#From what I could gather I really identify with Aaron

[scaevolawrites]

Glass Butterflies

WELCOME TO WRITEBLR SECRET SANTA Happy Holidays @thousand-page-dreams

Your name was pulled out of the stocking that adorned my wall this festive season, and I got to work on making something that would fit you and your writing. I hope that the following poem (under the cut) does your WIP Glass Butterflies and the characters therein justice.

Glass Butterflies

People see me as a fragile thing To be handled carefully I wouldn’t know a thing about it So I keep my distance and watch Hoping to catch that moment that Makes me understand So I can finally move out of this shadow Hoping others will finally notice me

People see me as a butterfly To be adored and gawked at I do not see myself as such a thing So I keep to myself and try to forget Hoping these expectations will Not anchor me in place So I can finally move out of this limelight Hoping others will see who and not what I am

These images of people are all I have A shallow representation of the person they depict A thing without depth, purely superficial

These images people present themselves as are all I have A shallow representation of the person they want me to see A thing without depth, purely superficial

Others fail to notice his quiet moments Seeing only the extravert But by luck, I saw him A butterfly lost in thought Wholly alone And I wish I could tell him I understand

Others fail to notice his passion Seeing only the oddball But by luck, I saw him A fragile thing lost in thought Wholly engrossed And I wish I could tell him I understand

Perhaps one day I will gather the courage and speak

Perhaps one day I will gather the courage and speak

[violetrainbow412-blog]

Wishes fulfilled [S. R.] birthday wishes pt. 2

Spencer Reid x fem!reader

word count: 7.7k

summary: After an unfortunate event, Spencer questions what he really feels about his childhood best friend.

contains: best friends to lovers, a little angst at the beginning, conflict over feelings, mostly fluff

A/N: A anon suggested there be a second part for birthday wishes and I thought, why not? You can read it as a standalone or as a continuation, tell me what you thought! this makes me very happy:)

The months passed and very soon the Christmas season arrived. There were some allusive decorations courtesy of García and she had even placed a small tree in the meeting room with symbolic gifts under it, one for each member of the team that they could open after Christmas Eve. It was a month full of warmth, love and delicious hot chocolate, but criminals in the United States didn't seem to adhere to that rule so the BAU continued with business as usual.

“She was Abigail Jones,” Garcia began, projecting an image on the conference room screen of a woman who must have been in her thirties. “She was found dead yesterday in her apartment in Las Vegas, in the area of Downtown, with multiple signs of violence, sexual abuse, and a completely disfigured face…” when she said this, she turned away from looking at the photo, with good reason, as it made even the strongest members feel nauseous.

There were two other victims, the same mobile phone and in scattered areas of the city. They were single women, who lived alone and although they didn’t seem to share traits in terms of their socioeconomic level, they were extremely similar physically and that is why Spencer's stomach turned when he realized how much they looked like you. A call to Hotch's phone interrupted the presentation and they all waited for the exchange to end, until after exchanging a few sentences the man spoke.

“It was the police chief. There is a new victim, they just found her in the Summerlin area, in an apartment complex on Pennwood Avenue.”

“At Pennwood?” Spencer asked, turning completely pale as she heard the area where the attack had taken place “Who is she?”

“They haven’t yet identified the body, but she has the same characteristics as the other women”

Everyone was shocked to see the doctor get up from the table and leave the room without giving any explanation, apparently to make a call from his phone. Aaron set the departure time of the jet and after that some members approached the young agent to try to find out what was happening. He seemed very worried, with the device pressed firmly against his ear and his gaze lost.

“What's wrong, Reid?”

“I'm calling Y/N,” he explained, feeling his breathing begin to quicken. “She lives in those apartments.”

The rest of the team seemed to understand, then, the concern that had overcome the man due to the information they had just received. They were also profilers and even with the little that they knew you, they knew that you fit perfectly into victimology, so it wasn’t difficult for them to connect both dots to realize what Spencer's fear was.

The first call had no answer, other than the answering machine, so he called again, again and again until panic took him in its clutches like prey.

“Dude, calm down.”

"She doesn’t answer!" Spencer practically sobbed, feeling like everything around him was spinning and a second later collapsing into Morgan's arms.

"What's going on?"

“Reid fears that the woman they just found is Y/N,” JJ explained to her boss. By this point the entire team was already gathered around the man, sharing the worry that was tormenting him and thinking about the possibilities of everything. The trip to Vegas was longer than usual trips, which didn't help in the least.

Spencer felt a chill when he tried to dial your number again and, just like before, he only heard your pre-recorded voice.

“Okay, listen,” Hotch said firmly, as he approached Spencer and grabbed his shoulders to get his attention. “I'm going to ask the officer to call me as soon as they identify the body, until then I need you to calm down. Do you know if Y/N has any particular signs with which they can tell us now if it is her?”

“Huh, she…” he stammered, struggling to put two coherent thoughts together to answer, “she has a… a mole on her belly, I think. It’s small and red.”

Under other circumstances the team would have mocked him, asking him how he had that knowledge or something along those lines, however, the situation was too delicate to allow for jokes.

“Okay, get your things so we can leave as soon as possible. And again, calm down,” Hotch said firmly, pointing at the agent. “It's not her, Reid. I know it"

Spencer tried to do what his boss had asked, but he kept dialing his cell phone every two minutes hoping to hear a response. He tried to calm down by telling himself that the chances of that body being yours were very low and trying to find in his mind some statistics that would corroborate this, but fear barely allowed him to understand the situation enough to know any information at that moment.

Obviously he was the first to arrive at the jet and he didn't stop trying to communicate with you, until he saw Aaron walk through the hallway with an expression he couldn't decipher.

"She…"

“No,” the man responded immediately. “The victim's name is Olivia Anderson. She’s not Y/N”

Hearing this he let out a breath of air and took a couple of steps until he reached the opposite one, to wrap him in a hug of complete relief. Hotch responded with warmth and a murmur of 'I told you so', which was interrupted by the arrival of the rest of the team.

Even though you still weren't answering the calls, Spencer was able to feel calmer during the flight, enough to analyze various aspects of the case that allowed him to offer valuable contributions for the future. When delegating the commissions, the unit chief was condescending to him and asked him to go to the last crime scene, so that with some luck you could meet and he could make sure that you were okay.

When they arrived in Nevada, the snow greeted them and Spencer adjusted his scarf tighter as he got into the car that Morgan would drive to the crime scene. The walk wasn't long and once there Derek motioned to his partner when the officer arrived to talk to both of them, as if he were permitting him to enter the building instead of staying. Spencer didn't hesitate to practically run inside to look for your apartment, and when he finally found the door with the number 17 he knocked frantically, but when he didn't receive a response he only became more frustrated.

Where the hell were you supposed to be?

He felt a vibration in his right pocket and almost dropped the device from his hand when he answered the call, without even looking at the identifier.

"Hello?"

“Reid, come back here,” Morgan spoke. “Y/N is with me.”

The agent didn't have to say it twice for Spencer to go down the stairs with the same speed he went up them, almost tripping on the way, and when he came out he looked for you in every direction. The snow and the tide of law enforcement personnel blocked the view a bit, but when his eyes finally met yours, you smiled and waved your hand to get his attention. Spencer ran, again, towards you, until he crashed into you in a hug. You were smaller than him and you fit perfectly against his body.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he asked in an angry voice, separating himself from you so he could look at you, but without letting go of your waist “I called you at least thirty times and you didn't answer, do you have any idea how worried I was?”

“I, huh… I left my phone at home and I'm just getting back from work, I had no idea what happened. Morgan already told me that there was a homicide.”

“Did you know her?”

“She's my neighbor,” you muttered sadly, looking toward the entrance of the building. “Oh, Crash, this is so horrible. She was… she was very good and kind to everyone. She didn't deserve this."

“I want you to go in there, pack some changes of clothes, and come back here, okay?”

"Why?"

“You will stay with me in the hotel until the case is over,” he ruled, with a tone that gave no room for opposition. “I need to work right now, but while you do what I asked of you.”

“But… I can't just leave my apartment like that, and what about my job?”

“I will talk to your boss and if he refuses, I will charge him with obstruction of justice or I will assign you an escort if necessary, but you are not going anywhere alone.”

You knew perfectly well that, although Spencer was a valuable member of the unit, he didn't have the power to do that, but because of the confidence in his voice you doubted for a second if he would be able to ask someone higher up in the bureau's hierarchy for that favor. You had rarely heard him speak like that, with a mixture of anger and concern, and he had never ordered you to do anything in your life. But he was doing it now, he was giving you specific instructions that wouldn't take no for an answer.

“Reid, we need you here” you heard Derek say from the other side.

"What's going on? Why do I have to leave here?”

“I'll explain everything to you later, okay? For now you go and get your things to call a taxi” he said, a little less agitated than he had spoken at first. Then he, in an unexpected act, gently kissed your forehead “Wrap yourself up, it's freezing out here.”

Although you had more questions, you knew that he was working and that you couldn't interrupt him just because, so you went to your apartment and grabbed a small suitcase to start packing clothes. Your phone was, as you expected, on the kitchen counter and you checked that he wasn't exaggerating with the number of calls he made to you.

When you left there was already a taxi waiting for you, so he just gave you the address of the hotel where the team was staying so you could get there. It was a picturesque place with lots of cheerful Christmas decorations, with a friendly guy as the receptionist. He already seemed to be aware of the agreement and after you checked in, he guided you to the room, where your friend would also be staying.

You didn't understand why it was necessary to keep you there and you hoped that he would call you at some point to clarify the situation, but he didn't. Since you had brought your laptop with you, you took the opportunity to continue working and it wasn't until a couple of hours later, you didn't even know how many, that someone knocked on the door. You didn't open it until you asked who it was and recognized your friend's voice, seeing him standing with his briefcase slung over his shoulder and a tired smile.

“Hello,” you sighed in relief, greeting him with a hug and then pulling him inside. You let him put down his belongings and sit on the bed, while you stood in front of him. “Do you want to explain to me what is happening and why I am here?”

“There is a murderer on the loose”

“That seems obvious.”

“There is a murderer on the loose who killed your neighbor, with characteristics surprisingly similar to yours, both physical and personal” he added and it took you a moment of silence to understand where the matter was going “I just didn't want you to be near there because he could come back"

“Do you think I'm in danger?”

“I don't know, but you're the kind of woman the unsub likes. I wasn't going to risk you”

You nodded your head softly, from your position of crossed arms.

“And what does your boss think about this?”

“He didn't know,” he confessed to you and you opened your eyes widely. “But I told him on the way here and he said to just try to stay out of trouble or Strauss would call him out on it. It's just that I... panicked, okay? When the police found Olivia's body they had not identified it and… I was afraid that it was you”

Suddenly all the calls and his face contorting into a grimace of relief when he saw you made sense to you, because at this point you hadn't even realized how much you and Liv shared. But Spencer had done it, that was his job after all.

“But I'm fine,” you said reassuringly, as you knelt in the space between his legs and met his gaze. “I’m safe, okay?”

“Did you see anything suspicious in the last few days? Anything that can help?”

“I don't think so, I spend all day at work” you lamented “I'm sorry.”

“Don't worry,” he reassured you, giving you a tired smile.

You knew your friend and you knew beforehand what stress did to his body, like those horrible migraines he had started to get or the dark circles under his eyes, and now his body language was screaming at you that something was still bothering him.

“You should sleep,” you suggested, reaching out with one of your hands to place it on his cheek. Spencer didn't complain, instead he closed his eyes and turned his head slightly so he could rub his skin against your outstretched palm.

It took you by surprise when, just a second later, he leaned down to grab your waist and help you get up from the floor. You were about to ask what he was doing when he maneuvered himself again until you were sitting on his lap, your legs dangling next to his and his arm wrapped tightly around your lower back.

“So we're cozy now, huh?” you scoffed, trying to mask with a smile the blush that had already spread across your face at the position the man had placed you in.

Spencer was a great lover of physical contact, contrary to what many might think, although this depended a lot on the person he was with. It had taken you months of effort to get a handshake and only as the years went by did, he begin to enjoy hugs with you. But after so much time you had gotten used to it and that's why the man became all clingy with you, after all it wasn't very common for you to see each other, which didn't bother you at all.

However, him holding you like that felt completely different than usual. You had only felt those butterflies in your stomach when, on his birthday, you had been so drunk and tired that you ended up sharing a bed. You had to admit that you liked him more than you should, waking up sheltered by his body, between a tangle of limbs and feeling the rise and fall of his calm breathing; and when the thought of having more nights like this crossed your mind you suppressed it immediately, feeling tremendously guilty about it.

But this wasn’t a product of alcohol or fatigue, but rather Spencer had done this of his own free will. His hair curled at the tips and you took the opportunity to gently brush some pieces off his forehead, while he watched you in complete silence.

“I don't know what I would do if something ever happened to you.”

His confession was barely a whisper that tickled your cheek, said with such sincerity that he took you by surprise. You couldn't measure the fear that had brewed in your best friend's chest that morning and that's why you couldn't understand his need to have you physically close, as he wanted to make sure you were there with him and not brutally murdered on a bed in the morgue.

A sigh of tenderness left you and you immediately pulled him close to you to hug him, feeling your hip fitting into the curve of his stomach and his face close to your neck, like he always did.

“Is that why you are like this? Baby, you don't have to worry about me. I already told you I'm fine."

“I know,” he murmured. “But I can't help it.”

“Well, you'll have to try it.”

“How do you want me to try something like that?” he exclaimed, separating from you so he could look into your eyes, and keeping the minimum distance between you two “I can't. I will always worry about you, you are my…” the words were cut off, because he didn't think there was a word that encapsulated well enough what you meant to him, but also because he was momentarily distracted by your lips; why was he getting distracted by them?

“Best friend in the whole world and sole owner of your heart?”

“Something like that,” he responded, laughing for the first time that night, and as he did so his face only moved closer to yours. He was strangely nervous about your presence and didn't know why, so he didn't help much when you leaned against his body so he could hold you better. Spencer just hoped your ear couldn't pick up the increase in his heartbeat.

“We should be able to stay like this forever,” you muttered absently, and although you didn't mean to be serious the words hit the man worse than they should.

For a moment he contemplated the possibility of actually staying with you forever and then he realized it wasn't an idea he disliked. From an early age every time Spencer thought about his future you were in it, but he hadn't thought about the role he wanted you to play. You had been friends for so long that he didn't believe there was anything more to your relationship, however, he was very wrong.

Was holding you like that awakening something in him that he didn't think was possible? Or was it the fear of losing you that made him realize that he would rather die than spend a life without you? No book or statistical study gave him an answer to what he was feeling and, to be honest, that terrified him.

He knew that you had tried to have a relationship with several men throughout your life, but none of them had managed to progress beyond a few months, due to one reason or another. However, Spencer wondered how long it would take for you to finally find love and if he could stand to see someone become your priority. It's not that he was jealous or possessive, just that he had been used to being someone important in your life for too long to accept the change from one moment to the next. He would always be happy if you were happy, but it made him sick to think that you would end up marrying someone completely unworthy of your affection and admiration; someone who didn't deserve the best woman of all. And as if it were an epiphany, Spencer realized that he wanted to be that man.

He needed it. 

“We have to sleep,” he murmured, gently patting your back, because he was afraid that if you stayed like this any longer his mind would travel to some other inappropriate ideas. “Sleep on the bed, I'll sleep on the floor.”

“The bed is big enough”

“It doesn't matter, you use it,” he murmured. You had already stood up and were playing absentmindedly with the long sleeve of your blouse, without stopping to look at him.

"But…"

“I don't want to have this discussion today, okay?” the man had already taken some pillows and was spreading a sheet next to the bed. You, resigned, climbed up to the mattress and remained to kneel on it, watching your friend arrange his place.

“How many days will you stay here?”

"We don’t know yet. With some luck it will only be until tomorrow."

“You should visit your mom,” you murmured. Among so many emotions, Spencer had barely had time to think about Diana, at least until now that you had mentioned her, and he felt a pang of guilt. “It's almost Christmas, it would be a nice gift.”

“I think you're right,” he smiled. Things were ready and although he enjoyed talking to you now he felt extremely tired, so he just wanted to go to sleep. “Rest, okay? We’ll talk tomorrow"

“Good night,” you replied, smiling tenderly at him. An unexpected urge to lean in and steal a kiss grew in Spencer, which he tried to shake off of himself.

Without saying anything else he walked to turn off the light and then came back to lie down on the blanket, trying to sleep. When he was about to get it, he felt your arm fall over the side of the bed and your hand groping for any part of his body you could hold. In the end it was his hand that held yours and he couldn't see your blushing cheeks when he left a kiss on the back of it, nor his mischievous smile.

He knew when you had fallen asleep by the decrease in the strength of your grip, but although he tried to imitate you he couldn't do it. His mind continued to be tormented by the impulses that had invaded him that night, trying to find what reason was behind it, but also wondering how bad it would be to carry them out.

A little defeated, he got up from the floor, but not before carefully placing the hand that was holding you on your chest, and he went to see the landscape through the bedroom window. Snowflakes were falling and the lights of the casinos illuminated the view, reminding him that Las Vegas never slept, adding to these the colorful Christmas trees installed everywhere. In his family Christmas wasn’t celebrated conventionally, as it was just him and his mother having dinner ordered from a restaurant. There were gifts, they were almost always books or objects related to science, but he didn't make sense of the idea of warmth and love that revolved around the holiday. Until one time your family invited him to celebrate, he was finally able to understand that Christmas magic that everyone was talking about and from then on it was his reference for the celebration.

After staring at the window for a while he focused on the vision of you lying on the mattress, sleeping in that strange position that you always used to, and he asked himself how many years it was that he had been in love with you and how it was that he had never noticed it.

He let out a sigh that showed resignation, but also tremendous fear, and finally retraced his steps to pick up the blanket and pillows from the floor. He climbed onto the bed, knowing that he wouldn't be able to sleep otherwise, and he lay down next to you, trying not to make any movements that would disturb your calm. The last thing he saw before falling into morpheus’s arms was your peaceful face, and even when he slept his dreams were filled with your smile.

The unsub was successfully caught, just as he had predicted, the next day and that was when he could breathe easy again. You were no longer in danger, outside of the usual danger that a woman from the United States faces, so you could return to your normal life without any problems.

Once you were back at your apartment Spencer said goodbye, promising that he would see you again soon, and heeded your advice about visiting Diana. He asked Aaron if he could stay in Vegas, after all the Christmas holidays were right around the corner and he made the excuse that he could come back if a new case came up. When the boss granted his request he wasted no time and headed to Bennington Sanitarium while the rest of the team headed to Virginia on the jet.

When he arrived good news about his mother greeted him, all referring to the improvement she had with the new medication, and when the doctors' report was finished they took him to the room where she was. Diana was reading to another patient and Reid smiled lovingly at the sight, a smile that was reciprocated when his mother noticed his presence.

“My child, I didn’t expect your visit,” she murmured, while she received the man in her arms.

“There was a case here and I decided to stay with you for a few days, if that's okay with you.”

“Of course it's okay with me, do you think I wouldn't want to see you?” she smiled, patting his face and hearing him laugh.

Both of them moved to her bedroom where they shared stories that she hadn’t read in the letters or that deserved to be deepened now that they were together. Her mother talked to her about how she had been feeling, some workshops she had taught and new people who had joined and she had befriended. He was very happy to see Diana so happy and lively, contrary to other visits where the circumstances had been more unfortunate.

The talk was interrupted by a nurse bringing dinner to Diana and a portion of contraband for Spencer, who was extremely grateful. In the middle of the silence of dinner his mind returned to you and when he looked at his mother, he knew that if anyone could give him good advice it was her.

“Mom, can I talk to you about something?”

“Of course,” she replied, pushing her food aside so Spencer could sit on the bed with her “What is it?”

“Well, huh… I guess you remember my friend Y/N, right? My God, of course you remember her” he answered himself, knowing that he was always talking about you in his letters “The fact is that I… I have felt weird with her since my birthday.”

“Weird how?”

“I don't know, like… different,” he murmured, not knowing if that would be the right word for the nature of his feelings.

“You don't want to be her friend anymore?

“Quite the opposite, actually,” he murmured nervously. He considered it prudent to explain the situation that had arisen from the case and about your stay with him during these days, so that his mother could understand the fear that he had suffered, before continuing talking “And last night when I got to my room and she was there I felt… I don't know, I don't even know how to say it. I only felt enormous relief to see her well and I wanted her to always be well."

“Well, you grew up together. It's normal that you worry about her, you guys are almost like family”

“But I can't see her like that,” he interrupted her. He hated her comparison, because he knew what brotherly love was and it was definitely not how he felt about you “I think I'm in love with her. No, I know I'm in love with her. And I… I'm scared” 

Diana's attentive eyes studied her son and Spencer didn’t know how to interpret her silence, until he felt his mother's hand placed on her knee and saw a smile appear on her face. 

“Oh, my boy… Why are you afraid to love?”

“I am not afraid to love. I'm afraid of not being loved”

That was. Spencer wasn't afraid of having those feelings, but rather he was afraid that they wouldn't be reciprocated. If he confessed things to you, he risked having the greatest romance in his life or being cruelly rejected by the best friend he had ever had.

Diana cupped her son's face with both hands and gave him a compassionate smile.

“You are, for more years than you can think,” she exclaimed, with complete confidence, and the man frowned in confusion.

"How do you know?"

“A mother notices those things, son,” Diana laughed. “Even one like me.”

Would his mother be telling the truth? He wasn't the best at reading social cues and that was clear, so he didn't know the difference between friendly behavior and one that held another interest when it came to you, but he doubted for a second if Diana was the best person to interpret those signs. He didn't even entertain the possibility that you had feelings for him, I mean, you were so pretty and funny and cool and he… well, he was just him.

“Are you going to tell her?” she added, noticing that he had remained silent.

"I should?"

"Sure! If not now, when will you do it?”

"But I…"

“But nothing,” she interrupted him. “I want you to go find her and tell her.”

"Now?!" Spencer screamed, feeling his mother get up and push him to the exit. “But mom…”

“When will you be in Las Vegas again?” she pointed out “I'm not going to leave here, you can come back tomorrow.”

"But it's too late"

“So what, Spencer? “Do you think I don’t want to see you married before meeting the creator?” Diana insisted and the man opened his eyes widely in a mixture of surprise and amusement. “The sooner the better. Go tell her, come on. And it would be better if you come back tomorrow that she will accompany you.”

Spencer watched her from the hallway for a few seconds and at the woman's security he felt a certain emotion, letting fear be replaced by pure motivation for the first time. He nodded and took a couple of determined steps toward the exit, but then he stopped and turned to wrap his mother in a tight hug.

"Thanks, Mom. I love you”

“I love you more,” she smiled. “Now go.”

Spencer left there completely determined and took the first taxi he saw to take you to your apartment, with his heart beating like crazy all over his chest and his mind busy searching for the words with which he would profess his feelings for you.

Inside your apartment you let out a squeal when you heard the microwave announcing that your reheated food was ready and you rushed there to return as soon as possible to see David Tennant's hottie in a trench coat. You had to admit knowing Doctor Who, at first, had been against your will, but now it was an acquired taste that you quite enjoyed and accompanied you on your sleepless nights. After a few seconds you returned to the living room with your burrito in your hand and just when you were about to play the Christmas special when someone knocked on your door, startling you a little.

“Mrs. Jensen, is that you? I already told you that I haven't seen your cat around here” you half shouted, without opening the door, but there was no response “Hello?”

“It's me,” said a fairly familiar voice. You thought you were wrong so you opened the door just a little and through the chain lock you could see that, indeed, it was your friend.

"What are you doing here?" you asked, opening the door fully. “I thought you were going back to DC.”

“I changed my mind” he replied and until then you noticed that he was holding a bouquet of tulips decorated with a white bow, which he extended in your direction for you to take. That only added to your confusion.

“Wow, I… Thank you?”

“Can I come in?” He asked timidly and as soon as you scooted to the side he walked into the apartment, not looking at you.

"Everything's fine?"

"No. I mean, yeah…” he stammered, looking you up and down. You were wearing thermal pajamas with a Christmas print and you were without shoes, with a messy bun holding your hair. “Did you like them?”

"What?"

“The flowers,” he pointed out.

"Oh yeah. They are beautiful” you smiled, looking at them carefully. There was a good number of red tulips, some open and others were just a small bud. “What are they for?”

“I didn't want to arrive empty-handed,” he lied. “I got them at a flower shop near here, a very sweet old woman sold them to me.”

“Well, thank you, then,” you smiled and he responded in kind, but then he didn’t speak again. You were just observing him, not figuring out what was causing his strange behavior. “Do you want to sit down?”

The flowers ended up in a vase on the counter in the kitchen and when you returned he was already sitting on the couch, legs together and hands on his knees.

"And how are you?"

“Well, I was about to eat something while watching the Doctor Who Christmas special,” you told him. You expected him to start ranting about fun facts or the story or the actors or anything, but he just smiled at you understandingly and stayed silent. “Is your mom okay?”

“Yes, she is. I was having dinner with her a while ago, but... I thought I'd come here because I want to tell you something important."

Oh, you thought, there's the real reason for his nocturnal visit. 

"Yeah? What is it about?" you asked, slightly worried about whatever he had to say.

