#Shoveling this in my mouth like a wild animal

[katagawajr]

i love cookies and cream ice cream

[januaryembrs]

NEARLY BROUGHT ME TO MY KNEES | Spencer Reid x Prentiss!Reader [2]

Description: FIVE times Spencer thinks he might like you + the ONE time he knows.

Word length: 20k

Trigger Warnings: death, murder, Lauren arc, spencer's addiction mentioned, Diana's schizophrenia mentioned, vomit, alcohol, blood, usual criminal mind warnings. mommy AND daddy issues in the prentiss family.

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‘so sweet with a mean streak

nearly brought me to my knees.’

The one where he tries flirting

Emily tutted at her as the girl blindly shoved the Lucky Charms in her mouth, her tongue staining a gross blue-green colour from the additives as she read from a battered copy of Anna Karenina. Bugsy had been living with her for just two weeks now, since her impromptu fleeing from the altar, and Emily’s certainly had a good insight into the life of the twenty three year old. 

Yes, it was her birthday next week. No, she didn’t act her age anymore than she had at twenty. 

“Bug, slow down.” Emily urged, a rogue orange marshmallow dribbling down her chin as she plunged the spoon in before she’d even swallowed the last mouthful, “You get sick when you eat too fast,” 

Bugsy waved her off with the utensil, not even ripping her eyes away from the page in front of her, scooping up the marshmallow with the side of her finger and popping it into her mouth. 

Emily rolled her eyes, downing a few sips of her coffee and heading for the stairs, knowing her ride would be here any moment and she still had yet to change her shirt from the one she’d spilled toothpaste down not ten minutes earlier. 

“Niko needs breakfast when you’re done,” The older of the two shouted down to the breakfast table, a streak of tabby grey running under her feet at the sound of food. Bugsy had insisted she bring her new feline friend into Emily’s apartment, and as much as she’d hated the way she nearly tripped over the chubby bastard almost every day they’d been here, she certainly had a fondness for him. 

Bugsy hummed in acknowledgement, though she scraped the edges of her bowl clean by the time the cat in question hopped up onto the counter in search of her leftover milk. 

“This is not for you, you have too much already,” She scolded, shovelling the last few sugary pieces of cereal into her mouth right as the door knocked. 

She dogeared her page, gulping down a quick sip of Emily’s coffee, cringing when she caught it was much too strong for her liking, and heading for the door, her sister yelling to her again. 

“Bug, can you get that- wait- are you wearing pants?” 

She certainly wasn’t, having rolled straight out of bed in a pyjama shirt and underwear, and towards the promise of breakfast, nor as she swung the front door to the apartment open before Emily had a chance to rush down the stairs.

Spencer could have laughed when he saw her, all too reminiscent of the first time he’d met her. The boxers that hugged her legs beneath a large top he was entirely convinced was not hers, though her face lit up in excitement to see him. 

“Good morning!” He thrust a coffee to-go into her hand, still warm even from where it had been jostled around in his car.

“You’re my saviour,” She grinned, sipping on the sweet beverage with bright eyes, “Cute sweater vest-” 

She was quickly manhandled behind the door by two firm hands, Emily’s face enraged as she glared down at her sister where she was now out of sight from the doctor. 

“What did I tell you about wearing pants? Huh? You nearly gave Mrs Jensen a heart attack last week,” Emily hissed, as Bugsy shrugged, remembering the look of horror the old woman across the hall had given her when she’d taken the trash out in a hoodie and booty shorts.

“It’s Spencer,” She poked her head around the door, despite Emily’s shoving, like she was taming a wild animal, “You don’t mind, do you?”

He shook his head, an amused and easy smile on his face as he watched the sisters bicker, not entirely unlike the way he and Emily tended to pick at one another. 

“Not at all; I agree pants are loathable,” And he wasn’t lying. He tried to go for looser fitting trousers or sweat pants, hating the way the tight fabrics restricted his legs, rubbed his skin, making him want to itch and squirm inside his body. 

“Don’t you start,” Emily pointed at him, huffing as she stepped out of the apartment, “You know she gets all worked up and weird on sugar,” 

“Hey, I’m the last person to deny someone a coffee,” He replied, and the two turned to head back to his car, not before he threw the younger woman a look over his shoulder and a wave. 

“Go save the world, kiddos.” She waved back, sipping her coffee indeed with bare legs that would have a nun blushing, “Curfews at nine, Doctor Reid, I expect both of you home for dinner!” She nudged the door closed with her hip before Niko could run out after Emily, and Spencer chuckled to himself, shaking his head. 

“See, told you,” Emily sniggered, rolling her eyes, “Weird,” 

Though that wasn’t quite the word he’d have used. 

–

A killer, so far as they had been able to profile from the four bodies, was targeting women he picked up in night clubs in Atlanta. Most of the team, except Derek, had outgrown the clubbing scene, though Spencer didn’t quite think he’d ever been in it to start with. They all went to O’Keeffe’s usually once a month or so for a quick drink, but it was not big on his list. 

Rossi, Reid and Derek stared at the puddle of blood on the sidewalk, wincing as Emily leaned over the balcony, the five story drop making her tug her lip in between her teeth. 

This woman must have been terrified by something, someone, to see this as a better way out. 

“Maybe she fought back,” Hotch speculated behind her, drawing her attention back to the cleaning equipment scattered over the floor, entirely different to the last three crime scenes where they had been arranged neatly into a triangle, “And when Becky fought back, his routine was compromised, cause he knew the police would respond,”

“Or she could have jumped,” Emily responded gravely, shaking her head at the carpet beneath her boots, “Her nervous system is pumping adrenaline, her fight or flight response kicks in?” Both were equally plausible options, but not ones they had time to entirely pick over. 

“He’s struck two Fridays in a row, and if his routine’s been interrupted, it might compel him to strike again,” Hotch said, his arms crossed tightly over his chest, his brow furrowed deeper than it usually was. 

“It’s Saturday, the clubs will be packed tonight,” Emily replied, her eyes sad, worried. 

“Take a look at the classes the Unsub might have taken, we need to generate a suspect pool as soon as possible,” Her boss ordered, and she nodded heading for the door before she stopped, looking at him with a grimace he didn’t quite understand, “What is it?”

“Bugs-my sister used to work as a shot girl in a club.” She said after a moment of thought, “She could smell a rat from a mile away; said most girls who work in bars get this sixth sense about guys with bad intentions, so they know when to cut them off earlier than most,” 

Emily looked at him for a moment, and he seemed troubled, hesitant as she was to even tease the idea to him, before he sighed, rubbing a hand over his forehead. 

“Call her in.” He said through an outbreath, gritting his teeth the way he did when he was in between a rock and a hard place. 

Rock being another girl murdered by tonight with a huge opportunity to catch the guy in the act missed. Hard place being a twenty-three year old risking her skin for his team for a third time. He hated the paperwork she brought him, hated the look on her face the day Spencer and Derek had dragged her out of that chapel bloodied and shaken even more. 

“But she wears a vest under her clothes, and she stays with Reid and Morgan,” He reasoned, “And just purely scouting; if the Unsub strikes, she gets out there like any other civilian.”

Emily nodded, her hand routing through her pockets for her phone already, “Couldn’t agree more,” She said, hitting the call button with a sigh. She just hoped this time her baby sister wouldn’t be making any drastic calls like throwing herself in the Unsub’s way. Though, Emily knew Spencer wouldn’t let her take another hit for him ever again. Not after the way he’d seemed so distraught the moment she’d been dragged from that room, his eyes all but glistening with tears when he’d seen her on the bed, bloodied and beaten for his sake. 

No, Emily could stake her life on the fact Reid would go down swinging before that ever happened to her again. 

-

“When you think about the nature of serial crimes, it’s amazing there aren’t more predators in clubs,” Spencer said, hoping the pretty girls he’d managed to snag into conversation didn’t hear the way his voice stuttered. This was so far out of his depth, the entire club atmosphere suffocating him worse than any tight pants ever could. The music was too loud, the heavy bass making him wince, the air was too close, too warm, the bodies that kept shoving past him made him want to shower for two hours straight and then wash his hands as well. He’d turned down the drink Derek had offered him, knowing the exact amount of bacteria that swarmed the ice behind the bar, on the rims of the glasses, on the taps- 

Spencer was more than overwhelmed. And talking to beautiful women was not helping his flushed demeanour whatsoever. 

“I mean, excessive amounts of alcohol, countless opportunities for date rape drugs, not to mention suprisingly risky behaviour being pursued,” He counted off, his satchel strapped tightly to his side, “All right, so who wants a flyer?” The three women turned their nose up in awkward smiles, the tallest pushing past him with little more than an outright scoff, the other girl following her like lost dogs, “Nobody? Okay, all right,” He said, his face crestfallen at their reaction, though he wasn’t so unused to it. Girls tended to react that way when he spoke, his entire high school career had been the same. Infact, the only girl other than his co-workers who ever bothered to listen when he spoke was-

“I’ll take one,” A voice came from behind him, the same one he had incidentally been thinking of since they’d left Emily’s apartment, and he could already tell she was smiling before he whipped around to see her slinking through the crowd. 

He was ready to retort something clever, but felt his words congeal in his throat. He had thought, that day when he’d stopped the elevator and seen her in a sodden wedding dress, that he had seen her at her most beautiful. Yes, her makeup had been tracking down her face with her tears, her hair sticking to her cheeks, her expression weepy. But she had reminded him of a star, glistening with the rain, the water shimmering off the snow white fabric, it had taken his breath away then, even when she’d thrown her arms over his shoulders, as if he was the only thing that she could grab on to for safety. 

But that dress was nothing like the one she wore now. 

It was nothing extravagant, and truthfully he’d seen at least ten girls in this club alone that had gone way more lavish than she had bothered to on such short notice. But, Spencer couldn’t help but take her whole image in as she shoved her way in front of him, an easy smile on her face. 

“Beats boxers and pyjama shirts, huh?” She twirled cheekily, warming under his gaze that blinked heavily at her. The dress had been an old thing she’d bought for a frat party, when she’d felt particularly sorry for herself and was going out looking for a bonehead jock to take home. It fit her nicely, complimented the areas she wanted it to, hid the others. A good fail safe option for a last minute night out like this. Covered the kevlar vest Hotch and Emily had wrangled her into.

Not her finest moment, being jumped on by her older sister as her boss forced the bullet jacket over her head; the new girl, Jordan, staring in discomfort as she’d cursed both of them out colourfully for ruining her outfit, but the way Spencer seemed to gulp heavily made her smile wider. 

“You look…” He swallowed again, his fingers digging into the flyers in his hand. Hot. She looked hot. Hot enough that he felt his face flush with the same feeling, he hoped she couldn’t see the way he blushed beneath the club lights, “Beautiful,” He settled on, because ‘hot’ was an entirely Derek word to use. 

“So you keep telling me,” Bugsy preened under his gaze, grinning like she knew something he didn’t. Grabbing one of the flyers from his sweaty palms gently, she took a look at the general sketch, not noticing the way he had yet to tear his eyes off her, “Alright, this the guy?” 

“Yeah, we think he has a mark of some sort- like a birthmark or a scar over his left eyebrow,” He informed, corralling her towards where Morgan stood, his own eyes widening at the girl’s attire. 

They knew she was coming to help scout the scene, they didn’t realise she’d come so ready. Derek immediately felt stupid for doubting her. 

“Woah, did someone call the fire department, because you’re about to set the damn sprinklers off,” He teased, her face lighting up at the man she knew had a way of making her feel a million bucks every time he saw her. 

Emily said he had little sisters of his own, and maybe that was how he knew just what to say. He had many years of experience being the best big brother. 

“Oh, please, you guys spoil me,” She snickered, though her eyes scanned the crowd for a general scope of the club. Safe to say she did not miss the eight pm till four am shifts she used to pull, nor did she miss the drunk bodies swaying around her, the men who would get handsy, the girls who would get scrappy, “So, how’s it going?” 

“Not good, I gave the profile to one woman and she asked if I was the unsub,” Spencer sighed, running a hand through his rogue curls, the humidity of the stuffy bar making them tighten around his ears just that bit more. “How are you doing?” 

“Well, I gave out all my flyers,” Derek said smugly, though Spencer’s eyebrows raised, a smile teasing at his lips. 

“Oh yeah? How many phone numbers did you get?” Bugsy snorted at his words, looking between the men with a smirk. 

“None, I’m working the case here, kids,” Derek tutted, to which Spencer and Bugsy looked at eachother with identical doubt, flicking their gaze back to Morgan. He huffed, “Okay, four were offered, but I didn’t take any of them.” 

Spencer’s jaw dropped, face scrunching in confusion how Morgan was so charismatic with women even when he wasn’t trying. 

“Alright, I’m gonna go grab more flyers from the van. You,” He clapped a hand on Spencer’s shoulder, “Need to relax, man. Remind me to teach you the basics on picking up girls. And you,” Derek pointed to where Bugsy nodded patiently, “Make sure wonder boy doesn’t get eaten alive. And stay together.” 

She nodded again, watching him leave through the crowd; already a woman grabbed on his arm for his attention, where she watched him politely decline with one of those flirty smoulders he’d mastered. 

“I don’t get how he does it. I mean, I get he has the whole body of a God thing going for him,” Spencer sighed, as the two of them went back out into the crowd, scanning for a group of girls who looked particularly sober enough to listen, “But, he just has this way, you know. I’ll don’t think I’ll ever have the way,” 

“Don’t put yourself down like that,” She chastised, nudging him affectionately with her elbow, “You’re very beautiful yourself, you know? You don’t need some stupid way, you just need to be yourself,” 

She said it as if it was nothing, as if it hadn’t just hit him in the chest that she thought he was attractive, though he still remembered that first day they’d met when she assumed he was a stripper. 

His heart swelled in his chest. 

“You really think so?” He asked unsure, waiting for her to laugh in his face and tell him it had just been a tease, she was good at those. But she was never cruel. Never to him. He didn’t know why he’d expected it. 

“Absolutely! I’ve seen like three girls already giving you goo-goo eyes. Believe me, you got the looks,” She simpers, watching his eyes scan the crowd to look for the supposed culprits. 

“So, what, it’s my personality they don't like?” He asked, though he knew that was more than likely the case. He’d always been told he buzzed in people’s ears like a fly, like he was simply background noise the greater population wanted to tune out. 

He knew that would be it. It didn’t stop the small stab of hurt in his stomach however. 

“If someone doesn’t like your personality, that is a them problem, Spencer, not you,” Bugsy was quick to snap, the joking lessening in her eyes as she caught his dejected expression, “Girls like it when you talk about something you enjoy, something you know what you’re talking about. Which should be easy, since you know everything. What do you feel most comfortable talking about?” 

“Statistics,” He said with a nod, to which she looked at him fondly.

“Okay, we have statistics as a backup option. Anything else?” She looked at him, the light bouncing off her eyes in a way that had him pause to think. 

“Magic?” He offered, and she smiled even wider, if that was even possible. 

“Magic! Perfect, girls love feeling magical,” She beamed, nudging him again with her elbow, and the two of them walked over to the bar, “Show me then, Gandalf. What moves would you pull on me if I was a girl?”

He blinked at her, “Are you … not a girl?” He asked, pure bewilderment on his face as he stole a few napkins from the counter. 

She snickered, “Okay, if I wasn’t me. If you didn’t know me,” 

“If I didn’t know you, I’d be way too nervous to even talk to you. And you definitely wouldn’t want to talk to me,” He said as he fiddled with the paper between his obnoxiously long fingers, folding the sheets into miniature shapes. 

She chuckled at him, shaking her head. It had never been like this with them before. Sure, she teased him, like she always had, but he was teasing back. Complimenting her with a seriousness beyond just being nice. 

Something was different in him since the day Cyrus dragged her away. And if that hadn’t done it, then seeing her every morning for two weeks had changed the boyish anxiety that had lingered even then. 

“Stop stalling and show me these tricks of yours,” She bit playfully, though the grin she gave him was genuine as she saw something mischievous flash in his eyes. 

“Patience is virtue, patience is virtue-” He murmured, fiddling with the short, plastic straws they kept at the bar, “Now for this to work, I’m going to need a beautiful assistant. Do you think you could find one for me-” 

She smacked his arm, and he snickered. She shook her head, fighting her own laugh overcoming her. 

Maybe she was right. Talking about something he loved made him feel entirely at ease, like he controlled every angle their conversation took, and the air between them had taken this odd electric turn he wasn’t expecting like someone had pumped a thousand volts under his skin.

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding,” He replied, holding out one of the straws, about as plain and simple as it would be if it were in a drink, “But I will need some magic words,”

“Ofcourse,” She drawled, her cheeks hurting from how tight she was smiling, “What are they?”

“Magic words are, ‘I’ll be there’” He instructed, fiddling with the cuffs of his sleeves as he watched her frown, and he pointed the straw at her mouth like a microphone, “You got it?” 

“Yep,” She responded, even though the confusion read clear as day on her face. He tapped the straw on her nose and cleared his throat. 

“3, 2, 1,” He tapped it to her temple, then to each of her shoulders, “Go on a date with me?” 

“I’ll be there,” She responded, and in a strobe of light the single instrument became a trio of origami roses, stuffed into the straws as stems. 

Her brain caught up to her as he gently placed them in her hand, her eyes gazing at him like he had just presented her with a 24 carat diamond, though in reality it was nothing more than a silly trick with napkins and plastic. 

“Spencer,” She said earnestly, and he could have sworn her voice quivered for a split second, before she shook her head at him, punching him on the hip gently, “You are the most humble man I’ve ever met. You do that to any other girl and you’re getting laid, I’m telling you,” 

He rubbed his chin bashfully, both of them catching the way the waitress behind the bar watched him with large, blue eyes Bugsy could have bathed in. She was gorgeous, and she stared at Spencer as if she’d been the one given roses. 

Attracted. Interested. 

“Talk to her,” Bugsy whisper-yelled, nodding over to the barmaid who busied herself with another order, though they both saw the way her flicking glances to the two of them as she scooped ice, “She would have seen if a guy like that frequented somewhere like here, talk to her,”

“What- no-” He protested, but his eyes widening as Bugsy leaned over the bar to flag the woman down with that playful charisma of hers, not missing the way a few heads turned as the dress tightened around her ass as she bent forward. 

He felt his chest flash with anger, glaring at the men, hoping it was enough to ward them off. Her hand enclosed around his wrist, drawing his attention back to the bartender who watched him with a sweet face. He had to admit she was attractive. 

“This is my very best friend, Spencer,” Bugsy told the woman, who smiled at him, and the Prentiss girl lifted his hand up to wave at her like he was a ragdoll, “Spencer, wanted to show you something, didn’t you, Spence?” 

Raising her eyebrows at him, nodding to the flyers in his hand. 

“I’m gonna go dance,” She fibbed, knowing she was going to go scout out the crowd to see if any guys fit the profile, nudging him a little harder than before, “Remember what we talked about. I’ll be by the DJ,” 

Grinning encouragingly, he watched her swoop into the crowd like it was second nature, not missing the collection of guys who watched her every move; she captured the room when she moved, when she smiled, when she politely excused herself past a group of girls that tried to pull her into their circle with friendly cheers. 

He did another one of his tricks for Austin, he’d come to learn was the name of the girl behind the bar, but it hadn’t felt the same, not even when she gave him her number unprompted, even as she flirted, smiled prettily, batted those sea blue eyes at him. It wasn’t the same. 

He worried for a moment that the electricity he’d felt was reserved only for Bugsy, but he squashed it down faster than he could confront the idea. 

2. The one where he nearly dies

“I don’t know how to do this,” JJ confessed, her bluebell eyes filled with tears as she stared out of her boss’ office and into the bullpen full of officers, scientists and even the damn military tearing through pages and pages of resources for answers. 

Anthrax. A weapon of mass destruction they’d already had a small dose of, was on the move through the BAU’s own city. And they each had strict instructions to not alert their loved ones. 

“I can’t stop thinking about Henry,” She whimpered through a strong facade as she turned to Hotch, and she saw the same guilt eating him up in those dark eyes of his that rarely let anything slip. 

He had Jack. He had Haley, even with the divorce papers signed so long ago. He had people at risk too. And yet she couldn’t stop seeing her precious little boy’s face as he lay back in his pushchair and enjoyed the sights of the park, the same park that had just been targeted with an airborne disease-

“He goes for a walk almost every single day at Potomac Park,” She sniffed, the nausea chewing away at her brain as she recounted the lesions on that poor teenage girls skin, that's going to be Henry, that’s going to be Will, “What type of mother am I if I don’t atleast call and tell them to stay home?” 

“JJ, we can’t,” Hotch said, though he felt his own dam start to tear down as he tried not to think of what could possibly happen to his own sweet son. 

“I know, but-” Her throat bobbed, “It-it’s not just me- Emily’s worried about Bugsy. She told me she cuts through the park on the way to her lectures- she has one every day this week- Hotch-”

It was true. She had caught Emily in her own turmoil as the woman sped off to grab a drink seconds after chugging down the dose of Cipro they’d all been given that morning. She’d caught her filling a glass of water until the liquid started leaking down the sides and went over her shaking fingers, and even then she’d had to tug her friend out of whatever rabbit hole the words ‘Media Blackout’ had sent her down. 

“I understand you both have people you want to protect,” Hotch was the voice of reason, as he always was, and it stung her to see his face so cold since she knew he was drowning his own sorrows behind it, “But if we all called home and used this information to give us an advantage other people don’t have, is that the right thing to do?” 

She bit her lip, knowing he was right. She just prayed on everything she had Will would stay home with Henry today, Haley would have a movie night with Jack, and for whatever she had seen in Emily’s eyes earlier, a pure, unadulterated self-loathing, that Bugsy at least took the day off teaching.

JJ prayed, and prayed, and prayed. 

–

She shuffled her notes together as she marked papers at her desk. They let her take the office to herself since she’d been at the University for five months now, gave her free reign of her lectures without having a supervisor like they had the first eight weeks or so. Bugsy enjoyed, surprising as it was to her, the feeling of somewhere that wasn’t the laboratory. Emily and Spencer had forced her to apply for jobs when they caught her binge watching real housewives for the sixth time back to back, of course lacking any bottoms. 

Emily didn’t know why she thought twenty-four year old Bugsy would be any different. They had thought at least that Derek holding her hair back on the night of her birthday party as she threw up copious amounts of jello shots on the sidewalk would be an eye opening moment, but it hadn’t deterred her in the slightest. She had just chucked a handful of gum in her mouth, patted the man on the back and asked Emily to hit up the drive thru on their way home. 

It wasn’t until she got the job did she feel a little bit more responsible, like what she was doing actually affected the people around her. Teaching first year college students was so very different than she’d expected, she was the authority figure. 

She could hear her mother laughing at her now. 

She almost smudged the little smiley face she’d drawn beside one of her student’s B+ as the phone rang on her desk, because she had an office phone believe it or not, and she cleared her throat, trying to sound as grown up as possible whilst also trying not to grin how excited she was to use her new landline. 

“Miss Prentiss speaking, who’s calling?” She said, almost not recognising herself as she squeezed her gel pen in delight. She had this grown up thing down to a tea.

“Hi, Bug.” Spencer’s voice sounded out of breath, and she heard his converse slapping against a linoleum floor fast, as if he was pacing, “I got a quick hypothetical to run through with you,” 

“Y-yeah, sure- Where are you?” She asked, her brows furrowing when he gave a wheezy cough, “Spence?”

“I’m not allowed to tell you, but I’m fine- for now,” He winced as he said the last part, as if it had slipped unintentionally, as if he knew what was coming next. He could practically hear her brain ticking over, “So, when you’re in the lab-”

“What do you mean for now?” She cut him off, standing up from her desk, already collecting her pencils back into their little pink case, “Where’s Emily? Is she okay? Is anyone hurt?”

“Everyone’s fine; as I was saying, hypothetically, when you’re in the lab where would you-” He talked over her right back, his slender fingers flicking through the piles of work, hoping he stumbled on a formula, a sticky note, a damn cheat sheet, anything. 

“Don’t avoid my question, Spencer,” She snapped, and she could already feel the worry lines on her forehead. 

He sighed, hoping she couldn’t hear the way his chest rattled and he choked down a cough. It would only make her worry more. 

“I promise I will tell you what’s going on if you just answer my question,” Spencer rushed, feeling his face growing sweaty, opening the entire cabinet of drawers. “Okay?”

She nodded, biting her nail, as she sat back down. “Okay fine, shoot,”

“Where would you put your valuable items if you didn’t trust your lab partner while the two of you were working together?” He asked, wiping his brow with his sleeve as he held the phone tight to his ear with his shoulder. 

She paused for a moment, “Well it’s standard practice that all jewellery comes off before we get scrubbed, so as not to contaminate anything. I usually put my scrunchie through my rings and tied it back into my hair so they wouldn’t get stolen. I knew some guys who put their watches around their ankles. Basically anywhere we could feel it on us,” 

He cleared his throat again, and she heard him take a few steps, “How’s grading papers going? Did you get a fax machine yet?” 

He was trying to change the subject, trying to take her mind off whatever it was he was doing that required such an urgent and peculiar question. 

“It’s going good, I miss you bringing me coffee; it was like I had a maid who helped me with my crosswords,” She said, biting her bottom lip squeezing her thumb in the middle of her fist to slow the nerves. He tried to pretend he wasn’t smiling hearing that. “Now tell me what’s wrong. Did you go running without your inhaler again? I told you to leave a spare at ours so I could rescue you if you ever-” 

“Bugsy, you’re a genius!” He cried, ignoring the way it made his throat burn, “Remind me to tell you every single day how smart you are- I have to go,” 

“Spence- Spencer-” She tried to cut in, but he had already put the phone down. 

