#the usa group b points table

[ptvsport]

FIFA World Cup 2022 points table, Group B standings after Matchday 6: England remains at top, Iran keeps Last 16 hope alive 

Iran scored twice deep into stoppage time to stun Wales 2-0 on Friday and breathe new life into a FIFA World Cup campaign overshadowed by mass anti-government protests at home. The win helped Iran rise to the second position in Group B. Also Read | FIFA WC 2022 points table, Group A standings after Matchday 6: Netherlands lead table after draw with Ecuador England, meanwhile, was jeered by its…

[aliciameade]

Darkness at Dawn - Ch. 4

Title: Darkness at Dawn Author: aliciameade Rating: M/E Pairing: Stephanie Smothers/Emily Nelson Summary: Even Bonnie & Clyde met their fate eventually.

Set five years after "Baby."

Also on AO3

Stephanie notices a shift in the way the other inmates act around and toward her after Emily lays claim to her. The intimidating shoulder-checks and glares have stopped; in fact, she’s given a wide berth when moving from point A to B.

When she returns to her cell after breakfast, meekly eaten next to Emily like the property she’s perceived to be, there’s an assortment of items on her bunk. A bar of soap and small bottles of shampoo and conditioner—all name-brands that are far better than the cheap, harsh options they’re provided. Several chocolate bars. Even a bottle of soda and a new toothbrush. She doesn’t know where it came from, but in prison, it was the equivalent of finding a bag of money. She didn’t even eat much chocolate on the outside, but after putting everything away, she settled on her bed and happily ate one. She even split it with her cellmates, who seemed to gain a level of confidence over the following days as well.

They’re protected by proxy. They’re Stephanie’s friends, and everyone knows to not mess with Emily’s girl.

It makes prison life more bearable. She still has to pretend that she’s not voluntarily following Emily around the rec yard, and she has to pretend that she’s being dragged against her will into empty cells and behind trees, and it was a particularly thrilling moment when Emily “jumped” her in the open group showers, making Stephanie get on her knees in front of everyone until Emily yelled at them to leave. She never could have predicted that prison would afford her the opportunity to act out so many fantasies, ones she didn’t even know she had until they were happening. It felt dirty and wrong, and maybe it was. It was also dangerous if they were to get caught. 

Weeks pass. She begs guards to use the phone to call her lawyer, citing her rights being violated by denying access to counsel, but they just laugh in her face or ignore her entirely.

At least she eats better now. Emily gets favorable treatment from the inmates working the kitchen, and so does she. One day, they even got to share an apple. An apple!

She’s going on eight months in when a guard shows up in her cell, cuffing her wrists and chaining her ankles to lead her, by herself, in a direction she’s never been taken before. “Where are you taking me?”

There’s no response from the guard, who jerks on the chain around her waist. He unlocks a door they eventually reach and pushes her through it. It slams closed and locks behind her.

Her attorney is sitting at a table with an empty chair waiting for her.

It’s an emotional conversation. He shares the gravity of her situation. What should happen next. What could go wrong. That once they finally get back to the USA, the process will finally begin and the time spent in prison in Greece will have been for nothing. That she and Emily will be tried separately, and that they will try to get one to implicate the other.

Stephanie would rather spend her life in prison for a murder she committed and failed to get away with, what she deserves, than let Emily be convicted of it.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Four months later, she and Emily are sitting on a prisoner transport plane above the Atlantic Ocean flying west. 

They’ve been extradited to face the laundry list of charges against them. They’re charged with many of the same crimes—first-degree murder, conspiracy, forgery, insurance fraud, and money laundering. Stephanie earned the bonus charges of kidnapping for taking Nicky to Greece and perjury for lying under oath at Sean’s murder trial. Emily’s bonus charge is bigamy for marrying Stephanie without divorcing Sean.

Their cases are messy, full of twists and turns and gray areas, and it’s those gray areas that her attorney assures her will result in exoneration. Is it kidnapping when Emily agreed to it, even if Sean didn’t? How can there be bigamy if there was no legal marriage to Stephanie? The exceptions are plentiful, and she gives herself a fifty-fifty chance in front of a jury.

Emily, asleep in her seat on the other side of the aisle, armed U.S. Air Marshals between them, has repeatedly promised that it will work out, that Stephanie will be okay, and that she’ll be reunited with their boys.

Each time Emily reassures her, she grows more worried. Emily is too confident about the situation, and red flags are starting to pop up in her mind.

The flags fade into the background for a while, because she has to adjust to her new home: York Correctional Institution in Connecticut. 

Detective Summerville is there when they arrive at intake. There’s no reason for him to be, but he is and doesn’t say a word. He just sits and smiles haughtily while they’re fingerprinted and photographed.

York is a far cry from Thiva. It’s still a prison, but it’s clean, comparatively. They have uniforms, and Stephanie’s gray sweatpants and maroon T-shirt are sized appropriately. She only has one cellmate who gives Stephanie the house rules on Day One, which she makes sure to follow. The food is tolerable. Comparatively. The chaos is more organized. Her attorney arranges weekly funding of her commissary account from her assets that haven’t been frozen by the government.

She’s surrounded by convicted felons and hardened criminals with serious charges awaiting trials. Like herself, she supposes.

At her bond hearing, she’s denied release despite her plea to be allowed to care for her son and her attorney’s arguments, for all the reasons she anticipated. She’s fled the country once. She knows how to change her identity. She’s accused of first-degree murder.

Freedom is denied with the slam of a gavel.

Prison is lonely. It’s monotonous. It’s dangerous. She struggles to not become a target of others’ misdirected rage, and she’s an easy target being as small and unassuming as she is. It’s apparent to everyone that she hasn’t made a habit of being locked up, and quickly earns the nickname ‘Pumpkin’ (or ‘Punkin,’ as most pronounce it), and several women try to stake claim to her. Several terrifying close calls keep her looking over her shoulder.

Many of them lay off her once she reveals she’s there on a murder charge after persistent questioning at meal times, and that she did time in Greece. Prison knows prison, she learns, and surviving the conditions of the facilities there earns her some respect. A few more finally leave her be when she mentions her wife is locked up there, too, also on a murder charge, and that her name is Emily Nelson.

It’s how she learns Emily’s done what she does best: she’s become a dominant inmate in her block better known as Half-Nelson, and the moniker makes Stephanie laugh. She assumes Emily made quick work of whoever the leader of her block was when she arrived. She hopes she wasn’t injured in the process.

News of power transfers travels quickly, and inmates in Stephanie’s block already know who Half-Nelson is, and were perhaps even warned to stay away from Stephanie if she were to guess by the way they stopped their repeated advances on her. She wishes she’d decided to drop Emily’s name much earlier. It’s also the first time she realizes she might have a way to communicate with Emily, if other people are, if only she can figure out how.

It’s all the things she knows prison is intended to be. They claim it’s supposed to be rehabilitative and teach her a lesson, but all it’s doing is filling her with her own rage and eroding her ability to trust people.

She gets to see Miles sometimes. It had taken many phone calls, a lot of tears, and a lot of breaking down her ego to convince her mother to take him in after Stephanie had kept him from her for nearly six years, leaving her to assume both he and her daughter were dead. It took even more phone calls and meetings with her attorney to set up a new guardianship—this time through Stephanie’s legal name. But she’d managed to get him stateside and avoid the foster system.

Visitations with him are hard. She had delayed it as long as she could, foolishly holding onto a false hope that this would all disappear tomorrow and she’d be released to wrap him up in her arms and kiss the top of his head and pretend that none of this had happened.

But time proved that would not be the case, and three months into her incarceration in Connecticut, she saw her son for the first time in a year. The reunion was in front of a prison guard and her judgmental mother who’d driven him down from Albany where she had moved to when she’d retired while Stephanie had been living her new life. Miles was taller than Stephanie now. She’d missed his thirteenth birthday a few weeks earlier.

He was angry. She wasn’t able to stop crying. He wanted to know what was going on, why she was in prison, why he wasn’t able to see her for so long, and where are his other mom and his brother. When can they all go home? Why did they do this to them?

She didn’t have any good answers for him. She promised she would explain everything eventually, and begged him for patience, trust, and understanding. She knew Nicky had been returned to his father not long after her arrest. She knew Emily was in prison. And she knew, via her attorney, that Emily was fighting her own custody battle for Nicky to not lose her rights permanently.

Even if Stephanie’s mother would allow it—she never would—Miles is disallowed from talking to Emily. She’d been his mother half his life, and he wasn’t allowed to talk to her.

It broke Stephanie’s heart, and it pained her to imagine Emily’s heightened isolation. At least Stephanie has her mother and Miles. Emily’s mother had been suffering from dementia for years, and Stephanie’s not sure if she’s still alive; even if she was, she knows Emily would want nothing to do with her. Stephanie and the boys had become Emily’s entire life, and they’ve all been ripped apart.

Unlike their incarceration in Greece, here her relationship with Emily is part of their records. Summerville made sure of it. Their permanent separation is mandated. She hasn’t seen Emily since they arrived. It’s maddening. It’s heartbreaking. She misses her wife and Nicky. She hasn’t been in control of her life for more than a year, and it feels like she was pushed out of an airplane without a parachute and she doesn’t know when she will finally hit the ground. She’s still falling.

“Smothers. Visitation.”

She has a black eye when she’s retrieved from her cell one morning. She’d carelessly reached for another inmate’s water cup, mistaking it for her own, and was promptly shown her mistake.

She checks the calendar on her wall; she doesn’t have an appointment with her attorney and Miles isn’t coming for another two weeks.

She’s shackled and led to the row of phone cubbies, and her blood runs cold as she sits down to find Sean Townsend waiting for her on the other side of the glass.

~*~*~*~*~*~

[spring2024golf-trevorhislop]

PHOTO ESSAY

Trevor Hislop

Professor Spurrier

Writing for the Media

03/26/2024

Rock Ridge Country Club: Photo Essay Overview

Rock Ridge Country Club, located in Newtown, CT, is a private country club ideal for families which boasts several awards for best family country club in Fairfield County. It enjoys a convenient proximity to Brookfield, Bethel, Danbury, Easton, Monroe, New Milford, and Redding. This is where the majority of members live, some live in NYC and come up on weekends and others live just off the course. Initially the course was just three holes, it served as the weekend retreat of a notable New York City physician. Later, the property was acquired and transformed into Pine Tree Country Club. Shortly thereafter, the property was purchased by a group that included numerous founding members of the club. They maintained the club's signature pine tree logo and established Rock Ridge Country Club in 1954. 70 years later, Rock Ridge offers several different amenities as a country club, featuring a stellar nine-hole golf course, Har-Tru tennis courts, an L-shaped swimming pool, and recently constructed pool cabana and clubhouse. The clubhouse includes a charming outdoor patio and fire pit strung all with string lights in recent years, serving as the central gathering point for the club's social events during the summer months. This year Rock Ridge added a beautiful top of the art golf simulator, a putting green and an upgraded driving range.

Here are some of the pictures from the Patio/Fire Pit and the Range

The Head Pro at Rock Ridge is a PGA Pro named Brian Hussey and I had a quick talk with him and asked him a little more about the club and a more in depth look. We talked about the tournament structure at Rock Ridge. The Espresso Cup which is a long-standing tournament started by the original members of the club. This is a team event between the Italians vs the rest of the club, since about half of the original club population was from Italy. I personally have always watched this event and rooted on my dad and team USA, the men always dress up in their country's colors and spirit and play each other in a matchplay golf event. This event usually starts the year. 

The main three tournaments are the Club Championship, Member Guest and The Nassau. The Member Guest is our biggest money maker and where we hold our staff, members and guests to the highest standard, this is how they promote the club, find potential members and there is a huge payout for the winner. The formatting of the member guest is pretty self explanatory as members will bring a guest and compete in a two day tournament where they are arranged by skill level and ultimately play using handicap to determine a grand champion. I personally have also watched this event growing up, it has always been basically a giant party for Rock Ridge members and their guests.

Next, is Nassau, this is the big money tournament of the year. 18 teams of four, which are randomly drawn, play in an ABCD format. For those of you who don’t know golf, this is basically where the 18 best players are listed as A’s, the next best 18 players are B’s and so on until you get to the D category. This is the biggest buy-in for a tournament all year and the most money on the table, this is only open to Men’s Club members and this is typically the most competitive of the year. Each player doesn’t want to let down their team and this event typically has the most nerves because using handicap, each player is on an even playing field. This makes all teams just about even.  

The last is the club championship, which is a single elimination tournament with all members usually trying to qualify, there is no handicap. It is to find the 16 best players at the club and annually they will do a single elimination bracket until there is one left. 

In Conclusion Rock Ridge Country Club is the ultimate destination for families and individuals seeking fun, relaxation, and social connections. With its impressive facilities, including a nine-hole golf course, tennis courts, swimming pool, and clubhouse, there's something for everyone to enjoy. From exciting activities and tournaments to peaceful moments by the pool, Rock Ridge is more than just a country club—it's a place where memories are made and friendships blossom.

[roman-catholic-mass-readings]

13th April >> Mass Readings (USA)

Saturday of the Second Week of Eastertide 

or

Pope Saint Martin I

Saturday of the Second Week of Eastertide

(Liturgical Colour: White. Year: B(II))

First Readings

Acts of the Apostles 6:1-7

They Chose seven menfilled with the Holy Spirit.

As the number of disciples continued to grow, the Hellenists complained against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution. So the Twelve called together the community of the disciples and said, “It is not right for us to neglect the word of God to serve at table. Brothers, select from among you seven reputable men, filled with the Spirit and wisdom, whom we shall appoint to this task, whereas we shall devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” The proposal was acceptable to the whole community, so they chose Stephen, a man filled with faith and the Holy Spirit, also Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicholas of Antioch, a convert to Judaism. They presented these men to the Apostles who prayed and laid hands on them. The word of God continued to spread, and the number of the disciples in Jerusalem increased greatly; even a large group of priests were becoming obedient to the faith.

The Word of the Lord

R/ Thanks be to God.

Responsorial Psalm Psalm 33:1-2, 4-5, 18-19

R/ Lord, let your mercy be on us, as we place our trust in you. or R/ Alleluia.

Exult, you just, in the LORD; praise from the upright is fitting. Give thanks to the LORD on the harp; with the ten-stringed lyre chant his praises.

R/ Lord, let your mercy be on us, as we place our trust in you. or R/ Alleluia.

Upright is the word of the LORD, and all his works are trustworthy. He loves justice and right; of the kindness of the LORD the earth is full.

R/ Lord, let your mercy be on us, as we place our trust in you. or R/ Alleluia.

See, the eyes of the LORD are upon those who fear him, upon those who hope for his kindness, To deliver them from death and preserve them in spite of famine.

R/ Lord, let your mercy be on us, as we place our trust in you. or R/ Alleluia.

Gospel Acclamation Romans 6:9

Alleluia, alleluia. Christ is risen, who made all things; he has shown mercy on all people. Alleluia, alleluia.

Gospel John 6:16-21 They saw Jesus, walking on the sea.

When it was evening, the disciples of Jesus went down to the sea, embarked in a boat, and went across the sea to Capernaum. It had already grown dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. The sea was stirred up because a strong wind was blowing. When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they began to be afraid. But he said to them, “It is I. Do not be afraid.” They wanted to take him into the boat, but the boat immediately arrived at the shore to which they were heading.

The Gospel of the Lord

R/ Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

--------------------------

Saint Martin I, Pope, Martyr 

(Liturgical Colour: Red. Year: B(II))

First Reading 2 Timothy 2:8-13; 3:10-12 All who want to live religiously in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

Beloved: Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David: such is my Gospel, for which I am suffering, even to the point of chains, like a criminal. But the word of God is not chained. Therefore, I bear with everything for the sake of those who are chosen, so that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, together with eternal glory. This saying is trustworthy:

If we have died with him we shall also live with him; if we persevere we shall also reign with him. But if we deny him he will deny us. If we are unfaithful he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself.

You have followed my teaching, way of life, purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, persecutions, and sufferings, such as happened to me in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra, persecutions that I endured. Yet from all these things the Lord delivered me. In fact, all who want to live religiously in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

The Word of the Lord

R/ Thanks be to God.

Responsorial Psalm Psalm 126:1bc-2, 2-3, 4-5, 6

R/ Those who sow in tears, shall reap rejoicing.

When the LORD brought back the captives of Zion, we were like men dreaming. Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with rejoicing.

R/ Those who sow in tears, shall reap rejoicing.

Then they said among the nations, “The LORD has done great things for them.” The LORD has done great things for us; we are glad indeed.

R/ Those who sow in tears, shall reap rejoicing.

Restore our fortunes, O LORD, like the torrents in the southern desert. Those that sow in tears shall reap rejoicing.

R/ Those who sow in tears, shall reap rejoicing.

Although they go forth weeping, carrying the seed to be sown, They shall come back rejoicing, carrying their sheaves.

R/ Those who sow in tears, shall reap rejoicing.

Gospel Acclamation cf. Te Deum

Alleluia, alleluia. We praise you, O God, we acclaim you as Lord; the white-robed army of martyrs praise you. Alleluia, alleluia.

Gospel John 15:18-21 If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.

Jesus said to his disciples: “If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you. Remember the word I spoke to you, ‘No slave is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. And they will do all these things to you on account of my name, because they do not know the One who sent me.”

