rosenspur

[marellaredeks]

Okay, Keepers Star Trek AU

Sophie is a half Vulcan half human baby found as the sole survivor on a Maquis ship. Sophie is raised by the human Foster family, professors at Star Fleet academy. When at twelve Sophie is in a terrible shuttle accident that claims the life of her parents and places her younger sister in a coma , Sophie is taken in by former Star Fleet Xenobiologis Grady Ruewen and former Star Fleet Commander Edaline Ruewen. Before Sophie has a chance to adjust to her new life Grady and Edaline are called back by Starfleet to serve aboard the USS Everglen, captained by their friend, and Edaline's former subordinate, Alden Vacker, SPACE THE FINAL FRONTIER

[yhwhsdaughter]

kishibe x fem reader + quanxi

content: angst, frenemies, mentions of sex, depression

“Why’d you join?”

Kishibe was less than warm, watching with a keen eye as the young woman moved with grace—fist under chin as she contemplated on his question “Hmm..” a few seconds passed before she snapped her fingers, as if the thought had just occurred to her, answering with faux sincerity,

“I want to help humanity!”

Kishibe had been a Devil Hunter long enough for him to know that most people weren’t noble enough to risk their life for the benefit of others. The majority that passed through had a chip on their shoulders - revenge seeking individuals that after facing the horrors of dealing with devils, if they survived, would quit immediately, realizing that it just wasn’t worth it.

“Liar.”

One of the things Kishibe liked about Quanxi was her brutal honesty and mighty fist. Unlike her, their newest addition to the team, a pretty thing called [Name], seemed to mask her intentions behind a wall of innocence, not that he particularly cared.

Unfazed, she responded with an enigmatic grin, “I look forward to working with you, Mad Dog Kishibe.”

.

.

.

Despite reeking of mistrust, the three of them worked well. Quanxi and Kishibe outranked [Name] in skill, though she possessed a nearly unbreakable will. Even when she was on the brink of death, the young woman would force herself up.

“Quanxi-sama!”

Kishibe’s eye twitched. “Unfair treatment, don’t you think?” Everytime he confessed his feelings, Kishibe was at the receiving end of Quanxi’s fist. Yet, the latter’s semblance softened just slightly whenever [Name] got close.

Though he was ignored by Quanxi, his other teammate had no qualms in teasing him, sticking her tongue out, childishly asking as she hung on the woman’s arm, “Jealous?”

For a few months that was their dynamic. [Name] would do her best to piss him off, flirting with Quanxi who would allow such ministrations. “Ah, Quanxi, I don’t mind if you punch me~”

To their surprised, she looked down, “Mn” before planting a soft kiss on [Name]’s lips. It brought a tiny bit of rouge to her cheeks, her battered body suddenly bridled with excitement,

“Kiss me more!”

Truly, to survive as a Devil Hunter, you had to be a little bit crazy.

The frustrated male was often left out of conversations when the two women spoke in Chinese, always initiated by [Name]. She would then glance at Kishibe with a mischievous glint, blowing him kisses. During one of their breaks, he made it a point to ask, purposely blowing smoke in [Name]’s face, which she hated.

“Where’d you learn Chinese?”

Her hand waved through the air, coughing, “Put that out—! And I learnt it from my mother. Her work took us to many places.” One thing he found interesting about [Name] was that she’d always mention her mother, enough for Kishibe to know that the older woman was a renowned doctor. “Father?” the first and last time he asked, she just shrugged, “I don’t know him. Mother only slept with him to have me. He loved her but she didn’t return his feelings.”

Huh, why does that sound familiar?

Extending an arm, Kishibe offered a drag from his stick but [Name] merely shook her head, somehow always conscious of her health.

“Cigarettes kill.”

“So do devils.”

She leaned against the railing, peering at the sky. “Yeah but I don’t want to die yet. Not before I accomplish my goal..” the last part wasn’t meant for his ears. Before he could question it, [Name] turned to him, “Hey Kishibe..”

“Hm?”

“Will you have sex with me?”

.

.

.

They did it a couple of times, mostly to get their frustrations out. Even as [Name] rode him with inexperienced hips, she managed to top him every single time.

As much as he loved women, his weakness was the strong ones. “Annghh.. are you this desperate for Quanxi~? It’s okay, I want to sleep with her too.” She grinned, seeing the conflicted expression on his face - a mix of pleasure and annoyance. Of course she’d take the opportunity to be a little shit, especially when he was more focused on coming than returning her insults.

They laid side by side, bodies slick with sweat. “Don’t think you’re my woman now.” His blunt words did nothing to [Name], who only bit his earlobe, “You’re so cold Kishibe~” she was quick to get up from the bed, her nude back exposed, “I don’t want to be no man’s woman. I want to be Quanxi’s only.”

Love rivals sleeping with each other…

When [Name] made a contract with the Time Devil, she had no need for it. For a month, the young woman worked with a solemn face, the willingness to live now lost. It was the only instance Kishibe saw her cry and the first time he jumped in front.

Her hands felt soft as she stitched up the large wound that ran from lip to ear. “You’re an idiot. Who would want to be comforted by you? I want Quanxi..” is what she said, but the tears pricking her eyes showed otherwise.

Sniffing, [Name] continued her actions. “My mother… is the one who taught me how to..” she blubbered. Though the expression on her face—puffy eyes and snot running down her nose—was an ugly one, it was perhaps the most pleasant moment Kishibe had seen her in.

Finally, her mask had finally come down.

“I did it for her. I wanted to elongate her life but they only gave her a year.” The left side of his face felt numb but he sat through it. “She spent her entire life saving others from their illness but no one could save her in the end…not even me…”

.

.

.

It was unintentional that [Name] became a hybrid, fusing with the Time Devil. He made a contract after she offered her remaining lifespan.

Usually, she only had to make an equivalent exchange to use him. If she wanted time stopped for a minute, [Name] needed to forfeit a minute of her life. However, with her objective gone, the young woman saw no point in living any longer. Thus, she gave herself up.

It’s unknown why the devil would do that, but upon the completion of their contract, [Name] did not age. At the same time, when Kishibe told Quanxi that he liked her, nine years later, the woman admitted to liking their now-hybrid teammate.

“I know.”

Shortly after, he was approached by her. Time passed and though [Name] looked the same, her impish behavior remained but she’d matured a little.

“I’m going with Quanxi to China.”

That was perhaps the last time they would ever see each other. [Name], the rock on the bottom of his shoe, would soon leave his side. Was it pathetic of Kishibe to think that he’d grown accustomed to the feeling of the same stone pressing on his sole and that he did not want her to leave?

She closed in, serious demeanor, pressing a delicate kiss on his mouth, “Take care, Kishibe.”

Yes, a silly thought indeed.

[lil-oreo-crumbles]

Aw, man, any thoughts about Rasticore?

YES HE’S MY GUYY

Ah yes, another example of a the whole running themes with Septarians being this “certain way.” Though, interestingly, unlike Seth and Toffee, he’s not as villainized as they are. Instead he’s literally just turned into the butt of a joke… which still isn’t great.

But I already kind of went into the show stereotyping Septarians as X and X in my Seth post, this is solely about Rasticore my boy and my thoughts on this dude!!

TL;DR: I love him a lot he is way too underrated.

Here’s some headcanons with thoughts mixed in there. (Though admittedly this is basically just Septarsis-Dragonfly AU Lore… but as long as it doesn’t impact the progression of the story it’s fine💀)

Rasticore is Seth’s (only and biological) son. He’s a result of a little fling that was mainly orchestrated to hatch a potential heir. Seth is a (very deeply closeted who’ll scoff if you even mention the notion despite his history of “flings” and “relationships” with men) 100% gay man, and even Rasticore is surprised by his own very existence.

Rasticore is older than Toffee by two decades (it’s not that long for Septarians they’re relatively close in age).

Seth and Rasticore have good standing and a good relationship, but they’re not particularly close

Rasticore IS however, extremely close with his Aunt, Princess Zarina, and handmade her robotic arm when Eclipsa permanently severed it with her darkest spell

The only reason he doesn’t outrank Toffee is because he not only doesn’t have the leadership skills, but also cares a lot less about the war effort than Toffee does. Seth is not the type to give Rasticore a higher rank for the pure sake of being his son, he has to earn it like everyone else. He just particularly didn’t put the work in. The war didn’t spark his interest until the Comet situation

While he didn’t like Toffee for a while as a child/preteen, they became incredibly close in their teenager days and formed a trio with Toffee’s then girlfriend, Ericka. They distanced again after the trio split and didn’t become “close” again until around Comet’s reign. This is all despite the fact that they literally live with each other in the castle.

While Toffee was studying as a historian and planning his destroy magic plot, Toffee’s (now ex) nerdy engineer boyfriend, Favian, designed and crafted Rasticore’s famous dimensional chainsaw (using stolen dimensional scissors). He also made several tracking devices that Rasticore ends up using.

It was around this time that he met Heinous (aka Meteora). Yes, they absolutely 100% dated on and off for a while, keeping it on the down low as a casual thing.

When Toffee volunteered to go to Comet’s banquet, Seth insisted that Toffee take Rasticore with him. This is really where the two men bonded again after all those years.

After Comet’s death and Moon’s spell, he retreated back to Septarsis. It was there that he finally admitted to his father that he was tired of being a “prince” and wanted to instead forge his own path.

He left Septarsis shortly after Toffee, renouncing his title and changing his last name from Kardona to “Chaosus-Disastervaine”

He has both of his eyes and both of his arms, he just uses the gem and robotic arm to better conceal his identity. He doesn’t actually think anyone would recognize him as the “Prince of Septarsis,” but he has to make sure. He also alters his voice sometimes for this exact reason.

He was pretty shocked about Meteora’s true heritage (go figure), but what disturbed him the most was the fact that she not only was Eclipsa’s daughter (he was WELL AWARE of Toffee’s friendship and falling out with her) but also the fact she kind of bore a resemblance to the baby who ambushed their meeting and blasted Toffee in the fact that one time. THAT’S why he skedaddled so quick and broke up with her (only to be blasted into an arm again)

A small part of Rasticore being with the other assassins trying to take out Eclipsa was deeply personal. He knows firsthand that Eclipsa not only took off his Aunt’s arm and killed many other Septarians, but deeply deeply hurt one of his longest and closest friends. Out of everyone there he had the most reason to actually want her dead.

He’s still working at there to this day, but with the arrival of the Echo Creek humans they’re not very popular and business is very slow. Part of him wants to go find a new job, but he’s made friends there who he doesn’t want to leave behind.

Yeah honestly most of these is just his backstory from my AU 💀 whoopsies. It’s hard to separate the two sometimes I just kind of lump canon in with my AU. But yeah that’s the gist of it! I think Rasticore is real cool and he’s one of my absolute favorites.

But then again I stan every single Septarian in this show so I am a heavily biased party

(My favorite Rasticore scene by far)

[kingcunny]

🔥 i need to know more about your alicent

absolutely! :)

women in westeros, specifically women and girls of high ranking houses do not own themselves, they are extensions of their house. their fathers political opportunities. otto is a very ambitious man and has groomed alicent into this exact role. she is an extension of house hightower, an extension of her father. she is his opportunity to rise through the ranks. and she envelops this role wholly. alicent is ambitious in her own right, but how much of that is herself and how much of that is otto? not even she could begin to separate those ideas.

so when otto suggests she marries the king. she jumps at the opportunity. maybe even sees it as a chance to finally gain some power for herself, to finally be out from under ottos control. to outrank him, in some way. even if she cant articulate that thought to even herself. or the desire behind it.

alicent was young when she came to court, viserys is 10 years older than her. she probably views him as another sort of father figure. projects her ideas of otto onto him. which helps, in a way. shes been her fathers pseudowife for so long, whats the difference in becoming this pseudofathers actual wife?

but she is still that culmination of all the grooming she was raised with. alicent wants power but does not believe she is capable of gaining that herself, she must find it through the men around her, her marriage, her children. thats how women gain power. so she marries the king, she gives him sons. her son will grow up to be king, and she will rule through him. THAT is how she will gain her power. and fulfill her duty to her father and house.

except then viserys fucks it all up. ruins her plans. even after giving him multiple sons, he refuses to fulfill his side of the unspoken pact and make them his heir. he does away with the rules and traditions that everyone has been following for hundreds of years, the traditions that got HIMSELF elected king. he keeps supporting rhaenyra as his heir. he refuses to even marry his daughter to her son. shes given him the one thing hes (supposedly) wanted all this time, the thing he killed his first wife trying to get. why wont he give her what she wants?

i think thats when all the projection and delusions of their marriage come crashing down. viserys isnt otto. he doesnt love her, he doesnt love their children. he has just been using her as a salve for his own fears of death. their marriage, their children, everything has been nothing but a plan B to him. a ‘just in case’ something happens to his preferred child, his chosen heir. all the years shes given him, all the pain shes put herself through for his benefit, is for nothing. she will gain nothing out of it. she will fail in her own goals and her duty to her family.

(to be fair, alicent also never loved viserys. not really. she was also using him for his position as king to try and get what she wants. but, from alicents pov, she does not owe him love. thats not part of her duty to her husband. her duty is to give him sons. in return for that however, he should at the very least love her and the children she gives him. see them as more than just spares.)

and, of course, alicent is ottos daughter. your children are extensions of yourself before they are their own people. they are your pawns to increase your standing. if they cant further your own goals then what good are they? if alicent fails its because her children have failed her. and now all they are are reminders of that failure, of time that couldve been better spent elsewhere. cause now shes stuck with them. and viserys.

but alicent cant take her anger out on viserys, hes still her husband and king, (and father in a way. just because you become aware of a delusion, doesnt mean it stops having control over you) so instead she takes it out on what she sees as the cause of all these problems - rhaenyra. viserys spoiled little daughter. his One True Love. the woman he would throw everyone else under a bus for.

this is why alicent suddenly turns on rhaenyra after they had been pretty close beforehand. theres not an actual date listed of when alicents mother dies, but i like thinking it happened before they all came to court. alicent knows how hard and lonely it is being a young girl without a mother, how dangerous it is being a young girl at court. and rhaenyras father is negligent and indulgent and distracted, in alicents eyes, wholly unfitted to be a father. so she reaches out to rhaenyra, to be that mother figure for her. to took after her and raise her. (and if she just happens to catch the kings attention at the same time. well two birds one stone.)

[askthefourhumanheroes]

I heard from the grapevine that you were a part of the nefarious Team Plasma, Marcus. Can I ask why did you join and why did you quit? And were you close with the leader? I heard he's hot.

Marcus: It's a long story, and I don't have a way with words like Dewott does, but I'll tell you what happened.

I grew up in Anville Town. It's that little town where all the trains stop for overhauls, and there's really nothing to do there except watch the trains go by or trade items with collectors on the weekends. I did sometimes leave to visit family, and seeing all those vibrant cities out there was like peeping through a window at a life I couldn't have. Things at home were...tough, you know? My dad took his anger out on me, my little sister, and Garbodor, and my mom didn't really seem to care about anything. She would just watch TV and sigh all day.

As I got close to finishing high school, I just felt so washed out. I had no idea what I was going to do with my life. Nothing seemed meaningful or even interesting. Some days I considered just buying a train ticket and leaving for Castelia or Nimbasa, but I knew there was nothing for me anywhere.

Then, a few months before I was set to graduate, Team Plasma showed up in town. I saw some of their fliers, and I was curious, so I decided to come to one of Ghetsis's speeches. And when I did, it was like my life had been...rejuvenated? Uplifted? I don't know. All I know is that I found a purpose that day: I was going to save Pokemon from their human abusers. It just made so much sense to me back then.

A few days later, I left with Team Plasma. I only told my sister about how I was planning to go; I doubt my parents cared. Lilian (that was my sister's name) wanted to go with me, but she was still a kid, so I didn't let her, but I did say that I'd come back when she was older, to see if she was still interested.

...

I never got the chance, but that's another story.

I stayed in Team Plasma for about a year, and it started off great. Everyone was super nice and helpful (at first), and I got to travel all over Unova for the cause. In my uniform, I felt like a knight from the stories I read as a kid.

In the beginning, I just put up posters, handed out fliers, that sort of thing, but the longer I stayed in the team, the more illegal it got. Us grunts would go out and steal Pokemon from trainers. I'm sure some of them were abusing their Pokemon, but others were genuinely heartbroken, and then there was that time me and another grunt stole a Lopunny from a little boy. He couldn't have been older than five, but the other grunt outranked me, so I went along with it. When we were done, we'd always give the Pokemon (in their balls) to the nearest Sage, and then the Sage would go release them somewhere. At least, that's what they told me...

To be honest, I should've seen the signs of corruption earlier. But I just wanted to work hard and earn back the kindness that had been steadily dropping over the months. Sometimes I'd try to talk to a Sage or Ghetsis about my concerns, like why some of us were given Pokemon to use when we were trying to free the Pokemon, and then they'd give me an answer that sounded good enough to placate me but really wasn't much of an answer. I myself never had any Pokemon, but I was always pretty tall and strong, and I learned how to beat people up. Probably should've questioned that...

Oh, about the leader, Lord N: I didn't really know him well, but I practically worshipped him. To be honest, I still kinda do. He just has this sort of supernatural goodness to him. We spoke a few times, usually just quick exchanges, and most of what I knew about him came from my comrades. Yeah, some of them thought he was hot, but, uh, I'm gonna change the subject. Now that I look back, I see that he really wasn't in charge of everything; he was more like Ghetsis's figurehead. Man, having a dad like that must suck.

Anyway, I fell asleep one night, and I woke up in the Pokemon world. From what my friends who were there told me, I just disappeared without a trace. I was gone for about a year, and when I came back, everything had changed. From what I've heard, a month after I disappeared, this trainer named Hilda started interfering with Team Plasma's plans, and then there was this epic battle with N where they both used the legendary dragons, but I'm sure you've heard about that. When I got back, Team Plasma had split into two groups: Old Plasma and Neo Plasma. I was confused for a long time, and I had friends on both sides, but I wound up siding with Sage Rood and Old Plasma. I didn't quit per say; I just stopped antagonizing people.

Recently, Neo Plasma was defeated, and some of us Old Plasma folks helped with that, but I was manning the sanctuary in Driftveil when the final battle happened. Again, I'm not a trainer, so I doubt I could've helped.

I still believe that we can do a lot to help the Pokemon. I don't know where Lord N went, but I hope I can see him soon. I have a feeling he'll believe me about the Pokemon world.

(OOC: Yay, I was hoping someone would ask about this! Team Plasma is my favorite of the evil teams, and they have great music too. Damn, I wrote a lot, but it felt good. Anyway, credit to PMD Sprite Repository for the icons, especially mucrush.)

[cicaklah]

picard thots 3x05

wanging on about star trek under the cat

🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈

poor picard, forever alone until the last two weeks when TWO lady loves come back into his life and say 'oh yeah turns out we could have been in love but you fucked it up without realising it'. (not to ignore his current lady love who is the only one with the spine to let him NOT fuck it up without realising he is fucking it up).

(I can't believe we are STILL paying for patstew feeling emasculated in the early 90s. the male ego: not even once.)

Ensign Ro is one of those characters that TNG fans have Strong Feelings about, and I am one of those, because I love Bajorans and Cardassians as the true ds9 stan I am. I love seeing Michelle Forbes in things. I hope she was paid a lot to come reprise the character she's seemingly spent her whole career running away from. I suppose that, and the fact that this is a show named after Picard, that the focus will always be on her relationship with Picard. It was the most interesting part of what we got about her, along with our general introduction to the Bajoran faith and people, but we had 7 years of development of them and none of her, I always assumed she was killed when the marquis were slaughtered by the dominion as a favour to the cardassians. Lucky escape, though of course she got killed off. she had her story beat: time to die. (cash that cheque, never look back).

Anyway, not that Picard would have ever done anything with her, due to being Noble Space Coastguard Man who outranks her by about 40 years, but I quite pruriently like the wow wrong bad hot of that dynamic, in a dead dove way. Like as usual I wish we could spend more time in these characters' heads, because god I love people who fail at starfleet more than anything, they are my favourite characters in any show. The dysfunctional relationship between starfleet and those within it is fruit ripe for picking. Picard breaking the rules to sleep with Ro would be absolutely out of character in the most delicious way, to the point I kind of want to write it. Like that is tragedy, highest nobility and loyalty to an institution vs the desires of the human flesh. Genuinely the best. Awful dysfunctional relationship between man who projects wildly onto a younger woman and the younger woman who clings to older man in authority as symbol of the authority she is a bad fit for. Neither of them ever actually engaging with each other as people, therefore doomed to failure.

