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lils-writes-stuff · 5 years ago

Text

All That Remains

Spencer Reid x reader

summary: it’s the readers first day back on the job and the case has a huge plot twist

warning: normal criminal minds things, angst, sadness, gore, fun stuff

A/N: based on season 8 episode episode 14

“Oh my god, okay I know I’ve seen it before, but the ring is just so beautiful on you,” Penelope gushed as she held Y/N’s that adorned her new engagement ring.

The women of the BAU gathered around her on her first day back to admire the ring. Of course, JJ and Penelope had seen it at least once before, but it was a whole different experience seeing it on her hand.

It had been a total of three weeks since Y/N was discharged from the hospital and she was so excited to get back to work. She couldn’t deal with leave again and since she was fine mentally, all she had to do was wait until she was fine physically.

Spencer tended to her needs every waking moment he was home, much to her detest. He even thought about having her call her mother to stay with her until she was completely healed, but he revoked his idea when she gave him a not-so-loving look. But she was grateful none the less for his love and care for her. She was concerned about him though, sure she was stabbed, but he was the one kidnapped. After Spencer’s psych evaluation, he was deemed fit to go back to work. Y/N was very jealous when he got to go back.

“Thank you,” Y/N blushed as her hand moved to Blake to look at the ring.

“He really did a good job of picking it out,” she declared as she examined the ring.

“Who knew Spence had such good taste?” JJ remarked, making the other women laugh.

Spencer heard the last of the conversation and naturally gave his actual reasoning for his choice. “It actually has nothing to do with taste, I made a decision by averaging all of her jewelry together and using an equation to evaluate which rings--”

JJ coughed making Spencer stop. “Spence, I was joking, you did a great job.”

“Right,” Spencer smiled sheepishly.

“It’s okay, Bubs, I think it was really cool how you chose it,” Y/N reassured the man’s insecurities.

He smiled at the compliment and then turned to Rossi as his voice was heard coming down the steps.

“Okay, okay, I know I saw it at the hospital that day, but you have to let me see it again,” Rossi spoke quickly as he came over to look at the ring again.

Y/N laughed and held out her hand for him to see.

“It’s very you, Y/N,” Rossi commented as he looked at the ring. “Congratulations you two, again.”

“Thanks Rossi,” Spencer smiled at the man gratefully.

“Hey, you know what we should do?” JJ asked, gaining the attention of the rest of them. “We should have an engagement party!”

“Oh my gosh that is a great idea!” Penelope exclaimed, bouncing on her toes happily. “We can have little cupcakes made with rings and all the fun stuff.”

“And I’ll host it,” Rossi said happily, turning to the couple who were just watching the plan being made.

“Oh, Rossi, you don’t have to-”

“No, no, I insist, it’ll be a great time!” Rossi cut Y/N off from her protest.

Y/N turned her head to look at Spencer, wanting his input on the idea. Spencer simply shrugged, muttering a ‘why not’. The both of them knew he wouldn’t take no for an answer.

“Okay, sure, that’d be fun,” Y/N agreed with a smile.

“Excellent,” Rossi said with a nod.

“Guys,” Hotch said, nodding to the round table room.

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

“911 what’s your emergency?” The operator’s voice spook.

A pause then an inaudible mutter.

“Hello? What’s your emergency?”

“They’re gone,” The man on the other line responded. “My girls are gone. I need your help.”

“When you say girls, do you mean your daughters?”

“Yes.”

“All right, I need you to stay on the line, sir. Please confirm where you’re calling from.”

“1721 Hillcrest Drive, this can’t be happening.”

“What’s your name, sir?”

“Bruce. Bruce Morrison.”

“How old are your daughters, Mr. Morrison?”

“Thirteen and Seventeen.”

“When was the last time you saw them?”

“They went to bed around 9:30. No, wait, it was Monday. Sarah has a study group, so it was more like 10:00.”

“Sir, today is Wednesday. You haven’t seen them since Monday?”

“No. No, that can’t be right.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but it is. The police have been alerted, sir, and they’re on their way.”

“That call came in an hour ago,” Hotch said, stopping the recording.

The rest of the team sat in stunned silence as they listened to the message.

“How does a single father lose his teenage daughters for thirty-six hours?” JJ asked in disbelief.

“He doesn’t,” Rossi shook his head.

“His girls are gone,” Blake repeated the phrasing of Bruce on the phone.

“Yeah, that’s strange, he didn’t blame anyone,” Y/N pointed, agreeing with Blake’s silent question.

“And he doesn’t use any buzzwords first responders are trained to hear,” Derek added. “He never says missing, abducted, runaway.”

“Maybe that’s what they did, though. Maybe they ran away,” Penelope perked up. She didn’t like to hear the call, let alone have this happening in the first place, she was hoping for a better outcome then what everyone was thinking.

“There’s no history of that,” Rossi argued sadly.

“The likelihood of a stranger abduction in a neighborhood like this is rare. I’ve counted seven turns from the entrance to their driveway,” Spencer announced as he looked down at the map on the table. “No one just stumbled onto the house.”

“And where’s the mother? Could this be a parental child abduction?” Y/N asked, turning her head from Spencer to Hotch.

“Uh, doubtful,” Hotch sighed. “Exactly one year ago today, he made this call.”

With one click on the remote, another 911 call came up. The call was almost exactly the same as the one they had just listened to. Same phrasing, same tone, just replacing ‘girls’ with ‘wife’.

“She’d also been missing for two days before he contacted authorities, and she’s never been found,” Hotch said, stopping the recording.

“This man is either the victim of a serial offender, or he is one,” Rossi said.

“Please tell me this guy’s in custody?” Derek asked with irritation.

“The Salisbury police are at his home, and they’ve been there since the call came in,” Hotch answered.

“There are hard copies and tablet copies of both case files on the plane,” Penelope announced. “It’s a short flight to the eastern shore. There’ll be more when you land.”

The team gathered up all that they had on the round table and made their way to the plane.

-----------

“Bruce and Judy Morrison were well-liked and active in the community,” Y/N said as she looked over the files they had received on the plane.

Spencer sat down beside her, placing a cup of tea on the table.

She smiled and mouthed a thank you which he replied doing the same thing.

“Yeah, all signs point to them living a quiet life,” JJ agreed as she flipped through her own file.

“He’s a writer and a professor, and it looks like she got into real estate a few years ago,” Derek added as his eyes scanned over a page.

“ ‘02, before the market crashed,” Rossi established as he looked at the date.

“Well, ten years later, Judy had an affair with a co-worker. A Jeff Godwin?” JJ’s voice went off in question as she read the name.

“That was discovered in the investigation, but never made it in the papers,” Blake said, leaning in her chair so she could look at JJ.

“Bruce Morrison was a prime suspect, but they never found any evidence, and the affair wasn’t deemed enough of a motive,” Hotch clarified. “The university’s put him on sabbatical since then.”

“He’s been writing forever, and he’s been teaching since 1985,” JJ added, flipping through the pages of the file. “Transcript says he was grief-stricken and couldn’t handle the pressure.”

“Not many people could,” Rossi bargained. “The odds of this event striking the same family on the same day must be a million to one.”

“Mm, close enough,” Spencer hummed, not arguing with the statistic.

“Judy inherited money from her family, and it’s in a trust fund for the girls,” Blake assessed.

“Oh, jeez, please don’t tell me he got rid of his wife for money,” Y/N shook her head.

“Uh, bank records indicate he hasn’t touched the funds, despite the depleting supplemental income from the university,” Spencer eased the worry.

“Yeah, but it could be a combo platter. Revenge and profit,” Rossi argued.

“His wife cheated, and he retaliated in anger, that might not be a surprise, but that doesn’t explain why he would harm his own children,” Derek added, confusion evident in his voice.

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

“The oldest daughter Sarah had a 4.0 GPA, but she didn’t apply to a single college back east,” Spencer began as he read from the page in the file in his lap. “She got accepted to Stanford early admission. Maybe her father saw going that far away as a form of betrayal.”

“The second one in a year,” Rossi’s voice posed over the phone. “First his wife of twenty-seven years fools around and then probably threatens to end the marriage. A year later, the daughter can’t wait to leave.”

“Abandonment could be the common denominator,” Blake agreed from her seat beside Y/N in the back of the SUV with Derek and Spencer.

“There is another possibility,” Derek interrupted. “Maybe Bruce Morrison didn’t do it. Did the family have any enemies?”

“The only person that could remotely be an enemy would be Jeff Godwin,” Y/N answered, her own mind forming possible theories.

“Mm, looks like he had a pretty solid alibi the night Judy went missing,” JJ’s voice said through the phone. “He was wining and dining with his own wife at a local restaurant.”

“So the only viable suspect back then was the same one we have now,” Blake said.

“All the answers are in that house,” Hotch said as they turned the final corner and came up to the house of the Morrisons.

The front yard was filled with locals as one SUV pulled into the driveway and the other pulled along the side of the street. The doors of the cars echoed shut as they exited the vehicles and walked up to the detective who was waiting for them on the front porch.

“Marty Friedman. Thanks for making the trip,” the detective said as Hotch and Rossi approached him first. “I’ve got search and rescue combing the woods and the Choptank and Wicomico rivers. We’re dredging all the way from here to the Chesapeake. I’m not letting this guy get away with this again.”

“Has he said why he took a day to call?” Y/N posed the question everyone had been wondering. Her hands were stuffed in the pockets of her navy coat from the cool air.

Friedman scoffed. “Claims he doesn’t remember,” he looked back to the window where Bruce was standing, inspecting the new visitors. “He’s been glued to his computer, maybe he needs new material for a novel.”

“We’ll work alongside your team if that’s alright,” Hotch said to Friedman.

“Whatever you need,” he responded with a nod.

The team followed the detective into the house. Y/N looked at Bruce as he eyed down Hotch as they walked into the house.

“Everyone take a room,” Hotch ordered and the team split up and walked amongst the house.

“Looks like Katie stayed in a lot,” Spencer assessed as he and Y/N looked over the young girl’s room. “She has her schedule of when she was gonna try new recipes.”

Spencer flipped through the colorful pages of the book with different recipes and fun sketches.

“She seems like a really sweet girl,” Y/N sighed as she looked through a journal. She then turned to her desk and pointed out some of the things she noticed. “Her charger’s here, but her phone is not.”

“Maybe it’s with her?” Spencer posed.

“Maybe, I’ll have Garcia track it,” Y/N said, pulling her phone out of her pocket.

“It’ll only work if it’s on,” Spencer reminded her.

“It’s worth a try though,” Y/N looked up to Spencer with sad eyes. Of course, her first case back had to do with kids, just her luck.

“If the girls had access to a phone and they were okay, they would have called for help by now,” Spencer said, giving her the same sad eyes she gave him.

Y/N’s thumb stopped typing, she knew he was right, but that guilty feeling in her didn’t want her to.

“Y/N.” Spencer’s hands reached for hers that held her phone. “You okay?”

“Yeah, it’s just-” she let out a shaky breath with a groan- “it’s just my luck that my first case back has to do with kids.”

Spencer looked down sadly, knowing the pain she was feeling.

“But it’s okay, it’s just because it’s the first case, ripping off the bandaid, you know? I’ll get back to being able to carpmentalizing it any second.” She shook her hands out after setting down her phone and the journal she was holding.

Spencer gave her the look. The look that said it’s okay to take a second, it’s okay to talk to me, it’s okay to not be ready all just yet.

“Stop that.”

“Stop what?”

“Stop being so understanding,” she laughed and pointed her finger at him. “I’m fine, I really am, it’s just gonna take a sec to get into the swing of things again.”

“Okay,” he smiled, reaching for her hand,and pulling her into a loving hug that made her heart melt.

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

Y/N’s eyes scanned over the box in the basement of the Morrison house. Shelf after shelf filled with buckets and old memorabilia of Judy.

“Wow,” Spencer mused as he walked closer to Y/N from his side of the room. “She had a lot of hobbies before she started selling real estate.”

“Yeah, family projects it looks like,” Y/N nodded. She turned to the shelf she had just been looking at boxes being held on it. “Devoted mom.”

On the boxes were dates written under the label ‘quilts’. The dates went all the way back to 1998, the years Sarah Morrison was born.

“You ready, Reid?” Derek’s voice called from up the stairs.

“Yeah,” Spencer echoed back. “You good?” He asked, turning to Y/N.

She nodded and he turned to head up the stairs.

Her eyes scanned over the boxes again, looking at the only one that was labeled with a name. On the box, it read; ‘Quilts, 1999-200, Katie’. Y/N made sure to keep that in mind for anything in the future and turned up the stairs to follow Spencer.

---------

“So what do you think?” Blake asked, turning to Y/N and Rossi, exiting Sarah’s room. The sobs of Bruce echoed down the hall after Hotch told him they had just found the body of Katie in a river. Sarah had still yet to be found.

“He’s sober, so this is raw emotion,” Rossi answered as the three walked down the hallway. “He lost his legs when Hotch told him.”

“The tears could be guilt as much as grief,” Y/N whispered as a reminder.

“Because that’s what we’re supposed to do when given that news,” Blake said as they rounded the corner and filed down the stairs. “I don’t mean to sound so cynical, but the man writes fiction.”

Y/N and Rossi nodded as they came to the last set of stairs. At the bottom stood Hotch and JJ, who had just gotten off the phone with Derek and Spencer who were at the scene.

“Any sign of Sarah?” Y/N asked, hopeful for a good answer.

“Maybe she’s still out there,” JJ said, just as hopeful as Y/N for a good report from the people on the phone.

“Doubtful, unless she’s found shelter,” Rossi acknowledged as they walked the final steps of the stairs. “It’s supposed to be in the twenties tonight.”

“Now that we’ve got Katie’s body, we should run scenarios for what really happened Monday night,” Blake said.

Hotch hung up his phone and looked up to the group around him. “That was the lab. Bruce definitely fired a gun at some point, there’s residue on the sheets and on the boots.”

Y/N sighed, not wanting to hear that news. “We need to get him to the station.”

The five of them turned as they heard the creaking of the floorboards behind them. At the top of the stairs stood Bruce, hearing the whole conversation.

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

“Alright thanks, Spence,” Y/N said, hanging up her phone and turning to Hotch. “That was Reid. He said Katie had skin built up under her nails. They’re on their way back from the M.E. right now.”

“We need to look for defensive wounds on him,” Hotch nodded, leaving the bullpen and entering into the interrogation room.

Y/N walked closer to the one-way window and watched as Hotch entered the room.

“Mr. Morrison, I need to ask you to roll up your sleeves,” Hotch ordered Bruce.

“What?” Bruce asked, turning his head sharply to look at Hotch.

“Please.”

Bruce sighed and rolled up his sleeve on his right arm, revealing small but numerous cuts on his forearm.

“I saw these in the shower this morning when I woke up,” Bruce said sadly, not making eye contact with Hotch. “I have no idea how I got them.”

“Did they happen during the fight?” Hotch asked, referring to the fit a neighbor had told them he heard.

“It wasn’t a fight, it was just parenting,” Bruce tried to explain. “Did the detective tell you about Jeff Godwin? You should talk to him.”

Hotch raised a brow in question at the man.

“He still coaches Sarah’s soccer team, even though it’s ridiculous.”

“Every time I ask you a question, you have this habit of deflecting attention onto someone else,” Hotch remarked, making Bruce become quiet.

Y/N rolled her shoulders, standing up straight as she watched Bruce’s body language, trying to decipher his emotions and behavior. When he stayed unresponsive, Y/N took that as the end of the interview and walked out of the room into the break room.

“Wonder Woman,” Derek greeted the woman as she walked in.

She let out a huff as a greeting back, clearly annoyed with everything that Bruce was saying. “Bruce Morrison wants us to talk to Jeff Godwin.”

“Convenient, since he just walked in,” Spencer said as he walked over to the two by the coffee station.

“Great just what he wanted,” Y/N sighed, moving into the spot next to Derek as he finished making his coffee.

As he moved over for Y/N to make her coffee, he picked up his phone that began to ring.

“Hey, Blake,” Derek answered as he stepped away from the coffee bar.

Y/N poured some creamer into the cup as she listened to Derek on the phone.

“Morgan, we need you to find Jeff Godwin,” Blake’s voice echoed through the phone.

“She isn’t the only one he thinks that,” Y/N sighed, taking a sip of her coffee.

“Uh, he just walked in,” Derek responded, turning to look through the window to Jeff Godwin who was standing in a room to the side of them.

“He did?” Blake mused.

“Says he heard we found Katie, and he’s worried about Sarah,” Derek said, relaying the conversation that Y/N had not heard yet.

“He also texted Sarah the night she went missing and then deleted the text.” Blake’s information made the three’s faces contort in shock and look to Jeff. “It looks like they texted a lot.”

“Really?” Derek said, some anger boiling inside him as he watched Jeff. Without having Blake respond, he hung up the phone and nodded for Y/N to come with him.

“Mr. Godwin,” Y/N greeted as she and Derek entered the room he was in.

“Mr. Godwin, why did you feel it was appropriate to regularly text a seventeen-year-old girl?” Derek asked, getting straight to the point.

“I-I’ve known those girls for a long time-” Jeff shook his head- “Way before anything happened between me and their mother.”

Y/N and Derek’s faces stayed unresponsive, waiting for him to get to the actual intent of why he was texting a teen.

“Look, I coach Sarah.”

“And you didn’t think to request a different team, you know, considering the circumstances?” Y/N asked, her hand not holding her coffee gesturing as she spoke.

“No,” Jeff shrugged. “My daughter plays on that team.”

Once again, Derek and Y/N stayed unresponsive.

“Look, Sarah reached out to me Monday night- God knows she needs a father figure--”

“Maybe the man her mother had an affair with…” Derek began taking a step closer to Jeff.

Y/N took a step also, becoming even with Derek. “Might not be the best person for that,” Y/N finished the statement.

Derek nodded in agreement.

“Look-” Jeff took a step of his own- “I just came in here because I had heard about Katie and I was worried about Sarah. Don’t treat me like a criminal.”

“Sarah deleted texts that the two of you shared,” Y/N said, turning her head to the side. “The same day she disappeared. Now that’s a little suspicious, don’t you agree, Morgan?”

“Mm-hmm,” Derek hummed in response.

“Hey- wait, okay,” Jeff stumbled, pulling his phone out of his pocket. “They’re all here. We agreed to meet in the parking lot of the convenience store on route 113.”

He turned his phone, showing the texts to Y/N and Derek. Derek took the phone from the man’s hand, putting it between the two of them so they could read it.

“Is this a regular thing for you?” Derek asked as he read the texts.

“Well, we’ve met there a couple of times recently, when she was really scared about what was happening with her and her dad,” Jeff responded.

“What was happening?” Y/N asked.

Jeff took in a deep breath, almost like he was afraid to tell them. “Bruce gets...violent when he drinks, and it’s been getting worse.”

Derek and Y/N turned their heads, silently saying for him to elaborate more on the topic.

Jeff let out a breath through his nose. “Sarah had every reason to be terrified. I mean look what happened.”

Derek and Y/N nodded, handing Jeff his phone back and heading out of the room. When they walked out, they were greeted with the whole team now, including Penelope on a video call.

“Is everyone there?” Penelope asked prompting Hotch to nod. “Um, this call came in on Monday.”

Before she continued, Hotch walked over to the door of the conference room and closed it.

“It was made on Katie’s cell, which is still M.I.A., the only 800 number she called was the local abuse hotline. She called there a few times in the last couple of months,” Penelope explained, pressing play on the recording. JJ turned up the TV volume.

“My name is Katie Morrison, I called last week,” Katie’s voice rang through the speaker.

“Yes, Katie, I remember you,” the operator on the other line responded.

“He’s at it again. He’s just going crazy. He’s really drunk.”

“Katie, are you safe?”

“Yes, hold on.”

“Hi, it’s Sarah,” Sarah’s voice came into the call. “We’re okay. I can handle this.”

“Girl’s open the door,” Bruce’s voice yelled next. “Katie, open the door.”

The sound of loud banging was heard next, making Y/N squeezing her eyes shut.

“I said open the door!”

When the recording stopped, Y/N opened her eyes and watched as Hotch asked to have the recording sent to his phone and took Rossi to the interrogation room holding Bruce.

-----------

Y/N watched through the glass as Bruce began to remember the night as the call was played to him. As it ended, he slammed his hand on the table, repeating the same words he said in the call. He looked up to the glass, on his side being a mirror so he was looking at himself.

He walked closer to it, his demeanor changing slightly as he looked at himself.

What surprised everyone behind the glass was what he said next.

“Oh my god, what a pathetic little cry baby.”

The rest of the team that was behind the glass looked at each other in confusion, continuing to listen to the man as he spoke.

“Ugh,” Bruce rubbed his eyes. “I was always right about you, huh?”

He was still talking to himself in the mirror. He then turned around, a smug smirk playing on his face as he looked at Rossi and Hotch.

“So you got old Bruce-y in a cage, huh?”

Rossi and Hotch didn’t respond, still trying to decipher who this was and what was happening.

“You think that’s gonna help?” Bruce walked around the two agents and back over to his chair. “It’s only gonna make him hide longer.”

When he reached the chair, he faced the two men again. “What do you wanna know?”

Rossi and Hotch stayed quiet again, not sure what to do.

When they didn’t give him a response, the man spoke again. “I’m gonna have to tell you ‘cause the baby’s got his pacifier.”

“Where’s Sarah?” Hotch finally asked a question.

“She’s learning a lesson,” the man responded with a shrug.

“What did you do to them?” Hotch asked.

In a mocking tone, the man responded, “What did you do to them?”

Not amused, Hotch and Rossi glared at him.

“I scared them that’s all. They need it,” he sighed.

“Why?”

“Because they’re spoiled, ungrateful little bitches who walk all over him any chance they get,” he responded.

“Wow,” Y/N whispered in amazement at the response.

“What happened to Bruce?” Hotch asked the question everyone had been wondering.

“He’s hiding, of course,” the man responded. “See… when he can’t handle it, I save his ass. Bruce’s problem is...he can’t handle anything.”

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

“So Bruce said Katie baked cookies Monday night,” JJ said, turning away from the board as Rossi and Friedman entered the room. “We found them in the kitchen, so that’s true.”

“And two of Sarah’s friends confirmed she never made it to her study group,” Blake continued, her voice slightly muffled from her cheek being pressed against her hand.

“And that’s because Jeff Godwin was in the parking lot with her from 8:15 to 9:30,” Derek added.

“And the girls called the hotline at 9:58,” Spencer finished the timeline.

“Detective, have your officers found either gun?” Hotch asked as detective Friedman walked up to the board to look at the post-it notes on it.

“No, but we’ve increased the search given where Katie’s body was found,” Friedman replied.

“Okay so, we’ve got residue, but we don’t know which gun or where it is now,” Derek said, his eyes trained on the floor.

“Okay, look,” Y/N said, raising her hands to stop anyone from talking. “Whoever that was in there said he wanted to scare them, not hurt them.”

“Katie was beaten over the head in the middle of nowhere,” Blake reminded her.

“You’re right,” Y/N gestured to her. “The altar could have lost his temper, or it could have been a horrible accident.”

“But getting the girls out of the house was planned. He said he wanted to scare them and had a gun to do it,” Rossi said.

“And then, he drove them somewhere,” Derek continued. “Bruce’s car had the same mud on the driver’s side floor that he had on his boots, but there wasn’t any in the backseat. SO three people drove somewhere, but only he came back.”

“And the DNA coming back from under Katie’s nails will tell us what we already know-- That Bruce Morrison did this. SO can I arrest him now?” Friedman said, antsy to put cuffs on the man he felt was responsible.

“Detective, you have sufficient evidence to make the arrest, but we still don’t have Sarah,” Hotch told him, eyes glaring at the man.

“Give us an hour, and maybe, he’ll tell us where she is,” Y/N said, an idea in her head forming.

“It's your call, but he could still help us,” Hotch said.

Friedman sighed. “Okay. One hour.”

So the team began their work, and they had to work fast.

“There’s no way for us to confirm a D.I.D. diagnosis yet, but we do know he has chronic alcoholism, Which can and has gone hand in hand with it,” Spencer explained to the team that was scattered amongst the conference room. “The interesting thing is his liver and pancreas wouldn’t have survived thirty years of that kind of abuse, so there must have been years where he’s gotten help.”

“He was in a program,” Blake shrugged.

“Eh, it would have to be more than that,” Spencer replied then turned to Y/N who had Penelope on the line. “Garcia, has he ever been on medication to help curb his drinking?”

“All I’ve got is a yearly physical, and that is it,” Penelope replied.

“D.I.D. usually stems from a history of sexual abuse,” Blake said slowly, hoping to give something to Penelope to help her.

“Okay, well, I’ve got nothing like that,” Penelope said. “All I have on Bruce Morrison is that his mother died when he was ten-”

“There’s your abandonment issue,” Rossi remarked.

“And he was raised by a single alcoholic father, and there’s no evidence of any prescriptions.”

“I mean, they look like the perfect family,” Spencer said, opening the file with family photos in it.

“Yeah, but she would have had to know about his drinking before they got married,” Y/N said as she peered over at the photos Spencer was holding. “So maybe, she helped manage him and kept his problem a secret.”

“She could have been the one that got the prescription,” Spencer’s lightbulb went off. “Garcia, can you run her medical history?”

“Yeah, hold on…”

They waited about twenty seconds before her voice was heard again.

“Okay, disulfiram. Am I saying that right? It’s for chronic alcoholism. She had a 90-day supply delivered four times a year for as long as I can tell. And it stopped coming a few months ago.”

“It makes you just feel nauseous if you drink,” Spencer explained the effects of the medicine.

“But she isn’t the one who had the drinking problem, he is. Garcia, who canceled it?” Derek asked the woman on the phone.

“Please hold while I dig.” She hung up the phone.

“Could that be the trigger? He goes after his daughters now that he’s off his meds?” Blake turned to look at Y/N and Spencer when she asked her questions.

Y/N’s eyes panned up to the TV that showed Hotch talking to Bruce. Then to Jeff Godwin in the other room. “That instability could work for us.”

She set her plan into action. Y/N had Derek get Jeff Godwin and bring him into the interrogation room with Bruce in it.

“Hey, I- I didn’t- Hey, look I didn’t agree to this,” Jeff stumbled as he came face to face with Bruce sitting in the interrogation room.

“Well, we’re looking for Sarah, and you’re the last ones to see her alive,” Y/N said, leaning on the metal table.

“Look, like I told you guys earlier, I had nothing to do with this. And Sarah’s afraid of him.” He pointed at Bruce when he spoke of him.

“You wanna tell us about your relationship with Sarah?” Y/N asked, moving her hands in a circular motion as she spoke.

“I don’t have one,” Jeff replied, after a pregnant pause.

Y/N’s eyebrows furrowed. “Huh, that’s strange. Why do you text her all the time then?”

At her words, Bruce sat up straighter, jaw clenching as he looked at a frightened Jeff.

“Jeff, come on, it’s not that big of a leap,” Y/N spoke nonchalantly. “Couldn’t have Judy anymore so you thought... Why not? Sarah looks just like her mom.”

Her words angered Bruce just like she thought they would. He pushed himself out of his chair and leaped for Jeff, but Derek intercepted him before he could touch him.

“I’m gonna kill that son of a bitch!” Bruce exclaimed as Derek pushed him back.

“Get him out! Get him out now,” Derek commanded the guard in the room to take Jeff out.

Once Derek had calmed Bruce (now his altar) down, he walked out of the room, leaving Y/N there standing on the other side of the table.

“Judy was gonna leave my boy for that scumbag,” the altar said, pointing to the door Jeff had exited.

“What’s your name?” Y/N asked as she watched the altar's body language.

“What’s your name?”

Y/N scoffed at his retort. “I’m Y/N, and you,” she nodded, her arms crossed as she stood tall.

“My name is Johnny, and I need a cigarette, Y/N,” Johnny placed his hands on his hips.

“Well, I might be able to help you out there, even though I don’t condone smoking, but I’m sure you’re stressed.” Y/N began to walk back and forth across the room.

“Oh, I’m not,” Johnny shook his head. “I just want a smoke.”

“Johnny,” Y/N scolded at the lie. “Come on. I know these teenage girls stress you out, no matter what you say.”

Johnny lifted his head up, a smug smirk as he looked at Y/N.

“How do you deal with it?” She continued her questions in hopes they would get him to tell her where Sarah was. “Do you like to, um...go out and shoot something?”

Johnny’s head cocked to the side and he shrugged. “Sometimes, but I don’t get much of a chance to do that.”

Y/N raised her brows in fake surprise. “Oh! I thought you did have a chance recently?”

Johnny chuckled and didn’t respond.

Y/N smirked at his none response and let out her own chuckle. “I think you did.”

Johnny’s head dropped as he continued to laugh.

“Now, you know, I’m just- I’m curious,” she laughed then pointed to the door with her thumb. “Then I’ll go get you a cancerous cigarette.”

Johnny smiled and gestured towards Y/N. “I like you, Y/N.”

Oh, that’ll make Spencer’s blood pressure go up, Y/N thought to herself.

“So…” Y/N trailed off, walking back and forth again as she changed the subject. “You took the girls somewhere to scare them...somewhere quiet, isolated…” She watched his reactions to what she said carefully. “Near the water?”

That got him to respond.

“I didn’t do anything but scare ‘em.”

“Oh, of course not.”

Johnny crossed his arms and came closer to Y/N as she stood in a dominant stance across the room.

“Do you have a place by the river?”

Johnny ignored the question. “Mm, pretty, and smart.”

Y/N gave him daring eyes, demanding an actual answer to her question.

“It’s not my place,” Johnny shook his head. “It’s not anybody’s place anymore.”

Y/N turned her head for him to elaborate more.

“I’ve taken them out there before, but this time…” He leaned forward, closer to Y/N this time (almost in her face) and whispered, “I got their attention.”

Y/N stepped back, nodding her head and nodded towards the guard to open the door.

“How about that cigarette now?”

“Not gonna let you pour cancer into Bruce’s lungs.”

The door closed behind her after she spoke and she could hear the tantrum Johnny was having. When she entered the bullpen, she saw Spencer standing in front of the glass. Arms crossed and lips pursed.

“Bub,” she whispered, gaining his attention. “You good?”