The Gospel of the Lord

R/ Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

[wordglobalnews]

FIFA World Cup 2022 Rankings - points table and team standings of all groups after day 12

FIFA World Cup 2022 Points Table & Standings: Two groups of the FIFA World Cup 2022, Group E and Group F, went into action on day 12 of the mega event. The German team faced a major disappointment on Day 12 of the World Cup in Doha when they were eliminated early for the second consecutive tournament despite an impressive win against Costa Rica. Japan shocked Spain 2-1 to win their group for the first time ever. Morocco and Croatia from group F also secured spots in the final 16. However, after disappointing performances, Canada and Belgium will be heading home. In the first game of the day, neither team mustered a single successful attempt at goal as Belgium and Croatia drew 0-0. At the Al Thumama Stadium, Morocco defeated Canada by a score of 2-1 to advance to the knockout round for the first time since 1986. Japan shocked Spain by coming from behind to defeat them 2-1 early in the second half with two goals. Despite defeating Costa Rica 4-2, Germany failed to secure a place for itself in the round of 16.

As we now head towards the start of day 13 of the FIFA World Cup 2022 in Qatar, let's have a look at the points table and team standings.

Group A

All group matches from Group A have finished and the Netherlands and Senegal have qualified for knockouts.

Here are the points table and team standings of Group A. Teams Matches Played Win Loss Draw Points Netherlands (Q) 3 2 0 1 7 Senegal (Q) 3 2 1 0 6 Ecuador 3 1 1 1 4 Qatar 3 0 3 0 0 Group B

Likewise in Group A, the action in Group B is also wrapped up with England and the USA cruising through.

Here are the points table and team standings of Group B. Teams Matches Played Win Loss Draw Points England (Q) 3 2 0 1 7 USA (Q) 3 1 0 2 5 Iran 3 1 2 0 3 Wales 3 0 2 1 1 Group C

Group C finished with its league matches last night only with Argentina and Poland punching their tickets for the round of 16.

Here are the points table and team standings of Group C. Teams Matches Played Win Loss Draw Points Argentina (Q) 3 2 1 0 6 Poland (Q) 3 1 1 1 4 Mexico 3 1 1 1 4 Saudi Arabia 3 1 2 0 3 Group D

Two teams that made it to the knockouts of the FIFA World Cup 2022 from this group are France and Australia,

Here are the points table and team standings of Group D. Teams Matches Played Win Loss Draw Points France (Q) 3 2 1 0 6 Australia (Q) 3 2 1 0 6 Tunisia 3 1 1 1 4 Denmark 3 0 2 1 1 Group E

Group E went into action on day 12 of the FIFA World Cup 2022, where Japan and Spain emerged victorious leaving Germany and Costa Rica behind in the race to the round of 16.

Here are the points table and team standings of Group E. Teams Matches Played Win Loss Draw Points Japan (Q) 3 2 1 0 6 Spain (Q) 3 1 1 1 4 Germany 3 1 1 1 4 Costa Rica 3 1 2 0 3 Group F

Much like Group E, the Group F points table has also closed with Morocco and Croatia at the top two spots, thus reaching the knockout stages. Sadly, Belgium and Canada will be flying home shortly.

Here are the points table and team standings of Group F. Teams Matches Played Win Loss Draw Points Morocco (Q) 3 2 0 1 7 Croatia (Q) 3 1 0 2 5 Belgium 3 1 1 1 4 Canada 3 0 3 0 0 Group G

Only Brazil from this group have made it to the next round. Who is going to be the second team will be decided during the group's last league matches on December 2.

Here are the points table and team standings of Group G. Teams Matches Played Win Loss Draw Points Brazil (Q) 2 2 0 0 6 Switzerland 2 1 1 0 3 Cameroon 2 0 1 1 1 Serbia 2 0 1 1 1 Group H

With Portugal being the only team from this group to enter the round of 16, it remains interesting to see who follows them on Friday.

Here are the points table and team standings of Group H. Teams Matches Played Win Loss Draw Points Portugal (Q) 2 2 0 0 6

[thegeekx]

Iran vs USA: Stream FREE, TV channel, kick-off time, team news for 2022 World Cup CRUCIAL Group B clash

Iran vs USA: Stream FREE, TV channel, kick-off time, team news for 2022 World Cup CRUCIAL Group B clash

IRAN take on USA in their final mouth-watering Group B clash TONIGHT and there is much more than pride on the line. Late goals from Roozbeh Cheshmi and Ramin Rezaeian inspired the Iranians to a dramatic win over Wales. 1 Iran snatched a late win against Wales in their last World Cup fixtureCredit: Getty And as a result, it meant Iran jumped up to second spot in the table – just a point off…

[real-the-candid]

How England, USA, Wales, Iran can qualify for round of 16: FIFA World Cup, Group B points table, scenarios

How England, USA, Wales, Iran can qualify for round of 16: FIFA World Cup, Group B points table, scenarios

Ahead of the final group stages matches of the FIFA World Cup in Qatar, all four teams – England, Iran, USA and Wales — in Group B are in contention to make the knockout stages. England has nearly secured its round of 16 berth after a 6-2 win against Iran and a goalless draw against the USA in its first two matches. With four points and a goal difference of +4, the Three Lions can afford a defeat…

[smurphyse]

Booger

Masterlist

Chapter 6 of Over Your Shoulder

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Jasper Donnelly Keaton (Long Lost Love AU)

Word Count: ~10k (WHOOPS)

Summary: The following day at the B&B! and then on to the station! Don't worry, after this chapter we're leaving Alabama and delving into the plot finally <3

Warnings: Talks of Torture/violence. There is a scene with a dog that attacks a character, but nothing happens and the dog is NOT hurt!

Animal House, Georgetown, USA- 15 years ago

“C’mon, kid,” Derek laughed as he pulled Spencer into the college bar, “All of these girls are your age, maybe you’ll get lucky.”

Spencer was still in the academy, but had already begun some of his work within various units in the FBI. Derek Morgan was one of his training officers and was working with him in his profiler training. He insisted on bringing him ‘out for a night on the town.’

Spencer didn’t want to go.

He didn’t like going to places like this. It was too busy, too loud, and he was too out of place. He somehow felt like a fly on the wall and the focus of the freakshow all at once. He didn’t like to drink much, and he definitely didn’t like to dance, so there was no point in him even being there.

“Girls there are smart. You wear that Caltech sweater of yours and you’ll get laid in no time,” Derek said, clapping an uncomfortable Spencer on the shoulder.

“But I don’t really care about ‘getting laid,’” he said, using air quotes, “I have this book I got at the Carl Sagan lecture I went t-”

“Kid, kid,” Derek hushed, “You gotta get outta that pretty little head of yours and meet some people your own age.”

He gave Derek a pleading look, but ultimately was forced into coming. Derek all but shoved the CALTECH emblazoned sweater over Spencer’s button up, then mussed up his hair like he was a toddler.

“Perfect. Let’s go, genius.”

So, there he was, standing awkwardly with a horrible drink in his hand while Derek talked up a group of co-eds next to the bar.

It was a relatively small place, packed to the edges with students and military personnel on leave. Cigarette smoke wafted through the air, and it made him itch for one himself. He was trying to quit smoking, it was a terrible habit. Even his mother, in her often distant state, noticed the smell, no matter how many showers he’d had or how many times he washed his clothes before visiting. She always knew.

A group huddled around the pool table, joking and laughing around a stack of beer glasses and cans. Others milled about the walls and chatted. Everyone seemed coupled up besides him.

He wouldn’t normally mind, but Derek was his ride home, and it looked more and more like Spencer would be taking the bus by the way he was flirting with one of the girls.

A set of booths lined one wall, a variety of couples sitting in them and chatting. From where he stood Spencer could see a pretty girl sitting alone at one, dark untamed hair poofing around her shoulders. She looked bored, adjusting her large glasses with one hand while she twisted a whiskey tumbler with the other.

Maybe Derek was right, maybe he should try and meet some new people. He really didn’t care too much about ‘getting laid,’ as Derek put it, but he definitely wouldn’t mind if it happened. Especially with someone as cute as her. It had been a while.

Just as he thought about going over there she looked up at him, big brown eyes meeting his and holding him in place. She gave him a polite smile, blushing a sweet shade of red before turning back to her drink.

“Alright, baby, here we go,” a man said behind him, scooting around Spencer with two drinks in his hands. He sat down at the booth with the woman, handing her one of the shot glasses. She didn’t look too excited about the drinks, but she flashed Spencer an apologetic smile before she took it.

Spencer turned away from them. Oh well, at least that ended before he managed to get himself punched. The man with her was large, not as tall as Spencer, but well-muscled and heavily tattooed with a nose that looked like it had been broken a few times. His dark hair was cropped tight on the sides, the middle left a little longer and curly.

He’d probably die if he took a hit from that guy. No thank you.

He people-watched for another hour or so, only half listening to whatever Derek was spewing at the girl he had his arm around. Spencer eventually decided he should go off on his own, a little tired of hearing Derek’s macho flirting.

He turned on his heel without looking and slammed into a waitress and her full tray of drinks. She let go of the tray to steady herself, dumping it’s entire contents on the small woman from the booth, who had been walking toward the door. The man with her side-stepped the whole thing, bursting into laughter as the whole bar seemed to focus in on the commotion.

Her grey Marines shirt was soaked through with various brightly colored alcohols, her curly hair drenched at the ends. She took off her glasses and shook them off, her mouth open in shock as Spencer’s face melted under a beet red blush.

“What. The. Fuck,” she growled, turning her anger to Spencer. Her dark eyes filled with rage as he looked down at her. Had the look on her face not been so fierce, he might have thought it comical how angry this tiny woman was, teeth bared and wild hair flying around her shoulders, barely coming up to his chest. The waitress took one look at her and scurried off to the back.

“I, shit . I am so- I’m so sorry,” Spencer sputtered, his hands clenching tightly at his sides as he tried to come up with some reasoning for destroying her clothes. Derek had turned around, watching the whole thing in amusement as Spencer stuttered. He could see him out of the corner of his eye, laughing to himself.

“This is my favorite shirt,” she grumbled, half-heartedly wiping the excess liquid down her body. Her nipples poked through the thin fabric, and Spencer felt his chest flutter a bit when he noticed that they were most definitely pierced.

Her friend was still laughing, his hands on his knees. He straightened a bit, reaching his hand out and clapping Spencer on the shoulder, “Thank you for that. Seriously, thank you. That was the funniest shit I’ve seen in months.”

“You’re an asshole, Jack,” she seethed, glaring at both of them as though they were in cahoots.

“Oh, Jasper,” he sighed happily, “you look like a drowned poodle.”

“Well…” Spencer offered, trying to ease the tension that was building up his spine. He was dangerously close to imploding. “I think you look just as good wet as you did before.”

The man, Jack, burst into laughter again, as did Derek behind him. Spencer’s jaw snapped shut as he realized what he said, while the woman took a predatory step forward.

“Shit, no. That’s not what I meant. Here,” he said, pulling off his sweater and holding it out to her. “Something dry to change into. I’m so sorry.”

She snatched it from his hands, her little jaw set tightly in place. She watched him for a moment, a look he would later recognize as her sizing him up, “What’s your name, Stick? ”

“Dr. Spencer Reid,” Derek chuckled, coming to stand next to Spencer. He put a protective hand on his shoulder, letting him know he was there now that he’d gotten his amusement out of the situation.

“Spencer,” she said, pointing a finger at him with the hand clutching his sweater, “I’m gonna remember that.”

She turned and stalked off toward the bathrooms, flipping off her friend as she went. He stayed behind laughing. He wiped his eyes as he turned toward the other two men. He had a smile that put you at ease, and a laugh that made you want to laugh with him, but Spencer couldn’t muster it. He was horrified at himself.

“That was fucking beautiful.” He thrust his hand out to a mortified Spencer, “Jack Keaton. It was nice to meet you before you died.”

-----------------------------------------------

Americana Inn, Ellison, Alabama- 4:52 a.m., Present Day

Jasper’s eyes flew open, her chest heaving as she launched herself upwards and onto her knees. Sweat poured off her in waves, her brain trying to catch up with her body as she scanned the room around her for details.

Nightstand, dresser, mirror on top of dresser.

Bathroom door- open, east facing door- closed, probably an exit.

Table- badge, gun, phone.

Badge, gun, phone.

Badge.

Alabama. The FBI. She was in fucking Alabama in a stupid B&B looking for a serial killer… with goddamned Spencer Reid.

After coming in from the porch, Jasper had collapsed on the floor of her room. She spent a few minutes letting the tears stream down her face in silence before she heard Spencer’s footsteps outside the door.

Jasper knew it was him. He shuffled nervously for a few minutes, mumbling to himself too quietly for her to hear whatever he was saying. She held her breath, listening until she heard his door open and shut.

She’d dragged herself over to the bed, pulled the covers over her head and fell into a fitful, sweaty sleep for a few hours, only to be woken by another memory.

She was still coughing. As soon as she cleared her throat, another cough hit. She watched the blood spray against the wall every time another sob wracked her body.

Blood trickled down her arms and along the sides of her neck. She had long since given up on trying to hold herself up, instead letting the full weight of her body hang on the wires securing her wrists to the piping.

The blood that had pooled over her shoulders was beginning to dry, painfully crusting and pinching her skin when she moved. Her eyes were sluggish, closing and opening slowly as she tried to stay conscious.

It was no use, she was dying. She was going to die here. After everything, she was going to die in a drug den in fucking Texas.

She might as well be her mother. This might as well be the trailer she grew up in.

“Baby,” a voice came suddenly, next to her and worried. She hadn’t heard anyone come in. Her eyes fluttered open, and she began struggling against the hands that cupped her face.

She had nothing, nothing but the inability to die quietly, so she snapped her jaws at the warmth in front of her, trying to catch flesh and tear. She’d leave them something to remember her by.

“Baby, stop!” a voice pleaded as the pressure around her wrists eased. Her arms flopped uselessly at her sides, the pain beginning anew as blood rushed back to them, only to flow back out of her open wounds.

She fell limply into someone’s arms. She could see the bones sticking through her skin, and she sickly wondered if she could use them as weapons against whoever was manhandling her.

“I’m gonna take you home, Sugar, I’m gonna get you safe.”

She knew that voice.

“Jack?”

Jasper ripped back the covers. She couldn’t stay here. She needed to get out, run, run, run.

She pulled on a sports bra and some running shorts before tugging on her Nike’s. She jogged down the stairs, trying to keep as quiet as possible, but also hurrying to avoid anyone else who might not be able to sleep at five in the morning.

As soon as the front door to the hotel shut behind her, she sprinted off. She could stretch later, but now she needed to go.

The B&B’s yard was expansive. The grass could have used a mowing, but she relished the dew brushing against her ankles as she set off toward the woods. The hot early morning sun filtered through the trees, setting the yard ablaze with streams of glittering haze as it peeked over the horizon. The birds chirped as they zipped back and forth across the sky, and she felt her heart lift a little watching them.

She hit the trees at a sprint, beelining for the small path she had noticed when they arrived yesterday. She didn’t know where it was going to lead, but she didn’t care. If it took her off a cliff, she just might just swan dive down to the bottom.

She hated running before. After she lost the ability to walk for months because of Wren’s bullet, she took up running just to take advantage of her legs. It took a long time for her to be able to run with the tight and efficient form she had now, but that’s what over ten years of near daily practice got you- perfection.

There was no limp in her step anymore, she didn’t struggle to breathe as she pushed herself harder, faster, further.

Keep going until your legs collapse and your lungs start comin’ out of your nose, Sugar. Keep going until you forget. Until your body hurts more than your mind.

Memories. The ones she’d hidden away years ago kept bubbling to the surface ever since she set foot in the States two days ago.

There was no use in trying to run from memories, from pain. She had learned that long ago. It always caught back up with you. It always found you. All you can do is make new pain to ease the old.

Just like Spencer Reid, catching up with her. She walked out of his door fourteen years ago and hadn’t looked back, running from the pain he caused her by getting herself shot, stabbed, blown up, beaten with a bat . Yet, here he was, in the room next to her, touching her in the hot night and setting her skin aflame.

Jasper wished Jack was here. She wished she could just call him up and ask him what to do. He’d probably tell her to stick it out, to think about the good parts of dating Spencer, and not the parts that had shredded her to pieces.

Spencer had almost killed her, and still, his hand resting on her neck the night before had felt like a safe haven. She wanted to lean against it, wanted to have him hold her like that all night long.

You can’t trust him, especially not with something so fragile as your scabbed torn up excuse for a heart. He was so careless with it a decade and a half ago, what’s to stop him from hurting you again?

That’s what love is, isn’t it? You hand someone a knife, hold it to your own throat and tell them where to cut you, how to bleed you like a pig. The real danger is in trusting them not to. Trust is more important than love.

Spencer had pulled a part of her to light that she thought was gone. She had lost most of her hope years before, when Sam died, and then a little more when Eli found her, took her to Church and ripped the rest of it out of her tired body. She thought she had died in that place, but Spencer had shown her that a piece of the old Jasper survived, and that some of the girl that Sam had loved was still there.

She had trusted him not to cut her, but he did anyway. He did it so efficiently, it was as though the thinnest, sharpest blade sliced right through her heart in a single swipe, and then everything fell to pieces. All the blood rushed out of her.