At the ~ revelation ~ that omg changelings are EVERYWHERE, when Ro says starfleet is corrupted to the highest level I went "what, AGAIN?" Its been 2 years since Romulans took over the top level of starfleet, and now its changelings. I mean, I still think the changelings have been there for twenty years, since the attempted coup in homefront/paradise lost.

I wish this series was...25% less ambitious prestige tv.

Anyway, glad that Jack said something to his mum that he's fucked and seeing things, but all this red and doors and stuff is synth-as-fuck, and honestly it makes no sense for Jack to be a synth even in this series. They can't do synth stuff without agnes and they ruined agnes by making her borg. it makes me miss narek, my problematic fave though. god, remember season 1? seems so long ago.

(IMAGINE IF SEASON 2 HAD BEEN ABOUT REINTEGRATION OF SYNTHS INTO SOCIETY AND EXBORGS AND JUST IN GENERALY NOT WHATEVER IT WAS GDI)

all these close ups of Jack's eyes is really highlighting that he is DRAMATICALLY miscast as a 23 year old, its just funny now. Man has more eye wrinkles than I do and I'm 36.

as we are introduced to more older characters the more I am changing my mind on gates mcfadden's face lift, I think its so uncanny it keeps throwing me out of her scenes because I keep analysing her face. can't do anything about it, and she does look good...if REALLY uncanny.

Worf and Raffi continue to be good, if a little boring. The timelines are converging. It was nice to see Charlie from Fringe as a Vulcan gone bad though. Been a little bit of a fringenaissance on TV this year, with anna torv in tlou and Charlie in this. more of that please. they deserve better.

I still like Shaw, but I like the bad apple captain trope best of all. Remember when we had Lorca and I got so excited about how Disco was going to be a show about actually working under one of the Bad Captains of the Week from TNG era?! Maybe I'm getting it.

(I also think that there's interesting things to unpack about Shaw and Seven's relationship that PERHAPS I might also write something about because mmmm he's a dick, she's bullheaded, what the fuck is she even doing in starfleet other than falling into the trap that so many failed fleeties have before, deconstruction of the protagonist hero trope, seven deserves better but how can she get better when she is in the military, which cares not for individuality?! Like the dichotomy of man who after trauma finds peace in conformity and playing by the rules, vs the woman who knows that conformity is seductive and ends up seduced by it again, and ends up in this job that she is ill-suited for even if she is technically good at it, because she is essentially self-harming by joining the military, the acceptable collective????

failed fleeties, my absolute fucking favourites. Right in the vein, please.)

anyway are we half way through? I think we're half way through. Wonderful.

[rebelliouspoise]

Comfortable Warmth (solo #2)

When Ahsoka met Rex, she had just finished pissing off Anakin, and that made Rex laugh. Anakin then decided Rex could learn a little respect by teaching Ahsoka a little bit about respect. He sort of did. Just because she outranked him didn't mean anything in the face of true experience. She took those words to heart because it wasn't as if Rex had been wrong.

It didn't take long for Ahsoka to realize that Anakin felt like more than just a master. He felt like the older brother helping her find her way as a Jedi who had been thrust immediately into a war as a soldier. It had been a fairly unique experience because Jedi were not ever supposed to pick sides. Their goal was to love everyone and help as many as they could.

She'd fit in well with all the other clones. They were family too.

In the events that lead to her leaving the order, she remembered how Anakin had been the only one to fight so viciously to help her clear her name. Clones had died and she had been framed. She had to run from them, and fight to keep from being arrested.

The Republic had turned on her pretty easily. The Jedi Order had as well. Except for Anakin. But she also remembered Rex had defended her. He had known she wasn't capable of doing what she had been accused of.

She thought she had lost everything when she left the Order. Anakin begged her not to go. They were family. He was her brother. He was the one who looked out for her more than anyone else, but she no longer knew who to trust. It had been a traumatizing experience, but it had been a necessary wake-up call.

She never said goodbye to the clones. She never said goodbye to Rex. She abandoned everyone and she figured that no one would want to welcome her back if she ever returned.

What she had not expected was the way Rex and his brothers welcomed her back. It had filled her with so many different emotions. Anakin returned her lightsabers to her, but that was the last time she ever saw her master again.

Rex was the only reason she survived Order 66. They fought side by side, back to back, fought insurmountable odds, and they survived together.

There was no one she trusted with her life more than Rex. Losing touch with him had been painful. She really missed him. She missed everyone though, and it was a deep, unyielding sorrow that kept her disconnected from the Force.

The first time she saw Rex in years, she yelled at him because it had seemed like the most logical choice at the time, but she had been running low on food and sleep. And morale. It was lonely.

She missed him more than she had thought possible, but knowing for certain he was alive helped ease her mind. He was a ray of sunshine in the never-ending darkness that surrounded them. She felt light.

So she wasn't sure what possessed her to ask him to come with her. They had parted ways for a reason, but it seemed she was able to breathe easier, and it compelled her to try and reach out through the Force again.

Her thoughts would take her to dark, cold places, but the sound of Rex's voice would pull her out of it. So looking at him was like looking at the sun. It was warmth and reassurance and something else she couldn't put a name to. Or wouldn't. Maybe both.

She mourned the losses of everyone, all the time.

But now she had Rex to talk to. To laugh with.

And apparently, stare at for awkward lengths of time.

All the clones were identical, but Rex definitely stood out the most.

Her best friend. The one she risked her life to save because he needed her help, and she needed his. He exuded warmth and compassion. She felt at ease with him, and she knew she always would.

She'd never considered a life outside of being a soldier in a war she joined as a padawan. There had never been time and it seemed pointless to think about those things.

Now there was time. Things had slowed down. And this left a lot of time to remember things. Like the fact that Ahsoka was adamant that Rex was by far the most handsome clone she had ever laid eyes on. It was a ridiculous thought to have when he had more than two million brothers sharing the same face.

She had always admired him and looked to him for guidance as much as she did with Anakin.

It was hard not to bask in the warmth of Rex's smile or how kind he was.

They were together on this strange forest planet and even if she really hated some of the bugs, at least Rex was there to help her remember that she didn't have to keep hiding alone. And sometimes he would scare the bugs off because she didn't believe in killing them.

She was happy, and she wanted to tell Rex. She wanted him to know how much she loved having him there with her. Something always stopped her because she was afraid to admit anything when it came to him.

She was scared, but it was exhilarating to be standing on the precipice of something new for both of them.

Her clone. Her captain. Her Rex.

[oneoftheextras]

Truth | Gojo Satoru

masterlist | request?

paring: gojo satoru x reader

summary: gojo was the most annoying upperclassman and partner you’d ever had, he always had something to say. 

when a special grade exorcism goes a bit too well, you realise all too late the truth-telling side affects of this particular curse. you just pray that gojo doesn’t ask the wrong or right questions.

words: 5.7

warnings: 18+, smut, swearing, spoiler free, descriptions of gore and blood, cheating mentioned (the curse’s vibe), mentions of someone taking their own life, little bit angsty

“Will you just shut up and give me the debrief?” you snapped, lifting your eyes up from your phone to glare at the descending ceiling of the abandoned subway station.

Satoru Gojo.

Of course it had to be Satoru - fucking - Gojo.

Normally, you’d be dispatched on your own, but for some reason the higher ups thought that this curse needed not one, but two special grade sorcerers to exorcise it.

With talent alone, Gojo outranked you - he made sure you knew that every moment you spent at Jujustu Tech with him - but, your cursed energy technique was stronger.

“Loosen up, you’re no fun to be around when you’re all grumpy-grumpy,” his voice took on a child-like tone as he pretend to stamp his feet the same way an infant would, “And you’re no fun to be around at all.” you quipped back.

This was the ongoing battle between you and Satoru Gojo. He knew exactly how to piss you off, to the point where just being in his presence grated on you, and you wanted more than anything to put him in his place.

He was arrogant, cocky, and egotistical. It didn’t help that he was attractive and didn’t try to hide the fact that he knew it.

Why the sorcerer executives had paired you together? You didn’t know. 

Both of you were more than capable sorcerers, but ever since you graduated Jujustu Tech they were adamant to make you work together. Gojo claimed it was so you could learn from him as he was a year older, but you protested that it was to keep him in line.

He placed a hand on the left side of his chest, right where his heart would be if it hadn’t frozen over, “You hurt my feelings.” he pouted and you scoffed, keeping your flashlight trained on the disgusting steps ahead of you.

“Good. Now tell me what the situation is.” you rubbed the bridge of your nose as you spoke, a headache was already starting to creep it’s way behind your eyes.

A long sigh left the tall man beside you, but you were glad when he started going through the case.

“Special grade, only because of it’s intelligence. Seems to stem from a heartbroken woman, she caught her husband cheating and threw herself in front of a train.” he said matter-of-factly, only showing sympathy towards the end.

Curling your nose up into a snarl, “What an asshole.” you felt yourself getting angry on behalf of this unnamed woman.

“Mhmm,” Gojo nodded along, probably the only time the two of you were in agreement, “Apparently the curse is vengeful and extremely violent. Likes to target couples too.” he continued.

You didn’t need to see his eyes to know that he was glancing at you, his shit-eating smirk did that on it’s own. It was clear what he was implying.

As if Gojo, as if.

He was a hard man to read, if you were being completely honest with yourself. All the time you’d spent getting to know him, the line between sincerity and teasing had blurred. You’d known each other since you were 15 and he was 16, you being a bright eyed and bushy tailed first year, and him being the ‘all knowing’ second year.

Immediately, you’d made it into his rotation of people to pester.

For years you watched him flirt with women, shoot his shot and very rarely get turned down, only fuelling the fire of his ego even more. 

But he was different around you. Sure, he flirted and teased just as much as he did the others, but he wasn’t as persistent with them - he’d only pursue someone for a couple of days and if they weren’t reciprocating his feelings he’d leave them be.

Here you were, ten years later, and he was still teasing you. Maybe it was just because you never left his rotation, all the others either dropped out or were dispatched to other parts of Japan. Only you were the one dumb enough to stay at Hokkaido.

Gojo said it was because you would miss him too much, you said it was because they needed you.

A rotten stench was starting to waft up from the subway, the deeper you went the stronger it got. By now, all natural light was gone, your only visual aid was your flashlight.

“We’re definitely in the right place.” you almost dry heaved at the odour that filled your mouth as you spoke, if it weren’t for your years of training your disgust would be more visible, “Oh, is that what that is?” Gojo feigned ignorance, “I thought you forgot to shower again.” he bumped his shoulder against yours.

“Ha ha, very funny! Go get eaten.” you mocked him and shoved the shoulder that’d bumped into you. At the force of your push, he stumbled down the last couple of steps and into the darkness of the subway platform.

You waited for a second, holding your breath to see if you could hear footsteps. There was nothing but silence.

The amount of cursed energy that radiated from this place was intense, if it wasn’t so far below ground it would’ve lit up like a Christmas tree, it was surprising that it’d taken you this long to find it.

“Gojo?” you called out into the darkness, hearing your own voice echo back at you. The silence continued so you stepped down onto the platform, flashlight scanning dusty expanse of the building.

“Over here!” you heard in the distance and shone your light at the direction it came from, his white hair illuminated in the light. You sighed a breath of relief, you had no idea how you would explain getting The Satoru Gojo killed to the higher ups.

His long legs were bent as he crouched down near the edge of the platform, it took everything in you not to push him off the edge and onto the filthy tracks below.

“What’re you looking at?” you asked as you strolled over to him. If you were on your own, you’d be on high alert and awaiting the inevitable jump scare of the curse showing itself, and in some ways you should be - this was still a special grade curse.

Gojo pushed up off the floor and stood at his full height, reminding you once again just how much shorter you were than him.

Does he really have to spike his hair like that too? He’s tall enough as it is without the hair for help.

He pointed a slender finger down onto the tracks before stuffing both his hands into his pockets, “Think I found our curse.” he inhaled deeply and then let out a noisy exhale through his mouth.

When you peered over the edge to see what he was talking about, you realised why he sounded so disappointed, “That it?” you grumbled, the thing you were both staring at was grotesque in every sense of the word, but you wouldn’t look at it and call it a special grade.

Laying on the rusted tracks was the torso of a woman, from what you could tell anyway. Where the head would normally be was a splattered stump of hair, bone and flesh - it was unrecognisable.

The arms connected to the torso were mangled and bent in multiple different directions, bone had shattered through skin and protruded through like a sprouting flower.

Where the torso would usually connect to a pair of legs was a gaping hole with intestines ungracefully dragging across the floor as it attempted to pull itself across the ground.

“I kinda feel sorry for it.” Gojo stretched his hands out in front of him with his fingers interlocked.

“Please, don’t lie to me.”

If you weren’t already looking at Gojo you would’ve sworn you heard him say something. “I’m not! Look at it, it’s begging to be put out of it’s misery.” he gestured to the mound of what used to be a person.

He didn’t see the confused expression on your face as he jumped down onto the tracks, “What?” you cocked an eyebrow at his weird statement.

“I do have a heart, you know.” he inspected the torso for a moment, probably wondering what made it so special. He clicked his fingers and the entire thing disintegrated the second his fingers had fully extended.

Okay, say what you want about his personality, but his power was nothing short of hot.

“Baby, please, don’t lie to me.”

This time you were sure you heard it, but before you could ask him what he meant Gojo was already speaking.

“As flattered as I am at the nickname, I’m not?” his voice went up at the end, he was just as confused as you. “What are you talking about?” your forehead crinkled with frustration.

It was hard to shake the feeling that something wasn’t right, that was too easy to be a special grade, and Gojo’s one sided conversation was throwing you through a loop.

“Baby, don’t lie to me”

This time you were both already facing at each other. You staring down at Gojo on the tracks and him gazing up at you on the platform - neither of your mouths moved.

“I just heard-” you stared cautiously, lowering your voice so only he could hear, “-your voice.” he finished your sentence for you and you both nodded in understanding. Now, this made more sense.

You stepped towards the edge of the platform and extended your hand out for him to grab, but as he reached up to take it you felt something slimy coil itself around your middle.

In the space of a few milliseconds your eyes widened, but before you could even gasp you were yanked backwards into the darkness.

He was too focused on you to realise what was happening before it happened - if his head had been more on the mission rather than you maybe he would’ve been able to warp fast enough. 

Instead he stood on the platform trying to sense which direction you’d gone, this curse was smart and was at least trying to mask it’s presence somehow. He was sure you’d be okay.

Cursed energy flowed around your hand as you punched the fleshy tendril that took hold of you, “Get off of me!” you shouted into the air. Every time you struck the curse and was able to get free another disfigured limb would take it’s place.

It’s lucky it took me by surprise.

As you became more and more frustrated, you felt your curse energy flowing faster. One of the fundamentals of Jujutsu was to maintain your cursed energy output regardless of your emotions to avoid burn out.

Something you’d been rather good at is expelling large quantities of cursed energy without the burn out - most sorcerers could never achieve that.

“I said, get the fuck off of me!” you bellowed, a wave of cursed energy exploded from you like a sonic boom, causing the curse to paint the walls a red-ish black.

Landing delicately on your feet, you groaned. Half from how disgusting that was, and the other half from the fact that the exploded pieces were merging back together again.

“You okay?” his voice made you jump, the sudden jolt of your body made you slip on guts and landed on your back with a thump. Damn his warping, he could at least give a warning. 

He peered over at your fallen form, somehow you’d managed to land with your head directly in front of his dress shoes. Great, now he literally is looking down on me.

“No, I’m not okay!” you huffed, normally you’d keep up the tough guy act until you were alone. But you must have been letting your emotions get to you.

Gojo knelt down and held his hand out to help you up into a sitting position and you graciously ignored it, instead pushing yourself off the floor to make a point.

You cupped your hand and watched your curse energy twirl around your fingers until it formed a sphere in your palm, “Are you hurt?” Gojo placed his hand on your shoulder to try and get you to look at him but you quickly shoved him off, too busy thinking of a revenge plan.

Also, you weren’t sure how you’d react to touching him. 

The things about your relationship with Satoru Gojo: you’d known him for 10 years, he’d been your biggest bully for 10 years and for the last 5 you’d been in love with him - like every other woman he came into contact with.

You absolutely did not want to become one of them. Discarded to the side lines when he was done.

So, you kept an arms distance from him, both physically and emotionally. At some point along the way you started this act of disliking him, and it was working but you weren’t sure what would happen if you felt his skin on yours without his infinity.

“Get behind me.” he commanded you in a lower voice, the curse had almost completely reformed itself, “No way.” you bit back, throwing your ball of energy at the curse.

It stuck to it’s sickly body for a moment, you glanced over your shoulder at the crease in Gojo’s blindfold. Ah right, he hasn’t seen this one yet.

“On second thought...” you corrected yourself, taking a step behind him just to let your ball of energy explode, sending chunks of guts hurling in the air.

This time you were safe and sound behind your meat shield. You watched the blood and guts slide off of his infinity, slightly disappointed that he didn’t get covered in it.

Gojo lifted his middle and index finger, letting a small purple ball form above the tips, and when it got to the size of a marble he threw it at what remained of the curse.

Granted, his explosion was bigger and louder than yours, but it seemed like the curse was finally dead. “Show off,” you snapped at him while rolling your eyes, “Yeah, but you love it, don’t you?” he turned his head to the side, smirking. “Yeah, I do.” you folded your arms.

Wait, that’s not what I wanted to say.

Your words seemed to take both you and Gojo by surprise. “Was that supposed to be an attempt at sarcasm?” he belittled you, striding over to the largest part of the curse’s limp body, “No.” you said before you could stop yourself.

What the Hell is happening? 

Say calm and he wont notice.

“A genuine compliment? From you? That means the world.” this time he was the sarcastic one, he kicked some of the guts with his shoe and let it tumble to the floor.

Not trusting your words, you stayed silent and watched him for a moment before turning on your heels and heading for the exit.

“Where are you going?” he called after you, “I’m leaving!” you shouted back, thank God you still had some control over your mouth. Your whole body, specifically your tongue was tingling and it scared the shit out of you.

Within a few seconds he was walking next to you, your hurried pace easy to match with his long legs, “Aw, bored of me already?”, he feigned sadness to irritate you.

“No.” you huffed through heavy breaths. Shut up, shut up, shut up. You couldn’t stop yourself from talking but you could at least try and limit it to one word answers.

“Hey!” he grabbed your arm with a tight grip, you tried to pull away but his grasp was firm, “Is everything okay? What’s wrong?” he fired two questions at you, “I don’t know,” you panted, “I don’t feel right.”.

For once in his life he seemed genuinely concerned but all you could think about was his hands on your upper arms. “Stop, talk to me.” he tried to calm you down.

You stayed silent, and your mouth let you.

“You said you don’t feel right? What’re you feeling?” his thumb started rubbing reassuring circles on your skin, “Warm and tingly.” you blurted out.

Okay, so it’s only when he asks me questions? 

He cocked his head to the side curiously and you hoped it was vague enough for him not to connect the dots. “Let go of me, asshole.” you growled at him, feeling more like yourself. 

Almost as quickly as your own attitude changed, so did his. “Okay, sure.” he shrugged and released you, “Anyway, there’s a cute little café about five minutes from here that I’d love to take you to.” he said casually as you started to walk towards the exit again.

You wanted to tell him to get lost, or to keep dreaming, but the tingling became more intense and your skin got even warmer so you stayed quiet in hopes that he’d get the message.

“So, what’s your ideal first date?” he asked like some cheesy dating show host. He had to know, or at least he was feeling more playful than usual because of your vulnerable state.

The tingling feeling travelled up your stomach and soon is was creeping up your throat, you couldn’t hold the feeling down anymore, it was like you were going to be sick.

“P-Probably, something quiet-” you clamped your hand down over your mouth and muffled the rest of your answer into your palm, the moment you stopped talking you were gasping for air. This was harder than any training you’d ever done.

“What is up with you?” he laughed through his words, you were already exhausted from the last bout of word-vomit so the next answer came prettily quickly, “I can’t stop myself from talking.” you whined with annoyance.

Then he went strangely silent, it made you nervous. The both of you hoisted yourself back up to the main platform so you were off the tracks, just a little while longer and you could go home and wait for whatever side affect this was to wear off.

