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samuel-de-champagne-problems · 3 years

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It's Delicate: Part II

Summary: Spencer Reid finds himself at a gas station at 2:00 am, thinking he’s only leaving with a cup of crappy coffee. But something taped to the door catches his eye. Spencer leaves the gas station with more than he intended: the chance at a friend, and maybe something more along the way.

Word Count: 3.6 k

Author’s Note: Here's the second part in It's Delicate, my first chapter fic. I've planned out kind of where I see this eventually going! Thank you to anyone who reads, likes, comments, and reblogs. It really means the world to me.

Content Warnings: Expletive language (3 uses), mentions of drug use, sexual innuendo

READ PART I

It's Delicate Masterlist

It's Delicate

Sitting on the plane, Spencer looks out from the little window. For hours, there’s been nothing but corn fields and clouds. It’s eerily peaceful, being there high above the clouds. His whole life Spencer has felt this distance between him and everyone else, but nothing makes that feeling more prominent than being strapped in a glorified metal box 35,000 feet off the Earth’s surface. But the thing is, Spencer does need to be flying above the trees to feel lonely. He can do that with two feet on the ground.

Luke sits across Spencer, the table between them and a deck of playing cards are spread out across its surface. He has to nudge Spencer’s leg from under the table, trying to bring him back to reality as he stares out the window.

“Whatcha thinking,” Luke asks, Spencer has been noticing more and more that Luke is one of the few people that actually listens to him.

Spencer, whose mind is racing too fast to even formulate an articulate thought, attempts to dodge Luke’s question with a noncommittal shrug.

“Reid, these cases are hard for all of us, you gotta know that man,” Luke says, laying down a four of a kind.

Spencer narrows his eyes, shocked that it hasn’t clicked yet for the rest of the team. He cracks his neck, preparing to answer Luke.

“We almost locked up an innocent man, Alvez. I almost sent another man to the same fate as myself. What kind of fucked up message is that?” Spencer says, throwing down the cards on the table. He doesn’t wait for Luke to respond.

“I fold,”

Spencer walks off into the small kitchenette to make a cup of coffee. He doesn’t want to think about his increased reliance on coffee, because he knows it’s a hot cup of coffee or a cold needle of Dilaudid in his veins. Spencer checks his watch, it’s 10:17 pm, maybe too late to find a meeting at a church or rec center somewhere.

He sneaks a peak at his phone, which was still unfortunately on Airplane Mode, he hasn’t even gotten a chance to see if Y/N has responded. He doesn’t know much about her, just as much as she knows about him.

It’s a brave new world for Spencer and he’s knee deep into the unknown.

Spencer can feel Luke’s eyes on him. He just knows that the minute he gets home, a certain tech expert will be ringing him. He knows that it’s Luke’s way of caring, but for someone who’s been alone for so long, having people that actually care is almost drowning.

Walking back to his seat, Spencer hands Luke a coffee. He smiles slightly; it’s the awkward smile that he used to make when intimating police chiefs and idiot cops would look him up and down like he’s a TA. It’s a peace offering for Luke, who despite his tough looking exterior, is one of the kindest people Spencer knows.

“Look, Reid. I’m sorry that we didn’t put it together. It’s just that man that we caught, he’s not like you. He’s not innocent of crimes, he’s just innocent of this crime,” Luke says in an attempt to make Spencer feel a little bit better.

“The thing is Luke, I’m exactly like that man,”

Spencer returns to staring out the window. The cards and the coffee on the table are long ignored for the silence that is found when you’re high above the clouds.

Spencer hears Tara and Emily murmur quietly about going out for a round of drinks. Luke accepts, while JJ and Matt decline, eager to get home to their families. Emily looks over at Spencer, her eyes silently scanning him, his body language. Spencer knows that there’s nothing he can hide from Emily, so there’s no use in trying to pretend he’s alright when she can take one look at him and know that nothing is right.

“You guys have fun, I’m going to head home and get some sleep. I plan on visiting my mom tomorrow and mornings are usually better for her,” Spencer says, slinging his go bag around his shoulders and making the trek back to the security to check out.

He walks slowly, enjoying the sound of the crickets chirping as he trudges along. Spencer tries not to think about the man, Richard, who was almost locked up for a crime that he didn’t commit. Spencer is pretty sure that being the person to throw an innocent man in jail is worse than being the innocent man in jail.

Spencer’s phone buzzes loudly, disturbing the silence of his walk. He looks at the phone to see a couple of messages from Y/N. Spencer slides open the lock to his phone and hits the button to read her messages.

Y/N: Spencer...that has a nice ring to it. So tell me a little bit about yourself. Your big three, but as books. Go! 🌞🌙⬆️

Furrowing his brow, Spencer reads the message over again. He does not have a clue what “big three” means, but it seems like some sort of pop culture thing that he’s not skilled in. He wants to text Garcia for a translation, but he’s also not too keen on telling her how he came across Y/N’s number.

Y/N: I assume you’re working, but I'm kind of impatient so I’ll give you mine 🙃 I’m a Little Women sun, an Emma moon, and an In Cold Blood rising.

Y/N: Oh no….I hope my astrology didn’t turn you off

Y/N: Not that I was trying to turn you on

Y/N: omg Y/N please shut the fuck up

Astrology? Spencer isn’t one to judge, but he’s a scientist first and foremost. The idea that there is something written about him in the stars seems like ludicrous. He decided to ignore the other messages, particularly the ones with a little more than slight innuendo.

Spencer: Y/N- I’m sorry I just got out of work. As for my big three, I’m not sure about astrology. I don’t particularly believe in pseudoscience. But those are good choices. In Cold Blood is an excellent choice. Capote spent years researching the case. In fact his prose and technique inspired the entire “Nonfiction novel” genre. The world of journalism and true crime would not be where it is without Capote’s work.

Y/N: Oh my god. You are a total nerd. 🙀

That stops Spencer right in his tracks. He’s only a couple of yards away from the Volvo at this point, but somehow it feels a million miles away. You are a total nerd. The words replay in his mind as the small gray bubbles pop up again. Spencer can feel his heart constrict at Y/N’s words. It’s ridiculous, he’s nearly 34 and is getting upset that a stranger called him a nerd. Spencer unlocks his car and tosses his go bag, phone included onto the passenger seat.

After a couple of minutes his phone buzzes again. He’s half tempted to answer it, but the way his heart seems to beat faster tells him to ignore it.

Y/N: I fucking love it and I think you’ll love this too

Spencer’s entire demeanor changes as he reads the message. He’s always had difficulties reading emotion in writing, especially when he can’t analyze the handwriting. Sometimes, it’s even harder to judge inflection during conversations. Maybe that is why Spencer has spent all this time studying people, studying the way that their minds work. Before he can get too lost in his thoughts, another message pops up.

Y/N: Meet Capote and Second Cat

Y/N: They are the loves of my life

Spencer: They are very...distinguished looking. Capote is an excellent name choice then. Second Cat is also quite catchy.

Spencer hesitates before sending the message, he notices that Y/N uses what Garcia calls “emojis” quite frequently. He assumes that it’s some sort of “texting lingo” that expresses emotion in small graphics. Great, he thinks. He already has a difficult time deciphering Y/N’s cryptic wording and now he’s got to analyze these emojis.

Maybe he should profile her. He re-reads the message and settles on a “😄” because he figures that he can’t go wrong with offering Y/N a smile.

Spencer: I don’t have a cat, but when I was a kid I always wanted one, they’re quite good companions for those that live several different kinds of lifestyles. From active to sedentary, they are adaptable and independent. Honestly they are the perfect pet.

Y/N: Is this your way of telling you’re a crazy cat man? 😜 🙀

Spencer, still sitting in his car that’s parked in the parking lot, chuckles at Y/N’s response to his message. Maybe it’s just easier to ignore his rambling when it’s done through 1s and 0s and there isn’t a face to the words.

Spencer: I’m actually more of a fish guy

Y/N: Like a “I-like-to-go-fishing-and-post-picture-of-myself-kissing-my-catch-on-Tinder” kind of fish guy or...I can’t think of any other kind of fish men

Spencer, not totally understanding the obvious joke that Y/N is trying to make, settles on something that he hasn’t really ever tried: being himself.

Spencer: Not quite sure what a Tinder is, but I think fishing is terrifying and kissing a fish is something out of nightmares. But his name is Leo

Y/N: DiCaprio?

Spencer: Uhh, Tolstoy

Y/N: Good😉 ⚔️🕊️ 🇷🇺

Spencer glances at his clock on the control panel, it tells him that he’s been messaging with Y/N back and forth for nearly 22 minutes. He nearly forgot how tired he was.

Spencer: Y/N- I’m so sorry but, I just got to my car to drive home from work. I’ll text you tomorrow morning about the book club, maybe we can figure out some things.

Y/N: OMG Spencer!! you should have told me. I’ve been talking ur ear off. sleep well and yes please tomorrow we can talk about the book club

Y/N: Good night, Book Buddy 😴

Spencer wants to respond to Y/N, but he doesn’t know what to say. She seems to text so easily, and judging by that, she must be around Spencer’s age or a little bit younger. Besides JJ and Penelope, Spencer has never had a friend close to his age. It’s a strange new territory for him and he’s walking in head first into No Man’s Land.

He starts his Volvo, the check engine still lights but, reminding him once again to go get it fixed. Driving away from the parking lot, Spencer hands over his ID to Gina, the security guard. She checks his ID and gives him a tired smile. Spencer, as he drives home to his apartment, thinking about what books he and Y/N will read together. He wonders what kind of books are her favorite, if they have any authors that they can obsess over together, or if what she thinks a poet’s prose is.