Everything he had thought about in the car seemed to have been erased from his memory and now Spencer didn't even know where to start. He had only confessed these kinds of feelings to two people in his life and neither of those times had turned out well, so he didn't know what to expect.

“Okay, I'm going to tell you, but you have to promise me that you will take it in the best way, okay?” he asked and you nodded. "And this won't change anything between us if you... if you don't agree with what I'm going to tell you."

“Hey, you're scaring me,” you joked nervously, but when you didn't hear him laugh your fear became genuine. “Is something wrong? You know you can tell me anything.”

“It's not a bad thing. Well, not unless you want it to be.”

“Well, tell me then,” you encouraged him kindly, with a smile that provided him with the courage he needed.

You were so pretty and he just wanted to kiss you to death.

“We've known each other for practically our entire lives, right?” he began “I still remember the first time I talked to you. And I don't speak figuratively, but I really remember it, it's one of the things from my childhood that my brain didn't throw away. I had been watching you from the window because you went out to your yard to spread a blanket to play with dolls and cars and all kinds of things. Sometimes you jumped rope and other times you kicked the ball and all I could think about was how you could have so much fun being alone. I mean, I was just reading and studying things with my microscope and you know, nerdy things” he murmured, letting out a short laugh “Until one day you knocked on my window and asked me if I wanted to play with you.”

“My mom told me to do it,” you confessed, “Well, I suggested it, but she encouraged me to do it. It always made me sad to see you there and I thought you were just too shy to come over and play.”

“But no one had ever done that. Include me in some activity, I mean. Everyone made fun of me at school or called me weird, but not you, not even when I deserved it. It made me happy that a girl like that wanted to be with me and even though you had too much energy, somehow I could keep up with you. When we grew up I thought you would just get bored of me, but that wasn't the case and even when I was promoted in grade you stayed in contact with me. You were there when mom got worse and I had to send her to that sanatorium and yet your family treated me like I was your own family. You have always been there for me and you have made me feel less alone in the world, and I don't think I have ever thanked you for that.”

“Oh, Crash,” you smiled, a couple of tears gathering on your eyelids. “You don't need to do that. I have done everything because that is what friends are for.”

“But I don't want to be friends,” he said immediately and your expression changed to a worried one at that moment. The silence between you made you imagine the worst, but it was only because he was gathering the courage to continue “To me you are something else.”

Your face contorted into another grimace, but this time one of surprise and confusion.

"What do you me…?”

“I'm in love with you,” he spat. This time all his years of training were of no use as he tried to decipher your expression. “And it's okay if you don't feel the same way about me, I'm not asking that of you. I just want you to know that the day I got here for the case I... I was going crazy at the mere thought of someone hurting you. I didn't realize that you meant everything to me until that moment and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since. That night I just wanted to hold you and keep you safe for the rest of our lives and although I don't have much experience, I think that's what love feels like. I have always loved you, only now it is a different love. And I'll understand if you don't feel the same way about me and I just misinterpreted things, but please, if that's the case, just let me stay your friend because I don't think I can handle messing things up. I don't ask you for anything more than that, that whatever you feel, things don't become uncomfortable just because of what I just told you."

There were a few seconds of silence and then he finally dared to look at you. You were stunned, with your gaze lost and your lips parted. Years of friendship passed before the man's eyes, who interpreted your lack of conversation as a rejection of his feelings, and he felt his heart break a little. From the beginning he was aware that this possibility existed, but now that it had materialized, he realized that perhaps he wasn’t ready.

But then your eyes met his and he felt your hand reach out to his, which was already shaking slightly.

“Your hands are cold,” you observed, sliding a little on the couch so you could take both of his limbs. Spencer followed your movements carefully and could see how you brought both hands to your lips to place a kiss on his knuckles.

“Is that all you have to say?”

“I actually have too much to say, I just don't know how,” you confessed.

“You don't have to lie to avoid hurting me. I already told you, it's okay if you don't feel the same."

“Spencer Reid,” you said sternly, thus forcing him to look at you. “Stop saying that.”

“So it's not like that?”

“Of course not, why would you think so?” You mumbled, really waiting for a response that never came. You watched him carefully, trying to memorize all his features, while you reflected on how much he had changed in front of your eyes and how he was still the same scared little boy from the window.

“Because… I don't know, there has never been someone who loves me the way I am.”

“Oh, Spencer,” you murmured condescendingly, “I've loved you since you were an ugly kid with glasses who couldn't stop talking about science, what other proof do you need?”

He definitely wasn't expecting that answer and that's why he started laughing; not like a soft laugh, but a loud, euphoric laugh.

“Why do you call me ugly kid?”

“You were!” You defended yourself, accompanying him in his joy. You had probably ruined the most romantic moment of your life, however, it was worth it to see the man laugh like that. And after all you were still his best friend, it was your job to joke like that “And yet I liked you, you can't imagine how much. Then you grew up and became this perfect prototype of a boy and you were so focused on your studies that I thought you weren't interested in me, at least in that way. But you were my friend and I was happy like that, I always have been. I tried to bury those feelings because I was also afraid of ruining things, but now you come to tell me all this, and I just don't believe it."

"Are you serious?" he asked, trying not to get overwhelmed by the fact that you had just called him perfect and that you were confessing to him that you had been feeling what he was feeling since you two met. When you nodded, another laugh escaped him as he thought that, after all, his mother had been right.

He had to take a moment to digest the situation. You loved him, you really did, and things weren't ruined. He felt foolish thinking about how long you had been keeping this quiet and how he hadn't noticed, but he concluded that if he had found out at another time he probably would have freaked out and things would have ended very differently, a result he would regret for the rest of his life.

Your hands were still joined and Spencer began to rub his thumb against the back of them, feeling the luckiest to see you smile at him that way and knowing the reason for that expression.

“Is that why you brought me the tulips?” you exclaimed in a sweet voice. You should have sensed it before but only now did you realize that detail.

“Yes, I wanted to surprise you,” he replied, quite satisfied with himself. “I thought about them because, in fact, in the language of flowers, tulips symbolize hope, sincere love and prosperity, but depending on their color the meaning can be transformed. Red tulips, in this case, are ideal for a statement and express unconditional love.”

You let out a gentle laugh, feeling nothing but tenderness at his reaction.

“There's my usual boy,” you said with a proud tone, reaching out to leave a loud kiss on his cheek. Something in Spencer stirred when he heard you call him yours and that desire to kiss you returned, this time with more intensity than before.

"And then?" he asked in your direction. With your eyes you asked for a more complete explanation of what precisely he was referring to “Do you accept me? Do you accept my love?”

“Of course I do,” you replied obviously, giving him that confirmation he needed.

“And if I asked you something serious for us right now, what would you tell me?”

You looked at him for a second, looking for a sign of lying on his face, but when you didn't find it, you smiled, your cheeks completely blushing.

“I would tell you that I would have liked to be more prepared. I'm in pajamas and I smell like a burrito, I think I've looked better."

"It doesn’t matter. "I can take you on a date later, in a nice and elegant place, like you deserve," he murmured excitedly, stopping holding one of your hands to place it on your face. "But only if that's what you want."

“I do, handsome,” you smiled, sliding your hand to surround his wrist. “It's the most definitive yes of my entire life.”

You had dreamed of this moment for a long time, but you had never believed it could come true and now that it had, your heart was overflowing with joy. He was smiling from ear to ear and you suddenly realized that his eyes traveled momentarily to your lips. You saw him swallow, undecided about the next move, so you decided to save him a little effort and reached out until your lips collided with his.

You took him by surprise and although at first it felt strange to be doing that with him, almost as if it were wrong, after a couple of seconds the contact relaxed and you knew that you no longer wanted to kiss lips other than his.

With every second he caressed you in a deeper and more needy way, very different from what you had expected, even his hands took you firmly by the waist to keep you as close to him as possible. He tasted like years of mutual longing and mint gum and it had you completely giddy. You separated only when it was vital to take a breath and then you continued kissing, already addicted to a drug you had just discovered.

“You're so pretty,” he sighed against your lips, allowing himself to compliment you now that he knew you reciprocated. “So, so pretty. And so sweet to me” he recited between kisses, each one gentler than the last “You are perfect.”

“Reid, stop it,” you asked him, feeling nervous from hearing him talk to you like that and feeling him kiss you like that.

"Why? That's what I think. I've always thought so” he smiled, separating himself from you just to enjoy the sight of your beauty, and then he gently caressed the side of your head “I love you” he said.

Your cheeks already hurt from smiling so much and yet you managed to give him that vision again, and how could you not? The man of your dreams was telling you that he loved you.

You leaned in again to kiss him, this time more briefly and delicately, and then you looked into his eyes.

“I love you too” you confessed.

And both of you knew that you didn't need anything more than that.

taglist: @navs-bhat @reidwritings @tricia-shifting14 @spencerslove

people who might be interested: @stephsycamore @andiebeaword @tothecar @reiderwriter @babymetaldoll @zuckker-blog

[bonky-n-steeb]

𝑊𝐼𝐶𝐾𝐸𝐷 𝑂𝑁𝐸𝑆

𝘿𝙀𝙈𝙊𝙉!𝘽𝙐𝘾𝙆𝙔 𝘽𝘼𝙍𝙉𝙀𝙎 𝙓 𝙍𝙀𝘼𝘿𝙀𝙍

𝗦𝗨𝗠𝗠𝗔𝗥𝗬: All your life, you thought yourself to be cursed. But the truth was simple; you had a really possessive demon as your guardian...

𝗪𝗔𝗥𝗡𝗜𝗡𝗚𝗦: DUBCON (though the reader is consenting, due to the power imbalance I’m adding this warning), Unprotected sex, oral sex (f receiving), bondage, death, stalking, yandere, PWP (porn with a very little plot... wait who am I lying to? It’s porn.) 𝙈𝙄𝙉𝙊𝙍𝙎 𝙋𝙇𝙀𝘼𝙎𝙀 𝘿𝙉𝙄!

ᴛʜɪs ɪs ɴᴏᴛ ʙᴇᴛᴀ ʀᴇᴀᴅ, sᴏ ᴀʟʟ ᴍɪsᴛᴀᴋᴇs ᴀʀᴇ ᴍʏ ᴏᴡɴ

For my sake, your sake, your mom’s sake and for the betterment of the entire world, if you are a minor, please do not read this!🔞

I just wanted to write demon!Bucky smut and so I wrote...!

MASTERLIST

You hummed to a tune you couldn’t quite place yet vividly remembered. It was a sunny, warm day filled with life. People jostling on the road, couples walking happily hand in hand, children running around in the park. It was a nice day to be alive.

But most importantly, today was your date. Aaron was a sweet and caring guy. With his mop of curly blond hair and bespectacled eyes, though nerdy, he was easy on the eyes. And his goofy smile was simply adorable. He truly was the human form of a golden retriever.

But just then your inner voice chimed in, what if this ended just like your previous dates? Just the thought sent a chill down your spine. You had dated only two guys before, that too a really really long time ago. And both of them had ended up falling in the clutches of gruesome death.

Everything you ever touched, burned into ashes. You looked around again and the world didn’t seem so bright anymore. Would these people, who made you happy by just a passing glance, suffer the same ill fate? Why couldn’t you be happy for once in your life?

You shook your head as if it was going to push the thought out of your head. This was your life, and you were going to be happy, no matter what. You repeated to yourself what your therapist had told you, this is not your fault, those were just coincidences.

Taking a deep breath, you steadied yourself. You weren’t going to go on a date with a ruined mood. Finally cheering up, you began walking quickly. Though you couldn’t ever shake the feeling from the back of your mind, you still tried your best.

But when you walked near the cafe, your heart dropped and you knew your worst fears had come true. There was a mob of people gathered in a circle around a scene and the police were trying to take situation under control. The emergency services were rushing and it was full blown chaos right outside the cafe.

You sprinted and pushed through the crowd to see what had conspired. When you took in the scene, your breath left your lungs and you wanted nothing more than to puke. A man was lying on the ground in the pool of his own blood, motionless and so very dead. And you knew the man, it was Aaron.

A car had hit him right as he was going to walk into the cafe and he had died from the impact. But you knew better, Aaron had died because of you. You had been greedy and selfish and tried to start again and look where it led you.

Your entire life passed through your eyes as you thought of your previous victims. It had all began with Jerry, he used to bully you in college and then suddenly one day he fell ill with a fatal mysterious disease that none of the doctors could even identify to begin with.

Then it had been your first boyfriend Matt, he had accidentally slipped down the flight of stairs and died exactly the day after you had lost your virginity to him. Then you had dated Anthony, and he too paid the price of being with you.

Your suspicions were confirmed by the untimely death of your boss, Lisa. She was mean and made you work extra hours. One day you wished she died and the next day she was found dead in her bathtub.

After that, you knew what you had to. Whatever you touched, death kissed it. No matter if that person was good or bad to you, bad things always happened to them. Just your existence was enough to make people suffer.

Unable to take it anymore, you had left behind your job and friends, only to be a recluse. You started freelancing and worked just enough to pull yourself through. But then you had decided to give yourself another chance with Aaron, and now he too was gone because of you.

Without waiting any further, you ran back home, sobbing all the way. Why did it have to be you? Why couldn’t it be anyone else? What wrong had you ever done to get cursed? Why couldn’t you be happy for once?

When you reached your house, you slammed the door and slid down with your back pressed to it. Crouching in a fetal position, you covered your eyes with your hands and cried. You weren’t even thinking anymore, the grief had overtaken your thoughts.

You didn’t know how much time had passed, but when you finally looked up, the sun had set and an ominous atmosphere had overtaken the skies. You blinked slowly to gather your senses when the feeling hit you. You weren’t alone.

All your life, you had this feeling as if someone was watching you. Their eyes never leaving no matter where you were or what you did. Silently taking in and judging your every move with keen eyes. Yet every time you had looked back, there used to be no one, by now you had given up searching.

And the worst part was, you knew the eyes staring at you, you just didn’t know whom they belonged to. You might forget your own name, but you wouldn’t ever forget the lustrous grey blue pools that haunted you night and day.

In your dreams, or rather nightmares, he used to intently stare at you as you slept. Somedays, you woke up to the feeling of someone laying besides you only to find a cold bed. You vaguely saw his form but weren’t able to catch any defined feature. But from what you were able to figure, he was devastatingly handsome.

Not just when you slept did you think of him, but even when you pleasured yourself. No matter who you fantasised of in the beginning, you always climaxed to his face. You didn’t know who he was, but he surely wasn’t human.

You were sure that whatever supernatural entity he was, he was the one responsible for everything. The person with the most beautiful set of eyes was the one who had plunged your life in darkness.

In the beginning you had tried telling your parents and friends about the supernatural occurrences surrounding you, but nobody believed and you stopped before they considered you insane.

You couldn’t take this anymore, you had to know who it was and why all of this was happening to you. You had been to dimly lit, shady places to visit so-called witches. They had suggested all sorts of bullshit, and though embarrassed, you still did everything they said. But not one thing worked.

“Who are you?” You didn’t say anything out aloud, for you knew that he could clearly read your thoughts. “There is no point in hiding. I know you are here. And I know I’m not insane!”

You remembered all the times you had been given heavy medication and taken all the various tests. You knew you weren’t deranged, yet no one believed you. Your life had become your own personal hell and no matter what you did, you couldn’t escape it; so why not face your demons?

“No. You’re not.” You froze as the voice came through. But where did it even come from? It surely wasn’t an audible voice as your ears didn’t hear it, so from where? Did you have some telepathic connection?

“Who the hell are you? And why are you doing this? You better show yourself to me!” Your helplessness was now turned into boiling rage. This was the man who had destroyed your entire life, how could you be calm?

“If that’s what you wish.” You pressed your back further against the wall with fear and prayed to all the gods you knew as you saw misty black fumes starting to gather in front of you. And soon they took in a shape of a human and right before your eyes, the black smoke turned into flesh.

He was the most gorgeous, hot, handsome man you had ever seen. You mentally slapped and reprimanded yourself, he had ruined your life, stop lusting over him. You could list how sexy he was later, right now you had some questions to ask.

You tried to open your mouth but no words came through. You really wanted to shout on his face and hit him for all that he had done to you, but you did neither. You were just too shocked to react.

“I know you have questions.” His voice was deep and confident yet not mocking. “You know what I want to ask you.” Your voice unlike him, was barely above a whisper.

“All I ever did was to protect you.” You scoffed at that. “Oh come on! Why would you want to protect me from good people who haven’t done anything wrong?”

“You yourself wished Lisa would die and so I did just that. And that Jerry was a douche bag.” He was so calm as if he hadn’t just admitted to two murders. “I wished her dead doesn’t mean I actually wanted her to die! What about Anthony and Matt? They were nothing but good to me!”

“That became a little personal.” He sighed. “Personal? What? I... wait! Who are you?” You couldn’t understand what he meant by his last sentence and you were too much in shock to form a coherent one yourself. “I’m a demon. I thought that was clear.”

Your breath hitched at his words and you held yourself tighter. He was a demon. Demon, from hell. “Yes doll, I sure am a demon from hell.” He said reading your mind.

Your insides melted by his words. You didn’t know if this was his trick or if you were actually starting to feel something for him. But whatever it was, you were helpless against his charm.

“Why me?” This question had haunted you your entire life. “Because you are precious and special and mine.” Those three words changed your whole world. Precious. Special. Mine.

“What? I don’t even know you.” You exclaimed. “Yes you do. You just didn’t know my physical form.” Despite your breakdown, he was still calm and warm. He wasn’t judging you, instead his eyes were so kind, he definitely didn’t feel like a demon.

“What do you mean by personal?” He still hadn’t answered your previous question. He took in a long breath, and began, “You don’t know this, or maybe you do. But I’ve always been looking after you. Making sure you are safe from harms way. You know, like a guardian Angel should.

I wasn’t supposed to fall in love with you. But I did. I fell in love with you and I couldn’t do anything about it. Demons aren’t supposed to feel, but you showed me what love felt like.

Demons are supposed to do the deals and make slaves, but you my love, have made me your slave. You wish it and I shall give it you. You sing and I shall dance on your rhythm.

I tried, you know, I tried so hard to not feel jealous. But I couldn’t stop myself, after all I’m a man made of sin. I wanted to kill Matt and Anthony the moment they touched what was mine.

But I didn’t, I controlled myself, but then the next moment I couldn’t. I was blinded by rage, it should’ve been me, not them. So I did what I had to. But I did try my best.

And about Lisa, what can I say? I’m a fool in love and your wish is my command.” You didn’t know what to say. Out of all the possibilities you had came up with, this wasn’t even an option. A demon... in love... with you..? Was he okay?

After a few moments of deafening silence had passed, he finally broke it, “Come with me. Submit to me. Be mine.” He half asked, half commanded, outstretching his hand towards you.

What did you even have here? You had no one and nowhere to go. And the people who tried to enter your life were pushed away by him. Would going with him be that bad of an idea?

“What would I get?” If this was going to be a deal then you too should be getting something in return. “Freedom.” That was all he answered. But you knew what he meant, freedom from all this pain and misery that was served to you. Freedom from the guilt that made it impossible for you to breath.

Funny how he was the one who had taken away your freedom and now he was as the only one offering it back. He was your culprit and he only was your saviour.

“Yes.” You knew your life wouldn’t be same, and truth be told, you didn’t want it to be the same. You accepted his outstretched hand and he helped you stand up.

As you stared in his enchanting eyes, you realised you had known him for your entire life. You had probably known him better than you had known anybody else.

On some dark lonely days, you always got a comforting feeling; the feeling that no matter what happened, you wouldn’t be alone. Someone was looking after you, someone was keeping you safe. That someone was him.

You both were standing close enough to share the same breath, slowly leaning further, you both pressed your lips to each other. His lips were surprisingly soft and you couldn’t pull yourself away.

The kiss felt like those in the movies, the world was spinning while you and Bucky were stuck in a timeless space of pleasure. The kiss was everything you hadn’t expected from a demon, sweet and soothing.

“It’s Bucky.” He said smirking. Your tilted your head in confusion. Reading your mind once again, he answered, “My name is James. But call me Bucky.” This intimidating demon’s name was Bucky? You would’ve laughed in any other situation. But now you were too intent in kissing Bucky.

Bucky gripped you at the waist and slowly slid his hands lower until they were settled on your thighs. You let out a surprised squeak when Bucky picked you up. You quickly locked your hands around his neck, while your legs around his waist.

Chuckling at your shock, he carried you to bed and gently laid you down. It had been years since you last had sex so every sensation was as good as new. You couldn’t wait anymore and began tugging at your clothes.

“Doll, you forget who I am.” As he snapped his hands, both of your clothes went away in the blink of your eye. He loved seeing you shocked with his prowess and now he was determined to always surprise you.

“Do you know how much I’ve waited for you?” He began pressing soft kisses to your neck and collarbone. He licked your pebbled nipple and the sight of his wet tongue encasing your nipple brought goosebumps on your skin.

Bucky had observed you all the times you had pleasured yourselves and by now, he knew exactly what you liked. “Do you know how many times I’ve almost revealed myself to you?”

Trailing kisses all over your stomach, he finally reached his desired destination. As he started pulling your legs apart, you quickly shut them back. “Sweet girl, I love every single part of you. You don’t have to be shy in front of me.”

Kissing your thighs and stomach, he gently pried your legs open and you let go. “You are the prettiest doll I’ve ever seen.” You shivered as you pussy was now exposed to the cool night air. Getting up on your elbows, you looked down at him.

Looking right in your eyes, he gave a kitten lick to your swollen nub, the sight and the sensation made you breathless and you fell back into your bed. “Oh god.” You whimpered as he relentlessly focused on your clit.

“It’s quite the opposite doll. But I get the sentiment.” He went back to his work, and instead of his previous torture, he thrusted his tongue in your channel. “I knew you’d be the sweetest doll.” Your hands found his hair and you tugged.

Taking your wrists in hand, he pushed them back on the bed. As he looked up, his face was glistening with your juices. “Hands up on the headboard.” His commanding tone made you gush and you did as instructed.

As you tried squirming, you realised your hands were bound to the headboard by some invisible cuffs. Now you were truly at his mercy, and you liked it.

His tongue left your pulsing hole, only for it to be filled by his two thick fingers. Your back arched and you whined at the intrusion. Bucky went back to sucking your clit.

Bucky felt your orgasm approach as he pumped his fingers, “You’re gonna cum, aren’t you? Cum for me sweet doll. Cum for me.” His words sent you headfirst into an orgasm.

Your walls spasmed sporadically around his fingers and your legs tightened and quivered around Bucky’s head. The entire time Bucky cooed and praised you about how good you were.

Once you came down from your high, Bucky leaned in to kiss you. You could taste yourself as he prodded his tongue into your mouth.

He hooked your leg around his shoulder and that’s when you saw his dick. It’s sheer size made you worry if it will ever fit in you. “Don’t worry doll, it will fit just perfectly.”

Your bound hands and leg were deliciously stretching your body. Pumping his cock a few times, he rubbed his head over your sensitive folds. “Please!” You begged unable to take his teasing anymore. You wanted to be filled and fucked.

“You look so pretty when you beg.” He didn’t relent as he pressed his length into your tight, wet warmth. You wanted to touch him and feel him, but your locked hands made everything much more pleasurable.

He groaned once he was fully seated in you. He started pressing kisses to your calf and rubbed his hand over your thigh. He did everything except the one thing you wanted, “Please move.”

You knew how this worked by now, you’d ask and he’d give it to you. Without wasting anytime, he started pounding into you. You cried out with the first thrusts.

His strength was truly inhuman. The clapping of your thighs reverberated through the room only to be disturbed by your high moans and his loud grunts.

You raised your hips to meet his thrust, but he pressed you back down with his free hand and kept it there. “Fuck doll, I can feel myself.” He said as he felt his cock ramming into you. His voice was hoarse and grainy.

He brought his hand a little lower on your stomach and started circling your clit with his thumb and at the same time, increased his thrusts. “I... Oh, I’m close... Can I... Can I cum..?” You didn’t know why, but you couldn’t reach your peak without his permission.

“Oh doll, fuck yes. You are so good for me. Cum for me.” His words pushed you over the edge and white pleasure overtook you. Your body buzzed from head to toe as you whined unintelligibly. You came hard as you stared into the bottomless pools of his eyes, just like you had every other time.

Your legs jerked around him as your back arched. Seeing you become a shaking mess for him made Bucky cum with a shout. He pressed his hips as deep inside you as he could and relished in the feeling of you. The sensation of warm cum filling you made your eyes roll back.

“Mine!” He groaned out. “Yours... yours Bucky, all yours.” You still hadn’t come down from your high, and you didn’t think you ever would. Finally, you could moved your hands and the first thing you did was hold on to Bucky.

As you lay in each other’s arms, you didn’t know whether you did the right thing or the wrong. You didn’t know whether your life would change for better or worse. You just knew that you finally had someone.

