. He’d fool Crowley by promising to seal deals, pretending he was going off with a girl or two, getting away for some ‘Dean time’ doing random shit… 

He was just going out to see her. There’s something that he can’t shake off about her. It might be the possessiveness, the ownership he feels towards her… it’s something he doesn’t understand, a tug deep within himself that yearns to be whole. A part of him that’s sure that missing piece is her. 

Crowley sent demons after her. Of course he did, to slow her down, to throw her off. Dean lied to Crowley, the way he always did to get what he wanted. Instead of fleeing because ‘you’re getting too attached, let’s move on’, Dean stayed behind to make sure she made it out safely. 

It irked him to feel that guardianship, that… need or whatever the hell it was that compelled him to keep her safe. 

But, one thing led to another, she was outnumbered by about fifteen demons. She’d gotten at least five of them by the time Dean decided to show himself. He didn’t completely protect her from harm, but he saved her from possibly deadly blows. 

She was stunned to see him there and she looked absolutely ravishing. Covered in blood. Her soft hair falling free from the tie holding her hair in place and out of the way. The focused furrow of her brows. The irritated scowl on her pretty face. 

Dean got distracted. It was his first mistake, ever since he became a demon. He felt time slow down with only three demons left, the two of them moving in sync like nothing ever happened, like nothing stood between them. 

“Six!” She shouted, expecting him to get down, but he didn’t. She punched him square in the face and his body fell loudly with a thud, but she didn’t let herself get distracted. 

She killed the last three demons in a breeze because even they were astounded that the knight of hell, Dean Winchester, was knocked unconscious by a smaller hunter. By a human.

She didn’t bother cleaning up. Fifteen bodies? If Crowley didn’t want to be tracked, he’d clean it up on his own. Instead, she carefully pulled Dean out of the warehouse she was staying in as she stalked her boyfriend and Crowley.

She found his car nearby, poor Baby was a complete mess. She hid her stolen car behind the warehouse next to a bunch of tumbleweed, took everything that was hers, wiped it clean of prints and other evidence, and left in the Impala. 

With Dean in the backseat, she wondered what she would do now. She didn’t expect for this to happen. The plan was originally to see what Dean and Crowley were up to, call Sam, then go back home as Sam took care of the rest.

It was too late for that. Her family was home waiting to celebrate the holidays. All of them cleared the schedules to get together, they’d planned it a whole year before, even she did and she was supposed to bring Dean. 

Guess that’s still the case, except he’s a demon now… and she’s kidnapping him. 

It was a long ride back home. It was inevitable that Dean would wake up completely pissed. 

He glared at her from the backseat, cuffed with his arms behind him. The road was empty so there was nothing to put them in danger as he wasn’t secured with a seatbelt. Most importantly, it wouldn’t matter that she swerved so hard that he fell onto his side with a grunt before letting out a deep growl. 

“Bitch!” 

“Oh, stop it, it’s the least you deserve after everything you’ve done,” she muttered, tightening her grip on the steering wheel. Her heart hammered rapidly with anger and hatred, but she focused on driving herself home safely.  

“I just helped you out,” he reminded her darkly, leaning against the car door to sit back up. 

“Yeah, and I’m thanking you by saving your life,” she retorted.

“I’m fine.” She scoffed at him, but stared at him from the rearview mirror for a few seconds before he looked back at her. She realigned the car when it veered off slightly. 

“You’re a demon.” 

“I’m still me, sweetheart, just because you don-” 

To prevent further conversation, she pulled out the first cassette tape she touched and shoved it into the car deck. The ride to her family’s home was tense and irritating because Dean decided to sing along tunelessly. 

It was better than having to hear his insults or cruel comments. He was funny sometimes, too, when they made pit stops… even if she currently hated him. 

“Ah, here we are, awesome,” Dean murmured sarcastically as she killed the purring engine of the Impala. 

“Shut up, I’m tying you up in the basement,” she glared at him. He scoffed as she got out of the driver’s seat, walking around the front of the car to unlock the door for him.

“Hey! We’ve been waiting for you!” She heard from the doorway. It was her little sister who was now walking towards them. 

“I’m going to shout,” Dean told her, gazing up at her with a feigned innocent expression. Green, sparkling eyes wide and a pout that almost reminded her of when he was human. 

“Shut up,” she whispered harshly before lifting her head with a sweet smile towards her sister. “Hey, Dean’s got.. an embarrassing situation going on, think you can distract everyone for the meantime?” Her sister stopped where she was, her eyes flicking to Dean for a heartbeat or two and then to her older sister. 

“Sure,” Kandora shrugged, quickly turning around and jogging up to the door. 

“Cute,” Dean grunted. Y/n gripped the back of his red flannel and harshly yanked him out of the car, holding back a snicker when Dean bumped his head on the top of the inside of the car. “You know, this is the body of the man you used to make love to,” he reminded her with a sneer, leaning his back against his car as she shut the door. 

She smiled at him sarcastically, “yeah, and then you used this body to fuck whores, so I don’t really care.” She grabbed the middle chain between the cuffs and tugged him the whole way to the entrance where they removed their shoes.

When she was fully inside the house she could hear her sister telling a story loudly while laughing hard along with her family. 

She quickly made her way down to the basement, turning the light on before pushing Dean. He stumbled over the stairs and glared back at his lover when he regained his balance. 

“Smart, no one could hear me here,” he told her with a smirk. She frowned at his words, freezing in the middle of uncuffing him after leaving him over an ugly rug where a devil’s trap was painted underneath. 

She had a few quick flashbacks of her and Dean having sex in the soundproof basement when they could get away from all the family time. No one could hear them—and hopefully no one knew what was going on. Those were the perks of a retired hunter family. 

She undid the cuffs and he gently massaged his wrists even if they healed up quickly. She watched curiously and then looked away to hand him a few clean up supplies that weren’t necessarily dangerous to her or her family.

She turned to look at him and opened her mouth.

“Let me guess: shut up and stay put?” He smiled down at her in an attempt to be charming, but she rolled her eyes, pretending it didn’t work.

“Oh, you’re so smart,” she praised bitingly, patting his cheek in a demeaning manner. He scowled and moved away from her to clean the demon blood off himself.

She made her way back upstairs to join her family who were now somewhat silent. Music played softly in the background. Thankfully, it wasn’t irritating Christmas music, but songs she recognised were her oldest brother’s favourite songs.

The scent of her favourite food wafted up her nose, arising hunger into her stomach that growled like a great beast. The lights weren’t too bright either, which allowed her to relax when she settled in the kitchen with her family as they waited for the food to get ready.

Her mother, father, two older brothers, and little sister sat around the table doing random things waiting for the food to finish cooking.

“Honey, you made it,” her mom, Meliora, smiled happily, halting when she saw the bloody state of her daughter, but her happy expression didn’t falter. 

“Hey, mom, guys,” she smiled at her family bashfully, not looking them in the eyes. “I’m gonna clean up, just wanted to say hi before going upstairs,” she informed them.

“Good, you stink,” her brother Koro snorted playfully. 

“Yeah, you didn’t have to say come hi, we could already smell you were here,” her oldest brother Cenric remarked just as mischievously. 

They all broke into laughter and Y/n shook her head, giving her dad, Guren, a kiss on top of his greying head before making her way out of the kitchen to clean up. 

Once she was done cleaning up—wearing cosy clothes from her past that her mom kept—she made her way downstairs again. Much to her dismay, she saw Dean wearing only a black t-shirt having the time of his life telling the embarrassing story about the time she got so flustered, she spit her milkshake out into the face of a woman who flirted with her when they were undercover for a Lamia case.

She wondered how he got out of the devil’s trap. She figured that maybe her parents removed it, but that wouldn’t be safe. 

He smiled brightly when he looked up and saw her, acting like nothing was wrong in the world. It looked domestic, way too painfully domestic. The casualness of him leaning against the couch next to Kandora who was holding a mug of warm Champurado in her favourite yellow mug looked too natural. He wore only some socks and really looked like a boyfriend right now. 

“Hey, babe,” Dean grinned and she forced a smile, making her way to him. 

“Hey.” 

As he wrapped his arm around her he murmured into her slightly wet hair, “you’re so lucky.” She hummed a laugh, feigning amusement and wrapped her arm around his waist to pinch his back harshly.

He tightened his grip around her and released a strained laugh before adding to the conversation, talking to her family and answering their questions the same way he would have if he weren’t a demon. 

“I know we said no partners, but Dean and I were working a last minute case,” she began explaining to her mom.

“It’s okay,” Meliora smiled, “Dean explained already.” Her mother kissed her forehead and got up to check the food. “Besides, he’ll make sure there are no leftovers that will go bad.” 

“Right,” she murmured, laughing softly as her mother disappeared into the kitchen with Guren getting up to help her out as well.

It was almost normal, except he’d sneak a couple of drinks—mostly alcoholic eggnog—until she could smell it in his breath, but he seemed completely unaffected by the alcohol. It was something her family didn’t catch on to throughout the evening. Although, the only one who knew about Dean’s drinking problem was Kandora—they told each other everything.

Dean was a bit more handsy as he got less sober, and he held his tongue most times to keep the conversation appropriate and respectful, save for a couple of swear words he’d exchange with Koro as they told each other stories. 

When they all sat at the dinner table to finally eat, Dean kept his hand on her thigh. Occasionally, he’d pet her, sneaking his fingers teasingly between her thighs, brushing over the thin material of her thick leggings. 

In response, she’d pretend to be cute and couple-y by lifting food up into his mouth and whispering warnings into his ear. She knew it only egged him on, he’d stare at her with a little smirk and even dared to kiss her with his mouth full of food, the corner of his lips smudged with tamale sauce. 

He was even playful. It would have warmed her heart, except it was very irritating and hurtful to know it wasn’t even real. When Kandora dared him to eat her mom’s spiciest salsa with his tamales, he accepted the challenge, and permitted her to serve him what she wanted him to finish. 

Y/n didn’t know if he was pretending or not, half the time. 

Still, Dean kept up appearances by overeating, taking at least two servings of everything, even the cherry pie her little sister made especially for him once he finished eating tamales with Meliora’s spiciest salsa. 

Even she resorted to drinking eggnog with alcohol to make the night easier, to loosen up a bit as Dean got clingier. She played along with Dean and finally, she was able to get away as midnight came and her family cleaned up to go to sleep. 

It sucked to watch Dean help her mother wash dishes, the way he would have if he were human. As if he were truly her Dean. She was just glad he didn’t plan on hurting them, at least so far he hasn’t tried. 

He just fit in perfectly with every single one of them, the way he always did. Easily moulding himself into whatever environment he was placed in. Everyone adored him, he was always so real, so loveable, so easy to talk to. He had a light to him that no one could recreate, one everyone was drawn to like moths to a flame.

“You drank too much,” she commented as she walked upstairs to her room with Dean behind her. 

“Was the only way I could deal with you and not be an asshole with your whole family there,” he grunted, stepping in front of her to open the door, falling straight into her pink bed rather than holding the door open for her or shutting it behind them. 

“Real thoughtful,” she muttered, shutting and locking the door of her childhood bedroom. “Get off my bed,” she ordered, making her way next to him. He only smiled, eyes closed, trying to be cute as he snuggled her pillow, verdant eyes fluttering open as he gazed up at her through long, beautiful lashes.

“Just join me instead and we can show this bed the action it’s been missing since you moved out,” Dean purred, turning over onto his back. He reached out for her wrist and tugged her forward, catching her with his arms around her waist. “You’re criticising me for drinking, but I can smell it on you, too,” he narrowed his eyes up at her.

“Shut up,” she muttered, squirming and wiggling until he let her roll over next to him. “I can’t stand you.” She grabbed the pillow beneath his head and yanked it out with a snicker, placing it between her legs as she turned over on her side. 

“I’m still me,” he retorted, turning on his side to face her back. 

“So ya keep sayin’,” she mumbled in irritation, trying to make her head stop spinning when she closed her eyes. 

He sighed and scooted up on the bed, staring up boredly at the pink ceiling, the bright light at the centre. He knew she wasn’t asleep, she kept moving, trying to make her drunkenness stop her from sleeping peacefully. 

He knew she wasn’t going to stop being angry at him, which was a complete one-eighty from the last time he saw her. She’d begged for him to come back to her, professed her undying, unchanging love for him… now, she seemed almost disgusted by him. It made him wonder what changed.

Irritation boiled in him, even jealousy made heat rise up his chest to his ears and neck. What if there was someone else?

“I’ve always wanted to get in a hot tub,” he broke the silence, staring at the back of her head as she stilled. She grunted in response after a few moments of silence and lifted the pillow between her legs up to her mouth, tight against her stomach as the alcohol decided to turn against her. “Wanna… get in?” He asked, grasping her hip and squeezing.

“We’ll… drown..” she lied, tightening her grip on the pillow when his touch sent sparks of pleasure down to her clit.

“Nah,” he murmured, sliding his hand beneath her shirt against her warm stomach to turn her onto her back, tight against his body. “Come with me,” he murmured, sliding his hand up higher.

“Fine,” she inhaled sharply, getting up faster than she should have to avoid his touch. Dizziness from the alcohol made her stumble, but she caught herself on the wall, facing the Christian Bale poster on her wall. 

“Careful,” he told her, getting up from the bed to make sure she doesn’t hurt herself. 

“Let’s just go cross it off your weird bucket-list.” She made her way to the door, forgetting to unlock it as she tugged it hard. 

“You’re drunker than me,” he chuckled, unlocking the door, wrapping his large warm hand over hers to turn the doorknob and open the door. She pursed her tips and unfocused her gaze on the door until he removed his hand from hers.

They quietly made their way down the stairs and she held the wall to balance herself while Dean watched her closely. Making their way blindly through the house to the backyard, Dean laughed softly to himself, which made her shush him.

“Sorry,” he whispered, completely unapologetically, “it’s just that you’re such a good girl,” he began explaining, an undertone of sexualness in his words, “I can’t believe you agreed to this.” He sighed gleefully, opening the glass door to the outside where the hot tub was.

“I… not always,” she argued, noting a few times in which she proposed scandalous ideas to him. He started to unbuckle his belt, his shirt riding up his tummy.

“No, not always,” he agreed quietly, staring straight into her eyes as she stared hungrily at the bit of exposed skin. “But you never want your family to know we have sex,” he told her, shoving his jeans down his legs, revealing the lack of boxers.

Her eyes widened and she looked away, walking past him to fill and turn the tub on. He smirked, pleased with her reaction.

“You were really loud in the basement, though,” he recalled, pulling the shirt over his head and toeing his socks off. “So pornographic,” he added dreamily. Her face heated up and she turned to glare at him. “Hey, sorry, beautiful… Come, take your clothes off.” He laughed, then bit his lip seductively, trying to reel her in with a tilt of his head. 