The summer air rushing in through the window is nowhere as warm and as comforting as thought of Spencer finally having a friend that isn’t able to read the scars of his past in the text bubbles that pop up on her screen.

When Spencer opens his eyes for the first time that morning, he isn’t sure where he is. Sometimes, before he can stop his thoughts from travelling there, Spencer thinks he’s still in jail. He hates the feeling of terror that rushes over him but he hates the idea of being vulnerable a little bit more. But the softness of his pillows and the coolness of his cotton sheets remind him that he’s not sleeping on a hard cot with only a layer of fabric over his body. The light streams in through the half closed blinds, and Spencer judges by how brightly the sun shines in, it must be around 9:45 am.

He supposes that he prefers the way the sun’s rays paint horizontal bars across his face more than the vertical bars that cast gray shadows over his cell at Milburn Penitentiary.

It’s a day off from work, so Spencer didn’t set an alarm, instead allowing his mind and his body to catch up on some much needed rest. The nightmares have been getting better, but his dreams are still haunted by the way that he hardly recognizes himself anymore. Deciding that it will be a day spent in pajamas, Spencer goes to his bookshelf in his bedroom to pick out a couple of novels to read while he drinks his morning coffee and defrosts some of Luke’s strawberry pastries.

Before heading out of his room, Spencer stops himself in the doorway. He replays the events of last night. He declined to go out with the rest of the team, while he walked to his car he thought about the crickets telling the temperature, and he read over Y/N’s messages.

Y/N.

He promised he’d text her back in the morning about their book club. Last night, she didn’t seem to mind Spencer’s long messages and awkward phrasing. He still doesn’t really know how this Book Buddy thing would work, but since he found Y/N’s number on the flyer, he can only assume that she knows what to do. He leaps on his bed, landing with thud on his belly, to grab his phone that charges on his nightstand.

Spencer settles at his kitchen table, a cup of steaming hot Dark Roast coffee in a Captain Spock mug in one hand and, surprisingly, his phone in the other. He scrolls through the messages from last night, Y/N’s cat and emojis tempt a smile to Spencer’s face.

Not entirely sure how to start the conversation again, Spencer looks around for inspiration until his eyes land on a certain fish tank in the corner of his apartment. He snaps a quick picture of Leo and attaches it to the message.

Spencer: Good Morning from Leo & Spencer

Spencer sets down his phone after a moment when he realizes that Y/N is probably not going to answer him back in a couple of seconds. He takes out a strawberry pastry from his freezer and puts it into the toaster oven on a non-stick baking sheet. His thumbs run across the texture of the book he started on the plane ride after his and Luke’s ill fated poker game. It's a thin book of collected essays on the meaning of life. Camus, to Spencer, is a little pessimistic with his droning on about the meaninglessness of life. Though Spence has seen the absolute worst that humanity has to offer, he still has to believe that there’s a deeper meaning behind it all.

His toaster oven rings, altering him so that his toasted strawberry pastry is cooked. He plates his breakfast and pours himself another cup of coffee- he’ll need it to get through Camus’s section on Absurdism this early in the morning. But the flash of Spencer’s phone screen sends him reaching for his phone. Y/N replied to his message.

Y/N: hi leo!!!

Y/N: and you too Spencer :) Did you get a good night’s sleep. You got back late it seems.

Spencer, taking a bite of the strawberry pastry, ignores the burning sensation in his mouth. He types out a response to Y/N as he washes down the bite with a swing of coffee.

Spencer: I did, thank you. Can you tell me a little bit more about this book buddy thing. From what I gathered from the flyer it’s like a little book club of our own and we meet at the bookstore?

It doesn’t take long for Y/N to respond. The little gray dots pop up almost immediately after Spencer’s message is delivered.

Y/N: That’s about right! Is it okay if I call you? Kinda easier to talk that way 🤷‍♀️

Spencer reads over the message a couple of times. He doesn’t really like to talk on the phone and only does it out of necessity. He’s pretty sure that his voice is grating and his vocal fry is quite irritating. Yet, he finds himself replying “yes” to Y/N. Soon enough, his phone buzzes in his hand and Spencer has to remind himself how to pick up a call.

“Spencer? Um, this is Spencer Reid, right?” the voice says. It’s a woman’s voice and he can only assume that it’s Y/N, considering it is her phone number calling him.

“Y/N, uh hi. This is Dr. Spencer- I mean this is Spencer,” he says, nearly forgetting that Y/N doesn’t know him as Dr. Reid, but as just Spencer. It’s been a long time since someone has known him as Spencer.

“Oh great! It’s wonderful to finally have a voice to your name. So about these buddy reads. You seem to have a good grasp of what they are,” Y/N’s voice trails off a little bit at the end and Spencer finds it natural to fill in the silence.

“Yes, the flyer was quite informative. But I was wondering, do we read the same books or do we read different books?” Spencer asks, trying to restrain himself from scaring Y/N off. But something about her made him think that she didn’t scare easily.

Y/N chuckles lightly in the speaker of her phone, “that’s a good question, uh, I was actually going to ask you what you would rather. We can read the same books, or if it’s okay with you we can choose what the other would read for that week,”

“Oh really?” Spencer says, very much aware how his voice rises a couple of octaves. He can’t trust himself to hold back on rambling over the phone Y/N, so he resorts to using his strained, brittle voice that’s full of hesitation and restraint.

“That’s the plan, so whatcha thinking, Spencer,” Y/N says playfully, like she can sense that phone conversations maybe not make him feel at ease. There’s something so natural and silvery about her voice; it reminds Spencer of an audiobook reader. While he’s not too keen on audiobooks, he’s sure that he’d listen to anything she reads or has to say.

“Um, I think it sounds interesting to pick out books for each other. I tend to gravitate towards more technical books or even books that aren’t in English so, uh, I think it would be interesting to get out of my comfort zone,” Spencer says, cringing internally at using the word “interesting” twice in a couple of sentences.

“Well, as long as you don’t pick out something in physics or anything by Ayn Rand then I’d say we’re good,” Y/N says. Spencer thinks it’s a joke, but he’s not too sure how to respond.

“Will you still be my Book Buddy if I read 1 out of 2 of those?” Spencer asks, hoping she’d get that he is trying to continue the joke.

“Oh no Spencer please don’t tell me you’re an Ayn Rand fanboy,” she says, and by the airy way she laughs, Spencer ventures to guess his joke landed successfully.

“So,” Spencer starts, he never has made plans with people outside of his team, and on top of that, there’s something about Y/N’s quickness that makes him a little nervous to meet her.

“I’m talking your ear off, aren’t I? Please Spencer, if you’re going to be my Book Buddy, you’re going to have to get used to me talking a lot, especially you pick out good books, which, I already have a feeling you’re going to be favorite Book Buddy,”

For once in his life, Spencer doesn’t really know how to respond. He lets out something in between a strangled laughter and a noncommittal chuckle.

“So,” Y/N says, mirroring Spencer’s earlier words, “so are you free tonight, I can meet you at the bookstore..”

Y/N’s voice trails off and Spencer leaps to finish her sentences. It doesn’t feel like his interjecting or interrupting, but like he’s snapping a puzzle piece together.

“Does 7 work?” “7 is great, Spencer. It’s a date,”

Those three little words send Spencer’s eyes flying wide open. He scrambles to come up with answer to louden the silence that falls, but he swears he can hear a string of quiet curses before Y/N manages to squeak out a small “goodbye,”

Y/N’s last words play back in Spencer’s ears. He scolds himself for being so weird and awkward that the very idea of going on a date with him would send Y/N in a tizzy. It’s not a date, because Spencer can’t think about it being a date. It’s not a date because of the looming photo above his mantle that freezes his future in the past. It’s not a date because of the nightmare of vertical bars that haunt his dreams

It’s not a date. It’s so not a date because Spencer would call Luke to come over to help him if it was.

“Hey Luke,” Spencer says, trying to control the nervous waves in his voice, “no man, I’m fine, it’s uh, easier if you just come over. I’m fine, really,”

Y/N: I really hope you're not an Ayn Rand fanboy 😉

It’s so not a date.

--THANK YOU FOR READING--

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consumedkings-archive · 4 years

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ancient names, pt. ix

A John Seed/Original Female Character Fanfic

Ancient Names, pt ix: heartlines

Masterlink Post

Word Count: ~7.3k (yes I am a clown)

Rating: M for now, rating will change in later chapters as things develop.

Warnings: Language, some “light” religious blasphemy (it’s Far Cry 5). Strong canon deviance.

Notes: I have nothing to say for myself, except: thank you thank you thank you! Everyone's comments really just got me through the real brunt of this chapter and it's a long one, oh boy. I cannot reiterate enough how much the hopeless romantic in me desperately wants them to just live happily ever after, and also how MUCH it really means to me to see your guys' feedback, but alas alack, here we are; I, with my long-winded author's notes saying the same thing every time, but I am just as grateful each time it happens.

As always, I have the best, sweetest, kindest, most thoughtful and wonderful proof-reader but most importantly friend who helped me block out this chapter because I was really, really struggling with it. @starcrier, my lover my life my shawty my wife, she is Elliot's number one stan and also an incredible writer so please go check out her stuff!!

On a brief tangent, I have some beautiful artwork made the artist @raviollies on tumblr, which you can find here! I definitely did cry a little tiny bit over it.