[samsspambox]

the finance title of luke pearce

wc: 1.6k, its a long one bois

Luke Pearce, Finance and Technology Expert sent by the NSB to the NXX, code name Raven. nothing out of place there, right? WRONG. the finance part of that title is fishy fishy and i’m gonna deep deep dive into what i think that singular title implies for the rest of the game going forward. take a seat and kick up your feet, its time to go. 

hello internet, welcome to game theory the show-- lmaoo jk hi! its me again back at it. but today we put on the tinfoil hat and read into something that was probably a translation error but at the same time could have been intentional and what that means for the game itself. 

luke, when he introduced himself to the nxx, said he was part of the finance and technology division of the nxx. though we know through his lil davis blurb that he has a masters in bioengineering. also, given his training, we know that he has the capabilities and skill sets to be a field operative. what kind of training is required for financial crimes? the actual apprehension of those committing crimes gets rallied off to other departments. why the hell would they do that? because they had to get someone from the government into the nxx without rousing suspicion.

thats right folks, im presenting you with this theory: lucas pearce may be a nsb mole for the nxx. let me walk you though this theory. 

for one, we know some of luke’s skill set though the shit he’s done in events such as sotn, lost gold, and hell skadi too. let’s list them out 

has gone undercover for missions and information recon (alluring gaze, a star in the palm)

has diving experience (lost gold) 

uncanny strength (sotn) 

hacking prowess (main story 5, sotn) 

astute analytical skills linked to detective work and able to identify chemical compounds (skadi, main story 1) 

some of these skills can be attributed to training with the nsb and his own prowess, especially with the chemical compounds since we know he has a masters in bioengineering. but not once in his skillset does he have anything relating to finance. so, what gives, luke? 

see, luke is no stranger to lying to other people or reading people so he can get the information he needs. its brief, but we do see him actually lie to the whole of the nxx in lost gold. its more lying through omission but he does say he has ‘work to do’ but he doesn't say that he was sent by the nsb to do so up until the end of the trip. hell, he popped some joints from a guy in lost gold to get his info. see, this makes me think luke is more of a information gathering agent. in a star in the palm he couldn’t really lie to rosa (as a weakness) but he tried. he tried denying that he had been in stellis before they reunited. thats what makes luke a ruthless agent, he’s willing to do a lot to get to his objectives. we know he does engage in combat (re his 2nd birthday art, i haven't read it) and it would be wise for the one gathering info to be trained to fight and be deadly, right? 

but okay, if luke is a mole, what’s the point? what does the nsb want? because we know for sure that luke was assigned through the nsb (i think the last part of chapter 4 alludes to this where aaron gives luke his assignment.) so we know that the nsb is the puppetmaster to luke’s puppet, right? is luke even aware that he’s a mole? 

i can answer one of the questions, but the rest have two different possibilities. the first one is what the nsb wants. they want information on the nxx drug and when they find the samples of it. we know through the tidbits given to us that the nxx was created out of sampled from flora x, which has some type of gene repairing properties even though it caused a pandemic and the drug itself has effects on the body’s hormone production that can ultimately lead to someone’s death. the samples used to create this drug were supposedly destroyed, but we know that’s not the case. i think the nsb wants whatever they can get their hands on (the drug, the samples) so that they can start their own research when it comes the gene repairing properties. the properties flora x, and by proxy the nxx drug, have can essentially provide the nsb with a hail mary- a way to keep agents for longer. 

with the nxx group going around and sticking their metaphorical noses into the blunt of these cases, its safe to assume that the nsb wants to be kept informed about whats going on and their progress regarding how close they are to closing herrison down. all so they can swoop in and start where herrison left off. but what’s their end goal? i don’t know, actually. i’m going off on global server knowledge (and a bit on cn server, but we get parts 1&2 on chapter six soon so i don’t think it’ll matter anyway) there’s no real indication of the nsb end goal. we don’t see luke reporting back, we don’t see him communicating with aaron about this. 

next question: does luke pearce know he might be a mole for the nsb? this one i don’t have much of an answer to, but i can give you my opinions on both. 

i think the most probable one is that he does know he’s a mole. one thing that clues me in on this is that luke does an alarming amount of undercover work, or at the very least is comfortable with undercover work. i know i mentioned this before but luke has no qualms about lying to people if it means getting information from others. and then theres alluring gaze and a star in the palm themselves where luke has gone undercover to find out information. it would make sense for him to be aware that he is a mole. that would technically explain his reaction when it came to mc being in the nxx. when he found out about them being in the organization his first reaction was to ask them to leave because it could be dangerous. i believe that luke wanted to shield mc from any of the things he has to do in order to get all the information and dip. it would also make sense for luke to know and come up with his own cover. in alluring gaze we know that luke is shit at coming up with names for his undercover-sona, who says thats where it stops? the finance thing could have been his idea. 

theres also the other school of thought- that he doesn’t know he’s a mole and that he genuinely thought he was there to help. this makes sense with luke’s personality itself. luke often sees himself as someone who is not worth it and, to be frank, a bit disposable at times. this sentiment has to be a product of his surroundings, both growing up and his time at the nsb. for him to be used as a puppet for the nsb makes sense. 

there’s also a bit where luke’s sickness comes into play: a theory i have is the nxx drug/exposure to flora x caused the illness he faces, and the nsb is holding that over his head. if he’s aware that he’s a mole, he could be dong it because the nsb offered to save him using their research on flora z/the drug. if he isn’t aware that he’s a mole, he could be motivated to do this particular mission because it deals with the thing that made him ill. 

but what does that mean for the rest of the story? what’s the point? as of right now, there isn’t one. this is just a rabbit hole, but if you stick with me for a bit i can tell you my last theory: luke is meant to go rogue from the nsb regardless if he knows he’s a mole or not. 

see, mhy has been doing things lately that deal with AUs a lot, and i think its more to test where the stories could be headed. and i think that one of those ‘ideas’ they’re testing is luke going rouge. we know from the ancient china and ancient egypt cards (that i have only the vaugest understanding of, i don’t really like spoiling things for myself) is that luke is a mercenary that somehow turns on the government, or at least has some disdain for the government. so, what can the government (nsb) do to luke to make him go rogue? simple, withhold the cure to his illness or withhold information from him. if he’s aware he’s a mole, all they have to do to get on his bad side would be not tell him what they’re doing with the drug and not giving him the cure. same for if he doesn’t know, only with the additional revelation that he’s been the mole the whole time.  

but yeah. that’s how one simple title can lead you through the rabbit hole that is theoryland. thanks for reading! :D (yall can send me asks about this if you have thoughts about this too!! :DD)

also, big inspiration from this came from the theory chain i had with lukepearcing, if you wanna read that you can do so here! 

[nathanbatemanfucker]

Aberration of the Heart: Chapter 1

warnings: explicit language, pining (could be seen as mutual pining if you squint)

AOTH MASTERLIST

You'd been a goner from the moment you stepped into his office for your interviews as the newest profiler in the Behavioral Analysis Unit at the FBI headquarters in Quantico. From the moment your brown eyes met his, you knew it was over for you; there was no resisting the brooding professional that was Aaron Hotchner but you would try you hardest.

That's why everyone on the team knows you well enough, but him. It's why you're nothing but professional on the job, nothing but the perfect agent that he can depend on. It's why you wear the blandest outfits and why you hardly ever make eye contact with him. You didn't want him to notice you or pay too much attention to you because as soon as he did, you knew you were hook, line, and sinker.

If you were being completely honest with yourself, you already were but you let yourself believe you weren't. But if Hotch knew you and accepted you it would be like an invitation for your delusions of being with him, and you engaged in those enough already. It was him who you pictured when your hands wander between your legs, him who you envisioned bringing coffee to in the morning when your bed was empty and cold.

"We have a case." Hotch's voice booms across the precinct, pulling you out of your thoughts about him. Your eyes meet his for a brief moment before you grab you leather journal and a pen.

You, Derek, Emily, and Reid immediately stand and start towards the conference that Hotch has disappeared in. JJ and Garcia are already standing by the monitor ready to present, Rossi already in usual spot.

Garcia and JJ tag team the case, filling you all in on today's little slice of horror. Someone was killing young women, violently, and dumping them in various parks around the Kansas State University campus. There was a substantial amount of overkill but with the way the unsub posed the victims and covering them the team felt unsure that they knew much about what was going on. You ignored the churn in your stomach as you identified with the victims.

"Alright, we need to gather more information and they've invited us in. Wheels up in 20. Prentiss, Y/l/n, could I see you both in my office, please?" Hotch doesn't wait for an answer before starting towards his office.

You knew that he didn't mean any harm by expecting the two of you to just follow by his addition of please. It was something that had bugged you from the beginning. Even though you had told yourself you wouldn't rock the boat with him too much, you talk to him about it. You remember the shock on his face from a few months ago, when you politely asked if he could say please when asking for things. You'd been on the team for over a year but you just couldn't take it anymore.

"Sir, I know that you mean no harm, but I would really appreciate it, and maybe others would too if you would say please."

The two of you were on the way back from a crime scene where he had abruptly said you were leaving to head back to the precinct. He was your boss, he got to do things like that, but if you weren't going to be asked nicely, an explanation would be nice. In this instance you had gotten neither and it'd bothered you until you had to say something.

He whips his head to look at you, his eyes wider than the horizon. "I - of course. I hadn't meant to be rude, Y/l/n." A light pink blush dusts his cheeks and it takes everything in you not to giggle at his embarrassment.

"Of course, not sir, I just...its just a preference." You fidget with you fingers in your lap, looking away from him and out the window.

"It won't happen again." He says firmly before the car is filled with a comfortable silence.

He'd made an effort since then, not only with you but with the entire team. The team had all talked about it in surprise but you never mentioned that it was you that had asked him. You let them believe that he'd just become more tactful, you didn't want anyone to think it was more than it was. For you, it was more. There was no denying that you had fallen hard for the distant but polite, put together Aaron Hotchner. He was reserved in a way that made you warm, all of his emotions evident in his eyes, never in his behaviors or tone.

"What can we do for you Hotch?" Emily asks once the two of you make into his office, pinching your thigh behind her back. Emily was the only one on the team that knew you had feelings for Hotch. You were very close to Derek as well, but it felt wrong to tell him about your feelings for Hotch.

"Prentiss I know that you're in charge of planning our yearly get away that's coming up in a few months and I think that Y/l/n would be a good co-pilot in order to make sure things don't get too out of hand." He's serious but has a smirk playing on his lips.

"I don't need a babysitter Hotch." Emily snorts, crossing her arms but you simply put your arm around her, pinching her back.

"Of course, sir, whatever you need." You give him a polite nod. "Is that all?"

"Uh, yes, I believe that's all. I'll see you both on the jet in 30."

You drag Emily out of the office with you and she starts to make fun of you as soon as you're out of Hotch's earshot. "Of course sir, whatever you need sir, would you like me to get on my knees and say thanks after I suck-" She teases in a high pitched voice, nudging you in the shoulder.

"Fuck off." You whisper in her ear as the two of you sit at your desks. Hers was right next to yours.

She scoots towards you in her rollie chair, keeping her voice low. "You're so timid with him, he has no clue who you are."

"That's the fucking point. He doesn't need to know me, I try to ignore the fact that I know him." You whisper back, crossing your arms in defense.

"I still don't understand your logic. I think he'd like you." She glances up at his office. The door was now closed and you guessed he was in there on the phone with Strauss or maybe even Jessica.

"If he knew me I wouldn't want him to just like me, Em, I would want him to love me. Its stupid, falling in love that easily is incredibly fucking stupid and borderline insane, especially when its with him!" You lower you voice in further when talking about being in love with your boss.

"Where's the harm in seeing what happens?" She challenges and you roll your eyes at her, throwing your hands up in frustration.

"Me having to flee the fucking country because I end up telling my boss I love him and he doesn't feel the same way? Or should I just end it? The metro would be the perfect place." You lean back, thinking about your options for a moment.

"What are you two ladies whispering about over here?" Derek waltzes over to your desk, plopping down on the edge of it.

"Wouldn't you like to know." Emily says cheekily, a wide grin on her face. Emily loved being in the know, especially when Derek wasn't clued in.

"Yes, we'd both very much like to know." Reid comes up behind Derek, pushing his glasses up on his nose before shoving his hands into his pockets.

"There's nothing to know, stop being so goddamn nosey, you're circling like vultures." You huff as you stand and grab your go-bag off the floor.

"That means you're hiding something." Reid says and you roll your eyes.

"I am not hiding something, your profiling skills are shit. I'll see you all on the plane, sans detective hats please." You smooth a couple wrinkles out of your white button down and look down to make sure the laces on your chunky black boots are tied as you wait for the elevator alone.

"Heading over early, huh?" Hotch's voice startles you and don't know what to be more embarassed about; the small yelp that leaves you, you dropping your bag on his foot, or the fact that a smooth chuckle leaves his throat. "I didn't mean to scare you, I'm sorry."

"Oh, its fine, sir. I just wasn't expecting anyone. Sorry for...yelping and dropping my bag on your foot." You both bend down to pick it up and his fingers brush yours for a moment, causing your knees to go slightly weak.

"Luckily these shoes are pretty sturdy, I didn't feel a thing." He jokes and a nervous laugh leaves you as he hands you the bag.

I am such an idiot, you think to yourself.

"Did you want to ride with me over to the tarmac?" He offers as the doors of the elevator opens. He ushers you on, his hand just barely touching the small of your back.

Your breath catches in your throat from his proximity but you quickly clear it. "Thank you sir, but I can drive myself, I think I need to clear my head."

"Everything alright?" He's genuinely concerned, you can tell by the way it swims in his dark, chocolate eyes.

His eyes always told you the complete story. They were truly the windows to his soul. It was how you knew he was actually sad instead of angry if he snapped at Morgan or if he was just joking when his voice was deadpanned telling a bad joke.

No, no, everything isn't alright, I'm in love with you. That’s what you want to say but instead you tell him the professional answer.

"Everything's fine sir, thank you." You give him a polite smile before turning to look straight ahead.

"You don't always have to be so formal, Y/n, I'm your boss, yes, but we're friends. You could call me Hotch or...Aaron." His mouth caresses your name like he was made to say it.

His use of the term friend fractures your composure and you look up at him in confusion. "You consider me a friend?"

"We've gotten drinks with the team and you've watched Jack a couple times when Jessica or JJ couldn't. I would consider that at least a budding friendship." He doesn't take his eyes off of you, noticing the way one of your curls is unfurling from behind your ear.

"Friends." You murmur absentmindedly as you look down at your feet.

He was right. You'd been in his house to watch Jack when he needed to run an errand. You remember being surprised when he called you out of the blue, citing that he just needed someone, anyone to watch his son while he went to the dentist. And you'd seen him consume alcohol, whiskey - neat, when the team got to go out on a rare occasion. You and Aaron Hotchner are friends? It was something you'd never thought about it.

"You coming?" When you look up, he's standing outside of the elevator, a small smile on his face.

"Of course, sir, sorry." You step out to meet him and the two of you walk in comfortable silence to your cars. You notice that he hovers to make sure you make in yours before getting in to his. You don't know what possesses you to do so but when your eyes meet, you wave. He gives you a shy grin before he waves back, driving off.

This wasn't good.

You and Aaron Hotchner were friends. How had the two of you stumbled around each other without this revelation before? You'd avoiding him outside of work at almost any cost, making sure to cling to Emily or Derek. You had avoided anything but a professional relationship with the man and yet here he was, calling you his friend. It could only be downhill from here.

read chapter 2 here.

tagged: @ssahotchsbitch, @ssahotchie, @mrsh0tchner, @hotchwhore15, @azenpal, @disgruntledchowchow, @chelseyjoyce, @averyhotchner, @hyacinthhotch

[path-of-my-childhood]

Aaron Dessner on the 'Weird Avalanche' That Resulted in Taylor Swift's “Evermore”

By: Lyndsey Havens for Billboard Date: December 18th 2020

One day this fall, Taylor Swift walked into Aaron Dessner’s home to wish his daughter a happy 9th birthday - but that wasn't the only reason Swift was there.

She was mostly there to film the Disney+ special, Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions, in which she was meeting up with her primary Folklore collaborators - The National’s Dessner and Jack Antonoff. They had all gathered for the first time at Dessner’s upstate New York studio to play her record-breaking album live.

On the last night of filming the special (a process that was done while following CDC guidelines, with a limited crew and COVID-19 testing), Dessner recalls how he, Antonoff and Swift stayed up until 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. - drinking and celebrating the more-than-warm embrace Folklore had received. But in the days that followed, Swift ended up staying, and she and Dessner unexpectedly continued working. Eventually, they had 17 more songs, all of which became the sister album, Evermore, released on Dec. 11.

“Folklore almost immediately was treated as a classic or a masterpiece,” says Dessner. “It was elevated fairly quickly and had been commercially really successful, so obviously it’s hard to follow something like that up. But one of the things I love about Evermore is the ways in which Taylor was jumping off different cliffs. The ability she has to tell these stories, but also push what she’s doing musically, is really kind of astonishing. It’s like I went to some crash course, some masters program, for six months.”

Below, Dessner tells Billboard all about the work that went into his second album in five months with one of the world's biggest pop stars.

With Folklore a lot of the production and arrangements came from a folder you had sent Taylor. Did you continue to pull from there, or was Evermore made from scratch?

A lot more of it was made from scratch. After Folklore came out, I think Taylor had written two songs early on that we both thought were for Big Red Machine, “Closure” and “Dorothea.” But the more I listened to them, not that they couldn’t be Big Red Machine songs, but they felt like interesting, exciting Taylor songs. “Closure” is very experimental and in this weird time signature, but still lyrically felt like some evolution of Folklore, and “Dorothea” definitely felt like it was reflecting on some character.

And I, sort of in celebration of Folklore, had written a piece of music that I titled “Westerly,” that’s where she has the house that she wrote “Last Great American Dynasty” about. I’ll do that sometimes, just make things for friends or write music just to write it, but I didn’t at all think it would become a song. And she, like an hour later, sent back “Willow” written to that song, and that sort of set [things in motion] and we just started filling this Dropbox again. It was kind of like, “What’s happening?”

And then it just kept going. She wrote "Gold Rush” with Jack [Antonoff] and by the end there were 17 songs, and it was only a couple months after Folklore came out, so it’s pretty wild. Each time we would just be in disbelief and kind of like, “How is this possible?” Especially because we didn’t need to talk much about structure or ideas or anything - it was just this weird avalanche.

Considering how industry-shaking Folklore was, what pressure did that introduce this time around?

I think because of how we made it, it really wasn’t like producing some giant record or something, it still had this very homespun feeling to it. There may have been a moment or two when I think Taylor was wondering when and how to put out Evermore, but I think the stronger it became, and as each song came together, it just started to feel like, "This is a sister record - it’s part of the same current of creativity and collaboration and the stories feel inter-related."

And aesthetically, to me, Evermore is wilder and has more of a band dynamic at times. You can feel her songwriting sharpen even more on it, in terms of storytelling, and also just this freedom to make the kinds of songs that were coming. When she started to write in a less diaristic way and tell these stories, I think she found she had this incredible wealth of experience and depth to her storytelling that was quite natural. She could easily make these songs more reflective or blur the lines of what’s autobiographical and what's not in interesting ways. It felt like the most natural thing in the world.

Folklore was made entirely remotely, how did that process change for Evermore?

This was both. Some of it was remote, but then after the Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions, Taylor stayed for quite a while and we recorded a lot. She actually wrote “‘Tis the Damn Season” when she arrived for the first day of rehearsal. We played all night and drank a lot of wine after the fireside chat - and we were all pretty drunk, to be honest - and then I thought she went to bed. But the next morning, at 9:00 a.m. or something, she showed up and was like, “I have to sing you this song,” and she had written it in the middle of the night. That was definitely another moment [where] my brain exploded, because she sang it to me in my kitchen, and it was just surreal.

That music is actually older - it’s something I wrote many years ago, and hid away because I loved it so much. It meant something to me, and it felt like the perfect song finally found it. There was a feeling in it, and she identified that feeling: That feeling of... “The ache in you, put there by the ache in me.” I think everyone can relate to that. It’s one of my favorites.

Did you watch the Disney+ special?

I’m not a big fan of watching myself - but I did watch it, and I thought it was beautiful. It’s funny, because it was very DIY in a sense; a tight little small crew was there to do it, nobody was styling us or fixing our hair or anything like that, it’s very authentic. I rehearsed a little bit before, but both of us - Jack and I - were pretty much figuring it out as we went.

And I think the nice thing is that all of the songs could work like that, and that’s partly a testament to the strength of the album. Without big production tricks or backing vocals or anything like that, the songs stand up, and Taylor just sang the crap out of them. And hanging out with them was so much fun. They’re kind of like siblings almost; they’ve known each other a long time, there’s this quick humor between them.

Would you like to do something like that again with Evermore?

I don’t know if you can recreate exactly what we did with Folklore. I haven’t actually talked to anyone about that. But to me, the songs of Evermore would be even more fun to play, because more of them feel like band songs. But, that being said, I won’t be disappointed if we don’t - there is no plan afoot right now to do that.

During an interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live! Jimmy asked Taylor about the rumors behind Woodvale and if there’s a third album coming, to which she said she’s exhausted. How are you feeling energy wise?

I think we both feel like it was Mission: Impossible - and we pulled it off. I imagine that we’ll make music together in some ways forever, because it was that sort of chemistry, and I’m so thankful and grateful for what happened, but I think there’s a lot there. It’s not just the two albums, there’s also bonus tracks, and two of my favorite songs aren’t even on this record. We’re not pouring into another one now.

I’m going to finish the Big Red Machine album - I was really very close to finishing it when all of a sudden the Folklore and Evermore vortex opened up, and actually Taylor has been really helpful and involved with that as well - and The National is starting to talk about making music, and I think she’ll probably take a break. But I’m so excited for any future things we might do -- it’s definitely a lifelong relationship. And I’d say the same for all the people who worked on these records, including my brother and everybody who contributed. It’s a really special legacy.

[thewhitejournal]

“The Intern” Part Two

Aaron Hotchner x Reader

hello all! the love on this first part was absolutely unexpected, but i am so grateful for it! here is the link to the first part of the series, go ahead and read that in case you haven’t yet. if you liked this part or have any feedback, do not hesitate to let me know. without further ado, onto the show!

content warnings: mentions of child sexual assault and murder

link to the inspiration for this fictional case

You and Penelope started looking over the file Agent Hotchner had given you. Not soon after you read over some of the details, a blonde woman swung open the door to the office.

”Garcia, debriefing in five. Hi, I’m Jennifer Jareau, but you can call me JJ. I’m the liaison for the team; I’ve heard so much about you, Penelope is so excited to not be alone in her office all the time.” She smiled at you, offering you her hand to shake, and you took it.

”It’s so nice to meet you, I’m (y/n) (y/l/n).” You smiled back at her, and she called for Garcia over her shoulder as she left. You looked up to Penelope, silently asking what your next move should be.

”C’mon kid, you're on this case. I have a little feeling Hotch won't mind if I invite you to work it.” She said to you with a knowing smirk playing on her lips, heat flooding your cheeks. You'd hope not, you didn't want to make the boss mad the first day you were shadowing.

Following Penelope out of her office, you looked around and noticed other agents heading the same way. Agent Jareau was walking ahead of you, talking to a dark-haired woman, and your path aligned with a skinny, long-haired man wearing a sweater vest and gun on his waist that looked like it physically weighed him down.

“Uh, hi, I-I’m Spencer Reid, Garcia told me about you. It’s nice to meet you.” His lips were in a straight line, and he didn’t make direct eye contact with you. You smiled at him.

“(Y/n) (y/l/n).” Without responding, he picked up his pace a bit, catching up to the two women in front of you. Garcia chuckled.

“He’s not the most social butterfly in the garden.” You scoffed, laughing lightly yourself. She assured you he would warm up to you though, which made you feel better. You didn’t want a single member of the team to dislike you.

You all eventually gathered in the debriefing room, and you couldn’t help but wonder where Hotch was. Penelope introduced you to the other agents sitting at the table that you hadn’t met yet, and they welcomed you warmly. Agent Rossi said something about always needing extra help, which gave you a nice feeling in your chest.

JJ stood to present the case, and not a second later, Hotch walked in the door. She must have seen him coming. The only empty seat left happened to be next to yours, and he took it. He gave you a very small smile, then turned to face JJ. You suddenly remembered you were in a room full of profilers; if you were going to steal glances at Hotch, well, it’s probably better you didn’t. How frowned upon is a relationship with the boss, especially with someone not even officially part of the team? You didn’t want to think about that, it was just a silly little crush after all.

Pictures from crime scenes and documents you had to be closer to the screen to completely identify crowded every screen in the debriefing room. A twelve-year-old boy went missing outside of Seward, Nebraska. Unfortunately, he wasn’t missing long, because his body was found in a ditch off of an interstate not three days after he was reported missing. The cause of death was asphyxiation, and there were signs of sexual assault, post mortem.

“You know, this reminds me of the Oakland County Child Killer. He was responsible for the killings of four children in Oakland County, Michigan in 1976 and 1977. Each child's body was discovered in a public area within 19 days of their disappearance, two boys and two girls. The children were all either strangled or shot, and the two boys had been sexually abused.” All this information at once took you by surprise; how did he know all of that? It was like he was reading it straight from a book.

“Are there any more missing kids in the area? This could be some kind of copycat.” Morgan questioned.

“There hasn't been any reported since this boy, Nathan Harrison. Reid, how far apart did the Oakland County Child killer take his victims? If this is a copycat killer, we could try to estimate when the next victim might be.” JJ asked him.

