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moonbeambucky · 4 years

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Hey Neighbor (Part 14)

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader, Billy Russo x Reader Word Count: 6039 Warnings: fluff, light angst, mentions of cheating

Summary: You had a plan and then life came along with one of its own. With your future almost derailed you worked hard to get yourself back on track and finally everything seemed to be going right… that is, until your new neighbor moved in.

A/N: Major cringe warning everyone.. I can’t wait for your reactions! 😂 A huge thank you to my wonderful beta Sam @buckyofthemyscira Feedback is always appreciated!

PART 13 | HEY NEIGHBOR MASTERLIST

Bucky pulls off his headphones, pressing a finger to the keyboard to stop the music he’s reviewing, taking a moment to pinch between his brows. He gets up to stretch his legs, grabbing the empty beer bottle along with him for the short walk to the kitchen. He tosses it in the garbage with the rest.

He doesn’t like drinking this much but lately he hasn’t been feeling great. His music has been stagnant, devoid of life and energy. Thinking about it only makes him feel worse, a painful reminder that deadlines are coming up and what little he’s created is absolute shit.

The knob squeaks as he turns the faucet, letting the water turn to liquid ice before he runs his hands through them, splashing it up against his face. He hears the hiss of the pipes next door and his heart sinks.

It’s Y/N’s shower. He looks towards the wall wondering if she’s alone, quickly shaking the thoughts out of his mind. He shouldn’t care if she’s alone or not. She’s in a relationship and it shouldn’t matter.

Bucky tried really hard to not think about her. He promised himself he would get out there and find someone and well, it hasn’t exactly worked out. In the last three weeks he’s been on a dozen dates. Most of the girls could barely hold a conversation, while the others were less exciting than watching paint dry.

He fucked a few of them even though he said he wouldn’t. That wasn’t the point of these dates but Bucky needed the distraction. It was hard hanging out with everyone, it didn’t matter if Y/N was there with Billy or if they were not; Bucky wasn’t sure what was worse.

Over the last few days he has been messaging someone new who’s been doing a pretty good job of keeping him entertained. Bobbi, she works at a gym Uptown. She’s worked extremely hard for her body and flaunts it in most of her photos and sure, Bucky would love to hit it but there’s something more that keeps him drawn in.

She’s so direct, talking to him as if they had known each other for years. He loves checking his phone to see her latest message, a smile already stretching across his face when he sees a long text about something that happened at the gym. Apparently a lot of characters workout there and she has an endless list of horror stories she couldn’t wait to share with him.

They planned a date for the end of the week and Bucky was very excited to finally meet her. It was promising, the idea that he could be happy with someone just like… just like everyone else.

You hug yourself a little tighter as you walk down the block, feeling the cool breeze move right through you. Billy seems to be in his own world, his head gazing down to his phone as it had been through most of dinner. You didn’t voice your annoyance though because it would only make things worse.

Billy’s been in a bad mood ever since the Feds came knocking at ANVIL’s door. A few former employees were recently involved in a string of armed robberies and Billy was questioned about it. Word got out and he lost a big account as a result.

Obviously the situation is upsetting but it’s not just that, Billy’s been distant lately. You’ve been spending a lot of time together but maybe that’s the problem, the honeymoon period might be over. You know it’s a normal part of any relationship but the idea that things could change so drastically doesn’t make you feel great.

“Hey watch where you’re going,” an unfamiliar voice barked.

Your head turned quickly to find Billy getting in the face of the stranger he apparently bumped into.

“What did you say to me?” Billy’s dark eyes sharpened like a bird of prey closing in on its target. His nostrils flared as he snarled, staring down the other man until he backed away with his tail between his legs. Billy looked him up and down, a smug smile creeping across his face in silent victory.

A heavy arm fell around your shoulders as Billy pulled you closer to him when he began walking away.

“What the hell was that?” you asked after a long beat of silence.

He faced you with the same incredulity he gave the man before. “That was people knowing better than to get in my way.”

Your stomach churned with unease and that silent alarm inside you was going off. You needed to get away from Billy, for tonight at least. By the time you got to the front of your building you figured out an excuse you hoped would work.

“Hey so, I promised Elena I would head in early tomorrow. Paperwork’s been piling up and medical records have been on our case about it. So, can we raincheck this?” You smiled, using your best doe eyes to seem sincere about it.

Billy stared you down, looking for the slightest crack in your expression. It was something he had always done, reading people, checking for lies. You know it’s a product of his upbringing, with so many broken promises made by a faulty system.

“Yeah. Yeah that’s fine,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Remember I got us Knicks tickets.”

You nodded in agreement, gasping slightly when he caught you off guard by his kiss. It was the last thing on your mind but you gave in, opening your mouth to his forceful tongue. Anything to keep up appearances, for tonight.

Billy watched you enter the building and you waved back at him right before you disappeared for the hallway, finally able to take a breath. On the way up to your floor you wondered if you should talk to Wanda about what happened. It was kind of late though and even though she would want to hear everything about it you didn’t want to disturb her.

As you approached your door you looked towards Bucky’s. Maybe he could give some advice from the male perspective. Then again you didn’t want to bother him either. Bucky’s also been pretty distant lately and you’ve barely seen him in the past month. Maybe everything’s changed, your relationship, your friendships. Change is supposed to be good but this felt all wrong.

You couldn’t find a comfortable spot on your bed, tossing and turning, kicking off the covers, pulling them back up again. Nothing seemed right. There was too much on your mind and you couldn’t relax.

“Shut up brain, just shut up!” you begged out loud, grabbing your phone to find something to distract yourself.

Scrolling through your playlists you tried to find one that wouldn’t give you the urge to stay up and sing along, and then you stopped on the perfect one. It was Bucky’s playlist, Greatest Cinema Scores. Grabbing your headphones you laid your head back on the pillow as John Williams carried you to dreamland.

You groan, rolling over to one side. It’s still dark out. You don’t want to look at your phone but you give in anyway. Two in the morning. At least you still had a few more hours of sleep. Your stomach spasms forcing you to get up, hurrying your paces to the bathroom because the weird rumbling has you convinced you might not make it in time.

It’s five past two in the morning when all hell breaks loose. Hell translating to everything you’ve eaten this evening coming up and out of you from both ends. It’s not pretty. Tears are streaming down your face as you puke into the garbage can you’re rapidly filling, trying to catch your breath in between painful heaves. The other end isn’t much better, hot liquid expelling itself from your body; stomach cramps, body spasms all doing their part to add to the mess.

Ten minutes pass by the time it’s safe to leave the bathroom. Your throat burns with the remnants of vomit, your ass is on fire and you curl back into bed, brushing aside the tears from the corner of your eyes. Your reprieve is short lived as your stomach grumbles again and you rush across your apartment, giving yourself over to the porcelain throne.

More comes out of you than you’ve taken in and you wonder about the science of it all. When will it stop? Dinner was simple, a glass of wine, a small house salad, chicken parm and some vegetables that come out whole as you peer into the soupy garbage held out in front of you. A whiff of the stench makes you gag again setting off another round of vomiting.

Everything hurts. Tears burn hot against your skin as you cry alone, half naked and in need of a shower at this point to clean yourself up. Elvis died on the toilet, is that how you’re gonna go too? It seems entirely possible at this point.

By the time the sun begins to peak out through the large buildings you’ve exhausted your body of all its worth. You’re shaking as you change into clean pajamas, crawling back into bed, barely having the strength to raise your phone to your ear as you leave a message for Elena, telling her you won’t be able to make it in today.

Sleep doesn’t come easy, not when you’re still getting out of bed every hour to get rid of every part of your insides. Isn’t it out of you already? You think back to dinner and the slightly pink chicken you thought at the time was your imagination or bad lighting. Dammit.

You text Billy, telling him you have food poisoning, hoping his seafood and linguine didn’t leave him in the same position you were currently in. After the hundredth trip to the bathroom you opened up your fridge looking for something. You squirm as you look at the orange juice, however tempting it is the acid would probably burn through you. Your mouth waters looking at the forbidden food, aka anything that isn’t a plain cracker. Do you have any of those? Nope. How is it possible you don’t have a single thing you could possibly eat?

The trek across your apartment and back to your bed seems like it went on for miles and now you shake with chills, wrapping yourself up in the blanket as you text Wanda begging for her to come over with Gatorade, ginger ale and crackers.

You whimper out loud as you feel your stomach gurgling, it wants another round versus the toilet where you’re going to lose. By the time you come out again you’re sweating, shaking on weak legs as you cry yourself to sleep.

In another hour you’ve woken up, thankful for the returned text that she would come by before heading to work. After your latest round in the bathroom you trudge to the front door unlocking it, and move to your couch where you plop face down. You text Wanda, telling her the door is open, and try to shut your eyes until the inevitable happens. Because you know it’s going to happen again. For some reason you’ve been cursed and there’s nothing you can do about it but suffer.

You aren’t sure of how much time has passed but you hear your door opening, bags rustling in hand and the tiniest smile spreads across your face.

“Wandaaa, my butthole hurts,” you whined, lifting your head up off the couch slightly to groan even more. “It’s like a volcano that’s erupting hot brown lava. There’s so much of it Wan. It won’t stop. My ass is vomiting shit.”

“Wow Y/N, that’s quite a visual.”

Oh no. Panic surges through you when you realize that was not Wanda’s voice. A weak arm pushes you up from the couch where you turn around to find Bucky somehow looking at you in the eye after he heard your very blunt confession.

You’re stunned into silence, not knowing what to say because you had just said far too much than you ever wanted to. Suddenly you feel nauseous again but for a different reason.

Bucky shifted one of the bags he was holding into his other hand so he could send a small wave in your direction, trying not to burst out laughing as he said, “Hey neighbor.”

“B-Bucky, what are you doing here?” you asked, sinking back down onto the couch because you couldn’t support yourself anymore.

“Wanda texted me, said she wasn’t able to get these to you before work.” He set the bags down, walking closer to you and crouching down by the couch. “Are you okay?”

Your head shook a little before you answered. “No. I think I’m dying. I’m puking up my organs.”

“Oh yeah? Which ones?” he chuckled.

“My intestines, definitely my stomach… maybe a kidney or two.”

He cracked a beautiful smile that somehow made you feel better just by looking at it. Bucky reached the back of his hand out to feel your forehead. You were a little warm but you didn’t feel feverish.

“Well I’m here now and I brought all the good stuff you need. Will you let me help you?”

Tears filled your eyes as you replied, and Bucky smiled again. He emptied the bags in your kitchen, taking out a bottle of ginger ale, Gatorade, crackers and some instant white rice.

“How about a little ginger ale to settle your stomach, yeah?”

Bucky brought over a glass that was less than half filled. Sitting next to you, he helped you sit up and you waited for the room to stop spinning before you took a few small sips as he told you to. Your hand was shaking and Bucky took the glass from you before you spilled it.

You didn’t think a few sips of ginger ale would be a magical cure but you wished it would. You felt so shitty… which seemed fitting, but it really wasn’t funny. You leaned against Bucky, closing your eyes as you sighed in frustration. It was comforting to feel his arm around you, and hear his whispers that everything would be okay.

“Are you nauseous? Do you need to…”

“I just don’t feel good,” you cried against him.

Bucky pressed his lips into a thin line, wishing there was something more he could do for you. When Wanda texted him he had shot right up, threw on clothes and raced to the store. He wished you had asked him, that you were as close as you used to be but he understands why you might not have wanted him to know.

The briefest thought about Billy crosses his mind. Did you tell him? Was he going to come in and take care of you? Would you shove Bucky aside if he did? But Billy isn’t here, and Billy isn’t important. Right now this is about you and doing whatever he can to help.

“Hey doll, do you want to try and eat something?”

You barely process the nickname as you think about how your stomach is feeling. It’s still too early to try and eat so instead you ask for some Gatorade, hoping that might make you feel a little better.

Bucky brings it back, along with a wet washcloth he places on your neck, feeling your skin prickle at his touch as he moves aside the collar of your shirt. It’s a nice relief for the short while it lasts. You head back to the bathroom again but at least you didn’t vomit this time. You’re thankful since you’re really not sure you have the strength to even handle throwing up anymore.

Back on the couch you lay your head down on Bucky’s thigh, curling your body into a fetal position as he lays a throw blanket over you. You don’t realize when you’ve fallen asleep but you wake up at some time later to find the sky is lit in a golden glow of the afternoon sun. Bucky assists you with sitting up, helping you quell the dizziness with more sips of Gatorade and ginger ale.

You feel brave enough to eat, hoping that one single cracker will not send you back on the hell ride through your digestive tract. Bucky can’t help but smile as you nibble on the cracker slowly like a hamster.

“What did you eat that got you sick?” he wondered.

“New Italian place on 23rd and 8th. Bad chicken. I mean, I thought it was good at the time but I don’t think I’ll be going back again.”

“Good to know. I’m gonna cancel my plans tonight,” he said, digging his phone from his pocket.

“Yeah, definitely go somewhere else.”

“No, I’m cancelling the whole date.”

Your head spun as you turned it too fast to face Bucky. “You have a date tonight?”

His head shook before he began speaking. “Nope, not anymore. I want to stay here and take care of you.” You began to protest but Bucky insisted. “Y/N, I really want to do this. Please, let me help you.”

The fluttering in your stomach made you wonder if you needed to rush to the bathroom again but it didn’t feel the same as before. Instead you smiled softly, thankful to have Bucky’s kindness. It was nice to know someone wanted to take care of you.

In the moment you scanned the table for your phone, remembering the text you sent out this morning. Billy still hadn’t replied. Maybe he’s sick too or maybe… well you don’t have the energy to think otherwise at the moment.

Your mouth is watering, craving anything and everything that you can’t have. Even the drinks have to be sipped slowly otherwise you’ll set your stomach off again. It’s so unfair. Why is this happening? And why is every commercial food related?

“Bucky, can you change the channel?” you begged.

He switched it to a show about animals, that’s fine, that’s… not fine. The TV shows a raccoon eating delicious red grapes and you feel the tears begin to flood your eyes. You huff against Bucky’s leg, not bothering to change the channel because there was no point. You couldn’t eat and you probably never will again. Was that being dramatic? Maybe, but right now you’re not in the mood to think sensibly.

“I feel bad askin’ but is it okay if I order food? I know you can’t have any and I really don’t want to make this worse for ya.”

Bucky is staring at you with big blue eyes, hoping his small request isn’t too much of an offence at the moment. You almost wanted to say no but you couldn’t, it’s not Bucky’s fault you ate bad chicken.

“Pizza? Really?” you whined after he placed his order.

His eyes grew big with panic and he was about to call back and cancel his order before you stopped him.

“No, no. I’m sorry Bucky. It doesn’t matter what you eat, I’m gonna want everything so enjoy yourself.”

You pouted, grabbing the throw blanket to pull it over your shoulder as you adjusted your position of resting on his leg, shutting your eyes until he got up to answer the door when the pizza arrived.

“That smells really good,” you said, frowning as Bucky opened the box.

He was hesitant to take a bite, feeling guilty as you looked at him. “Can I make you anything? Think you could handle some rice?”

Your head shook and you took out another single cracker, chewing on it slowly as Bucky sat down beside you with a few slices.

“I’m sorry Y/N. You’ll feel better soon, I promise. And when you’re up for it let’s get pizza. We still haven’t kept our promise.” Bucky’s mouth dropped open in response to your confused face. “Our pizza quest! Remember? Eat our way through the city to find the best pizza!”

“Oh yeah!” You smiled for the first time, bright and beaming across your face and Bucky was happy he was able to bring that out in you. “We definitely have to do that.”

The night continued with Bucky putting on Galaxy Quest for you both to watch. Halfway through the movie you went back to the bathroom, missing a call from Billy. Bucky couldn’t help but look over as your phone buzzed, seeing a picture of you and Billy smiling together.

A moment later a text came through and he knew he shouldn’t read it but he couldn’t help himself. Bucky looked towards the bathroom to check that you weren’t about to come out before he grabbed your phone, reading Billy’s text.

Billy: Wtf Y/N where are you? Did you remember the basketball game?

Bucky placed your phone back on the coffee table, remembering to unclench his jaw as your bathroom door opened. What an asshole. He didn’t even ask how you were.

“Your phone rang,” Bucky reluctantly said as you sat down again.

He watched as you read the text, typing back furiously. Another buzz and you were responding to Billy again, your face getting angrier the longer the back and forth messaging went on.

“I’m sorry, that was rude,” you said, tossing your phone on the table. “Let’s put the movie on.”

You got comfortable against Bucky, ignoring the buzz of your phone. The texts didn’t stop coming in and you tried your best to ignore it and pay attention to the movie but Bucky could clearly see you were upset.

“You can answer that if you need to.”

“I really don’t want to. Billy’s so concerned about wasting money on tickets, not once has he even mentioned the fact that I’m sick. Did he not get my messages?”

Bucky bit his tongue, not wanting to say something he might end up regretting, especially if this isn’t the end of you and Billy like he hoped. Why would he hope that? He’s dating now. Or at least he thought he was.

He cancelled his date with Bobbi tonight without hesitation, just so he could take care of you. She seemed cool about it, asking if he was free tomorrow and Bucky agreed to another date but the longer you stay curled up beside him the less interest he has in wanting to see anyone.

The warmth of your body against his lulled Bucky into a deep sleep. It wasn’t the most comfortable, slumped on the couch in a mostly sitting position but he didn’t want to move, not when you had fallen asleep before him. You were exhausted from everything you went through so your sleep was more important to him than the cramp that developed in his neck overnight.

You woke up, slowly opening your eyes, rubbing the sleep from them as you realized you weren’t in your bed but on the couch resting your head against Bucky. You watched the rise and fall of his stomach through the soft sweater he wore, the one that most certainly left tiny marks on your cheek from leaning against it.

Looking up at Bucky you smiled at the way his head was tilted to the side, eyes shut peacefully as small puffs of breath left his mouth. You thought about everything Bucky had done for you, what was supposed to be a simple task of dropping off ginger ale and crackers turned into his whole day being rearranged just to take care of you.

You wanted to do something nice for him in return, it’s something you’ll have to think about when your head’s not as light as it feels. Slowly you begin to sit up, taking a few sips of Gatorade from the bottle that was left on the table. You feel… better but still not great.

It’s daring but you aim to eat two crackers, hoping it won’t set off your stomach. It was grumbling with hunger but you knew better than to give in with actual food even though you were craving pancakes.

After sitting up for a while you didn’t think you felt dizzy anymore so you got up slowly. You felt the weakness in your legs as they carried you across the room but at least your trip to the bathroom was normal. A regular pee was a lot better than everything else that came out of you yesterday.

“G’morning,” Bucky said mid-yawn as you opened the door, seeing his sweater rise up to reveal a sliver of his toned stomach as he stretched his arms out.

“Morning Bucky.” You smiled as you made your way beside him again, reaching your arm across his stomach as you settled back against him, nuzzling your head on his chest.

Bucky loved this but absolutely hated that he needed to use the bathroom and therefore ruin the way you cuddled up against him. “I’m sorry doll. I’ll be quick,” he said, rushing up off the couch.

Doll. You liked that nickname. It was a little on the old fashioned side but it was endearing. Billy called you babe which was fine and all but it definitely didn’t have the same effect as doll. The thought of Billy made you roll your eyes. You would have to speak to him today but you really didn’t want to.

“Alright, where were we?”

Bucky’s voice rang out as he opened the door, walking back towards the couch. He moved his neck from side to side to crack it before he sat down again, letting you cozy up to him.

“How’re you feelin’ today?”

“Better. I think I might try some rice later.”

“Just let me know and I’ll make it.” There was no hesitation in his offer, just pure tenderness in wanting you to get better.

The morning was spent cuddling on the couch until Bucky’s stomach began grumbling worse than yours. He got up to make himself something while you insisted you weren’t ready for anything more than crackers and ginger ale yet.

“I’m gonna take your garbage out and head home for a quick shower. You think you’ll be okay? I’ll be quick.”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine. Thanks Bucky.”

He was thankful you didn’t tell him not to come back. You seemed much better than yesterday and you probably didn’t need him but Bucky really didn’t want to leave. Sure he had work to do but this was more important. He wouldn’t have been able to get you off his mind anyway so he might as well be useful.

During Bucky’s absence you debated talking to Billy, knowing it would probably end up in a fight but you didn’t have the strength to do that yet. Besides, you hadn’t done anything wrong so there is no need for you to be chasing him down.

With the little energy you had you decided to freshen up. While splashing your face with some water you noticed the broken blood vessels in your eyes, the result of straining so much to throw up. Fun stuff.

It was a bit of a struggle to get undressed and changed into new pajamas and you had to lay down in your bed before the room stopped spinning. Thankfully Bucky had come back and was able to help you.

He handed the glass of Gatorade to you, rubbing slow circles of comfort on your back that seemed so natural for him.

“You need to eat something Y/N. Think you’re up for some rice now?” he asked softly, gazing at you with concern as he awaited your answer. You gave a simple nod and Bucky leapt up to get it started.

The burn of tears rushed to your eyes as you thought about Bucky. He was so eager to make sure you were okay, taking out your garbage that was filled with various bags full of vomit without hesitation, spending every minute of his weekend just to take care of you. He even cancelled a date.

Something inside your stomach twisted at the thought of Bucky actually dating someone. It’s not like him sleeping with someone was a surprise to you but apparently in the last month you’ve drifted apart from him, unaware he had started to date people instead of just sleeping with them. You’re not so sure why this makes you feel so… well, you’re not really sure how you feel about it but you know you feel something.

None of this should matter though. You have been dating someone for two months. Someone you thought you loved but this past weekend has taught you a lot about Billy. Not only has his change in demeanor put you off but the fact that he hasn’t shown any concern for you over this weekend really makes you want to end your relationship.

Bucky happily brought over a small bowl of white rice. There wasn’t much in there to begin with but you could only manage a few teaspoons before you had to stop. The worst part of it all is that you were so hungry but you really couldn’t eat much, and certainly couldn’t chance upsetting your stomach anymore no matter how badly you wanted to shovel the rice down your mouth.

The afternoon was spent on your couch again, cuddled up against Bucky as you continued to watch movies. His arm was around your shoulder and occasionally you felt his hand rub up and down over the curve of your arm. You smiled against him, letting yourself enjoy however long you could have Bucky like this.