When he started lowly chuckling to himself you felt your blood go cold, “What?!” you snapped at him, “You’re freaking me out.”, he continued his laugh until he stopped walking, making you halt your pace as well.

“I get it now,” he wiped under his blindfold as though he was wiping away a tear from laughing, “How the curse was made, hearing that repeated phrase-” he stopped talking to stand up straight again, “-You can’t lie.” he grinned devilishly.

You tried to stop your eyes from widening but you were sure he noticed, “I need to leave.”, “Do you?”, “No.” the exchanged happened so quickly that you got whiplash.

“So, why are you in such a hurry to get away from me?” his smug grin never left his face.

Just say, 'I want to go home’, that’s all you need to say.

“I’m scared I’ll say something I don’t want you to know.” every muscle in your body was tensed, if you could clench your jaw tight enough, maybe it wouldn’t come out. But it wasn’t working.

When you’d realised what you’d said, you turned on the spot and started sprinting towards the exit, you needed to get far far away from him until this was over.

Then you collided with something hard, that something being Gojo’s chest. That fucking warp!

“What don’t you want me to know?” he asked as he wrapped his arm around you, holding you in place, “How I feel about you.” You spoke through gritted teeth.

Please, please, please don’t ask!

The corners of his mouth curled up into a wicked smile as he looked down his nose at you, the grip on your waist getting ever so slightly tighter.

“Okay okay! I see that look,” you could almost see his eyes flicking between your left and right iris under his blindfold. “What look?!” you snapped back rather harshly.

He quietly laughed to himself, “The murderous look in your eye,” he paused for a second, “But you don’t want to kill me do you?” he tilted his head to the side slightly. 

Normally you’d spit something like ‘If I could, I would’ his way but the moment you opened your mouth to speak, “No, I don’t,” came out instead.

“Aw, how sweet!” he cooed sarcastically. You could tell he was enjoying every second of this. He let go of your wrist and latched onto your wrist instead, walking you towards the exit, “Let’s get you home and cleaned up,” he stated.

He lifted his head up as though he was expecting a reply from you, but when your body allowed you to stay silent he added a “Would you like that?”. 

Despite the furrow of your eyebrows you let out a meek “Yes.” which earned an even deeper smile from Gojo.

In his defence, he left you in silence for the whole journey back to your apartment; although you felt a significant shift in his energy once you stepped through your front door.

“You can go now,” you huffed, shuffling your shoes off and immediately making your way to the bathroom so you could wash the dried blood off your hands at least.

Gojo tutted as he followed you down the hallway. “That’s no way to treat a guest!” He watched you start to scrub your hands clean as he leaned his shoulder against the doorframe, “And besides-” he continued “-Someone should stay with you just in case the curses effects get worse.”

You harshly turned the faucet off and gave him your most lethal death glare, “Well, I want a shower so you need to leave,” you peeled your shirt off of you and dumped it straight into the bathroom bin - there was no saving it from that curses residue, it was ruined.

“Don’t let me stop you,” he inspected his nails casually as though it was no big deal to him, but he had a slight lint to his voice to suggest that he was challenging you.

In some ways, it wasn’t a big deal. He’d seen you in your underwear before, back when you were both students.

“Leave!” you stood firm as you started to shimmy out of your pants, “Do you actually want me to?”, “No.” Slipped through your lips before you could stop it.

If his ego was visible it would’ve filled the room three times over by the stupid look on his face.

You sighed a “Whatever,” and proceeded to take off your underwear and dispose of them the same way you did your other clothes.

It was easier to be fully naked in front of him when he had his blindfold on, you knew he could obviously still see but you could still hold the illusion that he wasn’t sharing at your body.

“Happy now?” you smiled sarcastically at him and proceeded to turn the shower on, “Very,” he nodded and observed you.

He stood quietly against the doorframe as you leaned into the shower and turned the water on, the sound of water hitting the tiles was a nice change to the ever-tightening silence.

“So,” he started up again - of course he wouldn’t be able to stay quiet for long - “If you don’t want me to leave...” he let his sentence hang in the air.

You knew how it was going to end so you stepped into the shower and prayed that the water running over your ears would be enough to drown out your guest. “Sorry, can’t hear you, the water’s loud!” you said with sarcasm.

For a few deafening moments, everything was still; save for the sound of the shower. You didn’t trust it. The only thing worse than Gojo talking was when he wasn’t, because it meant he was up to something.

You turned to pull back your shower curtain to see whether he’d left, when Gojo stepped into the shower with you.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he smiled, “How inconsiderate of me! Can you hear me better now?” he raised an eyebrow at you and you realised that he’d taken his blindfold off as well as the rest of his clothes.

“Yes!” you squeaked and turned your head to the side to avoid eye contact with it. He placed his palms against the same wall as the showerhead and leaned over you, blocking the water from running over you and instead cascading it down his own back.

You refused to move away, even in your vulnerable state, you were determined to keep your pride.

“So, as I was saying-“ his smirk crept up the corner of his mouth as you dared to meet his eye “- if you don’t want me to leave, what do you want me to do?”. 

The cocky expression that his face held made you want to scream, but you knew that wasn’t going to come out of your mouth. 

Instead of having your thoughts aired to him, you slapped your hand over your mouth as you did previously, and mumbled your confession into the palm of your hand.

Casually he gripped your wrist in one of his large hands and pulled it from your face, “The fact you’re doing that gives me all the answers I need,” he planted a gentle kiss onto your wrist just above where he was holding you.

You opened your mouth to tell him that he was wrong and to let go of you, but you realised that you could easily get out of his grasp if you wanted to.

The twinkle in his crystal blue eyes said that he realised that too.

He let go of your wrist and dragged the pads of his fingers down your side, outlining the silhouette of your body until he got to your hip - where he pressed his thumb into your flesh, making you jolt forwards.

He continued to trail his fingers along your skin as though he hadn’t done anything, his slender tips venturing lower and lower until they stopped on the inside of your thigh.

He leaned in so his lips were inches from your ear, “Do you want me to stop?” he whispered. He could’ve said anything, but he just had to ask you a question when he knew you couldn’t lie, “No.” you replied bluntly.

You swore at yourself under your breath. Of course you didn’t want him to stop, but you didn’t want to become just another number in his head. 

Somehow you’d managed to keep your name out of his ‘black book’ after years of pining for him - you didn’t want to give in and then be ignored by him for the rest of your life.

But you couldn’t deny the fact that you wanted him, badly.

As soon as you gave him the answer he was looking for, he slipped his hand lower and immediately pressed the pad of his middle finger against your clit.

You gasped at the shock it gave you, but you quickly regained your composure enough to shoot him a quick, “I’m genuinely surprised you can find it!”.

He laughed through his nose and stared at your shit eating expression; even after a mission, with a curse’s lingering effect on you, somehow you still managed to challenge him.

The expression on your face fell pretty quickly when he started to rub little circles against your sensitive nub, instead it contorted into a look of bliss.

Your knees buckled and you fell against him, unintentionally trapping his hand in between your bodies as he wrapped his other arm around your waist so he could hold you against him.

“I- I-” you kept trying to speak but the barrage on you meant that any attempts at speech were cut off by gentle whines. 

For some reason he showed you some mercy and slowed down enough for your brain to form a sentence, “Go on, what is it?” he encouraged you, water running down his face and dampening his white locks.

“I hate you,” you said shakily, and he stopped all his movements save for momentarily letting go of you so he could push his sopping hair out from his eyes.

He reached behind you and turned your shower off, the only sound bouncing off the tiles was your laboured breaths and stray water droplets hitting the floor.

“Do you mean that?” he searched your face for an answer before your voice would give it, “No, I don’t.”. This time you couldn’t tell if that was the curse or you speaking.

A wicked grin crossed his lips as he yanked the curtain back and stepped out of the shower, swiftly grabbing you and pressing your front against the cold surface of your counter top.

“That wasn’t very nice,” he tutted playfully as he kept you bent over with a single hand on your lower back, “You could’ve really hurt my feelings!” his voice was laced with sarcasm.

The palm of his other hand caressed your ass cheek before giving it a gentle slap. 

His hand disappeared for a moment and you were about to turn your head to see what he was up to when you felt something warm tapping against the cheek he’d just slapped.

The wet feeling of, what you presumed to be, is pre-cum spread across your skin, “Do you want me?” he asked in a voice that was almost a whisper. You bit down on your forearm so he wouldn’t hear your answer.

A loud tut came from him moments before you felt his fingers slide into your hair and yank your head backwards, “I want to hear your answer, I said do you want me?” his voice had an aura of annoyance to it.

Your mind didn’t have time to warn your mouth, “Yes, I want you!” you cried. 

At your admittance, he pushed himself inside you. The lack of preparation meant that he met a bit of resistance against your tight ring of muscle but once you felt him push past, he slid the rest of the way in with ease - the angle he was holding your head meant that your moan was able to glide up your throat freely. 

A quiet sigh of ‘Oh fuck’ came from behind you as Gojo started to softly rock his hips, squishing your body between his pelvis and the counter.

His pace started off slow and calculated, but as his groans and your whimpers grew louder his resolve seemingly slipped away from him - he untangled his fingers from your hair and decided to grip your hips instead.

His fingernails, while short, were digging into your flesh just enough that you were sure there would be little crescent moon shaped indents left in their wake.

As moan after moan left your lips, you started to lose sight of why you’d resisted his advances for so long. 

Every smack of his hips against your ass reminded you that he’d offered you exactly this at least once a week since you met and you’d responded with a scoff of disgust or just flat out ignoring him.

Every laboured breath fogging up the mirror prompted the memory of you throwing your drink at him when he tried to kiss you at his promotion party. 

The sour words ‘I can do better than you, Satoru,’ holding an ironic embrace around your thoughts as they were flooded with the sensation of his shaft rubbing against your insides.

When one of his hands left your hip to entwine his fingers with your own, and his lips landing feverish kisses on the back of your shoulder, your mission to protect your pride felt more like blind sighted stubbornness.

“I’ve wanted you for years,” he mumbled almost drunkenly against your skin. For once in your life, you sensed no sarcasm, cockiness or arrogance in his tone. “I th-thought, ah! I thought you r-really did hate me,” he struggled through his sentence.

His pace increased, as did your own sounds. You couldn’t help but mentally kick yourself for waiting so long to give in - you were sure you’d have buckled eventually, but feeling your orgasm tighten so quickly inside of you made you realise how much time you’d lost by digging your heels in the mud.

“You’re so much better than I imagined,” he spoke breathlessly. You unconsciously tightened around him, causing him to groan loudly against your skin, the fact that he’d seriously thought about fucking you heightening your senses.

He straightened his posture and used your hips to pull you back onto him and meet his thrusts until the new angle forced your orgasm out of you unexpectedly, washing away any last piece of stubbornness you had in you.

The mixture of your moans and the way your walls gripped him had Gojo finishing shortly after, he attempted a few more shallow bucks of his hip as though he was in denial of it being over, but he was spent.

He silently helped you clean up, turning the shower back on again and helping you into it like you’d gone back in time and he hadn’t just fucked you over your sink.

“Are you going to leave now?” you asked quietly, the sad realisation that now he’d had you he was probably going to throw you away like he did the many other girls before you.

His movements stilled for a second, “What?” he furrowed his eyebrows, looking genuinely hurt.

“Isn’t that what comes next? You got what you wanted and now you ignore me,” your cockiness from earlier had completely disappeared, “Is that what you think of me?” he asked.

You didn’t want to reply, but the feeling of your words being forced out of you returned - it wasn’t as strong as before so you were able to control how you told the truth. At least that meant the curse’s effects were wearing off.

“That’s what I’ve seen you do to others,” you shrugged sadly and reached for your shampoo bottle. 

He took it out of your hands and squeezed a bit of the gel onto his own hands and started to massage it into your hair for you.

“No to you, you’re special” was his brief reply as the gel turned into a light lather. You didn’t need to verbally say anything for him to understand that you didn’t believe him, it was in your eyes.

He leaned down and gently kissed you on the nose, a genuine soft smile spreading across his face, “For me, it’s always been you.”

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@mylife-demonstrates-murphys-law @hereticpriest @enagmaticether @anxiousgoddest @kodzu-ken @moonnei @diesinspanishbcimhispanic  @fvckmeupyoonz @homosexualjohnwayne @notplutos @moth-baybee @answer-the-sirens @ochakoakabane​

[koravelliumavast]

Kaladin aroace moments chronicalized by me, an ace

| TWOK | WOR | OB | ROW | KOWT |

TWOK ch 10: stories of surgeons

“Sani’s head rolled to the side, and she mumbled, drugged. She wore only a white cotton shift, her safehand exposed. Older boys in the town sniggered about the chances they’d had —or had claimed to have had— at seeing girls in their shifts, but Kal didn’t understand what the excitement was all about. He was worried about Sani, though. He always worried when someone was wounded.”

•••

TWOK ch 16: cocoons

“More and more, Kat found that he liked looking at Laral, Kat knew, logically what was happening to him. His father had explained the process of growing wich the precision of a surgeon. But there was so much feeling involved, emotions that his father's sterile descriptions hadn't explained. Some of those emotions were about Laral and the other girls of the town. Other emotions had to do with the strange blanket of melancholy that smothered him at times when he wasn't expecting.”

•••

“Kal found his eyes lingering on her again. That hair of hers was beautiful, with the two stark colors.” (Ok this reads as aesthetic attraction to me more than anything.)

•••

“Kal, if you go to war and find a Shardblade, then you’d be a lighteyes… I mean… Oh, this is useless.” She settled back, folding her arms even more tightly.

Kal scratched his head. She really was acting oddly. “I wouldn’t mind going to war, winning honor and all that. Mostly, I’d like to trace. See what other lands are like.”

•••

TWOK ch 17: A Bloody, Red Sunset

“Always keep a glowing sphere in your pocket,” Kaladin said. “It’s good luck.”

“You certain you don’t want a love potion?”

“If you get caught in the dark, you’ll have light,” Kaladin said tersely. “Besides, as you said, most people aren’t as trusting as you.”

•••

TWOK ch 25: The Butcher

Kal glanced up at the mansion again. “That’s why you encouraged me to play with Laral so much. You wanted to marry me off to her, didn’t you?”

“It was a possibility,” his mother said, returning to her work.

He honestly wasn’t certain how he felt about that

•••

How would he feel marrying someone like Laral? He’d never be her equal. Their children would have a chance of being lighteyed or darkeyed, so even his children might outrank him. He knew he’d feel terribly out of place. That was another aspect of becoming a surgeon. If he chose that path he would be choosing the life of his father. Choosing to set himself apart, to be isolated.

If he went to war, however, he would have a place. Maybe he could even do the nearly unthinkable, win a Shardblade and become a true lighteyes. Then he could marry Laral and not have to be her inferior. Was that why she’d always e chaired him to become a soldier? Had she been thinking about these kinds of things, even back then? Back then, these kinds of decisions—marriage, his future—had seemed impossibly far-off to Kal.

He felt so young. Did he really have to consider these questions?

•••

TWOK ch 37: Sides

Would he see Laral here? He was embarrassed by how infrequently he thought about her these days.

•••

So much had changed. It had been so long, and seeing her brought up old emotions. Shame, excitement. Did she know that his parents had been hoping to marry him to her? Merely seeing her again almost flustered him completely.

•••

TWOK ch 40: eyes of red and blue

Ok I don’t want to quote the whole thing because it’s like three pages. But the conversation between Kal and Sigzil at the end of the chapter where Sigzil says stuff about Kaladin being a leader and whatnot. Yeah.

•••

TWOK ch 44: the weeping

Some might find that dark hair sprinkled with foreigner blood to be unappealing for its indication of mixed blood, but to Kaladin it was alluring.

(Dictionary definition of Alluring: powerfully and mysteriously attractive or fascinating)

•••

TWOK ch 46: child of tanavast

“Your face has strong lines. Square and firm, with a proud chin. We would call it a leaders face among my people.” [Sigzil]

“I’m no lighteyes” Kaladin said, spitting to the side.

•••

TWOK ch 62: Three Glyphs

“I tried to rescue, Tarah…” He hadn’t thought of her in some time. His failure with her had been different from the others, but a failure it was nonetheless.

•••

I dont remember what chapter this is from but holy fuck that’s the gayest thing I’ve heard Moash say and Kaladin following it up with a cool thanks bro can you go help those two? KALADIN

[avantegarda]

mmmmaeglin headcanons...

my feelings around maegs are very complicated because on one hand, he had a pretty rough go of it in life. on the other hand, he caused the deaths of a lot of my faves. basically my opinion on him can be summed up as "dreadful boy whom I would like to hug."

anyway, headcanons:

he felt insecure around the other lords of gondolin because they'd all known each other so long and were all much older than him. to cope with this, he reminded himself that he outranked all of them.

basically, "coping through semi-feigned arrogance" is Maeglin's entire MO.

he's also... very sarcastic.

because of this, although he's very well-respected, he has a hard time forming close friendships.

there are a few exceptions to this: he gets along well with the other blacksmith/engineering/mining types who join the House of the Mole (including Enerdhil, who made the Elessar gemstone).

though he would probably deny this, he's also very close with good old Salgant, who aggressively tried to befriend him pretty much as soon as he arrived in town. the reasons for this include:

-both of them are considered very eccentric by everyone around them

-Salgant figured it would be useful to have a buddy in the royal family

-they both really, really like making fun of their coworkers.

as for the whole Idril thing...well, it's complicated.

he had a bit of a childish infatuation with her as soon as they met, because she was pretty and sophisticated and was kind to him.

because she was kind to him, in a big-sisterly way on her part, his feelings with her became a lot more intense pretty quickly. the fact that she knew about this, and started giving him more space because she was uncomfortable with the situation, made things...worse.

and i am definitely going to have to do a part 2 regarding his parents and turgon because wow I have a lot of thoughts

[360iris]

do you have any wips? sorry i’m just curious, i’m in love with your writing

Luv, Hold Me Down (Sirius Black x Reader, WIP)

Warning: Mature themes? I don’t know with this one.

Word count: 2,209

A/N: You’re gonna hate my ass because I have zero intention to finish the smut on this one shdhd. Maybe when I’m less busy I’ll come back and update it (although not atm). There are typos galore too so I’m sorry in advance!

—————————————-

The infamous Bubblegum Bomb Incident of 1972. Casualties: one.

During Year Two, Sirius had resolved to get revenge on Cissy’s insufferable boyfriend ever since he tripped him in the halls to get a laugh out of his Slytherin lackeys; and what better way to do that than ruining his precious platinum locks.

It was suppose to be a quick and untraceable procedure. He’d get to personally serve Lucius his own brand of justice and the job would be completed without having to suffer detention.

If only you hadn’t been rushing through the halls that day.

Lunch had just ended, and you were haphazardly ducking and dodging through the wave of students, on your way to visit Remus. He’d been sentenced to a strict, three day period of consistent bed-rest in the infirmary after a particularly bad transformation.

You’d just wanted to bring him a slice of his favorite Hogwarts style coconut cream pie, but one wrong turn and you were suddenly bombarded with three quick pelts of homemade exploding bubblegum bullets.

Sirius had designed them to be quick and lethal with their distribution of rubbery goo so that the target's hair was sure to be ruined.

The first shot sent the small plate in your hands completely airborne. The next two hit you square in the chest, knocking you fully onto your back.

The aftermath was so extreme that it took the combined effort of Professor McGonagall, Professor Flitwick, and eventually, the guiding hand of Madam Pomfrey to free you from the sticky sludge and off of the stone pavement.

By the time they’d got to the infirmary, your entire head of hair had been deemed unsalvageable by sweet Poppy, and the only thing she could figure to do was shave it clean off by hand.

You’d spent the next two days unexpectedly alongside a tired Remus, confined in the sick bay, crying your eyes out hysterically. You’d had no idea who had done this to you or why.

That was until the third day, when Poppy finally allowed visitors in, in hopes of lifting your spirits.

Your guests included:

An empathetic Lily and Mary, both girls bringing you and Remus an abundance of flowers from the greenhouses, with explicit approval from Professor Sprout; alongside the homework you’d missed and plenty of junk foods.

An overzealous Marlene who’d spent the entirety of the three days drafting up and collecting signatures for a petition to permanently ban disruptive joke shop type inventions.

