#But some of my blank tapes were made in like 2019 and Dollar General had them?? Dunno what's up with that

[solradguy]

I love using my handheld portal to the entirety of human knowledge (Samsung Galaxy S10e smart phone) to record music onto an audio cassette tape with hardware older than some of my friends

[timelordthirteen]

Killing Time 4/?

Detective Weaver/Belle French, Mature

Summary: A Woven Beauty Law & Order-ish AU. Written for Writer’s Month 2019.

Chapter Summary: Flashback: Weaver and Belle get a start on the case.

Notes: Meanwhile, back at the hall of justice... You didn't think I was going to give up the bed sharing goodness that soon did you? ;) Okay, I am in the next chapter, but I need to balance present with past. I might try alternating chapters if that seems reasonable? IDK. I'm winging it here y'all. For the Writer's Month prompt #7: sports.

Warnings: Nothing much for this chapter, just the usual references to the crime. Please see AO3 for complete warnings and tags.

[AO3]  Previous: [1] [2] [3]

12 weeks ago...

“Sports? Seriously?”

Weaver rolled his eyes and dropped his head back to look up at the ceiling before he turned around. He pointed at the television mounted on the wall of Belle’s office with the remote that was still in his hand.

“You said ‘no news channels’ because they’re too distracting,” he snapped. “Movies with guns and explosions seemed inappropriate, and if I have to listen to another home renovation show I’ll fucking shoot something. The city only pays for basic cable. That makes our choices the Weather Channel, that will repeat the same useless, and probably wrong, forecast every half hour, or...”

He paused to gesture exaggeratedly at the TV as though he was displaying it on a game show. “Premier league.”

She huffed and stalked to her desk. “Fine, but keep it down so I can think.”

He gave another brief gaze up to the ceiling and then set the remote back where he found it, echoing her with a quiet but annoyed, fine.

“Court today?” he asked, noting the slim, navy pencil skirt and suit jacket she was wearing, with what she always referred to as a ‘standard issue’ white blouse.

Belle sighed audibly and dropped into her desk chair. “Yeah. Branson’s lawyer is filing everything he possibly can, so I spent all morning fielding that, and then I covered a continuance this afternoon for Mal. But starting tomorrow, my caseload is officially down to just this.”

She swept her hand towards the stacks of boxes and the large, blank whiteboard.

Weaver stood by the leather sofa, his hands on his hips as his eyes moved over the veritable mountain of evidence they had to go through. All they’d managed that first day was moving things around in her office and dragging the largest whiteboard they could find up from storage. That had been trickier than anticipated when they discovered it wouldn’t fit in the elevator unless they squeezed themselves into the corners and put it diagonally. Of course that took them a solid fifteen minutes of arguing to achieve.

If they couldn’t even get setup without being at each other's throats, he wasn’t sure how weeks of building a case was going to go.

“Where do you want to start?” he asked finally.

She frowned and sagged a little in her seat. She was already tired and done with today, but they needed to get started sooner rather than later. This case was the kind that could make or break a career, and there were far too many victims and victims families depending on her, a whole city in fact. It was something she kept trying not to think about, but that succeeding in keeping her up half the night.

Stretching her arms up, she bent to one side and then the other, trying to work out the knots in her spine before she answered. “The board?”

He nodded slowly and then moved to the whiteboard. There was a large pack of markers sitting on the ledge and he wasted no time in opening it and dumping them all into his palm before turning and holding them up like playing cards for her to see.

“Pick a color, any color.”

He wagged his eyebrows, and she laughed in spite of herself. “Red.”

Three hours and thirty dollars in Chinese takeout later, they had managed to get through one half of one box, and about a third of the information they had on victim number one.

“Oh come on!” Belle exclaimed, popping up off the sofa and bouncing on her bare feet. She’d ditched her heels almost immediately, and then her stockings about an hour into their work. “I cannot believe it’s going to end in dual red cards and a fucking tie. What the hell?”

Weaver watched her, bemused, and leaned back on the sofa. “I told you not to cheer for bloody Arsenal.”

She shot him a glare and then sat down, reaching for one of the takeout boxes. The chopsticks rattled around inside it, and she tipped it towards her to find it empty. “Did you eat the rest of the noodles?”

He held up his hands, feigning innocence. “Don’t look at me, oh, Queen of the Spicy Peanut Sauce.”