Maybe she finally died that night.

Maybe she had been a ghost ever since, wandering the Earth in search of the life that had been stolen from her time and time again.

Jasper eventually rounded back to the edge of the property, the house coming back into sight as her chest began to ache. She could see a figure sitting on one of the rocking chairs on the porch.

It was Luke, holding a coffee cup and sipping from it. He lifted one from the table next to him and held it out for her as she climbed the stairs. He didn’t flinch at her scars, didn’t even look twice at them. He had seen them all before.

“Heard you take off like a bat out of hell,” he yawned, swiping a hand across his chin, “thought you could use this when you came back.”

“Mmm,” she grunted as she took the mug. Jasper leaned against the railing across from his seat, taking a sip of the coffee and avoiding his gaze. The dew from the grass began drying on her ankles and socks, the morning sun warming her back as she glared into the dark liquid.

“Luke, I can’t do this.”

“Can’t do what?” he asked, but the look on his face when she glanced up at him told her that he knew exactly what she was talking about.

“This job,” she said quietly. She trusted Luke, she really did. Jasper had done nothing but lie to him ever since she met him, but she really did trust him with her life. She almost felt guilty for lying so much to someone who cared about her as much as Luke did.

“Did you love him?”

“No,” she lied.

Luke nodded, taking another drag from his cup, “For a minute I really thought you wanted to work for the BAU.”

Jasper looked up at him, her mouth set in a grim line. Now she didn’t feel so bad.

“I do.”

“Why are you here, Jasper?” he asked, his tone laced with annoyance and disbelief.

“I told you. I wanted a change.” Never give in. Always stick to the lie, always stick to the cover. There’ll come a day when the lie is the only weapon you have to protect yourself, Sugar, and if there’s even the smallest crack in your cover, you ain’t makin’ it out alive.

Luke leaned forward in his chair, his shoulders rounding and tense as he rested his elbows on his knees. She steeled herself, his pose threatening her comfortability, her upper hand.

“I’ve always trusted you, Jasper,” he began, clenching his jaw in between sentences, his frustration bubbling to the surface. “Always.”

“I understand that in Iraq, over there , you had to lie to me. I was a Ranger, I was there to be your support team, not to be your supervisor. It wasn’t my job to know what your job was. It was my job to make sure you got where you needed to go, and that you came back.

“Even when you went into a building and came out covered in blood and brains and bruises, I knew you were doing something you had to, and I didn’t need to know what that was.”

He pointed to her scars angrily as he spoke. “Even when Jack showed up at my place at two o’clock in the morning and dragged me to a crack house in Dallas to find you beaten within an inch of your life, I didn’t ask why.”

“What’s your point, Luke?” She watched him with pointed disinterest, keeping her features calm and schooled though inside she was bristling.

“ I trust you. Even now. You don’t have to tell me why you’re here,” he sighed, “I know it’s got nothin’ to do with me, but these are good people. They’re not throw-aways like we were in the desert. These people, Jasper? They see for a living. All they do is theorize, observe, think . Eventually they’ll wonder why you’re here, and Spencer is just going to be another wrench in whatever plan you have.”

“Point?” she asked again, her jaw tight and her back coiled, ready to lash out if needed.

“ I don’t know what happened between you and Spencer, but the way you’re eyeing each other? That’s not something that’s just going to go away.”

“I’m leaving the BAU, Luke. I can’t move on with my life if he’s here. I can’t get the change I need around him,” she lied again. Never give in, never give up the lie, even when you’re caught. Especially when you’re caught. “I want to have a life here.”

“Fine. You want a change. You want a home. This is what you’re looking for,” Luke smiled smugly at her, “I’m not helping you leave the BAU.”

“What?” she growled dangerously, standing up straight from the railing. Luke rose from his chair, crossing his arms and looking down at her, his jaw set and his gaze full of steel.

“You’ll never admit it, but you trust me. You trusted me to have your back in a war-zone, and I’m asking you to trust me again. Get to know these people. If you ever decide you need help with whatever mission you’re on, this is the team that’s gonna get it done. I’ve got your back, just like I did in Iraq.

“And maybe, when you’re done causing whatever murder and mayhem you have planned, you’ll settle back down. Maybe with Dr. Reid in there. Make a baby or two, have a life. After everything he’s been through, God only knows he deserves it. You do, too.”

Jasper’s mask of emotional detachment dropped in an instant, “What the hell do you mean, ‘all he’s been through?’”

Luke shrugged, “It’s not my place to talk to you about that, Jasper.”

“Is he…” she started, bringing her free hand up to rub her forehead, “is he at least… okay?”

“He’s doing a lot better than he has any right to, considering.”

She thought about that for a moment as her chest tightened painfully. She never wanted anything bad to happen to Spencer. In fact, all Jasper ever wanted to do was protect him. He had said he wanted to do the same but still he was the one who went and...

Fuck that. Fuck him. Fuck them both.

“I’m not on a mission,” she said, putting the mask back on. Back to the matter at hand, getting out of the BAU.

“You’re a talented liar, Jasper. The best I’ve ever seen,” Luke shrugged, throwing his hands up in defeat, “I’m gonna keep on trusting that you’re here because you have something important to do. But don’t you dare use your history with him to back out of this. You got a job to do? Get it done. Figure your shit out with Spencer and move on.”

They stared at one another for a few moments. It was the first time she’d seriously thought about killing Luke Alvez.

Not really. Well, not completely. More like, incapacitate so he can’t fucking look at her like that anymore. Like he knew her.

He didn’t know shit.

-----------------------------

Spencer did not sleep.

He had been in complete shock when he saw Jasper’s scars. The protective part of him that tried to hold her broken pieces together so long ago had lurched out of his chest without his permission.

He hadn’t meant to touch her. In fact, he had made a mental note not to. Her skin was seething hot, and he wouldn’t have been surprised if his hands had molded to her soft skin.

God, she was soft.

Even with all her cracked and sharp edges, Jasper was soft. He still burned from where he’d touched her. His hand slid up her neck so easily, resting under her jaw with practiced ease and comfort, his fingers tracing that scar on her thigh without any hesitation, just trying to soothe.

Fourteen years. He had gone fourteen years without touching Jasper Donn- Keaton.

It was like coming home.

It was like she never left him.

Back then, she had always relaxed under his touch, sighed deeply and melted into his arms. Hours ago she had stiffened up, her whole body turning rock solid and tense as he touched her. That deer in the headlights look haunted him.

Was it his touch that had frightened her? Was it his touch? Was it his touch?

He didn’t want to think about that.

He had hurt her, he knew that. After what he did, Spencer was lucky Jasper hadn’t slapped him for daring to put his hands on her. He was lucky all she’d done was pull away and leave him on the porch with his mind racing.

What happened to her? He didn’t have the right to ask her. He didn’t have the privilege of knowing anything about her anymore.

Jasper moved to his lap on the couch, her strong thighs cradling his hips as she ground down against him. She muttered to herself in between kisses, about how stupid it was that he wore shirts like this in the first place, how he didn’t need this many buttons.

Finally he slapped away her hands and unbuttoned them himself, smiling against her mouth as she huffed in annoyance.

“I could’ve gotten it off myself,” she grumbled, running her hands over his chest as he tugged the shirt off his shoulders.

“Yeah, in a decade,” he laughed, kissing her again as he reached for the hem of her t-shirt.

She stopped him, resting her hands over his and squeezing once. Spencer looked up at her, moving his hands to her thighs, giving her a light squeeze back as she nervously held his gaze.

“I didn’t come back from Iraq because my tour ended,” she said quietly, her voice hardly above a whisper.

He didn’t want to ask, didn’t want to push her. The few times he had asked about her time over there she had changed the subject. He only nodded, moving one hand to cup her jaw and trace light circles behind her ear. She leaned into his palm, sighing softly.

“I have… a scar.” Jasper’s voice shook a bit as she tugged on the edges of her shirt, “It’s not pretty.”

“It’s yours,” Spencer whispered back. He leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to the tip of her nose, smiling when it scrunched up. “It’s beautiful.”

Jasper said nothing, her eyes searching for any hint of uncertainty. He had none. He knew he would love every piece of her body, scarred or not. He didn’t need to know what happened to know that.

She pulled her shirt over her shoulders slowly, clutching the fabric to her chest when her arms came down. She grabbed one of his hands from her thigh and pressed it against her chest.

He gasped when he felt it. It was big. He could feel the raised skin, hard and hotter than the rest of her under his touch. Spencer lightly tugged the shirt away from her chest so he could see the scar properly.

He smiled as it fell away, happy to know his hunch about her nipples being pierced was right. He placed a kiss between her breasts, smiling once more as she sighed and leaned into him.

The scar was big. It ripped from her ribs in a jagged line around to her back, smaller healed rips in her soft skin peppered around the biggest parts of it. An explosion? That made sense to him. What happens to soldiers? They get blown up with IEDs.

“Told you,” Spencer said, leaning down and kissing her ribs. She sucked in a breath as she watched him, and he just grinned back at her. “Beautiful.”

“You’re a sap, Stick.”

“That might be true,” he laughed, “but I’m always right.”

He stood suddenly, earning him a yelp as Jasper wrapped her legs around his waist. He walked into the bedroom and dropped her on the bed. She leaned back on her arms as she watched him unbuckle his pants and drop them.

Her wild hair flew around her shoulders as she hurried to pull hers down. She kicked them off, leaning back once more as Spencer admired her.

“Now,” he said, hooking his hands underneath her knees and tugging her toward him, “let’s see just how right I was about you looking good wet .”

Spencer scrubbed his face with his hands and sighed. He didn’t want to think about this, about how good things used to be. In the beginning they were happy. They were totally and completely in love with each other from the first- well, the second day they met.

The first night he met her he’d been terrified of her, but the very next day… that had been different.

Spencer had been hurrying to a profiling class when he heard a voice call his name. He’d turned, and there stood Jasper, still wearing his CALTECH crewneck, a pair of tight jeans and some Chucks, looking like she hadn’t slept all night.

She flashed him a tired smile, a cigarette in one hand as she leaned against a building. Sleepless bruises stained into her warm skin under her glasses. The sweatshirt hung halfway down her thighs, and she had the sleeves cuffed at the wrists so they wouldn’t hang over her hands.

If he thought she was pretty the night before, in the haze of the bar, she was stunning in the morning. The orange light from the rising run bounced off her curls, revealing a depth in the color he hadn’t noticed before. Her sleepy grin sent a warmth pooling down his spine, and suddenly he was glad he was such a klutz.

You ain’t getting this back, Stick.

I was gonna say, you should keep it. It looks better on you.

That was the first time he’d ever skipped a class. Derek had been furious with him until he told him that he’d managed to talk her into breakfast at Moe’s, even though he had just left there twenty minutes before. Derek listened with a big grin on his face as Spencer recalled their impromptu date.

He watched her make a little house with her waffles and some toothpicks, while he showed off his building prowess with a pancake hut of his own. The owner, Maureen “Moe'' McArthur, had been thrilled to see Spencer there with someone, and told Jasper she was tired of seeing him reading in the booth alone, much to Spencer’s embarrassment.

Jasper had smiled sweetly and asked for more stories, grinning as Moe prattled on. He watched her from across the booth, thinking about how he never wanted to eat pancakes again if it didn’t include an architectural adventure with Jasper.

Derek was proud, but told Spencer never to ditch class again, or he’d track him down and really embarrass him.

That had been a good day.

Spencer decided now was as good a time as any to get out of bed. He showered quickly and made his way downstairs, only to find the team standing in the dining room. They all were facing the windows, craning their necks to look out onto the porch.

“What are you guys doing?” he asked as he made his way into the room, looking around the buffet table for the coffee.

“Looks like the Wonder Twins aren’t getting along,” Rossi said over his coffee mug, pointing out the window.

Spencer moved to see Luke and Jasper standing on the porch. Jasper’s jaw was tight, her eyes narrowed as Luke spoke to her, standing tall with his arms crossed over his chest. Her anger seemed to drop off her face at one point, a look of shock taking over her usually stoic features.

The team scurried to look casual when Luke and Jasper came inside, chatting idly and sipping their drinks as they hit their seats. Spencer turned to the coffee pot and poured himself a cup without thinking.

Jasper came up next to him, holding her cup out for a refill. She glanced over to his mug, her brows knitting together as he filled hers.

“Since when do you drink your coffee black?” she asked.

Shit. He had been so busy trying to look busy that he hadn’t put any sugar or cream into his mug. Welp , he decided, can’t tell her I was watching her on the porch like a creep. He picked up the cup and took a sip, trying to school his features as the bitter liquid hit his taste buds.

Disgusting.

“Whenever the feeling hits, I guess,” he shrugged.

Jasper watched him take another drink, a smile playing along her lips. He scrunched up his nose at the taste. Black coffee really was the worst.

“I saw you guys spying from the window,” she laughed, her shoulders shaking as she watched him try to choke it down.

“Then why are you giving me grief?” he grinned, a bit proud of the way her eyes crinkled when she smiled at him. He finally grabbed the sugar and dumped it into the damned cup.

“Stick, you’ve never been able to fake nonchalance. It’s good to know some things never change.”

“Alright, maybe I was distracted. You’re not wearing any clothes,” he said, motioning to her scantily clad body, trying to ignore the scars that sent a violent shock down his spine when he saw them. She looked down, like she’d forgotten she was only in a sports bra and shorts.

“Not like you haven’t seen it before,” she shrugged, as though last night never happened, as though his reaction hadn’t been what sent her running back inside. She avoided his gaze, looking into her cup instead, but she didn’t move away.

“You look pretty much the same,” he said, chewing on the inside of his lip. This was so damn awkward. Would this ever not be?

“You don’t,” she said quietly, finally looking up at him. She only came up to his chest. He didn’t know why the thought always tickled him, it’s not like she was going to grow , but he liked the fact that she was still so small compared to him. “You grew up, Stick. Well, you’re not really a stick anymore, are ya?”

Spencer patted his belly, a little self-conscious. He’d bulked up a bit, finally taking up working out after leaving prison, never wanting to feel that vulnerable again. He’d never tell Derek, but he enjoyed lifting weights, but that probably had to do with the fact that Luke was more fun to exercise with than ‘Give-Me-One-More-Pretty-Boy’ Morgan

“I didn’t mean like that, you goober,” she chuckled, shaking her head, “I meant you… you look good, Spence. You look like you’re good.”

“I am, Jazz. It’s been a… heavy couple of years but I am good ,” he made a face as he said ‘good.’ After all, it was all relative, but he had felt good as of late.

“Heavy, huh?” her brows knitted together again, concern coating her soft features. Spencer's arm twitched, yearning to brush that stray curl behind her ear and have her lean into his palm. To make that sad face of hers change into one of comfort.

“I’m sorry about Jack,” he said suddenly, bringing up the only bad thing he knew that had happened to her since he last saw her. Dumbass, why would you say that?

Jasper’s eyes widened a bit, his change of conversation throwing her off balance. She opened her mouth and closed it, then opened it again as she shook her head, “You don’t have anything to be sorry about.”

“I mean it, though. I know what he meant to you.”

Her eyes hardened, soft puddles of brown backed by steel for a swift moment, “You don’t have anything to be sorry about, Spence.”

She smiled at him again, moving on , taking a step away from him and turning on her heel, “I’m gonna go take a shower and I’ll be back down.”

She took the coffee cup with her, poofy ponytail swinging behind her, and Spencer couldn’t help but smile as he remembered her fondness for drinking coffee in the shower. It was such an odd thing to enjoy, but he’d found it endearing, even when he started finding coffee mugs on the tub wall every morning.

They watched her climb the stairs, then all turned on Spencer.

“Stick?” Emily laughed, a big grin splashed across her face. Tara chuckled beside her, trying to hide her amusement behind her coffee mug.

“How’s she still walking around with scars like that?” Walker asked, “They look brutal.”

“Jasper’s tough, man,” Luke sighed, plopping himself down at one of the chairs. “Always has been.”

“She wasn’t kidding about that sniper taking off her leg,” Rossi said, “It must have taken her months to start walking again after that.”

“I remember when it happened. I visited her in the hospital. She said at the time she thought she’d exploded,” Luke nodded solemnly, “Said it took a few seconds for her brain to catch up to her body. She didn’t even feel it at first.”

“And the others?” Rossi leaned forward in his chair, “Did she feel those?” Luke watched Rossi for a moment, seemingly to decide what to say, “I, uh, I’m sure she did.”

“Do you know what happened?” Emily asked.

Luke glanced over at Spencer and scratched his temple as he thought, “Uh, yeah. Yeah, just in the line of duty stuff. You guys know how it goes.”

“I shouldn’t have pushed her,” JJ spoke up, having been quiet since he came down, “Last night, I mean.”

“I’m sure she doesn’t care,” Spencer smiled at her, patting her shoulder softly. “She probably liked that you were so straightforward. As much as she avoids her own feelings, Jasper likes when people just say what they mean.”

“Yup,” Luke nodded, “I bet you ten whole dollars she would’ve done the same thing to someone who was ignoring obvious questions about a significant other.”

“That’s a very specific set of parameters,” Emily chuckled, leaning across the table and thrusting her hand out to Luke, who took it with a grin, “You’ve got a deal.”