And lastly, an uncharacteristically stonefaced James and solemn Sirius who both quietly observed the crucially placed scarf on your head meant to distract from your current state of baldness.

“Go on then. Tell her, man. It’s only proper.” James said abruptly with folded arms, for the first time ever foregoing his usual impeccable home-taught manners and any form of courteous greetings altogether.

You watched confused as Sirius stood some several feet away, staring directly down at his shoes. After another coarse verbal prod from James, he stepped forward, eyes wide and brows furrowed.

“I- You have to understand, I couldn’t have known, Y/N! It happened so suddenly and before I knew it, it was too late!” He pleaded desperately and you weren’t quite understanding what he meant.

“I don’t follow, Sirius. What are you on about?” You asked, watching as he began wringing his hands.

He looked over to James again, seemingly pleading for aid that wouldn’t come. James looked positively severe, intent on standing by his decision to have the boy do this by himself.

“I- I was the one who blew the gum bullets.” Sirius finally whispered, looking positively terrified of your reaction. “But I didn’t intend on hitting you, I promise! It was for that git Malfoy! Remember when he tripped me in front of all of those sixth years last month? I’d been working on a way to get him back ever since! You’ve got to believe me, Y/N!”

But you’d stopped listening after the initial reveal. Your blood ran cold and it was hard to focus on anything in particular before suddenly all of your senses came rushing back in, and you were furious.

And even though James and Remus had been gauging your response, neither could have been quick enough to match the speed at which you pulled off both of your slippers and hurled them at the older boy’s face.

Successfully managing to clock him so hard, he reflexively reached up to clutch his sore, but still intact nose.

After that day, you had deemed Sirius public enemy number one, he managed to outrank even the silver-spoon fed Slytherins and that antagonizing blight, Peeves.

While there were tonics for quickening hair growth, you cursed Sirius Orion Black, every time you had to awkwardly apply a plethora of random oils to your scalp and walk around campus bald for an entire semester.

When he looked your way, you glared back mercilessly. If he dared to even address you, your responses were far from being deemed PG-13.

He’d spent the first six months wearily but consistently trying to apologize, however the damage had already been done, and it’d destroyed any semblance of friendship he’d crafted with you beforehand.

So after a while, he gave up. If you were going to hate him regardless of his actions, he figured he might as well stand up for himself during the bickering matches that transpired whenever the two of you were less than six feet apart.

Over the years, you’d remained bestfriends with Remus and James, though they could never hang out with the both of you at the same time.

For example, if you were eating breakfast with the two boys in The Great Hall and Sirius arrived late after sleeping in, you’d promptly roll your eyes and slide away to talk with Lily.

——

“That most definitely is not healthy, James.” You grimaced, tilting your head back laughing. The book in your lap, long since abandoned from the moment your bestfriends entered the common room.

“Muggle five second rule, Y/N! You were the one who told me about it to begin with!” He grinned from his spot sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of you.

You couldn’t help bursting into a fit of giggles, desperately trying to respond. “Rem- Remus! Please! Inform him that it doesn't apply to dropping a sandwich down an entire flight of stairs!”

“Believe me I tried, but he seemed pretty determined to eat it, hair and all after catching up to it.” Remus replied softly, a fond smile playing on his lips as you began making gagging noises of disgust.

“No! James Fleamont Potter, tell me you didn’t actually eat hair!” You laughed, extending your socked foot to shove him.

“I will suffice by just saying that, there may or may not have been a stray hair or two on it when I picked it up- Oh! Sirius, how was detention?” James trailed off to greet a certain boy and your demeanor immediately soured.

Your textbook on alchemical runes suddenly seemed like the most interesting thing in the world.

“It was worth it. Mcgonagall must be getting tired of me because she had me choose a book and read for three hours. Don’t let me interrupt the fun though. Looks like you’ve finally coaxed the Ice Queen to defrost for a bit. Shame I wasn’t here to see it.” He remarks, and you didn’t need to be looking at him to know he was wearing that infuriating smirk.

“Don’t worry, Black. I’ll never be able to truly relax knowing you’re still out running amuck. Next time you get written up, I’ll be sure to beg Mcgonagall to keep you chained outside with the rest of the wild animals.” An acute look of disgust etches across your face as you close your book, promptly shoving it into your bag.

“If you’re so desperate to see me in a collar, the person you need to be begging is right in front of you, doll.”

You could not have rolled your eyes harder at his remark. In a huff, you tug the strap of your bag around your frame and stand indignantly.

“You’re actually right for once. James? Keep your mutt on a tighter leash, before I’m forced to be the one that puts him down.” You sneer, flipping your hair over one shoulder and striding up to the girls dormitory before he can get in another word.

Remus sighed, unhappily leaning back against the couch he was currently sprawled across. “You just can’t help yourself, can you?”

Sirius watched as your figure disappeared up the stairs before turning to the boy, a dumb smile playing on his lips.

“She doesn’t hate me nearly as much as she tries to make you believe.” Was all he offered giddily before skillfully changing the subject.

———

Much like the infamous playboy Sirius Black, you were known for how frequently you broke the hearts of anyone you hooked up with. They found that sex with you was a spiritual experience, but were usually crushed when you made it clear you weren’t interested in recurring partners.

When Gryffindor’s Quidditch team won a mid-season match against Ravenclaw, James was relentless in persuading you to come to the after party. And though you weren’t originally keen on the idea, you figured it’d be an ample opportunity to relieve some stress.

The night had gone well. You’d garnered a nice buzz from the punch James made in his dorm and had your eyes fixed on Theodore Nott who’d been snuck in by Marlene.

Sirius, who was working his way onto his third cup of punch, watched you make eyes with the Slytherin boy from across the room.

He sat silently seething as you adjusted in your spot on the couch, crossing your legs while holding that snake’s gaze. In the end, all it took was the simple curl of your index finger for Theodore to hand his drink to an unimpressed Marlene and approach you.

Sirius watched as the two of you exchanged a handful of words before you sultrily dragged the boy away by his collar.

It took a minute for him to register that the styrofoam cup in his grasp was crushed.

After grabbing a napkin, he irritatedly ran a hand through his hair and his breath was ragged.

Why did he care that you were probably seconds from fucking a random guy? He definitely wasn’t one to judge, he’d been with plenty of people over the years.

However, no matter how many times he rolled the idea around in his head, he was getting angrier by the minute.

Remus approached him to spark up a conversation, but he was already slipping past him, towards the direction he watched you disappear to earlier.

He found you in the hallway, lip-locked with Theodore who had a grip on one of your exposed thighs. Meanwhile your hands were tangled in his hair.

Sirius’ body switched into autopilot, moving at such a speed that his brain couldn’t even keep pace.

He had harshly pulled the boy off of you, slung you onto his shoulder and made his way to his dorm. Partygoers standing confused as you beat his back, yelling at him to let you go. Once he’s on the stairs away from prying eyes, he delivers a sharp slap to the exposed skin on your thigh.

“Stop screaming bloody murder, Y/L/N.” is all he says and you bite your lip at the sting.

By the time he locked his door and tossed you onto his bed you’re looking at him like he’s insane. Scurrying to get off the mattress but he quickly grabs you ankle, pulling you back to where he dropped you.

“What the fuck has gotten into you!?” You hiss, watching him run a hand through his locks.

“I’m tired of waiting for you to stop being a brat and realize you like me. Tired of watching you hop on random dicks that aren’t mine. You want to get laid tonight? Fine, fuck me then.” He growls and you’re instantly overwhelmed.

“Did a screw come loose in your head? I don’t know what the hell you’re on but I’m not fucking you all people!” You respond by grasping a pillow from his bed and chucking it at his head. He easily catches it with a roll of his eyes.

“I’ve loved you since our first year, Y/N. And I’ve observed you long enough to know if you genuinely hated me or not.” He confesses and you freeze. His eyes were crystal clear and you’re at a loss of words so he continues.

He gently grasps one of your hands, bringing it up over his heart. You can very faintly feel his heart racing and your brows furrow. He was actually being genuine.

“You want fuck me so bad you’ve officially gone stupid?” You ask but he sees the tiniest smirk on your lips. And for whatever reason, you actually let him move in to kiss you.

He jumps a bit when you bite his bottom lip and you giggle before he’s pressing you back onto the bed.

It’s a fight for dominance, neither of you wanting to be the one that relents.

[phoenixyfriend]

If you are doing them the soulmate fic starter 3 or 9 for rexwalker? I love all your star wars stuff so much

soulmate au prompts

3. the one where you and your soulmate have matching marks on your bodies. 9. the one where your soulmate’s last words to you are written on your body.

Featuring marginally-less-terrible Jango with more excuses than usual.

------

The Kaminoans hate soul marks.

Rex knows this from the day he knows to ask. The Nulls and Alphas don’t have any soul marks, just scars where there was once a promise. The eldest clones have records, at least, where the scientists had taken photos before beginning th surgeries, but the marks themselves are long gone.

Prime had found out about the removals and thrown a fit, raging so intensely that Nala Se had ended up intubated from the damage he’d dealt, and she hadn’t been the only one. Rex isn’t old enough to remember that, but Cody is, and he whispers the story in the dead of night more than once. Nobody likes Prime very much, except Boba, but that’s one of the few instances they can point to and say ‘he cares more than he likes to admit.’

It’s anathema on Mandalore, one brother claims, a light in his eyes that Rex hasn’t ever seen before. That’s what I heard him telling one of the aruetti trainers.

So is refusing your children so much as a name, another grouses, and the conversation dies an ugly little death. So is letting your children die just because you don’t think they’re good enough. So is turning your back from even letting them be part of your house, let alone part of your clan. Sounds like he cares more about our soul marks than he does for our lives.

Rex doesn’t know how to address that. He does get a personal visit from Prime, one day, gets asked to show his little marking to the man that is, in some ways, his father.

“Another one,” Jango Fett mutters to the trainer that came with him, the woman holding a datapad and ready to record whatever it is that they’re looking for. He passes a thumb over the marking, frowning. “A lightsaber, lit white, with pale blue halo, between a set of symbolic Jaig eyes. The eyes are dark blue, slightly desaturated. I think they’re meant to frame it like an exaggerated beskad crossguard.”

“Sir?” Rex asks.

“That makes six,” Jango says, still so quiet, and then shakes his head. “Thank you for showing me, 7567.”

“Rex,” he corrects, before he can second-guess himself. “I’m Rex.”

“Thank you, Rex.”

------

The rumors say that anyone with a lightsaber soul mark is going to have a jedi for a soulmate.

Rex isn’t sure how true that is, but he’s eager to find out.

Prime gets more erratic, more unpleasant at times and almost awkwardly nice at others. Rex meets the others who got Jedi soul marks. He’s the youngest, so far.

Jango tells them all to hide the markings, and to keep them secret. They’d already all known that much, that only batchmates should be told about soul marks. All the adults that should know already do, after all.

“Where’s your dad going?” Rex asks once, when Boba’s been handed over to Cody’s squad for looking after while Prime goes haring off on some trip that nobody gets to know about. Rex hangs out with Cody’s squad more than his own batch, it feels like, but that’s a whole thing that he’s not supposed to talk about since the late transfer to command track.

“Dunno,” Boba says, kicking his feet back and forth. “My soul mark came in. Something about it made him really angry, I think.”

Rex doesn’t ask to see it.

It’s not his place.

------

The Alpha batch is getting quieter, angrier, and end up in hushed conversations with Prime and some of the trainers so often that the rumors start up harder than before. Rex keeps his head down, because the Kaminoans get antsier when Jango does. Soul marks come up more often, and Rex gets called in to talk to the Alpha clones about his mark. He’s not supposed to, but Prime says it’s important, and Prime is in charge.

“Oh, is that all it took?” one of the Alphas sneers, and Prime shoots them a look that has Rex taking a few hasty steps back. The Alpha clone isn’t even fully grown yet, by natborn standards, but they don’t back down. “What, ready to stop being a dar’buir--”

“That’s enough,” Prime says, low and hard, and the Alpha clone rolls their eyes. “There’s a child here.”

“So now you care about that?”

Rex is escorted back to his rooms.

------

Decommissioning finally stops, for all that it requires Jango almost decapitating a Kaminoan, and someone Rex hopes he never sees again shows up.

(His memory is blurred. He’s sure the man was human, and tall. Elderly enough to have white hair, probably? A... there was fabric that swished when he turned, something dramatic, but...)

(He is not the only one that cannot remember.)

It takes years for anything else to come of it all... at least where the clones can see.

------

Rex is fully grown, as far as clones go. His aging is supposed to slow down to ‘natborn normal’ now, because he’s reached his full height and most of his brainpower, and he’s officially old enough to fight on the field if the war starts tomorrow.

It might.

“Hey, look up.”

Rex listens, and looks, and sees a natborn with Nala Se, pale skinned and with reddish hair, soaked to the bone. They wear robes, brown and heavy-looking. Even as he watches, another natborn jogs up from behind, also sodden and pale, but with darker hair that sticks up despite the water. A third joins them, a tad slower and more controlled; this one wears all white, and they--maybe she?-- are slight and small and poised in a way that Rex thinks might be how a natborn leader carries themselves, if they aren’t a soldier.

They pass on through the walkway, showing emotions that the Kaminoans can’t read and the clones absolutely can. None of it is... good.

“Shit,” someone mutters. “That was a Jedi.”

“Venn--”

“What if they don’t want us?”

------

Rex is called to Prime’s rooms.

He tries not to look at the wide eyes of the brothers he’s been gossiping with, just stands and pulls on his full kit. He hesitates at his bucket, but then pops it on and marches to what might be his doom. It’s probably not.

He hopes it’s not.

He knocks, and is let in by Boba, and sits down on the couch when Prime tells him to. He removes his helmet when asked. Boba hops up onto the couch between Rex and his father, and leans in against Rex’s side.

There’s a list on the table, one he recognizes, quickly writing out all the paired elements on the Jedi-Clone soul marks. Nobody who isn’t already involved in the project would know it. He spots the ‘yellow tickets’ that Bly got tattooed on his face recently, the ones he won’t claim are or aren’t related to his mark. He spots his own listing of Jaig eyes.

“Prime?”

His... progenitor, maybe, in this situation, looks at him, and holds up a hand. “You saw the list. You can guess why Rex is here.”

Oh. Prime’s using his name without prompting. That’s nice.

“I can’t read it,” the younger Jedi says, with something that might be a pout. Rex wants  to roll his eyes, but his helmet is on the table. People would see.

“It’s in Mando’a,” the elder tells him, voice low, and then glances between Rex and the younger Jedi. “Fett, how did you know which one to call? I can guess some things, but--”

“I have a good eye. The hilts are all different. Only one matches.”

“I see.”

Rex fidgets, and tries not to wonder at... at... oh. The younger Jedi’s lightsaber hilt does match Rex’s soul mark.

Boba notices when Rex starts picking at his glove, pressing a finger right to the mark on his wrist, and frowns up at him. He grabs Rex’s hand to still it, and tries to ask a question with his eyebrows. He is mostly unsuccessful.

“Anakin,” the elder Jedi says. Rex still doesn’t know his name. “Your hand, please?”

“Why?”

“...you’ll understand in a minute,” the Jedi says, long-suffering in the way of the trainers who dealt with the youngest cadets. “Your hand. No, the other one.”

“Why do you need my hand?”

“Reasons, Anakin. You there, ah... Rex, was it?”

“Yessir.”

The Jedi flinches. “Right. I suppose I’ll have to get used to that... right, Rex, can you come here? I imagine you know what it is that I’m looking to compare.”

Rex has been taught to listen to Jedi, but he has no idea who he’s supposed to listen to here. The older Jedi is probably in charge, but Rex hasn’t been assigned to anyone yet, so isn’t Prime still technically the closest thing he has to a CO?

He glances at Prime, who just gestures for Rex to go ahead with it.

Rex pulls off a glove, pulls back his sleeve, and bares the symbol on his wrist for inspection.

The younger Jedi’s face morphs from confused irritation to surprise, and then... something Rex doesn’t want to analyze too closely. He’s not sure if it’s wonder or horror. He wasn’t aware the expressions could look so similar.

The Jedi--Anakin--pulls back his own sleeve, moves his wrist to Rex’s and watches as the marks glow faintly from the proximity.

“Looks like Fett was right,” the elder Jedi mutters. He doesn’t sound happy. He looks at the other natborn, the one Rex is pretty sure is a woman, and raises an eyebrow.

She shakes her head, eyes closed.

“You said there were others?” the elder Jedi prompts, and Prime nods. “We are no more open about our marks than most, but I can spot one, maybe two, that I can guess at. I’d need to see the actual markings to confirm, of course, and I imagine that wouldn’t be something anyone would be happy with.”

“The rest can happen naturally,” Prime dismisses. “This was just proof.”

“Not just proof, I hope,” the Jedi mutters. “I’m.. I have to call the Council.”

Rex sees the panic in Anakin’s face, and is seized by the urge to do something, anything, to fix it.

“Obi-Wan, you can’t let them--”

“Nobody’s going to separate you,” the elder Jedi says. Obi-Wan, apparently. “And there’s no ‘let,’ Anakin, they outrank me. Significantly. Right now, I’m concerned about the implications of this war, of multiple of these cloned soldiers that have been indoctrinated to fight for and serve the Jedi having soulmates among us, especially given that I have no idea how recently our wartime protocols on such things were updated. There is an entire army that is supposedly in our name, ordered by a man ten years dead.”

“Count Dooku is involved,” Prime says, dark and satisfied and petty. “Calling himself Darth Tyrannus. The Kaminoans mostly believe he is an isolated and reclusive Jedi Master that serves as their contact when Sifo-Dyas is unavailable.”

The Jedi named Obi-Wan closes his eyes and breathes deeply, and then stands. “Right. That’s... well, alright, I absolutely have to call the Council now.”

Prime smiles, pulling Boba into his side. Rex finds himself tugged down to sit where Obi-Wan had been a few moments earlier.

“Why are you telling us all this?” the natborn woman says. “This Count sounds like he hired you, did he not?”

“The project predated his involvement, but yes, he’s my supervisor, so to speak.” Prime smiles that same dark smile, runs a hand over Boba’s head and pointedly doesn’t look at Obi-Wan. That smile is... unpleasant. Rex doesn’t want to look at it, and so he looks down to the faint glow at his wrist instead. “Did you know, they told me the clones would be sub-sentient and halfway to droids? Not really people? That my DNA was for the bodies, but the minds would be little more than lines of code? Do you know how much they hated that I saw the evidence of their lies written into my children’s skin?”

Rex jolts, head whipping about and hand pulling away from his soulmate, staring at Prime, his mouth agape in a way a soldier’s shouldn’t but--but he’s--

Rex has never, ever heard the Prime refer to any of them except Boba as his child. His copies, his echoes, his clones, but not his children.

A hand curls into his, and he looks down to find Anakin’s lacing their fingers together. He looks up into a hopeful, unsure smile.

Anakin tilts his head and leans in, lips to Rex’s ear, and says, “When I told Obi-Wan he was like a father to me, he didn’t even know how to respond. Just made a bad joke about it and then pretended it didn’t happen. Is this the same?”

“...close enough,” Rex breathes out, because now isn’t the time to explain just how different a clone’s existence is from what they’ve seen in the holos meant to prepare them for interacting with civilians. That ‘family’ here has always been brothers, your squad and any brother that chooses to take you on, or a brother you choose to nurture, that the Alphas raise them more than Prime or the trainers do, that the older squads are who they turn to because the adults won’t help, that they don’t have parents, and they are discouraged from thinking of children in their futures.

(Protecting intellectual property, one of the scientists had mused. They’d made it very, very difficult for any of the clones to impregnate a partner. Not impossible, because to make it impossible was itself impossible, but... nearly so.)

“There’s millions of us,” Rex says instead. “He doesn’t... he doesn’t usually acknowledge most of us as his.”

Anakin’s face twists, already angry, and the glare he aims at Prime is ghastly. Rex might already be a little in love, just for that. The way Anakin’s fingers squeeze around his is nice, too.

Prime does not notice.

“Can I see the contract you say you signed?” the natborn woman says, and Prime eyes her. He nods, at length, weighing her worth and finding she measures up to whatever it is that he’s decided is necessary.

“Boba, go pack like we’re going on a hunt,” Prime says, pulling out a personal datapad and only dropping his gaze to find the right file. “We’ll probably be leaving tonight.”