“Mm-hm, yep,” he nodded turning to her. “Just uh, you know, it was a little difficult not jumping through the glass to strangle him when he looked at you.”

Y/N chucked, her head dropping as she took a step closer to him.

“Spence, you and I both know that he wouldn’t have walked out of that room if he got closer to me.”

Spencer laughed as she pushed up on her toes to place a kiss on his cheek. He grabbed her left hand and brought it up to his lips, kissing the spot right beside her ring.

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

That night, in the pouring, freezing rain, JJ and Derek found Sarah in the woods. She had a black eye and some cuts but she was okay.

Y/N had gone to the hospital to talk to Sarah with JJ. Letting her know what she would have to do and it was okay to back out.

Sarah seemed like a genuinely sweet girl and she took a liking to Y/N as she cried. When the three of them entered the precinct, JJ took her into the interrogation room, while Y/N stayed in the bullpen with the rest of the team.

“I have a bad feeling,” Y/N whispered as her stomach turned, something was off.

“What about?” Spencer whispered back.

“I’m not sure yet…”

As Sarah sat down, her two hands clasped together reached across the table for Bruce’s. His cuffed wrists stayed together as he held her hands.

“I’m so sorry,” Bruce said, eyes spilling with tears.

“Dad, you need help,” Sarah said softly.

Bruce let out a breath and nodded.

His eyes went up to the cuts and bruises on Sarah’s face and sucked in a sharp breath. “Did I do that?”

Sarah nodded and let a few more tears slip.

“I’m sorry,” Bruce apologized genuinely again. “I’m so sorry.”

Y/N stomach turned again, this time out of sadness. Instinctively, she reached for Spencer’s hand, needing a reassurement, and to know it would all be okay. He grabbed her hand, lacing their fingers together for a second, and squeezed it.

“What can I do?” Bruce asked Sarah, pleading agony in his voice.

“They say that if you tell them where mom is, this will all just-”

“But I don’t know. You know I don’t know,” Bruce cut her off.

“She didn’t just disappear, Dad,” Sarah sobbed.

When Bruce didn’t respond, only letting out a breathy sob, Sarah let out another crying accusation.

“Oh God, you killed her too didn’t you?”

“No, no, I didn’t,” Bruce shook his head.

“How am I supposed to believe you?” Sarah sobbed and started pointing to the marking Bruce, or rather Johnny left. “This--this is what you’ve done.”

Bruce just looked at the injuries sadly.

“You have hurt us all for a long time,” Sarah continued, her voice giving out at the end. She stood up from the table and began to exit the room with JJ.

Bruce pleaded with her to not go, but she didn’t listen and just left the room.

----------

Y/N walked with Sarah into her home, the mood of the house much different now compared to earlier in the day. The rain had died down from earlier, but it was still falling on the roof hard enough so it could be heard in the house. Sarah had an FBI jacket wrapped around her and Y/N had her signature navy petticoat tied around her waist.

“You cold?” Y/N asked, noting how Sarah wrapped her arms around herself.

“Yeah, a bit, the thermostats right there,” she pointed to the machine down the hall.

Y/N walked down the hall, turning up the temperature, and looked back to Sarah. “Should warm up soon.”

Sarah stood, staring at the floor as Y/N walked closer to her.

“You think you can sleep?”

“Yeah, I want to shower first,” Sarah pointed up the stairs.

Y/N nodded in surprise. “Okay. Uh… you sure you’ll be okay up there?”

The reason why Y/N asked this was because, after her brother died, she wouldn’t even enter that side of the house for months. So it confused her as to how she would be able to go upstairs and be okay.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine,” Sarah said reassuringly.

Hesitantly, Y/N nodded, her bad gut feeling coming back. “Okay, um, I’m gonna make us some tea, that sound good?”

“That’d be really nice, thanks.” And with that, Sarah made her way up the stairs.

Y/N nodded, letting her reassuring fake smile fall once Sarah was out of sight. Her eyes panned over to the table in the hall that adorned family photos. Behind it was a quilt she assumed their mother made.

The sound of her text messages startled her. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and looked at the text from Spencer.

All good?

“Oh Spencer, you always know when somethings up,” Y/N whispered to herself and replied with ‘not sure’.

About five minutes later, after Y/N had finished with the tea, she made her way to the dining room and set the cups down. Her phone went off again, this time a call.

When she pulled it out of her pocket, Spencer’s name lit up the screen.

“Hey,” she answered, her voice hushed.

“What’s wrong?” Spencer asked, worry clear in his voice.

Y/N sat down at the head of the table and let out a breath. “I don’t know, I’m not sure, but the feeling is back again. She’s just...too casual and almost cold since we got here.”

“It could be the shock,” Spencer replied.

“Yeah, I know, but she’s composed at the same time,” Y/N said, trying to explain Sarah’s behavior. “She has not mentioned Katie to me even once since we got here. I couldn’t go to the side of the house that my brother stayed in after he died.”

“She does have a point,” JJ’s voice said through the phone. “When my sister died, I couldn’t even walk into my house, let alone past her room.”

“Well, what do you think, Y/N, Sarah pulled it off?” Blake’s voice asked.

“It may be a possibility,” Y/N shrugged.

“It’s a very detailed plan,” Blake commented.

“What, she knew about her father’s condition and took advantage of it?” Spencer asked as his voice rushed as he spoke.

“She set up character witnesses like Jeff Godwin...to back up her fear,” Derek’s voice said, piecing together a theory. “She even got her little sister to make calls to a hotline. She manipulated us from the minute we found her.”

“Her writing suggested no empathy and no real emotional connection to the family,” Blake said, recalling the writing she had read earlier that day.

“Psychopathic tendencies,” Spencer remarked.

“Her wounds are more than superficial, but they could be self-inflicted, right, Y/N?” JJ asked the woman on the phone.

Out of the corner of her eye, Y/N saw Sarah enter the room.

“Baby, I know, I’m sorry I can’t be there for the dinner tonight,” Y/N said, quickly coming up with a cover for why she was on the phone. “But London and Jackson are there until Friday and I promise I will make it up to you when I get back.”

Y/N then turned to look at Sarah, acknowledging her presence. “You okay? I didn’t hear the shower.”

“Yeah, I just wanted my tea,” Sarah pointed to the cup on the table.

“Oh, I was gonna bring it to you, but it should be ready,” Y/N stood up and handed her the cup.

“Yeah, I’m still here,” she said, wanting to let them know she was okay.

“We’ll be right there, stay on the phone,” Spencer said quickly as Y/N assumed he was running out of the precinct.

“Baby, I gotta go,” she said and hung up the phone, watching as Sarah walked away.

When Y/N heard the water running, she walked down to the basement, remembering the tub she saw earlier. She took her flashlight connected to her holster out and walked down the stairs. When she reached the floor she walked straight over to the tubs of quilts, specifically the one with Katie’s name.

She pulled it off the shelf and moved it over to an empty table next to it. As she filed through all the blankets, she came across a real estate binder. When she opened it and flipped through the pages, she heard a gun click behind her.

“Why did you have to come down here?”

Sarah’s voice rang in the quiet of the basement.

Cautiously, Y/N turned around to look at her. In Sarah’s hand was the second gun they had been looking for.

“We’ve been looking for that.”

“It’s an old house, I know the best hiding places,” she shrugged. “But you, what do you think you know?”

“You put everything that went missing with your mother inside this box,” Y/N nodded to the box beside her. “1999.”

“Maybe my dad did it?”

“No,” Y/N spoke before she could even finish. “No, you chose this box because it’s the year Katie was born and everything changed.”

Sarah’s face formed a snarl as Y/N spoke.

“She was your little sister.”

“Katie ruined everything-” she took the last step so now she was level with Y/N- “and my mother let her.”

“Your mother loved you,” Y/N protested.

“Well, she loved Katie more,” Sarah seethed.

Y/N and Sarah stood in silence for a second.

“I should’ve cried for Katie,” Sarah scoffed. “I guess there are some things I just can’t fake.”

Carefully, Y/N’s hand reached for the gun on her belt, something she really didn’t want to have to do.

“You won’t do it,” Sarah said, taking another step closer.

“You need to back up- now.” Y/N’s voice was stern as she commanded the young girl.

“I can say my trauma kicked in,” Sarah explained. “PTSD.”

Her face then formed into fear, “I saw you with the gun, and I didn’t know what else to do!”

Then her face went back to normal.

Truly, Y/N was kinda impressed. “You thought of everything.”

Then, by the grace of whatever is out there, footsteps were heard coming down the stairs.

“Sarah put the gun down,” Derek said softly as he came up behind her.

“No, no, you don’t understand. She has a gun, she was going to hurt me,” Sarah used her plea.

“No, no, Sarah, It’s okay,” Derek reassured her. As he put his gun down, Spencer lifted his up and pointed it at her.

“Listen to me,” Derek said, holstering his gun. “I understand. It’s okay, Sarah. She wasn’t going to hurt you. I know you’ve been through enough. All right? I get it.”

Sarah let out a fake sob as Derek placed his hand on her shoulder. “Sarah, you’re safe now, okay?”

Sarah nodded and turned to Derek. “Okay, thank you.”

As soon as Derek pulled the gun out of Sarah’s hands, Spencer came up from behind her and cuffed her.

“What are you doing?!” She exclaimed as the cuffs came down on her wrists.

“You’re a smart girl, Sarah. Figure it out,” Derek said, taking Sarah out of Spencer's hands and led her up the stairs.

Sarah tried to plead as Derek took her up the stairs.

Y/N turned back to the book she had been looking at, opening to a page that held trophies from Sarah’s mom.

“February fourth, the day Judy went missing,” Y/N said as she read the date above the necklace.

“Trophies,” Spencer said as he got closer to Y/N. “If the detective Friedman had ever found it, she would have pinned it all on Bruce.”

“Damn, it’s almost impressive,” Y/N whispered as she closed the boom and brought it up as evidence.

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

“The guests of honor!” Rossi exclaimed as Y/N and Spencer walked into his home.

The two chuckled and walked closer to Rossi to hug him. Rossi grabbed each of their faces, kissing them both on the cheeks.

“Dave, thank you so much for this,” Y/N said, taking Spencer’s hand as she thanked the man.

“Well, it’s the least I could do,” Rossi smiled, then turned and pointed to the room holding his own personal bar. “And I heard that there’s a special someone here to see you, Y/N.”

Y/N raised a brow in confusion then looked to Spencer, who had a smirk on his face.

“Remember the other day when you had to cover on the phone, and said something about London and Jackson coming to visit,” he beamed at the smile that formed on Y/N’s face as she put the pieces together.

“Shut up!” She laughed and rushed into the room, her best friend standing with her own boyfriend next to Derek, laughing about something. “London!”

When she heard her name, the dark-headed woman turned around and saw Y/N. “Y/N!”

The two met in the middle and hugged tightly, having missed each other so much.

“Oh my god, let me see it,” London said, pulling away from the hug so she could look at Y/N’s ring. “Oh, it’s beautiful.”

“I know,” Y/N sighed as London held her hand still.

“Now I just wonder when Jackson will give me one of those,” London laughed as her boyfriend came up next to her.

“Okay, no need to be hostile,” the green-eyed man said as he wrapped an arm around London’s waist. “Congratulations, Y/N.”

“Thank you, Dr. Avery,” she responded diplomatically.

“And to you too, Dr. Reid,” Jackson said, tipping his wine glass to Spencer as he walked up to the three, grabbing Y/N’s hand.

“Thank you,” Spencer smiled at the man.

The four of them had all hung out before. After another case the team had in Seattle, Spencer and Y/N stayed an extra day to hang out with London and Jackson. Y/N and laughed, making a comment about how she was the only one in the group who wasn’t a doctor.

“So how was your last case?” London asked. She loved to hear about cases and she repeatedly told Y/N that the team was the real life Scooby-Doo gang.

“A plot twist to say the least,” Y/N laughed, not wanting to go into detail. “I’m just glad it’s the weekend, and I’m just keeping my fingers crossed we don’t get called in.”

“I know that feeling,” Jackson agreed with a laugh.

Then, Hotch’s phone ringing was heard from across the room.

“No, not tonight,” Y/N groaned, throwing her head back. “One night, can serial killers just chill out for one night.”

Those who heard her comment laughed, but then Hotch reassured her worries.

“Don’t worry Y/N, that was Jessica, telling me Jack finished his homework.”

“Oh thank goodness.”

The night went on, Rossi had hired a catering service so the dinner was all little finger foods. Due to the cold weather, Rossi had made a dance floor in the bar room. Clearing out the tables that were in the middle of the room and leaving room for everyone to dance.

There was laughter heard all night as everyone danced and sang obnoxiously loud to the 90’s rock. It was a perfect surreal moment that made Y/N so happy. As she danced with Spencer, she pulled herself closer to him and whispered to him.

“I wish every night was like this.”

“It will be,” Spencer whispered back, placing a kiss on the shell of her ear as he spoke. “This is how we’ll spend every night we’re married, dancing, singing, and laughing until we can’t breathe.”

Y/N smiled, turning her head to place her lips on his. This kiss was meant to be a peck, but Spencer held the small of her back closer and let their lips dance together longer.

She giggled as she pulled away from him as Derek yelled “Get a room!” as he danced with a very drunk Penelope.

“I think I like the idea of us dancing till sunrise.”

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hypnoticwinter · 4 years ago

Text

Down the Rabbit Hole part 10

The door opens and the bell rings and Peter and I both look up; the lady I’d ran into earlier on my first day in Gumption walks in and nods to Peter. Through the course of the story we’d finished breakfast and then I’d walked with Peter down to the 7-11 and he’d clocked in and started his shift while I sat on a stack of beer cases and listened, turning the voice recorder to its highest sensitivity to capture everything he was saying. I could always go back and take a transcript later if I had to, if the audio was too loud or too distorted.

Her eyes stray over me but whatever she thinks she doesn’t betray anything with her expression. I’ve reached out automatically and covered the voice recorder with my hand as soon as I heard the door open; it was an automatic action, quick as a whip, no conscious thought required, and I slide my thumb down its ridged side, click it off.

“Hey, Michelle,” Peter says.

“Hey, Peter,” she says.

He glances at his watch and whistles. “I didn’t realize it was four already.”

“Time flies when you’re having fun,” she says, a slight layer of sarcasm flavoring her words. I can feel my hackles rising but I ease myself down. Peter’s eyes flick over to me.

“Well,” he says, and I feel my mouth drop open.

“No way. You can’t be serious.”

“What?”

“You aren’t going to finish the story?”

Peter grins at me. “I have to go get ready,” he says in a soft voice. “I’ll finish telling you later.”

“Oh my god.”

“What?” he repeats.

“What the hell happens to Makado?”

“She…” he starts, and then stops. I can see a flicker of pain cross his face like the dappled back of a fish beneath a sunstruck river. My heart falls within my chest and I realize that I’m becoming far too invested to be objective, I need to take a step back. “She made it out fine,” he tells me. I don’t believe him.

Despite all of my efforts to cajole him he won’t tell me any more. He assures me that we’ll have enough time tonight, that it’s going to be a lot of sitting around and waiting while I film far-off dots moving around under the cover of darkness and that he’ll tell me then. It smells like a cop-out to me, like he just doesn’t want to get into what happened to Makado.

It’s unbelievable enough already, though, isn’t it? Amalgams and copepods and all of that stuff. I hear it and I think, oh, this is the plot to a movie. This isn’t real, it can’t be. Even though I’m only a few miles from it, even though I’m going to be going there tonight, it doesn’t feel like the Pit is a place that actually exists. It feels like somebody is pulling my leg.

Or it would, if it weren’t for the look on Peter’s face when he talks about Makado. That at least is real. Whether everything else around it is fake, I guess there’s a little kernel of doubt still sprouting in my head somewhere, the tiny eternal skeptic inside of me that isn’t willing to believe anything it can’t touch or feel or see itself.

We walk out of the 7-11 together and look at each other. Peter nods. “Same place as where you followed before. You know how to get there?”

I nod as well. “Line up the two rocks and the cactus with the setting sun and walk straight until I hit the three boulders in the dip of the hill.”

“Good memory. If you mess up you’ll be able to see us probably anyway, I’ll have my flashlight.”

“How many people are coming?”

“Besides you there’s three others, one guy from the cult for his initiation and two others who…well, you know.”

“Yeah. Was that what Erica was talking to you about the other day?”

“When she pulled up at midnight or whenever? Yeah, she was just telling me who to look out for. Because those guys want to be able to get back out again I have to give them different instructions, that kind of thing.”

I shudder in spite of myself. “Well, see you tonight.”

“See you,” he says. He turns and walks quickly away and then past the corner of the building and I am alone. I stand there for a moment and then lean up against the side of the building. The sun is hot but not terribly so and here in the shade it’s really quite a nice afternoon.

A car pulls up and turns into one of the pumps. It’s the second customer I’ve seen all day. The guy looks over at me but it isn’t anyone I know or have seen before, and after a moment he puts his card in and fills up the tank, then drives off.

I look round and, after a moment, let myself slide down the faux-brick façade of the 7-11 and stretch my legs out in front of me. My knee cracks like a gunshot as I do and I wince. I take my phone out of my pocket and dial a number and listen as the harsh buzzing tone drills one, two, three, four, five times into my ear, and then there’s a click and the answering machine picks up.

“Hi, you’ve reached Mark Dzilenski. I’m not able to take your call right now but if you leave me your name and number, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Thanks, bye.”

“Hi, dad,” I say, and I feel a wave of emotion pressing at me that I refuse to confront. I swallow. “I’m sorry our call got disconnected the other night, I think there’s something wrong with my phone. It was good hearing your voice, I’m glad you and mom are doing okay.”

I lick my lips. Alright, Roan, you’ve been very glib so far. Spit it out.

“I, uh,” I start. Come on. “I got some news the other day that I wanted to tell you, I…”

“If you are satisfied with your call, you can hang up, or press 1 for delivery options. To re-record –“

I hang up the call, and then I stand up. I rummage in my bag for a cigarette and light it, and then walk slowly back to the hotel, taking my time. I’m meeting Peter at one in the morning but my nerves are already balling around themselves in a panic. I feel like I’m going to be sick.

“So what?” I ask out loud. I look over and see my distorted reflection looking back at me in the thick glass window of a closed barbershop. I look tired. “So what?” I mutter again. I look at the me in the window a little longer but I don’t like the way she looks at me so I toss my cigarette on the ground and crush it out and hurry a little more. It feels like there is a cloud looming behind me but it’s just in the sky, promising rain.

When I get back to the hotel room I unfold my laptop, dump the audio files from the voice recorder back onto it, and then I connect to the extremely rickety wi-fi network the motel offers and I look up what exactly the penalty is for trespassing on federal property. It’s not that bad, actually; a misdemeanor in all cases, at least under federal law. I don’t know if the site around the Pit is solely administered federally or if state law would also apply, though. Or would it count as trespassing on a military base? Apparently that can be a felony, if it’s important enough or if you’re being malicious about it. I do more googling around but the information I turn up is cryptic and limited. I wonder, not for the first time, if I’m putting myself on some kind of list doing this sort of research, then shake my head. Whatever.

The evening passes slowly and my nervousness doesn’t fade no matter how many cigarettes I smoke, leaned over on the wiry metal bannister, staring off into the flat, unexciting horizon. I watch television just to pass time, let Baggage and The Price is Right and Family Feud wash over me like an ocean, like waves, like I’m drowning. Am I drowning? If I were sane I think I’d feel like I were drowning.

When the time comes I put some pants on, long ones this time, shrug into my jacket, make sure I have my voice recorder and my camcorder and my slim little folding knife, more of a letter opener than anything else. I laugh at myself when I tuck it into my pocket but I still do it.

“Alright Roan,” I say to myself, staring in the mirror, sounding braver than I really feel, tucking my hair back in a ponytail. “Let’s go commit a felony.”

* * *

Peter raises his hand in greeting as I crest the hill and I wave back at him, click the light on my phone off and move down, join the little circle. He’d said there would be three others; two are here so far. One is a small Asian girl, so skinny it looks like she’d burst into flame if she crossed her legs too fast, and the other is a tall, heavy guy, looking like he’s in his late forties, balding hard. He has bags under his eyes and he keeps reflexively running his hands together. “Hi Lily,” Peter says to me and I blink and almost look behind myself to see if there’s someone back there, but he winks at me and I realize I’m supposed to be Lily. I wonder if there’s anything else important he’s left out.

“Hey,” I say. The Asian girl glances at me and then looks away again. Her eyes are very dark and it looks as though she’s chewing lightly on the inside of her cheek, sucking it inwards and holding it between her teeth and then letting it go again.

“This is Bao and Rey,” he tells me, indicating each of them. I nod at them.

“Hey,” I say again. “You guys, uh…excited?”

Peter shakes his head minutely and I feel faintly embarrassed, like I’ve said something I clearly shouldn’t have without realizing the taboo.

To their credit, they definitely do not look excited; nervous is more accurate. Perhaps haunted would be appropriate as well. Rey keeps glancing out into the darkness as though he can see something moving around out there; I can see his eyes focus on something and track it for a while before slipping off like a thrown egg slipping slowly down a window. I look out into the darkness as well but even though my eyes aren’t as adapted now thanks to Peter’s big utility flashlight throwing enough light to make me squint, it is very clear that there is nothing out there, nothing large enough that he’d be able to see it and track it like that.

I want to talk to him, I want to take out my recorder, I want to pry my way into his head, but I restrain myself. This is clearly not the time. The camcorder is still in my jacket pocket, the bulky night-vision attachment screwed onto its snouty muzzle already, fully charged and ready to go, but clearly I am supposed to be pretending to be one of these people. While we lapse into another uneasy silence and Peter checks his watch, I consider my new existence as Lily.

These two people are clearly so far gone that they barely recognize me as a person, let alone the deeper distinction between Roan and Lily. The way Rey keeps seeing ghosts and watching them like he’s ready to bolt or to fight, the way Bao keeps jumping at sounds none of the rest of us can hear, clearly they’re the two who are – what even is the right word? Afflicted? Who are, at least in Peter’s estimation, beyond retrieval?

I look at Bao. She’s young, maybe about my age, maybe a little younger. Twenty-two or twenty-three? Very possibly. Bao…the name sounds more Chinese than Japanese or Korean but I don’t know enough about Eastern culture to positively identify her, plus obviously there are more Asian countries than just China, Japan, and Korea. And if I’m supposed to be one of these people then should I care? Should I be getting into character?

I look again at Peter and feel a faint spark of anger at the fact that he didn’t let me know, didn’t warn me, but then I realize he didn’t really have a way to – he doesn’t have my number, and maybe this was something that resolved itself later in the afternoon after we’d parted, this need for secrecy.

I’ll draw the line at aping those nervous tics. Just watching these two is making me sad, giving me a feeling like someone’s taking hold of my heart and squeezing. It feels cruel, knowing I can do nothing.

Clearly the reason I’m Lily is because the third person, the guy from the cult, will know I’m coming, or at least will recognize my name. I think back and wonder if anybody had had a chance to take a photo of me while I was out walking around the town, but I’d have given people so many opportunities to take one without me noticing that it’s pointless to dwell on.

Surely if there was some sort of danger, if the cult knew for sure I would be here and they were perhaps willing to prevent me from coming somehow, Peter would have contacted me. He knows the motel I’m at, he might not know the room but if Erica Walken could get the phone number to it, surely Peter could have as well…right?

I toss my head, work my jaw sideways. It feels like it wants to crack but it doesn’t; I can feel the tension in the bulgy little knot of muscles down the side of my cheek. It doesn’t matter. I’m here, and I’m going in with them, cult or no cult.

There’s a crunching of feet on the dry hard earth behind us and Rey and I both turn to watch the third guy, tall and dark, making his way down the hill to us. He’s young, with a trimmed beard, and close-cropped hair. His eyes are very small; they linger on me for a moment and then flick to Rey and Bao.

“Alright,” Peter says, “everybody’s here. We’re going to be going under the fence through a hidden tunnel. It’s going to be tight so you guys are going to have to drop to your stomachs and crawl. It was going to be a waste-drainage pipe but they didn’t give the contractors they hired to do it the right plans and so it turned out that they were digging right on top of one of the power lines for the electric fence. They just left the pipe in there and put a fake rock over the entrance.”

I almost laugh when I hear that. It’s too easy. There must be a catch, mustn’t there?

“The pipe is going to let you out on the side of the patrol road inside the fence,” Peter says, looking between us. He weights his words carefully. “There should not be a patrol moving at the time that we go through,” he says, “but on the off chance that there is, whoever is in front needs to just freeze and wait, you understand?”

He looks around at us until we each nod. It takes Bao the longest but she does acknowledge, at least, that he’s speaking. “You,” he says, pointing to the guy from the cult, “your name is Marcus, right?”

“That’s right,” he says. He has a slow, deep, purposeful voice.

“You’re going to be in front. I don’t normally come in but I will be this time, I have some business to take care of inside. Me and Lily here,” he says, pointing to me, “will be in the rear. You two will be in the middle,” he says, and Rey and Bao nod, a little quicker this time.

“Once we’re inside, you’re going to be going in through a disused emergency exit that they haven’t sealed up because the Pit uses it to breathe. I’m not going to lie to you, it won’t be pleasant. It’s going to be tight, hot, smell horrendous, and it’ll be pitch-black, but it’s a one-way trip without any side branches, so just push through it and you will get through and out into the old Bronchial section. It’s been a long time since I’ve been there but all of my information says that any damage is fairly minimal and you should still be able to get through. Once you’re in, you’re on your own. If you want to come back out, take the same drainage pipe that we go in through and be careful not to cross the road right in front of a patrol. This area that we’re in, there aren’t any cameras, there’s no other detection, so as long as you look out for patrols, you’re fine. If you get caught, I don’t know you and you don’t know me. If you don’t tell them anything, the worst they can do is felony trespassing and a $500 fine. It isn’t great but it also isn’t the worst thing in the world. Understood so far?”

We all nod. My heart is beating quickly; I can hear it in my ears, a little thump reminding me that I’m really doing this, I’m really going to do it.

“Great,” Peter says. “Once you’re inside, the deeper you go the less likely it is that someone will catch you. Flip side is, the deeper you go, the more likely it is something will catch you. Anything with a sign that says ‘LVC’ or ‘Main Gullet,’ don’t go that way, you will get caught. I don’t know what you want to do down there or how long you want to do it for, doesn’t matter to me, but try not to get caught. And one more thing,” he says, looking very seriously at all of us. “Do not, under any circumstances, try to go in or out any other way than the one we’re going to take. That means do not go down to the main orifice. That is the most watched area in the entire facility and it is completely open. I know that this way isn’t great but it’s safe, easy, and it is unobserved. Everybody good?”

Once again we all nod, but I wonder whether or not Rey and Bao have really absorbed the information. Rey keeps watching things moving around in the shadows and Bao’s eyes are unfocused and glassy, and her head rocks lightly to the beat of something none of the rest of us can hear.

Peter gives instructions on how to get to the entrance, which I can now identify as being the same way as he and Makado got out during the disaster, the same breathing orifice that they’d pushed their way through four years ago.

Something about the…the enormity of it, of the thing beneath us and ahead of us and surrounding us, is getting to me. I can feel my skin prickling and a flash of heat passes over me suddenly and I nearly gasp but I contain myself. It wouldn’t do to have a panic attack right now, I tell myself, and I slowly, gradually, get myself back under control. I can feel my hands shaking at my sides and I shove them deep into my pockets. I want a cigarette.

There is finally, it seems, nothing left to talk about, no more instructions or warnings Peter can give us. He nods to himself, going over some kind of mental checklist, and then shrugs. “Alright,” he says. “Let’s go.”

* * *

Fifteen minutes later I’m already laughing at myself for getting so worked up over something so banal. Yeah, the other day when I followed Peter it had seemed like very serious business but here, actually making the trip myself, I can’t help but feel like it’s very small potatoes. It’s just a fence, I say to myself as we walk up to it, and then that turns into it’s just a waste drainage pipe, one that I have to shimmy through on my belly, grimacing as dust and grime gets on my nice coat, but it can’t be helped.

Peter’s behind me and Bao is ahead of me; Peter is staring at my ass, I’m sure, but then I realize that it’s pitch black in here so maybe I can give my ego a break and not assume it’s all about me. I keep having to prop myself up on my hands and knees to readjust the camcorder and make sure I’m not smashing it to bits on the hard floor of the pipe, but eventually we make it through and then we’re standing on an identical bit of hard, scrubby earth, except now we’re on the other side of the fence. As I watch, Bao, Rey, and Marcus all take off along the path, crossing it quickly and dropping down into the ditch below, and then they are just dark silhouettes making their way beneath the sharp half-moon. I get out my camcorder and flip it on and start filming them; the night-vision is really not that effective but it’s way better than just filming in the dark.

Peter clambers to his feet next to me and dusts himself off. “Well,” he says after a moment, “there they go.”

“They really don’t get caught?”

“Not usually. The ones who’re there to, you know, die to it, they go as deep as they can as quick as they can, far as I understand it, and the people with the cult tend to stay in the upper areas. There’s not very many personnel in the Pit right now so the odds of running into somebody is slim.”

I point ahead of us. “Can we go sit on that ridge? I want to get some shots of the Pit itself.”

“Sure. If a patrol comes we’ll have to duck down but it should be alright.”

We make our way across the road and down onto the ridge. I find a little flat section for us to sit on and then I pick out the three dark blobs making their way carefully up the hill. I whistle softly. “That’s the easiest way up there?”

“It is,” he says. “It doesn’t look like it but there’s a clear path, you just have to be careful of your footing.”

The figure in front stops for a moment. I can’t tell from this distance but I think it might be Bao. She stops and turns and looks across the great downward sloping crater of the Pit, and I pan the camcorder around and take a shot of it as well. I frown at the image. “That isn’t flesh down there, is it?”

“No,” Peter says. “They filled it all in with concrete. Do you see that little dark spot over there?”

I look where he’s pointing. “Yes.”

“That’s the orifice. They don’t keep it dilated as wide as they did during the park days, and the elevator is way smaller, too. There’s a little command center down in the gullet but it’s like, maybe a quarter of the size of the LVC. They’re all about minimizing impact now.”

Bao seems to be rocking unsteadily back and forth there on the trail and I turn the camera to record her. “So what happened to Makado?” I ask.

“I told you, she got out fine.”

“You know I don’t believe that.”