Reid thought for a moment. “His first victim was in February of 1976, and he didn’t kidnap again until December of that year. Then, though, the last two victims were taken only months apart in 1977. I don’t believe this killer had a pattern, other than always placing the bodies where they could easily be seen.” Hotch sighs, eyes darting around the table that’s filled with case files and crime scene photos like he’s taking in all the information. His dark brows are furrowed; you guess he’s thinking of what the team should do next.

“Well, I don’t want to wait around and see if he makes his own M.O. or if he follows this killer’s actions. We’re going to need to do more research on the Oakland County killer and if there are anymore unsolved child cases in Nebraska that might be connected to our unsub. Wheels up in thirty.” Hotch looks around the room at everyone as he says this, and his gaze lingers a second longer on you before he leaves the room. The other agents start gathering the files and coffee mugs they may have brought into the room and head out too.

“Just like that, they’re gone?” You ask Penelope, turning your chair to face hers. You were the only two people left in the room. She nods.

“Just like that. You and I will stay behind and help with all the fun behind the scenes stuff unless they need us out there later.” She stands, jewelry jingling with the motion. You followed suit, trailing behind her back to her office. Looking around the room, the agents were carrying duffel bags out the door and to the elevator. You saw Hotch still standing in his office, preparing his bag and making sure he had everything.

“You think they’d let me come with you?” Your voice lowered. Secretly, she knew you meant Hotch. You didn’t want to overstep any boundaries, this was their case after all.

She only nodded, dangling earrings swinging as she did so. Hotch exited his office and you tried to inconspicuously watch where he was going. You’re sure you can’t have been that sly about it though. He rounded the corner and looked like he was going to go out the door, but he stopped behind you two, calling out for Garcia. You turned around in sync to face him.

“I don’t know what we’re walking in to yet, I want you to have a go-bag ready if needed.” He turned to face you. “(Y/l/n), if you’re comfortable with coming along with us now you’re more than welcome. We’re leaving in fifteen.” With that, he slid past you, walking through the doors to the elevator in the hall. For a split second, you felt his body heat in your space; you even caught a little whiff of his cologne.

You looked over at Garcia. You didn’t know what to do; you were here to shadow as a technical analyst, not as a profiler. You weren’t supposed to be in the field, it wasn’t the plan. You searched her face to try and figure out what she might say next, and if she was okay with you going. Maybe it could be fun, a good experience. It might be a chance to get to know the team better, maybe one to get to know your temporary boss better too…

“You can go if you want to honey, I know it appeals to some people. I am not some people, however. I like my office. My screens. And hey, nobody said you had to stay here. Maybe they’ll make you wanna be a profiler.” She placed a hand on your arm, gently patting it, her smile beaming at you. You gave her a small smile back.

“I don’t know Garcia, I don’t know the first thing about being in the field and profiling and working an actual case like that. I’ve been studying tech stuff, it’s all I know.” Your lips tightened and your brows knitted. Your eyes fell to the floor; you couldn’t look her in the eyes. It felt like you were abandoning her, as silly as it sounds.

“I may not be a profiler, but I can tell you want to work this case out there. I’ll still be here when you come back in one piece.” A small smile came upon your lips, and you met her eyes.

“Thank you, Garcia.” She smiled with her lips. Her eyes scanned your body.

“If you end up needing to stay there, you can probably fit Prentiss’s or JJ’s clothes. I’m going to send you all the teams’ contact information too. Be careful. Tell them they better take care of my girl.” She gave you a quick, unexpected kiss to the forehead. Turning into her office, she grabbed your purse and handed it over to you. She told you where to go to board the jet, and you hurried out to the elevator. You heard her laugh behind you, but you didn’t care. You were excited to be going into the field and getting to be able to know the team and all the ins and outs of the job. Maybe you did want to be a profiler.

Hotch filled your mind again though, inevitably. You were still thinking of how he extended the invitation to you personally, did that mean something? Maybe he was just being nice to you, trying to make you feel welcome here. Or did he really want you to be there with him and the team, did he want to teach you the ropes and spend more time with you? You shook your head to yourself, now heading out to board the jet. You needed to be focused on this case. But you had a feeling that being in a little space with him for at least three hours, which you knew would feel like so much longer, wouldn’t help your focus at all.

[ssa-daddyhotchner]

The Struggle of Loving You - Chapter 39

Chapter Selection 

I walked my way in Aarons office, he sat silently at his desk with papers that stacked his desk. He noticed and watched as I took a seat on his couch. 

I laid down and covered my eyes, "Are you okay?" I groaned in response and turned on my side. 

"Mentally... I'm fine. Now physically my head is fucking killing me." 

"Light sensitive?", I nodded my head and Aaron stood up to close the blinds that faced the outside. It got dark instantly and a wave of relief coated me. 

I uncovered my face and saw Hotch standing over me. He put a hand on my forehead, "You're not running a fever, is that all that hurts." 

I let out a weak chuckle at Hotch trying to take care of me, "Aaron you're not my mom." 

"I know that, I just want to make sure you're alright." He said softly. 

"Are you saying that as my boss?" Aaron pulled a chair from in front of his desk and took a seat over me. 

He laughed lightly, "Yes as your unit chief I want to make sure my agent is in a good condition to work in the field and office." 

He switched his tone to more caring and gentle. "As your boyfriend I want to take care of my girlfriend if she's not feeling well... wouldn't you say that's fair." 

I rolled over and pulled one of the leather cushions under my head. 

"I guess that's reasonable", we smirked and he brought the back of my hand to his mouth, pressing a kiss to the back of it. 

He always wanted to take care of me, I was the most important thing to him... other than Jack of course. He wanted to protect me and be certain that I was safe, in all circumstances. 

Aaron Hotchner was the man to put himself in the line of fire for someone he cared for, his protective nature just took over especially when he knows he could save someone. 

That instinct gets twenty times more powerful when it's someone he loves. That was the one of the many reasons I loved the man, his heart was so big. 

"Do you need ibuprofen?" 

"I took some ten minutes ago, didn't work that's why I'm here." He grinned and walked back to his desk. Sitting down he pulled a stack of files from the corner of his desk and pulled one out. 

"Do you ever actually work, there's so many papers." 

"Well what do you think I was doing before you came in here." He gazed at me. 

"Just watching my beautiful ass through your window but that's just a guess." A deep chuckle filled the room.

"Can I help?", I started getting up but his rumbling voice stopped me. 

"Not right now, just get some rest", settling back down I nestled into the leather. I could smell the lingering scent of Aarons cologne from when he would spend late nights at the office and forgot to head home. 

I started slipping in and out of sleep and going into a dream but the sound of the door opening tugged me out. 

Garcia poked her head into the room, "Sir, we have a case." The door was left open and I heard Hotch shuffle around before the door clicked shut. 

I opened my eyes and I was alone, he left me by myself so I could try and sleep but that wasn't going to happen. 

I rolled off the couch, swinging his office door open and squinted my way over to the round table room. 

I took the seat next to Hotch and put my head in my hands, massaging my temples.

"Okay now I know it's early but you know how these things go.... this case is local. There are currently seven victims of a serial arsonist. Sarah Lauren,  Jacob Parker, Darren Bryant, Joel Hogan, Florence Reynolds, and the two most recent identified Johns Doe's are Andrew Simmons and Anthony Dickinson--"

The rest of what Garcia said faded out as she showed the victims on the screen. 

I picked my head up and my hand traveled under the table, instinctively finding Aarons hand. He glanced over at me then back at the screen and he realized. 

His hand squeezed mine and I tried holding on... I did. Both of them fucking burned.... gone. 

While Rossi was speaking I stood up and left, darting to the bathroom and hovered over the toilet just waiting. 

I started throwing up and I couldn't stop, I heard the door open, someone pulled back my hair. 

"Y/n are you okay?", Emily was by my side holding my hair in her fist while I was busy getting rid of my breakfast. 

She reached over and got me some paper towels when I leaned against the wall. 

"What happened? You've never reacted like that before." 

"Probably just some food poisoning." Totally wasn't because all of my friends are dead. "Is the briefing over?"

"Yeah Hotch wanted me to check on you while he finished things up... we leave in an hour." I nodded and tried to catch my breath after not being able to breath. 

"Can you get me some water?" She said of course and left. 

When she walked out I gathered some strength to stand up. I leaned against the sink and hit the wall before breaking down in tears. 

The door opened, "Thank yo— oh." 

Aaron stepped over and wiped the streams off my face, "Aar." I fell into his arms. He was quick to comfort me, his arm went around my waist holding me close to him. 

Emily ended up leaving the water on my desk, when she had opened the bathroom door all she saw was Aaron holding me and she walked out. 

After ten minutes of trying to calm myself down I finally did. Pulling away from Aaron he looked down at me and kissed my temple, "Come on baby." 

I followed him out of the bathroom when my face was clear of any sign of the sadness that overwhelmed me. 

Going into the bullpen I ignored the stares after Hotch gave them a look silently saying 'don't ask.' 

Keeping with that they never said a word. Letting me be and settle with the fact that the friends I had were now all six feet under. 

______

On the jet Hotch sat next to me for the emotional support I desperately needed. The whole flight my hand never left his as it rested under the table in my lap. 

While the whole team was debriefing and trying to organize everything they definitely noticed my silence, I spoke as little as possible. 

If I broke my friends down to victimology I was going to break, the team didn't need to see that. 

The people I knew for years were going to be reduced to words on a page. 

When we landed he never left my side, I'd see the team whispering to each other while he walked. 

Going into the police station we walked in and I automatically went to the conference room, "I'm gonna go sit for a while okay." 

"Tell me if you need anything." Rossi and Reid went to the Morgue to look over the victims 

The photos stared back at me and it brought a bad taste to my mouth. Blaming myself for the position that they were in, if I'd stayed in contact then maybe they wouldn't be the victims of a crime.

______

The next two days were spent looking at the limited crime scenes that were available to us. The rooms where Anthony and Andrew died were the most charred. 

They were the obvious victims in the crime, the other deaths were accidental. 

Whoever the killer was it was going after the people I knew, Hotch knew that but it was a silent rule that I set for us to not speak of it. 

Despite the rule, it was going to happen, Garcia would do a background check on the boys and she'd find out I also knew them. 

Because of the time between the kills Hotch kept the possibility that this was related to Chloe's death, the connection being me and the COD. 

I knew it was but again, the unspoken rule came into play in those moments that he wanted to ask. 

"What did you find Garcia?", what I predicted was happening. 

It was routine to find out what the victim's past was, in this case it was personal and not the work of a serial killer. At least one had a specific type.

"The tenants in the apartment buildings all started living there at different times, they didn't know each other from what I see. The only connection I actually found was from the previous John Doe's; they went to college together and graduated together in twenty eleven." Garcia finished speaking. 

I sat down on the opposite end of the table avoiding Reids gaze towards me, "Y/n didn't you graduate in twenty eleven?"

I let out a small sigh and looked down, "Is that relevant?" Reid leaned forwards and spoke into the microphone. "What are you getting at?" Aaron said before walking closer to me. 

Aaron and I both knew what was happening.

"Garcia can you find out for me please." I heard her fingers clicking over the keyboard. I could already see the nervousness on her face. 

She was just trying to help and even though she didn't want to break my trust and privacy, she understood there was a good reason for him asking. 

"She did graduate that year and... y/n also went to college with three of the victims." 

Morgan and Emily scrunched their eyebrows, "Baby girl I thought you said the other victims didn't know each other other than the Johns." 

"That's right but I just added a new one to the list, Chloe Prescott." I felt the tears coming on and I really didn't have time for this. I stood up and leaned into Aarons ear whispering. 

"You guys can ask me about it later, I can't right now." 

He agreed and told me to be safe, I walked away from him. I could feel the stares from the team burning the back of my neck when I left. 

Taking the SUV I drove away. When I walked into the hotel room I got a phone call, I held the phone to my ear. 

"Hello." I was too tired at care and after a moment of waiting for a response I hung up. 

Stripping my clothes I took a shower feeling the cold water on my skin is what I needed. It cleared out the headache that was like a gnat in my head. 

Walking out of the bathroom with damp hair I made myself comfortable in Aaron's clothes. 

Climbing into the bed I turned off the lights. 

I wanted a little relief from the rage, sadness, and pain bubbling under my skin. 

I felt like I was suffocating, being quite literally the only person to understand the sorrow I was feeling. 

No one near me could relate, I didn't need the pitiful glances. 

I was going to get them though, the 'oh honey' or 'I'm sorry'. The questions started spiraling in my head, asking why me? what the fuck do they want? 

Trying to sleep and having no luck I was still stuck in the stage of sleep where I was gone enough to dream but I heard every little thing that happened. 

At that moment the door started to open and I looked forwards, seeing the window, it was still dark. 

I realized it was Aaron from the belt being unbuckled and I rolled over. "You're still up?" Aaron started getting undressed and I took a deep breath. 

"What time is it?" 

“Two o’clock, you should've been asleep for a few hours now." After sitting up the phone started ringing, looking at it I declined after I saw Unknown. 

"Who was that?" 

I rubbed my eyes, "Unknown Caller and yeah well after everyone gets in your shit it's hard to stop thinking about." 

He was down to his boxers and he climbed into bed, I made movements and cuddled into his chest. 

Aaron kissed the top of my head, "I know baby."

................................

Permanent taglist:  @qtip-blog  @hotch-meeeeeuppppp  

[publiusvirgilius]

Guilt by association - Chapter 3: Chilling Developments

Aaron Hotchner x OC

warnings: stressed-out oc

word count: 2.5K

summary: the end of term is near, but it seems Ida will have more to worry about than just turning in papers.

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2

December arrived without fanfare, bringing chilly gusts and freezing rain that slowly overwhelmed the once sunny days.

I had gotten through most of the parent conferences, fully accepting the chaotic schedule that now ruled my life. I only had a couple of conferences left, and with winter break just a little over a week away, I was more than ready to step away from my kindergarteners for a while and focus on my own classes.

As I sat in the classroom at the end of the school day—Brad left before me these days since the study was coming to a close—I opened my overfilled online planner again. I checked it and updated it obsessively. I knew myself too well to allow myself to lose track of appointments, and I couldn't afford to miss any advisor meetings or grant proposal hearings, much less be late to them.

I had my second-to-last parent conference in half an hour:

Wednesday, 12/8  3:30 p.m. Meeting with Anna's parents — Marc Orly and Fiona Orly

And then the next day:

Thursday, 12/9  7:00 p.m. Meeting with Jack's parent — Aaron Hotchner

We were supposed to have met a week ago, but unsurprisingly, Hotchner had rescheduled.

I decided to call him to make sure that he still knew about the conference. Not because I hadn't seen him in three weeks and wanted hear his voice.

"Hello?" His tone was impatient, as if I had just interrupted something.

"Hi, Mr. Hotchner," I spoke in what I hoped was a friendly but efficient tone. "I wanted to call to confirm our conference for tomorrow at seven p.m."

"I'm going to have to reschedule, Ms. Nott," he said without missing a beat.

Again? Should've figured.

"Mr. Hotchner, the end of the term is next week, and we really would like to—"

"I will contact you tomorrow to confirm when I will be available, but right now I have urgent matters to attend to." His voice sounded strained, as if he were under duress. Then he hung up, without even a good-bye.

Is he serious? In the three months I had known Jack's dad, I had never known him to be rude.

By eleven p.m. the next day, I still hadn't heard from Hotchner. Brad would be furious. Parent-teacher conferences were not just for updating the parents about their children's educational development, but they were an opportunity to gauge the relationship between the child and parent by evaluating how they responded to hearing about their children's progress.

On my way to school the next morning, I decided to call him myself. The first time, the line rang until I got to voicemail. The second time, however, he picked up after the first ring.

But no sound came out of the other end.

"Hello?" I spoke into the phone.

Still no answer.

"Hello? Mr. Hotchner?"

What game is he playing?

"Mr. Hotchner, are you there?"

Finally, someone spoke. However, it was not Hotchner's voice on the other line. It was the voice of a younger man, and his tone was cold, laced with a raspy edge that made me shiver.

"Agent Hotchner is unable to come to the phone. And you'll never talk to him again, unless you give me what I want," said the chilling voice.

I froze in the middle of the street. Who is this? Is Hotchner in trouble?

Before I could respond, the speaker hung up, and I remained glued to my spot, unable to move.

What is going on? Is this a joke?

The entire day, I was on edge. I couldn't get that cold voice out of my head.

During recess, I was on duty, and I took the time to gather my thoughts. Jack was at school today, so whatever had happened to Hotchner, his son was safe.

But who had gotten him ready for school? He had been on time today, like always, and nothing had seemed out of the ordinary about his behavior. If I hadn't called Hotchner that morning, I never would have known that anything was out of the ordinary.

The playground looked the same as always. The ground was slightly blanched and damp from the remnants of morning frost. The kids, their noses pink from the chilly air, ran and ducked under the slides and around the bare bushes. From my usual spot under the tree near the building I had a view of the whole playground and the parking lot beyond it, and my gaze fell into the familiar pattern of tracing the students' movements across the yard.

Then, something appeared in the corner of my vision. Something out of place. A large black SUV pulled into the parking lot and skidded to a jolting halt just behind the playground fence, and a large man exited the car as soon as he had parked haphazardly across the asphalt.

Parents generally signed in at the front office before visiting during the school day. This back parking lot was for buses and pick-up only. I called to the other teacher on recess duty to let her know I would go talk to the man.

Huh. I don't recognize him. He must be the parent of a student in another class.

At least, I hoped he was a parent. The man was intimidating to say the least. His biceps bulged out from under his dark gray shirt with the edge of a large tattoo peeking out from under his left sleeve, and his shaved head emphasized his dark, menacing brows.

"Hi, can I help you?"

The man flashed me a badge. "Ida Nott? I'm Derek Morgan with the FBI. I need you and Jack to come with me."

"What's going on? Is Mr. Hotchner okay?" My head started to spin. The handle of the man's gun glinted even in the scarce sunlight.

"We'll explain everything later. But right now, I need you and Jack to get in the car."

Still not quite processing, I handed over my shift to the other teacher and called Jack. He bounded over with his usual quiet cheerfulness.

"Hi Derek!" the boy said.

"Hey little man," Derek smiled. "We're gonna take you and Ms. Nott to your dad's office, alright?"

"Okay."

Jack was calm as ever during the ride to Quantico. He must be used to it.

About half an hour later, I found myself sitting in what felt like a conference room with a cup of coffee warming my hands. A few minutes later, a tall man in a sweater vest came in to lead Jack out of the room, giving me a tentative wave. Derek came in shortly after, seating himself directly across from me.

"Ida, we think you're the last person who spoke to our unit chief Aaron Hotchner."

The blood drained from my face. "What do you mean? What's happened to Jack's dad?"

"We traced his cell phone activity, and it looks like the last time his phone was active, he was on a call with you."

Oh no. I should have known something was wrong when he didn't pick up. My skin prickled, anxiety crawling up the back of my neck.

"What's wrong, Ida?"

"I—," I stammered, then gulped down a sip of coffee to ground myself. "When I called Mr. Hotchner this morning, he didn't pick up, which I thought was just him being rude, considering how he hung up on me last night—we've been trying to find a time for a parent conference before the end of the term. But when I tried him again right after, someone else picked up."

I shivered, remembering the strange man's voice. "It wasn't anyone I recognized. His voice was... cold," I said, for lack of a better adjective.

"You're sure it was a man?"

I nodded.

"Do you remember what he said?" he asked.

So it wasn't a joke. "Um," I started, my voice beginning to shake. "He said I'd never talk to Hotchner again unless he got what he wanted."

This was bad. I felt sick at the thought of Hotchner in danger. What would happen to Jack? Was he safe? Was I safe?

"Ida, I need you right here," Derek said firmly, gripping my arm to steady my nervousness. His hands were strong, and I caught a faint whiff of patchouli and orange spice, and suddenly I found myself longing for the more familiar scent of nutmeg and pine—Aaron Hotchner.

When I had imagined myself at the FBI headquarters—and I had imagined it, more times than I'd like to admit—it was always with Hotchner. But today, when I finally found myself at the Bureau, it was under hardly favorable circumstances. For all I knew, Hotchner was missing, or worse, dead, and the last thoughts I had associated with him were only negative ones.

Derek's grip on my arm tightened, bringing me back to the present.

"Think back to the call. Could you hear anything to identify where he might have been calling from?"

"I don't know," I said meekly.

The tall, weedy-looking boy peeked his head into the room again.

"We got the recording," he said. Then turning to me, he added, "You can come with us, if you'd like."

I was led down the hall and into an open work area filled with desks and monitors. where I saw several agents gathered around one monitor—seated in front of the computer was an oddly dressed blonde woman. She wore a brightly patterned dress with a matching pink satin headband, her hair teased out in an '80s style pouf, with sky-high pink stilettos with what I could only describe as furry pom-poms attached at the heel.

"Oh, hello! You look young for a teacher," she said in a bright, friendly voice.

Derek pointed out each of the agents who were now staring up at me with piercing eyes that looked as if they were taking apart each microexpression on my face.

"Ida, these are Agents Garcia, Prentiss, Jareau, and Dr. Reid, who I think you've already met," he said.

Garcia pressed play on the recording, and for some reason I hadn't expected to hear my own voice as well.

"Hello? Hello, Mr. Hotchner? Mr. Hotchner, are you there?

Agent Hotchner is unable to come to the phone. And you'll never talk to him again, unless you give me what I want."

I hadn't realized I sounded so... timid. Had I known something was wrong before even hearing the man on the other line? Or was I just that afraid of provoking Hotchner? Through the recording I was able to hear the sharp intake of my breath in response to the man's words, which I didn't even know I had made in that moment.

The agents began to discuss the implications of the man's message, taking apart the lexical nuances and unconscious stress syllables, but I hardly heard any of it. It was hard to think of Aaron Hotchner as missing. He was so solid, immutable, not just physically, but in all aspects. I suddenly remembered our conversation from two nights ago.

"I spoke to him two days ago," I spoke up. "I didn't notice it then, but he sounded sort of strange."

The agents thought this worth tracing as well, and soon they pulled up the recording of what was possibly the last conversation I had ever had with Hotchner.

Something about my face must have given away the fact that I was on the verge of hyperventilating, because one of the agents—Jareau? I think?—came to my side with a concerned expression.

"Ida? Would you like some more coffee?" she asked.

I nodded, grateful for the offer of escape. "That would be great, thank you."

Once she led me back to the conference room, I could somewhat relax. This agent seemed to be the only one who wasn't trying to peer into my mind each time I caught her gaze.

"Agent Jareau, was it?"

"You can call me JJ," she smiled.

"Can you tell me what's going on? What's happened to Hotchner?"

Her large blue eyes looked troubled. "We can't really say. Right now, we know just about as much as you do, which is why we were hoping to get your help. What I can tell you is, we're doing everything we can to bring him back."

"What about Jack? What are we supposed to tell him?" I asked.

"Jack's a tough kid. This isn't the first time his dad has been in danger. He'll be just fine."

Look at me, less emotionally stable than a five year old.

When JJ spoke again, there was that look of searching in her eyes that I had noticed in the other agents. "Ida, can you tell me the relationship between you and Aaron Hotchner?"

"We don't really have a— a relationship," I stammered. "I mean, he's visited my apartment but that's not what it sounds like... I might have had a crush on him at some point, but..."

The agent smiled, a charming, genuine smile. "I just meant professionally," she said. "If you could tell me more about your job and your role in Jack's life."

"Oh," I said, embarrassed, then began to explain quickly. "I'm a graduate student at the School of Education and Human Development at George Washington University. A part of my research is studying the behavioral development of children aged five to seven, so my advisor thought the best place for me to do that would be as an elementary school teacher."

"And what is your relationship with your students' parents like?"

"They know that they're a part of the study, and they also know that their kids' education will always come first, and that the study is secondary. We do keep files of all the parents in addition to the kids because we have to take all variables into account."

JJ seemed troubled by this, but quickly hid her frown. "You've already helped us a lot, Ida. Agent Prentiss and Agent Reid are going to head to your school to interview some of the other teachers, but we think it best that you stay here for now."

"Agent, it's still the middle of the school day. I need to get back." Brad was on my back as it was, and I couldn't afford to miss a day of school, especially with my research grant on the line.

"Seeing as you've had contact with a potential suspect, we believe it would be safest for you to stay away from your usually frequented locations, including your home."

"I can't even go home?"

JJ's tone was sympathetic but firm. "If we want to find out where Agent Hotchner is, we can't have you becoming the next victim."

So Hotchner really was missing. I couldn't help but feel that it was my fault. If I had just called him sooner, or if I had been mature enough to go talk to him after the apartment fiasco... It was hard to imagine Hotchner, the big, strong agent, Jack's superhero, losing control, or even, losing at all.

Does he know where he is? Is he in pain? Is he unconscious? Or awake, thinking of his son?

And even though I had no right to, my heart ached for Aaron Hotchner.

[babb1es]

Wizard 101: My Wizard Children

What do they look like?

What do they think like?

What do they like to do?

Well friendly citizen it is I who shall tell you!

First order of business! Names!

Abigail- meaning fathers joy. Fun fact did you know Karen means pure? Now you do.

Michael- meaning who is like god, was contemplating naming them Raphael but decided against it.

Helen-meaning bright one or shining one. Thought it was fitting for her occupation.

