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themilky-way · 4 years

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paris {s.r}

gif credit: sincerelycalum on tumblr

pairing: spencer reid x female! reader

summary: while working on a case in paris, you and spencer realize that there may be more to your friendship than you think. how long until the city of love casts a spell on you? based on this song.

warnings: none i think it’s just fluff (like everything I write lol)

author’s note: this long af bc this was supposed to be a series and this would’ve been the second part but the first one i posted didn’t do well lmao. so instead, just enjoy this one shot and maybe i’ll post the first one again if u guys want but idk. also we a lil bold in this fic bc we love confident queens

grabbing your go bag and cell phone from the charging port, you quickly made your way to the jet that was already waiting for departure. the team was ready to make their way to paris, france on a case for a serial killer that migrated from california. it had been difficult for everyone, considering the unsub wasn’t leaving much evidence.

despite it being for work, you and the team were excited to explore one of the most beautiful cities in the world. if you thought about it, it was kind of like killing two birds with one stone: the opportunity to finally catch a gruesome killer and a vacation. morgan was practically shaking with anticipation as he kept getting up from his seat and bothering garcia every five minutes and then going back.

“just think about it, baby, all the smokin’ hot people we’re gonna meet. I mean, it’s called the “city of love” for a reason!” derek rambled to penelope as she typed away rapidly on her computer.

“this isn’t a vacation, sugar, but yes I’m aware of all the potential babes we might encounter. and for that, I prepared another bag,” she giggled as derek started to laugh along with her. he raised his hand to high five her and she lifted hers too, lightly patting it.

“oh you’re bad bad aren’t you,” he laughed, and they both continued to talk too rapidly for the others to understand. meanwhile, you had grabbed your seat next to emily and right across from you was spencer. you and emily were talking about god knows what, the range going from guessing the types of desserts paris had to perhaps renting a motorcycle for your stay. the banter between the both of you was endless, and you even started watching a french movie to get some pointers on the language.

between the jokes and wondering remarks, you didn’t really notice that spencer was observing you the whole time. sure, he could play it off as if he were judging both of his coworkers for their lack of knowledge on french culture and linguistics, but he wasn’t really doing that, was he? no, in fact, he was watching you in such depth, the way he’d look at the pages of a book, and taking in every aspect that you had to present. he was, in the most simplest way it can be described as, mesmerized.

the day spencer realized that he looked at you this way shocked him. to be completely honest, it scared the hell out of him. he never pictured you as anything more than a friend, and he always thought you were too relaxed for a job like this. he told himself that he’d leave the matter alone, that their would be no thinking or second-guessing of any kind. but the second he’d lay his eyes on you, it’s like the rules he made up never quite existed. however, the more he looked back on it, there was one question that urged this matter forward: am I gonna find out why?

he shook out of his deep concentration to look up at the voice that was now speaking to him. his eyes focused again and he stared at you confused.

“reid, you okay? you’re spacing out on me, buddy,” you said, head turned slightly from the position you were seated in. you had shifted in your seat to face emily, your left leg bent on the cushion and your right giving you stability on the ground.

“sorry, I was busy thinking.”

“well, try not to use that big ol’ brain of yours too much yet, we’re gonna need it when we land,” you said, giving him a small wink. he gave you a small smile while a tiny smear of rose-colored blush crept its way onto his cheeks. it was a friendly gesture; everyone on the team did it so you thought, “why the hell not?”

reid opted to read a little bit while on the plane so that he could get in some new interrogating tactics for when they met the unsub. you and emily continued to watch french movies and spot all of the hot actors and actresses you thought would be fake, penny and morgan, well they were on a whole different level of fun. the only ones quiet and doing some work was hotch, jj, and rossi.

the plane slowly began to descend, butterflies erupting in your stomach from the fall, before the captain announced, “we are now ready to descend and are getting ready for arrival.”

when the captain finished, hotch began, “alright, listen up, team. the location of this case was by chance and we shouldn’t get distracted by anything or anyone. do your job quickly and efficiently as you’ve always had.” he spoke sternly, his shoulders were straight and his face emotionless and heavy with sleep. to any other person, hotch would be a zombie who helped solve murder cases, but to the bau team, he was their leader and they admired him.