“Okay, buir,” Boba says, sliding off the couch. “Am I telling the Alphas the thing you said?”

“No, I’ll handle that myself. You just pack.” He stands, nods to the natborn woman, and moves around the table. “Senator, I’ll sit with you, if you don’t mind. I imagine you and Knight Kenobi are the best suited to get this problem fixed.”

“And me?” Anakin demands.

“You,” Prime says, with a just a hint of condescending drawl. “have just met your soulmate. I assumed you’d want some privacy to get to know each other.”

Anakin flushes, a little angry and a lot embarrassed. It’s frighteningly cute. “I--I mean--I don’t--”

“The clones are mentally the ages they look, but do remember they’ve had practically no time to gain any sort of experience,” Prime says, already ignoring them in favor of pointing something out on the datapad to the senator. “Take advantage of any of my kids, and I’ll be the one hunting you down. I’m told I’m rather good at it.”

Anakin’s face does some acrobatics. Rex would pay more attention, but he can feel himself turning just as red.

“Rex, you know where the private meeting room is,” Prime says, and waves a hand in the direction of the tiny, tiny office that’s by the door. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

“Be nice,” the Senator hisses, smacking Prime’s arm.

“He’s ten.”

“...still.”

Rex just stands and pulls Anakin away to the little room before things can get worse.

They’re delayed when Obi-Wan asks what they’re doing from the kitchen he’s been using to get a spot of privacy, but then Anakin says “we’re just going to talk, Master,” and they get an aggrieved sigh and a response of “the clothes stay on, padawan, and you’ll need to finish up whatever conversation you have soon, there’s work to do and being a padawan only excuses you from so much.”

Rex backs into the meeting room, yanks Anakin in, and then decides to throw caution to the wind and just press their lips together.

Oh.

Okay.

He’s kissing back.

Lack of caution: good.

The mark at his wrist thrums, warm and comfortable, and Rex pulls away. He stifles the noise he wants to make, and when Anakin whines, small and soft but clearly disappointed, Rex offers him a small grin he knows would get him called ‘shy’ by his asshole older brothers.

“We probably should actually get to know each other,” Rex says. “I don’t even know your last name.”

“I... yeah, I don’t know yours either, unless it’s Fett.”

“It’s not. I don’t have one.”

Anakin’s face does another one of those ‘I’m angry for you’ twists that Rex is quickly coming to recognize, and then he sighs and falls into one of the chairs. “Okay. So. I don’t know much about the soldier life. Tell me about it.”

And he does.

[perpetual-bad-guy-shipper]

Hey so, is Lilith still in the Emperor’s Coven in this au, and if so, what was her reaction to Belos arts-and-crafting a boy? Also, what the limit on how many asks I can send u, cause I have a ton of questions

eyyy feel free to send over any questions you have i'll try to answer as fast as i can :)

so on the subject of Lilith, she is still in the Emperor's Coven in the same position she is as canon and she's still holding out the hope that belos can cure Eda. as far as hunter goes, she's kind of in the same boat as Kikimora. in that she is aware that Belos undertook some strange, time-consuming magic experiments for a long stretch of time only to vanish into his laboratories for months until suddenly he was...just back. and he brought someone with him????

and while no one's sure what belos did or why, it is pretty difficult to keep a whole ass baby boy a complete secret. so the rumour is that he tried to make some kind of super solider witch and based on all the 'special treatment' hunter gets after he gets older, apparently this solider's got some edge on everyone in the coven. so he's a threat, but also he's this snide, mouthy teenager who somehow has the ear of the Emperor more than any other witch alive and you bet that's gonna rankle her.

as far as missions and rank go, Lilith technically outranks hunter (if for no other reason than hunter's rank didn't even exist before he was born) but you can imagine that being one upped by another seemingly prodigious teenager is going to eat at her...

(i have to say, i know deep down in my soul that Belos kept his nephew's origins as secret as possible buuuuut the image of him bursting out of his lab all dirty and sleep deprived, hair a bigger mess than usual with a tiny sleeping baby in his arms to the aghast faces of kiki and Lilith lives in my head rent free)

[ssahotchhner]

hunter, hunted

i should not be so excited about this but i just discovered that when you copy and paste text into a new post tumblr FINALLY allows italics and bolded fonts to be transferred over so I don't have to remember to go through it and do it myself again i could literally CRY rn. ANYWAY I thought it would be fun to write a oneshot like the Profiler, Profiled where Morgan is accused of murder. i created an oc for this one and I hope you love April I've spent a lot of time with her the last couple of weeks (:

words: 13.4k

pairing: hotch x oc

warnings: detailed descriptions of murder and torture and sexual assault

questions comments concerns

“Where’s the weapon, April?”

It was almost laughable. A federal agent handcuffed in an interrogation room being questioned for murder in her small town while visiting a childhood friend. She shakes her head at the detective, laughing. “I carry a gun on me at all times because, as I said, I’m a federal agent. You have it in your possession already. If you want to test it to see if I’ve fired it recently, be my guest. You won’t find anything.”

“You’re right, we won’t find anything because Brandon Perry died from blunt force trauma to the head. So I’ll ask you again, where is the weapon?”

This time, April does laugh. Of course he wasn’t shot. That would be too easy. “You know what, Detective Barnes, if you hadn’t kicked my hotel door down in the middle of the night, handcuffed me and dragged me in here, I may have cooperated with the investigation, but here we are. So I’ll tell you again: my Unit Chief is SSA Aaron Hotchner. I won’t be answering any more questions until I can speak with him.”

The middle aged man glares at her until finally getting up and leaving her alone in the interrogation room. She rested her head on the table and hoped that maybe that stupid motherfucker would listen to her this time.

***

“Hunter has been detained in Bar Harbor, Maine.” Hotch tells the team in the conference room.

JJ frowns, “Isn’t that her hometown? Why has she been arrested?”

“For murder.” Hotch says. Before the team can react, he pulls up a picture of Brandon Perry’s body, “Brandon Perry was found yesterday by a fisherman just off the docks a week after he was released from prison on parole. He had been bludgeoned to death with some sort of blunt object, the M.E. suggests a baseball bat.”

“And why do they think April did this?” Spencer asks.

Hotch clicks a button and a picture of a couple brutally murdered in their bed, a little boy who’s throat had been slashed, and a little girl with brown hair and bright green eyes, alive and well filled the screen, “Because he was serving time for the murders of Addison, Jacob, and Timothy Hunter. April’s family.”

Everyone stares at the monitor in shock, “Her whole family was murdered when she was a kid… and she never mentioned it to us?” Penelope asks, her lower lip trembling.

“April was left relatively unharmed, but she had been sexually assaulted by the assailant. She said he was tall, but he had on a ski mask so she was never able to give solid identification.” Hotch finishes.

“So how’d they connect these murders to Brandon Perry?” Rossi asks.

“He was connected to a couple other home invasions and assaults nearby so he entered a plea deal. The local police were under a lot of pressure to close the case.”

“Breaking into homes to murdering almost an entire family is a big escalation.” Morgan says.

Hotch nods, “I thought so too.”

“April was just a kid,” Prentiss says, “And to go through a trauma like that, I’m sure she believed whatever the police fed her. And to see him be released from prison like that… I hate to say it, but it could have been the trigger.”

Penelope’s shaking her head, “No, no, you guys don’t really think April did this, do you?”

Everyone’s silent for a moment and then Morgan speaks, “Baby girl, if she’s innocent, we’ll prove it. But we can’t rule out the possibility that she did this just yet.”

“I know April hasn’t been here that long,” Garcia says, “But she is still a part of this family. You can all treat her like an unsub, but I won’t.” She finishes and marches out of the conference room.

Aaron sighs, “Wheels up in thirty.” He says resolutely before leaving the room.

***

Hotch walked into the police station, the team at his back and was greeted by a man about April’s age who introduced himself as Detective Fielder. “Detective, I’d like to speak to my agent.” Hotch demanded after shaking the man’s hand.

The man shrugged, “Sorry, sir. My partner’s in there with her. She’s stubborn as hell. I went to school with her, you know it’s a shame the way her family died but… must’ve knocked a screw loose or somethin’. She ain’t ever been the same.”

Aaron thought it over, killers had made their way into the bureau before. Not like this, though. Not under the nose of his whole team. April kept to herself, but she had joined this team less than a year ago, it would be overwhelming for anyone. “You misunderstand, detective. It wasn’t a request. Bring me to my agent.”

Reluctantly, the younger detective brought Hotch to the back of the station where he could already hear another man, older by the sounds of it, screaming at April.

She was staring back at him, her posture relaxed, looking more annoyed than anything. Hotch walked in and she relaxed further, only then letting on that she had been putting on a show of being unbothered for the detective, “Thank God.” April sighs, “I thought maybe they didn’t call you.”

“Are you alright?” He asks her first, unable to explain why hearing another man scream at you had made his blood boil.

“I’m fine,” She says and directs her attention back to the older detective, “Detective Barnes won’t even get me a water, though.”

“Detective Fielder, get April some water.” Hotch demands. He can feel the two men exchange a look behind him before the younger detective leaves the room. “Detective Barnes, uncuff my agent.”

“You can’t let her go, you don’t have jurisdiction here.” He growls.

“I’m not suggesting you let her go, but even if you’re right she committed a one off crime of revenge. She’s not a threat to anyone here. Uncuff her.” The detective glared at April who only smirked at him. “Now, detective.” Aaron said, firmer this time.

With a look of disgust on his face, the detective uncuffed a smiling April as detective Fielder came back in the room with a cup of water. “Thank you, Billy.” April said as the detective placed the cup in front of her. He ignored her completely.

“I’d like to speak to her alone.”

“Like Hell.” Detective Barnes spat.

“With all due respect, detective, it doesn’t appear that you’ve gotten much out of her. You’re welcome to watch through the window, but I will be questioning her. Clear the room.” They stared at each other for another few moments before the detectives both left the room. Hotch turned back to April whose entire demeanor changed. She sighed, relaxing her shoulders and slouching over the table as she rubbed at her wrists where the cuffs had been. The antagonizing behavior Hotch had just witnessed her exhibit completely vanished.

“You don’t help when you antagonize them like that.” Hotch says.

She shrugs, “The men in this town don’t like a woman who thinks she’s his equal. They never liked my attitude. They like it even less now that I outrank them. Either I act like the superior I am, even in cuffs, or they force me into submission.”

He sits down at the table across from her, “Why didn’t you tell me about your family? It wasn’t in your file.”

“Strauss knew.” April says, immediately defensive. She hadn’t lied, the bureau knew.

“But you didn’t want me or the team knowing, why?” She doesn’t answer him, just stares at her hands. “April, I can’t help you if I don’t know.” He says gently.

Finally she looks up and sighs, “When I was twelve my entire family was brutalized and murdered in front of me, but not before the unsub raped me in front of my parents. And I didn’t react the way the people of this town wanted me to. I was twelve and I was covered in semen when he left. So I showered before calling 911. I didn’t cry even once in front of anyone and I never spoke about what happened to anyone, not even the police. Only enough to tell them that I had no idea what he looked like, but I thought he was white.” Her eyes water just slightly and she doesn’t meet his eyes, “For the six years after the murders that I stayed in this town, I know a lot of people thought I did it. That I was some kind of psychopath. So no, I didn’t want it in my file.”

“You thought maybe we’d arrive at the same decision the town did.” Hotch opens the case file, “But you were never tried or even considered a real suspect. There was no physical evidence.”

She smiles sadly, “No physical evidence means nothing to a small town who’s rarely ever seen a scandal, and certainly nothing like this.”

He stares at her for a moment, “And so when Brandon Perry was released from jail, you thought he hadn’t suffered nearly enough so you came back up here and killed him.” April laughs and Hotch can see he’s made her feel antagonistic again, “This isn’t funny, April, you’re a suspect in a homicide.”

“No, Hotch, you don’t understand. It’s funny because I don’t even believe Brandon Perry killed my family and I haven’t believed that for a long long time. Which is why it would make no goddamn sense for me to kill him.”

“That’s bullshit!” The door bursts open and detective Barnes walks in.

“Detective--” Hotch stands as if to shield her and April nearly frowns at how protective he seems to be of her right now. She had seen him this way around the rest of the team, but never her.

“You told Detective Fielder when you were fifteen that you would kill that son of bitch yourself if he ever got out of jail.”

Hotch looks at April with a bit of annoyance, he hated when others had more information than him and from the second he walked in here she kept hiding things from him, not telling him the whole truth.

She lazily rolls her eyes and stares at Billy, “I was fifteen. I was angry. He cooperated with the police so he had the opportunity to get parole after fifteen years? Get his life back after I thought he had ruined mine? Yeah, I said some stupid shit, I think any kid would have.”

“When did you start to doubt that Brandon Perry had killed your family?” Hotch asks, but she’s still shooting daggers at the other detectives, “Agent, eyes here.” He says roughly, growing impatient with her.

Her eyes snap to his, “I used to lurk on support pages for people whose loved ones had been murdered and I remember seeing that this girl described… Almost exactly what had happened to my family, but she said it happened while Brandon was on trial here. She lived a couple towns over.”

“So what did you do?”

She shrugs, “Nothing, I was seventeen, I didn’t have any resources there was nothing I could do.”

Hotch sits down across from her again, leaning over the table so he’s closer to her, “You really expect me to believe, with the conviction you just said Brandon is innocent, that you didn’t look into this further?” She stays quiet and won’t meet his eyes, “I can have Garcia search your desk and computer if you’d rather do this that way.”

She leans back in her chair, rolling her eyes, “Jesus fucking Christ, I’m not a fucking criminal.”

“Then tell me what you know.” Hotch says, voice raised.

“Fine! I started volunteering at the police station so I could get access to files. I was good with the digital databases, but no one else was so they basically gave me free reign. I was able to find three similar cases, all within a couple years of each other but in different cities. One of them, he crossed into New Hampshire. All of the local police departments either arrested someone like Brandon or dismissed it as a one off crime and let it go cold. The files are in my desk drawer at the BAU.”

“You carried them with you all this time?”

She picks at the cuticles around her thumb, something Hotch noticed weeks ago she does when she’s nervous. “I thought… I thought about asking you guys to just look at the case a million times. See if you saw what I saw. And if you didn’t then maybe I could finally move on.”

“So why didn’t you ask?”

Her eyes dart around the room, to the detectives, the one way window, and then back to Hotch, “You guys, the team, you all have… This unbreakable bond and I… I barely just got here and I thought if I’d asked…” She sighs and runs her hands through her hair, “I just… I didn’t think you’d care.”

“The whole team flew out here at the drop of hat for you and you think we wouldn’t care?”

She frowns, “The whole team is here?”

“Yes.”

April sits back in her chair, looking dazed.

“Detectives, you’ll be releasing Agent Hunter from your custody now and since we have reason to believe there’s a serial killer loose and across state lines, we’ll be staying on the case.”

“You don’t really believe anything she’s saying, do you? She’s a psychopath!” Detective Barnes fumed.

Hotch stands and steps to the detective who immediately takes a step back after noticing Hotch’s menacing stance, “She is a federal agent and is no longer a suspect, you have no physical evidence and you just lost motive. You will speak to her with respect and if you don’t think you can handle that I’ll contact your superintendent and have you removed from the case. Is that clear?”

The detective stood back and out of their way, April looking at the ground so Hotch wouldn’t have to yell at her for antagonizing them again.

“What’s the history with you and Billy?” Hotch asks as they walk out of the room.

April rolls her eyes, “He was my high school boyfriend.”

“Oh,” Hotch muses, “You can do better.”

Before she can figure out if he was joking or not, the team realizes she’s walking of her own free will and they seem to all release the tension in their bodies. JJ walks to April first, pulling her into a hug before she can react.

April slowly raises her arms to hug JJ back, “I wish you had told us sooner.” Is all she says.

“I’m sorry you guys came all the way out here.” April addresses the team when JJ moves away from her.

“That’s okay, Hunter, we’re just glad to see you aren’t a murderer.” Morgan teases.

“We might actually be staying here for a while after all.” Hotch says.

Prentiss frowns, “Is there a case here?”

April opens and closes her mouth, “I-- Maybe.”

“Why don’t you call Garcia, ask her to get those files to everyone.” Hotch says to her quietly.

April nods and walks off.

“What’s going on, Hotch?” Rossi asks.

Hotch pushes his hands in his pockets, “The reason we were able to clear Hunter is because she has no motive. She doesn’t believe Brandon Perry killed her family and she hasn’t since she was a teenager.” He pauses, “She thinks the murders may be the work of a serial killer. She found three additional cases nearby, one crosses over to New Hampshire, that she believes are the work of the same unsub.”

Prentiss slowly nods, “And you want us to see if that’s true or not.”

Hotch nods, “I’m sure April would really appreciate our support.”

Everyone on the team is already nodding when April comes back, “So, as Penelope might say… Avengers assemble?” She asks hopefully.

Thankfully, they all laugh and nod, even Hotch cracks a smile, “Great.” April sighs in relief, “Let’s go to the conference room.”

With Garcia on a laptop screen, April tells them everything she knows, which admittedly, isn’t much. However, there are overwhelming similarities between the cases.

“Every family he chose was wife, husband, two kids. The eldest was the daughter all between the ages of 11-13 and in each case the daughter was raped and kept alive.” April was speaking as if she wasn’t speaking about herself and Hotch would be lying if he said it didn’t concern him. “In each case the parents were brutally tortured with a knife, forced to watch the rape and then killed with a fatal gunshot to the head. The boy was always killed first and it was always quick.”

“A mercy kill?” Reid muses.

April sighs, “I’ve never been able to figure that part out. It’s obvious he gets off on the rape and torture of the parents and daughter, but why not leave the boy alive the way he always leaves the daughter if it’s out of mercy?”

“It could be he thinks he’s sparing the boy the pain and trauma of having to go through the after effects of watching his parents and sister tortured.” Prentiss says.

“When all is said and done the daughter suffers the most psychologically.” Hotch says, “She could be the real target, maybe a surrogate for someone he knew.”

At this point, Hotch notices the way April is staring at the table, eyes unfocused, “Hunter,” Her eyes shoot up, “You must be exhausted, let me drive you back to the hotel so you can get some rest.”

“Hotch, I’m fine, I want to help.”

“No,” He says and she frowns, “If the daughter is the true target we’re going to have to dive deeper into victimology. Why he chose you. You don’t want to be here for that.”

Everyone’s quiet and deliberately looks away from April. She sighs, “Fine, but I’m coming back first thing in the morning.” She stands and walks out of the conference room without waiting for Hotch.

“Garcia, see what you can find about April’s childhood as well as the other victims and let us know if there’s any similarities.” Hotch says.

“It feels icky, but I’ll do it.” Garcia responds.

“I’ll be back.” Hotch addresses the rest of the team before heading after April.

They ride in silence for a few minutes, Hotch glancing over to the passenger seat every few seconds. “Whatever you want to say just say it.” April says, growing tired of the constant glances.

“You don’t have to keep working on this case like it’s any other case--”

“It’s not just any other case.”

“I know,” He says gently, “I’m worried about you. I know you bottle things up, showing emotion to other people makes you feel vulnerable, which in turn makes you feel weak. And I worry that the way you’re bottling up your rage is going to lead to you taking it out on--”

“I didn’t kill Brandon.” She says.

“I know you didn’t. But if we do find the real killer, I can’t let you come with us into the field until he’s been taken into custody.”

“Hotch--”

“It’s not up for discussion. I’m sorry.”

She sat back in the seat and crossed her arms over her chest and they continue on in silence for a while longer. “Do you think our unsub is also responsible for Brandon’s death?” Hotch felt guilty about upsetting her and thought maybe getting her brain back into work mode would stop her from giving him the silent treatment.

For a few moments he thinks she might continue to ignore him, but finally, she sighs, “It’s possible. If we think he gets off on the suffering of the daughters, he might be upset that I thought he had been caught. That I felt safe knowing he was behind bars. Killing Brandon after he was released could have been a message to me that he’s still out there and obviously following me.”

“You don’t feel safe anymore.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“It was implied.” Hotch pauses, “I can stay at the hotel with you, work with the team remotely from the room next to yours.”

He expects her to refuse, but instead she agrees. “Okay.” She says quietly. This only worries him more as she is typically unlikely to accept help unless he insists upon it.

They walk up to the hotel room in silence and Hotch stands behind her as she unlocks her door, “Hey,” He says softly and she turns, “Anything you need, anything at all, I’ll be right there.” He nods his head to the door next to them.