Aaron- meaning mountain of strength, exalted, enlightened, bearer of martyrs which is by far the coolest.

Amanda-meaning worthy of love. Because she is.

Christian-meaning and original take a wild guess

John-meaning I haven’t researched it because he’s not very important, but King John was a greedy bastard in Robin Hood and John is a greedy bastard of a wizard.

The next step! Appearance!

Abigail- Cool pale skin, dark blue eyes, brunette bob. She is 5’4 and leaning on the slightly chubby side. She burns quite easily in the sun and used to live in New York. Not NC City but the countryside. I’ve been on a road trip through the mountains and the older towns are really quite beautiful. She was swallowing an Ibuprofen for period cramps when she was teleported to the Spiral.

Helen- Cool medium skin, light brown eye, dirty blonde. She’s 5’6 and a bit on the frail side from spending a lot of time in a hospital bed. She was involved in a car crash which took one of her eyes and broke one of her legs. She was extraordinarily lucky to get away with minimum damage however the bus driver did die of a broken neck. Her head was shaved as she was cut up by glass. She was in the middle of physical therapy when Ambrose plucked her of off Earth.

Michael- Warm pale skin, freckled, olive green eyes, long ginger hair. They are 5’8 with a muscular build. Was nicknamed the Male Aphrodite by their class and is not comfortable with that nickname. At all. While physically they are quite masculine, they identify as non-binary. Was at their part time job in the back of a Walmart when pulled into the spiral.

Amanda- Dark warm skin, hazel eyes, very curly black hair. She’s 5’3 with an athletic build. She also has vitiligo. She’s lives every horse girls dream, training horses working with horses, riding horses. She’s an animal girl. She doesn’t have a very good internet connection so she hacked her neighbors WiFi. She was in the middle of a LOTR extended edition marathon when she was so rudely taken away.

Aaron- Cool dark skin, dark brown eyes, keeps his hair short. He’s 6’0 flat with a chubby build, which isn’t going to last long in Wizard City when he’s going to be running and fighting to live everyday. He’s a long time fan fiction writer and had a lovely 50,000+ word Scary Harry Potter fic he had been working on for a while. A long while. After severe editing he posted the first chapter just as he was zapped away to the Spiral.

Christian- Warm medium skin, bright blue eyes, dark brown hair(EBoy haircut you know the one). He’s 5’5 with a skinny build. Not a lot of fat, not a lot of muscle. He lived in Florida with his dad and is an artist. Give him a medium and he’ll take to it like a fish to water. Was in the middle of detailing his dad’s car as a birthday present when he was snatched.

John is actually from the Spiral, and he thought that being a wizard would mean fame and money. He's from Marleybone and is a rich mans son. When he realizes he’s a glorified magical errand boy, he runs off to become a pirate. He has black hair, dull blue eyes, and a pasty complexion.

And now, finally, PERSONALITIES!! And current states of mind!

All characters are between 17 and 18 years old.

Helen- Helen is quiet. She wasn’t quiet before Wizard City. In fact she was quite loud and laughed often. She was looking forward to getting out of the hospital and physical therapy so that she could go home and be with her mom and dad. Realizing that she’s not allowed to go home until she helps deal with the problem takes its toll on her. Helens light dims before it can shine again.

Michael- Michael is in heaven. Their family is far, far away from them, they have a magic wand, there’s no more working at Walmart. Their mood however immediately tanks when Ambrose tells them they have to defeat Malistaire. He’s sending a bunch of novices new to magic and completely unfamiliar with the world to kill a dark and powerful Necromancer. Realizing none of them have a choice, Michael takes it upon themselves to keep the rest of them safe. They are a sword and only waiting to be drawn.

Amanda- Amanda quickly bonds with Christian over their shared interests in memes, jokes, and generally being chaos gremlins. However the jokes won’t be slung every second for a while. Helens not the only one slipping down a slope. Christian has for all intents and purposes lost his father, one of the only grounding presences in his life. Amanda lost her Aunts and the animals, some of her only friends. Storm clouds have to gather in order for rain to fall.

Christian- Christian was a prankster, a jokester, an artist. His dad hadn’t been the same since mom left, but the first time he made his dad smile and laugh again he knew that’s what he wanted to do. Give happiness to people. Get that light in their eyes back. He’s scared about what will happen when his dad comes home from work to find him missing for his birthday. And the day after his birthday. And the day after that as well. A fire burns brightest in the darkest of places.

Abigail- Abigail, after Ambrose was done with his speech, sunk into a chair and started crying. She was always an emotional person and while she did her absolute best to remain calm and rational, sometimes things would sneak up on her. Things being kidnapped by a wizard and all but thrown into a war. She’s in pain, she’s confused, and everything is unfamiliar and strange and please I just want to go home. If you hit a block of ice, it will crack. Hit it again, and it will shatter. It will melt and eventually reform into something new.

Aaron- Aaron is in shock. He doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know what to think, he just...stands there. He doesn’t hear Abigail crying, he doesn’t here Christian shouts of outrage, nor does he hear Helen hit the floor as she passes out from stress. He only vaguely feels Michaels hand on his shoulder as they guide him to the dorms. He doesn’t acknowledge anyone beyond stiff nods and quit agreements. Maybe things will make more sense in the morning. Allowing yourself to grieve is the first step to moving forward.

John- John is a rude, greedy little bastard who sneers at the older kids collective mental breakdown. We don’t talk about him.

[ravenvsfox]

what’s up what’s up what’s up, here’s rockband au chapter nine as promised!!!

7.

Andrew hands Neil his t-shirt. It’s Saturday, and they’re in Neil’s room, shoulder to shoulder, moonlight quivering above them like a ladle-full of mercury.

“Walk me through it again.”

“Walk yourself through it,” Andrew says. “It’s not that complicated.”

Neil holds the shirt in a ball against his bare chest. “Closed venue. Metal detectors. Sixteen songs. Quick encore.”

“Riko’s not coming.”

Neil swallows, thinking of the number seven in bold, underlined. “He might.”

“I told you to stop believing everything he says he’s capable of,” Andrew says. Neil strums his fingers on the messy wad of his shirt. “He threatens ten people before breakfast. He doesn’t realize how defended you are.”

Neil turns his face into the pillow and screws his eyes shut. “It’s not really about him. It’s just—I don’t know. I trust my instincts.” He doesn't mention the final numbers in a drawn out countdown. He doesn’t rehash the details of Riko’s threat. It won’t change anything.

Andrew shifts and splays his hand over Neil’s jaw. “Don’t,” he says. “They lie.” He scrapes his teeth over Neil’s neck. His half-hour old yes hangs in every corner of the room like smoke. They’re so close, he feels like a shadow being painstakingly gathered up and rolled on.

He licks his lips so close to Neil that his tongue flickers against his skin, and his pulse reacts to the feeling, thunderously fast. He feels the brief pressure of Andrew’s hand on his wrists, and he makes himself go boneless beneath him.

Every time they do this, Neil replays everything a moment after it happens, stockpiling the taste of the frantic breath trapped between them, the hot, calloused hands up under his clothes. His mouth is perpetually gasping open, Andrew’s wet hair choked in his fists. He never used to want anything like this, so badly it could kill him. It could really kill him.

“Neil,” Andrew says. Neil chases his mouth, but Andrew sits up over him, slouched against his hip. “Don’t do this if you think it’s your only option.” “What do you mean?” Neil breathes.

“I don’t need this,” Andrew says, holding a hand down hard on Neil’s chest. “Neither should you.”

Of course I need it, Neil wants to say. I kiss you and I feel — the way music feels before it leaves my mouth. When it could be anything.

“I just want to,” Neil says, shrugging. Just. Like there’s something nonchalant about admitting it, like it’s nothing to him. He waits for Andrew to call his bluff.

He doesn’t. He just looks down at him, slides his index and middle fingers over Neil’s hipbone, and kisses his chest.

Oh no, Neil thinks. We’ve been so stupid.

6.

His hands make the shapes of the chords, but he can’t seem to play them. His vision swims white.

He can hear what his part should sound like, the dark wind chime cacophony, big-band style backgrounds underneath the grind of furious twin guitars. He should be the food colouring bleeding into their batter.

“Play,” Kevin says bluntly. “This isn’t a read inside your head kind of deal.”

“Yeah,” Nicky says. “Share with the class.”

“One second,” Neil mutters.

“I’m serious, get out of your head,” Kevin says.

“Give me a fucking second,” he snaps. There’s a cool moment of silence.

“We’re never going to be ready for Saturday,” Aaron says, ducking out from under the strap of his guitar.

Neil’s ears burn. He plays some simple inversions so it seems like there’s something musical going on behind his eyes other than alarm bells.

“The rest of us are going to play,” Kevin says. “Catch up.” He slides his fingers down the neck of his bass like he’s slitting a throat. Andrew launches himself at the drum-kit, and Neil blinks at the time signature on his music, the little 6 stacked over the 8.

One, two, three, four, five, six. Play. Play. Play.

He plays a natural A instead of a flat, and the structural integrity of his first chord crumples. He blinks, disbelieving, at his hand, hunched over the botched note. He straightens all of his fingers. The song gallops on without him.

“Are you okay?” Nicky mouths. Neil frowns. His head is full of numbers.

It turns out the song isn’t very good without vocals or keys. Kevin is obviously aware of it, and his face is sour, clenched like a fist. Neil watches his pursed mouth, then Nicky’s concerned brown peach-pit eyes, and Andrew and Aaron’s uncannily synced expressions of disdain.

“I’m sorry,” he says, before the last note has completely died.

“Useless. That’s utterly useless to me,” Kevin says.

“I’m distracted.”

“Obviously,” Kevin says tightly. “Let’s go again.” They play for a minute. Andrew puts his sticks down suddenly, and the tempo trips over its own feet. He stands up amid the clatter of directionless instruments. “Jesus Andrew, fucking participate.”

He sidles out from behind the drums and walks wordlessly out of the room. Neil immediately gets up to follow, but Kevin catches his arm.

“This distraction, Neil, it’s poison. If you let it progress I will never forgive you.”

“You don’t have to worry about anything progressing,” he tells him.

Kevin’s grip loosens. “This isn’t a joke to me,” he says quietly.

“I guarantee you I don’t find anything about you funny.”

Kevin sighs and looks at the ceiling. “Okay.”

“Five minutes,” Neil says. He shakes Kevin loose and stalks out of the room, feeling a little shock of adrenaline lifting his feet.

Andrew’s waiting for him around the corner.

“Don’t be an idiot.”

“Okay,” Neil says.

“You’re not careless like this. Not about music.”

“Don’t worry, it’s not about this,” Neil says, gesturing between them.

Andrew narrows his eyes. “Riko’s not going to hire a hit on you at a public gig, and the more you obsess about it the more I think you might actually be clueless.”

“You don’t already think that?” Neil asks, surprised.

Andrew ignores him. “If you’re so afraid of losing your voice, then why are you going silent now?”

“It’s not just about my voice anymore. It’s about all of us. You—“ He searches Andrew’s face. “You must know that.”

“I try to know as little about you as possible.”

“Right.”

“Right.”

He watches Andrew’s tightly closed expression and wants so badly to screw it open.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Andrew says.

“Just—distract me?” Neil begs.

Andrew considers. “From what?”

He steps closer. Andrew lets him. He doesn’t bend backwards in Neil’s blustering, wanting wind.

“From him.” He doesn’t say Kevin and his prying, or Riko’s posturing, or his father’s oppressive memory, but Andrew seems to understand.

He understands all the way into Neil’s space, and then he understands his mouth open and his thighs apart, and he gives him something to press down into, when the piano keys wouldn’t budge.

They sway. Music trickles through the halls from somewhere. Maybe out of Neil’s mouth.

“Oh,” someone says.

The interruption is a lightning strike, and it splits them in half. Andrew uses Neil’s chest as leverage to push himself backwards several feet. He’s overcorrecting, trying to close off his expression and hold his breath, wrenching a door closed over the vulnerability of being seen wanting something.

Neil sucks his bottom lip into his mouth, and tries to get his equilibrium back, shifting from being deeply kissed to being shoved halfway across the hall.

“Oh,” Nicky repeats. “Oh, fuck, um. Sorry. We’re just—starting.” He holds a hand to his face, half laughing. “Oh my god.”

Andrew wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, and Neil and Nicky watch him breeze past them both.

“What the fuck, actually,” Nicky hisses. Neil shakes his head, speechless. “You’re— no, I can’t even talk about this.”

“Good,” Neil manages.

“Actually, wait, I definitely can,” Nicky says. “That’s my—Neil, you know that was Andrew, right? My cousin Andrew?”

Neil bristles. “Unlike you, I do actually try to identify a person before I kiss them.”

Nicky ignores this dig, and says, “so that is what you were doing? I didn’t hallucinate that?”

Neil gives him a look, and tries to walk back to the recording studio, but Nicky catches him by both elbows.

“No, no, no, no, I’m nowhere near done with this, oh my god.”

“I am.”

“Neil,” Nicky moans.

“Practice, now,” Neil says, dragging him back with him.

“Then talk later, please, Neil, take pity on me.”

He ignores him, and everyone else, until he’s behind the piano.

He starts playing the sequence, pitch perfect this time, and one by one, the ensemble climbs in behind him. 

If he doesn’t look up at them, it’s like nothing even happened. Andrew’s drums are full of space and Nicky’s guitar is urgent where Aaron’s is steady. Kevin’s bass is thick and sweet as syrup, and suddenly they’re good again.

In the shuffle of coming and going, he had completely forgotten to count himself in.

5.

Before Monday can start, Neil tries to stop time.

He wanders the house in the twilight, hoping that the silence will somehow keep him preserved in place.

The oven clock blinks 5:00 am for what seems like a very long time. The humidifier in Kevin’s room makes a noise like wheels on asphalt, that silky, endless grind.

As always, Neil doesn’t have a destination. He pauses drowsily at the kitchen window and looks at the grey stucco of the house next door. He goes downstairs, pauses on the second to last stair, then walks back up again. He sits on the porch steps for a while, but it feels so exposed that he panics, fumbling loudly with the screen door on his way back inside.

He almost cries in the bathroom mirror, and then he pinches his fingers over his eyes until it hurts.

He nudges the door to Andrew’s bedroom open, but he’s soundly asleep for once, and it makes him want to cry again, to think of waking him. He eases the door closed.

“Hey,” Nicky says gently. Neil looks up, hand still curled around Andrew’s doorknob.

“What do you want?” he whispers.

Nicky looks sad. “Just checking on you. I heard you moving around up here.”

“How did you know it was me?”

Nicky smiles, crossing his arms and leaning sleepily up against the wall. “I listen pretty good, you know? It’s what makes me so invaluable.”

“Right,” Neil says. Then stronger, meaning it, “right.” He swallows. “Look, Nicky, I don’t really want to talk about—“

“It’s fine,” Nicky says, waving him off. He grins. “You’ll tell me everything eventually. They always do.”

Eventually. Neil tries to smile, or roll his eyes, or get angry, but he feels like he can’t move. If Nicky isn’t actively telling a joke he always looks like he’s about to, or like maybe he just did and you didn’t get it. It feels incongruous and cruel to do anything but laugh. 

“Come sit with me,” Nicky says, nodding towards the living room. “We’ve got time.”

Neil peers around the dividing wall into the kitchen as they pass. 5:15, the oven reports. They settle into their usual spots on the couch and love seat, predictable as ghosts. Cold air presses in through the cracked window and makes the old leather crunch when he moves.

“Are you nervous?”

Neil looks back at him, distracted. “About what?”

“Saturday.”

Neil’s heart jerks, confused, before he remembers the concert. He feels like he’s been staring so hard at the details of the frame that he forgot the painting inside it.

“I don’t really get stage fright,” Neil says honestly.

“I know,” Nicky says. He’s smiling wryly, chin propped up on his knee. “You’re fearless. It’s obnoxious.”

“I’m not fearless. I just think it’s a waste of time to worry about the things I actually like to do.” “Sage wisdom,” Nicky snorts. “Trying to put Betsy out of a job?”

Neil shrugs. “I probably could.”

“Pff,” Nicky says. “I’m not sure you’re well-adjusted enough for that.”

“It’s a pseudo-science anyway,” Neil says.

“Uh-huh,” Nicky says, amused. His smile sags a little, and he looks away. “Um. I know I wasn’t going to make you talk about it, but—“

“Nicky,” Neil warns. “You didn’t even last five minutes.”

“I know, I know, I’m a gossip, whatever. Just tell me you’re not jerking him around, okay? Tell me it’s serious. I know it doesn’t seem like it, but I pretty much raised that rascal.”

“It’s not serious,” Neil says, confused. “It’s not really anything. It’s just—a distraction. For both of us.”

“Neil, come on.”

“What?”

Nicky’s looking at him with wide-open disbelief, and Neil’s skin crawls.

“It’s obviously something.”

“It’s not,” Neil argues. He thinks of Andrew, hot against him, saying I don’t need this, neither should you. “I know exactly where we stand.”

“Really, because it seems like maybe you don’t, at all. There’s no fucking way this means nothing to him. I think there’s been something about you from the very beginning. He only writes lyrics about shit that’s like, in his bloodstream—“

Neil shivers, annoyed. “We don’t have feelings for each other just because you want us to. We have a deal. He’s counting on me not to get attached.”

Nicky studies him appraisingly. “Did he tell you that?”

“Yes,” Neil says, trying not to dwell on it. “That’s what I’ve been saying.”

“Okay, fine,” Nicky says. “Believe what you want.” He pushes himself to the edge of the couch, and reaches out to pat Neil’s cheek. “Just be careful with each other, okay?”

“Andrew doesn’t need to be coddled.”

Nicky smiles, sideways. “Sure he does.” He stands, steadying himself on Neil’s shoulder. “We all deserve a little coddling, I think. Why not? It’s better than getting hurt for no reason.” He rounds the couch and makes his way over to the stairs to the basement. “I’ll try not to bring it up again unless you fuck up in a big way, okay?”

“Okay,” Neil agrees, relieved.  

Nicky smiles. “Go back to sleep.” He nods back to the place where he found Neil skulking in the hall. “Believe me, waking Andrew up is more trouble than it’s worth.”

Neil shrugs. “I’ve done it before.”

Nicky wrinkles his nose a little, and scoffs, “I bet you have.” He doesn’t elaborate, and Neil narrows his eyes at him until he slinks back down the stairs towards his room.

He knows Nicky is wrong about this. Andrew agreed to stop writing about him, and Neil agreed to stop pinning his hopes on him in return. He would know, if Andrew wanted more from him. He thinks—no, he would know.

He sits in the chilly little sitting room, listening to that grumbling humidifier and watching the dark TV screen reflect the outside lights. Every corner of this place is familiar. It hurts to think of how much time he’s spent here, letting himself in, drinking and singing and kissing Andrew’s tired morning mouth. 5:30, the oven clock whispers.

He puts his hand to a crease in the couch, and thinks, hopeless, I want to stay.

4.

Some nights, Kevin drags him back into the studio after practice. He forces him through vocal gymnastics and ear training until he can sing all of their songs a cappella and unwavering.

Kevin walks him through the empty halls with such purpose, like he’s fighting through a crowd that isn’t there. Neil wonders what it would be like, to have that self-importance baked into you. To feel like you’ve earned it.

He watches the arc of Kevin’s back as he tinkers with wires. As always, in the final days of the countdown, Neil wants absently to be somewhere else. 

Of course he loves these sessions, honing his skill with Kevin, and he enjoys pacing through Palmetto when it’s a perfect empty labyrinth. But he doesn’t want to go through the motions of the same fight, and he doesn’t want to think about what they’re practicing for anymore, a tour that he is unlikely to finish.

He swallows stale bottled water and plonks his phone up on the piano where he won’t be tempted to check it.

“Are we ready?” Kevin asks. Neil shrugs. “Let’s try the harmonies in big blue.” Affectionately nicknamed by Nicky for its bluesy influence, a sound so rich and dark that it’s almost purple.

“Can we workshop the repeat? I’m still not sure what we’re doing with dynamics, there.”

“Not yet,” Kevin sniffs. “We need everyone here for that.”

“But I’m good on everything else,” Neil says.

“I decide when you’re good,” Kevin says, adjusting Neil’s microphone in front of him, like he’s a child who can’t fasten his own bib.

He can’t help it, his fists curl. “Right. Remind me why you get that privilege, again?”

“Neil,” Kevin says. “We don’t have time for this conversation.”

“For once we agree,” Neil says icily.

“I was one half of Evermore, remember? We weren’t the most popular duo in America because we wasted time bickering. We were an organization in every sense of the word. We each had our tasks and we completed them.”

“Do you think that’s what makes a good band?” Neil asks.

Kevin falters. “I—not anymore, no.”

“We’re better than Evermore because we fight. For everything.”

“We’re not better than Evermore,” Kevin scoffs.

“That depends on how you define better,” Neil says. Kevin looks away. He can’t seem to hold eye contact; his face always splinters under the heft of the other person’s gaze, like thin ice underfoot.

“I try not to think about before.”

“Yeah,” Neil says, feeling his stomach sink. “Yeah, I understand that.”

“I—“ Kevin starts, twisting the plug at the root of his bass, rocking back so he’s sitting on the nearest amp. “I know you’re hiding—something. From us.”

Neil nods. “Okay.”

“And it’s weird because, there’s a lot of shitty stuff about you that you don’t bother to hide.”

Neil snorts, feeling unusually lenient with Kevin, almost enjoying his sharp mouth.

“So I’m kind of thinking… whatever it is must be really bad.”

“Interesting theory.”

“Are you denying it?”

“I can’t be bothered to lie to you, Kevin. Most of what I say goes over your head anyway.”

“Fuck you,” Kevin says, but he’s kind of smiling.

“All you need to know is that I’m committed to Ausreißer. I will be until the very end. Will you keep practicing with me until then?”

“Yeah,” Kevin says, reaching out and knocking awkwardly on top of the piano. “Every night.”

3.

Neil has never had trouble telling the twins apart. The way they hold themselves is entirely different; Aaron’s shoulders are always at a contrary angle while Andrew’s are straight across. Aaron is sour where Andrew is bitter—there’s a crucial difference there. The armbands help, but he likes to think he could tell them apart in a snowstorm, bundled up across the street.

He also has disdain for Aaron where he has respect for Andrew, and he hasn’t teased those feelings completely apart yet.

When he walks out of the record shop on main street and sees Aaron walking with an unfamiliar woman, he stops short. His fingers bunch in the plastic handle of the bag swinging from one hand.

“I thought you had an appointment with Dobson,” he calls. Aaron looks around guiltily, and his arm shrivels away from the woman’s shoulders. “And unless this is her...”

“Neil,” he says stiffly. “This is Katelyn.”

She waves cheerfully. Neil ignores her. “Is there a reason you’re lying to the team?”

Aaron rolls his eyes, and makes a show of relaxing back into Katelyn’s side. “It’s none of your business, at all, as usual.” He tries to steer them past Neil on the sidewalk, but Neil sidesteps back into their way.

“Andrew doesn’t tend to like outsiders.”

“Do you honestly think I’ve forgotten that?” Aaron hisses. He seems embarrassed, and Neil can see his hand consciously gentling on Katelyn’s shoulder. “Can you—“ he looks at her apologetically. “Just give us a second, okay?”

“Of course,” she says sweetly. “Wave me over if you need extraction,” she says, quieter, and he smiles secretly back at her. Neil frowns as Aaron kisses her on the temple, and ushers Neil back under the awning next to the record shop.

“I know what Andrew’s opinions are on this, probably better than you do,” he starts.

“So why are you still doing it?” Neil asks.

“Why are you fucking my brother?” Aaron returns. His irises look exactly like Andrew’s do when he’s frustrated, more like an absence of colour than anything else. Neil shivers, though the noonday heat is still tense in the air.

“How is that relevant?”

“So you are then.”

Neil squints at him. “Just tell me what to think about this so I can stop talking to you.”

“Nice,” Aaron says sarcastically. “Don’t act like you’re above this. You’re breaking the rules just as badly as we are.”

“What rules am I breaking, exactly?”

Aaron looks nervously back at Katelyn. “You should’ve spoken to Andrew about this, not me.”

“Believe me, I would rather be talking to him, but you’re the one who just showed up here with a secret.”

“Look, just pretend you never saw us. I’ll pretend your obsession with my brother isn’t physically repugnant to me.”

“I don’t have time for pretending,” Neil snaps. A passing bicyclist startles at his raised voice, and one pedal briefly spins out. “I don’t have time for whatever is keeping you and Andrew apart.”

Aaron scrutinizes him for a long moment. There’s something surprisingly sharp about his expression. “Whatever problems we have were here long before you got here, and they’ll be here after you’re gone.”

“You’re right,” Neil says. He can feel the frustration bleeding out from his face, wetting his collar, flooding the street. “What a waste.” 

He tugs his shopping bag up around his wrist like a bracelet and sets off in the opposite direction from the one Aaron had been walking in.

Later, when he’s listening to Ausreißer’s first studio album on a borrowed CD-player, he can’t stop thinking of the family they have so clearly always been.

Their sound was chaotic, angrier than it is with Neil. Andrew’s lyrics are about missing something you’ve never had, and Neil emphatically thinks yes, without really understanding why it resonates with him.