“oh, come on, hotch! if we work extra hard these few days and have enough time by the end of the wee-” you began before getting cut off.

“yes, we can stay a while and explore the city. the unsub and the evidence altogether looks promising, so hopefully we can wrap it up quick. but don’t stray from your path in the meantime.”

everybody nodded and “yes, sir’d” before standing up and grabbing their luggage from the compartments at the top of their seats. everyone walked out in pairs and headed for the taxi cars that were waiting for them. you took emily, morgan took reid, jj and penelope partnered up, and of of course rossi and hotchner stuck together. at different paces, the team agreed at a nearby hotel closest to the paris police department that had called them. getting your bags in the car, along with the rest of the girls’, you made your way to the hotel to check in and drop your luggage off.

at first glance, it looked like a simple building; a cream color adorning the walls and some very intricate, sophisticated street lamps aligned on the perimeter of the parking entrance. before entering, there was a sort of roundabout you had to pass in order to reach to valet parking, and in the center of the roundabout, was a water fountain. it was simple, yes, but to parisians only. to outsiders, like the bau, it was already quite elegant. the ladies, including you, pitched in a little to pay for the ride and once you got out, there was a young man who offered to take your bags inside.

“avez-vous besoin d'aide, madame?” the boy said. all of you looked at each other a little confused because even though you thought it might’ve helped, watching french movies for nine hours with emily wasn’t doing it.

“he’s asking if you need help with these. here,” penny clarified before putting her tiny hello kitty handbag in yours, “let me handle it.”

she walked up to the somewhat tall boy, looked him over once, and said in the thickest french accent there was, “oui je fais mon doux muffin merci beaucoup.” she did a tiny hair flip to her blonde curls and came back to where the rest of you were standing.

“penny, uh, what exactly did you tell that boy?” emily said, stifling down a small giggle.

“nothing, i just said “yes” that I needed help and “thank you very much.”

“no, no, the other part. there must’ve been another part to it. tell us!” jj said, grabbing penelope by the shoulders and shaking them lightly.

“what other part?”

“the one where you made a boy dressed in victorian era clothing blush like a maniac over some luggage,” you laughed. to this, garcia started to laugh too and then even harder. you and the rest of the girls had puzzled grins on their faces, but the inkling of seeing your friend laugh so hard was reaching your guys’ throats too.

when she finally caught a breath to speak, she said, “I called him my sweet muffin!” at this, you and the girls broke into heaves of laughter, and couldn’t stop. you and jj had to bend down and place a hand on your stomachs’ to stop them from hurting a little. after a while, there was no words just the intake of small breaths and exhaling them out for control. when the fun comedy was over, you guys followed the boy and his friend inside the hotel lobby. `you took turns registering, and when you were all done, you saw that the rest of the team had beat you to it. they were sitting down in a cushion area near the front desk and were waiting for you guys.

“okay, now that the rooms are ready, you all can pick a partner to dorm with. it doesn’t really matter, but just choose wisely. I know some people get too crazy when they’re together,” hotch announced, flashing a look at you and garcia before handing out keys. you and emily teamed up per usual, and the rest pairing up in the same order they had been in before. once everyone was ready, you started to make your way up to your rooms while making small chatter with the rest of the gang. emily inserted the key into the lock of the door, and as soon she opened the door, your eyes’ were met with the most delicate and luxurious room you both have ever encountered.

on either side of the room were two king sized beds with victorian style bed sheets; the design on them were floral, the pastel shades of the roses tracing the outline of the bed beautifully. the ends of the sheets were long, but shabby, which added a nice, elegant, and almost romantic feel to it.

in the middle of the two beds was a small isle that allowed one person to walk on it at a time. at the end of it, was the entrance to the balcony, which gave view to the famed Eiffel Tower. the small cities, parks, and lakes, that made up the ground portion of the tower were now completely lit up, giving way to an entire new feeling for you. you set your bags on the bed, pushing the cushion down with your hand to feel the softness of it, and made way to the balcony.