She scoffed at him, but began removing her clothes. He shrugged and dipped his fingers into the tub, testing the waters before stepping inside. She stripped down to her bra and underwear, which he tilted his head at disappointedly with a frown. He held his hand out for her to take and carefully helped her inside.

She scooted far away from him and slid inside so only her chin rested above the water to combat the biting December wind. He rolled his eyes at her, but let her do as she wanted, staring up at the sky which was frosted with stars, the whole gated community dark and asleep. 

“How’d you get out?” She broke the awkward silence, looking around the white glazed bricks separating her parent’s home and the neighbours’ homes. The lights inside were shut off, except for the Christmas lights decorating the inside and the outside of their houses. No one was awake to peep.

“Devil's trap not gonna work on something like me,” he told her smugly, playing with the water. She hummed in irritation, looking at him. “Come closer to me,” he requested, making his way halfway to her.

Begrudgingly, she made her way to him, staring curiously at his still handsome face. 

“What?” She murmured, tilting her head at him. Dean gently brushed his knuckles down her cold cheek and she moved away slightly, brows furrowing with perplexity. 

“You know, to really cross it off my bucket list, we need to have sex,” he reminded her. She considered his words and grimaced, moving away from him. It stung, demon or not, to see the woman who once loved him unconditionally become disgusted by the thought of sex with him. 

“No,” she whispered, “we’re drunk.” 

“It’s not like we haven’t done it drunk before,” he pressed, splaying his hand over her back and cupping her jaw. She inhaled and became tense, pushing him away.

“You getting separation anxiety?” She asked scathingly, hoping to change the subject. He released her reluctantly and relaxed on his side of the tub.

“From who? Sam?” Dean asked boredly, playing with the water again, his mood sour.

“Crowley.” He glared at her, this time, he pounced on her, holding the back of her head to press his mouth to hers roughly. His tongue forcibly parted her lips, tasting the sweet eggnog and bitter alcohol in her mouth. As bile rose up to her throat, she whimpered and pushed him off. “You ass!” She splashed water into his face and he growled at her, eyes flickering black.

“Why are you being difficult?” He shouted at her, gripping her arms tightly.

“I’m not some meaningless lay,” she spat, reaching up between his arms, burying her fingers into his hair to pull roughly at his longer, honey strands, until he loosened his grip on her arms and hissed. 

“I never said you were,” he seethed, wrapping his hand around her throat. She tugged his hair harder and so he immediately let her go, running his fingers down his face tiredly. “Is that what this is about? The women?” He inquired casually, like they meant nothing.

“What?” She asked, crossing her arms over her chest, shuddering at the cold breeze despite the flush of alcohol and the hot water.

“You heard me,” he whispered threateningly. 

“Yes! Okay?” She admitted, then sighed, tears welling up her eyes. She blinked them away and clenched her jaw to keep her breath steady. She turned away, ready to climb out of the tub when Dean grabbed her elbow, moving them both into each other.

He didn’t say anything, but for the first time since he was a demon, his green eyes were cast downward in shame and regret. 

“You told me that if you couldn’t have me, no one could,” she reminded him quietly. 

“I meant it,” Dean reaffirmed, pulling her closer.

“That just applied to me, then?” He remained quiet, averting his gaze from hers. “What makes you think I’m letting you go now that I have you back?” His eyes snapped back to hers and they darkened. 

He leaned down to kiss her again, but this time, she took his face in both of her hands, angling his face to control the kiss. Dean wrapped his arms around her, keeping her tight against his body.

Her soft tongue smoothed over his, teeth scraping, and lips bruising. Possessive and hot, she slid one hand away from his face between his legs where his cock was already erect. She curled her hand around him, pulling a deep groan from him.

He slid his hands up her back, finding the clasp of her drenched cotton bra, darkened red from the water. He quickly rid of it as she pressed and kissed him, her hand tugging his cock slowly.

His blunt nails scraped the silky skin of her shoulders, pulling down the straps until she released him for total removal of it from her body. He walked forward with her until her back was pressed against the heated wall of the tub and pulled away from her mouth to catch his breath.

He panted against her mouth, kissed her deeply once more before trailing open-mouth kisses down her neck and shoulders. His tongue picked up warm droplets that rolled from her velvety skin, his teeth grazed her collarbones and the tendons of her neck, suctioning her pulse and the sensitive parts of her.

“Remember that cat your sister had?” He murmured against her skin, moving her up slightly to attach his lips to her nipple and remove her underwear. 

“Um, yeah, Tickle-toe?” She mumbled absent-mindedly, arching her back. 

“Yup,” he chuckled, removing her underwear completely, throwing it out of the tub. “Always tried getting into the room when we were having sex? And then when we finally did let him in, he’d just stand there watching, or he’d lick you, or scratch me, like it was trying to be a part,” he retold, grasping both of her thighs. “Yeah, that’s Crowley.” 

She laughed softly, wrapping her arm around his shoulder, her nails digging painfully into his skin to the point of breakage. Dean moaned softly, pushing her fully against the wall of the tub, spreading her thighs wide open so they were pressed against the wall. 

He nuzzled his face into hers, brushing his lips softly against hers as his cock nudged teasing through her folds and past her clit. With her free hand, she wrapped a hand around his cock and guided him to her entrance. 

Dean was gentle at first, slowly pushing in while his teeth sunk into her bottom lip. The pull out and the push in was slow as he felt the drag of the water, the way it slowed him before he began to fuck her earnestly. He released her lip to smash his mouth against hers, matching the painful thrust of his hips against hers.

She clung to his waist, moaning wantonly into his mouth as his cock stretched her walls, the length of it brushing wonderfully against the most sensitive parts of her, driving her crazier and crazier, driving her deeper into pleasure.  

“Think I’m gonna fuck someone this good, this raw, with this much passion?” He panted against her mouth as she pulled him closer. She gasped loudly, squeezing his cock so tightly he growled deeply against her. “D’you think I’ll ever feel this love for anyone, for someone who isn’t you?” Her toes curled and she dropped her forehead to his shoulder, moaning his name softly, pulling his body closer to hers.

“Please,” she whispered, chuckling breathlessly as he thrusted roughly and shallowly into her. He tightened his grip on her thighs, bruising her thighs, cutting her soft flesh with his fingernails, moaning with her as his body thrummed with life he hadn’t felt since he became a demon.

She squirmed as she approached her orgasm, her warm walls pulsing around his cock. Her mouth found his once more, their lips moved together messily, violently like their love, until they both fell apart. 

He sucked her bottom lip and pulled away breathlessly with a smirk. 

“Come with me,” he whispered, unhanding her thighs so she could wrap her legs around him instead. He held her closely, too, folding his arms around her waist.

“Ask me again in the morning,” she murmured, kissing his prickly jaw. “When I’m not drunk. When the afterglow’s gone.” She pressed her lips to the corner of his mouth and he nodded in agreement, staying in the tub for a few moments before they untangled each other's limbs.

“Will your answer be different?” He quizzed, holding her chin between his two fingers. She tongue poked out to lick her bottom lip, followed by a thoughtful bit of her lip.

 “No.” 

Dean dipped down to peck her lips, lingering for a few thuds of his heartbeat before pulling away and kissing the top of her head. 

“I’ll stay,” he promised, moving both of them out of the tub into the freezing cold. Dripping in water, they put their clothes back on with much difficulty, laughing quietly. Somewhat drunk still, they cleared out the tub and tried to get dry with Dean’s t-shirt before heading inside to shower and sleep in her childhood bed where they continued to do unspeakable things in the darkness as quietly as they could to not be discovered.

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@rominaszh @livingdeadmak @lanassmarty @murdockscumsock @zepskies @candy-coated-misery0731 @stxrgazer03 @epsilonsagittarii @lyarr24 @spnfamily-j2 @globetrotter28 @deansbbyx @lickmybawls @jackles010378 @winchstrdean @deanwinchestersgirl87 @the-achievementhunter @deanfreakingwinchester @k-slla @madzzz0797 @laylaackles @fanfic-n-tabulous @kristophalis

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do not steal, plagiarise, translate, or republish my work on another platform

[thisistheworldofgays]

BUT for the people who do not know:

yes. this is true.

If you tag, lets say for example, "transid dni" it will show up in the tag for "transid" as well. and i mean if for some reason someone was in the tag for "dni" it would be there too- the tag is not counted as 1 entity, the space separates the two words into functionally 2 tags.

Similarly, if you tag something like, "God i hate minecraft"

the tags will be seperated as "god" "I" "hate" "minecraft"

so anyone in the tag for "minecraft" will be suggested the post, because the tag contains minecraft.

oh, similarly, if youre new around here: word from someone who used to make pretty gifs a lot.

every time you use a gif in a post in the way that makes it have a little credit bar you can click back to? it tells the op who posted the gif youre using. be mindful of this. it straight up shows up in the notification bar and links us to the post you made with our gif.

for example

if you use the gif tab, it takes from tumblr gifs and searches via tags. lets look up a tag basically only i use!

as you can see, the gif credits me

if you posted this, i would get a notification that you used my gif.

all of this is to say- if you are the DNI having type.... BE MINDFUL OF THIS. If you are the type who is harassed by dni having types... BE MINDFUL OF THIS.

it can also just be... fucking annoying sometimes. the amount of times people would use my gifs on their nsfw or porn blogs when i was like 16 doing uploads was .... often. which idc about but like, are you comfortable pinging a 15 year old stimboard maker on your cnc cumflation blog? right.

just download the gif <3

dont tag crazy shit and commentary on your original posts <3

tag spam can and will get you ban <3

stop <3

i usually dont tend to address dni users directlybut i feel i need to because i just tried to go through a tag and had to block a ton of people: if you dont want someone to interact, please for the love of god do NOT tag your post as "[blank] dni", it will show up in the "[blank]" tab too, it works essentially the same as crosstagging, please for the love of god stop doing it

[purpleyellow]

The audacity

Seventeen 14th member

Hayun’s masterlist

“Seventeen won’t take bs when it comes to Hayun”

Requested by: two (2) anons    

cw: offensive language

a/n: Feel free to share your thoughts with me. Requests are open! 💙

(to my brazilians around, this gif is svt’s version of ninguem solta a mão de ninguem)

The arrival of dancers made the practice room even more crowded and noisy than usual. It was one of the few times Seventeen worked with an outside dance team, and they happened to have a lot of new faces around, who needed time to figure out the staging and how things were working so far.

After they ran through the choreography a couple of times, the choreographer called in a break, allowing the huge group to instantly clear the middle space and separate themselves into small circles of conversations.

Seungcheol, Jeonghan, and Joshua instantly met each other and began chatting about dinner plans and whatnot. Slowly approaching Jun and Wonwoo, the oldest filled them in on what they're deciding until he starts searching for someone.

“So, we could order it on the next break and have someone grab it for us. Anyway, did anyone see Hayun?”

“Making friends, as usual,” Wonwoo comments, pointing at the other corner of the room where the girl was surrounded by four dancers.

“Hayun-ah” The leader waves her over and waits as she jogs to his side “We're talking about dinner, what do you think about-”

“Oh, those guys were talking about this new restaurant that opened downtown, I was thinking of tagging along with them” She points back at the group and watches as her members nod “But I can cancel, of course”

“No, go ahead. It's just a meal” Joshua goes to wave her off when Seungkwan approaches them with crossed arms.

“Yeah. Just a meal. Until she's suddenly ditching us during the holidays and moving out with her new friends” The boy pouts, turning his face away from the group. Hayun reaches up to ruffle his hair before landing a soft slap.

“Says the dude who is friends with half of the entertainment industry” Ignoring his eye roll, she turns back to the rest of their little huddle “Well, if nobody else will feel betrayed”

“I was kidding” Seungkwan whines and Scoups pushes her away from them “Stop being dramatic and go do your mingling”

Going back to the group of dancers, Hayun resumes chatting with them for a couple of minutes before the break is over.

After more hours of running over every tiny detail for the stage, the rehearsal finally ends and the scattering of people begins. Hayun takes a couple of minutes talking about minor adjustments with the members and just checking up on them before searching for the four friends she had made that evening.

“Hey, how do you guys plan on heading there?” She asks, taking a sip from her water bottle and missing the glances between the two boys and two girls.

“Actually, we might have to do it another day,” The girl closest to her says and flips a hair strand off of Hayun's shoulder. “We got pretty tired from this last session”

“And work tomorrow it's going to start pretty early, you know. It's best to let this go for today,” The boy nods to her before pulling out his phone from his pocket and slightly turning away from the idol.

“Yeah, I get it. That's okay, we'll reschedule it then” Hayun smiles and gives them a thumbs up “I'll head to the dorms, then. Have a good rest, and tomorrow we'll talk more”.

Sending her some quick waves and small smiles, the four dancers waited for Hayun to turn around before sharing an annoyed look and sighing.

The practice room slowly grows empty, only leaving Wonwoo and Vernon who lost an incredible game of rock, paper, scissors, and had to stay behind to clean up everything. Finally turning off the lights, the two boys head out into the hallway and spot a group of four people standing by the entrance.

“Aren't those the people Hayun was talking to earlier,” Vernon asks quietly before a voice from the group reaches them.

“Why is this damn cab taking so long? We should have let that airhead tag along”.

“Agreed. She would have talked our ears off, but at least we would have made it to the club already”.

Sharing a look, the two idols stop walking and listen closely to understand if the dancers are talking about what the boys think they're talking about.

“That was so stupid. Why would you invite her in the first place? She's so annoying”.

“I mean, having an idol considering you a friend would be fun, right? Especially with the Christmas season coming up. Can you imagine the gifts she would buy us?”

“Yeah, dude. We wouldn't even need to worry about paying for stuff anymore. Just have Hayun tag along anywhere and, boom, no more tabs to pay.”

“But also, no more functioning eardrums”

“No, you have a point. She seems like she'd give us her credit card password on the third time we hung out. Not to mention, looking at her position in contrast with ours. You don't even have to befriend her, but be on her good side, and she'll make sure to give us more gigs within Pledis”.

Standing frozen, Wonwoo and Vernon listened to everything they were saying and shared looks of disbelief. Having enough of it, the oldest cleared his throat and slung his bag, making it hit his own back with enough force to make a thumping sound.

“Let's go, Vernon,” He ignored the four people standing before them with wide eyes and resumed walking. Once shoulder to shoulder with one of the dancers, Wonwoo stopped again and said while looking ahead, “Next time, be careful of whom you're talking about”.