Nicky and Aaron and Andrew had only found each other six or seven years ago by Neil’s count. They had been slung together with Kevin from circumstances that looked entirely incompatible on paper, but harmonized when they were spoken aloud.

They hurled things at each other like pottery that shattered into colour and powder; they demolished their glass houses and stood hand in hand in the rubble; they flattened all of that gravel into smooth open road.

Neil knows they play better, now that the music is all pointed in the same direction, but there’s something about this snapshot of who they were that’s so compelling. Teenagers who didn’t know they were all feeling the same terrible things. Even though they sing about hollowness and regret, it’s so obvious from the outside that they weren’t alone at all.

Neil clutches the jewel CD case to his chest, lying in the dark, and wonders if the five of them look like that now, always at odds but completely in tune.

2.

They have brunch at the Foxes dorm on Thursday.

Neil has long been charmed by the cream and sunshine corners of their house, the huge monstera plant in the kitchen, the teacups full of wrapped candies on every surface, the orange living room wall with a couple of framed music awards hanging above the couch.

It’s lived-in in a completely different way from the monsters’ strange storm-cloud pocket in suburbia.

Wymack and Abby have been invited to keep the peace. It’s interesting to see the way everyone from Foxes relaxes with them posted at the dining room table, while everyone from Ausreißer get the slightest bit stiffer, possibly out of some warped kind of respect.

Almost nothing happens, all morning. It’s a tableau so appealing that it’s almost ugly. It already feels like a memory.

Neil watches Renee and Nicky setting the table, and Matt threatening teasingly to pour coffee in Kevin’s lap. Wymack’s voice when he calls the rest of them to the table is commanding in a way that startles Neil less than it used to. Dan jumps when Neil does though, and they share a look.

“He has such a dad voice, it’s ridiculous.”

“Yeah,” Neil says, pretending to understand.

“No one even think about leaving this table without a good reason,” Wymack says. “Anyone bringing animosity to breakfast gets a boot in the ass.”

“You promise?” Nicky says.

“Don’t be gross,” Aaron says. Allison laughs. They tuck into french toast and peaches and whipped cream from a can. Matt made the bacon too crispy, and even the smell of it is nauseating.

“Neil, are you freaking out yet?” Matt asks.

“What? Why?” Neil asks. He can feel Andrew peering at the side of his face for a fraction of a moment.

Matt’s smile quirks, turning on its side. “Big concert on Saturday? Live debut of your very own songs? Ringing any bells?”

“A few,” Neil says awkwardly. “I’m in denial.”

“Mm, he is,” Nicky says around a mouthful of fruit. “About so many things.” He’d definitely smoked a little weed bright and early this morning, and it’s made his lips dangerously loose.

Neil glares at him, but Dan’s focus is already cranked in tight. She puts down her knife. “Like?” she asks.

Neil shrugs.

“What, is it a sex thing?” Allison asks.

“Uh-uh,” Wymack says. “Vetoed.”

“You can’t veto conversational topics in our house,” Dan argues.

“I can, I am, change the subject.”

“Boring.”

“How’s the mixing on the collab going?” Kevin asks, reaching across half of the table to get at the orange juice.

“Done,” Matt says proudly. “Chopped and screwed. Signed, sealed, delivered, etc.”

“Collab?” Abby asks, interested.

“Neil’s featuring on a Foxes track,” Renee says, smiling around her napkin.

“We’re set to drop it on Monday,” Allison adds.

He wonders if they’ll still release it, once he’s gone missing. He thinks again of his echo, the proof of his relationships with all of these people, fossilized in mp3 files and kicked around the radio forever.

“That’s exciting,” Abby says. “Kind of outside your rocker comfort zone though, isn’t it Neil?”

“My ‘comfort zone’ is pretty narrow,” Neil says flatly. “But music is music.”

“I suppose so,” she says, smiling sheepishly. “It’s not like you don’t have the voice for it.”

“And anyway, genre’s a beautiful thing,” Dan says twirling a fork full of pineapple in the air. “It’s made to be fucked with.”

Matt raises his glass in mock toast. “Here here.”

“I still haven’t heard this song,” Kevin complains.

“You haven’t earned it,” Allison says.

“Play it for him,” Neil hears himself say. He can’t catch the thought before it flutters out of him. They all look at him. “I want to hear what he thinks,” he admits.

He half looks at Andrew, who is slouched back in his seat, drowning his french toast in syrup and jam. Neil suspects that he’s the sort of person who would put ice cream on breakfast foods.

Neil can see a little moth-eaten hole in the shoulder of his t-shirt. There are mismatched seat cushions tied to the dining room chairs, and Andrew’s is orange and blue gingham.

“Play it, play it,” Nicky says.

“Okay, fine, but only because Neil actually asked,” Dan says.

Allison hums. “Neil’s superpower. Asking nicely.” He looks up at her, but she’s looking past him.

Dan starts to stand, but Renee scoots back from the table and waves her away. “I can pull it up for you,” she says. “I was just playing it while I made breakfast.”

There’s a little set-up in the far corner of the room, a couple of monitors and speakers, a keyboard, a microphone. Renee tugs her skirt primly underneath her and sits in the rolling chair, sliding home at the desk.

Neil watches her click through a few files and toggle the volume controls. The longer it takes her, the more his hands start to shake. He hides them under the tablecloth. Andrew’s knee presses against his, hard.

“Ready?”

Neil almost shakes his head.

“Just don’t offer unsolicited critiques,” Dan says. “It’s a done deal, no more tweaking allowed.”

“Yeah, Kevin,” Matt says pointedly. “If you comment on the timbre or whatever the fuck, you’re uninvited to brunch.”

“Please, he’d love that,” Nicky jokes. “He loves insulting people and hates social obligations.” He scruffs the top of Kevin’s head teasingly but his hand gets slapped away.

“Just hit play,” Wymack commands. Renee does.

The house floods with music.

kidnapped by two pomegranate halves

the seeds won’t let me go

walked thigh-deep in the ocean

I’ve never been this slow

I have to die tomorrow

but for a minute I could grow

here in your garden.

don’t don’t watch me go

it’s so much worse if you know

I really thought I was home

and the lights stay on

but there’s no more show

and don’t watch me go

it stays a yes if I don’t say no

it was dangerous to fly so low

But worth it not to be alone.

Neil sits through it, embarrassed and relieved at once. It’s like a love letter being passed around the room to be read.

He knows most of them will listen only to the tune at first, the same way he knows that Andrew is memorizing the lyrics as they are sung.

Everyone in Foxes had assumed that he was writing about something that had long since happened, so he managed to dodge their concern. They’d been excited, contributing, unspooling then re-spooling his rhyme scheme so it was tighter, vacuum sealing his ideas to the shapes of the notes.

And the music is exactly right, dark and rolling with the lushness of a thunderstorm. 

Neil and Dan sing together, caught up in these tricky, wonky harmonies that almost grate but resolve sweet—like the burn and flush of hard liquor. Matt, not usually one to sing, is a counterpoint in the bass below them.

The guitar gallops next to the bass, pinched together with layers of electronic effects. Renee’s muted violin comes in halfway through, building up to a crescendo, making everything feel urgent and serious, and then the tension breaks — the instruments all drop out, but Neil is singing so hard that he’s almost shouting, Dan’s voice pinned up underneath him, the rest of them humming, like a machine, or like a mother soothing her child to sleep.

“Oh man,” Nicky whispers.

It’s not pop, but it’s not rock either. It’s an outlier on the album that Foxes put together and it’s meant to be that way, more of a marathon of sounds and feelings than a formulaic piece of music. It’s a risk, they keep telling him. Their audience might not ‘get it’.

He loves it in the particular way that you love the limb that’s about to be amputated. You have it, and you’ve always had it, and you won’t have it again.

Nicky leans over and fishes his hand out from under the table to be held. “You’ve outdone yourself, Neil Josten.”

“I haven’t heard you sing like that,” Kevin admits, nose in his drink to hide the compliment.

“You have,” Neil argues.

“He has,” Aaron agrees, unexpectedly. “You’re just too busy admiring your own playing to notice.”

Nicky squeezes his fingers. “Those lyrics—“

“Okay, give us compliments now,” Allison says.

“Well it goes without saying,” Nicky starts, but he says it anyway, lauding the production, Allison’s warm alto, Renee’s switch from drums and synth to violin, and the a cappella section in the heart of it all.

Andrew is silent next to Neil, but he is pulling a loose thread from his cloth napkin so it contorts around one tense point.

He’s never heard the conversation get so animated between these two groups, so much so that it kind of doesn’t feel like two separate groups at all.

At some point, Kevin says, “maybe we should all try working on a track, if it gets these kinds of results.”

“Seriously?” Matt asks. 

“I’m not moderating that recording session,” Wymack says, looking exhausted at the thought of it.

“We can all take care of ourselves, it’ll be fine,” Dan says flippantly, and Neil thinks, yeah, of course.

They’ll be fine.

1.

“Are you planning on going somewhere?” Andrew asks.

Neil looks up from his notebook. He’s been sitting at the kitchen table in his sweatpants while the rest of the band flits around the house collecting shoes and jackets and dugouts full of stale weed. The doors keep opening and closing, but he thought they’d finally left for Eden’s Twilight.

Andrew stares him down, backlit from the hall. He has the sudden thought that he can’t remember the last time he saw Andrew have a drink.

“I told you,” Neil says, “I don’t want to go to a club the night before our concert.”

“Don’t watch me go / it’s so much worse if you know,” Andrew recites. “I want to know where you think you’re going.”

Neil’s eyes flit towards the foyer. “Are they just waiting in the car for you?”

“I asked you a question.” His voice is dangerously close to colour.

“I don’t know,” he admits. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, or who’s going to come for me, but someone will, and I’m worried that it will end badly for more than just me.”

“Worried enough to write a song about it.”

A moment passes between them in which they both think of what else is important enough to write songs about.

“I never expected to be here forever,” Neil says.

“You should’ve thought of that before you signed with us,” he says. Neil shrugs, miserable. He had thought about it, and he’d decided they were worth every feverish moment of risk. “I’ve told you I won’t allow the Moriyamas to get to you,” Andrew continues.

“I don’t think you should promise me that.”

“It’s part of the deal.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t have a deal anymore,” Neil says, too loud. Andrew stares at him. “Maybe we should call it off.”

“You’re a special kind of suicidal,” Andrew says. “There’s no reason for you to let them win before they have even come.”

“I need to fight for myself,” Neil admits. “I need you with me, and behind me, but I can’t keep holding you in front of me.” Andrew stands perfectly still, a muscle straining in his jaw. “Let me go.”

“I think you’re making a mistake.”

Neil almost laughs. “For once, I’m not. There are people in my life that I want to protect. So I’m going to do that.”

Andrew steps just barely closer. “You can’t change your mind.”

“I won’t.”

“Okay,” Andrew says simply.

“Thank you,” Neil says, leaning back in his chair, wrung out with relief.

Andrew walks all the way up to him, and Neil’s loose neck tips back to keep him in view.

A hand slips up to hold the back of his head, a tight, familiar grip.

“Don’t make me regret trusting you.”

In a moment of weakness, Neil wets his lips and says, “you trust me?” His heart is so far up his throat that he imagines he can feel his molars digging into it when he talks. His hand finds the bottom of Andrew’s sweater and tangles in the hem.

Andrew winces, spectacularly, an entire chain reaction of eyebrows and lashes and wrinkled nose. He reaches down and pulls his hand away, but it takes him too long to let go of Neil’s flexed fingers.

For days afterwards, Neil will replay this suspended moment, in which they are connected at the hand, and Andrew can’t bring himself to deny that he trusts him.

0.

He gets the last text in the countdown halfway through final rehearsal at the venue, but he doesn’t let himself dwell on it. There’s no follow-up, no phone call, no shadow in the window. He turns his phone off.

The more day that they manage to chew up and put behind them, the more the anticipation turns into confusion, and then droops and dissolves completely. They have a show to put on, and he is tired of being threatened.

They’re playing the same auditorium in Colombia where Neil saw his first Foxes show, the same place where he received the first text in the countdown. Backstage is exactly as he remembers it, cooler and darker than the rest of the building, lined with equipment and snaked with wires. This time though, their custom Ausreißer drum-kit is centre stage, and their set-up is as organized as a well-laid table.

He keeps making grinning eye contact with Nicky and remembering that under any other circumstances, he would be hyper-charged with good adrenaline, a wind-up toy trembling to be let go.

He warms up so thoroughly that he could pour his voice straight through a sieve and nothing would catch.

The sound check is a bit bumpy, and it’s always jarring to be mid-song and get the signal to stop. He never knows how much he should be performing, in practice.

Eventually, the curtain is dropped, and the five of them are corralled into the dressing room at the very end of a ropey backstage hallway. Neil sits cross-legged on a worn leather couch and lets Nicky apply make-up to his face. He often did his own before he joined the band, when he was concerned with sculpting his face and covering scars, but Nicky’s toolkit is entirely different — eyeliner and smoke.

Kevin shrugs on his custom jacket, fitted, leather. He’s warming up under his breath, always. Aaron’s been ready since lunch, and he sits with his combat boots dangling over the arm of a chair and a book balanced on his knees. Neil’s watching though, and he can see Aaron running through fingerings with his left hand. Andrew isn’t in the room, which means he’s smoking somewhere.

They’ve done so many shows, but it feels like a different art now, somehow. He thinks of the words that Andrew has written for him, the chord progressions that Kevin fed him every night until he spoke in notes instead of words. He thinks of the moment before you perform, when the crowd is a runway and you are a plane.

For the first time all week, he wants time to move faster.

______

The show grins and spits in the crowd’s faces.

It’s filthy and fast-paced and polished, and the sound and energy could prop Neil up even if his body gave out.

They’re sold out, and the audience never stops arcing up to try and touch them; all he can see is a forest of arms forever and ever.

He loses his mind a little bit, somewhere between their opener and their eighth song. His hair works itself out of the stubby little ponytail that he’s knotted it into, and his eyeliner melts off under the stage lights. Kevin does some improv so excellent that Neil holds his microphone up to the bass, and feedback screams like a sixth band member. Andrew hammers the snares so hard at the end of their third song that the momentum forces him up out of his seat.

They take a mid-show break, and a nervous employee tells them that the crowd is getting out of hand. Nicky replies that they’ve obviously never been to an Ausreißer show before. Kevin tells them to call in more security. Neil thinks, how did he ever think that Riko could get him here, through this thicket of fans?

The second half of their set is somehow even rowdier; songs devolve into sheer noise, and Neil has to grab at his ear piece and concentrate to stay on pitch. They’ve organized posters and chants, and action ripples constantly through the venue.

His anxiety spikes, somewhere under the thrill of performing. He looks back from the keyboard towards Andrew, who raises his chin at him. There’s a noise like something shattering, at the back of the hall. Something feels wrong.

Nicky’s laughing, unaware, spritzing a beer into the audience, and Aaron is playing fuller chords to make up for his absence. Kevin takes the melody in this one, and he’s holding the mic tenderly with both hands.

Finally, they play the song Neil wrote, and he’s half in and half out of the euphoria of it. He’s coasting from uneasy to sickly, but it’s the biggest crowd they’ve ever played, and the music is snapping together so perfectly. It might be better than their studio version. It’s the most frightening thing he’s ever done.

They careen through their final songs, to raucous applause.

Backstage is an ice-cold haven, and Neil droops gratefully into its open arms, accepting a water bottle and holding the back of his hand to his feverish forehead.

He blinks hard in the new darkness, listening, detached, to their fans begging for an encore.

They’re in a loose circle, debauched and exhausted. There’s no point in trying to talk through the noise, so they breathe together, and nod, and gather themselves back up.

Four fifths of them are back on stage in a riptide of joy that sounds painful, when a stage-hand gestures violently for Neil’s attention.

He jogs up and hands him an open flip phone. Neil looks down at it, then back into the person’s nervous face.

“It’s for you,” they mouth.

A shiver rakes viciously down his back. He takes the phone in one frozen hand.

There’s a text that reads:

Come find me in your dressing room, Junior.

And then,

You really should have answered my calls. Too late now.

He can’t see. His whole world falls on its side. He drops the phone. He can’t hear the noise it should make when it connects with the floor, like maybe physics isn’t working, and he thinks--I’m dreaming. 

He manages to look out at the stage, where it feels like everyone in the world is looking expectantly at him. He looks back towards their dressing room.

For a moment, it’s hilarious. He was safe and invisible, and then he clambered up on stage and sang himself raw for months. He was constantly recorded, and photographed, and trackable. 

He wonders if he could’ve even performed like he does, without the fear at his back, if part of him was using the band as another means of running away. He wonders why they let him live this long, what kind of mercy could possibly live inside his father.

He walks unsteadily towards the dressing room, ears ringing. His legs don’t belong to him. He tells the stage-hand—something. To vamp, or excuse him. He doesn’t even know.

He’s been pacing this hallway all day, he knows it creaks and moves with you, but the sound is all swallowed now.

He wrings the doorknob, and presses inward, expecting the barrel of a gun, expecting some impossible amalgamation of Riko and Nathan and all of their muscle combined.

The dressing room looks the same way they left it.

He scans the table full of their belongings, and the wall of mirrors. His breath is so loud in the stillness of the room. He thinks wildly that it was all a cruel prank, or a misunderstanding. 

And then he sees her grinning, cheshire reflection in the dark. He whips around.

“Lola,” he chokes.

“Oh, good. You do remember me,” she says. There’s a gun in her hand with a silencer screwed into the barrel, and she’s holding it casually at attention, the same way one might hold a lazy cigarette.

“You can’t be here,” he says.

“I very nearly wasn’t,” she says. “I didn’t have a backstage pass. I can’t decide if you’re an idiot, for choosing to stand directly in the public eye, or if you were counting on your position affording you extra… protection.” She shifts, and Neil can see now that there’s a corpse at her feet. She nudges it with her shoe. “Anyone you know?”

He nearly throws up. His body roils with terror and fury, and his voice is thick when he says, “you’d better hope not, for your sake.”

She laughs, delighted. “Have you decided to fight back? Your father will be so pleased.” She stands up. “Hate to cut this short, but we’ve got places to be, rockstar.”

He shakes his head. “You can’t possibly think that you can get me out of here that easily. My band is literally waiting on stage for me.”

“That’s why you’re going to finish your little set, and then you’re going to come find me in the parking lot. Oh, and this guard was a dud,” she says, nodding at the crumpled body that Neil can see now is one of the hired security guards who had been controlling the crowd. “So I hired you some specialists.”

He shakes his head again, thoughts racing. “They won’t just let me go.”

“I think they will, with some persuading,” she says.

“Don’t touch them.”

Lola wiggles the gun teasingly against his chin. “Don’t make me.” She moves past him, trailing her nails along his shoulder as she goes. When she opens the door, he can see the looming figures of Jackson Plank and Romero Malcolm, decked out in all black. The thrill of music and cheering bursts back into his ears. He’d almost forgotten where he was.

Lola tucks her hair behind her ear and her gun into her waistband. She smiles at him, and he has the sick feeling that the whole time he’d been thinking of the daily texts as the dwindling digits on a time bomb, Lola had been relishing in every number.

“See you soon, Junior.”

[what-the--curtains]

Braving the Elements

Chapter 20: Another Party

Part 1/2

Tw: Swearing, sex in pt2

Authors note: TWO IDIOTS IN LOVE, yes this was inspired by moulin rouge dont @ me. love u all❤️❤️

Both versions r so good they both get included!

“He really thinks he’s James Bond doesn’t he?” Wanda laughs

“He sure does, much better ass though.” you respond the other two nodding in agreement as you head into the board room for the briefing. Everyone gathers in and Tony pulls up an infographic on the main targets, who they were, how they may be contributing, and the best way to get information out of them.

“So, Nat and Sam, we want you to engage with those I’ve identified as “salespeople”, act as if you, as non-mutants, are interested in obtaining temporary powers. I’ll be with the investors, acting as though I’m hoping to get in on the ground floor. Wanda if you wouldn’t mind, pretend like you’re interested in the genetic side, say you would be willing to donate some DNA but you need to know how it’s being used and processed first. Y/N you’ll help Wanda but see if you can get to the seedier parts of their operation. Based on your dubious past and ties to Roman they may be more inclined to share any less than legal aspects with you. Everyone else you’re there to keep up appearances, don’t interfere, play along. The most important thing is that we do not reveal what we know already. Everyone needs to pick a target and latch on for the night”

“ (y/n) you get the hot one!” Wanda exclaims

“Why?” you ask, forgetting that people didn’t know about you and Bucky.

“Cause you're single and hot so it should be easy for you to seduce him.” Tony says.

“Well put Tony thanks for the objectification” you say, rolling your eyes. The guy was hot and rich, and probably full of himself, used to getting what he wanted. Getting information out of him would be a breeze.

“Fine i'll use my womanly wiles” you say making some spooky hand gestures.

You quickly look to Bucky to see if he’s appreciated your joke, but he’s avoiding your gaze. You notice his jaw is clenched and his body seems tense, you wonder what’s got him in such a mood. You go to ask him but he’s gone by the time you stand up. Shrugging you follow Wanda into Nat’s room to get ready. Sitting down on her bed you feel something poke you in the butt. Reaching under the sheet you pull out a whip.

“Oh my god do you use this on Steve?” you ask throwing it at Wanda

“Wait what??” Wanda exclaims, tossing it onto the ground in disgust and surprise.

“Shit sorry Nat!” You exclaim.

“How long!” Wanda asks. Nat goes on to explain about that night you all went out together and then again in Russia and how they’ve talked about dating but didn’t want to have it fully out in the open yet because of the press and all the paperwork that would go into it, but they were very much exclusive.

“How long have people known?”

“Well Y/N and Barnes saw us in the kitchen and he told Sam immediately. Literally the second he could, and I was going to tell Wanda and Vision tonight but” she gestures to you.

“Sorry! So what, you going steady now?” You ask giggling

“Ya, how does it feel to date someone who can get a senior discount?” Wanda riffs off of you. Nat jumps on the bed hitting you two with pillows, instigating an all-out war only calling a parlay when you realize you were all going to be late if you didn’t get dressed. Unlike last time you actually had a dress procured for you, one of the benefits of being a hero, people sent you free stuff now. Your dress was a deep forest green. The off the shoulder top was decorated in overlying fabric leaves lined with gold beading. It cinched at the waist and gently flowed out with a slit going up the right side. You wear your hair down in waves and you finish it off with a headpiece. It’s a crown made of gold branches twisted together with a few gold leaves and flowers scattered throughout.

“You look like a goddess.” Nat says, looking at you as she puts in a diamond earring. She’s in a scoop back mermaid black dress with a high neck, simple, elegant and gorgeous.

“Well you’ll fit Sam’s need for a bond girl!” you say, linking your arm in hers and heading out to meet Wanda and Vision in the lobby. Wanda’s in a satin hi-lo plum colored dress that matches Vision tie, it has a halter top, and her hair’s twisted up. Vision escorts Wanda into the venue and you and Nat go in behind them. Nat nods her head towards the bar, she’s spotted your target. You let go of her arm, straighten your dress and pull your hair forward. You make your way over to the bar, stopping next to him and pushing your hair to the side to expose your neck leaning over in an attempt to get the bartender's attention. You can feel your target staring at you.

“Hey aren’t you that mutant girl,?” he asks, you turn to look back at him, biting your lip as you do so.

“How often does that line work out for ya?” you laugh

“Rarely, but for someone as pretty as you I figured it was worth the risk.” he smirks

“Well flattery will get you everywhere, Y/N.” you say extending your hand

“Pleased to meet you, Max Van Der Bilt, what are you drinking?” he asks, kissing it.

“Whatever you’re having” you say smiling at him. He beckons to the bartender and orders two double vodka sodas. Bucky’s standing near the bar, trying to get an optimal vantage point on you. You looked beautiful, statuesque, he'd never seen anything like it. You looked like something out of a Greek tale. He wanted to tell you that, he wanted everyone to know that you had chosen him, but instead he’s stuck watching you flirt with another man. He feels his heart ache. He tried to calm himself and stop the feelings he was having, but he can’t fight against them. He reminds himself that it was all just an act, but he can’t help but fear for the worst. Why had you agreed to go for the only attractive target. Why did he suddenly feel like he was being deceived by you? Everything you did when you were alone with him, you were doing with this other guy, was this just some big game to you? He’s pulled out of his thoughts by Nat elbowing him in the ribs lightly.

“I said, god what’s got your panties in a knot?”

“Nothing.” He grunts out. Following his eyeline Nat notices he’s burning a hole in the back of your head.

“Fuck Barnes relax she’ll be fine she can handle herself. Besides what’s he gonna do to charm her to death?”

“Where’s Steve?” He asks, downing another drink.

“Oh somewhere playing his part.” She says, handing him her drink saying he looked like he needed it more.

“How are things with you two?”

“Good. It’s actually really nice to have someone amongst all the chaos, someone who gets it, ya know. Also doesn’t hurt that he’s a snack with an ass that won’t quit and superhuman stamina.” She responds.

“Alright didn’t need to hear that.” He cringes.

Nat laughs “C’mon Barnes there’s plenty of hot girls here go after one maybe you’ll finally relax.”

“Go after one? When have I ever needed to do that?” he says smiling.