“You watch it, sister, I’mma win that money.”

--------------------------------------------

Jasper was about to snap.

Sure, she understood that she cut an interesting figure. Crazy hair, rage-backed eyes, tiny frame that gave her an unassuming air, sure. But what she could not understand was the capacity for straight men to continually hit on women even after they explicitly show disinterest.

She looked over at Spencer. He was already looking at her, watching as she half-listened to whatever the sheriff’s deputy was spouting at her. She tried to focus on the murder board in front of her, focus on the dead boys who needed her help. Focus on the mission.

“...you never know, you might have fun,” Deputy… Dunlop? Dunlap? Was saying to her.

“I’m sorry?” she asked, turning her attention to him, away from Spencer’s gaze.

She’d decided to wear the cardigan again over a linen tee and jeans. She didn’t normally like talking about her scars, or showing them off. People either got awkward, or they were too interested, wanting all the gory details. She peeled it off as she stared down the much taller man, revealing the deep scarring around her wrists and arms.

If the ring on her left hand didn’t deter him, the scars surely would. She saw Spencer sit up straighter out of the corner of her eye, sucking in a breath as he saw them once more. She knew it bothered him, but fuck him. They weren’t about him.

Jasper crossed her arms as she glared at the deputy, “I wasn’t listening.”

“Oh,” he sputtered, his face turning red as he eyed her scars and ignored the look on her face. Spencer stood from his chair, his hands snaking into his pockets as his chest puffed out. Luke glanced over at them, no doubt recognizing the beginnings of a situation.

The deputy was handsome enough, and in another situation she might take him up on whatever sexual escapade he was not-so-subtly suggesting to her, but right now her mind was being pulled in too many directions to teach Deputy Dumbass how to give head in a remotely satisfying way.

“I was just saying,” he drawled, pulling back some of the confidence he’d lost, “after we catch this guy I could show you the flower fields over the hill. They’re real pretty.”

“Are you asking me out in front of the pictures of a bunch of dead kids?”

“Uh- I-���

“I’m going to assume not,” she took a predatory step forward, eyes narrowed, backing him up against the wall, “because if you ask me out one more time after I told you no three times yesterday, I’m gonna have to take that pathetic little pants pinkie of yours and toss it out to the squirrels just to drive home how little I want to do with you outside of this precinct.”

“Alright,” Luke said, coming up behind her and putting a protective hand on her shoulders. He pulled her closer to his chest and away from the deputy, who looked seconds away from pissing himself. “Let’s get back to what we were doing.”

“That’s all we need from you, Deputy Dunlap,” JJ smiled sweetly, eyes following him as he high-tailed it out of the room.

“Rough being this good lookin’, huh?” Rossi joked, sidling up next to her at the board. Luke gave her a squeeze before letting go of her arms, warning her to keep her temper intact. He knew how she could be.

She liked Rossi. He was tough and grizzled but soft enough that you just knew he had your back. She didn’t like that , didn’t like that she wanted to trust him, but that’s what teams do. They trust one another.

She trusted her team.

Ugh. When they found out about this, they’d never let her hear the end of it.

“Oh, you’d know more about that than I would, sir,” she smiled, her peripheral vision still trained on Spencer’s staring problem.

“Good answer,” he laughed. He gestured to her arms, and then to the chair behind them she’d tossed the cardigan on. “I’m surprised it took you this long to shuck that thing.”

Jasper shrugged, “Sometimes it’s easier to cover them up than to talk about them.”

“You don’t seem like the type to be ashamed of something that trivial.”

Jasper turned toward him, smiling. She really liked Rossi, but he scared her. This whole team did. They saw too much, and Spencer knew too much about her.

She’d loved him too much. She showed him too many parts of herself that before she had kept hidden from everyone. He knew her tells, her fears- how she sounded when she was scared, waking up screaming and crying, trying to run from the blood and guts and piss and violence that was now part of her daily life.

“I’m not,” she said slowly, “I guess there’s someone here who knew me before I had them, and I’ve never really had that before.”

“Move on a lot?”

“Yeah, you could say that.”

She looked at him again, studying his face. He wore a nonchalant smirk, and had she not known of his profession, and not been so good at hers, she might see it as passive disinterest. But it was the opposite. Rossi was curious. They all were, all hungry to know more about the girl who’d slept with Spencer Reid.

She knew Spencer. In the past fourteen years he probably hadn’t had too many serious girlfriends, instead shrinking in on himself and not putting himself out there. The team probably hadn’t met too many exes of his. Hell, the only reason she even looked at him twice was because he was standing in the middle of the bar as Jack went to get those stupid shots all those years ago.

She’d been clocking Jack’s movements, struggling to be in such a public place without a gun on her person. Jack had made her leave them at home, though she never told him she’d kept the knife in her Chucks. He’d probably known, but let her keep it anyway.

He wanted her to unwind that night, to take a breath and reintegrate with a society that had long-since thrown her away. She didn’t think she needed it. Doing the job they did, she could easily go the rest of her life not creating relationships or talking with any of those people. If it were up to them she’d be locked up in a six-by-six cell with no windows. That’s probably where she should be.

Jack had been furious when she came back from the mission in Iraq nearly split in two by a humvee door. She thought for a moment, in her drug-fueled hospital bed haze, that he might actually kill Eli for sending her to a warzone. He’d been against it, been against her going out without him for backup.

She’d awoken in so much pain in some Army hospital in Germany. Her ribs crackled with every breath and her head was pounding as she took stock. After she’d gotten over the shock of being in a safe room instead of the desert, she finally noticed Jack’s hand clasped in hers as his head rested on the bed next to her, fast asleep.

Eli was sitting in the chair in the corner, his face lighting up when she finally noticed him. A shiver had run down her spine. She hated seeing him smile. Bad things happened when Eli smiled.

Welcome back to the world, Sugar. I thought I lost my best girl there for a moment.

Rossi was still looking at her expectantly. She decided she might as well get it over with quickly. She held her arms out in front of her and twisted them, showing Rossi how the scars went through both sides of her forearms.

“Someone tied me up and decided to play whack-a-mole.”

“Looks like it hurt.”

“It did.”

“Did you get the guy?”

“Something like that,” she said, giving him a pointed look.

Rossi measured her gaze, trying to look past the steel and into whatever she was hiding. She knew he wouldn’t find anything, she was too good at putting it in a box and walking away from it.

“Good girl.”

“I want you to say goodbye, Sugar,” Eli said, chewing on the end of his cigar as he pointed toward the approaching building. Church, as he called it.

“A piece of you is going to die in there, and you’re never going to get it back. You might not notice it’s gone tomorrow, but ten years, hell maybe even in two months, you’re going to feel a piece of you let go. You’re gonna bathe in this shit. You’ll be up to your goddamned eyeballs and you don’t have the luxury of holding on to the hope that things’ll just work out in the end. You either make it or you don’t. Survive or die.”

He pulled a pistol out of his hip holster and pointed it between her eyes. She didn’t flinch, and she didn’t blink in surprise as her fucked up brain thought about how much colder the metal was than she’d thought it would be.

“Your choice, Sugar. You comin’ inside with me or am I leavin’ you out here?”

“Who’s Sugar?” she asked, turning away from the gun and looking toward the horizon. She could say the piece of her that had hope died right there, but with how easily it seemed to slink into the ether, she wondered if she hadn’t lost it long before.

“Good girl.”

Teams like the BAU, ones who see the nitty gritty, but don’t actually have to wade in the blood themselves, they don’t see self defense as anything more than ‘that guy tried to kill me, so I killed him.’ In Jasper’s world it was different. You didn’t wait for someone to kill you, you killed them before they even saw you. Any other margin of contact, any bit of error, could be the life and death of hundreds.

She wasn’t scared to kill, or to die, but she was scared of Eli.

Thank God he was dead.

“I forgot that people do that,” Spencer said, plopping back into chair, leaning back as he flicked a pencil between his fingers anxiously.

“Do what?” she asked, painfully aware of the rest of the team milling about the room. They had no doubt seen the bit with her arms, probably watched as the deputy hit on her while she was lost in thought.

“Ask you out even if it’s highly inappropriate,” he smiled awkwardly, nodding to himself.

“Oh,” she said. She had forgotten, or at least she had gotten used to it over the years. When they had dated, people did that constantly. They had no idea she was so incredibly in love with the skinny genius she didn’t even notice them until they poked her on the shoulder and interrupted her ‘let’s stare at Spencer’ moment.

“It’s not like anyone could ever pull me away from you, anyways, Stick,” she said without thinking.

“Stick?” Tara asked amusedly, a deep grin on her face as she turned toward them.

Jasper felt the blush rip up the back of her neck and over her cheeks. Stick . She only ever called him that in private, as he would get embarrassed by it in public. He didn’t mind when she called him that at home, prancing around in one of his shirts, happily sinking to her knees to make up for it. To tell the truth, she could’ve stayed on her knees forever for Spencer Reid. She would’ve done anything to look up at any moment and see his head thrown back in bliss, a soft blush patching over his shoulders and face as he lost himself in her.

“What do you think of this guy? Mark Halsten” she asked, looking away from Spencer and his stupid staring and holding up a file. “Hits all the right places- super-pedo, anger issues, lives in a remote area.”

Luke snatched the file from her hands, flipping through it quickly. Emily reached over and snagged it from him as well, nodding as she read.

“How about you and JJ go and interview him? We’ll keep going through the paper files and see if we can find anything else.”

Jasper and JJ glanced at one another, unsure eyebrows cocked at the idea of a partnership. Jasper understood JJ, understood why she was the way she was. She was protective of Spencer, and could probably see that having Jasper around had stretched the team dynamic just a bit.

“Cool,” Jasper smiled, picking up the SUV keys from the table, “I’ll drive.”

------------------------------------

Halsten’s house was about ten minutes outside of town, somewhere in the boonies. JJ and Jasper rode in silence, JJ rubbing her temple and looking over and over again like she wanted to speak, only to turn back to the window and snap her jaw shut.

Jasper ignored her for the most part, focusing on the terrain in front of her. As soon as they left Ellison city limits the road turned to gravel and remote fields. It was a desolate countryscape, and not knowing the lay of the land was making her nervous. There could be snipers in the treeline, or camouflaged men lying in wait in the tall grass.

“I’m sorry about last night,” JJ finally blurted. Jasper had figured that was what she’d been so upset about. Walking on eggshells when yesterday she wouldn’t stop pestering Jasper with questions.

“For what?” she deadpanned, taking a turn up a small hill. She kept scanning their surroundings. She had a bad feeling about this.

“I shouldn’t have pushed you to talk about your husband.” “Did you know he was dead?”

“What?” JJ asked, turning her body toward Jasper in shock.

“Did you know he was dead? Did you kill him?”

“No,” she shook her head, “of course not. How could I?”

“Exactly,” Jasper grunted, already over this conversation. Nobody needed to know about Jack or their relationship. “It’s not a big deal. He’s been dead for over a decade. I’ve moved on.”

“Why do you still wear your wedding ring, then?”

Jasper’s jaw clenched, her thumb moving to rub the small band. It was a small diamond set with two pearls on a gold band. It was one of the only personal possessions she’d consistently kept with her. The rest were in a storage unit in Arlington.

“It’s not really my wedding ring,” she sighed, “Someone gave me a ring but then he died. After Jack was gone, I melted both bands down and had them remade with the gems from both of them. Jack’s gave me a diamond, the other gave me the pearls.”

“Were you and this guy together?”

Jasper turned into the driveway of Mark Halsten. She stepped on the brakes just a little too hard, jerking JJ forward in her seat. She glared at the blonde agent, trying to contain herself.

“Yes,” she whispered through clenched teeth. “This was the easiest way to keep them both with me while I was working.”

She kicked open the driver’s door as she turned off the ignition. JJ followed out from her side, hands on both their holsters as they approached the Halsten residence.

It was a run-down ranch style home on a big property with a sagging porch. There was a barn behind the house that looked like it hadn’t been used for farming in years. The grass was long, almost up to their knees as they stepped up the stone path to the door. Jasper could smell that familiar scent, rancid heat-soaked remains, but it could be anything this far out in the country.

Suddenly the screen door flew open, a streak of brown fur and teeth shooting out toward them. JJ bolted back toward the car, climbing the hood, but Jasper stood her ground. As the pitbull followed JJ for running, Jasper waited for it to pass her, grabbing his collar and twisting tightly.

The dog jerked back in her grip, his jaws snapping and snarling. JJ’s gun was pointed toward them, but Jasper just twisted the collar tighter, kicking the dog's legs out from underneath it and pinning it to the ground in one swift movement. She set one knee down on the back of the dog’s neck, just under her grip on the collar, the other on it’s back hips.

“ Stay,” she snarled into the dog’s ear, pinching the collar tightly against its neck. It whimpered and stilled underneath her, looking up at her in fear.

“ Hey, hey, hey! ” a voice burst from the door. A young white man in jeans and an old t-shirt shoved it open and stepped onto the porch. “You best not hurt that dog!”

“Sir, you ne-,” JJ started, still standing on top of the SUV, pointing her gun at the man.

“Give me a leash, or I put a bullet in it , and then you ,” Jasper snapped, holding her gun against the dog’s head. She wouldn’t really shoot the damned thing if she couldn’t subdue it, but this asshole didn’t know that.

“ Slowly, ” JJ warned as the man opened the door back up. He sluggishly pulled a leash from behind the main door, shaking it like an asshole toward Jasper before he threw it to her.

She clipped the dog’s collar, twisting the leash tightly in her hand so it was taut. She let the dog sit up slowly, holstering her gun as they both stood. It watched her, unsure what to make of her.

“Booger, come ,” the man said, patting his thigh. The dog glanced back up at Jasper, who tugged the leash tighter. It looked back at the man, but stayed in it’s spot.

“Are you Mark Halsten?” Jasper asked.

He glared at her, looking between her and Booger before answering, “Yeah, what’s it to you?”

“We’re with the FBI, we’d like to ask you a few questions about the child murders that have been going on over the last few months.”

“I ain’t had nothin’ to do about that. I don’t need to talk to feebs, anyways,” he sneered, hands on his hips. Jasper just wanted to shoot this pedo and be done with it.

“You’re on parole, right?” JJ asked, stepping down from the hood of the car. “All it takes is one call to your parole officer and your little property is crawling with us feebs .”

Halsten looked at her for a moment, bouncing on his toes. He bolted, taking off toward the barn.

JJ and Jasper followed, but he was taller than them both, and faster. He made it to an old pickup behind the house before they could stop him, throwing it in drive and tearing ass back toward them.

“Move!” Jasper yelled, tackling JJ out of the way of the truck. As it passed she pulled her back to her feet and dragged her back toward the SUV. The dog watched it all unfold, sitting obediently where Jasper had left him.

Jasper jumped into the driver’s seat, barely waiting for JJ to climb into her side before pulling the SUV into reverse and following Halsten down the driveway. She flipped it into drive as she exited the driveway, wincing as the bumper hit a tree before she switched gears.

“Be advised,” JJ ordered into the walkie, holding onto the ‘oh-shit’ handle, “Agents Keaton and Jareau are in pursuit of an 2000’s model Chevy pickup truck, color blue, down Route 6 toward Ellison. Suspect’s name is Mark Halsten, twenty-nine, white male, blue eyes and blonde hair, approximately six-foot three.”

“Affirmative,” Luke’s voice cracked through the speaker, “We’re five minutes out.”

They followed his erratic driving around the hills for a few minutes, just making sure he didn’t hit anyone else and didn’t crash until backup could arrive. She wished Billy was driving, he was their pilot and driver. He was way better at this shit than her.

Jasper turned another bend, closing in on Halsten’s pickup. He made a hairpin turn, using his vehicle as a battering ram as it came back toward them.

“Jasper!” JJ screamed, holding tightly to the handle and the center console. Just before the truck hit them, Jasper pulled the emergency brake as hard as she could, turning the car so the impact would hit just behind the driver’s seat.

Jasper tried not to squeeze her eyes shut as the grill of the truck slammed into their car. The sound of crunching glass filled the air, followed by the airbags smashing into Jasper’s nose and launching her into unconsciousness.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Kudos and Comments are writer fuel! Please let me know what you enjoyed so far! Let me know your feelings on what's going on!

Do you guys like the long chapters? I feel bad writing short ones when you wait a week to read the chapter? And I never know how to stop prattling on.

- Smurph❤

Forever Tag:

@simplyparker, @spencerreidsmommy

(Lol I know this is Chapter 6, but like... yeah I've been posting these all day)

[ptvsport]

How England, USA, Wales, Iran can qualify for knockouts: FIFA World Cup, Group B points table, scenarios

How England, USA, Wales, Iran can qualify for knockouts: FIFA World Cup, Group B points table, scenarios

Ahead of matchday two of the FIFA World Cup, England is in a prime position to qualify for the knockouts in Group B. England beat Iran 6-2 in the opening match on Monday and needs another win against the USA on Friday to seal its passage into the round of 16 stage. A defeat for Iran against Wales in the afternoon kick-off and a point for England against the USA will spell elimination for the…

[smurphyse]

Over Your Shoulder

Smurphyse - Masterlist

Prefer to read on ao3 or want to read the tags/warnings? Read it here.