Vernon, on the other hand, made eye contact with each dancer before raising one eyebrow and following the oldest. After closing the car door, he groaned annoyed, “Can you believe they had… ”

“… the fucking audacity” Jeonghan places his cup on the table, face showcasing utter disgust after Wonwoo told him what they had listened before leaving the Pledis building.

“Show me who those people are again tomorrow. I'll make sure they never step inside our practice room, ever again,” Hoshi points out.

“Is there a way of not having them tomorrow? I'm afraid Scoups Hyung might commit murder” Dokyeom brought attention to the leader standing on the corner of the kitchen.

Looking like he was plotting an illegal act, Seungcheol scoffs and pushed himself away from the cabinets. “The bare minimum you would expect from someone is that they can be professional. I swear, those people are getting an earful for talking about Hayun within a billion-meter ratio from where I work”.

“It's best to let it rest until tomorrow's performance is done. After we'll probably never see them again, so there's not much point causing any visible disturbance.” Laying a hand on the leader's arm, Woozi tried to make some sort of sense, but all it did was cause Scoups to roll his eyes.

“We can't just act like nothing happened”

“We also can't change anything about the choreography until then” Hoshi butts in and takes a breath trying not to jump in the 'let's hunt them down' train.

“They already know Wonwoo and Vernon heard them trash-talking her, so I'm not letting them have it easy tomorrow.” Jeonghan rolls his eyes and pointed to both Woozi and Hoshi, “I'm speaking my mind the first moment I see those sons of bitches, you're free to wait until the show's over”.

“About that, I don't think we should tell Hayun what happened” Joshua, who had been quiet the entire time, speaks, drawing attention to him. “Not until, as you said, the show is over, and we won't see them again. You know that she's probably going to get disappointed about it”.

“And you expect her to not go running to meet her new 'friends' once we arrive at the venue?” Wonwoo raises an eyebrow, but Mingyu shakes his head and backs the older up.

“We just have to keep her entertained around us. Fill in Dino, Seungkwan, and Myungho later, and have them help with making sure the group doesn't run into her”.

Raising his hand, Vernon casually mumbles “Maybe don't tell Seungkwan, he won't be able to hide his feelings about the whole thing”

“Myungho won't either” Jun comments and the room falls silent at the sound of the remaining members chatting and approaching the kitchen.

“Wow, you make a meeting and forget to call in the main characters” Hayun laughs walking through the room and opening the fridge for a beer “So, when's the food arriving?”

~

Hayun is sitting on the makeup chair, casually watching Scoups and Jeonghan whispering to each other from the mirror's reflection, when a hand lands on her shoulder and another holds out a smoothie for her.

“Whatcha thinking about?” Joshua sits on the chair next to her while Mingyu punctures the drink's lid with a straw.

Without taking her eyes off the mirror, she nods with her head to it. “Those two are up to something”

“Scoups and Jeonghan Hyung? Nah, they're always like that. Sharing secrets and stuff,” Mingyu giggles, shoving the straw inside her mouth and shifting to stand in front of the mirror. “Cute nail polish, when did you have time to get it done?”

“Oh, these are acrylics. This lady was just putting them on” Hayun falls into his trap and began analyzing the design with some occasional comments from the boys.

Peace has seemingly set inside the dressing room, yet it doesn't last long until Dino's loud “Uh?” caught the attention of the members, who turned to see what he and Vernon were doing.

Trying to shut the youngest up, Vernon makes it very obvious to the guys that he had just filled Dino in with the “frenemies” situation. Most of them try to brush it off and not bring more attention to it. Seungkwan, however, approaches them by, very loudly, asking what's up.

“What are you talking about?” He boringly fixes up his outfit. Vernon can feel the burning eyes of Jeonghan on his skull as he tries to deviate the conversation to another topic.

“Did you go see catering already? I heard they had a coffee machine”.

“Wait. Does he not know what happened?” Dino fails to read the room properly and instigates the older boy.

“What happened? Why is everyone sharing secrets all of a sudden? Is the thing you're discussing why Scoups Hyung seems ready to jump someone”.

The timing of events can't be worse, as the makeup artist taps Hayun's shoulder to let her know they were done. Within seconds, the girl gets up and turns to where the three youngest were standing.

“What's with the gossiping? Did Vernon lose his airpods again?” She brushes away from Joshua as he tried to hold her in place and waves off Mingyu when, in a panic, he suggests they should check out the pigeons outside.

“What? No! I mean, yeah! How unfortunate, isn't it?” Vernon jumps around his answers and tries looking for anyone willing to help him out.

“Just tell her about it” Approaching them from the door, Jeonghan, now without the leader's company, shrugs his shoulders, making Hayun raise an eyebrow.

“Jeonghan, at least wait until the day is over,” Joshua speaks through his teeth and the boy rolls his eyes.

“Well, she already knows something is up, and to be fair I don't know what good hiding this will bring. At least, if she feels like doing something about it, she'll have the chance right now”.

“Do something about it? Hadn't we agreed that the best is to wait until the performance is over and just never see them again?”

“What even are you talking about?” Hayun shuts them both up and Jeonghan and Joshua turned to her with annoyed expressions, “Don't even look at me like that. You're the ones mentioning me as if I'm not in the room”.

Placing a hand on her shoulder, Joshua tilts his head a little and speaks softly, “Trust me for a moment here, it's best if you brush it aside. Until later at least, and then we can settle it as you wish”.

“Wha- Just spill it out for fucks sake. I'm going to combust if you don't tell me right now whatever this all means,” Hayun puffs, punching his shoulder. Just as Joshua opens his mouth to say the same thing again, Jeonghan beats him and shoves himself in front of the girl.

“Do you recall those dancers you were planning to go out with yesterday? Yeah, well, turns out they're all little shits who were trash-talking you, and just overall talking crap, yesterday”

“Jeonghan” Joshua repressed the older who does nothing but wave him off.

“Doesn't matter what they said because you're nothing of it, and-” Adverting his eyes for a second, Jeonghan stares to the side, where half of Scoups' body is waving for him through the door. “And, and, you're amazing and all of that. So now go rest your awesome self while I go teach those punks a lesson”.

Zooming past her, Jeonghan runs to the door, where the leader is already back outside. Hoshi, Jun, Woozi, and DK, scream for him before also going out of the door. A very lost, Seungkwan, simultaneously tries to get Vernon to tell him what exactly the dancer said before while shouting for the older to wait for him to also speak his mind.

“I didn't want you to know about this before the performance, but-”

“Whatever, let's make sure nobody dies today” Hayun rolls her eyes and turns around, Wonwoo running from where he was watching everything and holding her by the shoulder.

“Do you want us to go fix that up? It's okay to give them the cold shoulder or just go off if you want to” Nodding, she keeps silent and walks out, bringing the rest of the guys behind her.

The8, who also had just found out about the situation, whispers to Vernon, “Can you believe they had the audacity?”

“I know, right?” The youngest whisper-yelled at him as they made it to the hallway and assessed the situation.

“The next time you even think about opening your mouth to talk about her-” Scoups had his finger pointing at the tallest dancer -who ironically had a few centimeters on him-, while the rest of the members stood next to him nodding and calmly listening to what the leader was saying.

“Oppa, just drop it,” Hayun shouts, walking past them and holding his shoulder.

Annoyingly, Scoups rolled his eyes and turned to her, “What do you mean, drop it?” Thinking for a second, he blinked and turned even more bothered, “Who even told you about this?”

The leader looked around until he found Mingyu, offending the tall guy who made an X in front of his body.

“Doesn't matter who told me. Let's just not lose time doing this” Brushing past him, Hayun now faced the dancers “Look, I'll teach you something right now, so grab it or drop it okay? I don't give a shit that you don't like me, or whatever, but at least be professional because all this situation did was teach me that none of you care about your careers. It's pretty clear by the angry puppy beside me that you just lost any chance of growing inside our brand, so keep this as a lesson and respect the artists you're working with. Also, once we're on stage put on a smile, so my fans won't be able to sense your shit”

“It should be pretty clear by what she said but you definitely don't have a chance to work with any Pledis artist again” Hoshi came from the end of the hallway alongside their manager and choreographer. The latter nodded and added.

“For the sake of the performance, you should all go back to your dressing rooms. You all said whatever was on your mind, so try to refocus during the last few minutes you have”.

“I didn't get to say what was on my mind” While the group was dispersing, DK mumbles on the side and Jun snorts.

“You had a chance, but all you did was stare at them and scowl until Scoups Hyung took the lead”

“I don't care about who said and who didn't say what they wanted” Hayun rolled her eyes, turning to the boys as they arrived in the room. Clasping her hands together, she brings them to her face and smiles, “You all care about me”.

“The fact you still doubted about it after years hurts me” Dokyeom held his chest and frowned, the girl laughs and goes to hug him.

“Group hug?” Seungkwan says uncertainly and Hoshi nods, dragging Woozi with him, “Group hug!”

[sierraraeck]

Sacrifice

BAU x OC Aundreya

Masterlist | Series Masterlist

Summary: Aundreya does everything she can to save Spencer, which ultimately means sacrificing herself in the process. Story fifteen.

Category: Angst.

Warnings: Cussing. Mentions of drugs, prison, and homicide.

Word Count: 6.3k

A/N: Still fiction, still don’t know anything about prisons or their policies on handling inmates.

Nothing good in this world lasts for long, someone smart said at some point.

Not like things had exactly been going ‘good’ for us lately.

“Welcome home,” Sheriff Deborah sneered.

“Oh fuck you,” I hissed back.

“Wow, did you just say an expletive to an officer of the law?” she asked, feigning offense.

“Yeah I did. Last I checked, I’m protected by this cool thing called freedom of speech as a part of my rights.”

“You’re about to lose those,” an all too familiar voice piped up. Shit. This just got worse.

“Ah. Jane Doe, it’s nice of you to grace us with your ever-so-lovely presence,” I deadpanned.

“Nice to see you too,” she smirked. Sheriff Anderson and I went way back. She was the one who had initially caught wind that there was someone known as The Figure running around on the streets. I had been completely anonymous prior to that, and she was the one who brought all that unwanted attention on me. Since then, she apparently made a vow to catch me, and she really did try. Jane was the one that set up the first trap to try and lure me out and arrest me. She was also the one that encouraged calling in the FBI, who set another trap to try and get me to talk. I showed her my face that time and winked on the way out. Unfortunately, she had to be the one that finally arrested me when I got sent to the supermax. Needless to say, we were not friends.

“So what brings you to my cozy motel room this fine evening?” I asked. My bitchiness always elevated when Jane was around.

“Actually, I invited her,” Sheriff Madalina spoke up.

“Oh, did you now?” I asked incredulously.

“Sure did. I was thinking about the case, your case, and I realized that there was one name that just kept popping up. Luckily for me, Sheriff Anderson here was close by and very available.”

“I’m sure,” I rolled my eyes, “What’re you missing this time, Sheriff? A funeral, a graduation, another wedding..?”

“Will you ever put that to rest?” Jane asked.

“Will he?” I quipped. Once she started tracking me like a bloodhound, I figured I’d do some of my own digging. I found out that she’d skipped her plane ride out to Mexico so she could be there to simply watch the FBI deal with me. I found out later that after it was unsuccessful, she basically missed her own son’s wedding. I got quite the kick outta that and brought it up when I could, just to get under her skin.

“Aundreya,” it was Hotch this time. I had gotten so sucked into Jane’s guest appearance that I forgot the rest of the team was there, too. I guess that was probably what they were going for, bringing her here, to throw me off.

“It’s a valid question,” I remarked. “So what? You find a common problem and you all decide to tag team?”

“They’re here because they want to be, not because we asked them,” Sheriff Anderson stated.

“Oh, so you want to send us back to prison?” I glared at the team members. And to think I actually trusted them at some point.

“It’s not like that,” Morgan started.

“No, I think it’s exactly like that,” I cut him off.

“Careful Agent, I wouldn’t want you to end up the victim of aggravated assault. Again,” Jane smirked.

“Aggravated assault?” I questioned, my eyes getting a bit bigger, “I wouldn’t call it that.”

“Then what would you call it?”

“I’d consider it a workplace squabble,” I commented, suppressing a small smile.

Derek snorted and shook his head. Deborah was quick to step in, “You’d call attacking a special agent, then pulling a gun on your team a ‘workplace squabble?’”

“Absolutely,” I confirmed, “What would you call it?”

Deborah’s mouth hung slightly open before replying, “Aggravated assault of an agent.”

“Interesting, we should totally compare notes on definitions another time, but that’s not really why you’re here, is it?”

“No,” Jane shook her head, “We’re here because you broke out of prison. And brought company.” It was the first time anyone in the room had really acknowledged Spencer, who seemed cemented in place behind me. All eyes turned to him, and I could see the discomfort spread like wildfire across his features.

I drew the attention away from him by asking, “How’d you find me anyway?”

“An anonymous tip,” Anderson informed.

That’s when everything clicked.

Corbyn Young and the spying, Koda and dealing Spencer drugs, the sheer amount of drugs in Spencer’s apartment, the connection to Darrell Fairchild, how it was all slowly driving me crazy … and now? An anonymous tip accompanied by my least favorite cop?

Xena.

“Wait, an anonymous tip?” I confirmed, shaking my head. How did I not see this?

I got no response, not like I needed one, and immediately started looking around. I took small, slow steps, being sure to stay in my own little radius, evaluating every nook and cranny of the motel. “There are cameras in here, aren’t there?”

Again, no response, just a bunch of gaping mouths. I let out a venomous chuckle. “You little bitch. I should have known. God, I should have fucking known!” I shook my head. “Of course it was you. But I mean, this … this is a whole new low, even for you. Invading my personal space, spying on us, using the same goddamned sheriff…”

“Chambers, who are you talking to?” Prentiss piped up.

I didn’t even answer. I was fuming. “And typically, you don’t even bother to show up because you can’t handle real face to face conflict. You never could. You always felt the need to record your victories instead. I mean, how else were people supposed to believe you,” I jeered. I’d finished searching the room and finally found what I was looking for. A tiny, black circle in the middle of the clock on the wall, recording everything. I flipped it off, making sure to shove my finger right in the middle of the frame. “Alright fine,” I performed the most obnoxious curtsey I could to be sure she’d see me, “Well played. Round five goes to you. But don’t forget, I’m still up three to two and you better believe I’m coming for you in the next one.”

“What the hell is going on?” Derek sounded confused and irritated.

Again, I blew the question off and turned to the sheriffs. It really wasn’t worth explaining. “Whatever you’re here to do, just do it.”

I saw the slight shock on everyone’s face, and I had a pretty good idea why. For someone that hated being caged, practically couldn’t be caged, I was giving up fairly quickly. But I knew that if Xena was behind this, which she had to have been, I wasn’t going to get out of it by stalling. Might as well just get it over with.