So much for not worrying her, she thought, as she got on the phone to Emily within seconds. 

-

Bugsy all but burst through the hospital doors, apologising when she nearly knocked a stack of files from a nurse's hands, wishing she had an inhaler herself after she had ran all the way from the car park, including the three flights of stairs. 

After calling in sick the rest of the day, and practically volleying her rucksack into the passenger's seat of her car, she had blindly called Emily four more times until the woman answered with a frightened lilt to her voice. 

Spencer was headed to the hospital. Spencer was headed there on full blues with lungs full of an even deadlier strain of Anthrax. Last Emily had heard he was getting worse. Bugsy put her foot down on the pedal even harder. 

She knew the speeding ticket would come any day, and didn't even want to think about the state of her parking. All she cared about the second the lady at the desk had said what room he was in was seeing he was okay, that he wasn’t growing lesions or choking on his own blood or having half of his brain boiled alive. 

Bugsy felt a small spike of panic, if it could even get worse, as she yanked the curtain back to see him asleep, a cannula tucked into his nose, a hospital gown tied over his shoulders. 

Diving for his file that was attached to the end of his bed, she looked through his information to check what meds he’d been given. He once told her he was allergic to narcotics, said he had been since birth, and while she trusted one of the team to have passed the information on, she had to see it for herself that he was stable. 

No narcotics given. Only paracetamol for his fever that was rapidly coming down. She could breathe again. 

She jumped out of her skin when the curtain rail was pulled back a second time, and Derek seemed to startle for a moment too before a tired smile met his handsome face. 

“Where have you been, Baby Prentiss?” His breath knocked out of him when she threw herself at him, a sigh of relief coming from her bitten lips. 

“Oh, thank god you’re okay,” She murmured, and his chuckle echoed through his chest into her ear, “You all worried me half to death,”

“You’re looking very grown up,” He teased as he patted her on the back. And she was. She had taken to wearing maxi skirts and tights, even throwing on a cute blazer for affect, she was the teacher after all. She shoved him away with a smack to the chest. He laughed, holding up the opened pot of jell-o to her face, “Jell-o?”

She gagged, filled with memories of her birthday. 

He shook his head with a smile as she sat down in the seat next to the bed and he spooned the first mouthful of the fruity dessert into his mouth. 

“Is everyone else alright?” She asked, wringing her hands together. She fought back the urge to tuck Spencer’s curls behind his ear, knowing he was sleeping peacefully.

“Stop worrying. Team’s fine; we caught the guy and confiscated his supply. Even saved the last few survivors with you telling Reid where to look,” Morgan watched her jaw feather, and she picked under her nails. 

“I keep telling you guys, I didn’t do anything. I just… spoke to him. He’s the genius, not me,” She said solemnly, staring into her lap with a frown. 

“Not to him. Whole journey back, before the aphasia kicked in, he kept telling paramedics to tell Doctor Kimura it was you who’d figured it out.” Derek said, but it seemed to make her sulk more. 

She said nothing, pulling out her book from her bag to continue reading as she waited for him to wake up, and Derek took it as a sign she was in no mood to talk, god forbid even take a compliment, and opened the magazine he’d grabbed from the cafeteria. 

–

Half an hour and another pot of pudding for Morgan later (she gagged again at the sweet strawberry smell of it), the pair of them sat in silence, reading their own materials when a very sleepy, doe eyed man looked up and frowned.

“Are you eating Jell-O?” Spencer asked, barely noticing the girl on the other side of the bed, who shot up out of her seat as he came around. 

“Hey doc. You have a visitor,” Morgan said with a small smile, Spencer’s face falling into a frown. He looked to the other side of him, just in time to see a worn copy of Middlemarch being flung to the floor and a hand grabbing his clammy ones tightly. 

“Spencer I’m- I’m so mad at you-” She gasped, every soppy feeling of sadness she’d been stewing in leaving her body when she saw his hazel eyes fall to her, “You put the phone down on me and next thing I know you’re in the back of an ambulance nearly flatlining- I’m so-” 

She breathed when she saw his eyes soften. He didn’t think she knew it but he saw the way her eyes glistened, her voice trembled underneath her anger. He felt the way she had yet to let go of his hand, how nice and warm it felt in his palm. 

“I’m sor-” He hadn’t even finished his apology when she had latched onto him, trying not to hug him too tight but hard enough she could tell herself he was still here. He was okay. 

And he could understand. He’d felt the same when they’d found her in that church, when Cyrus had hauled her away after she’d practically offered herself up in exchange for him. He’d known she was braver than she gave herself credit for, but that had stopped his heart right there and then. He had grabbed her in a hug the first chance he’d got even then, even when he barely knew her, when she was Emily’s sister and not Bugsy. Not the woman he’d spent every morning with for weeks bringing her a coffee just the way she enjoyed it, the woman he’d sat with on Emily’s couch with her legs across his lap as they did the puzzles in the morning paper together. She tried to do them, and he would finish them when she got too annoyed by the ones she couldn’t answer. 

“I’m sorry,” He said, his arms gently hugging her back and he felt something wet on his shoulder blade before he knew what it was. He felt even worse for worrying her, squeezing her tighter than was even comfortable for him. 

“Don’t do that to me again,” She said through tears as she settled in his arms. 

He really hoped she couldn’t hear the way his heart pounded. 

3. The one at Haley’s funeral

She had no idea what to say. Emily had always been the one who knew how to talk to people. She had this horrible habit of saying the first thing that came to her head, probably because a lot of the time it was the most real, and people liked real. 

But now wasn’t the time for what was best for her. Haley Hotchner had been murdered. 

She hadn’t spoken to Hotch yet, she’d only met the man a handful of times. But he’d invited her anyway, for the team. For Emily, maybe even Spencer; Emily said he liked when she was around. She couldn’t imagine any other reason she would be there. 

Other than, ofcourse, to be Spencer’s crutch. Literally. Since his real one had broken and he was still limping around with one knee weakened by the bullet wound in it. 

She’d nearly had a heart attack when he’d called from the hospital, again, though this time he’d waited until he’d gotten the all clear to tell her so she didn’t panic quite as much as last time. She’d cursed him out for being so reckless, and requested another week's sick pay to take care of him until he was able to actually walk. It was only a one year contract with the university anyway, she didn’t care if she missed a few days to make sure he was okay. 

“You look very handsome today,” She whispered to him as she hauled him out of the car, minding that he didn't hit his head on the ceiling. He gave her a small smile and tucked her own hair behind her ear seeing it come loose from its braid when she’d leaned down to grab him. 

“Just today?” He asked, and she finally smiled back. She’d been stuck in a bubble in the car; her and Emily both had. They had the same thinking face, he’d realised. 

“Just especially today,” She answered honestly, and he worked on adjusting his black jacket so she could hold onto him comfortably. She was quieter than usual. Feeble, almost. 

“Thankyou, you do too,” He replied, his face scrunching after a moment, “Look pretty I mean,” 

He leaned on her arm, looped it around hers as he tried to be the least amount of imposing as possible. That went about as well as you’d expect for a six foot one bag of bones. 

She gave up after just a few steps, moving his arm to wrap around her shoulder as she walked with him. To anyone else they would easily pass as a couple, especially as she squeezed him tightly to her when the men laid down Hayley’s coffin, and the service began. 

“W.S Gilbert wrote ‘It’s love that makes the world go around’ and if that’s true, then the world spun a little faster with Hayley in it.” Aaron began, his voice strong as his large hands gripped the eulogy like it would give him any comfort. She smiled softly, her eyes glued to the man who stood unmoving for his son, “Haley was my best friend since we were in high school. We certainly had our struggles but if there’s one thing we agreed on unconditionally, it was our love and our commitment to our son, Jack,” 

Bugsy smiled sadly when Jack looked to the floor bashfully. Glancing between the photo on top of the coffin, a beautiful blonde woman grinning back at her with brilliantly happy eyes and a soft face, she saw where he got most of his looks from. 

“Haley’s love for Jack was joyous, and fierce. That fierceness is why she isn’t here today. A mother’s love is an unrivalled force of nature, and we can all learn much from the way Haley lived her life. Haley’s death causes each of us to stop and take stock of our lives. To measure who we are and who we’ve become.” She felt Spencer’s head knock into hers, felt the sniff run through him, and she searched her pocket for a tissue, “I don’t have all those answers for myself, but I know who Haley was. She was the woman who died protecting the child we brought into this world together; and I will make sure Jack grows up knowing who his mother was. And how she loved and protected him. And how much I loved her.” 

If Haley were here today she would tell us not to mourn her death. She would tell us-” Aaron cut himself off with a watery voice, his resolve finally melting as he realised this would be some of his final words to his wife. Bugsy felt her bottom lip quiver in remorse, “She would tell us to love our families unconditionally. And to hold them close because in the end they are all that matter.” 

Spencer felt her tug him closer as she hid the lone few tears from the rest of the mourners and wished more than ever he could press a small kiss to her brow.

–

No, Bugsy was not good with knowing what to say and when. Wasn’t good at cheering people up no matter how much Spencer told her she always made him feel better. Didn’t really know much about how to make someone understand that she cared other than showing them with her whole body. 

So by the time it was her turn to offer condolences, she didn’t bother shaking his hand. That meant nothing to her. That was a business deal, that was an agreement, a formal way to pretend you cared. But she did, she felt terrible for Hotch, wanted to fix him and his sweet son until Haley was right back there to thank her. 

She didn’t shake his hand like everyone else had. He held his hand out for one, his eyes soft and warm, like he could see she was struggling. She brushed past his hand and just pulled him in for a hug, and he wondered if she was always going to greet him that way. 

“I guessed that sorry wouldn’t make anything better so I brought you the biggest bottle of wine the store had,” She murmured into his chest, and she was gobsmacked to hear him chuckle weakly. She felt his hands pat her on the back gently, and he appreciated her candour. “I’ve got some Xanax if you’d really like a treat,” 

She was a breath of fresh air. Aaron truthfully had been sick of people saying they were so sorry for his loss, and he felt like shaking them and yelling, screaming that they hadn’t been the one to kill Haley, Foyet had. 

He pushed all of it down, focusing on the way she’d tucked herself to him like she had the day she’d become a runaway bride dripping rainwater over his bureau floor. 

“She would have really liked you,” Aaron confessed, and they finally parted, and she saw he was smiling like he meant it, not just saying it to make her feel more comfortable being here. “You would have made her laugh,”

He saw the easy expression on her face fade, and she turned to look at her heels, nodding quietly. 

“I would have been lucky to have known her,” She said, handing him the gift bag with a very heavy present inside. “I only wish someone would ever love me the way you love her,’ 

And with that she bid him a smile, and returned to her seat in between Emily and JJ, the pair of them mother henning her all day.

Aaron wished he could have said more to her after that, but before he knew it, someone else was offering him their condolences, and the sadness in her voice was forgotten.

–

The team sat around the table, nursing their beers, or in Spencer and Bugsy’s case a tea. Spencer didn’t want to affect his healing process with alcohol, not that he’d ever been big on the stuff, and Bug said she struggled driving even without the help of a beer, so they chatted between sips from two very fancy china cups. 

Emily and JJ sat to the other side of her talking about how beautiful the flower arrangements were when a small, fawn haired body came wandering over to where Will held a one year old Henry on his knee. 

“Would he like to play?” Jack asked shyly, trying to peer up onto the adults table to see if there were any other kids his age that would like to do something with him. His dad had been busy talking to all those people, and auntie Jessica had been trying to make it round to every table to thank people for being here. He didn’t entirely understand what was happening, in all honesty.

“He’s still a little too small yet honey. In a year or so, you guys can be best friends,” JJ said sweetly as he pulled his chin up to the tabletop and spied the younger woman sitting next to uncle Spencer.

He tottered over to her, where she sat unaware she had a shadow until Spencer's face softened as he looked behind her, and she swivelled around in her seat. 

“Hello,” Jack said quietly, looking up at where she seemed to buffer, feeling eight pairs of eyes on her as she interacted with the small boy.

She had never been good with children, had never been around them since she was their age, even the kids she taught now were all at least eighteen. 

The mantra to absolutely not fuck up the next few moments reverberated around her head. 

She gave him a soft smile, holding out a hand for him to shake, “Hi, Jack. I’m Emily’s sister. You can call me Bugsy,”

His tiny nose scrunched as he watched her, shaking her hand the way dad had shown him how. 

“Bugsy? That’s a weird name,” He said, and she chuckled, “Like the bunny?”

She shrugged, “I guess like the bunny, yeah,” although she had never thought of that before. 

“Would you like to play with me?” Jack asked, and she felt her chest warm unnaturally. He had such a sweet face. It was just like the woman in the picture.

Smiling at him crookedly, she rooted around her bag for the notebook and pens she kept for her to-do lists. Maybe Spencer was rubbing off on her. 

“We could do some drawing if you want?” She offered, showing him the pad with kind eyes. That seemed to satiate him as he grabbed her knee and started pulling himself up to sit in her lap, and she paused. 

Kids were so funny, she realised, she would never just start grabbing someone she just met and asking to climb on their lap. 

She got him comfortable on her knee, not noticing the flashing glances Spencer gave her between his conversation with Kevin, Garcia’s beau, as Jack started drawing a bunny with a human face, that was supposedly meant to be her. 

Spencer watched her giggle as he gave the rabbit a pretty dress, like the one she was wearing, and Spencer had to admit it was a pretty dress she’d gone for today. Had he not been so mournful earlier he thinks he would have blushed how tight she’d held him. 

She showed him how to play noughts and crosses, and she let him win most of them, laughing when he asked to tear out the page from her notebook to show his dad later. 

That is, until the man himself came over to the table of his work colleagues, only to see the group watching their youngest playing with his sweet son. 

“Bugsy,” Hotch said, and her head shot up to him, a guilty look passing over her face, worried she’d overstepped, though the fact he hadn’t said her real name said otherwise, “Can I talk to you for a moment outside, please?”

She blinked, straightening in her seat “O-ofcourse!” Shuffling Jack off her lap as fast as she could without hurting him, smoothing out her dress down as she followed him to the small balcony the funeral home had. It was a classy manor, but she guessed Hotch would have only had the best for Haley. 

“I’m sorry if I overstepped, Jack asked to sit on my lap- and- I’m not good with kids anyway I just didn’t want to tell him no, especially not today-” He put his hand on her shoulder to shut her up, a small smile spreading on his face. It was fatherly and calming, something her own father had been much too busy to ever bother with.  

“Not at all, that’s not why I called you out here,” He reassured, squeezing her gently as he leaned against the railing, taking a deep breath of the midnight air, and he felt his professional mask begin to slip. “I’ve been thinking… about how much help you've been to us over the years. Reid would be dead if it wasn’t for you.” She opened her mouth to protest, and he flashed her a look that said he was serious. “Let me finish,”

She wrung her hands guiltily, “Sorry,” 

“You’re very resilient far beyond your years, you’re incredibly charismatic when you need to be, and you’re by far one of the smartest people your age,” He said, watching her face to see how she felt. He knew she didn’t take compliments well, for some other reason they could dig into any other day. But he needed to say it now, needed her to know now for what he was about to ask her. 

“Whether that is true or not, why are you telling me this?” She asked politely, without the usual bite that went with it when they tried calling her something she wasn’t. 

“I need to take some time off to spend with Jack, try and help him…” He trailed off, unsure as to what he wanted to say. “Help him understand Haley’s not coming home,”

She nodded with a glistening lash line, and grabbed onto his arm gently.

“My team looks to me to be their glue, but I know I can’t keep everyone together and look after my son. Emily said your contract at the University was ending,” He cleared his throat, looking at her again with something vulnerable in his sable black eyes, “So I was wondering if you would reconsider the FBI academy? It’s only twenty weeks, but Rossi and I can put you forward to do the written exams earlier if you’d like, and then Strauss can have you assigned a trainee position at the BAU-” 

“Anything,” She nodded, “Anything you need, I’ll do it,” and he hugged her for once. Maybe it was the way she had said it so willingly, no matter her own reservations about joining the academy, no matter her stubbornness and resistance to her sisters pestering, or even the fact they all talked weekly about how much easier their job would be if she was there. Her and Reid’s brains together were a force to be reckoned with. 

And he knew, the surprisingly kind girl that clutched at him back, would keep his team together, would be the glue to keep their heads on while he took some time to watch his son. 

“Thankyou,” He murmured into her hair, and she forced herself not to get weepy at the grief in his voice. Of all people here, she was the last person who should be allowed to cry. Least of all to him. 

He pulled away from her eventually, cursing himself for letting the front slip, but it was as if she had that effect on everyone on the team, like she had this little way of worming her way between that gap in their chests where their hearts once were before they’d seen the things they had, dealt with the people they had. 

It was for that reason Aaron knew they would be just fine. 

“You know, when I was a kid, mom got letters every day from people with their own agendas against her,” Bugsy said once they’d taken a gulp of cool night air, “They all said the same thing; that they were going to take me for ransom unless she left the country. She didn’t think much of it until a guy started following the car home from school and she decided to get me trained in self defence,” 

Hotch frowned, his chest tightening. He knew how it felt to be a parent on edge for his kid’s safety, but to hear it from the other side cut deeper. 

“Which was fine, I got a pretty mean shot if I say so myself, but eventually it progressed into hostage training, in case…” She swallowed dryly, clearing her throat and picking her nails, “I wet the bed the first time they grabbed me, the whole idea was that I wouldn’t know it was coming. They let me go pretty fast, I don’t think they’d expected the eleven year old to reach for the kitchen knife,” 

Hotch scoffed, shaking his head in horror, though he didn’t doubt her for a second. 

“I slept with it next to my bed for a year, so that next time they came for me, they would think twice and let me sleep in,” She said with a thoughtful smile.

“And did it work?” He asked, watching her run her hands along the stone wall beneath his  elbow. 

“I dunno, but the one guy left pretty quick when I almost took his eye out,” She giggled, and the sound made him laugh quietly as well, “My point is, you’ve got nothing to worry about with Jack. Kids like us, we get made tougher, resilient. And with parents like you two, I’d say he had a pretty good head start.” Bugs said, smiling to herself flicking a glance up to his face that said just how touched he was. Deciding he was likely waiting for her to turn around before he let himself cry, she took a step back, heading towards the reception. “I mean look at me, I turned out alright!” 

She barely heard his small chuckle that faded into a weep before she shut the door behind her, heading back over to the table where the team sat, Jack now with his auntie Jessica, and their eyes fell on her, waiting to hear whatever it was she had to say. 

Taking a deep breath, she gave them an awkward smile, “Guess I’m joining the academy afterall,” 

And that was all she got out before Garcia dived on her with an excited cuddle. 

4. The one with his new hair

He knew he was sweeping his fingers through his hair much more often than usual, his hazel eyes flickering to his reflection in car doors in a way that was almost obsessive. He liked what his barber had done, but that wasn’t the point. 

He was hoping she liked it. 

Bugsy had passed the academy with flying colours, not that anyone had ever doubted her, and had been part of the team for all of two weeks, though he would argue she was BAU way before that. Hotch had figured out a staggered schedule where he could take care of Jack four days a week and work the rest until Jack settled back in at school. 

It had been nearly five months since Haley had died, but it hadn’t gotten any easier for the boy. 

Spencer definitely, definitely hadn’t spent the last two weeks practically breathing down her neck whenever they went out into the field, nor had he definitely not found himself fighting off the grin that threatened his composure when he caught her scribbling notes down to herself whilst Penelope presented the cases. 

And he most definitely hadn’t gone out to get a new hair cut in the hopes she would find him more attractive. 

Definitely not.

And yet, her face was the first one he found himself looking at as he stepped into the office, watching as it trailed up from her notebook, her pink gel pen paused mid sentence as the rest of the team went silent, her face spitting into a grin the minute she saw him. 

“What, did you join a boyband?” Hotch asked in a rare moment of teasing, Derek snickering as Emily nudged his arm with her own chuckle. 

“Can I be your groupie?” Bugsy asked, which made them laugh harder, though she stared at him with a small twinkle in her eye the way she always did when he squirmed under her compliments. 

He hadn’t thought she was being mean, not even when they took a moment to settle down, not even when she smiled wryly at him, her eyes flicking up to his hair twice more before her attention was stolen back by Garcia switching the board. 

“Okay, so what are we looking at here? Late twenties, early thirties?” Emily asked after they quietened, adjusting her bangs over her brows. 

“All single, though two are in committed relationships,” Rossi added, flicking through his own pack of notes. “All living on their own,” 

“Looks like normal suburban houses. Give the Unsub privacy,” Morgan added, his face scrunched in disgust as he looked at the crime scene photos. 

“The differences are more striking than the similarities. Different hair colours, different body shapes.” Reid noted, Bugsy’s handwriting scrawling over her notebook as she tried to capture everything they were saying. 

“What do we know about his MO?” Hotch asked JJ, the blonde woman shaking her head with a grimace. 

“That’s why we were invited in, the abduction sites are pristine,” She said gravely, looking between her team as they seemed to balk at the information. 

“No DNA besides the victims, and there’s no sign of forced entry or struggle,” Bugsy noted in the pack Garcia had given her that morning, along with a little pat to the head for good luck. Before now, in those two weeks, they had only dealt with one kidnapping and one group homicide that had turned out to be one very stupid teen spiking drinks at a pool party. This case would be the worst one she’d seen yet. 

“And the victims aren’t reported until two or three days after they’re abducted,” Emily tailed off the end of her sister, her eyes serious as the team came to the same conclusion. 

He had days to spend as much time with the bodies as he wanted. 

“Two or three days? Women like this don’t just disappear without somebody noticing,” Rossi chimed in again, as JJ clicked onto the next screen handing the remote to Garcia. 

“Yes, which is why I had Garcia dig into their lives a little,” She said, taking a seat next to Hotch to let penelope lead. 

“And I took a look at their online activity, I could easily see what the Unsub was doing,” Penelope said, clicking onto a screen full of the women’s profiles. 

Bugsy couldn’t even say she was shocked. Ever since she was in highschool, friendships, or her lack thereof, had been entirely decided on who had the most likes on their status update. Apparently no one found the girl who read Russian Literature for fun cool, nor did they want anything to do with her. Emily didn’t know she’d sat in the school toilets to eat her lunch for three years straight. Turns out kids from every country were bitches. 

“Social Media profiles?” Her older sister asked, though the surprise was evident on her face atleast. 

“Yeah, facebook, twitter, you name an online life-sharing time suck, these victims were on it,” Penelope said, enlarging the screen for the team to see the specifics, “And if you look at each of their last posts, they say kind of the same thing, ‘Going out of town, Going on a business trip, Going on vacation,’ but when you look at the time and date stamps on each of these, queue the twilight zone music because they were all posted the morning after each of them went missing,”

“The unsub posted them?” Hotch concluded, his natural frown deepening. This Unsub had a way to keep all of his victims hidden for much longer than they’d anticipated. Who knows what he could be doing as they spoke. 

“You know, social networks are an easy way for an unsub to target his victims. These women were especially open, they posted everything from what they had for dinner to where they were going on dates,” Spencer said, looking at the print outs Pen had handed to them. 

“The unsub ‘Friends’ his victim, and then uses it as a cover once he takes them,” Derek said, as Bugsy’s face scrunched in disagreement. 

“What are you thinking, Kiddo?” Rossi asked from her left, as he head shot up to see the team watching her, waiting for her input. 

Surprising to everyone, she was somewhat nervous when she’d started at the BAU. The Bugsy Prentiss, the woman who had caught out parts of the Russian Mob when she was just a college student, was nervous to not mess up in front of them. 

“I understand what Derek’s saying, but nowadays you don’t actually have to be friends with someone to follow them.” She said, picking her fingertips in thought, “A lot of people have hundreds of total strangers they’ve never met on their page; some settings mean you don’t even need to be ‘friends’ in the first place to see what they're posting. The UnSub probably wouldn’t even bother implicating himself in the first place by following them, he could just access their profile and see what they're up to. I think he profiles as patient and organised, and somewhat tech savvy if he’s up to date on the way these medias work,” 

The team watched her carefully, Spencer beating down the proud smile he wanted to flash her, knowing he needed to be focused on this case, but she seemed satisfied with her answer when Penelope nodded in agreement.

“So you don’t think he’s an old guy like me, is what you’re saying?” Derek asked with aghast, knowing full well mid thirties wasn’t too old. Hadn’t stopped his pride hurting. 

She shook her head, “I just think he wouldn’t be as old as you. Mine and Reid’s age maybe. But he seems obsessive, and he also must have a job that affords him the spare time to spend the following few days with the bodies, but it means we should also assume that these women are likely already dead,”

She looked to Hotch hopefully, to see him staring at her unreadably for a moment, before he looked to Rossi with a nod. 

David slapped her on the shoulder affectionately, “You just put together your first profile, kid,” 

And before long, they were heading for the jet with her deductions in mind to hand over to the cops. 

–

“Can someone explain to me the appeal of these sites? ‘Eating sushi tonight, yum!’ ‘Boss is keeping me late at work, grr,’” Rossi stared at the status updates, perplexed, as the team snickered to themselves. 

“Now, wait a minute. How did you find my profile?” Bugsy asked jokingly, and she drew a fond smile from Aaron her way when Rossi chuckled to himself. 

He wished she would stop looking so nervous to contribute. She fit right in with the furniture. 

“Whose life is so important that we’d be interested in this kind of detail?” Rossi asked seriously, though Bugsy supposed even the coffee machine was a new useless piece of technology to the man who liked his espresso fresh. 

“That’s just it, no one is. I guess everyone just wanted to believe it to themselves that they all have an audience out there waiting to hear every update of their day. Some of them even have GPS tracking systems in place to make it even easier for people to find out exactly where you are,” Bugsy said, her eyes flicking to Spencer who watched her intently, automatically floating up to take in his new hair again. 