It’s your fucking fault.

Elliot’s words, venomous little baby snakes spitting their venom, crawled around the bone arena of his skull. John could not stop replaying them in his head, even though he desperately wanted to; the idea that the rookie deputy might now well and truly hate him—really hate him, more than she maybe ever had before—was an unsettling one. He liked to think that it was because he was worried what Joseph would think if they no longer had her cooperation, her good behavior, but—

But there was something else that dug at him. There was something else squirming in the cavity of his chest, sinking its nails right into him, but he couldn’t pick it out, couldn’t pull it apart.

(Or maybe he didn’t want to; maybe the idea of identifying what this strange and unknowable beast inside of him was kept him from trying too hard, a good enough reason to throw up his hands and say, sorry, I just can’t.)

He pushed the door to the church open, stepping back inside to the cool, dim quiet. Jacob had pulled a map out and spread it over the table, the radio set aside; Joseph sat in a front-row pew, one leg crossed over his knee and his expression mild.

“Did you get the opportunity to chat?” he asked, without looking at John, as though he just knew that it was him and not someone else coming in. “She seemed…” Joseph’s head tilted, just a little. “... Unseated.”

John hesitated, and then began walking down the aisle. “Yes,” he replied. “Although, I don’t know if chat is the proper word for it, considering that she all but put her teeth in my neck.”

“I thought you liked that kind of thing?” Jacob supplied without a hint of a humorous inflection in his voice, and John shot him a dirty look.

“Bleeding out to death? Not particularly.”

Joseph nodded, the gesture gentle, ignoring the bickering. “It does appear as though our deputy is not a damsel in distress, but rather a damsel under duress.” He turned to look at the youngest Seed brother when he reached the front of the church. “But it is nice to see the foundation you’ve put down, John. You’re taking my advice, and it isn’t going unnoticed.”

He felt something pleasant and warm bloom in his chest, billowing up into his head until it almost completely gassed out the venomous little vipers Elliot had planted in his mind. “I did have an idea about that,” he added, feeling more emboldened by Joseph’s praise as he walked past the table. “About endearing the deputy to us.”

“Oh? Well, I’m all ears.”

John’s gaze flickered across the space between his two brothers. Jacob had said nothing; he was bent over the map, dog tags glinting in the single beam of light that hit them from the window, one veiny hand clenched into a fist as it held the map in place.

“Maybe,” John continued, “our dear brother could try to stop antagonizing her.”

“Why?” the red-headed deadpanned, not looking up from the map. The fact that Jacob didn’t even deign to make eye-contact with him was enough to make irritation prickle in his chest, raise his proverbial hackles.

“Why?” John reiterated. “Perhaps because each time you open your mouth, you incriminate yourself as a villain—and us too, by proxy.”

“You can drop the attorney lingo,” Jacob said dryly, finally lifting his head to look at John—and John wished that he hadn’t, because the half-lidded, arrogant gaze of his eldest brother only served to stoke the fires of anger inside of him.

“It’s just my vocabulary, Jacob, and you missed the entire point, by the way, so in the interest of making sure we’re all on the same page—”

“—not an idiot, little brother, so you don’t need to—”

“I think John is right,” Joseph interrupted, effectively silencing the argument that was brewing. “He’s done exactly as I asked of him. Think of a stray dog, Jacob; you don’t beat it into submission. You feed it, nurture it, gain its trust, and then it becomes a lifelong companion.” The hint of a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “A loyal companion.”

“This is an age-old philosophical debate.” Jacob’s brows furrowed together; a deep-set frown sat on his face. “A classic: is it better to be feared than to be loved? I think that we’re going to disagree fundamentally on this one.”

“Well,” Joseph replied mildly, “aren’t we lucky that there’s only one of us in charge of how our deputy is treated, then?”

John’s breath flickered out of his chest in a single blink at Joseph’s words. Casual and ever-so-patient, as though Jacob’s jaw weren’t setting in preparation to argue, as though it didn’t strike John right in his gut to hear Joseph say, there’s only one of us in charge of how our deputy is treated, as though it didn’t twist the knife right between his ribs to hear Joseph refer to Elliot as their deputy, over and over again.

A stamp. A brand. Joseph claimed, like he always did, the things that he thought rightfully belonged to him.

“Someone’s lucky,” Jacob said at last, a final and reluctant acquiescence.

Joseph’s small smile did not disappear. In fact, it seemed only to root itself more firmly on his face, as though he were pleased at Jacob’s unease. Joseph’s gaze flickered back to John, settling on him and then beckoning him forward.

He did as Joseph bid, coming and sitting beside his older brother and clearing his throat. He wanted to stop thinking about the way that Joseph had said our deputy, like he had any claim on Elliot—and that shouldn’t have bothered John, but it did, wriggled its way through the spaces between his ribs and squeezed, nice and tight.

“She was upset,” Joseph said, when John had settled next to him; it was not a question, but a statement, an assertion of what Joseph knew to be true. Their eldest brother scoffed from his spot at the table, bent back over the map, tracing and re-tracing the topography lines. John shifted in his seat a little.

“I think Jacob might have ruined any chance at a merciful conversion when he mentioned that her friends would deserve it if they didn’t make it out.” John’s voice was hard when he shot the red-head a stinging look, but unsatisfyingly, Jacob did not lift his head this time. John felt the strain of his brows furrowing at the center of his head, and then Joseph’s hand was on the side of his face, fingers spreading against his hair, primed and comfortable to grip.

“Grief,” Joseph said, his voice low and soothing, “is a part of change. Like shedding a skin.”

“It’s not—she was furious with me,” John replied, grimacing. “She just kept saying she hated me, and us. Joseph, I think—it would be beneficial to let me do things my way—”

“Our deputy is killing the person she used to be, John.” Joseph’s gaze was steady, piercing, a venomous yellow. His other hand came to the right side of John’s face, cradling him. “Strangling her old self, with her own hands. People like us, we’re lucky; we’ve always known who we were meant to be.” He leaned against the wooden backing of the pew again. “You’ve guided her here. Give her a while to grieve that girl from before. Patience is a virtue.”

John’s throat felt tight. He thought the Elliot in the bar those years ago—flushing and soft, breathless when he leaned into her—and the Elliot threatening to choke a man to death in front of him if he didn’t beg for his life, and the Elliot who played baseball with a shovel and a man’s head, and the Elliot that smoked a cigarette down to nothing while she cranked Welcome To The Jungle up on a van stolen from a group of crazy Swedish cultists.

He was not convinced she had not already killed the girl she used to be.

“You have got to have faith.” Joseph’s voice broke him out of his reverie. When John looked over to his brother, Joseph was absently dragging his thumb along his lower lip, his eyes fixed on the Eden’s Gate emblem glowing above them in the afternoon light. “Remember what I said; you have to love them. I know you can do this for me.”

His throat felt tight. This would be easier, he thought, if he could have just done everything this way. Wrath, he thought, would look perfect on her. But that wasn’t right; wrath already fit her. There was no skin to be shed. It was already on.

“John.”

He dragged his gaze from the white collar of Joseph’s shirt to his brother’s gaze, meeting it.

“Tell me you can do this,” Joseph said, his voice lower now, softer. It was not his counseling voice; this was Joseph asking him, his brother, not the man who led the masses. Asking, demanding, but waiting patiently for it to be given, never taking before it was time.

He was no longer thinking about Elliot at her fiercest, but rather the way she had softened for him, on occasion. Pressed against him for warmth, lashes wet with tears, unwilling to let go of his arm.

“I can,” John replied, “for you.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Elliot didn’t know for how long she slept. When she woke, the sun was still in the sky, the air felt sticky and wet with late-summer humidity, and while she slept sweat had gathered at the nape of her neck and in the hollows and dips of her body. For a second, panic filled her—she couldn’t remember where she was, or how she got there, confusion twisting and knotting its way through her.

And then she remembered. She was in Joseph’s compound, in a bunkhouse that served as a home to Eden’s Gate members, dressed in Eden’s Gate clothes sans her boots and underclothes. Elliot wiped the sweat from her forehead and pulled her hair out of the ponytail. Standing proved dizzying, and she felt the dehydration twisting around in her stomach like a scorpion; stinging, and unkind.

“Fuck,” she said, pressing the heel of her palm to her eye. The gesture reminded her that she had done it just recently; just before she screamed at John, just before she told him that she hated him. Oh, yes. That.

Grief still squirmed around inside of her, but it had been abated, for now, and she thought that she almost—

“No.” Elliot’s voice was firm, but still wobbled on its legs, when she spoke to herself. “I don’t feel bad about what I said.”

“Good to know.” It was John’s voice from the doorway, bringing with him a hot breeze that should have felt good being that they were on an island, but it just added to the humidity. Elliot’s stomach twisted violently at the sound of his voice. It wasn’t anger that populated her mind, now, but embarrassment: that she’d let him get under her skin, that she’d let him see her without her veneer, that he’d been there and endured it and now he stood here again, undeterred, as though John Seed were someone with a moral high ground that allowed him to endure verbal attacks and return as though nothing had happened.

I hate you. Elliot willed the words to her mouth, tried to muster the venom, but she couldn’t. She fixed her eyes instead on the knot of a wooden floor panel, trying to ignore the sight of John moving in the corner of her eyes, closing the space between them. He did this, always—invaded her space, overwhelmed her, until saying things like I hate you became harder.