“i’ll be right out here, em, if you need me,” you said, waiting for the small “yup” that came from her before proceeding. as soon as your leg crossed the small threshold to the other side, the fresh, cool breeze of the night flooded your senses. you smiled and took in the emotion it gave you, fully crossing over to stand against the railing now. you took in the sights first. the trees that shaped the parks swiveled against the current of the wind, couples of all ages walking hand in hand, admiring how the moon and the stars matched so well to their love. the lights of the tower gleaming brightly and almost seemingly looking at you, as if they asked you, “don’t you realize, (y/n)? don’t you pay attention?”

paris, and everything it was offering you at that moment, put you through a trance. one where you began to actually speak to the lights, the very same ones that millions of others had fallen in love under. “realize what? I do pay attention, i always have, but what is it I need to notice?”

you kept staring and looking around, if the lights actually were talking to you and this wasn’t a dream, and that you weren’t crazy. you looked around the balcony and walked on it to spy a tiny clue your instincts informed you about. soon enough, you noticed that the balcony was shared by the room next door. you placed your right hand on the rail to kneel down a bit and see if you could figure out who the room belonged to.

“maybe it’s penny, oh god please be penny. i’m not in the mood to see rossi in scooby-doo underpants...” you whispered fairly. just when you saw a dainty silhouette about to exit the restroom, you turned around to your end of the balcony.

“(y/n)? are you spying on- (y/n), we’ve been here one hour! our hot, paris boyfriends can wait until we catch the unsub,” emily, whose head was the only part of her body on the outside of the balcony, whispered. “come on, get changed into some comfy clothes. we can take a look at the victimology together.”

standing up, you made one quick glance at the room and the figure was already gone and so was the light. thanks for that, eiffel tower lights, you thought. you crossed to you room again and took a shower before arranging your clothes according to the days of your stay. you put your pajamas on and climbed onto one side of emily’s bed to wait for her to come out of the restroom, since you guys took turns brushing your teeth.

after about a half and hour of rearranging victimology statements and connecting photos from the crime scene, the both of you were ready to go to sleep. emily turned off her lights and you took one last glance at the view before doing the same.

and then you heard footsteps on your balcony.

----------

“you guys think I can woo a french girl tonight?”

“honey, with those shoes? not a chance,” garcia pointed out. morgan made a pout at her response and then acted as if he was offended. the team laughed and then raised their glass in unison and took a sip. the case, overall, went well. you guys managed to catch the unsub in an isolated tunnel and brought him over to the parisian authorities. you and jj had taken the only victim left alive to the station to make one final statement to the news. the rest of bodies were given proper burial and the families were finally given closure.

because the team had performed beyond excellent, and there were still a few days left before your departure, the team opted on celebrating on a night out. currently, you and your friends were seated around a small circular table inside a local bar, chatting away at whatever came to mind.

you chose to only drink mineral water, mostly because you knew that you were technically still at work and you didn’t want to risk being drunk in case of an emergency. reid, in a similar manner, chose a glass of soda to toast with. but while doing so, he found himself looking at you in the same way he did on the plane. he hadn’t been able to take in your features that night, but as everyone was so deeply distracted, he began to notice everything.

he looked over your outfit for tonight, a red, plaid mini skirt with a black turtleneck. the shirt itself was fitted to your body and allowed your angles and curves to be accentuated perfectly. the skirt permitted your legs to be highlighted in a decent, and elegant manner. your hair was loose tonight, and with every breeze that made its way through the bar windows, it caused small strands to caress your face lightly and some to stick to your lip gloss. the heels, oh god, the heels. it drove him crazy; the delicate way in which they clicked when you walked on the concrete, how they would sometimes cause you discomfort and force you to stop and fix it, how your gentle hand had grasp his shoulder for balance or else you’d fall.

everything about you tonight was immaculate. no matter how hard he forced himself to look away from you, to stop thinking of you in any other way than a coworker, and to just drink his soda which was becoming less carbonated with every passing second, he just couldn’t. and it was scaring the hell out of him.

you on the other hand, were still trying to decipher what the tower lights had asked you. what was there to realize? you were here, in paris, the city where millions of people fall in love, to fight a serial killer. the chances of you finding love, especially on a balcony where you had spied on a stranger, were slim.

by the time you finished your thought process, you noticed that hotch was looking at you with a puzzled expression.