Chapter 6: Booger

Summary: The following day at the B&B! and then on to the station! Don't worry, after this chapter we're leaving Alabama and delving into the plot finally <3Like I said, I see Jack Keaton as Jake Johnson from Stumptown, 100%! I just think Jack's character has the same funny guy/buff secretive dude ratio that he has lol. This chapter clocks in at just under 10k words, so I'm sorry lol

Notes: CW: Talks of Torture/violence CW: There is a scene with a dog that attacks a character, but nothing happens, and the dog is NOT hurt!

Animal House, Georgetown, USA- 15 years ago

“C’mon, kid,” Derek laughed as he pulled Spencer into the college bar, “All of these girls are your age, maybe you’ll get lucky.”

Spencer was still in the academy, but had already begun some of his work within various units in the FBI. Derek Morgan was one of his training officers and was working with him in his profiler training. He insisted on bringing him ‘out for a night on the town.’

Spencer didn’t want to go.

He didn’t like going to places like this. It was too busy, too loud, and he was too out of place. He somehow felt like a fly on the wall and the focus of the freakshow all at once. He didn’t like to drink much, and he definitely didn’t like to dance, so there was no point in him even being there.

“Girls there are smart. You wear that Caltech sweater of yours and you’ll get laid in no time,” Derek said, clapping an uncomfortable Spencer on the shoulder.

“But I don’t really care about ‘getting laid,’” he said, using air quotes, “I have this book I got at the Carl Sagan lecture I went t-”

“Kid, kid,” Derek hushed, “You gotta get outta that pretty little head of yours and meet some people your own age.”

He gave Derek a pleading look, but ultimately was forced into coming. Derek all but shoved the CALTECH emblazoned sweater over Spencer’s button up, then mussed up his hair like he was a toddler.

“Perfect. Let’s go, genius.”

So, there he was, standing awkwardly with a horrible drink in his hand while Derek talked up a group of co-eds next to the bar.

It was a relatively small place, packed to the edges with students and military personnel on leave. Cigarette smoke wafted through the air, and it made him itch for one himself. He was trying to quit smoking, it was a terrible habit. Even his mother, in her often distant state, noticed the smell, no matter how many showers he’d had or how many times he washed his clothes before visiting. She always knew.

A group huddled around the pool table, joking and laughing around a stack of beer glasses and cans. Others milled about the walls and chatted. Everyone seemed coupled up besides him.

He wouldn’t normally mind, but Derek was his ride home, and it looked more and more like Spencer would be taking the bus by the way he was flirting with one of the girls.

A set of booths lined one wall, a variety of couples sitting in them and chatting. From where he stood Spencer could see a pretty girl sitting alone at one, dark untamed hair poofing around her shoulders. She looked bored, adjusting her large glasses with one hand while she twisted a whiskey tumbler with the other.

Maybe Derek was right, maybe he should try and meet some new people. He really didn’t care too much about ‘getting laid,’ as Derek put it, but he definitely wouldn’t mind if it happened. Especially with someone as cute as her. It had been a while.

Just as he thought about going over there she looked up at him, big brown eyes meeting his and holding him in place. She gave him a polite smile, blushing a sweet shade of red before turning back to her drink.

“Alright, baby, here we go,” a man said behind him, scooting around Spencer with two drinks in his hands. He sat down at the booth with the woman, handing her one of the shot glasses. She didn’t look too excited about the drinks, but she flashed Spencer an apologetic smile before she took it.

Spencer turned away from them. Oh well, at least that ended before he managed to get himself punched. The man with her was large, not as tall as Spencer, but well-muscled and heavily tattooed with a nose that looked like it had been broken a few times. His dark hair was cropped tight on the sides, the middle left a little longer and curly.

He’d probably die if he took a hit from that guy. No thank you.

He people-watched for another hour or so, only half listening to whatever Derek was spewing at the girl he had his arm around. Spencer eventually decided he should go off on his own, a little tired of hearing Derek’s macho flirting.

He turned on his heel without looking and slammed into a waitress and her full tray of drinks. She let go of the tray to steady herself, dumping it’s entire contents on the small woman from the booth, who had been walking toward the door. The man with her side-stepped the whole thing, bursting into laughter as the whole bar seemed to focus in on the commotion.

Her grey Marines shirt was soaked through with various brightly colored alcohols, her curly hair drenched at the ends. She took off her glasses and shook them off, her mouth open in shock as Spencer’s face melted under a beet red blush.

“What. The. Fuck,” she growled, turning her anger to Spencer. Her dark eyes filled with rage as he looked down at her. Had the look on her face not been so fierce, he might have thought it comical how angry this tiny woman was, teeth bared and wild hair flying around her shoulders, barely coming up to his chest. The waitress took one look at her and scurried off to the back.

“I, shit . I am so- I’m so sorry,” Spencer sputtered, his hands clenching tightly at his sides as he tried to come up with some reasoning for destroying her clothes. Derek had turned around, watching the whole thing in amusement as Spencer stuttered. He could see him out of the corner of his eye, laughing to himself.

“This is my favorite shirt,” she grumbled, half-heartedly wiping the excess liquid down her body. Her nipples poked through the thin fabric, and Spencer felt his chest flutter a bit when he noticed that they were most definitely pierced.

Her friend was still laughing, his hands on his knees. He straightened a bit, reaching his hand out and clapping Spencer on the shoulder, “Thank you for that. Seriously, thank you. That was the funniest shit I’ve seen in months.”

“You’re an asshole, Jack,” she seethed, glaring at both of them as though they were in cahoots.

“Oh, Jasper,” he sighed happily, “you look like a drowned poodle.”

“Well…” Spencer offered, trying to ease the tension that was building up his spine. He was dangerously close to imploding. “I think you look just as good wet as you did before.”

The man, Jack, burst into laughter again, as did Derek behind him. Spencer’s jaw snapped shut as he realized what he said, while the woman took a predatory step forward.

“Shit, no. That’s not what I meant. Here,” he said, pulling off his sweater and holding it out to her. “Something dry to change into. I’m so sorry.”

She snatched it from his hands, her little jaw set tightly in place. She watched him for a moment, a look he would later recognize as her sizing him up, “What’s your name, Stick? ”

“Dr. Spencer Reid,” Derek chuckled, coming to stand next to Spencer. He put a protective hand on his shoulder, letting him know he was there now that he’d gotten his amusement out of the situation.

“Spencer,” she said, pointing a finger at him with the hand clutching his sweater, “I’m gonna remember that.”

She turned and stalked off toward the bathrooms, flipping off her friend as she went. He stayed behind laughing. He wiped his eyes as he turned toward the other two men. He had a smile that put you at ease, and a laugh that made you want to laugh with him, but Spencer couldn’t muster it. He was horrified at himself.

“That was fucking beautiful.” He thrust his hand out to a mortified Spencer, “Jack Keaton. It was nice to meet you before you died.”

-----------------------------------------------

Americana Inn, Ellison, Alabama- 4:52 a.m., Present Day

Jasper’s eyes flew open, her chest heaving as she launched herself upwards and onto her knees. Sweat poured off her in waves, her brain trying to catch up with her body as she scanned the room around her for details.

Nightstand, dresser, mirror on top of dresser.

Bathroom door- open, east facing door- closed, probably an exit.

Table- badge, gun, phone.

Badge, gun, phone.

Badge.

Alabama. The FBI. She was in fucking Alabama in a stupid B&B looking for a serial killer… with goddamned Spencer Reid.

After coming in from the porch, Jasper had collapsed on the floor of her room. She spent a few minutes letting the tears stream down her face in silence before she heard Spencer’s footsteps outside the door.

Jasper knew it was him. He shuffled nervously for a few minutes, mumbling to himself too quietly for her to hear whatever he was saying. She held her breath, listening until she heard his door open and shut.

She’d dragged herself over to the bed, pulled the covers over her head and fell into a fitful, sweaty sleep for a few hours, only to be woken by another memory.

She was still coughing. As soon as she cleared her throat, another cough hit. She watched the blood spray against the wall every time another sob wracked her body.

Blood trickled down her arms and along the sides of her neck. She had long since given up on trying to hold herself up, instead letting the full weight of her body hang on the wires securing her wrists to the piping.

The blood that had pooled over her shoulders was beginning to dry, painfully crusting and pinching her skin when she moved. Her eyes were sluggish, closing and opening slowly as she tried to stay conscious.

It was no use, she was dying. She was going to die here. After everything, she was going to die in a drug den in fucking Texas.

She might as well be her mother. This might as well be the trailer she grew up in.

“Baby,” a voice came suddenly, next to her and worried. She hadn’t heard anyone come in. Her eyes fluttered open, and she began struggling against the hands that cupped her face.

She had nothing, nothing but the inability to die quietly, so she snapped her jaws at the warmth in front of her, trying to catch flesh and tear. She’d leave them something to remember her by.

“Baby, stop!” a voice pleaded as the pressure around her wrists eased. Her arms flopped uselessly at her sides, the pain beginning anew as blood rushed back to them, only to flow back out of her open wounds.

She fell limply into someone’s arms. She could see the bones sticking through her skin, and she sickly wondered if she could use them as weapons against whoever was manhandling her.

“I’m gonna take you home, Sugar, I’m gonna get you safe.”

She knew that voice.

“Jack?”

Jasper ripped back the covers. She couldn’t stay here. She needed to get out, run, run, run.

She pulled on a sports bra and some running shorts before tugging on her Nike’s. She jogged down the stairs, trying to keep as quiet as possible, but also hurrying to avoid anyone else who might not be able to sleep at five in the morning.

As soon as the front door to the hotel shut behind her, she sprinted off. She could stretch later, but now she needed to go.

The B&B’s yard was expansive. The grass could have used a mowing, but she relished the dew brushing against her ankles as she set off toward the woods. The hot early morning sun filtered through the trees, setting the yard ablaze with streams of glittering haze as it peeked over the horizon. The birds chirped as they zipped back and forth across the sky, and she felt her heart lift a little watching them.

She hit the trees at a sprint, beelining for the small path she had noticed when they arrived yesterday. She didn’t know where it was going to lead, but she didn’t care. If it took her off a cliff, she just might just swan dive down to the bottom.

She hated running before. After she lost the ability to walk for months because of Wren’s bullet, she took up running just to take advantage of her legs. It took a long time for her to be able to run with the tight and efficient form she had now, but that’s what over ten years of near daily practice got you- perfection.

There was no limp in her step anymore, she didn’t struggle to breathe as she pushed herself harder, faster, further.

Keep going until your legs collapse and your lungs start comin’ out of your nose, Sugar. Keep going until you forget. Until your body hurts more than your mind.

Memories. The ones she’d hidden away years ago kept bubbling to the surface ever since she set foot in the States two days ago.

There was no use in trying to run from memories, from pain. She had learned that long ago. It always caught back up with you. It always found you. All you can do is make new pain to ease the old.

Just like Spencer Reid, catching up with her. She walked out of his door fourteen years ago and hadn’t looked back, running from the pain he caused her by getting herself shot, stabbed, blown up, beaten with a bat . Yet, here he was, in the room next to her, touching her in the hot night and setting her skin aflame.

Jasper wished Jack was here. She wished she could just call him up and ask him what to do. He’d probably tell her to stick it out, to think about the good parts of dating Spencer, and not the parts that had shredded her to pieces.

Spencer had almost killed her, and still, his hand resting on her neck the night before had felt like a safe haven. She wanted to lean against it, wanted to have him hold her like that all night long.

You can’t trust him, especially not with something so fragile as your scabbed torn up excuse for a heart. He was so careless with it a decade and a half ago, what’s to stop him from hurting you again?

That’s what love is, isn’t it? You hand someone a knife, hold it to your own throat and tell them where to cut you, how to bleed you like a pig. The real danger is in trusting them not to. Trust is more important than love.

Spencer had pulled a part of her to light that she thought was gone. She had lost most of her hope years before, when Sam died, and then a little more when Eli found her, took her to Church and ripped the rest of it out of her tired body. She thought she had died in that place, but Spencer had shown her that a piece of the old Jasper survived, and that some of the girl that Sam had loved was still there.

She had trusted him not to cut her, but he did anyway. He did it so efficiently, it was as though the thinnest, sharpest blade sliced right through her heart in a single swipe, and then everything fell to pieces. All the blood rushed out of her.

Maybe she finally died that night.

Maybe she had been a ghost ever since, wandering the Earth in search of the life that had been stolen from her time and time again.

Jasper eventually rounded back to the edge of the property, the house coming back into sight as her chest began to ache. She could see a figure sitting on one of the rocking chairs on the porch.

It was Luke, holding a coffee cup and sipping from it. He lifted one from the table next to him and held it out for her as she climbed the stairs. He didn’t flinch at her scars, didn’t even look twice at them. He had seen them all before.

“Heard you take off like a bat out of hell,” he yawned, swiping a hand across his chin, “thought you could use this when you came back.”

“Mmm,” she grunted as she took the mug. Jasper leaned against the railing across from his seat, taking a sip of the coffee and avoiding his gaze. The dew from the grass began drying on her ankles and socks, the morning sun warming her back as she glared into the dark liquid.

“Luke, I can’t do this.”

“Can’t do what?” he asked, but the look on his face when she glanced up at him told her that he knew exactly what she was talking about.

“This job,” she said quietly. She trusted Luke, she really did. Jasper had done nothing but lie to him ever since she met him, but she really did trust him with her life. She almost felt guilty for lying so much to someone who cared about her as much as Luke did.

“Did you love him?”

“No,” she lied.

Luke nodded, taking another drag from his cup, “For a minute I really thought you wanted to work for the BAU.”

Jasper looked up at him, her mouth set in a grim line. Now she didn’t feel so bad.

“I do.”

“Why are you here, Jasper?” he asked, his tone laced with annoyance and disbelief.

“I told you. I wanted a change.” Never give in. Always stick to the lie, always stick to the cover. There’ll come a day when the lie is the only weapon you have to protect yourself, Sugar, and if there’s even the smallest crack in your cover, you ain’t makin’ it out alive.

Luke leaned forward in his chair, his shoulders rounding and tense as he rested his elbows on his knees. She steeled herself, his pose threatening her comfortability, her upper hand.

“I’ve always trusted you, Jasper,” he began, clenching his jaw in between sentences, his frustration bubbling to the surface. “Always.”

“I understand that in Iraq, over there , you had to lie to me. I was a Ranger, I was there to be your support team, not to be your supervisor. It wasn’t my job to know what your job was. It was my job to make sure you got where you needed to go, and that you came back.

“Even when you went into a building and came out covered in blood and brains and bruises, I knew you were doing something you had to, and I didn’t need to know what that was.”

He pointed to her scars angrily as he spoke. “Even when Jack showed up at my place at two o’clock in the morning and dragged me to a crack house in Dallas to find you beaten within an inch of your life, I didn’t ask why.”

“What’s your point, Luke?” She watched him with pointed disinterest, keeping her features calm and schooled though inside she was bristling.

“ I trust you. Even now. You don’t have to tell me why you’re here,” he sighed, “I know it’s got nothin’ to do with me, but these are good people. They’re not throw-aways like we were in the desert. These people, Jasper? They see for a living. All they do is theorize, observe, think . Eventually they’ll wonder why you’re here, and Spencer is just going to be another wrench in whatever plan you have.”

“Point?” she asked again, her jaw tight and her back coiled, ready to lash out if needed.

“ I don’t know what happened between you and Spencer, but the way you’re eyeing each other? That’s not something that’s just going to go away.”

“I’m leaving the BAU, Luke. I can’t move on with my life if he’s here. I can’t get the change I need around him,” she lied again. Never give in, never give up the lie, even when you’re caught. Especially when you’re caught. “I want to have a life here.”

“Fine. You want a change. You want a home. This is what you’re looking for,” Luke smiled smugly at her, “I’m not helping you leave the BAU.”

“What?” she growled dangerously, standing up straight from the railing. Luke rose from his chair, crossing his arms and looking down at her, his jaw set and his gaze full of steel.

“You’ll never admit it, but you trust me. You trusted me to have your back in a war-zone, and I’m asking you to trust me again. Get to know these people. If you ever decide you need help with whatever mission you’re on, this is the team that’s gonna get it done. I’ve got your back, just like I did in Iraq.

“And maybe, when you’re done causing whatever murder and mayhem you have planned, you’ll settle back down. Maybe with Dr. Reid in there. Make a baby or two, have a life. After everything he’s been through, God only knows he deserves it. You do, too.”

Jasper’s mask of emotional detachment dropped in an instant, “What the hell do you mean, ‘all he’s been through?’”

Luke shrugged, “It’s not my place to talk to you about that, Jasper.”

“Is he…” she started, bringing her free hand up to rub her forehead, “is he at least… okay?”

“He’s doing a lot better than he has any right to, considering.”

She thought about that for a moment as her chest tightened painfully. She never wanted anything bad to happen to Spencer. In fact, all Jasper ever wanted to do was protect him. He had said he wanted to do the same but still he was the one who went and...

Fuck that. Fuck him. Fuck them both.

“I’m not on a mission,” she said, putting the mask back on. Back to the matter at hand, getting out of the BAU.

“You’re a talented liar, Jasper. The best I’ve ever seen,” Luke shrugged, throwing his hands up in defeat, “I’m gonna keep on trusting that you’re here because you have something important to do. But don’t you dare use your history with him to back out of this. You got a job to do? Get it done. Figure your shit out with Spencer and move on.”