“There’s the lady killer I’ve heard so much about.” She says, patting his arm and heading off towards the bar. Well, if he was supposed to keep up appearances he shouldn’t be standing alone in a corner should he. He makes his way over to a nearby group of women who had tried to approach him earlier. Apologizing for his abruptness he begins conversing with them, hoping to get a rise out of you. You’ve moved into a booth and Max is droning on about genetics, which are super interesting but not when they’re being condescendingly explained to you. I mean seriously you were a literal mutant, you’ve known the basics of genetics since middle school thanks to Charles. You tilt your head trying to get a look out into the rest of the party. You see Bucky with a group of women laughing letting them feel his metal arm up, amongst other things. You feel hurt, no let down. Why was he doing this? Did he always act this way when you weren’t around? Have you been played for a fool?

“It’s a shame you know,” Max says loudly, catching your attention once again.

“Pardon.” you respond, turning the charm back on.

“That all mutants aren’t beautiful like you then society wouldn’t be so afraid.”

You’ve never wanted to punch anyone more, but you don’t have the information you need yet so you force a laugh and gently touch his arm.

“So this genetic coding, how do you extract the gene?”

“It’s a simple process using DNA from hair, nails, teeth or bone. We don't need much, just one strand of hair is enough to create an entire dose.” He touches your hair moving it behind your shoulder.

“And where do you get your samples from?” you ask allowing your leg to cross slightly over his.

“That is classified information, but you may just get it out of me” he laughs, placing his hand on your thigh, rubbing it gently. You know you’re close to getting what you need.

“I think I may know a few ways to do that.” you smile

“Let’s dance” he says “They say private conversations are best had on the dance floor.”

[livsinpjs]

Believe in the Green Light (pt 2) the pursuing

“There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.” - F. Scott. Fitzgerald

The BAU team is called into Pasadena, California after the deaths of three lead to an investigation revolving around Gatsby, a new drug that hit the market at a dead sprint. When a raid on a house reveals the creator of the drug, a young man no one even knew was missing, Jason Gideon and co. find themselves involved in a case bigger than they originally thought.

It was cold. It was always cold though, so that was no surprise. His arms ached in their position raised above his head. His wrists were rubbed raw from his attempts at freedom from his shackles he had long since abandoned, his forearms crusted with old blood. If he closed his eyes, he could picture he was in a dungeon from one of the books his mother had read to him as a child. But the not so pleasant fantasy fell away every time his eyes settled on the lab equipment strewn throughout his concrete prison.

He had long since figured out Their intentions with him. He was a student at CalTech with a doctorate in chemistry already tucked under his belt among other degrees. He had no family to look for him and he was an easy target when it came to physically apprehending victims, so there was no use wallowing and questioning ‘why me?’ He knew why. They wanted drugs. More specifically, they wanted him to make drugs. Obviously, he knew right away when he awoke and his eyes first landed on the lab equipment 6 weeks 2 days and 14 hours ago. That didn’t mean he was eager to cooperate.

The first time he refused, They denied him food and water. After a couple days, he relented. Desperate to survive, he caved and created the first batch of Gatsby. After that, every time he refused, two big and  burly men came down into his prison to beat him within an inch of his life, leaving him bruised and bleeding with a “We’ll let you rethink your answer.” A few more days with no food and water and he would relent yet again. After going through that cycle a few times, he stopped refusing. He felt sick with himself for giving in so easily. He wanted to become an FBI agent, yet here he was, aiding Them.

He wondered, dejectedly, what the Academy thought when he didn’t show up. Probably that he had chickened out. He was sure he wasn’t the first person to enroll and then never show. He thought about Agent Gideon. He and Agent Gideon had become close in a fairly brief time. He had encouraged him and his ambitions. What did he think about him now? Was he worried? Disappointed? If only he knew where he was...

He shifted his position on the cold, hard floor trying to sit comfortably even though he knew it was useless. His chains clinked against the wall, his head throbbed and spun along with the little movement that he made. He knew he was in a dangerous position. Being this uncoordinated and forced to make drugs without proper care spelled loads of trouble. Mostly for himself.

One wrong move and he could kill himself in the process. Not that the thought hadn’t crossed his mind. On several occasions the dark thoughts he naively assumed he had gotten rid of long ago would pop up again while he was working. He never let himself dwell on them for long though, he would push the thoughts to the back of his mind like he used to and think of his mother. Who would be there for her if he was gone? (Though he couldn’t be of much help to her from where he was currently.) He thought of the stories he and his mother would read together, and then his mind would helpfully wander through the many things his eidetic memory stored for him. Before he knew it They would thrust a cup of water and food at him, (which he would devour quickly and greedily) and he would be roughly escorted back to the wall and chained up yet again. They would leave him in the cold while they did who knows what with the monster he created.

Another thing to add to the ever growing list of awfulness that was his current circumstance, would be the fact that ever since he had been brought here, he had been on the verge of a meltdown. It’s not easy to calm yourself when you’re being held against your will, or stim when you’re chained to a wall. Everything was either too much or too little. He could do nothing to ease the ache in his chest. Even the stimming he could do was quickly shut down by Them. The frantic tapping of his foot or the insistent keen that would every once in a while escape his lips was deemed annoying by Them. He found himself forcing everything down; It was exhausting. He was surprised that he had been able to keep masking for so long.

In his haze, though, he had been hit with an idea so abruptly that he inhaled and choked on his own saliva. Yet once he was finished hacking and had caught his breath, a smile had been drawn to his face. If he had been thinking clearly, he would have quickly deduced that the idea was a stupid one. So many things could go wrong, or innocent people could get hurt, and really, if it did work, it wouldn’t help him in the slightest. But all he was focused on was the fact that he was in control of making the drug, and he was the only one there to make it for Them.

It was during this time, when he was rethinking what he had done, that They walked in.

He referred to them as Them because, well, he knew absolutely nothing about them. Well, that wasn’t true. He knew Maria from his philosophy class. He didn’t know if she was the reason he was here or if it was just a coincidence that her family was a part of some kind of drug cartel. But he also didn’t know Maria that well. The only thing he knew was that she went to the same school as him and they shared a class together. So he just found himself referring to them as, well, Them.

Two men, Maria’s father and brother, (he presumed by the similarities in their features) and Maria entered the room. The father gave him a disappointed look and for a brief moment, he felt ashamed of himself for disappointing the man. He quickly shoved the feeling off though. The brother looked like he wanted to rip his throat out, and he shrunk in on himself a bit at the glare he received. Maria’s face was expressionless.

“Ya got guts, I’ll grant you that much.” The father spoke to him as if reprimanding a child, instead of a captive. “Poisonin’ the latest batch of Gatsby like that.” He shook his head. “What I don’t get is how you thought doin’ so would help. You have no idea what we’re doin’ with it, or if we’re takin’ it ourselves. Even still, if we had taken it and had died, how would you escape? You would more quickly die of dehydration than be found by the athourites. And what would you accomplish by killin’ our clientele, eh? Other than puttin’ an even bigger target on your back for my men to aim at as they teach you once again, what happens when you defy us. Luckily for us, we have, erhm.. drug testers, if you will, who make sure the batch is clean before sending it out. Unluckily for you, my son’s friend happened to be testing the drug this time and has, unfortunately, passed away.”

The brother seemed to grow even angrier at the mention of his friend and stepped forward menacingly. The only thing keeping him from carrying out his wishes was Maria, holding his arm.

“So,” The father bent down to get on his level. “Would you care to explain to me just what exactly you thought you were goin’ to accomplish?”

He was terrified. He mentally cursed himself for making such an error in judgment. He registered, vaguely, that he had actually killed one of them. He couldn’t identify the feeling that engulfed him. The only thing on his mind at the time had been revenge. How stupid did he have to be to go through with something so idiotic? His eyes immediately snapped to the side, avoiding the man’s powerful gaze. He gulped painfully. The father sighed after a moment of silence, the only thing he could think of as his head spun was that the man’s breath smelled horrible; garlic and tobacco.

“Very well” The man stood, and his knees gave audible pops, “Go ahead and bring ‘em in.” The brother quickly exited the room and was soon being accompanied by two familiar men. They looked at him a little too eagerly as Maria and her father went for the door. “Make sure you keep him alive, we still need him after all.”

With that, Spencer Reid was left alone with three men who had only one thing on their minds. To cause him unimaginable pain.

~CRIMINAL MINDS~

The team was gathered together on the jet; even Penelope Garcia was on their video feed, streaming from Quantico, Virginia. The technical analyst and the rest of their team had just finished going through their files one last time together before their Unit Chief, Aaron Hotchner gave them their assignments.

“All right, once we land, Gideon and Morgan, you go to the crime scene and see if they’ve turned up any new information, then meet up with the M.E. Garcia, look into McCarthy’s background and criminal record, see if our Unsub could be someone he has bad blood with, and JJ, you’re with me at the precinct. We’ve got a long flight ahead of us, so go ahead and get comfortable.”

The team split off from one another, Garcia logging out and the rest going to separate areas of the jet.

Gideon sat alone, gazing out the window before pulling out his PDA. No recent emails. He returned the device to his pocket and shut his eyes, wanting to relax as much as possible before this case inevitably took up all of their time.

~CRIMINAL MINDS~

Agents Gideon and Morgan arrived at the crime scene at around 5:00 p.m. There, they were greeted by local LEOs; Gideon went straight to analyzing the scene, leaving Derek to speak with them.

“I’m SSA Derek Morgan, and, that over there,” He pauses, indicating to the older man, “Is SSA Jason Gideon.”

“Detective Sanders, glad you could make it out here.” The men shook hands before Sanders continued. “My men and I received the call early this morning ‘round 7:00 a.m. CSI should be finished processing the crime scene by tomorrow.” Derek nodded, turning to see Gideon talk absently to an agent as his eyes expertly scanned the abandoned playground.

“What happened with the mugging four years ago? It says that they caught the guy, Gillian Murphy, and he’s still serving time."

“Well, the Arnold’s were visitin’ the park after Mr. Arnold had gotten off of work, Murphy attempted to mug the family and, after not getting the reaction he wanted, shot and killed them. He fled the scene and was found shortly after trying to sell the victims’ belongings at a local pawn shop.”

“What makes you think the two crimes are related?”

“Honestly, I don’t see any connection, but the mayor’s sister lives ‘round here and he insisted that we bring in the FBI ‘cause the crimes were both committed at this here park.”

Morgan nodded, shifting his stance to look over the detective’s shoulder to see that Gideon had moved to talk with CSI agents. “All right, let us know if you uncover any connections.”

Gideon had begun to walk back the way they had come, so Morgan matched his stride beside him as they moved towards their FBI sanctioned SUV.

“Find out anything new?” Morgan asked the older man as they stepped up to the car, Morgan taking the driver’s seat with Gideon in the passenger seat.

Gideon shook his head, “CSI found nothing out of the ordinary, a few beer cans and marijuana by the play structure. Looks like the victims were confronted by our Unsub. McCarthy met the Unsub a few feet away, leaving the Nooks next to the structure. What about you?”

“Nothing that points in the direction of these cases being linked. Sounds to me like it was more of an excuse to get us down here in the first place.” Morgan spoke dryly as he drove toward the Coronors’ office.

“Well, we’re here now, no use in gripping about it.” Gideon said wisely. Derek watched Gideon pull out his PDA, look at it, and then put it away, from the corner of his eye.

“You expecting something?”

“..Hmm? Ah.. no I was just checking my email..” Gideon said vaguely as he watched the road in front of him as they made their way to the Coroner's Office.

~CRIMINAL MINDS~

At the precinct, Unit Chief SSA Aaron Hotchner sat in front of his third possible witness since he had arrived at the precinct with JJ.

While JJ set up the room Pasadena P.D. had indicated to her, (setting up their evidence board and attempting to start a preliminary profile) Aaron got to work on interviewing people who had been in contact with Gatsby. The witness in front of him, Abigail Cooper, a disgruntled teenager with blonde hair and an obvious distaste for law enforcement, leaned back in her chair, arms across her chest and an attempt at an intimidating glare strewn across her face.  

Aaron quickly profiled the young girl. A look of distrust in her eyes and a defensive posture hidden by an attempt at nonchalance. A negative past with law enforcement, or men, or both. Her eyes glanced quickly over to the window and she had sat herself closest to the door. Aaron had to show this girl that he meant her no harm and that she would not be punished anymore than the charges she faced for possession of drugs and alcohol underage.

“My name is Aaron Hotchner, I’m with the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI.” He began in a calm voice, looking her in the eye.

“FBI? Why’s the FBI here? I didn’t do anything that serious!” Abigail spoke incredulously, sitting up slightly with a questioning look on her face.

“I am here to ask you a few questions. Nothing more.” Aaron assured her, “Last night, there was a murder. Three men were killed and it seems that the crime may have a connection to a drug. A drug that you were found in possession of. Gatsby.”

“So? I didn’t kill nobody! Just because I had some with me doesn’t mean I’m a killer.” She tightened her crossed arms, which had been slowly falling due to the shock of being in the presence of an agent of the FBI.

“I never said you were.” Aaron said placating, “I am here because you may be able to help us find the person who did kill them.” He watched her shoulders relax slightly at that, her eyes softening slightly.

“Uh.. well.. all right..” She sat up, letting her arms fall to her sides. “What do you want to know?”

“I need to know any information you have on the person who sold Gatsby to you. A name, a phone number, an address that you met at, anything could be of help.”

A look of disappointment flashed across Abigail’s face. “I don’t know. No one does, really. People say that they find you. I was.. Uh.. drinking with some friends.. when he came up to us. Told us about this cool new drug. We’d heard about it around school and thought ‘why not’ Ya know? We paid him and he left and that was it.”

Aaron frowned but didn’t voice his disappointment. “Where was this?”

“Oh! Uh.. we were behind the Denny’s downtown, lots of people go there to dick around.”

Aaron nodded at her. “Thank you for your time.” He got up and went to leave the room to inform JJ when Abigail spoke up.

“Agent Hotchner?” Aaron turned around to face her, giving her his attention once more. “I.. um.. I hope you get the guy..” She said hesitantly.

“You were a big help Abigail.” He said, then he left to find JJ.

~CRIMINAL MINDS~

Hotchner had just finished filling Jennifer in when the phone on the table in their conference room went off.

“It’s Garcia. Hotchner, you’ve got me and JJ. What do you have?”

“Hello my pretties! All right, so, James McCarthy, 21, single and lives alone. He was arrested and sent to a juvenile detention center when he was 16 for shoplifting and possession of drugs and alcohol.” Garcia reported.

“Did he have any grievances with any of the other kids?” JJ asked, looking at the evidence board.

“No, actually he was very well behaved. He didn’t get into any trouble and it looks like he was even helpful when others were upset or angry. The workers there were really proud with the progress he made.”

“All right, thanks Garcia.” Hotch said with his arms crossed, looking down at the receiver.

“Of course! Garcia Out!” The line cut out.

A few minutes later, Gideon and Morgan walked in from the Coroners’ Office looking glum.

“Looks like all our victims had ingested Gatsby in the last 24 hours.” Gideon began, “Other than that, nothing new. All the victims died from their gunshot wounds and then were shot again post-mortem, some more than once.”

Morgan continued. “Also, there doesn’t look to be any correlation to these murders and the murders from four years ago.”

JJ sighed, still looking over the board. “It looks like we’ve got less to work with than we started with.”

“But it seems that this drug, Gatsby, is in the center of it.” Morgan said. “Multiple Gatsby related deaths, and now three murders involving the drug? Doesn’t sound like much of a coincidence to me.”

“It seems that the people dealing these drugs go out of their way to find people to sell it to, instead of having people go to them.” Hotch informed the rest of the team on his interview with Abigail Cooper.

“All right, so how do we find them?” JJ asked.

The team sat in thought for a moment. Hotch looked at JJ and she could see the idea pop into his head.

“I know exactly how.”

~CRIMINAL MINDS~

He was enraged.

He stood by the corner store, shoulders hunched and arms crossed. His foot tapping erratically. Her funeral was tomorrow. Her funeral . He stood and he tapped his foot. And he waited. And he waited..

~CRIMINAL MINDS~

That night, a man walked up to another, jittery man. He proposed something to him and beckoned him into the alley next to where they were standing.

Later, 10 shots rang out loud into the night.

pt 1 | pt 2 | pt 3| pt 4|

[littlemsstark3000]

In Love Again

Can we forget all the lies that we've led

Take us so far away from the truth

Can we erase all the tears and regrets

Fear hiding in the pain, the shadows of yesterday

- lyrics from "In Love Again" by Colbie Caillat

*****

A few notes before you keep on reading:

- Prompt is from @natashastarkotp 's unpopular opinion: Tony and Natasha falling in love after Civil War and raising the new breed of Avengers without the rest of OG6

- Song fic idea is from @autumnwoodsdreamer, listen to the song and agree that it screams TonyNat

- The identified young Avengers here are not canon compliant; I actually don't know Riri and Kamala except from what I read from other fics, too

- I dedicate this to my IronWidow / TonyNat fam, you included @philosophical-army @queeenpersephone ❤️

*****

"Natasha, Mr. Stark's car has just entered the compound through Gate 2."

Natasha lifted her head from the book that she was reading at the dining area while having coffee. Her eyebrows furrowed upon that notification by AARON (Analytics, Automation, Response and Operations Nanny), the Avengers Compound's AI.

She stood up to meet Tony. He definitely can find his way in and override all access requirement, which he himself created, but he might have something urgent for him to come over in the middle of the night.

When she unlocked the door after security confirmation, he also just got there.

"Hey," she managed to say, hiding a tug on her chest.

"Hi," Tony smiled a little, both hands in his pockets on either sides. He was still wearing a white long sleeved shirt sans its pair coat. "Let me in?"

She motioned her head and went ahead, both to give way and to hide whatever her expression might give away.

"Thanks," Tony said, following her when she decided to go back to the dining table.

"What's with the surprise visit?"

"You were surprised."

It was more of a statement than a question to her ear.

Natasha shrugged as she tried to look at him again. "Because we were just together two hours ago."

A corner of his lips lifted and his gaze locked with hers. "You probably mean we were in the same event, at the same place, two hours ago."

It was valid. They were technically not together. The gala which happened earlier that night was hosted by an NGO advocating Women and Children's Rights, and both the Avengers and Stark Industries were invited among others. She was there representing the new Avengers - Peter Parker aka Spider-man, Kamala Khan aka Ms. Marvel and Riri Williams aka Iron Heart all had prior and more important stuff to attend to. Tony was there representing his company.

That morning, he offered to pick her up and bring her back to the compound, but she declined and brought her own ride, one of the team's service vehicles but would also pass as a luxury car - thanks again to SI. The whole night, they barely stood within each other's arm reach except when they greeted upon arrival and said goodbye.

During her short stay at the venue, she also caught him tied up with different groups and personalities. She mentally applaud how he has improved his interaction skills in times like that through the years, while she also mentally cursed herself for wanting to glance his way from time to time.

So yes, they were far from being together two hours ago.

"Right."

Tony sat on the table instead of the chairs. "How are you?"

"Fine," she leaned back on the marble counter, still standing, and replied without much thought.

"The kids?"

"In their rooms. And stop calling them kids; you've actually recruited them so they have to be called grown-ups helping to save the world," she quipped.

He chuckled bluntly. "Compared to us, they are babies."

"Way to acknowledge that we aren't any younger."

"Acceptance is key to a certain level of peace."

She rolled her eyes as she turned to the nearby coffeemaker, which contained what was left of her brew. "Coffee?"

"Our usual."

The response was short, instant, and it hit her like a bullet.

Our. Their brew. The only thing they wanted around every waking day back at the penthouse... aside from each other.

Natasha discreetly breathed heavily, her back still on him.

"Seriously - why are you here, Tony? Do you really just want to check on Peter, Kamala and Riri?" her tone was flat, going for emotionless response contrary to her heartbeat that she could almost hear now.

"I asked how you are first."

She sensed Tony's pitch lowered, too.

"It's not as if you don't have at least an eye on us here in the compound. AARON reports everything to your AI."

He sighed, seemingly intentional for her to catch. "Then maybe I just want to talk."

"At 11 in the evening, yeah?" she retorted as she placed a cup of coffee before him on the table.

"I've been thinking of coming over since 9."

She could feel heat rising to her face, and her jaw clenched  a little. The next thing she knew, she had let out words which she hoped she could take back.

"And, of all the days, you decided that you want to talk today."

Silence followed.

Natasha could not believe that her brain-to-mouth filter just disabled.

Probably, Tony could not either.

"You remember," his voice hinted amazement.

"I'm somehow not as bad as you are with dates," she pivoted again to walk to the sink, placing her used mug there and also putting more distance between them.

"Luckily, FRIDAY isn't, too. She prompted me this morning, about our anniversary."

Unfortunately for her, Tony stood from the table and started closing that distance.

"Guess it's time to update programming." The line behind her own words tasted like bitterpill.

He stopped a couple of feet away from her. His straight look on her suddenly grew tender.

"I'm sorry, Tash."

Hearing the nickname, his former term of endearment for her, constricted her throat.

Their unexpectedly beautiful relationship that came after the falling out of the former Avengers and after some compromises along the way; the love and respect built on the friendship that blossomed out of their hardwork on Accords... ruined by one thing:

Not telling him earlier on that she actually knew about Howard and Maria Stark's death in the hands of the Winter Soldier.

She swallowed the invisible lump.

"Tony, I am sorry. You snapped on me because I was at fault, and believe me, I completely understand. I would've reacted the same way if I were you."

"I lied, too." Tony stepped nearer to her. "It wasn't true that I wanted you out."

Tears brimmed through her eyes so she looked down, hiding them from him. She bit her lips to stop them from trembling. "I deserve it."

"It wasn't what I felt, Tash. I was mad, and hurt, and they slipped out before I could think about them. You don't deserve any of that."

His words that night when he learned - figured out rather - that she might knew something about his parents' murder replayed in her mind.

"You just broke my trust again, Natasha. I don't know what else I have left for you."

Tony was just standing across her that time, same as their present distance, but she felt him so far away; giant walls in between them.

How she wanted to protect him from feeling his pain.

How she wanted to shield him from the nightmares that would surely follow in the coming nights.

How she wanted to say that, apart from keeping what she knew, everything else between them was true.

How she wanted to just feel him physically, touch him at the very least.

But he would not let her. So instead, she said:

"Maybe I should leave -"

She meant to say temporarily or in the meantime while they think through the situation, until he responded with cold, piercing stare and colder tone.

"Maybe you should."

That actually hurt more. Less words, no shouting, but a whole lot of indifference.

It took more than a month before she saw him again, and they were back to the professional, teammates-only interaction they used to have before the original Avengers blew off. She stayed at the compound which housed the new breed of Earth defenders and stood as their guardian.

When Tony arrived with a date in one of their event engagements three months later, she then killed all of her remaining hopes that they can still be fixed... that she can be fixed.

Indeed, everything that I touch breaks. It's too much to wish for something normal, something more human.

She drove around the city one night. Tears just continually rolled down her cheeks but she never made a sound. No stopovers, she went on for hours until nothing comes out of her eyes anymore. The following day, back was the Agent Romanoff - strategic, analytical and distant.

"I shouldn't have -" Tony started but was cut off immediately.

"Stop. Just... don't." It was too weak for an order. Almost a plea.

Instead of talking back, he gently gathered her in his arms.

Natasha could definitely let herself go in multiple ways, but her arms were stuck, crossed on her chest, unwilling to move. Tony pulled away and held her face gently, his brown eyes soft on her green ones, conveying more than words, giving her hope again.

"By now, you should know that I tend to do the exact opposite what I'm told to do."

Despite his quip, fear ran through her nerves; because right there, she wanted to gamble one more time - history and logic be damned. He was and will always be worth it.

And Natasha recognized that Tony, at that very moment, was taking the risks for her, too.

She tugged on his shirt to kiss him hard, demanding an unfiltered response. He willingly obliged. Each touch, each movement, communicated what they needed, what they missed, what they almost completely let go.

When they finally pulled apart, they ended up snuggled on a couch at the common area, and just spent the whole night talking - with confessions, apologies, a bit more tears and new unspoken promises.

*****

Comments are welcome. Just be gentle. 😉

[kostya-kolomnitinowe886c-blog]

The Names and Faces of the Florida School Shooting Victims

As gunshots echoed through the high school, a geography teacher, Scott Beigel, 35, paused to usher stragglers into his classroom before locking the door, only to be shot and killed himself as the shooter strode by.

A parent, Jennifer Zeif, credited Mr. Beigel for saving her son’s life. Short Term Loans Her son, Matthew, 14, had been the last one to slip inside the class, just ahead of Mr. Beigel. Seconds later, the room filled with a smoky haze, Matthew said, and he turned to see his teacher lying near the door, pale and bleeding. Consumer Banking | Personal Banking | U.S. Bank

Scott Beigel.

“Mr. Beigel could have passed Matthew up and gone in the classroom first,” Ms. Zeif said. “In that case, Matthew would have been the one in the doorway.”

On Thursday, as officials identified 17 people killed in the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., some of the victims, like Mr. Beigel, were remembered for having tried to spare others in the moments of chaos that unfolded inside the school.

Aaron Feis, a popular football coach who was killed, also had tried to protect students, officials said. “He was that kind of guy,” said Jack Fris, a former football player at the school.