In the back of your mind you thought about him dating again. Whoever he ends up with would be the luckiest girl ever, to have someone as kind and caring as Bucky take care of them as he has been with you. You chew on your bottom lip remembering the shared kiss on New Year’s Eve. Yeah, it was safe to say you would be completely jealous of any girl that ends up with him.

While attempting to have a little more rice you watched Bucky respond to his phone that had gone off a few times. It was hard not to glance over at him, imagining what pretty girl he was probably talking to.

What you didn’t know was Bucky was talking to a girl, Bobbi, cancelling the plans they had rescheduled for today. He didn’t bother to reschedule again and Bucky knew it was stupid not to but somehow the weekend he’s spent on your couch made him lose all enthusiasm for dating someone. Logic tried to reason with him, remind him that you were in a relationship but it was hard to deny the way he felt about you, how he’s been feeling for a long time now.

Bucky can’t stop staring at you, watching as you finish up the rice from earlier. He’s hated seeing you in pain but being able to help you this weekend has been such an honor.

As the sun set you realized you were not at all prepared to go back to work tomorrow. You probably could use another day off but since you weren’t throwing up anymore you wanted to at least give it a shot. Besides, Tony had been relying on you a lot recently with the logistics of getting The September Foundation prepared and you didn’t want to disappoint anyone.

“I need to take a shower.” As you stood up you felt a little dizzy and Bucky had his arms around you just in case. After a moment of a few deep breaths you felt a little better. “I’m okay,” you assured him.

Bucky didn’t quite believe that so he poured more Gatorade and handed you the glass.

“I’m not leaving you.” Bucky wiped his hand down his face realizing how forceful that sounded. “I mean, I won’t leave until you get out okay? I don’t want you to slip and fall or anything.”

“I’ll leave the door unlocked just in case but now I feel like I’ve jinxed myself,” you joked. Having Bucky hear your vivid description of shitting was bad enough, you really didn’t want him to find you passed out in the shower.

Bucky lowered the volume of the TV to barely above mute, wanting to listen out for anything out of the ordinary. He heard the shower turn on and a minute later the curtain pulling as you stepped in.

A text from Sam pulled his attention away from listening and he opened the message, his jaw clenched as he scanned the photo attached. It was Billy, with his arm around another girl. She was short with dark hair pulled into a bun, dressed professionally and Bucky questioned if he was jumping the gun at thinking the worst. Maybe she worked with Billy or maybe it was his sister.

The next text that came through proved his theories wrong. Sam captioned the picture of Billy kissing the girl with “Asshole.”

Bucky: I’m with Y/N now. She’s been sick all wknd I don’t think she knows about this.

Sam: Do you want to tell her or should I have Wanda come by? She’s ready to rip his head off.

Bucky: So am I Bucky: Fuck. Bucky: idk maybe Wanda should talk to her?

There was nothing Bucky wanted more than to tell you what an asshole Billy was but he didn’t want to be accused of using it to his advantage in any way. Bucky would be there with everyone else to support you through this but as a friend only. You deserved better than Billy no matter who you ended up with.

“Bucky!”

The sound of your voice in distress makes him pop up from the couch. He runs to the door, fear coursing through his veins as he hopes you’re okay. Inside the steamy bathroom he finds your head poking out through the shower curtain, the rest of it pulled close to your body not to reveal yourself.

“I forgot to grab a towel,” you said, smiling. “They’re over there.” A bare arm slick with water points behind him and he grabs a towel from a shelf. “Thanks,” you said, taking it from him, watching as he nods awkwardly before shutting the door.

Bucky’s cheeks are flushed from the brief humidity and the sight of seeing you in the shower. Well, not that he saw anything but just the idea of it has his heart racing.

Ten minutes later and you were out of the bathroom, changed into new pajamas, these ones covered with a cute cactus print, brushing through your still wet hair.

Silence filled the room as you finished your post shower routine of putting on a variety of moisturizers and facial sprays and Bucky felt like he had overstayed his welcome. You were winding down even though it was still early, and truthfully he had a weekend’s worth of work to catch up on.

“So there’s more rice on the counter, plus an unopened bottle of ginger ale too, and if you need anything else you know where I live.” He chuckled uncomfortably at his bad joke. “Really though if you need me please call me okay? I’ll come running.”

He didn’t mean to sound so desperate but it was true.

“Thank you so much for everything Bucky.” You threw your arms around him for a hug, melting deeper into him as he wrapped his arms around your body.

Neither of you realized the other didn’t want to let go but you made the move to reluctantly pull apart. Bucky had spent his whole weekend doting on you, you didn’t want to force him to stay any longer.

Bucky smiled as he gazed upon you, the way your eyes shifted down before staring back up at him. He leaned in slowly, pressing his lips to your forehead and a surge of electricity went racing through you. His kiss lingered and the longer he made contact with your skin the more you wanted to press your lips to his.

“Goodnight, Y/N,” he said, walking away slowly towards the door.

Your heart was caught in your throat as you locked it behind him, letting out a deep, longing sigh, and the realization that you might have feelings for Bucky.

PART 15

#bucky x reader #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes au #billy russo x reader

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thepapergirlandthespiegelman · 4 years

Text

Might stop reading Worm.

Content warning: bugs/insects/arachnids and related horror, body horror mention, miscellaneous violence mention, sexual violence/assault mention

My thoughts on the first ten arcs of Worm. (contains spoilers)

So, I finally got around to reading Worm. It was kinda big when I was in high school, and I still know some people who are/were into it, so I thought it was time that I gave it a serious shot. I did actually try to read it in high school once, but I couldn’t get into it and stopped reading after the first chapter. I tried to be a little more persistent this time to give it a fair evaluation.

When I started reading Worm this time around, I kind of just breezed past the warning at the beginning (“This story isn’t intended for young or sensitive readers. Readers who are on the lookout for trigger warnings are advised to give Worm a pass.”) I don’t consider myself someone who really gets triggered by media. I think it’s important to talk about stuff, including fucked-up stuff. It’s uncomfortable, but that discomfort is part of the point. I think it probably should bother you to read about terrible things, even fictional ones, given that those fictional atrocities almost always have real-world counterparts.

I think I vastly underestimated the amount of fucked-up-ness that is in Worm. When I read that warning, I thought, “Okay, this story’s probably dealing with some dark themes, and there might be some particular scenes that are really disturbing.” After reading the first ten arcs, though, I feel it’s more accurate to say that fucked-up-ness is Worm. It is the core of the story, and there is really very little else.

So it’s not that any particular thing that happened in the story triggered an immediate, strong, psychologically-damaging reaction in me, but as I continued reading, I began to notice that not only was I not enjoying myself, I was actually finding it subtly unpleasant. When I read about something bad happening, I get hit with a small dose of negative emotion. As it turns out, that adds up over time, especially when there aren’t any positive scenes to balance out the negative stuff. Without me even noticing for a long time, Worm was making me unhappy.

Here’s what I did like about Worm:

Impressive world-building - Wildbow is exceptional at inventing different locations, groups, and individual actors and thus creating a detailed ecosystem of capes and civilians.

Lots of characters, lots of superpowers - Directly related to the previous point, Worm contains a lot of characters...arguably too many characters. I generally prefer stories that focus on a smaller number of characters in order to give each character more room for development, but I appreciate Wildbow’s talent for coming up with vivid, if simplistic, characterizations. There are also some really interesting superpowers and interesting takes on common powers.

Inventive use of Taylor’s superpower - Taylor is always coming up with new uses for her power: having black widow spiders spin silk for her suit, using her bugs are a sixth sense to keep track of her enemies and environment, using venomous bugs to take hostages, covering her body in bugs as a disguise, coating her bugs’ stingers in capsaicin for extra punch, using human-shaped swarms to fake out her enemies...The list goes on and on, and I really appreciate how Wildbow took this oft-overlooked superpower to the next level.

Danny Hebert - The only character in the story who I can say I genuinely like. Danny Hebert is a union organizer whose pet project is getting the ferry up and running again so that there can be more interaction between the poorer and wealthier parts of Brockton Bay. I also loved the scene where he supports Taylor in the “mediation” with her bullies and their parents at school. Even if he was impotent, unable to protect her, I could tell he was on her side. His one screw-up is when he locks Taylor in the living room and tries to force her to talk to him, but it definitely makes sense with his character (a little bit of a pushover) and the story (Taylor was shutting him out and seemed to be putting herself in danger) that he would end up letting Taylor’s grandma convince him to take a forceful approach. Don’t get me wrong, locking up your kid is a horrible thing to do (I should know, my parents did it to me, and it fucked me up), but I still ended up feeling bad for him when Taylor just up and disappeared. She didn’t even call her dad to let him know that she was still alive after Leviathan! I mean, on the one hand, I do actually appreciate that she started making an effort to protect her father from the dangers of her cape life, something that I was kind of appalled to see that she never even considered before. But damn, did I feel bad for Danny.

Here’s what I didn’t like:

Way too much fucked-up shit happening - Name an atrocity, Worm’s probably got it. The plot is mostly just terrible thing after terrible thing and reveals of how terrible all of the characters are, with many terrible things that aren’t directly treated in the plot peppered in along the way.

Lots of capes, no heroes - This is one of those themes that sounds deep on paper but is really just cynical and fatalistic. Even if all the capes are corrupted by power (or by the toxic power dynamics between capes), what about civilians? Where’s the thoughtful therapist or the brave fire-fighter? Danny Hebert is one notable exception to the “Everyone is terrible” rule, but we don’t see all that much of him. Other than him, the only person I can think of who could possibly fit this “civilian hero” role is Aisha’s social worker, who I don’t think even has a name.

All superpowers are evil - This is arguably just a rephrasing of the previous point, but I think it’s important to mention. Worm contains so many superpowers, but it seems like they’re all being put to evil purposes. Panacea, the superheroine with healing powers (really just dominion over health and illness of the human body in general), makes some really despicable threats (e.g. giving someone cancer with a touch, or giving someone a disorder that will only manifest at an unknown time in the future, leaving them to anguish over their fate). Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing inherently wrong with writing a character using this type of power for evil ends. There’s a lot of interesting stuff to explore there, and I actually love that Panacea is a character that acknowledges the burden of having a healing power, feeling unable to take any time for yourself while simultaneously growing to resent those you feel obligated to help. My issue is not with Panacea but with the fact that literally every superpower in the story is painted in a negative light. It just feels absurd to suggest that, for example, someone like Gallant couldn’t use his power (carefully and thoughtfully and with consent) to heal people with emotional trauma. Superpowers in Worm are only for violence and conflict and crime, and I just don’t understand that. Again, the rogues form a token exception, but we rarely actually see them, and one of the first rogues we meet, Canary, is immediately subject to harsh and unjust punishment and never heard from again.

A misguided focus on only certain types of crime/violence - Worm deals with gang violence, robberies, and general chaos-inducing terrorism. It focuses on crimes perpetuated by working-class individuals and small to medium size illicit groups. There’s some commentary on state-sanctioned violence in terms of the corruption of the Protectorate and Dragon’s worries of having to obey a despot should one take over the government, but it’s not exactly framed in a way that highlights the struggles of the average person; the focus is almost entirely on capes. Worm doesn’t discuss things like wage theft, illegal rent hikes, or, dare I say it, the inherent violence of capitalism, which, while less flashy, are important problems with far-reaching consequences. It’s weird, and honestly kind of unrealistic, that there’s not a single anarcho-communist cape. Whether you agree with that kind of politics or not, it’s still a glaring omission if the setting of the story is trying to emulate real life. Again, Danny Hebert’s role as a union organizer and interest in restoring the ferry and reintegrating the city pay token attention to some of these ideas, but the vast majority of the story is unconcerned with addressing the source of, or solutions to, poverty and crime in Brockton Bay and the wider world of Worm.

So those are my thoughts. There’s a part of me that still thinks, “But so many people like this so much! Maybe it’ll get better!” I have a really strong drive to understand why others like the things that they do, to be able to share in their appreciation. But from what I’ve seen in a couple memes I happened upon, things are getting worse, not better for the world of Worm. And even if things start to resolve at some point, I’m not sure it would be great for my mental health to continue reading up to that point.

The breaking point for me, if you’re curious, was when a main character was just casually revealed to be a serial rapist. That wasn’t even the point of the chapter, it was just kind of thrown out there as an extremely-not-fun fact. So I was still reeling from that reveal while also experiencing all of the atrocities said character was committing in the moment, and after that was when I realized, “Hey, maybe this is not the kind of content I should be reading.” It even took reading a few more chapters into Arc 11 for it to really sink in, but I had this weird revelation of like, I get to choose which fictional worlds I spend my time in, and the world of Worm isn’t one I relish.

If you do enjoy Worm, I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on what makes it appealing to you.

#text #long text #review #thoughts #web serial #fiction #Worm #superpowers #parahumans #superheroes #supervillains #morality #evil #violence #capitalism #systemic violence #grimdark

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cant-think-of-anything · 3 years

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Pirate AU (Part Four)

TW: Violence

Cordelia sat on the rails, allowing her legs to dangle over the calm water. She enjoyed going out with her newfound acquaintances, but those stuffy dresses suffocated her. She tipped her head back, enjoying the breeze that the sea always brought when a sudden voice nearly made her topple off the ship.

“Cordelia?”

Lucie Herondale was standing behind her, staring openly. Cordelia loved that Lucie knew her name now, but all she could currently feel was the flush creeping up her face. She hoped her skin would hide it. Alastair stood behind her, clearly trying to cover up his smile.

“You didn’t tell me she was going to be here,” she muttered, pulling her coat tighter around her.

“Well if you trust her so much-” he broke off with a laugh, glancing at her upfronted expression. “Less than a week Cordelia! How does one manage to blow our cover that quickly?”

“Not my fault,” She grumbled, face heating up.

They had made plans to meet up, she just hadn’t expected it to be here, when she was dressed like this. Her only comfort was that Alastair was wearing something identical, though he looked far more comfortable than she did. She ought to find someone that made her brother embarrassed the way Lucie did her.

“Eugenia?” Cordelia asked, purposefully letting her eyes stay on the sky.

“She’s with her family. I met up with her earlier.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. I will be going to the city, to map the area out.”

“Map? What for?” Lucie asked.

Cordelia’s guilt gnawed away at her. It was Lucie’s family they were planning to steal from after all. She knew the Herondale’s had huge amounts of money, they certainly wouldn’t be impacted that greatly, but she didn’t want Lucie to think she was using her.

“Dinner of course,” Alastair said, his voice an intent but his words sarcastic.

He glanced at the carriage near the trees and sighed deeply before disappearing down the ladder. Cordelia knew what he really was out to do of course. When night fell Alastair would observe the bank that Mr. Herondale’s money was kept and find a way to get in without being caught. Just the night before Alastair had taken their mother to a hospital under a fake name. It was part of the reason they need money so quickly. She finally looked at Lucie.

“Why are you here?”

Lucie’s face reddened. “I can go if you wish, I just wanted to see,” she gestured wildly around them. “All of this.”

“Don’t go,” Cordelia said quickly, hopping off the railing to come sit next to her.

Lucie reached out and touched the thin material of her billowy white sleeves, her eyes widening when they fell to wear Cortana rested. Cordelia tugged the sword free of its sheath and placed it in front of her, a sign of great trust. She watched as Lucie gently ran her fingers over the words engraved in metal.

“I can’t believe you live on a ship,” she whispered, her eyes almost fervent as she looked around her. “I mean I didn’t think you were lying but still.”

Then she straightened suddenly. “I have to get back to the institute before night comes.” The words were deeply mournful, as if walking off this ship would make everything less real.

Cordelia smiled and took her hand. “I’ll come with you.”

~~~

Alastair hated London. The streets, he thought, were absolutely filthy. Repulsive even. His only saving grace was he was a few stories above the cobblestone sidewalk. His dark coat was buttoned to hide the bright white of his shirt and he had picked a pair of boots where the silver had mostly dulled. The problem with clothes that were practical for the sea was that they were very impractical for everything else. He still preferred them to suits.

The bank was further from the institute than he would have expected, meaning it was also in one of the quieter areas of the town. A shadowy figure on the street snapped him from his thoughts. He checked his pocket watch and logged the time. Night had fallen and the sky had fully darkened. He squinted and caught a flash of light brown hair. What fool, he thought, drawing a field telescope from his pocket, walked around at this hour without so much as a hat?

As it turned out, those were the least of his worries. Yet another figure came down the street. He wasn’t too concerned until the shorter of the two whipped a long narrow blade. Alastair stiffened, recognizing the weapon as a rapier immediately. But that hardly made sense unless…

Alastair drew a dagger out and unbuttoned his jacket before digging the sharp edge into the bricks lightly enough for it to slide and pushed off the windowsill.

~~~

Thomas’s mind was a whirlwind of thoughts. He was searching for anything suspicious that connected back to Barbra but he couldn’t quite wrap his head around this. A girl, quite petite in size, was standing in front of him with a blade pointed at his chest.

The figure was completely covered, he couldn’t see any defining features that would help him place her. He jerked back, instincts taking over. He’d been looking for something suspicious, people armed with swords roaming London certainly qualified. The rational part of his mind reminded him that the killer used poison not...a pirate sword?

Suddenly she lunged, sweeping her sword out. Thomas caught her arm before she made contact, a flash of white blond hair under the hood of the person’s jacket visible. Ripping out of his grasp somehow, she pulled back as if she were about to run but was cut off by a person dropping off the building in front of them.

This one also wore a hood, but they didn’t have anything covering their clothes. A loose white shirt that tightened at the wrist, a crushed velvet vest, black breeches, and gold buckled boots that all combined to make quite a striking outfit. They straightened, hands tightened around two golden daggers. The blonde one tilted their head and then struck out. The two of them parried and lunged which should have left Thomas to feel quite awkward. Or at least he would have if he wasn’t staring. The silver haired figure whipped back from the fight suddenly, hissed something at their opponent and took off, her black cloak blending her into the night.

That wasn’t why Thomas was staring though. The man’s hood had fallen back, revealing what Thomas had to believe was one of the most beautifully crafted faces ever made. Then the other boy’s lips twisted into a scowl, his dark eyebrows pushing together as he regarded Thomas. An unpleasant expression on a very pleasant face.

“Bloody hell,” He murmured to himself before tipping his head back to look at him. “Thomas Lightwood?”

Thomas stiffened, the reality of what had happened finally sinking in. Somewhat. “How do you know who I am?” He demanded. “And what in Lord’s name was that? Who were you fighting just now?”

The man groaned and rubbed his head. “I’m going to torment you forever for this Eugenia.”

Before Thomas could question him further he cut him off. “Yes, yes I know. I suppose we’ll just add you to the list of people who know everything about us they shouldn’t?”

~~~

Lucie sat with her legs crossed in the “Sanctuary”, the name her father gave to the large room that housed a fountain along with a few murals. Cordelia was beside her, red hair turned to flames from the fireplace, her dark eyes deep with excitement as she recounted a story.

Lucie adored fiction, piled off started novels scattering her room, but there was a different sort of feeling that came with a story that she knew was true. What Cordelia was speaking about was a train robbery she and Alastair had done a few months prior to coming to London. As she put it “Those stuffy nobles hardly needed the money,” before casting an apologetic look at Lucie.

Lucie found she didn’t mind. Cordelia laughed a little as she spoke and the small noise seemed to drown out every other thought in Lucie’s mind. She hoped Cordelia would think the red on her face was because of the fire.

A sharp knock on the Sanctuary door startled her out of dreamy haze. Lucie frowned, glancing at the door, shouting for them to enter but no one did. Cordelia tensed, her body straightening as her fingers wrapped around Cortana. Somehow the room felt much colder than it did a moment before.

“Lucie-”

The sconces lighting the wall suddenly flickered out, the fireplace went dark as if it had somehow doused itself. The room plunged into near darkness, the only light filtered from the windows lining the wall. She felt Cordelia’s hand wrap around her shoulder tugging her closer to the moonlit squares on the floor.

Lucie started to speak, turning around- and then cried out, scrambling back. Cordelia wasn’t the one who had touched her. As miserable-looking as she remembered, stained dresses and faded hats stood Tatiana Blackthorn.

“Lucie,” Tatiana murmured, her voice dropping into a horrid, gravelly whisper. “How you’ve grown.”

She was unable to prevent the shiver that ran up her spine. “I don’t understand. You left after-”

Tatiana scowled viciously when her voice broke. “You don’t get to mourn my son, not when this was your family’s doing.”

Lucie stepped further away, backing up into another body. She stifled a yell, swinging her arm out. Cordelia’s callused fingers wrapped around her wrist. “I’m here.”

“That won’t do you much good Carstairs girl. I hadn’t expected the two people I was searching for to be this... closely acquainted,” she said, sneering as she looked at their locked hands, “but I suppose that makes things easier for me doesn’t it?”

She felt something cold press into her hand, glancing down to see a dagger. She turned, but Cordelia was standing in front of Tatiana now, her beautiful golden sword gripped in her hands. And then she attacked, bringing Cortana down in a large golden arc. Tatiana dodged, her hideous face twisted into a crude grin. Lucie heard the word “foolish” before Tatiana drew her own blade and slammed it into Cordelia.

~~~

Cordelia felt as if she had been punched in the arm- at first. Then it burned. She had spilled some of her mothers boiling hot tea on her a few months ago when a rather unexpected wave crept up on them but this felt as if someone had set small fires to each of her nerves. Cortana clattered to the ground, but she stayed standing, her arm clutched to her chest. She refused to fall.

Her ears were ringing but she could still hear Tatiana’s twisted laughter, and a few moments later she could see Lucie creeping up behind her, dagger in hand. Before she could cry out, stop Lucie from walking to what would certainly be her death, Lucie plunged the dagger into Tatiana’s shoulder.

The repulsive woman shrieked, more from surprise than pain she was sure. Lucie, wide eyed, moved away, her chest rising and falling fast. Cordelia tried to reach out to her but a blinding pain made her drop down to her knees. Lucie knelt next to her, pulling her up onto the chair, murmuring something, her head swiveling between Cordelia and Tatiana with panic in her eyes.

“You little wretch,” Tatiana spat, staggering to her feet and stumbling closer to Lucie as if she were drunk. “I ought to do with you what I did to the worthless twat you called your cousin.”

Lucie’s face twisted in outrage, but before she could lunge forward, Tatiana pulled a dagger from her dress and smashed it into the glass window. Without hesitation she leapt down when it broke, but there was never any noise of impact. But by that point Cordelia’s ears were already ringing too loudly.