She couldn’t help think he had stopped looking cute, and started looking hot. He’d always been cute, god knows she’d always thought he was good looking. But now he looked… dreamy. It had made her double take the minute he’d walked through the door, hoping it wasn’t too obvious she was staring. 

“That explains how he’s finding them, but it doesn’t tell us how he’s getting into their houses,” Hotch nodded along with her, eying her carefully as she looked through her own notes she’d made once she’d brought herself round to ripping her eyes off Reid. 

“At the very least I believe he has copies of their keys,” Spencer said, his finger trailing the information in his file, “Doris Archer had a home security system installed, but the disable code was entered at 1:56am, so he knew that too. He also found a way to deal with her dog, a German Shepard she adopted from the pound last year, it went missing the night she did,” 

“Did they find the dog?” Bugsy asked, her face in a frown as Emily looked up to her.

“Why? What are you thinking?” She asked her little sister who played with the ‘TRAINEE’ lanyard around her neck. 

“If he hurt the dog, it likely meant the dog had been on alert to him as an intruder, since opportunistic violence isn’t in his profile of being collected and organised. So if he didn’t hurt the dog, and he was found alive and unharmed, it means the dog knew him,” Bugsy explained, and Derek stroked his face in thought. 

“This guy’s gotta be in and out of the house well before the night of the disappearance. He comes up with some ruse, talks his way inside, and then once he’s familiar enough with the house he knows he can come back and kidnap them without disturbing anything,” He said, the girl nodding in agreement with him.

“Think of people you let into your home you don’t consider a threat. Home repair guys, dog walkers?” Rossi offered, but JJ was quick to flick to her own pack. 

“Detective Fordham looked into that too. No one came even close to being a killer,” She shut down, not wanting to waste their time running through avenues that had already been explored. 

“Alright,” Hotch started as he glanced at his watch to see they were landing in around ten minutes, “Morgan and Prentiss, start with the last abduction site, see if anything points to his MO.” 

Bugsy raised her hand politely, as if she were still in class, and he nodded in her direction to speak, “Do you mean as in me when you say Prentiss or as in Emily when you say Prentiss?” She asked, and Emily seemed to be having the same issue as she flicked a glance between the two of them.

“I mean Emily, for you I guess I’ll have to say-” But he stopped himself with a frown. What would he say? Bugsy? No, too informal on a case. Baby Prentiss? Absolutely not. He thinks she might just hit him if he said her first name too much. “We’ll workshop it for now. Dave, you, Prentiss, Reid and JJ go back over the women’s lives. Start with asking around their friends on the sites. If this is how the Unsub is finding them, maybe they’re connected to him without even realising.” 

The team was quiet for a moment, before Spencer pointed to Bugsy with his pen, “So that time you meant Bug, right?”

Dave wished he could protest but he had also been a bit confused, as Hotch rubbed his head tenderly. 

He felt the headache coming already. 

–

“What was it about these women that made him choose them as targets?” Bugsy asked as she and Spencer sat in a small room in the Boise precinct, the three victims' profile pictures staring back at them from the board. 

It was their second day working on the case, and other than Garcia tracking a very disturbing snuff film of the last murder being streamed from the victim’s own IP address using camera’s he’d set up in the home, they had yet to have a big breakthrough. Hotch had told her to leave the room when they’d shown the footage, knowing it was one of her first weeks on the case, and despite having a strong stomach, he wanted her to ease into the role rather than drop her in the deep end head first. 

Even seasoned agents like Morgan and Rossi had both winced, JJ even gagging as they watched it happen. They usually dealt with the aftermath, not have front row seats on the act itself. 

She had been allowed in once the tape had finished, but Reid had immediately shuffled her into the small office they’d been permitted to use by the Boise police, his face a little more peaky than usual.

She wished he wouldn’t worry so much about her, wished he would hide it better when he fretted over her. She was sure he would burst a vessel if he kept flicking his head to look at her, though she just sat staring at the women as if the answer would jump out at her. 

“They’re all pretty, aren’t they?” Bugsy said, swinging her legs beneath the table, her eyes roving over the three faces, “Though unconventionally, they’re still pretty.”

They weren’t his type, Spencer thought, they looked almost nothing like her. She had removed the last of the pink hair dye she’d managed to keep on top of for a year or so before she’d started at the university. Her nose piercing had progressed to a little thin silver hoop, though her earrings had been dialled down for safety reasons in the field, and she kept her hair tied back away from her face most days. She looked older, which was a dumb thing to think, since of course she was older. But she had grown into her face, and Spencer was entirely convinced she took after her father since the only thing she shared with Emily was the same pout when she thought too hard. 

He’d watched her grow for all of three years into the twenty five year old that sat before him, and yet her face had never really changed shape. She still had those pretty eyes that seemed to glint up at him, those soft lips that pursed when she tried not to giggle at him, that perfect nose he would trace the edge of using just his gaze when she had come over to his apartment to study for the academy. She was still as beautiful as the day he’d met her, he thinks part of him had always thought of her in that way. He had just put it down to a pretty girl giving him attention. But girls gave him attention all the time, he had realised since that stakeout at the club, when he’d given her those napkin roses. He just didn’t care for them. 

He only cared about what she thought of him. 

Only cared what her face looked like-

“Wait,” He stopped his thoughts that could go on for days, weeks, about her. They already had, it was difficult to pull himself out of it sometimes. He stared at the photos of the victims, his mind revelling in her own face that he didn’t doubt had guys swooning and falling over their own feet, as he zeroed in on their eyes, cheekbones, septums, “Their faces are all an identical structure,” 

“How did you figure that out?” She asked, wide eyed and he ripped down the photos before she could catch him blushing. 

He thought he might take it to the grave what he’d been thinking about. 

–

“He’s going live,” Hotch seethed, clicking a button on the remote and the whiteboard in the centre of the room lit up with video footage, a small red dot flashing slowly in the corner telling them they were watching it being streamed. 

Bugsy stood behind Spencer, her eyes glued to the small computer at the desk that played the same screen, her heart rate spiking when she saw a small body camera pointing at a house, the UnSub cutting across a lawn in a near sprint. 

He’d lost control completely, and he had another victim set in his sights. 

“He’s not slow, deliberate. This guy’s pissed.” Rossi said, his jaw hung open in horror as the streamer headed straight for the front door. 

“All right, what do we see? Determining markers?” Hotch snapped the groups focus back from the gut wrenching panic that everyone felt, and it was like a switch flipped.

“A one story cottage,” Spencer noted, his eyes glued to the screen so tight he missed the way Bugsy’s face changed colour, and she looked like she was swaying on her feet. 

“That could be anywhere,” Detective Fordham commented back, his face grimacing. 

“Is there a number on the house?” Morgan asked, and everyone leaned in closer to the footage. 

“No, he’s already at the door,” JJ said, running a hand through her long blonde hair. 

Bugsy thought she might be sick. 

“Garcia,” 

“He’s using twice as many proxy servers,” Her shaky voice came through the speaker, furious typing in the background.

“Wait, this window in the background, is that the chat room?” Emily asked, pointing to the small screen at the bottom that flooded with comments from at least forty different users, and more began entering the stream. 

Get that bitch. 

Show her a good time. 

Teach the pigs a lesson for sticking their nose in. 

Bugsy wished she hadn’t been so fast at reading, as she felt her skin go cold at the sight of the comments. 

“People are getting off on it,” She said quietly, but no one heard her, too focused on finding out where the UnSub was. 

“Uh Huh,” Garcia confirmed, as the footage flicked to show a kitchen view, a pretty fair haired woman stood chopping peppers none the wiser to the sick people watching her life before it was about to be ended. 

“He’s in the house, guys,” Reid ran clammy hands over his trousers, his stomach churning as the video went on.

“He’s completely changed his MO,” Derek added, and the team could do nothing but watch in terror, “There’s too much light, what happened?”

“Someone asked the wrong question at the press conference,” JJ explained from beside Reid, her nails bitten to hell. 

“Oh my god, turn around. Just turn around,” Emily begged, and part of her little sister thought she might have been talking about her. 

“Maybe she can fend him off,” Derek said, though even his tone of voice wasn’t convinced. 

“New kitchen appliances, maybe we could check the work order?” Spencer was grasping at straws he knew that, but he couldn’t sit back with that big brain of his working overtime and not try to help at all.

“He’ll be gone by then,” Rossi said, and he wasn’t entirely wrong.

“Garcia, can you give me anything?” Hotch asked, and the sound of typing got even faster if that was possible.

“I’m stateside now, I’m almost to Idaho, I just need more time,” but Garcia was cut of by the man in the video lurching at the innocent woman, his hands wrapping around her neck with a venomous grip, her every moment of pain and terror captured on his body cam for his audience to see. 

His audience including the team. 

Bug felt the bile rise then, felt her eyes burn as she watched the woman’s face freeze in fear, a yelp of “No!” leaving her oesophagus, her small hands coming up to his wrists to try pry him away from her, anything to gasp for another breath of air. 

She wasn’t listening as Hotch barked orders at Garcia, her eyes were stuck on the woman that writhed in pain, pleading with the masked man to spare her. But her rebuttals got weaker, her whimpers began to grow quieter, and soon he’d tackled her to the ground in a blood curdling scream, his whole body weight crushing her throat. 

Her own hand came up to cover her mouth that dropped open in shock, her eyes burning with tears that she couldn't let fall. It was this woman who was suffering, not her. 

There was a bit more struggling from the woman, her eyes bulging from her skull, lips turning blue, until she slumped beneath his hands, and he released her. 

She took a step back, bumping into a chair she hadn’t even known was there as her eyes fixed to the screen, and Spencer’s head shot around to see her shaking on the spot, her eyes haunted. 

Emily followed suit, but Spencer was already out of his seat, rushing forward to grab her arms and lead her outside. 

“I’m gonna get her some air,” He called behind him to the team that watched her go with forlorn glances, and he hated how he felt her trembling beneath his grip, grabbing onto his jacket just as tight. 

They made it halfway down the stairs before she bolted for the bathroom, and he heard her retching as he dipped into the room after her, not caring that the sign clearly stated it was for women. 

“I’m fine, Em, just give me a minute,” She said, and he heard the sniffles between her words. 

“It’s me,” He said, finding the one stall on the end that had it’s door engaged, pulling a cup from out of the dispenser and filling it at the water fountain, “You should drink some water, the cold helps reset your body’s instinct to fight or flight,” 

“Or in my case, make a complete fool of myself and take time away from a time sensitive investigation because I’m such a wuss,” She said cynically, coughing chestily and he heard the toilet flush. 

His forehead creased as he frowned. The door unlocked and she stepped out, her eyes red and teary as she gently took the water from his hands, and he rooted around his pocket for a stick of gum to give her. She chucked it in her mouth, letting the peppermint clear the vile taste from her mouth, hoping she didn’t look too gross. 

“You shouldn’t stand so close to me, toilet bowls are like full of germs and my heads just been in there, I know it makes you feel funny to be around germs-” He pushed her hair behind her ear as if to tell her to stop thinking so loud, and she couldn’t help smile sheepishly at him. “Do you think Hotch will be mad?” 

He shook his head instantly. 

“Mad? No. Worried? Incredibly.” Spencer replied, stroking her hair a little the way his mom used to when he felt sick. 

Bugsy shook her head, sniffing to herself a little more. 

She couldn’t stop seeing that woman’s face as the life slipped from her, the hands around her neck. The yelps and pleads and begs and she fought with everything in her.

“How long was it until you started feeling like this?” She asked earnestly, running a sleeve under her nose, “You’re so brave, I always knew you were but, since I started, it’s like I realised nothing really touches any of you anymore.”

He fought the incredulous laugh, him; brave? The man scared of the dark and elevators brave? 

“We all take things home with us at the end of the day,” He said, wiping under her eyes for her with his own cardigan cuff, “If you didn’t feel anything for the victims we help, you wouldn’t be human, Bug,”

She nodded, “I know. I just don’t want to let anyone down. Not you guys and especially not the people we’re helping,” 

“It’s for that reason I know you’re going to do great,” He said, giving her one of those small Spencer smiles he reserved for when he wanted to see one of hers. 

Her forehead thumped onto his chest as he pulled her a little closer, and his cheek fell on top of her hair as he ran gentle hands over the sides of her arms, calming her until her breath started evening out. 

“You never said,” She pointed out, “How long it took for you to start getting cold feet. Bet I beat some kind of record, two weeks is absolute dog shit,” She chuckled to herself, not noticing how his face evened out in sadness. 

It was Tobias Hankel that had done it. It was getting tied up and injected that had made him feel like a failure, like he wasn’t cut out for anything let alone the force. Like his life was taking a huge spiral downwards. 

But he wouldn’t tell her that, not yet at least. 

“Come on, let’s get you back,” He brushed off, and she figured it was a sore spot for him. She cursed herself for asking in the first place. 

Nodding, she downed the rest of the water and got herself a refill, following him out of the bathroom, looking back up at him for a moment.

“I forgot to say,” Bug said, nudging against his side with her whole body, knocking into him lovingly, “Your new hair is very… dashing. I really like it.”

He swore his face went crimson in a single second.

5. The one with his migraines

“Let me pay for your fuel at least,”

“Spence, just shut up and get in the car,”

That was around about how the past eight months had gone. Every day, she would drive by his apartment, Emily in the passenger seat of her little sisters beat up Renault Zoe, affectionately named after its model, the back seat reserved for Spencer’s lanky legs and satchel bag as she drove the three of them through through roads of Virginia, to work and back again. 

Sometimes he surprised her with coffee, sometimes Emily brought them donuts.  Either way, they all enjoyed their morning routine that had stood the test of time about as much as Bugsy had as part of the BAU. 

It had gotten easier after that first case; she still had her moments, but her skin had thickened to a point she barely remembered what her life had been like before that day Hotch asked her to join the academy. 

Things were going well, she felt settled, even with the new girl Seaver replacing JJ while Jareau was away on business in the pentagon. She couldn’t say she was the girl’s best friend, but they got along. And that was good enough for her. Her team was a well oiled machine. 

That was, except for Spencer. Spencer she worried for every day. 

She hated the way he twitched in the passenger seat, now his since she’d forced Emily to get the subway to work today, bitching eachother out in the way sisters did until the older woman left in a huff but without asking questions, and she left to take Spencer to the hospital. 

The sunglasses did little to stop his eyes hurting, his brain quite literally feeling as though it was pressing against his skull. He even turned down coffee this morning, and her stomach had dropped when she realised just how serious it was. 

He didn’t even question her when she held his hand tightly in hers as she walked him into the office, knowing he would hate every second of having this MRI done. 

“Everything’s going to be absolutely fine, they’re going to find what it is and we’re going to get you fixed right up to your perky self again,” She said, as they sat together outside the doctor’s office, keeping her voice calm and quiet as not to upset his delicate head even more. 

He nodded, appreciating her gentle touches on his hand, and he jumped in his seat when the door opened, his name being called through and he wished she could come with him. 

“You got this,” Bugsy smiled at him reassuringly when he looked hesitant, and nodded again, squeezing her hand once before he let go, following the nurse into the MRI room, wondering how he got so lucky to have a best friend like her. 

–

Spencer sighed, leaning back in his seat. The flight had not helped the building pressure in his head in the slightest. He looked up to the ceiling, closing his eyes as the harsh office lights beat against his face mercilessly. 

Two bodies found sacrificed to a 'higher being', their tongues and fingers cut off, shells put over their eyes and mouths. They had seen worse, perhaps not as odd, but they had seen worse. And yet this was the case that made him feel like his brain was about to explode right out his ears.

He hadn’t felt like this since he had been on Dilaudid, since he’d be on a come down and his whole body would sweat cold, and his head would rattle with every movement. And even that almost paled in comparison to how bad his head hurt right now. 

Spencer had wondered if that was what had done this to him, if it was a long term side effect of its use. He knew it wouldn’t be, but the self punishing part of him couldn’t help but fill his head with it. 

He just wanted answers. He just wanted it to stop. He just wanted to crawl into bed with an ice pack over his face and never surface again until this thing had subsided. 

Spencer felt hands in his hairline, fingernails weaving and massaging until he almost moaned, the touches releasing some of the metaphorical knots like magic at their fingertips, and he knew who it was, because that was how she always made him feel. 

He opened his eyes to see her very upside down as she looked down at him, their eyes inline with one another as she continued running her fingers against his temples gently. 

“You okay, handsome?” That was somewhat new, not that he was complaining. Part of him said she just felt bad for him and his weird brain, and maybe that was how it had always been, but ever since he had started getting these migraines she was impossibly even softer with him now. Like she was his comfort blanket he cuddled to when he was feeling particularly sorry for himself, and she knew it too. They were rarely not stuck together like velcro, where he moved, she moved. Where he sat, she was pressed against him like the concept of personal space had never been such a huge deal for him. 

And when his pain struck him down into the embodiment of a wounded doe, she was right there fluffing his pillows, grabbing him aspirin, massaging his head like she could grab the bastard migraine right out of his skull and say leave my precious boy alone. 

She was too sweet on him recently, but then he never wanted it to stop. It felt like a relationship without the kissing and especially without the sex. The thought of it made him want to moan again. 

“This one’s a stubborn one,” It had lingered around for three days straight, and the Miami heat wasn’t helping as he looked up at her inverted face, and he could tell she was smiling gently at him. 

She ran her thumbs over his eyebrows, smoothing them out and he sighed in delight as he felt the muscle begin to relax beneath her touch. 

“You make things better,” He confessed, her fingers tracing down his pretty nose, and he closed his eyes as she went over the bags beneath them. “You always do,” 

He felt her kiss his forehead for good luck, and he knew she hated seeing him in so much pain. He could have whined when she pulled away, letting go of him gently as Rossi stepped into the room, hoping he hadn’t seen the affection before too much teasing could come. 

But he said nothing, even if he had seen, just raised his eyebrows and grabbed the file off the desk for his own thorough look through. 

He sure as hell missed the way she interlaced their fingers under the desk though. 

–

Spencer twisted the bracelet around his wrist as they sat together outside the doctor's office. Orula’s ide. That was what Julio had called it. Said it would protect him from the bad spirits that clouded his head. 

Spencer was a man of science, a man of logic. But even he couldn’t quite explain how Julio had managed to figure out he was having migraines despite him not letting any infliction of pain cross his face, even more confused when Julio had said his body had been a conduit for a higher spirit who wanted to help him. 

He was glad to be back in Virginia where everything made sense to him. Where she could hold onto his knee at the doctor's office to stop it from bouncing and his team couldn’t tease or ask him what was wrong or make her stop touching him so much. 

“I say we get some ice on your head and put on whichever Doctor Who episode you want, don’t even care if we’ve seen it before,” She offered, smiling over at him and hoping he couldn’t see the worry in her eyes. 

He could. He just nudged her shoulder with his forehead to say thankyou without ruining the solace the quiet brought him. 

That is until his name was called, just as it was the last time he was here, and he stood to enter the office, not letting go of her hand as this time he’d made sure she could come. 

“That doesn’t make any sense,” He said as he sat on the bed, his doctor showing him the clear brain scans that hadn’t flagged a single neuron out of place. 

“I’m not sure what you want me to say,” His doctor replied, watching the way his female accomplice frowned, squeezing his hand tightly. 

“Isn't there any tests that would look for a specific prognosis we could try?” She asked, and the man shook his head. 

“Not unless we’ve ruled out every other option, and in this case I’d like to suggest that Dr. Reid’s condition might be psychosomatic in nature,” The doctor explained, wary of the way the two agents screwed their expressions up, almost identically, hearing his explanation of Spencer’s headaches. 

“Psychosomatic…” Spencer echoed softly, in near disbelief. 

That couldn’t be it. It had to be the Dilauded. Or a tumour. Or a long standing concussion. Something physical and tangible he could point out and get fixed.  

“It just means a mental or emotional cause-” The doctor explained, only to have Spencer cut him off. 

“No I know what ‘psychosomatic’ means Doctor, but it's not that,” He said, his voice tired; the idea he was making up his problem in his own head bothered him. 

“Well, I think it’s something we should consider.”

“Listen, I’m not crazy,” Spencer insisted, and he felt her tugging his hand closer to hers, her own way of comforting him when she couldn’t grab at his hair or face or jaw. 

“Dr Reid, I’m not saying-” But he was stopped by Spencer’s voice that was slowly growing more irate. 

“No, listen, I have headaches. I have increased sensitivity to light, because there’s something wrong with me physically. Not mentally. It’s not that,” He corrected the doctor, his sweet face pulled into a grumpy pout, almost offended that the professional was willing to write his pain off as a hallucinations. 

“That?” The doctor asked, a frown on his face as Spencer continued.

“Listen, doctor, my mother’s a paranoid schizophrenic who’s been institutionalised. So I know very well what mental illness looks like, maybe even better than you. It’s not that, it’s not.” Spencer said in a huff, standing from the bed and grabbing his satchel, all but pulling her from the room as she sped walked after him, her hand still tightly in his. 

She was gobsmacked. She didn’t know how she hadn’t seen it before, and suddenly every single instance of her whining about her mother to him entered her head and she felt a pit growing in her stomach that only had room for guilt. 

They sat in the car in silence, her hands at ten and two as she tried not to stare at him. 

She couldn’t stand the quiet in which he stewed, murmuring to himself every now and then about how that most certainly wasn’t what was causing his state to decline. 

“You never told me that before,” She said after a while, and it was quiet, whether to satiate his headache or because she didn’t know if she was allowed to say it he wasn’t sure. 

“It never came up,” He said in a way that left little question. He didn’t want to talk about it. 

They sat in the quiet some more, the only sound being the way her engine hummed beneath the bonnet, the music turned low for his pounding head, and he saw the way she chewed her lip and flicked glances at him from the driver's side.

He sighed, not wanting to snap at her the way he had the doctor, “Bug, would you please stop looking at me like that, like you pity me-”

“No, it’s not that it's…” She started carefully, her gaze flicking ot him for a moment as they stopped at a red light, “Every time I forget you’re the strongest person I know, you just seem to remind me,” 

And just like that his heart swelled all over again, and he felt like maybe his head wasn't an entire failure to him.

+1 The one with the eulogy.

This was hell on earth. 

She sat around the table at the funeral home with her mother to her left, her father and Stephanie to her right. 

She could feel the team’s eyes on her; she hadn’t spoken in days, her face shallow and off colour, sick looking. Speaking to her mother and father was difficult for her on a good day, let alone when she was all alone. 

Because that was how she looked, as if she were half a person now, her face bitter and angry as she tried to take up the least amount of space at the table as possible, her mother inspecting her finger beds as if they’d scorned her. 

“Sit up straight,” She chided, nudging her daughter's knee, but Bugsy made no move to adjust her posture. She just stared blankly at the ugly floral tablecloth, waiting for the other mourners to arrive, to give their sorrows, before they could move to the church. 

Emily was right next door. Cold. In a box. Her entire body was likely in rigour mortis now, her face was probably white as snow with the blood pooling away - pallor mortis Reid had called it - her hands were probably twisted and ugly like a raven's foot-

She couldn’t keep doing this to herself. And yet the thoughts wouldn’t stop, not even as Stephanie, step mother from heaven as she was, began to chime in to try lighten the mood. 

Her dad hadn’t said a word to her yet, just patted her on the head the way he hadn’t done since she was five. 

“It’s a lovely day for a funeral, don’t you think?” She commented, but her voice was too sweet, too soft, too normal to have the charm she’d intended. 

Stephanie wasn’t a bad person. Not evil or horrible like Bugsy had always thought a step mother would be. But she was the person her father had left little Bugsy for, and though she knew almost all of her anger had been displaced onto the poor woman when he’d told her he had a new wife, Stephanie had never exactly bothered to remedy their relationship. 

Emily and Bugsy had been someone else’s kids. Had been Richard Prentiss’ problems, not hers. And no amount of kindness she bothered to overcompensate with today would change the past twenty years her father had been too preoccupied to even call for her birthdays. 

Bugsy scoffed, ignoring the warning look from her father. He knew very well how his youngest felt about his wife. 

“Mr and Mrs Prentiss,” Hotch came over, as if sensing the girl’s annoyance at the woman’s words, and she mentally could have planted a kiss right on Aaron’s lips when he made the effort to exclude Stephanie in his condolences, “I’m so sorry for your loss. Losing a child is a devastation I never would wish on anyone,” 

“Thank you for your kind words, Mr Hotchner,” The step mother piped up again, before either of them could say anything, and Bugsy shot her a look so full of hatred, Aaron thought she might have slapped her right then and there. 

Richard cleared his throat, moving to put an arm around Steph’s chair, one that she’d pulled up to the table herself. 

If there was one thing Elizabeth and Bugsy would ever agree on it was that Stephanie was intolerable. 

Her mother looked empty as she nodded at Hotch, crossing her legs properly and pursing her lip, not saying anything. She’d never seen her mother cry, and she doubted that would start today. Elizabeth was much too of a proud woman to weep in front of the masses. 

“Thanks, Hotch,” Bugsy said the first words she had in days, the only time she’d gotten out of bed was to feel Niko and Sergio or to use the bathroom. Her voice was raspy, ghost like, and it scared the crap out of him. 

He couldn’t see her getting through this alive. 

With Haley, he’d had Jack to get him through it, keep him going, if not to put on a front for his little boy that was the spitting image of his wife. But Bug had nothing left of her sister, nothing but herself and two parents that couldn’t stand to look at one another without screaming curses. 

The other’s had already given their condolences, had already bombarded her with enough letters, flowers, stuffed teddies to fill a house, and she knew she wasn’t being fair ignoring them when they were grieving too. If not just as much as she was. 