It was Jane who recovered first. “We’re here to arrest both of you and return you to your rightful places behind bars. You’re going for assault and escaping, and he’s going back for the murder of Corbyn Young.”

Both women started to take steps towards us as Deen’s voice came ringing back into my head. You have to focus on getting the two of you safe. Make sure that it wasn’t for nothing and that you finish this out.

I instinctively stepped in front of Spencer and blurted, “It was me, you were right.”

Their movement towards us halted. Sheriff Madalina’s brow was furrowed, “What?”

“You were right, earlier I mean, when you thought it was me who framed Reid. I did it.”

I felt Spencer’s hot breath on my ear as he whispered, “Aundreya, what-”

“Hush,” I whispered back.

“What are you saying?” Hotch probed.

I took in as much oxygen as I could manage and turned my attitude to stone, fighting the urge to rub my palms together. “I’m saying that it was me the whole time. Corbyn was one of my guys, and I had him tracking the members of this team. I found out that he was getting paid to keep tabs on me as well, and when I approached him about it, I realized that not only had he betrayed me, but he had sensitive information I didn’t want getting out. So I killed him. I hadn’t thought it through, and couldn’t afford to get caught. So the first thing I thought to do was set Spencer up,” I started.

“Stop, what are you-” Spencer tried.

“The people at the front desk had seen me often enough to dismiss my presence, so I just snuck past them with the drugs,” I continued. “I stashed them in his place so that when people found Corbyn, Spencer would look like the prime suspect.”

“Why are you telling us this now?” Deborah asked.

“Because while you may believe I have no capacity for emotions, I do. When I saw how badly beaten up Reid was, I just couldn’t choke down the guilt anymore. If he died, that would be my fault, and while I could handle him taking the fall for me, I couldn’t handle him dying for me. I thought that I could break us both out and get away with it, but clearly I was wrong.”

“I don’t believe you,” Jane stated.

“You should,” I retorted.

“You wouldn’t have a problem letting him die for you. I just can’t understand why you’re trying to take credit for what he’s done?” she pondered.

“Oh, come on sheriff, look at the kid. Does he really look like he could overpower and then murder a man like Corbyn?” I inquired.

“I mean, the evidence-”

“Screw the evidence. How long have you been tracking me to know that it doesn’t really matter? What does matter, is that I’ve killed people before, and will certainly kill people again. My track record says so. His,” I gestured to Spencer, “is squeaky clean. Come on Janey, you have everything you need, and this is a one time offer. It will never be this easy again.” I glanced over at the recording device inside the clock. I will never let her catch me this off guard again.

“Alright, then. Aundreya Chambers, you are under arrest for the murder of-” Sheriff Anderson started.

“You don’t seriously believe that, do you?” Reid interrupted.

“Of course they do. And out of all the people in this room, you should be the most willing to believe it,” I hissed. He was not making this easy for me.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Emily asked.

“We broke out of the prison, and on the way we had a little encounter, didn’t we?” I addressed. I looked back at Spencer, who’s eyes were just about as wide as his socket would let them, “Come on. You know better than anyone what I’m capable of.”

He swallowed.

“Reid, what is she talking about?” Derek pushed.

“Uh,” he looked down at me, and I shot my eyebrows up, inviting him to proceed. “On our way out, we ran into some guys. They were, um, the ones that beat me up a week ago. As we were trying to get around them, she uh…”

“Yes, Reid,” I prompted. If this is what it takes to get him out and safe, so be it.

“She slit his throat,” he mumbled, and I wondered if anyone else heard him. All it took was one glance around the room to know that they had.

“You what?” Derek’s jaw had crashed to the floor.

I hadn’t exactly planned on it, but that opened up the perfect opportunity for me to clear his name for escaping as well. “Which is probably why he was scared enough to go along with me.”

“So you’re saying he didn’t escape of his own free will?” Deborah confirmed.

“Correct. It was my plan, my execution, and he was probably so scared of what I could do to him with my drugs, dagger, and gun, that he just went along with it,” I shrugged.

“That’s not true,” Spencer huffed. Is he trying to get sent back to jail?

I looked over at Hotch with pleading eyes. He had to know what was actually happening, and if not, he had to help me get Spencer out of this. Because whether or not he thought I was guilty didn’t matter, because he knew Spencer wasn’t.

“If she’s been manipulating him this whole time, he’s probably still under her influence,” Hotch casually pointed out. Thank god.

“What? No, that’s not-” Spencer persisted, but it wasn’t going to work, not now that Hotch had stepped in.

“It’s called Stockholm Syndrome,” Hotch continued, all eyes locked on him, “We see it all the time. It’s very common when a victim believes that their captor is also trying to help them. In this case, he’d think that she’s helping him by getting him out of prison.”

“And you’re sure?” both sheriffs confirmed.

“Yes,” Hotch assured.

“Alright then.” Deborah escorted a stunned Spencer to where the rest of the team was standing with his mouth hanging open, the betrayal in his eyes set on his boss.

“It looks like I’ll be the one who gets to take you in,” Jane grinned.

“Looks like it,” I coldly retorted.

“I guess I’ll be keeping my promise after all.”

“Oh, really? Is that what you think this is?” I asked, some heat returning to my voice.

“I promised you that the next time I cuffed you, and sent you behind bars, the chair would be waiting,” she snickered, taking a few cautious steps my way.

“Don’t forget what I promised you, old Janey,” I tsked, “That you will never truly catch me, and no matter how hard you try, no matter how hard you work, I will always get out of it.”

She rolled her eyes and firmly shook her head. “Not this time.”

“Are you willing to find out which one of us will be breaking our promise?” I challenged.

“I’ll take my chances,” she accepted, taking a few more steps in my direction, these a bit more confident.

In response, I stuck my wrists out at her, “Have at it.”

She quickly took advantage of what I was offering, turning me around against the wall and swiftly clasping the cuffs around my wrists. She tightened them as much as possible.

“Ooh, I didn’t realize you liked your cuffs that tight, Janey-poo,” I mocked. “Got a little kink to ya after all.”

She yanked me back from the wall, and I felt the hot words on her breath as she whispered, “I’ve pulled some strings to get you in solitary, practically in your own wing, once you arrive. You’ll be right next to the room where it happens, waking up and falling asleep with the knowledge that soon, it’ll be your final words you’re hearing echo down that hall.”

I just chucked, only guessing at how crazed I must have looked. Sheriff Anderson hauled me out of the room, but I resisted, fighting to turn around and look at the team. Who knows how long it’ll be ‘till I see them again?

I stood there, only for a second or two, but it was enough to give them all a definite nod. Jane shoved my head through the door frame of the police car, the familiarity of it all rising to the top of my mind. I looked out the window and saw a shadow of a figure, hovering outside of the motel. I didn’t have to look twice to know exactly who it was. Xena was looking right at me, and I winked at her, flashing one of my most cruel smiles.

She only got half of a win. She might have gotten me, but she didn’t get to Spencer, or anyone else on the team. Because there is no way in hell I’m going to let her touch them, not like last time.

It was as satisfying of a thought as any in that moment, as the squad car sped off in the direction of my new hell hole.

# # # # # # # # # # # # #

Eight days.

That’s how long it took the team to give up on me.

Eight.

Not only give up on me, but effectively replace me with Doctor Tara Lewis. It’s like they were waiting for something like this to happen and just jumped at the opportunity to get rid of me.

Did I confess to two murders, one I did commit and the other I didn’t commit? Yes. Did I have a pretty nasty track record? Definitely. Was I expecting to be left in prison for a long time? Absolutely.

But did I ever expect the BAU to just push me to the side like trash and forget about me? Absolutely not. And I would have never guessed that they would have actually believed me, believed that I did it. Not only that, but believed that I would have framed Spencer for it. Just when I thought I’d thought of everything.

The only person who ever visited me was Penelope, and she had to come in secret after the first week. She was the one who hinted at the fact that the rest of the team wasn’t exactly helping me anymore, and I dragged the rest out of her.

‘And the rest of them?’ I asked her.

‘They… they, uh…’

‘What Penelope? I can handle it.’

‘They don’t really know what to think,’ she reluctantly answered.

‘They think I did it, don’t they?’

‘Well… no, I think, um…’ I appreciated the effort, but I knew it wasn’t good.

‘Damn. So why are you here?’

Penelope’s sweet eyes couldn’t meet mine, and I knew that she was starting to be influenced by the rest of the team.

‘Everyone needs someone.’

‘Thank you, Garcia, but I know there is something more,’ I could see it in the way she tried to smile at me.

‘Did you really… kill that man?’

All I could do was sigh, ‘I’m sorry Penelope.’

I couldn’t stand to look at her anymore, so I got up and turned away, returning to my solitary cell, like Sheriff Anderson promised. She visited me one more time after that, and that was it. Whether that was on her own accord or because Derek or someone else found out and reprimanded her, I didn’t know, and I honestly didn’t care. I was back to being alone either way.

I kept to myself, not like I really had a choice, and tried to just ignore everything that was spinning out of control around me. At the end of the month, right after Penelope stopped visiting, I got granted ‘good behavior’ (plus they needed to free up some solitary space), so they moved me out and into a regular cell, where I could pretend to interact with people.

The day was going fine all the way up until some dumb bitch decided to announce to the cafeteria who I was.

“I cannot believe it,” the stalky, black braided hair chick said as she sauntered over. “It’s the great and powerful Alionth. Back at it again in prison, are we?”

I sort of recognized her as another initiate from the gang I rejected, but besides her face, nothing else came to mind. I kept my head down but rolled my eyes.

“Hello? I’m talking to you!” she squawked as two other girls came to back her up on either flank.

Jesus Christ. I sighed, voice dull, “I’m aware. Anything else I can help you with?”

“Oh, so you’ve got attitude. I know that you think you’re pretty hot stuff, but I run this place around here,” she spat.

I snorted, “You wish.”

She wadded up the collar of my jumpsuit and yanked me to standing. She held me up to the cylindrical pole near the center of the room, right behind my seat. Here we go.

“What did you just say to me?” Her heavy New Jersey accent was a crisp sound, pinging off the rows of metal tables and concrete walls.

“I said, ‘you wish.’ Sure, you’re high up in the rankings, but I know you don’t run this place. If I had to guess, you and your girls here are about third or fourth in command, but peaches over there,” I nodded my head toward the dark woman with a tapered afro, “is the real leader here.” That caught her attention, and I could see the curiosity in her eyes as she watched what continued to go down. “And blondie over there,” I gestured to another woman in the back, “is her second. That leaves three and four to be either you or my new bestie here,” I stated casually, directing my attention to the girl who sat a few seats over from me, “How’d I do?” I challenged.

Her grip on me loosened, and I could tell I had shocked her.

She quickly composed herself, though. “So I guess the rumors are true.”

“I bet they are,” I deadpanned, squinting me eyes.

“So, uh,” she licked her lips, “where’s your fed friends?”

I quickly grabbed her hand and forced her off of me. “Careful,” I warned through clenched teeth, tone cold.

“Why? You don’t want me talking about your pretty blonde friend or the rest of your so-called ‘family?’” she quoted the air, “I bet you’re thrilled you betrayed us to go work for the dirty swines that are leaving you in-”

Then I kicked her jaw in. I was not going to be taking shit from from some fourth-in-command, entitled bitch who knew nothing about me or my situation. I felt the top of my foot hit the side of her jaw as my toes dug into her neck. By the time she hit the floor, she was out cold.

At the sound of her body hitting the floor, the guards decided they wanted to pay attention. I saw them coming at me, so I quickly announced, “Any more questions?”

Right as I finished, lightning struck my body, sending shockwaves through my nerves. A guard had poked me in my shoulder blade with his taser, and I turned to grab the pole for support. I used every ounce of energy to keep myself on my feet, gasping for air. I felt a pair of hands going to grab my arm and escort me out but I shook them off.

“Anywhere you are taking me, I can get there myself,” I forced out through labored breaths. I pushed off of the pole, glared at anyone in my line of sight, and shook feeling back into my feet, just enough for me to walk. I took a couple of wobbly steps forward, and felt the hands return to my arms. “I said I got it. Back to solitary?”

I wasn’t expecting an answer, but a deep voice replied, “It’s almost like you’ve done this before.”

I chuckled. “You could say that.” I felt the eyes on me as I exited the cafeteria in a haste, having enough social interaction for one day.

# # # # # # # # # # # # #

It had been about three months since Aundreya had been incarcerated, and Derek and Emily were on their way to see her. If they were being honest with themselves, they didn’t exactly know why. It could’ve been because she used to be their friend, it could’ve been to share whatever updates they had about her case, it could’ve been because they felt slightly guilty for not having visited her. Maybe they just wanted to see her face and look into her eyes when they asked her about what had happened, trying to gauge her reaction and get the best answers they could. Whatever the reason, they were there, and were walking down a strip of cells when a woman’s voice caught their attention.

“Don’t do that,” she warned, sandpaper coating her throat.

“And who are you?” Emily asked, sass evident in her undertone.

“Raven. I used to run this place until your bitch showed up,” she spat.

“And what does that have to do with us seeing her?” It was Derek’s turn to question.

“Are you really that stupid? No wonder you piss her off so much,” Raven smirked.

“What does that mean?” Derek snapped.

Raven’s smirk morphed into one that was condescending, “Aren’t you the people who supposedly cared about her, then gave up on her after like, a week?”

“That’s not-” Emily tried.

“Don’t try to deny it, we all know,” she interjected. “One of my girls was pressing all sorts of buttons before Alionth snapped, but the one that pushed her over the edge was the button with your names on it.”

“Alionth?” Emily arched an eyebrow.

Raven just huffed and shook her head in response, continuing with, “She barely even mentioned you guys and her ass was on the ground. Her whole face is practically broken.”

“Aundre- Alionth did that to a girl, because of us?” Derek sounded astonished.

“You and whatever the fuck you did to her,” Raven ignored his shock, “And as far as I know, she’s always been like that.”

“That’s not true,” Emily immediately defended, but anyone with ears could hear the wavering in conviction.

“Maybe you just brushed it off because she was ‘protecting a friend,’ or ‘saving an innocent.’ Maybe you just thought that the case got to her and that’s why she was particularly hateful toward the bad guy, and I mean, come on, it’s just a serial killer. Who cares if he gets a little bit roughed up or, honestly, if she shoots him if necessary? I could see how that would be deceiving. But that’s just her,” Raven casually stated, shrugging her shoulders, “She’s on-edge, ruthless, and violent. She’s ready to explode at any moment, taking any and everyone down with her. That’s how she’s always been. You didn’t really think she got all of that cleaned up because she joined the FBI, did you? You couldn’t have believed that she was magically fixed because she spent a few years with you?” She paused to eye the agents in front of her, but wasn’t really expecting an answer. She didn’t get one, “That’s not how it works. Twenty-four years versus three? I mean there’s really no comparison. You of all people should know that. And honestly, her being a stone cold bitch is working for us, and while I’m still sort of terrified, I guess I should be thanking you.”