And that was all Cordelia remembered before blacking out completely.

~~~

Apparently if you get stabbed in the chest and are bleeding out your head will feel very large. Like really, really big.

Tagging: @adoravel-fenomeno and @barbra-lightwood

#alastair carstairs #thomas lightwood #thomastair #lucie herondale #cordelia carstairs #lucelia #tatiana blackthorn #the last hours #tlh #tsc #grace blackthorn #my writing #tw violence

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skywalkerstyles · 3 years

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Skin (Bakugou x OC!Reader insert)

Warnings: kidnapping, stockholm syndrome, quirkless AU, criminal Bakugou, robbery, hostage situation, anxiety, mysophobia

Summary: Katsuki Bakugou is a killer, hell bent on revenge. Hikaru Moshimoto is a college student with a dark and cloudy past. When Hikaru is taken hostage and forced to work with Bakugou in order to survive, will the be able to get passed their differences, and see the people behind the scars? A stalker seeks to finish something Hikaru started a long time ago. When they come head to head, will Bakugou protect her? Or will he add another victim to his list?

Hikaru Moshimato felt sick when she woke up that chilly september morning. Monday, September fifteenth to be exact. It was a day she would never forget or get over. It changed the course of her life forever.

It started out like any other morning, she got up, got dressed, had breakfast, fed her little cat Yoshi and headed out the door on her way to work. But there was a presence, it was dark and gloomy, and hung over her like a shadow. Something was coming, and she wasn't ready for it. At all.

She pulled up to the little gas station by her job, it had a little convenience store attached, a place she could grab snacks and drinks before work, the vending machines there were usually way overpriced, so it was easier to just bring food with her. She got out of her car, locking the doors as she held her wallet close to her chest, tucked her head down and walked inside.

She sighed, upon stepping into the cool air conditioned building, and instead of walking up to the counter and just paying for her gas she eyed the slushie station. She loved slushies, and she could never pass one up. She smiled to herself thinking, fuck it, and strolled over to the slushie machine. There was a man standing to the side of the machine, where the fridges held the drinks, he had a Redbull in one hand and a smartwater in the other. He wore an unbuttoned, navy blue flannel with a black t shirt and grease stained blue jeans. His eyes were covered by dark sunglasses and his hair was covered by a blue and white striped baseball cap. Hikaru was hyper aware of his presence, making sure to keep aware of her surroundings. She didn’t like the vibe she was getting from this guy. He scared her. Seemed like trouble.

But if he noticed her presence, he didn't show any signs of it.

So Hikaru relaxed her shoulders, shaking her head and began to ponder the flavor she’d get today. Hikaru had never been one for conversation anyway. She always kept to herself, due to some social anxieties and quirks she had, that made her ‘unapproachable’ as her mother had put it. But if you had a doctor mother who abused prescription medication and neglected you after your father’s death, you might have some fucked up issues too.

Which is why she found it strange when she felt the man’s presence shift, he’d come closer to her, and she could feel him staring. She kept her eyes down, feeling her cheeks heat up as she pulled a cup from the slot and got ready to pour her syrupy drink into it.

"What's your favorite flavour?" He asked suddenly, and the deep rough voice startled her. She twitched and peek at him curiously through her hair, that thankfully, covered most of her face.

"Coke." she answered meekly. The man cracked a smile, his teeth were perfect and bright. It was almost, alluring. Definitely charming.

“Really?” he asked, reaching out and taking the cup from her. She didn’t have time to react, before he plucked it from her hands and filled it with the drink of her choice. “I like blue raspberry best….sometimes cherry’s good too.” He handed her the drink and she took it hesitantly. He chuckled at her demeanor, cocking his head to the side, that ridiculously handsome smile still plastered to his face.

“Thank you.” she managed after a moment, she placed a lid on her drink and grabbed a straw.

“No problem,” he replied, following her as she turned towards the cashier. She can feel the panic and the nerves rising within her. Why was he following her? As they stood in line, waiting for the other customers to leave, she could feel the man change, his whole demeanor took on a darker, more serious tone. She curled in on herself, hoping he wouldn’t try and follow her to her car. Hikaru hadn’t always been this way. Afraid of germs, afraid of touch….Basic human contact. No. If you looked at her high school yearbook, you wouldn’t even think it was the same person. She used to be bright, and outgoing, willing to chat it up with just about anybody, a regular teenage girl. Until Amano. And...Hina... She shook her head, trying to focus on the task at hand, get the drink. Get the gas. Go to work. She took a deep breath, she would complete her goals today.

“Hi! How are you today?” a cheery red head smiled at Hikaru, she tried to smile back, and return the enthusiasm, but the feeling of dread was starting to creep back up on her and she couldn’t shake it off.

“I’m fine thank you. Ten dollars on pump-”

“Shut up.” Hikaru feels a strong hand wrap around her upper arm and tug her back, she looked up to see the man who had been by the slurpee machine, pulling her towards him, a pistol in his hand, pointed right at the cashier. Hikaru squeaked as the man pulls her into him, jabbing the gun into her side. “Give me all the money in the register, or you, and her die. Now!” Hikaru flinches at the last word, which he snarled at the cashier. She had her hands up, tears streaming down her face. “Move.” he ordered. The cashier slammed a metal grate down and an alarm began to sound. The man held onto Hikaru even harder, yanking her around as he turned to find an exit. “Fuck!” he exclaimed. Hikaru shifted, trying to wriggle free. He pulled her closer, he was big and intimidating. He reminded her of Amano. “You’re not going anywhere.” he said. “I need you. Come on.”

Panic began to rise within Hikaru, she could feel her breath growing more ragged by the minute, all the things she needed to get done shooting through her head. The man dragged her towards the back of the store and into the warehouse, once inside, he shut and locked the door, shoving her from him and holding the gun to her. Surprisingly, the slushie hasn’t spilled. “Don’t move.” he said coldly. A sob escaped her throat, the bubble was rising, she could feel the panic getting ready to burst.

“P-Please,” she rasped, her throat was closing, she couldn’t breathe.“I-I have money.”

“I don’t want your money. We need to get out of here.” Hikaru looked at him confused.

“W-we?” the man grabbed her again, yanking her towards the back of the warehouse.

“Yeah. We. You’re my hostage,” fear filled her as the man’s lips curled into a confident smirk. He pulled a set of handcuffs from his pocket and yanked her forward, cuffing her. “Don’t struggle. And you live.” She was about to faint. The alarm was blaring, but through the sound Hikaru could hear the doors bursting open. The same doors she had walked into only minutes ago, it seemed like hours now. The man cursed again, kicking the back exit door open and shoving her through.

________________

They hid behind a dumpster, he peaked out, looking around to see cops, flooding into the gas station, Hikaru shifted uncomfortably, the cuffs were tight on her wrists, digging into her skin. He didn’t seem to notice. “A-are you a criminal?” she asked. He didn’t even turn to look at her, inching forward slowly, his hand still gripping her tightly.

"Yeah."that was it. No explanation. Just a straight no bull answer. As the cops go into the front of the store, the man gripped her tightly and yanked her towards an older Astro van. Hikaru pondered why no cops were looking over towards them, how no one could see he was taking her. But it would be just her luck. He threw the passenger door open, shoving her inside, before running around to the otherside and climbing in. The door shut with a slam and he pealed out and away, the cops just noticing as you leave the gas station. The sweet and tasty slushie, left on the floor of the warehouse.

____________

The van was loud. It sent deep rumbles of vibration all the way down to Hikaru’s bones. Like a massage after the chaos back at the gas station. Her hands are still bound but the man had finally stowed the gun. There was no handle on the inside of the passenger door. She was stuck and she stayed quiet. Out of fear. The man drummed his fingers against the steering wheel, listening to a song on the radio. The silence wasn’t tense, but it wasn’t comfortable either. "Are you going to kill me?" she asked softly, so low he might not even hear her. He stopped drumming and turned to look at her for the first time since he’d taken her.

"Wasn't planning on it." He replied. “I just needed some cash….but damn that cashier was quick on her feet. Taking you was the only way I would have gotten out of there alive.”

“W-why do you say that?” she asked, curiosity getting the better of her. He cocked his eyebrow, finally taking off his glasses, his eyes were a deep blood red.

“You...You don’t watch tv do you ?” she shook her head. The news gave her anxiety. The only time she left her dorm was for class or work. Necessities. She kept to herself. He chuckled and shook his head as he turned on his turn signal.

“Why do you ask?” she asked a bit louder. She watched his adam’s apple bob and his eyes scan the road, searching for the right answer.

“I uh, I’m in a business most don’t agree with.” he said.

She decided to push a little further, “what do you do?”

“I’m...I’ve killed people.” he said it solemnly. Like he wasn’t proud of it, but he had to do it. Hikaru feels the panic begin to rise again. He cleared his throat. “What’s your name?” he asked, changing the subject.

“M-my…..it’s Hikaru.” she said, wishing she sounded braver than she felt. “Hikaru Moshimoto.”

“I’m Bakugou, Bakugou Katsuki.” he responded, “You know, you’re the first person I’ve met in a long time who didn’t know who I am.” he sighed, clicking his tongue, “You’re a weird girl.”

“Says the man who just admitted to murder being his occupation.” he laughed, shaking his head. She didn’t want to admit it, but she liked his laugh.

“Yeah, maybe we’re both just weird.” He paused and then said carefully, "I won’t hurt you."the tone of his voice is softer, calmer, and surprisingly soothing "Unless you make me." He added with emphasize on ‘make’.

“H-How many…” Hikaru trailed off, unable to finish her question. It was strange, she could never talk and be this open with just anybody. She usually just kept quiet, and stayed in her lane. She wasn’t the type of person to make waves. Not since before…..

“How many people have I killed?” Bakugou finished for her. She nodded, glad to have been pulled back from the darkness of her thoughts. He can tell that she’s got something going on. She looked so small and fragile. Like the china plates his mom used to collect. He really didn’t want to hurt her, and silently prayed he’d never have to. He bit his lip, trying to think of the right answer, “If I had to count….possibly sixty.” Hikaru’s mouth fell open in shock.

“Oh my….” she instinctively moved further from him. He couldn’t help but feel a pang of rejection. She focused on her shoes, on the scuffs and the threads in the laces, anything to keep her from going crazy. They sat in silence for a long while. Bakugou began to twitch as it stretched, it was slight, barely noticeable. Except she saw it. "So where are you taking me?" Hikaru asked awkwardly, eyes darting to his before looking ahead again

“I’m taking you to my family. You’re my hostage for now, but they’ll decide if you know too much or have seen too much.” Hikaru swallowed hard, wondering what that could possibly mean. He must have sensed her worry, because he reached out, only to pull his hand back when she flinched, with a sigh. “Just don’t worry….You seem harmless enough.”

“Can you take the cuffs off? Please? They hurt.” Bakugou pulls off onto the side of the road.

"Don't try anything, okay? I have a gun." Bakugou met her eyes as he shut off the van and turned to her, he looked down to her hands. He quickly unlocked the cuffs and sat back. She rubbed her swollen wrists and he started the car back up.

“Are you scared?” he asked after a while. Hikaru looked up at him again. She noticed he had freckles, they were light and scattered across his cheeks...He’d be a good subject to draw.

“I….” she bit her lip, unsure of how to proceed, “I’m terrified…..I know that mentally….But I guess I’ve shut down. I don’t really feeling anything.”

“Why?” he asked, suddenly curious. Did he want her to be afraid.

“I’ve been in….I’ve been in a lot worse situations,” he scoffed at that, disbelievingly.

“You’re my hostage. I had you at gunpoint. I’m kidnapping you and you’ve been in worse situations?” she smiles at how ludicrous it sounds.

“It does sound crazy but….I don’t know. I have a lot of anxiety disorders and I’ve been struggling with depression so I….maybe this was too much and my body is protecting itself.” he pursed his lips together.

“How old are you?”

“22.”

Shit. He thought. She’s just a kid. “I’m sorry it had to be you.” she gave him a questioning look. “In the store. If you hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t have taken you.” she nodded, not quite accepting his apology, but understanding, that he knew, she had been through some shit.

“I haven’t…..I haven’t left this town my entire life.” she said quietly, changing the subject. Bakugou picked up her switch in demeanor and followed it, trying to lighten the mood.

“Yeah?” she tried to smile, it was small and tight, but she could feel the uneasiness begin to grow again.

“Yeah….where is your family?”

“You’ll see,” he said, flashing her a grin. “You’ll like it better than this dump.” he snorted as they passed the ‘Leaving Town’ sign.

“Why did you come here?” she asked before she could stop herself.

“Don’t ask questions you already know the answer to.” she nodded, sinking back into her seat. Bakugou cleared his throat and turned the radio back up. “Better settle in. We got a long drive…..what kind of music do you like?”

________

He shut the door behind him. The dorm room was quiet and he couldn’t feel her presence as he looked around. Everything was in it’s rightful place, meticulous and germ freak as ever. He missed her so much. He walked over to Hikaru’s desk and lifted the sketchbook that sat open on it, he touched the lines of the person she drew, imagining the way she drew it, the way her hands moved. His heart was racing. It was 4pm and she should have been home now. She didn’t have any friends.

Where was she?

Where was the girl he’d been searching for for so long?

He was dying to see her again…….

#bakugou x reader #bakugou #bakugou katsuki #bakugou x you #bakugou x oc #bakugou bnha #bnha #bakugou imagine #bakugou one shot #bakugou fanfiction #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #mha bakugou #my hero academia fanfiction #my hero academia fanfic #my hero academia one shot #my hero academia imagine

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imagineaworlds · 4 years

Text

I Love You (Part Forty-Two) -- Aaron Hotchner

Written By: @desperately-bisexual

Request: None.

Warnings: Cursing. Mentions of kidnapping. Mentions of death, torture, sexual assault, panic attack, PTSD-- everything Criminal Minds. Talk of sex, BDSM, Dom/sub relationship, etc.

Pairing: Aaron Hotchner x Greenaway!Reader

Word Count: 12469

Timeline: Season 6 Episode 09. A month after part forty-one.

A/N: Hi, my loves. I might be taking a very short break. School is..... it's a lot right now. I think that between school and the way my friends have been getting into my head about Criminal Minsd/Hotch/Thomas, I've just kind of fallen out of love temporarily. I'm finishing up Sense8 rn, and then I'm going to start watching Tales of the City to help revamp my love for Thomas, and in turn Hotch and Criminal Minds. Chapter 43 is going to be a long one, so I just need ya'll to bear with me for a bit as I get to writing it. I love you guys! <3

A week stuck in the house after getting back from Hawai’i was a week too long. All I wanted to do was get back to work and act like nothing happened, because, really, nothing did happen. Yeah, something happened, but it could have been way worse. I handled the situation before it could get bad, and the team found me. As for the only surviving Unsub who took me, Morgan and Emily went to question him after he got out of surgery. They asked him about this website that Foyet had supposedly set up for his fans, but by the time they got the name of it, it was gone, and Garcia couldn’t find anything about it. She searched far and wide, even trying to recover the site itself, but whoever really set it up was good, and they knew how to cover their tracks.

All we knew was how the site operated. According to the Unsub, there were levels of the “membership”. Those who wanted to join Foyet’s little minion club, or whatever the fuck it was, had to start at level one with a misdemeanor. The higher up they wanted to move through the levels, the more intense the crimes got. The third to last level, the one the Unsub and his friends were on, was killing me. Throughout the whole ordeal— from the moment they bid on the task in the level, up until I managed to shoot two of them, they were in contact with the person in charge. He told them where to find me, when to take me, how to do it, where to take me, what to do about the call, but they came to a screeching halt when they were told that they needed to send a piece of me, one at a time, to Hotch and Jack. For a group of criminals who worked through the levels of robbery, rape, child abductions, and animal murder, it was surprising to me that they wouldn’t even try to follow their orders. I mean, they could have at least— Maybe that wasn’t anything to ponder on.

When asked what the last two levels were, however, the Unsub told us that he didn’t know because the bids were hidden from anyone on the lower levels. They had been the first group to make it to the “my” level, no one knew what the last two were. If I had to guess, though, based on what I knew about Foyet and his mission to ruin Hotch’s life, I was going to take a wild guess that the second one was likely hurting Jack— which was already unthinkable— and the first… the first was Hotch.

Foyet liked torturing Hotch. From the stabbings to killing Haley, Foyet enjoyed making Hotch’s life a living hell. Even from the grave, Foyet was doing his best to break down Hotch. He wanted Hotch’s life to fall apart around him, to have him lose everything before he would finally be targeted, too. From what we knew, the only task the Unsubs had with me was sending me off in pieces. That was it. The consideration to do more, the conversations I had overheard, was of their own volition; but it also happened to be their downfall. With Hotch, the task was probably to make it as painful as possible. Honestly, I didn’t want to consider the options after knowing what Foyet had already done.

After the Unsub was out of the hospital, our questioning completed, he was processed, and it was finally out of our hands. When we got home, I practically collapsed in the doorway, catching Jack in my arms as he ran to me for a Superman hug. I had never been more relieved to see him in my life since Foyet took him. I held him in my arms for as long as I could, even when he tried to protest that I was hugging him too tight. I never wanted to let him go. Even when he started asking questions about what happened on our vacation, because something was clearly wrong, I just stayed as still and quiet as possible because I just wanted to hold my son in my arms.

Hotch made me stay home for the week following that while he practically catered to my ever want and need. In a way, I suppose, I was under house arrest. All I was missing was the ankle monitor; and, honestly, it wouldn’t have surprised me if I would have woken up with one on. Hotch was being a little too protective since it happened. While I tried to not blame him because he was obviously still trying to get over the fact that he could have lost me, I just wanted to get back out there and live my life. I wanted to get back into the field; I wanted to see our friends; I wanted to mess around with Morgan and Emily all the time. I didn’t want to feel like a wounded, little lamb.

What happened to me wasn’t even that bad, as I said. All I had were a few cuts and bruises, yet Hotch was acting like my entire body was broken and he needed to do everything for me. He didn’t go to work, he hardly even let me out of my sight. It was like the days following Haley’s death where I watched Hotch and Jack like a hawk because I was afraid that if I let them out of my sight for even a moment, I would never see them again. Hotch probably felt the same way about me this time around… But I really just needed him to take a step back and let me breathe.

When I did get back to work about a month after Hawai’i, it wasn’t an easy transition. All the way to the office, Hotch tried to convince me into reconsidering going back. If it were up to him, I would have been at home for the next nine months or so. But I didn’t want that. I didn’t want to be locked up for months on end, sitting around, worrying about Hotch and the rest of the team as they went out to work on hundreds of cases without me. That wasn’t going to happen. I had a life to get back to. I could deal with my trauma outside of work— just like Hotch, who was still going to therapy because of what happened with Foyet while still going to work, too. And if he was just worried about me being pregnant, which I was sure was a factor, then he had to understand that it wasn’t a big deal yet. It was a miracle, of course, but it wasn’t impeding my ability to work just yet.

I just had to keep reminding Hotch that I had been to hell and back a thousand times, and this was just one more thing to add to the shit list. If I could get through all of that, I could get through this. But if Hotch started blowing this all out of proportion and made a big deal out of it, we were going to have problems. I compared it to when he found out the truth about those photos the Fisher King had taken out of my jewelry box, and he promised that he wouldn’t treat me any differently knowing what he knew now. I needed that understanding back. He always told me that he trusted my judgement—if he didn’t, he would have never let me go near that train Elle was being held hostage on in Texas a few years back—so I just needed him to trust me now. I was going to be fine. I was fine.

On Tuesday, after driving into work and getting some reports done, the team gathered in the roundtable room to discuss potential cases. Only, JJ already had a case in mind. Daniel Lanham, a ten year old boy, was reported missing on a camping trip by his father last November… Over a year ago… He was never found. In fact, the case had run so cold, that the police were initially grasping at straws by trying to pin the whole disappearance on the father. However, with no forensic evidence tying him to a crime, they couldn’t arrest him; but now that Daniel’s body had just appeared on the Appalachian Trail, questions were starting to stir and fingers were being pointed again.

I stared at the photo of that boy’s decayed body. He was only ten. How could someone do this to a child—How could someone do this to their own child, if that were really the case. I mean, there were signs of care and remorse with the body that indicated personal attachment that a father could potentially have. Daniel’s body had been wrapped in a plastic bag that was buried underground and covered by elements, all in the name of preserving and protecting the body from weather, animals, natural accelerated decay, etc. But this was an opportunistic crime. Our Unsub, if he was hunting for a victim on the Appalachian Trail, had to sit and wait for the perfect boy to come along. Or if Daniel’s father was responsible, he had to wait until his son was alone with him. Either way, it was an opportunity that arose, not a sophisticated, targeted attack. That was… unless…

“JJ, are there any more missing persons or mysterious deaths on the trail that could be connected to this?” I asked.

“The Rangers contacted me with this case, and they claimed that they’ve never seen anything like it. So, I’m going to assume not. But I’ll check with them when we get on the jet, just in case.”

“It says here that Daniel’s father went back to the trail every month in search for his son?” Hotch questioned, looking through the file. “And then he stopped in March.” He stopped in his tracks as a realization hit him. “Which is about the same time the M.E. estimates Daniel was killed.” He closed his case file. “Y/N, we’ll talk to Mr. Lanham when we arrive at the Park Ranger’s office. JJ, can you have them organize that while we’re on the jet and you’re contacting them about similar cases?”

“Sure,” she answered.

“Prentiss and Morgan, when we get to the trail, you guys should head out to where Daniel Lanham’s body was found in order to get an understanding of this Unsub’s level of mental stability.”

By that, he was alluding to the fact that we weren’t sure if our Unsub was Mr. Lanham or not. If this presented as organized or disorganized, it would help us conclude on way or another, and if there was anything else important out there that they Rangers missed, it might help us build our profile. So, it truly made sense that we would send someone out there. But I wished that it were me. Hotch usually teamed me up with Morgan—or, at times, Morgan and Emily. I wanted to go on the trail with them so bad. But Hotch wanted me to stay back in the Ranger’s office with him in order to question Mr. Lanham, even though that was a small enough task for one of us to do alone.

----

The Park Ranger’s office was more like a large cabin. Actually, that was exactly what it was—and it was similar to Gideon’s cabin, but perhaps twice that size. There was one main office where all of the Rangers had been waiting for our arrival, then there was the lead Ranger’s office to the left, and, lastly, set ahead was a boardroom where we could meet privately if need be. As we walked in, we were immediately told that Mr. Lanham was waiting for us in said boardroom.

While Emily and Morgan turned on their heels to head straight out to the trail as Hotch ordered, Rossi, Reid, and JJ moved to the table in the middle of the room that had a large map taped down to it for us to get our bearings. Reid immediately started building the geographical profile. So, while he was busy with that, and JJ and Rossi were getting caught up with the Ranger’s investigation, Hotch and I headed into the boardroom.

Hotch held the door open for me. I silently thanked him as I headed inside to see Mr. Lanham sitting at a desk, never looking up to acknowledge us. We carefully approached.

“Mr. Lanham, I’m Agent Hotchner, this is Agent Greenaway, and we’re with the Behavior Analysis Unit at the FBI. We’ve been called in to investigate your son’s death.” Hotch pulled a chair out for me. “We need to ask you some questions.” After I sat down, Hotch moved to take a seat in the chair next to me.

Mr. Lanham shrugged, keeping his eyes lowered, his hands in his lap, his leg shaking nervously under the table. All signs that he had issues with authority. Some of them were signs of guilt, but they could also be attributed to his frustration with the FBI questioning him when he thought that everyone had forgotten him as a suspect. I understood why he felt that way. However, it was necessary to ask him these questions in order to confirm or deny if he had any involvement in his son’s death. So far, it was inconclusive.

“You went almost twice a month out to the site where your son disappeared from November to March. And then you stopped going.”

He nodded. “That’s correct.”

“Why? Why stop at the same time he died? Because that looks awfully suspicious to us, Mr. Lanham.”

“I don’t know. Alright? I just—” He let out a heavy sigh as his body slumped in his seat. A sign of defeat rather than guilt. “I had this… feeling that he was gone. And it was taking too much out of me to keep searching. You probably don’t know what that feels like.”

I glanced over at Hotch. When Foyet took Haley and Jack, I had this feeling in the pit of my stomach that something terrible was going to happen, and no one was going to be able to stop it. And then Haley died. My suspicions had been confirmed, my heart shattered in my chest, and yet… the anxiety dialed back. I could remember still being hysterical and worried out of my mind because I wasn’t sure if Hotch and Jack were dead; but… Now that we were sitting there and Mr. Lanham had brought up this “feeling” he had, I realized that some part of me that day knew that they were still alive. I still had a sliver of hope that Jack was just hiding, safe and sound in his secret spot, and I had a feeling that Hotch was alright. And I was correct. Hotch was beaten and broken, of course, but he was alive. And my little man was alive. So, I understood that “feeling” Mr. Lanham had referred to.