“everything alright, (y/n)?” he softly asked you.

“yes, sir, just thinking. is it okay if I head back to my hotel?”

“yes, of course, you might even catch reid on the way there. he left a couple of minutes ago.”

“thank you, sir. good night,” you spoke and got up from your chair, adjusting your skirt as you did so. huh, he left? weird, you thought. you left a tip for the waiter and bid farewell to the rest of your companions before grabbing your coat and clutch and exiting the bar.

it was rather close to your hotel, so within a few minutes you had reached your dorm and set your things down. sitting down on the edge of the bed, you bent over slightly to unlatch your heels and slip them off your feet. you set them aside and you laid on your back for a few minutes. the only light in your room was the bathroom’s as you didn’t like strong lights shining during the night, so these dimmed ones would do.

you closed your eyes for a little while and just let the sounds of the city flow through you. you had one opportunity to experience paris, and you weren’t gonna take it for granted. for a while, only your small inhales and exhales of breath were audible, the aura of the room peaceful.

it wasn’t until you heard footsteps, the very same ones from that other night, on your balcony. your eyes flew open and you pushed your body upward to look back at your window. this is my shot, my chance, you thought. could it be a super old man who was here on vacation? yes. could it rossi, who might’ve gotten the dorm next to yours? maybe. were the possibilities of who the hell was on your balcony in a parisian hotel endless? again, yes.

but you had to see for yourself, figure out what exactly the universe, paris, was telling you. so you got up from your bed and creeped quietly to the window and slid it up. you crossed the threshold, and even though your light was limited, you were able to make out a tall, thin figure. you inched a little closer, hands crossed over your chest to appear somewhat like a normal human. you wouldn’t have figured it out until he spoke.

“(y/n)?”

his voice sent shivers down every inch of your body, and no, it wasn’t the cold air of the city, it was him. it was spencer. it caught you by surprise, the feeling his voice gave you, but you tried to play it off. he never made you feel this way, why now?

“(y/n)? you okay?” he spoke again. this time you lightly shook your head and walked closer to where he was standing so you could lean on the railing now. his body followed yours, and now you were able to make out the perpexled look on his eyes.

“hi, yeah, I’m good. just didn’t expect to find you here, that’s all,” you spoke quietly, unsure of yourself. he noticed, obviously he noticed, it’s spencer.

“yeah, same here. I heard footsteps the other night here but I had just taken a shower so I didn’t come out until later.” you glanced up at him when you realized that he was the figure that was in the restroom you’d seen. the one you had spied on and probably would’ve seen naked if emily hadn’t interrupted. a tiny blush made its way onto your cheeks, and you were quite thankful the dark covered the rosy color a little.

but spencer wasn’t dumb, much less stupid, and if he noticed every little detail about you tonight, he saw how you became around him. and god, he sure did like it. “oh, well that’s good, i guess,” was all you could mutter. so you turned your body now to face the tower, elbows on the railing and hands folded together. he saw the shift in stance and he followed, so now you were both side by side and looking at a view that somehow resembled your emotions for one another.

“hey spence?”

“yeah?”

“have you ever fallen in love?”

his voice hitched a little and he felt his throat tighten. he let out a small cough to mask the impact of your question, but he found the strength in his voice to retort.

“what makes you ask?”

“no, no reason, i was just curious, ya know. being in paris and all,” you answered. you began to feel intrusive for asking such a personal question, but it had seemed easy for you to do so because of your friendship. you were looking at him as you replied, but then looked back towards the view again. the both of you stood in silence for a couple minutes, your guilt seeping in more at this point.

“only once. it didn’t end well for the both of us,” he broke the silence. you turned your head to look at him, and you were about to open your mouth to say something when he spoke again.

“but it happened a long time ago. i don’t think about her anymore.”

you straightened up a little and you continued to face him, prying a little deeper than you should be. “so who do you think about now?”

he glanced at you, his face quickly returning back to the nature displayed in front of him and then looked back to you. a small grin began tugging at his lips, as if he meant to ask, “is this your way of playing with me?”

you gazed up at him and took this sudden swerve of confidence to glance at his lips, and then back up to him, your own smile forming.