“What for?” Derek demanded.

“I mean, I haven’t seen a prison run so smoothly, have you? Most of the girls in here, or at least the smart ones without a major attitude and ego trip, are getting upped for ‘good behavior’ because they know that if they do anything to piss her off, they will be in the infirmary in three seconds flat. Not to mention that she’s got basically every single guard under her thumb already. So for her sake, and for the good of all of the rest of us in here, leave her the fuck alone.” And with that, Raven sat back down in her cell, effectively shutting both agents up. Within the next couple of minutes, they both left without another glance behind them.

# # # # # # # # # # # # #

The only other contact besides Penelope that I had with the team was a letter. A single letter, left on the bed of my solitary room when I returned there for the sixth time in four months.

It was an ongoing joke now, that whenever they let me out after my allotted time, it was always ‘see you in a couple days’ or ‘don’t stay away too long’ or something to that effect. Each time I left, it was like there was a new person in line, ready to take their turn at me. It was funny to me that there were still a few girls willing to fight me, already having previewed the outcome. But I guess the definition of insanity (which these girls definitely seemed insane to me) is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome, which in this case, was them heading to the infirmary for about the same amount of time I headed back to solitary. It was starting to form quite the nice routine, actually.

Except this one little piece of paper was not a part of the usual plan.

I picked up the envelope and scrunched up my nose at the guard who was about to shut the door in my face. “This for me?”

“Do you see anyone else in there?” he quipped. The squeak of the door as it was pushed shut and the clang of the lock vibrated throughout the small box they called a cell. I stared down at the stale envelope that matched the scenery around me, and sat on the skeletal mattress I frequented. I slipped my thumb under the flap, careful to avoid paper cuts, and slowly opened it, as if I were expecting a bomb to be triggered by my movements.

When I pulled out the letter, there was a single paragraph that bore into the delicate material.

I thought I knew who you were, but I don’t know what to believe anymore. I thought that you were helping out and there was no way that you would have let me take the fall for something you did, no way you would have even killed that man to begin with. But I also wouldn’t have thought you’d kill an inmate, no matter how awful, in cold blood right in front of me, that you’d changed and moved passed that. Now I’m supposed to defend you against separate murder charges, not to mention drug charges involving drugs I know you’ve taken, and I just don’t know how to anymore. All the evidence points toward you. But the one thing I can’t stop thinking about is what Hotch said the night we got caught: that you were manipulating me the whole time and I’d fallen into the trap of a professional criminal, even as a profiler. I don’t want to believe that, but maybe it’s true. Maybe you’re the one who’s been using me this whole time. I don’t have the answers, and I don’t think I ever will. Don’t keep tabs on me. I know you have the means to, in whatever capacity, but I don’t want you tracking my life. I no longer want you to be a part of it. And stay out of Maeve’s, in case you think that’s some twisted loophole you can use. This is no longer your family.

The room had never felt so silent before, so suffocating. All the air circulation in the room stopped at once, slowly making its way in my direction. It piled up on top of me like some sick game of tetris, stealing any oxygen I could get, collapsing my lungs in the process. The weight of that small cell, of that small letter, of those small words, pushed me under the smothering air, holding me there until I surrendered, allowing everything to go blank.

# # # # # # # # # # # # #

“But do you think she’s back on drugs?” Derek persisted. It was something most of the team members had been arguing over for the past few weeks. Penelope had hacked the cameras inside the facility that was housing Aundreya, and observing her was a new pastime. Derek, Emily, JJ, Penelope, and Rossi would gather in the bat cave to see what was new with their recently-estranged team member.

“I don’t know. She seems unwavered by anything at this point. I just can’t tell if that’s just how she’s coping, or if that’s something more,” Emily joined.

“I don’t think she would.” It was JJ this time, “I mean, she worked pretty hard to get off of them the first time, and only got back on to help out your cousin. Plus, she didn’t relapse when she went in there for Spence.”

“True,” Derek acknowledged, “but she had a purpose going in there, and now she’s just sorta … in there.”

There was a moment of heavy silence before Penelope asked, “Do you think she knows?”

“Knows what?” It was the first time Rossi had entered the conversation this morning.

“You know, about … her case? Like how it’s going?”

“Who knows what she knows. She clearly just got some sort of information, but I’m not sure it’s about how badly her case is, otherwise I think she’d be looking a lot different,” Rossi pointed out.

Derek shivered, “It’s kinda freaking me out.”

“Which part?” Emily inquired.

“All of it. The way she’s nonchalantly getting into fights, not being affected at all by the taser, just sitting there in her cell completely unmoving with that creepy-ass smirk on her face…” Derek shook his head.

“Yeah, I see that, so I definitely don’t think she knows more about her situation. If she does, she’s not letting on,” Emily replied.

“I agree. I just want to know what she knows,” JJ expressed.

“And whatever is on that piece of paper. She brings it everywhere with her and just keeps looking over it,” Rossi added.

“What I really wanna know is: why hasn’t she gotten herself out yet?” The inquiry came from Derek’s mouth, but had been rattling around in everyone’s head. “What is she waiting for?”

“I mean, it takes a lot of effort to break out of a prison. Maybe she just hasn’t figured it out yet?” JJ offered.

“I don’t think so. When it came to breaking Reid out, she did it in under a week. She’s been in there … what? Six months?” Derek acknowledged.

“Seven months, one week, and two days,” Reid recited from the doorframe. It was the first time he’d even come near Garcia’s layer in the mornings since finding out the activities of the other agents. All heads whipped toward him. Before any other comments could be made, he stated, “We have a case.”

The rest of them shared a collective questioning look before trudging back to the bullpen.

Derek straggled, taking one last look at the girl he used to know, sitting inside a cement block on the screen, and mumbled to himself, “What are you planning?”

# # # # # # # # # # # # #

Prison is on a whole different planet. The time moves differently; not exactly slower, but definitely not faster either. It’s like each individual day takes eons to go by, but the next thing you know, you’ve already wasted over a year of your life in there, doing the same thing every day, over and over and over again.

There were only two things that kept time for me in the form of ‘pre’ and ‘post’: a single visit, and that letter.

That damn letter.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was obsessing over it. I read it at least 15 times a day, if not more, and everytime I read it, it was like the information was completely new to me. I kept trying to make sense of it, or at least push it past the thick layers of protection that were preventing me from understanding it, until I literally woke up reciting it. At that point, I forced myself to face the truth of the matter, and come up with a new pastime.

Which wasn’t much better.

I instead decided to obsess over a list of names I had scratched on the back of the letter. It was a simple list, but the weight of it was massive.

1. Troye Harding - 19, initiation

2. Sam Raxton - mid 20s, fight club

3. Em Taylor - 16?, me or her

4. Philip Dung - 34, self-defense

5. Lex Quinn - 18, traitor

6. Idina Perie - 28?, fight club

7. Brayden Price - upper teens, traitor

8. Ori B. - 44, ordered

9. Jay Nix - 21, self-defense

10. Chris W. - mid 30s, preventative necessary

11. Elle - mid 20s, pre-nes

12. Aiden Jaxton - 23, bad call

13. Jordan U. - 31, cross-fire

14. Andie Trinity - 39, pre-nes

15. Callie - 22?, bad call

16. J. Justin - 24, information

17. Victor Collins - 57, me or him

18. Sydney Racca- 20, me

19. Darrell Fairchild - 48, hurt Spence

The list contained those I’d personally killed, their age, and why. I thought it was important that at least someone remember them, and if they were gonna haunt anyone, who better than me? Plus, I liked the reminder of what had passed, and where I was now.

At some point I’d gotten so used to the violence and the hate that I just became immune to it all. At one point, I didn’t care who I hurt, or why. There was even a moment, one of the lowest in my life, where I didn’t need a reason anymore. I didn’t want a reason. All I wanted to do was just act out, but I forced myself to control it, releasing it in still unproductive ways, but not as unproductive. I turned back to drugs and fighting, which was ultimately my downfall. It’s what led to one of my best friends getting killed, something that I would never forgive myself for. It snapped me out of my daze, but not soon enough, because shortly thereafter I found myself behind bars, just like the ones surrounding me now.

Below the list, I had theee more names written out.

20. Xena Adaland

21. Jamar DeLeon

22. Aundreya Chambers

I wanted to stop, I wanted to be better. But I was in a situation that just didn’t seem to allow that. I told my father only months prior that there was always a way out without having to return to my old habits. I really wished that were true.

But here, in this cell, with the new information I had, I couldn’t see how it would be. They destroyed my life, and now, I had everything I needed. All I had to do was strike.

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DT - Drunk Twitter 1/3

Description: One stupid drunken night leads to an uncomfortable week from hell. That only gets worse when you are forced to face the problems, that your drunken escapades caused, head on. Yeah, you are never going to drink ever again.

Masterlist HERE.

Word Count: 8,380 ish.

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader.

Rating: PG.

Warnings: Lots of curse words, awkward moments, and a slightly frustrated reader. Little angst here and there, but lots of stupid humour.

Requested: Nah, this just randomly popped into my head and I ran with it.

A/N: I sadly don’t own any of these characters. And no beta reader, so I do proudly own all the errors and this story, so there’s that.

You groan loudly as your hand flails out from under your duvet cocoon, blindly searching for the hellish contraption that currently insists on screaming at you. It is far too early for such an ungodly sound, and you are far too hungover for this shit right now.

Your hand finally makes contact with the screeching little asshole that is your alarm clock, causing a loud smash to echo through the room, just from the sheer force of your flailing limb alone. And then instantly your room falls back into silence once again. Though the constant ringing in your ears, both from the alarm and your hangover, makes that last fact slightly unknown to you in this moment.

You groan, grumbling incoherently as you pull your hand back into the warmth of the little blanket bundle that has now become your life. You plan to spend the rest of your days just hiding in this dark little cove, and then eventually one day dying here. Which from the aches and pains wreaking havoc on you currently, might be sooner, rather than later.

Why the hell did you drink so much?! Who let you polish off two bottles of wine last night?! Like, where the hell was your adult?! Clearly from this day forward you’d need someone to constantly make life choices for you, so that you never ended up in this position ever again.

You vow in this exact moment, that from this day on you will never ever drink again.

But then you remember your best friend's birthday is in 2 weeks, and you groan loudly. Okay, so you kinda have to drink for that, but mark your words now, that will be the very last time that you do!

Your phone buzzes on your bed beside you, lighting up the dark little fortress you’ve created around yourself. And whelp, looks like you never plugged it in last night. You’re honestly surprised it’s even still alive. You’d have to write a tweet to Apple about how their phone actually made it 24 hours on one charge. You’re sure that’s something they’d like to know about, as that was a highly uncommon thing to actually happen.

You reach over to grab your phone, picking it up and bringing it close to your face, before hissing at the brightness and yanking it away with such force you’re surprised you didn’t fling it across the room. You squint your eyes as you fumble to turn the brightness down, and once you successfully have you bring the screen back to you. Directly in front of your face so your blurry, dry eyes can actually read it.

And instantly you gasp loudly, your eyes watching as notification after notification pops up on your lock screen. Your twitter is blowing up right now and a cold sweat promptly rips through you. Because oh God, did you do it again?! Did you seriously post something while stupidly drunk again?!

Fuck. You groan, unlocking your phone quickly to check. Because for some ungodly reason, drunk you always insisted on posting the stupidest tweets. Normally you’d wake up the next morning, hungover and a little closer to death than the day before, and you’d open your twitter to find all the ridiculous shit you’d posted about, the previous night. Usually all of which only had maybe a retweet or two, a couple likes and usually at least one comment—thanks to your lovely best friend. Her comments normally consisting of both laughing at you and calling you out for being a crazy drunk tweeter. She just knew you and your quirks far too well. It was seriously a problem.

But this time, this time was clearly entirely different. However that was just an educated guess, due mainly to the hundreds of notifications that you now had, thanks to whatever your dumb drunk ass had posted, which had obviously blown up. And now you’d be lucky if you could sweep it under the rug like you’d always done in the past.

Oh God, please don’t let it be another praising tweet to some figure head or celebrity. That seemed to be your go to favourite thing to drunk-tweet. You had this weird need to cheer random strangers up when you were drunk. This insistent desire to support and appreciate the people you idolized. Oh please God say you didn’t tag the person the tweet was about this time.

Your shaky thumb clicks the iconic blue and white, Twitter app icon. Completely ignoring the ridiculous number in the little red circle on the icons top right corner, as you do. You haven’t even read the tweet yet and already you’re freaking the fuck out.

You quickly make your way to your profile and your eyes widen at the insanely large rant, that’s continued through multiple separate tweets, and is now sitting at the top of your page. Your eyes skim over them all, in order of posting, and you cringe, truly and utterly mortified now.

‘Do you ever just hear of someone in passing, or see them in the media, and have this instantaneous deep longing emotion within you. Not a longing in the sense of wanting them, but entirely due to hoping with everything inside you that they find their true happiness one day..’

‘..‪That they wake up in a few years and smile, like truly smile, because they are exactly where they wanted to be. Where they deserved to be. That they’d ended up with every desire they had yearned for. And I’m not talking about material objects. I’m talking life goals and accomplishments..’‬

‪‘..I’m talking about the true important aspects of life. The things that actually matter in the grand scheme of it all. Well, that is how I feel whenever someone brings up Steve Rogers. Or whenever I see an article or a news story about him. I instantly have this desperate want for him..’‬

‪‘..to be happy. Truly and utterly happy. The man deserves exactly that, and yet so much more. What with everything he has done for us and this planet. If anyone in this world has earned their happily ever after, it’s that man.’ ‬

‪Oh God. You groan, as your free hand comes up to cover your face in sheer horror and embarrassment. I mean, at least the silver lining here is you didn’t make any major spelling mistakes, and you also luckily, completely forget to actually tag him in it. So those are both small victories, in and of themselves. ‬

‪But the fact parts of that rant had blown up, regardless of you actually tagging him, is a little disheartening. You’re pretty sure he’s either seen it or been informed about it by now. And even if by the off chance he hasn’t, you know it’s only a matter of time before that changes. ‬

‪You scroll through the notifications and you feel your heart stop, as all the blood leaves your body and goes—honestly who knows where it goes, but it definitely doesn’t stick around to be apart of this train wreck of a situation. You abruptly sit up, the blankets falling from your upper body and pooling around your waist now.