They stared at one another for a few moments. It was the first time she’d seriously thought about killing Luke Alvez.

Not really. Well, not completely. More like, incapacitate so he can’t fucking look at her like that anymore. Like he knew her.

He didn’t know shit.

-----------------------------

Spencer did not sleep.

He had been in complete shock when he saw Jasper’s scars. The protective part of him that tried to hold her broken pieces together so long ago had lurched out of his chest without his permission.

He hadn’t meant to touch her. In fact, he had made a mental note not to. Her skin was seething hot, and he wouldn’t have been surprised if his hands had molded to her soft skin.

God, she was soft.

Even with all her cracked and sharp edges, Jasper was soft. He still burned from where he’d touched her. His hand slid up her neck so easily, resting under her jaw with practiced ease and comfort, his fingers tracing that scar on her thigh without any hesitation, just trying to soothe.

Fourteen years. He had gone fourteen years without touching Jasper Donn- Keaton.

It was like coming home.

It was like she never left him.

Back then, she had always relaxed under his touch, sighed deeply and melted into his arms. Hours ago she had stiffened up, her whole body turning rock solid and tense as he touched her. That deer in the headlights look haunted him.

Was it his touch that had frightened her? Was it his touch? Was it his touch?

He didn’t want to think about that.

He had hurt her, he knew that. After what he did, Spencer was lucky Jasper hadn’t slapped him for daring to put his hands on her. He was lucky all she’d done was pull away and leave him on the porch with his mind racing.

What happened to her? He didn’t have the right to ask her. He didn’t have the privilege of knowing anything about her anymore.

Jasper moved to his lap on the couch, her strong thighs cradling his hips as she ground down against him. She muttered to herself in between kisses, about how stupid it was that he wore shirts like this in the first place, how he didn’t need this many buttons.

Finally he slapped away her hands and unbuttoned them himself, smiling against her mouth as she huffed in annoyance.

“I could’ve gotten it off myself,” she grumbled, running her hands over his chest as he tugged the shirt off his shoulders.

“Yeah, in a decade,” he laughed, kissing her again as he reached for the hem of her t-shirt.

She stopped him, resting her hands over his and squeezing once. Spencer looked up at her, moving his hands to her thighs, giving her a light squeeze back as she nervously held his gaze.

“I didn’t come back from Iraq because my tour ended,” she said quietly, her voice hardly above a whisper.

He didn’t want to ask, didn’t want to push her. The few times he had asked about her time over there she had changed the subject. He only nodded, moving one hand to cup her jaw and trace light circles behind her ear. She leaned into his palm, sighing softly.

“I have… a scar.” Jasper’s voice shook a bit as she tugged on the edges of her shirt, “It’s not pretty.”

“It’s yours,” Spencer whispered back. He leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to the tip of her nose, smiling when it scrunched up. “It’s beautiful.”

Jasper said nothing, her eyes searching for any hint of uncertainty. He had none. He knew he would love every piece of her body, scarred or not. He didn’t need to know what happened to know that.

She pulled her shirt over her shoulders slowly, clutching the fabric to her chest when her arms came down. She grabbed one of his hands from her thigh and pressed it against her chest.

He gasped when he felt it. It was big. He could feel the raised skin, hard and hotter than the rest of her under his touch. Spencer lightly tugged the shirt away from her chest so he could see the scar properly.

He smiled as it fell away, happy to know his hunch about her nipples being pierced was right. He placed a kiss between her breasts, smiling once more as she sighed and leaned into him.

The scar was big. It ripped from her ribs in a jagged line around to her back, smaller healed rips in her soft skin peppered around the biggest parts of it. An explosion? That made sense to him. What happens to soldiers? They get blown up with IEDs.

“Told you,” Spencer said, leaning down and kissing her ribs. She sucked in a breath as she watched him, and he just grinned back at her. “Beautiful.”

“You’re a sap, Stick.”

“That might be true,” he laughed, “but I’m always right.”

He stood suddenly, earning him a yelp as Jasper wrapped her legs around his waist. He walked into the bedroom and dropped her on the bed. She leaned back on her arms as she watched him unbuckle his pants and drop them.

Her wild hair flew around her shoulders as she hurried to pull hers down. She kicked them off, leaning back once more as Spencer admired her.

“Now,” he said, hooking his hands underneath her knees and tugging her toward him, “let’s see just how right I was about you looking good wet .”

Spencer scrubbed his face with his hands and sighed. He didn’t want to think about this, about how good things used to be. In the beginning they were happy. They were totally and completely in love with each other from the first- well, the second day they met.

The first night he met her he’d been terrified of her, but the very next day… that had been different.

Spencer had been hurrying to a profiling class when he heard a voice call his name. He’d turned, and there stood Jasper, still wearing his CALTECH crewneck, a pair of tight jeans and some Chucks, looking like she hadn’t slept all night.

She flashed him a tired smile, a cigarette in one hand as she leaned against a building. Sleepless bruises stained into her warm skin under her glasses. The sweatshirt hung halfway down her thighs, and she had the sleeves cuffed at the wrists so they wouldn’t hang over her hands.

If he thought she was pretty the night before, in the haze of the bar, she was stunning in the morning. The orange light from the rising run bounced off her curls, revealing a depth in the color he hadn’t noticed before. Her sleepy grin sent a warmth pooling down his spine, and suddenly he was glad he was such a klutz.

You ain’t getting this back, Stick.

I was gonna say, you should keep it. It looks better on you.

That was the first time he’d ever skipped a class. Derek had been furious with him until he told him that he’d managed to talk her into breakfast at Moe’s, even though he had just left there twenty minutes before. Derek listened with a big grin on his face as Spencer recalled their impromptu date.

He watched her make a little house with her waffles and some toothpicks, while he showed off his building prowess with a pancake hut of his own. The owner, Maureen “Moe'' McArthur, had been thrilled to see Spencer there with someone, and told Jasper she was tired of seeing him reading in the booth alone, much to Spencer’s embarrassment.

Jasper had smiled sweetly and asked for more stories, grinning as Moe prattled on. He watched her from across the booth, thinking about how he never wanted to eat pancakes again if it didn’t include an architectural adventure with Jasper.

Derek was proud, but told Spencer never to ditch class again, or he’d track him down and really embarrass him.

That had been a good day.

Spencer decided now was as good a time as any to get out of bed. He showered quickly and made his way downstairs, only to find the team standing in the dining room. They all were facing the windows, craning their necks to look out onto the porch.

“What are you guys doing?” he asked as he made his way into the room, looking around the buffet table for the coffee.

“Looks like the Wonder Twins aren’t getting along,” Rossi said over his coffee mug, pointing out the window.

Spencer moved to see Luke and Jasper standing on the porch. Jasper’s jaw was tight, her eyes narrowed as Luke spoke to her, standing tall with his arms crossed over his chest. Her anger seemed to drop off her face at one point, a look of shock taking over her usually stoic features.

The team scurried to look casual when Luke and Jasper came inside, chatting idly and sipping their drinks as they hit their seats. Spencer turned to the coffee pot and poured himself a cup without thinking.

Jasper came up next to him, holding her cup out for a refill. She glanced over to his mug, her brows knitting together as he filled hers.

“Since when do you drink your coffee black?” she asked.

Shit. He had been so busy trying to look busy that he hadn’t put any sugar or cream into his mug. Welp , he decided, can’t tell her I was watching her on the porch like a creep. He picked up the cup and took a sip, trying to school his features as the bitter liquid hit his taste buds.

Disgusting.

“Whenever the feeling hits, I guess,” he shrugged.

Jasper watched him take another drink, a smile playing along her lips. He scrunched up his nose at the taste. Black coffee really was the worst.

“I saw you guys spying from the window,” she laughed, her shoulders shaking as she watched him try to choke it down.

“Then why are you giving me grief?” he grinned, a bit proud of the way her eyes crinkled when she smiled at him. He finally grabbed the sugar and dumped it into the damned cup.

“Stick, you’ve never been able to fake nonchalance. It’s good to know some things never change.”

“Alright, maybe I was distracted. You’re not wearing any clothes,” he said, motioning to her scantily clad body, trying to ignore the scars that sent a violent shock down his spine when he saw them. She looked down, like she’d forgotten she was only in a sports bra and shorts.

“Not like you haven’t seen it before,” she shrugged, as though last night never happened, as though his reaction hadn’t been what sent her running back inside. She avoided his gaze, looking into her cup instead, but she didn’t move away.

“You look pretty much the same,” he said, chewing on the inside of his lip. This was so damn awkward. Would this ever not be?

“You don’t,” she said quietly, finally looking up at him. She only came up to his chest. He didn’t know why the thought always tickled him, it’s not like she was going to grow , but he liked the fact that she was still so small compared to him. “You grew up, Stick. Well, you’re not really a stick anymore, are ya?”

Spencer patted his belly, a little self-conscious. He’d bulked up a bit, finally taking up working out after leaving prison, never wanting to feel that vulnerable again. He’d never tell Derek, but he enjoyed lifting weights, but that probably had to do with the fact that Luke was more fun to exercise with than ‘Give-Me-One-More-Pretty-Boy’ Morgan

“I didn’t mean like that, you goober,” she chuckled, shaking her head, “I meant you… you look good, Spence. You look like you’re good.”

“I am, Jazz. It’s been a… heavy couple of years but I am good ,” he made a face as he said ‘good.’ After all, it was all relative, but he had felt good as of late.

“Heavy, huh?” her brows knitted together again, concern coating her soft features. Spencer's arm twitched, yearning to brush that stray curl behind her ear and have her lean into his palm. To make that sad face of hers change into one of comfort.

“I’m sorry about Jack,” he said suddenly, bringing up the only bad thing he knew that had happened to her since he last saw her. Dumbass, why would you say that?

Jasper’s eyes widened a bit, his change of conversation throwing her off balance. She opened her mouth and closed it, then opened it again as she shook her head, “You don’t have anything to be sorry about.”

“I mean it, though. I know what he meant to you.”

Her eyes hardened, soft puddles of brown backed by steel for a swift moment, “You don’t have anything to be sorry about, Spence.”

She smiled at him again, moving on , taking a step away from him and turning on her heel, “I’m gonna go take a shower and I’ll be back down.”

She took the coffee cup with her, poofy ponytail swinging behind her, and Spencer couldn’t help but smile as he remembered her fondness for drinking coffee in the shower. It was such an odd thing to enjoy, but he’d found it endearing, even when he started finding coffee mugs on the tub wall every morning.

They watched her climb the stairs, then all turned on Spencer.

“Stick?” Emily laughed, a big grin splashed across her face. Tara chuckled beside her, trying to hide her amusement behind her coffee mug.

“How’s she still walking around with scars like that?” Walker asked, “They look brutal.”

“Jasper’s tough, man,” Luke sighed, plopping himself down at one of the chairs. “Always has been.”

“She wasn’t kidding about that sniper taking off her leg,” Rossi said, “It must have taken her months to start walking again after that.”

“I remember when it happened. I visited her in the hospital. She said at the time she thought she’d exploded,” Luke nodded solemnly, “Said it took a few seconds for her brain to catch up to her body. She didn’t even feel it at first.”

“And the others?” Rossi leaned forward in his chair, “Did she feel those?” Luke watched Rossi for a moment, seemingly to decide what to say, “I, uh, I’m sure she did.”

“Do you know what happened?” Emily asked.

Luke glanced over at Spencer and scratched his temple as he thought, “Uh, yeah. Yeah, just in the line of duty stuff. You guys know how it goes.”

“I shouldn’t have pushed her,” JJ spoke up, having been quiet since he came down, “Last night, I mean.”

“I’m sure she doesn’t care,” Spencer smiled at her, patting her shoulder softly. “She probably liked that you were so straightforward. As much as she avoids her own feelings, Jasper likes when people just say what they mean.”

“Yup,” Luke nodded, “I bet you ten whole dollars she would’ve done the same thing to someone who was ignoring obvious questions about a significant other.”

“That’s a very specific set of parameters,” Emily chuckled, leaning across the table and thrusting her hand out to Luke, who took it with a grin, “You’ve got a deal.”

“You watch it, sister, I’mma win that money.”

--------------------------------------------

Jasper was about to snap.

Sure, she understood that she cut an interesting figure. Crazy hair, rage-backed eyes, tiny frame that gave her an unassuming air, sure. But what she could not understand was the capacity for straight men to continually hit on women even after they explicitly show disinterest.

She looked over at Spencer. He was already looking at her, watching as she half-listened to whatever the sheriff’s deputy was spouting at her. She tried to focus on the murder board in front of her, focus on the dead boys who needed her help. Focus on the mission.

“...you never know, you might have fun,” Deputy… Dunlop? Dunlap? Was saying to her.

“I’m sorry?” she asked, turning her attention to him, away from Spencer’s gaze.

She’d decided to wear the cardigan again over a linen tee and jeans. She didn’t normally like talking about her scars, or showing them off. People either got awkward, or they were too interested, wanting all the gory details. She peeled it off as she stared down the much taller man, revealing the deep scarring around her wrists and arms.

If the ring on her left hand didn’t deter him, the scars surely would. She saw Spencer sit up straighter out of the corner of her eye, sucking in a breath as he saw them once more. She knew it bothered him, but fuck him. They weren’t about him.

Jasper crossed her arms as she glared at the deputy, “I wasn’t listening.”

“Oh,” he sputtered, his face turning red as he eyed her scars and ignored the look on her face. Spencer stood from his chair, his hands snaking into his pockets as his chest puffed out. Luke glanced over at them, no doubt recognizing the beginnings of a situation.

The deputy was handsome enough, and in another situation she might take him up on whatever sexual escapade he was not-so-subtly suggesting to her, but right now her mind was being pulled in too many directions to teach Deputy Dumbass how to give head in a remotely satisfying way.

“I was just saying,” he drawled, pulling back some of the confidence he’d lost, “after we catch this guy I could show you the flower fields over the hill. They’re real pretty.”

“Are you asking me out in front of the pictures of a bunch of dead kids?”

“Uh- I-”

“I’m going to assume not,” she took a predatory step forward, eyes narrowed, backing him up against the wall, “because if you ask me out one more time after I told you no three times yesterday, I’m gonna have to take that pathetic little pants pinkie of yours and toss it out to the squirrels just to drive home how little I want to do with you outside of this precinct.”

“Alright,” Luke said, coming up behind her and putting a protective hand on her shoulders. He pulled her closer to his chest and away from the deputy, who looked seconds away from pissing himself. “Let’s get back to what we were doing.”

“That’s all we need from you, Deputy Dunlap,” JJ smiled sweetly, eyes following him as he high-tailed it out of the room.

“Rough being this good lookin’, huh?” Rossi joked, sidling up next to her at the board. Luke gave her a squeeze before letting go of her arms, warning her to keep her temper intact. He knew how she could be.

She liked Rossi. He was tough and grizzled but soft enough that you just knew he had your back. She didn’t like that , didn’t like that she wanted to trust him, but that’s what teams do. They trust one another.

She trusted her team.

Ugh. When they found out about this, they’d never let her hear the end of it.

“Oh, you’d know more about that than I would, sir,” she smiled, her peripheral vision still trained on Spencer’s staring problem.

“Good answer,” he laughed. He gestured to her arms, and then to the chair behind them she’d tossed the cardigan on. “I’m surprised it took you this long to shuck that thing.”

Jasper shrugged, “Sometimes it’s easier to cover them up than to talk about them.”

“You don’t seem like the type to be ashamed of something that trivial.”

Jasper turned toward him, smiling. She really liked Rossi, but he scared her. This whole team did. They saw too much, and Spencer knew too much about her.

She’d loved him too much. She showed him too many parts of herself that before she had kept hidden from everyone. He knew her tells, her fears- how she sounded when she was scared, waking up screaming and crying, trying to run from the blood and guts and piss and violence that was now part of her daily life.

“I’m not,” she said slowly, “I guess there’s someone here who knew me before I had them, and I’ve never really had that before.”

“Move on a lot?”

“Yeah, you could say that.”

She looked at him again, studying his face. He wore a nonchalant smirk, and had she not known of his profession, and not been so good at hers, she might see it as passive disinterest. But it was the opposite. Rossi was curious. They all were, all hungry to know more about the girl who’d slept with Spencer Reid.

She knew Spencer. In the past fourteen years he probably hadn’t had too many serious girlfriends, instead shrinking in on himself and not putting himself out there. The team probably hadn’t met too many exes of his. Hell, the only reason she even looked at him twice was because he was standing in the middle of the bar as Jack went to get those stupid shots all those years ago.

She’d been clocking Jack’s movements, struggling to be in such a public place without a gun on her person. Jack had made her leave them at home, though she never told him she’d kept the knife in her Chucks. He’d probably known, but let her keep it anyway.

He wanted her to unwind that night, to take a breath and reintegrate with a society that had long-since thrown her away. She didn’t think she needed it. Doing the job they did, she could easily go the rest of her life not creating relationships or talking with any of those people. If it were up to them she’d be locked up in a six-by-six cell with no windows. That’s probably where she should be.

Jack had been furious when she came back from the mission in Iraq nearly split in two by a humvee door. She thought for a moment, in her drug-fueled hospital bed haze, that he might actually kill Eli for sending her to a warzone. He’d been against it, been against her going out without him for backup.