“It doesn’t matter if you believe it, it’s the truth.”

“Alright, can you introduce me to her, then? I’d like to meet her, or at least have a phone call.”

Peter laughs. “I really don’t think you’d want that.”

“Why not?”

He makes a little grunting noise. “I think you’d find that she –“

“Holy shit!” I blurt. Peter jumps next to me, looks around wildly.

“What is it?”

I’ve already gotten to my feet. “Bao just fucking ran back down the trail and someone else lost their balance and fell off,” I tell him, pointing at the dark object bouncing down the cliff face towards the white concrete below. Whoever it is they’re flopping like a rag doll, and I wince with each impact. “Jesus Christ,” I say, pointlessly. Next to me, Peter curses.

“Stay here,” he tells me before hustling off into the darkness. It looks as though he’s heading for Bao; I can barely see her but it looks as though she’s collapsed against a large boulder maybe a hundred yards away at the base of the hill, her shoulders shaking.

Well, Bao’s fine. I guess. She must have lost her nerve. I turn around, peer through the screen of the camcorder. Whoever she pushed, either Marcus or Rey, he’s reached the bottom by now and slumped into a huddled pile at the bottom of the crater. I can see one limb extended out limply like an exclamation point. I look back at Bao; Peter’s reached her and is hunched down next to her, trying to get her to move. She’s hugging her legs to her chest and I can see her shaking her head frantically. Did she do it on purpose? I didn’t see the whole thing but it looked like she just panicked.

When I turn back to Rey I can see him moving, trying to get up. “Oh fuck,” I say. He pushes himself up on his hands and then his arm gives out and he falls and lays there. I can just barely see, through the camcorder, his chest rising and falling. “Goddam it,” I say to myself, and then I fold up the camcorder and stuff it back into my jacket pocket, and then I get up and start to carefully pick my way down the heavy rocky incline of the crater lip.

* * *

I’m scared. I’m not ashamed to admit it, I’m terrified. I’m scared that someone is going to see me, is going to see whoever it is at the bottom, Rey or Marcus, and roll up with the black helicopters and take me wherever the Men in Black take you. It’s an insane, worthless fear but I still feel it. About half of me wants to bolt and run, scurry my way back into that drainage pipe and out and never look back, but I look at the lump ahead of me, hardly even seeming to be a person, no matter how beat up, and I see him again trying to rise and again falling and then I’m down there with him, my ankle aching from where I stepped wrong and very slightly rolled it, and I get down on my knees next to him. “Hey,” I say, “I’m here, it’s okay.”

He’s muttering in anguished Spanish to himself and I have to repeat myself a few times before he cracks his eyes open, his face dirty, blood from a cut above his eyebrow seeping down and stinging at his eye. He says something to me in Spanish and I trot out the little I know. “No entiendo,” I say, “Uh. Habla ingles?”

“Yeah,” he coughs. “You’re – Lily?”

“My name is Roan actually. Are you okay? Can you stand?”

“Rowan?”

“Roan. Like the horse. My parents were hippies.”

He looks at me like I’m speaking Greek and I might as well be. I put my hand out. “Can you stand?” I ask again, and he takes it. I help him pull himself up but his leg buckles beneath him and he lets out a cry of pain that echoes in the deserted Pit, bouncing off the soft white concrete expanse.

“I think I broke it,” he says. “Oh god.”

He’s staring around again, wilder than before. I look around in spite of myself but as I knew there would be there’s nothing there. I reach into my pocket and click the voice recorder on.

“What do you see?” I ask him.

“You don’t see them?”

“No, I can’t,” I shake my head. “What are they?”

That gets his attention and he tears his eyes from whatever vision he can see cavorting around us. He looks at me closely. “You don’t…you don’t see them?”

“No.”

“Oh,” he says, sounding disappointed. He tries to rise again but I put my hand on his shoulder.

“Wait,” I tell him. “Your leg must be broken, we can’t –“

“I’m so close,” he says. His eyes are wild now, and fixed on me. Before I can take a step back he’s thrown his weight towards me awkwardly and grabbed my arm. His hands are sweaty. “You have to help me.”

“Put your arm around me,” I tell him, crouching down. He’s heavy enough that I don’t know whether I’ll really be able to help much, but if I get on the same side as his hurt leg I can at least make sure he doesn’t have to put weight on it. The hard part will be getting up again –

Rey cries out again and I wince. “I’m sorry,” I tell him. “This is going to be rough but we have to get you up.”

“No,” he says, leaning on me. His face is pale now, his mouth tight and drawn with the effort.

“No?” I ask. “Come on, we need to leave like right now –“

“No,” he repeats, one shaking finger extended out ahead of us. He’s pointing to the tall gantry of the elevator down into the Pit. “We have to go there,” he says. “I have to –“

“Absolutely not,” I tell him. “We have to go –“

But he is starting forward towards the gantry and I curse and walk with him, because if I don’t he’ll fall, he’ll cry out again, he’ll fucking crawl on his hands and knees over to the goddam gantry, I can see it in his eyes, I know he will without even wondering how I know, and even though the lurching pace we set is clearly causing him pain, he urges me forward without any regard for his leg, hanging uselessly at his side, the foot jostling along the concrete every now and then and making him groan, a low deep animal noise that makes me feel as though I’m going to be sick.

We make it about halfway before a deep, rumbling alarm starts somewhere and ratchets up to a screech and all the lights click on and turn the night to day. All the strength seems to leave my body; I almost collapse. “Oh fuck,” I say.

“Come on,” he says. I glare at him; I’m sweating, the tight grip he has around my shoulders is starting to hurt, and he isn’t exactly slim. It’s taking all of my effort to keep him upright and walking and I am so close to just dropping him. I give him a dirty look and try to summon up my willpower, every single ounce of meanness and cruelty in my body and just twist out of his grasp and let him fall, but I can’t do it.

“Goddam it, Rey,” I tell him. “It’s a fucking elevator, they won’t let you on, there aren’t going to be stairs you can go down.”

“Come on,” he says again. The closer we get to the orifice the deader his voice gets. He keeps looking over his shoulder but there isn’t anything there, at least not yet; a pair of headlights are cresting the ridge and I can see people piling out of what looks like a Humvee but they aren’t anywhere close to us yet.

I reflect, briefly, on how useless this venture is; we probably could have gotten away if Rey hadn’t insisted on coming down here to peer down an empty elevator shaft. And if I hadn’t had such a damn big heart I could have gotten away, at least. Felony trespassing; well, I have the money for the fine, at least, but that’s got to be at least a year in federal prison, nothing to sneeze at. Maybe they have special accommodations for sick people? At the very least once I tell all of the prison lesbians what’s wrong with me they’ll –

“YOU TWO DOWN ON THE EXCLUSION PLATE!” a tremendous voice yells down at us through a megaphone. I nearly jump out of my skin but somehow manage to keep ahold of Rey. “STOP WHERE YOU ARE OR WE WILL SHOOT!”

I stop but Rey keeps going. “Rey, stop,” I tell him, but he doesn’t pay any attention to me. We’ve gotten far enough now that the end is in sight, the gantry is maybe twenty or thirty feet ahead of us and the yawning hole in the concrete is visible, but I can’t see inside it, not from this angle. “Rey!” I yell, but he pushes me back and I stumble to my knees. Rey breaks into a shambling run, or tries to anyway, but his leg simply is too hurt for him to put any weight on it. He nearly falls but he catches himself and bounces back up.

The first gunshot is unbelievably loud, even though it seems to come from a mile away. I hear it crack and I scream and fall down to my knees, my shoulders cringing together without any conscious effort on my part. I can see a spray of concrete splinters rising at Rey’s feet like shrapnel, and I realize the shot missed. He’s nearly there. I don’t know what he wants to achieve. I throw my jacket off and wrestle with the pocket, pull out the camcorder as quickly as I can force my shaking hands to operate, and snap it open so quickly I nearly break it. I start filming just in time to see the third, fourth, and fifth bullets bury themselves in him, two in his shoulder and one in his thigh. I cry out again but Rey is utterly silent. He’s down on his hands and knees but he tries to rise, and then another bullet catches him, this time in the back of the head, and he is down for good, and I realize that I’m crying, even while I’m trying very hard to keep the camcorder steady to get the shot of Rey’s supine body, one hand extending forward, reaching for the edge of the orifice, just ten feet away from him, a shocking red spray of arterial blood staining the concrete ahead of him like a punctuation.

Then two pairs of hands catch me under the shoulders and haul me to my feet and someone takes away my camcorder and they shove my head into a hood and then I can’t see. They force my hands together behind my back and handcuff me and I want to say something witty, quip something vaguely salacious like ‘easy boys, get to know me first before you get out the handcuffs’ but I can’t make my voice work the way it ought to and I’m still crying and shaking and I realize as they half carry half drag me to some kind of vehicle and fold me into it that I’ve wet myself, and any sort of bravery I might have been able to muster disintegrates into a painful, sharp-edged mass of shame and fear and embarrassment and a feeling not unlike I’m falling, like what I thought was just a rabbit hole has turned into a bottomless pit.

Continue with Part 11

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#writing #mystery flesh pit #mystery #michael crichton #disaster #thriller #spilled ink #original writing #series

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one-leaf-grimoire · 4 years ago

Text

Grey Deer Fic- Ch 4

Here’s the full link if you want to read through it again. I’ve had this chapter sitting around so I thought I’d post it finally. Enjoy! We finally get a look at the Main Character’s magic and she comes up with an interesting plan :))

Chapter 4:

Luckily, I'm not one of those people who's scared of confined spaces, otherwise this little trip down into the mine would be a lot more nerve-wracking. It's pretty scary as it is, but it dawns on me that it's just because the last time I descended into a dark, underground area, I was pushed and beaten half to death. That's the main reason why I bring up the rear, letting Julius, Martin, and Forwin head out in front. Even so, I keep glancing behind myself, noting when the light from the entrance finally disappears.

"How much farther do we have to go?" Forwin asks, having to turn to the side to squeeze through a particularly narrow gap. "This is starting to look a little dangerous..."

"It's quite a ways down, I'm afraid," Julius replies, slipping through after Martin. "This mine was stripped pretty heavily, so if there's any gems, they'll be down in the very deepest part."

Wonderful! No one will find our bodies, I think, a little morbidly, before squeezing through the crack myself, stumbling a bit as I come out the other side. "Be careful, there's a lot of loose rocks." Julius glances back at the sound.

"Yeah, I can tell-" I catch myself before I say anything too rude. "Thanks for the memo."

Julius just smiles before turning to continue. Remember, he might be someone you can trust, but that doesn't mean I can get so comfortable with him... well, unless I can. If he's the only person other than Alice with an alibi for that night, then I should try and become closer to him. The plan starts to formulate in my mind as we walk along in silence. It won't be like me and Alice, but it'll make things easier. I look back up from the ground, back to the back of his head.

He's a nice guy, after all-

Suddenly, something above us starts to shake, causing us all to freeze. "What the Hell?! Don't tell me that's an earthquake!?" Martin squeals, his head craning up to see.

"It's possible." Forwin seems pretty unbothered with the situation. "I didn't think we were near a tectonic plate, though-"

He's cut off as dust starts to pour down on us. Some gets in my eyes and I'm temporarily blinded. "OUch!" I urgently try to wipe it off, but then even louder, more ominous sounds start to crescendo. Martin doesn't even make out any words, he just screams and covers his head. "It's actually going to collapse!" Forwin's composure breaks for the first time as he freezes like a deer in the headlights (pun intended). I can't even see, and I don't even have time to be panicked. Shit! My magic can't do anything against physical attacks-

Luckily, at least one person is thinking straight. "Hold on-" Julius simply raises his hands as a rock suddenly starts to crash down on us. It immediately halts in midair, suspended in some kind of bubble. He clenches his fist, and it blips away into nothingness. "See? I told you we'd be fine."

Martin babbles something incomprehensible into his hand as Forwin and I look up to see that the ceiling has caved to reveal another passageway above us. Not a vote of confidence for the integrity of this mine, but at least Julius seems to be confident. And I need to be confident, too... "We would have been fine anyway," I say, crossing my arms. "That's why you gave us these, right?" I point at my hard hat.

"Right, right." Julius manages a chuckle before turning back towards our path. "Come on, we still have a long way to go."

And so, we continue on down, Forwin's flame lighting our way. I'm not sure how we're going to find our way back to the surface, but I'm sure Julius has a plan for that, too. At long last, the passageway starts to open up. Forwin's flame grows larger, lighting up each corner of the cavern. "There! Look at that!" We look over at Martin's shout, to see something glimmering within a crack in the rocks.

"My, there really are some gems stuck in here." Julius quickly goes over and tries to pry it out with no luck. "Someone, use your pickaxe."

"Can't you just use your magic?" I ask, knowing full well that he could vaporize those rocks like he did just a little earlier.

Julius shrugs. "I could, but I might accidentally destroy the gem."

"Ah, okay. I got it, then." I feel a bit weird as he steps aside so I can start chipping away at the rock. Like the captain said earlier, my magic will come in handy if we need to escape an enemy, but not so much if we need to destroy rocks, or light our way. No one expects much of Martin at this point, but I at least want to feel helpful. While I work, Julius and Forwin make Martin start digging out another gem before searching for more. "Look! I got it!" I finally manage to chip the gem free and hold it up for Julius to see as he runs over excitedly. "These really amplify magic?"

"Apparently. You can make magic items with them, too." Julius takes it and holds it up like some pawn shop owner inspecting a new ware. "I'll have to show this to Elger... he can tell us what they can be used for." Elger is one of the senior knights, with versatile transcription magic that's good for making weapons and magical items. If anyone would know, he would. "Good job, keep looking!" Julius gives me a thumbs up, and for some reason my heart does a somersault in my chest. ...right. Keep looking.

An hour of searching later, we've exhausted this chamber of gems. Julius has a nice little bag of them now, which he sticks somewhere under his cape. "God... it's so hot..." Martin rubs the sweat off of his face, panting. "I can hardly breathe down here-"

"Quit whining, you should be honored to get to go on missions like this," his cousin scolds, holding up his hand as if to swat him in the back of the head.

"Now, now, it's perfectly fine. We've all worked hard." Julius steps in before tensions can rise further. "We can head home now."

"Thank you!" Martin basically starts sprinting off, leaving us all in the dust. "Whoa! Martin, you don't know the way!"

The three of us run after him, which is hard when we're carting around mining equipment. "Martin, really, slow down!" Julius sounds like a concerned parent as he calls out after the younger boy. "I don't want anyone getting-"

Right before he says the word hurt, a massive tremor rocks the cave, sending us all flying in separate directions. "Ahh!" I cover my face and hear a loud CRACK, like when the cave was collapsing earlier. A moment later, I hit the ground and start rolling. I let out a shriek of surprise before finally halting as I hit a wall. "Ouch-" I hit my head, but luckily it doesn't hurt too much due to the hard hat on my head. Slowly, I sit up, hearing a fight nearby. Wait, so there actually were enemies after the gems... good thing we got here when we did!

"You alright?"

I realize that I'm not alone, and turn around quickly to see someone looming over me in the darkness. I choke out a gasp and scoot back, spooked by the sudden closeness. A flame is lit, and I recognize them as Forwin. Thank god, not an enemy-

However, that realization doesn't make my panic dissipate. In fact, it only grows stronger.

Not an enemy...

But...

He is, isn't he?

Confusion passes through Forwin's eyes as I refuse to take the hand he's held out for me.

His silhouette... My vision starts to blur and my lungs shrink in fear. It could be the one... the one who attacked me-

"Did you hit your head or something?"

...I can do it. I can escape... If I cast Fear Landscape-

"Hey, you two alright down there?"

A familiar, comforting voice calls down to us from above, and I look up to see Julius peering down at us from a ledge. The quake must have cracked the ground into a lower and higher elevation. His eyes are on both of us now, and my paranoia starts to fade.

Right... even if Forwin was the attacker, would he really try anything right here? Where Julius could easily see?

"Yeah, we're fine." I finally reach out and take Forwin's hand, allowing him to pull me to my feet. "What happened? Where's Martin?"

"Martin's fine," Julius calls back, watching as we start to clamber up to him. "There were some mages here, just two. I got them both pretty good and they ran off. We'll probably see them again soon."

"Great!" I grunt as I pull myself up the rock face with difficulty, my hands scraped on the rock. Julius quickly reaches out and grabs my wrist. I let out a surprised sound as he pulls me the rest of the way up with almost frightening ease. He's so strong... I catch myself before I can think about that fact any further. Forwin reaches us next, just glancing at me with a weird look on his face. I need to stop acting so strange... but for now I'll just pretend that never happened. "Come on, let's go."

Julius makes us all walk next to each other this time, which is a little awkward but probably the safest bet. We don't want one of us to get snatched. Martin's teeth are basically chattering the whole time. "H-Hey," he stutters at me, pulling on my sleeve. "If we die today... I need to tell someone my secret."

Forwin groans as if he already knows what this is about. "Martin, we're not going to die-"

"My name's not Martin!" the boy blurts out. "It's Martini! My name is Martini Vermillion!"

"...what?!" I almost stop in my tracks, but funnily enough I find myself stifling a giggle. "That's your secret?"

Martin hangs his head. "My old man is obsessed with naming his kids after alcoholic drinks... my brother Brandy is in on it too."

"Huh..." No one really knows what to say to that. "Well, now that you told me that, I might start calling you Martini."

"NO! Please don't-"

"Shh!" Julius suddenly stops and holds out his arm to halt us. We look ahead to see five cloaked mages standing in front of us, blocking our path. "...I take it you're the ones responsible for the earthquake?"

"So what if we are," one of them sneers. "We know you got the gems, hand them over."

"I can't do that." Julius wiggles his fingers in anticipation. "Are you from the Diamond Kingdom?"

"Hell no! We just want to get rich. Now, the gems, please!"

Julius shakes his head slowly, glancing back at us. "I'll make this quick-"

"No." He stops short as I suddenly interrupt him. "These mages..." I narrow my eyes. "Let me take them."

Julius gulps nervously, but a little smile comes to grace his lips. "You sure?"

For some reason, that smile gives me strength. "Definitely."

Julius nods once, then steps out of the way. I draw in a shaky breath before looking out at the enemy mages. "You heard him. Get out of our way, or I'll make you regret it."

The five of them snicker among each other at my words. "Oh? And how are you going to do that? Has a pretty little thing like you taken on five men at once before?"

Wow, rude. I raise my hand, my pale gold Grimoire starting to flip open to a specific page. "Get out of our way, or I'll put a hole through all five of you."

"Ooh~ Sounds like fun!" They're Grimoires are flipping open as well, but too late. "Well, go ahead and try-"

Illusion Magic: Sudden Death.

...

I've never seen my own illusions from Sudden Death. It's one of my more simple spells, one that doesn't require me to glean intimate information from my target. There's one thing that everyone fears, even those who deny it: Death. So, the easiest way to scare someone is to make them think that they've died.

In my mind, I imagine what they see: Five beams of golden light shooting out of my Grimoire and right into their chests. It can be as fast as I want, because this spell is only bound by my own imagination. They freeze as soon as the "attack" hits, and I know it's convincing because they stumble back. "W-What was that? What did you-"

One of the bandits looks down at his chest, where he was hit, and his words catch in his throat.

I look away from his face. I always hate the way I make them feel, even if it's all pretend. Because my illusions are potent enough to make them imagine the pain.

...I'm sorry.

"WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO!???"

Wretched screams fill the air, but luckily it's quick. All five of the bandits fall to the ground in various positions, panicking and writing around with nothing but fear in their eyes. It'll last 10 minutes or so, even after I release the spell. "Come on, let's go," I tell the others, and we quickly walk over the bodies and run off towards the exit of the cave at long last.

I hear the cries fade into the distance, but they don't leave my mind.

At least I know... I can protect myself. I just need to be ready. But even so, I really don't like doing stuff like that.

Before long, we run out of the mine and into the sunlight. "God, it's bright!" Martin immediately starts complaining. Forwin groans and stretches his arm, which he must have landed on pretty hard back during the attack. I stand there silently, staring at the ground and lost in my thoughts over what just happened. I feel good about myself and happy that I was helpful, but Sudden Death always leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

But a large, warm hand lands on my shoulder, drawing my gaze up to Julius once again. "Thank you for stepping in... because of you, we were able to get out of there without a bad fight. It could have gotten nasty."

Slowly, I manage to smile. "Right... I'm glad I could be of help!"

"You always are." Julius smiles again before turning to Forwin and Martin. "You two good to go back?"

"Yeah." Forwin digs the broom out from the bush he hid it in- good thinking. "See you back at the base."

"Wonderful. Shall we?" Julius holds out his hand, which I eagerly take.

"Let's go home."

"That's awesome! It always amazes me that you can kick ass without even summoning an attack!" Alice is basically jumping from foot to foot as I recount the mission to her and the others. "That's my roommate, for you!"

"You're like a master manipulator," Giles adds with a grin, fascinated as well.

"I don't get what's so great." Wren pops up behind me to rain on our parade as usual. "It's not flashy in the slightest."

"Wren, shut up, or I'll put a hole through your stomach, too." I raise my hand threateningly, which makes him recoil. We all burst into laughter at the reaction, before a booming voice yells at us.

"Quit dragging your feet! Dinner's ready and you four are always late!"

"Sorry, Captain!" we all yell before quickly running to the mess hall. Everyone else is already gathered there, eating and chatting. Say what you will about our squad, but it's nice that everyone manages to gather together for dinner every night. It strengthens the bonds between us, as both friends and comrades.

... at least... the bonds that appear to be there.

But that makes me remember something. I look over near the end of the table at Julius, who's sitting there next to Elger. Elger has one of the gems in his hand and is inspecting it closely as Julius watches. However, the seat on Julius's other side is empty.

Right! Operation Befriend Julius Novachrono begins now!

With a massive amount of willpower, I push my shame aside and just go ahead and sit down next to him. It takes him a moment to realize I'm here, and he only blinks once in surprise before smiling. "Hello there? You're sitting next to me today?"

"Uh, yeah." I stare at my plate of food like it's the most interesting thing I've ever seen in my life. "Is that a problem?"

"No, I'm honored!" His words put me at ease a little. "It was fun going on the mission with you today, it's always nice to watch you work."

"Oh, thank you-"

I look up from my plate as he keeps talking, to see my friends at the other end of the table all staring at me incredulously. Alice has a goofy smile on her face, Giles's eyebrows are nearly to his hairline, Elia looks jealous, and Nigel wrinkles his nose. Sorry guys... I'll be back with you for breakfast. But this is something I need to do.

I turn back to listen to Julius, and for the rest of the meal, I somehow forget about the problem that plagues me.

First four chapters: DONE! I hope you have a good idea of what this fic is going to be like, so leave comments with suggestions/concerns/ideas/thoughts/etc! Thanks for reading so far!

#black clover #julius novachrono #julius novachrono x reader #grey deer fic

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keiwritesstuff · 5 years ago

Text

With You

Kuroo Tetsuro x f!reader

Summary : Kuroo and her are classmates, but never really talked to each other since he’s a social butterfly while she prefers to do things alone. One day, their teacher assigns both of them to be assignment partners, and they discovered new things about each other.

Genre : slice of life, soft

Notes : Long. Written in 3rd person ‘s POV. Absolutety self-indulgent. Slowburn-ish. Happy ending. Bokuto is adorable.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

“For this topic.. Kuroo Testuro and L/N F/N,” the teacher announced before nonchalantly proceeded to name the other pairs. She subconsciously straightened her back, totally not expecting to be paired up with a boy, what more a really famous one. She’s not that interested in sports, but she knew enough that he’s somehow very popular, considering how he’s the captain of Nekoma vc and is very often surrounded by people (mostly girls, but what’s the difference?).

She prefers working alone, and knows that she’s very good at it. But this project… this presentation, will contribute to her getting good grades should she does it well, and she would really like to maintain the ones she had achieved, if not get better ones.

She has to.

After the teacher had finished assigning the topics to all pairs, the teacher had them sit together to start their discussion. From what Y/N knew, Kuroo is good in Science. She had never seen him fail the subject, if that is any indication.

It won’t be too bad, she told herself.

“I’ll be in your care, Kuroo-kun.” she spoke.

“Same goes with me.” he smiled before taking out his textbook to start the discussion. “I don’t think this topic is too difficult to present on, but I do think that we need to look for more examples to make our explanation easier to understand.” he added. She was rather impressed, considering he hadn’t even turned to the page related to said topic.

Both of them immediately set up a schedule for upcoming discussions since he is busy with volleyball practice.

That weekend, he goes to her house to work on the contents of the presentation. He was greeted by a young boy, who welcomed him into the house. The boy brought him to the kitchen, where he saw Y/N cooking, with a pair of twin boys clinging onto her legs.

“I didn’t know you’re a single mother.” he started, couldn’t help himself from doing his habit of teasing people.

“Shut up.” she laughed (which amused him, since he didn’t take her as someone who accepts jokes easily).

“These are my brothers. My parents are out working. Usually mom is at home taking care of these kids, but whenever I can do it, she’ll be at the shop, helping my dad.” she spoke, still busy stirring the food in the pot. “I think you can put your stuff on the couch. I’ll be there in a second.” she continued, somewhat apologetically, since she couldn’t immediately start their discussion. Kuroo sensed it, and quickly replied, “Alright. Tell me if you need a hand, though my assistance does come with a hazard warning.”

He saw her smile again before walking to the living room. He didn’t notice the warmth blooming from somewhere inside his chest.

After making sure her brothers have finished their meal, she rushed to Kuroo with iced peach tea in her hand. “Sorry. I’ll try .” she starts to jot down and rearrange the notes that she had collected through her own research for Kuroo’s opinion. Kuroo looked at her and noticed the conforting smell of homemade oyakodon. He couldn’t help but smile. Though they rarely talked in class, she had always given him this impression that she prefers to be left alone. Who would’ve thought that at home, there are three little gremlins glued to her hips all the time?

After school, both of them stayed in class along with other pairs who seem to be struggling as well. Both Kuroo and Y/N are more exhausted than usual, and Kuroo definitely took back what he said about the topic being easy. Linking the examples with the main points has been proven to be more difficult than they deemed it to be, especially in efforts to make it as simple and as easy to understand as possible. Y/N wanted to ace this assignment, and Kuroo noticed how she was struggling to digest the notes, reading the same page over and over again but to no avail.

“You reeaally want to ace this presentation, don’t you?” he asked.

She rested her head on the table, a few strands of her hair tickling her nose.

“Of course. I need to make sure I maintain impressive grades in my result transcript. Gotta get those scholarships.” Y/N replied, exhaustion could be heard from her voice, probably from taking care of her younger brothers. Funny, Kuroo thinks, that he couldn’t notice this side of her before. Had she been this… at ease before?

“Scholarship?”

Y/N nods. “Yeah. I’m aiming for Tohoku University.” she replied. “It’s not easy to get a scholarship there, but their Natural Science department is top notch and I’d love to study there. Not to mention, if I survived uni, that Tohoku logo would look good on my CV, don’t you think?”

Her head is still on the table, but her eyes are looking somewhere else now, her facial expression clearly shows that she can already visualize that life, that dream.

Kuroo was rather impressed. Tohoku isn’t so easy to get into, it is not a place for everyone, and if anyone wants to earn a scholarship there, they have to work extremely hard (and maybe offer a sacrifice to the gods for good measure).

“That’s pretty amazing,” he commented. “But what about your brothers? Will they be okay? Aren’t you worried? They seem to be really attached to you.”

“I am, but at the same time I want to work hard and secure a good job so that they don’t have to worry much about money, just in case one day they want to apply to any college institution.”

If Kuroo was impressed before, now he has an utmost respect for Y/N.

“Well, it’s just a dream for now, but, just like how your team works hard to win matches, I’m going to work hard to make my dream come true.” Y/N said, patting her cheeks hard, back straightened, tucking those stray hair behind her ears, and re-reading that page, again.

++++

On Friday, surprisingly, Kuroo was suddenly absent without telling Y/N. They were supposed to have another discussion after school, since Kuroo won’t be available that weekend due to volleyball practice (there is an upcoming match with a strong team whose captain is a dorky owl, he said. Not that she understood, but he seemed ecstatic, so she just agreed on the change of plan in the schedule.).

She texted him during recess, but received no reply. He didn’t even read them. Did something happen? It’s not like him to ignore her texts like this. At least, he had never done so before.

Would his teammates know what happened to him?

She stumbled upon a familiar second-year student on her way to the gym hall after school. He had a game console in his hands. If she is not mistaken, she had seen him before, walking with Kuroo.

“Uh, excuse me, sorry.. You’re Kuroo’s friend, aren’t you?” she said.

He looked at her. “And what if I am?”

She gave him a meek smile. Sheesh. What’s with that attitude?

“Do you know where he is? We’re supposed to have a pair discussion today for our assignment, but he’s absent and didn’t reply to my texts. I mean,I get it if he’s occupied with practice, but it would be nice to receive a heads up.”

She has a life too, you know.

The second-year stood straight. “Oh. I see. I thought you are one of those girls who are constantly bugging him.”

Oh.

“He told us he wasn’t feeling well yesterday. His blocks were easily broken through too. He didn’t reply to my texts, either, let alone answer my calls. So, it could only mean one thing.”

She raised her eyebrow.

“He is definitely sick. Most likely fever. I’m planning to check on him after practice today.”

++++

Kuroo stirred in his sleep. The doorbell is ringing relentlessly.

Oh gosh, do I HAVE to open the door?

Dragging his feet, he could feel his joints ache with every movement. He rarely gets sick. He takes pride on that. But when he actually does, he could not deny how bad it can get. Fever is the worse. His head feels heavy, cloudy. His throat is in pain. His body is in pain. He doesn’t have the strength to move, and usually it’s either Kenma or his grandmother who would help to nurse him back to health(Kenma is not really good at it, but he tries).

He opened the door. “Hey Kenm---eh..?”

It was not Kenma.

“I told Kenma I’d check on you. He won’t be coming over today.” Y/N said.

Y/N?

“Are you sick?” she took a step forward, putting her hand on Kuroo’s forehead, startling him in the process.

“Yep, you definitely are.”

Huh?

“Ojamashimasu*,” she invited herself in, and Kuroo is still standing in the doorway. Weak, but shocked nevertheless.