Her feeble swat at his leg only made him snicker. He relaxed against the sofa, and watched her from the side as she stacked the containers and tucked them back in the plastic bag they’d been delivered in. They’d spent so many nights like this, both at work and at home. If he closed his eyes, it could almost be four years ago, when another case introduced them and eventually brought them together, but there were far too many miles between then and now.

Weaver had lost the leather jacket minutes into their work, and rolled up his sleeves. It should have distracted her all that much, but for some reason it did. There was a weird intimacy in seeing someone be comfortable in your presence and your space. She wondered if he thought the same of her, and then pushed it aside, dumping the bag into the trash bin by her desk, and then turning to face the board. She read over what they had posted and arched her back, pressing a hand against her spine in a vain attempt to crack something.

Overall, it was going to be a fairly standard case board, with a picture of the first victim, a woman named Molly Macreedy. She was everything people loved about cases like this; she was young, pretty, and full of hope. Even her name sounded good, with a nice little bit of alliteration that made it easy to stick in people’s minds. It was a sad but true fact about anything like this, it helped when the victim was likable. They’d taped a picture of her at her college graduation under her name, written in red, and listed out all the particulars of the general crime scene, and a brief timeline leading up to when they believed she was killed.

That was the crux of the issue.

Nick Branson had been caught red handed - quite literally as his hands were covered in blood - trying to dump the fifth victim’s body. Later, they found Henry Mills, unconscious and tied up in Nick’s apartment. It was easy from there to tie Branson to the others, but his lack of confession meant they needed to work out the details of each murder on their own. DNA was great, but it wasn’t always enough. People wanted to know the where, when, and how. They wanted the existence of the DNA explained, and, in their minds, why any of it happened in the first place.

As if it was possible to find reason in something so senseless.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Weaver said.

His voice was soft, and Belle blinked, only just realizing that he’d turned off the television. She sighed. “I’m not sure they’re even worth that.”

He ran the back of his up and down her arm, shoulder to elbow, a light soothing motion. She wanted to lean into it, let his knuckles press just a little harder and ease some of the tension she’d been carrying all day. That was something he’d always been willing to do for her, a neck rub here, a foot massage there, purely for the sake of touching her and being close to her.

“There’s just so much,” she said finally. “I don’t know, you know? How to get through all of it.”

Weaver resisted the urge to put his arm around her. He knew she meant more than she was saying. It went beyond how to physically get through the boxes and folders and reports. It was how to survive the whole exercise, how to read about blood, injuries, wounds, and causes of death, and go home at the end of the day not feeling like you’d been through it yourself. It was how to live with it, and how to move on from it when it was all done, if any of them every really did in this job.

He swallowed and let his hand drop to the sofa, a hair’s breadth from Belle’s. “The same way we always do.”

Except that was a bit of a lie. Sure he’d probably finish of most days with a scotch, neat, but it would be at Roni’s instead of home, and there wouldn’t be a second glass with red wine in it for Belle, or the comfort of cool sheets and a warm body. But they would both still understand, still be able to look at each other and know from the dark circles and endless pots of coffee, the toll it was taking on the inside.

“Yeah.”

Her voice was barely above a breath, and then he felt something touch the edge of his hand. He glanced down to see her pinky brushing against his, and he turned his hand over to catch it between his thumb and index finger. She looked down suddenly, and then her eyes flicked up to his face. He tried to hold it back, but his lips twitched in amusement anyway, and she smiled.

“Sorry.”

He shrugged, letting go of her finger, somewhat reluctantly. “Don’t be. You always fidget when you’re thinking.”

“Yeah,” she said again, her head dropping for a second. Then she looked up, her stare fixing on Molly’s picture as she took a deep, steadying breath. This was the most civil they’d been to each other in a while, and also the longest amount of time they’d been in the same room. They didn’t even sign the divorce papers together, just shuttled them back and forth between lawyers.

“We need a plan,” she said.

Weaver pushed to his feet and walked over to the rest of the boxes, still neatly stacked under the window of her office, organized by which ones went with which victim.“Divide and conquer?”

He looked back at her over his shoulder at Belle, with raised eyebrows. “I’ll do the timelines, you do the lab results?”

“And we’ll do the autopsy reports together?”

She sounded almost hopeful, as if looking at the grittiest details together might lessen their blow on the psyche. It wouldn’t, but at least they’d weather it together.

His mouth curved crookedly. “Whatever the lady wants.”