Hotch moved on. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you used to take Daniel camping every weekend.”

“Yes. His mother had full custody, but she allowed me to see him on the weekends.”

Hotch and I knew that feeling all too well. Haley practically had full custody, but she allowed us to see Jack whenever we were in town; but it was still hard. Co-parenting was hard. I couldn’t imagine how Hotch did it alone all those years.

“So, the night he disappeared, what happened?” I asked. Mr. Lanham didn’t respond because he seemed at a loss for words. Even though he had recited his story a thousand times for local police, state police, Park Rangers, and so on, he couldn’t find the right words anymore. I really couldn’t blame him.

“You set up camp…” Hotch began egging him on once he noticed Mr. Lanham’s hesitancy. “You fell asleep… And then… A man came into your tent?”

“No. No one came into the tent. Daniel got up because he had to use the bathroom. He didn’t wake me up because he was in that phase where he was convinced that he didn’t need his dad protecting him all the time…” He sniffled. “So, I rolled over and I went back to sleep. I should’ve—” His voice cracked behind a sob. “I should’ve gone after him. But I didn’t.”

“Mr—” I began, but he interrupted me.

“I was his hero, and I failed,” Mr. Lanham cried before hiding his face in his hands out of shame.

I recognized the look on his face as he had said it, though. It was the same look Hotch wore for months after Haley died. He was ashamed that he couldn’t have done more to save her, and he failed at being Jack’s superhero when he needed it most.

“I don’t care that you all think I’m guilty. Because I am! I am guilty! I didn’t protect my son when he needed me most.” He looked up at us. “If I could go to prison for that, I would.”

Without a doubt, I knew that there was no way Mr. Lanham hurt his son. That kind of thinking—that sort of regret couldn’t be replicated by any kind of sociopath. No. Only a true grieving father who had been through hell could possibly feel that way. And since I had seen Hotch go through the exact same motions after Haley’s death, I knew that Mr. Lanham was innocent, and that he wasn’t putting any kind of show on for us. He genuinely regretted that night.

But I just couldn’t sit there and keep listening to his distraught cries. The way he was sobbing while blaming himself for something he had no control over only took me back to over a year ago where Hotch practically collapsed in my arms after Haley’s wake, and he pleaded with me about moving houses because he couldn’t stand being in that house anymore. The cries were eerily similar. And the worst part was, that parental regret that Mr. Lanham was starting to rub off on me when it came to Jack, and now the regret was turning into panic with our baby. Fuck.

I stood and saw myself out of the boardroom. Hotch was hot on my heels, likely because he didn’t want to listen to it any longer, either. The superhero thing hit too hard. We were Jack’s superheroes—we always had been—and the day that Foyet killed Haley, we failed him. We couldn’t protect him and his mom practically the one time it mattered most. Before, I used to regret that deeply, of course, but now that there were… other factors involved… I felt all of that ten times harder now, and it made me reflect on what the hell Hotch and I were actually going to do to prevent something like that from happening ever again. I didn’t want it to be Jack or our baby that we would lose next time—No. There would be no next time… This was exactly why I had to get away from Mr. Lanham while he was like that.

Apparently, Emily and Morgan had gotten back from the trail while we were talking to Daniel’s dad. They were standing around the map table in the middle of the office, a marker in Emily’s hand as they told Rossi and Reid everything they found out there. More bodies. And by more, I mean a lot more. Where they went to find Daniel’s burial ground, they ended up finding at least a dozen other bodies that Rangers were working to dig up currently so that they could be identified. So, this just turned serial.

“His name is Tyler Dale. He was the same age as Daniel when he went missing, and he was on a family trip when it happened,” Morgan explained, catching me and Hotch up to date with what everyone else knew.

Reid immediately scurried off with this new information to work on something that was churning in his mind, something that he couldn’t explain to us quite yet or it would ruin his thought process. We all turned to watch him silently work. We knew that whatever it was, it was likely important, and likely to help us. Honestly, if I were to guess, now that I was watching him scan through both Daniel and Tyler’s files a mile a minute, he was probably working on victimology. If he wasn’t, I was going to start. He was the fast reader, but I was the quick spotter. I almost wanted to challenge him one day into seeing who could solve a cold or closed case first—like the Foothpath Killer. Considering I solved that one the fastest, and Gideon was incredibly impressed, I was sure I could win against Spencer Reid.

And then he jumped to his feet with a thought. Okay… So, maybe he would put up a good fight. But I liked a challenge. I kept considering it as Reid set the files out on the map table and started dialing Garcia’s number on the conference phone. I cocked a brow at him. What was it that he found? Or, actually, what was it that he thought he had found?

“Garcia—” Reid began.

“Oh, it’s the boy wonder!” she cheered. “You never call me. It’s so isolating…”

Reid smiled lightly in response. “Sorry. We’ve been a bit busy.”

“I forgive you. I guess.”

Those of us who were standing around chuckled somewhat. Reid immediately turned back to his work when he shook it off, though, so that he could get back to what it was he called her for. “Can you look up the missing persons reports on the trail, specifically young boys between the ages of nine to thirteen.”

“I’m gonna need more than that.”

“The Unsub’s probably in his late thirties to forties, so disregard any cases older than twenty years.”

“What are you doing?” Rossi asked, utterly confused.

Reid hardly acknowledged Rossi when he answered with, “Speeding up the process of identifying those kids.” He grabbed a pen. “Garcia, narrow it down to boys with dark hair only. How many do we have now?”

“Twelve.”

Emily’s eyes widened. “They’ve only found ten bodies so far.”

Reid stood tall. “Yeah, but they’re still looking. It’s entirely possible those other two boys are out there. Garcia, which of those is the oldest case?”

“Um… Victor Dane disappeared when he was ten… and that was…” Garcia paused and gulped. “Oh. Fifteen years ago. They never found out what happened to him, but Rangers at the time suspected that he just happened to get lost.” That was usually their excuse when people went missing out there.

“What time of year was that?”

“October 20th.”

Reid was scribbling notes down on a piece of paper in one of the kids’ files. “What about the other boys? Did they all disappear around that time?”

“Yeah… How did you…”

“Thanks, Garcia.” Reid hung up on her without any consideration, and he stood to face all of us.

As we all huddled around, Reid began explaining how the cogs turning in his head had just come up with a dozen different answers to the problems we were facing. For our profile of the Unsub, we were missing any kind of link between how, when, and why the victims were taken. But Reid figured it out. Now that we had the identity of another kid, he was able to connect some of the dots, but what Garcia told him explained it all clearly to him. Our Unsub was crossing stateliness, which was why no one connected the dots—and he was spending months doing so. To hike the entire trail would take about six months. He was taking his victims in the fall, and we knew from Tyler and Daniel, he was killing the boys in the winter…

He was torturing them for months on end… He got away with it because no one knew that he existed.

I cringed and took a step back and away from the group. I felt Hotch’s eyes following me, so I didn’t let any emotion show that would give away the panic building in my chest. What if Hotch had thought that I just wandered off in Hawai’i? What if he had really been convinced that I left to go back to the Mainland—that I had left him… No one knew that those men who took me existed. No one knew that there were people out there who were so loyal to The Reaper. No one knew that I was a target. I could have died if Hotch didn’t know me so well. I could have died if the team didn’t have enough trust in him and I to know that something was wrong. I could have ended up like those boys that were being dug up in the forest.

I swallowed all of my pain.

----

That night, Hotch forced me to go back to the hotel with him while the team stayed at the Ranger’s office to have a long night of working. I think this move of his had more to do with Hawai’i than anything else. He was worried that I wasn’t better. He thought that I was suppressing any memories or PTSD in order to trick him into thinking that I was alright. And maybe I was. Maybe I wasn’t at all okay because every time I closed my eyes, I was terrified that someone else who had seen “Foyet’s website” would come to kill me, Jack, or Hotch. I was dreading a call from home while we were gone on this case that would tell us that someone took our little man from us. Foyet was always cruel. There was no doubt about it. But I never thought that it would get this far after death, after Hotch had bashed his face in to the point he was unrecognizable.

I needed rest desperately. For once, I wasn’t going to argue with Hotch about something related to dictating my life. Because I clearly needed to sleep, but Hotch didn’t, he decided to set up shop at the desk while I rolled into bed, which meant that I could afford to at least close my eyes because someone was keeping watch. Usually, Hotch fell asleep without struggle. If I were wrapped in his arms, it would take only a few minutes before he would completely crash and start snoring in my ear—but I could never fell asleep. If I did, there was a chance someone could take him from me. Something like Hawai’i could happen to him if I weren’t careful. So, I stayed up nearly every night just to ensure no one would come in and take him—or even to make sure that no one was lurking in the house to hurt Jack. But Hotch was staying up now. He was sitting at the desk, looking over the case, facing the door and the window, which was a reassurance to me that meant that no one could sneak up on him now.

So, I relaxed.

After a few minutes, I heard Hotch get up to grab his pajamas and toiletries from his go-bag and head into the bathroom. My eyes followed him until he closed the door.

I curled up on the bed, bringing my knees up ever so slightly towards my chest, and I laid my hands over my stomach. It was so odd… Everything felt normal, but it clearly wasn’t. Between the fact that Hotch was being overprotective and that I was subconsciously protecting my stomach more, it was obvious that I was pregnant; but I wasn’t showing yet, and I technically couldn’t even feel anything yet. It was just knowledge and an unconscious drive to protect something we couldn’t even see or feel. But the strangest part of it all was that I couldn’t wait to have more than that. I couldn’t wait to hold our baby, to see if they got mine or Hotch’s eyes, or what color hair they would end up with. Every second that we wasted just knowing and not seeing was torture. I was just excited to skip the next few months and finally have them in my arms.

Hotch came out of the bathroom, his face washed, teeth brushed, hair combed out of his face, and his suit switched out for his pajamas. When he saw my curled on the bed, he smiled. I smiled back at him. Despite how tense I had been about his protective behavior, I could find myself relaxing and falling in love with him over and over again every time he looked at me like that. It was this sparkle in his eyes that spoke volumes about how much he eternally loved me. And that smile… It was this slight curl at the corner of his lips that ever so slowly turned into a wide, toothy grin the longer he stared at me. It was pure joy. And it was absolutely contagious. I found that every time I spotted that smile growing on his face, I’d start smiling ear to ear, laughing at how cute and silly he was.

Aaron Hotchner… Cute and silly… It was strange to think about that sometimes—how I knew him in that capacity when no one else even got a hint of that side of him. In fact, most people didn’t know that he was capable of smiling. But he was. He was capable of so much, and he was deserving of every happiness in the world. After everything he had been through, I could confidently say he earned eternal bliss.

“You okay?” he asked quietly. He always whispered when he was afraid of disturbing me because he was taken by the way I was just… existing. I wasn’t doing anything special, yet he didn’t want me to move. I could tell that he wanted to remember me like that for a little longer.

I nodded. “Yeah. Just thinking.”

“About?” He moved to sit down at the end of the bed, bringing my feet onto his lap so that he could massage them lightly. I relaxed immediately. When he started rubbing his thumb into the arch of my foot, I rotated somewhat so that I was laying on my back and looking at him.

“What Mr. Lanham said about his son,” I answered. “I’m terrified that something is going to happen to our kid, Aaron. Terrified. We know what’s out there—We know who’s out there. How can we possibly protect them from all the evils out there?”

“We just try our best.”

“Mr. Lanham tried his best. You tried your best. What if I can’t try my best?”

Hotch moved his thumbs to the pads of my feet. “It’s hard, Y/N. I’m not going to lie. All that pain and panic you feel on behalf of Jack is going to be ten times worse now with your own flesh and blood. That doesn’t mean that you love Jack any less—please don’t take it that way. But it is different when they’re your own. So, this anxiety you’re feeling now is entirely valid. Trust me. But it’s a day by day thing. You do your best one day, and then you try even harder the next. That’s all you can do. There’s no point in dwelling on what you could have done better or what horribly thing can potentially happen.”

“And if we fail?”

“We won’t.”

“How do—”

“We won’t,” he said more sternly.

I reached out to squeeze his bicep, since that was all I could reach and reaffirm. Maybe I did understand why he wanted to protect me. Maybe he was just doing his best with me, and he felt that his day to day best wasn’t enough. But it was. Actually, it was more than enough.

“I love you.”

He kissed his way up from my ankle to my hip, slowly moving around until he was hovering over me and I was giggling at the way his kisses tickled to me. I punched at his pecks lightly in a playful attempt to make him stop. But he didn’t. He only smirked and moved to kiss my stomach. I ran my fingers through his hair, encouraging him to stay there because I loved how it felt. I loved thinking to myself that we knew something was there, though we couldn’t see it, yet he had an instinct to still show me every bit of love. Especially there.

“I love you,” he whispered against my stomach.

----

In the morning. Hotch and I woke to a call from the Park Rangers that two kids had just been reported missing on the trail. A boy and a girl. Robert and Ana Copeland. That didn’t match our Unsub’s M.O. at all, but we simply couldn’t take the chance. Knowing that the body count out in the forest was only increasing with every knew hole Rangers were digging out there, it was entirely possible that the Unsub was spiraling. It wasn’t worth ignoring. If it meant potentially saving those kids, we were going to at least look into it. If it turned out that it had nothing to do with our case, it would be passed on to the Rangers and local PD, who could hopefully help the parents seek closure.

Until then, we had to try our best. So, we hurried out of bed and raced to the Ranger’s office. When we got there, JJ was already setting up a search party with the Rangers and local volunteers who found out that the kids went missing and wanted to help. Hotch pulled me to the side before we stepped in.

“You should stay here with Reid, give us some outside geographical help,” he offered.

I cocked a brow at him, scoffed, then walked away. There was no fucking way I was doing that. Fucking ridiculous. “JJ,” I said, tapping her shoulder. She turned to face me. “I’ll take the far East quadrant.” I pointed to her map, signaling to the area of the forest that I was referring to. It happened to be the smallest with the least amount of volunteers to oversee, so I figured that Hotch would at least compromise on that. “And I’ll check out the—"

Hotch suddenly grabbed my bicep a little harder than expected and started pulling me to the board room to talk to me privately. He let go of my arm as I stumbled inside, catching my balance quickly before turning to face him. He was frowning like he was angry with me. My eyes followed him as he locked the door then proceeded to turn all of the blinds up so that they were closed, making it so that no one could see into the room.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he asked me, crossing his arms over his chest once the room was made private and dark.

I shrugged. “I’m going to go help those kids.”

He shook his head. “I’m benching you.”

“Hotch—”

“I don’t want to hear it.”

He was oddly calm. Usually, if I gave him push back like this, he’d try to be a little more demanding— whether it be with his boss or Sir tone. Either would have worked on me, but he was still holding back. Asshole. Just fucking crack. Please. Give me something in response to my pushback. Recognize that I’m fucking with you because I want you back, and just do something! Please!

“You can’t bench me—”

Hotch’s eyes narrowed. “I’m pulling you from the field. You shouldn’t have come back this early. And I don’t want you to get hurt, especially since there are new factors involved.”

I chuckled. So that was what this was about. I wasn’t even showing, and he was already losing his shit. This was exactly why I was scared to tell him I was pregnant in the first place. I knew that this would fucking happen. “That’s bullshit,” I snapped. I just wanted him to fight with me. Was that too much to ask? “You didn’t pull JJ out of the field until she was too pregnant to even walk.”

“That was different.”

“It really fucking isn’t, Aaron! I’m going to go out there and I’m going to help find those kids and our Unsub, and there’s really nothing you can do to stop me right now. If you want to pull me out of the field, then you’re going to have to wait until we get back to the office and tell Strauss exactly why.” I started making my way towards the door. “Until then, I’m going—"

Hotch stepped in my way, making me crash into him slightly, but he didn’t waver. “Sit down and shut up,” Hotch demanded gruffly.

I gulped and instinctively took an obedient seat on the couch. There was the Hotch I knew. I found him in there somehow, which meant that I was right about him holding back on my behalf. He still wanted to be rough with me, I could see it in his eyes; but he was doing everything in his power to not do it because he thought I was fragile. I wasn’t fragile. He knew better than anyone that I wasn’t fragile. Hopefully, all it would take was this one snap and we’d be back in business.

Hotch paced the room for a moment before stopping just in front of me. He roughly pinched my face with one hand to make me look up at him. “You want things to be normal? Fine. Stop being a brat and listen to my orders. You’re staying here with Reid, and that’s the end of it.” He let go of my face.

“Yes, Sir.” I nodded.

His chest fell as he let out a relieved sigh, “Good girl.” He ran his fingers through his hair as he caught his breath, trying to come to terms with what he had just done, and how he thought it was entirely out of line. “Sorry,” he whispered under his breath, ashamed.

I shook my head while standing. “I love you.” I took his face in my hands and kissed him gingerly. “I’m sorry for pushing your buttons.”

He kissed me back. “It’s okay.” He let go of me, and I let go of him, then, within an instant, Hotch was storming off towards the door. “Call me if you and Reid find anything.”

I hesitantly agreed, watching him leave the board room and head out with the team, the Rangers, and all of the volunteers. It was just me and Reid in the Park Ranger’s office now. He glanced over at me, confusion written all over his face, but I just shrugged it off. I didn’t need him asking questions when I was still coming to terms with it myself.

I shook my head, unfolded my arms, and headed to the map table to search it with my eyes and fingers to find anywhere that stood out to me as a good place to hide out for the winter and to keep hostages. Reid was hovering over it with a pen in hand in order to help him pinpoint certain areas. When he saw something, he circled it. The only time I spotted something, I asked him to circle it, too.

Yet, all I could think about was Hotch while I should have been thinking about those kids that were out there, scared out of their wits as a monster did who knew what with them. I should have been focused. We weren’t supposed to let our emotions get in the way, which was a main concern Hotch and I had when we initially started dating. We couldn’t forget our work. We couldn’t let our relationship get in the way of saving lives. And I was trying to remind myself of that while staring at that map, attempting to force my eyes to focus in on something, but I just couldn’t. My mind was elsewhere.

“He’s probably hiding them in a cave,” he continued. I hummed a thoughtless agreement. “Somewhere near water so that he can live off the land.” I agreed again. “And then aliens came down and took them.” I hummed again. “What’s wrong with you?” Reid asked, circling a waterfall on the map. I cocked a brow, knowing that he could sense my confusion without having to look up. “I mean… I don’t want to pry, but something’s off.”

“It’s nothing,” I insisted. I knew that he was referring to how Hotch and I were practically dancing around each other, which wasn’t like us at all— especially since we just went through something which should have only brought us closer.

Reid looked up at me through his eyelashes for a brief moment to get a profile on me. He looked back down. “It makes sense, you know,” he commented while still scribbling on the map. I raised a brow, and he sensed my confusion again, so he continued, “Hotch has lost a lot. More than anyone should have to lose. It’s no surprise that he’s being more careful with you than he ever was with anyone else. He’s had to learn and evolve based on his experiences, and that evolution has brought him to being— for a lack of a better term— a helicopter parent. I don't think he’s necessarily trying to suffocate you, like you think he is. In his mind, he’s reminding himself of everything he could have done differently with Haley that could have saved their relationship and her life, and he’s testing out these new behaviors with you.

They say that a mother’s bond with her child is the strongest connection any two humans can have; but we’re still primal creatures, and the fathers have a tendency to become overbearingly protective once they are aware that their mates are carrying their child. Think of it like a wolf marking its territory. The wolf becomes hostile towards anything or anyone that tries to come near its territory because it’s their safe space and they have an instinct to protect it with their life. Fathers of most species are the same way with the mothers of their children, and humans happen to be the worst about it because we’re more advanced creatures—”

“Reid,” I spoke up, catching his attention, “you’re rambling.”

He chuckled self-consciously. “Sorry… I’m just trying to say that… things aren’t going to go back to normal— for a while, at least. He’s trying to make up for his past mistakes. And after what happened in Hawai’i, you can understand why he’s a little uneasy and a little more protective than you’d like. It might help if both of you, I don’t know… set some rules and boundaries.”

I smirked. “Is that the doctor’s advice?”

He shook his head and looked back down at the map. “It’s your friend’s advice.”

“Thank you, Spencer.” I put a hand on his shoulder.

Suddenly, the walkie talkie on the table started buzzing with static. Mine and Reid’s attention to turn to it just before we heard Morgan’s voice echo through the room with an update from the trail, a really good update, actually. They found the daughter. She was safe with him and Emily, and they were sending her back to the office with a Ranger so that I could question her because they couldn’t find her brother anywhere yet. I picked up the walkie to acknowledge his report.

We waited about thirty minutes after the call from Morgan to see the Copelands come in with JJ from the trail while looking around for their daughter who hadn’t arrived yet. JJ showed them to the boardroom so that they could wait there. When they were sitting down and holding each other anxiously, JJ came over to me and Reid and asked if we would be fine with waiting with the Copelands while she headed back out to the trail to work with the other volunteers who had a million questions for her. I shrugged and insisted that she go. I could handle this while Reid kept looking at the map.

On her way out, JJ ran into Ana and the Ranger that had brought her back. Ana was covered in dirt, her jacket torn up, her hair knotted, her eyes sunken out of exhaustion. I didn’t see any bruises on her, though. In fact, from where I was standing, I didn’t see any sign of any kind of abuse—sexual or otherwise. It made sense. Unfortunately, our Unsub’s type was kids, but he preferred boys. Whatever happened out there in the woods, there was probably a reason that Ana was with us and not Robert. Hopefully, she could give us some answers.

After sitting around for a few minutes, watching as the Copelands held their daughter close and let her cry against them, I decided to go in. Sitting there and watching them was just breaking my heart. All it did was remind me of all the times after Haley’s death when Jack would cling to me for dear life, crying into my shoulder until my shirt was soaked and I needed to change. I had never heard anyone sob in pain like that until that dreadful day when Hotch broke down, and then Jack started having nightmares. The two of them were in pain… They just couldn’t stop sobbing and whimpering. Ana was the same way.

I couldn’t cry like that when they found me in Hawai’i. Part of me knew that if I broke down and sobbed like that, then Hotch would have been in even worse shape than he already was. Besides, I had happy news that offset how I was really feeling. We had this little miracle in our lives now, and all of my focus was being drilled into that instead of remembering the panic I felt when I saw Gene standing just behind Hotch on the beach. I had to remember that in just a few months, there would be another little Hotchner running around—just as we had always joked about—and it distracted me from waking up with nightmares of sitting in that cabin, anticipating the moment they would finally decide to get rid of me.

I couldn’t keep thinking about it. I was sick of sitting around and waiting for something to happen. So, I carefully pushed into the room that the Copelands were sitting in, and I entered with a welcoming, kind smile that would help the scared little girl warm up to me. A thought occurred to me. I was never going to let my children be that terrified. Ever. I dreaded being an overbearing parent, but I knew what was out there, and I knew what I needed to do in order to protect my family. I was going to do whatever it would take. Neither of my kids would ever have to be in Ana or Robert’s shoes. No matter what.

“Hi, Ana.” I held my hand out for her to shake, just a simple way of me building rapport with her while also making her feel more adult and brave than she really was. “My name’s Y/N Greenaway, and I’m with the FBI. I’ve been looking for you and your brother, Robert.” She shook my hand warily. As she let go, I sat down in the seat across from her and crossed my ankles over each other. “Are you up for a few questions?”

Ana nodded shyly, tucking under her mother’s arm as much as possible.

“Cool.” I smiled at her. “What do you remember?”

“I shouldn’t’ve left Robert, but he told me to run. He made me promise to go when he distracted the man.”

“You did the right thing, Ana,” I reassured her, playing along with the dodge of my original question.

“But he still has my brother.”

“You being here because you listened to your brother is going to help us, though. I promise. I need you to tell me about the man who took you if we’re going to find Robert. Can you do that?”

She nodded. “We were in a cave…” she began slowly, pondering her words carefully as she tried to push through the nightmares running through her. I knew what that felt like. “He kept us in a cage with toys. Lots and lots of toys. There were no lights, and he stole Robert’s flashlight to make sure we couldn’t see anything.”

“What about the man, Ana?”

It was great that she was already being so open and talkative, but we knew all of this because Morgan and Emily were already searching for a cave, and the Unsub was probably long gone by now if he knew that Ana had escaped. We needed to know about him specifically in order to build the profile and find him.

“He was dirty,” she answered, “and scary. He was tall and fat. He walked funny and didn’t like to talk—”