“Thank you.” She says, giving him a small smile before pushing the hotel door open and then quickly closing it behind her.

He stands there for a moment, staring at the space she was just standing in before sighing and going to his own room.

“How is she doing?” Rossi asks when he calls the team from his room to let them know he’ll be staying there.

“She won’t admit it, but she’s scared. She thinks he might be following her and that Brandon Perry was a message to her that he’s still out there.”

“That would make sense if we think the girls are the real targets.” Prentiss chimes in.

Hotch stays on the phone with them a little while longer before they all decide to head back to the hotel. He stares at the wall that separates him from April and tries to get his mind to quiet enough to rest. He’s right here. Nothing will hurt her if he’s right here. He thought about how just last week Rossi had teased him for catching him staring at April. He had nearly convinced Aaron to ask her out. But she was so distant and hard to read and he didn’t want to chance rejection. Eventually, he closes his eyes and drifts off, an image of you smiling at him on the backs of his eyelids.

***

April was exhausted, but she stared at the ceiling for what felt like hours. Small noises that she never thought twice about now startled her. Hotch is next door. She reminded herself. She thought about the comment he made about Billy: You could do better. Had he been… Flirting? Aaron Hotchner… Flirting? It felt absurd. Shaking the thought out of her head, she got up and poured herself some water from the Brita in the mini fridge. Finally, after drinking the water, she’s able to fall asleep.

The breeze against her face wakes her. Slowly blinking her eyes into consciousness, she notices the balcony doors are open. Those were closed when I fell asleep, She thinks to herself and shoots up in bed, scrambling for her gun as her heart races. April considers yelling to Hotch, but if he’s still here she doesn’t want to scare him off.

On the wall at the foot of her bed reads “Welcome Home” in what looks like blood. Under it sits her favorite childhood teddy bear, head ripped clean off. She tightens her grip on the gun in order to stop the shaking and then glances around the room, but there’s nothing. Then she slowly opens the bathroom door. Pointing her gun at the shower, the curtain moves. She doesn’t hesitate she fires off four rounds, breathing hard. She doesn’t hear a body fall. Reaching out she pushes the curtain, but no one’s there.

Seconds later, Hotch is calling her name, but he doesn’t wait for a response before kicking down the door. “Hunter?” He calls again and she thinks she might hear fear in his voice. Fear for her?

“I’m in the bathroom. You can put down your gun, it’s clear.” He appears behind her a moment later, still staring at the shower, “I thought he was still in here.”

She walks around him and back out to where he left the message, “He came in through the balcony, I— I thought I locked it…” She trails off, looking at the glass of water on the table and realizing she can’t remember when she fell asleep.

“What is it?” Hotch asks.

“He was in here before. I think he drugged my water.”

He narrows his eyes at her, “We should go to the hospital then, I’ll have the team come here and treat this as a crime scene.”

“I don’t need to go to the hospital, I’m fine—“

“We don’t know what he gave you or how much, besides, having you tested will tell us what he used faster than sending a sample of the water to Quantico.”

“Fine.” She agrees begrudgingly, he was right. She walks over to her bag of clothes and it’s only at this moment that she realizes she had worn only an oversized t-shirt to bed and Hotch was making a valiant effort not to stare at her legs.

“I’ll, um, I have to get dressed as well.” He says hurriedly, gesturing to the pajama pants he’s wearing. He leaves before she can say anything else. Under normal circumstances, April’s sure this would have made her laugh, but that teddy bear seems to be staring her down. She gets dressed and leaves the room without another glance.

***

April stares out the window of the SUV in silence while Hotch calls Rossi to fill him in on what happened so the rest of the team can start assessing her hotel room. When he hangs up, she feels his eyes darting between her and the road again.

“Do you want to talk about it?” He asks quietly.

She’s quiet for a moment and then she takes a shaky breath, “That teddy bear went missing from my room a couple weeks before the murders. It was my favorite.” She swipes impatiently at the tears that start falling, “I blamed Timmy for it, we fought about it for hours. He felt so bad that I was mad at him he used his birthday money to buy me another one. I really thought he took it.” She tilts her head back in the headrest, trying desperately to stop the impending sobs.

Hotch doesn’t say anything, but he reaches across the car to hold her hand. To her own surprise, she lets him, the calluses on his thumb rubbing reassuring circles on the back of her hand.

***

“What do you have, Garcia?” Hotch steps out of your examination room for a moment to accept the call.

“How is she?” Penelope asks first.

“She’s… shaken up. But, like everyone else on this team does an excellent job of seeming unaffected.”

She sighs, “My poor wonder woman. Anyway, I think I found the connection between all the daughters.”

“What is it?”

“Well, it turns out that our April was a very talented child. Her parents took her to talent shows regularly, she was voted ‘Most Likely To Make It To Hollywood’ in her middle school yearbook.”

Hotch frowns and looks back at April, “We’re talking about the same federal agent, right?”

“I know, sir, not much surprises me anymore, but this did. There’s videos of her singing all over the internet, she was on the local news, quite the young star.”

“And the other victims?”

“All singers, sir. Every last one.”

“Thanks, Garcia.”

He walks back into April’s room, “You used to be a singer.” He says.

She rolls her eyes, “So?”

“So all the other daughters were singers too.” She sets her jaw and won’t meet his eyes. She’s not surprised by this information. “Why didn’t you mention it?”

“I didn’t think it was relevant.”

“You didn’t think it was relevant that there was a connection between all of the victims?”

She sighs and she feels shame at his obvious disappointment, “I’m sorry. I’ve worked really hard to block it out, sometimes I honestly forget.”

“What else aren’t you telling me?”

She bites her lip and looks down at her hands, picking at the cuticles around her thumb again, “He made me sing while… While he raped me.”

“Is there anything else?”

“No. I swear.”

He stares at her for moment and she knows he’s trying to see if she’s lying. It makes her angry at him, but also at herself. Maybe Hotch had never been as fond of her as the others, but he had never distrusted her. Just another thing the unsub had taken from her. “What song did he make you sing?”

The question is so painful to think about that she visibly flinches, “Do you really need to know that?”

“You know I do.” He says softly.

She looks away from him again, back to the cuticle on her thumb that she’s made bleed, “Like A Virgin by Madonna.”

He places his hand over hers again and she finds it almost alarming the way his touch seems to immediately calm her. “April, we won’t stop until we find him. I promise.”

She gives him a teary smile, “Will you stay with me?”

He smiles back at her, giving her a hand a slight squeeze and his smile takes her breath away, “I’ll be glued to your side until this case is over.”

***

A couple hours later they had found out that there was a classic date rape drug in April’s system: Gamma-hydroxybutyric acid, or GHB. The drug is usually prescribed for narcolepsy, but it was most often obtained illegally from Mexican pharmacies which they assumed was how the unsub got it.

“I’m bringing you back to the police station so you can stay with me and the team like I promised, but you don’t have to keep working the case.” Hotch says as he drives.

“Funny that you think you can stop me from working the case.”

He smirks a bit and brings his attention back to the road.

“What do you guys have for a profile so far?” He looks over at her, frowning. “What? I know you guys have been working while I’ve been reliving my trauma so what’ve you got?”

“White male, when he murdered your family he was probably in his twenties so now we’re guessing mid thirties to early forties. The torture is consistent with a sadist. Killing an entire family is an incredibly high risk crime which suggests he’s a narcissist, but also very organized. He’s able to control four people at once without much difficulty and he’s never left a shred of physical evidence behind except on the daughters. This means he’s arrogant and--” Hotch cuts himself off.

“What?”

“You said you showered before calling 911. Why?”

“I… I told you he left… He left his semen all over me, I was just a kid, I wanted a shower--”

“No.”

“Excuse me?”

“No, that doesn’t make any sense. Yes, you were traumatized, but every kid has it hardwired in their brain that as soon as something bad happens the first thing they do is call 911.”

“Okay, well I didn’t.”

He presses some buttons on the console of the car and then Garcia’s voice is coming through the speaker, “At your service, sir.”

“Garcia, in any of the family murders, was there a rape kit done on any of the daughters?”

“Well, surely there must have been-- Oh. No, no rape kits, not on any of them.”

“Does a police report tell you why?”

“I’m checking… and…” There’s a sigh from Penelope.

“What is it, Garcia?”

“All of them showered before calling 911.”

April is already shaking her head, “No, no that can’t be right.”

“Did any of them report why they showered before calling for help?”

“Most of them, like April, just reported that they felt icky and needed to shower, but the first one, the very first victim Katie Yates, she reported that the unsub made her shower. Like, held her at gunpoint, marched her to the bathroom, and watched. Once he was satisfied with how clean she was, he left while she was still in the shower.”

“That’s not what happened,” April says quietly, her eyes closed.

“Thank you, Garcia.” Hotch says and hangs up the phone before she can respond, “April--”

“No.” She says fiercely, “I’m telling you that’s not what happened.”

“Every other aspect of the crime is controlled and calculated, he wouldn’t make the mistake of leaving DNA all over his victims--”

“I would remember that if he did--”

“No,” Hotch says gently. He had pulled into the police station now, putting the car in park, “No, because you didn’t want to remember. Just that one memory, that one you wanted so badly to believe was your own. That he wasn’t there for the shower. But he was, wasn’t he?”

“Please stop.” She said breathlessly.

“I’m sorry.” He sounds sincere and he puts his hand over hers, “Look at me.” She doesn’t obey immediately so he reaches up to grip her chin and gently turn her face to his. Her eyes are shining and her breathing is uneven, but his eyes are soft and she has the absurd urge to rest her forehead against his. “He can’t hurt you anymore. You’re safe.”

She nods and swallows. “I need you to walk me through exactly what happened after the rape.” He continues. Her lip trembles, but she nods again. “Okay, close your eyes.”

“Hotch--” She whimpers.

“I’m right here. I’ll be here the whole time. You know how this goes. Close your eyes.” She takes a shaky breath and closes her eyes. “Good. He’s on top of you still. He’s just finished. Tell me what you feel, what you hear.”

“Um. I’m crying. I can hear my parents crying. His weight on me is making it hard to breathe.” She starts panicking, her breathing quickens.

“April, focus. He’s not here. You’re safe. What about your hands, what are you touching?”

“The carpet. I’m on the floor in the basement.”

“Can you see your parents?”

“Yes,” She gulps, “But I’m trying not to look at them. It’s humiliating.”

“Okay. Now what is he doing?”

“He… He kisses my neck and whispers in my ear ‘Thank you for the show’ and then he stands up.” Her breathing quickens, “He’s walking to my parents, I don’t want to watch, he’s going to kill them, Hotch--!”

“Okay, okay, come back. Open your eyes. I’m here.” His hands come up to cradle her face. She should be startled by her boss touching her like this, but she’s oddly comforted.

Her breathing finally slows, “I’m tired.” She says softly.

“I know. We’re almost done. Close your eyes again, you can do this.” His hands stay on her face as she closes her eyes again, “Okay. Your parents are dead. What does he do now?”

“Uh, I’m screaming. He’s looking at me and laughing and then he grabs my arm and pulls me up from the floor. I struggle and he puts the gun to my head and says if I don’t calm down he’ll blow out my brains like he did my parents. And then… He walks me up the stairs to the bathroom…” Her breathing becomes rapid again, “I don’t know if I can do this.”

“Yes you can.” Hotch’s voice is low and soothing. He believes in you, she thinks to herself, if he thinks you can do this, you can.

“He turns on the shower. I’m already naked and once I’m in the shower he starts undressing.” Silent tears stream down her cheeks and she’s distantly aware of Hotch gently wiping them away with the pads of his thumbs. “He comes in the shower. He’s touching me. I’m begging him to stop. Oh, God.”

“April, stay there. He’s undressed, he’s taken the mask off, do you recognize him?”

She’s shaking her head, “I can’t… I can’t look.”

“The water’s hitting your skin, his hands are on you--”

“Stop.”

“Look up, April.”

Despite herself, she listens. She’s in that shower, significantly smaller than she is now, and she looks up to see blue eyes looking down at her. Shaggy brown hair nearly covers them, especially now that it’s wet. He has a smirk on his face and crooked front teeth. There’s a tattoo on his right arm of a cross.

“Okay, okay that’s enough, you did it.” Hotch’s voice pulls her back out and she becomes aware of the car that’s still around them and the fact that she’s sobbing. “You’re okay. You’re safe. You did so good.” She falls forward in his arms and after a moment of hesitation he wraps his arms around her, holding her until her breathing settles. It takes him a moment to realize that anyone could look in the SUV and find him in a seemingly compromising position with his subordinate and he pulls away. To his shock, she seems to look disappointed. “You ready to go inside?”

“Yeah.” She says and without another word, she gets out of the car. Hotch can’t deny that he feels like he’s done something wrong as he watches April walk into the station.

When April walks in the station, her whole team cranes their heads to watch her, but she heads straight for the coffee without looking at anyone. Hotch files in soon after.

“Is she okay?” Reid asks, the rest of the team waits for his answer.

“I just gave her a cognitive interview, I’m sure she’s upset.”

“Did you learn anything?” JJ asks.

“Yeah,” Hotch nods, “She remembers what he looks like and she identified a tattoo on his right arm.”

“We should have Garcia run that, see if we can get an ID.” Morgan says.

“Call a sketch artist as well.” Hotch looks up at where April was standing just a few moments ago to see her gone, “Excuse me.”

***

April’s hands shake so hard as she tries to pour the coffee she ends up putting it down in frustration. “Need some help?” She turns to see Billy, standing there smirking at her.

Sighing, she stands back and gestures for him to go ahead. He steps in to pour the coffee, “Pretty elaborate ruse you got going on, staging a break in at your hotel room with that teddy bear.”

She stares at him in disbelief, “You still think I did this?”

“I think,” He says, handing her a cup of coffee, “That you’re impulsive and you went to confront Brandon and you didn’t mean to kill him, but you did and now this is all to cover everything up.”

“Oh,” She scoffs and starts walking away from him, “You are delusional and a dick.”

He follows April into another room and closes the door behind them, “Open the door.” She says when she realizes she’s shut in.

“You and your stupid FBI team are making this whole police force look bad, you need to drop the investigation.”

“The cases cross state lines, we have jurisdiction.”

“Yeah, you would have jurisdiction if there was a real case, but there isn’t. You’re a pathological liar and you can’t even see it. Brandon Perry murdered your family and raped you and just can’t let it go.”

“You’re a sick son of a bitch,” She walks around him to the door, but he turns quickly and places his palm against the door, slamming it shut again. “Let me out.” She says slowly.

“I’ll let you out when you promise me that you’re going to march out there and tell them that you’ve been lying this whole time and then march your pretty ass back to D.C.”

“Or what?”

“Or I’ll arrest you for the murder of Brandon Perry.”

“You have no evidence.”

“Oh, April, April, April. I know you know what a coerced confession is here. And I also know that you know a jury of your peers here in Maine would send you to prison for less.”

There’s a sharp knock on the door and Billy finally steps away. When she opens it, Hotch is on the other side, “Everything okay in here?”

“Just fine, Agent Hotchner. Isn’t that right April?” Billy says and grabs a strand of her hair, twirling it around his finger and tugging, exactly like he used to when he sat behind her in middle school.

April slaps her hand on his wrist and twists his arm around until he yells. “You lay a hand on me or threaten me again, I will make sure you don’t have a career here anymore. Understood?”

“You can’t--” He starts, but she twists his arm further.

“Am I clear?” She says again.

“Alright, fine!”

She shoves him away and he stumbles, nearly falling to the floor as April storms out, Hotch still standing in the doorway, watching Billy.

“I told you,” Billy says, pushing himself to standing, “She’s a crazy bitch.”

“Detective, let me make myself very clear. If you continue to harass my agent or impede on this investigation in any way, not only will I make sure you never have a career in law enforcement again, I will arrest you for obstructing a federal investigation.”

Billy shakes his head, “She’s got you all wrapped around her finger.”

“And I think your boss has you wrapped around his finger. He’s the one who arrested Brandon Perry. Seems like he would have a lot more to lose if he was wrong than you would.”

“He wasn’t wrong.”

“Then let us conduct the investigation. If it leads back to Brandon Perry, then so be it.”

“You really think she’d accept that?”

“If the evidence led us there, she would. Now stay out of our investigation if you value your job.” Hotch leaves without giving him time to respond and then tries to find April.

“Are you alright?” He asks when he finds her. She’s sitting alone at a conference table.

“I’m fine, Billy’s just an asshole.”

“There’s more to your relationship than you told me to begin with.”

She frowns, “What are you talking about?”

“You said you came up here to visit a friend. Who were you visiting?”

“I’m tired of being interrogated--”

“The reason Billy is so sure you killed Brandon Perry is because you were with him that night and then you left suddenly, isn’t it?”

April sighs and looks down at the table, “Hotch, I appreciate everything you’re doing to help, but who I was with and what I was doing that night doesn’t change the fact that I didn’t kill Brandon so please just drop it.”

He shakes his head and he looks almost frustrated with April, but that doesn’t make any sense. Why would he care so much about her relationship with Billy? “I don’t understand why you would waste your time on a cop like that, look at what a mess it put you in.”

She frowns, “With all due respect, sir, it’s really not your business who I’m sleeping with.”

“Why did you leave that night if you didn’t kill Brandon?”

She scoffs, “I can’t believe this.”

“Answer the question.”

She was angry with him. Practically bursting at the seams with rage. Just like every other man, thinking he’s entitled to everything about her. They all disappointed her in the end. “Billy and I had a fight and I wanted to be alone.”

“What was the fight about?”

“He wanted to be an official couple again. I didn’t.”

“Why not?”

She tilts her head to the side, “Just because I’m a good fuck doesn’t mean he gets to claim me. Like you said, he’s just a stupid cop and I could do better. Now will you leave me alone?”

April recognized that look in his eyes: He was jealous. Aaron Hotchner was jealous that she had a sexual relationship with another man. And suddenly her anger evaporated and was replaced by desire. She supposed she did always have a thing for older men which she was sure a profiler would say had to do with her dead dad. Either way, she sent a smoldering glare his way until he left her alone.

When he left, she rested her head on the table in exhaustion and didn’t notice Emily had approached until she heard the seat in front of her being pulled out. She raises her head and manages a smile, “Hi.”

“How are you doing?” She asks.

“Better now that you’re here, I’m tired of all the men around here.”

She laughs, “Good. Well, the sketch artist is here and I’m sad to report that he is a man.” April groans. “But, I will stay with you if you want and then I think we’re all going to work through the night, but Hotch was talking about bringing you back to the hotel to get some rest. It sounds like you had a rough day.”

“Yeah,” She sighs, “Cognitive interviews are the worst.”

As promised, Emily sits with her while she talks to the sketch artist and Hotch walks over not long after. When it’s finished, Emily gives your hand a squeeze and leaves with the sketch to pin to the evidence board.

“You should get some rest, I’ll take you back to the hotel now.” Hotch says, hands in his pockets. It was intriguing to her that he could act like he didn’t just ask about her sex life only an hour ago.

“I can’t sleep in that room again.”

“You can sleep in mine. I’ll sleep on the floor,” He adds quickly upon seeing the look on her face.

She sighs, “You don’t have to sleep on the floor, just don’t touch me.”

“Won’t be a problem.” And with the indifference in his tone, she thought maybe she had actually imagined everything earlier.

“Great.” She murmurs and gets up to walk out first.

Hotch stays behind for a moment, pinching the bridge of his nose and Rossi comes up behind him, “You picked a terrible time to start giving her hints about the way you feel, Aaron.”

“We’re trying to solve a case about her family’s murder and all I can think about is how pissed off it makes me to know that she’s been sleeping with someone else.”

“You’re human.”

Hotch just shakes his head and walks away.

***

“Daddy driving you home?”

The voice behind April makes her jump, her hand flying automatically to her gun.

“Woah, it’s just me April.” Billy laughs, leaning up against the station building, “You really are on edge, lately, huh? A sign of guilt or genuine fear?”

She could strangle him right here, she thinks. But instead, she reigns in her temper and leans against the wall next to him, “What about your daddy, huh? Haven’t seen him here all day. Is he too busy making wrongful arrests?”

Billy scoffs, “Yeah, and how’s your stupid little profile going? Did you find the real killer yet?”

She sighs, “You cops are all the same, think your old fashioned police work is better than profiling.”