“she’s standing on a balcony with me in paris.”

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minhthangcoi9993-blog · 6 years

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Review Game Detroit: Become Human

It’s a testament to the breadth of Quantic Dream’s branching storylines that I felt terribly guilty as the credits rolled after my second playthrough of Detroit: Become Human, as I’d played against my personal moral compass to test how far I could push the story’s exploration of the morality of artificial intelligence. This was very much the opposite of my mostly peaceful first run, and Detroit obliged my wickedness to a surprising degree, leaving a trail of bodies of those who had previously survived in my wake. And while it never seems to know when enough heavy-handed expositional dialogue is enough, Detroit: Become Human manages to be a frequently moving melodrama that bends to your choices with meaningful results.

Each of those playthroughs took around 10 hours to complete, and during that time Detroit’s pace rarely lags thanks to the deft juggling act it performs, alternating between three android characters across multiple chapters: Kara, a housekeeper who must care for a little girl named Alice, Connor; a prototype police model whose assignment is to round up ‘deviant’ androids, and Markus; a carer model who believes androids should share equal rights with humans.

The trio of performances is excellent. Bryan Dechart is delightful as Connor thanks to his deadpan innocence, which makes for a great foil against the whirling dervish of his cynical partner, Clancy Brown’s Lieutenant Hank Anderson. Valorie Curry brings quiet strength to Kara, and excels at selling her love for her ward, Alice, who is quite possibly the least charismatic video game child to have ever existed. Jesse Williams employs all of his dreamy Grey’s Anatomy warmth as Markus and is never unlikeable, no matter how you choose to play him.

Based on your choices, you can change their personalities and the tone of their individual stories. In my first playthrough, for example, the relationship between a humble Connor and the android-hating Anderson played out like a knockabout buddy comedy. In my second, I let Connor’s ambitions take over, and his story was of a different genre.

Though Markus appears to fundamentally remain endearing no matter what you do (unlike Connor, who really can be played as a hero or villain), there’s a tug-of-war going on within him that throws up some of Detroit's most interesting moral quandaries. Kara’s story seems less tonally flexible but is the quietest and most intimate, which provides a welcome contrast to all the running and explosions you can opt into in the other two stories.

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For the most part, supporting characters adapt to the way you choose to play, but there are occasional misfires. When I played as ‘nice’ Connor, for example, Anderson was far too aggressive toward him to be believable. When I played as ‘mean,’ or even ‘indifferent’ Connor, his fury made a lot more sense. At one point, Markus gained a lover very abruptly, and I felt I’d missed a slow burn somewhere. It’s noticeable when your choices feel they’re going against the grain of a more robust story.

I found all three of Detroit’s central characters to be dramatically interesting, which meant putting them in compromising situations – or worse, killing them – was a real fear throughout. It’s testament to the writing and performances that I found making decisions “just to see what would happen” teeth-clenchingly hard.

I'm a Real Boy

The backbone of Detroit’s story – meaning the one that’s relatively fixed in place despite the choices you make around it – is big, ambitious fun that takes Phillip K. Dick's question of whether androids dream of electric sheep to the nth degree. In doing so, however, it does suffer from a multitude of plot holes. Marcus appears to gain magical android powers when it suits him; Hank is impressed when Connor solves the most basic of mysteries; and one twist makes absolutely no sense if you look back on that particular storyline after having finished.

These were noticeable (and often pretty funny), but they weren’t deal-breakers for me. Detroit is audacious and silly as hell, but it’s got real heart to it. There were enough moments of quiet tenderness to keep me emotionally invested, and the stakes were suitably high - particularly in its final act - to keep me thrilled.

With this in mind, there is a lot of clumsy exposition and dialogue I was willing to forgive, as one would while watching a fun B-movie. But occasionally, Detroit ignores the standard writing rule of “show, don’t tell” to such an extent I was yanked out of the story. Bad guys spout monologues that spell out Detroit’s themes in capital letters. (There’s a compartment for androids on public transport, in case you didn’t get what Detroit was going for here.) Select side characters, like Hank’s harrowed police chief and the inexplicably wise and mystical Lucy - are loudly cliched, so we understand what their roles are without any real character development.