“What do you mean by ‘he walked funny’?”

“Like, with a limp…”

“So, he was hurt?”

“I think so. That was why he couldn’t catch me, but he could catch Robert. He always took Robert. Never me. He took Robert at one point, and when he came back, he was crying and shaking, and that was when he told me that I needed to run the next time the man came for him. So, Robert pretended like he had to use the bathroom, and the man left the cage unlocked… Robert pushed him over long enough for me to run.” She started to sob. “I shouldn’t have left him!” She hid her face against her mother’s chest. “I shouldn’t’ve left him!”

I rubbed my hand over her back soothingly. “You did really good, Ana. Thank you.”

There was a knock at the door from Reid, a signal that he needed to talk to me privately. I nodded to him. I had gotten everything I could get out of Ana—at least for right now—and it was probably best just to let her relax and be with her family. I knew that after Hawai’i, all I wanted was to be with our family. I wanted Hotch, Jack, Morgan, Emily, Rossi, Reid, and JJ. I needed their support. I needed to know that they were okay, because if they were, then it gave me every reason—or excuse, depending on how you looked at it—to be okay, too. Ana probably needed that right now, too.

So, I silently stepped out of the room, letting the door fall shut quietly. I crossed my arms over my chest as I looked at Reid. He lifted his phone and turned the screen to face me, at which point I saw an image of a flower I was not at all familiar with, and I really had zero clue as to why he was showing it to me. I shrugged.

Reid looked at the photo again. “Emily and Morgan found his cave.”

“Robert?”

“They’re both gone. But Emily sent me this picture.”

“What is it?”

“It’s called Devil’s Claw.”

“Which is…”

“It helps heal swollen joints. Without it, our Unsub will be in a lot of pain.”

I glanced over my shoulder back into the room where Ana was hugging her parents as tight as she could—the same way Jack would always hug me and Hotch whenever he was upset. A superman hug. I looked back at Reid. “She told me that our Unsub walks with a limp. It’s probably connected.”

“If it’s really that bad that he still walks with a limp while taking this, it means he’s going to need more of it. And fast.”

“Where can you get it?”

“I mean, the flower version, like this, is all over the forest out there. But you can get it in pill or powder form on the black market, if you know where to look.”

“He’s going to head into town with Robert,” I realized. “And if he’s spending all of his time out on the trail, not working… That means he doesn’t have any money.”

“He’s going to sell Robert for drugs.”

I hesitated. “He wouldn’t give Robert away entirely. It goes against his M.O. You’re right, he’s going to sell Robert; but not the way you would think.” I hurried over to the walkie talkie sitting on the table and lifted it towards my mouth, pressing the TALK button as fast as I could. “Hotch.” I let go of the button and waited.

“I’m here,” he answered momentarily.

“Everyone needs to come back. Our Unsub isn’t out there anymore. He’s heading into town.”

And they did come back. It took a bit, but the entire team raced to get back to the Ranger’s office, at which point, we started discussing where the Unsub could have possibly gone, using our extremely loose profile we had. It really wasn’t enough to present to the Rangers or PD, but it was barely enough for us to use to our advantage. Knowing that he would have to get his medicine as fast as possible, we knew that he was going to turn to the black market—but in order to know who was possibly selling anything similar to Devil’s Claw, he had to already have connections in that world. Since we had previously deduced that he had been operating on the trail for at least fifteen years, that meant that he probably hadn’t met many criminals since then, so it had to be beforehand. But how did this pattern not appear sooner? Why hadn’t he started kidnapping children or abusing them sooner?

The simple answer was prison. It would explain why he was stagnant for a while, and why he was so fond of hiding in isolation. Not to mention, he probably met other pedophiles in there. And drug dealers. If he was desperate, he was going to meet with someone he knew and could trust to understand his medical condition, and also someone who would be willing to take time with a child as payment.

So, we called Garcia. We asked her to look for a man with a sexual assault history who was released from prison about sixteen years ago, then missed parole meetings fifteen years ago by going entirely off the grid. One would be shocked by how many men matched that description. So, we asked her to look for someone who had originally been housed near other registered sex offenders before going missing. That did the trick.

His name was Shane Wyland, and he had a long medical history when he was in prison. I mean, sex offenders were top targets inside, but he went to the infirmary more than the average pedophile. When I asked if it had to do with swollen joints, she agreed. She told us that Shane had a condition that made it increasingly difficult to keep moving around, even with the medication he was getting. But, in prison, they didn’t have what he needed. So, he had to get it from his bunk mate, another pedophile who was released around the same time as Shane.

“We need an address for his bunk mate,” Hotch insisted.

“That’s the thing,” Garcia began while still typing in order to get the address to us ASAP, “there are a handful of registered sex offenders who all share the same address.”

“What?” I questioned.

“It’s a cluster,” Emily said. When we all cocked a brow at her, she continued, “Since sex offenders can’t be near parks or school zones, their housing options are limited. Usually, they’ll reach out to their buddies from prison and ask if they know anywhere that will house them. That’s how they all end up with each other.”

Hotch shook his head. He hissed, “Garcia, the address, please.”

“Right. Sorry, sir.” She pressed the ENTER key of her computer as hard as she could, and we all felt our phones buzz.

As they all looked at their phones to take note of the building number and street name, I watched Hotch to see if there was any way he would let me go. They had a whole building to clear. I could be an asset. My time was better spent clearing the building with them than sitting around in the Park Ranger’s office, counting the minutes until the team would return. I really fucking hated feeling useless.

The team started collecting their gear, throwing on vests as fast as they could and putting comms in their ears. I waited for Hotch to tell me one way or the other. But, when I didn’t do anything, he didn’t seem to argue. I figured that if I were to move towards them and start gearing up, too, that was when things would have spiraled. All I could do was shake my head in disappointment and move to take a seat at the table with Reid. He was staying behind in case that lead didn’t pan out, which wasn’t very likely, but it was still a good idea to have back up. But he didn’t need me there. That was a one person job, and we all fucking knew it.

“Hey—” JJ called out, hurrying over to me. She slowed as I turned to face her. “Are you and Hotch alright?”

I peered over her shoulder to see Hotch talking to Morgan about how they were going to narrow down where the Unsub was and how we were going to get to him without letting the kid get hurt or die. I looked back at her. “Hotch is trying to pull me out of the field after this case, and we had a fight about it.”

“Oh…” She looked at her feet, almost like she regretted asking in the first place.

Ever since the bombing case in New York, I stopped opening up to JJ about my relationship with Hotch. She had insisted that she thought that Hotch and I were taking things to fast, and she almost seemed to doubt us. It really wasn’t until our wedding that I saw that she had changed her mind. But that was a little too late. By that point, I didn’t necessarily care about any opinion she had on my relationship. I valued her as a friend and a team member, of course; but… this… I just…

“Well,” she began hesitantly, “I know that you’ll figure it out. The two of you always get through it. I hardly hear about you guys fighting, so I wouldn’t stress over it too much.”

I nodded and shrugged. I mean, she was right, actually—kind of throwing what I just thought back in my face. But still. Hotch and I had always been honest and open with each other, which was why we were so successful. If I just listened to Spence, used my words and tried to level with Hotch, then we could sort all of this out and come to a better conclusion than pulling me out of the field entirely.

When they left without a word to me or Reid, I sat down across from Reid. We sat in silence for nearly thirty minutes as we waited around uselessly. The team let us know when they arrived in the city; and they let us know how they were splitting up. Rossi and Hotch were going to stay outside while Emily and Morgan were going to head inside, and JJ was going to coordinate with the local PD that had just appeared on site. A few minutes later, the comms started buzzing with back-and-forths.

“Hey, Hotch,” Emily said into the comms. “It looks like Robert was in the apartment, and there was a struggle. There’s a chance he could have escaped, which means that Shane and his bunk mate are probably chasing him around right now.”

Hotch responded, “Alright. You and Morgan continue to search the building, I’ll start a perimeter set up out here.”

“Got it.”

The comms went quiet again. I pouted and slumped forward, resting my elbows on my knees. Reid watched me through his lashes like he was trying not to stare at me. I glanced back at him. When our eyes met, he cleared his throat and shuffled around in his seat to make it look like he was keeping busy with the files in front of him. I rolled my eyes.

“You remember when you were shot in the leg and Hotch made you stay at the office during cases?” I asked quietly, moving to pick at the wood table in an attempt to cure my boredom. Reid hummed an agreement. “How did you not go crazy?”

Perhaps that wasn’t the right wording I should have used around him… He was always nervous about his dilaudid problem and the fear that his mother’s schizophrenia could be passed onto him. “Crazy” wasn’t exactly the right term for Spencer Reid. He was our resident genius, and that put a lot of pressure on him, and I wished that he knew that he wasn’t crazy, but I could tell that he thought he was. So, I almost felt bad for the slip up. But Reid genuinely didn’t seem to notice, which was a relief.

Reid crossed his legs, getting himself comfortable, and he looked back up at me with a little more confidence this time around. “I’m not gonna lie, Y/N, it wasn’t fun. None of us are used to sitting at Quantico all day like Garcia is. When Hotch officially benched me after Hankle and getting shot, there were times when I thought I was going crazy. I was extremely anxious while just sitting around all day. And I was killing myself with worry that one of you—or maybe all of you—wouldn’t come home one day… But I had to suck it up and just go with it until I got better because I knew that, ultimately, Hotch was just trying to protect me. Now, he’s just trying to protect you, too. He’d do it for any one of us for any number of reasons. My advice is the same as before. Talk to him, Y/N. And, if that doesn’t work, then just… suck it up and get through the next few months, because no matter how often you argue with him, you’re not going to win. Trust me. I tried.”

“I hate arguing with him, Spencer…”

He nodded. “I know. That’s why it might just be best to let him win this one.”

I lowered my head and leaned back again to focus on kicking the carpet. “Yeah.” Maybe he was right. I mean, maybe I shouldn’t have been taking advice from Spencer Reid, the guy who never had a girlfriend in his life… but his advice was surprisingly nice and welcoming.

“Hotch, we’ve got Robert, but Shane’s gone. We think he might be in the immediate vicinity,” Emily said over the comm again.

I smiled. They got him. They found Ana, and now they had found Robert. Knowing how many cops were crawling around that neighborhood now that Hotch had created that a perimeter, Shane Wyland was probably long gone. There was no way in hell he stuck around long enough to see if he could get Robert back. He likely knew as well as I did that if he managed to escape, he could keep taking other boys like Robert, and he could keep getting away with it. Even now that we knew who we were looking for, the trail was too long for us to track him. He was a ghost in the wind. But none of that necessarily mattered right now. This was technically a win for us. We saved two kids from a monster, and we discovered who that monster was. At least we could keep an eye out for Wyland in the future.

I stood and walked to the boardroom to tell the Courtlands the news. When I told them that their son was alive and well, they jumped to their feet while letting out breaths of relieve, and demanded to see him immediately. I told them that a Ranger would be driving them to the hospital in the city. Within an instant, they were pushing past me, racing to go seek out a Ranger that could take them as soon as possible. I didn’t take offense to that, though. I knew that they were overwhelmed by their joy of knowing that their son was alive, and all they wanted now was to hold him in their arms. It reminded me of Hotch when he found me in Hawai’i.

Hotch…

I sat down on the couch in silence and reflected on what just happened, and what I was inevitably going to say to him. I loved him. I would protect him to every end. In fact, we said as much to each other in our wedding vows a month ago. Maybe Reid was right about not trying to fight all of this, and instead just let Hotch win this time around because it was easier than making a big deal out of it. Inevitably, I was going to get back to work. Probably in about a year or so. And as shitty as that seemed, at least it meant I got to go back. Hotch could have totally insisted that I quit the FBI—though I knew he would never ask me to do that; so, at least he was giving me the chance to still work out of the field. I could live with that for the time being. However, what I needed to discuss with Hotch more than anything was his behavior and how he was going about protecting me, because I really didn’t need him to stifle me through all of this. After being trapped in that cabin in Hawai’i, I never wanted to be trapped anywhere ever again.

When I saw him turn the corner into the office a few hours later after they gave up on looking for Shane Wyland, I nodded sideways towards the doorway I was standing in, letting him know that I needed him to join me. He silently noticed. As the team patted each other on the back and celebrated getting the kid back safe and sound, Hotch quietly and politely excused himself from everyone. They didn’t seem to stop him. Reid saw what was going on, though, and he sent me a supportive smile that let me know I was doing the right thing.

Hotch walked past me into the room, and I closed the door behind him. “Aaron, we need to talk.” I sat down on the couch, but he leaned back against the table with his arms crossed over his chest. He was listening. “I understand that you’re just trying to do what you think is best for me. I know that you think that keeping me locked up in the tower will keep me safe. And I appreciate all of that. I really do. In fact, I love that you want to protect me and take care of me, but you need to realize that at some point, you need to take a step back. That I can’t be babied, Aaron. It’s not in my nature, and we both know that. I can’t have you hovering over my shoulder every second of every day while telling me that I can and can’t do my job. I can do this. It wasn’t unreasonable for me to go out and look for those kids, but it was unreasonable for me to ask to go looking for the Unsub in the city—I know that. I know myself and I know my limits. I’m not going to suddenly break just because I’m pregnant. I’m okay right now.

“When I need to take a step back from the field, I will do so without hesitation or argument; but until then, you need to keep letting me do my job the way I’m supposed to. I just need you to believe in me—"

“If I didn’t believe in you, we wouldn’t have gotten this far.”

“If you believe in me, then just… act like it! Why is it that I always have to go above and beyond to support you and your dreams, but I’m stifled because you’re scared? You believe in me, but you don’t—”

“You have always been able to do what you wanted, Y/N! I have done everything I can to restrain myself from being controlling in every aspect of our lives, despite the fact that it’s all I know. I grew up in a household where my father was controlling, manipulative, and abusive. That was how I learned to become a man, and I always thought that would work because I was young and naïve; but Haley left, and you came along— and you…” He took in a deep breath. “You have always been this wild and free spirit that I knew I couldn’t control, so I wanted to step back and let you thrive because I know you’re capable of so much, Y/N. Do you remember that I wouldn’t even fucking look at you when you joined the team because I was so fucking in love with you that I didn’t know how to stop myself from letting my feelings trump your dreams? But you came waltzing into my office, demanding answers, and the next thing I knew, you were meeting Jack and telling me that you love me. I have had to fight an inner battle every single day since meeting you between screaming from the top of my lungs how much I love you and want to hide you away from the cruelness of this world, and letting you spread your wings and flourish as an agent. You deserve every bit of happiness, and I know that a lot of that comes from your work, so I never want to step on your toes. But you’re my wife, Y/N. I made a vow to you that I would protect you, no matter what. And, you’re right… maybe I’m being more protective with you than I have with anyone in the past, but can you blame me? Dammit, with everything I’ve been through, can you blame me for not wanting to lose you, too?”

His eyes wandered to my stomach as he sat back down. “We’re having a baby, Y/N. I’m not just protecting you anymore, and you’re not just taking care of yourself anymore. What happens if you get shot, hmm? What happens if you get stabbed like Foyet did to me? What happens if you get taken again like in Hawai’i? What happens if I lose you like I lost Kate and Haley? Am I just supposed to pretend like I wouldn’t die without you here? Am I supposed to forget about you and the best few years of my life? Why do I have to pretend like I don’t care just to make you feel better about yourself? Since meeting you, I could never bear the thought of losing you, but now I can’t bear the thought of losing either of you,” he pressed a palm to my stomach. “Aren’t my feelings valid, too? Don’t I get a say in the safety of our child?” He cupped my face with his other hand. “Please don’t make me lose you, too. I won’t live if I lose you.” He sniffled as a tear slid down his cheek. I reached up and carefully wiped it away with my thumb. “I believe in you, Y/N, more than I even believe in myself…” He screwed his eyes shut as the tears started to fall faster. “But I don’t want to lose you because you’re too damn stubborn to just sit out of the field for a few months.” He sniffled again. “Why is it so hard for you to just understand that I love you so much that it hurts to even think about being away from you? Can’t you just accept that I want what’s best for you— I always have— and right now that means keeping you safe from any harm.”

I rested my forehead against his. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be sorry, Y/N. I just need you to understand that I love you. More than anything.”

I kissed away a tear running down his cheek. “I know, baby.”

“If I didn’t believe in you… I couldn’t have stood before all of our friends and family a month ago, and said, ‘This is the person I can’t bear to lose. This is the one thing in my life I can’t lose.’ That’s what I thought we agreed on…”

He reached out and wrapped his arms around me, pulling me in for a hug so that he could hide his face in the crook of my neck. I tangled my fingers in his hair. I hadn’t meant to upset him, but I just needed him to know how I was feeling—but I had never stopped to ask myself how he was feeling, which was incredibly selfish of me.

“How about this,” I began offering carefully, waiting to see if he would stop me, but he didn’t, “when I start to show, I’ll stay back at the office with Garcia.” It wasn’t what I wanted, but if it made him feel better, I was willing to make that compromise.

He sniffled and sat up. We held each other’s faces, searching each other’s eyes, trying to find a reason that we shouldn’t agree to that. But there was no reason not to. If it were up to him, I would be sitting at home for the next few months, but that wasn’t reasonable for me; and if it were up to me, I would be in the field up until the day I was giving birth, but Hotch would never let that happen in a million years. At least, being at Quantico meant that I could still help with the cases and the profiles.

“The office or the house at any given moment,” he negotiated.

I shrugged and nodded.

“Okay.” He leaned in to kiss me before hugging me again, our chins tucked over each other’s shoulders. “I love you.”

I grabbed onto the fabric of his shirt on his back, feeling the way his broad shoulders tensed, and his breathing had slowed. I smiled lightly against him. We were going to be okay. “I love you, too.”

---------

criminal minds family: @peggy1999 @gorgeousdarkangel @alex--awesome--22 @oceaneblu @desperately-bisexual @brithedemonspawn @absolutemarveltrash @bshelley322 @rousethemouse @sunshinepower17 @weexinling @pettttyyyc @Braty-angel

#Criminal Minds #criminal minds fanfic #Criminal Minds Fanfiction #criminal minds smut #criminal minds imagine #aaron hotchner #Aaron Hotch Hotchner #aaron hotchner fanfic #aaron hotchner fanfiction #aaron hotchner imagine #aaron hotchner x reader

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writingwithadinosaur · 4 years

Text

“Under the Knife” - Part 2

My Masterlist - Here

Story Masterlist - Here

My Tag List - Here

Hannibal Lecter x Reader, Will Graham x Sister!Reader

Word Count: 2,500-ish

Key: Chunks of text in italics are (Y/N)’s thoughts. Y/N = Your Name, H/C = Your Hair Color, E/C = Your Eye Color

Warnings: Talks of murders, talk of crime scenes, cursing

Summary: You are Will Graham’s sister who works with him at the FBI. When you get offered a job promotion, life starts to change. Some changes for the better; Some for the worst.

Tag List:

@fruitloopzzz @theeactress @melconnor2007 @ashenfallsof @geeksareunique @all-by-myself98 @sj-thefan @fuck-your-bad-vibes-dude @ntlmundy

Author’s Note: This is my first Hannibal piece and I am proud of it. There aren’t too many stories for Hannibal, so I figured I would add to the collection.

This does take place in some happy medium where they are all alive and work together. Sort of a happier season 1 era.

This is beta-read by @theeactress, but please let me know if there is something that we missed or that we should look at again!

If you would like to be tagged in any of my future pieces, check out my tag list above and let me know! And as always, feedback is greatly appreciated!

- DreaSaurusREX

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

After your meeting with Jack, you filled out some paperwork and made it official: You were going to be his profiler for any case that he wanted to call you in for. And apparently he already had one building.

“We have a suspected serial killer hitting close to home. Three killings in Montclair, Lorton, and Fredericksburg.” As he said the Virginian cities, Jack plopped 3 case files in front of you and moved to the board full of evidence that he had.

“Oh! We’re starting right now? O-Okay.” He turned from the board to look at you with a sort of incredulous way.

“Do you have a problem with that?”

“I mean, we literally just signed the papers. I thought I would have a night to prepare instead of being thrown right in.” You said the truth without seeming ungrateful or annoyed, which was good. But you instantly started to nervously ramble as Jack nodded and walked back to his desk. “But if we need to start right now, I can. I just wasn’t ready for--”

“You’re right. We’ll start talking tomorrow. For now, take those files, do your homework, and report here at 9AM. We’ll go to the lab and introduce you to Beverly, Price, and Zeller.” Jack smiled and motioned toward the door.

“Thank you. I will see you tomorrow morning!” You tried to be professional but also show that you were actually excited to work with him.

“See you tomorrow.”

After putting the files securely in your bag, you headed to your apartment. You put the files on your dining room table before you hung up your coat and work bag. You checked your watch. You had dinner plans with Hannibal in an hour and a half. You stood between your room and the table that the files were seated on. You fidgeted with your ring for a few seconds as you debated on whether or not to start catching up on the case now or after dinner.

“I can read over the first one and then get ready for dinner.” You told yourself as you pulled out the semi-comfy chair and opened the file.

Case: #566-A

This case was from 6 weeks ago in Montclair. Ballsy to be close to the FBI and kill people. There were two victims: Dr. Everet and his wife Whinnie. They were found dead in their shared bedroom in their upper-class house. A nice upper-class place thanks to being a doctor.

Whinnie looked like a murder that you would find in an armed robbery case: Quick throat slit, not much thought or motive into it, left on the floor to bleed out. Dr. Everet on the other hand was what you assumed grabbed Jack’s attention.

Dr. Everet was in the middle of their bed. The autopsy report claimed that the cause of death was exsanguination which made sense considering he was in pieces. Everet was cut at every major joint. His arms were separated from his shoulders, his legs from the pelvis, his thigh from his knee, his forearm from the elbow, and so on and so forth down to his fingers and toes. The report showed that there was a high level of paralytics in his system. So you make him sit there while you cut him apart. That’s why there are no defensive wounds. He had to lay there and endure all of that...

Why was Everet presented like this while his wife was a simple throat slit?

You made some notes in your book, making sure to write out questions to ask the team when you met up with them tomorrow. With every note you made, you found yourself going back to the case file and trying to connect dots. You soon realized that you couldn’t begin to connect those dots until you looked at the other files.

Without much thinking, you opened all three files, quickly skimming over each of them and writing out the main points that stood out. You were supposed to be at Hannibal’s at 7 o’clock and it was only 5:45. It didn’t take that long to get to his place.

All of the murders happened 2 weeks after the other, starting 5 and a half weeks ago. Dr. Everet was about 6 weeks ago, Dr. Chaseten was about 4 weeks ago, and Dr. Loriet was about 2 weeks ago. Which means this killer is bound to strike again soon if this time frame is important to him.

They all have at least one victim that is treated like a paralyzed piece of artwork like Dr.Everet and at least one victim thrown to the side and killed quickly. The ‘pieces of art’ were all doctors, the others were their husbands or wives.

They all were in different cities in Virginia but close enough to make a solid assumption that this is the same killer.

You were scribbling out a note to ask about if there were any particulates found in any of the bodies when your phone buzzed on the table next to you. You didn’t even look at the screen, you just hit the answer button and put whoever was calling on speakerphone.

“(Y/N) speaking.”

“Good evening, (Y/N).” The thickly accented voice rang through your speaker and stopped your writing mid-word as you looked from your phone to the files that were now spread out across your small tablespace.

“Dr. Lecter! Hi! Good evening! Sorry, I was um... caught up in something and didn’t even register who was calling!”

“No need to apologize. I was just wondering if I should still expect you tonight?” You dropped your pen as you frantically looked at the time on your phone. It was 6:15PM. You quickly started to shut the files and stand up muttering a few curse words as you did. “I take it you got distracted?

“Yes! I’m sorry! But I am still coming over as long as the invitation is still good.” You picked up your phone and walked to your room to start to quickly figure out a nice outfit that didn’t look too much like a work outfit or too fancy. “I am getting ready now!”

“As I can hear.” You could almost hear the slight smirk he most likely had on his lips from hearing you fumble around your small space.

“I should be there right around 7 and I’ll explain myself, I promise.”

“I will see you then, my dear.” Hannibal hung up while you were slinging your work shirt into your laundry bin. You couldn’t help the smile that spread as you thought about how he called you ‘my dear.’ You know it's probably nothing more than a common nickname for any woman in Hannibal’s life, but it still felt good to be called something other than your real name.