But she couldn’t do anything, couldn’t be anything except this shell of a woman once called Bugsy. Her sister gave her that name, she didn’t think she deserved it anymore. 

Spencer just wished she would cry. He had been sobbing non stop, even where his eyes were puffy and red as Garcia’s as they stood in the funeral home, the smell of incense too strong, the sounds of wails too loud. But she looked… he hated to say it, she looked dead.

“That poor little lamb,” Penelope sniffled, tears already streaking down her cheeks as Derek tucked her under his arm, pulling her close into his smart black suit, “I wished she would let us in,”

“That girl is a carbon copy of Emily, of course she’s going to take herself off to lick her wounds,” Rossi said, his own fancy blazer stuffed with tissues in case his dark eyes welled up with tears again. He’d already managed to save himself once this morning before leaving the house, but he didn’t trust himself anymore than that. 

Spencer missed her smile more than anything, though he himself was struggling to muster anything past a grimace. 

“The Spring flowers are all in bloom, isn’t that lovely?” Stephanie continued, an easy grin on her face as she looked out of the window to the graveyard, as if she was entirely unaware of the grief lingering in the room, “I think she'll like it here,”

That was it. 

That was what pushed Bugsy over the edge, even Elizabeth broke her cold facade to look at the other women in shock, her daughter’s eye twitching as her head snapped to Stephanie, a rage encompassing her entire face.

“What the fuck would you know what she liked or didn’t like, Stephanie? She barely even fucking liked you,”  Bugsy hissed, drawing the attention of a few of the mourners with her vitriol anger. 

That wiped the smile off the woman’s face harder than any slap could have. 

“You watch your mouth, young lady,” Richard snapped, his face a blazen rage as Stephanie cowered behind him. 

Bugsy scoffed, and Hotch knew by the sound of it alone, something had been lit inside her that was about to go off like a hand grenade. 

He couldn’t say he blamed her. 

“I don’t know why you even bothered showing up, Dad. You’ve not seen either one of us since Emily left college,” She spat back, her eyes wild like a cat ready to claw its way out of a fight, “Surprised you even remember my name now you have your shiny new family and your million honeymoons to keep you busy,”

Richard stood from his chair, his black three piece creasing as he pointed in her face, his hand shaking with rage, and she saw the tears well in his eyes that looked too much like her own for her comfort. 

“You are turning out to be just like your mother, pushing away anyone who ever cared about you.” He barked, not caring that a few mourners turned to look at him in shock, “Don’t come crying back to me when you end up alone, little lady,” 

And with that he took Stephanie’s hand, who was the patron saint of guilt as of now, a face like a scolded child, too naive for the grown woman she really as. At least she had finally shut up, Bugsy thought darkly as her father stormed out of the home, ignoring the way faces watched hers carefully, knowing every word he’d said had been true. 

She thinks for a minute if Emily was here she’d poke fun at the way Steph’s face had been hilarious when her smile had dropped, or that her dad still had the worst temper out of them all, Bug included. She thinks that if Emily were here, she’d tell her he’d said all that stuff out of anger, and that she won’t end up alone, and that she’d always be with her.

She thinks that if Emily were here, she wouldn’t feel the empty nothingness where shame and sadness would be after having that entire thing play out infront of so many onlookers. 

But Emily wasn’t there. And she couldn’t even say she was shocked when her mother stood from her seat besides her too. 

“Where are you going?” Bugsy snarled, the Ambassador looking somewhat concerned before the expression fell and she went back to an equally lost look of her own. 

“I refuse to be made a spectacle of today,” Elizabeth said detachedly, collecting her purse over her black midi dress, her painted nails skimming the handle gently, “I can say my own goodbyes to your sister later, when everyone has left,” 

Coward. Coward. Coward. Bugsy wanted to scream after her, wanted to tear her hair out, wanted to grab the two of them by the neck and make them feel the way her words trapped inside her and clawed at her throat, sitting inside like a moth bouncing against a window trying to escape. 

But she said nothing. Did nothing, as her mother left the home, left her sitting there alone, until the officiant came over to her not even a moment’s later and told her it was time to start the funeral. 

And then she truly felt as if she would never be whole again. 

–

Her hands shook as she got to the podium. She’d always hated public speaking, which Spencer thought was odd since she seemed to grab the attention of every room she walked into like it was second nature. She didn’t even bat an eyelid at chasing down a criminal or being shot at or evening chewing out a detective that wasn’t pulling his weight, but speaking to a handful of decorated officers that watched her with grieving eyes was too much. 

Adjusting the mic to a more appropriate height, they watched her eyes scan the room, her brows scrunched, her mouth dry. Trying to find Emily, Hotch realised with a crack in his chest. The way she always did when she was nervous. The way she did when she was looking for Emily to come save her. 

“H-hi, um,” Her voice shook, her fingers fiddling with the chord for something to do, “Mom- Ambassador Prentiss got called out on business so I guess I’ll be giving the eulogy,” 

No one spoke, not even the ones who knew it was a lie, her eyes falling to where Spencer gave her a sad smile, some sort of encouragement for her to keep going, though his eyes were red and bloodshot, and he was sure the burn in his throat was rising again. 

She hadn’t cried yet. Penelope had cried four times today alone. 

“I- um, I wasn’t really prepared for a speech, so I’m, um, I’m just going to read the letter I wrote to her if that’s okay?” Her head shot to the priest who had handed the spotlight over to her, the warm spring breeze pulling at his robes as he nodded, his hand gesturing for her to continue. 

She cleared her throat, tearing the envelope open, and the paper rattled in her fingertips with her shaking hands as she pulled out the double sided A4 that had been written on in neat blue ink. 

Unfolding it, she let her gaze rip off the crowd of people who stared at her, waiting for whatever it was she had to say, the final words her sister’s body would hear before she was put in the ground forever. The last goodbye. The only one that had ever mattered. 

“Dear Emily,” Bugsy read, her voice finding footing as she was able to look away from the hundreds of eyes that watched her tearfully. But it was the wrong move. Because the minute she’d prepared herself to say the words out loud she felt her eyes well up. 

This was it. The last chance she would ever get to tell Emily how she felt. How sorry she was. How she was so damn sorry for being such a shitty person for so many years, for never saying thank you enough, for never hugging her when she really ought to have, for never appreciating how lucky she was to have a sister like her. 

Her throat clogged, and she sucked in a deep breath, releasing a trembling sigh. Her bottom lip quivered. 

“Sorry-” She apologised to the watchers, rubbing her mouth nervously, hoping no one could see just how deeply she had broken, just how harsh the wound had gaped open, “Dear Emily,” She started again;

“Everyone thinks they know what a sister is; it's the woman you share fifty percent of your DNA with who you’re put on this earth to annoy the shit out of,” A small wet laugh reverberated around the crowd, and she flashed a small smile at her own words. “But the truth is you can actually share up to sixty-one percent of your genes with one of your siblings. Which is crazy to me, because I know no matter how hard I try, I will never be even one percent of the woman you are,” 

She swallowed heavily, and she heard Penny burst out crying again, her head buried in Morgan’s neck. 

“If I was as gracious as you, I’d probably say you’re in a better place now, and if I was as brave, we probably wouldn’t even be here, because I would have been able to save you that day instead of just watching like a fly on the wall.” The first tear fell then, her face crumpling in pain. “If I was as considerate as you, I would be able to look every one of your friends in the eyes and tell them it would all be okay in the end. And if I was even the tiniest bit as kind as you, then I would have told you all of this to your face when it actually mattered.”

She sniffed heavily, and Derek did the same, his own throat burning, picking the thread on his nice trousers as Penelope’s tears wet his shirt through. 

“Everyone thinks that true love is finding someone you want to marry and have children with, but I know now that’s not the entirety of it. Love is a person you want to spend every day making happy, and make them proud to say they love you too.” Her chin wobbled some more as she read the next few sentences with something darker than remorse in her glassy eyes, “I sometimes think, if we were given a second chance, if we could try again, I would be able to tell you that I truly love you, Emily, and that you’re the only person I ever cared about loving me too,”

Her voice cracked, and she regarded the paper with misty eyes, her cheeks soaked as she quickly wiped them with the back of her white, lace gloves. 

“I think maybe next time I wouldn’t be so spoiled and bratty, and you could have been more relaxed and maybe less like my mom at times, but I think if we could do it over, we could have done it right, the way sisters are supposed to,” She sniffed, missing the way Spencer’s face dripped with tears of his own, her words tearing him inside and out with the guilt in every line. “But I guess it’s too late for that now. I only got one chance to be your sister and I failed, no matter how many times you pulled through for me. And that’s a debt I’ll never be able to repay.”

She braved a look at the closed casket, imagining her big sister, the only person she ever truly loved laying in there with fair, snow skin, her noir hair sitting perfectly like a princess in the fairytales she used to read to her before bed. Only this one had no happy ending. This one ended with her heart torn from her chest, bleeding for the rest of her days until her own body was buried and everyone could mourn the girl who was barely half the woman her sister was, no matter what the statistics say.

“I’m sorry, Emily” It was the first time she’d said the two words that had been playing in her head on a loop for weeks, the two words that sang to her like a mantra, every morning, noon and evening. Even in her sleep she had dreams where she could do nothing but scream into a void of darkness, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. It should have been me, I’m sorry. “I hope you can forgive me,” She whimpered through a sob, ignoring the way her cheeks gushed with fat tears now, as she wept freely at the podium, her hands no longer shaking. 

“Lots of love, your shitty baby sister, Bugsy.” She finished with a small whine, her expression broken as she folded the letter back up and placed it in the envelope, the cursive lettering of her big sister’s name staring back at her. Finishing where she’d started. 

Tucking the letter underneath a tulip wreath atop the coffin, she stepped back down off the podium, ignoring the way the eyes followed her back to her seat, ignoring the way Derek rubbed her shoulder affectionately, or the way JJ handed her a packet of tissues, even though her own face was flooded, and showed no signs of stopping. She felt Spencer grab her hand in his delicately, entwining their fingers together, and squeezing lightly. 

The priest continued with a hymn, though she didn’t bother singing it. She just stared at her shoes, as if her entire soul had been sucked from her the minute she’d ended the eulogy. 

Which it had, because that had been Emily’s last goodbye. 

She didn’t speak in the car on the way back to Spencer’s, not as Hotch pulled her in for a wide hug, rare and warm, even going so far as to stroke the back of her head with more affection than they’d ever seen him give her. 

“Call me if you need anything,” He’d murmured into the side of her head as he held her close, feeling two hands hesitantly wrap around his waist, as if she wasn’t entirely switched on which, going by the vacant look on her face she wasn’t. 

Spencer made her tea the moment they got in. She didn’t ask for it, she just sat on the sofa and stared at the beat up, old TV he kept only for the occasional documentary, and for the shows she liked to watch too of course. But she hadn’t even switched it on, just stared at the inky black glass like it would jump to life itself and tell her how to feel. 

He took a seat next to her, on the other end of the couch, flicking the screen on for something to stop it from being so silent in his home; the silence meant they were alone with their thoughts, and for once he and his thoughts couldn’t stand being together. He didn’t want to interrupt her, or be the first to break the quiet. Not even when he watched her tea go cold in front of her, or as she barely acknowledged the cartoon on the TV, or when he pulled out his copy of The Brothers Karamazov that he’d been re-reading for the third time. 

“Would you like me to read to you? Would that be better?” He asked tentatively, and she didn’t even blink, as if she were some sort of zombie or corpse sitting next to him programmed for instruction on acting human. 

She said nothing, but she did move, the act of it making him jump slightly, and it was then he realised she had been perfectly still for the past half an hour, barely even showing signs of breath. A puppet with no master. 

She leaned over, her body dropping onto the sofa softly as if she was taking a nap, only for her head to rest on his thigh, and his hand flew to pull the claw clip out of her hair like he read her mind. Her knees nestled to her chest, in foetal position, her pretty black dress, the same one she’d worn for Haley’s funeral riding up past her knees. 

He gently tucked his long fingers into her roots, stroking her hair like she were a tame cat curled in his lap, clearing his voice as he continued where he’d left off, making sure he wasn’t reading too fast the way he would if it was just him. 

His head still whirled around the eulogy she’d read. How watching her crack beneath the weight of her own words had hurt him more than his own grief, had made him bury whatever it was he felt and just need to put her back together again. 

Because he didn’t need an eidetic memory to have ingrained what she’d said into his head, not even as they went to bed, and she burrowed into his side in one of his sweatshirts he usually saved for his own bad days. 

“Bug,” He braved to say, watching her eyes force themselves open from where they were on the very lip of sleeping, “You’re my very best friend, did you know that?” 

She hummed, her nose digging into his arm that he wound under her head, pulling her close enough he could feel her heartbeat against his own where she was in the crook of his neck. 

“I love you,” She said, like those three words didn’t rip the air from his lungs. 

Not even as her breathing finally evened out, and he felt himself heave a sigh of relief; the bags under her eyes had been more noticeable today than ever. Not even when he dared a kiss to her forehead as she slept, the smell of her shampoo completely taking over his pillow as he allowed his own heart to hurt for just a few moments, missing his friend dearly as he looked after the woman.

Love is a person you want to spend every day making them happy, and make them proud to say they love you too. 

He knew then.

–

TAGLIST

@release-your-sweets @smileykiddie08 @caramelised-onions@the-tpd-bau @stephthepeach @sunflowersndpeaches @sammy-4103 @starmansirius @yeonalie @delusionallooney @hades-disappointment-child @sadbae-33

[batrogers]

Don't Touch My Brother

Fanfic written for @queering-the-chain, alternate prompt "standing up to hate."

Rated T for moderate violence and harassment, approx. 1000 words.

Also on AO3

IIII

They were in Wild’s Hyrule, which was at least extremely distinct: the stables were a bit surprised to see a group like theirs, but it was workable and the area was usually more than safe enough for them to camp outside. They had a whole area near the river to use, which put Link’s teeth on edge: he was still getting used to how much everyone trusted water. Back home, it was at best contaminated and liable to make you sick. At worst, something would sneak out and eat you.

‘Something’, Link thought, and laughed under his breath. That ‘something’ was Zora, which seemed to be a game of chance, which of them thought of them as people and which hostile animals. He’d never quite figured out if they were mixing up species or not yet....

Still, the stable seemed confident in the river’s stability and Link set his jaw and walked off to find Wild again. If they were going to keep winding up by river’s like this, he really did need to learn how to swim.

Wild wasn’t that far. He’d settled down by the communal cookpot again, but apparently he’d gotten cornered while he did so. Link didn’t want to cause them any problems, but still – he meant it, about asking, and the others had gotten distracted by the dozen little chores of settling in: Twilight, with Epona, Time and Warriors talking to the other travellers, Sky and Legend with laundry, and Four and Wind with whatever teenagers did to stay calm.

Well. Normal teenagers.

For his part, Link pulled out some of his own work: doing his best to repair his last doll, destroyed in the Dollmaker’s courtyard a little over a week ago now. So recently? He thought, and considered what other scraps he could use to patch the hole in the side. He had options from old damaged tunics, and he flipped through the bag in his lap.

Across the fire, he could hear Wild and the other man talk – well. More the other man was talking, and Wild was listening. Perhaps better phrased, he was ignoring him.

“You showed up here with a group, didn’t you? They looked like nothing much,” the man said. “Are they making you cook for them?”

Link suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. The man wasn’t paying much attention if he didn’t realize one of that group had joined them.

“C’mon, you’re a good cook. I’ll bet they don’t even care about your skill, just shovel it down. Treat it like its worthless. Why do you bother?”

Link watched Wild’s mouth tighten, but he kept silent still, eyes fixed on the pot in front of him and stirring quietly. He was upset; Link could see that much, but he wasn’t sure why he hadn’t yet told the man to back off. He might’ve just been being polite, and if that was the case...

Did Wild even realize Link had joined him? He was so tense.

But was he keeping silent on purpose?

“Does that really need that much attention?” the guy continued. He got up, then, and reached out—

Link’s hand was on his sword at about the same moment Wild whirled and cracked the spoon in his hand into the man’s arm.

“Don’t touch me,” Wild snarled. “For fuck’s sake!”

Link saw the moment the man realized he’d made a mistake, but he didn’t quite realize which one until he’d lashed out and punched Wild in the face.

“What the fuck do you go dressed like a girl for?” the man snarled. “You fucking tricked me—”

He shut up when Link’s hand hit his throat. Link stopped, braced with his nails dug into his skin for several long seconds until he let go and let the man drop to the ground, wheezing for breath and – Link knew – dizzy.

Dizzy because he’d been about three seconds from holding on long enough he didn’t get back up.

“Don’t fucking touch me or my brother again,” Link hissed. “I don’t care what mistakes you made; that’s on you, not him. Maybe if you didn’t chat up anyone pretty and silent you wouldn’t feel this humiliated when they turned you down.”

The man scrambled back to his feet, several steps further back from where he’d hit the ground and spat at Link’s feet.

“Keep your whore,” he snarled. “Fucking—”

“If you finish that statement, I’ll cut out your tongue,” Link said, loudly, hearing Time and Warrior’s footsteps move from wood to sand.

“What happened?” Warriors snapped.

The man tried to start walking back, skirting them at the fire as it to go towards the stable, and Warriors unsheathed his sword without another word. He pointed it at the man’s chest.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“My things are inside.”

“Then you can come get them later tonight,” Warriors said. “Get lost.”

Link watched the man throw another small fit before he walked off, then turned and smiled tiredly at Warriors. “Thanks.”

“What happened?”

“He got mad when he realized Wild was a guy.”

Warriors spun, still furious, and Link went to check on the food, because as much as Wild was protesting to Time he was fine, it was just a bruise... Link could see he was shaking. He swallowed hard, and wished he’s stepped in sooner but. He hadn’t known. He waited until Time let Wild sit down again before he asked,

“How many times has that happened?”

Wild shot him a dirty look and sat back in place. He didn’t answer, and that was answer enough for Link. He sighed, but – there was no point arguing. He looked up, and Time and Warriors seemed to realize it, too. Without asking, they took seats around the fire, and Link forced a smile.

“I came over to ask if you’d teach me to swim, after we eat,” he said, and the tension slowly faded from Wild’s shoulders. “If you’d like?”

“...Alright,” Wild agreed, but he gained a little more confidence – a little more sure that they meant it, and the matter was done. “I can do that, sure.”

“I should probably learn too,” Warriors said, and the last of the unease faded away.

It was over, for now, and Link hoped it didn’t have to come up again.

[jupiter-soups]

every bait and switch was a work of art

part two of begging for you to take my hand. part one here.

pairing: joel miller x f!reader, friends -> enemies -> lovers (kinda)

summary: joel has always pulled away from you. you are determined to find out why.

warnings: unprotected piv sex, explicit smut, 18+ MDNI, some angst

word count: 10.3K

sixteen months ago

The first time that you had met Joel Miller was the second time that he appeared in Jackson. His initial visit had been incredibly brief, after all, and so it wasn’t until after you returned from the resource expedition for the town schoolhouse that you heard of his arrival at all. 

Tommy had been a veritable whirlwind of emotions; guilt, happiness, fear, all at once. It must have been the tenth time in just the few days it took for you to return that Maria heard Tommy’s retelling of his brother’s arrival, and yet she listened quietly, with a troubled expression on her face. An expression that told you everything you needed to know about how unlikely it was for this mysterious man to ever return.

As months passed without word of the older Miller brother, you didn’t talk about it; not to Tommy, or Maria, or any of the wall guards that were given the burdensome task of informing Tommy of the lack of news at the end of each week. 

So, when you finally bumped into him at the end of a grueling five day trip beyond the walls, you didn’t even consider the possibility that it was him. You had never seen the man in person, after all. 

You had just trudged into The Tipsy Bison, worn boots covered in a thick layer of wet mud and hair dripping rainwater over the scuffed hardwood floors. A rain storm had ambushed you the moment you foolishly let yourself believe that you made it home without incident, and had managed to soak you to the bone in the short minutes it took for you to actually get through the gates. 

If your hunger hadn’t already begun to verge on nausea you would have immediately gone home to take a warm shower and pass out, face down, on your welcoming bed for the next twelve hours in a coma-like type of sleep. Instead you perched on a stool in the mostly empty bar and began shoveling the contents of the small bowl of dried berries into your mouth, fistfuls at a time and with the ferocity of a wild animal. 

You could feel his stare on you from where he sat at the corner of the counter. It was hard not to feel, since he wasn’t exactly being subtle as he watched you. What you couldn’t tell was if he was looking at you in indifference or disapproval, just another old man who thinks that table manners still matter in the apocalypse. He mostly just seemed deeply exhausted as he sat there, slouched on his stool and with dregs of a drink sitting in a chipped whiskey glass in front of him. 

“Yes?” You asked pointedly, voice muffled by the fruit you refused to stop chewing. 

“Nothin’, nothin’” He responded carefully and in a slightly gravelly tone, as if he hadn’t spoken in a while. He cleared his throat. “Here.” He slid the small bowl that was sitting in front of him across the counter at you, and you didn't hesitate to begin eating the weird dry crackers from them. It was way too late for dinner service, and you were sure your cabinets were empty, so the bar snacks would do.

Slowing down your rapid consumption now that you had started to feel like a real human being again, you looked back over to the man who was staring down at the last few sips of his drink with an unreadable look on his face. He looked sort of familiar now that your vision wasn’t clouded by hunger. He was handsome, too,  in that weathered, rugged, sleep-is-for-the-weak, kind of way. 

“You new here? Haven’t seen you around before,” You questioned while leaning over the counter to pour yourself some water from a glass carafe. It was way too late in the night to start drinking, as much as you were craving something strong to ease the exhaustion paining your body.

He looked over, looking slightly surprised that you spoke to him again. “Yes. Been here about four days now. Tommy Miller’s brother, you might’ve heard.” 

“Oh fuck,” You exclaimed, eyes wide, before you could contain yourself.  “You actually made it back! I thought–” You stumbled over your words for a second as he raised an eyebrow at the start of your sentence,  “Well, shit, welcome!” You continued, hopping down from your stool and rushing to move over to the one directly next to him, making sure to bring the bowl of crackers with you. 

“Yes, we did.” He watched you approach with an inscrutable expression, and you felt a   twinge of guilt for intruding on this man who probably just wanted a quiet nightcap before heading home to bed.

“You had a kid with you, right? You’re both back here for good then? Tommy must be a mess right now. In a good way!” You grinned at him, trying to couch the way you hinted at Tommy’s unstable emotional state. It had been obvious that Tommy loved Joel, but there had also clearly been some kind of drama that Joel probably didn’t want some random woman to know about.

“Uh, yes. Ellie. She’s not mine, just takin’ care of her. An’ Tommy’s been fine. Happy, I suppose.” He finally lifted the glass up to down the last few sips of his drink, chasing his words down with the bitterness of whiskey. The empty glass now back on the counter, he turned slightly more to look at you. “You know us, then?”

“Right, I forgot to introduce myself!” You ignored the sudden realization of just how much of a mess you must have looked, pushing your wet hair behind your ears and sitting up a little straighter before saying your name brightly. “And I’m Maria’s friend. Tommy’s too, of course, but I met Maria first. Heard a lot about you. A little about Ellie, too. She’s quite…feisty, apparently?”

His lips pulled up in one corner ever so slightly at the mention of the girl’s attitude. “You could say that.”

A few moments of comfortable silence passed between you, as you scarfed down another couple of handfuls of crackers, reaching the end of the bowl. He continued to look vaguely amused despite himself as he watched you eat, tapping his thumb against the countertop. “They don’t keep you fed here, or somethin’?” 

You made a show of tipping the crumbs from the bottom of the bowl into your mouth that was still very much full of food, with an eyebrow raised as if to challenge him. He chuckled quietly with a small shake of his head, deciding to let you go about your impromptu dinner without any more judgment. 

After a slightly painful swallow (the crackers were more sharp than you anticipated), you asked “So, what are you doing here so late, Joel Miller? Would’a thought you’d be making up for all of the months of shitty sleep now that you get to have a real bed.” The thought of sleep made you need to muffle a yawn, your body suddenly remembering just how exhausted it was.

“I suppose I should be,” He hesitated and looked you over, as if debating saying anything further. “Been a little strange, that’s all.” He finally conceded, shifting his eyes down to the countertop then back up at your face again.

You nodded and raised your eyebrows encouragingly for him to keep talking. He inhaled sharply and began to turn the empty glass in his hand as he spoke.

“Things are real peaceful here, is all. I’m glad for that, it’s just. Hard to sleep sometimes.”

You gave him a sympathetic smile and a small pat on the shoulder, a touch that made the muscles in his shoulder twitch for a split second. “Makes sense, it can be a little quiet here sometimes. But hey, you’ll get used to it. Might not seem like it now, but I’ve been here a long fucking time and I promise you, everyone gets used to it.”

The next yawn was not one that you were able to muffle, so you slowly, reluctantly, began to stand up, stretching as you did from the pain in your muscles. 

“In the meantime, you should go to the gardens and ask for some passionflower. Tell them I sent you. Boil it with some water and drink it right before you go to bed, and it should help you sleep.” 

He nodded slowly as he watched you wordlessly throughout your movements, before beginning to get up too. Joel followed you outdoors, where you groaned in exasperation at the rain that had only worsened. As you pulled your tragically hoodless jacket up and over your head, you faced Joel again. 

“You’re gonna be okay, Joel.” You reassured with the most certain smile you could give him. “You have family, you have community, and most importantly, you’re gonna be given a job that will be so physically exhausting, you’ll be falling asleep standing up in no time!”

His faint smile didn’t really seem convinced, but it was good enough for you to give him a quick wave and start walking home.  