He smelled like sweat, and day-old cologne, and heat and dust and outside, and when he put his hand on her arm she opened her mouth to say something—anything, any of the venom that might come to her in the heat-addled and perspiring confusion—but he put a cold water bottle, slick with condensation, in her hand.

Her eyes went to find the bloodstain on his shirt when she realized that he wasn’t wearing that shirt anymore. He was in a white shirt, the same kind that Joseph wore.

“Drink,” he said. “I promise it isn’t poisoned.”

Elliot turned the cap of the bottle. It cracked, promising that the seal was freshly broken, and she brought it to her mouth and took one heavy swig before she pulled it away. Her nerve-endings immediately screamed in relief at the water in her mouth, but her stomach lurched—she knew she’d need to pace herself, or she’d be puking it up in a few minutes.

“Did you sleep?” John asked when she didn’t say anything. Elliot sucked her teeth.

“I don’t think we should play at being friends,” she said, her voice wicked with a dry, crackling, wildfire-in-the-making heat. John’s gaze was steady, though, once again unfettered by her words and remaining in her space. She was more aware of it than ever, now: as though resting, and having basic necessities like shower and drinking water also made her all the more aware of John’s presence, the heat radiating off of his body and the way he was watching her—

(like he couldn’t get enough of her)

—like he wanted to make sure that nothing she did escaped him.

“We’re not playing at being friends, deputy,” John drawled, crossing his arms over his chest and rocking back on his heels a bit as he looked at her. “Whether you like it or not, you and I are on the same side.”

“For now,” Elliot bit out.

“For now,” he acquiesced, as gracious as ever.

Her eyes narrowed. John was not the kind of person who forgave and forgot the sorts of things that she’d said to him. Elliot felt the suspicion rising up in her throat. She kept waiting for the punchline; for John to say something stupid like, and when this is over you’ll be begging for me to absolve your sins, or something equally driven by ego and his desire to have Joseph’s approval.

“So,” John began again, arms unfolding elegantly to be held out in a gesture of harmlessness, “did you sleep?”

Elliot took another swallow of her water bottle, stepping around John. Her body instantly braced itself—as though she expected him to try and stop her—but he didn’t; merely turned with her, a planet trapped in her orbit.

“Briefly.” She kept her voice short and clipped as she headed towards the door. “Are your friends back?”

“Jacob’s ready whenever you are.”

Her face scrunched up at the mention of the eldest Seed brother. She was now unsure which of them was the most unpleasant to be around; they all found their own special ways to get under her skin. John, perhaps, was the worst; Joseph and Jacob, she could handle their particular brand of crazy, but John—he was harder for her to read, because all of the time spent with him had started to cloud her brain.

“Why are you being nice to me?” she demanded, turning suddenly to find that he’d crossed the bunkhouse again, as though to follow her outside. Because she hadn’t quite gone out, yet, he now stood nearly nose to nose with her, even with her back pressed against the door of the bunkhouse.

John’s gaze swept over her. “Does it bother you?”

The plastic of the water bottle crunched in her hand. Her jaw set, painfully tight, holding back her gut reaction—to tell him that yes, it did bother her—and instead swallowed thickly. It would be just like John, to go out of his way to be nice to her because he thought it would unsettle her. But then, wasn’t John all about bending and cracking someone to his will, no gentleness required?

A headache splintered behind her eyes, throbbing painfully. She was spending too much time trying to parse John Seed out, and that was her first mistake.

“I’m just surprised you know how,” Elliot snipped, watching the way her words ticked the corner of his mouth upward in that easy, boyish smile.

“I can be nice,” John offered, “if someone isn’t spitting venom at me nonstop, calling me pathetic.”

“Fucking pathetic,” she pointed out, ignoring the way John’s eyes flickered down to her mouth and then back up to meet her eyes. “I shouldn’t have said that—”

“—no need to apologize after the fact, deputy—”

“—because I know how sensitive you are,” Elliot finished, wiping the smile off of John’s face, “and since we’re on the same side, I suppose I can’t afford to have you down and out.”

John’s eyes narrowed. His hand found the doorknob, and he was very close, so close all of a sudden that for a brief moment Elliot’s brain short-circuited and all she could think about was how unjust it was that a man so deserving of her venom could make cologne smell so good.

And then he said, “No, I suppose you can’t,” and opened the door behind her, the heat of the afternoon sun sunk into her skin, sticky and hot. “I work best when my partner isn’t trying to fight me the entire time.”

She turned and stepped out of the bunkhouse, clutching the water bottle in her fist and putting as much distance between herself and John as she said, “And I work the best if you stay the fuck out of my way, John.”

No more, she thought, decisively, no more of that.

Images of Eden’s Gate members scattered in her periphery; they were eager to look, but not eager to be seen, so that when she turned her head to find them they were already disappearing behind a corner or into a building. The heat was no more bearable if she was moving, either, the sun high in the sky and threatening to burn any exposed skin.

John fell into step beside her, his hand landing on the doorknob to the church before she could open it, holding it closed while she stopped on the landing.

“Jacob likes when he gets under your skin,” he said to her, the words sounding a little different than before. “He might say whatever he can to rile you up, and make you look unreliable to Joseph.”

Elliot hesitated. She didn’t know why John was giving her this information; not only because she already knew that—because of course Jacob enjoyed pushing her—but she didn’t understand why John was trying to be helpful. It was always going to be the Seed brothers against her, wasn’t it?

She thought of the way they had been bickering, the two brothers, while she tried to gather herself after her call with Jerome. She wished she’d been paying attention so that she could know what it was they had been arguing about.

John waited expectantly. He said, “You want to get Joey out of there, don’t you?”

“Of course.” Her brows furrowed. “What kind of—”

“And I want Faith out of there, with as little risk as possible,” he plunged on, keeping the door in place, “so we can’t get outvoted in there. Joseph does take you seriously, though who can imagine why—”

“If you’re trying to convince me we’re actually partners,” Elliot deadpanned, “you’re doing a shit job of it.”

“All I’m saying,” John continued irritably, “is that if we present a unified front in there, we have a better chance of us both getting what we want.”

Elliot didn’t want to admit that he was right. The last thing she ever wanted to do was tell John Seed that he was right about something. But if she had to weigh her options, she’d rather tell John he was right than do whatever the fuck it was that Jacob and Joseph wanted her to do. One Seed brother she could handle.

So, she relented, “Fine.”

John stuck out his free hand to her, grinning. “Shake on it, partner?”

Elliot groaned and swatted his hand away. “Don’t push it, buck,” she replied, pushing the door open—and this time, John let her, trailing in after her. Jacob and Joseph were in their spots at the front of the chapel, waiting ever-so-patiently. She reminded herself of what John had confirmed; that Jacob liked to see her on the brink of a meltdown, that he was a pusher.

It did not escape her that John had not offered any insight into Joseph.

“Have a nice nap?” Jacob asked as she came up to the table with the map.

“Funny, John asked me the same thing.” Elliot kept her voice even and took a drink of her water before she started tying her hair back into a ponytail. “So, where are they? Where are Joey and Faith?”

“South of here, the faithful say,” Joseph said before Jacob could speak again. “At Sacred Skies Lake. Just past Angel’s Peak. It sounds like they don’t go by any name, and just call themselves a family.”

“And do the faithful say what they’ve been doing?” she asked tartly. She had an idea of where they had made their home; probably at the abandoned youth camp, though as far as she last remembered that had been occupied by Joseph’s own.

Well, probably not for very long. There was no way Joseph’s little rednecks could hold up to the precision that these crazies had.

“Living,” Jacob replied, his gaze hard and his jaw set. “They’re not doing anything. They’re just—there. Like they’re waiting for something.”

Elliot’s stomach plummeted at Jacob’s words. There was no way he could have known, surely; she hadn’t told John, and she hadn’t said anything to them in the car, about the way Ase had cradled her face, and called her mor, and had said, I know that you will always come back to us.

Fuck. There’s no fucking way.

But there was. If Ase didn’t have absolute confidence that Elliot would seek them out, why would she have let them go? Why would they have been mostly unscathed? They were playing with their food—a sick, drawn-out catch-and-release.

The brothers had started speaking again. The aqua curve of Sacred Skies on the map burned into her retinas the longer she stared at it without blinking.

“Waiting for me,” Elliot mustered up after a moment, her mouth feeling very dry. “They’re waiting for me.”

Three pairs of eyes fixed on her, all with the same uncanny precision. There was no time for it to bother her; her stomach was already rolling with nausea.

And then Jacob barked out, “Explain,” and she thought she might punch him in the face if he didn’t shut up. Elliot took in a deep breath, mustering all of the composure she could manage, and focused herself on the map.

“When John and I got—when we had our run-in with the family,” she began, “we were separated, and—they drugged me, with something. But their leader, Ase, she was there for a little while—”

“What?” John demanded. So much for presenting a unified front, she thought ruefully. She shot him a look, willing him to be quiet, to just let her gather her thoughts; blissfully, he did.

“She kept calling me something in Swedish,” Elliot explained, “and she kept saying all of this weird stuff, like—like that she saw my color, that she saw me, and then…”

The Seeds all stared at her, waiting expectantly. Even Jacob remained silent.

“And then she said something like… Like that she was going to let me go, but only because she knew I was always going to come back to her.”

A moment of silence stretched in front of her, endless and dizzying, where no one in the room said anything and all Elliot could think about were all the things that Ase had said.

And then, as though these words had almost no impact on him, Jacob said, “Well, at least we have proper bait.”