~~~~~~~~

Somehow you had managed to avoid a lot of major traffic and pull up to Hannibal’s home right at 7 o’clock. He must have heard your engine or seen your headlights because as you got out of your car and made your way to his front door, it was already open with him waiting for you with a small smile on his lips.

“Right on time.”

“Did you doubt me?”

“Never.” Hannibal moved to the side to let you in. You were instantly hit with the scents of whatever he was whipping up in his kitchen.

“One day you’ll have to teach me how to make something really fancy just so I can show off next time I have someone over.” You shrugged off your bag and went to hang it up in the closet, but Hannibal beat you to it.

“Someone like a partner?” He was so good at hiding any sort of inflection in his voice, but you could have sworn that you detected a bit of jealousy. You slightly laughed at the idea of having any sort of romantic partner right now.

“I was thinking more along the lines of my brother. You know I don’t have much of a social life outside work.

Hannibal motioned for you to walk towards the kitchen, you did so and he was right behind you.

This was normal for the two of you. You tried to have a meal or at least coffee together once or twice a week to give both of you a break from whatever the world was dishing out to you that week. You had met as colleagues when you worked together on a project for the FBI. But now you both were in a comfortable friendship. There was a pang in your heart that wanted to explore the idea of being more than friends or coworkers with him, but you doubted Hannibal felt the same. If he did, he wouldn’t show it due to his connection with your brother and out of respect for you. So the two of you continued this dance of being extremely friendly but too scared to make a move or speak up.

You poured yourself a glass of water and leaned against the kitchen counter as Hannibal reached into the refrigerator for lemon juice and finished up cooking.

“How was your day today?” You ask him, as you take a sip.

“It was alright. Met with patients, got further in a drawing, figured out what to cook for a beautiful lady as a congratulation of sorts.” Hannibal quickly looked up at you as he said the last half of that before turning to the stovetop. You felt a very small blush creep on your neck, but tried to play it cool.

“Congratulations?”

“On your new position. I hope you don’t mind that Will shared that with me today.”

“Did he now?” You couldn’t help the slight negativity in your voice as you looked away and played with your ring. “He is definitely not as happy for me as you are. I’m sure you’re aware that he did not want me to accept Jack’s offer.”

“I cannot tell what he said, but I can tell you that he was rather upset when he came in today.”

“Sounds like my brother.” You took another drink of water, not even noticing that Hannibal had plated dinner until he spoke up.

“Now, if you’d please.” You quickly looked up and saw that he was gesturing to the dining room. You tried to help by grabbing a plate or his cup or something to bring to the table but he just gently ushered you into the next room. He never let you help out when you were over as a dinner guest, but you tried every time.

The two of you sat and began eating. It was a good minute or two of silence before someone spoke up.

“This is delicious, Hannibal! I don’t know what vegetable this is exactly,” you help up a swirly looking green piece on your fork, “but it is amazing with this sauce you’ve made.”

“That is romanesco broccoli. I thought you might like it. It looks intimidating but tastes like the typical broccoli that you normally eat. It's just a bit… Artistic.” He slightly smiled, happy that he could amuse you with new food. You took another bite as Hannibal reached for his wine. Before he took a sip, he asked something that had been on his mind.

“May I ask what grabbed your focus so much that you almost missed out on dinner tonight?”

“Oh, right! Jack apparently already has a killer he wants me to start profiling. He gave me copies of the reports to read up on before I have my first official day tomorrow. I told myself I was just going to read the first one, but then got carried away.”

“Is this the killer that has been targeting doctors?” You gave him a questioning look, unsure of how he knew about the case. “Jack asked for my opinion at the crime scene for Dr.Chaseten a few weeks ago. Considering they haven’t caught anyone, I’m assuming that is what he has you working on.”

“Then you would be correct. There are now three mutilated doctors that have no obvious correlation to each other other than the cause of death and the fact that they are doctors.” You sipped your drink and continued. “I know I’ve only been Jack’s official profiler for less than a day, but it's still biting at me that I don’t see anything yet.”

Hannibal reached over and put a hand on yours to try to rein you back in before you thought too much about the case.

“I’m sure you will have more answers tomorrow.” You smiled and patted his hand, ignoring the slight butterflies you got from the contact. You took a deep breath.

“I know. I shouldn’t get this deep yet. That insanity will hit me tomorrow when I have to brainstorm with Jack.” You smiled even though it didn’t fully reach your eyes. You knew Hannibal would pick up on it.

“I think it was Oscar Levant that said that ‘there’s a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.’ Let’s just hope Jack Crawford won’t erase his line.” Hannibal gave your hand a small squeeze before removing his hand, causing you both to return your attention to your meal.

“You know, we could have rescheduled this dinner if you felt the need to finish your work.” Hannibal was sincere. He understood your work was a major part of your life, but he did like to see you outside the halls of the FBI.

“No! I wanted to come by tonight! Honestly, I needed a mood lifter after today.”

“Oh? How come?” You finished chewing and then spoke your mind. You knew Hannibal was a therapist, but he wasn’t your therapist. So you tried to keep it friendly.

“I should be excited and happy to be starting this new position, but I’m more worried about Will. I don’t want this job to be what divides us, you know? We’re so close, and I am one of the few people that he can be comfortable around. I don’t want to take that from him.” You pause, unconsciously bouncing your leg and fidgeting with your ring slightly. You shook your head as if that would temporarily erase the thought. “I just hope that if I keep working cases, he will get more and more okay with it.” You cut off a piece of fish and ate, letting Hannibal know that you were done speaking.

“I’m sure he will be fine.” You look up to find him staring at you. More like watching you, hyper-aware of your movements that show your anxiety. “But enough about Will.” Hannibal held up his glass towards you. “Here’s to you and your new path in the FBI. May they see you as valuable and wonderful as I do.”

You patted your lips with your napkin and smiled as you clinked your glass with his. Your heart swelled at his words. Why do you do this to me?

The rest of the evening was spent finishing your meal and forcing Hannibal to let you help with the dishes. Afterward, he walked you to your car, as usual, opening the door for you like a true gentleman.

Your drive home was peaceful and you found yourself smiling, thankful for your evening with Hannibal. It was nice to know that someone you cared about was happy for you.

#hannibal #hannibal fanfiction #hannibal fandom #hannibal imagine #hannibal lecter x reader #hannibal lecter #hannibal lecter / reader

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bowsie22 · 4 years

Text

Pingxie Week 2021 Day 2

Summary: For a city with such a high rate of criminal activity, Wu Xie has always been safe. Now if only he could figure out why? Photography student Wu Xie/Triad leader Xiaoge

It was weird. Despite being open for eight months, Wushanju had never been robbed. The stores around it had all been robbed multiple times in that period. He’d never been attacked on the street, despite multiple robberies happening every day. Pangzi put it down to Wu Xie’s stupid luck, but Wu Xie thought it was weird. Anytime he was cornered, or a Triad member came into the shop for their protection money, there was always a moment. A moment where the men would stare at him like they knew him from somewhere and they’d run. Literally run from him like bats out of hell. It made no sense. And he knew it was a weird thing to be upset by, but he was.

Which led to now. Wu Xie, in a moment of stupidity, decided to go into the city at night to complete one of his final projects for a photography class. Sure, he had his own store/gallery/studio, but that was more due to his uncles making sure he could look after himself. And to a lesser extent, Pangzi. But he still had to finish college, no matter what Sanxing said. And after taking his two-year break, possibly due to an emotional and mental breakdown after the disappearance of the love of his life, Wu Xie was more determined than ever to ace his courses and make his uncles proud. And again, to a lesser extent, Pangzi.

Hence the moment of stupidity. While the city was beautiful at night, it was also dangerous. Especially for someone was still trying to get himself back to full health after the aforementioned disappearance. Not that Wu Xie couldn’t defend himself. He had learned something from Heiye and Pangzi.

So, he wasn’t too nervous about being followed by the two men creeping behind him. Honestly, they weren’t subtle. He wasn’t surprised by the bruising grip on his wrist, as the men pulled him into an alleyway, slamming him against the wall. Wu Xie groaned as his head bounced off the wall, attacker one holding him against the wall, attacker two standing in the mouth of the alleyway, cutting off any escape attempt.

“Ok, suppose my luck had to run out sooner or later.”

Pangzi always said that his sarcasm would hurt him. Never mentioned a mugger slapping him around the face though. Spitting out the blood, Wu Xie realised a second too late that he should have aimed away from the expensive looking shoes.

“You little bitch.”

A punch to the gut had Wu Xie gasping for air, the one to the back of his head had him on the ground and the following kicks to his stomach and chest had him spitting up more blood. Typical. The first time he gets robbed and he’s going to get murdered too. Attacker one grabbed his hair, forcing Wu Xie to his knees. That was a knife against his throat. Oh God, he was really going to die here.

“Whatever you’re doing, make it quick. Traffic is starting to pick up.”

At those words, a car drove past, Wu Xie wincing as the lights shone in his eyes.

“Shit!”

He was thrown to the ground, the two men backing away from him. Looking up, Wu Xie could make out the scales tattooed on their necks meaning that they were from the Zhang Clan. Shit, why were the Triad attacking him, he thought robbery was a bit beneath them? More concerning, why weren’t they doing anything anymore? The two were staring at him, wide eyed and pale. Wait a minute, why were they scared? They were the ones who attacked him!

“Shit, it’s him. We’re not meant to touch him. He’s going to kill us!”

“No, he’s going to torture us and kill us in the most painful way possible. The top of the list. The one person in this city, this country that you are not meant to touch and you chose him!”

“We were behind him! It’s not like we were given a picture of his ass! Look, don’t worry I know what to do.”

Wu Xie had a head injury. That was the only explanation for attacker one to slip a business card into his pocket and beg him to visit their boss and explain that this was all just some terrible mistake. What kind of self-respecting Triad member did that? Reaching for his phone, Wu Xie decided that it would be a tomorrow problem. Right now, he needed to contact Pangzi and make sure neither uncle heard about this.

“Are you serious? No!”

Pangzi swiped the card from his friend’s hand, glaring at the younger man.

“Like hell you are walking into a Triad building. To do what? Speak to the boss, demand reparations of some kind?”

“Of course not Pangzi. I just want to know what happened last night.”

“You didn’t hit your head that hard Tianzhen. You got attacked last night and had to be treated for bruised ribs, a sprained wrist and get stitches on that head wound.”

“I know all that. I meant after that.”

“After that you were concussed and probably imagining things!”

“So, I imagined that business card into reality?”

Groaning, Pangzi dropped the card in front of Wu Xie, recognising the stubborn pout on Wu Xie’s lips.

“There’s nothing I can say is there?”

“You can say that you’ll drive me there and wait outside like a good friend.”

“Damnit Wu Xie.”

Wu Xie was used to people staring at him. He was emotional, loud and the nephew to two of the wealthiest people in the city. But something was different about this. Normally people looked down at him, the rich boy who used his uncle’s money to open his own shop/studio. Or he was looked at like something to be used. Get into the Wu heir’s good books and you have an in with the brothers.

Here though, people looked afraid of him. Steeling himself, Wu Xie stepped away from the entrance, heading for the receptionist. Taking the card out of his pocket, Wu Xie pasted his biggest, friendliest smile on his lips and waited for the young man to hang up the phone. Considering he worked for the Triad, the man looked fairly unthreatening. Long hair, glasses, nice jaw bone, Wu Xie supposed he was attractive, if not a bit twinky. Hanging up, the man smiled nervously at him.

“Hello sir. The boss will see you now.”

“What?”

“Kan Jian here will show to you to the head office.”

Wu Xie was so distracted by the man’s blazer with the sleeves ripped off that he was standing in an elevator before he knew what was happening.

“I’m sorry, what the hell is going on?”

“Don’t worry sir, the boss will explain it all. Just two more floors aaaannd here we are!”

The elevator doors opened onto an office that even his uncle Erbai would be jealous of. A wall of windows looked over the city, there was a fully stocked bar against one wall, a couch beside it, while a large TV took up the majority of the wall opposite. Directly across from the elevator doors stood a large, wooden desk, mahogany if Wu Xie were to guess, these desks usually were. More importantly behind that desk sat the boss, the head of the Triad. And Wu Xie’s waste of an ex who had abandoned him two years ago.

“Xiaoge?”

His ex-boyfriend was the head of the Triad. And still, Wu Xie was annoyed to say, stupidly handsome, especially in an all-black three-piece suit. Wu Xie had always been weak for a man in suits, especially when it was Xiaoge.

“It always felt like you were hiding something from me. Never would have guessed this though.”

Accepting the drink from the other man, Wu Xie tried to ignore the eyes running over his body and the frown on Xiaoge’s face.

“Wait! You’re why I’ve never been robbed or attacked. Until now at least. Why?”

Xiaoge settled onto the couch beside the younger man, an odd look on his face. Wu Xie knew Xiaoge, knew that he always needed a minute or two to think over his words.

“It was the only way I could keep you safe. I always knew I’d have to take over. Zhang Rishan gave me a few years to be normal. I wasn’t expecting to meet you and fall in love. When I took over, I sent out a picture of you and informed everyone that touching you meant instant death. Clearly, not everyone understood.”

“This is why you had to leave, isn’t it?”

“This life isn’t safe. If I involved you, you’d be in danger. I had to keep you safe Wu Xie. You were and still are the most important person to me. If you got hurt because of me, I don’t know what I’d do.”

“Wasn’t that my decision to make!? Xiaoge, I was a mess after you left. I didn’t eat, I didn’t look after myself, I dropped out of university! You leaving ruined me. And now you tell me it was to protect me and you did it because you love me so much? What am I meant to say to that?”

“Tell me what to do. Wu Xie, please. I’ll do anything to make it up to you if you’ll let me.”

Wu Xie looked at his ex, mind racing. He knew what Xiaoge was expecting. That Wu Xie would give him some impossible task. But damnit, Wu Xie loved him. The last two years had been the most difficult of his life. Wu Xie had spent the entire time feeling like something was missing, searching for Xiaoge in every crowd, dreaming about him every night. Even just being in the same room as the other man made him feel better.

“Dinner. At the fanciest restaurant in town, tonight.”

Xiaoge looked at him, a small smile on his face, the one Pangzi always used to call his Wu Xie smile.

“Dinner, that’s it?”

“That’s it. And a very long, overdue conversation.”

“I can do that.”

“Good, see you tonight Xiaoge.”

Wu Xie turned to the elevator, making sure to add extra sway to his hips, aware that the older man was watching him. When the elevator doors closed behind him, Wu Xie realised that Pangzi was going to kill him for this.

Eh, worth it.

#pingxie #pingxie week 2021

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purple-scarf-mistress · 4 years

Text

Dark Truths

A Criminal Minds FanFic.

Chapter 2

Summary: Jamie has been missing for a year, subjected to horrible torture. Her friends/team/family aka the BAU team scramble to find her. Once she is found it will be a challenge to help her get back to her normal life. Master List (Multi Chapter) Pairing: ReidxJamie (OC) Warnings: This story is explicit and deals with s*xual assault and psychological torture. I will add notes for where to skip and pick back up to for those who want to read this but avoid the warning content.

June 3

Jamie clenched her teeth to avoid screaming. She was already paying for making noise when she was not asked to. It was one of the rules she was told to follow, even though her captors made it nearly impossible to follow a single one. She couldn't hear what the men around her were saying, she was becoming dizzy from pain as they beat her and called her names. She felt her ankle snap, biting down hard on her lip to keep from screaming out at the excruciating pain. The world around her began to spin before it all went black.

July 1st :

Hotch had everyone gather so they could review the new evidence they had collected. They couldn't be certain if it had anything to do with their long lost friend but they were working with it.

"The phone number that called Reid that night was made from an Irish pub about 5 miles away from here." Penelope said as she pulled up pictures of the pub, "I did some digging and looked into the visitors that frequent the pub and found that a good 90% of them have ties to the Irish mafia, or mob, or whatever you want to call the Irish bad guys. I am not sure what that has to do with Jamie unless they just randomly picked her for …" Garcia trailed off mentally kicking herself because they didn't know what they were doing to her, or what they had done with her.