Wait a minute. Hold up for a second. What is all this? What is she doing here? What is going on? Did she just come into the house? Eh..? Has she always been this forward?

And then he remembered the discussion that they were supposed to have that day. Oh no.

Crap.

“Uh, hey, Y/N.. I’m sorry I didn’t inform you earlier--”

“Rest, Kuroo It’s fine. Just take out all your have on the assignment, and I’ll see what I can add to the contents. You, rest. I’ll be here for a while though. I’ll leave whatever part I can finish on the table so you can take a look at them later. Is it okay with you?”

Goodness grief, the determination in this girl. How important can that scholarship be?!

“S..sure..? I… I’ll make you some tea..” he winced in pain, taking a step towards the kitchen, but stoppped when he felt a tug on his sleeve. He turned, only to face a stern-looking Y/N. “Kuroo, rest. I know this is your house and I’m a guest, but in your defense, I came here on my own accord, and you’re sick. You should rest. I will drag you to your bed, by your feet if you insist on entertaining me.”

What is she? A mother? Oh wait, she kinda is.

He chuckled. “Okay, okay..”

He wanted to say more. Thanks for coming. Make yourself at home. I’ll buy you ice-cream when I get well. Thanks for helping me with the notes. Thanks for understanding and not getting mad.

But his body is aching all over, and all he could do is to just listen to her, and walked into his room. After handing everything he had on the assignment to her, he fell onto his bed , sleep immediately overtaking him.

He gained consciousness every now and then, only to shift his position and fall back into slumber. His fever is really bad this time around, and the fact that he has his assignment partner doing all the work in his living room is making him feel even worse. Not to mention, his family members are not around.

“..roo.”

He dreams of warm, chicken soup. He has no appetite to eat, but it would be nice to have some, to help him get better.

“Kuroo-kun.”

He felt something cool on his head. A hand. He wasn’t sure if his mind is playing tricks, but he could smell chicken soup.

“Kuroo-kun, hey, wake up.”

Another hand shook him gently, and he pried his eyes open, only to see Y/N sitting on his bed next to him, a bowl on her lap.

“Y/N..?” his voice came out hoarse.

“Here. I made you some porridge and ginger tea. Can you sit up?”

Truthfully, the ache on his joints says no. But the captain in him insisted, and as he was struggling to sit up, he noticed that she had her hands steady on his shoulders, ready to guide him if he suddenly falls to his side. His head is spinning, and it takes some time for his vision to clear.

Wait. She said she made porridge?

He stared at the bowl on her lap. She handed him the cup of tea. “Did you just---” he pointed to the bowl.

“I know, I know.. I used your kitchen and some ingredients in the fridge.. I’m sorry. I waited for a while to see if any of your family members would come home. Maybe they would bring home some food. But no one did, so I went ahead and cooked.. sorry.. I’ll pay you back for the ingredients I used. It’s just.. you looked like you hadn’t eaten anything today.”

No, that’s not the point, silly.

He stared at her in disbelief.

And something, like a gentle wave, is washing over him from all sides.

Kuroo looked at this girl.

This unbelievable girl.

Did he do something to deserve this kindness?

Stop.

Why is she so nice? So unquestionably thoughtful?

Stop it.

If he didn’t feel it before, Kuroo can definitely feel it now, that warmth inside his chest, blooming bigger and bigger. Like an onslaught, refusing to spare him.

As if it’s going to explode anytime soon. Has it always been there?

“Yeah.. my dad usually comes home from work at night, and my grandparents are visiting our relatives in Chiba for a week. So.. yeah.” he took the bowl in silence, inhaled the smell of chicken, rice and spices, and at the first taste of the warm porridge on his tongue, Kuroo immediately slumped, his emotions are suddenly so overwhelming that he could feel heat prickling on his eyes. He hadn’t felt this fragile in such a long time.

Bullets fly, from his left and right, front and back. There is nowhere to hide.

She noticed the change. “Kuroo-kun..? Hey, you alright? Is it too hot? Are you in pain?” Y/N panicked, quickly taking the bowl away and trying to get him to drink the tea.

What is this?

He couldn’t understand.

Kuroo shook his head lightly. For some reason, words just failed him. What is this feeling? Why does it seem like he had missed this feeling for so long? This gentleness, this--this

-yearning?

The next thing Y/N realized, she was in his arms. She couldn’t see his face, her own is buried his chest, but he was shaking, and she could hear a faint, shaky whisper of “thank you” from him, and it was enough for her to understand.

How he didn’t mention his mother. How there seem to be a lack of a female’s touch in certain corners of the house. How she noticed that there were mostly men’s shoes in the doorway.

She gently pat him on his back, as she would often do when her little brothers get sick.

+++

“You seem off today.” said Kenma, fishing his water bottle out of his bag, panting. Today’s practice is harsh as usual, but exciting nevertheless, since they are very much looking forward to see their good friends from Fukurodani.

“Do I?” Kuroo asked. “The Science assignment, I guess. I’m just hoping that I’ll do well. I mean, Y/N wants to maintain her grades. She’s aiming for a scholarship, you know.”

There was a short silence before Kenma chuckled and spoke, “Why does it sound like you’re bragging? You make it sound like she’s your girlfriend or something.”

Kuroo tensed. It was a nonchalant comment, but it definitely got to him.

G....girlfriend?

He had never thought about dating anyone. He had always been occupied with volleyball practice. Y/N however, might be different. She’s probably dating someone, considering how wonderful she is. Kuroo stared at her, her eyes are currently focused on the sheets of paper and cue cards.

Does she have a boyfriend? Who is he? Does he get upset whenever she spends her time with him?

And somehow, that thought alone irked him.

“So..maybe it’s better if we connect this part with this example right here. I think it’ll make it easier for us to get our point across.” she said, pointing to said contents on the notes.

“Yeah, okay. Sure.”

That attitude did not go unnoticed.

“Kuroo-kun.” she called. “Are you alright?”

“Hm? Yeah.” Kuroo doodled circles on a piece of paper, refusing any eye contact.

“You don’t look alright. You’re clearly upset.”

“How’d you know?” Kuroo asked.

“You scrunch your nose when you’re upset.”

“No, I don’t!” he exclaimed, covering his nose.

Y/N laughed. “Okay, you don’t, but still, I know you’re not okay. Is something bothering you?”

Kuroo was silent before answering her. “It’s.. nothing. I’m just not thinking clearly, I guess.” Kuroo scratched his head. How does she know?

“You want to talk about it?”she asked again, this time staring at him straight in the eyes. To make sure he knows that she will listen if he decided to share something.

That stare. Those eyes. Oh, how different it feels whenever he’s with her. With her, he is not the captain of Nekoma vc. With her, he doesn’t have to focus on leading anything or anyone. With her, he doesn’t have to hide his feelings (she can see through him anyway). With her, he is just Kuroo Tetsurou from Class 5.

There it is again. That warmth. Blooming. Bigger and bigger.

She still waits for his response.

There is no escape.

“Y/N, I..”

She listens.

“I..I think I….li--”

The classroom door slid open, revealing a tall boy with light grey hair, panting for air. “Captaaaaaiin! I’m here to get you!”

Kuroo almost fell off his chair in shock. Talk about the worst timing ever. “Lev..! You idiot!” he muttered under his breath.

“Where were you?! You’re late! Practice started 15 minutes ago! Why didn’t you text back?! They had me searching for you all over the school!”

“What? Oh! Crap! I forgot!” Kuroo stood up in panic. Crap crap crap. Now he even forgets his captain duties. The practice match with Fukurodani is on the weekend and here he is, not being able to function well in neither his assignment nor practice!

“You have practice today? You didn’t tell me?” Y/N looked at him

“Yeah. I forgot. Sorry, both the presentation and the upcoming practice match with Fukurodani is getting to me, I guess.”

He lied, hoping she would not see through that lie.

Fortunately, she didn’t. With a soft sigh, she placed her hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry, Tetsurou. We’ll do well.”

Tetsurou.

As if he was struck by lightning, it took a while before Kuroo could move. Tetsurou. Tetsurou. It sounds different when she says it. It sounds good when she says it.

Y/N stood up and tidied up the table, packing her stuff. “You go ahead. I’ll clean up. Uh… Lev-kun? Sorry you had to come all over here to look for your captain. If I had known, I would’ve sent him to the gym hall.” Y/N gave the tall boy a smile, and Kuroo noticed how the younger boy’s ears turned into a darker shade of red.

“It… It’s okay!” the boy replied enthusiastically.

Kuroo doesn’t like it.

“Let’s go,” he simply said, and dragged the boy with him.

+++

“Let’s do this.” Y/N whispered, their presentation is being projected onto the white screen. Kuroo nodded. They had done everything they could for the contents of the presentation, they even did a mock presentation the day before to make sure they deliver the contents smoothly.

“For some reason this feels like a volleyball match.” he commented, gripping his cue cards in both excitement and nervousness.

She smiled at him, though she too, shares the same feelings. “Well then, if that is so, I’ll be in your care today, captain.” she smiled.

Captain.

His heart beats faster, harder, not because of the presentation alone, and Kuroo knows it.

Bigger. Blooming bigger. Hotter.

“Phew, that was nerve-wrecking!” she exclaimed, obviously relieved that everything is over. If the applause they received from their classmates and teacher is any indication of how well they did in their presentation, they could say that they did pretty well.

“Now that this is over, I can focus on the practice match with Fukurodani this weekend.” Kuroo puts away his notes, sighing in relief.

“I wish you luck with that. Sadly there is nothing I can help you with.” she said apologetically.

“Nah, you’ve done enough. I still hadn’t bought you your well-deserved ice cream, for taking care of me the other day.”

She laughed at him. “Well, don’t you forget that.”

Kuroo took some moment before speaking, unsure of how he should choose his next words.

“Uh, anyhow, Y/N.. Do you want to come to see our match this weekend..?”

Kuroo himself didn’t expect that he would say that. It just came out, and he immediately added, “I mean, if you have time! If you don’t have anything to do on that day! You don’t have to if you don’t want to, but it would be great if you’d come, you know!-- For.. for--”

He stopped himself when he noticed her staring at him with an expression that he could not read.

“-for moral s..support..”

The last part came out shaky.

Her eyes brightened. “I’d love to. Not sure how much support I can give, though. I don’t know much about volleyball.” Y/N replied, pink tinting her cheeks.

Kuroo beamed. “N..No worries! Just cheer for us!”

++++

The day came, and when Y/N arrived at the hall, she immediately noticed the white jackets close to her, warming up and talking to each other. Nekoma’s team is across the hall, but she doesn’t think that it would be appropriate to come up to them. After all, the only person she’s familiar with is Kuroo, and she had only talked to Kenma and Lev once.

Lost, she looked around to find a place to sit and wait for the match to start. As she turned around, a tall presence stood behind her.

“Hey hey hey? You seem lost!”

No lie, she felt like a midget next to him. He isn’t just tall. He’s pretty big, as well. Looking at his grey spiky hair and big eyes, Y/N couldn’t help feeling a little intimidated.

“Uh, no… I’m just waiting for the match to start.. I…I’ll be going, then..”

Her attempt to escape failed when the boy spoke, “Wait! Will you be cheering for us? You should! We’re pretty awesome, you know! We will win this--”

“Hyaaaaaah!”

Kuroo ran from afar and tackled the boy down.

“Idiot rooster head! What was that for?!” the boy pushed Kuroo off him. It seems like that tackle didn’t affect him even a little bit.

“What were you doing to Y/N, Bokuto?” Kuroo asked, calm, but irritated. He pinched Bokuto’s cheeks really hard.

“Oi, oi! I did nothing! Oww! AKAAAAASHIIII!”

Y/N can only watch. Another dark haired boy came and tapped on Kuroo’s head. “He asked her to cheer for us.

“Haaaaah??!!” Kuroo pinched harder.

“Akaaaaashiiii!!”

After a few smacks on his arm, Kuroo finally released the boy he called Bokuto, and stood next to Y/N. “She! Will! Be! Cheering! For! Me!”

Bokuto stared at him in disdain and pouted.“Huh? Why should she? You’re not even that good.”

“Haaaah?!!”

As another one of their bickering started, Kenma tapped on Y/N’s shoulder. “I think you should go up there. It’s pretty dangerous down here during the game.”

+++

It was like a new world for her. The crisp sound of the ball being hit, the cheers every time any one of the teams scored, and the intensity of the game itself truly amazed her. She got lost sometimes, not understanding why points were given, but it didn’t stop her from watching the whole match.

Bokuto and Kuroo, she noticed, despite being good friends, can also get on each other’s nerves very easily.

And Kenma radiates a different energy when he’s in the court. He was right, too. Y/N could’ve easily get hit by a stray ball if she stayed close around the court.

Kuroo, on the other hand, looks so different. He’s not the same person as he usually is in class. From what Y/N could observe, the team really listens to him, respects him even and there is this intensity to his demeanor. Where did the laid-back guy go to?

It was clear to her why all those people (again, mostly girls, but what’s the difference?) surround him all the time.

He looked up, looking at her after he successfully blocked a particularly hard spike from Fukurodani (Bokuto’s, to be exact). He flashed her a wide, teethy smile and gave her two thumbs up. For some reason, her ears feel hot, and she smiled back at him. Lev noticed her looking at them from above and frantically waved at her. She waved back, laughing. Kuroo frowned at him.

Lev noticed his captain’s stare and pouted. “I blocked that spike too!”

The game was exciting to watch. If she had known all along that this is how it feels like to watch a match, she would’ve come to every volleyball match as much as she could. Kuroo had once mentioned the names of other strong teams, one of them being Karasuno High School, complimenting Karasuno’s ‘shrimpy’ especially. She couldn’t help thinking that if Kuroo himself (who loves his team the most) respectfully acknowledges that team, then it definitely means that they must truly be a force to reckon with. A match between Nekoma and Karasuno would be as intense as this one, if not more.

As the match proceeds, the heat in the court gradually got to Y/N, and she doesn’t notice that she is no longer holding back her voice. She cheers for Nekoma, claps her hands when Fukurodani scored points (smug was evident on Bokuto’s face, only to spur Kuroo on), and without realizing it, as Bokuto was about to spike hard, she was screaming someone’s name.

Everyone in the hall cheered in amazement. Nekoma managed to block that spike, the ball bounced back too quickly for Fukurodani’s libero to save.

Y/N’s breath hitched when the whistle was blown, ending the match with Nekoma’s victory.

Her eyes automatically darted to Kuroo, who fantastically blocked that last attack, and she saw the pure joy on his face, smiling at his teammates and rival team, before finally, at her.

And she swore she felt time stopped.

She stood outside the gym hall. She wasn’t sure how long she should stay inside, or if she should see Kuroo to congratulate him and the team.

“Hey hey hey! It’s you again!” Bokuto appeared behind her, with the team. Why is he everywhere?

Y/N bowed. “Your team was amazing. Please do come again for practice matches, Bokuto-san.” Y/N said, already familiar with the grey-haired captain. The boy beamed with joy. “We were, right?! Ah, if only you didn’t cheer for that rooster head and cheered for us instead, we could’ve won!” Bokuto said, though Y/N wasn’t sure if he was just joking or truly regretful.

“Wait, did you hear me?” she suddenly grew alert. He couldn’t have, right? Was it that loud?

“Hm?The whole hall did? You called Tetsurou’s name like, really really loudly.”

And in an instant, her face turned beet red.

Suddenly, she remembered. She actually did call Kuroo’s name. Screamed, to be exact.

“Tetsurou, you can do it!!”

Oh. Oh no.

What was she thinking?!

It wasn’t like her at all! What is this?!

“Ah, her face is red.” Bokuto commented in confusion. “But like I said, next time, you should definitely cheer for us! We are much better than---OWWWW!”

Bokuto was tackled down again, Kuroo appearing out of nowhere, pinching his cheeks for the nth time that day.

“Akaaaaaaashiiiiiii!!!!”

++++++++

Kuroo waves his hand as Fukurodani’s bus leaves the premise. Y/N stood next to him, doing the same thing. After the bus disappears from sight, Kuroo turns to her. He was wearing this smile that Y/N couldn’t read. “Thank you so much for coming, Y/N.” he spoke. The setting sun hits him differently. He looks gorgeous, Y/N thought.

Y/N doesn’t know why, they are talking normally as they always do, but her heart seems to beat faster than usual.

“Well, I hope I managed to give you the moral support you asked for.” she replied.

Kuroo smirked. “You definitely did. I didn’t even know you can scream that loud.” he chuckled.

She turned red again, this time caught by Kuroo. He laughed. “You should watch us play again next time. It’s good to hear people cheering for you. Especially when they’re suuuper loud.”

She huffed at his teasing. “You normally have a lot of friends to do that, anyway.”

“Yeah, but I want to hear yours.”

Y/N was rendered speechless. She looked at Kuroo, looking for any hint of playfulness, maybe he’s joking around again, maybe she should tease him back,-

but there was none. He was looking at her, eyes intense, awaiting for something from her.

“Kuroo..-”

“I--” he cut her off, “I don’t know how to say this, Y/N.. I’m not used to it.. but..I just…I know that.. I want to be with you.”

Y/N’s breath hitched quietly, not expecting Kuroo to confess his feelings so directly like that.

“You don’t have to answer immediately. I just.. I don’t think I can hide it any longer. Especially after you screamed my name in front of everyone like that. I thought I was going to explode out of sheer happiness.”

Kuroo took a shallow breath before continuing, “Whatever your answer is, I just want you to know that I enjoy you around me a lot. Even if you can’t return these feelings, I still hope we can still be friends. It’s nice to have a--”

This time, Y/N cuts him off, pulling him down into a tight hug. Kuroo’s eyes widened in shock.

“This is my answer, Tetsurou.” she spoke, voice trembling, burying her face into the crook of his neck. Trying to get over his shock, Kuroo gently wraps his arms around her waist, trying to hold himself back. He wanted to hold her tighter, to wash away any traces of disbelief in his heart, -she likes me too?- but he wasn’t sure how she would take that.

“Y/N…” he whispers her name, and she tightened her embrace. If there’s anything that he understands about her, he knows that she is definitely more actions than words. He understands what that means.

I like you. A lot.

This time, Kuroo doesn’t hesitate. He hugged her tight, unwilling to let go even a second. His heart is bursting with love and joy, and he instantly becomes sure that this is the person that he wants to be with.

For the rest of his life.

Eventually, they pulled apart, because Lev and the rest of the team emerged from behind them.

“I want a hug too!”

Y/N laughed while Kuroo stared at the first-year in disbelief. “How dense can you be? Can’t you read the atmosphere here??”

“BUT I BLOCKED THOSE SPIKES TOO! I DESERVE A HUG!”

“Then go hug Yaku!” Kuroo pointed at said boy.

“Aw, hell no!”

Yaku ran when Lev sprinted towards him.

________________________________________________________

[A/N] How did this get so long? Thanks for reading! I’ll work hard to improve!

#kuroo tetsurou #kuroo tetsuro x reader #haikyuu fanfiction #haikyuu imagines #haikyuu fluff

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citrinekay · 5 years ago

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hi! i've got kind of a prompt: bill and holden have been seeing each other for a while and they're doing a decent job at hiding it, but then one day one of them slips and says something that to anyone listen might seem like harmless banter, but wendy notices something else is going on and finally confronts them

This was actually really fun to write! Thanks for the prompt 💕

Holden tilts his face toward the gust of warm, summer air through the half-open window as the dull, gray edges of the Quantico building emerge from the treeline up ahead and the extended Memorial Day weekend fades into the past. He closes his eyes to cling to the relaxed state of mind he had sunken into over the three-day break for a few more seconds before they’re thrust back into work.

“Ugh, I can feel the stack of requests growing from here. Why can’t we have one more day off?” He complains.

Bill’s hand squeezes around Holden’s where they’re attached on the seat between them.

“That’s life. All good things must come to an end.”

Holden frowns, and casts him a coyly petulant gaze. “You sound like my mom.”

Bill chuckles, and guides Holden’s hand up from the seat leather to press a quick kiss to his knuckles. “Well, not everything.”

Holden bites back a smile, feeling himself blush.

When they pull into the Quantico parking lot, Holden takes off his seatbelt.

“I’ll go in first.” He says.

“Okay.” Bill says, pulling his cigarettes out of his pocket.

Holden interjects his hand before Bill can put the cigarette in his mouth. “Kiss first.”

Bill’s mouth tugs with a slow smile, and he leans over to capture Holden’s mouth in a firm, simmering kiss that lasts much longer than is probably safe. Holden leans into it, breathless and willing, before grudgingly pulling back with a sigh. He quickly glances around the parking lot, but there’s no one within their vicinity to witness the exchange.

“Fuck.” He mutters, exhaling a slow breath past pursed lips.

“What?” Bill murmurs, though his eyes are glinting with mischief.

“You know what.” Holden says, “I’m really going now.”

“I’m five minutes behind you.”

“Okay, see you in there.”

Holden climbs out of the car, and scans the parking lot again before heading for the BSU entrance. The mild breeze cools the flush on his cheeks, and by the time he makes the long walk and the elevator ride down to the basement, he’s managed to rearrange his expression into one of nonchalance.

When he arrives at his desk, the case files that he’d been complaining about are stacked about a foot high in his incoming tray. The outgoing tray is significantly smaller, a daunting discrepancy that speaks to how the rest of the week is going to go.

Bill comes in five minutes later just like he’d said and walks behind Holden’s desk to get to the coffee stand in the corner. His hand discreetly grazes the width of Holden’s shoulders, sending a delicious buzz through his veins that makes his knees go weak. Holden shoots a stern glance over his shoulder, grateful that he’s seated. Bill’s mouth purses against a devious smile as he pours himself a cup of coffee, and heads into his office.

Drawing in a deep breath, Holden turns to the incoming requests. It takes him close to an hour to get his thoughts in order and focused on the task at hand while his mind and leaping heart keep wanting to sift back through the warm, sunlit memories of the long weekend.

Six months. He reminds himself. It’s only been six months.

He knows he shouldn’t be entirely getting his hopes up about the longevity of this relationship, especially when their close working relationship could be irreparably damaged in the fallout should things go wrong. They should be taking it slow. Neither of them have dated another man before, or even attempted to hide a relationship from nearly everyone in their life. They’ve been doing a pretty good job of concealing it in Holden’s opinion, but the task is growing more difficult with every day that passes. It’s nearly impossible to focus on work when the object of your affection is just across the office, a perilous distraction of longing gazes, secretive smiles, and whispered exchanges when no one is looking.

Two hours later, Holden has the mountain of requests separated out into three categories: urgent, escalating, and minor. He carries the stack of urgents into Bill’s office.

“I’m done sorting.” He says, entering without knocking.

“Okay, let’s take a look.” Bill says, waving him closer.

Circling the desk, Holden sets the stack in front of Bill, and perches on the edge of the desk.

“I’ve identified the most urgent, and we have two cases here that I think require on-the-ground assistance.” Holden says, taking the two folders off the top. “You and I can take one, and Gregg and Jim can take the other one.”

“Sounds good.” Bill says, taking a drag of his cigarette and perusing Holden’s position on his desk with a contained smile.

“What?”

“Nothing. You just look good up there.”

Holden glances away, blushing again. He can’t help it. Bill’s appreciative gaze triggers instant heat, a warm flood that journeys from his belly and outward.

“Where are the cases?” Bill asks, clearing his throat.

“We’ve got on in Michigan and another in Florida.” Holden says, “Miami, actually.”

“Mm, Florida golf course.”

“Florida hotel room.” Holden adds, flipping open the Miami folder with a disinterested gaze. “Ocean views.”

Bill’s mouth seeps with smoke. “You got something again Michigan?”

“The beaches aren’t as great.”

“We’re supposed to be there working.”

“Says you, talking about golf courses.”

Bill takes his reading glasses off, and sizes Holden up with a penetrating gaze. “Who says we’re going to have time to visit the ocean?”

“I don’t know. Once the case is over? We could take a few extra days. We deserve a vacation every once in awhile, don’t we?”

“In Miami?”

“Sure. Why not? Some place you’d rather be?”

“Not necessarily.” Bill says, leaning forward to tap ashes into the tray. He lowers his voice, “I don’t care where it is as long as the bed is comfortable.”

Holden shifts on the edge of the desk, feeling his veins going warm and tingly. Their gazes hold, both of them knowing they shouldn’t be talking like this at work yet unable to quell the teasing affection.

“So, you don’t care?” Holden whispers, his voice slightly trembling. “Miami or Michigan?”

Before Bill can answer, a sharp knock on the door jolts them both out of the suggestive layers of conversation. Holden glances over his shoulder to see Wendy leaning in the doorway, and quickly hops off the edge of the desk.

“Sorry. Was I interrupting something?” Wendy asks, her eyebrow arching.

“No, of course not.” Holden says, feeling his face grow hot again. “We were, um … we were just discussing the urgent cases.”

“Care to share it with the rest of the team?”

“Yes. Let’s get everyone in the conference room.” Holden says.

Wendy gazes suspiciously at them for a long moment before leaning away from the door frame. “All right. I’ll get everyone together.”

“Thanks, Wendy.” Bill says.

When she walks away, Bill shoots him a glare.

“What? You were the one facing the door.” Holden says, gesturing vehemently. “How long was she standing there for?”

“I don’t know. You were the one sitting on my desk.”

“Let’s just go.” Holden says, shaking his head.

In the conference room, their other co-workers provide a conversational buffer, but Holden can feel Wendy assessing them critically from across the table. He feels sick.

Wendy is smart, intuitive; if anyone was going to figure out what’s going on between him and Bill based on behavioral clues alone, it would be her; but she’s also the last person he would want to expose himself to, aside from perhaps Ted or someone in upper management, because she’s the most honest and exacting. He values her opinions and respect, and he has no doubt that she would highly disapprove of an office romance.

The next day, Holden expresses his worries to Bill over lunch in the cafeteria.

“What if she knows?”

“Look, Holden. I’ve known Wendy a long time. She isn’t going to say anything.” Bill says, “She’s not a tattler.”

“Doesn’t it make you uncomfortable?”

“Yeah, but it’s nothing she can prove.”

The conversation does little to ease Holden’s nerves, and ends up being entirely insignificant. Two days later, everyone is packing up to leave for the day when Wendy sticks her head out of her office, and asks for Bill and Holden to come in for a moment.

They exchange anxious glances before Bill rearranges his face into superb composure, and nods for Holden to follow him. The last intern exits out the exterior door just as they slip into the office.

“Shut the door.” Wendy says, though no one is around to hear them.

Bill eases the door shut. “What’s this about?”

Wendy sets aside the transcript and notebook in front of her, and turns to face them both directly.

“We’ve all worked together for quite some time now.” She says, her tone calm and steady. “I’d like to think that means we all trust and respect one another to some degree.”

“Of course.” Holden says.

“Wonderful. Then, I’ll just ask this question directly, and expect an honest answer.” She says, spreading her hands benevolently.

Bill and Holden trade nervous glances. Bill’s jaw clenches and his hands clasp tightly behind his back as he turns his gaze back to Wendy.

“Okay. Ask away.”

Wendy leans forward to lace her hands in front of her, and gathers a deep breath. When her gaze rises back up to shift back and forth between them, her expression lacks any type of nonchalance or levity.

“Is there something going on between you two?” She asks.

Holden feels his stomach drop. Despite his years in hostage negotiation and behavioral science, he can’t conjure a quickly manufactured expression of calm or a believable lie. He’s sure he’s already given away the answer by looking away from her decisive gaze, fidgeting with his hands, and turning red.

“Going on?” Bill echoes, managing an attempt at evasion.

“Yes.” Wendy says, coolly. “Romantically. Sexually.”

Holden almost chokes. “Wendy, this is …”

“Inappropriate?” She finishes, her eyebrow raising. “More inappropriate than the two of you spending more time staring at each other and talking than actually working for the past few months?”

“Jesus, Wendy.” Bill curses, quietly.

“That wasn’t exactly an answer.”

“We’ve all been working hard.” Bill says, “We’re busier than we’ve ever been. I find it a little insulting for you to imply that we’re not pulling our weight just because we’re …”

Holden lifts his gaze from the carpet to stare at Bill agape. It isn’t an affirmative, but it’s close enough. He hadn’t expected Bill to give up the truth so easily.

“So, there is something going on.” Wendy concludes.

Bill sighs, and rubs a hand over his forehead. “Yes. Happy? Is this interrogation over?”

“Not quite.”

“C’mon, Wendy. Our personal life isn’t really any of your business.”

“It is my business if it affects my job - all of our jobs.” Wendy says, her tone softening. “I’m not angry.”

“Well, thank God for that.” Bill says, putting up his hands. “That’s the all-clear I was searching for.”

“Okay.” Wendy says, her eyes narrowing. “Before you start getting defensive, I’d just like to say, I care about both of you very much.”

Silence settles. Holden can see Bill’s prickling posture relax a bit, and feels his own stomach ease its churning.

“In fact, I want you to be happy.” Wendy continues, “If that means with each other, fine. I’m simply concerned.”

“Concerned?”

“You know my stance on sexuality. I don’t discriminate, but other people do. A lot of people here at the FBI do, in fact. I don’t think I need to tell either of you what would happen if someone other than me found out what was going on.”

“We don’t need to be lectured.” Bill says, “We both know what the stakes are.”

“Then, consider being more careful? More discreet, perhaps?”

“Discreet?” Holden says, “I thought we were being …”

Wendy casts him a dubious gaze, and his throat knots.

“Careful.” He finishes, weakly.

Wendy chuckles softly, her rigid facade cracking to expose amusement.

“What?” Bill demands.

“I suggest you try harder.” She says, rising from her desk and gathering her things. “If I had to guess based solely on your behavior, I’d say this has been going on for five, six months?”

“Six.” Holden whispers.

“Hm.” She murmurs, her mouth tipping. She swings her gaze over to Bill. “And you, Bill - I expected more from you.”

“Me?”

“Come on, you made it easy for me. Obvious, actually.” She says, patting him on the shoulder as she walks past him toward the door.

Bill sputters for a moment before pressing his mouth shut. His brow pinches with an irritated frown.

Wendy pauses with her hand on the door knob.

“Truly,” She says, casting a fond glance over her shoulder at both of them. “I’m happy for you. Just, please, be more careful.”

Before either of them can conjure a response, she slips out of the office, and lets the door swing shut behind her.