“Absolutely not,” John cut in immediately, angrily. “You’re not putting Elliot out there to try and lure them here—”

“—they want her, I don’t see why we wouldn’t—”

“Brothers,” Joseph interrupted, his voice effectively bringing both John and Jacob to heel. Like before, he stood directly across from Elliot; her gaze was fixed on him now, tumbling Ase’s words around in her head while the Seeds argued about whether or not she was shark bait or not. “What do you think, deputy?”

The words were gentle. Elliot knew what they were; certainly, Joseph knew how long it had been since someone had asked her opinion, rather than her having to fight tooth and nail for someone even to consider it.

“I think—we could get Ase to come out of the youth camp, which is probably where they’re holed up,” she said after a moment, willing the charm of Joseph’s attentiveness away. Her gaze slid to John for a moment. “If we used me as bait.”

“Are you serious?” John demanded. He took her arm in his hand, pulling her from the table and hissing, “When I said present a unified front—”

“If we’re partners, you have to trust me,” Elliot insisted tersely. His expression hardened. A part of her hoped that he regretted suggesting they be anything remotely close to on the same team, and a part of her was glad that he had, or he wouldn’t look like the words you’re right were sitting right on his tongue.

Finally, at last, he said, “Fine.”

Elliot turned back to Jacob and Joseph, with the brunette’s hand still on her arm, and asked, “Are you any good with a sniper rifle?”

“The best.” Jacob’s voice was clipped, insistent. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes.

“So if I can get Ase out to meet me,” she continued, “can you not shoot me?”

His eyes narrowed, but there was a tiny, tiny smile pulling at his lips. “Scout’s honor.”

John exhaled a sharp, short breath. “This is ridiculous—”

But before he could plunge onward, Joseph held up his hand to stop him. He turned his gaze to her, now, studying her for a few long heartbeats before he said, “Do you think they won’t kill Faith if we kill their leader?”

Elliot shrugged his hand off of her arm and walked back to the table, setting her water bottle on the table and crossing her arms over her chest. “I think like any snake,” she replied, “the body won’t function if you cut the head off.”

“At any rate,” Jacob interjected, “push comes to shove and you can get in without a firefight to get Faith out of there.”

“And Joey,” Elliot replied firmly, and stifled down the absolute fury when Jacob shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly.

“We’ll start making the preparations immediately.” Joseph sounded pleased. It took everything in her power not to say something just spite that, to remember that even though she didn’t want to be, she supposed that she was on their side, too.

Jacob gathered up the map from the table and immediately set off after Joseph, who had stepped down from the small stage and gone to the side door. Elliot picked up her water bottle and took one more heavy drink to finish it off before she turned and looked at John.

His brows knitted together at the center of his forehead. He looked troubled. It was not an expression that she was used to seeing on John Seed’s face; it might have been endearing, if she didn’t know that he was troubled by her, and not in the fun way.

“Spit it out, then,” Elliot prompted. John heaved a loud, impatient sigh.

“This is a stupid idea,” John said abruptly, angrily. It was a change of pace from the cocky asshole he normally liked to be. “There’s no way that they know they aren’t waiting for you to show up so they can skin and gut you, and—”

She waited, patiently, for him to get the words out. Whatever they were, they stuck in his throat.

“—and what use would you be then?” he finished, his lip curling up in clear distaste. Ah, there he is, Elliot thought absently. Almost thought I’d lost you, John.

“Don’t worry,” she said lightly. When she had capped her water bottle again, she headed to the back of the church. It feels good, she thought, pushing on the door, to have a plan again. “I’ll far outlive my use to you, Seed.”

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The plan was simple.

Elliot was going to walk herself—unarmed, much to her personal chagrin—out to the Sacred Skies Youth Camp, once they dropped her off. Jacob would already be in a position where he could get a good look at what was going on, and when he got a clear shot at Ase, he was going to take it.

And they were banking on the woman coming out to get Elliot herself, based on what Elliot had told them. John was not convinced, but he had been overruled; it was no longer his choice, and instead of going in and being on the same team as Elliot, he had found himself on the opposite of the playing board from all three of them—his brothers and the deputy.

Not ideal.

But now, as John parked the truck at the bottom of the hill leading up to the youth camp, all he could feel was dread knotting his stomach. The plan was supposed to be simple, but John remained unconvinced that it would be executed as easily as everyone seemed to think it would.

Elliot seemed in perfect spirits; she’d eaten a handful of granola bars, finished off two other water bottles, and her coughing had become less frequent. Not once had he seen her reach for a cigarette, either. It was like the second she had an actionable plan, she no longer stressed: there was nothing for her to worry about, beyond getting the job done.

John met her gaze through the rearview mirror. “You’re sure?” he prompted, and ignored the way Joseph’s head gently cocked to the side. Elliot flashed him a smile.

“Just focus on making sure Jacob doesn’t shoot me in the head,” she replied, “okay? And I’ll focus on getting Joey and Faith out of there.”

Joseph said, lightly, “That’s all we could ever hope for, deputy,” and when he did Elliot shot John a look through the mirror, a look that said, can you fucking believe this guy? And for one, brief second it felt like they shared a joke only between the two of them.

Then she pushed the back door of the truck open and kicked her legs out, landing on the dirt road with a soft thump. The blonde closed the truck door and then came up to John’s window, which had been rolled down, and said, “You’re sure you don’t want to give me a weapon?”

It would blow the whole fucking thing if they caught her with a gun or a knife, Jacob had said; if by some strange happenstance he didn’t snipe the shit out of the crazy fucking Swedish woman, and Elliot wound up getting dragged into the belly of the beast, having a weapon on her would out her immediately. They would know that she hadn’t come willingly, but that she had come with the intent to harm.

At least in the instance that they somehow avoided Jacob, she could lie her way out of it. Maybe.

“I have absolute faith,” John said, mimicking Joseph’s veneer of confidence, “that you can make a weapon out of just about anything if you need to.” She patted the side of the truck and took one centering breath, but before she could set off up the hill John said, “Elliot—”

The blonde turned back around to look at him, life and vigor back in her face and one brow arched loftily at him.

Be careful, he thought to say, the words sticking in his throat. That’s what he should have been saying, if they were actually partners—even fake partners, even tenuous partners, partners-by-proxy because John insisted for the sake of feeling like he had some control over the situation and Elliot because there was no one better that she had the chance to pick. Not exactly setting the bar very high, were they?

“Any day now, John.” Elliot’s voice snapped his attention back to reality. She was waiting expectantly, but there wasn’t impatience in her voice; she was content, at last, to have motion. He cleared his throat.

“Don’t start going yet,” he said, instead of the things he thought would matter, like, don’t forget to breathe. “Give Joseph and I a chance to get up to where Jacob is.”

She gave him a two-finger salute, wisps of hair fluttering into her face from a late-afternoon breeze. “Yes, boss.”

John threw the truck into reverse, pulling back and then into a u-turn to head off down the road. The car was silent for a moment, blissfully, with the golden-hour light drenching the two of them in a warm glow. If he didn’t know what was going on just out of reach, he might have felt like he was transplanted into a different time and place entirely.

“You don’t need to worry about her, John,” Joseph said lightly.

“I’m not,” John replied, pulling the truck off of the road. Dry brush crunched and snapped beneath the weight of the tires. “She’s perfectly capable of handling herself with three granola bars in her system and healthy bout pneumonia.”

“You sound frustrated.”

“I just think that maybe we could have picked someone that’s not—” John inhaled. He parked the truck deep into a grove; to the right of them, a small trail would lead up to where Jacob waited with his perfect vantage point to see Ase come out and collect Elliot. “—Sick,” he finished, after a moment, “and not such a wildcard. You know she tried to kill one of the guards when I had her at the ranch? She was going to choke him to death, right then and there. For—touching her, or something.”

Joseph looked unaffected as he stepped out of the truck. “I’m unsurprised, if that’s what you’re looking for.” And he paused, looking thoughtful for a moment, before he said, "Touching her, you said?"

John ignored the question. “Well, then maybe that should speak to the level of reliability Elliot displays.”

“I think you’re underestimating the power of a positively-reinforced bond.” As Joseph spoke, John fell into step beside him, climbing up the slope. Behind them, he heard the distant sound of voices; the members of Eden’s Gate that weren’t holed up would be waiting for Jacob’s signal to swarm, if things looked grim. “Didn’t she say she hated you, and us? And yet today, here she is. In a good mood, no longer frothing at the mouth, rabid and dangerous.”

“She’s still dangerous,” John started, but Joseph stopped him by pressing his hands to his shoulders.

“You’ve done exactly as I asked,” he said, a mirror of the words he’d said before. “Remember? You haven’t beaten your stray into submission. This—” Joseph gestured with his hand in the general direction of where they had dropped Elliot off. “—is all only possible because of the work that you have put in, John. And when we bring Faith home, and return to our followers, that is what they’ll remember. Not the person the deputy used to be.”

John’s felt something hot and painful twist in his chest, prickling pain squirming up his spinal cord. He should have been pleased to hear Joseph refer to Elliot as something that belonged to them and instead was giving him some ownership—but he realized too late that it wasn’t what he had been wanting from his brother. This wasn’t what he wanted from Elliot.

He swallowed and said, thickly, “Yes, Joseph.”

“Good boy.” Joseph held him in a tight hug, the pressure of the gesture relieving some of the stress in his shoulders like muscle memory pulling it right out of him, and then he pulled back. “Now, let’s go and get our sister back, yes?”