It took another two days for you to hear if your advice had actually been helpful. Tommy was the one who found you at your home, and he rapidly banged against the door with both fists in his eagerness for you to get up out of bed and open the door. To be fair, it was the mid-afternoon, but damn if you didn’t nearly kick Tommy in the shins the moment the door swung open to his stupid, excited face.

“What?” You growled at him, making sure to give him your patented ‘you’re my friend and I love you but I won’t hesitate to kill you’ look that he knew very well.

He spent the following twenty minutes begging you to accept Joel as your new patrol partner. You knew immediately that you would love to work with Joel. He seemed a little gruff and closed off, but you were naturally pretty extroverted so that didn’t bother you. And he wasn’t exactly hard on the eyes. You still let Tommy beg though, considering it payback for his annoying wake-up call.

 According to Tommy’s excited blathering, Joel had mentioned that the flower you recommended for him helped him get the first full night of sleep he had since arriving in Jackson. Not only that, but he apparently even smiled when recounting how grateful he was for your tip, especially as dropping your name with the gardeners was what convinced them to give him some of the limited supply. So, clearly, you were destined to be best friends and you had to be the one to show him the ropes, whether it was during the regular local surveying or monthly trips out to the firewatch station for overnight patrol. 

fifteen months ago

The first three weeks of working with Joel had been pleasant, if a little uneventful. He didn’t speak much, and you didn’t really want to push him to do so. Instead, you just let yourself fill any awkward silences with little anecdotes about your time in Jackson. It was hard to tell if he was even listening to you, but he didn’t object so you just kept going. Occasionally you would catch a throwaway comment or quick exhale of air from his nose (‘that’s just stupid,’, ‘now why would you ever think that was a good idea?’) with a small smile tugging at the side of his lips. The knowledge that you had even slightly amused him filled you with a strange sense of pride.

During your first encounter with a small group of stragglers, you could feel Joel tense up beside you, hand firmly on the pistol sitting in his holster. He watched as you offered the people the berries from your hip bag, and he seemed to be holding back the urge to interrupt your kind act. While you knew very well that caution was important, these were people that had clearly been abandoned by a larger group. People that had been deemed weak and a burden, and if their emaciated state was any indication, they were not going to be a problem for Jackson. 

Your first trip to the firewatch station had similarly been uneventful. You taught him how to use the detailed map in the center of the room, and how to use the radio to listen out for signals or warnings from the broader region. He took the first shift staying awake, letting you have a few hours of sleep on the single bed in the corner of the room, and when he woke you to swap roles, you took his place on the fold out chair on the small-wrap around balcony surrounding the station. A mostly empty thermos that smelled strongly like floral tea sat on the railing, still warm. 

fourteen months ago

Ellie had practically run you over with how fast she reached you the second she heard the Savage Starlight joke leave your lips. Any offense that you felt at her surprise that an old person liked the comic books faded as her excitement won you over, and so you let her the teen and her friend, Cat, ramble on and on about the character (‘...and then they crashed and it was like woooOAHHHH, but I don’t get why they didn’t just work together to…’). 

The eye contact you made with Joel over their heads made you giggle at the way he seemed both embarrassed but also impressed by the girl’s ability to speak without stopping for air. He gave you an apologetic look, before telling Ellie and her friend to go back to school and stop bothering you both on your break. It took a promise to have dinner with the pair of them, where she would have free reign to quiz you, for her to finally agree and head back to class instead of continuing to ditch. 

The hesitant look in Joel’s eyes at the prospect of having dinner with you made you nervous, but he insisted that it was fine. His uneasy assurance did not really do anything to make you think that it was actually fine, but you still showed up on their doorstep that evening, tupperware of oat cookies in hand.

After a fun evening eating the slightly overcooked, but still tasty, pasta that Joel had made, and trying to wrestle the cookies out of Ellie’s grasp for long enough to make sure that Joel got one, you found yourself on his couch, lore-dumping all of the obscure comic book information that you knew onto Ellie.

You weren’t sure how it came up, but Ellie mentioned that Joel played the guitar and had already begun to force it into his hands before he could even protest (‘come on, old man, don’t be shy now!’). He begrudgingly played a few chords, and you recognised the old country song from the cassette tapes your brother hoarded. Face as sincere as possible, you began to sing along, hitting every note in the first line as poorly as you could manage.

As you peeked out of the corners of your eyes to see his reaction you were met with sheer, undisguised panic. You burst out into laughter at him, stating that you were just messing with him. He returned this laugh. It was the first sincere, loud, laugh that you had heard from him, and the butterflies in your stomach at the sound immediately dampened your mood. The jovial atmosphere suddenly felt a little dangerous for you. Thankfully, Ellie’s mockery at Joel’s expense (‘you shoulda seen your stupid face!’) helped to mask the sudden internal crisis you were having. 

As you forced yourself to calm down and snap out of the rise of emotion that you felt for the rugged man sitting just a mere few feet away from you, Joel mentioned his newly growing collection of old Westerns. It didn’t take much insistence from you to put one on, and he seemed determined to convince you that they were actually good (‘you both need to learn to appreciate the classics.’) 

Within ten minutes of the movie starting, a knock at the door from Ellie’s friends had her rushing out to a last-minute sleepover, leaving Joel yelling out a hasty warning (‘don’t do anything stupid, I know where’ta find you!’) You had begun to get up to leave as well, when Joel stopped you, offering to finish the movie. The lurch in your chest at the idea of that had you sitting back down instantly, and the way warmth radiated off of his body that was now right next to you was overwhelming.

You had woken up a couple of hours later to a gentle shake of your shoulder, Joel’s bleary voice indicating that he had just woken up himself. He quietly joked that it probably didn’t help his these-movies-are-amazing argument that neither of you made it through it (‘maybe we should give it another go next time. Should really give it a fair chance,’.)

Dinners with Joel and Ellie became a twice-a-week activity, after that.

twelve months ago

Joel Miller was your friend. You knew that much for a fact, despite not quite knowing when you realized that he felt the same way about you. 

Maybe it had been when last call had rung out in the Tipsy Bison, and you noticed that everyone else that you had sat for dinner with had been long gone.

Maybe it was when you had snuck beers up to the firewatch tower in an old cooler, and regardless of his vocal disapproval, the next time you headed out you found that he had packed some mixed nuts and extra jerky to pair with it. 

You were only certain when you spent an evening sitting next to each other on the balcony of the firewatch station, and he told you about Sarah. He was well aware that Tommy had told you all about outbreak day and the heartbreak that came from the loss of his precious niece. But he still told you about it himself. He didn’t pull away when you reached a hand over to clasp his clenched fist, and instead you felt his hand slowly relax in yours,  not quite holding yours back, but enough to acknowledge that you were there. That you cared.

Later that night you woke up on your own, rather than by him calling out for you to get up and swap shifts. You trudged out to the balcony, confused to see him still sitting there even as the sun had begun to rise. Questioning what was going on just resulted in Joel awkwardly standing up, curtly explaining himself, and promptly heading inside (‘don’t need the third degree,’ ‘thought you might have needed an extra hour. Looked like you were sleepin’ pretty deeply, is all. Forget it.’)

ten months ago

“Hey,” you called to Joel while leaning part way out of the wooden balcony door. The sun had just begun to set, and the way the gentle evening breeze tousled Joel’s slightly-longer-than-usual curls made you forget what you wanted to ask for a second. The bead of sweat that was forming on his forehead reminded you, and you held out the condensation covered bottle of beer to Joel. “Want another?”

He gave you an appreciative smile, and took the cold bottle from your hands, using the back of the metal spoon he had just used to eat to crack off the cap. You watched unabashedly as he tilted his head back and took a few deep gulps from the bottle. This had been happening more and more as of late. Him, being accidentally sexy. You, being unable to look away.

He let out a satisfied exhale, and you quickly sat back in your seat, pressing your own bottle against your exposed neck and upper chest in a pathetic attempt to cool yourself down in the sweltering heat of early fall. The tank top you wore did nothing to help.

You could feel Joel stare at you, but you refused to look at him. Overthinking every little look he gave you had become a habit for you over the last couple of months, and it had become increasingly difficult to avoid any delusions that maybe he might be struggling around you in the way you struggled around him. The rush to avoid this train of thought caused you to quickly burst into an attempt at conversation.

“So, Maria’s been trying to force me to go on a blind date recently. Well she says it’s a blind date, but I just know it’s going to be one of Tommy’s gardening friends.” Good job, moron, you berated yourself for bringing up the topic of romance.

“That so?” He murmured quietly, thumb tapping on the edge of the bottle in his hands, “You like gardenin’. You thinkin’ of going along with it?”

Your leg bounced with anxiety at the absolute minefield you had dropped yourself into, and it took a conscious effort to seem as relaxed about the topic as you wanted to seem. 

“Well, I-uh,” You laughed in an attempt at seeming nonchalant, “I guess I have been a bit lonely recently. My younger brother– he’s getting married soon. Don’t really know if that’s for me, but it sort’a made me realize that maybe I do want…something like that?”

You heard him take another slow sip, and lifted your own bottle in turn, using it to cover your face. You knew that it would betray exactly what you meant by wanting something.

“Makes sense. You, uh, you deserve that.” He cleared his throat before continuing. “Somethin’ real, I mean. Someone-” He hesitated and shifted the glass bottle, paying all of his attention to the movement as he seemed to try and reformulate what it was that he was trying to say. “Someone who can give you what you need,” He finally finished.

The pair of you watched the gradually darkening sky for a moment, letting his words linger as you thought about what it was that you really needed. The idea of a romantic relationship, someone that could hold you at night and make you feel loved, was definitely appealing. But it wasn’t as if you weren’t happy enough as is. You were safe, you were cared for, you cared for people. And you had Joel, in whatever way it was that he let you have him. What more could you really need? Wouldn’t it be selfish of you to try and pursue something more when what you already had was so good?

“I guess I might go for it. It has been a while since I got laid,” You joked, missing the way he sort of choked on his beer. “But, I don’t know. Maybe it’s best for me to just leave things as they are. I’m not exactly unhappy, right now.” You mused, while pulling a knee up to your chest to try and prevent the constant leg bouncing that was a dead giveaway for your nerves.

“And would that be enough for you?” He asked quietly, waiting for you to turn and look at him in the eyes before he continued. “If nothin’ more were to happen, no big commitments, would that be enough?”

His questioning made you uncomfortable, and as obvious as your discomfort probably was, Joel didn’t let up, seeming to need an answer at that moment. You struggled to find one that felt right.

“I don’t know. I don’t care about marriage, or whatever. But, I guess I do like the idea of having someone.” You couldn’t bring yourself to elaborate, suddenly shy under the weight of Joel’s probing brown eyes.

He nodded slowly, wordlessly, and leaned back into his chair. You weren’t even really sure when he had shifted so far towards you until he moved back.

“I hope…I hope that that works out for you, darlin’” Something about his words felt definitive, as if he had made a decision in that moment that you were not privy to.

“So, uh, what about you? Tommy set you up with anyone since you've been here?” You finished off your beer, trying to steel your nerves in preparation for his response. 

He let out a dry laugh, a sound that was far from amusement. “Yeah, I think those days are far behind me, doll,” You watched as he tapped his fingers against the armrest of his fold out chair. “Not really somethin’ I’m capable of anymore,” 

As you watched the soft orange light against his face, you desperately wanted to convince him otherwise. But that would have been too honest, too vulnerable. Instead you joked, “I’m sure Ellie’s relieved about that, can’t imagine her horror if she came home to a sock on the doorknob.” 

He laughed for real that time, and you finally felt yourself relax after the weird and uncomfortable conversation.

The sun was much lower in the sky at that point, and the conversation felt like it was at a safe ending place. Joel didn’t look at you again as you got up, and when you finally went to bed, he let you sleep through the night. 

nine months and nine days ago

Patrol with Lucas was different to patrol with Joel. He was younger, and more agile, of course, but he was also rash. He had something to prove, and none of the confidence that came with experience. It was fine. You were fine with it. 

The boots you were wearing as you made your way into the Bison squeaked from the water they accumulated in the heavy rain. It was miserable and gross, and all you wanted to do was get to bed and forget about the way that Lucas got spooked by a creaking door and almost shoved you to the ground in his haste to escape the room.

You halted in place in the doorway at the sight that greeted you in what should have been an empty bar, given the extremely late hour. Of course, on such a shitty day, you would see Joel sitting at the corner of the bar, swirling the few remnants of his beer around the pint glass in his hand.

He noticed you, as well, and began to sit up from where he was slumped on his stool. He looked exhausted. Good, you thought, as you examined the dark circles around his eyes. 

Reluctantly, you walked up to the bar, reaching to grab a small bowl of dry puffed rice. You pouted unintentionally at how bland the current selection of bar snacks were. 

Something caught your attention from the corner of your eye, as a small bowl of candied nuts slowly worked their way into your frame of vision. You looked up to see Joel sliding the bowl over the counter, eyes flitting up to yours for a brief second before shifting away as soon as he saw you noticed him. 

Your jaw ticked in anger at the weak attempt at…well, you didn’t know what he was doing, really. You pointedly grabbed another handful of the crunchy cereal and shovelled it into your mouth, glaring at him the whole time. He seemed to get the point, and he withdrew the bowl with poorly disguised exasperation. 

It almost made you laugh, how he had the audacity to act annoyed in that moment, and you couldn’t help but provoke him. 

“Yes?” You made no attempt to conceal your persistent anger at the man.

“Nothin,” He responded quickly, but quietly, and you watched him scrape the edge of his fingernail across the countertop, back and forth.

You gave him a derisive look up and down, and he sort of shrunk under your gaze before clearing his throat and waving down the bartender and to hand him a drink ticket. 

“You seem tired. New patrol partner putting you to work?” You continued to poke at him, and you were not really sure why. He was leaving, you could have, and you probably should have, just left it as is.

He sighed out loud this time, while standing up from his stool. “Haven’ been sleeping all that well.”

You let him leave, and as soon as he is out of your sight, you leaned over and grabbed the bowl of candied nuts.

now

You were laying there awake on the cold floor, barely three hours later, with your teeth chattering so loudly that you couldn’t even imagine falling back to sleep. It was hard to tell what woke you in the first place, but you were inclined to believe that it was the loud-ass snoring of the old man across the room.

Any warmth that the alcohol had lent to you was long gone, and if the way the old wooden building shook from the snowstorm outside was any indication, you were in trouble. Survival tactics would dictate that the best plan of action would be for you to share some body heat with the person that you were stuck with, but the thought of that pained you, especially given how your last conversation ended.

A particularly all-encompassing shiver had you giving in and rolling over to look at him, ending the internal debate over whether you should just suffer through the cold. He was still snoring away peacefully. Of course he is, the bastard you found yourself thinking bitterly, the chill in your bones definitely making you unnecessarily spiteful. 

As much as it pained you to admit, you knew that Joel emitted warmth like a space heater and he would be able to help stop the shivering with ease. You fought away the thought of his broad chest pressed against your back, and instead focused on getting up on your knees to crawl over clumsily in the dark towards Joel’s body, still wrapped in your sleeping bag. 

“J-Joel?” A shiver punctuated your faint voice, as you nudged his shoulder to try and wake him.

Joel barely moved from the contact, making you grit your teeth in frustration. Logically, you knew he wasn't ignoring you on purpose. He was just far too exhausted to wake up from such a gentle jab. It still irritated you, regardless.

You gave his chest a stronger shove. “Come on, move over, I’m f-freezing.”

His eyes slowly cracked open and he softly said your name, a question, confusion and something else that you couldn’t quite place lacing his tone. Joel’s brown eyes were softer than you’d ever seen as he stared up at you, unmoving. Your words seemed to catch up with him all at once, and he nodded quickly, unsteadily, reaching a hand out to start unzipping his own sleeping bag.

“Sure, sure…come here, darlin’’ His voice was thick with sleep as he flipped open the bag.

With some effort, you combined the two bags and started to slip in next to him, hesitating briefly when deciding which direction to face. None of the options felt appropriate. There wouldn’t have been enough space to comfortably lie on your back, facing him seemed like a psychotic choice, and letting him spoon you felt way too intimate. It would have been too intimate even when you were still friends, let alone now. Your eyes flitted up to his, questioning what the correct choice was. Joel responded with a firm hand on your shoulder, pulling you down so your back was pressed against his chest. 

The way you fit against him just deepened all of the frustration you felt about your situation. It should have felt awkward and bumbling, but it just didn’t. Your frame fit against his like you were made for him to hold, and you hated it. You should not have been feeling this way about him after he had made it so abundantly obvious to you that he simply did not like you. 

It made you feel pathetic, harboring a childlike crush on this man that didn’t give you the time of day. I’m a grown woman, for fucks sake, you reprimanded yourself as you tried desperately to will yourself to sleep. 

The way his gentle breathing against the delicate skin of your neck caused goosebumps to rise made you feel as if you were going to suffocate. It had taken you months to bury these emotions, concealing it with anything from mild disparagement to outright pettiness. And here you were, feeling all of it again. Suddenly, freezing on the cold floor by yourself seemed like the preferable option to whatever hell you had gotten yourself trapped in.

“Do you mind?” He muttered quietly, as you felt his arm lift over your torso, hestating slightly to give you an option to tell him to keep his hands to himself. “Arms sorta sore, keeping it straight by my side.”

“Yeah. It’s fine,” you responded quickly– probably too quickly. If you were lucky, your tone would have seemed irritated rather than reflecting the greed you suddenly felt towards the idea of having more of his skin against yours.

His sturdy arm shifted to rest against the side of your torso, and you felt his hand slide down gently, resting his palm flat against your stomach. You were holding your breath for a moment to try and repress the gasp that almost fell from your mouth. His hand was just so big against you. It made you feel like a repressed Victorian housewife to react so strongly to an innocent touch, but God you had tried so hard to forget how much Joel Miller could affect you. 

Minutes went by without any further speech from either of you, and you finally felt your heart rate begin to settle back down from its elevated position. He was so warm, so soft, so inviting, that you couldn’t help the way your eyes started to flutter shut. Your shivering ceased quickly after you were wrapped in Joel’s heat, and you had become convinced that he had already fallen back asleep as his body seemed to have relaxed around you. 

“I’m sorry,”

“Jesus, fuc-” You jumped out of your skin at his voice, the sleep in your system quickly evaporating. His hand bunched up slightly in the front of your shirt at your movement and his arm tightened around you, instinctively pulling you in closer. He quickly let go of your shirt upon realizing what he had been doing, but his arm remained just as tight around you. 

‘It’s fine.’ You responded brusquely. Him touching you like this meant that he had the upper hand. There was no way that you would be able to maintain a cogent argument with him wrapped around you, and you knew it was best to just avoid the urge to drag out the argument. 

“I didn’ say what I was sorry for yet.” 

You sighed. “Fine. Continue.”

“I shouldn’t have been such a hardass earlier about you getting in trouble with that runner. It was a fuck up, but you’re not…bad at what you do.” He paused, as if waiting for some kind of response. Without any indication from you that you were actually listening or even cared about what he was saying, he continued.

“An’ I shouldn’ve asked Tommy to switch me off of patrol with you. That was….” he hesitated as if he couldn’t or didn’t know how to keep going. “I overheard you talkin’ with Al on the radio earlier. I guess I didn’ realize that you would take it so hard.” You heard him swallow dryly. “Everyone back in Jackson sees you, sees how good you are. I thought you would just tell me to fuck off, or somethin’’ 

His tone was almost begging you to just understand him.

“I did tell you that.” You reminded him bluntly, trying to keep your voice unaffected despite the way he had begun to lightly trace lines against your stomach through the cotton of your worn t-shirt.

Joel let out a single chuckle, clearly not really amused by the memory but more so at your candor. “Right.”

“Just forget it, Joel. I know that I’m good at what I do. I just….” you were suddenly glad that you weren’t looking right at him, as you decided to just bite the bullet and say it. “I liked working with you. I thought we were friends…or whatever. It hurt my feelings that you thought- I don’t know, that I was a burden, or something? That because I had been in Jackson for a while, I was weak or not as capable as you. But it’s fine. I don’t need your validation. I guess I just wish you would have told me yourself or something.”

You fought the urge to turn over and see his facial expression, instead choosing to listen closely for any change to his deep breathing.

“I jus’ didn’t know what to say. How to say it.” He gradually said, choosing his words carefully. They felt strangely loaded. “I see now that I shouldnt’ve. Said any of that, I mean. Should’ve just... been honest.”

His words circle around in your mind. He should have been honest? If what he said was him being reserved, what was it that he actually wanted to say to you? 

“Well, be honest now then.” You demanded.

“I-” Joel started before cutting himself off, clearly not knowing what to say next. You feel a small smile pull at your lips at the fact that you had made him uncomfortable. Good. Suffer. you thought to yourself, highly aware of the way that even when apologizing, he was unable to give you actual closure. 

“I just didn’ think I could be a friend to you, like you wanted. It was becoming-” He went silent for a second before clearing his throat and continuing. “Difficult, for me.” 

“I see.” You wished you could say something more, but the sick feeling in your stomach prevented you from doing so.

Joel Miller just didn’t like you. He didn’t want to be your friend, let alone anything else. There was nothing more to it, nothing fixable to save the friendship that had become so important to you. Maybe the disappointment you felt was your fault. If you had just accepted that he didn’t want to work with you any longer, you would have been able to move on by now. But God, he had just seemed so genuine every time you made him laugh. If you hadn’t spent night after night with him, falling asleep watching his favorite movies tucked under that stupid purple blanket, this probably wouldn’t have felt so wrong.

“Do you understand what I’m tryin’ to say, darlin’?” His voice was practically a whisper in your ear.

“Goodnight, Joel,” was all you could summon as an answer.

A bright sliver of light from the cracks of the shutters was concentrated directly on your sleeping face, dragging you out of a warm and pleasant sleep. It had been such a long time since you slept so deeply, dreamless and without a kind of nagging awareness of an endless list of upcoming tasks clawing at your brain even in unconsciousness. 

You tried to shift your face away from the sun but were quickly made aware of something soft, yet firm, pressed against your cheek that prevented such movement. At some point during the night, Joel had shifted onto his back, and pulled you with him so that your head was resting against his chest. You were now facing him, with your left leg kicked up over his hips, and clinging onto him as if you were a koala. He had an arm wrapped around you, holding you against his chest in a gentle embrace. His other hand rested on his own stomach, and to your immense horror you realized that he was holding your wrist in his soft grip against his torso. Joel was breathing gently, deeply, under your palm and his steady heartbeat thumped loudly against your ear. It was too intimate, too tender.

With all of the grace and elegance of a turtle stuck on its back, you jolted back away from his inviting body, only to be caught by the constraints of the small sleeping bag. In your attempt to disentangle yourself, you felt something press against your thigh that was extremely identifiable. That's when the panic set in, causing you to manically swing your arm up from where it was stuck with as much power as you could muster, trying to get it free from the bag with sheer brute force. Fortunately, it worked, and your arm was freed. Unfortunately, the sudden loss of the sleeping bag’s restriction around your shoulder caused your arm to propel up, resulting in an audible smack against Joel’s jaw.

“Huh- Wha-” He looked around wildly for his assailant before clocking the abject terror on your face at the predicament you were both in.

“Fuck- sorry, I-” He quickly reached up and unzipped the bag in one swift motion, freeing you both.

With a quick, ungraceful, scamper away, you turned back to face him where he remained on the floor. Despite everything, you couldn’t help the way your heart pounded at his appearance, all wild-eyed and messy, overgrown hair that stood up in strange directions. 

You also couldn’t help but let your eyes snap down towards his crotch in a need to confirm that you had felt what you thought you had felt. Immediate regret flooded your system at the sight, and you could feel your face heat and your mouth get dry. You quickly wrested your eyes away and back to his face. His expression was one of mortification and guilt.

“I-”

“Uh-”

Both of you spoke at once, and then paused. Joel took a moment to sit up fully, and dragged part of the loose sleeping bag over his lap, trying to subtly cover what you had both already known was there.

He attempted to speak again. “I’m sorry, darlin’,  I hope I didn’t make you uncomfortable.”

“It’s fine, Joel. You’re a man, it happens. I’ll just. Uh. Go and wash my face or whatever and then we can eat something and head out?” You said, already starting to walk backwards towards the staff room. The awkwardness is only heightened when you clipped into the side of the counter while walking backwards, letting out a humph of sudden pain that just embarrassed you further. 

You could barely make out his response (“Right. Sounds good.”) over the blood pumping in your ears as you firmly shut the door behind you once you reached the safety of the staff room.

After a quick rinse of your face with fresh water from the spout of the water jug placed on one of the shelves, you checked in with the morning shift radio workers at Jackson, confirming that you would shortly be beginning the three hour hike back to the gates. A few deep breaths later, you were able to make your way back out to face him. 

The creaking door announced your entrance back into the main room, and Joel looked at you from where he was standing and trying to shove the sleeping bags back into the small pouches that housed them. 

Grabbing it out of his hands wordlessly, you started to correctly fold the sleeping bag for him, refusing to acknowledge the awkward atmosphere. Even ignoring Joel’s obvious arousal, you had practically been cuddling in your sleep. Mere hours after he made it abundantly clear that he wanted nothing to do with you.

Obviously, what happened while you slept was out of your control. It wouldn’t be fair of you to read into it. But, in the cold light of day, you found yourself needing more, needing a real reason for his dislike of you. There was no way that this conversation wasn’t going to hurt you, but maybe that was what was needed to get over everything and truly move on from it. You could sense him sneaking looks at you, but you chose to keep your eyes on the task at hand until everything was correctly packed away.

No longer able to stall, you finally began “Can we talk?” 