‪Tony Stark retweeted your post. ‬

‪5 little words that make you want to delete every social media account you currently have, plus move to ‬Lesotho or something. Never heard of Lesotho? Well, that’s exactly why you’d picked to move there. Because most people don’t really know it even exists, nor where to find it on a map. So it would be the perfect place to hide away, and start a new life under a fake name.

Yup, it’s settled. Pack your bags, we’re moving to Lesotho!

You don’t even have it in you to read Mr. Starks response back to your tweets, nor dig any further into your notifications to see who else may have retweeted this whole mess. God, what is wrong with yo—

Your phone ringing scares the complete shit out of you, damn near chucking the metal brick across your room, for the second time this morning if anyone is keeping tabs, as your heart thumps loudly in your chest. However, you manage to keep a firm grip on your phone, but just barely. Effectively saving the thing from an untimely death, thanks to being forcefully introduced to your bedrooms brick wall.

Though come to think of it, maybe smashing it would be the best option here?

You sigh deeply as you finally notice it’s your best friend calling, a groan leaving your throat as you then instantly realize that she is probably calling thanks to your stupid Drunk Twitter rant. You contemplate not answering for a second, you could pretend you’re still asleep. But you know she’ll just keep calling until you answer, or worse, she’ll just show up at your house and let herself in with her spare key. Then you won’t have the luxury of hanging up on her if her teasing gets to be too much.

So as you click the answer button and hesitantly raise the phone to your ear, you prepare yourself for your incoming humiliation. I mean, more so than your already currently experiencing. Which is both surprising and frustrating, because who knew you could ever be this mortified in real life? You certainly didn’t, but yet here you are.

“Oh my God, Y/N!” Lindsey’s loud voice mixed with her unabashed laughter rings out of the phones speaker, it’s so loud that you instantly yanked the phone away from your ear. Your headache coming back tenfold as you groan loudly and message the side of your skull.

“Giiiiirl!!” She hollers now, and so lustrously that you can hear her perfectly, even with the phone still being nowhere near your ear. “What the hell were you drinking last night? And where can I get me some!”

You grumble out a, “you need to lower your voice or I’m hanging up on you.”

“Awe, is someone a little hungover today?” She coos in a motherly voice, though at a much quieter level now, at least enough to warrant putting the phone back to your ear once again. However her voice may be softer now, but the playful and teasing edge to her tone is as loud as a freaking bomb.

“More like dead,” you mumble falling back down to lay on your bed and slinging your free arm over your eyes. “Or at least I wish I was.”

Her gleeful cackle rings out of the phones speaker now. “Girl, don’t say that! I’d miss you too much, and you’re fucking famous now!”

You just groan, not even remotely interested in what she means by that.

“Oh, and why am I famous now, Lindsey?” She says in a mocking tone, clearly trying to impersonate you, but in your opinion not coming anywhere close. “It’s so wonderful you should ask Y/N! Probably because your tweets are all over the news stations, social media and the internet. Even most of the Avengers have already retweeted it, most notably Tony Stark, Natasha Romanoff, Sam Wilson AND Bucky Barnes. Ya know, all of Steve Roger’s best friends. But yet, no one has commented on whether the recipient of your beautiful drunken words has actually seen it or not. Buuuuut we can all assume he probably has.”

“Can we just not do this today?” You roll onto your side, your free hand now pulling the duvet up and over your head again. “I am in far too much pain and far too humiliated to be having this conversation right now. Can we please, for the love of all things that are holy, talk about something else? Anything else, I beg you!”

“Hell no!” She exclaims, you wincing at the abrupt volume change. “My best friend is famous! And all because she drank too much wine and tweeted a ridiculously sweet rant about thee Captain America! Honestly, this. Is. Just. Too. Damn. Good.” She squeals, “you can’t even write better shit than this!”

“Lindsey,” you groan, “I am way too hungover and under caffeinated for this right now. Seriously, I’m going to hang up now and hopefully fucking die.”

“Fine, fine,” she relents but you can still hear the humour in her voice, “I promise I’ll drop it, for now. But get your sexy ass out of that bed and meet me in the kitchen STAT.”

“Uuugh,” you drag the sound out. “You’re freaking in my house right now, aren’t you?”

“I am,” she says gleefully. “But before you flip shit, don’t. I brought coffee and bagels, so be a good girl and get your ass out here or I’m going to eat all of it myself.”

You don’t even respond as you hang up the phone, she had you at ‘coffee’. You quickly flip the blankets off yourself and roll out of bed. Not even bothering to check yourself out in the mirror because honestly, Lindsey has seen you at your worst. So she is entirely used to this from you.

You trudge your way out to the kitchen, seeing your best friend pulling wrapped food from a brown bag and you groan again, but this time happily. Her eyes dart up to you and she gives you a once over, a small frown on her lips now.

“Oh boo thang, you look horrendous,” she says softly, sweetly, as you reach her, and she hands you the large to go cup of coffee. “Drink this. Then go jump in the shower, you stink like shame and poor life choices,” she scrunches up her nose playfully.

“I honestly don’t think a shower will remove those particular smells from my skin. I think that’s just my natural scent now,” you giggle as you take a deep waft of the glorious life juice’s warm aroma, a content sigh coming out on the exhale. You bring the drink to your lips and almost moan. Yes, you are this much of a coffee nut. You take a few generous gulps then stumble over to the counter stools and plop down. “But a shower does sounds like a good plan,” you nod, the cup staying close to your mouth for quick and easy access.

She hums in agreement, nodding as she hands you a wrapped up bagel. “So, should we talk about what caused you to want to get ‘Sappy Drunk Tweets’ wasted last night or?”

You sigh, “I just had a shit day at work. My boss was a raging asshole, yet again.” You shake your head, “but what’s new?”

“I can not stand that evil little man!” Your friend growls. “You seriously need to find a new job, Y/N. You can’t keep working for that piece of shit anymore. And I honestly don’t think your poor liver can take much more of these semi frequent beatings. Somethings gotta change.”

“I know, I know,” you nod, “I’ve been searching for something else, but there just isn’t many available jobs at the moment. But I’m hopeful I’ll find something soon.” You take another large gulp of the sweet, sweet liquid gold, feeling as the warmth radiates throughout your whole body, as your brain slowly begins to rejoin the land of the living.

It’s been a few days since your stupid drunken escapades on Twitter, and a few days since Lindsey visited. You both had enjoyed your coffee and bagels, talking about everything and nothing. Luckily she had kept the drunk tweet talk to a minimum, like she promised. And once you were all done that, Lindsey headed off to work and you hopped in the shower, before spending the entire day on your couch, watching movies and pointedly ignoring your phone. Or rather, the never ending string of notifications on said phone.

So now you’ve been basically hiding out since then, only leaving your house to go to work or to make a quick trip to the store down the block from your apartment. The stupid tweets are still blowing up, people are still retweeting them and talking about them.

You’d hoped this would have all blown over by now, that something else ridiculous would have come along and stolen everyone's attention. But alas, you aren’t that lucky. Because not a damn thing is going on in the world right now, obviously, as everyone is still very much hung up on your whole embarrassing sap fest.

So much so that you are being recognized now as the ‘Steve Tweet Woman’. Which is just fucking outstanding—ha! not!

News outlets, websites and talk shows have been blowing up your phone and email, asking for comments or to set up interviews. Wanting to know if anyone from Steve’s camp has reached out to you, or if you’ve been invited to the tower to meet the team. Also asking if you and the Avengers are now friends, or at the very least acquaintances. And those are just a few of the things they are asking you. Honestly, those are the least ridiculous questions—which is freaking sad.

So leaving your house has become a damn chore now, you have to wear a full disguise just in the hopes no one recognizes you. This is not what you wanted at all. Shit, you don’t even know what you wanted from making that tweet, but this for sure was not it. Not even close.

You’d avoided Twitter along with all your social media playforms since that dreadful morning, as well. You were just too overwhelmed with all the notifications and messages you’d been receiving ever since. Far too many to ever read, let alone even keep up with. Nor did you want to see what any of them actually said.

You sigh, trying to focus back on your computer monitor. You were currently at work, hiding out in your cubicle and keeping your head down.

At the moment you worked as a writer for a news and entertainment website, much like Buzzfeed but nowhere near as large or well known—And I know! Ironic right? Uuuugh! Your damn life was just such a joke.

Your cubicle neighbour, Tyler, springs up over your divider wall. His arms resting on the top as his chin sits on them, a small frown on his face. So this obviously isn’t going to be good.

“Do I even want to know?” You ask quietly before he can utter a word.

He sighs, “probably not. But sadly you kinda have to know.”

“Okay,” you spun slightly in your chair to face him fully. “I’m ready, lay it on me.”

“The boss saw your tweets,” he starts and you wince in embarrassment. “He messaged me as your email keeps sending his messages back undelivered. So you should probably check into that, but first, he wants to see you in his office.”

You groan, dropping your forehead onto your desk with a thud, “my email has been so swamped the last few days that I shut down the receiver.”

“Understandable,” he says quietly, and you can hear that the frown is still present on his face.

“Does he want to see me now?” You peek up at him.

He nods, “yeah, said it was urgent.”

“Shit,” you mumble and sit up, grabbing a notebook and pen quickly as you stand from your chair. “Well, wish me luck, hopefully he doesn’t just fire me the second I walk through the door.”

Tyler shakes his head, “he’d be an even bigger idiot than we all currently think he is, if he did that. Don’t sweat it, at worst he’ll probably just throw a tantrum and give you a slap on the wrist.”

“On second thought, I think I’ll just quit instead,” you say playfully as you walk out of your cubicle. Hearing Tyler’s deep chuckle behind you as you do.

“But then who will keep me entertained everyday?”

“You’ll find someone,” you giggle, shrugging. “My replacement, most likely. Though sadly they will never be as awesome as me!”

“Ain’t that the truth,” he agrees as he lowers back down into his chair and you continue on towards your bosses office.

A moment later you find yourself standing outside of his closed door, notepad clutched to your chest. You have no idea what this impromptu meeting will be about, but you can only assume it has something to do with your stupid drunken posts.

You take a deep breath in, raising your fist up to knock on the door. And a moment later hearing a muffled and authoritative, “enter.” God, he really was just such an entitled asshole.

You open the door and peek your head in, “you wanted to see me, Sir?”

He glances up and nods, “ah, Y/N. Yes, come in.”

You quickly open the door and make your way into his office, closing the door and then hastily moving to stand in front of him.

He interlocks his fingers together and rests his hands on his desk, just staring at you. “Why isn’t your email working?”

“Oh, uh,” you shift awkwardly in your spot. “I um, I shut it off for a bit.” You nod, “just till I could get caught up on the emails I already have.”

He raises a brow at you, “your email is being swamped with messages, I take it?”

You nod again, “ah yes, Sir.”

“Does that have anything to do with the tweets you sent out last week?”

You almost groan, almost, but manage to contain it. “It—it does, Sir.”

He nods, glancing to his monitor, “now normally, foolish shenanigans such as this would be grounds for termination. And I was going to fire you for the embarrassment you’ve brought on this company, but I had a change of heart. So you won’t be losing your position just yet.”

You nod slowly, wishing you could give this idiot a piece of your mind. But your need to pay bills and have a job forces you to bite your tongue. “Oh, um, thank you, Sir.”

“But,” he flicks his beady eyes back to you, “you will have to make this up to me.”

You almost gulp, what the hell does that even mean?! “Um, how,” you clear your throat, “how exactly would you like me to do that?”

He leans back in his chair, a smirk on his lips. One that instantly causes a chill to run down your spin, and this time you do gulp. “There is a press conference in 3 days. You are going to attend it on behalf of our website.”

You nod, following along so far, and honestly this doesn’t sound so bad. Getting to be at a conference first hand is a huge accomplishment. Being trusted enough to be the one present is a big deal in this company. Normally only seasoned writers get to attend such functions.

Yet, something about this feels...off. Like there is a shoe about to drop nearby and you can’t shake that thought. “Okay, um of course, Sir. But what is the press release for, exactly?”

His smirk grows into a full blown grin and your heart rate picks up instantly because of it. “I’m so glad you should ask,” he nods, “It's a press conference for the Avengers. They are opening their new facility and are holding a press junket to cut the rope and answer some questions.”

And instantly you choke on air, no joke, then coughing a few times to clear your airway. Because oh fuck. Fuckity fucking fuck fuck. Why you?! Why does life always do this to you?!

“Um, Sir,” you start quietly once you stop coughing. “I don’t um—this is not to say that I’m not completely honoured that you’d choose me for this job. But uh, I really don’t think it’s a good idea to send me to this. Not with everything currently going on, at least.” You swallow thickly, your hands turning clammy as your nerves pick up. “There, ah, there has to be someone more qualified to send to this event. Ya know, someone other than me.”

He shakes his head, “there isn’t. And even if there was, I can’t send anyone else. You were specifically asked for by name, we weren’t even originally supposed to attend this press release. Only larger media outlets were invited.” He opens his top drawer in his desk and pulls out an access pass on a lanyard, holding it out to you. You gingerly step forward to take it then take a few hasty steps back once it’s in your grasp. “You were the only one invited, and were given an all access pass for the whole event.”

You gaped at him, eyes wide and mouth hanging open as you glance between your boss and the press pass currently in your hand. “But ah,” you shake your head, “why me?”

He shrugs, “probably because of those silly posts you made. You clearly caught someone's attention. So get to work, you have a press conference to prepare for,” he dismisses you with a wave of his hand.

But you just stay firmly planted in your spot, “Sir, I really don’t think this is a good idea.”

“Oh but it is.” His eyes shoot to you and narrow, “so you either attend that conference or I’ll fire you. We are making the most out of your blunder here, don’t mess this up. You only have one shot at this, and I expect the article from this to not only be outstanding, but also on my desk Monday morning. This is the break our website needs, but if you aren’t willing to pull your weight and fix your mistakes, then we don’t have a place here for you anymore. So it’s your choice, Miss Y/L/N.”

You sigh defeatedly, and nod, “okay, I’ll do it.”

“I figured you would,” he nods once then turns back to his computer screen. “Close the door behind you.”

You nod, spinning on your heels and exit the room. Shutting the door softly behind you like he’d asked and then heading back to your desk to start preparing for this press conference.

But all you can think about is how truly mortifying this whole week has already been. And it’s clearly only going to get worse from here on out. How do you get yourself into these things? Now someone from the Avengers team has specifically requested that you be there. Great.

Were they planning to embarrass you further? Were they going to make a mockery of you because of a stupid drunken mistake? Were you going to regret accepting this article instead of just quitting?