His brother stepped up the last stretch of the slope, and he followed obediently behind. Jacob was perched carefully, eyeing the scope and muttering to himself; as John crouched beside him, and Joseph on the other side, the redhead breathed out a little swear.

“Stupid piece of shit,” he sighed. “Remind me to get these upgraded next chance we get.”

“What’s wrong?” John asked, already on edge.

“Nothing’s wrong—the gun’s perfectly functional, it’s just not as stealthy as a rifle should be,” Jacob explained. “It’s got a red dot sight on it.”

John’s eyes narrowed, his teeth clenching. “So they’ll see it the second you get it on that woman.”

“They might,” Jacob protested, “I’ll just have to be fast.”

��Where’s your rifle?”

“It’s back at the center,” his brother snapped. “I didn't have the opportunity to grab it before I went on a wild hunt for you across the Montana countryside. Anything else I can help you with today, little brother?”

“There’s no time for arguing,” Joseph interjected, sounding almost tired now. “Quiet, now.”

From their vantage point, they had a clear view of Elliot. The blonde was yelling something to garner attention, to lure people out, and there was some movement through the trees that blocked off the camp up the road. He could see her start to walk farther up, and then stop, hesitating.

“Someone’s coming,” Jacob said, peering carefully through the scope.

Tentative bodies drifted down the road, breaking the treeline: though John could not see Ase’s strange, lithe form anywhere among them, he could hear what he thought was certainly her voice, saying something to Elliot, who had her hands up carefully to show that she was weapon-free as best she could.

The movement that he thought might be the Swedish woman stopped just before the treeline. Come on, John thought, taking in a breath, come on, you fucking bitch, come out here.

It was someone else that stepped forward from the protection of the tree line. It was Ase’s man, the tall, broad-shouldered ginger, though he too looked unarmed. John tried not to think about how easily he had nearly disposed of them with only his hands, last time.

The man made it to Elliot, gesturing for her to come forward, to close the last foot of distance between them herself; she did as he bid, straying to her right, feigning innocence. John knew what she was doing: leaving room for Jacob to make a shot.

“That’s not her,” John hissed.

“Yes, I’m not fucking blind.” Jacob’s voice was sharp but steady. “She’s leaning for me. Who is he?”

“Her—right-hand man, or something. I don’t think you should take...”

John’s voice trailed off. The man had stopped Elliot, snagging her wrist—which looked tiny in his hand—and said something to her that did not look pleasant.

“I think I should,” Jacob muttered, shifting the rifle.

“Jacob—” John began, sensing the way his eldest brother’s muscles tensed, ready.

Elliot was saying something to him. She paused, just briefly, and John saw her head tilt down; she saw it, first, and then the ginger looked down at his chest just as Jacob was lining up his shot.

The incriminating red dot gave it away. The man’s head shot up and locked on them instantly, and before Jacob could pull the trigger, he’d twisted Elliot around and pulled her right against his chest, his hand gripping the pillar of her throat.

John’s stomach plummeted. He heard, as though in a last-ditch effort, Elliot shout his name: and he didn’t know if it was because she wanted help or if she wanted someone to take the shot anyway. He didn’t know if either of those options was more comforting than the other.

The man had shifted her so that the red dot now lay directly over her chest, pinning her, and Jacob did not pull away from the scope. Even from this distance, John could see the wicked grin splitting across his expression.

“Do not fucking shoot,” John hissed, “Jacob—do not fucking shoot—”

For sure, now, he heard her voice. "John," she said, desperately, his name choked in her throat by the grip of the Swedish man bruising her skin.

“There’s a good chance it would hit him and kill him,” Jacob insisted, his finger hovering over the trigger. “They’re goading us. This is the perfect opportunity to—”

“You fuck,” John seethed. “Joseph, tell him not to shoot!”

Joseph was silent, his jaw set lightly and his gaze fixed on the scene before them; Elliot, struggling to breathe, while the man began to make his way back to the treeline with her body shielding him. For the first time since Elliot had become a problem of theirs, John saw his older brother take time to consider whether or not he really needed her alive or not.

“Killing a right-hand man would be—”

“The plan was to let her get taken in,” John snapped. “Not to fucking shoot through her to get to some nobody!”

“That was before they knew we tried to trick them,” Jacob insisted. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand, little brother—”

“Leave it.” Joseph’s voice was final, and sharp. It seemed his brother was bringing an end to fights like this more and more often. “They won’t kill her, or the others. They want her for something. If you shoot through her, we’ll lose our one person on the inside.”

Jacob looked, for one split second, like he might willfully disobey Joseph’s final ruling on the matter. The hard lines of the eldest Seed’s face sharpened, steeling, before he finally flipped the safety on the rifle and straightened up.

A swift, hot breeze drifted through, picking up dust along the dirt road, and right as the shade of the treeline began, the man stopped. John could see Elliot squirming against his grip, her fingers grasping at his wrist and hands, scratching as she gasped for air: but he was immovable, and his attention wasn’t on her, anyway.

It was on them—where he thought they might be. He lifted his hand, thumb up, and two fingers out in the shape of a gun, pointed it at them, and mimicked a single gunshot.

Jacob was seething, the emotion rolling off of him in waves. “The fucking gall—”

But John wasn’t listening anymore. He felt like he was going to throw up. This was exactly what he’d been worried about happening—and here it was, laid out before him, a feast spoiled rotten by reality. He couldn’t get the sound of the way she’d called for him, desperately, like he was the last safeguard she had left.

And yet again, he had failed her. Her, and Faith, and sure, while he was at it, he could stick Joey Hudson’s name on the list; and didn't that mean he'd failed Joseph, too?

John came to a stand. “I have to go in,” he said, assertively, drawing both sets of eyes from his brothers now. “They know, now, and—they think Elliot is a big threat, so if there’s a chance she’ll put up a fight they’ll drug the fuck out of her. I should go in, and Jacob can watch my back, because—”

Because I don’t trust anyone else to get this done the way it needs to be. The thought auto-completed itself in his brain, but the words didn’t come, and it didn’t look like Jacob nor Joseph expected it out of him.

“John,” Joseph said, “are you sure you want to do that?”

“Faith is our sister,” John replied, “and didn’t you say that’s who I was? Ever-giving?”

The man hesitated, just for a second; the sound of chatter below, and Elliot’s furious voice rising as she presumably was given more room to breathe, echoed in the air.

“Yes,” Joseph said at last, relenting. “We did.”

John nodded, turning and making his way down the slope. He kept thinking of the way Elliot had said his name, because it wasn’t the first time she had done that; in the van, too, his had been the first she’d said.

And he couldn’t stop thinking of Ase’s man, either, and the way he’d wielded her with ease, the way he’d grinned when he’d spotted them, the way his hand gripped Elliot’s throat like he’d choke her to death right there if he’d gotten the chance.

No, John thought furiously as the truck came into sight, that won’t do at all.

#far cry 5 #john seed #john seed x deputy #ch: elliot honeysett #fc5 #john seed x ofc #fic: ancient names #my writing #me: KISS KISS KISS #also me: elliot will strangle john with her bare hands if he's not careful #this is true love and no one can tell me otherwise

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theconservativebrief · 6 years

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After more than eight years of shenanigans involving candy people, alternate universes, vampires, nearly 3,000 wiki pages’ worth of lore, some highly unusual exclamations (“Mathematical!”), and bacon pancakes, Cartoon Network’s beloved Adventure Time is coming to a close.

Since its debut in 2010, the series has evolved into one of the most popular and influential programs in the channel’s history. Despite being first and foremost a kids’ show, it built a sizable fan base among older audiences and gained mounting psychological and even philosophical weight over its 10-season run. The September 3 series finale marks the end of an era in imagining new storytelling possibilities, not just for cartoons but for TV in general.

Adventure Time spans nearly 300 11-minute episodes involving hundreds of distinct characters — so it’s no easy feat to describe. But in brief, it takes place 1,000 years after a nuclear apocalypse known as the “Mushroom War” warps the Earth into a fantasy landscape; its main setting, the Land of Ooo, is populated by offbeat creatures and people made of candy, fire, or “lumpy space,” among other things.

A young boy named Finn (Jeremy Shada) is apparently the last human being on the planet, and he and his foster brother/best friend — a shape-shifting dog named Jake (John DiMaggio) — have taken it upon themselves to be as helpful around Ooo as possible. They lend their treasure-hunting, monster-fighting, errand-running prowess to their many friends and neighbors, and along the way, the complex backstory of Adventure Time’s characters and their world is unspooled.

That supremely odd summary belies the fact that Adventure Time has sneakily persisted as one of the most critically acclaimed shows of the 2010s. When considering the recent “Golden Age” of TV, few would rank it alongside the likes of Breaking Bad, Mad Men, or Game of Thrones. And yet it has received high praise from sources as wide-ranging as the A.V. Club, the New Yorker, NPR, and this very site.

In addition to being aimed at kids, Adventure Time lies at the intersection of multiple artistic categories that often struggle to attract serious critical consideration — namely, animation, fantasy, and short-form episodic TV (which for a long time was mainly the playground of experimental Adult Swim shows like Aqua Teen Hunger Force). Still, it has won over many critics. And though its erratic airing schedule has led to a decline in viewership and prestige in its later years, it has maintained a consistent standard of quality nonetheless.

With its series finale now on the horizon, let’s take a look back at the brilliance of Adventure Time, both as a singular achievement and as a show that has left a lasting impact on the TV landscape.