He swallowed, before giving you a few short nods in agreement. 

“I know you already gave me a reason for not wanting to work with me anymore. I…didn’t have the experiences that you had, and you didn’t want to have to take orders from me. Fine. But, I don’t think I’m crazy for thinking that we were real friends, Joel.” You stared at him, trying to gauge any kind of emotional response.

“I don’t care if it’s cruel or…whatever, just.” You sigh. “Just…please tell me why I was wrong. Why you don’t like me.” Every part of you burned from the embarrassment of being so vulnerable in front of him. You had spent months curating the perfect image of hate for this man, and to have to admit that he was still so capable of hurting you was just embarrassing.

He watched you with a look of true indecision, letting you say your piece but then remaining silent for a torturous amount of time after. 

“Nothing? Really?” You knew that your face was giving away the hurt that you felt in that moment.

Once it became clear that you weren’t giving up, Joel let out a low exhale of defeat. He didn’t look at you, and he hung his head before speaking hesitantly.

“This is what I was hopin’ to avoid. I thought if I were harsh with it all, you would just leave me alone.” He caught himself quickly, and his head snapped up to look at you with some semblance of panic, grabbing your upper arm as if to hold you in place. “Not that– I just thought it might be best to…create some distance.”

“What, I crowded y’all or something? Because that was never my intention. I just. I liked being around you both.”

He looked sort of pained as he quietly admitted “And that’s the problem. I liked being around you too. More than I should’ve.”

The grip he had on your arm loosens, and you feel his hand slide down to meet yours. Joel didn’t make a move to grab it, but his fingers traced the back of your hand gently, as he watched the path they took against your skin.

“Somethin’ about you just” He finally grasped your hand in his, moving his thumb across your scuffed knuckles, “Hard to resist”’

You blinked rapidly, thoughts running at a million miles per hour as you tried to make sense of what he was saying. You began to speak when his other hand lifted to cup your cheek, rendering you speechless yet again.

“I thought you wouldn’ care. I still don’t see why you would, but I’m sorry, darlin’, for hurtin’ you.” His eyes flash to your lips before he pulls himself away from you. Your blood feels like ice in your veins in the absence of his touch.

As he stood a few steps back from you, you watched a look of guilt manifest on his face, before he let out a pained chuckle. “You see now, doll? Why I had to push you aside? You don’t want  an ol’ man like me getting attached.”

His eyes were searching yours for something that you were struggling to understand how to provide. You could feel your heartbeat where he had been touching you, and it finally clicked. 

You slowly stepped forward until you were chest to chest, putting your own hand against his cheek to force him to look down at you. Rising up on your tiptoes, you pressed your lips against his softly, giving him the option to push you away if he so chose. 

He was practically frozen under your lips, and so you pulled back, ready to apologise. The words didn’t get the chance to leave your mouth as he grabbed your face with both hands and kissed you as if it had been costing him every ounce of control in his body to prevent. 

You found your back pressed against the end cap of the shelves in the center of the room as he devoured you, barely letting you up for air.

“Joel-” you were unable to finish your sentence before he wrapped an arm around your waist and kissed you again, pushing his tongue into your mouth desperately.

It was impossible to hold back your loud moan as he hitched you up, wrapping your legs around his waist and letting you feel himself, hard against your quickly dampening core. 

“F-fuck, I-” he practically whimpered as you took the opportunity to grind against him, eyes practically rolling back at the obscene sensation of him. “We don’ have to do this, this is why-” You cut him off by gripping his jaw in your hand and looking into his wild eyes as if to give him permission. “Joel. I want this.”

That’s all it took for him to lean his head over into the crook of your neck and start pressing wet kisses along your skin, all  while walking you over to the chest freezer and placing you on top. It takes him a few more minutes of lavishing kisses against your skin to pull himself away for long enough to drop down to his knees in front of you. 

He grabbed a thigh in each hand roughly and tugged you forward until you were perched on the edge of the surface. Shaky hands began to pull at the waistband of your jeans, not even bothering to try with the buttons. As he finally succeeded in pulling them down and off, you couldn’t help but bite your lip at the sinful sight in front of you. His pupils were dilated and his lips were swollen as he repeatedly murmured to himself “Wanted this for so long, been so hard to resist-”

His chest was heaving as he grabbed at the lace decorating the edge of your underwear, beginning to pull at them impatiently, any hesitation that he once had long gone.

‘Wanna make you feel so good, baby, need to make you feel good”

Your response was to simply push your fingers through his soft curls and grab a handful, pulling his face towards your waiting pussy. 

Joel pulled your legs over his shoulders and quickly pressed his face against you, licking a wide stripe up your wet folds eagerly. A broken moan pierced the room as he expertly pushed his tongue into your dripping opening, before withdrawing to raise his mouth up to suck on your sensitive clit. 

Your hand remained tightly in his hair as you lost yourself in the sensations of the man on his knees for you, it only being heightened by how much he seemed to be loving it. 

He moaned against your cunt at your taste, as if he couldn’t get enough. Every moment that he retracted slightly to get a lungful of air, you heard him speak almost deliriously “So perfect, so sweet for me.” Before long he was taking a hand off of your thigh and bringing it down towards his own crotch, desperate for some direct stimulation.

This snapped you out of your reverie, and you dragged his head away from your folds, ignoring the sharp pang of pleasure coursing through you at the sight of his wet jaw and desperate eyes.

“Joel, please, fuck me.” Your voice cracked and the sheer desire radiating through it made Joel rise to his feet in an instant, reaching for his belt.

He pulled you in for another deep kiss as he fumbled with his belt buckle, and the taste of yourself on his tongue made you ache. He drew back from the kiss and pushed his jeans down past his crotch. Your eyes went wide at the sight. He was huge, bigger than anyone you had been with before, and the way he was pressed against his boxers told you it had been sheer torture for him when you stopped him from touching himself.

He grabbed your hand and placed it against his erect cock, slightly hissing at the contact even through the material of his boxers, before murmuring “Y’see, baby, do you see what it is that you do to me? Do you understand now why I’ve had to push you away?”

He freed his cock from his underwear and lined himself up with your entrance, before giving you a gentle kiss against your temple. “I’m so weak around you, doll, it’s so hard to hold back.” He whispered in a broken voice against your ear.

Truthfully, you had no idea what he was talking about. The hint of self-reproach in his voice told you that this was something that he had struggled with, but it was too difficult to focus on the meaning of his words when his swollen tip was nudging against you in such a maddening way. So, instead, you chose to reach down to grab his hip and pull him closer, “Then don’t hold back.”

Whatever shred of restraint he had dissipated instantly at your quiet request, and he plunged himself into your wet heat, practically a man possessed with the way that he thrust himself into you.

Everything was him, and you had never felt this consumed by another person. Every sense you had was overcome by him. His quiet voice as he whispered how perfect you were in your ear, the scent of his musk, the rough feel of his calloused fingers against your waist as he held you in place to fuck up into you. All you could see was him and his brown eyes, as he filled the room yet again. Each open mouthed kiss was deeper and sweeter than the last.

The stuttering of his hips indicated that he was about to reach his peak, and he quickly shifted a hand down to rub circles on your clit, determined to ensure that you came before him. “Baby, you’re so good, you’re so good for me,” he panted in a husky tone.

You could see redness travelling down his neck and below the collar of his flannel shirt, but the increased pressure from the masterful way he moved his fingers stopped you from ripping open his shirt the way you wished you could. Instead, you grabbed on tight to his arm, digging your nails into the firm muscles.

“Joel, I-I’m gonna-” your moan cuts off your sentence as something in you snaps. Your toes curl and you clench around him, eyes screwed shut from the radiating pleasure.

“F-fuck, darlin’, look at me, look at me while you cum” he seems to barely get the words out as your walls pulse around him. 

As you were finally able to open your eyes to look back at his face, he quickly pulled out, reaching down to grab his cock and bring himself to completion. You moved faster than him, and wrapped your own fingers around his shaft, wanting to bring him to climax yourself. He practically fell into you, forehead resting against your shoulder as you jerked him off, each whimper he let pass his lips going straight to your core. He came with an extended groan, his release coating your fist. Continuing to gently stroke him through it, you listened to him babble incoherently, repeatedly,  into your ear:  “Fuck, you’re so perfect, you were made for me, fuck-”

“Jesus…” you trailed off with a gentle laugh, before releasing him and moving to wipe your covered hand onto your discarded underwear. 

Joel seemed to be basking in the afterglow, responding with only a hum of agreement as you hopped down from the top of the freezer onto shaky legs. You pulled him close to press a kiss against his cheek. Chaste, after everything that had just happened, but it just felt right with the way your heart was bursting out of your chest. In your rush to go and grab a clean rag from the staffroom, you didn’t notice the way he froze under the press of your lips.

Emerging with a satisfied grin on your face, you spotted Joel standing by the door that was now unlocked and letting in the bright early morning light. He had managed to clean himself up in the brief moment that you took your exit to do the same, and he had his bag strapped across his back, clearly ready to start heading back.

“Easy, Joel, give me a second to regain my balance,” you said playfully, making a show of stretching your legs out. His face was expressionless as he watched you and you felt your stomach drop from the sudden uneasiness that that familiar expression brought you.

Rather than let him keep waiting, you decided to quickly grab your own bag and hoist it onto your shoulder, approaching him where he stood and putting a hand on his shoulder to snap him out of the absent-minded state he was in. He flinched at your touch.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” You asked with a feeble attempt at an encouraging smile. 

“Nothin, nothin.” He insisted with a shake of his head, returning an equally unconvincing smile before exhaling sharply and turning his attention to the outdoors. “Just thinkin’ that we really should get goin’. Snow’ll likely start up again soon,”

“...Right.” You confirmed with a dry swallow. 

Something was very clearly wrong. Joel had never been the best liar, and it wasn’t exactly shocking to you that he would be a little apprehensive after everything that had just happened. What was concerning was how he flinched at your touch. The touch he was just begging for, quite literally on his knees with how much he craved you. 

Maybe he just needed a minute, you justified to yourself as you walked ahead of him, allowing him to trail behind slowly. It wasn’t exactly the way Joel liked to operate, he would always be in front of his partner, always ready to be the one to meet the threat head on. It was unsettling, to say the least, that he wasn’t rushing ahead. 

Okay, you continued to rationalize three silent hours later as the tall structure of the Jackson walls came into line of sight, maybe he just needed a few hours. Slowing your pace, you looked over at him and felt your chest tighten painfully at how he pointedly avoided your gaze.

‘What is it, Joel? What’s happening?” You asked feebly, coming to a halt in a small clearing before the forest thinned out to allow for Jackson.

His jaw clenched and unclenched before he spoke. “That shouldn’a happened.”

You blink at him. “What shouldn’t have happened?” You knew immediately what he meant, but needed him to say it.

“Any of that.”

You gave him a resolute look. “But it did happen. We fucked. We both wanted it, and it happened.” You took a few steps closer to him, and the way he stepped back hurt you more than you could have anticipated.

“Well, it ain’t happening again.” 

“Joel, please. Why are you being like this?” You tried to reach out and place a hand on his shoulder.

He practically ripped his arm away from your  touch, putting even more space between the two of you before he started speaking.

“I can’t give you what you need,” He said unwaveringly.

You raised an eyebrow in response, “I think you just gave it to me pretty good a few hours ago.”

Joel’s unchanging face filled you with a hot rage.

“Joel, you just fucked me and now you’re telling me that, what, you can’t do this? You don’t want anything else to do with me?”

“I’m not the man that you treat me as. I can’t do all of the loving, sweet shit that you would want or need”’

You scoffed in response, unable to stop your voice from raising as you looked at him in disbelief.

“Oh, you’re such a fucking martyr Joel, so brave and strong for coming to this conclusion after getting your dick wet.” You laughed humorlessly. ‘I thought you were an emotionless dick, but this is beyond.”

“It isn’ like that, darlin’, i just-” He suddenly seemed small under your gaze, cold demeanor breaking at your words. No part of you wanted to hear him try to defend himself.

“Don’t. You can have what you want. We’ll go back to Jackson and pretend this never happened. But you don’t get to use that bullshit excuse.” You stomped off past him, shoving your shoulder against his as you walked out of the clearing, back onto the well worn path to the gates. 

He didn’t speak for the rest of the short journey back to the gates of Jackson, following you with a distance of at least 10 feet between you.

As you approached the gates, you heard him call out your name after you. Every part of your brain was screaming at you to just flip him off and go home, but instead you came to a stop a few feet from the gates, and turned to him with an icy glare.

“I-uh. Thought you would’a wanted this.” He handed you the Spider-Man bobblehead that you had already forgotten all about. 

“It was for Ellie. Give it to her yourself.” You said coldly, going to turn back around before he stopped you.

“No, I know. I jus’ thought. Well, it was your idea. And Ellie’s always yammering on about your comic collection, so she would probably appreciate it more from you.”

Your heart clenches. It would have been so simple, so nice and right if he cared about you the way you had come to accept that you cared about him. But he didn’t. Not enough to try for you. Not enough not to hurt you.

You snatched the stupid toy out of his hand and turned away from him, letting him watch you leave without another word.

a/n: ahhhh please tell me what you think!

[elliesmainhoe]

Hunted

Abby Anderson X fem!reader

Summary: Although you stopped Abby from killing Joel, Ellie still wants to seek her revenge.

Contents: violence, injuries, scarring, domestic fluff, trauma response, PTSD, guilt, angst, cliffhanger, death mention, death alluded to.

Requested ages ago by my lovely 🍞 anon

You can remember it. The gore, the screaming, the sobbing. An old man- who reminded you of your father laying on the floor as your girlfriend buried a club into his head and his daughter, who reminded you of yourself being pinned down as she watched the life in her father figures eyes begin to drain out.

Abby got two swings in before you finally stopped her. And you regret not stopping her sooner.

Violence wasn't something you were accustomed to. Of course you'd seen it- you grew up in a post-apocalyptic world, with fungal-infected cannibals that was governed by a dictating military.

But to see someone- a human like yourself- be beat to a pulp for protecting his child just felt wrong to you. No matter however many times Abby talked in favour of her father and praised him, you strongly believed that the revenge Abby was seeking would not fill the whole his death left in her heart.

You remember it well, the bloodied man on the floor looking up at you in delirium as you screamed out incoherent words to the blonde that was killing him. Your disruption made everyone stop and look at you, your voice filling throughout the room for two minutes allowing Jesse and Dina to rush into the room and begin shooting.

Guns were fired and people ran, usually Jesse and Dina would have followed after- hunting every last one of them until they were dead, but they were preoccupied on making sure Joel wouldn't bleed out.

You remember that night, you and Abby had broken off from your group and made camp in an abandoned barn for the night. The fire roared, it's flames casting a golden glow onto her fair skin and dirty blonde hair. As Abby cried in your arms, trying desperately to calm down.

"It should- it should feel good" she hiccuped, muttering her voice scratchy "but... I don't... Why don't I feel better?"

You had so much to say. But you just couldn't.

••••••••••••

Joel lived. However, the hits to his head had messed up his mobility, so he was stuck in a wheelchair and had to be pushed around by Ellie and Tommy full time. There was a large scar that split his face in two, one eye was damaged and it's vision was restricted.

And worst of all? He was quiet. So so quiet. He barely ever spoke, he never laughed, he never told Ellie his stupid- stupid dad jokes. Abby may not have physically killed the man, but Joel's spirit was gone.

Ellie hated it, she sat with him daily, helping his trembling hands to shovel spoonfuls of soup into his mouth. She tried desperately, cracking jokes and reminiscing with him and nothing, nothing worked. Joel was gone.

Her dad was gone.

••••••••

Oregon was beautiful, the mountains, the trees, the water. It was perfect for you and Abby to settle down into, and you did. You found a beautiful abandoned cabin hidden thick into the woods, the view was beautiful, the expansive lake and the greenery. Just perfect.

Domesticity was not something you had ever thought about before, but it worked. It worked so so well. Abby enjoyed the physical tasks, her axe chopping skills were rapidly improving, and she loved hunting wild animals. You spent your time taking care of your new addition to the family, a german-shepard you'd named BoBo, among other little chores like cleaning and filtering water by boiling.

It was a beautiful morning, the sun creeped through the closed curtains, waking you and Abby up from your slumber. Her strong arms wrapped around your waist and squeezed your body tightly.

"Good Mornin' love" you whispered into her ear, ignoring the loud snores coming from BoBo who laid sprawled out on the foot of the bed. "Mornin' sugar" Abby groaned nuzzling her face into your neck trying to block out the sun's intrusion.

"we gotta get up baby" you cooed, pulling the stray blonde strands of hair, that had become loose from her braids, behind her ears. "No we don't..." "Yes, yes we do"

You began moving, leaving the warm soft covers behind and making Abby let out another frustrated groan.

The day flew by like any other day usually would, you woke up, went outside and collected fresh eggs your hens had laid, you made two omelettes, and Abby joined next to you filling up two glasses of water and setting the table.

After eating Abby left the cabin, looking at the animal traps she'd laid out the night before, two rabbits and a squirrel 'not bad'.

The sound of sharp barking echoes through the woods- BoBo yapping like mad. Of course Abby had heard the dog bark before- just never ever like this. It was desperate territorial growling and barking.

Something was wrong. Very very wrong.

Abby had never felt her legs move so fast before. Abandoning her catch on the mossy floor of the woods. The wind rushed through her blonde locks as her feet carried her as fast as possible, her breathing heavy but controlled

"Abby" your strained voice whimpered out from behind her as she slowed down, still deep in the woods.

Ellie's left arm was firmly and tightly wrapped around your waist, her other one held a knife to your neck drawing a line of blood as she increased the pressure of the blade against your skin.

"Let her go Ellie-" Abby's voice came out shaky despite all the effort she put into keeping it level. "I don't want to fight you..."

You hiccuped in an attempt to keep your sobs at bay, only causing Ellie to dig the hunting knife into your skin. "You don't have a choice." She grunted, hatred spilling out through the tone of her voice.

"Fine. Just leave her out of this" Abby softened, her shaking hands made a fist to try and cease the shaking and jittering of nervousness or anger? You couldn't tell.

The sudden release of Ellie's tight grip on you caused you to lose your balance. You stumbled before your foot got caught on an overgrown root of a tree making you tumble to the ground with a hiss at the twang of pain from your newly sprained ankle. Great.

Your mind was hazy- you heard the grunts and heavy breathing as the two women fought, but you couldn't bear to watch. Instead you turned your attention to the now whimpering BoBo who settled by your injured ankle, licking it softly in hopes it would ease your pain.

Ellie had ran at Abby, balled fist punching and swinging at the blonde who dodged and avoided her assaults.

"I don't want to hurt you" Abby gritted

"Stop being such a pussy and fucking fight me." Ellie spat, taking out the blade and handling it- begining to try and slash at the muscle of Abby.

Abby's body contorted, moving under Ellie's arm as she tried to swing the knife at her- coming from behind her and shoving her into the bark of one of the oak trees that surrounded the woods clearing.

Her hand manhandled the blade out of Ellie's tattooed hand throwing it on the grassy ground, still damp from the dewy spring morning. "Are we done now?... I'm not going to kill you Ellie."

"Fine. I won't give you a choice." The sound of a click came from behind Ellie's back, her hand pulling out the gun that had been strapped to her holster and pointed towards your sitting frame.

Bang.

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

I don't think I like this. But here you go 🍞 nonnie.

Taglist: @aunslie @lonelyfooryouonly @eywaskisses @daryldixonh0e @kittynnie @lovelyyevelyn @randomhoex @moonlightdivine @haerinwho @mufflaa @mial1l @sarahsmileslikesarahd0esntcare @moonlighting87 @escaping-reality8 @magicalfreakcowboylawyer @hejdevkdbdjsd @dergy @half-of-a-gay @ellieismami @cyberlainn @gollumsmygel @sseorii @kyleeservopoulos @taloulalila @ellieluhme @kiiyoooo @delusionalvioleht @joelscharm @hi2647 @gumdropkoo @coffeeandbookskeepmealive @womaniza @namgification @kimiisims-blog @tayyyystan @abigaillovestoread @whoreshores @kylieeluvstlou @knowitsforthebetterr @endureher @erikaar @lanasluverr @sayah13 @ilovebufflesbians @srryhoneyy @222fine444u @jade1212

NOT PROOFREAD

[conspicuous-clown-car]

small fnaf sb drabble

wrote this at like 3 am after imagining chica like one of those photos you see of cats where their eyes glow in the dark menacingly, then it slowly turned into...this lol

point of view is of my fnaf sb self insert, chica eats trash and feels bad, moon is a bastard but just wants to hang out with his friend.

i'm not a writer so keep that in mind, i just really wanted to get this idea out, and it would take too long in comic form

You walk down the second level hallway between Monty Golf and Kids Cove, heading towards Chica's Bakery. You fidget with the lanyard you're wearing, twisting the security badge around in your hand idly.

Hearing a suspicious sound of crunching in the distance, you pause, letting the badge fall against your shirt.

Your eyes dart around, and you slowly make your way towards whatever the noise is, attempting to keep yourself hidden. Right as you’re about to walk out from behind a food cart, the lights go out. ah, right. hourly recharge. 

You quickly peek your head out, trying to find what’s causing the noise, eyes straining as they get used to the dark. Your eyes widen seeing a figure that looks like Chica, hunched over a knocked over garbage bin……eating trash……

god, not again.

You stand up straight, and carefully walk closer, making sure not to trip on anything in the dim lighting. You do your best to make as little noise as possible with your footsteps, thankful that the carpet muffles most of it.

Finally, standing a good 5 feet behind her as she shovels garbage into her mouth, you just, pause. Contemplating why she’s still doing this after supposedly being “fixed” weeks ago. When and how did this behavior start? Why did they give her the need to eat in the first place? Why has management been ignoring this problem for so long?

and why……….why do you keep watching, this is disgusting.

You decide you’ve had enough of watching and listening to her shoving trash down her gullet, and move your hand past your jacket to silently unclip your flashlight from your belt.

Flashlight in your hold, you click it on and shine the light directly on her, informing her of your presence.

“Chica!”

The animatronic's head spins a whole 180 degrees towards you, body still facing away. You wince at the sight. She looks like a wild animal, her eyes reflecting the light of your flashlight, her mouth stuffed with trash from the garbage bin that she was clearly just eating out from. She looks sort of…aggressive? Like a pet getting caught eating something it knows it's not supposed to be eating.

You two stare at each other for a long awkward moment. 

When she finally relaxes a bit her eyes dart back and forth on you, surveying you

“Uh-“

Some chewed up mix of garbage falls out of her beak as her jaw moves

“…..Yes?”

You try not to laugh at that, stifling a smile and managing to keep a straight face. You lower the flashlight so that it's pointing to the floor, closing your eyes, you take in a deep breath. Your shoulders slack and you let out a long sigh, then look at her

“you know you’re supposed to be charging right now, right?”

She comically blinks out of synch, processing the information

“…Oh…oh!”

Chica jolts, and looks around as if she’s just now noticed the darkness the pizzaplex has been engulfed in

“Oh my gosh, you’re right!! Sorry! I just uh…..” 

She glances to the toppled over garbage bin, then back to you. Shrugging sheepishly, she lets out an embarrassed giggle

“……Got distracted?”

You huff and manage a smile, not really that upset with her eating habits, just a little concerned for her. You scratch at your face absentmindedly.

“it’s alright, just... get to the nearest charging station asap, yeah?”

She straightens up, her body rotating to face you. Her mood lifts a bit and she smiles, relieved that you aren’t reprimanding her for her strange habit. Despite that she still seems tense

“Yeah! Of course!”

She struts towards you, eyes lighting up the dark and casting a purple glow over you. Abruptly stopping herself from patting your shoulder, she frowns when realizing how much gunk is on her hands. You look up at her with a soft expression on your face.

"...hey, i'll help you clean up after my patrols if you want, okay?

Chica stays silent, lost in thought as she stares at her messy hand. Her eyes quickly dart between you and her hand for a moment. Then, catching up to the present, her eyes settle on you, and she smiles gratefully.

"...I would, really appreciate that, thank you"

You give her a small smile, and pat her clean arm wordlessly, an attempt to comfort her. It seems to lift her up, as she swiftly regains her peppy composure and remembers her current task

“Right! Charging! Sorry again, see you later, Krissy!”

she gestures a peace sign as she starts walking past you

“mhm, see ya”

You nod your head at the chicken, watching as she hurries towards what is hopefully a charging station, leaving you in the dark. But as she walks further in the distance, you see her form slouch a bit, as if in shame. It tugs at your heartstrings, and you wonder if this is starting to get a little out of control, this eating problem of hers. It’s clearly taking a toll on her, you can tell, no matter how much she tries to hide behind her enthusiastic nature.

You look over at the garbage bin on its side, ultimately deciding to let a staff bot handle it. There's no way you were touching garbage without gloves, and you cringe at the thought.

As your mind wanders you turn around and continue walking to your original destination, Chica’s Bakery. Knowing the path, you turn the flashlight off, keeping it in your hold just in case. You quite enjoy the darkness, along with the bright colors of the neon lights on the ceilings and walls, it's very peaceful. Lost in your thoughts as you continue making your way towards the bakery, only the muffled sound of your footsteps can be heard in the quiet empty pizzaplex.

That and the faint sound of bells.

You immediately freeze right outside the shutter doors, hair standing on edge at the noise. Your ears strain to listen for anything else as you stand completely still. The darkness around you is slowly lit with a red hue, and right behind you, you hear the sounds of something…mechanical.