Rossi cleared his throat taking over the conversation before the team could lose themselves in what-if scenarios. "The Irish Mafia, like many other organized crime groups, has a long history in grudges, robbery, assault, drugs, prostitution, illegal pornography, human trafficking, and murder. The Irish mafia and the Italian Mafia do not particularly get along and I might be able to call some people I know to see if they have any idea as to what's going on with their rival."

"I don't see why they would target Jamie…we haven't come across these people ever, as far back as I can see Jamie hasn't either in her personal life, what's the connection here? " asked JJ who was getting frustrated.

Hotch pulled out a file handing it over to them. He knew this held sensitive information that he should have guessed was connected with his baby girls' disappearance. "This was my very first murder case as a detective, in it has every detail on how I met Jamie McConnell." Looking around the room Hotch saw a lot of different emotions staring back at him.

"Jamie McConnell?" Reid asked dumbfounded looking through the file first. He pulled out photos of a man and woman, both dead, both with obvious signs of torture; behind the rest of the crime photographs, which he passed around the table, was a document.

He started reading out loud "Deckland and Mary McConnell were found murdered in their Los Angeles home on August 12th 1997. The way the bodies were found match other bodies similar to those that were killed by members of the Irish Mob. Upon looking through the house detective Aaron Hotchner found a young child. The child was determined to be Jamie McConnell, age 5, daughter of the deceased. It was estimated that by the time detectives had arrived on scene they victims had been deceased for three days. It was later confirmed that the child had stayed in the closet during the duration of the murder and the days after. The child will be placed in a foster home with a new surname for protection."

The room was silent as the agents mulled over the new information on their friend. Every person remembering how Jamie never talked about her parents and didn't really talk all that much about her foster families either. In fact, when the topic of the family was brought up Jamie simply skirted the topic or talked about the Hotchners.

"So, we have a lead with some actual evidence." Stated Morgan "Now let's find our girl, kick some ass and bring her home."

It had been a long day. Jamie felt numb and exhausted; she craved the cool, damp corner of her dark cell where she some sometimes was allowed to sleep. Instead, her captors carted Jamie to different "parties" where she would entertain them however her boss ordered her. She noticed what they dressed her in today was red, white, and blue and assumed it was some patriotic holiday today, probably the fourth of July but she didn't ask. She had given up asking questions or talking without permission… hell making any sort of noise without permission. She could still hardly walk from her last bought of punishment where they broke her ankle. Jamie was so tired, her body craved both sleep and the cocktail of drugs they had shot her up with so many times. She fought her body hard to stay awake as they drove to their next location, but she kept nodding off.

"Someone call the boss. She isn't going to make it the full day out... Let's give her a few hours rest, give her the shot, and clean her up." He chuckled "We won't want a crashing, dirty girl for our party tonight." She heard the man say.

She knew this man well. Knew everything he liked and everything he disliked. She knew how he enjoyed punishing her in all sorts of ways. She even knew that for this kindness he was giving to her, a slave, she would have to pay. The price for this would be high but she needed it. She would pay whatever he asked of her later so long as she could have one hour of quiet sleep, where no one was touching her.

"Hey Hotch, we have a problem" Jamie started shaking hearing that name. "The chick is crashing, I don't think another injection is going to keep her up right now and it could kill her if we give her it now. Quinn thinks we should let her catch some sleep so she is ready to entertain them later."

Jamie's heart started to race. She had grown to fear the man on the other end of the phone. The one who was responsible for all her pain, she couldn't argue it anymore, couldn't fight to not believe it, her dad was doing this to her. She pulled her knees up to her chest trying to calm down till she hears the man in the front seat start talking again.

"Yes sir." He hung up "were taking her back to the factory for some rest. Hotch says that we can let her sleep for a little while, clean her up, and have our own fun later. She earned enough money for him this morning."

When the car parked at the factory Jamie got out and slowly walked inside with Quinn. He led her to her cell, stripped her out of her "work clothes" and put her back into her usual old tattered shirt and panties. Once she was dressed for bed he pushed her hard into the ground, watching her weak body crash into the cement.

"Sleep. You have two hours, then you’re up and with us." He watched Jamie crawl into the corner before bedding down and gabbing her hair, yanking her head back to him, he kissed her cheek "Happy Independence Day" Quinn laughed as we walked out of the room, locking her in the dark.

It had been 3 days since they learned about his dear friend's true history. Since then it all became clear. They had quickly narrowed down where they believed Jamie was being held with the aid of Rossi's Italian contacts. The team took the jet to New York City and split up in groups of two at three possible locations where they might find their friend. Spencer sat at the window watching the old abandoned factory. A dark tinted SUV pulled up across the street at the factory he was watching pulling Reid from his thoughts.

"Morgan!" he called to his friend to come to see. He watched as the driver and passenger got out of the car, followed by the people in the back seat. Morgan and Reid watched them intently, making sure to snap pictures of the men. The two found it hard to believe what they were seeing; the fourth person was a girl wearing some skimpy Fourth of July attire. The girl looked weak as she walked getting pulled along by the man they would eventually know as Quinn, there wasn't a doubt in either of the men's minds. They found her.

"Jamie…" Spencer whispered so quietly to himself before grabbing his phone calling Garcia while Morgan took more pictures "Garcia! Call everyone else! We have eyes on Jamie! Get them on the line now!"

Penelope was so excited that her friend was really alive, that they were going to get her, that even as quickly as she connected everyone it didn't seem fast enough.

"Got them! I got them! Hotch, Rossi, Prentiss, and JJ you are connected to Reid and Morgan and me!"

"Guys! We found her! She is here! They just walked her inside the factory!" Reid said, his voice climbing higher as he was anxious.

Hotch spoke quickly, "Everyone gets there as soon as you can. Reid, Morgan you are not to enter until we get there and create a plan." He hung up before anyone else could argue. Grabbing his gun and his bulletproof vest he quickly made his way to the car with Rossi in tow.

"Ready to get your baby girl back?" asked Rossi trying to get Hotch to talk.

"More than ready. I want her home. I want her home tonight!" he took off when they were both in the car. Diving quickly to the apartments where Reid and Morgan had been placed.

Prentiss drove quickly as well, only slowing as they neared the location so that they would not attack attention. Taking a deep breath she looked at JJ "ready?"

JJ only nodded in response. She was worried about what state they would find her friend. She knew that getting her back was only the first half of the battle, the second half would be dealing with the psychological and physical damage that the youngest member of the team had sustained during her year in captivity.

JJ and Prentiss walked up the stairs and joined the rest of the team. They heard Garcia on the phone going over the blueprints of the old factory.

"When we enter, the likelihood that we will arrest everyone if anyone at all will be very small. There are two many exits. The goal here is to get Jamie out safely. We will find these people again later if we don't get them now and get Jamie the justice she deserves." Said Hotch.

Rossi looked out the window at the factory, "It would be better for us to go in when it's dark, so long as they don't take her anywhere. Someone should be watching for that at all times."

Morgan nodded taking up a post at the window while he listened to the rest of the group plan how they would enter and sweep the building. When the planning was done all they could do was wait. Hotch sat sating at the pictures that Morgan had taken of his baby. Seeing her dressed the way she was made Hotch's stomach churn. It was not something Jamie, his baby, would ever have chosen to wear on her own.

The other three agents went about filling their time in the best way they could, trying to sleep though it was hard to do. Spencer, who knew he wouldn't be able to sleep, sat in a chair reading a book he had carried with him since Jamie had been taken. She had bought it for him to read because it was one of her favorites and she desperately wanted someone to share in it with her. Whenever he missed her he read this book, and if he was honest, he missed her every seconded that she had been gone. So pretty much any of his free time was spent with reading this book over and over again so that when he got the chance they could talk about it as much as she wanted.

Quinn checked the time as he smiled to himself; it was time to wake her. He grabbed a syringe full of methamphetamine and walked to her cell. He laughed to himself, looking at her huddled up on the floor, she truly was pathetic to him and he really enjoyed making her life hell. For no reason at all. Squatting down beside her, he took her arm, found a vein, and shot her up fast.

Jamie's eyes shot open, her heart beat faster and her lungs were working overtime. Her eyes hesitantly looked up to look at Quinn then back down as fast as possible. No eye contact. She was never to make eye contact with anyone. Property didn't have the right to do that she reminded her self. Quinn pulled her close to him, kissing her cheek like he always did when he had something horrible planned.

"Tonight I'll let you come and enjoy the fireworks with us. You will be able to see them from the bed in my room" he gave a long pause "But only after we get you cleaned up. You are too filthy to be allowed into a bed." He told her, putting the choke collar around her neck, adding a leash. "I like this one better than the shock collar I used to train you with." Pulling on it hard, forcing her to grab her neck in response as the prongs push at her skin and cut off her air.

"Walk" he commanded her.

Jamie didn't hesitate to obey his commands; the reactions had become a natural response. She crawled after him, keeping slightly behind as he led her to the showers. She stayed on her hands and knees watching him from the corner of her eye as he turned the water on. He knelt down by her undressing her quickly before tossing her into the tub keeping a tight hold on the leash.

Jamie winced feeling the cold water against her skin.

"Go on. Wash up" he smirked watching her shiver in the shower.

Jamie slowly began to wash. In her head, she prepared her self for what was to come as she went through the motions numbly. She was happy that he wasn't participating in the shower like he had so many times in the past. He always made them so much worse. Quinn saw she was done and yanked on the collar making Jamie lean towards him as she clung to the collar trying to keep the prongs from cutting into her skin and choking her. It didn't work. Jamie felt her body go weak as she blacked out.

/// Skip to next note to avoid s*xual assault content///

She woke up feeling sore. Jamie was careful to keep her eyes closed as she listened to what was around her. She could hear the three men, her stomach churned as she began to get more feeling back into her body. Jamie recognized the familiar sounds, smell, and feel of the man who wasn't talking with the others. She knew it was Quinn and that meant he would soon recognize that she had woken up. As if he had read her thoughts, she felt her head being lifted by a hard yank on her hair.

"Decided to join in on the fun, huh?" Quinn laughed as he kissed her cheek. "You have been out for a while and we didn't want to slow down the party to wait for you." He stated as he continued his assault on her body.

Jamie stared at a familiar comer of the wall, the one she always focused on in this room, trying to close her self off from the feeling of him. She made sure not to cry or make a noise as he continued. He was being more gentle than usual and she didn't want that to change. She didn't want to screw it up as they told her she did with everything. A big bang followed by some sizzles made her flinch, gasping in fear of what the noise was coming from.

You stupid girl, you may have just pissed Quinn off! Her mind berated her.

"She is still scared of loud noises I see" laughed a man who was watching them over in a chair. "I wonder what else we can conditioner her to fear, we have ingrained so many into her subconscious."

Quinn grunted his approval at her reaction, before he violently flipped her over onto her hands and knees, yanking her hair back hard again pulling her against him, "watch the fireworks, it's the closest to freedom you will ever be."

Jamie's eyes watered as she opened them and watched the light show trying to not react to the sound each time one went off. She swallowed bile as she felt him release inside her as the firework show finished.

Jamie got through the next couple of hours without disobeying too many rules. Each time she did they took the time to give her the punishment she deserved. Quinn and the boys were done with her for the night. So they dressed her back into her clothes, that in all honesty no more than tattered rags, and took her back to the cell. After they left her, Jamie cried silently to her self until she succumbed to some much-needed sleep.

///Pick Back up here///

11:15 pm July 4th :

The BAU team was dressed in their bulletproof vests as they approached the factory. It was time to get their girl back.

"Morgan, Rossi, and Prentiss, when we enter go left. Reid, JJ, and I will go right. Detain anyone you can, kill if necessary, but no matter what, we get Jamie." Hotch said before he nodded to Morgan to enter.

The team split, both clearing the hall and rooms as the checked for their safety as well as hoping Jamie would be behind one of the doors. Reid made his way to the staircase; slowly he walked quickly to the second floor. Upon seeing that Morgan was already checking that hall he worked his way up another level and proceeded in.

Quinn looked up at the security footage, "Shit FBI is inside! Get everything you can I'm going to get the girl!"

"No! they're almost to her! We got to let her go! We can get her back for the boss later!" said one of the other men as he grabbed as much video and documents of what they had subjected Jamie through into a bag.

The other man began wiping the hard drives of the computers after he copied all the information for them, "Let's GO!"

Quinn struggled to go after Jamie, his pet, he didn't want her taken but once he saw one of the agents pass by their door he had no choice but to run with the other two men as they worked their way down the fire escape.

Prentiss called out, "They are running down the fire escape. Three men. They don't have Jamie!"

Quinn Fired a shot at Prentiss who retuned fire missing Quinn but hitting one of the other men. She kept firing but Quinn and the other man were able to get into their car and drive off.

Jamie tensed hearing the gunshots but she didn't dare move. Her eyes darted to the door when she heard the knob turning. Reid slowly walked in seeing Jamie sitting on the floor, his heart pounded in his chest as he carefully walked up to her and knelt down.

"Jamie..." he saw the fear in her eyes as he slowly moved towards her, his heartbreaking as she scooted further back against the wall trying to get as far away from as she could.

~Can also be read on AO3 and Fanfic by anonymouslymine ~

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unknownauthor · 5 years

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Captivated

Pairing: Billy Hargrove x OC!Reader

Warnings: kidnapping, murder, violence, smut, toxic relationships, abuse, abusive childhood, trauma

Summary: Billy Hargrove is a killer, hell bent on revenge. Layla Gonzalez is a college student with a dark and cloudy past. When Layla is taken hostage and forced to work with Billy in order to survive, will they be able to get passed their differences, and see the people behind the scars? A stalker seeks to finish something Layla started a long time ago. When they come head to head, will Billy protect her? Or will he add another victim to his list?

A/N: I’ve tried this AU before and it never felt quite right. I’m hoping with Billy I may be able to pull it off because I love the idea and the potential of a good thriller. Please, please leave comments. Let me know what you think. Is this something I should continue? Also, all the younger kids in stranger things are 16 and 17 for the purpose of this fic. Thank you

Part 2

Something crawled over my skin as i left my last class for the night. It wasn’t physical, but i could feel it. Trepidation, fear, something was coming for me and I wouldn’t be able to stop it.

I usually never walked home from class, but my car was in the shop getting fixed and I only lived a couple blocks away. I decided to hoof it. Why not? It was summer, the sun was only just setting and nothing bad ever seemed to happen in my little town of Hawkins, Indiana.

Cars buzz past me, I barely pay attention, focused instead on the quiet evening I had planned at home. A night of romance novels and chocolate ice cream, maybe the Goonies if I was feeling up to it. I didn’t have any friends, with my condition, being the way it was, I couldn’t. If I got them, they would eventually give up, having only come to my aid to try and help bring me out of myself. They would give up before they even got to know me.

I didn’t notice the car trailing me. Not until it was right up beside me. The driver honked, startling me. I turned in time to see the driver roll the passenger side window down. He leaned over and flashed a friendly smile my way.

“Need a ride?” he asks me. I shake my head.

“No. I’m only a few blocks down.” he shrugs his shoulders.

“I can drop you off, it’s not a problem.” he smiles again. It’s disarming. He doesn’t look like a bad guy either. He has golden brown curls, cut in the style of a mullet, thick black eye brows and light blue eyes, framed in long dark lashes. He wore a faded denim jacket, dark red flannel, half buttoned and a silver ring on is middle finger. His baby faced looks made me feel safe. He couldn’t be that much older than me. I smile shyly and reach for the door handle, ignoring the voice in the back of my mind, screaming at me not to.

“Okay.” he grins, sitting back as I open the door and hop into his blue camaro. It’s nice inside, clean. I’m relieved to see it’s clean, germs give me panic attacks. “Thank you.” I say as I slam the door.

“Not a problem.” he says, pulling away from the curb. We drive in silence for a bit, i watch the street signs, waiting for my road to come up.

“You can turn here.” he ignores me. I turn my head to look at him. His eyes have narrowed, fists white knuckles on the steering wheel. Dread instantly pools in my belly. “You missed my turn.” I squeak quietly. He smirks, turning to meet my gaze.

“Now you knew better than to get into a car with a stranger.” I open my mouth in a silent scream as he child safety locks my door and speeds down the road. “You’re not going anywhere.”

“Where are you taking me?” I ask him, my voice is quiet. I feel numb. This cannot be happening. This isn’t real.

“I need your help.” he says. “You help me and once I’m in the clear I’ll let you go.”

“What do you need my help with?” he pulls onto the bypass, taking us out of Hawkins. My nails dig into the fabric of my jeans, my anxiety beginning to rise within me. Before he can answer we see flashing lights ahead. Some sort of police checkpoint. I see him sit up out of the corner of my eye, jaw clenching, he glares at me.

“Keep your mouth shut.” he reaches over me as he slows down. He sticks his hand in the glove box, pulling a black item out of it. It only takes me a moment to realize what it is.

He makes sure the safety is clicked on as he comes to a stop. He sets the gun in his lap and puts on a pair of sunglasses. I look around, no one else is out here but us. It’s late, nobody comes into town past 9 most nights. I’m so fucked.

A short officer with a brown mustache walks over, the man? Boy? Christ, I know nothing about this dude, rolls down his window. “Evening Officer.” the cop leans down, peering into the car.

“Evening. Sorry to stop you folks, but we’re looking for a man who might be on the run.” my skin begins to crawl again, fear making its way up my body to wrap around my throat like a snake. I stay silent, watching his hand beneath the seat.

“Oh?” is all he says to the officer. The officer smiles kindly at me and turns his attention back to the man who had taken me.

“Yeah….Billy Hargrove. Say he might be responsible for some murders and a gas station robbery out this way. We’ve got all the ways out of town blocked, so we can catch him.” the man nods, taking in the officer’s words.

“I’m sure you’re all doing a fine job at that.” I can hear the sarcasm dripping from his words. I press my back into the door behind me.

“Thank you sir….Now if you don’t mind, can you remove the glasses?” the man sighs, he pushes them further up his nose, I see him reaching down to grab the gun.

“Ya know…..Ah fuck it.” His arm shoots out, he grips my wrist tightly, pulling me over his lap. He brings the gun to the back of my head, I feel the cool metal press against my scalp. The cop steps back, pulling his own weapon.

“Drop it Hargrove.” I feel the gun press into me harder.

“Here’s what’s gonna happen.” he sounds calm, almost serene as he stares down the officer. “You’re gonna let me through and pretend you never saw me. Or I’m going to shoot her and then I’m going to shoot you and be on my way. Either way I’m out of here. But it’s your choice.” There’s a few heavy moments of silence, my heart pounds in my ears, his arm over my back and his hand pressed against my scalp with that gun. Silent tears fall down my cheeks.

After what feels like forever he pushes me off, not roughly, but not with any gentle sincerity either. I watch him put the gun back beneath his seat. He salutes the officer before peeling past the check point and speeding away.

“Might want to buckle up. I like to drive fast.” I reach over and grab the seat belt, fastening it around myself.

The Camaro is loud. It sends rumbles of vibration all the way down to my bones. Like a massage after the chaos back at the check point.. I looked around, trying to find a way out. That was when i noticed, there was no handle on the inside of the passenger door. I was stuck so I stayed quiet. Out of fear. The man drummed his fingers against the steering wheel, listening to a song on the radio. The silence wasn’t tense, but it wasn’t comfortable either. "Are you going to kill me?" I asked softly, so low he might not even hear me. He stopped drumming and turned to look at me for the first time since he’d taken me.

"Wasn't planning on it." He replied. “I just needed a scapegoat once I finished my job. Taking you was the only way I would have gotten out of there alive.”

“W-why do you say that?” I asked, curiosity getting the better of me. He cocked his eyebrow, finally taking off his glasses, his eyes were a deep brown, almost black.

“You...You don’t watch tv do you ?” I shook my head. The news gave me anxiety. The only time I left my dorm was for class or work. Necessities. I kept to myself. He chuckled and shook his head as he turned on his turn signal.

“Why do you ask?” I asked a bit louder. I watched his adam’s apple bob and his eyes scan the road, searching for the right answer.

“I uh, I’m in a business most don’t agree with.” he said.

I decided to push a little further, “what do you do?”

“I’m...I’ve killed people.” he said it solemnly. Like he wasn’t proud of it, but he had to do it. I feel the panic begin to rise again. He cleared his throat. “What’s your name?” he asked, changing the subject.

“M-my…..it’s Layla.” I said, wishing I sounded braver than she felt. “Layla Gonzalez.”

“And’ I’m Billy Hargrove.” he responded, “You know, you’re the first person I’ve met in a long time who didn’t know who I am.” he sighed, clicking his tongue, “You’re a weird girl.”

“Says the man who just admitted to murder being his occupation.” he laughed, shaking his head.

“H-How many…” I trailed off, unable to finish my question. It was strange, I could never talk and be this open with just anybody. I usually just kept quiet, and stayed in my lane. I wasn’t the type of person to make waves. Not since before…..

“How many people have I killed?” Billy finished for me. I nodded, glad to have been pulled back from the darkness of my thoughts. He bit his lip, trying to think of the right answer, “If I had to count….possibly sixty.” my mouth fell open in shock.

“Oh my….” I instinctively moved further from him. I focused on my shoes, on the scuffs and the threads in the laces, anything to keep me from going crazy. We sat in silence for a long while. Billy began to twitch as it stretched, it was slight, barely noticeable. Except I saw it. "So where are you taking me?" I asked awkwardly, eyes darting to his before looking ahead again.

“I’m not sure yet.” he said, keeping his eyes on the road. “I gotta make a pit stop to some colleagues of mine, might just drop you off at a station of something. Do you got any family?”

“We aren’t close.” I say quietly. My parents barely spoke to me anymore….Ever since Lexa….They disowned me in everything but name. “No one will miss me. I’m sure.” I could feel his eyes on me, I turned my head to look out the window, tears beginning to fall down my cheeks. “I’ve….I’ve never left Hawkins before.” I say, trying to lighten my own mood and look at my situation differently. If I allowed myself to fall down the rabbit hole of dread, who knew what he would do. He admitted to being a murderer. He probably wouldn’t have a problem killing me.

“Yeah?” he asks, picking up on my change in subject. “Then think of it as a mini vacation. How old are you?”

“Nineteen.” I say, still not looking at him.

“Why don’t you get some sleep. We got a bit of a drive ahead of us. I’ll wake you when we get to a place to eat or something.” his words are softer, kinder. It sends my head spinning, this cold and calculating killer, suddenly wants me to get some sleep?