Adventure Time began as a short film made for Nicktoons. After the short leaked online and subsequently went viral, creator Pendleton Ward was able to successfully pitch it to Cartoon Network as a series. Produced in 2006, it exemplifies the “random” style of internet humor of that time, pioneered by the likes of Homestar Runner, eBaum’s World, and Newgrounds.

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In just under seven minutes, a boy and his dog fight an ice-powered, princess-abducting king, with a brief dream excursion to Mars for a pep talk from Abraham Lincoln, before ultimately running off to confront some ninjas who have stolen an old man’s diamonds (ninjas were to internet comedy in the mid-2000s what bacon would be to it in the early 2010s). Millions of people loved it when it hit (the then-young) YouTube, and the short was eventually nominated for an Annie Award.

Once Adventure Time the show made its Cartoon Network debut, it found instant success and regularly drew millions of viewers per episode for many years. Examining the phenomenon, critics have often cited the show’s broad appeal for both kids and adults as a big reason for its popularity.

Cartoons have long embraced an anything-goes sensibility, but Adventure Time took the approach to a new level. Every single episode would pack its brief running time with strange new characters, places, and ideas: A vampire who drinks the color red. A pack of sentient balloons eager to die. An imaginative robot that “switches places” with its reflection. And to fit within the 11-minute runtime of each episode, it all came at the audience at a breathless pace.

Animated shorts are as old as television itself, but Adventure Time spurred a revival of the format, especially on Cartoon Network. The show also led the way in turning “random” humor and world-building from a niche interest into what is now practically an industry standard, not just for animated series aimed at kids but for adult-oriented ones as well. Shows like BoJack Horseman and Rick and Morty demonstrate a common willingness to indulge the strange, an instinct that Adventure Time arguably introduced to the mainstream.

It didn’t stop there. Even as Adventure Time told bizarre tales of trickster gods from Mars and penguins that turned out to be world-threatening alien abominations, it worked hard to incorporate them into its complicated backstory and world, maintaining dense continuity through multiple long-running story arcs. In the grand tradition of prestige TV, it featured overarching plots about Finn’s search for his birth parents, or the recurring threat of the fearsome undead sorcerer the Lich. And yet it also made time for many standalone episodes, sometimes ultimately folding them into the larger picture, with major characters like Marceline the Vampire Queen being introduced in apparent one-off installments.

Adventure Time’s penchant for experimentation was both admirable and skillfully executed. The show didn’t hesitate to hand over multiple episodes to guest directors simply to riff on a different animation style. It occasionally adopted an idiosyncratic airing schedule, where several new episodes would drop over the course of a single week and then months would go by with nothing new. While the inconsistency sometimes hurt Adventure Time’s ratings, the show’s creative team used the “episode bomb” approach to produce several miniseries that featured some of its most ambitious ideas and set pieces.

Despite the show’s overall comedic tone, it handled its biggest ideas with gravitas and sincere emotion. And for all the manic energy it could indulge, Adventure Time never hesitated to slow down for a scene or two, or even a whole episode. American animation sometimes has trouble simply putting breathing space into shows and movies — superfluous gestures, brief pauses, and other moments that aren’t necessarily propelling the plot forward. Hayao Miyazaki once explained this to Roger Ebert as ma, the soundless beats between claps of the hand. Adventure Time had lots of ma.

Look at this scene from the “Stakes” miniseries, in the episode “Everything Stays.” In less than a minute, the episode creates an extraordinary evocation of intimacy between a parent and child. The animators inject dozens of little gestures to establish this feeling — note the brief shot in which young Marceline strokes her mother’s arm. And then the scene is over, and it’s on to the next beat.

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This kind of formal economy, doing a lot in precious little time, is rare in television. Today, many prestige shows are running longer with each installment yet still struggle to carve out time for characters to simply be. They could learn something from Adventure Time, a show that used its 11-minute episodes to explore myriad genre ideas and flights of fancy, and to demonstrate the endless potential of simply being artistically open and flexible.

Every single character on Adventure Time, from the regulars to the one-episode guests, had a distinct voice. And I don’t mean in terms of acting (though the show’s voice acting was excellent), but in how each person spoke. The writers gave everyone a unique slang, or attitude, or cadence to work with.

Finn and Jake had their own adolescence-inflected goofy rapport and strange swears (“Aw, dingle!” “Algebraic!”). Marceline was a laid-back slacker punk rocker. Princess Bubblegum was officious and scientifically minded. Finn and Jake’s parents, who only appeared in a few episodes, had ’30s-style trans-Atlantic accents (“Make like there’s egg in your shoe and beat it!”). One episode set in an alternate universe introduced an entirely different future lingo. No character was too minor to be considered as a distinct individual.

Adventure Time frequently devoted entire episodes to fleshing out secondary characters, sometimes shining a spotlight on someone who had only existed in the background for the entire show up to that point. It drew up complex inner lives for the likes of characters with names like “Root Beer Guy” — a sentient, walking mug of soda — and “Cinnamon Bun.”

And what it could do for its main characters was even more impressive. Some of them were hundreds of years old, with a few of them predating the Mushroom War, and as we got to know them better, we came to understand a long history of regrets, which stemmed first from the act of survival and then from trying to build a new society out of the ruins. Their arcs were contrasted with the subtle but definable trajectories of Finn and Jake, who slowly matured over the course of the show from goofballs to responsible figures.

Many episodes of Adventure Time took detours to toss out different philosophical challenges, aiming them at both the characters and the audience. In one, Finn got trapped in another world and lived an entire lifetime there before returning to his own as a child again. In another, Finn and Jake confronted a population of people willingly submitting to a Matrix-like virtual reality existence. In a sequence emblematic of the series’ simultaneous whimsical tone and intellectual seriousness, one character mused: “What’s real? Your eyes think the sky is blue, but that’s just sun rays farting apart in the barf of our atmosphere. The sky is black.”

Adventure Time dared to be anything and everything, often at the same time. It was a silly, plotless kids’ show. It was an epic fantasy adventure. It was a long-term coming-of-age story. It was an experimental exercise. It was a stoner’s dream. It was a relationship drama. It was a heartbreaker.

Episodic television offers a canvas unique among the arts: time. The best shows make use of this canvas to tell their stories as creatively and ambitiously as they can; Adventure Time used it to become one of the best television series of its day.

Adventure Time’s four-part finale, “Come Along With Me,” airs Monday, September 3, on Cartoon Network.

Original Source -> An ode to Adventure Time, one of TV’s most ambitious — and, yes, most adventurous — shows

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

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disorientedblog-archive · 6 years

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Zhoushan Island

by Kevin Mei / photo: the author

do i even have a(n) accent, argot, brogue, cant, dialect, enunciation, elocution, idiom, inflection, jargon, language, lexicon, lingo, lingua franca, localism, locution, mother tongue, native tongue, parlance, patter, patois, phraseology, pronunciation, provincialism, regionalism, slang, speech, street talk, talk, terminology, tone, tongue, vernacular, vocabulary, voice

For many travelers, the disorienting experience of going abroad is the encounter with a foreign language. The inability to fluently express yourself diminishes your identity, circumscribes interactions solely to the realm of practicality, of greetings, farewells, and thank yous, of “my name is” and numbers and directions, yes’s and no’s. You understand what it's like to be an immigrant, the guesswork grammar and telltale reproduced pronunciation. More easily reduced to a concept than a person. You feel like you're complex, that the people around you similarly hold multitudes, but if only you could understand and be understood, be islands connected by oceans of words.

I don't think I ever really bothered to interrogate my origins. What can I say? In elementary school, I filled out forms that inquired about ethnicity and language. Asian > Chinese. Primary language > English. Language spoken at home > ... "MOM! Do we speak Chinese?" "Yes." "But what kind of Chinese... I've heard Mandarin; what do we speak?" "Shanghainese." Good enough, until I met enough Shanghainese classmates in high school. "Oh yeah, Shanghainese is just easier to say because everyone knows Shanghai. We actually speak Ningbo." Ningbonese. By the time I had met enough people from Ningbo to know that my words didn't quite sound like Ningbonese, I turned to Google to figure out what I spoke at home. It's the Wu dialect. After I graduated college, my dad wanted to take me on my first trip to China. It was only then, at the cusp of adulthood, it was made clear to me that my parents come from someplace called Zhoushan. Really, I speak some variant of Wu that we can just call Zhoushanese. A city and a suffix make a language and a people.

On the night I fly out for Zhoushan, my mom drives me from Flushing, Queens (2010 U.S. Census: 69.2% Asian, 9.5% White) to Canarsie, Brooklyn (2010 U.S. Census: 81.0% African-American, 2.6% Asian, 5.9% White), and drops me off at a corner a block away. I take my deteriorating suitcase (empty, for the salted eel I would smuggle back) out of the trunk and she watches from the car as I roll up to an indistinguishable red townhouse. She drives away. Uhseh ("the third" of three brothers and my dad), uhnya (“grandma”), and uhya (“grandpa”) are sitting in the living room, China Central Television playing on a small boxy cathode-ray screen. We sit around smiling and appraising each other. The damask pattern on the red-and-gold velvet wallpaper looks to me, at times, like the stares of sinister samurai masks.