You glance down at the press pass in your hand and sigh, there is no way to know currently just how this will all play out. But sadly, you’ll be finding out the answers to your questions soon enough. And in a little less than 3 days, at that.

You stand in front of your full length mirror—wearing the seventeenth outfit you’ve tried on so far this morning—and trying desperately to find faults with it. In all honesty, all the outfits you’ve tried on had looked perfectly fine and would have worked. But you were determined to stall, to waste as much time on pointless outfit changes as you could, so that you didn’t have to face your reality.

That reality being that today was the day, today was the Avengers press conference at the new facility. And oh God, how you really did not want to have to do this today.

I mean, the moon wasn’t in the right placement. Nor was Jupiter currently aligned. And your horoscope had warned you about ‘life changing events should you venture out of your box.’ And you could only assume said life changing events weren’t going to be good ones, and this was very much venturing outside of your box. Plus like, you just had this strange gut feeling, something deep inside you telling you that something was going to happen today—And one should always trust their gut in true times of crisis.

So really, that was all to say that this was a horrible idea, and you should probably just stay home. Yeah, it’s settled then, you’ll stay home. That was a much smarter plan for sure.

Your hired car pulls up to the large, intimidating steel and glass structure and you instantly feel like you’re going to puke. And if the hired car didn’t charge you your first born for doing just that, you’d gladly probably have puked in this exact moment. It comes to a stop and you thank the driver before collecting up your belongings and climbing out.

Glancing around you notice a bunch of people hanging about, some with large camera’s around their necks, others with microphones. But all are wearing various passes, some look similar to yours, however none match it entirely. Your hand grabs on to the pass around your neck and pulls it away from your body to examine it more closely.

Yeah, yours is the only one like it, that you can currently see. Which yeah, that’s extremely odd, for sure. You release the pass, letting it fall back to your chest and head towards the check in booth, just wanting to get this all over with so you can promptly go home and die of humiliation in your bed. Alone and away from the world.

You give one of the ladies at the table your full name and instantly notice a wicked smirk appear upon her lips as she hears it. Which honestly can’t be a good sign for what’s to come. No, this is a sign you should probably just leave now. The universe is clearly trying to warn you, but your dumb, job needing ass can’t leave. No matter how much you desperately want to.

She hands you a map, pointing to the location where you will be standing for the conference. Then she points behind herself, in the direction you are to head and you mumble a quick thank you before heading the way she showed you.

As you make your way to the location, you continuously glance between the map in your hands and the area around you. The last thing you need right now is to get lost on this insanely large property, and end up missing the press release all together. Oh God, your boss would pitch a fit if that happened.

Your heels click on the cement ground, thankful you aren’t trudging it through grass at the moment. Heels and grass do not mix, and with your luck you’d probably end up twisting an ankle or snapping a heel. And the last thing you want right now is to draw unwanted attention to yourself. Ya know, more so than you already have.

You glance down at the outfit you’d finally begrudgingly decided on, choosing to stick to basic shades to help you blend in a little better. No fancy or colourful prints or shades today. No, blacks and whites was what you went with. Hoping that most of the other press members would be dressed similarly. And with one glance around you, that hope actually came true.

You’d decided to go with a black pleather pencil skirt, that was form fitting but also flattering to all your softer areas. With a long sleeve white shirt tucked into it, and simple black pumps. It was a pretty basic look, but that’s exactly what you were going for. You wanted to blend in, praying none of the Avengers or press would even noticed you, let alone figured out you were the drunken Twitter tweeter.

God, doesn’t that just sound so stupid? The ‘Twitter tweeter’. Just ridiculous. And to think, this is your life now! This is who you are now. Seriously, the next time you drink, you are going to leave your phone at work. As you clearly can’t be trusted with it when you’re intoxicated.

As you make your way closer to the spot the nice lady had shown you, you realize that you are the only one in this location. All the other press are further down, in front of the stage, whereas your place is off to the side. It has a perfect view of the stage, but there is nothing and no one to hide behind.

You halt your steps, and even though it’s a beautiful sunny day, you feel a cold sweat come on. Are they segregating you? Are they going to make an example out of you? Or treat you like some circus clown?

You know these thoughts are ridiculous, these are world heroes we’re talking about here. Good people who put their lives on the line everyday for everyone else. But maybe they are going to force you into speaking to the press, maybe they are going to use you for good PR. Your stupid tweets are the hot topic at the moment, everyone is wanting the inside scoop on you, your life and your possible new affiliation with the mighty team.

But being in the spotlight isn’t your thing, you like to be unknown, anonymous. Just another face in the crowd. And if this is an ambush, then take you the fuck off that sign up list. You are not interested in this being spun around on you. Fuck that.

You turn on your heel and head back to the main press area, you’d just hide out there amongst all the other reporters and journalists. At least you could hang in the back and keep your head down while you take notes.

You might be overthinking this. Or be acting a little too irrational at the moment. But cut yourself some slack, this week has been hellish and overwhelming, to say the least. And your poor frazzled mind is in overdrive mode, overthinking the smallest things and making you a bit of a basket case. Clearly you don’t handle stressors like this very well. That’s obviously a flaw of yours, but one you very much do not plan on addressing today. Or ever, maybe. But definitely not here and now.

You reach the main press area and tuck yourself into a back row chair, lowering your large black purse onto the ground and digging through it to grab your notebook, recorder, pens and your phone. You’d record the whole press release, taking notes and photos here and there. Then when it was all over you planned to hightail it out of here, long before anyone noticed you. Hopefully. That was the plan anyways.

You glance around, noticing a few nearby press members staring intently at you. God, you hope none of them cause a scene and point you out. You quickly glance up at the stage, seeing that it is still empty and none of the team is up there yet. So you drop your eyes down and decide to just doodle in your notebook till the junket begins.

Time seems to be ticking along at an alarmingly slow pace. Probably just because you are so desperate for this to all be over, therefore it’s doing the opposite now. The minutes currently feeling like hours to you.

Finally, after weeks of waiting—at least you swear it’s been that long. You hear commotion up on the stage, and notice as everyone around you is seated now, taking photos. You grab your phone and flick your eyes up to the stage, seeing the mighty group of heroes slowly ascending the stairs and fanning out on the platform.

You snap a few shots and then prepare your recorder, hitting the button to start it once Tony Stark makes his way to the microphone. You balance the recorder on your left leg, your notebook open on your light and pen at the ready. Your phone sitting in between both legs, fully charged, set to silent and camera app open.

The conference starts with Tony doing a speech, thanking everyone for being here and just general PR stuff. You are sort of paying attention, but also not. You know that you can always listen to the recording later if you miss any part of this conference, so there isn’t a huge weight on you to be fully listening currently.

So instead, you get lost in your own mind, continuing to berate and chide yourself for your horrible life choices. Ya know, all the ones that led up to this very moment. You keep your eyes down for most of the event, only glancing up periodically to snap a few more photos here and there. But then they flick back down to continue doodling in your notebook.

On the plus side, the grassy, flowery meadow you have been drawing this whole time is looking wonderful. Even if it’s only in all blue and black pen ink. But focusing on this is better than possibly locking eyes with the poor victim of your latest drunk tweets. You know he is up there, because they all are. And the last thing you want is to look at him currently. Your immense guilt and humiliation preventing you from even entertaining the idea of ogling the handsome man right now. Not even a little bit, no matter how badly you want to. No matter how much you want to see just how attractive he is in person. You can’t allow yourself to.

You don’t even really deserve to be here right now, the only reason you are, is because drunk you is a sappy asshole. Had you not posted those stupid tweets, you wouldn’t have been invited here today. God, how you wish you had a time machine right now.

You’d made a bunch of mistakes throughout your life, I mean, who hasn’t? But this one was by far the worst, you were definitely paying for this one. Tenfold. Maybe this is the wake up call drunk-you needs though. Hopefully she will have learned her lesson from all of this. Buuuuuut knowing her, probably not.

You sigh, picking up your phone to take a few more photos as the time nears to the official opening of the facility. To the rope cutting, which is the true reason you are all here today. You keep your eyes on your phones screen, but movement off to the side of the stage catches your eyes and they snap from the screen to it.

They lock with a greyish blue set, and you see the owner of said eyes glance over your face momentarily, before a smirk breaks out on his lips. Bucky Barnes aka The Winter Soldier aka Steve Roger’s lifelong best friend. You are currently having a stare off with an ex hydra assassin, and an insanely good one at that.

You are just about to break the eye contact when you notice him elbow the blonde super soldier to his right. Leaning in once he has the other man's attention and whispering something in his ear, before his head nods in your direction. Oh God, this also can’t be fucking good.

The blonde furrows his brows for a moment, his eyes scanning the crowd before they land on you. And the second your eyes meet, you are fucking trapped. Because, Jesus! This man is basically a human bear trap, and your ass just willing stepped right on to it.

Greeeeeat. Now you’re having a stare off with thee Steve Rogers. Just exceptional. Note the extreme sarcasm.

And then you notice as he frowns, most likely now realizing you are the crazy lady who tweeted about him. He snaps his eyes away from you, turning to glare at his best friend. Who only grins wider in return and then shrugs his shoulders before nodding his head to the billionaire at the podium. Mr. Roger’s heated gaze then flicks to the side of Mr. Stark’s head, narrowing a little more and honestly, if looks could kill, everyone here today would be witnesses to a murder. To the death of Iron Man, at the eyes of Captain America.

And oh fuck, this is not going well. So much for going unnoticed. You can’t do this, you can’t be here any longer. This is all just too much and you want to go home.

You quickly pack up your belongings, throwing them haphazardly into your large purse. As the tears of humiliation begin prickling in your eyes. What did you do to deserve any of this? Clearly you fucked up in a past life and now you were paying for it in this one.

Your eyes involuntarily glance back up to the stage, tears threatening to fall but you try to force them to hold off until you are away from this place. Away from all the prying eyes. The last thing you need is photos of you crying like a baby, at the Avengers new facility opening, to start circulating the internet and only adding fuel to the fire.

They’d probably play it up like you were this insanely huge fan, and just being here made your crazy come out to play. Bawling your eyes out for just being here, in the presence of the hero you so clearly had lady wood for. But yet, that wasn’t it at all. You know most of these people were probably too focused on Mr. Stark to even notice the moment between the super soldiers. You’re pretty sure you were the only one who actually did see it.

Your eyes lock once again on the intense pair of blue ones, finding yourself momentarily trapped all over again. Then his eyebrows furrowing snaps you out of it, thankfully, and you feel a tear slip down your cheek. You quickly wipe it away as you turn and hastily make for the press area exit.

You don’t look back, you can’t bare to see the relief probably on Mr. Rogers face now. He is probably thankful you are leaving early. He probably never wanted to actually see you in the flesh. He probably thinks you are just some ridiculous, crazed fan who went out of her way to either try to get noticed by him, or boost her career via the exposure.

God, how far from the truth that actually was. But not like you’d ever get the chance to prove that to anyone now. You vow in this exact moment to delete your twitter the second you get into the Uber. Like completely deactivate your whole account. Then you’d have no way to embarrass yourself ever again. At least not publicly, not in front of the entire world.

As you reach the spot where the hired car had dropped you off, you pull out your phone and open your Uber app. You had a hired car set up to pick you up later on, for when the press release was supposed to be over. But as it was still early and now only over for just you, you needed a ride and fast.

You begin filling out the order, hastily walking down the laneway towards the main road. Like hell were you going to stay standing on the facilities grounds any longer. Risking being seen or stopped by random press members. You’d just meet the car down the road a bit. That was the best plan here.

But as you are making your hasty get away, you hear fast footfalls coming up behind you. And you cringe slightly, too nervous to turn around and see who is coming towards you currently. You pray it’s just someone running to meet their car. Maybe one of the press people has an emergency and needs to leave early because of it?

“Hey, hold up,” a deep voice calls from behind you, effectively killing that last thought dead in its tracks. Much like you wish would happen to you right now. If you could just drop dead in this moment, you totally would. You didn’t have suicidal thoughts, ever, but in this exact moment, you’d take any out you could get. The sheer humiliation of this week finally crashing down on you.

You sigh, quickly wiping your cheeks of the few tears that refused to stay put in your eyes, and slowly turn around as the footsteps near you and come to a deafening halt. You know whoever it is, is now only a few feet away from you and there is no avoiding this awkward situation any longer.

You instantly realize the person now standing mere feet from you, is the very last person you want to be anywhere near right now. Even with keeping your eyes down, focused entirely on the ground so that whoever the person ended up being wouldn’t see the tears, now in your eyes. You still instantly know that it’s Steve Rogers, the newest and current victim of your drunken praise, and it now takes everything in you to not start rambling out a ridiculous apology, while also bawling your eyes out.

A heavy silence looms over you, starting to feel as if you are being crushed by it. You take a deep breath, keeping your eyes honed in on the cement ground. “I um, I’m really, really sorry,” you start, the words coming out raspy from your unused and tear tingled voice. The volume barely above a whisper so you quickly clear your throat, “I shouldn’t have come here today. I ah, I didn’t want to ever make you feel uncomfortable in any way. And I guess I just need to apologize to you for my ridiculous antics last week. And ah, and for stupidly agreeing to come to this junket. I’ll just um,” you glance over your shoulder momentarily. “I’ll just be going now,” you finally glanced up at him, as you gesture with your thumb over your shoulder and take a step back. “Sorry again, for um, for everything.”

But holy fuck, he is so much better looking than you could have ever imagined. Up close and personal he is a freaking dream boat—Argh! You have no right to ogle this man! Give your damn head a shake. You are the very last person on this planet who is allowed to fangirl over him right now.

You quickly turn and continue to hastily make your way towards the road, not even giving him a moment to respond to your words. You don’t need him to say anything back though, he doesn’t owe you a damn thing. You are the dick that brought this all on to not only in yourself, but this poor man as well.

You got the chance to apologize to him, which is more than you could have ever asked for. Now you just want this all to be over. You just want to go home and pretend like this entire week never happened. He can go back to his normal life, and you to yours.

God, you could really use a stiff drink right now, but that’s what got you into this whole mess in the first place. So that’s probably not the smartest idea at the moment. So instead you’ll settle for a giant tub of ice cream and a lengthy, tear filled, phone call with your bestie.

“Wait,” he says softly, probably so he doesn’t startle you any further, as you feel a large warm hand grasp your elbow, urging you to turn back around.

You clench your eyes shut, why can’t this just all be over already?! Why you?! You take a deep stuttering breath in then open your eyes and turn to face him again. He releases your elbow as you do and then you awkwardly lock eyes with him once again.