He must’ve seen my text books on the floor boards, because before i could doze off he asked me.

“You in school?”

“College.” I murmured. “I wanted to be a nurse.”

“Huh.” I hear him say surprised. “Isn’t that somethin’.” He didn’t say anything else. And i feel into a fitful sleep, a dream filled with roars and screams of an engine and the face of a monster.

Third Person P.O.V

He shut the door behind himself. The dorm room was empty and he couldn’t feel her presence anymore. She was just...gone. He walked over to Layla’s desk, flipping open her sketchbook, scattering papers, he became manic, flipping over her mattress, emptying her cabinets.

Where the fuck was she? He missed her and it was time for her to come home.

Part 2?

#billy hargrove #billy hargrove one shot #billy hargrove imagine #billy hargrove fanfiction #billy hargrove fanfic #billy hargrove smut #dacre montgomery fanfiction #dacre x reader #dacre montgomery #stranger things fic #stranger things fanfictjon #stranger things one shot #stranger things fanfic #stranger things imagine #stranger things fanfiction #stranger things

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what-is-love-babey-dont-hurt-me · 6 years

Note

Hey I’m not super active in the fandom and I was wondering if you had any fics that maybe involved Danny working with his parents as Phantom?

Sure thing, Anon!

Ngl, most of these are angst. Not all of these are strictly phantom working with his parents, but I went by a phantom & his parents interacting basis.

The List:

Phantom of Truth- Locked away in a secret government lab with Phantom as her subject, nothing stands between Maddie and the truth… except, perhaps, herself. And the highly recommend follow up Shadow of a Doubt

Roughing It- Lost deep in the woods with an undead pack on their heels, Maddie and Phantom find themselves entangled in an awkward alliance. Can they cooperate long enough to get out of this mess?

In The Way- A twisted tale of a summer spent all alone.

Moral Code- Says to never kill or capture a specimen that you did not weaken yourself. Maddie finds Danny Phantom wounded late at night after a hard battle. After she helps him, she finds there is more to him than she ever thought possible.

Stray- Maddie and Jack Fenton, two arctic researchers, have been trying to discover the existence of a race known only as ice dwellers. Their breakthrough comes in the form of a teenage boy they find frozen in the ice, who holds a dark secret from his past. (incomplete but still worth a read)

A Gift Of A Heart- A bank robbery goes wrong and Maddie takes a bullet straight through her heart. She dies. Or, at least, that’s what she thinks.

Darkness- Maddie and Phantom are trapped in the dark. Can they come to an agreement to work together before they both die at the full moon? Part 1 of Illuminations Saga. (there are two other parts to this)

The Scientific Method- “After two years of failures you’d have better luck asking Phantom to be your lab-rat,” Jazz said. The Fentons decide to try just that.

Like Son, Like Father- Jack wishes he could share his son’s problems and gets more that he bargained for...

Also, just for fun:

Empty Promises

I figured you wouldn’t want to wait a few weeks for a large list, so I kept it short. If it interests you, a few more (longer) fic rec lists can be found at (X) (Y) (Z). Shameless self promo time I also have a longer personal fic rec list (it excludes romance fics cus that’s a different list) coming out soon.

If anybody wants to add on, please do!

#danny phantom #danny fenton #maddie fenton #fic recs #dp fic recs #snappy speaks

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dukereviewsmovies · 5 years

Text

Duke Reviews: Furious 6

Hi, Everyone, I'm Andrew Leduc And Welcome To Duke Reviews Where We Are Continuing Our Look At The Fast And Furious Series By Talking About Furious 6...

In This Film, Dom And His Team Are Offered Amnesty For Their Crimes By Hobbs In Exchange For Helping Him Take Down A Skilled Mercenary Organisation, Led By Owen Shaw (Played By Gaston From Beauty And The Beast)

However, Dom And His Team Are More Interested In Getting One Member From Shaw's Team, Namely Letty Ortiz, Dom's Supposedly Dead Girlfriend For Life Who Was Thought To Have Died At The Hands Of Fenix From The Fourth Film. Can Dom And His Team Stop Shaw And Save Letty?...

Let's Find Out By Watching Furious 6...

The Film Starts Where The Last One Left Off With Brian And Dom Racing Once And For All To Find Out Who's The Best...

Or Not...

All Right, Turns Out They Were Just Racing To The Hospital Where Neves Is With Mia, Who Is About To Give Birth, But Of Course, Like All Parents, Brian Has Worries About Being A Father...

About To Go Inside, Dom Tells Brian That Once He's Goes In. He's A Father And Their Old Life Is Over...

This Leads To A Flashback Of The Last 5 Movies Which Roles Slight Credits Before Showing The Title Card And No Offense, I Just Don't Like It, It's Too Long Unnecessary And Annoying To The Point You Want Them To Get To The Story, Thank You!..

It Continues In Moscow, As DDS Agent Luke Hobbs And His New Partner, Riley Hicks (Played By Gina Carano, Who Was Hot On The Remake Of American Gladiators, And Nearly Kicked Colossus's Metal Ass In Deadpool) Who Are At A Site Where A Russian Military Caravan Was Attacked, With The People Behind The Attack Stealing Satellite Components, Leaving Six Hospitalized And Dozens Of Vehicles Destroyed In Under 90 Seconds...

Getting A Call That One Of Them Has Been Caught, Hobbs Goes To Interpol Where He Meets Someone Who Looks Like Dom But It Isn't Him...

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(Start At 0:18)

Getting The Information He Needs, Riley Thinks They Should Pick Up Shaw, But Hobbs Thinks Differently Saying That If You Want To Catch Wolves, You Need Wolves...

This Leads Us Back To Dom Who Is Visited By Hobbs To Tell Him About Shaw But Despite Neves Loading A Gun On Her Former Partner And Telling Him That He Can't Touch Dom, Hobbs Tells Her That He's Not Here To Extradite Anyone Because Dom Is Going To Beg Him To Be Apart Of This Assignment Which Leads Hobbs To Show Dom A Picture Of Letty,..

Giving Him A Few Minutes, Dom Is Shocked By What He Sees Despite Knowing It To Be Impossible But Neves Tells Him That If There Was A Chance Her Husband Was Alive, No Matter How Small, She'd Go...

Uh...You Realize You're Giving Him Permission To Dump You So He Can Go Back To His Old Girlfriend, Right?

Asking For Everything Hobbs Has, He Tells Dom That He'll Give It To Him Once His Team Is Formed But Dom Unfortunately, Dom Wants To Do This Alone. However, Hobbs Says That That's Not Going To Work As They're Fast And If He Goes Alone, He'll Never Touch Them, One Way Or Another, Hobbs Needs His Team...

So, Dom Calls Them As We See Where The Team Is Now, Starting With Roman, Who Is On A Private Plane To Macau To Take 4 Beautiful Women To His Penthouse Suite...

Next Is Tej, Who Is Using His Skills To Play Robin Hood To The People Of A Mexican Village..

And Finally We Have Giselle And Han, Who Are In Either China Or Hong Kong (I Don't Think They're In Tokyo Yet, So It Probably One Of Those) As They Continue Their Worldwide Adventure...

(Giselle) Like My Guns, Guys? I Call Them Batman And Superman...

With Everyone (Except Leo And Rico As They're Too Busy Enjoying Their Money) On Board, Dom Goes To See Brian, Mia And Their Son Who They Named After Dom And Mia's Father, Jack As He Tells Them The News About Letty, But Brian Thinks It's Nothing But A Lie As He Pulled Stuff Like This When He Was A Cop To Get Mess With People's Heads...

But Unable To Let This Go, Brian Wants To Go With Him Despite Dom Saying That Once He Was A Father Their Old Life Was Over But Mia Agrees With Brian Saying That They're Family And If There's A Problem They Deal With It Together Plus, Mia Will Feel Safer Knowing That Brian Is With Dom Because They're Stronger That Way...

Traveling To London...

The Team Reunites, Happy With The Upgrade In Equipment, Though They Do Wonder Who Is Paying For It?...,

Well, You're Working With Wonder Woman And Groot So, Adding The Hulk Can Only Be A Step Up, Roman...

With Hobbs And Riley Entering, Dom Tells Him To Give His Team A Reason To Stay In This Room, Which Leads Hobbs To Tell Them About Shaw...

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(Start At 1:01, End At 3:21)

Later That Night, The Police Send The Person That Hobbs Punched Around At Interpol Into Shaw's Hideout, Completely Wired And Ready To Give Positive ID On Shaw. However As The Man Runs Into Shaw, Alarms Go Off At Interpol Which Leads Dom To Tell Brian To Take The Others There To Stop Whatever Is Happening While Him, Hobbs And Riley Deal With Shaw So He Can Take Him To Letty...

Shaw Gives The Guy A Bag With His Take Of The Last Job Along With A Little Extra Which Just So Happens To Be An Explosive Which Shaw Activates As He's Driving Away In One Of 2 Vehicles That I Like To Call Flippers, Which Are Cars That Can Flip Other Cars It Runs Into...

But As Dom, Riley And Hobbs Go After Shaw In The Flipper, Brian And The Others Arrive At Interpol...

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With Hitting Letty's Car, She Sideswipes As Dom Gets Out Of The Car To Talk With Her Only For Letty To Shoot Dom In The Shoulder...

With Roman Believing That This Entire Thing Has Been Raised To A Whole New Level, Brian Goes Over To Talk With Dom (After Calling Mia To Tell Her That Letty's Alive) To Say That Maybe The Letty They Knew Is Gone But Dom Is Unwilling To Give Up On Her Saying That You Don't Give Up On Family...

Meanwhile At Shaw's Hideout, Letty Returns As Shaw Shows His Crew Pictures Of The People Who Followed Them And Among Them Is A Picture Of Letty With Dom Which Leads The Other Members Of Shaw Crew To Consider Her A Traitor, But Unfortunately, She Has No Clue Who He Is Which Leads Shaw To Believe Her As He Sends His Henchmen To Find Dom And The Others Weaknesses...

Looking At Images Of Shaw's Crew, Roman Realizes That They're Basically Carbon Copies Of Them...

Hobbs And Riley Return With CCTV Footage Of The Raid So They Can See What Shaw's Crew Grabbed From Interpol Which Turns Out To Be Information From A Database That Has Every Location That Might House The Final Component Needed For The Nightshade Device, Which Is About 2,000 Possible Locations...

Only Good News, However Is That The List Is Only Good For 96 Hours, Which Means Wherever They're Gonna Hit, They'll Hit It In About 4 Days...

With Dom Saying That Hobbs Is Right, They Go Over What They Know About Shaw's Team, Starting With The Fact That They Use Custom Engines For The 2 Flipper Cars, So, Dom Sends Han, Roman, Riley And Giselle To Find Out Because If They Find The Guy Who Made Those Cars, They'll Find Shaw...

Also He Wants Tej To Work On Cars That Can't Be Overridden By Computer Chips But Despite Hobbs Saying That DDS R&D Is On It, Tej Says That He Has It Handled As Him And Hobbs Go To An Auction Where A Snooty Person Mistakes Them For Kitchen Staff..

While Han, Roman, Riley And Giselle Go After The Guy Who Designed The Engines For The Flippers In Which Giselle And Riley Decide To Add A Woman's Touch To The Situation...

Well, I Guess, If We Wanted To See Angel Dust From Deadpool And Wonder Woman Team Up, This Is It, Folks...

But As The Girls Show What Girl Power Is All About, Roman Complains About What Giselle Said Before She Left, Only For Han To Defend Her Leads Roman To Realize That Han Is In Love With Giselle...

Asking Nicely About Shaw, The Guy Starts To Get A Little Friendly Which Leads Riley To Use Her Moves On Him So They Can Get The Information They Need...

(Giselle) Now Are We Going To Play Nice Or Am I Going To Have To Use My Lasso Of Truth On You?

Back At HQ, It's Revealed That Tej Bought All The Cars At The Auction, While Back Where Giselle And Riley Are, They Have The Guy Go Get The Information They Want On The Custom Engines But Unfortunately As He Does, He Calls Shaw To Let Him Overhear The Conversation So He Can Send 2 Guys And Letty To Try To Kill Riley And Giselle...

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(Watch Whole Video)

But While All That Went On Brian Traced The Bullet Letty Shot Dom With To A Pawn Shop...

Not That Pawn Shop!

Anyway, They Head There To Try To Get Clues About Letty By Talking With The Owner And It Turns Out That A Street Racer That Matches Letty's Description Came In Here To Buy Everything He Had (Guns, Ammo, The Works) But Unfortunately He Doesn't Know Where She Lives...

Returning To Shaw's Hideout, Letty Tells Him That One Of Their Men Is Dead And He Doesn't Care, Stating That He Made A Mistake And He Paid The Price For It..

Wow, Great Philosophy On Death, Pal...

With Giselle And The Others Returning To HQ, We Learn That The CCTV Footage Came Back To Reveal Nothing As Anywhere Shaw And His Guys Are The Cameras Are Out, This Leads Riley And Hobbs To Head Out To Investigate While Giselle Breaks The News Of Braga's Involvement With Shaw To Dom And Brian...

With Both Of Them In Shock At This Discovery, They Realize It's Impossible, But When Coded Payment Transactions To Braga's Cartel Is Discovered They Realize It's True...

Only Problem Now Is That In Order To Get To Braga, One Of Them Has To Go To Jail To Talk To Him, This Leads Brian To Put His Foot Forward Because He Feels Guilty For Getting Letty Involved With Braga's Organization And He Wants To Make It Right...

While Hobbs And Riley Deal With CCTV Which Was Again Offline Of The Robbery, Brian Goes To LA To Meet With His Old FBI Nemesis, Stasiak, Who's Only Helping Him To Get Credit For Taking Down Shaw...

Yeah, And You're A Bigger Asshole, Pal...

Anyway, Stasiak Tells Brian That He's Going Into Victorville To Go After Braga For A 24 Hour Hold After That He Has To Be Out By 9 AM Which Is When Forensics Will Run His Fingerprints Into The National Database Which Will Blow His Cover To The Point That Stasiak Will Not Be Able To Get Him Out...

Telling Brian That Braga Is In D Level Which Is Solitary, Brian Is Going To Have To Do Something To Gain His Attention Which Leads Him To Break Stasiak's Nose Again!...

Back In London, Tej Hooks Up His Connection To Every CCTV Camera In The City To Their Main Computer To The Point If Shaw Even Makes A Move, They'll Know About It, Leads Us To Wacky Hijinks With Roman, As He Checks Out Tej's Latest Weapon, A High Tensile Titanium Cable Launcher Which He Nearly Kills Dom With...

But After That, Dom Hears From Han That A Street Race Going On That Night...

But As That's Going On, Braga Visits Brian's Cell That Night With 2 Other Guys Who Are There To Kill Him...

You Know What Would Have Made This Scene A Little Bit More Interesting? How About Instead Of Just 2 Other Guys Braga Had Carter Verone And Johnny Tran's Brother, Lance With Him To Get Revenge For What Brian Did To Them, Plus It Would Have Shown More Of What Happened To These Characters After Brian Arrested Them....

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(Start At 0:55)

So, With Brian On His Way To The U.K., Dom Goes To The Street Race That Han Told Him About And Wouldn't You Know It? Letty's There, So He Decides To Race Her...

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(Start At 1:38)

Pulling Over To Talk, Letty Tells Dom That He May Know How She Races But That Doesn't Mean That He Knows Her As A Person To Which Dom Recites A Saying He Knows "Show Me How You Drive, And I'll Show You Who You Are"...

Asking What He Knows About Her, Dom Tells Her Some Stories About Some Scars She Has On Her Body...

Uh, Dom, No Offense, But On The List Of Things I Would Talk About With An Amnesiac Person, Scars Would Not Be On The Top Of My List...

Including One, She Got From Her First Street Race Where She Raced Against Some Kid (Who Happened To Be Dom) Who Tried Showing Off, Only To Lose Control Of His Car, Sideswiping Right Into Her To The Point She Could've Lost Her Arm...

Wow, A Love Story For The Ages...

But Despite Telling Her This, Letty Tells Dom He's Over His Head And That She's Not The Girl That He Remembers But Dom Doesn't Believe That Because Of What He Just Saw...

Dom Gives Letty Her Necklace Back Before She Drives Off, Which Is When Shaw Enters To Talk With Dom..

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(Watch Whole Video)

Calling It A Stalemate For Now, Shaw Drives Off As Hobbs Gets Off Of The Roof To Tell Dom That If He Hadn't Placed A Tracker In His Car, He'd Be Dead...

Returning To His HQ, Shaw Notices Letty's Necklace Which Leads Him To Question Her Loyalty...

Working With Tej, Hobbs And Riley Are Able To Find Shaw's Location, But When They Arrive Its Completely Empty, However, They Do Find Paint In The Building Which Tej Analyzes To Be Highly Specialized Anti-Thermal IR Coating For The Military To Which Tej Gives Hobbs And Riley A List Of Bases That Uses It And Cross References With Shaw's Military Targets And Surprise, It's A NATO Base In Spain...

So, With An 8 Hour Lead Ahead Of Them, Hobbs And Riley Decide To Drive Ahead To The Base To Lock It Down...

With Brian Returning From LA, They Fill Him In On Shaw Before Brian Goes To Talk To Dom Where He Admits That The Entire Thing Was His Fault But Dom That The Past Is The Past And What They're Doing Now Is For Her...

With The Base Locked Down, Riley Finds One Of Shaw's Men, Which Forces Hobbs To Take Extreme Precautions By Deciding To Move The Component Out Of The Base

Hearing From Tej That Hobbs Caught One Of Snow's Men, Brian Starts Thinking Something Not Right As He Tells The Team What Braga Told Him Which Immediately Makes Dom Realize That Shaw's Not Going After The Base But The Convoy...

With Their Thoughts Being Dead On, Dom And The Others Arrive As Shaw, Letty And His Crew Are Taking The Convoy But Unfortunately They Have A Bigger Problem...

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(Start At 2:03, End At 4:22)

Going After The Tank, Shaw Starts Crushing Cars Which Gets Letty To Start Having Second Thoughts As It Wasn't Part Of The Plan, And Unfortunately One Of Those Crushed Cars Is Roman's But Luckily He Jumps Into Brian's Car In The Last Minute, But Shaw's Going To Wish He Didn't Crush Roman's Car As It's Now Dragging Behind Him...

Which Gives Dom And His Team An Opportunity To Use It Like An Anchor, Realizing He May Have A Problem Shaw Sends Letty To Cut The Car But Managing To Get The Car Hooked, The Tank Abruptly Stops, Causing Letty To Go Flying, Realizing She's In Danger Dom Decides To Jump After Her To Save Her...

I Don't Know Maybe Vin Diesel's Role In The Iron Giant Went To His Head...

Either That Or Dom's Seen Titanic Too Many Times...

But Either Way Letty Is Saved, The Tank Is Stopped, Shaw Is Arrested And They Have The Chip...

Returning To The Base, The General Wants Letty Arrested But Dom And The Others Stand By Her Saying She's One Of Them. After The General Leaves, Brian Tells Letty How She Lost Her Memory And If Anyone's To Blame For It, It's Him, But Letty Simply Tells Him That While She May Not Remember Anything She Knows One Thing, Nobody Makes Her Do Anything She Doesn't Want To Do...

Talking With Dom Shortly After, Letty Asks Dom If He Knew That When He Jumped To Save Her That There Would Be A Car There To Break Their Fall, And The Truth Is He Didn't, It Was Just A Leap Of Faith...

With Riley And Hobbs Entering With Shaw, Hobbs Tells Him That Shaw Has Something To Say To Him...

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(Start At 0:33, End At 3:53)

Making A Phone Call To His Henchmen To Kill Mia While In The Car, Shaw Is Callblocked By Tej Who Has Jammed The Signal For Miles,

Following Shaw And Riley, The Team Watches As A Giant Airplane Lands On The Tarmac, Which They Get On Board With Dom, Brian, Letty And Hobbs Soon After As They Fight Riley, Shaw And His Henchmen While The Others Figure Out Away To Keep The Plane On The Ground...

Sending Some Of His Henchmen After The Others To Keep Them From Hitting The Wing Flaps To Lower The Plane While Brian Gets Mia Off The Plane While Hobbs And Dom Deals With Shaw And His Henchmen And Letty Deals With Riley...

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(End At 6:42)

(Sarcastically) Oh, No! They Can't Kill Dom, The Franchise Will Be Dead Without Him...

Is He...?

He's Alive!

So, With Giselle Dead (Only For Her Spirit To Be Reborn On Themyscira So She Can Become Wonder Woman) Dom Gives Hobbs The Chip Which Leads Hobbs To Ask Dom To Name His Price To Which Dom Answers 1327, Which To Them Is Home...

So, With Their Lives Back To Normal, Home And All, Han Decides To Go To Tokyo Saying It's Something He Has To Do And As Hobbs Delivers Their Pardons To Them, Neves Decides To Step Aside, Simply Saying To Dom That He Has His World And She Has Hers. Asking Letty If Anything Looks Familiar? She Says No, But It Feels Like Home...

I Would Say That That Wraps The Film Up But We Get A Mid-Credits Scene That Ties The 3rd Film, Tokyo Drift To The Next Movie, Furious 7, We See Han Trying To Get Away From The Bad Guy Of The 3rd Film, DK, Only To Be Hit By An Unknown Driver Who Is Revealed Here As Deckard Shaw (Played By Jason Statham) Who Is The Brother Of Owen Shaw From This Film Who Leaves Letty's Necklace Behind At The Crime Scene While Leaving A Message For Dom On His Phone While He Walks Away From The Crime Scene, Telling Dom That He Doesn't Know Who He Is, But He Will...

And That's Furious 6 And It Was A Good Film...

The Story Was Good, The Characters Were Good, The Villain Was Way Better Than The Villain In The Last Movie I Mean At Least This One Tried To Be Both A Threat And A Person That Shouldn't Be Messed With Where With Reyes You Got None Of That Really Also, I Loved The Location With London And I Would Love The Film Series To Do More Stuff In The United Kingdom (Maybe In The French Riviera) And After That I Don't Know What Else To Say About This Film Except See It..,

Till Next Time, This Is Duke, Signing Off..

#fast and furious 6 #the fast and the furious #vin diseal #paul walker #jordana brewster #michelle rodriguez #dwayne the rock johnson #tyrese gibson #ludacris #gal gadot #luke evans

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