Our wordless reverie is interrupted by a Pakistani driver from some unknown and quasi-professional car service come to pick us up for the airport. Uhseh tries to cajole our driver with wildly misinformed assumptions about the Middle East. His voice crescendos with each expression, as if building up to something, but there’s nothing at all. In the backseat, Uhnya, who doesn't speak or understand any English, also gets the sense that Uhseh is acting daft, and tells him, "Shut up, you imbecile." (Aside to me: "Sick in the head, amirite?") Uhseh doesn't handle embarrassment or shame well. He blusters at our driver and tries to haggle the price down. The driver can't take the nonsense. "Listen, I also drive for Uber. Why didn't you just call an Uber? Like everyone else does! I could've driven you for a third of the price." The same scene recurred throughout my maiden journey to the motherland. Uhseh likes to flex his poor social-animal faculties. At the airport for our return flight, he "strikes up" conversation with some Ukrainian workers who were in China for employment on oil tankers.

—Ukraine? Excellent country, right?

—My man, we are being invaded by Russia.

—Oh, Russia! Russia is so strong! So powerful. You don't want to mess with Russia. If I were you, I wouldn't mess with Russia.

[...]

—You guys make excellent yogurt! Yes! You guys! Very popular, very famous for it. Good job!

[...]

—Me? I'm from America. Yes, I love America.

I don't like the way Uhseh talks… halting gravelly stuttering and stalling words tripping, falling down, treading over each other, slurrrrrring loud intimidating covering up nothing-words… not speaking… properly… Mandarin. I can't believe I never noticed this inability. Of course, he can make himself understood, but what came out of his vocal organ was still the mish-mash of someone confused between his patois and putonghua. It came across whenever I asked: What does that character mean? How do you say this word properly? What's the tone? What's the pinyin? And unable to admit his ignorance, he'd ply me with palaver and circumlocution. What does that sign mean? Rumble ramble power of tigers fighting against mountain fires. All the sign expressed was: "No smoking."

We landed in Shanghai, when it was too early for airport shuttles, so we overpaid to take a taxi to a bus station. The sky was overcast. The city covered in murk. Was this pollution or just a foggy morning? It rains. My dad is irritated and getting into arguments, feeling as if he is being constantly cheated. ("Why didn't the taxi driver let us off exactly in front of the bus station?! TA MA DE!"). I have my iPhone stolen at the bus station. I'm disappointed that, not one day in, I won’t be able to take any photos of my month-long stay. Everyone else expresses more upset about it than I do. The drive to Zhoushan is full of soupy loops of white vapor, at times lifting their ponderous loads so I catch glimpses of cranes and partially-started construction. Amazing how much construction is happening in China. My dad decides to sit next to me at one point and impress me with the landscape. Look over there, he points at a spot in the thick opaqueness. Your [disreputable family member] taught there (like Trump praising dictators, it irks me Uhseh is so enamored of this person). It's beautiful and one of the most well-regarded schools in this region. Cool.

Hours later, we happen upon a red sea. I always imagined that my parents came from some poor rural village in the hinterlands of West China, deep in central Asia. Instead, they come from some poor rural village in an archipelago in the East China Sea. Zhoushan consists of more than a thousand islands, and before the investment of billions of yuan in the twenty-first century and the construction of cross-sea bridges, was only accessible by boat. Our bus takes us across the second longest bridge (G9211 Ningbo-Zhoushan Expressway) in the world, over water the color of ochre, clay that formed my ancestry.

Wikipedia on Zhoushan: Sixth National Population Census of the People's Republic of China in 2010 gives a population of 1,121,261, with 1,109,813 Han Chinese. I did the division: 98.98% Han Chinese. I long to speak English. To meet someone else and have a conversation in English. People didn't know who I was here. I couldn't make jokes. I hang around a shopping center most days. I read Moby Dick at Starbucks. The unfortunate thing about wanting to meet another foreigner is that I don't look like a foreigner myself. Before I open my mouth, no one would know my background, but the moment I try to order a pork bun: "What?! Putonghua please. I don't come from this part of China. Xiaodi, are you aboriginal?" Once, I see a hipster in KFC. An American hipster. I couldn't square myself up to say hi. He takes his ironic graphic tee and beat-up Herschel bookbag, hops on a skateboard, and glides away. I walk after him, but he gets farther and farther until he's turned a corner and gone. Another time, I see a group of Slavic laborers with a Chinese translator and lingered near them, taking in their rough inflected declarations for coffee and chicken. I send desperate emails to friends at night, but it doesn't make up for a verbal lack, a desire for complex portrayal, here.

My mom told me to seek out her childhood friend Le Jun, who foresaw that automobiles would one day populate Zhoushan Island, apprenticed in the niche trade of auto repair, and is now a successful business owner. He invited me often to extravagant meals at his resort restaurant and to his family's New Year's dinner, where I entertained people through my Zhoushanese. For all that I benefitted from his hospitality, he gained by making me his novelty item, showing me off to business guests and political patrons. I was always introduced as that American who can't speak a lick of putonghua but is fluent in Zhoushanese.

I wasn't fluent. I wrote my college essay on the language barriers that existed in my household. I spoke English with my brother, Zhoushanese with my mom, and she spoke Mandarin to the man cohabitating with her. I imagine this is a problem for many children of immigrants who never fully learned their parent tongues. When my mom got into arguments with that temporary stepdad, I didn't understand. When I got into arguments with my mom, I couldn't express simple concepts like "you're being controlling," never having learned the Zhoushanese for "control." Intimacy is difficult without mutual intelligibility in the diction beyond practicality. I still can't share the things that occupy my mental space, except in English. My Zhoushanese is utterly practical. And unless one becomes a linguist, these provincial "dialects" aren't something one can easily pick up.

Around New Year's is when people my age came back to "rural" Zhoushan for the holidays. I met many of my cousins, who used slang like niubi around me. Because they couldn't communicate well with me, they mostly ignored me, felt me to be a burden or a potential danger ("don't tell my dad that I smoke"), but they reminded me of the joys of fluency, the ease with which they joked and made their personalities felt, with friends at a bar, playing Overwatch at a wangba—what Bakhtin calls "heteroglossia" in the novel, I saw in their languages that expressed their hip millennial culture, their Internet-speak, their negotiations between being "good" twenty-something-year-old sons and with their twenty-something-year-old desires to live. They said no one really speaks Zhoushanese anymore in their generation. You go to school as a kid, you learn putonghua, and that's the language you dream in. Zhoushanese isn't common and therefore isn't useful (although I've always loved that I could always assume that others couldn't understand what my family and I said to each other). As a language, it's functionally defunct. Moreover, my expressions were antiquated, vintage. Zhoushanese had moved on from Zhoushan, had been carried away by my family into the pocket world of our domestic life in Flushing and hardened in the amber of our speech. Le Jun would tell me: "Nobody says that anymore. I haven't heard that phrase since I was a little kid. You speak my grandparents' language, an old dialect." He made fun of my word for fish, "awng," explaining it's what adults might teach children when they're trying to learn "fish," but I had never lost it, never been corrected about it. Perhaps an approximate analogy would be the hypothetical scenario of calling a cow "moomoo" as a kid and ordering a "medium-rare moomoo" as an adult.

Though it's difficult to recall specifics, I have a general sense of constantly trying to explain something, but failing, ideas becoming mangled and warped and all that trying too hard and being incoherent making me appear and feel foolish. Yet despite all this frustration at being unable to communicate, unable to translate what I can express in English to everyone I met in Zhoushan Island, how ironic that I'm unable to adequately express my experience in Asia with English. My friend showed me pictures of her own trip to China, particularly these food stalls in which dung beetles, scorpions, silkworms, starfish, and centipedes are served on skewers. While the scorpions and starfish were recognizable, I asked her what the other critters were, and she had no idea. Zhoushan being an island is famous for its seafood and I can't even describe the variety of aquatic life I saw on display in supermarkets and restaurants. Ribbonfish, cuttlefish, blobfish (my most joyous discovery of something I didn't expect to find in real life and especially as a comestible). I can't describe them because I just don't have the words for all of them, not in Chinese, not in English. I wonder if I knew the words in Chinese, if they would be translatable. Other foods I am very familiar with and have never been able to translate. What does it mean to know the names, in English now, of food items like nilou (Bullacta exarata) or arbutus? Because surely, when my mother serves those tiny salty mollusks packed in reused plastic jars and tells me stories of her childhood picking them out of muddy beaches in Zhoushan, or when the arbutus wine (also in reused jars) is broken out and I'm told I can only have a few of those dark purple berries max, that these experiences have been a part of my identity, experiences I couldn't articulate before without knowing what the hell to call the Korean mud snail.

I have had an inordinately hard time thinking about "self-discoveries" in experiencing China. My sense of identity has not changed. My trip to China was not an experience in how I perceive myself but in how I perceive others, how others perceive me, and how I can communicate my identity, and seeing that all the aforementioned has been for a great part dependent on language. My sense of identity has not changed but my means of talking about it has, though still limited by what I can and can’t express. I feel my relatives in China are stuck with only a vague sense of who I am that I have very little influence over. It’s been a great loss that I’m not fluent in Mandarin or Zhoushanese, not only on the trip but throughout my life, in my familial relations and growing up in a predominantly Asian hometown. And despite my fluency in English, by never learning the vocabulary to talk about my ethnic identity, from not even previously knowing the name "Zhoushan," I have not been able to talk about certain aspects that make up my cultural and ethnic identity. Self-making through language-learning—it will always be a work in progress. Language, in the broad sense of what and how we speak, reveals both indirectly and intentionally so much of ourselves and reminds us what islands we all are.

Kevin Le Mei visited Asia for the first and only time in January of 2017.

#china

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