You spin around and, not expecting Moons face to be inches from yours, you jump and flail backwards, cursing. You lose hold of your flashlight and it thuds on the carpet. How you didn’t feel him so close to you, you had no clue. His body is slouched low to the ground as he snickers at you. Your face feels warm, embarrassed by your reaction

“c'mon moon! the hell?”

You glare at him and ball your hands into fists at your sides, only slightly irritated at his amusement

His chuckling slows and quiets to a stop and he tilts his head, the action causing a creaking sound as he looks at you. god you gotta fix that.

“taking my job?”

His voice filled with mirth, and maybe a bit of mock irritation too. 

You lean over to grab your flashlight off the floor, keeping your eyes on him. Standing up straight attempting to regain your composure, you fail to process what he said

“huh?”

“Chica.”

He says plainly, casually taking a step towards you, still slouched. You don't understand where he's going with this, as he's purposely acting mysterious

“oh”

you say dumbly

“right, she was uh, just kinda there so i….sent her on her way?”

You shrugged awkwardly, thumb fidgeting with the grooves on the flashlight. You can't really tell if he's taking this conversation seriously or not.

Glowing red eyes seem to brighten as he stares at you, his body rigid as he shakes his head creepily.

“didn’t do it correctly.”

You squint at him, tilting your head in confusion.

“…didn’t-…..what do you mean?”

He glares, abruptly walking towards you, and you manage not to flinch. Yet your grip on the flashlight tightens.

“didn’t escort her to a charging station.”

He starts slowly circling around you, like a predator, keeping his gaze locked on you. You turn towards him, making sure to keep your eyes on him. You're really not in the mood for what you think he's planning.

“didn’t make sure she actually got to one.”

His hands twitch a bit, and you glance at them for a brief moment, trying to figure out if he's actually upset or not.

“well, isn’t that your job?”

you instantly regret the quick retort, mentally yelling at yourself for saying it ruder than you meant. wow! way to de-escalate the situation!

Moon stops walking, and just stares at you, alarmingly still. All you can do is look back into his red eyes as you attempt to control your breathing and keep your face emotionless.

Another moment goes by of staring at each other, then a reedy giggle bursts out of his voice box with a glitch. He covers his mouth with a hand -as if that would muffle it- and grips his stomach, his body shaking as if he’s actually laughing. You just stare at him as he laughs at you, wondering what's so funny.

He finally stops laughing and lets out a quiet sigh, mimicking wiping a tear from his eye while holding a hand to his chest. His faceplate quickly tilts toward you.

He lifts his hand, and calmly motions for you to come closer, holding it out as if he wants you to take it.

“c'mere.” 

You grip your flashlight to your chest with both hands, confused at the quick change, not fully trusting his intentions. You purse your lips and squint your eyes at him suspiciously.

“….why?”

He slowly moves a bit closer, crouching to your eye level, trying to appear less intimidating.

“come on...” 

His voice is softer, as if he genuinely means no harm. It could still be a trick though, you've fallen for this before. Stretching his arm towards you he motions again for you to take his hand.

You look down at his hand, then at him, then back at his hand, and think for a moment. You trust him, right?

You let out a sigh through your nose and cautiously lift your right hand.

Moon quickly shakes his head and waves his hand, and you ignore the fact that it slightly startled you. He then points to your left hand, the one that has the fazwatch on it. oh.

He holds out his hand again, and -after switching your hold of the flashlight to your right to make sure he doesn't take it- you carefully place your left hand on his, watching him to see if he'll try anything.

Smoothly shifting closer to you, he gently grabs your arm and gets up into your personal space. He brings your wrist and fazwatch close to his face, and starts fiddling with it. You relax a bit, relieved that he was just messing with you before.

Curious, you try to see what he’s doing as he taps his fingers on the screen, but his huge faceplate is blocking your view

“….what’re you…?”

“shhh...”

He quickly shushes you, faceplate spinning once, and the bell on the end of his hat hits your chest.

"hey!"

You scoff, feigning annoyance, despite it not hurting that much.

Moon hisses in response.

He stops tapping and stares at the screen for a second, then guides your arm up to your face with both hands so you could see what’s on the fazwatch. You wince at the bright screen, your eyes adjusted to the dark. Oh, it’s the useless map of the building you stopped using weeks ago, with...dots on it. Four to be exact, one red, one purple, one green, and one pink. The pink one was further away from the rest, not moving.

You quickly put together that these were the glamrocks in their green rooms, all charging. Except for Chica, who was still loitering in the atrium…ugh.

Moon points to the pink dot, his finger getting too close to your eyes for comfort.

“Chica.”

You bring your arm down to look at him, simultaneously getting his hand further away from your face.

“yea, she’s still not in a charging station...”

You sigh and look at the ceiling, dragging your right hand down the side of your face tiredly. You really were a babysitter to these four. At least now you'll always be able to see their locations on your fazwatch, that's helpful.

You realize Moon still has a hold on your arm as his hands start curling around it, and he gently tugs you closer, getting your attention back on him.

“come with me.”

You look at him for a moment, then turn your head toward the shutter door that separates you from the bakery. You had your own personal reasons for going there besides having to patrol…but...

One of his hands moves from your arm to your other shoulder and he pulls you even closer. He stand a little taller, so that his face is right in front of yours

“could be funny...”

You lift your eyebrows in interest, eyes darting to him for a second but you keep facing towards the shutter. Hmmm, knowing Moon, it could be funny…

“help me do my job?”

He requests, calling back your previous statement. Man he really wants you to come with him, huh?

“…hmmmmmmmmm....”

You draw out a long hum, and turn towards him somewhat, still not looking at him. You wait for whatever he’ll do to try and convince you to go with him.

Moon's hands squeeze you, he tilts his head to the side, and your eyes are immediately drawn to him.

“pretty please?”

ah shit, you can't say no to that

“....hmmmmmmm okaaay…”

You huff, reluctantly agreeing to accompany him.

You hear a mechanical rumbling noise coming from his chest, and he straightens his posture, looking pleased. His hand engulfs yours as he quickly grabs it, clearly thrilled to be able to spend time with you.

You roll your eyes and fail to hide a smile as he happily drags you through the dark building, away from Chica's Bakery.

[hopefulvittori]

Kindled emotions

Pinocchio (Lies of P) x OC/Reader

Angst/Fluff

So this is my very first fanfiction... To be honest, I was kinda afraid to post it at first, but every starts are always the hardest. Sorry about my english in advance, I'm not a native speaker. I only created this blog as a placeholder because AO3 has a pretty long inv queue nowadays. As soon as I have an account, I'll post my upcoming fics here and there. :)

As his journey goes on, the puppet of Geppetto starts to experience fear and doubts about his circumstances. Luckily, a certain helpful falcon helps to take that despair away.

──────────

Pain wasn't foreign for the puppet of Geppetto. At least not anymore. He noticed a few changes ever since he started his journey. It hurt him when the frenzied puppets hit him with a candle holder or a shovel. Or when the monster-turned infectees latched themselves onto him. 

Yet, this kind of pain was different. It came from his chest area. It was suffocating. 

Ever since he dealt with the Black Rabbit Brotherhood and saw that painting, he's been thinking a lot. Every time he was close to shutting down, the woman in blue always stayed time's hand from claiming him. And despite his struggles, he always saw his father - his creator - watching that portrait with melancholic fondness. Oh, how he wished that his only family would've looked at him with similar tenderness...

He started to feel fear. Fear from the uncertainties of his time-manipulating circumstances. What if the next of his perilous endeavours will be the last? What would his father think of him then? Will he be sad? Disappointed, maybe both? Questions, yet no answers.

"Are you okay, pal? You've been spacing out a lot lately." Gemini asked him with a worried tone. His green light flickered in the dark streets of Rose Isabelle.

It was all true. He has been extra cautious when it comes to his stalking. Krat was certainly a dangerous place to live by, especially with these frenzying puppets and monsters around. Despite that, although slightly, his non-legion hand was shaking. He couldn't feel the sword in his hand the way he held it before. His cerulean gaze was glued to the ground. 

He felt cold...

"H-hey! Watch where you're going or else we'll be--!" Even though the puppet guide in the lamp tried to warn him, the encounter was inevitable. A large number of frenzied puppets fell from a storeyed house. Screaming like wild animals, they were lunging themselves towards the puppet of Geppetto. He reacted as quickly as he could and turned his back on his desired destination. Although he avoided getting clobbered by the puppets, he couldn't stop one of them latching itself onto his leg. Trashing against his captor, the boy managed to get himself free and cut it down with a single powerful strike. Then he ran away with the feeling of hopelessness and confusion.

He didn't even notice that lack of the lantern's green glimmer. The hostile puppet managed to grab Gemini and drop it to the ground. It couldn't see where the puppet boy ran off to nor warn its partner in crime as the impact managed to turn it off.

───── ⋆ ─────

The Falcon felt quite tired after spending the night on the streets of Krat, getting rid of the maddened puppets. With each strike, her indigo dress was painted with oil. She felt the taste of iron in her mouth. It sickened her. 

Separating her lance into two blades, she finished her work on the last two or three automatons. Electric sparks lightened the darkness as her enemies lifelessly fell into the cold stones. She sighed in relief while sheathed her swords. She saw no other puppets on the streets. None, except one. The Falcon noticed a familiar lanter lying on the ground. Its side was kinda battered.

"Cricky? What happened?" She asked as she picked up the lantern. No response. The lack of his peculiar green light worried her. Then she suddenly remembered how its owner turned it on and off. She looked for a button on its side. With a "click" and its signature green spark, the lantern turned on. 

"T-t-tori?" Though her distorted voice surprised the stalker, she was more annoyed about calling her that silly nickname.

"What happened to you?" She asked. 

"I-i don't know. There were... so many puppets and... and..." He said with fearful hesitation.

The Falcon looked around, searching for the signs of Gemini's owner. Did the puppets get him? He was pretty much inseparable from his lantern. Something bad must've happened.

"Where is Speckles?" She asked slowly. 

"I'm... n-not sure. One of the puppets grabbed me a-and... and..." Even though it felt kinda impossible, Gemini sounded like it was in despair. Its entire purpose was to guide its owner. Without him, no wonder it sounded so lost.

The Falcon grabbed the lantern and strapped it on her belt. Her hand rested on its form as some comfort of sorts. She didn't say anything but started her search for the puppet of Geppetto. She knew his nature. He was pretty much an Ergo-harvesting automaton. She always felt the sweet scent of life on him. It was both of her blessing and curse to being attuned to those souls, feeling their desires as her own. She followed that odor of the puppet's Ergo. She always found his scent quite nostalgic. Like settling around a fireplace after getting away from the cold rain or snow. It was warm. 

She stalked around Rose Isabelle streets for almost an hour. Luckily, she felt it. The scent of Ergo got a lot stronger inside of an abandoned storeyed house. She was careful though. Her steps were light as a feather when she started searching through the home. There she heard it: a quiet but hasty heaving. It came from a bedroom. The Falcon doubled her steps, carefully opening the door. Then she slightly gasped at the sight that awaited her. 

The puppet of Geppetto sat before a bed. His frozen expression was lightened in the fireplace's gentle gleam. It was subtle, but his eyes were staring forward in shock. Lips parted and gasped for air. 

It seemed that he was searching for some sort of solace. To remind himself of the comfort of his home. Yet despite his endeavors, he clearly failed to calm his nerves. 

"Speckles? What are you doing here?" The Falcon asked gently. She hoped for a response, yet the boy couldn't even look at her. The woman got closer and crouched before him. Even like that, the puppet failed to notice her presence.

Judging by his body language, he had a panic attack. The stalker didn't know that this was even possible. He was a puppet after all. Yet even though she had questions, she needed to wait for answers. 

"P?" The woman tried to call out for the boy once again. Only this time, her hand found its way to the puppet's human one. To the Falcon's surprise, it felt wet. His hand was drenched in sweat. She placed her other hand on his freckled cheek, forcing him to look at her. Despite tilting his head towards the woman, his eyes were unfocusing. 

"It's alright, P. It will pass." She said gently, stroking his cheek. "I'll stay with you until this is over."

Then she felt it. His human hand gently squeezed hers. He showed her appreciation in a way he could in this situation. She warmly smiled and sat beside him. She petted his fluffy chestnut brown hair while holding his hand.

"Try to control your breathing. It will help you calm down." She continued on as she showed it to him. "Take a big breath... keep it in for a bit... then breathe out."

She kept doing it until the puppet of Geppetto tried to do something similar. Even though he couldn't look at her, he tried to do his best to calm his breathing. His shoulders rose and fell in a more rhythmic manner.

"That's it, P. You're getting better at this. You're going to be alright." The Falcon said in an encouraging way.

His chest heaved less and his eyes became more focused. He needed a few minutes before he could finally look at her. He tilted his head a bit slightly to the right, eyebrows raised in a questioning manner. 

The Falcon smiled at him, unstrapping Gemini from her belt in the meanwhile. The boy was surprised to see his puppet guide in the hands of the stalker woman. 

"Some puppet must've snatched it. I found it after you hid here." She explained quietly, handing over the small puppet to its owner. The boy gave her a small smile as his appreciation. 

"What happened?" As she asked, his simper disappeared. He tried to avoid her stare, but the Falcon searched his gaze curiously. 

"I..." His lips were parting slowly, but no more words came out. She knew now: these feelings were beyond his comprehension. He wasn't ready yet.

The Falcon shifted and sat before the puppet boy. She grabbed his automaton arm and gently squeezed both of his hands.  

"I see now. You can't tell me, can you?" She asked quietly. 

The boy nodded curtly. 

"...Because it's something you can't exactly explain." She continued. 

He blinked a bit before nodding again. The woman averted her gaze and looked at the fireplace. 

"The flames partake in such warmth. To wash away the pain."

The puppet raised an eyebrow curiously. 

"Oh, just a phrase someone I knew used a lot..." She said with a tint of melancholy. The Falcon shook her head. "Anyway... if you have any doubts, you don't need to be afraid. I know how these new feelings and doubts can burden one's heart. But..." She gave him an encouraging look. "When you're ready to tell me about them... you know where you can find me. You can always partake in this warmth." 

This woman - this girl - intrigued him to no end. Sometimes she was witty, yet showed kindness to others. Even strangers. She was willing to sit with him, helping to understand these new emotions without asking anything in return. His doubts were washed away in those sea of flames she spoke of. As he held onto her hands, clutching them like small, fragile things, he felt... safe. Like a warm blanket, this new feeling covered his entire being.

He felt warmth...

Without hesitation, he leant towards the Falcon and gently pressed his forehead to hers. Her breath hitched as her entire body froze. His human hand shifted to stroke her long ashen brown hair. His eyes were closed as he tried to express the gratitude he had felt. Then a small smile appeared on his lips as he felt her being relaxed in his grasp. Her hand found its way to his arm as a way of support. This situation was also new to the stalker. Her kindness was appreciated. Her words didn't fall on deaf ears.

It wasn't in vain.

Realizing this, she gave out a sigh of bliss. The Falcon felt a bit light-headed from the content she had felt... or maybe from the tiredness. Her head slowly slipped from the boy's forehead onto his left shoulder. He gave her a mild puzzled look as his arms encircled around her form. Each time she sighed, her shoulders were rising. The puppet of Geppetto could've sworn he heard her snoring. He felt his gears moving a bit faster as he looked at her peaceful form. The Falcon completely tired herself out, yet she found the strength to help him. He carefully scooped her up and laid her down onto the bed. He watched her serene face as a content smile appeared on her lips.

"Geez, she is completely tired herself out. Just to look out for you." It was a genuine surprise how long Gemini has been quiet. Its voice was kinda raspy from the damage it sustained, but it survived worse situations than this. The boy was fully convinced that it was fine when the puppet guide suggested to draw a mustache and a monocle on her face. With a deadpan face, he reached for his lantern.

"Imagine her reaction, that would be price... Wait wait! I was kidd--" With a loud "click", Gemini was turned off. The puppet of Geppetto quietly sighed as he sat down next to Falcon's resting form.

Morning wasn't coming any time soon. He could wait until down to make sure she gets some rest. As he watched her defenseless form, his hand reached for hers. He gave her a last squeeze before standing up and reaching for the door.

"Sweet dreams."

──────────

In the original storybook, the Falcon was a minor character. It was the Blue Fairy's helper who rescued Pinocchio from hanging. I thought it would be a neat idea to put P in a similar but symbolic situation. He was literally suffocating from his fears and doubts until the Falcon tried to make those feelings go away. :) Btw my OC just loves giving nicknames yet she hates being called Tori (her real name is Vittori, her nickname means "bird" in japanese).

Once again, sorry for any grammatical errors. I hope you enjoyed this story filled with angst and fluff!

[ghostoffuturespast]

3 May 2024 - Friday Field Notes

Of course, much of what fills our mouths is taken forcibly from the earth. That form of taking does no honor to the farmer, to the plants, or to the disappearing soil. It’s hard to recognize food that is mummified in plastic, bought and sold, as a gift anymore. Everybody knows you can’t buy love. In a garden, food arises from partnership. If I don’t pick rocks and pull weeds, I’m not fulfilling my end of the bargain. I can do these things with my handy opposable thumb and capacity to use tools, to shovel manure. But I can no more create a tomato or embroider a trellis in beans than I can turn lead into gold. That is the plants’ responsibility and their gift: animating the inanimate. Now there is a gift. People often ask me what one thing I would recommend to restore relationship between land and people. My answer is almost always, “Plant a garden.” It’s good for the health of the earth and it’s good for the health of people. A garden is a nursery for nurturing connection, the soil for cultivation of practical reverence. And its power goes far beyond the garden gate–once you develop a relationship with a little patch of earth, it becomes a seed itself. Something essential happens in a vegetable garden. It’s a place where if you can’t say “I love you” out loud, you can say it in seeds. And the land will reciprocate, in beans.

Epiphany In The Beans - Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants - Robin Wall Kimmerer

Gardening adventures begin! We'll see how they do. Completely operating on trial and error here.

In the late afternoon of July the prairie reaches a crescendo. Under a hot sun, dry wind eases through the tallgrass while monarch and painted lady butterflies quench their thirst at a blazingstar. Bumble bee workers circle the heads of coneflowers gathering pollen. Dickcissel birds rise from the shade of bluestem and indiangrass with their eponymous dick-CISSEL-CISSEL calls. As the sun works its way farther west into the evening, a coolness settles in the valleys as plants transpire, their exhalations creating a dampness that thickens the air. The quiet of this space creates a distance that can be unnerving. It is just you and the horizon, just you and the sky fading into the grass, all made part of something much larger and older than yourself. The colors change in these golden hours as afternoon fades into evening. Bright greens are washed in faint blues, the yellow tops of coreopsis and sunflower mute to burnt orange and copper, and the purple prairie clover blooms shift to a magenta as moths take their turn to feast. Walk into a prairie at any time of day and it’s like entering a Jacuzzi bath; you are delightfully vulnerable, soothed of everything you’ve dragged around all day, trusting in the place to hold you close, to give you back your one wild and precious life. Sit down among the plants and watch a banded orb weaver create a web larger than a cookie sheet, strung between a few blades of arching switchgrass. Prairie becomes a word synonymous with empathy and gratitude; it is not a simple place but one full of meaning that stretches out through time.

Ch. 1 - Prairie Up: An Introduction to Natural Garden Design - Benjamin Vogt

Perhaps there are more efficient ways of weeding out the old stands of tumbleweeds, but there's something incredibly intimate about crawling around the prairie on all fours. You get to greet new friends and say goodbye to old ones.

Pronghorn crossing, excuse me.

[ethernetmeep]

anyway, excluding annoyances, i assume now is a good time as any to reattempt my lost to network error writing entry about a dead bird i found this morning.

06:42, around that time — frantically run/walk to bus. see a sparrow on the road. check for any signs of life. none. wasn’t a window collision, then the body would remain mostly the same. wasn’t ran over, body would be… emaciated. likely caught by either coyote or injured by another animal in some capacity. injury near one of legs. neck seemed fine, when coming back later seemingly 180° post-mortem. when found, generally ‘fresh’. i did not have time to sit and stare. moved sparrow to clearing on side of road, near wild plants. went on my way, still thinking about the animal

skipping all affairs during the day, unrelated to the subject at hand — walk home. see corpse is where i left it. ants, now. not taken over completely. volunteer interview in thirty minutes. pick up corpse, bring near house. dig a makeshift hole for burial. not very deep… i am bad with big shovels. the hand ones are the easiest for me to work with. regardless, bury them. thunk the soil on top. feel bad for it, but have to make sure they are safe underneath the soil. originally wasn’t going to bury; continue the cycle. didn’t want the children on the block to find the creature though. during the event of bringing it back to our yard i had a moment of clarity where although i was breathing through my mouth (habit when i pick up dead things) i was muttering & during this muttering realized the place where i am at in my life.

i am feeling like a freshly washed plate

[hot-take-tournament]

it's funny you mention pizza because i always either alternate bites of crust and body, or roll mine up like a sushi roll or croissant, and every time I've eaten pizza in front of people they've asked me what the fuck I'm doing

yeah, i get this reaction a lot

it's probably my weirdest food habit, but i can't eat while the sun is still up

during the day, i have no appetite whatsoever; i will vomit if i eat breakfast, or more than two bites at lunch

but, as soon as the sun goes down, i turn into a wild animal and just tear my kitchen apart at 3 in the morning

i have unironically ripped cupboard doors off their hinges so i could get to packets of crackers and boxes of cereal and jars of apple sauce and loaves of bread, and just shovel them into my mouth bear-handed

i will hold a pizza or a steak to the table in both hands and just rip chunks off it with my teeth - if i eat out too late, and the courses take too long to arrive, i will do this in public, because i literally cannot control myself, nothing is off limits

i have been thrown out of restaurants because of this

i can feel this hunger building as we speak

soon

[cowvboyenema]

shoveling my mouth full of fish not even taking time to chew just cramming that shit like a wild animal moaning and drooling and shit

[penny00dreadful]

First Impressions - Complete

We're here! We did it! My Pride and Prejudice AU is finished! I've had such a good time writing this and I hope you've loved it as much as I have.

Here's a little snippet of the epilogue that can be read as a standalone: UNHINGED and chaotic shovel talks (all in good fun, no angst here) from Eddie and Robin.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 AO3

Eddie would never admit it to anyone but at the moment he was regretting his lack of athletic prowess. He’d done some pretty wild things in his youth but he’d never had the chance to scale the side of a house in order to climb through a bedroom window before and it was a struggle.

God damn it, his arms were so skinny. And his knees were close to giving out, his back was starting to hurt and he was gulping in air like a fish out of water, though it didn’t seem to be doing much. Would it have killed him to put on some muscle at any point prior to this?

Eddie tossed his bag up onto the flat roof in front of him, finally managing to pull himself over the ledge and immediately collapsing flat onto his back, leaving his legs dangling over and panting big heaving breaths out into the evening.

God he was super out of shape, he needed to quit smoking. The sky was a dusty pink and orange above of him, completely indifferent to his struggle to breathe. Steve and Robin would be home from work soon, he needed to get up. He needed to prepare.

The sound of car doors slamming below brought him swiftly back to the present. Shit. Okay well, they usually started dinner once they got back in so he still had time.

“Hey degenerate.”

Eddie jerked in surprise as a voice called out to him from behind. Twisting his head around he saw Max leaning out her bedroom window with her chin in her hand.

“You’ve got the wrong roof.” 

He shook his head, still breathing hard. “No, it’s the right roof.”

“The fuck it is if you think you’re sneaking into my room-”

“God no, don’t flatter yourself.” He groaned, finally dragging his legs over the edge and getting to his feet. “This is the right roof, Steve and Robin don’t have a ledge under their windows and the other roof is a much more difficult climb. This is my best option. I’m going in through the guest room.”

“You should’ve gone around to the other corner, there’s more footholds along that pipe.” She pointed.

“And how would an innocent young lady such as yourself know that?”

With almost perfect timing a second bag was thrown onto the roof before Lucas popped into view, pulling himself up with far more strength and grace than Eddie had managed.

Lucas froze to a dead stop at the sight of him, his eyes darting wide and panicked between him and Max. Eddie turned back to look at Max who just shrugged. Lucas’ shoulders dropped minutely once it became obvious Eddie wasn’t going to scream at him or throw him off the roof.

“Why are you up here?” Lucas asked, looking like a cornered animal. “Why didn’t you use the front door?”

“Why didn’t you use the front door?” Eddie challenged. “Steve knows about the two of you. You’ve kissed in front of him. I had to hear all about it, he was traumatised.”

A blush was steadily darkening Lucas’ cheeks and his eyes had gotten wider before he gave Max a panicked glance.

Max for her part looked completely unbothered until she caught sight of Lucas’ distress, her face breaking into a wide, evil grin.

“I dunno, Eddie.” She sighed, putting on her best dramatic interpretation of a wistful woman. “But there’s just something so thrilling about your boyfriend sneaking into your room in the middle of the night, don’t you think?”

Eddie’s mouth pulled into a frown. “Ugh. And it’s not even night time, it’s evening.”

Max glanced back to Lucas before looking Eddie dead in the eye. “That’s okay. We can just play pretend.”

“Okay, I’m gone.” Eddie snatched up his bag and hurried over to the guest room window. “I need to go bleach my brain or drown myself or something.” He yanked the window open. “I’ll send you my therapy bills.” He clambered inside before sticking his head back out again. Lucas still had not moved, staring at him with a mixture of embarrassment and fear. “Don’t tell anyone I'm here and I won't tell anyone what I just saw."

“Why are you here?” Max asked, leaning nearly halfway out of her window to keep looking at him.

“Mind your own business, Red.” Eddie said, closing the shutter to punctuate his statement and shuddering violently. If he wasn’t in the middle of something right now, he’d get as high as humanly possible to wash out whatever kind of role play he’d just unwittingly interrupted, hopefully forgetting it forever.