Bill shifts his gaze to stare at Holden disbelief.

“Did that just happen?” Holden whispers.

“Yeah, I think it did.”

They stare quietly at one another for a long moment until Bill starts to chuckle.

“What?” Holden demands. “You find this funny?”

“Yeah, a little bit.”

“You’re unbelievable. What if she had been angry?”

“I told you she wasn’t going to tell anyone.” Bill says, reaching over to catch Holden by the wrist and reel him in. “You know what this means though?”

“What?” Holden asks, scowling as he braces his hands against Bill’s chest.

“No more coming into my office and climbing up on my desk.” Bill murmurs, leaning in to kiss him slowly on the mouth.

“Hey,” Holden protests, tipping his mouth away from the tender gesture. “No more of that either.”

“Nobody’s here.” Bill says, snaring Holden’s lower lip in a kiss.

Holden resists for a moment before melting into the kiss. Their lips stroke both and forth for a long moment, and he’s rendered dizzy again. They break apart with a muted gasp from the back of his throat, his lips prickling with friction.

“Come on.” Bill murmurs. “Let’s go home.”

#bill x holden #mindhunter #my writing #Anonymous

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ionlyreadfivebookslastweek · 6 years ago

Text

Bless The Broken Road - 29

Another month went by and Jane was ready to retake her psych eval in order to see if she was ready to reenter the field.

“What if I don’t pass?” Jane asked Spencer the night before, sharing her fears.

“If that’s the case, you’ll just need more time. You’ll be able to take it again after a while.”

Jane snuggled into him, remaining silent.

~ Tuesday, September 14th.

Jane retook her psych eval in the morning and managed to pass. Her therapist’s only requirement was that she continued to have sessions for a while as she eased back into working in the field.

Upon her return to the bullpen, she rushed up to Spencer to tell him the good news.

“I passed!” she cheered.

“That’s great!” he said, getting up from his chair to embrace her.

Within the next hour, Hotch informed them that they had a new case. Already, Jane was getting thrown back into the field.

The team gathered and Garcia began the briefing.

“The body of a woman was found on the steps of a church in Kansas City, Missouri. She was wearing a wedding dress and she was supposed to be married there the day before she was found. The fiancé got a voicemail, however, on the morning of the wedding breaking off the engagement.”

Garcia paused and played the voicemail for the team.

“Two weeks ago, another woman was found the exact same way in Kansas City, Kansas. And she left this voicemail for her fiancé the morning of her wedding.”

She played the older voicemail.

“They’re the exact same, verbatim,” Reid stated.

“Wheels up in 30,” Hotch ordered, ending the briefing.

When they landed in Kansas City, Jane and Reid headed to interview the fiancees of the victims. Both fiancees told them that the victims never showed signs of getting cold feet and how they didn’t know anyone who would want to do this to either of them.

“We were finally going to get married,” the second victim’s groom cried. “We’d known each other forever but have only been dating a few years. I was finally going to get to marry my best friend, but she was taken away from me on what should’ve been the happiest day of our lives.”

Spencer looked over at Jane, but she didn’t notice. When they were finished with the interviews, they met up with the rest of the team to see what everyone had found.

The maids of honor had similar statements. They also said they last saw the bride at their respective rehearsal dinners.

Hotch and Rossi, who had gone to the latest crime scene, shared that it was clearly a spot to display the body and not the place where the murder occurred.

As the team talked, Jane noticed that Reid was unusually quiet.

“I can’t find any connections between the victims, their weddings, or their wedding parties,” Garcia told the team via video chat.

“See if any services at the rehearsal dinners are the same. Catering, valet, décor, event staff, etc,” JJ instructed.

“JJ and Morgan, why don’t you head to the rehearsal dinner location of the 2nd victim. Rossi and I will go to the first victim’s rehearsal dinner space. See if we can get anything on the security footage,” Hotch told them. “Addison, stay here to work on victimology and Reid work on the geographical profile.”

When Jane and Spencer were alone again, Jane decided to mention her observation.

“Spencer, what’s going on inside your head? You’ve been quiet since we talked to the last fiancé.”

“I’m fine,” he replied tersely, keeping his focus on the map of the city in front of him.

“Spence,” Jane warned, knowing it was a lie.

“Don't worry about it, alright?”

Jane sighed and turned back to her own task. “OK.”

An hour or so later, Garcia got back to them and let them know that she had struck out again, but would now work on analyzing the footage sent to her.

While they still didn’t know the connection, they had enough information to deliver a profile before calling it a night.

The team went out to eat before heading back to the hotel to get some rest. While at dinner, Jane kept catching Spencer staring at her.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” Jane asked him again, crawling into bed and laying her head down on his chest.

Instead of answering, he just pulled her closer, cuddling her until they fell asleep.

In the morning, they got back to work on the case.

“I can’t find where the brides disappear to in the footage,” Garcia informed the team. “They go out of view of the camera and never come back.”

Late morning, another man received a call from his bride calling off their wedding that was exactly like the first two.

They spoke with him and the rest of the wedding party only to receive the same information as the first two victims’ wedding parties.

The team continued working until an idea came to Jane.

“I think I know what we’re missing,” she stated, turning to her co-workers. “We don’t know what happens after the victim leaves the rehearsal dinner. Next, we hear from them when they call the groom, and then the bodies show up the next morning on the church steps in their wedding dress.”

Everyone stared at her, unsure what her point was.

"Who brings their wedding dress to a rehearsal dinner?” she asked. “They must have to go to the church to pick it up. The church also has security cameras on the inside.”

“We need that footage,” Morgan stated.

They moved fast to get the footage and managed to find a common vehicle at all three. Once Garcia ran the plate number, they were able to get a name and address for the UNSUB.

“Carl Wilkinson. Looks like he used to be in a long-term relationship... he was left at the alter,” Garcia told the team.

“He wants others to feel how he felt getting the love of his life taken from him,” Reid stated.

“He went on a long rant on Facebook about how she’d called him the morning of. He even posted the transcript of the call.” She paused. “You guys, it’s verbatim what he makes his victims read.”

“What happened to his ex-fiancé?” Rossi asked.

“She recently got married to someone else.”

“That’s the trigger,” Morgan said.

“Address is sent. Go, my pretties, go!”

The team rushed to the home of Wilkinson where he was keeping his latest victim and managed to talk him down, saving the bride.

~~~

Friday, September 17th.

Jane went grocery shopping on her own after work. When she arrived home, she was surprised to find Spencer and her brother hanging out together.

“Jack, hi! What are you doing here?” she asked, greeting him with a hug.

“Just keeping Spencer company while you were out running errands. Do you want to hang out tomorrow?” he suggested.

“Sure, if that’s alright with Spencer.” She looked past Jack towards her boyfriend.

“That’s fine. Morgan mentioned wanting to hang out tomorrow anyway.”

The next day while Jane and Jack hung out at Jack’s place, Spencer drove up to Jane’s parents’ place. He needed to talk to her father in person.

The last case they’d been on really made him start thinking about life and how he wanted to spend forever with Jane by his side. He’d made up his mind. He was going to ask her to marry him. He just needed her father’s permission first. He spoke to Jack about it the night before and Jack was happy to help keep Jane busy for the day.

After he finished talking with Mr. Addison, he drove back home and met up with Morgan to go ring shopping.

Jane and Jack were playing a card game when she received a call from JJ.

“Hey, JJ, what’s up?”

“Hey, Jane. Can Henry spend the night over at yours and Spence’s apartment?” the blonde asked her.

“Of course! What time do you need to drop him off by?”

“I was kind of hoping now?” JJ chuckled.

“Alright. Um, I’m at Jack’s but I can head home now and meet you there. I’m not sure if Spencer’s home but I should be there shortly.”

“You’re the best! I’ll see you soon!”

Jane hung up and turned to Jack. “JJ needs a sitter for Henry so I have to go,” she explained. “I’ll talk to you later, alright?”

“Alright.” Jack stood with her and gave her a hug before helping her gather her stuff and walking her out. After she left, he quickly called Spencer, warning him that she was on her way.

Spencer and Morgan had just arrived back to the apartment when they received Jack’s call.

“She’ll be home soon. Can you take care of the ring for me so she doesn’t find it?” Spencer asked Morgan.

“Of course,” he accepted, taking the ring and pocketing it.

“Thank you for all your help.”

“I’m glad to help. Congrats in advance, man!”

Morgan started walking to the door to head home when they heard a knock come from the other side. Morgan opened it and was greeted by Henry and JJ.

“Hey there, kid!” Morgan cheered.

“Hi!”

“Come on in, guys!” Spencer told the pair. “Jane should be home soon.”

“I’m right here! Hi, bud!” Jane called out, entering the apartment shortly after JJ and Henry.

“Aunty Jane!” Henry ran over to her and she stooped down to hug him.

“How are you? Are you ready to have fun tonight?”

“Yeah!”

“I’m going to head out. I’ll see you guys on Monday,” Morgan told everyone.

“Yeah, I need to go too. Will is waiting in the car,” JJ stated. She gave Henry a hug and kiss goodbye.

“Bye, guys!” Jane and Spencer called as JJ and Morgan headed out.

“Movies?” Henry asked almost immediately, causing the two adults to chuckle.

“I need to eat first. Have you had dinner Henry?” Spencer asked. He nodded.

“I ate at Jack’s,” Jane informed them. “Henry, why don’t we get changed into PJs and pick out a movie while we wait for Spencer to eat?”

Henry nodded excitedly and followed Jane down the hall.

After watching a movie, Henry asked if they could watch another. They compromised with an episode of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, saying it was too late to watch another full movie. The three of them all ended up falling asleep on the couch.

~~~

In the morning, JJ came over to pick Henry up. When no one answered the door, she found her spare key and let herself in, figuring they were still asleep.

She smiled when she found the three all cuddled up, sleeping on the couch. Pulling out her phone, she took a few pictures to send to Garcia before gently nudging them awake.

“Good morning,” JJ greeted.

“JJ, hey. Sorry, we must’ve fallen asleep here and didn’t have an alarm set to get up for the morning,” Jane apologized.

“It’s alright. Did you have fun, Henry?” she asked her son. He nodded sleepily.

“Henry, why don’t we go get dressed before you go home?” Jane suggested.

He agreed and she took him to go get dressed. As soon as she was out of the room, Spencer sat up and stretched his arms before saying, “Can I get your advice on something? You have to go promise not to say anything to Jane.”

JJ glanced towards the doorway before replying, “Of course. What is it?”

“I’m going to ask Jane to marry me,” he told her. JJ grinned but remained quiet, not wanting Jane to hear. “I was thinking about doing it on her birthday next week. What do you think?”

JJ frowned and shook her head. “The day you get engaged is its own special day. It shouldn’t be done on a day that’s already special,” she told him.

Spencer nodded. “Alright, great. Thanks. I’ll wait until the weekend after then.”

~~~

Monday morning, Jane grew suspicious about what was going on. She noticed people having whispered conversations with Spencer, but had no idea why they felt the need to be so quiet.

In the afternoon, a new case came in that took them to Ohio. The press was calling the UNSUB ‘The Van Gogh Killer’ because he was cutting off their ears and keeping them as souvenirs.

Wednesday, September 22nd.

For Jane’s birthday this year, the team made sure it was much different from last year in which they’d pretended to forget it was her special day. Despite still being on the case, everyone showered her with birthday wishes and made plans to celebrate after the case was over.

“I’m sorry that you’re having to spend your birthday working on a case,” Spencer apologized when they got back to the hotel that night. They had yet to catch the UNSUB, but were ordered to call it a night, get some rest, and start fresh in the morning.

Jane shrugged as she crawled into bed. “It’s part of the job. Sometimes it lands on a birthday or holiday, but there’s not much we can do about it.”

Spencer climbed in under the sheets next to her and pulled her close, giving her a gentle kiss. “You know I love you, right?” he asked when he pulled back, resting his forehead against hers.

“Of course, Spence,” she assured him. “I love you too.” She reached up and pulled his lips back to hers again.

“Happy birthday, Janey,” he whispered in between kisses. When he moved down to start kissing her neck, she let out a groan. She allowed herself to enjoy it for a moment before gently pushing him back.

“Spence, we’re on a case,” she pointed out.

“But it’s your birthday. Surely, we can make an exception,” he countered. She giggled. He moved back to kissing her neck. This time, she didn’t stop it.

“Just don’t leave any marks. We don’t need the team teasing us in the morning,” she laughed.

The case lasted until the end of the next day. After finishing up, they flew back home and had a paperwork day to end their work week.

At the end of the day, Spencer quickly went over to speak with Morgan while Jane was off with Garcia.

“Do you have it?” he asked.

“Right here, pretty boy,” Morgan answered, pulling the small box out of his desk. Spencer took it from him and quickly pocketed it before Jane could see it. “You got it all planned out?”

“Yeah, I think so,” Spencer told him, nodding.

Morgan put a hand on his shoulder. “Relax, man. It’s going to go great.”

Before he could respond, Jane and Garcia entered the bullpen and approached them.

“Hey, ready to go home?” Jane asked him.

“Yeah, sure. Let me grab my bag.” He went to his desk and gathered his things before returning to Janes side, taking her hand, and walking with her towards the elevators. When he glanced back over his shoulder, he saw Morgan and Garcia grinning at them, excited for what was to come.