One of his large hands comes up to rub the back of his neck, the action almost looking sheepish. Clearly he also has a few words for you, and whatever they are you’ll totally deserve them. Even if they are chastising you for your stupid posts. So you quickly steel yourself for what’s about to come.

“I ah, I wasn’t—“ he pauses then quickly corrects himself, “I’m not uncomfortable about you being here,” he shakes his head, “not at all. I just—firstly, I just wanted to apologize to you, actually. I know they probably forced you to be here today, I don’t really know how, but judging by your reaction to all of this, I’m guessing you really had no say in being here.“ He sighs deeply, “I had no idea that they’d actually invited you, so I can only assume that Tony played a huge hand in all of this. He really likes to insert himself into other people's lives, so I apologize that you got dragged into this. He doesn’t really know when to butt out.”

You nod slowly as you glance down to the ground again, “it’s okay. You really don’t owe me anything, I honestly brought this all on myself. I um, I don’t blame anyone else for any of this, but thank you for saying all of that.” You look back up at him, “it really helps to hear. This week has just been—“ you cut yourself off with a deep sigh, as you wave a dismissive hand around, “sorry, that’s really not important. Um, just basically thank you, ya know, for easing my mind with all of this.”

He frowns a little, but quickly corrects it. And you still just honestly want this all to be done with. But he looks like he still has more to say, so looks like your hopes will go unanswered this time. And just as you suspected he speaks up again.

He shakes his head, “don’t mention it, but I should really be the one thanking you.”

Awe, isn’t that just so dang sweet of him—wait, what?! I’m sorry, come again?! Your eyes widen as your mouth falls open slightly. You imagine it’s a super attractive look—note the sarcasm again—but you honestly can’t bring yourself to care about that at the moment. Because what did he just say?

Your eyebrows furrow after far too long of a moment with you just gaping up at him. “I’m sorry if this is rude, but um, why exactly would you owe me a thank you?”

He smiles down at you, then quickly glances over his shoulder before looking back to you. “I’ll explain all that, but first, can I show you something?”

You find yourself nodding before you’ve even realized it. “Um, yeah. Yeah, of course.”

“Okay, great. Just uh, just follow me then,” he says through a hesitant smile as he leads you off and away from the gathering. You aren’t sure where exactly he is taking you, but for the first time all week, you aren’t worried at all. Probably because this is Steve Rogers, the man out of time, and a true gentleman, in every sense of the word.

And maybe, just maybe, your hellish week that all began thanks to one stupid drunk moment, might just end on a way better note. Maybe your Drunk Twitter escapades weren’t all bad. Maybe they weren’t entirely horrible.

But honestly who really knows, you’d just have to wait and find out.

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Part 2 of this, from Steve POV, will be coming sometime this week! So stay tuned for that!

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Using STAT for Content Strategy – Whiteboard Friday

Posted by DiTomaso

Search results are sophisticated enough to show searchers not only the content they want, but in the format they want it. Being able to identify searcher intent and interest based off of ranking results can be a powerful driver of content strategy. In this week’s Whiteboard Friday, we warmly welcome Dana DiTomaso as she describes her preferred tools and methods for developing a modern and effective content strategy.

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Video Transcription

Hi, everyone. Welcome to Whiteboard Friday. My name is Dana DiTomaso. I’m President and partner of Kick Point, which is a digital marketing agency based way up in Edmonton, Alberta. Come visit sometime.

What I’m going to be talking about today is using STAT for content strategy. STAT, if you’re not familiar with STAT Search Analytics, which is in my opinion the best ranking tool on the market and Moz is not paying me to say that, although they did pay for STAT, so now STAT is part of the Moz family of products. I really like STAT. I’ve been using it for quite some time. They are also Canadian. That may or may not influence my decision.

But one of the things that STAT does really well is it doesn’t just show you where you’re ranking, but it breaks down what type of rankings and where you should be thinking about rankings. Typically I find, especially if you’ve been working in this field for a long time, you might think about rankings and you still have in your mind the 10 blue links that we used to have forever ago, and that’s so long gone. One of the things that’s useful about using STAT rankings is you can figure out stuff that you should be pursuing other than, say, the written word, and I think that that’s something really important again for marketers because a lot of us really enjoy reading stuff.

Consider all the ways searchers like to consume content

Maybe you’re watching this video. Maybe you’re reading the transcript. You might refer to the transcript later. A lot of us are readers. Not a lot of us are necessarily visual people, so sometimes we can forget stuff like video is really popular, or people really do prefer those places packs or whatever it might be. Thinking outside of yourself and thinking about how Google has decided to set up the search results can help you drive better content to your clients’ and your own websites.

The biggest thing that I find that comes of this is you’re really thinking about your audience a lot more because you do have to trust that Google maybe knows what it’s doing when it presents certain types of results to people. It knows the intent of the keyword, and therefore it’s presenting results that make sense for that intent. We can argue all day about whether or not answer boxes are awesome or terrible.

But from a visitor’s perspective and a searcher’s perspective, they like them. I think we need to just make sure that we’re understanding where they might be showing up, and if we’re playing by Google rules, people also ask is not necessarily going anywhere.

All that being said, how can we use ranking results to figure out our content strategy? The first thing about STAT, if you haven’t used STAT before, again check it out, it’s awesome.

Grouping keywords with Data Views

But one of the things that’s really nice is you can do this thing called data views. In data views, you can group together parts of keywords. So you can do something called smart tags and say, “I want to tag everything that has a specific location name together.”

Opportunities — where are you not showing up?

Let’s say, for example, that you’re working with a moving company and they are across Canada. So what I want to see here for opportunities are things like where I’m not ranking, where are there places box showing up that I am not in, or where are the people also ask showing up that I am not involved in. This is a nice way to keep an eye on your competitors.

Locations

Then we’ll also do locations. So we’ll say everything in Vancouver, group this together. Everything in Winnipeg, group this together. Everything in Edmonton and Calgary and Toronto, group all that stuff together.

Attributes (best, good, top, free, etc.)

Then the third thing can be attributes. This is stuff like best, good, top, free, cheap, all those different things that people use to describe your product, because those are definitely intent keywords, and often they will drive very different types of results than things you might consider as your head phrases.

So, for example, looking at “movers in Calgary” will drive a very different result than “top movers in Calgary.” In that case, you might get say a Yelp top 10 list. Or if you’re looking for “cheapest mover in Calgary,”again a different type of search result. So by grouping your keywords together by attributes, that can really help you as well determine how those types of keywords can be influenced by the type of search results that Google is putting out there.

Products / services

Then the last thing is products/services. So we’ll take each product and service and group it together. One of the nice things about STAT is you can do something called smart tags. So we can, say, figure out every keyword that has the word “best” in it and put it together. Then if we ever add more keywords later, that also have the word “best,”they automatically go into that keyword group. It’s really useful, especially if you are adding lots of keywords over time. I recommend starting by setting up some views that make sense.

You can just import everything your client is ranking for, and you can just take a look at the view of all these different keywords. But the problem is that there’s so much data, when you’re looking at that big set of keywords, that a lot of the useful stuff can really get lost in the noise. By segmenting it down to a really small level, you can start to understand that search for that specific type of term and how you fit in versus your competition.

A deep dive into SERP features

So put that stuff into STAT, give it a little while, let it collect some data, and then you get into the good stuff, which is the SERP features. I’m covering just a tiny little bit of what STAT does. Again, they didn’t pay me for this. But there’s lots of other stuff that goes on in here. My personal favorite part is the SERP features.

Which features are increasing/decreasing both overall and for you?

So what I like here is that in SERP features it will tell you which features are increasing and decreasing overall and then what features are increasing and decreasing for you.

This is actually from a real set for one of our clients. For them, what they’re seeing are big increases in places version 3, which is the three pack of places. Twitter box is increasing. I did not see that coming. Then AMP is increasing. So that says to me, okay, so I need to make sure that I’m thinking about places, and maybe this is a client who doesn’t necessarily have a lot of local offices.

Maybe it’s not someone you would think of as a local client. So why are there a lot more local properties popping up? Then you can dive in and say, “Okay, only show me the keywords that have places boxes.” Then you can look at that and decide: Is it something where we haven’t thought about local SEO before, but it’s something where searchers are thinking about local SEO? So Google is giving them three pack local boxes, and maybe we should start thinking about can we rank in that box, or is that something we care about.

Again, not necessarily content strategy, but certainly your SEO strategy. The next thing is Twitter box, and this is something where you think Twitter is dead. No one is using Twitter. It’s full of terrible people, and they tweet about politics all day. I never want to use it again, except maybe Google really wants to show more Twitter boxes. So again, looking at it and saying, “Is Twitter something where we need to start thinking about it from a content perspective? Do we need to start focusing our energies on Twitter?”

Maybe you abandoned it and now it’s back. You have to start thinking, “Does this matter for the keywords?” Then AMP. So this is something where AMP is really tricky obviously. There have been studies where it said, “I implemented AMP, and I lost 70% of my traffic and everything was terrible.” But if that’s the case, why would we necessarily be seeing more AMP show up in search results if it isn’t actually something that people find useful, particularly on mobile search?

Desktop vs mobile

One of the things actually that I didn’t mention in the tagging is definitely look at desktop versus mobile, because you are going to see really different feature sets between desktop and mobile for these different types of keywords. Mobile may have a completely different intent for a type of search. If you’re a restaurant, for example, people looking for reservations on a desktop might have different intent from I want a restaurant right now on mobile, for example, and you’re standing next to it and maybe you’re lost.

What kind of intent is behind the search results?

You really have to think about what that intent means for the type of search results that Google is going to present. So for AMP, then you have to look at it and say, “Well, is this newsworthy? Why is more AMP being shown?” Should we consider moving our news or blog or whatever you happen call it into AMP so that we can start to show up for these search results in mobile? Is that a thing that Google is presenting now?

We can get mad about AMP all day, but how about instead if we actually be there? I don’t want the comment section to turn into a whole AMP discussion, but I know there are obviously problems with AMP. But if it’s being shown in the search results that searchers who should be finding you are seeing and you’re not there, that’s definitely something you need to think about for your content strategy and thinking, “Is AMP something that we need to pursue? Do we have to have more newsy content versus evergreen content?”

Build your content strategy around what searchers are looking for

Maybe your content strategy is really focused on posts that could be relevant for years, when in reality your searchers are looking for stuff that’s relevant for them right now. So for example, things with movers, there’s some sort of mover scandal. There’s always a mover who ended up taking someone’s stuff and locking it up forever, and they never gave it back to them. There’s always a story like that in the news.

Maybe that’s why it’s AMP. Definitely investigate before you start to say, “AMP everything.” Maybe it was just like a really bad day for movers, for example. Then you can see the decreases. So the decrease here is organic, which is that traditional 10 blue links. So obviously this new stuff that’s coming in, like AMP, like Twitter, like places is displacing a lot of the organic results that used to be there before.

So instead you think, well, I can do organic all day, but if the results just aren’t there, then I could be limiting the amount of traffic I could be getting to my website. Videos, for example, now it was really interesting for this particular client that videos is a decreasing SERP for them, because videos is actually a big part of their content strategy. So if we see that videos are decreasing, then we can take a step back and say, “Is it decreasing in the keywords that we care about? Why is it decreasing? Do we think this is a test or a longer-term trend?”

Historical data

What’s nice about STAT is you can say “I want to see results for the last 7 days, 30 days, or 60 days.” Once you get a year of data in there, you can look at the whole year and look at that trend and see is it something where we have to maybe rethink our video strategy? Maybe people don’t like video for these phrases. Again, you could say, “But people do like video for these phrases.” But Google, again, has access to more data than you do.

If Google has decided that for these search phrases video is not a thing they want to show anymore, then maybe people don’t care about video the way that you thought they did. Sorry. So that could be something where you’re thinking, well, maybe we need to change the type of content we create. Then the last one is carousel that showed up for this particular client. Carousel, there are ones where they show lots of different results.

I’m glad that’s dropping because that actually kind of sucks. It’s really hard to show up well there. So I think that’s something to think about in the carousel as well. Maybe we’re pleased that that’s going away and then we don’t have to fight it as much anymore. Then what you can see in the bottom half are what we call share of voice.

Share of voice

Share of voice is calculated based on your ranking and all of your competitors’ ranking and the number of clicks that you’re expected to get based on your ranking position.

So the number 1 position obviously gets more ranks than the number 100 position. So the share of voice is a percentage calculated based on how many of these types of items, types of SERP features that you own versus your competitors as well as your position in these SERP features. So what I’m looking at here is share of voice and looking at organic, places, answers, and people also ask, for example.

So what STAT will show you is the percentage of organic, and it’s still, for this client — and obviously this is not an accurate chart, but this is vaguely accurate to what I saw in STAT — organic is still a big, beefy part of this client’s search results. So let’s not panic that it’s decreasing. This is really where this context can come in. But then you can think, all right, so we know that we are doing “eeh” on organic.

Is it something where we think that we can gain more? So the green shows you your percentage that you own of this, and then the black is everyone else. Thinking realistically, you obviously cannot own 100% of all the search results all the time because Google wouldn’t allow that. So instead thinking, what’s a realistic thing? Are we topping out at the point now where we’re going to have diminishing returns if we keep pushing on this?

Identify whether your content efforts support what you’re seeing in STAT

Are we happy with how we’re doing here? Maybe we need to turn our attention to something else, like answers for example. This particular client does really well on places. They own a lot of it. So for places, it’s maintain, watch, don’t worry about it that much anymore. Then that can drop off when we’re thinking about content. We don’t necessarily need to keep writing blog post for things that are going to help us to rank in the places pack because it’s not something that’s going to influence that ranking any further.

We’re already doing really well. But instead we can look at answers and people also ask, which for this particular client they’re not doing that well. It is something that’s there, and it is something that it may not be one of the top increases, but it’s certainly an increase for this particular client. So what we’re looking at is saying, “Well, you have all these great blog posts, but they’re not really written with people also ask or answers in mind. So how about we go back and rewrite the stuff so that we can get more of these answer boxes?”

That can be the foundation of that content strategy. When you put your keywords into STAT and look at your specific keyword set, really look at the SERP features and determine what does this mean for me and the type of content I need to create, whether it’s more images for example. Some clients, when you’re looking at e-commerce sites, some of the results are really image heavy, or they can be product shopping or whatever it might be.

There are really specific different features, and I’ve only shown a tiny subset. STAT captures all of the different types of SERP features. So you can definitely look at anything if it’s specific to your industry. If it’s a feature, they’ve got it in here. So definitely take a look and see where are these opportunities. Remember, you can’t have a 100% share of voice because other people are just going to show up there.

You just want to make sure that you’re better than everybody else. Thanks.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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