Friends said they were not surprised that Mr. Beigel, a much-beloved figure at a Pennsylvania summer camp that he attended and later helped to run, had put his students’ safety above his own.

“Thousands of people at Camp Starlight looked up to Scott,” said Grant Williams, 33, an emergency room nurse who worked with Mr. Beigel at the camp for several summers and was mourning long-distance with former camp counselors and campers on Thursday. “He was someone you strive to be like,” said another former Starlight counselor.

At the Florida high school, teachers and students were among the dead. There was a soccer player, a student nicknamed Guac and a trombonist in the marching band. Eight of the victims were girls and young women; nine were boys and men. They ranged from 14 years old to 49.

These are some of their stories.

Alyssa Alhadeff.Alyssa Alhadeff

Alyssa Alhadeff, 14, had played competitive soccer since she was 3 years old. Like any athlete, she had her ups and downs. But when her club, Parkland, faced off against the rival team from Coral Springs on Feb. 13, she was at the top of her game.

“Her passing was on, her shooting was on, her decision-making was on,” her mother, Lori Alhadeff, recalled. With her outgoing personality, Alyssa had a wide circle of friends at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. She placed first in a debate tournament, was taking Algebra 2 and Spanish 3, and was honing her skills as an attacking midfielder. The score at what was to be her last time on the soccer field was 1-0, Parkland.

“I was so proud of her,” her mother said. “I told her it was the best game of her life.”

Martin Duque Anguiano.Martin Duque Anguiano

Martin Duque Anguiano, a 14-year-old freshman, was “a very funny kid, outgoing and sometimes really quiet,” his brother, Miguel Duque, wrote on a GoFundMe page for funeral expenses.

“He was sweet and caring and loved by all his family,” Miguel wrote. “Most of all he was my baby brother.”

Nicholas Dworet.Credit...via ReutersNicholas Dworet

Nicholas Dworet, a promising high school swimmer, took a recruiting visit to the University of Indianapolis a few weeks ago. After a group dinner, he pulled the coach aside and said he wanted to compete there after he graduated this spring.

“He was an instant part of our family,” said Jason Hite, the university’s swim coach. Mr. Hite said Nicholas, 17, had received an academic scholarship and planned to study physical therapy.

University officials and a youth swim team in Florida said Nicholas was among those killed on Wednesday. A post on the Facebook page for TS Aquatics, the Florida club where he swam, described Nicholas as an amazing person who had been “on a major upswing in his life.”

Nicholas had improved academically and athletically since starting high school, Mr. Hite said, and his mentors in Florida “felt like the best was still to come for him.”

“We were going to continue to groom him to be a future leader for our team,” Mr. Hite said.

Mr. Hite said he sent Nicholas a text message on Wednesday afternoon after hearing about the shooting at his school. He got no response.

“The saddest thing to me is how much life this kid had and how hard he had worked to change directions and change paths,” Mr. Hite said. “He was really going in the right direction and he had really created some opportunities for himself.”

Aaron Feis.Aaron Feis

At Stoneman Douglas, Mr. Feis was known to all — an assistant football coach and a security monitor. But he too had graduated from the school, played on the football team, and knew exactly what it was like to be a student in these halls.

So he was seen as someone who looked out for students who got in trouble, those who were struggling, those without fathers at home. “They said he was like another father,” Mr. Feis’s grandfather, Raymond, recalled. “He’d go out of his way to help anybody.”

School officials said that Mr. Feis, 37, did the same on Wednesday. When there were signs of trouble, they said, he responded immediately to help. “When Aaron Feis died, when he was killed — tragically, inhumanely — he did it protecting others; you can guarantee that,” said Scott Israel, the sheriff of Broward County.

“I don’t know when Aaron’s funeral is,” Sheriff Israel said. “I don’t know how many adults are going to go, but you’ll get 2,000 kids there.”

In Parkland, Austin Lazar, a student, recalled his former coach as cheery and selfless. “He always put everybody before himself.”

Mr. Feis was married, his family said, and had a daughter, Arielle.

Jaime Guttenberg.Credit...via Associated PressJaime Guttenberg

Jaime Guttenberg, 14, danced nonstop. Sometimes she went on for hours, her aunt, Ellyn Guttenberg, said. Jaime was warm, too, always taking Ms. Guttenberg’s son, who has special needs, under her wing.

Jaime’s Facebook page, now memorialized, shows photos of her dancing, hanging out with friends, enjoying the beach and snuggling a dog.

Her father, Fred Guttenberg, posted this on Facebook: “I am broken as I write this trying to figure out how my family gets through this.”

Christopher Hixon.Credit...Susan Stocker/South Florida Sun SentinelChristopher Hixon

Christopher Hixon, 49, the school’s athletic director, was a well-known figure in Florida high school sports. One man, Jose Roman, posted on social media that Mr. Hixon was “a great coach and an awesome motivator” when he was a freshman athlete years ago.

Mr. Hixon was named athletic director of the year in 2017 by the Broward County Athletics Association.

Luke Hoyer.Luke Hoyer

Luke Hoyer, 15, spent last Christmas with his extended family in South Carolina, where he bowled, joined in a big holiday meal and swapped stories with relatives.

A cousin, Grant Cox, who was at the Christmas gathering said the family had been told by the police that Luke, a freshman at Stoneman Douglas, was among those killed on Wednesday.

Mr. Cox said Luke was a basketball player who was ambitious about the sport and admired N.B.A. stars like LeBron James and Stephen Curry.

“I know Luke loved his family,” Mr. Cox said. “I know he did. He had a huge heart.”

“He was quiet, but a very happy individual,” he said.

Cara LoughranCara Loughran

Cara Loughran, 14, loved the beach. She adored her cousins. And she was an excellent student, her family said.

“We are absolutely gutted,” by her death, her aunt, Lindsay Fontana, wrote in a Facebook post. “While your thoughts are appreciated, I beg you to DO SOMETHING. This should not have happened to our niece Cara and it cannot happen to other people’s families.”

Gina Montalto.Credit...via Associated PressGina Montalto

Gina Montalto, 14, was identified in local news accounts as a member of her school’s winter color guard team.

Andy Mroczek, who has worked as a choreographer at Stoneman Douglas, posted a tribute to Gina on Facebook. “We lost a beautiful soul tonight,” he wrote.

Joaquin Oliver.Joaquin Oliver

People often spelled Joaquin Oliver’s first name wrong, so he went with a snappy nickname: Guac.

He played basketball in the city recreational league — his jersey number was 2 — and he loved to write, filling a notebook with poetry, said Julien Decoste, a close friend of Joaquin’s and a fellow senior at Stoneman Douglas.

“Guac and I always wanted to graduate together and prove everyone wrong, that we would be successful together,” Julien said.

On Tuesday, Joaquin, 17, asked Julien to help out at his next basketball game, which was scheduled for Thursday.

“I’ll be there,” Julien texted his friend. “Good looks brotha,” Joaquin responded.

On Wednesday, as he hid inside a closet during the shooting, Julien texted Joaquin to check in.

“You good?” Julien texted. “Bro I need you to answer me please.”

Alaina Petty.Alaina Petty

Alaina Petty, 14, had helped do cleanup work in Florida after Hurricane Irma, her family said in a statement, and she was an active member of a volunteer group with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

“Her selfless service brought peace and joy to those that had lost everything during the storm,” the family’s statement said. “While we will not have the opportunity to watch her grow up and become the amazing woman we know she would become, we are keeping an eternal perspective.”

Alaina was also a member of the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps, her family said.

Meadow Pollack.Meadow Pollack

Meadow Pollack, 18, was a senior at the high school who was planning to go to Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla., next year, according to her father, Andrew Pollack, who said his daughter was among the dead.

“She was just unbelievable,” Mr. Pollack said. “She was a very strong-willed young girl who had everything going for her.”

Mr. Pollack described his daughter as smart, beautiful and caring. She worked at her boyfriend’s family’s motorcycle repair business.

“She just knew how to get what she wanted all the time,” Mr. Pollack said. “Nothing could ever stop her from what she wanted to achieve.”

Helena Ramsay.Helena Ramsay

Helena Ramsay, 17, was smart, kindhearted and thoughtful, her relative, Curtis Page, wrote on Facebook.

“Though she was somewhat reserved, she had a relentless motivation towards her academic studies, and her soft warm demeanor brought the best out in all who knew her,” he said, later adding: “She would have started college next year.”

Alex Schachter.Alex Schachter

Alex Schachter, 14, played the trombone in the Stoneman Douglas marching band, and was proud to have participated in winning a state championship last year. A freshman at the high school, he often played basketball with friends and was “a sweetheart of a kid,” his father, Max Schachter, said. Earlier this week, the two had discussed which classes Alex would take next semester.

Mr. Schachter said Alex had loved his mother, who died when he was five years old. His older brother also attends Stoneman Douglas and survived the shooting. Alex “just wanted to do well and make his parents happy,” his father said.

Carmen SchentrupCarmen Schentrup

Carmen Schentrup, a 2018 National Merit Scholarship semifinalist, was the smartest 16-year-old that her cousin, Matt Brandow, had ever met, he said in a Facebook post.

“I’m in a daze right now,” he wrote.

Peter WangPeter Wang.

Peter Wang, 15, a freshman, helped his cousin, Aaron Chen, adjust when he settled in Florida.

“He was always so nice and so generous,” Aaron, 16, said, adding that even though Peter was younger he had worked to be sure Aaron didn’t get bullied when he first arrived.

Peter was last seen in his gray uniform for the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps, or J.R.O.T.C., on Wednesday. On Thursday, Aaron and another cousin said the authorities had informed the family that Peter was among those killed in the shooting.

“He was the kid in school who would be friends with anyone,” said the other cousin, Lin Chen, 24. “He didn’t care about popularity.”

[loretranscripts]

Lore Episode 53: Trees and Shadows (Transcript) - 6th February 2017

Credit for transcribing this episode goes to @laqueus-ludovicus! A big thanks to her for helping me with this project, it’s massively appreciated.  

tw: animal mutilation

Disclaimer: This transcript is entirely non-profit and fan-made. All credit for this content goes to Aaron Mahnke, creator of Lore podcast. It is by a fan, for fans, and meant to make the content of the podcast more accessible to all. Also, there may be mistakes, despite rigorous re-reading on my part. Feel free to point them out, but please be nice!

Some of the things we see aren't what they appear to be. Heather Bowie and her cousins learned that lesson back in 1989. She was eleven at the time and according to her mother, Karen, it was a bright winter day, the sort of day where the sun reflects off every inch of snow, which always has a way of making dark objects like houses and trees stand out. Heather and her cousins were walking along a small country road that ran between their town and the next when they saw a dog sitting in a stream near the roadside. Well, stream might be too strong of a term, it was just a bunch of run off, the sort that passes beneath roads through those big metal tunnels. It was a drainage ditch basically, but kids love dogs, so Heather and the others veered off the road side and into the snow to walk toward it. They assumed it was a local pet that had wandered a bit too far from home, so they planned to check its collar and see what they could do. But even from a distance it looked a bit odd. To be specific it looked too big to be a dog. They took one more step toward it and then stopped. They stopped because that's when the dog turned to look at them. And as it did so, it did something they weren't expecting - it stood up on its hind legs like a human. Obviously frightened, the girls ran home as fast as they could. Humans have always had a connection to animals. We live with them in our homes. We depend on them for food and resources. We identify with them, sometimes even treating them more like people than beasts. We speak to them, we name them, and we project human personalities on them. For thousands of years, we've treated them as if they were more than animals. But of course, that's just our imagination. If we believe the stories, though, it might be more true than we expected. As I said before, some things aren't what they appear to be. Sometimes, they’re worse. I'm Aaron Mahnke, and this is Lore.

Our connection to animals is nearly as old as humanity itself. We've almost always treated them as important parts of the world around us, although different cultures have expressed that importance in a variety of ways. The common thread, though, is that animals have always helped us better understand our world. Some cultures have revered them as gods to worship. Others have seen them as valuable sacrifices to offer to whatever deity they wanted to please. In many cultures, animals have served as our companions through daily life, and in others they journeyed with the dead to the afterlife. Just think of what we know of ancient Egyptian culture. There were entire cults built around specific animals, like bulls and cats, their dead were frequently buried alongside animals that held personal or spiritual significance, and many of the Egyptian gods and goddesses were represented through simple animal symbolism. Anubis, for example, was part man, part jakel. Sekhmet was a woman with the head of a lion. Ancient Hindu teachings for thousands of years have demanded deep respect for the animals around us. In China, the ancient philosophies of Confucianism and Daoism both stress the same thing. With the Hindus, that respect is founded on the idea of reincarnation, in China, it's rooted more in moral responsibility, but the result is the same. Animals are and always have been important to us, and yes, I know that ancient cultures focused a lot of their religion and practice around the sun and moon and stars, but they often framed those complex systems with simple animal language. Thats why so many cultures have their own zodiac symbol, where the major constellations are represented by animals. The Greek root of zodiac, by the way, literally means “circle of little animals”. Just an aside – the ancient Egyption word for cat was meu, which sounds a lot like the noise that cats actually make. And that classic stereotypical dog name, Fido? It comes from the Latin word fidelis which means loyal and faithful.

It's easy to see then how animals have helped us understand our world a little better. They help us find our bearings and keep us company in a big, wild world. More significantly, though, they've helped us understand ourselves by giving humans a sense of identity and purpose, a theme or a banner to unite around in a sense. Sometimes those themes are took the form of religion, as was the case in Egypt with the bull cult. Sometimes it's more of a totem thing, where an entire tribe or community built their identity around a significant animal in their environment. Sometimes they did it for a feeling of safety, sometimes it was a symbol of power. In Icelandic folklore the Norse warrior class known as “berserkers” were members of the bear cult. Berserkr in Old Norse literally meant “bear shirt”, but it also embodied tha fierce, powerful nature that they wanted for themselves as warriors. They were often depicted wearing bear skins and sometimes even bear heads as head coverings. That's a tradition that still survives, by the way. You can see it in the ceremonial military caps worn by some personnel in multiple European countries. The most common tribal animal, though, has always been the wolf. It's a global fascination, with examples found in Mexico, North America, India, Mongolia, and the Middle East, and this is probably because wolves represented so much of what early humanity identified with. They moved in packs, they hunted their food, and they have a distinct social order. Any hunter-gatherer community would instantly admire those qualities. And like bears, wolves were also seen as brave and powerful warriors. Ancient Persian and Hittite warriors were known to dress in wolf skins for battle. Interestingly, though, they also had a reputation for tossing their weapons aside and just jumping on their enemies, literally biting them like wolves. For a very long time, you see, humans have wanted to be animals, which of course led to stories where that was the case - animals that became people, people that became animals. It's an idea so powerful that we can find it hiding inside the folklore of dozens of cultures. The Native American skinwalker, the Nagual of Central America, and of course, throughout much of Europe, there's the werewolf. These are stories, of course, artifacts from another time, when animals were gods and humans desperately wanted to imitate the divine. And yes, these stories also address our dual nature, because we are in so many ways nothing more than animals ourselves, but those moral lessons have a way of distracting us from the plot. For thousands of years, people have told stories about mysterious beasts – and it turns out those stories might be more real than we care to believe.

In 1989, a woman was driving along the same country road that Heather Bowie and her cousins had just walked along weeks before when they sighted that strange creature. In Lorraine Endrizzi’s case it was well after sunset, so she was doing the responsible thing and scanning the edges of her headlights for wild animals. Wisconsin has plenty of deer, after all, and deer don't mix well with windshields and front ends. Lorraine worked as a manager at one of the local bars in Elkhorn and had just wrapped up a very long, very tiring shift. All she really wanted to do was get home safely, but when she did notice something unusual, it wasn't in the periphery of her headlights. It was right in the road in front of her. Seeing it early gave her the chance to slow down and swerve to avoid hitting it, but it also helped her get a good look at it. From a distance it looked as if there was an animal hunched low to the pavement of the oncoming lane. It's head was gently bobbing at an irregular rhythm. She couldn't tell for sure, but it almost seemed to be eating. As she slowly passed it, she claims she saw everything. It was eating, alright. Whatever it was, the creature was hunched over a pile of roadkill, pulling big chunks of flesh off the dead animal. Lorraine said she could clearly make out what appeared to be long, white fangs that protruded from a gray snout. Together with the pointed ears, she couldn't help but think of as a wolf. The trouble was this wolf was kneeling on the road, like a human. It's one story, I know, and stories that are born in the middle of the night after an exhausting day of work are often full of flaws. That might very well be the case here. I think we've all had moments where we've seen things that don't make sense, so Lorraine’s story could just be a bit of midnight confusion, I suppose – if it wasn't for the other stories.

Two years later – on Halloween night, in fact – it was Doris Gibson’s turn. She was just 18 at the time and had been driving out to pick a friend up for some trick or treating back in town. Like Lorraine before her, she was driving that same stretch of country road, named for the old Bray family farm that it passed. According to the story Doris later told to a local reporter, she’d briefly taken her eyes off the road to switch channels on the radio when she felt the car lurch. It was as if, she said, she'd run something over. Frightened by the possibility of what had just happened, she stopped her car, put it in park and then got out for a look. Doris, it seems, wasn't a big horror movie fan, because anyone who knows anything about horror films knows that you never, ever get out of the car. Ever. Still, there wasn't a scratch on her car. The bumper was spotless, there was no sign of blood or fur or anything else that might hint at fresh road kill. And even more convincing, there was nothing on the road, no dead animal, no unlucky farmer out for an evening walk, not even a pothole. There was no clue anywhere that could explain the bump shed felt. She was about to turn and head back to her car when movement caught her attention. There was something in the trees and shadows along the roadside. According to her, it was a large figure that stood upright like a man but seemed hairy and very muscular, which (as you might imagine) was a pretty shocking thing to see on a dark, lonely country road. So Doris did the smart thing and bolted for her car door. As she did, this thing, whatever it was, chased after her. Doris said she could hear the heavy thud of the creatures feet on the pavement behind her and the sound of the deep, panting breaths. Thankfully, she managed to get into the car and shifted quickly back into drive, but as she pulled away, she felt her car shudder once more. When she looked in the rear view mirror, all she could see was the dark silhouette of the creature filling her back window. It had jumped onto the trunk.

Whatever her attacker was, she claims that it fell off when she got her car moving quickly enough, but she wasn't willing to stop for another look. She did, however, continue on to her friend’s house and eventually they both headed back to town for some Halloween fun. Later that night, on her way back along Bray Road to drop her friend back off at home, Doris swears she saw the figure one more time. It was far off in the distance, at the edge of her headlights, but it was the same unmistakable shape. Tall, thick and very animal like, but standing upright on two legs. It wasn't until the next day in the safety of her own driveway and by the light of the noon day sun that she took another look at her car. There, on the trunk, she found evidence that something very unusual and very dangerous had taken place the night before: long, vicious scratches all grouped together as if they were made by claws.

This is the point in the story where you're probably expecting me to clarify what the creature was. All of the physical descriptions certainly point toward the folklore regarding werewolves, but almost no one in Elkhorn made that connection. Maybe that's because there were never any stories of humans transforming into the monster, or perhaps it's because the sightings weren’t limited to full moon nights. In the end, whatever it might have been, the people of the area took to calling it the Beast of Bray Road. There were other theories, of course. One common suggestion was rooted in the Native American folklore about a giant wolf known as the Shunka Warakin, which was described as sort of a hybrid between a wolf and a coyote. Others have made comparisons to the Inuit stories of the Amarok or the Waheela, both of which were enormous, monstous wolves. But honestly, there are far too many human charactristics attributed to Bray Road creature to make the comparison stick. Then, that’s without taking into account the additional sighings. Because Lorraine and Doris weren’t the only witnesses to see something strange along that stretch of country road and once they spoke to a local reporter, others found the courage to come forward with their own tales.

Marvin Kershnick was one of them. According to his testimony, he had his own encounter way back in 1981, a full decade before Doris Gibbson. Unlike the others, though, his sighting didn't happen in the dark. He'd been driving along Highway 11, which runs just north east of Elkhorn, and as he approached the turn off for Bray Road, he saw an unusual animal in the trees along the side of the road. Kershnick slowed down when he saw it and then pulled over to get a better look. The way he described it, much of the creature was obscured by the underbrush, but it was clearly wolf-like. They stared at each other for a moment before the beast moved toward the car. Frightened, Kershnick drove away quickly. Five years later, in 1986, Diane Koenig was traveling in the same area, returning home after a day in nearby Berlington. From a distance, her headlights didn't give her a very clear view so at first it just looked like a tall man was walking along the side of the road with something heavy in his arms. As she drew closer, though, all of that came into focus. According to Koenig, this man had the head of a wolf, and the heavy burden that it held in its arms turned out to be a full sized deer. Unlike Kershnick though, Koenig didn't stop for a closer look and instead sped up, just in case the creature decided to give chase. She kept the story to herself for years out of fear that she’d be considered a lunatic.

More stories flooded in. One unnamed girl told the authorities that she'd been chased up a tree by a wolf then had to stay there for over an hour while it paced around, trying to find a way to climb up after her. What struck her as odd, though, was that the wolf walked around the tree on its hind legs. When she led her parents back to the tree the next day, they found large claw marks on the lower portion of the trunk. Even Scott Bray, who lived on the family farm that gave the road it’s name, claimed to have seen unusual things, including enormous wolf tracks on his property. Local animal control authorities were called to several homes in the area to examine and collect a large number of mutilated animal corpses. A few townsfolk tried to blame that one on Satanic cults, but everyone else agreed it was just the Beast of Bray Road. There was a good amount of fear in town, as you might expect, but the sightings were also creating something else that's lasted to this day. A reputation. The bar where Lorraine Endrizzi worked created a menu item called the Silver Bullet Special. A bakery in town started making wolf shaped cookies. Think Roswell New Mexico and UFO collectables but with wolves, and I think you'll get the idea. Even Chuck Coleman, a local state representative, got involved by using the Beast of Bray Road in his election marketing. He ran an ad that showed a man dressed up as the Beast casting his vote for Coleman. Perhaps proof of the popularity of the Bray Beast stories, Coleman won his election. Doris Gibson's encounter also seemed to have been the last sighting of the creature by travelers on Bray Road. After that, Elkhorn Wisconsin sort of became quiet – for a while, at least. You see, in the spring of 1992, county animal control officer John Frederickson was called to a field outside of town, to the east near Bray Road. This is a man who was used to the occasional road kill or injured farm animal. He’d seen a lot in his career. But when he arrived at the field, he was well out of his depth, because there, laying in the pasture, were the bodies of five horses. Their throats had all been slashed.

It seems that people are drawn to animals and we always have been. And if the internet’s collection of cat videos and dog tricks tells us anything, it's that our passion for these animals isn’t fading any time soon. Perhaps they meet a deep, unspoken need in our soul or maybe they just trigger the right pleasure center in our brains. Whatever the reason might be, animals are significant to us. But every time I see someone dress up their dog in a sweater, I can't help but think of how, for a very long time, humans used to be the ones dressed up as animals. We envy their grace, their strength and their power, and that envy has woven itself into the very fabric of global folklore. But what if there's another reason why we tell stories of animals that act human? What if, deep down, we fear the possibility, or that our ancestors told just enough stories about human-like animals that we wonder, just a little? Whatever it was lurking in the trees and shadows of Elkhorn, Wisconsin back in the early 90s remains a mystery to this day. No answers have been uncovered, no unusual corpses have been found in the woods or along the roadside, no nests or dens, or whatever sort of dwelling a creature like the Beast of Bray Road might have lived in. All we have is story. Sometimes all we ever have is story. All of the witnesses who came forward to tell their stories seemed to agree on the details, and surprisingly all of them appear to be telling the truth. When a documentary on the events was being produced in 2008, all of the witnesses agreed to take a polygraph exam, and each of them passed. It's not irrefutable proof, I know, but it's enough to make you wonder.

Sometime after the events of the early 90s, a local who lived along Bray Road looked out his window to see a man standing in his driveway with a handgun. Obviously frightened by the sight of an armed stranger in his yard, he called the police, who quickly arrived. José Contreras was immediately arrested and his handgun, along with 50 rounds of ammunition, was confiscated. He eventually went to trial and his lawyer attempted to build a case around self defense. Contreras, he told the judge, was looking for the Beast of Bray Road, which he believed was a werewolf. That meant, according to his defence, he wasn't a danger to anyone else. The judge, though, dismissed the notion and convicted Conteras anyway. His reason? Apparently none of the bullets in the gun had been silver. Maybe it's fantasy, maybe it's real, but it's amazing in the very least how parts of fantasy can become so accepted that they play a role in something as significant as a criminal trial.

One final tale. Just six years ago, more witnesses came forward about a new sighting. One night in October of 2010, six people were driving together down Bray Road. Down the road ahead, they watched as shadows seemed to move across their path. As they drew closer, they watched the shape run into the open field to their right. What they say might seem hard to believe, so we’ll have to take them at their word. They claimed it was an animal, covered in fur, and similar in appearance to a wolf - except it was running on two legs and not four. Once it reached the field, the beast dropped to all fours and bolted off into the darkness. One final detail sets this report apart from all the others, though, because unlike every other encounter dating back over 30 years, this one finds a way to make the Beast of Bray Road even more frightening. According to the witnesses, it wasn't a single creature. There were two of them.

[Closing statements]