Billy looks like he’s about to respond, but Hotch walks through the door just then, “There’s daddy, you better hurry up and get in the car like a good girl.”

Hotch barely registers what Billy’s said before April launches herself at him, fists flying. He immediately reacts, grabbing her arms, “Hunter, hey, hey! That’s enough! Get in the car.” He says sternly.

She shakes him off, but walks to the car all the same.

“Fucking bitch.” Billy mutters, drawing Hotch’s attention back to him.

“Detective, I thought I made myself clear that you were to stay away from my agent and out of my case.”

Billy steps up, eye to eye with Hotch, “This is my station, agent. Back off.”

Hotch stares him down for a few more moments, “The superintendent will be hearing from me tomorrow, at the very least you’ll be getting suspended. Maybe now’s a good time for you to clean out your desk.” And then he turns and walks back to the SUV, ignoring Billy’s curses behind him.

Once Hotch is in the SUV and starts driving away, he starts talking to April, “When you’re out in the field you represent me, you represent the team, and the whole bureau. You can’t just--”

“I don’t need a lecture right now.”

He’s surprised to hear tears in her voice and it softens him immediately, “April, I’m sorry I’ve been so hard on you today.”

“You’ve only done what you need to do to solve the case, you shouldn’t apologize.”

“No, no, I… I shouldn’t have questioned you about Billy earlier. You were right, it’s none of my business.”

“It’s fine.” She says. First indifference, now an apology. Maybe she really had imagined everything. “I just want to sleep.”

***

Hotch works for a while by the light of the lamp when you get into bed, poring over the case files again and again, trying to figure out if they had missed anything. He’s pretty sure April is actually sleeping and once he’s sure he can’t get any more work done, he turns off the lamp and gets ready for bed.

He slips in the bed as quietly as possible, hoping not to wake her, but there’s the smallest moan that escapes her lips when the mattress shifts. A moment later, she turns over, still in sleep and slings her arm over his chest, sighing contentedly as she rests her head on his chest. Hotch freezes, unsure of how to react before slowly wrapping his arms around her in return. Her shampoo smells like peaches and vanilla and he breathes it in deeply knowing in the morning she’ll pretend this never happened.

***

When April wakes up and finds herself in Hotch’s arms, legs tangled under the sheets, she does her best not to panic. With the way they were positioned, it was clear she had initiated this which was all the more embarrassing. Lucky for her though, she doesn’t have to figure out her next move because his phone rings. She pretends to be asleep as he slowly comes to wakefulness and reaches for his phone.

“Hotchner.” His voice is husky from sleep and it sends a thrill through her and she imagines for a moment what it would be like if Aaron Hotchner was hers. Then she hears Billy’s voice in her head calling him her daddy and the moment sours.

“Okay.” He says after a few moments, “We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

He ends the call and sets the phone back on the nightstand, but to her surprise, he doesn’t immediately wake her. “Are you awake?” He whispers after a few moments and she tries not to balk.

“Mmm.” Is all she manages and she keeps her eyes closed, not sure she can meet his eyes like this.

“They’ve, um… Another family was killed last night.” He tries to say it as gently as possible, but she shoots up in bed anyway, “The daughter was killed as well this time.”

She’s shaking her head, “No… No, that can’t be. She has to… She can’t be dead.”

“It’s probably a message to you.” Hotch says calmly.

She scoffs, “That’s great. A whole family’s dead because of me.”

“This isn’t your fault.”

“Oh, like hell it isn’t.” She says, climbing out of bed and pulling on her jeans. She doesn’t fully realize who she’s getting dressed in front of until Hotch tries to subtly avert his eyes. “I should’ve solved this case years ago. I’ve known it was serial for a while. I could have saved them.”

“You know as well as I do that thinking like that isn’t helpful for anyone.” He says, following her lead and getting dressed in front of her. The fact that they’re both acting like nothing out of the ordinary has taken place between them makes everything somehow even more intimate.

She sighs, “Let’s just get over there.” And she walks into the bathroom to brush her teeth.

***

April can feel the bile rising in her throat as her team mills around the crime scene. She’s crouched next to the girl, Layla, whose throat had been slit. She had also been stabbed too many times to be counted by the naked eye. Her eyes stared blankly ahead, but April could see the fear there. He had left her here, in front of her parents’ bodies, naked. “He went through the entire ritual, even the shower, then brought her back down here and killed her.”

“He’s always been very controlled and organized, but this last kill is full of rage.” Prentiss notices.

April frowns as she looks at Layla’s throat and notices that it almost seems to be bulging, “I think there’s something in her throat.” She pulls on her latex gloves while everyone crowds around her and then gently prys the girl’s jaw open. Reaching in, her fingers brush what feels like crumpled paper at the back of her throat and April pulls it out. Heart racing, she smooths it open.

Welcome home, April. I’d like to see the woman I’ve created. Arrive alone at the place where we first met, 20:00.

Everyone was silent as April read the note over and over after reading it aloud the first time. The word “alone” had been underlined several times. There was no threat attached to it, but April knew it was one all the same.

“We’ll have to call SWAT and let them know, we’ll also have to prepare the local police--”

“No.” April cut off Hotch, “You can’t be serious, he said to come alone.”

“April, his end game is clearly to kill you, if you go there by yourself you won’t come back out. And I already told you you’re not allowed to handle the arrest.”

“This is our one shot to get him,” Her eyes water, “This family died because of me--”

“Hunter--”

“Stop.” The tears fall down her cheeks and he wants to brush them away like he had the day before. “I won’t let this happen again, I’m going to see him by myself.”

“At least go in with a wire, we’ll stay a safe distance away.” Morgan bargained.

She shifts her attention to Morgan, to her team who are all looking at her sadly. Concern dripping heavy from their limbs. “No SWAT.” She insists, “Just this team.”

Hotch sighs and rubs a hand over his face, “You’re sure you can handle this?”

She wasn’t, but she nods anyway.

“Fine.” Is all he says before walking away.

***

Aaron is conscious of her eyes on him as he helps her put the wire on, “You steer the conversation away from yourself when you’re in there. Don’t let your guard down for a second. He’s going to try to get in your head, blame you for what he’s done. Don’t let him, just feed his ego and then call us when you’ve got him. Okay?”

“Yeah.” She says quietly.

He finishes putting the wire on and leans away from her in the surveillance van, “I can go in with you.” He says, giving it one last shot.

“No.”

He nods resolutely, “Promise me you’ll walk out of there alive.” She avoids meeting his eyes, “April.”

Finally she locks her eyes to his, “I’m scared.” She says, and her voice shakes.

It’s the first time he’s heard her admit it. He’d known she felt it, but she’d never admitted it. “Listen to me.” He says firmly, “You are not the twelve year old girl he knew. You’re stronger than him. You can do this.”

She takes a deep breath and nods, moving around him to exit the van.

“Be careful.” He says one last time and he thinks maybe she’s aware of just how worried he is about her, his eyes full of concern.

She gives him a small smile before turning away and walking down the street, rounding the last block to her childhood home, the house she hadn’t entered again since the murders. The town was small and since everyone knew what had happened there, it had never been sold.

April stands just outside the house for a minute, hand hovering just above her gun, trying to get both hands to stop shaking. Hotch believes in you. She reminds herself, recalling his words in the van. She can do this.

She’d been avoiding thinking about all his touches in the last few days. The way his rough, callused fingers felt so gentle on her face when she cried. The way he’d wrapped his arms around her in sleep, almost protectively. The way when he woke to answer his phone this morning he had absently stroked her shoulder. Did they mean anything to him or was he just an overworked, touch starved man, desperate for any sort of attention, even from her.

Shaking the thoughts from her head, she headed for the door, raising her gun as she approached. The door was already slightly ajar and she pushed it lightly with the pads of her fingers. Carefully, she cleared each room, heart ricocheting against her rib cage, though she already knew where he’d be waiting for her.

After they had found the last family, Garcia had been able to ID the killer based on the sketch and the tattoo as Allen Grey. He had the usual tough past, abusive father and mother, grew up in poverty. His parents died when he was still young and his older sister was left to take care of him, and she then continued the cycle of abuse, escalating to sexual assault. It explained the mercy for the young boys and torture of the eldest daughters, but April couldn’t bring herself to feel sympathy for him.

She stood at the top of the basement stairs, could already see the lights on down there and could hear Madonna’s Like a Virgin playing on vinyl. April hated the way her body reacted, the way everything in her was telling her to run. She was a federal agent for Christ’s sake, she took down killers like this one all the time. He was no different, she tried to assure herself, he was just like the rest. And then she steeled herself, brought her gun back up in front of her at eye level, and began descending the stairs.

“There you are! Welcome home, April!” Allen says cheerfully as you point the gun at him, “Now, now, come on, I don’t have a weapon,” He raises his hands, “Why don’t you holster that gun, Agent Hunter.” He had an arrogant smirk on his face.

Tears stung the corners of her eyes and her finger flexed on and off the trigger, wanting so bad to just pull it and be done with it. But she knew her team was listening and this was exactly why Hotch hadn’t wanted her in the field for this. She lowered her weapon and put it back in her holster.

“That’s better. Why don’t you have a seat?” He gestured to the worn out table and chairs, “Let’s have a drink. Talk.”

She swallowed thickly, “No thank you.” She managed.

“No, come on now, April. We have to catch up!”

“Why did you bring me here?”

He smiles at her again and comes closer to her. Slowly, he pulls a knife out of his pocket and brings it up for her to see. She balks, but he quickly grabs her from the back of her neck to keep her steady and runs the knife gently over her face. “You were always so clever, April.” She keeps eye contact with him, doing her best not to show any fear. “So pretty and smart. I only followed you, after, you know? You were… number two, I believe. I chased the high I got with you with everyone after, but none of them were the same.”

“Is that why you stopped for a while after the fourth family?”

He nods, “Like I said, you were always so smart. And then I saw how you became obsessed with people like me, went to college to study criminal justice, always thinking about me. Joined the FBI because you were so obsessed with me, weren’t you, little April?”

She wanted to spit in his face, but she remembered what Hotch said about feeding into his ego, “They say you never forget your first.” She says cooly, almost seductively.

It works, an arrogant smile twists its way up his face and he pockets the knife. “All I ever wanted was to find you,” She says, slipping into character, “See those blue eyes again. I dream about them every night.” None of these statements are lies, but the tone she takes when delivering them, the sweetness she adds to it, the act she puts on makes bile rise in her own throat.

“I knew it.” He says, looking at her with newfound desire, “We’re soulmates, you know?” His words are gentle, but he grips her by the hair again and pulls, exposing her neck. “Let’s run away together, baby.”

“Okay.” She says softly, “I’m ready.”

Hotch is already ordering the team to go in, jumping out of the back of the van with Morgan. Through his earpiece, he listens closely to you. He can hear your fear in the way you’re breathing, but he’s not sure Allen is picking it up from you.

When she agrees to go with him, he spins her and shoves her against a wall, her head painfully bouncing off the cement. He laughs as she winces and then leans in to kiss her throat, “Are you going to tell your team to leave us alone?” He reaches under her shirt where the wire is and yanks it off her. “April, April, April. My clever, clever girl. You had to know I would have expected you not to come by yourself.”

He pushes himself off her and walks to the table, reaching under it and pulling out a gun that he had taped there earlier.

April’s jaw tenses as he raises the gun to point it at her head, “You won’t kill me.” She says smoothly, though she’s not sure she believes it herself.

“No,” He cocks the gun and turns slightly to aim towards the doorway, “But if Aaron Hotchner walks through that doorway I’ll kill him.”

She does her best to betray nothing, but a muscle in her jaw jumps involuntarily and he narrows his eyes at her, “Yeah, I thought you liked him.”

“I care about everyone on my team.” She says stiffly.

He shakes his head, “No. Don’t forget April, I’ve been watching you. I know your weaknesses as I’m sure you know mine and the past few days here I’ve noticed the way you look at Agent Hotchner when you think he’s not looking. But he always notices because he’s always aware of you, even when he tries his hardest not to be. So, April, I’ll give you one chance,” He hands the wire back over to her, “Tell Aaron to back off.”

Reluctantly, she takes the wire from him. “Hotch,” She breathes, “Stand down.”

Hotch holds a hand up to the team on the outside, signaling them to stand down, though he can barely hear past the roaring in his ears.

“There,” Her voice comes in his earpiece again, “Are you happy now?”

“I’ll be happy when he hears me kill you and knows there’s nothing he can do to stop it.”

“I thought we were running away together.”

“You think I can’t tell when you’re playing me?”

“No, I know you can’t tell when I’m playing you.” Something in April had unlocked when Allen threatened Hotch. Threatened her team. And she knew Hotch could hear them and though she had told him to stand down, he was trying to figure out another way to get to her. He wouldn’t stop until she was out of there, whether it ended with both her and Allen in body bags or Allen in cuffs. But she wouldn’t let it come to that.

“Since you’ve been watching me my whole life, you know the entire town thought I killed my own family and that I lied about the whole thing. Do you know why they thought that? Because they saw in me what my team sees in people like you.” She walks up to him, and though every instinct screams to run, she instead places a hand on his chest, “That night… you made me into you. So no, Allen,” It’s the first time she uses his name and she relishes the shock that lights in his eyes, “You can’t tell when I’m playing you.” Capitalizing on his surprise, she disarms him the way Morgan has drilled into her over and over, quickly slamming his wrist into the nearest surface and catching the gun when he releases his grip. Faster, she takes a step back from him and draws her gun as well, now pointing two weapons at him, “And I think you’ve overplayed your hand, babe.”

He raises his hands and now there’s genuine fear in his eyes, “April--”

“I’d like you to very slowly remove the knife from your pocket and toss it to the floor and if you even think about launching it at me, just know that I am a very good shot and I have been dreaming about killing you every day since I was twelve, don’t tempt me.” Her voice shakes, but this time not from fear, but from anger that she’d harbored close to her chest since the man who stood in front of her stole everything from her.

As Allen slowly does as he’s told, April hears footsteps on the stairs and is relieved when she spots another gun trained on Allen in her peripheral. Morgan begins to walk to Allen, but April stops him, “No.” She says, “I want to do it.”

He nods and redraws his gun, backing away. She holsters her own weapon and hands Allen’s gun back to Hotch without looking at him. Drawing cuffs from her pocket, she walks behind Allen who has managed to get a smirk back on his face. The sight breaks something in her and she roughly shoves him against the wall, feeling satisfaction at his grunt of pain when his face collides with the cement. She tightens the cuffs a bit more than necessary and begins stating his rights to him as she marches him up the stairs.

“I’m going to be a legend, you know? They’ll make all these dateline documentaries about me and the families I’ve killed.” He’s smiling still as April shoves him in the backseat of Billy’s police car. She’s trying not to think about the fact that he showed up here.

“Prisoners don’t look too fondly on those among them who kill and rape children, Allen, and I’m going to make sure that whatever cell block you rot in knows exactly what you’ve done. Have a nice life.” And she slams the car door.

Billy’s watching her as she does so, “I’m sorry.” He says simply.

April sighs, “I don’t care.” She says without looking at him and then walks away.

Hotch is watching her, arms crossed and frowning deeply. She stops in front of him, tilting her head to the side and noticing the concern written all over his face as he sizes her up, “Thank you for backing off when I asked you to. I know that was hard for you.”

He simply pushes himself off the car that he was leaning against and pulls her to his chest. She feels surprised for a moment, but then wraps her arms around his waist in return, breathing him in, focusing on his touch rather than Allen’s. And when the sobs begin to wrack her body, he just holds her tighter. He knows the rest of the team is watching and maybe he’ll have to explain this later, the way he rests his head on top of hers to reassure himself as much as her, but he doesn’t much care. He’d been fairly certain she was going to die in there and he’d never have the chance to tell her how he really felt.

Hotch drives back to the hotel with her sleeping in the passenger seat. The medics had checked her out and concluded that she didn’t really have any injuries, but his heart had nearly shattered in his chest when April asked if there was any way they could refill her sleeping medication. They had been unable to, but decided to give her a few doses of ambien anyway, to last her until she could call her prescriber back in DC.

“You can take as much time off as you need when we get back.” He had said as they climbed in the SUV, his too big FBI jacket wrapped tightly around her shoulders as she immediately popped the ambien in her mouth.

“I don’t need to take time off.” Was all she said before she curled herself in a tiny ball, facing the car door, and fell asleep only minutes later.

Now, he pulled into the hotel parking lot, rain falling gently against the windows and debated whether he should wake her. “April.” He said softly, gently shaking her shoulder.

“Mmm.” She murmurs and her eyes flutter. Still straddling the line between sleep and wakefulness, seeing Hotch’s face above hers prompts a small smile. “Aaron.” She says softly and reaches her hand up to touch his face.

Hearing her use his first name so tenderly sends a jolt through him, but he reminds himself that she’s sedated, albeit lightly, from the ambien. “Do you think you can walk up to the hotel room?”

She nods sleepily and he quickly gets out of the car to help her out of the other side, pulling the hood of his jacket over her head to shield her from the rain. She walks slowly because of the drug, but he doesn’t mind. And when she slides her hand down to his to intertwine their fingers, he doesn’t mind that either. When they get to the hotel room she wordlessly strips down to her underwear and climbs into bed.

He stares at her for a while, unsure if she would want him in the bed or not, and decides it’ll be safest to sleep on the couch. He begins taking some cushions off the couch when he hears her voice, “Aaron?” There was his name again. He wasn’t sure why hearing her say it had him coming undone, but he wanted her to repeat it over and over again.

“Yes?”

“Why won’t you come to bed?”

He opens and closes his mouth a couple times before responding, “I was going to sleep on the couch.” She’s quiet for too long and he thinks she must’ve fallen asleep so he turns back to the couch.

“I don’t want to sleep alone.” Her voice is so quiet, he wonders if he imagined it. But when he turns back to the bed, she’s watching him, eyes full of sadness and what he thinks might also be desire. He can’t say no to her. She continues watching him as he takes off his clothes, first unbuttoning his shirt. She watches him carefully, no traces of shyness and he tries his best not to let on the way her attention affects him. He undoes his belt buckle and then pulls off his pants before walking to the bed, pushing the sheets aside, and climbing in.

She turns to him and brings their faces close enough that just another inch would have them rubbing noses together. “Why have you been so nice to me this whole case?”

It’s not what he was expecting her to say and he frowns, “It was a tough case for you that brought back a lot of trauma, why wouldn’t I be nice to you?”

She shrugs, “I know you’ve never liked me the way you like the rest of the team--”

“That’s not true--”

“Aaron.” He wonders if maybe she’s caught on to the way saying his name affects him as his mouth closes immediately, “I’m not stupid, I haven’t been here nearly as long as the others and I certainly never open myself up in front of them the way the rest of you do. It’s not anyone’s fault, I’m just… Not a part of the family. But this case… You treated me the way you would treat Reid, JJ, Morgan, Prentiss… Any of them. Why?”

“The second you join this team you’re a part of this family and I’m sorry we made you feel otherwise.”

She rolls her eyes and turns her head to look at the ceiling, “Would you have shared a bed with any of them?”

Heat floods his face and he’s glad she’s not looking at him. “No.” He says and he’s sure his voice, thick with desire has betrayed him.

But April only nods, still staring at the ceiling, “Is it just because you’re lonely?”

It’s then that he realizes what she’s getting at. He hears the vulnerability in her voice, the fear there. She thinks she’s not good enough for him and it breaks his heart even further. “April, look at me.” She manages to turn her head to him and her eyes are glassy. “You have shown the last few days how incredibly resilient, intelligent, and just amazing you are. You can’t really think that the only reason I keep reaching for you is because I’m lonely.”

She smiles sadly, “You wouldn’t be the first.”

A lesser man would’ve taken this personally, perhaps groan about how she could think so little of him, but Aaron was different. He understood what she’d been through, that he could have been Superman himself and she’d still have her doubts.

“Then I suppose I’ll have to prove it to you.”

She turns her head back to him and frowns, a trace of amusement on her face, “And how do you plan on doing that?”

Hesitantly, he reaches out and strokes a thumb across her cheek, “I’d like to start by just holding you tonight, if that’s alright.”

She closes her eyes at his touch, nuzzling her face further into his palm and he melts. “I’d like that.” She says softly.

So he gently wraps an arm around her waist and pulls her to him. Her little sigh of contentment as she settles against his chest is almost too much for him to take. “Aaron?” She says after he's spent a few moments just listening to her heartbeat.