With the remarkable performance-capture technology – and performances – Quantic Dream has at its disposal, there’s no real reason for such heavy-handedness. Nor do I think Detroit is incapable of subtlety; some of the scenarios here are unusual and profound. But I wish its ideas had more room to breathe before being trampled by someone spelling out the meaning for us.

Characters are certainly capable of non-verbal expressiveness. The level of detail you can see in their faces is astounding; facial hair, blemishes, freckles, and moles are rendered in stunning detail, particularly in checkerboard 4K on the PS4 Pro. The animation is just as good; as Kara and Alice hurry through the rain on a freezing night, hunched over and miserable, I could have been watching two humans from the side-streets.

The world here feels very real, too, built with a sense of history. This is a miserable, dark version of a future Detroit where androids are so omnipresent that they’re old news, sold in chain stores for the price of a discount mobile phone. Little details from the sidelines tell the story of a burst tech bubble, like basements filled to the brim with discarded models or a street performer advertising the fact he is playing “human music.”

Though the path you are guided through in Detroit’s world is as linear as previous Quantic games, I felt like there was more time to enjoy these beautifully detailed environments. One of my favourite sequences involved chasing graffiti tags to find a particular location, which ended up being an eerie, silent excursion in a forgotten corner of the city. There’s also a marvelous scene in an abandoned amusement park which still creaked with enough life that I got a sense of what it might have been, once upon a time.

The way you interact with Detroit’s environments hasn’t evolved much from Quantic Dream’s usual formula, which is unobtrusive and mostly works. Action sequences are generally executed using timed button presses, swoops of the thumbstick, and occasional motion control, which evoke the action you are performing on a case-by-case basis. An android detective mode allows you to scan your environment to reconstruct crime scenes, and fast-forwarding and rewinding through these is a lot of fun, as is a new ability to ‘pre-construct’ scenarios before you execute them. I would have liked the opportunity to play around with the latter ability more than I was allowed to, in fact.

Like Beyond: Two Souls before it, though, Detroit: Become Human struggles to justify its multiple fight scenes with meaningful interactivity. Clicking on buttons at just the right time while struggling with an angry android encourages a welcome sense of participation in the fight, but you have to screw it up disastrously to fail. I understand that making combat a proper challenge runs the risk of introducing an immersion-breaking sense of trial and error, but I was left wishing the stakes were just a little higher after I ‘won’ each fight without really trying. Why make them interactive at all if the input feels so meaningless?

Of course, the way you play Detroit is primarily through the choices you make within it. While there’s that backbone of a story that can’t be shattered, which can occasionally result in frustration when it makes a decision for you to keep you from straying too far off the beaten path, I found its branching paths to be multiple and deep. Quantic Dream has been smart in making this multitude of paths transparent through flowcharts introduced at the end of each chapter, showing you just how differently it could have played out if you’d made another choice, enticing you to play through again.

Not every alternate choice leads to a drastically different story, but some will. Sometimes it might lead to the same result, but by a surprising new means. Sometimes it might change your relationship with another character and unlock a path that wasn’t there before. Sometimes it might result in death, whether that be of a supporting character or one of the central trio (they can all die at points throughout Detroit), or a dramatic action sequence with unexpected consequences. Comparing endings, not only between my first and second playthroughs but with other players, was astounding, particularly when I assumed everybody’s story had wrapped the same way as mine and found that nobody’s had.

For me, this is the biggest draw of Detroit. One playthrough really isn’t enough to see what it has to offer, and characters and world-building are interesting enough that it was a pleasure to go back to see what I’d missed in scenarios that are deceptively complex.

The Verdict

Detroit: Become Human is a poignantly pulpy interactive sci-fi drama where your choices can impact events to a greater and more satisfying degree than in most games of this type. Though I wish its story had been handled with a softer touch, especially considering the subtlety that can be conveyed through its tech and performances, its well-written and acted central trio were vital enough to me that I found myself feeling genuine distress when they were in danger and a sense of victory when they triumphed. Most importantly, Detroit offers a multitude of transparent branching paths that entice further playthroughs, and choices have a permanence that raise the stakes throughout.

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