~~~~~~~~~~

Bless The Broken Road Masterlist

~~~~~~~~~~

Tag List:

@cynbx @neon-deanmon @drw0301bieber @notsosmartbutcute @banananna99 @lydklein1

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tonystarktogo · 7 years ago

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My shadow's the only one that walks beside me. Tony, Rhodey

Rhodey is the first. It’s not a secret. Nor is it something anyone ever really comments on. Most don’t even acknowledge it, barely comprehend that there is something to acknowledge, so used have they become to this. It’s a simple, fundamental truth, nobody in their right mind would waste their time fighting.

When it comes to Tony Stark, Rhodey is the first. Always has been.

He’s the one the hospital calls, when they first fly him in from Siberia–never mind that Rhodey can barely get up from a chair on his good days, never mind that Tony’s and Pepper’s separation still isn’t public knowledge–just like they did when Tony was nineteen and had a shard of glass bigger than his palm embedded in his left foot, and Rhodey reaches the hospital long before they finish the surgery because that is what he does. There’s no family only bullshit from the doctors here either, because that’s what Rhodey is, Tony’s made sure of that. And so did Rhodey, that one time they refused to let him through to Tony, who had a lot of lawsuits to pay off once the anaesthesia wore off.

He doesn’t leave Tony’s side, not even when a squad of over-eager military guys show up to arrest Iron Man. And Rhodey may not be Tony, may not have billions of mega watt smiles and sheer audacity to carry him through, but he’s served in the army for decades. He knows how to work the system, knows which buttons to push and which laws to circumvent.

So that’s what he does. He calls in favours and gets in contact with old friends, dials the numbers of journalists JARVIS had cleared back when he’d still been around. He talks with the right people, gets the right story out there–the story of a betrayed hero in a coma, put their by his former team mates and friends. Adds a sprinkle of tearful, honourably discharged best friend. FRIDAY and Pepper help as much as they can, but it’s Rhodey who drives them, Rhodey who fights this battle with the same bullheaded stubbornness he’s fought every other one.

Because Rhodey is a soldier, and with his best friend recovering from excessive trauma and Ross throwing a tantrum, he’s in just the right state of mind to fight dirty.

That he gets to drag Captain America’s through the mud is really just an added bonus. One Rhodey takes a vindictive pleasure in, even though the tactician in him recognises a disadvantageous move when he sees it. Knows they might be in need of the runaway super-humans one day soon.

He publicly tears them down all the same.

Later, looking back at those chaotic first weeks filled with accusations and nightmares, the thing that will most stand out to Rhodey isn’t Ross’ face when he first realised the guy in the wheelchair would push back, isn’t even the gracious moment Tony regained consciousness for the first time, confused and scared and barely aware, but recovering–healing–all the same. No, it’s the unsurprised acceptance people greet him with, the way not once any of them ask him ‘why’.

Granted, it’s not a question he’s asked himself either. Not in a long time. But it’s only now that he realises that the one thing nobody fights him on is his right to stand up for Tony. To speak for Tony, while he isn’t in a position to do it himself.

Rhodey has been there before the Avengers. He’s been there before Pepper. He’s always been the first. He just hasn’t considered until now that the public might know it too.

The first time he runs into T’Challa–after–serves as a bit of a wake-up call.

They’re in a private medical floor at Stark Tower–and damn hadn’t Rhodey taken a sick satisfaction in tearing that cursed Avengers’ sign down. T’Challa has brought some documents from yet another UN meeting in the aftermath of the wayward superhumans’ disappearance. It’s a front, and an obvious one at that. The king of a country doesn’t usually run around, handing people paperwork.

Which is precisely the reason Rhodey has ordered FRIDAY to bar the entry to Tony’s room. The enforced steel door may be a bit over the top, but the last time he turned his back on the guy, he came back in a thoroughly trashed suit with more internal damage than Rhodey cares to remember, so he doesn’t care.

“Ltd. Rhodes,” T’Challa greets him, and Rhodey appreciates the way the man’s eyes don’t linger on the wheelchair. “I hope you are doing well?”

It’s a bit disconcerting, really, to try and reconcile this calm, polite man with his cultured voice and proud but unobtrusive stance with the rage driven fury Rhodey had come to associate with the prince in his father’s death. Well, king now.

“As well as can be expected,” he replies, and though the words are polite there is no hiding the steely undertone. “A pleasure to meet you again, King T’Challa.” He bows his head in respect, but only a little. Respect has been hard to come by, these days.

“That is good to hear,” T’Challa smiles. It looks sincere enough, but then so had Rogers. Rhodey can’t bring himself to smile back. “These,” he pulls a very official looking stack of paper out of a very professional looking briefcase, “are copies of the transcript of Zemo’s interrogation, confession and trial. I believe you will find the jury’s verdict acceptable.”

Considering how at peace T’Challa looks, talking about the murderer of his beloved father, Rhodey has no doubt he will. Part of him wishes that would be enough, wishes the knowledge that justice has been served will fix–all of this. But it won’t. It will help, certainly, but it won’t mend what has been broken.

Not this time. Maybe not ever.

“Thank you,” he says instead and takes the file. “I’ll make sure that Tony will receive it once he’s feeling better.”

It’s a half-lie. Tony, in true Tony-fashion, is doing pretty damn good already. Very much to the displeasure of the medical staff who, Rhodey’s pretty sure, preferred him unconscious. If not from the start than certainly after he woke up for the third time and promptly pulled the IV out. The nurse had not been impressed. Just because Tony is convinced he’s perfectly fine though, doesn’t mean Rhodey wants anyone not vetted by him, FRIDAY and possibly an old friend in the FBI near him.

He’s seen the tremble in Tony’s hands–the one that refuses to die down for hours and comes back time and time again when someone mentions the Avengers–and he never wants to see it again.

To his credit, T’Challa seems neither surprised nor taken-aback by the unsaid but strongly implied warning to back off. If anything he looks like he’s expected nothing less, and that, that eases some of the tension Rhodey has been holding on to for weeks.

They part on better terms than Rhodey has with anyone else since Tony made it back from Siberia.

Rhodey is the first. He has always known that. And slowly but surely the rest of the world is beginning to catch on as well.

#Musical Weekend #IronBros #IronHusbands #interpret this how you want #James Rhodes #Tony Stark #Post CW #Post CACW #Not Team Cap friendly #Rhodey is a good friend #Rhodey is bitter #bitter Sunday #T'Challa #ficlet #drabble #ReRe writes #Anonymous #ReRe answers #protective Rhodey

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supersoldierfreak · 8 years ago

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Take It or Leave It 3

I’m just saying another huge thank you for all the support I’ve gotten off this story so far and I really hope you enjoy this.

Also: Pairings. I’m not 100% what pairing this may end up with so please let me know. I’ve received a couple of Tony x reader thoughts but I’m not sure what I’m really doing with their relationship yet. I’m happy with writing any pairing or maybe no pairing? Idek, help me out pleaseee!.

… … … … … … … … … … … …. … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

Chapter 1 – Chapter 2 – Chapter 3 – Chapter 4 – Chapter 5 – Chapter 6 – Chapter 7 – Chapter 8

You walked into work with a nod to the girls at the reception desk who smiled back at you. There was no one at work who flat out hated you to your knowledge. You mean, sure there were a couple you didn’t get along with but that was to be expected; because everyone had that, no matter who they were. You passed Paulina on your way and she gave you a grimace.

Jogging back you caught her arm. “Hey, Paulina, what’s up?”

“It’s Harvey. You’re late and there was a first thing meeting this morning with one of his clients: Washington Oil.”

“Shit.” You muttered. Harvey Scott, the man who hired you, Senior Partner at Hughes and Wood, was… well… Harvey was Harvey. Best closer in New York, loyal, always there, stubborn, secretly cares but never shows it unless he trusts, trustworthy, dependable, blunt, smart and he was one hell of a poker player.

“You’re his secretary slash my best friend can’t you help a girl out?” She gave you a look.

“I already have.” Paulina, the stunning redhead, told you before walking off.

Groaning, you hurried the rest of the way to your office only to see Harvey sat there, in your chair, facing away from you.

He spoke simply. “It’s 8:30. That’s half an hour after you have to be here. And an hour after when you should be here.”

“Okay, Harvey, since when did we use a time clock?” You joked as you plopped your bag by your desk and hung up your coat.

“What are the new Oil transportation laws instated?” He stood up.

You shook you head and moved around to your chair. “Oh they’re nothing; they’re just a nuisance.”

“Andrew Washington wanted to know about them because he was worried about them.”

You leant back in the chair as Harvey circled to the front of your desk. “Then tell him that he doesn’t need to worry because it’s just another form he has to fill out.”

“What I’m worried about is that I could have told him that in the meeting, had you been there. This morning. At 8.”

“But I checked the calendar! There was nothing on this morning.” You reached for your phone to double check.

“I know. It was spontaneous. And I was there. And you? You were not there.” Harvey stopped and paced slightly. “Did you hear me when I told you to get your shit together?”

You looked at him ludicrously. “Of course I listened and that’s why I’m late this morning.”

“Being late is not getting your shit together.” He picked up a file only to slam it down. “Get it through your head. We’ve just been under attack as a firm and the world knows it. We’re weak, Y/N, and in the law of the jungle the weak get eaten.”

You sighed and spun slightly on your chair. “Look Harvey, I’m sorry about being late this morning. If you’d just ease up and let me explain…”

“Ease up!?” Okay, wrong thing to say. “You’re telling me to ease up!? You’re telling me to ease up when our clients might be leaving? That’s right, David Houston might be leaving me. People don’t leave me!”

You blinked rapidly. “I, I just…”

“ENOUGH!”

You stood up from your chair sharply and Harvey took a step back. “No! Enough you, Harvey! You want to know why I was late! I was signing on fourteen new clients this morning. One of which is corporate. So before you go telling me what to and not to do, make sure you know the damn facts.”

“Y/N, look, I’m sorry. I-”

You gave a slight smile. “Harvey, it’s fine, I understand. I’ll try to be on time next time but right now, I have so much paperwork-”

“That’s generally what happens when you take on 14 clients.” Harvey sarcastically said as he hovered by the door to leave.

Childishly you poked your tongue out at your mentor. Checking to make sure no one could see, he pulled a silly face back at you. You smirked before flicking on the computer. You logged on and immediately started going through procedure and checking your work email. A knock on the glass wall of you office made you jump. You looked up to see the delivery man at the door, which happened seldom to not at all as the receptionists brought around any mail or parcels.

“Hi? Can I help you?” You stood up to walk over when you saw the flower bouquet in his hands. “I’m sure you know it’s not Valentine’s Day nor my birthday.”

The delivery guy, Robert, smiled. “I’m well aware Miss L/N, but this was left downstairs for you.”

You looked at him oddly and spotted Paulina watching from the corner of your eye. “Thanks for bringing them up for me, Robert.”

He nodded and disappeared off again. You studied the bouquet in your hands as Paulina slid gracefully through the door. “I know you can pull anyone but the delivery guy? He’s way out of your league, honey.”

Laughing at the jab you place the bouquet in a vase you kept in the cupboard in your desk for certain situations. “Apparently they were left for me at the front desk.” You removed the decorative wrapping and gently put the flowers in the vase.

“Ohhh, so Y/N has a secret admirer? Okay, we both know it’s not Jim from accounting.” She grinned before coming up for a closer look. Paulina looked at them before plucking something out. “Ah ha!”

In her hand was a small slip of paper which you were quick to snatch before opening it.

Hi Bunny,

The team wanted to say thank you for helping us out and we both know that you office is way to aesthetically perfect so we decided to send flowers. And when I say decided I mean Red said to. Hermione agreed and the guys don’t understand the female mind so then agreed with them.

I was going to send carrots but Legolas said it was too far.

-T

You smiled at the note quietly and grabbed a photo holder to put the note in and placed it next to the flower neatly.

“Y/N, this is gossip time. Because I understood none of that and you’re smiling.” Her hand were on her hips, showcasing the raspberry dress she was wearing.

“Paulina. I’d love to but I can’t I have too much paperwork-”

“Then I’ll go and grab my laptop and join you here.”

As much as you dearly loved your friend, she was so stubborn. You tapped away with your case, adding all the new information to the system and going through any and every paper piece of evidence Tony had given you to make a head start on it. True to her word, Paulina came back with her laptop and sat with you in your Senior Associate office and listened as you explained as much of the story as you could. She was a great listener, only talking when she didn’t understand something or offering drink breaks. Several hours later you had finally explained everything between breaks, hot beverages, pastries, toilet breaks and work.

“So let me sum this up for me. You’re now the official attorney for the Avengers, the corporation and them themselves, to help with the Sokovia Accords and to make sure half of them don’t end up in deeper trouble.” By now, sushi lunch was sprawled out across you desk. You were a huge foodie and there was this one sushi bar that was only a couple blocks over and was incredible.

You nodded, covering your mouth with your chopsticks. “In a nutshell.”

“Damn. Can you get me an autograph or 14?” She joked and you laughed quietly.

“Sorry, no can do.”

She’s groaned dramatically. Paulina flopped back in her chair, hand splayed across her forehead. Rolling your eyes, you tapped quickly away at you computer because, at last, you were almost done. Paulina, knowing the signs of you almost finishing, began a countdown.

“10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3…2..1.”

“DONE!” You shouted and spun a full circle in your chair, arms above your head in triumph.

You laughed happily and Paulina stood up and told you that she was going back to her desk outside Harvey’s office. Finally, it had taken you a good six hours to do all of the work and now you were chuffed that you had it done. You glanced at your phone to see that you had missed calls from Tony. Moving around your desk to shut the door, you tapped the redial button and moved the phone to your ear, pinning on your shoulders. The dial tone played as you started to move onto drafts of potential needed documents so you wouldn’t have to do them in a rush.

“Tony Stark speaking.”

“Tony, it’s me.”

“Hi me, I’m Tony.”

“Tony.” You warned with a roll of your eyes; You could hear the smirk in his voice. “You rang.”

“I did. Ross showed up with his attorney.” You immediately stopped what you were going and grabbed the phone before placing it on speaker on you desk.

“What! Please tell me you didn’t say anything.”

“I didn’t no. Romanoff and Barton took care of it with the odd sentence from other people.”

You swore under your breath as Harvey strolled into your office, file in hand. You motioned zipping his lips and nodded; he closed the door and said nothing as he sat in front of your desk.

“Were they diplomatic about it?” Your fingers were crossed.

“As much as they could be, being them.” Harvey stared at you in shock he began mouthing at you. Is that..?

You nodded and motioned for him to shut up. “I need you to give me details, Tony; I can’t work on kinda diplomatic.”

“I’ll have FRIDAY send over a recording and transcript.”

“Sent to Bunny, sir.” FRIDAY’s voice chimed in the background.

“Seriously Tony! You’re AI is in on it too?” You leant back in exasperation of your friend and client.

“That’s irrelevant. Are you coming back later?”

“Of course.” You had nodded before then realising he couldn’t see it.

“See ya later, carrot hater!”

Shaking you head with a smile, you replied. “In a while, Mr Senile!”

“Hey!” He objected but you had already ended the call.

Harvey sort of just stared at you. “Since when was Tony Stark been your client?”

You looked at him weirdly. “Since I got here almost, along with representing Stark Industries.”

“So let me guess, those fourteen clients weren’t any random fourteen.” He gave you ‘the Harvey Scott look’, as you and Paulina jokingly called it.

“Not really.”

“Damn, now I almost feel bad about getting angry at you.”

You snorted and span your chair. “No, you don’t.”

He nodded and stood up. “You’re right, I don’t because if I did, it would mean I cared about you.”

You gasped in mock hurt and grabbed you coat and bag. “Paulina and I both know you care about me really.”

“Whatever you say, kid.”

You got into the elevator and headed down, to meet Rae who was Harvey’s driver. In these situations you generally just trusted Harvey as to where you were going because most of the time, it was to a client and today was no different as you pulled up at Washington Oil’s headoffices thirty minutes later. You and Harvey discussed a brief plan on how to talk to Andrew Washington in the elevator’s rise up. When you did eventually step up, it wasn’t what you were expecting.

Andrew Washington was there, but so was a young boy with red puffy eyes and a box of tissues by his side.

When Andrew saw you, he stood up and moved away from the boy to talk to you. “I’m afraid business is going to have to wait. I know you don’t do pro bono cases but I need you to do this. His… his parents, my brother and sister in law, they were killed by a drunk driver.”

Involuntarily, you sucked a sharp breath in. “How old is he? You nephew.” Your chest was constricting rapidly.

“He’s twelve. He’s going to be staying with me from now on.”

“Of course. We’ll make an exception.” Harvey was glancing wearily at you as you stuttered into a walk towards the boy.

In front of him, you crouched down to be level. “Hi there, I’m Y/N. I’m here to he-”

“To help me. Yeah, I get it.” The boy sniffled.

You let out a small chuckle. “What’s your name?”

“Toby, but Uncle Andrew calls me Tobias.”

“So, Toby, what’s your favourite ice cream?” You asked and adjusted your feet under you.

“I don’t see how that’s relevant.”

“It’s absolutely relevant.” You replied. “Ice cream has special properties to make you feel better."

"I don’t believe you.” Toby pouted petulantly.

You put on a grin. “When you come over our office, there’ll be ice cream waiting for you.”

“Strawberry.” He said quietly and you knew you had gotten somewhere.

“Hey, little man!” Harvey came over to join the pair of you and sat next to Toby on the sofa. “We’re not going to pressure you into talking but when you’re ready, let Uncle Andrew know and then he can tell us.” He glanced at you and looked terrified.

You nodded encouragingly. “We’ll see you soon, Toby, okay?"

The young boy nodded. You glanced at Andrew Washington and he nodded to Harvey. They had obviously done all the technicalities whilst you had been talking to the boy. Your heart swelled slightly at the thought he was doing this case so you didn’t have to do it by yourself. So you brought it up on the way back to headquarters.

“Thank you, Harvey, for this.” You were studiously looking out of your window on the left hand side. It was practically a religion that the pair of you always sat in the back and on the left and he sat on the right.

“It’s what we do, Y/N, you know that.” He replied quietly.

“Have I told you the real reason I wanted to become a lawyer?” You moved away from the window to look at him.

“Once or twice.”

You smiled slightly. “Three’s a charm. I wanted to become a lawyer because my parents were killed by a drunk driver when I was only 10. My grandma took me in but it always hard having to explain to other people why I didn’t have parents. The lawyer who was in charge of our case didn’t give a damn, I could tell, and that’s why I wanted to become a lawyer; so it didn’t happen to other people who needed help.”

Harvey turned to look you in the eye. “You’ve definitely helped more than enough people to make up for what he did. You’re a damn good lawyer.”

You smiled. “But not as good as you.”

Harvey chuckled. “That goes without saying.”

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fluentlanguage · 7 years ago

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De-Brief From An Organiser: Women in Language 2018

A few weeks ago, I was proud to co-organise and witness the first ever Women in Language conference, a unique online event designed to champion, celebrate, and amplify the voices of women in language learning. It was not my first online conference about language learning, but certainly the first I partly created and the first one ever to feature an all-female line-up of speakers.

In today’s article, I am going to lift the curtain and share my official de-brief as one of the three members of our organising team.

What I Felt at Women in Language

Let me start with the most important thing: I enjoyed every single presentation that I saw. And as I was often online making sure everything went smoothly, those were almost all of them. The quality of our many speakers at Women in Language was excellent, and the range of topics kept things interesting and inspiring.

Women in Language delivered on a few extra levels too. It felt as inspiring and intense as every offline conference could feel, with the added bonus of allowing me to sleep in my own bed. I adored seeing #womeninlanguage posts on social media, and to hear from our attendees in the live chat and Facebook group. And most importantly, I got SO inspired and motivated to learn languages in a brand new way!

If you want to learn more about languages, join the extraordinary four-day online conference #womeninlanguage with presentations by 50 incredible women! Day 2 has just started 😉 #language #onlineconference #cpd #neverstoplearning #alwayswanttoknowmore #passion

A post shared by Barbara TRANSLATIONS (@barbara.peckova) on Mar 9, 2018 at 4:09am PST

What I Learnt About Language Learning

A lot of the impact of four days of language love cannot be put into words. It’s a boost in motivation, a renewed commitment, a burst of energy. And at Women in Language, I got all of those out of it and more. I got to know more of our conference attendees and boosted my own desire to learn and teach languages in new ways.

Here are the most important lessons from Women in Language that will be essential for all language learners:

1) Dabbling Is Legit

At Women in Language, we celebrated the huge diversity of how people learn languages. You can choose whatever language you want to learn, and you can learn it for 2 weeks or 20 years, and you can dabble in a handful of languages at once if you want to. This is all “allowed”, and won’t make you any less of a language lover or polyglot.

Sometimes it’s easy to feel self-critical as a language learner, and to tell yourself that you’re doing this wrong if you don’t use Anki or speak from day 1 or spend many hours on your project. But dabbling is perfectly legit, and you are allowed to feel proud of it.

2) Compassion Matters

Leading on from the previous point, compassion was a regular theme of the conference. When you’re faced with so many blog articles and Instagram posts and YouTube videos and language books telling you what to do, it’s sometimes hard to remember that everyone has a bad day.

You can’t always be happy and you can’t always be 100% gold in Duolingo. Compassion means allowing understanding and empathy for yourself when times are tough, but also for other language learners. No one method is the right one. Allow other people to feel good about themselves, and extend that same kindness to yourself.

3) Everyone Loves Transcribed Audio

Finding something interesting to watch or listen to, at the right level, and then with a transcription…that’s difficult. But it’s also what a lot of our conference attendees wanted, and you certainly CAN find it online. If you want to get a few ideas, check out Speechling, Glossika, Rhinospike, and Movieclips on YouTube.

And by the way: Just listening is NOT enough. If it’s just a wall of sound, you’re not doing much good. You’ll need to know what you’re hearing. Find input that you can engage with, and check against your own skills. For more about this, listen to my podcast episode about listening skills.

4) There’s So Much to Talk About

It’s never enough to practice speaking by doing the “Hello how are you where do you live” dance over and over again. Speaking practice is best when you’ve prepared something interesting to talk about. And lucky for us, there are tutors and learners who already discovered this too, and they’ve even put together lists (like this one) of questions and conversation prompts.

5) When Your Brain Is Having Fun, You Learn

All too often we think of language learning as a STUDY activity, in all caps. But it’s just not necessary to do things this way. Language can be learnt through story, through fun activities, through play. The most important things are exposure and repetition, not how hard you study or how much your language experience feels like work.

Though some of these lessons may read as happy-clappy positivity notes, I found that they often helped to ease a learner’s mind and allow them to take a break and come back to language learning with new energy and enthusiasm. After all, we want to get fluent while having fun, right?

What Do You Think?

Whether you attended Women in Language 2018 or not, what do you think about those lessons above? Are you a dabbler, or a hardcore study nut? Leave me a comment below to join the conversation.

In part 2 of this blog article, I will put on my co-organiser hat (a very stylish hat, for sure) to tell you more about how Women in Language was organised, what we learnt in the process, and what you should consider if you want to run or contribute to an event like this in future.

Organising A Successful Online Conference

I’ll start with what we looked for in our speakers and talks.

For this first ever conference, we used our own network of interesting women to ask if they wanted to speak at Women in Language. Their social media accounts, blogs, youtube channels, relationships with us were what put them on the radar. So if you’re dreaming of speaking out yourselves, making yourself very visible is good advice.

Before contacting our speakers, we considered some guidelines about the types of talks we would be looking for. In addition to practical topics featuring tips and techniques for language learners at “Beginner” and “Advanced” levels, we also chose the tracks “Living with Language” and “Working with Language”. Each speaker we contacted let us know which of the four themes they would like to address in their presentation, and was allocated one. This way, we ensured that no topics would be repeated and we could offer a varied programme on every single conference day.

Here are just three of the 25 talks we saw at Women in Language:

Some of our speakers came to us with a firm idea of the talk they wanted to present, while others found themselves unsure at the start. As our programme officer, I found myself receiving several messages saying “I don’t know, maybe I have nothing to say after all.” If you have ever hesitated to put yourself forward for an opportunity, here is the thought process that does stop them in their tracks: “Maybe I don’t have anything to say here.” Meaning “Maybe my experience, my voice, my passion are not valid. Others will have more to say.”

I extended offers of a little “talk surgery” to those who needed an idea boost, and without exception it was the speakers themselves who came to me with fantastic topic ideas, and who delivered on them 100%. In fact, I found that the most intriguing topics came from a place of passion and excitement in each speaker’s mind. Topics like “Learning With Crime Novels” and “Managing Motherhood and Language Learnings” are not a language learner’s most burning question, but that’s exactly why they make incredible conference topics: They are real, and invite us to think differently.

Some People Voiced Different Opinions

I won’t lie to you, at times it felt hard to be out there putting together this positive, kinda feminist event. Some commenters felt that it was a wrong move towards equality, unnecessarily excluding male voices. To those guys, I want to remind you that we welcomed and celebrated male voices throughout the event - it’s just that this time only women got to speak “on stage”, and every single one of them brought expertise, commitment, quality, enthusiasm, and outstanding topics. We set out to show the language learning world from a different angle, and I was so encouraged to hear from several male attendees who were enjoying the conference just as much as everyone else.

If You Want To Be a Conference Speaker

If you are considering applying to speak at a language conference, please don’t hesitate. Even if you were to hear a no, don’t worry and keep putting yourself forward - maybe the programme is full already or the conference can recommend a future event for you to try.

Don’t be shy about suggesting a topic outside the memory-boosting-fluency-fast-track-performance mainstream. Don’t wait until you’re fluent in 16 languages. You’re good enough right now, as long as you have a cool topic. And what’s a cool topic? Your own experience!

You are so cool when you are yourself.

I want to give kudos here to all those women who agreed to speak and trusted Shannon, Lindsay, and me with Women in Language. You absolutely killed it, and we appreciate all the hard work you put into giving a great online talk at an event you’d never heard of before.

Many of our speakers were new to presenting online. From my perspective as a blogger and podcaster, I’m used to speaking to an empty room and waiting until later to see if anyone connects with my words. But these guys were new to the whole environment, and they handled it brilliantly.

Tickets

When we put together our event, we knew that it was a risk to ask for payment from attendees of an online event. Many other online events are open to attendees for free, but we wanted to create an atmosphere where the sales pressure is off, and where our audience members were just as invested in having a great time as we were.

We found that the ticket sales achieved this goal, and allowed over 250 audience members to join us from all over the world. This reassurance also helped us relax and increase our commitment to Women in Language. So on the ticket selling front, we are happy to note that all went well and we are now able to give a donation of over $400 to our chosen charity, Kiva. The charity supports entrepreneurs who do cool things to alleviate poverty around the world.

Here I want to say thank you to our audience members, who went ahead and trusted us organisers with a brand new conference idea. Some purchased a ticket and even took time off work, others were unable to attend but joined the conference to support celebrating and amplifying women’s voices in language learning. We appreciated your trust and support.

About The Technology We Used

In terms of technology, we used a setup of Google Hangouts on Air for our live broadcasts and embedded them in individual Teachable lectures via YouTube. We also added individual Chatango chat boxes in each lecture.

At the end of any session, the viewers could click “Complete and Continue” at the top and move on to the next session in our packed programme. Credit here goes to Shannon for leading us on the setup of a gorgeous page and ensuring the information was up to date.

This format added to the feel of hosting a real conference, where you would often walk into the next room for another talk. But in addition, it made us into the Netflix of language learning, where any previous talk could be streamed from the beginning right after it was published.

All talks were offered on a single track (no two at the same time), which kept the conversation focused and helped create a live chatroom community. We also added an “after hours” experience through a dedicated Facebook group for Women in Language attendees.

Marketing Women in Language

Our marketing campaign, headed up by Lindsay, made it easy for Women in Language to get seen. We obviously talked about Women in Language in our own blog, podcasts, social media, newsletters, youtube, and wherever you see us.

Lindsay also prepared some beautiful pictures and tweets for the speakers and the attendees, so that everyone could easily spread the word about our event. We are so grateful that you guys supported us and shared your excitement before the event. It helped us so much.

Shout out to our friends How To Get Fluent, Language Learning Summit and Langfest for inviting us to present our new event, and to Mezzofanti Guild for hosting a guest post written by Shannon. Check those guys out - they are doing amazing work.

The Organising Team

Between three organisers, we found that we were able to play to our strengths and largely handle the large workload of running a conference like this one. We stayed in contact with each other through direct messages, but also weekly meetings, and the project management software Asana. When your organising team is living on three different continents, it’s helpful to ensure online communications are as good as they can be.

Our track record of collaborations was a key to our success. Lindsay, Shannon, and I were no strangers to each other’s work. We knew already that we appreciate each other’s work and that each of us knows how to use all parts of the technology and marketing setup. We had also met in person before and solidified our friendship. Throughout the organising process, we were able to stay supportive and open to suggestions from each other.

Sometimes, it can take courage and grace to reach out to a colleague and trust that they’re on board with your idea. From the minute Lindsay first mentioned the idea of Women in Language and Shannon hopped on the first Skype call to join us, that was something we committed to.

I am grateful that I had the opportunity to run such a cool project with two colleagues and friends that I respect so much.

What We’ll Do Even Better Next Time

So we were excited, we were buzzing, we enjoyed four days of a successful conference full of tips. But that doesn’t mean that there weren’t any mistakes to learn from.

On the technology front, a few hiccups taught us the following lessons. Maybe you’ll find them useful one day, so I’m sharing them here:

When you want to embed your YouTube events in another page, it pays to set up a dry run so that you’re double sure the embed will show up the way you want it to.

When you are planning to invite someone to a Google Hangout, you cannot send them a “join link” in advance because the software will discard that link the minute you close the video window in your browser. And then your speaker’s link will be useless and they’ll be confused.

Don’t click “eject” when you want to reset your Hangouts partner’s setup as they joined your Google Hangout. They won’t be able to join again, and you’ll have to create a new event.

Power Point going full screen in Google Hangouts is a bit of a gamble, so stay calm, have a dry run, and prepare trouble shooting notes to make sure all goes smoothly.

In terms of the programme, we tried a new format of round table discussions which was successful at large. The two-hour time slot did discourage some audience members from watching it though, and that’s something I had not expected and we will look into providing shorter round table discussions next time.

Finally: I feel fired up to expand our commitment to diversity and ensure we include more global voices. Our line-up was international but still looked largely like us: white women who speak English a lot. Even if each of them is different in nationality or language line-up, this still gives our attendees an unintentional impression of what the “norm” is. We can add to that during future events, and I’m excited that we now have 27 speakers who can help us grow our network and look for polyglots and language experts from more diverse backgrounds.

What About You?

Did you enjoy the online conference?

Have you ever thought about becoming a conference speaker?

I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

#women #women in language #conference #online course

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jeremyanderson-blog1 · 8 years ago

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“Reality Check” is a perfect soundtrack for my life towards the end of last year. The song is about Noname overcoming her fears of leaving her comfort zone and taking leap of faith to live out her dream of becoming a rapper. “Telefone” is her first album and this song likely chronicles her journey out of her complacency as a local rapper/poet with features on other artists’ albums, into her decisions to begin and complete her first full-length project. “Reality Check” directly spoke to me during a time I was deciding my plans after graduation. This past summer, I decided to enter a doctoral program in History after graduation. However, I wanted to take a year off in order to ease the transition between undergraduate and graduate school. I am not a history major, and have only two true history classes on my transcript. I told myself I needed that time to work at a history museum, and read more books centered around what I wanted to study so that I could be more prepared going into a doctoral program in history. In October, I spoke with Dr. Luckett (mentor/professor) about history professors I’d like to work with in graduate school, one of whom was Dr. Bill Ferris from the University of North Carolina. Dr. Luckett told me that Dr. Ferris would be in Jackson for a book signing later that week. After meeting Dr. Ferris, he seemed eager to get me into UNC and encouraged me to apply. However, I told him that I planned on taking a year off before entering graduate school. After awhile, I realized that my rationale for taking a year stemmed more from apprehension than tactical reasoning. I don’t know anyone in North Carolina. I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t change my mind about what I wanted to do. I wasn’t and still am not well versed in the field of history. I wanted another year to stay in a comfort zone before entering a doctoral program. Yet, hearing Noname’s lyrics helped me realize that my connection with Dr. Ferris was an opportunity too precious to put on hold for a year, especially since UNC is my top choice. I ended up hastily studying for GRE, requesting letters of recommendation with closing due dates, and writing a personal statement all within two weeks in order to meet the application deadline. I felt that it was time to take that leap of faith, and a life in my comfort zone wasn’t one that would be fulfilling.

A few verses that hit me:

“Opportunity knockin’ a n*gga was out for coffe/Inadequate like my window/The Grammy’s is way too lofty/And I could stay here forever, I could die here/I don’t have to try here, can I get my two sugars please?” Here, Noname writes about her persistence in staying comfortable (forever staying in a coffee shop while getting sugar is as easy as asking a question). I felt this way about my academic career. Graduating and holding off opportunities simply to stay in a space of comfort was the underlying reason of not immediately applying.

“Opportunity knockin’ a n*gga just got her nails done/Skeletons in my closet gone open the door when Yale come.” This verse relates to my fear that graduate departments would look at my transcript and resume and have no reason to believe that I’d excel as history student- “Yale” equating to UNC, “Skeletons” equating the lack of history classes on my transcript and coming from a school that may not impress everyone perusing my application.

“Mississippi vagabond, granny gone turn up in her grave/and say my granny really was a slave for this ..... You know they whipped us n*ggas, how you afraid to rap it?” This verse reminded me of both of my grandmothers, one of whom was an educator, and the other, an avid reader. I thought to myself, how would my grandmothers respond if they knew I considered turning down this opportunity out of fear? They both would have killed for this opportunity. They both prayed for opportunities like this to be available to their grandchildren.

“Don’t fear the light the dwells deep within. You are powerful beyond what you imagine. Just let your light glow.” The chorus of the song strengthened me to believe in myself. The lyrics comforted me as I realized that I have all I need to succeed, regardless of what doesn’t show on my transcript, regardless of what school I come from.

“And when that call comes, you better say hello. No hiding, deep down below. No beg your pardon, you better stay and grow. Your liberation for your lonely, you’ll be on your own.” The outro is beautifully sung. I hear this part and gain the courage to not even hesitate take that leap of faith if the opportunity presents itself. Although grad school will be challenging and there will be many moments where I’ll want to quit, I understand success only comes from struggle

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bettydgunter90 · 5 years ago

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079: How Andrew Quit His 6-Figure Job in 9 Months With His Land Investing Business

Today we’re talking with Andrew Flanagan.

Andrew is someone I’ve noticed in our Facebook Community over the past couple of years as another helpful voice who asks good questions and gives good feedback to others.

A few weeks back I noticed him post something about how he was able to use the land business to quit his 6-figure job within 9 months and that apparently, he said he owes a large percentage to the stuff we’ve been putting out there at REtipster.

Any time I see this, I’m like, “WOW! I want to know more!”, and I’m sure the REtipster audience would love to know more too.

So today, we’re having another one of these land investor success story conversations to find out what the road map looks like. Not everyone has to take the same steps or follow the same timeline, but chances are, we’ll all learn something new from this.

youtube

Links and Resources

Forum Topic: Has anyone ever put blind offers on postcards?

REtipster Facebook Group

Profit First Book

Zillow

Craigslist

Land.com

AgentPro247

Jack Bosch

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Leave a note in the comments section below!

Share this episode on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn (social sharing buttons below!)

Help out the show:

Leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts Your ratings and reviews really help (and I read each one).

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Thanks again for joining me this week. Until next time!

Right-click here and “Save As” to download this episode to your computer.

Episode 079 Transcription