“Hm?”

“You’re the only man I’ve ever felt truly safe around.”

He feels her sadness then and he tightens his grip around her to convey that he’s sorry she feels that way, but he’s grateful for her trust. They fall asleep like that and neither attempt to move away from the other the entire night.

***

“So this is a date.” It had been about two months since they had gotten back from Maine and Aaron had been nothing but a gentleman to her. So much so, in fact, that at some points she thought he was no longer interested in her.

He chuckles, “It’s not a date. We’re meeting the team.”

“Yes, but you’re taking me,” April grins, linking her arm through his as they walk towards the bar, “So it’s a date.”

“If it was a date I would’ve done this--” Hotch spins her in front of him and abruptly kisses her. At first, she freezes, but when he gently nips at her bottom lip she moans slightly, kissing him back. As sudden as it began, it ends and Aaron is staring at her with a look of such arrogant satisfaction she wants to slap him.

“Okay, so it is a date.” She murmurs quietly as Aaron steps around her and walks away, “I knew it.”

When Aaron opens the door to the bar for her, he casually slips his hand in hers, intertwining their fingers. He notes her questioning look from the corner of his eye, but just squeezes her hand in response. And instead of detaching herself from him when the team notes their arrival, she squeezes his hand in return, even when the relentless teasing from the team commences.

Aaron only slips away from her to go get them drinks and even then she looks back for him. It’s the most unsure of herself he’s ever seen her and it only broadens his grin.

“You finally did it, eh? Attaboy, Aaron.” Rossi’s already at the bar, a whiskey in hand and another on the bar that he slides to Aaron. He takes it and then orders April a gin and tonic.

“It’s just one date, Rossi. She’s still… hesitant.”

“She doesn’t look hesitant,” Rossi says, looking over his shoulder, “She hasn’t taken her eyes off you since you walked away from her.”

Aaron smirks, “Yes, well, I’ve discovered playing hard to get is very effective with her.” He tips the bartender and clinks his glass with Rossi before walking back over to April. When he hands her the drink, she seems to shrink into his side, taking larger gulps of her drink than he thought she should.

“Slow down,” He plucks the drink from her hand and places it on a nearby table, “Why are you so nervous?”

“Look at all of them just staring at us, I feel pressured.”

“Pressured into what, being with me?”

“Aaron, no,” She places a hand on his arm, sensing the insecurity rising in him, “I want to be with you.”

“Then what?”

She shrugs and reaches for her drink again, but Aaron covers her hand before she can, clearly expecting an answer from her. She sighs and looks up at him, “I feel pressure to be perfect because I can see on their faces how much they love you and I don’t want to fuck this up and then you all hate me because I wasn’t good enough for you.” It all comes out in a rush and she feels breathless after admitting it, her cheeks reddening as he lifts his hand, allowing her to reach for her drink.

“April, they like you just as much as they like me.” She rolls her eyes and he reaches out to tip her chin up gently with his fingers, “You could never mess this up.”

“I messed it up with Billy.”

He drops his hand, unable to hide the annoyance and jealousy on his face at the mention of Billy, “Billy was an immature boy who didn’t know how to treat you anyway.”

She smirks, “And you’re a big strong man who can sweep me off my feet at a moment’s notice?” He manages the smallest of smiles as a slow song starts playing, “Come on, Hotchner. Ask me to dance.”

“You want to dance in front of the team?”

“Well you brought me here to show me off, didn’t you?” He gives her a look like he’s offended she would even think so and she laughs, “Please?” She pouts, “Billy would dance with me if he were here.” She adds teasingly, her eyes glittering with mischief.

Hotch shakes his head at her, but he’s grinning, “You love causing trouble, don’t you?” And she laughs in response as he takes her hand and pulls her to the dance floor, letting his left hand rest gently on the small of her back, his other hand holding hers.

He twirls her around the room and with the whole team watching, he kisses her as the song ends. Their lips worked together to teach each other their own dance and for a moment, it’s just the two of them, until the rest of the team starts jeering and April pulls away, her face flushed. Aaron is still looking at her, smiling and she reaches up with her thumb to swipe at his mouth, “I got some lipstick on you.” She says quietly.

“Can I take you home?” He says finally and his voice is husky and full of want.

She wonders if he’s aware of how alluring the sound of his voice is. “Yeah.” She responds swallowing.

He leads her out of the bar after much protesting from the rest of the team, but all he wants and needs is to get April, April who’s smiling at him from ear to ear, home and in bed with him. They settle into their new relationship with ease, the team noting that they’d never seen either of them smile so much and all of April’s fears and insecurities melted away day by day.

As long as her unit chief quietly placed a coffee on her desk every morning with a sweet note attached to it, she figured she could overcome anything.

[storiesofsvu]

Serendipitous Secrets & Surprises Ch 2

*not my images* warnings: language. Talk of usual SVU type cases A/N: just to put some little clarifications on ages on this cause I am messing with them a little bit via the timeline lol. Technically, this would be set in a “season 23/24” era SVU. Y/N is somewhere around 37/38, our early season ada’s/Amanda/Sonny are around the same age, having all gone to school around the same time. Last ch we found out Rita was approx 8 yrs older, so she’s mid 40’s. (and Pippa will be joining her in that age range). While we keep Donnelly is somewhere between 67-71.

The following month was a bit of a trial period, both for you and for Olivia’s approval of you fitting in with the squad. You worked alongside them for more than a few cases, it was almost more of a part time gig as things settled. You split your shadowing between Fin and Amanda, while you did outrank Amanda, she’d been doing sex crimes a lot longer, though so far it was an easy enough transfer in. Narcotics wasn’t too far off from working similar cases, you’d come across a lot of familiar situations while taking down drug rings, and partnered up with Vice in more than a few undercover ops.

You were a little apprehensive talking with victims at the very start, having not really dealt with them in a few years, and it taking a special kind of interaction here, but it didn’t take long before you had that down. When it came to dealing with perps, there was absolutely no issue, Fin, having also come from narcotics would regularly send you in to deal with the worst of the worst. Kat was a little worried about you the first time going in alone, but was immediately shocked with how good you were in an interrogation room, Fin simply clapped her on the shoulder and said if you could handle a drug king, you could handle just about anything.

Today, you had been left in charge of the precinct when Olivia had a Noah emergency she had to deal with and Fin was already off for the day. She trusted you enough by this point that you’d be able to handle things, but she did give you a little pep talk in the privacy of her office that the squad had a tendency to toe the line and to keep an eye on that. You knew this was likely a test that would determine your fate in the squad and considering that you were enjoying it more than you’d thought, you didn’t want to have to make yet another transfer.

Currently, you were sitting on your desk, shooting through ideas with the rest of the team and Carisi in front of the white board. You were working through what seemed to be a domestic violence case, a six year old boy had presented with injuries at school, and in a misconstrued way had vaguely implied that he’d gotten them from a caregiver. When it was reported to you and the team had talked to him, he recanted, and since he was so young, it was hard to get a concrete statement. The father, obviously, was already upset at the so called harassment by NYPD but there was more than enough suspicion. You’d pulled as much of their medical records and E.R visits as you were legally allowed to and after looking through them, were stuck at a turning point.

“I say we pick him up.” Kat suggested.

“Absolutely not.” You cut in immediately, “everything we have is circumstantial at the very best.”

“We’ve got multiple injuries on Beth and Thomas, yet none on him? That’s enough to be more curious.”

“And every single one of those injuries could be explained away. A fall on the playground, tripping down the stairs, a soccer ball to the face, spilt pot of boiling soup. Not to mention we don’t have a complaining witness and the attachment of spousal privilege makes it near impossible to warrant an arrest. A public defender could get it thrown out before arraignment and these guys have enough money for someone much better than that.” You cocked an eyebrow in Carisi’s direction for back up and he nodded.

“We can try to talk to them again, but an arrest won’t hold.”

“So what? We just leave them in an abusive situation?” Kat was getting more frustrated by the minute (understandably so).

“You guys don’t even know if it’s actually abusive situation.” Carisi urged, “when you talked to them you mainly talked to Thomas, right?”

“I talked to Beth.” Amanda suggested, “she seemed a little shaky but nothing over the top, plus we talked to them at the school, no indicator of what the home life could be like.”

“Why don’t I go with you to talk to them at home, they might be a little more pressured if the D.A’s with you.” Carisi suggested and you shook your head again.

“That’s exactly what we’re not going to do.”

“Why?” His face scrunched, the tone of his voice much more curious than confrontational.

“People v Kendall, 2007.” You fired back, “Paddy Kendall was technically under investigation for kidnapping his biological kid from his ex, but there was nothing linking him to it, especially after the baby popped up safe and sound. The A.D.A went with the detective and child services to get the baby back out of their custody and Kendall filed suits against all of them for violating his civil rights. A.D.A’s don’t have jurisdiction to be pulling stuff like that.”

“I”- you cut him off before he could even start.

“Listen, I know that you were cop, and I know you have a hell of a lot more experience working sex crimes than I do, but I’m not about to let y’all start to play fast and loose with the law while I’m responsible for it for the first time.” You sighed, “Bruce is pissed enough, the last thing we need is him to file suits against any of us and put the investigation on hold until they’re closed, we’re dealing with a ticking time bomb already.”

“So what now?” Kat pressed and you turned back to her.

“You and Rollins go to the house, take a peek around while you’re there and do your best to try and have sit downs away from Bruce, try to keep him otherwise occupied. And tread lightly, keep things friendly, get lists of babysitters, nannies, any other adults that Thomas has been alone with from Bruce and try to get something usable out of Beth in the meantime. If something is going on, it’s gonna be a hell of a lot more helpful to have a cooperating wife.”

“On it.” Kat grabbed her coat in a flash, practically dragging Rollins out of the bull pen with her. You cocked a brow in her direction as they sped off.

“She always that antsy?”

“Pretty much.” Carisi sighed.

“Sergeant Winters.” A voice called out and you glanced up, brow furrowing at Buchanan entering the squad room, “you just paying a visit or am I going to have to put up with your sass over here now?” You ignored his question completely,

“We don’t have a single person in lock up or interrogation, what the hell are you doing here?”

“Nice to see you too.” He scoffed, reaching inside his suit jacket to pull out a couple pieces of folded paper, extending them to Sonny, “your office told me where to find you. Good luck trying to get the Menson case off the ground.” With a smirk, he turned on his heel and left, and you said a silent thank you to the gods that he didn’t stick around.

“Great.” Carisi groaned, running his hand over his face, “I really don’t have time for this.”

“Which is exactly why you shouldn’t be running around playing cop.” You sighed, wincing slightly at the tone evident through your words, “sorry.”

“No, I get it.” He replied, “first time being left in charge, new squad, you’ve gotta prove yourself when you’re the new kid.”

Sonny felt for you, he really did, he knew what it was like to have to be the new kid in the SVU squad and it wasn’t exactly easy. Not to mention butting heads when he’d made the move to D.A, he was dealing with being the new kid all over again while also having to remind his old coworkers of rules they wanted to pretend didn’t exist. Since you’d popped up his life had been a little easier, you were always cutting into conversations, bringing up legal points, laws or old cases that no one else remembered. He didn’t know where you’re knowledge came from (he hadn’t bothered to ask) but it was very clear you’d either spent a lot of time with lawyers, or you’d taken a handful of criminal law classes yourself. Whatever the reason was, he was happy to have someone on his side, and to be getting phone calls a little later in the game when he was actually needed rather than called in immediately only to turn right back around to go back to the courthouse or office.

“Thanks.” You smiled, “go deal with whatever you need to deal with, I can call in someone else for this if you want.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I know a few people who specialize in cases like this, and the last thing I want is this to get thrown out or end in a not guilty. Hell, even if Bruce ends out on bail those two aren’t safe. It sounds like you’ve got enough on your plate already.” You gestured to the pile of motions in his hand and he chuckled.

“Yeah….Buchanan, king of burying you in paperwork.”

“Good luck with that one.”

Sonny huffed out a laugh again, giving you a nod before he grabbed his briefcase, leaving the squad room. You pulled your phone out, shooting a quick text off to Benson to update her on what you had going on and started to make a few other phone calls.

*

When Olivia returned to the precinct a couple of hours later she was reading through the last few texts that you’d sent to keep her in the loop. Even with the heads up that you’d called in a different lawyer she certainly didn’t expect the sight of the blonde beside you outside the interrogation room. She paused for a moment before shaking out of it, moving forward, considering their last interaction, she didn’t think she’d see her inside a police precinct ever again.

“Alex?” She asked, pulling both of your attention over to the Captain, “what on earth are you doing here?”

“Y/n called me in. She said she told you.” The blonde replied, keeping half an ear on the conversation on the other side of the glass.

“She specializes in domestic violence cases, figured it was a safe bet.” You stated.

“That’s what she’s calling it now?” Olivia cocked her head, brow raised as she surveyed Alex.

“Oh!” You cut in, “she’s not doing that anymore, don’t worry.”

“You knew about that?” Olivia glanced to you.

“Most days I pretend that I don’t all things considered. How’s Noah?” You quickly changed the topic.

“He’ll be fine.” She sighed, “couple of stitches, probably a nasty bruise, but for now he’s being healed by ice cream and Ninja Turtles.”

“If you wanna go I can handle this for the rest of the day?”

“No, it’s fine. He’s got Lucy with him, besides, didn’t you say you had plans tonight?

“It’s just some silent auction fundraiser dinner for….” You paused, trying to remember what on earth the ticket had said.

“Give Kids the World.” Alex finished for you with a smirk.

“If you could let me finish a sentence for once in my life.” You half teased and she chuckled a laugh.

“I didn’t realize you two knew each other.” Liv half asked.

“We went to college together.” Alex stated simply with a shrug.

“Yeah,” you nudged at her, “up until this one abandoned me for Massachusetts.”

“I came back didn’t I?” She scoffed.

“Temporarily.”

“Okay, but it’s not my fault I got shot.” She sassed and Olivia watched half in awe as the two of you went shot for shot.

“Technically…technically…it is.”

“Oh and how do you reckon that?”

“You have a horrible habit of sassing people you know are murderers?”

“You know you’re a pain in my ass sometimes.”

“You love it.” You smirked as Alex playfully rolled her eyes with a grin on her cheeks.

“Okay…”Olivia started, unsure on just how well you knew each other, “Winters, why don’t you get me fully up to speed and then you can take off for the day?”

“Sure.” You shot Alex a smile as you stepped around her to follow your Captain back to the bull pen and the blonde called out after you.

“I’ll see you tonight.”

“You owe me a drink.”

“Good thing it’s an open bar.” Alex laughed and this time it was you rolling your eyes.

When you left her office twenty minutes later Olivia found her eyes following you through the bull pen as you collected your things and said a quick goodbye to Amanda. She’d always thought she was a pretty good judge of character, of getting a read on people, especially those in her squad. She’d given it a couple of days when you showed up, considering you’d just come out of a multiple month undercover op. Being younger she expected you to either be more casual similar to Kat, but she knew you came from money, and being Sergeant you had a title to uphold so she wasn’t too surprised when you opted for classy fitted pant suits (with comfortable shoes) most days. You were well put together, and the air of femininity you gave off had her thinking one way, but there had been something about the interaction with Alex that had made her think she’d gotten her wires crossed completely. She thought she had you figured out, but it was appearing you were an enigma she couldn’t quite wrap her head around. Digging around in a filing cabinet she tugged out your jacket, thinking maybe it could help her get a better read on you, but as soon as she’d taken a seat at her desk, Amanda was popping into the door, something more important already thrown on her plate.

___________ @charabs @bisexualcrowley @natasha-danvers @ineedafinghug @veteranwerewolf95 @billiedeannovak @stardust-galaxies @laurenhope13 @randomthingssss @farahs-faeling @imlike-so-gaydude @wannabe-fic-reader @gaylorrds @infiniteoddball @thatesqcrush @altsvu @disneyfan624 @svushots @svulife-rl @gay-ass-bitch @lesbianspacecowboy @delphineecormierr @venablemayfairgoode @whimsicallymad @mysticfalls01 @oliviaswifey @thatgaygiraffesquirrelgirl @Cloudymd @swimmingstudentchaos891 @1000spices @screenee @nocreditinthestraightworld @beccabarba @redlipstickandplaid @cmmndrwidw @bumblebear30 @enduringalexblake @denpine @molllss @wosoimagines @solemnnova @lawandorderimagines @infernumlilith @yourtaletotell @Aprylrxse @australiancarisi @cerberus-spectre @whispered-tear-drops @snowsgay19 @michael-rooker @jj-arms

[slurp-imagines]

Hey, I have a headcanon I would like to ask, how would Sakazuki's relation be if he had a sister? They are like night and day - she is easy going, friendly and laugh/jokes around alot, but she will beat you ass if you're not respectful. Can imagine there are some friction between them, but she will always have Saka's back. Will they also have some sibling quirks? Thank you ^^

I found this a little difficult to write after a certain point (hope it's not too obvious lol) but it was an interesting prompt for sure. re-reading your ask now, I do feel like you were hoping for like... more just fun headcanons. but I ended up going kinda serious with it. hope that's okay too haha... regardless, ty for sending anon :)

Sakazuki (Akainu) + his friendly sister

↳ Sakazuki hates her omg. Probably not genuinely, but. Some people definitely wonder

↳ I'm sure she hassles him all the time lmfao, he never gets a break. She was the reason he got his first gray hair, he just knows it.

↳ It'd be funny if his sister was older than him & was always making fun of him like "yep, that's my baby brother, the admiral :D Isn't he so cute?" Meanwhile Sakazuki’s stood there stony-faced, looking like the most intimidating thing since death itself. He wants to deny it so bad, but it would only validate her. Because what’s cuter than a big, grumpy guy denying how cute he is?? The gap moe would be too strong. And he can’t have that. He’s helpless to it and she knows it lmao, the best he can do is just not even dignify it with a response. Sakazuki has mastered the “...As I was saying,” deadpan. Prob has a vein popping in his neck or something too. It kills her every time

↳ I could see Sakazuki and his sister being sooo at odds most of the time, but weirdly in sync on the battlefield. He likely outranks her since he's an admiral, but I imagine she wouldn't be too far behind him. She's always on the same page, always knowing what his orders will be before he even voices them. I can see her keeping up a mutual respect with her brother by still dutifully completing their missions; even while she's joking around the whole time, she gets the job done. Cleanly.

↳ She can totally crack the whip on their subordinates, too– the authority she commands is made a little heavier by her brother's name, of course, but it's also one entirely her own. She has her stern/scary side, but she's definitely warmer and more approachable than him. I could see her taking on a role where she sort bridges that gap between Sakazuki and their fellow marines.

↳ On a more serious note... We don’t have a backstory on him (yet - I hope) but I always imagined that his incredibly black-and-white view of justice was shaped by some formative, possibly traumatic experience when he was younger. As a child, I could see Sakazuki admiring/liking her quite a bit, up until that point. I feel like he’d think she wasn’t taking his plight– their duty as marines to enforce justice– seriously.

↳ So Sakazuki is always scolding her, always telling her to “drop the act & get serious already” because he knows what she’s capable of. He does mean that genuinely, but she pulls a lot of the weight keeping things more light-hearted. The tension really doesn't rise unless she's actively screwing things up or holding things back from an important goal.

↳ Idk why, but I feel like sometime around the aforementioned point in his life, Sakazuki would have unconsciously stopped holding blood relation as inherently more important that choice relations. In that sense, he may only continue feeling a sense of loyalty toward his sister so long as she stays on the same path as him.

↳ Because surely from her past actions, he knows that she has his back, and he knows that he's better off because of it. (Does he ever tell her that? Nah. But she probably gets it... I feel like they'd have that silent-understanding type of relationship)

↳ But I'm a little hesitant on how far Sakazuki will have her back in return. We haven't seen anything from him yet to make me think that he'd value a personal relationship over his duty. I could actually see him disowning someone close to him should he decide they're morally wrong. (Doing so would hurt him, but only privately, and maybe only after the fact.)

↳ And even if they butt heads a lot, or even if he never expresses it, I do feel like he would be quite attached to his sister deep down (especially now that they're both far into their adulthood and their dynamic has likely become less volatile than when they were kids/teens). Sakazuki naturally doesn’t want to look down on her, but he will if her philosophy & reasons for fighting are severely out of line in his eyes. We love the friction don't we