She’d awoken in so much pain in some Army hospital in Germany. Her ribs crackled with every breath and her head was pounding as she took stock. After she’d gotten over the shock of being in a safe room instead of the desert, she finally noticed Jack’s hand clasped in hers as his head rested on the bed next to her, fast asleep.

Eli was sitting in the chair in the corner, his face lighting up when she finally noticed him. A shiver had run down her spine. She hated seeing him smile. Bad things happened when Eli smiled.

Welcome back to the world, Sugar. I thought I lost my best girl there for a moment.

Rossi was still looking at her expectantly. She decided she might as well get it over with quickly. She held her arms out in front of her and twisted them, showing Rossi how the scars went through both sides of her forearms.

“Someone tied me up and decided to play whack-a-mole.”

“Looks like it hurt.”

“It did.”

“Did you get the guy?”

“Something like that,” she said, giving him a pointed look.

Rossi measured her gaze, trying to look past the steel and into whatever she was hiding. She knew he wouldn’t find anything, she was too good at putting it in a box and walking away from it.

“Good girl.”

“I want you to say goodbye, Sugar,” Eli said, chewing on the end of his cigar as he pointed toward the approaching building. Church, as he called it.

“A piece of you is going to die in there, and you’re never going to get it back. You might not notice it’s gone tomorrow, but ten years, hell maybe even in two months, you’re going to feel a piece of you let go. You’re gonna bathe in this shit. You’ll be up to your goddamned eyeballs and you don’t have the luxury of holding on to the hope that things’ll just work out in the end. You either make it or you don’t. Survive or die.”

He pulled a pistol out of his hip holster and pointed it between her eyes. She didn’t flinch, and she didn’t blink in surprise as her fucked up brain thought about how much colder the metal was than she’d thought it would be.

“Your choice, Sugar. You comin’ inside with me or am I leavin’ you out here?”

“Who’s Sugar?” she asked, turning away from the gun and looking toward the horizon. She could say the piece of her that had hope died right there, but with how easily it seemed to slink into the ether, she wondered if she hadn’t lost it long before.

“Good girl.”

Teams like the BAU, ones who see the nitty gritty, but don’t actually have to wade in the blood themselves, they don’t see self defense as anything more than ‘that guy tried to kill me, so I killed him.’ In Jasper’s world it was different. You didn’t wait for someone to kill you, you killed them before they even saw you. Any other margin of contact, any bit of error, could be the life and death of hundreds.

She wasn’t scared to kill, or to die, but she was scared of Eli.

Thank God he was dead.

“I forgot that people do that,” Spencer said, plopping back into chair, leaning back as he flicked a pencil between his fingers anxiously.

“Do what?” she asked, painfully aware of the rest of the team milling about the room. They had no doubt seen the bit with her arms, probably watched as the deputy hit on her while she was lost in thought.

“Ask you out even if it’s highly inappropriate,” he smiled awkwardly, nodding to himself.

“Oh,” she said. She had forgotten, or at least she had gotten used to it over the years. When they had dated, people did that constantly. They had no idea she was so incredibly in love with the skinny genius she didn’t even notice them until they poked her on the shoulder and interrupted her ‘let’s stare at Spencer’ moment.

“It’s not like anyone could ever pull me away from you, anyways, Stick,” she said without thinking.

“Stick?” Tara asked amusedly, a deep grin on her face as she turned toward them.

Jasper felt the blush rip up the back of her neck and over her cheeks. Stick . She only ever called him that in private, as he would get embarrassed by it in public. He didn’t mind when she called him that at home, prancing around in one of his shirts, happily sinking to her knees to make up for it. To tell the truth, she could’ve stayed on her knees forever for Spencer Reid. She would’ve done anything to look up at any moment and see his head thrown back in bliss, a soft blush patching over his shoulders and face as he lost himself in her.

“What do you think of this guy? Mark Halsten” she asked, looking away from Spencer and his stupid staring and holding up a file. “Hits all the right places- super-pedo, anger issues, lives in a remote area.”

Luke snatched the file from her hands, flipping through it quickly. Emily reached over and snagged it from him as well, nodding as she read.

“How about you and JJ go and interview him? We’ll keep going through the paper files and see if we can find anything else.”

Jasper and JJ glanced at one another, unsure eyebrows cocked at the idea of a partnership. Jasper understood JJ, understood why she was the way she was. She was protective of Spencer, and could probably see that having Jasper around had stretched the team dynamic just a bit.

“Cool,” Jasper smiled, picking up the SUV keys from the table, “I’ll drive.”

------------------------------------

Halsten’s house was about ten minutes outside of town, somewhere in the boonies. JJ and Jasper rode in silence, JJ rubbing her temple and looking over and over again like she wanted to speak, only to turn back to the window and snap her jaw shut.

Jasper ignored her for the most part, focusing on the terrain in front of her. As soon as they left Ellison city limits the road turned to gravel and remote fields. It was a desolate countryscape, and not knowing the lay of the land was making her nervous. There could be snipers in the treeline, or camouflaged men lying in wait in the tall grass.

“I’m sorry about last night,” JJ finally blurted. Jasper had figured that was what she’d been so upset about. Walking on eggshells when yesterday she wouldn’t stop pestering Jasper with questions.

“For what?” she deadpanned, taking a turn up a small hill. She kept scanning their surroundings. She had a bad feeling about this.

“I shouldn’t have pushed you to talk about your husband.” “Did you know he was dead?”

“What?” JJ asked, turning her body toward Jasper in shock.

“Did you know he was dead? Did you kill him?”

“No,” she shook her head, “of course not. How could I?”

“Exactly,” Jasper grunted, already over this conversation. Nobody needed to know about Jack or their relationship. “It’s not a big deal. He’s been dead for over a decade. I’ve moved on.”

“Why do you still wear your wedding ring, then?”

Jasper’s jaw clenched, her thumb moving to rub the small band. It was a small diamond set with two pearls on a gold band. It was one of the only personal possessions she’d consistently kept with her. The rest were in a storage unit in Arlington.

“It’s not really my wedding ring,” she sighed, “Someone gave me a ring but then he died. After Jack was gone, I melted both bands down and had them remade with the gems from both of them. Jack’s gave me a diamond, the other gave me the pearls.”

“Were you and this guy together?”

Jasper turned into the driveway of Mark Halsten. She stepped on the brakes just a little too hard, jerking JJ forward in her seat. She glared at the blonde agent, trying to contain herself.

“Yes,” she whispered through clenched teeth. “This was the easiest way to keep them both with me while I was working.”

She kicked open the driver’s door as she turned off the ignition. JJ followed out from her side, hands on both their holsters as they approached the Halsten residence.

It was a run-down ranch style home on a big property with a sagging porch. There was a barn behind the house that looked like it hadn’t been used for farming in years. The grass was long, almost up to their knees as they stepped up the stone path to the door. Jasper could smell that familiar scent, rancid heat-soaked remains, but it could be anything this far out in the country.

Suddenly the screen door flew open, a streak of brown fur and teeth shooting out toward them. JJ bolted back toward the car, climbing the hood, but Jasper stood her ground. As the pitbull followed JJ for running, Jasper waited for it to pass her, grabbing his collar and twisting tightly.

The dog jerked back in her grip, his jaws snapping and snarling. JJ’s gun was pointed toward them, but Jasper just twisted the collar tighter, kicking the dog's legs out from underneath it and pinning it to the ground in one swift movement. She set one knee down on the back of the dog’s neck, just under her grip on the collar, the other on it’s back hips.

“ Stay,” she snarled into the dog’s ear, pinching the collar tightly against its neck. It whimpered and stilled underneath her, looking up at her in fear.

“ Hey, hey, hey! ” a voice burst from the door. A young white man in jeans and an old t-shirt shoved it open and stepped onto the porch. “You best not hurt that dog!”

“Sir, you ne-,” JJ started, still standing on top of the SUV, pointing her gun at the man.

“Give me a leash, or I put a bullet in it , and then you ,” Jasper snapped, holding her gun against the dog’s head. She wouldn’t really shoot the damned thing if she couldn’t subdue it, but this asshole didn’t know that.

“ Slowly, ” JJ warned as the man opened the door back up. He sluggishly pulled a leash from behind the main door, shaking it like an asshole toward Jasper before he threw it to her.

She clipped the dog’s collar, twisting the leash tightly in her hand so it was taut. She let the dog sit up slowly, holstering her gun as they both stood. It watched her, unsure what to make of her.

“Booger, come ,” the man said, patting his thigh. The dog glanced back up at Jasper, who tugged the leash tighter. It looked back at the man, but stayed in it’s spot.

“Are you Mark Halsten?” Jasper asked.

He glared at her, looking between her and Booger before answering, “Yeah, what’s it to you?”

“We’re with the FBI, we’d like to ask you a few questions about the child murders that have been going on over the last few months.”

“I ain’t had nothin’ to do about that. I don’t need to talk to feebs, anyways,” he sneered, hands on his hips. Jasper just wanted to shoot this pedo and be done with it.

“You’re on parole, right?” JJ asked, stepping down from the hood of the car. “All it takes is one call to your parole officer and your little property is crawling with us feebs .”

Halsten looked at her for a moment, bouncing on his toes. He bolted, taking off toward the barn.

JJ and Jasper followed, but he was taller than them both, and faster. He made it to an old pickup behind the house before they could stop him, throwing it in drive and tearing ass back toward them.

“Move!” Jasper yelled, tackling JJ out of the way of the truck. As it passed she pulled her back to her feet and dragged her back toward the SUV. The dog watched it all unfold, sitting obediently where Jasper had left him.

Jasper jumped into the driver’s seat, barely waiting for JJ to climb into her side before pulling the SUV into reverse and following Halsten down the driveway. She flipped it into drive as she exited the driveway, wincing as the bumper hit a tree before she switched gears.

“Be advised,” JJ ordered into the walkie, holding onto the ‘oh-shit’ handle, “Agents Keaton and Jareau are in pursuit of an 2000’s model Chevy pickup truck, color blue, down Route 6 toward Ellison. Suspect’s name is Mark Halsten, twenty-nine, white male, blue eyes and blonde hair, approximately six-foot three.”

“Affirmative,” Luke’s voice cracked through the speaker, “We’re five minutes out.”

They followed his erratic driving around the hills for a few minutes, just making sure he didn’t hit anyone else and didn’t crash until backup could arrive. She wished Billy was driving, he was their pilot and driver. He was way better at this shit than her.

Jasper turned another bend, closing in on Halsten’s pickup. He made a hairpin turn, using his vehicle as a battering ram as it came back toward them.

“Jasper!” JJ screamed, holding tightly to the handle and the center console. Just before the truck hit them, Jasper pulled the emergency brake as hard as she could, turning the car so the impact would hit just behind the driver’s seat.

Jasper tried not to squeeze her eyes shut as the grill of the truck slammed into their car. The sound of crunching glass filled the air, followed by the airbags smashing into Jasper’s nose and launching her into unconsciousness.

Notes:

Kudos and Comments are writer fuel! Please let me know what you enjoyed so far! Let me know your feelings on what's going on!

Do you guys like the long chapters? I feel bad writing short ones when you wait a week to read the chapter? And I never know how to stop prattling on.

- Smurph❤

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Pluralistic: 11 Mar 2020 (Saturated fat and obesity, which foods produce satiety, spying VPNs, Twitter's research-friendly terms of service)

Today's links

Obesity and unsaturated fats: Blaming unsaturated fats for obesity is very plausible, but likely wrong, alas.

The satiety index: Which foods cause or satisfy cravings?

Sensor Tower's VPNs and adblockers spied on users: Like sneaking laxative into Immodium.

Twitter's new Terms of Service help academics: Good bots welcome.

Italy's "I Stay in the House" law: The comprehensive quarantine plan.

Scam-buster hacks into a scam-factory: He gets their CCTVs, recordings of their calls, transaction data, Whatsapp chats, and more. Delicious.

Postmortem: the catastrophic EU Copyright Directive. Testimony from yesterday's Senate hearing.

Podcast: A Lever Without a Fulcrum Is Just a Stick: My latest Locus column, on how copyright failed artists and enriched corporations.

This day in history: 2010, 2015, 2019

Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

Obesity and unsaturated fats (permalink)

Scott Alexander does a very deep dive into the literature on diet, weight, and saturated vs unsaturated fats.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/10/for-then-against-high-saturated-fat-diets/

The most important elements for me were first, the validation that something really has changed: average US adult men's weight went from 155lbs to 195lbs from the 1800s to today. The 90th percentile 1800s man weighed 185lbs, today, it's 320lbs. US obesity rates in the 1800s were 1%. Today, they're 25%.

But the usual culprits can't explain the change: they ate more bread and potatoes in the 1800s, for one thing.

In China, obesity rates were very low even with a diet dominated by white rice.

1970s France had 1800s US obesity rates, on a diet of "baguettes, pastries, cheese, meat. Lots of sugar, white flour, and fat."

It's true that some tactics (intermittent fasting, low-carbing) work for some people, but they're not what worked in 1970s France or 1800s USA. So if those things work, they're "hacks" – not an indictment of carbs or eating three meals a day.

There's a widespread theory that the change is driven by the switch from saturated to unsaturated fats, which was driven by spiking heart disease in the 1950s. It's likely this heart disease epidemic can be attributed to the vast increase in smoking a couple decades earlier, but the tobacco industry's denial machine meant that the blame fell on diet, and the US (and then global) diet's fat composition shifted dramatically.

We ate a lot fewer animal-derived fats and a lot more plant-derived fats. These fats had lots more Omega 6s and (to a lesser extent) 3s, and the ratio of these Omegas also changed dramatically, both in our diet and in our bodily composition. Intriguingly, these play a significant role in metabolism. There's a plausible ring to this whole business – particularly as a way of crisping up what we mean when we say "avoid processed foods." What is "processing?" Maybe it's doing something that requires vegetable fats.

Unfortunately, neither the literature nor the lived experience of experimenters support the theory. Studies don't support it. Meta analyses don't support it. Reddit forums skew heavily to people saying it didn't work for them (dotted with people for whom it did).

Which makes weight gain a mystery. It can't be (just) exercise: we're exercising more now than we did 40 years ago, and we're heavier now. Studies about causes are inconclusive overall, but clear that weight gain is more explained by diet than exercise. What's more, we're seeing weight gain in lab rats, pets and feral animals, so exercise seems an unlikely culprit here.

Alexander ponders other possible causes: plastics or other contaminants in our diet, or that it's a "ratchet" (once your weight set point changes, it doesn't change back.). Both have little evidence to support them.

He concludes that he's "more confused than when I started it," but will avoid unsaturated fats where possible, with the exceptions of Omega-3 rich oils (fish/olive oil).

I am likewise confused, but also better-informed than I was before I read his post.

The satiety index (permalink)

I lost ~100lbs in 2002/3 with a low-carb diet. The thing I immediately noticed when I started eating (lots) more fat and (lots) less carbs was that I was always satiated, with none of the food cravings that had plagued me all my life.

No other diet since has had that effect. I really struggle with cravings (and have put 50lbs back on through my 40s, though some of that is muscle from a much higher level of exercise). For me, satiety is the barrier to sticking to any diet. I don't just get ravenous, I get these all-consuming cravings that I can't put out of my mind, even if I resist them (and the longer I resist, the more likely it is that I'll really blow it out when I give in at last).

So I was really interested in this 1995 open access study, "A Satiety Index of common foods," which offers a league table of the foods that made subjects feel full.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/15701207_A_Satiety_Index_of_common_foods

The meaty (heh) parts are in these charts on pp682-3.

Sensor Tower's VPNs and adblockers spied on users (permalink)

Sensor Tower, a company that made apps billed as privacy-protecting, installed man-in-the-middle certificates on your devices that let them spy on everything you did online.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/vpn-and-ad-blocking-apps-sensor-tower

They made 20+ VPN apps for Android and Ios, but didn't disclose that all those apps were owned by analytics company, Sensor Tower. The apps had names like "Free and Unlimited VPN, Luna VPN, Mobile Data, and Adblock Focus."

The apps installed a "root certificate" in users' devices. With this cert, the company could insert itself in all the device's otherwise secure, encrypted sessions – web browsing, email, etc. Sensor Tower admits that they collected data using this cert, but insists that it was "anonymized," which is something most computer scientists agree is likely impossible for this kind of data. Re-identification of anonymized data is devilishly hard to avoid.

The claim is made even less credible when you listen to the company's other claims about its practices, such as the idea that they hid the authorship of their apps "for competitive reasons."

Or this howler: that "the vast majority of these apps listed are now defunct (inactive) and a few are in the process of sunsetting." Well, yes, they were removed for violating their users' privacy. It's not like the company had a change of heart or anything.

And then there's this: "Apple and Google restrict root certificate privileges due to the security risk to users. Sensor Tower's apps bypass the restrictions by prompting users to install a certificate through an external website after an app is downloaded."