Seth: Hey everybody, how’s it going? This is Seth and Jaren with the RETipster podcast. Today in episode 79, we’re talking with Andrew Flanagan. Andrew is someone I’ve noticed in our Facebook community over the past couple of years as just another helpful voice who asks good questions and gives good feedback to others. And a few weeks back, I noticed him post something about how he was able to use his land business to quit a six-figure job within nine months.

And that apparently, he said, he owes a large percentage of the stuff he’s learned to what we’ve been putting out on RETipster. So anytime we see anything like that, I’m like, “Whoa, I don’t know exactly what he did to get there, but I want to know more.” And I’m sure the RETipster audience probably wants to know more too.

So today we’re having another one of these land investor success story conversations to find out what the roadmap looks like. And not everybody has to take the same steps or follow the same timeline, but chances are there is something Andrew has to say that we can all learn from. So, with that Andrew, how are you doing? Welcome to the show.

Andrew: I’m doing great. Thanks for having me.

Seth: Just to get started, maybe you can tell us your backstory. What were you doing before you get into the land business? How long have you been a land investor, and how did you get into it?

Andrew: I’ve been doing land full-time as my day job for just hit over a year. Before that I was doing medical device sales, selling little screws and pins that go in your tendons and ligaments and in the OR. I mean, it was a great job, full benefits, publicly traded company, but I just hated making the boardroom members rich and not me. And I just wanted a little more free time and work for myself was my biggest goal, to be self-employed.

Seth: Yeah. That makes sense.

Jaren: That’s awesome.

Seth: Have you ever done anything in real estate before, or was land the first real estate thing you ever got into?

Andrew: Land was the very first. It was all I could afford.

Seth: Yeah, that sounds like me.

Andrew: I looked into them all for years. I mean, I was sold on real estate investing as a pathway, but apartments and all that stuff is way too expensive for me. I wanted to do it full-time and making $1,200 off a fourplex, I couldn’t turn into a full-time gig. Something like that. And so, your blog really gave me the roadmap to have the confidence to go full-time and or just start really.

Seth: That’s awesome, man. That’s really great to hear. Tell me how this works. Especially when I hear that timeline of nine months from a six-figure job. I mean, that’s really fast. That’s a huge income to replace. I mean, obviously it’s possible, you did it, but a lot of people don’t make it happen that quickly. I’m just curious, how did you manage this whole thing of working that job while also building up your land business to the point where you had enough income to pull the plug on your job? How did you juggle those things?

Andrew: So, nine months was kind of when I started going full speed on my mailings and taking it a little more seriously. You know, I had sent a couple mailers of 40, 50 to a few counties kind of testing the markets. But when I started sending 300 – 500 a week, postcards, that’s when it really skyrocketed. I got a couple big deals and that just gave me the financial confidence to jump ship. And I haven’t looked back. It’s been amazing.

Jaren: Did you use a lot of seller financing or selling on terms to cover the practicals of your overhead personally and your business? Are you just primarily doing cash? How did you set it up? Because that’s what people want to know is like the practicals of, okay, I really want to quit my job and do land full-time, but how do I bridge that gap? Right? Because if you just do cash, there might be a cash flow issue there. Right? So, how did you overcome that?

Andrew: There was, and for a while, while I dabbled and still to this day, I only have one note. It was all organic growth through cash sales. So, in the beginning, I’d sell one and have to wait two months or something for it to sell and then just kind of wait, wait it out. I didn’t want to borrow money. I did pull $6,600 out of my 401(k) to just kind of start mailings back when I started dabbling and then pieced it all together slowly and kind of just worked it as best as I could. There were days when I would sell one and have a closing two or three days later. And I’ll say this, I had a buddy who was willing to invest or lend to me, which gave me the confidence to mail and pursue deals. I think that confidence helped a lot. I just know I had that kind of safety net of financing if I needed it.

Seth: Yeah. That seems to be a common thing I’ve heard from people that are having access to that kind of cash. Because it’s one of those points of friction where it’s like, you’re going to run out of money at some point. When that happens, what next?

Jaren: What do you do? Yeah.

Seth: That makes sense.

Jaren: I’m just curious, what market are you in?

Andrew: Well, I live in the Houston, Texas area and I’ve focused primarily in Texas. I mean, there’s plenty of land, 200 plus counties in Texas. I’ve done one deal out of state in Utah and a few kinds in East Texas, but I’ve mainly focused kind on the coastal destination regions. Kind of these are my bread and butter. They buy these lots just to put a little cement slab on them. And that’s honestly, 60% of my business is just focusing on that type of stuff. Coastal markets. You can get lots for $5,000, sell them for $20,000 to $25,000. So, it can be nice.

Jaren: Yeah. Most people don’t think of coastal land in Texas, but there’s a huge coastline.

Andrew: Right. I never said the water was pretty, but…

Seth: I’m curious. If I understand this right, so, you’ve only ever worked in Texas then. Right? Have you ever explored any other states?

Andrew: So, I did do Utah. I had that one deal and I did a little in Utah. I had a buddy in Virginia. I kind of reached out to him. We kind of work together, but it’s honestly the ease of getting the list has been my differentiating factor and the quality of the county data and their TAD system, how well it’s set up. Because if you can’t view the parcels in TAD data and things like that, it’s really hard for me to do it remotely from this room.

Seth: Yeah. And where are you getting your list?

Andrew: I go directly from the county. I initially did try AgentPro 247 and ListSource, but man, I was getting so many return mails. But at the end of the day, they’re extracting the data from the county anyways. So, I figured I’d just go straight to the source, right?

Seth: Yeah, for sure.

Jaren: Makes sense.

Seth: You mentioned earlier that you started off doing postcards. Are you still doing postcards or have you looked at blind offers at all? Andrew: A hundred percent postcards. I’ve never liked the idea of blind offers because you’re going off a percentage of the appraised value. One example, if I would have been doing blind offers, I bought a lot for $50. My second deal, the third deal was for $50. If I would have gone off appraisal, I would have bought it for $1,000. People tell you so much over the phone about the area, about their lot. You just kind of say, “Well, tell me a little about it” and they love to talk. And I do well on the phone just from sales and things like that, but you can’t discount the phone and you learn that real quick.

Seth: Yeah. That’s really interesting to hear because something that I hear a lot of people hating on is postcards and lists from the county. And I totally get why. In a lot of counties, it is a huge pain to get that list and then sort it and then postcards do require more time on the phone. People, understandably, don’t really like that. But I think you also make really good points too about you get a lot of information if you are willing to get on the phone. And you can potentially pull more deals out of a campaign and get them for better prices.

Jaren: And direct mail is a lot cheaper with postcards too.

Seth: Yeah. It’s not something you want to just like across the board “Nope, they never make sense” because they do in some cases. Especially depending on what you enjoy doing and what you’re good at doing. So, I would never want to just across the board throw something out.

Jaren: Hey Andrew, I have a question about pulling a list from the county. Are you getting them typically for free? Are you paying a small fee to the county? What does that look like?

Andrew: I email them directly and just ask for it. And then they tell me the fee and it’s usually anywhere from $300 to $350, but I won’t pay over probably a hundred if it’s a quality county, but average, probably $10 to $50. A little key that I’ve found is half these counties if some of them have like an FTP site that they give you the login info and password and they never change it. So, once you get it, you have their code and password. I’ve done that for multiple counties. Just refresh it every six months.

Seth: That’s awesome. I never thought about that. That’s something that I think confuses a lot of people when they get that. They’re like what? Like FTP, huh? Just give me an Excel file and I’ll be good. But that’s a nice little hack there.

Andrew: Your video on YouTube helped me extract that TRP file or whatever it is. Massive file. And you put the little lines.

Seth: Yeah.

Andrew: That’s a game-changer.

Seth: That’s awesome, man. Very cool.

Andrew: Like I told you, I’ve learned 80% of my junk from you.

Seth: The stuff that’s junk, right? I’m joking. No, I appreciate that. Thanks a lot. That’s actually really, really encouraging. A lot of times, I don’t know who reads this stuff. I mean, I’m sure if somebody is finding some help from something, but it’s hard to draw any correlations or see examples. So, it’s really cool to see what you’ve been able to do with it. So, I’m curious when you’re picking certain counties like this in Texas or wherever for that matter, in the beginning where you just kind of picking them at random or did you have some rationale for why you were picking certain ones? And then the ones that ended up working the best for you, was your instinct right? How did you end up landing on these most ideal places where you can keep going again and again for deals?

Andrew: Again, I mean, I listened to you. I went an hour or two out from each major city. We have three or four big cities in Texas and you kind of figure out quick that Texas is big and if you’ve ever driven across it, people aren’t going to buy in the middle of nowhere, pay utility. Because, in buyers, what are they doing? They’re building houses or some sort of vacation spot. And they can’t do much with it in the middle of nowhere.

So, I did the hour to two-hour drive out from each major city. I literally printed out a county map of Texas and emailed every single one and asked for lists. The quality counties that I got and then kind of just whittled it down. I try to keep it simple. Everyone’s trying to complicate things. I mean, I don’t even input my deals into the computer until they’ve accepted the offer. Inputting data, taking it out, that’s just not my style.

Seth: Yeah. So for a lot of people I know selling is sort of like the big bottleneck. That’s where things sort of get stuck. Have you experienced that? Or, if anything, is the bottleneck in your business, what do you think that is? And have you found any creative ways to overcome that?

Andrew: I think it is selling at the end of the day, because I can always mail and always get deals, but I try to get cash sales always. Actually, just seeing the benefits of my note. They’re paying a large amount each month, but I like cash sales. I just went to a realtor. I have a couple of big deals, large dollar amount deals. And so, I just put those with a realtor. And I’m also selling close to retail, 80% to 95% retail, for cash. And so, I’m aware that they’re going to take a little bit longer to sell and I’m okay with that.

Seth: And how long does it take typically for the average property to sell?

Andrew: I’d say one to four months, but two to three really where it’s priced at and the quality of the property and what improvements I’ve done too. I like to throw in a culvert and get the survey and kind of mark it off. Maybe brush hog it, clear it just so people can see it, visualize it, see the property corners, and access it with a culvert. I mean, super easy, super cheap. Just little things like that I think are selling quicker.

Seth: So, have you found that like doing a survey and doing the brush hog thing? Do end buyers’ value that a lot? Is that something that causes somebody to say, “Yes, I will buy” versus “Eh, I don’t really care?” Or have you nailed down any specific things that are like, this is an obvious improvement to always do?

Andrew: I think culvert for down here because people, especially with my RV, the ones that I’m tailoring towards the RV audience, I will do a culvert almost every time.

Seth: And what is a culvert for anybody who doesn’t know?

Andrew: It’s like the water drainage pipe under a driveway. But you have to have the county do it typically, they’ll like size it. And I mean, they’ll do everything. They do the crushed rock and install it and everything, bring the pipe to the site. So, that can be a problem for some people, but I like getting handsy and dirty sometimes and get out of here some days. And so, I haven’t nailed down like, any metrics or like if the culvert or no culvert works, but they sell faster I think when they can see it. And especially when the grass is higher, the neighboring properties they can see their little piece that they’re going to get. I think they can visualize it a little better. This could all be in my head, but I think it helps sell and pictures better. When you take pictures, they can see it. I think it helps.

Seth: I’ve had those conversations sometimes. I was actually sitting in on a Mastermind meeting yesterday. A group invited me just to hang out with them. I’m not normally there, but one of the things they were talking about was are there any improvements that really make a difference. Like either make itself for more or sell for faster and actually justifies the cost of doing that? I don’t know what the answer to that is honestly, because some people might value something and other people might not. And I’d hate to just like, throw money at something when you don’t have to, or if somebody has a different plan for the property.

But it seems like if a property has a certain zoning where it’s like, you can only do one thing with this and one thing only. So, why not get them another step closer to that? Maybe I could see it then. And maybe that is what you’re sort of seeing in those examples.

Andrew: Yeah. It’s hard to say, but the couple realtors that I’ve talked to say that land clearing does help more of the residential lots.

Seth: Yeah, I can see that.

Andrew: I typically keep the big mature trees. I’ll do all the underbrush and kind of just nasty stuff. And you can get guys off Facebook, good old boys that are just local. I mean, they would love to do it for you. You can beat them down on price. It can get expensive, larger acreage, but I mean the quality of deals that I’m going for, I adjust for those things.

Jaren: Andrew, I want to go back a little bit to the county list that you were pulling and I just had a quick question there. I know a lot of guys typically say they don’t mail out to the same list, except for once in every six months or so. Is that kind of your strategy or how often are you… because you mentioned that you will hit the same county again, using the hack of saving the login details to access the list. So, how frequently do you hit one list?

Andrew: The few that I have the login for, they are large lists. I just refreshed it today and it’s like 16,000-line items. And so, I’m doing 500 a pop 16,000 divided by 50. I just got through it about a year last week. I mean, I just finished the X, Y, Z. But I’ll miss a week or two in there and if I’m low on funds or I got too much in the pipeline or you can always adjust, but I won’t resend within 6-8-10 months, but I’ll definitely resend a year later for sure. Especially if I like the county and I’m seeing results.

Jaren: That’s awesome. Do you have a particular acreage size that you target or do you just kind of pull a list? Is there like a certain threshold that you don’t go under? Like I know for me in my land business I typically do an acre or higher, but I really don’t like anything under 0.25 acres just because I feel like it gets too small at that point. But what’s your experience and what do you target?

Andrew: Those planted infill lots have killed it for me. I wouldn’t discount them. I mean these 5,000-, 7,500-square foot lots, people are looking for them and builders, you get them at the right price. Maybe don’t buy in like an old neighborhood where it’s like, a house got flooded and they just demolished it. No one’s going to build a new building there, but these coastal regions or these infill lots or just random smaller ones, they do really well. I’ve even subdivided. You buy two on a tax ID and then subdivide it. I mean, that’s one of my home run deals. I love them.

Seth: Maybe you can tell us about your home run deals. I know sometimes I don’t want to draw too much attention to these because obviously it’s the ones that are out of the ordinary. Like you shouldn’t expect this all the time, but just for the sake of showboating, maybe you can tell us what’s something you’re really proud of. What was the awesome deal that had just amazing numbers?

Andrew: So, I was thinking about this. One day I was super tired and I was on the phone. I was just trying to get through my calls and I didn’t really even want—I didn’t think I could afford the lot. So, I said, okay, $12,000. And he said, okay. I was like, wait, $12,000? And then I listed it for $73,000.

Seth: Wow.

Andrew: And it sat and sat for probably two months. And then I subdivided it and sold for $78,000 in two lots for $78,000 total. So, I made a little over $60,000 on that. I mean…

Seth: Yeah, that’s huge.

Andrew: And they sold super quick. And so, that’s when I fell in love with subdividing and I did a similar deal probably like a month later. I bought it for $20,000, sold it for $84,000.

Seth: Man, that’s awesome. What’s involved with subdividing in that? Because I know sometimes it’s like, super easy, other times it’s super complicated.

Andrew: So, what I’ve learned with acreage, there are platted lots that are already previously platted from years ago of a surveyor. And then there’s like acreage that you have to get a surveyor to separate them. But if they’re already platted, I literally just email the county and they’ll just do it and send me a new tax ID number and a new legal description. It’s over, it’s free. It’s over.

Jaren: Shoot, man. I felt like I didn’t get in Texas.

Seth: Yeah, that sounds way easier than a lot of places I’ve worked.

Andrew: If it’s over four platted lots or you can’t subdivide them less than that platted lot. If you want to go more than four lots or something, they make you do surveys. And there’s a little more restriction once you get higher up. But if it’s like a three-platted lot and you just want to separate them into three tax IDs to sell a mass, then simple email. Around here at least.

Jaren: That’s awesome.

Andrew: It was a killer deal.

Seth: Yeah. That’s pretty cool, man. Now with surveys, I’m just curious from your experience. So, if you want to get a survey on a property, just like a basic drawing and just stick the corners so people that see onsite where it is, how much are you usually paying for that kind of survey?

Andrew: $350 to $400. So, I specify a boundary survey only, not a mapping survey. Mapping shows like the structures and all the junk in the middle. But if you just want the corners, staked and a little PDF, that’s just a boundary survey. I get $350 to $400.

Seth: That’s a big takeaway right there. I hear from time to time from people who are like “I’m trying to get a survey and it’s $3,000. This is crazy.” Yeah, I understand. There are lots of different kinds of surveys and some are much deeper and more comprehensive than others and include, like, easements and everything you can imagine. And a lot of surveys would just assume, well, that’s what you want, right? But now you’ve got to specify the simplicity that you’re looking for. And that’s the pretty much the exact same cost that I’ve encountered too.

Andrew: I think with raw land, the simplicity comes with that. But I think with houses involved, you do have to get that mapping to show how far it is off the property line and things like that. But raw land, it’s just boundary survey.

Seth: So, I’m curious, are there any, like, software tool you use in the course of your business? Whether it’s paid or free, just in general for any step of your buying and selling process? What services have been the most helpful to you?

Andrew: Once I started getting more than two or three deals in the pipeline, I use free Podio still to this day, just to kind of keep track of the name, the size of the parcel, kind of the stage it’s in. That’s about it. I still use a free Google Voice. I was buying in my name for the first 10 months and then I finally switched to an LLC. But then I try and keep it super simple, super cheap. I’m cheap in general, but I think we try to overcomplicate things. And I have a wix.com website. I mean, super easy and I still get submissions.

Seth: Cool. That’s awesome. You don’t have to spend a ton of money to make stuff work.

Andrew: A PO box and that’s about it.

Seth: I’m curious when you say that you’re cheap, if you’re willing to share, you don’t have to. How much money were you working with when you started out? Were you just pinching pennies or did you have a big slush fund at your disposal?

Andrew: So, I started with that $6,600 out of the 401k and started just mailing. And then when deals would come through, I would fund as needed. First, I borrowed $5,000 from my buddy at 20%; I was given my friend’s and my brother-in-law’s later 20%. Now I dropped down to $15, but if anybody’s out there looking for deals… I was just on a shoestring budget. Again, I didn’t have money for a $300 LLC. So, I had no assets to protect and minimal PO box just to keep a little anonymous. But, hey, it’s worked for me.

Jaren: I just had a coaching session yesterday, where we were talking about the LLC and a lot of people starting off, they think that they got to do all this stuff to become an official business. And obviously this is not legal advice. It wasn’t legal advice that I was giving them at all, obviously. But I was just telling them in my opinion, right now, you’re just trying to get proof of concept. You’re just trying to get to your first deal. And I said, talk to your legal professionals and your tax professionals. But if you don’t have that many assets to protect, the likelihood of something happening on a vacant land parcel that you bought for $1,000 to $5,000 or less, isn’t that huge.

So, I just was letting them know, “Hey, you don’t have to get an LLC right out of the gate.” You can just buy properties in your personal name. And I was telling them that I wish that I did that because when I first started my land business, I started in Indiana, but I didn’t know what I was doing. And I didn’t know what the future of my land business was going to become. And now I’ve switched everything to Florida. So, I started off with an Indiana-based LLC that I don’t use anymore, but I paid money with a rocket lawyer to get it set up. And it was wasteful.

Again, everybody has a unique situation and you got to talk to the right professionals about your unique situation. But for a lot of people out there, it might be a good option just to buy things in your personal name, to get a couple of deals under your belt and then figure it out from there.

Andrew: The only reason I even put it in an LLC is so my wife wouldn’t have to come to closings to sign off on the property. She was getting more annoyed than I was.

Jaren: That’s awesome.

Andrew: Yeah. That’s the only reason really. And just to be anonymous.

Jaren: Yeah. It gives them some separation there. Wait, I wanted to ask you Andrew, for those who want to go full-time, but they feel stuck in their day job. Everybody has different circumstances, but bills are bills and they’re not fun. Why do you think that people get into that situation? How do you think that they can get out? You had a great job and you were in a great situation and you were able to transition out within nine months.

I guess this is a two-part question. One is why do you think that people get caught up in that situation where they emotionally feel stuck? Where, when you remove the emotion out of it, they can easily just leave or they can just figure out a very clear game plan? And then second to that, how did you personally do it? What was your thinking process? And did you deal with any personal anxiety? What was your process there?

Andrew: Financial security is a real thing to be uncomfortable and no one wants to go down financially, right? And we often think that when we’re going to quit a nice job or and so I didn’t have any kids, we’re expecting, but I was married, my bills aren’t going to get any cheaper than they are now. And my kids’ daycare bills are not going to get any cheaper than it is now. So, I said, this needs to be the time that I start. And so, I just went full bore. People do it out of comfort. They’re not uncomfortable enough. I was very, very uncomfortable and just didn’t know what I was doing. Yet, it provided, but I didn’t hop out of bed every morning wanting to jump into surgery. I mean, it was cool. It was super hard, but I almost felt like I was doing my company a disservice as well, just by not giving it my all. I think just the fear of failure as well.

Honestly, I don’t think I’d be sitting here if I didn’t have the clarity of the steps to take through Seth’s blog. I mean, that’s why I’m so scared because I’m one of those calculated people that need those steps kind of laid out for me to make that leap of faith. And at one point I got so uncomfortable. I just said, no one’s going to show up on my doorstep with financial freedom. So, I just bit the bullet. I mean, what are all these people talking about? It must be real. So, I got to try it now or I’m going to be 60 regretting it. And man, I’m so glad I did it. This is like a dream come true.

My biggest goal was to be self-employed. I wouldn’t say I’m financially free through like, passive real estate. Self-employment was the biggest goal at the time. And so I’m just obsessed with land.

Seth: That’s so cool, man. It’s so good to hear your story. I mean, it’s just a breath of fresh air to hear another example of somebody who kind of made it and just took the risk and it worked out. It’s awesome, man.

Andrew: Yeah, thank you.

Seth: For other people out there who maybe they’ve heard about land or they’re considering it, but they’re like, “Yeah, but I don’t know if this is for me, I just don’t know,” do you have any advice for people? Whether they’re holding off because they’re afraid or they’re uncertain or even if they’ve already started and they’re just figuring out the ropes. They don’t know exactly what market to go in or what to do. Any advice come to mind for you that you would give to them?

Andrew: Yeah. The biggest reason I chose land was the cost barrier. It’s so cheap to get in. And if you’re sold on real estate investing, what are all these real estate investments built on? They’re built on land. I’m cherry-picking these lots and I’m keeping a few from my portfolio to build things. Almost built a shopping center a couple months ago, but kind of backpedaled because of the virus and stuff. But the opportunities given to me through land has just been incredible. I think—we think we can’t jump to another niche of real estate if we just stay in land. And I don’t think that’s true. You have a few rental houses, right Seth?

Seth: I did. I sold them off last year.

Andrew: Oh, cool.

Seth: It’s not because I’m not for average it’s just, people were paying crazy high prices for them. So, I figured I’d take advantage of that. But yeah, land isn’t the final destination for me either. It’s just a really good cash machine to get the money that you need to take the next step. Andrew: Exactly. I’m just trying to build the bank role. I’m debating between like large apartments or stuff like that, or kind of self-storage and RV parks. They’re big in Texas. And so, I’m kind of still up there, but I’m just enjoying my time with my wife and being self-employed really.

Seth: That’s awesome, man. It’s really cool. I’ve thought about that too. The whole idea of developing something, building from the ground up. Normally there’s a fair amount of risk in that. And I think there still is even if you get the land super cheap. But the ability to buy land for pennies on the dollar, it’s really a huge hedge of protection against that. If you get a good location, it makes it way easier if you want to pursue that. So, yeah, I would agree.

So, for somebody like you, and I think I see this in a lot of people who get to where you are. They don’t do it without being really good at one or even several things, almost kind of like a jack of all trades in their business. Because it’s only you in the beginning. You have to wear a lot of hats and figure things out. Is there any particular attribute of yourself or your personality or the way you think that has been the most important factor of your success? And is it because you’re good at sales and talking on the phone? Or is it because you’re able to multitask? I don’t know, what comes to mind for you?

Andrew: I think being just comfortable on the phone makes them comfortable and I use good manners and try to be polite. And I think that goes a long way over the phone. They’re trying to fill you out. They don’t know if you’re just some sketchy dude trying to scam them, but use manners, follow up. And just being consistent. People emphasize that, but you don’t really get that until you’re in it. Just consistently mailing. Like if you mail, they will call. It’s tried and true.

Jaren: On that note, have you ever had a month where you mailed and it just bombed for whatever reason? It was a fluke of a thing where it’s like, “I just didn’t get any calls from this campaign.”

Andrew: Yeah. The PS. I typically mailed by the letter and the PS just didn’t do too well for me just a couple weeks ago. But I think it’s by county. Again, the quality of the county list. I spend a good amount of time scrubbing the list. I think that’s critical. And so, I focus on that. I don’t know if I could ever outsource that to a VA or something. I see things and there’s little things about list scrubbing that you can’t just teach.

Seth: I remember the first few delinquent tax lists I ever got from the county. I spent, man, I’m like, embarrassed about this, but I spent maybe five to eight hours per list just scrubbing it. Just being ridiculous. Like trying to get to only the right people on there. And they did do really, really well. And I’m curious how much time and effort do you spend per list scrubbing that and what specifically are you looking for?

Andrew: I’ve nailed it down. I got a few shortcuts and hotkeys that I can use, but I’m still spending a couple of hours on these lists. They’re 20,000-line items, 16 when I’m done. But I take out LLCs, like you’ve talked about, and a full little list of little things I take out like County Inc Incorporated, LLC Corp company. I take out all those types of things, but I leave all the names and states. But I think trial and error, honestly, you see what, who calls and who doesn’t just slowly build in your process.

Seth: Yeah. I know another issue that commonly comes up with that kind of list is the inability to separate land from houses on the list. Like, “I want only land on this list. No houses.” Is the county able to do that for you? Or have you found an effective way to make that work? Or do you just hit houses inevitably in?

Andrew: No, I’m lucky that the county that I love mailing to, that I’ve been referring to this whole time, has land use codes that can C-1 through D are all just a type of land, A-1, houses. So, just cut those out. I’d be spending five times as much money.

Seth: Yeah. That’s an important point because I think a lot of times on those lists. They do come with that information. But you, as the person scrubbing it, need to understand that it’s there and what it means and how to actually use it to filter your list. And that’s usually not obvious for the first time or going through a list. So that’s a good point to look for that. And if you can, you probably have the filtering criteria you need right there. You just have to be aware that it’s there.

Andrew: Again, I want to emphasize just keep mailing and just stay at it. I mean, persistence is key. I know it’s super cliché, but it works, it really does. I was super skeptical of just this flimsy postcard. Which one of us have truly responded to a solicitation in the mail?

Seth: Actually, the personal letter postcard template. I had gotten one of those from a completely different company. It wasn’t exactly that, but the font was the same. Something about it, it was a weird thing that clicked in my head that made me think. Man, I wish I could remember what it said. But I just remember it was just so unusual that I would get a postcard that said this specific message. And I actually called the number and it ended up being just something stupid and hung up. But still it made me take action based on that. So, I don’t know, there’s something. Maybe it’s because it’s so unusual. I get plenty of like, junk mail from credit card companies and stuff like that, but it’s pretty rare I get junk mail that looks quite like that on a postcard like that. So, maybe it sort of sticks out somehow.

Andrew: I’m really clear on my postcard. It’s bright yellow, one side says “Notice.” So, they’d probably think it’s some bill, but they’re in New Jersey and they see this bright little yellow postcard about a lot that was inherited to them 20 years ago that they’d been paying on. Perfect timing and they call. It’s magic. I don’t know.

Seth: Yeah.

Jaren: That’s awesome, man.

Seth: And do you have any virtual assistants or people or services that you hire out on a regular basis?

Andrew: Nope. Just back to the cheap part. The few critical things that I could source out, I don’t want to. Like list scrubbing. I don’t want to source that out. I don’t think I’m going to have to level to be doing that. I want to get in on some SEO maybe for my website. I take every single call. Not live, but I call back every single person and analyze every single deal. Because at the end of the day analysis is the biggest key as well, I think. And no VA is going to know the local market. I live around here and know the area well and certain neighborhoods I don’t want to buy in and things like that.

Seth: Yeah. Maybe a good question is because you kind of sound like me. I had a really hard time letting go of anything. I just didn’t trust anybody to do anything right. And you know, there’s some validity to that. People will screw stuff up and they will cut corners and they’re not going to care as much as I do. But still at some point you do become the bottleneck. If there was any one thing, if you had to pick anything to get off your plate and give to somebody else, what do you think that would be? Would you trust somebody to do it?

Andrew: Maybe the ads.

Seth: Posting listings on websites and stuff?

Andrew: Yeah. And renewing and replacing them throughout this place, as we put them. Other than that, it’s hard to say I have the time to do it. And I think until I’m like, super busy, I don’t think I should be paying someone when I’m sitting on the couch.

Seth: Yeah. What website has been most effective for you at getting your property sold? Andrew: Zillow and Facebook really. And Craigslist. Those are really the only three I use.

Seth: Of those three, which one is most impactful?

Andrew: I’d probably say Zillow. Just because it’s got a large audience and it’s got the mapping feature. You can’t really map on Facebook yet, or that I’ve seen. Because they just see them in the feed or whatever. Well, then the groups though, Facebook groups. I’m in all the local buy/sell groups of that area. And so those help as well too.

Seth: It’s hard to pick just one.

Andrew: Facebook probably if I had to choose. I don’t know, I’m super fickle.

Seth: Luckily, you don’t have to pick one.

Jaren: It’s really interesting because when I tell coaching clients in the land business that the best websites to sell properties on are free websites. Sometimes I get some pushback, like, are you sure how does this work? And I just tell them, “Hey, sometimes it just takes time to sell a property.” But if you’re listing them on Facebook Marketplace, buy and sell trade groups, Craigslist and Zillow, you’re going to be fine. And to be honest, I subscribed to Lands of America for an entire year. And I didn’t really have any luck selling on that. And it’s expensive. I admit the year, the one I was paying was $320 a month and they lock you in for a year.

So, I think that if you’re doing the more premium property, like the 50,000 plus range, maybe there’s some opportunity there for bigger, more expensive stuff. But for what I do, I haven’t seen any benefit from it. And even I did another one. I forget what it was. I think Land Century or something like that. It was like $50 a month. I didn’t see anything from that. The bulk of the sales have always come through those free channels.

Andrew: I would think about putting on one of those paid websites, but it was like a large 20-acre farm property or something, a couple of hundred thousand dollars, but I’ll just use a realtor for those.

Jaren: And they’re paying for it anyway.

Andrew: Yeah, they are paying.

Seth: I get this, I don’t know if you guys get this too. I don’t even know why I get it because I never signed up for it, but I get this land magazine every quarter I think it is. Or maybe even every month.

Jaren: I get that too.

Seth: Yeah. It’s a huge, thick catalog. Maybe you get it if you sign up on LandWatch as paying. Actually, it seems like a really high-quality magazine. It’s the kind of thing you’d put on your coffee table. Like it’s got beautiful pictures in it, really well written listings. I have noticed all the listings there are like, pretty high-end stuff. 40,000-acre ranches and stuff like that. So, maybe that is like, and this is spot on, I don’t really know, but maybe it’s the kind of thing where if you have a higher end property, it makes a ton more sense to use that kind of a paying thing on the regular.

Andrew I really appreciate you coming on the show, man. It’s been really awesome to talk to you. Lots of really helpful insight on how you’ve gotten where you are. So, at the end of every interview, well, most interviews we do, we ask three closing questions that aren’t really real estate related, but kind of just to learn more about how you think and how you work and what makes you successful. So, the first question here is what is your biggest fear?

Andrew: Is this professionally, or all over? Everything?

Seth: Any way you want to go.

Andrew: I’ll say two-sided. Professionally I’d say just the fear of failure. People relying on you, your family relying on you. Being self-employed. And on the personal side, being a man of faith. Just going to hell really.

Seth: Hey man, I hear you.

Jaren: So, what is something you’re most proud of?

Andrew: I never thought I’d be here. I thought I was going to be a corporate drone for 30 more years. And so, honestly, I’d say being self-employed, being my own boss and being on this journey to financial freedom. I’ve had a blast, really finding a passion. My wife had to keep a note up here, keep it smooth and slow because start talking to some land with people, I get super excited and I talk fast. But just being able to be passionate about something and just be self-employed, really.

Seth: Yeah. That’s huge. It’s funny how I have that same kind of drive and ambition like that. That matters to me. That’s important. But it’s funny when I talk to people who don’t care about that. They are totally cool just working a job. And I guess that’s cool for them, but it’s weird how we’re wired differently, you know? Like some people need that autonomy and freedom and others don’t need it at all.

Jaren: And then there’s hybrids out there like me where I’m definitely wearing the employee hat, right?

Seth: But you got the autonomy though, right?

Jaren: Yeah. And it’s weird how my career has developed into this kind of in-between where I have a lot of the perks of being self-employed, but I’m not self-employed. It’s just interesting.

Andrew: You had the choice though, right? You kind of joined forces.

Jaren: Yeah. It definitely was like the perfect fit, man. It’s been a dream come true. RETipster has been a dream job from day one for me because I’ve always wanted to do content stuff and I love teaching. I love making videos. It’s just awesome. I wanted to say though, I know we have one more question to ask you, but it’s really interesting how similar your and Seth’s stories are.

Seth: I think maybe what it is, is everybody has a gift to give to the world. Like something that they’re really good at. Value that they can give to anybody who wants what they have to offer. The trick is figuring out what that is. Because when you know what your gift is and you give it away, magic happens. And some people never figure it out. Or if they do, they have trouble figuring out how to give it away or actually having the resources to do that. So, if you’re ever in a spot where you know what you can do better than anybody else and you can do it, that’s just an awesome thing.

Andrew: I scream it from the rooftops. I tell everybody I can about land and real estate investing. I got a couple converts. My best friend made over $100,000 on his first deal.

Seth: Wow.

Jaren: Wow. We gotta get him on the podcast.

Andrew: He held it for a year, but it was like a 40-acre parcel good buy, but was kind of out there. And he was okay with sitting on it. I mean, he killed it.

Seth: That’s awesome, man.

Andrew: Yeah. People can just see my passion and my enthusiasm for it. And they just want to learn more and I’m just always excited to talk about it.

Seth: I never really get tired about telling people about it. It’s such a unique thing. And it really does bring things to the table that no other real estate business or really no other business period has to offer. And it’s cool when you can talk to somebody and they start to see the light and you can sort of see them start to get it. And it’s a fun thing to talk about.

Jaren: I literally just had a call right before we jumped on the podcast today. Somebody who is in kind of the apartment syndication space and he’s doing well, but he just was looking at some other options for more consistent cash flow and stuff. He was asking me about land. I just straight up told him that I don’t think that there is anything else that compares to the land flipping business because most land investors don’t even look at a deal unless they’re making 100% ROI. Like, how do you beat that? When you say that at a surface level, people think you’re lying. Or you’re some snake oil salesman, but it’s like, no, it’s just that’s what it is.

Andrew: Yup. That’s awesome.

Seth: I’m actually kind of surprised. I remember back when I first started, nobody was talking about this. I mean, truly nobody. It was an unknown business. And then there was like a really small crowd with Jack Bosch that started to learn about it. And I remember thinking like, man, oh, I really hope nobody else learns about this because it’s just going to kill the opportunity. And all these years later, thousands of people have gotten into it. Granted not all of them have stayed, but the secret is out. It’s not like this novel thing, but even then the secret still sort of isn’t out. Because I talked to people all the time who have never heard of it. It’s like, man, how can something this good stay under wraps? Are people just, they must just be dismissing it when they hear about it or I don’t know. I sort of thought it would be more commonplace now, but it’s still not.