Still, he didn’t have much time left, he needed to set this up before one of them came upstairs. Eddie cracked the guest bedroom door open, peeking out into the dimly lit hallway, looking up and down like he was breaking into the Louvre and not Steve’s house, which he knew intimately enough at this stage to avoid the creaky floorboards.

He had Shirley Bassey's Goldfinger playing on a loop in his brain and he didn’t know if it was a help or a hindrance.

Slipping out and closing the guest room door softly behind him, Eddie crossed the hallway and slowly, painfully slowly, he opened the bedroom door. The room was nearly dark, the sun was on the opposite side of the house and in just a few minutes it would be plunged into complete blackness, perfect.

He kept the door cracked while he set up the room so he could see without turning on the light, removing language books from the swivelling chair and setting them down on the desk. There was a table lamp with a flick switch that he pulled closer to him. He’d have preferred a pull switch for the drama but it would have to do.

Situating the chair so the back of it was to the door, he pulled the final touch from his bag.

Chrissy’s pink stuffed whale.

Just as he tucked his bag out of sight he heard the telltale creak of the first step on the stairs. 

Eddie shot to his feet and tried to close the bedroom door as quietly as possible. He nearly tripped over what must have been an empty trumpet case when he made his way back to the chair, swivelling around so his back was to the door again and put the whale on his lap, waiting in the darkness of the room.

When the handle jiggled he took a deep breath to steady himself and placed a hand lightly on the switch for the lamp.

A second after the door swung open he spoke.

“Evening, Buckley.” Eddie said in his lowest voice, the one he always adopted for his villains or… certain activities with Steve and switched the table lamp on as Robin screeched out in shock.

He swung around in the chair until he was facing her, the picture of nonchalance, one leg crossed tightly over the other and gently petting the stuffed whale like a cat.

“What- what the fuck, Eddie?!” She clutched at her chest, half collapsed back against the wall.

“We’re gonna have a conversation.” He growled, trying to sound as over the top evil as possible.

“So call on the phone like a normal person!”

“Sorry babes.” He shrugged, attempting to bore into her soul with his eyes. “This is something that needs to happen face to face.”

“Jesus Christ.” Robin rolled her eyes, running a hand through her hair and Eddie maybe felt a little bad. “Okay, well I’m changing into my pyjamas so you’re gonna have to deal with that.”

He waved a hand at her just as she stripped off her top, leaving her standing in her bra.

He allowed the silence to stretch for dramatic effect, stroking over the whale again. Maybe he should have brought a monocle. 

“Chrissy is very special to me-”

She snorted, popping the button in her jeans. “Oh, that’s what this is?”

Eddie glared up at her, his voice falling back to its normal tone. “Do you mind? I’m trying to do a bit here.”

“Rob, are you okay? I heard a scream- Eddie?”

Steve turned into the doorway and stopped dead, blinking at the scene before him. Robin in just her bra with her jeans open and Eddie sitting in her desk chair like some kind of voyeur with a large pink stuffed whale in his lap.

“Hello precious.” Eddie smiled at him bright and warm, his menacing character completely gone.

“Do I want to know what’s going on here?”

“I’m being threatened.” Robin wiggled her way out of her jeans.

“I want to preserve your innocence, Stevie. This doesn’t involve you. She’ll be down in a few minutes.”

Steve looked back and forth between the two of them as Robin reached behind her to unclasp her bra. Steve abruptly turned his back and Eddie covered his eyes with the whale.

“Rob, what the fuck?”

“Robin!”

“Oh, now you’re uncomfortable? You broke into my room, Munson, you deal with the consequences.”

“Okay,” Steve said, throwing his hands up and already walking away. “I’m going back downstairs and away from whatever the fuck this is. Dinner's nearly ready.”

“Make it snappy Eddie.” Robin pulled the whale down and made a ‘speed it up’ gesture at him, now clothed in a loose shirt and pyjama pants. “I’m hungry.”

“Give me a second.” He placed the whale back on his lap and rolled his shoulders. “I need to get back into character.”

He allowed his face and posture to melt back into something casual but evil. “Chrissy is one of the most important people in my life, and if you hurt her, I’m afraid it’s not going to end well for you.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. I’m going to have to fight you.”

“Oooohhh.” Robin fake cowered. “To the death?”

Eddie’s grin split wide into a huge satisfied smile. 

Perfect. 

Right into his trap.

“No.” He growled softly. “To the pain.”

“Oh my god. Is there going to be a dance break in the middle of this production, Dread Pirate Roberts?”

“I’ll have you know I’m a triple threat.” He huffed, snaking his head, trying to keep his character in the forefront of his mind. “No. To the pain.” He repeated, waving his hand at Robin as if to say ‘come on’.

Robin rolled her eyes but there was a smile tugging at her lips.

“I don't think I'm quite familiar with that phrase.” She recited, mimicking an English accent.

Eddie sighed. “I'll explain and I'll use small words so that you'll be sure to understand, you warthog faced buffoon.”

She raised her eyebrows and opened her mouth in offence. “That may be the first time in my life a man has dared insult me.”

“It won't be the last.” Eddie continued to stroke the whale like it was a cat. “To the pain means the first thing you will lose will be your feet below the ankles. Then your hands at the wrists. Next your nose.”

Robin got to her feet, waving an imaginary sword in his face. “And then my tongue I suppose, I killed you too quickly the last time. A mistake I don't mean to duplicate tonight.” She lunged for him before he held a hand out, stopping her.

“I wasn't finished. The next thing you will lose will be your left eye followed by your right.”

She hung her head back in mock exasperation. “And then my ears, I understand let's get on with it!”

“WRONG.” Eddie cried, jumping to his feet and pointing at her. “Your ears you keep and I'll tell you why-”

“Food!” Steve’s voice called from the end of the stairs.

“Thank god.” Robin groaned. “Not that I didn’t love this production Eddie, though I’m sad there were no tap shoes involved, my stomach is literally eating me from the inside out. Are you coming? We made chicken enchiladas.”

“Oh, fuck yeah.” He dumped the whale on her desk chair and followed her downstairs.

Once he’d made his way into the kitchen he latched onto Steve’s back, holding tight to him while he tried to finish plating up their dinner.

“Mmm.” Eddie hummed with his lips pressed against the back of Steve’s neck. “Smells so good.”

“Ed’s, please. I’m in the middle of something. Go sit down.” Steve was trying his very best to sound irritated but his voice was coming out too soft, leaning his head back so it rested on Eddie’s shoulder.

Eddie lifted his hands from Steve’s stomach, grabbing a fistful of pec in each hand and squeezing as he pressed a long slow kiss to Steve’s cheek.

“Honk.” He whispered, squeezing again and causing Steve to break away from him with an involuntary laugh, bright and loud and his favourite thing.

“Oh my god, you’re the most irritating person. Go. Leave me finish this in peace.”

Eddie unwound himself from around Steve with a smile and seated himself next to Robin.

“Are you the two of you going to explain what happened upstairs?” Steve asked, setting the plates down in front of them.

“I told you. Eddie was threatening my life.”

“Uh, excuse me. No I wasn’t.” He turned back to Steve. “I was threatening to mutilate her.”

“Right.”

“Yeah, it was this whole production.” Robin spoke through a mouthful of food. “He made me recite lines.”

“You loved it.”

“I think you could have done with a monocle.”

Eddie snapped his fingers. “I knew it!”

“Are you two in a play I don’t know about?”

“No, it was Chrissy’s shovel talk.”

“Ah.” Steve nodded before turning to Robin. “So what are you planning for mine then?”

“I need a plan? I figured I’d just threaten to cut all of his hair off.”

“Oh no. Robin, you will not be outdone with this. He brought a prop. It needs to be a thing.”

“And I already did ‘campy villain’ so you can’t do that either.”

“God damn it, well now you’ve issued me a challenge. How far can I go?”

“Go as far as you need to. Scare me. Make me feel like I’m being stalked by a serial killer or something, I don’t know. Just don’t touch my hair. Or actually kill me.”

“Oh come on now Eds. You can’t take all her fun.”

Eddie shrugged. “Sorry. I draw the line at my own death.”

“Party pooper.”

~x~X~x~

Eddie was just about ready to tear his hair out. One thing that he fucking hated about being a manager now was all the goddamned paperwork that was involved. All he wanted to do was go home and wolf down whatever magnificent feast Chrissy and Steve had decided to experiment with today.

Sometimes it weirded him out a little just how similar they were. The two of them loved sports and exercised for fun, which both he and Robin just stared on in bewilderment and a little bit of lust whenever it happened. They both came from controlling mothers and emotionally absent fathers. They both had spent most of their lives being forced into a mould that would fit their parents ‘upper-middle class perfect image’ sensibilities that neither he nor Robin had ever had to deal with. 

They had both been the most popular person of their respective years in high school, the King and Queen respectively, before shedding all of that with the help of a weird soulmate and a healthy dose of trauma. 

They both stared on with empty eyes as he and Robin got into yet another ‘debate’ about whether music theory was necessary to the art form, or what made camp cinema camp or whether Lord Douglas fucked over Wilde.

Then when Steve started cooking more and more in their apartment, Chrissy latched onto a new joint interest between the two of them easily. Eddie was sure he’d never eaten better in his life before.

So heading home and falling face first into a plate of whatever they’d whipped up tonight was something he just could get his mind off of. He only had a half an hour left anyway.

Fuck it, this paperwork could wait until tomorrow, he could spend the last bit of his shift out in front where it was slightly easier to waste his time.

Pushing his way out of the office door he was surprised to see Robin sitting at the bar, he had expected her to already be at the apartment.

“Robbie, my dear. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I’m bored.” She said, slumped over the counter, placing her cheek in her hand. “And I have a question.”

Eddie mirrored her position. “Okay, shoot.”

“Can I have a drink first?”

“Is that your question?” He smiled at her while she pouted.

“Obviously not.”

“Alright.” Eddie straightened up and stretched, his back was starting to act up from all those hours sitting on an uncomfortable office chair. “What can I get you? The usual?”

“I don’t know if I should feel good about having a usual at my second favourite alcohol dispensary of choice. But sure, the usual.”

“Second favourite?” Eddie scoffed, turning to pull the bottles down for her Tequila Sunrise. “What illustrious dispensary could possibly compete with our nicotine stained and beer lacquered majesty?”

“My own home. It’s less sticky there.”

“You sure about that?”

“Yes.” Robin hissed. “Steve is very clean. And don’t make some kind of gross sex joke about the stickyness, I know you were about to.”

Eddie clamped his mouth shut and slid her drink across the counter to her. “I would have done no such thing.”

“Uh-huh, sure.” She took a long sip through her straw, shuddering a little at the alcohol. “Okay.”

“Okay.”

“You ever met Gabriel Buckley?” 

Eddie blinked across at her. That was her question? “Uh… no. The name doesn’t ring a bell.”

Robin nodded. “You’ve never come across him in any particular bars or clubs in the city?”

“Can’t say I’ve had the chance to frequent them much anymore.”

Robin seemed surprised by that. “You and Steve don’t go?”

Eddie shrugged. “He’s full time at the daycare now and I’m working on my trilogy so we’ve become a bit of an old married couple.”

“Sucks for you guys.”

“Not really. We’re happy.” He smiled across at her as she rolled her eyes.

“Don’t be getting all gooey on me now, you’ll make me lose my train of thought.”

“Sorry.” He said, not sounding sorry at all.

“Well anyway, Uncle Gabe was the first person in my family I came out to. He took me under his wing and all but adopted Steve too. He introduced us to the queer scene in the city. He does drag up there and we went to a few shows, had the time of our lives honestly and he’s actually pretty well known. Or his drag persona is at least.” Robin smiled to herself but her face suddenly became contemplative, almost hard. “You know how hostile the world is towards drag queens, right? He’s been shot at in the street before but it’s never fazed him, he’s a real hard ass. A survivor. And he’s endlessly loyal to his people. Hardly blinks at things that would turn regular people’s stomachs.”

Eddie nodded at her a little wide eyed, trying to figure out just where this was going. Robin set her gaze on him again and he nearly recoiled at how intense it was, like she was bearing huge sharp and fierce teeth and he had the sudden urge to run or to play dead. His whole body felt chilled.

“Do you know how to get rid of a body?”

“I-” he swallowed involuntarily. “I have some theories, I suppose. Doesn’t everyone?”

“Theories.” She laughed, cold and dismissive. “Cute. I do. I know how. Barrel. Drain cleaner. Maybe fire. But that’s an awful lot of effort, right? Lucky for me, my favourite Uncle Gabe works for Hawkins Crematorium.”

She took another sip of her drink, letting the silence permeate between them. “I mean it’s insane,” she emphasised with a sharp hiss, “the body doesn’t even need to be dead to be fed into the furnace. Just… incapacitated. I suppose it depends on what your favourite method is. Like take for instance if you have someone who sleeps like the dead. You could bind and gag that person easily.”

Robin sent a pointed look his way and he suddenly remembered with startling clarity the morning he’d woken up with his bandana tied around his wrist. He’d been so confused, he hadn’t remembered doing it the night before and it had been one of the few nights recently he’d slept alone. Steve had been busy with a bake sale at the day care and hadn’t come over and Robin and Chrissy were staying overnight after a city date night. How had she… how could she have-

“Another example.” She cut through his thoughts, nearly making him jump. “Sloppy eaters. They don’t pay much attention to what they put in their body. They just wolf anything down as long as it looks halfway edible. Or they can’t function without their morning coffee, even if it does taste a little… off.”

Oh Jesus H. Christ. Robin had turned up at the apartment more than once with his coffee order first thing in the morning and while it didn’t always taste wrong, occasionally there’d be something strange about it. Not exactly a bad taste, but weirdly different. He’d still knocked it back carelessly while she’d watched.

“And afterwards, when the body is nothing more than dust you could just… flush ‘em down the toilet. And no one would ever know what happened. I can only imagine Uncle Gabe would be more than happy to help his favourite niece and her best friend if someone needed taking care of.” Robin folded her arms on the bar in front of her.

“Fucking hell, Robin.”

“What?” She asked, the spell of her cold and menacing figure immediately broken as she looked at him curiously. “These are just hypotheticals, silly.”

“I suppose I did ask for this.”

“Exactly. Come on.” Robin lowered her voice again, pinning him with her stare. “Let me walk you home.”

“Stop it!”

“Don’t hurt my soulmate and you have nothing to worry about.”

Eddie unwrapped his apron from around his waist and waved goodbye to Lionel.

“Never on purpose.”

“Oh no, you’re not getting away that easy. Don’t do it by accident either.”

“I’ll try my best but sometimes I can be a bit of a dumbass.”

“At least you’re self aware.”

Their conversation flowed easily between the two of them on the way home like it always did, but when he pushed his way into his apartment he immediately broke away from her. Eddie threw himself into Steve’s arms who had barely enough time to turn and catch him with a shout of surprise, stumbling back into the kitchen cabinets.

“She’s so scary, Stevie. She threatened to kill me and flush me down the toilet.” He mumbled into Steve’s neck, holding on for dear life.

“Did you go full serial killer on him?” Steve asked, trying to brush some of Eddie’s hair out of his face while the other arm held him tight and close.

“I gave him what he asked for.” Over Steve’s shoulder he could see Robin wrap her arms around Chrissy from behind, hooking her chin over her shoulder.

“She’s crazy.” Eddie whispered into Steve’s ear. “Baby, she’s trying to kill me.”

“What’s going on?” Chrissy asked, looking between the three of them.

“Shovel talks.” They all answered at the same time.

“Oh.”

Eddie pulled back just enough to free his face, still pressed flush against Steve from chest to hip, a firm arm around his waist. “Have you two been doing the same?”

Chrissy and Steve glanced towards each other for a second before looking away.

“We’ve discussed it amongst ourselves.”

“You don’t need to worry about it.”

“Wait.” Eddie and Robin looked at each other. “What does that mean?”

“What did you discuss?”

“Never you mind.” Steve pinched Eddie on the ass, out of sight of the other two. “Dinner’s up.” He pulled away, starting to plate up the food.

“No, you can’t leave it there.”

“That was so cryptic, you have to tell us.”

“Yeah, tell us.”

“Tell us.”

“Tell us.”

“Tell us.”

“Tell us.”

“I regret ever introducing the two of you.” Steve sighed like the most put upon mother in the world.

“They’re the worst, aren’t they?” Chrissy agreed, helping to set the table while Eddie and Robin buzzed around them like annoying bees.

“Robin, are you hearing this?”

“They don’t appreciate us, Eddie.”

“Why don't you two run away and get married if you prefer each other so much?” Eddie asked petulantly, crossing his arms.

Chrissy and Steve looked at each other for a moment before Steve put his arm around Chrissy’s shoulders. “Maybe we will.”

Chrissy for her part, wound her arm around his waist. Together they looked like a picture perfect couple, a white picket fence practically manifesting behind them, like a middle page spread of Good Housekeeping. “That'll leave the two of you for each other.” She said. “Feral cats, a match made in heaven.”

Robin and Eddie looked at each other and simultaneously scrunched their noses in disgust and then offence.

“Fuck you Buckley. I'd make you a fantastic wife.” Eddie poked her hard in the shoulder before she smacked his hand away with a scowl.

“I'd be an even better husband,” she tugged hard on a lock of his hair, “just watch me!”

Eddie was gearing up to tackle Robin and engage in some kind of childish slap fight. They’d both more than likely end up hurting themselves more than each other in the tussle but before he could start, the plates were set down on the tables with a thud.

“Are you two going to sit down to dinner or not?”

Chapter continues on AO3

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9

[kwaggysshardmindemporium]

Album! Okay so today was Oar by Alexander 'Skip' Spence. I'm sorry Skip but this is bad. The BEST songs on it are like the definition of "the lower end of okay." And those are the first few songs. After that, it sounds like the artist is getting progressively more bored of making music. I legitimately feel like my time was wasted listening to this. I would say listen if you need a nap, but I've had TWO albums recently that would do that for you that DIDN'T suck completely and totally. (Those would be Ys and The Hour of Bewildebeast, to clarify.) If it wasn't obvious, 1/5. Not the worst thing I've been made to suffer through, but definitely the worst thing I've had in a while.

And you know what? I don't love being this negative. So let's talk about something I LIKE that I've been wanting to post about but never get around to it. Let's talk about my *favorite* band. My favorite song. The song I'm listening to right now to wash the taste out of my mouth. Big long gush plus some song links about something I love very much below the break.

So, my favorite band is The Amazing Devil. You know Jaskier from the Netflix Witcher series? Yeah, he's the lead singer of a band, too. This one. It's great. They write some of the most poignant music you'll hear in your fucking life. The genre I've seen it described as is "gothic folk" and it's very good. Their most popular song according to Spotify at 11.5 million plays, and the first song I ever heard from them myself, is the title track of their second album: "The Horror and the Wild." It's a great song. Here ya go:

That whole album is great, but fair warning if you or a loved one close to you have severe mental health struggles, the opening track "The Rockrose and the Thistle" is about that in a very raw way and might be a tough listen. Similarly, if you've had experiences with abuse, "The Unwanted Animal" towards the middle might be triggering. I personally check both boxes here even if I don't really talk about the latter, and it's probably the only song on there I have real difficulty listening to.

The *best* song on that album in my opinion, is "Farewell Wanderlust," their second-most popular song. Have a link:

I listened to this, got to this song, and knew instantly that this was my new favorite band.

And y'all? This isn't their best song, nor their best album.

Their best album IMO is Ruin, their most recent album. The album goes a little harder on the drums and faster on the guitar, and the subject matter is generally less grim. So it absolutely *soars.* The songs are fucking powerful. The other song I hear a lot of people say they know from this band is on this album because it's... I guess I'd call it a minor viral hit? It's called "Drinking Song for the Socially Anxious" and while it's a good song that title is a LIE. It's a story song about two nerdy and socially stunted people finding solace in each other's presence at a party. It's very sweet but very much not a drinking song.

Another great track on this album that I love a lot is "Blossoms," a song about a very nasty messy breakup.

And let's stop dancing around it. My favorite song from this band, and by extension my favorite song PERIOD and it's not very close, is "The Old Witch Sleep and the Good Man Grace." It's a song about overcoming your demons and if not becoming the person you want to be at least becoming someone who isn't weighed down by the shit the world has shoveled on them. Strap in, it's fucking long.

They do have another album, Love Run. It's their first album. I've listened to it, and it's... fine. Nowhere near as good as the later two, really only bother if you decide you like this band and want the complete experience. You won't be wasting your time but if you're like me you just won't like it as much. I'm not gonna spam links to songs off it because there's not much on there that does it for me.

Don't really have a closer here. Hope a mutual or two actually reads this and gives the band a listen. And even if you don't, if you're seeing this I appreciate you reading it.

[firstdraftblog]

Dungeon Crawlers - 1

By the yellow light of a sunrise, a large valley is lit. There are trees dotting the grassy landscape where a few domestic farm animals graze. A man stands with his son on top of a hill, overlooking it all.

"Look. All of this is ours. From the tree line over there, back to the hills behind us."

Something in the field catches his eye. He raises his hand to shield his eyes from the sun and squints into the distance.

"What is that?" he continues, talking more to himself now than to his son. "A... door?"

....

40 years later:

A giant crab swims up to an island and scuttles up onto the shore. On it's enormous back sits an old, brick house with smoke puffing out of the chimney. An anchor hangs from a side window. As the crab rises out of the water we can see a few blob-like parasites stuck to it's underbelly.

The shore is lined with cartoonish, mutated beach life. The little monsters stare at the crab creature, but most move out of its way without attempting to attack or impede it. The crab continues onwards inland, pushing aside or knocking down trees as it goes.

While the crab scuttles through a heavily wooded area, lightly spattered with monstrous wildlife a little voice from inside the house asks, "when are we gonna be there?"

The crab continues onwards and makes it's way to a hilltop. The front door of the house opens up and a squat, muscular man appears in the doorway. His eyes are wild and his smile is maniacal.

"This is the place!" he says excitedly. Then he turns his head slightly back towards the house and calls, "Drop anchor!!"

A small child appears at the window and opens it before saluting. "Aye , aye daddy!" she says, before pulling a lever that drops the anchor out the window and all the way down to the earth below. As it sticks into the dirt and impedes the crab's scuttle, the beast stops and seems to look around confused.

'This is the spot." the father says and produces three large, orange, watery orbs from within a chest just outside the door. He throws them down onto the grassy land below, and they hit the ground with a 'pop', bursting and releasing gooey, brightly colored liquid that soaks into the ground. The crab chitters and then bends down, as much as its body allows, and begins to drink it up.

As it is distracted, the father swings down to the underside and, with a shovel, begins prying the blob like parasites off of the crab's belly.

Once they've all fallen to the ground, he drops down with them and gives them all a swift 'thwack' with his shovel. They also burst, but instead of leaving behind a liquid, they leaving behind glittering jewels which he leaves where they lay.

A put-upon looking teenager strolls out of the house, jumps down and begins to pick up the coins.

"Geez man, these are probably valuable. Why do I have to pick up after you?" he grumbles to himself.

Behind him, we can see the crab slowly burrow into the dirt until all that is left above the surface is the house.

The door opens again, and the mom comes out, looking around. One excited child sits on her shoulders, and an identical one (the one who dropped anchor) follows at her heels. The dad beckons to them, and the family joins him, looking out over the hill.

The view is the same as from the first scene - an expansive valley in the dimming light - but now the land is absolutely covered in monsters.

"This was my father's land," the dad begins, "and now it is ours. From the tree line over there, back to the hills behind us. When the dungeons first appeared, a number of them appeared all clustered up on dad's land. He couldn't clear them so eventually the monsters spilled out and took over the land... we're gonna take it back."

The teen looks out over the land for a while. He looks off to the sides and sees a few other houses built just past the border of their land. He looks at the door in the field- the mouth of a cave, leading to a dungeon - and then he looks back at his dad.

"Why?" he asks, unimpressed.

[begaydodrughailsaten]

*looks up at your from my crouched position in fount of the fridge mg eyes glowing like a wild animal* yeah same thing i think *continues shoveling fist fulls of shredded cheese in my mouth*

Taking my white ass to the kitchen to eat some more cheese

[angelssfeathers]

“This...This is a scientific discovery!” Flug practically squealed in excitement, almost in a similar manner of his squeaks whenever he gets startled or scared. “I can’t believe it... you... you have a laughter button right here! Nonono, no squirming away from me!” The doctor followed, making sure that he could get a chance to actually be a teaser and make someone laugh. Namely you. “Anddd... got you!” He claimed as he got you into his grasp, which he gladly pulled you into his lap for simplicity and ease to reach for the ‘laughter button’ or rather, your navel. “Aaaa...tickletickletickle! Yep! Definitely a laughter button right here. Just listen to how adorable you sound!” He teased as he continued wiggling his finger into your navel, being silly as usual. He always got super silly when tickling someone. It made it lighthearted and sweet, so, nothing to complain about. “Truly, I’m surprised it’s scientifically possible for someone to be this ticklish. I think I should keep going. Someone has to document how ticklish you are after all!” He would’ve been obviously smiling if he wasn’t wearing the paper bag, his tone was obviously giving that away. “So, allow me to test and document this. Are you ready? Mhm? Very good! Tickle tickle tickle! Kitchee kitchee koo!”

(Enjoy your Ler!Flug once again!)

(- 🌃 anon)

A-

ASCXV SBKCBKS DJNSKSHMXNJCH MA DJCJBCJSBMC MLMD, M ,HSC?!??!?!?!?!!???!!!!! CHSBSNCBHSBUBXJBU????!!!?!!!?!? WHAT THE FUCK. BDNNB.AMDM