Twitter's new Terms of Service help academics(permalink)

Twitter just published a new, and much-improved developer policy, one that permits academics to field bots for research and auditing purposes.

https://blog.twitter.com/developer/en_us/topics/community/2020/twitter_developer_policy_update.html

"Researchers will be able to share an unlimited number of Tweet IDs and/or User IDs, if they're doing so on behalf of an academic institution and for the sole purpose of non-commercial research, such as peer review."

https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/10/twitter-rewrites-developer-policy-to-better-support-academic-research-and-use-of-good-bots/

Twitter's also creating a bot registry that must include contact info for the botmaster, so that "it's easier for everyone on Twitter to know what's a bot – and what's not."

https://developer.twitter.com/en/developer-terms/policy#4-b

Italy's "I Stay in the House" law (permalink)

The FAQ for the Italian government's "I Stay In the House" decree is a fascinating document:

http://www.governo.it/it/articolo/decreto-iorestoacasa-domande-frequenti-sulle-misure-adottate-dal-governo/14278

Most notably, Italy has kicked out its tourists. As Bruce Sterling writes, "It's a tourist-ectomy. An Italy devoid of all tourists. It's fantastic, unheard-of. Surely this hasn't happened in at least 700 years."

https://www.wired.com/beyond-the-beyond/2020/03/stay-house-decree/

People are allowed to go to work, to shop, and to run errands, provided it is for an "essential purpose," which you must prove "by means of a self-declaration which can be made on pre-printed forms already supplied to the state and local police forces. The veracity of the self-declarations will be subject to subsequent checks and the non-veracity constitutes a crime."

Business travelers are permitted to enter and leave the country, cab, delivery and freight drivers are allowed to do their jobs, and "outdoor motor activity is allowed as long as not in a group."

Public offices are open. Training activities are suspended. Government offices need to provide hand santizer, but if they run out, they have to stay open ("disinfectant is a precautionary measure but itstemporary unavailability does not justify the closure of the office").

Bars, pubs and restaurants may open from 6AM to 6PM, but have to cancel live music, games and screening events. Theaters, cinemas and museums are closed.

Schools are closed. Universities are closed. Exams and graduations will be conducted by video-link. Med schools are not closed. Research institutions are not closed.

Masses and funerals are canceled. Islamic Friday prayers are canceled.

Farms are open.

Scam-buster hacks into a scam-factory (permalink)

Jim Browning is a talented and prolific scambaiter. He calls the numbers listed in pop-up tech support scams and has the scammers log into a specially prepared system that lets him trace them.

In his latest adventure, Browning thoroughly turns the tables on http://Faremart.com , a Delhi travel agency that was the front for a sprawling network of tech-support scammers taking in millions every year through fraud.

Browning not only traces the scammers: he breaks into their unsecured CCTV network so he can watch them work. He compromises their phone system and listens to the recordings of all their scam-sessions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le71yVPh4uk

He gets hold of their ledgers, which list how much money each scam nets for the gang. He doxes the scammers and learns their real names. He gets a confederate to fly a drone over their HQ and maps out their comings and going.

In part II, Browning treats us to a delightful scambaiting session in which he mercilessly trolls a scammer who claims to be in San Jose, CA, tripping him up in a series of ever-more-desperate lies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uV-qa9M-o4E

It's part of a growing genre of journalists who explore and document the operations of overseas scam operations. See, for example, Reply All's excellent podcasts on this:

https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/6nh3wk https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/76h5gl

There are two more parts to come in Browning's series (you can watch them now on his Patreon, apparently):

https://www.patreon.com/JimBrowning

He also turned his footage over to the BBC's flagship investigative programme, Panorama, which has produced its own doc based on it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rmvhwwiQAY

Postmortem: the catastrophic EU Copyright Directive (postmortem)

Yesterday, the Senate Subcommittee on Intellectual Property held hearings on "Copyright Law in Foreign Jurisdictions," at which two key copyright experts testified on last year's catastrophic EU Copyright Directive.

First up was Pam Samuelson, one of America's leading copyright experts, who explained in eye-watering detail how the compromises made to pass the Copyright Directive produced an incoherent mess that no one can figure out how to implement in law.

https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Samuelson%20Testimony.pdf

Next was Julia Reda, who served in the EU Parliament during the passage of the directive and helped spearhead the opposition to it.

Her testimony really shows you where the bodies were buried: how the EU knew it was making a pig's ear out of things.

https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Reda%20Testimony.pdf

Both are essential reading for anyone striving to understand Article 17 (formerly Article 13) – it is such a tangle of garbage lawmaking that these kinds of guides are indispensable.

Podcast: A Lever Without a Fulcrum Is Just a Stick (permalink)

I've just posted my latest podcast: a reading of my new Locus Magazine column, "A Lever Without a Fulcrum Is Just a Stick," on how copyright failed artists and enriched corporations and what we can do about it.

https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/03/11/a-lever-without-a-fulcrum-is-just-a-stick-2/

Tldr: Giving monopolies to artists doesn't help them gain leverage over the super-concentrated entertainment industry, because the corporations control access to audiences and force artists to sign away those monopolies to get past their gatekeeping.

The more monopolies we give artists, the more monopolies are transfered to corporations, and the more they dominate the market and thus the more they can retain from the earnings generated by the artists' works.

Fights like the EU Copyright Directive are a distraction, a fight over shifting some points from Big Tech's balance sheet to Big Content's – but without any mechanism to move more of that revenue to creators.

Enriching creators means thinking beyond more "monopoly"-style copyright: instead, we have to think about inalienable rights that can be taken away through one-sided contracts (like the "reversion right" that lets US artists take back copyrights after 35 years).

And we have to think beyond copyright itself, by beefing up competition laws to break up entertainment cartels, and by beefing up labor laws to let artists form unions.

There is a role for copyright, but in things like extended collective licensing that would allow all online platforms to access the same catalog and pay for it based on the number of users they have, so a new platform pays pennies while Youtube pays hundreds of millions.

These blanket licenses have been key to keeping other forums for artistic revenues open: think of what the world would be like if one club or radio station could buy the exclusive rights to play the hits of the day, and then use their ensuring dominance to squeeze artists.

If you prefer the written work, you can read the column here for yourself, of course:

https://locusmag.com/2020/03/cory-doctorow-a-lever-without-a-fulcrum-is-just-a-stick/

Here's a direct link to the MP3 of the reading (thanks as always to Internet Archive for hosting – they'll host you too, for free!):

https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_330/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_330_-_A_Lever_Without_a_Fulcrum_Is_Just_a_Stick.mp3

And here's the RSS for my podcast:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/doctorow_podcast

Now in its 14th year (Thanks to Mark Pesce for convincing me to start it)!

This day in history (permalink)

#10yrsago London Olympics: police powers to force spectators to remove non-sponsor items, enter houses, take posters http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20100303/tts-uk-olympics-london-ca02f96.html

#10yrsago Leaked documents: UK record industry wrote web-censorship amendment https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2010/bpi-drafted-web-blocking

#5yrsago Piketty on the pointless cruelty of European austerity https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/thomas-piketty-interview-about-the-european-financial-crisis-a-1022629.html

#5yrsago Rightscorp loses big on extortion racket https://torrentfreak.com/rightscorp-hemorrhages-cash-profit-from-piracy-remains-elusive-150311/

#5yrsago UK foreign secretary: stop talking about Snowden, let spies get on with it https://web.archive.org/web/20150315031642/http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2399082/government-minister-is-bored-with-snowden-and-wants-to-get-on-with-surveillance

#1yrago Defect in car security system aids carjackers, thieves https://www.pentestpartners.com/security-blog/gone-in-six-seconds-exploiting-car-alarms/

#1yrago Former Archbishop of Canterbury cheers on students who are walking out to demand action on climate change https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/10/rowan-williams-school-pupil-climate-protests

#1yrago Leaked Chinese database of 1.8 million women includes a field indicating whether they are "BreedReady" https://twitter.com/0xDUDE/status/1104482014202351616

#1yrago Why #Article13 inevitably requires filters https://www.communia-association.org/2019/03/05/final-x-ray-article-13-dangerous-legislative-wishful-thinking/

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources: Slate Star Codex (https://slatestarcodex.com/), Slashdot (https://slashdot.org), Fipi Lele, Matthew Rimmer (https://twitter.com/DrRimmer).

Hugo nominators! My story "Unauthorized Bread" is eligible in the Novella category and you can read it free on Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

Upcoming appearances:

Museums and the Web: March 31-April 4 2020, Los Angeles. https://mw20.museweb.net/

Currently writing: I'm rewriting a short story, "The Canadian Miracle," for MIT Tech Review. It's a story set in the world of my next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and reconciliation. I'm also working on "Baby Twitter," a piece of design fiction also set in The Lost Cause's prehistory, for a British think-tank. I'm getting geared up to start work on the novel afterwards.

Currently reading: Just started Lauren Beukes's forthcoming Afterland: it's Y the Last Man plus plus, and two chapters in, it's amazeballs. Last month, I finished Andrea Bernstein's "American Oligarchs"; it's a magnificent history of the Kushner and Trump families, showing how they cheated, stole and lied their way into power. I'm getting really into Anna Weiner's memoir about tech, "Uncanny Valley." I just loaded Matt Stoller's "Goliath" onto my underwater MP3 player and I'm listening to it as I swim laps.

Latest podcast: A Lever Without a Fulcrum Is Just a Stick https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_330/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_330_-_A_Lever_Without_a_Fulcrum_Is_Just_a_Stick.mp3

Upcoming books: "Poesy the Monster Slayer" (Jul 2020), a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Pre-order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627?utm_source=socialmedia&utm_medium=socialpost&utm_term=na-poesycorypreorder&utm_content=na-preorder-buynow&utm_campaign=9781626723627

(we're having a launch for it in Burbank on July 11 at Dark Delicacies and you can get me AND Poesy to sign it and Dark Del will ship it to the monster kids in your life in time for the release date).

"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020.

"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a very special, s00per s33kr1t intro.

[fyrapartnersearch]

on the look-out for long-term, m// original role plays.

hi there, my name is molly and i'm a great big disappointment. let's be friends. i'm 26 years old and reside in central time zone, usa. i have about 15 years of role playing/writing experience under my belt, but over the past several years i have stagnated in both categories, so i am rusty to say the least. here are a few things about me that are important:

i am rather fond of a happy balance of both quality and quantity responses. generally my intros have been anywhere between 1,500-2,000 and responses 500-800 words, but as i've been out of the writing game for some time i am very open to something more casual to help me get the hang of things again. a compelling story and character dynamic are the most important things to me.

i only want to do m/m relationships.

i love ooc chatting and getting to know my partners outside of the role play. i have met some of the best people through role playing so i see it as both an avenue to writing great stories with great people as well as making friends! i love obsessing and gushing over characters with each other and sharing songs and creating au's. i also love to get to you know as a person.

i am by no means a frequent replier. i am a slow, methodical writer with a bad attention span haha. once a role play progresses, i am generally better about my timeliness, but before that i point i do require patience. in return i give you my own infinite patience and understanding. however, in between replies i am always open for general chatter or gushing over characters!

i will only do modern/realistic settings, though they can step into supernatural/futuristic territory. just no fantasy, anime, fandoms, nothing like that.

these are really the only major points about my role playing style that are necessary for you to coincide with, otherwise i am flexible and do not really have limits except for the very obvious ones that are most peoples' limits (i can specify if needed). just talk to me about whatever you might be interested in and we can go from there. plot bunnies: #1 - character with cancer becomes the sympathetic poster child for a politician’s campaign in his quest to restore his reputation #2 - character is sold into human trafficking and other character is his involuntary captor (his father is the boss) and attempted rescuer #3 - this idea was inspired by the futurama episode, 'the devil's hands are idle playthings', in which fry makes a deal with the robot devil to be able to play the 'holophonor' (a revered and notoriously difficult instrument to play) so he can prove his enduring love for leela. fry ends up trading his hands for the devil's, who knows how to play the holophonor, and proceeds to write an opera for leela. in a broader sense, i am intrigued with the idea of someone so dedicated to another that they would take on a risky endeavor like making a deal with the devil in a zealous effort to win them over, potentially even undergoing a physical alteration like fry did for leela. #4 - former boy band member does anything to break away from his 'teenage heartthrob' image. pairings:

divorced dads (either divorced from each other or divorcee/divorcee)

drug dealer/druggie

drug dealer/supplier

groom/best man

closeted/uncloseted

older gay man/younger 'straight' college boy

college roommates

opposites attract

blue collar worker/boss's son

complicated hook-up

friends with benefits

father/son's friend

former friends with bad blood

topics:

human trafficking

age gaps

group of men thrown in a horror setting and forced to survive

group of men/boys in general surviving and thriving

murderous cults

southern gothic

deals with the devil

power imbalance

one-sided relationships

relationships doomed to fail

settings:

period pieces in the '70s, '80s, '90s

traveling carnival

apartment complex

retail

this is just a start-up list that i will add on to as i think of more ideas/pairings. i am open and eager to hear about any ideas you are particularly interested in that you’d like to bring to the table. contact: when you contact me, please tell me a bit about yourself. not just your role playing style, but you personally. i like to get to know my partners parallel to planning the role play; i feel a bit awkward just diving right into brainstorming with essentially a stranger. i will probably not reply if you don't a. tell me about yourself and b. specify what you're looking for role play-wise. i do have a discord, but prefer initial correspondence be through email. once we've established a rapport, we can move to discord if you like. email: orangeasphalt0@gmail.com

[burneyanddefoe]

Could you maybe explain what is inaccurate with those two dresses? I know a little bit about 18th century fashion and they look fine to me, (except that the blue-green dress doesn’t have a stomacher for some reason) but you seem to know a lot about it and they do look a bit "off".

Thanks for the question! This reply ended up being really long and I feel like it’s really nitpicky…but also, it shows that a little bit of research can go a long way for those Outlander costume designers. I’m not an expert, this isn’t an area I’ve studied heavily (yet) but I know where to find resources so that gives me an edge. If anyone has corrections for this post, please let me know!!!

This analysis is based on 18th century fashion and doesn’t account for the modern influences that Brianna and Claire might bring to the table. It also doesn’t take into account the rare exceptions to some of these points.

EDIT: I recently discovered Frock Flicks so if you want to hear more about the fashion choices on Outlander, the good and the bad, check their Outlander tag out! And here is the group absolutely destroying Gellis’s hair choice.

Brianna’s Wedding Dress

In some cases, an 18th century woman’s wedding gown would simply be the nicest one she had in her wardrobe. If she had a special gown made, it wasn’t a one-and-done thing like it is today. It would have been worn again and again for special occasions because it would likely be her nicest gown. That being said, it wasn’t always white.

Sleeves usually had some sort of decorative feature such as ruffles of lace or fabric. With lace or white fabric ruffles, they can be sewn on then taken off at a later date to wash or sew different ones on.

Not related to the outfit, but the hairstyle is a tad bit inaccurate but I’ll let that slide.

Most fichus are not that long, they would typically end either at or above the waist. I think there’s something else a bit off with the fichu but I can’t put my finger on it.

I feel like there’s something off with the fabric choices, but I can’t pinpoint it.

Here are some examples of 1700s wedding outfits. In most cases, they were identified as wedding outfits by family lore.

Gown from 1763 - worn in Maine, USA. - The MFA, accession number: 52.558

Gown from 1742 - made in England but worn in Massachusetts, USA - The MFA, accession number: 42.210a-c

Gown from 1760 - French or British - The MET, accession number: 40.136.1a, b

Gown from 1776 - American - The MET, accession number: 2009.300.731

Gown from 1747, altered in the 1770s - British - The MET, accession number: 2014.138a, b

Gown from the 1770s-80s - British textile, worn in Rhode Island - Colonial Williamsburg, accession number: 1951-150,1

Petticoat from 1775 - American - Colonial Williamsburg, accession number: 2016-123

Petticoat fragment from the 1750s-80 - Philadelphia, USA - Colonial Williamsburg, accession number: 2009-43,2

Claire’s Wedding Guest Dress

Again, the hair is inaccurate. I can let it pass for Brianna, but not for Claire. There shouldn’t be that big chunk of hair hanging down her back. For a special event, fashionable women wore a pouf. To create a small pouf, all you need is a hair cushion and a bunch of pins. This photo of Abby from American Duchess shows a simple hairstyle.

So Claire’s gown doesn’t actually fit a definition of any of the types of gowns that I’ve come across? It’s not a robe a l’anglaise but it’s slightly closer to a round gown. The issue is that Claire’s gown appears to be ONE entire piece, as if it was put on over the head. There are no ties, pins, hooks and eyes, or way to close it. The buttons of this gown are decorative.

A round gown as a back bodice similar to the anglaise but the round gown is one piece. The gown and petticoat are attached.

Describing a round gown is complicated but basically, the gown and petticoat are sewn together in the back while the front petticoat is brought up with the ties being wrapped around the waist. The front of the round gown will then be pinned closed or use a hook and eye closure. This creates the illusion of it gown and petticoat being separate.

This post shows the construction of a round gown!

I don’t have a clue what’s going on that zig-zag. Zig-zags are seen later in the 1780s and 1790s with contrasting trim in fashion plates but that’s not what’s going on here.

I’m not an expert on lace, so lace-experts feel free feel free to correct me! The green portion of the gown looks like cheap, modern tatted lace. In the eighteenth century, lace was handmade and very expensive. Here are some beautiful examples of handmade, 18th century lace. Obviously I don’t expect the designers to be buying yards of expensive, handmade lace but seeing as they have a very large budget and unlimited resources, it shouldn’t be too hard to find decent lace at a decent price.

THE END!!