Andrew: It’s not as cool.

Jaren: Yeah, it is not as cool. If you notice the people in the land community, a lot of them are kind of more detail oriented, not all of them. But generally speaking, there’s a lot of engineers, a lot of software guys. And it’s because they can see the opportunity in the midst of the boring detail stuff. Like dirt is boring as it gets like there’s nothing, there’s never going to be an HGTV show about flipping land. But because there’s not a lot of people in this space and because there’s just so much opportunity with the vastness of how much undeveloped land is available in the United States. Like, there’s a lot of room for a lot of land investors to enter into the industry.

Seth: So last question, Andrew. What is the most important lesson you have ever learned?

Andrew: I would have to definitely say regarding land, just keep mailing. Like I was saying earlier, just stay consistent and persistent. There’s been times where no deals come, you’ll be in a month or two, nothing of quality comes through. And then all of a sudden you get your grand slam. Just stay consistent. I mean, it’s there. It’ll come. It really will. I was so nervous, but just listen, I trusted you Seth. And I just kept plowing through and I’m just lucky to be here.

Seth: And I know this is a very common thing. I’ve experienced this and I hear this all the time from people who, there sort of comes in waves where they spend a lot of time sending out mail, then they get a huge influx of deals and they kind of work those and get them sold. And while they’re selling them, they’re not sending out more mail. So, there’s sort of like through the cycle. Have you found a way to keep a consistent pipeline of deals coming in while you’re working on getting them sold? Or do you sort of follow that same like, “Okay, this month I’m in acquisition mode. Next month I’m in selling mode?”

Andrew: I mean, I try to stay consistent because there’s such lag between the stages. I’ve learned you got to just keep the pipeline full. My wife was just telling me, stop mailing, stop making offers, because I hadn’t sold one in like a month or two, but then I just sold one and got one under contract. And so, then she was like, okay, well… But staying consistent and just keeping the pipeline full, really. I never stopped mailing.

Seth: Is it ever hard for you to, on the same day, be in an acquisition mode and then switch gears to selling mode? Like, okay, now I get incoming phone calls. Now I have sales phone calls. I don’t know. Is it hard for you to switch gears like that?

Andrew: Sometimes it’s hard to keep track of what’s what, what stage it’s in. And I have a lot of sticky notes. I’ve burned through those things, but that’s…

Jaren: That’s the most sophisticated CRM system I’ve ever heard of, man. Super complicated for me.

Andrew: It helps. But still a lot of stuff’s on paper for me until it’s a deal like I was saying earlier. But I don’t think there’s big secret sauce, big secret to it all, there’s really not.

Seth: When you’re sending your mail out, what does that look like for you? Are you just kind of taking a postcard template and using click to mail and that’s it?

Andrew: Right.

Seth: Okay. Sweet. Pretty straightforward then.

Andrew: I mean, I adapt it. Everything you’ve said kind of adapted that I go for a certain type of deal. I don’t do those desert lots for $500, stuff like that, but just standard templates. But I’m very clear about, I want your vacant land in blank county, Texas or whatever. So, they know right off the bat. And here’s what bullets I can pay all cash, I pay closing costs. They net the full offer amount. So, my current postcard is multiple generations but just keep working at it, really.

Jaren: That’s awesome.

Seth: Sweet. Do you want to share a website or anything?

Andrew: If they’re inclined, they can just find me on Facebook. My personal page. I’m not hiding anything. Andrew Flanagan, there in Texas.

Seth: Sweet. If you guys want to get in touch with Andrew, I know he’s also an active member of the RETipster community. Thanks again for doing that, Andrew. It’s always helpful to have your voice in there. Cool man. Well again, thanks a lot for sharing your experience. It’s been great to talk to you and hear what’s worked for you and we should stay in touch. Maybe we can do another one of these, someday.

Andrew: Thank you Seth. Your blog and your podcast and everything have been amazing. Thank you, Jaren too.

Jaren: Yeah, man.

Seth: Well, there you have it folks, that was their interview with Andrew. Hope you guys enjoyed it. I really, really liked that. I don’t know. I just felt like he had a lot of practical, down-to-earth guidance. It’s kind of cool how he’s managed to not spend a whole lot of money. I say that’s cool. Sometimes it ends up costing you more than it actually helps, but I was at a very similar way when I was getting started and I can totally understand that.

Jaren: I just posted on the RETipster forum. Somebody was asking about blind offers on postcards. And Seth has taught me a lot about over committing to things. So I’m not committing to this, but I’m thinking about it. And I’m probably 60% – 70% of the way there about testing it out in my next campaign. Because if you compare the cost, at least with like letterprinting.net who I’ve used in the past to service my direct mail postcards compared to a one page letter or even a two page letter, the costs to do postcards is significant. You’re saving a lot of money. And so, if we could figure out a way, because I mean, it wouldn’t be that hard, really. You would just say, “Hey, I will offer you X for your property in X county.” And you do the exact same process. You’re not doing an actual purchase agreement, but you’re at least throwing out a number. I wonder if they would do well.

Seth: Yeah. I actually have on my to-do list, make blind offer postcards again. I’m not committing either, but it’s on my radar. There’s a lot of different ways you could go with that. You could make it look exactly like the standard letter with just a number, insert it somewhere. Or you could like, take one side of the postcard and blow up the number, so it’s huge. You could make it look like, I mean, it wouldn’t really be that effective, but you could try to make it look like a dollar bill or something cheesy like that. And as for what works best, who knows? You just have to try a bunch of things and see what sticks.

But I can see how a number like that would have power in it. And probably would be, I mean, more noticeable than a letter anyway. And I think in that forum thread some people were talking about, am I contractually obligating myself to something by doing this? And pretty sure again, I’m pretty sure the answer is no, because nobody’s signing anything on that postcard and there’s no terms, there’s no dates, there’s no closing date or acceptance date or any of that stuff. It’s literally just a number. It’s kind of like the 32nd email offer—or it is automated offer now—through REI conversion. But that email offer where you’re just throwing a number out there. The point is just to throw something against the wall and see if anything sticks. So, it’s not a contract per se, but I don’t know. I feel like there’s something there. We’ve got to explore that a little bit.

Jaren: Now, one other thing I did want to throw out there. Something that I have recently changed. I used to have the same philosophy about direct mail consistency, and no matter what, I’m going to send out mail. He’s doing the smaller volumes. So I think if you’re doing 300 to 500 a week, that’s okay, that’s doable. But I was doing about a 1,000 to 1,500 a week and I was really trying to scale and grow. But again, you guys have been hearing me talk a lot about Profit First recently, because it’s had a really big impact on my life. And to adapt that towards real estate, I’m actually doing what they call an allocation, meaning I’m assigning when profit comes in, our money, revenue comes in from a sale and then I’m assigning money to different buckets as it were.

And that actually I am practically checking accounts, different checking accounts for different functions. I’m actually pulling my marketing costs after each sale. So, I’m personally running the cycle and my consistency on my business from sale to sale and not committing to sending out mail unless there’s actually money in the bank for mail. So, again, I don’t know what his circumstances are. And I just want to wave the flag for you guys. I actually think it’s especially starting off. It’s financially more wise personally, it’s safer to only send out mail after you have an influx of cash from a sale. So, for what it is, you can definitely, I know other guys and Andrew’s also full-time and I’m not, and there’s different circumstances there. So, you got to assess your own unique situation.

And I know a lot of other land guys who are full-time say, “No, this is my full-time thing. I’m committing this amount of direct mail every single month.” And if you have cash flow coming in from like terms deals, for example, to cover your overhead in case you don’t have sales pending, I think that’s fine. You can definitely set it up that way. But for somebody who’s doing it on the side part time, you can definitely set it up where you send out mail after a sale. So, you don’t have to commit to a big overhead at all.

Seth: Yeah, man, I got a lot out of that. I think Andrew’s got a really good head on his shoulders and I’m curious to see at what point he ends up outsourcing any of that work. Because I just know that it gets to be a lot in terms of wearing all the hats in your business. It’s like at some point, you got to get other people involved. I’m totally the biggest hypocrite in the world because it took me forever to even start doing this.

Jaren: Well, and it’s still kind of a struggle.

Seth: Yeah, I’m still not good at it. It’s not like I have it figured out, but on the same coin though, if your goal isn’t to grow it to be the biggest thing in the world, you might not need it if you’re okay with that and if you enjoy it. So, it’s not like it’s wrong to not by any stretch, but I don’t know. It’d be interesting to fast-forward five years from now and see, “Has Andrew outsourced anything?” And if so, what did he outsource and how did he get comfortable with that?

Awesome, man. Well, I guess, let’s transition to our little standard question that we do. All right. So the question today is who is the most famous person you have ever met?

Jaren: So, this is actually a pretty funny story. When I was six years old, my dad was married to my stepmom at the time she was Puerto Rican or is Puerto Rican. She grew up with somebody who knew Orlando Cepeda, who was entered into the hall of fame. And it was like a big baseball guy who played for the San Francisco Giants. And so, I was six years old and we went to his induction day into the hall of fame. All right. I think that’s what it’s called. I’m not a sports guy, people. So, I apologize if I’m butchering any of this, but I was sitting there in the dugout at six years old with all the San Francisco Giant people. And here comes along a guy named Barry Bonds who just sits there. And I was bored. I didn’t know what was going on. And so I was like, kind of dozing off trying to take a nap. And Barry Bonds came and sat next to me and he’s like, “Hey kid, no sleeping in the dugouts.” And I turned to him and said, “My dad lets me do whatever I want.” And I could see my dad hearing me. And he turned around and went bright red, seeing me like mouth off to Barry Bonds. So that’s my story.

Seth: Was that before you met Jesus?

Jaren: Yeah, I was six.

Seth: Back in those days.

Jaren: I was like six years old.

Seth: Oh, man. Have we talked about this? I feel like I’ve heard that story from you. Maybe it was…

Jaren: I don’t think it was on a podcast. Yeah.

Seth: Well that’s a good one. I mean, that’s a pretty famous name. I don’t think I’ve met anybody that’s famous before. I’ve met people who were like, famous in some circles, but like others wouldn’t know or care about them. In my mind, somebody like Pat Flynn is super famous in the online blogging world, but the average person on the street doesn’t know who that is. So, I’m at Pat Flynn. And I got to hang out with him for a few days at one of his workshops. I thought that was fun. In terms of like across the board famous people that everybody knows.

Well, even this, I don’t think everybody knows them, but so there is a big retail giant called Meyer. It’s sort of like Walmart, but Meyer is pretty much only in the Midwest. Fred Meyer, the guy who owned the whole thing, when I was 16 years old, I used to work at the airport. I was one of these people who would stand out on the runway, pointing planes, “Hey, go over here.” I’d use my arms and tell him which way to turn. Which I always thought was kind of a cool job for a 16-year-old. Not many 16-year-olds did that. But anyway, so his private jet flew in, because Meyer is headquartered in Grand Rapids. I helped him off the plane and I rolled out a red carpet, like he’s royalty that he can walk over. And I was like, “Sir, can I help you with your bag?” And he said, “No.” And that was the extent of our conversation. But hey, I met the guy and I just thought that was pretty cool.

Jaren: That’s awesome.

Seth: So that’s my story.

Jaren: That’s awesome. Probably the second most famous person I’ve met is Perry Marshall and he’s in the marketing space.

Seth: You didn’t just meet the guy. Like you actually, like he knew you. You did a lot of stuff together.

Jaren: Yeah. I mean, we still talk to each other and stuff too. Like we text back and forth on a rare occasion.

Seth: I should also say I met Ramit Sethi as well. He’s another one of these online…

Jaren: That’s a pretty big deal.

Seth: Yeah. I think he actually might be more famous than Pat Flynn if that’s possible.

Jaren: Yeah. That’s a pretty big deal. I’m trying to think here. I mean, there’s a lot of guys. I feel like Leslie Samuel, who we had on the podcast is a pretty big deal and we’ve had some pretty big guys on the podcast.

Seth: Yeah.

Jaren: Did I miss that amazing opportunity for a joke? Right out of the gate I should’ve been like Seth Williams. And I should have called you a celebrity and I missed the golden opportunity.

Seth: I’m not really famous though, man. I don’t know if anybody would laugh at that or maybe they would laugh because I’m not famous. Right. Is that the idea?

Jaren: Oh, no. You’re famous in the land circle, right?

Seth: Yeah, I guess so. I don’t know. I guess it depends on it’s all in the eye of the beholder, right?

Jaren: Yeah.

Seth: Actually, I think it’s really cool that anybody that pays attention to anything I say. I think maybe it’s because I’ve had enough people like that in my life that I looked up to and it’s like, “Man, that person is so cool.” I’ll do anything they say, because I look up to them that much. The fact that anybody would look at me in that light, it’s kind of mind-blowing. And you too Jaren, you’re going to be famous now. Right?

Jaren: I don’t know about that.

Seth: Has anybody ever asked for your autograph?

Jaren: No.

Seth: Me neither. So, maybe we’re not there yet.

Jaren: Yeah, man. Hey Seth, can I have your autograph? Boom.

Seth: Oh, done. Take that off my bucket list. So, you are asking me that?

Jaren: Never have I ever.

Seth: Alrighty. Well folks, if you’re listening to this on your phone, feel free to pick up that phone and text the word “FREE.” F-R-E-E to the number 33777. And you can stay up-to-date on what we’ve got going on with RETipster.

Be sure to go check out the forum too. There’s all kinds of cool conversations out in there every day. That’s retipster.com/forum. And if you want to see the show notes from this episode, you can find those at retipster.com/79. Because this is episode 79. And thanks again to Andrew for coming on the show with us. It was awesome talking with him and thanks to you, dear listener for hanging out with us. And hopefully we’ll talk to you in the next episode. See you then.

The post 079: How Andrew Quit His 6-Figure Job in 9 Months With His Land Investing Business appeared first on REtipster.

from Real Estate Tips https://retipster.com/079-andrew-land-investing/

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bixshits · 5 years ago

Text

Lost Odyssey - A Thousand Years of Dreams - Story Three Transcript

White Flowers

Lovely white flowers mask the town. They bloom on every street corner, not in beds or fields set aside for their cultivations, but blending naturally and in line with every row of houses, as though the buildings and the blossoms have grown up together.

The season is early spring and snow still lingers on the nearby mountains, but the stretch of ocean that gently laps the town's southern shore is bathed in refulgent sunlight.

This is an old and prosperous harbor town.

Even now, its piers see many cruise ships and freighters come and go.

Its history, however, is sharply divided between the time "before" and the time "after" an event that happened one day long ago.

People here prefer not to talk about it—the watershed engraved upon the town's chronology.

The memories are too sorrowful to make stories out of them.

Kaim knows this, and because he knows it, he has come here once again.

"Passing through?" the tavern master asks him.

At the sound of his voice, Kaim responds with a faint smile.

"You're here for the festival, I suppose. You should take your time and enjoy it."

The man is in high spirits. He has joined his customers in glass after glass until now and is quite red in the face, but no one shows any signs of blaming him for overindulging. Every seat in the tavern is filled and the air reverberates with laughter. Happy voices can be heard now and then as well from the road outside.

The entire town is celebrating. Once each year the festival has people making merry all night long until the sun comes up.

"I hope you've got a room for the night, Sir. Too late to find one now! Every inn is full to overflowing."

"So it seems."

"Not that anyone could be foolish enough to spend a night like this quietly tucked away under the covers in his room."

The tavern master winks at Kaim as if to say "Not you, Sir. I'm sure!"

"Tonight we're going to have the biggest, wildest party you've ever seen, and everybody's invited—locals or not. Drink, food, gambling, women: just let me know what you want. I'll make sure you have it."

Kaim sips his drink and says nothing.

Because he is planning to stay awake all night, he has not taken a room—though he has no plans to enjoy the festival, either.

Kaim will be offering up a prayer at the hour before dawn when the night is at its darkest and deepest. He will leave the town, sent off by the morning sun as it pokes its face up between the mountains and the sea, just as he did at the time of his last visit. Back then, the tavern master, who a few minutes ago was telling one of his regular customers that his first grandchild is about to be born, was himself just an infant.

"This one's on me, drink up!" says the tavern master, filling Kaim's shot glass.

He peers at Kaim suspiciously and says, "You did come for the festival, didn't you?"

"No, not really," says Kaim.

"Don't tell me you didn't know about it!

You mean you came here by pure chance?"

"Afraid so."

"Well, if you came here on business, forget it.

You'll never get serious talk out of anybody on a special night like this."

The tavern master goes on to explain what is so special about this night.

"You must've heard something about it. Once, a long time ago, this town was almost completely destroyed."

There are two great events that divide history into "before" and "after": one is the birth or death of some great personage—a hero or a savior.

The other is something like a war or plague or natural disaster.

What divided this town's history into "before" and "after" was a violent earthquake.

It happened without warning and gave the soundly sleeping people of the town no chance to flee.

A crack opened up in the earth with a roar, and roads and buildings just fell to pieces.

Fires started, and they spread in the twinkling of an eye.

Almost everyone was killed.

"You probably cant imagine it. All I know is what they taught me in school. And what does 'Resurrection Festival' mean to a kid! It was just something that happened 'once upon a time.' I live here and that's all it means to me, so a traveler like you probably can't even begin to imagine what it was like."

"Is that what they call this holiday? 'Resurrection Festival'?"

"Uh-huh. The town was resurrected from a total ruin to this.

That's what the celebration is all about."

Kaim gives the man a grim smile and sips his liquor.

"What's so funny?" the tavern master asks.

"Last time I was here, they were calling it 'Earthquake Memorial Day.'

It wasn't a festival for this kind of wild celebrating."

"What are you talking about?

It's been the 'Resurrection Festival' ever since I was a kid."

"That was before you were old enough to remember anything."

"Huh?"

"And before that, they called it 'Consolation of the Spirits.' They'd burn a candle for each person who died, and pray for them to rest in peace. It was a sad festival, lots of crying."

"You sound as if you saw it happening yourself."

"I did."

The tavern master laughs with a loud snort.

"You look sober, but you must be plastered out of your mind! Now listen, it's festival night, so I'm going to let you off the hook for pulling my leg, but don't try stuff like that in front of the other townspeople. All of our ancestors—mine included—are the ones who barely escaped with their lives."

Kaim knows full well what he is doing. He never expected the man to believe him.

He just wanted to find out himself whether the townspeople were still handing down the memories of the tragedy—whether, deep down behind their laughing faces, there still lingered the sorrow that had been passed down from their forefather's time.

Called away by one of his other customers, the tavern master leaves Kaim's side but not without first delivering a warning.

"Be careful what you say, Sir. That kind of nonsense can get you in trouble. Really. Think about it: the earthquake happened all of two hundred years ago!"

Kaim does not answer him.

Instead, he sips his liquor in silence.

Among the ones who died in the tragedy two hundred years ago were his wife and daughter.

Of all the dozens of wives and hundreds of children that Kaim has had in his eternal life, the wife and child he had here were especially unforgettable.

In those days, Kaim had a job at the harbor.

There were just the three of them—he, his wife, and their little girl.

They lived simply and happily.

The same kind of days that had preceded today would continue on into endless tomorrows. Everyone in the town believed that—including Kaim's wife and daughter, of course.

But Kaim knew differently. Precisely because his own life was long without end and he had consequently tasted the pain of countless partings, Kaim knew all too well that in the daily life of humans there was no "forever."

This life his family was leading would have to end sometime. It could not go on unchanged. This was by no means a cause for sorrow, however. Denied a grasp upon "forever," human beings knew how to love and cherish the here and now.

Kaim especially loved to show his daughter flowers—the more fragile and short-lived the better.

Flowers that bloomed with the morning sun and scattered before the sun went down. They were everywhere in this harbor town: lovely, white flowers that bloomed in early spring.

His daughter loved the flowers. She was a gentle child who would never break off blossoms that had struggled so bravely to bloom. Instead, she simply watched them for hours at a time.

That year, too...

"Look how big the buds are! They'll be blooming any time now!" she said happily when she found the white flowers on the road near the house.

"Tomorrow, maybe?" Kaim wondered aloud.

"Absolutely!" his wife chimed in merrily. "Get up early tomorrow morning and have a look!"

"Poor little flowers, though," said the daughter. "It's nice when they bloom, but then they wither right away."

"All the better" said Kaim's wife. "It's good luck if you get to see them blooming. It makes it more fun."

"It may be fun for us," answered the girl. "But think about the poor flowers. They work so hard to open up, and they wither that same day. It's sad..."

"Well, yes, I guess so..."

A momentary air of sadness flowed into the room, but Kaim quickly dispelled it with a laugh.

"Happiness is not the same thing as 'longevity'!" he proclaimed.

"What does that mean, Papa?"

"It may not bloom for long, but the flower's happy if it can open up the prettiest blossom and give off the sweetest perfume it knows how to make while it is blooming."

The girl seemed to be having trouble grasping this and simply nodded with a little sigh. She then broke into a smile and said, "It must be true if you say so, Papa!"

Your smile is more beautiful than any flower in full bloom.

He should have said it to her.

He later regretted that he had not.

The words he had uttered so carelessly, he came to realize, turned out to be something of a prophecy.

"Well now, young lady," he said. "If you're getting up early to see all the flowers tomorrow morning, you'd better go to bed right now."

"All right, Papa, if I really have to..."

"I'm going to bed now, too" said Kaim's wife.

"Okay, then. G'nite, Papa."

His wife said to Kaim, "Good night, dear. I really am going to bed now."

"Good night" Kaim replied, enjoying one last cup to ease the day's fatigue.

These turned out to be the last words the family shared.

A violent earthquake struck the town before dawn.

Kaim's house collapsed in a heap of rubble.

Kaim's two loved ones departed for that distant other world before they could awaken from their sleep and without ever having had a chance to say "Good morning" to him.

The morning sun rose on a town that had been destroyed in an instant.

Amid the rubble, the flowers were blooming—the white flowers that Kaim's daughter had wanted so badly to see.

Kaim thought to lay a flower in offering on his daughter's cold corpse, but he abandoned the idea.

He could not bring himself to pick a flower.

No one—no living being on the face of the earth, he realized—had the right to snatch the life of a flower that possessed that life for only one short day.

Kaim could never say to his daughter,

"You go first to heaven and wait for me: I'll be there before long."

Nor would he ever know the joy of reunion with his loved ones.

To live for a thousand years, meant bearing the pain of a thousand years of partings.

Kaim continued his long journey.

A dizzying numbers of years and months followed by: years and months during which numberless wars and natural calamities scourged the earth. People were born, and they died. They loved each other and were parted from the ones they loved. There were joys beyond measure, and sorrows just as measureless. People fought and argued without end, but they also loved and forgave each other endlessly. Thus was history built up as the tears of the past evolved gradually into prayers for the future.

Kaim continued his long journey.

After a while, he rarely thought about the wife and daughter with whom he had spent those few short days in the harbor town. But he never forgot them.

Kaim continued his long journey.

And in the course of his travels, he stopped by this harbor town again.

As the night deepened, the din of the crowds only increased, but now, as a hint of light comes into the eastern sky, without a signal from anyone, the noise gives way to silence.

Kaim has been standing in the town's central square. The revelers, too, have found their way here one at a time, until, almost before he knows it, the stone-paved plaza is filled with people.

Kaim feels a tap on the shoulder.

"I didn't expect to find you here!" says the tavern master.

When Kaim gives him a silent smile, the tavern master looks somewhat embarrassed and says, "There's something I forgot to tell you before..."

"Oh...?"

"Well, you know, the earthquake happened a long time ago. Before my father and mother's time, even before my grandparents' generation. It might sound funny for me to say this, but I can't imagine this town in ruins."

"I know what you mean."

"I do think, though, that there are probably things in this world that you can remember even if you haven't actually experienced them. Like the earthquake: I haven't forgotten it. And I'm not the only one. It may have happened two hundred years ago, but nobody in this town has ever forgotten it. We can't imagine it, but we can't forget it, either."

Just as Kaim nods again to signal his understanding of the tavern keeper's words, a somber melody echoes throughout the square. This is the hour when the earthquake destroyed the town.

All the people assembled here close their eyes, clasp their hands together, and offer up a prayer, the tavern master and Kaim among them.

To Kaim's closed eyes come the smiling faces of his dead wife and daughter. Why are they so beautiful and so sad, these faces that believe with all their hearts that tomorrow is sure to come?

The music ends.

The morning sun climbs above the horizon.

And everywhere throughout the town bloom countless white flowers.

In two hundred years, the white flowers have changed.

The scientists have hypothesized that "The earthquake may have changed the nature of the soil itself," but no one knows the cause for sure.

The lives of the flowers have lengthened.

Where before they would bloom and wither in the space of a single day, now they hold their blooms for three and four days at a time.

Moistened by the dew of night, bathed in the light of the sun, the white flowers strive to live their lives to the fullest, beautifying the town as if striving to live out the portion of life denied to those whose "tomorrows" were snatched away from them forever.

#lost odyssey #a thousand years of dreams #1000 years of dreams #kaim argonar #seth balmore #jansen friedh #ming numara #cooke and mack #cooke #mack #sarah sisulart

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olwog · 7 years ago

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So Peeps, Today we’ll learn about the joy of walking on the North Yorkshire Moors and a couple of anecdotes about a condom. It doesn’t have to be warm to walk and it’s even enjoyable in the rain.

It’s been a hectic summer and my adventures in France and Spain with the superheroes and the Pilgrim are a wonderful memory.

George has been beavering away arranging a walk from Swainby to Lordstones and back varying the route a little to capitalise on our priceless countryside.

I pack my stuff into a day bag and include a camelback water holder that I’ve found so useful in hotter climes I’m trying it on the local walks, it certainly saves on carrying plastic bottles and is instantly available encouraging me to drink; to quote Louise Graydon, “If you’re not peeing, you’re not drinking enough”.

Abbott’s excellent bus service to Swainby is leaving the Parish Church at quarter to ten and I’ll be catching it nearer my home a little later. The last time I caught this one I alighted to an empty coach having been the subject of some misunderstanding when the walk was postponed to the following day! I’m stepping on to the coach today with some trepidation. No worries, there’s a couple of smiling faces in the naughty boy seats towards the back.

I arrive at the back to a chorus of, “Now then”. If you live in Yorkshire you’ll recognise this brace of opposing adverbs as a greeting, if you live elsewhere it’ll probably have you scratching your head. Whilst Yorkshire folks don’t show a lot of emotion (except me who’ll be cry if there’s sad music on the radio and be rendered distraught if an animal dies in a story or film) so these two seemingly conflicting words, one representing the present and the other the past, when combined, don’t make any sense but in Yorkshire they represent an affectionate (but not too affectionate) greeting and sometimes have the addendum, “How you doing?” but that element is assumed.

So when used in entirety we have “Now then, how you doing?”. So the “Now then”, is the cue to listen and the, “How you doing?” means I’m your good friend and I’m interested in your health.

Of course, it can also be used with a cursory nod of acknowledgment that you actually exist but I prefer the former.

George and Dave are full of beans and the short journey to Swainby which is free for old farts with a pass hence the term “Old farts pass” when referring to our magic card. It’s about the size of a credit card with a mug shot that looks like it was taken prior to being locked up and it takes us around our area for free. There are rumours of people using these to travel around the country by virtue of ritualistic study of local timetables and linking one local service to another. You need a lot of time on your hands for this though and we prefer the train for longer journeys, the fare is heavily discounted, of course, by our ‘senior citizens’ discount cards though so it’s win – win.

We’re dropped at Swainby and Peter is all togged up with his best waterproofs and looks set for a week on an Icelandic Trawler.

Pete has a new camera! It’s a wonderful bridge camera, although it can be used for portraits and landscapes too and it’s rekindled his passion for photography a hobby, it has to be said, that he is both proficient and gifted and I’ll probably steal some of his output today for this piece.

We set off immediately along Swainby High Street adjacent to the stream that’s usually in full flow. Whilst not short of water it’s surprising how little there is today. The trees are still in full summer plumage but there’s a hint of autumn. Looking at the leaves carefully you can see an edge to them and there’s the odd one that’s already started to make the transition from green to the beautiful golds yet to come. We make a left along Scugdale Road and on to Holgate.

A mile and a half in and we’re turning off the road onto the Cleveland Way. Pete calls a photo stop at the gate (so it’s a gate camera too, it’s very versatile) then starts the ‘up’.

We did this walk in the spring when the gorse was in full show of almost perfect yellow and the spring flowers were waking from their protective sleep through the winter. Today it’s overcast and grey but that’s OK, you don’t have to squint and the slightly lower temperature means walking is comfortable.

Another half mile and we’re through the gate and here starts the proper ‘up’. The steps are not slippery at the moment but the weather forecast is poor so they’ll be a bunch of laughs when we return in the afternoon. In spring the woods here were alive with birdsong and although we hear the odd crow it’s quiet with the exception of an occasional grunt as we negotiate these carefully positioned stones that represent the Cleveland Way proper.

The gate is both a barrier for the sheep further up on the moor and a delimiter, on one side is the wood and relatively clear of ground cover whereas the other represents the moor proper and abundant ground cover largely of ferns. Pete takes a couple of photographs of both ferns and sheep (this device is priceless, not only a bridge camera but also a fern and sheep camera). There are few trees on the moor and the path disappears through vibrant ferns that overhang. They’ve been known to gather water from the mizzling rain that we occasionally get through the night and then deposit on the unsuspecting passer-by so the day may be blue sky and sunshine but you still end up well and truly soaked. Fortunately, it’s not like that today and although still grey above we exit the ferns still dry from the elements but wet from sweat – you can’t win!

There’s a lot of ‘up’ it’s just over 400 metres at the top but from a mental prospective you wouldn’t know it as the surrounding moor is not much short of that; however, you really do know it in terms of exertion but that’s part of why we do it, the feeling is great.

Towards the top of Live Moor there’s a cairn that turns out to be an ancient burial ground and a stone has been placed with a little plaque explaining this and asking that you don’t add stones. We were not aware of this and on occasion, in the past, have been guilty of the odd addition with a thought for those that have gone before. Pete takes a couple of photographs (so it’s a cairn camera too, it’s been a good purchase).

It’s down and then back up Gold Hill then along Faceby Bank towards and around Carlton Bank. At times we just stop and admire the view of the Cleveland Way as it stretches in front of us zigzagging its way into the distance. We take a few photos but it’s best to be here and there’s a couple of observations that this is one our best walks, with the wind (and even occasional rain) together with blue skies when we’re lucky, there are some of the best views across the heather that you’re likely to see. Just beautiful.

It’s all down now to Lordstones and we arrive just as the rain starts, perfect timing. Only down side is that their gas is off so no cooked meals. We ensconce ourselves under the huge covers outside and arrange for various beverages and sandwiches to be sent to our wooden bench seat outside where we can keep an eye on the beautiful chaffinches and their young that are flitting between the vacated tables that have a few crumbs on each. They’re fascinating to watch and Pete has his camera framed on them in seconds (so it’s a bird camera too, versatility knows no bounds).

After twenty minutes a guy dressed completely in leathers and looking like a man from the Lordstones chapter of Hells Angels turns and addresses me, “Now then George”, see, there that phrase again.

“Now then Alan”, I return. Now, this is a little underwhelming considering I’ve only seen him a couple of times in 30 years so I go across and give him a hug. A man-hug obviously, no kissing the air on each side of the head or anything like that but affectionate all the same. We spend some time catching up, he already knew about my circumstances but he had bad new from his perspective and told me that his wife had had a stroke and now struggled a bit.

//*I add this to this lighthearted transcript because I’d like you, Dear Reader, to tell your loved one(s) how much they mean to you whenever you can and to live in the moment and to start each day with a clean sheet no matter what happened or was said the previous day. */Sermon over

It’s raining heavily now but we must start our return so our wet gear is sourced and donned. As we set off Johnny Ray is buzzing in my head, how this could be so when “Just a’ Walkin’ in the Rain” was a hit in 1956 and I was 5 is anyones guess but here it is. The rain is blowing from the North initially so it’s a bit nippy and I have a walking stick which is essential on walks with stones as steps, they become lethal; however, when you have to carry something and your hands get wet they soon become excruciatingly painful. If you’ve worked outside you realise that this transient and will soon pass, they’re still cold but don’t feel it anymore and over the next twenty minutes that’s exactly what happens.

We reach the top of the back of Carlton Bank and begin the easy walk back down towards Holey Moor, Live Moor and the south side of Faceby Plantation then the anecdotes started- if you’ve any issues with rude stuff it might be best if you stopped reading…

Undivided attention again eh?

Just incase you’re not sure what a shoe horn is, it is a device that you put into the back of your slip on shoes to ease the shoe onto your foot. They’re still around but rarely used. Now here’s the anecdotes…

We’d been talking about embarrassing times when one of the team recalled an amorous interlude at the end of an evening on a snicket between South Parade and Thirsk Road when two nineteen year olds were becoming more familiar with each other. It was at a time when going back to either home was really not an option for horizontal jogging and they chose to do a bit of vertical stuff against the fence. They’d settled on that particular place where there is a dog leg in the snicket as it is easy to see both ends. After (not much) preamble our speaker tells us of fumbling about in his wallet for a condom that he’d secreted in there some time ago (it was actually two years ago and at that time it was wishful thinking). After retrieving the wrapper and removing the dust and fluff, clearly with one hand as the other was meant to be maintaining interest, he bit and tore the end off the packaging to remove the contents. Now at this point we’re interested from the point of view of ‘did he damage the latex contents’, he didn’t; however, on removal he somehow reversed the teat and whilst he’d practiced the manoeuvre in the privacy of his own home on occasion he hadn’t tried it blind fold or in the dark. Now a condom is meant to be removed from its packaging and the teat end pinched between finger and thumb then rolled on naturally like putting on a tight sock (or for the ladies like putting on tights). He’d removed it and in the excitement of the moment had managed to turn it inside out…

…on this occasion it didn’t end well but they remained good friends.

As with all good anecdotes the next tale was told in an effort to ‘out condom’ the last and Walking Chum number 2 (what’s said on the walk stays on the walk) and after the laughter from the first dies down he chirps up…

“Well I never practiced trying to get the thing on, I thought it would be easy”, says he, “And, not surprisingly, it was something of a disaster”.

So, we’d dried our eyes and regained our decorum and walking steadily again.

He continues.

“My tale begins in a car.” He mentioned the car but I’ll hold that back as it may identify the innocent.

His oratory went like this:-

“Englebert Humperdink was singing ‘A Man Without Love’ and Love Affair were singing ‘Everlasting Love’ both of which were entirely appropriate.”

“We’d stopped in a gateway of a field not far from…and been ‘chatting’ for a while.”

We’re still walking and the view down Scugdale is getting better but I’m not sure it was noticed.

He continued, “I asked if she’d like to get in the back and she said no, I’d rather stay in the front with you. OK that bit didn’t happen but I couldn’t resist it.”

Off he went again, “We were in the back and I too had a condom that had lain dormant since purchase.

Having spent some time doing a bit more ‘chatting’ I retrieved said condom and began the process of opening it and here’s the issue – I didn’t know that you were supposed to roll the thing on – so I unrolled it. Now, believe me, an unrolled condom is just not going anywhere it just is not designed for that kind of fitting.”

We’ve cleared Faceby Wood and making our way down Hollin Hill but no one had really noticed.

He cleared his throat, “So here I am with a lady in good spirit, we’re both giggling nervously and neither of us have a clue. So in an effort to lighten the situation and with reference to getting the condom on I said ‘I could do with a shoe horn.’”

“The atmosphere changed and her immediate response was, ‘We do it naturally or not at all.’

…It was some time before another opportunity arose”

So we’re into Clain Wood and heading down hill towards Swainby.

The weather is still variable and we sit in the bus shelter waiting for the Abbotts return service to Northallerton ‘Old Farts Passes’ at the ready.

It’s been a good walk and the tales were fun too. No ladies names were divulged during the above and no-one but the speaker was compromised.

The walk is just short of 11 miles and is a little bit challenging at both ends but well worth the effort. It does help if you’re walking with people you like and just for information the anecdotes are not often quite as rude but it’s funny when they are.

Acknowledgments: Photographs from Peter Hymer, George Renwick and me.

Swainby to Lordstones Return – Oh, and a Condom Anecdote So Peeps, Today we’ll learn about the joy of walking on the North Yorkshire Moors and a couple of anecdotes about a condom.

#Anecdote #Cleveland Way #Condom #Funny #Landscapes #Lordstones #North Yorkshire Moors #Photographs #Photos #Pictures #Rude #Swainby #Walking #Walks #Yorkshire #Yorkshire Moors

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